The more time I’ve spent with Deuteronomy, the more I’ve come to realize that what we find in these chapters has the potential to change our lives, and not just a little bit, but in significant ways. 

This might sound not just like a big claim, but a confusing claim. Because Deuteronomy, well, doesn’t feel that relevant. But if we feel that way only it’s only because we don’t know how Deuteronomy is supposed to work. We might think of Deuteronomy as something like our Constitution, a document outlining the ideals of what we aspire to be. But what you really have is something different: God coming to a lost group of people and giving them directions for how to get home.

Israel has spent 400 years as slaves in a pagan land, and even before that, their ancestors experienced all sorts of family dysfunction. They have learned and practiced all sorts of unhelpful ways of worship with idolatry, of family, with polygamy and divorce, and of relating to others and wealth. They are a mess. You might say they’re lost, in the dark forest of their own sin without any clue as to how to get out of it. 

And God in the instructions he gives, meets them where they are at, in the forest, and tells them what they need to do next. Okay, you have this polygamy thing, not great, but let me tell you the first step to take. Okay, there are some inequities where some of you are forced to sell yourselves as servants—we’re going to work on that. But here’s the first step you need to take to get out of this mess to head home. The law of Moses is not, “Here is what is perfect.” It’s “Here’s what you need to do to start moving in the right direction.”

Today, we find ourselves in our own mess, our own version of lostness in the forest, and we too are trying to find a way home, a way of life that is good, joyful, human. If we think Deuteronomy is supposed to give us step by step instructions for how to get out of the woods, we’ll be frustrated, because those directions are for Israel. We’re lost in an entirely different part of the woods than Israel was, and so we need to discover a different pathway. But we can study Deuteronomy in a different way, looking not primarily at the instructions, but where those instructions are taking Israel—if we, so to speak, look along the pathway described here, through the trees, we are enabled to see the destination. We can gain a vision for what God wants for his people, what our true home looks like. And as this vision becomes clearer, we too, illuminated by the Holy Spirit can begin to chart our way home.   

In these past few weeks, as we’ve looked beyond these instructions to their intended destination, we’ve seen a couple of key things. First, the life that is good and beautiful is a life that is lived in relationship with God, knowing and worshiping him as he truly is. And second, this life of worship is life experienced in the context of rest and savoring God’s goodness. This is where God was telling his people to go, and this too is where we seek to go.   

This morning, we are invited to notice a third aspect to God’s intended destination; a third aspect to the life we were made for. This good life of worship and rest is a life involving what we might call microcommunities of deeper commitment and deeper connection. To use the language of the Bible, this life of flourishing is a life found in households.

The Importance of Household in the Bible

In Israel, the most basic unit in their society was the household. Now, when you hear “household” you most likely think “nuclear family,” but the word meant something slightly different. A household would include at least a father and mother, their sons and their wives, and their children as well, along with any unmarried sons and daughters. And if the grandparents lived long enough, the great grandchildren would also often be part of that household. Beyond even the biological family, a household would include servants and hired help, and sometimes refugees. Though a household would all live on the same plot of land, there might be two or three buildings to house them together. All told, it could easily be over 30 people all living in close proximity to each other, working together every day, eating meals together, depending on each other. The household was the foundation, the building block of Israel’s society.

The the village or city, also called the clan, was simply a collection of households who lived near each other, often having some degree of blood relation to each other. While the farms of the clan would surround the city, the city itself was where the different households lived, all protected by a gate that would keep them safe from danger at night. When there were complicated clan matters to resolve, the leaders of each household, often referred to as “elders” would gather at the gate to discuss.

So why are we talking about this? Well, when we look at the instructions God gives Israel—when we, if you will, look along the pathway that God tells them to walk on and see the destination it’s pointing to, we discover that the household was something more than just a cultural tradition. The household was something quite important to God, something that he commanded his people to protect as central.

The fifth of the 10 commandments, God’s central instructions is “Honor your father and your mother,” which is about more than little children doing what they’re told. It’s about upholding the very structure of the household, and submitting to its leadership. 

In this morning’s passage we find two sets of instructions given by God toward this very same end of protecting the strength and integrity of the household. In the first passage, we find a description of the kind of mess, part of the lostness that the people of Israel find themselves in: a man has two wives, favoring one and being cold toward the other. But the unloved wife has the firstborn, while the man wants to treat the son of his favorite as the firstborn instead. So in this messy and less than ideal situation, what way should they go to move toward what is good? 

The priority here is to protect the integrity of the household by giving  the firstborn what he is owed. The father “shall acknowledge the firstborn” it says, he shall give him his “right” which is the same word for “justice.” There is an order to the household, and while the patriarch has a certain kind of authority, he cannot just upend things based on his own preference. He is called by God to preserve the integrity and order of the household.

We see the same priority guiding our second passage. Whereas the first of these passages curbs the potential abuse of power of the patriarch, the second addresses the other side: a son deeply and persistently rejects his parents’ instruction into adulthood. The severity of the punishment prescribed reminds us once again that here we are encountering a situation where the people spoken to are standing in a place different from ours. Israel is a nation under God’s rule, and the parents are the primary administrators of God’s governance. They are to instruct their children and all their household. To persistently and unyieldingly reject this instruction is thus the equivalent of rejecting God himself.

In a situation like this, where the household order had broken down, God’s instructions was for the parents to elevate this to the level of the clan: the son is to be brought to the elders of his city at the gate, who are there to ensure a careful investigation and a thoughtful process The parents explain the charge, and if the elders agree with the charge that’s made, that the fault is not with the parents but the son but that they have, as the passage says, carefully sought to discipline/train him and he has refused to hear them, the punishment is the same as we saw two weeks ago for idolatry: the entire community stones the rebellious son. “So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear.” 

Now, again, we’re in a different place and time, when the kingdom of Jesus is not of this world, and the way of responding to rejecting God’s rule is quite different. What we need to notice again here is the trajectory. If we look along the path described in Deuteronomy and seek to peer at where it’s going, if we pay attention to what God prioritizes, we see strong, healthy, flourishing households.

In Deuteronomy 5, Moses restates the 10 commandments that first were spoken by God in Exodus. When he comes to the 5th commandment, he doesn’t just say “Honor your Father and mother,” but adds the emphasis, “as the Lord your God commanded you”—to make it clear that this wasn’t just a human commitment; protecting the household is God’s priority. And then the command goes on to explain that they are to uphold the household in this fashion “so that your days may be long and it might go well with you in the land.” God is saying, “Do this, because it is crucial to societal flourishing. The structure of the household, its integrity and good order will determine whether you can be a functional society that lives well and worships me or one that falls apart.”

Lest you think this emphasis is only an Old Testament thing, consider what we see in Ephesians. Paul tells Christians, “Be filled with the Spirit,” meaning, allow the third member of the Trinity, given to you to give you the power to make you whole, let him do his work in you! And we might wonder, but what does that look like? Here’s what he goes on to say: if you’re filled by the Spirit, you sing with each other in praise to God; you will give thanks in your hearts. And, when you are filled by the Spirit you will grow in your relationships within the household. As the Spirit rebuilds a community into the likeness of Jesus, he rebuilds the household.

Now, there is an important shift in the New Testament about this. Whereas these microcommunities were mapped primarily along biological lines in the OT household, we find an even deeper bond emerging in the New Testament. Yes, households will still usually include some traditional bonds of marriage and biological family. But it will be more than that. In the church, some find themselves rejected by their biological family because of their commitment to Christ. Others, Paul says, for the sake of the kingdom, remain celibate, foregoing the gift of biological descendants. And yet all these people still can be located in households, located in a “house church.” Within a house church you would find a interesting group of people some slaves, some wealthy, Jews and Gentiles, some families and some single. Yet you would also find a deep bond of connection and mutual responsibility to each other. They were in Christ. In this odd collection of people would be spiritual parents and children, mentors and those being taught, people who had no biological ties would call each other brother and sister because they shared an even deeper connection. The house church became a household.

Sometimes these house churches would be brought together into a larger Christian community, more closely resembling the modern church, and that would function as a clan, a collection of households being overseen by elders who were given authority, not because they had many children, but because of their spiritual maturity.

In the New Testament the household changes—it becomes more beautiful. What it doesn’t do is go away. Because this is what we’re meant for. God has designed us to live within the bonds of strong and healthy microcommunities.

Significance for Us

See, when we talk about humanity, we often focus on two levels, the level of the individual and the level of society. There’s me, who I am, what I want, and there’s the community, there’s the public, how we all on this world are to function together. But there is a crucial a third category in between the individual self and society at large. God has designed humanity in such a way that we can only experience what it is to be fully human when we in some sense experience the bonds of a strong household offers. The way we are designed by God to flourish, both as individuals and as a society is as we live in microcommunities that are strong and healthy.

Because, as we both Moses and Jesus teach, the heart of what it is to be human is to love—to be fully human is to love God with all of our being and to love our neighbor. And we don’t learn to love in either dimension simply by ourselves, by reading a book or watching a YouTube video. 

Here’s how I began to learn what it meant to love God. From my parents. One of my earliest memories is of them trying to explain to me the story of God making this world, of our sin, and of Jesus dying. I remember years later working to help my dad plant a vegetable garden and asking, “How do we know that this really happened,” and him patiently teaching me about how to think of this. More than that, I remember what I saw—people, who in of course a very flawed way, oriented their lives around a love for God through church, study, and personal integrity. I learned to love God in my household. Some of you have very similar stories to mine. Others, of course are quite different—but even then my guess is many you, as you think about how you learned to love God, can think of mentors, spiritual parents even who were committed to you who helped you to learn how to love.

And when it comes to learning how to relate to others, what is the household if not a training ground for love? If a household is functioning rightly, we experience what it is to be known, to be recognized with all of our flaws, and all of our selfishness—and yet still be loved. And within that experience we learn to love others in the same way. If a household is functioning rightly, we experience the protection of knowing that others feel responsible for us—that if we’re stuck on a highway somewhere we know someone will notice that we didn’t get home and when they find out where we are they will get us. And we will learn how to bear this responsibility for others as well—to make sacrifices for others because we belong to them, even as they belong to us. And when the household truly is functioning as it is meant to, this training ground of love turns us outward, as love always tends to do, becoming a source of generosity and service to the surrounding community. The household, this microcommunity of belonging, is where we are meant to learn how to love God and neighbor.

And I want to stress again that while the nuclear family is often foundational to the household, we’re talking here about more than this. Historically the nuclear family has almost always been supported by the extended family and recent history has shown its fragility left on its own. A stable household involves a more extended web of relationships. Even more importantly, the gospel moves us to relating beyond biological connections, where we learn and maintain bonds that go deeper than blood, bonds that can incorporate those who are single, or those who cannot experience these things with their biological families. This is God’s intent for households, the destination God intends to lead his people to. 

But how do we get there? Right now I imagine there are at least two very reasonable concerns some of you might have as you’re thinking about this with me.

First, for all the glowing talk about households, what about the fact that it doesn’t always work this way? What about the fact that there are many—far too many times where it is precisely in the household that people are most hurt and abused, experiencing not love but hatred?  

We must be honest and realistic about this. Sin has made a mess of things and we’re a long way from home. This is one of the reasons why households are called to have be accountable beyond itself to the church, the modern clan, if you will, to help address those wrongs. And this is also one of the reasons that we must not simply equate household with biological family, since some will only be able to experience loving relationships as they are adopted into a spiritual family. And yet of course, even those two factors don’t solve this. Until Christ returns, as long as people work to be close and committed to each other, there will also be the potential for great hurt. And yet I would suggest that the alternative of disconnection and anonymity, though it might feel safer, is not the direction we want to go.

Second objection, this all feels very idealistic. How in the world is the microcommunity you’re describing even possible in modern life? Sure, in the New Testament it might work, but don’t you know how much has changed since then? 

And that is totally fair. In the last few centuries there have been some fairly significant developments that have made the biblical vision of the household almost unimaginable. 

Think about geography: until very recently a grown child would either live in their parents’ home or would live in walking distance from it. There would be multi-generational continuity in a place. This would allow extended relationships with family and also deeper ties with neighbors, who would be known for multiple generations. Today, the expectation is that kids will leave a community never to return. And, wherever they land will only be one step along the way as they move from one place to another, never establishing roots or deep relationships.   

Think about economy. Until very recently, most businesses were family businesses, and people’s work would be closely tied to their household. A household’s economic contribution to society involved every member of the family and extended household, which meant that work deepened ties of connection to each other. Now work does the opposite, pulling us away from each other, with each person’s individual job or schooling disconnecting them from their household.

Or think about technology. Until very recently, survival could only happen through depending on each other for food, repairs, even for entertainment, sharing stories together. But now we can do whatever we want and get whatever we want with a click of a button. Complete privacy and disconnection from others is more possible than ever before.

All of this has been like an acid burning away even the possibility of the kind of microcommunity envisioned in the Bible. The truth is, the kind of household held out in the Bible as crucial to our humanity, the type of household that we need to learn to love God and neighbor, that’s not really possible in our present day. I don’t believe we can even with the best of intentions just engineer into place the kind of connectedness or community God intends for us. We’re too deep in the dark forest for that.

But we can start walking along the pathway out. We can take a few steps to move toward this today, and when we get a little further believe that God will show us a bit more. We can, one piece at a time begin to rebuild the household, trusting that if we are faithful, maybe our grandchildren or even great-grandchildren could experience what we have lost.

I believe it begins by developing a vision for what God intends for us in our connection to each other—a better memory of what has been lost and a deeper longing for what one day might once again be. A vision of a microcommunity that includes the nuclear family but whose boundaries are bigger than that, incorporating close friends from church as part of their web of relationships and belonging. An extended household whose vision is about more than comfort or personal happiness, but about being a training ground of love, about being a greenhouse for the world of life, creativity, and service. 

What would a modern version of what we see in the New Testament look like? I don’t believe we need to know. We only need to know what to do next. While that will look different for each of us, let me suggest what those steps will look like. 

    • Walking towards the way of the household will mean moving away from our tendencies to seek to maintain control of our lives by staying at arms’ length from of others and instead move towards commitments to others that diminish personal freedom.

    • Walking towards the way of the household will mean moving away from some of our tendencies to protect our privacy towards recognizing others and be recognized.

    • Walking towards the way of the household will mean moving out of our tendency to be completely independent and develop bonds with others where we are responsible for them and they for us. 

Again, for each of us, what this looks like will be a little different. But if you’re looking a simple idea, I would suggest that being part of a community group, eating together, sharing with each other, and maintaining commitments to each other, is a good place to start. More than that, a good place to start is in prayer to the one who has designed us for this kind of community. Let’s do that now.