Today’s Daily Reading: Deuteronomy 21-23 (KJV)
Click the link below for Alexander Scourby Reading the King James Bible
https://earnestlycontendingforthefaith.com/ListenToTheKingJamesBible.htm
Deuteronomy 21 puts two strong passages right beside each other, and at first they don’t seem connected. But when you see what the New Testament reveals, they fit together like pieces of God’s plan laid out long before Calvary.
The first passage is about the stubborn and rebellious son (Deuteronomy 21:18–21). If a young man kept refusing to obey his father and mother, even after they chastened him hard, the parents were to bring him to the elders of the city. The elders would judge him, and if the charge stood, the men of the city would stone him with stones until he was dead. The reason God gave was plain and serious: “so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.” The law showed how God hates rebellion. It wasn’t just bad behavior—it was a heart turned against authority, and the penalty was death to keep the nation clean and to make everyone else take notice and fear.
Then, just a few verses later in the same chapter, God says this about a man who has been executed and whose body is hung on a tree: “his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God;) that thy land be not defiled” (Deuteronomy 21:23). A man hanging on a tree was a public sign that he was under the curse of God. That wasn’t just a way of disposing of a body—it was a declaration of divine judgment.
Now turn to the New Testament and you see something that takes your breath away. Galatians 3:13 declares, “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” The very thing Deuteronomy called a sign of being accursed—hanging on a tree—became the picture of what Jesus did on the cross. He was made a curse for us.
Think about who we really are. The rebellious son in Deuteronomy isn’t just an extreme case from ancient Israel. He’s a picture of every one of us. The Bible says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way” (Isaiah 53:6). There is none righteous, no, not one. We have all been stubborn against God, chasing our own lusts, refusing His voice, loving our sin. Under the law, that rebellion earns death. The rebellious son dies. That’s the righteous demand of a holy God.
But at Calvary, the whole picture changes. The Lord Jesus Christ—the only begotten Son who never once disobeyed the Father—took our place. Philippians 2:8 tells us He “became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Hebrews 5:8 adds, “Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered.” The perfect, obedient Son submitted Himself to the very death the law demanded for rebels.
So put Deuteronomy 21 next to the cross. The law said the rebellious son must die for his sin. The law also said the man hanged on a tree is accursed of God. Fifteen hundred years before Christ ever came, God placed those two truths in the same chapter: the rebel who deserves death, and the cursed one hanging on a tree. Back then they looked like separate rules in Israel’s law. But when Jesus hung on that cross, those two pictures came together in one mighty act of redemption.
The sinless Son—the One who always obeyed—hung on the tree as the cursed One. He bore the curse that belonged to rebellious sons like you and me. He died the death we deserved so we could live.
That’s the power of this truth. The law exposes our rebellion and shows us what it justly deserves—death and the curse. The gospel shows us the Substitute who took that judgment in our place. Deuteronomy 21 gives us the problem in black and white. The cross gives us the answer in blood.
Brother, don’t miss it. You’re either still carrying your own rebellion and its curse, or you’ve run to the One who became the curse for you. There’s no middle ground. Trust Him today, or face the judgment the law demands. The obedient Son has already paid it all. Will you receive what He did for you?
Keep reading, because the law that exposes sin also prepares the way for the grace that redeems sinners. Tomorrow we’ll move into Deuteronomy 22 and 23, where God keeps giving laws that show His holiness, His care for purity, and His heart for justice and mercy—laws that keep pointing us forward to the greater Redeemer who fulfills them all.
Until tomorrow, stay in the Book. 📖
Brother Tony
Tomorrow’s Daily Reading: Deuteronomy 24-27 (KJV)
Click the link below for Alexander Scourby Reading the King James Bible
https://earnestlycontendingforthefaith.com/ListenToTheKingJamesBible.html