The sermon titled 'God's Passion to Provide Atonement' by Scott Brown explores the challenging text of Deuteronomy 21:1-14, which involves the ritual of sacrificing a heifer to atone for unsolved murders. This passage highlights God's dedication to justice and the seriousness with which He views sin, demanding accountability from the community and its leaders. The sermon emphasizes the lengths to which God goes to provide atonement for sin, drawing parallels between the Old Testament rituals and the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The speaker addresses common criticisms of these difficult passages, arguing that they reveal the depth of human sinfulness and the need for divine justice. The sermon also discusses communal responsibility for sin, the roles of elders and priests, and the broader implications of atonement, underscoring that unresolved crimes pollute the land and that justice is crucial for maintaining God's glory.

Deuteronomy 21, 1 to 14. If anyone is found slain, lying in the field in the land which the Lord your God has given you to possess, and it is not known who killed him, then your elders and your judges shall go out and measure the distance from the slain man to the surrounding cities. And it shall be that the elders of the city nearest to the slain man will take a heifer which has not been worked and which has not pulled with a joke. The elders of the city shall bring the heifer down to a valley with flowing water, which is neither plowed nor sown, and they shall break the heifer's neck there in the valley. Then the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come near for the Lord your God has chosen them to minister to him and to bless in the name of the Lord.

By their word, every controversy and every assault shall be settled. And all the elders of that city nearest to the slain man shall wash their hands of the Hethed, whose neck was broken in the valley. Then they shall answer and say, our hands have not shed this blood, nor have our eyes seen it. Provide atonement, O Lord, for your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, and do not lay innocent blood to the charge of your people Israel. An atonement shall be provided on their behalf for the blood.

So you shall put away the guilt of innocent blood from among you when you do what is right in the sight of the Lord. When you go out to war against your enemies and the Lord your God delivers them into your hand and you take them captive, And you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and desire her, and will take her for your wife. Then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and trim her nails. She shall put off the clothes of her captivity, remain in your house, and mourn her father and her mother for a full month. After that, You may go into her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife.

And it shall be, if you have no delight in her, then you shall set her free, but you certainly shall not sell her for money, nor shall you treat her brutally, because you have humble hair." Amen. Deuteronomy 21 is a much maligned text of scripture and it's commonly used by people who hate God to say, well, if God is loved, then what about all the things in here? What's all of this killing people for doing this or that? What's all this about shaving a woman's head? What's all this about stoning babies?

That's what they say. We're going to spend the next few weeks unpacking what Moses is actually saying here. But these are difficult passages. These are not the most, if you go online and search for sermons on these texts. You won't find very many of them because people don't really like to preach on them.

Quite frankly, I'll tell you, I really have no interest in my own personal passions for establishing the guilt of a city for murderers that could not be found. And that's what this text is about here in verses 1 through 9. This is the great thing about expository preaching. It stretches you. It helps you to study things that you would normally study in the normal course of your life.

But this passage of scripture is very profound and, I think, very helpful to us. It breathes so many things. First of all, it breathes God's passion for the atonement of sins and the great lengths that he goes. We've already seen this in Deuteronomy, how God pursues atonement for the sins of sinners. And this passage really explains sort of the diligence that God requires of his people to deal with sin in the wider community.

And the intellectual disciplines that you see, like in Sherlock Holmes, who's trying to solve a crime. The mind benders, the great lengths that he goes to try to solve a crime really is laid out in this text. That there is enormous energy and there's accountability that needs to be established when there is a crime. It reminds me of my wife's uncle who was working in the San Diego police department. He would often go undercover and he would show up wearing these strange clothes and these wild haircuts.

Sometimes he would look like a madman as he went undercover to go to try to get to the bottom of some issue on the docket of San Diego Vice. Because he was going to great lengths to go to try to find the killer or the drug dealer or the pimp or whoever it might be that he was after. And this is, this passion to find the perpetrator of a crime is really spoken of here in this text. And Moses continues to deal here in this text with the problems that the people will encounter when they come into the promised land. There are problems to be addressed in the promised land.

And so far in our study in Deuteronomy, we've seen that Moses deals with lots of different problems. This text deals with a whole range of very thorny issues. What do you do in very strange and difficult situations? And it just really goes to show that when God calls us into the promised land, it's not a problem-free land. God saves you.

He brings you into his kingdom. He brings you into his church. It's not problem-free. It never really was meant to be problem free. The world is not a problem free world.

It's marked by sin. It's groaning. It's straining against the power of the evil one. And so There are all kinds of issues that bring stress into your life. And Moses is bringing one of those to bear here in this text.

This is the issue of unsolved crimes in a community and the responsibility that must be taken among the people of God to find accountability for them. Now Moses, if you just look at verse one with me, Moses gives an if-then scenario here. The first word in verse one is if, and then in verse 2 is then. So we encounter this if-then scenario. So if something very disconcerting might happen, like for example, anyone is found slain, lying in a field in the land which the Lord your God is giving you to possess.

And it is not known who killed him, then do this. Then your elders and your judges shall go out and measure the distance from the slain man to the surrounding cities." So he starts with this if-then scenario. And he explains this in verses 1 through 9. I'd just like to sort of back up and show what this chapter is communicating here. So that's the first thing that we encounter.

And then in verses 10 through 14, we encounter another situation in which a woman is taken as a captive in war, And there's a marriage. And this text has to do with the limitations of a husband's authority. It does not allow a husband to treat his wife badly. We'll go into that in detail next week. We won't get into that part.

We're only going to focus on one through nine today. And then there's a scene of heartache in a family where there's a son who is not loved. There is the sin of polygamy in the culture and it produces lots of problems. One problem that produces is an unloved son, an unloved firstborn son who should get the inheritance. And God says, no, you do not go with your feelings.

You go with what I've told you about inheritance. And so the second is this heartbreaking situation in a family where there's an unloved son and an unloved wife. And then thirdly, in verses 18 through 21, which is perhaps one of the most controversial texts in Deuteronomy, what do you do with extremely rebellious sons in the land? When parents reach their wits end, what do they do? And what God does is he imposes limitations on parents.

And If you read what is said clearly in the text, this is not about stoning children. It's not about stoning babies. There are many qualifications and issues. This actually is a limitation of parents authority. And we'll talk in detail about this later as well.

But this is in radical contrast to the Roman doctrine of fatherhood, which declared that fathers could do anything they want with their children. They could kill them if they wanted to. They could abort them. They could throw them out. They could do the same thing with their wives.

Here Moses is coming with a limitation for the wickedness and the passions of men who would try to exercise wrongful authority over their children and actually kill them. And what Moses does is he says, no, the whole community must be involved in this. It's not just about you. Parents have responsibilities, but they only have one responsibility, and that is to correct their children. And then, if things are terrible, they bring them to the elders and then the entire community.

So it's not just about, oh, I have a rebellious son, I'm going to stone them. That is an absolutely ridiculous interpretation of this text. And so we'll spend, we may actually spend an entire Sunday morning on this text. Because this is one of the ones that people say, well, if God is loved, then why are you out there stoning babies? And we'll deal with the insidious and the ludicrous nature of that proposition when we get to it.

And then lastly, there's the issue of hanging. When there's a capital crime that has been committed that requires hanging, What do you do? What do you do when you have to hang someone? And in this text is a statement that the Apostle Paul quotes in Galatians chapter 313 about the one who is accursed and hung, and our Savior who is hung on a cross. We will jump from that text to Galatians, and we'll study Galatians and work through an exposition of the Book of Galatians.

And then we'll come back to Deuteronomy again. So we were going to go through Galatians at the end of Deuteronomy. We're just going to do it in the middle of Deuteronomy now. And then we'll come back to it. So that's where we're going with this whole thing.

This is a very difficult and controversial chapter in scripture. It's much misunderstood. And it's much misrepresented, particularly with those who hate God. If you hate God, then you can misrepresent anything and the haters of God have used these words that are here to try to defame the Word of God. Here's what we need to understand in Deuteronomy 21.

It is the Word of God. And as is true in every text of Scripture, when you read Scripture, And if you find something that you don't like, if you find something that offends your consciousness, if you find something that you think is unfair, here's what you need to know. Your brain and your heart has become so sinful that you actually judge the Word of God as being unfair. That's one of our problems as sinners, is that we do not understand the heart of God. And so when we read the words that declare the mind of God, it offends us and it should show us what sinners we are.

And it's easier for us to say, well, I don't like that. That's unfair. God is not unfair. God does all things perfectly. And he speaks all things well.

And every word of God is pure every single word of God is pure and if you don't believe that then you're you know you can be like Thomas Jefferson you can get your scissors out and cut out the parts that you don't like and create the Jefferson Bible so this text of this this chapter is a chapter that we're going to slow down a bit and try to bury in to the things that are here. Now, so that's an overview of chapter 21. Now, I'd like to also now just dive down a little bit deeper into an overview of these first nine verses. Now, here's what these nine verses teach us. And that is that God requires that justice must prevail and that every crime must be punished and unpunished crimes pollute the land.

That's what this text is saying. And that it is the responsibility of the elders of the city to restrain evil and to control it through punishment of the killer. And the entire community has responsibility to solve the crime. The community cannot be indifferent to crimes, or it will be guilty itself. We cannot shut our eyes.

The whole community is under God's condemnation when crimes are not punished rightly. And what does that mean? It means that the earth belongs to the Lord. It means that the glory of the Lord is the most important thing in the world. And part of the glory of God is to punish crimes.

And so the major theme here is found in verse 8, innocent blood, and the atonement that God desires to bring to deal with innocent blood. So now The defiling of the land, this whole thing of polluting the land on behalf of bloodshed is a theme in scripture. And There are a number of ways that the land can be defiled. It can be defiled through various forms of immorality. If you go to Leviticus chapter 18, there are a number of forms of immorality that Moses says defile the land.

The land can be defiled by murder, as we know in Numbers 35 and in various sections of Deuteronomy, including this one. In Numbers 35, Moses says, So you shall not pollute the land where you are, for blood defiles the land, and no atonement can be made for the land, for the blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of him who has shed it. Therefore, do not defile the land which you inhabit in the midst of which I dwell, for I the Lord dwell among the children of Israel." So the land can be defiled by immorality. It can also be defiled by murder. And that's what we saw really at the beginning of time, when Cain killed Abel.

His blood was crying out from the ground. And we see this also in Genesis chapter 9, where we learn that because man has made the image of God, that God will reckon it to men if they shed innocent blood, that he will demand a reckoning. So here in Deuteronomy 21, verses 1 through 9, he's saying mark it, name it, take out a heifer, and kill it, and make sure that Your hands are washed of innocent blood. So that's the overview, really, of NIE. Now let's dive in to the text here.

I've tried to outline this in different ways. But what we have before us now, and you have in your outline, are seven steps for atoning for a polluted land. And So we begin in verses one and two where jurisdiction and accountability is established. And what we read here is that if anyone is found slain, lying in a field in the land which the Lord your God has given you to possess and is not known who killed him, then your elders and your judges shall go out and measure the distance from the slain man to the surrounding cities." So there, so the first thing that that that Moses requires is that there's a jurisdictional establishment. And so that there is responsibility that is identified.

And there's a presupposition here in this passage, and that is that we are accountable to God for crimes. The community is actually accountable to God for crimes. And it's interesting, you know, we live in a society where really our culture has replaced the whole idea of accountability with non-accountability. For example, today in America, The civil magistrate wants to remove responsibility. So we say that a crime is a result of your environment.

We say that a crime is a result of some syndrome that you have. People have done terrible things, have gotten off Scott Free by insanity. And so we try to assign blame to the psychological categories rather than to people. God assigns guilt to people, not the psychological categories. And so that's what's happening here.

And what we find is there's no laziness in dealing with crimes. Intellectual laziness, laziness of schedule is inappropriate when a murder has been committed. And it's sinful for a society to allow murders to happen without pursuit and assignment of guilt for the crime. That's what this is indicating here. And It's not love that lets the murderer go.

It's not love that revokes punishment from a murderer. It is love to avenge the crime. That's what Moses is saying here. And so the first step is to assign jurisdiction and accountability. And then the second is a sacrifice is selected in verse 3.

A sacrifice is selected. And it shall be that the elders of the city nearest to the slain man will take a heifer which has not been worked and which has not pulled a yoke." So there's a heifer. This is a very expensive animal. And the life of the heifer must be taken. Blood must be shed.

Here we find ourselves now entering into the shadow of the gospel. We enter into substitutionary atonement. We enter into something Moses is telling the people that will finally be fulfilled. We've already seen how it's pictured in the sacrificial system and how all of that is summed up in Christ. So here when we come into this whole language about the heifer we enter into the cross of Jesus Christ, his substitutionary death And so Moses now is speaking of Jesus.

That's why Jesus said, Moses spoke of me. And Moses is speaking of Jesus right here as he casts a vision for the atonement that is only secured by the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. So a heifer is taken and a life must be taken, blood must be shed. And this, by the way, this does not prevent the execution of the murder. They can't find the murder.

They might find him later and he will need to be executed. But here, the people are guilty. And there's atonement for the people for allowing it to happen that they could not find, that there were conditions, that there was so much disorder in the culture, that there was so much killing going on, you couldn't even find the killer. And that is the responsibility of the people. The people have sinned.

The sin is laid on all the people for this one murder and this one murder that cannot be found. Something has gone wrong in the society when you can't find the murderer. I think that's what Moses is saying here. And so this is a second step. A sacrifice is selected.

And then thirdly, atonement is made, verse 4. Atonement is made. There's a sacrifice made in the valley. The elders in the city bring the heifer, and they break its neck there in the valley. And so the animal is slain, and the neck is actually broken.

A beautiful, valuable animal dies because of the sin of this killer who was not found and the people who are guilty because he is not found. And then Roles, various roles are played. You know, whenever you're reading scripture, it's always important to say, who are the various players? Who are the personalities involved? And who has jurisdiction over this area?

Who is doing what? And in Deuteronomy, it's a very critical question to ask because is it the civil government that's doing this, or is it an individual? Is it done in the family? Where is this happening? And you see the various jurisdictional roles being explained in Deuteronomy.

And often what people do is they get confused. Remember what we saw the Pharisees were doing? They were taking what the civil government was supposed to do and doing it with individuals. And that was wrong of them. And Jesus rebukes them for it.

So you have to understand who's doing what. So what we see here, that there are various roles that are played that are explained in verses four and five. So the elders bring the heifer down and It's actually the elders that break the neck. That's sort of different than what we see in the temple, because in the temple, the sacrifice for sin was all done by the priests and Levi. So here, this is kind of, one author said, it's the laymen that are doing it.

It's the elders of the city who are charged to keep order in that city. And then the priests do something in verse 5. So you have the elders, they bring the animal down, they break the neck, and then the priests, the sons of Levi, come near, For the Lord your God has chosen them to minister to Him, to God, and to bless the name of the Lord. By their very word, every controversy and every assault shall be settled." Remember, earlier in Deuteronomy, we read that the most difficult matters, if they couldn't be figured out in the civil magistrate area, they went to the priests. Moses commanded them, if you can't, if you have, if you come to something that's too hard for you, go to the priests.

They've been studying the law of God and they, and they can give you the answer. And when they give you the answer, you have to abide by it. That's what Moses told them earlier in Deuteronomy. Now we know that the priests come down, and it's repeated that every controversy and every assault will be settled by them. Because they understood the word of God, they knew how to apply it in society.

And then there's a fifth step in this whole process of atonement. Guilt is cleansed. Guilt is cleansed. There is the washing of hands. In verse 7, we read, then they shall answer and say, our hands have not shed this blood nor have our eyes seen it.

And so they wash their hands. Now it's very interesting that we find this passage quoted in Matthew chapter 27. We'll get to that later, where someone, a civil magistrate, washes his hands. And he washes his hands of blood. And his name is Pilate.

And it's very interesting that this very text is quoted in Matthew chapter 27. And it's there for a reason, and we'll get to that near the end of our time. So there is the washing of hands and the cleansing of guilt, in verses 6 and 7. And then next, the sixth step in God's mercy in working toward atonement is prayer for atonement is given, in verse 8. Here we find the priests, they cry out in a very powerful prayer.

Look at this prayer. They cry out and they say, provide atonement, O Lord. Isn't that an amazing thing? Provide atonement, oh Lord, for your people Israel. This is guilt of the people of Israel.

Again, we know that an individual murdered someone, could not be found. But at the same time, there is guilt on the people if that murder cannot be found. I don't really understand everything about that. I have a lot to learn about that, but We have to be very honest about what's being said here. There is guilt on all the people of Israel for their refusal to, or their inability rather, to find the perpetrator.

So the prayer, provide atonement, oh Lord. These are very tender words. And you'll notice that I've really titled the sermon on the basis of verse 8. This whole text is about God's passion for atonement. This whole text is about the blood guiltiness that all sinners possess and their only hope to receive the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Oh, provide atonement, oh Lord. I think that's the pulsating heart of this whole passage of scripture. For your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, and do not lay innocent blood to the charge of your people Israel. And atonement shall be provided on their behalf for the blood, So you shall put away the guilt of innocent blood from among you when you do what is right in the sight of the Lord." Okay, So there are a number of things here. This prayer for atonement teaches us many things.

And you've read prayers in the Bible. Like, for example, when Daniel prays, he prays and he says, oh, Lord, we have sinned. And it's the collective sins of the people. Nehemiah does the same thing in his prayer. After he surveys the walls, he falls down and he cries out to God and he says, oh Lord, we have sinned.

Well, Nehemiah didn't do everything that he was crying out for, but somehow the sins of the people are implicated upon the individuals of that society as well. And somehow all the people have a certain kind of guilt for the sins that run in a reign of terror in the world. Many of the sins that are running even today, I think this text means that there's a blood guiltiness of mankind that must be atoned for in some way. And we know that way. It's the blood of Christ atones for those sins.

So there's this prayer that sins should be resolved. And This resolution of sin is so prominent in everything that Moses is trying to teach in this passage. David said in Psalm 26, he demonstrates his heart's desire to have clean hands. And he says, vindicate me, O Lord, for I have walked in my integrity. I have trusted in the Lord.

I shall not slip. Examine me, O Lord. Prove me. Try me. Try my mind and my heart, for your loving kindness is before my eyes.

And I have walked in truth. I have not sat with idolatrous mortals, nor will I go with the hypocrites. I have hated the assembly of the evildoers and will not sit with the wicked. I will wash my hands in innocence. I will go about your altar, O Lord, that I may proclaim with the voice of thanksgiving and tell all of your wondrous works.

O Lord, I've loved the habitation of your house." David is saying, I've washed my hands in innocence. And that's what Moses is advocating, that the washing of hands must take place, or there's blood guiltiness and eternal fire for those who do not have their hands washed by in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Psalm 73 shows the difference between the godly and the ungodly. The godly are aware of their dirtiness of their hands and their need for cleansing. Psalm 73 12 says, behold these are the ungodly who are always at ease.

They increase in riches. Surely I have cleansed my heart in vain and washed my hands in innocence, for all day long I have been plagued and chastened every morning. The psalmist is talking about those who sit at ease and they have no consciousness of their need to be cleansed and yet that for those who would be saved they would need to know how greatly they've sinned against God, not just individually but corporately. They have contributed to the corporate sins of their nation and they are guilty. They are one million percent guilty.

If you've broken one point of the law, you've broken them all. We are a million, we're a billion, we're a quadrillion percent guilty of the sins that so have afflicted us. And so The sixth step is a prayer for atonement. And then there's a seventh step. The critical purpose is accomplished.

Verse 9, put away the guilt of innocent blood from among you. That's the purpose of it all. That's sort of the climax of it all, that guilt is put away. And it's put away by being obedient to take these steps to atone for sins. Now, I'd like to move to some applications here.

And I've got several applications that I'd like for us to really consider from this text. First of all, unsolved crimes should be a concern for all of us, because they pollute the land. You might have a nice little family. You might have a nice little church. You might have a nice little business where rampant sin is not running.

But you live in a world where it is, and you should be concerned about it. And in some way, and I don't understand exactly how, somehow the sins of society shine upon us. They affect us. And there's some kind of blood guiltiness that we have in the midst of living in a wicked and perverse generation. We're just not individuals.

We are individuals standing before God, but there's a bigger picture. And unsolved crimes should be a concern for us. Here's the second, every crime will be avenged by God. Every crime will be avenged by God. In the providence of God, often as Matthew Henry said, hidden works of darkness by strange occurrences are not found out.

But the truth is that God, God as the avenger of blood, He will bring every sin to justice. He will bring every secret sin to justice. He will bring every sin that was hoped to be secret to justice. Imagine the emotion that Moses must have had when he spoke this, because he himself hid an Egyptian in the sand to try to cover up his sin so that no one would find it out. Moses himself was the great sinner in this whole matter.

He's standing before the people, And he's telling people that there is this great sin upon the land, and it curses the land, and he is that man. Amazing. And every time Moses stands before the people and points the finger of the Word of God, it always points back. Because he's not only broken one law, he's broken them all. And he's broken this law as well.

Imagine how Moses must have felt as he delivered this very law, knowing that he himself had violated the law of God and tried to cover up his own sin. But Every crime will be avenged by God. Nobody gets outside of God's authority. Nobody is able to escape from their sins, except through the blood of Christ. In the book of Revelation, in chapter 6, there's a picture of the souls of those who have been slain for the Word of God under the altar.

Imagine that. If you can see, just imagine this picture. There are these souls who have been slain for the Word of God and they're under the altar and they're crying out in the loud voice. Imagine this. They're crying out.

This is... And they're saying, Oh Lord, Oh Lord, holy and true, how long will it be until you avenge the blood of those who dwell on the earth? They've gotten off free is sort of what they're saying. How long will it be before this blood is avenged? And then a white robe is given to each of them.

And then they're told that they should rest a little longer until the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who would be killed were completed. In other words, there's still, the vengeance won't be given out until the number of them has been completed. In other words, there aren't enough martyrs yet. God is waiting until a time of completion to avenge the blood of the martyrs. I think that means that He's not going to avenge the blood of the martyrs all the time here on this earth, but He will do it.

There won't be one sin that will go unpunished in the world, not one sin of yours and not one sin of mine. All will be punished. All will have to have shed blood. Someone will die for your sins. And all sins will be avenged.

And so every crime must be atoned for. There must be a resolution for every crime. Blood must be shed. This is what Hebrews speaks of, of the mediator of the New Covenant, who by means of death, for the redemption of transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the internal inheritance. And, for when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and goats with water, scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people saying, this is the blood of the covenant which God has commanded you.

This is the blood of the covenant which God has commanded you. Do those words ring familiar to you? We will read those very words in our communion service in just a few moments. The blood of the covenant. We celebrate this atonement today according to the way that Moses communicated it there at the end of his life in this speech that he's giving in Deuteronomy 21.

Then likewise he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle and the vessels of the ministry, and according to the law almost all things are purified with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no remission." So That's how sins are always atoned for. Fourth application is really in the form of a question. Is your land the land of bloodshed? Is your land a land of bloodshed. And the idea in this text is that the land must be cleansed of its bloodshed.

And the people are guilty of their inability to constrain evil. They have guilt by not being able to constrain it. And the atonement is for those who have responsibility for it, because man is made in the image of God. Genesis 9, the Bible is very clear that man is made in the image of God, and murder destroys that image. And so we live in a culture where not only do we refuse to bring punishment, and we say that someone's crime was because of insanity or something.

Not only that, but we live in a society in which in just about in a span of not even a half a century, we've murdered at least 50 million babies through abortion. And we have to understand that we cannot shut our eyes and we cannot shut our ears in a society that sheds innocent blood. The church has a responsibility to cry out for innocent blood. If the church does not cry out, no one will. And it's so easy for the church to forget about the innocent blood that's shed every day in our land.

Do you think the judgment of God is against the nation that will not stop the shedding of innocent blood. If you read this text, honestly, you have to believe that. That there is blood guiltiness on nations and all the individuals that live in that nation that allow innocent blood to be shed. That's a very sobering principle that's in this text. And then, fifthly, unsolved crimes punish the innocent.

Unsolved crimes punish the innocent. And in this case, it was an innocent heifer. In our case, it was an innocent Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who took the punishment for our sins. Because without the shedding of blood, there's no remission of sins. And here, in this context, the worshipper brings the animal, and he lays his hand on the animal and kills it.

And the animal is a substitute for sin. And we find this absolutely as a shadow of the cross of Jesus Christ. Hebrews 13, 11 says, for the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin are burned outside the camp. Therefore, Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach.

For here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come. Therefore, by him, let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name. But do not forget to do good and share, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased." Here in Hebrews 13, you have this picture of the Lord Jesus being sacrificed outside the camp. I don't know if this is the connection here. Here, the heifer is definitely outside the camp.

It's in a beautiful valley. It's by a stream. It's not in the temple. It's definitely outside of the normal sacrificial methodology and location. So I don't know if Moses was talking about this Christ being sacrificed outside of the camp or not, it seems to me that it might likely be.

But what we do know is what Peter said to us, that he who committed no sin nor was deceit found in his mouth, who when he was reviled he did not revile in return, when he suffered he did not threaten, but he committed himself to him who judges righteously, who himself bore our sins in his own body, on the tree, that we having died to sins might live for righteousness, by whose stripes you were healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls." So Moses is speaking of God's passion for the atonement of sins among mankind. God created men in the image of God and through the fall sin has racked our bodies and we are full of sin and we must have atonement lest we be cast into outer darkness for all of our sins and the sins of our communities. And God has supplied help for sinners. Now in Matthew chapter 27, a certain governor quoted this verse in Deuteronomy.

And in Matthew chapter 27, verse 24, we read, when Pilate saw that he could not prevail at all. But rather than a chew-malt was rising, he took water and washed his hands, before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person. You see to it. Now out of the mouth of Pilate is a quotation of Scripture. And all the people answered and said, His blood be on us and on our children.

What an astonishing thing that the crowd replied with. His blood be on us and all of our children. And what that means is that every person who ever sinned sent the Lord Jesus Christ to the cross. It means that He suffered and died for our sins. Now, aren't you glad that it was His blood that was shed?

Aren't you glad that it was the perfect lamb of God who never sinned, who always kept all of the law? The Lord Jesus Christ never broke the law as we have and He has taken the punishment for our law breaking, and taken it upon himself, and and he was accursed for our sins. And it is true that His blood is on our hands. That is true. And this is the glory of the Gospel, that God in Christ Jesus sets sinners free by the shedding of a sacrificial lamb.

That it would be true that men and women and children could lift their voices toward heaven and give thanks and be free and be truly free. The Lord Jesus said, you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for this astonishing picture of the blood of Christ, how the thread of redemption runs and continues to run even today. How you've made atonement, how you've had such a passion to pursue sinners, how you've called us by name, how you reach your hand down and rescue us, how you go to great lengths to communicate your desire for atonement for sin.

In Jesus' name, Amen.