Deut 21:22+23, "And if a man has committed a sin worthy of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his corpse shall not hang all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on the same day (for he who is hanged is accursed of God), so that you do not defile your land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance. 
    	In this morning’s reading, we have set before us some of the detailed elements that would happen to the people of God in their habitation of the Promised Land. The Lord foreknew these issues such as the finding of a dead body, or dealing with captive women from conquests, or the rights of the first born son. He even provided for the significant and severe handling of a wayward and obstinate son, who was a rebellious glutton and drunkard. 
We also have these two verses which usher in the whole aspect of the severity and the solemnity with which the Jewish nation perceived the awfulness of hanging someone on a tree. It is vital to us to have some understanding of what was at stake when a person was killed by being hanged from a tree.
	Our current day society has withdrawn itself from the stigma that was part of this type of death as in the days of the scriptures. So sadly, we have been a part of such a violent history, with the hangings of our western expansion, and then the numerous lynchings of the civil rights era. As a result we do not understand how awful this is before God. Death by hanging on a tree no longer carries the terrible and vile and repugnant and awful essence of the curse of God upon anyone who would be hung from a tree. We have become desensitized to such a vile means of death. It is, sadly, a more or less an accepted means of the treatment of violent offenders, and even more regretfully, innocent victims of hatred and animosity in the days of not that long ago.  
	This type of death, especially to the Jewish nation, was the ultimate punishment that could be meted out to the most vile and despicable and contemptible offender of that day. To be hung on a tree meant that the whole of the social order was witness to the public punishment of one who had committed the most foul and odious of sins. This was seen as the ultimate form of God’s judgment because it took away the very dignity of the person being hanged. It reverberated throughout the entire familial structure of that criminal. The whole social fabric was frayed and tattered when such a punishment had to be meted out because it put such a stain of guilt upon all who were connected with the vile offender. 
	It was bad enough that the person was so guilty as to deserve this type of death. However that individual became a public display to all the surrounding people of what would happen if anyone else did the same or similar offense to the holiness of God and His Law in the communal order. Hanging on a tree was only for the most egregious of sins, as the ultimate means of the people to strip that criminal of every sense of dignity and seemliness. 
Keep in mind that most of the time that someone was sentenced to death in the Old Testament; it was by the casting of stones by all the citizenry. This was the usual form by which the Lord decreed that an offender of His Law would be dealt with by the leaders of the cities and communities. Again, it was to make a public example for the well being of the whole society. However, death by stoning was not as odious to the people as was death on a tree. 
As well, the body of the person hanged would always be removed by the end of the day, as stipulated by the Lord as in this morning’s passage, …his corpse shall not hang all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on the same day (for he who is hanged is accursed of God), so that you do not defile your land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance.       
    	The community wanted to allay any dishonor of the Lord by not defiling the land with such a corpse on the tree overnight. It was one thing to have to use such a vile and abhorrent means of punishment, stripping away everything that made that person a human being. But, to defile the land of the Lord by not removing that body before the end of the day was even more abhorrent to the sensibilities of the people exactly because of the requirement of the Lord which we just reiterated. The people would not tolerate an even greater indignity to their deep feeling of the shame that shrouded the whole miserable means of this type of death, so they were insistent on the removal of the corpse by the end of that day.
	This is some of the background that should cause us to have an even greater depth of appreciation for what Our Lord Jesus Christ came to this earth to endure for the sake of our salvation. He was not just coming to die some death. He came to die the most ignoble and odious and disdainful type of death that would indicate that He had become the direct object of the most severe outpouring of the judgment of God. …(for he who is hanged is accursed of God)… 
This was not set aside for Jesus. Itwas the very focus of why Jehovah made this declaration all those centuries earlier. It was the reason that Jesus took upon Himself the full measure of the decreed justice of God for your sin and for my sin. He was sinless. He was perfect. He was undeserving of such a stigma of dishonor and horror and shock and disgrace and utter humiliation as a human being. 
	He never made it a secret that He had come to die, and to die in such a horrid and unwarranted manner. Please open to John 12:28-33 in which we have the account of how Jesus was so knowledgeable about what was before Him on this earth.
	John 12:28-33, "Father, glorify Thy name." There came therefore a voice out of heaven: "I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again." The multitude therefore, who stood by and heard it, were saying that it had thundered; others were saying, "An angel has spoken to Him." Jesus answered and said, "This voice has not come for My sake, but for your sakes. "Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world shall be cast out. "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself." But He was saying this to indicate the kind of death by which He was to die. 
	It was the crucifixion that would lift Him up from the earth. He would be hung on the cross, the tree of this accursedness in His death. It was the only way in which the full plan and purpose of God could be accomplished. Yet it was still so vile and so disgusting that the people could not understand what He meant. They could not fathom that He would die such a brutal and reprehensible death as the focus of the totality of God’s wrath. 
This horrid crucifixion was absolutely the only means by which such an unmerited salvation could be freely bestowed upon those who would not only accept that fact that Jesus was crucified on that cross made of rough hewn wood, but also that He did so because of the sin of others. It was none of His own, since He was without any sin or trespass. He was the perfect Son of God, without blemish or any spot of transgression against the will and the Law of God. He was the perfect Lamb Who was slain in such a reprehensible fashion for any who would believe upon Him. Then, only by the power of God, He was raised from that death, resurrected and glorified forevermore so that the grace and the mercy and the love of God could reign in our lives.
	We return to the awful stigma that this type of death had within the nation of Israel. On the eve of His crucifixion, because of the despicable manner of His death, those Jews who wanted Him dead besought Pilate to remove His body before the end of the day. We have this recorded in John 19:30+31. 
John 19:30+31, When Jesus therefore had received the sour wine, He said, "It is finished!" And He bowed His head, and gave up His spirit. The Jews therefore, because it was the day of preparation, so that the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. 
    	Hopefully, having a little better understanding of the attitude of the Jews about the manner of Christ’s crucifixion should help us to relate more intensely and with greater understanding as to what the awful stigma of crucifixion meant to the people of that day. It is an inherent and overriding theme that the Apostle Paul shared with the readers of his letters. 
Keep in mind that the idea that anyone could be saved by the death of someone hung on a cross would have been utter anathema to the Jews of that day. The Gospel message was filled with everything that the Jews abhorred. That was often the reason that Paul was so violently removed from the temple and from the communities, even to the point of beatings and public attacks which left him near death.
	Yet listen carefully to the encouragement that the Apostle puts forth to those who would but choose to believe in the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Our Savior. We will begin with 2 Cor 5:18-21, if you would please turn to it.
	2 Cor 5:18-21, Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were entreating through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. 
	In this passage we have the reality that Jesus became sin on our behalf. He, the perfect Lamb of God, was hung on that tree and suffered the intensity of all that the holy judgment of God would rain down upon Him. He took upon Himself, willing, the fact of dying the death that meant that He was accursed of God for you and for me and for all who will accept His death and resurrection as our means of being reconciled to God. In full accordance with that fact, when we are so cognizant of the horror that we put upon the Beloved and Perfect Son of God, we need to ask Him to now live forth, in the resurrection power of His life in us. We need to ask God to make known all the fullness of the purity and the perfection of Jesus in the course of how we now conduct ourselves before Him. We are now and forevermore freed from the curse because Jesus became that death curse in our stead.
	The Apostle Paul makes this so very evident in Gal 3:13+14. Gal 3:13+14, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us — for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree " — in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. 
    	Because of the fact that Jesus died in this fashion, He became the object of the full outpouring of God’s wrath as accursed and despised. The Father did not withhold any of the righteous and just and holy chastisement, retribution, and castigation that sin dictates. It all rained down upon this only perfect man Who hung on that cross, now and forever bringing forth redemption for Jew and Gentile alike who will accept this freely and mercifully offered salvation.
	Then the Apostle recounts for us how our full and utter appreciation for the death that Jesus died on our behalf and how the glorious power of His resurrection should be manifested in everything that we do. All our conversations with others, all our interactions, all our behavior must be in line with that which will show God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, just how much we are in awe of His tremendous and immeasurably wonderful sacrifice. We find one example of this in Paul’s letter to the Philippians, Chapter 2, verses 1-11, if you would please open to it. 
	Phil 2:1-11, If therefore there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. 
    	The Apostle Peter joins the chorus of just how immeasurably and eternally satisfying to the Holiness and the Righteousness of God was the perfect sacrifice of Jesus nailed to that cross. He details how much that perfect love of Christ accomplished in our lives, now and forevermore in 1 Peter 2:21-25. Jesus bore upon His body the full brunt of the curse of sin in order that we, the lost and the feeble and the sick and the dying, would have eternal life in all the abundance of His glory and His grace and His mercy and His so manifestly displayed love.
	1 Peter 2:21-25, For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth; and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously; and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed. For you were continually straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls. 
	As we recognize just how awful the death that Christ died was, once and for all time, we can begin to offer Him the praise and the adoration that He so distinctly and gloriously deserves. He let Himself be nailed upon that rugged and rough hewn tree for the sake of bringing the full measure of God’s love and forgiveness and grace and mercy and righteousness and holiness into our lives. Because we believe in Him, He now lives forth triumphantly in us to show the whole of creation the full measure of the heart of God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So be it!
"And if a man has committed a sin worthy of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his corpse shall not hang all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on the same day (for he who is hanged is accursed of God), so that you do not defile your land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance. Amen.

	This morning’s benediction for today and this New Year is Ps 86:11-13. Teach me Thy way, O Lord; I will walk in Thy truth; Unite my heart to fear Thy name. I will give thanks to Thee, O Lord my God, with all my heart, And will glorify Thy name forever. For Thy lovingkindness toward me is great, And Thou hast delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol. Amen.