If You Think God Doesn't Care About the Minutae in our Lives, Think Again

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Taking Care of Small Business God's Way (or more laws about minor things) -- Deuteronomy 22:6-12

How many times have we heard someone say, "Just trust God with that" and the response has been, "I don't think God cares about things like this"? Well, this passage is intended to convince us that God does care about more than we think he cares about. Maybe He is less involved in some things than others, but He certainly has an eye for details.

Let's look at some of those laws dealing with minor things that Moses shares from God.

Believe it or not verses 6 and 7 deal with a mama bird and her babies. She is huddling over them. To brood eggs is to sit upon the eggs for the temperature regulation necessary for safe, successful hatching. First we note that God has taken care of that very detail in the way He arranged for their creation and multiplication. But the verses go on to say that if you see such a bird family, and for some crazy reason, you need to take the eggs or the baby birds, fine, but don't touch the mother. Let her live. Let her be. Let her reproduce again. Because if you don't, the verse goes on to say, "it won't be well with you, and your days won't be prolonged."  Wow.  That's some promise for such a minor offence, isn't it? But a law is a law.

David Guzik says, with this law that many Jewish commentators refer to as the smallest, or least of all the commandments, "God simply and plainly commanded kindness to animals". But notice the penalty it carries if it is not followed. God doesn't fool around when it comes to the care of His creations. He goes on to quote:

"Puritan commentator Matthew Poole wrote on this, "Partly for the bird's sake, which suffered enough by the loss of its young; for God would not have cruelty exercised towards the brute creatures; and partly for men's sake, to restrain their greediness and covetousness, that they should not monopolize all to themselves, but might leave the hopes of a future seed for others.""

Guzik also goes on to ask a most obvious question:

"What possible connection can there be between showing kindness to a bird's nests and eggs and little baby birds and national survival?

i. First, because obedience to the smallest of God's commands brings blessing. It puts us into a properly submissive relationship to Him, that this always brings blessing to us.

ii. Second, because kindness and gentleness in the small things often (but not always) speaks to our ability to be kind and gentle in weightier matters. If someone is cruel to animals, not only is that sin in itself, but they are also much more likely to be cruel to people. If Israel allowed such cruelty to flourish, it would harm the nation." (Remember the kid in the neighborhood that liked to drown little helpless birds? No loving parent had cared enough to tell him or her how and why this was wrong. Sometimes we see kids like that grow up to cause much greater harm to humanity.

Matthew Henry adds a third lesson from these two verses about birds:

"It further intimates that we must not take advantage against any, from their natural affection and the tenderness of their disposition, to do them an injury. . . . The remembrance of this may perhaps, some time or other, keep us from doing a hard or unkind thing to those whom we have at our mercy." (We need to remember this when we are working with or reaching out to others who are not like us in how and to whom they show their affections.)

The next section of the passage, verses 8-12 covers a host of other minor laws:

Verse 8 tells us, as Chuck Smith puts it, "When you build a new house, and you're putting on the roof, you've got to put supports around so no one falls off the roof and gets hurt while they're working on your house." Yes, God cares about you not being sued -- just do the right thing.  Follow the safety rules.

On this verse, Robert Jamieson gives us more of the explanatory reason: "The tops of houses in ancient Judea, as in the East still, were flat, being composed of branches or twigs laid across large beams, and covered with a cement of clay or strong plaster. They were surrounded by a parapet breast high. In summer the roof is a favorite resort for coolness, and accidents would frequently happen from persons incautiously approaching the edge and falling into the street or court; hence it was a wise and prudent precaution in the Jewish legislator to provide that a stone balustrade or timber railing round the roof should form an essential part of every new house."

Verse 9 says don't intermix your seeds when planting in a field -- because one seed will defile the other. Yes, God cares about your produce.

On this verse, Robert Jamieson provides the science behind the law: "This also was directed against an idolatrous practice, namely, that of the ancient Zabians, or fire-worshippers, who sowed different seeds, accompanying the act with magical rites and invocations; and commentators have generally thought the design of this and the preceding law was to put an end to the unnatural lusts and foolish superstitions which were prevalent among the heathen. But the reason of the prohibition was probably deeper: for those who have studied the diseases of land and vegetables tell us, that the practice of mingling seeds is injurious both to flowers and to grains. "If the various genera of the natural order Gramineae, which includes the grains and the grasses, should be sown in the same field, and flower at the same time, so that the pollen of the two flowers mix, a spurious seed will be the consequence, called by the farmers chess. It is always inferior and unlike either of the two grains that produced it, in size, flavor, and nutritious principles. Independently of contributing to disease the soil, they never fail to produce the same in animals and men that feed on them" [WHITLAW]." And now you know the rest of the story behind God's thinking.

Verse 10 says when you're plowing a field, don't use one ox and and one donkey -- either two oxen or two donkeys, but not one of each. They don't get along.  Yes, God cares about your productivity and travail in your work.

Jamieson gives us more insight:

"Whether this association, like the mixture of seeds, had been dictated by superstitious motives and the prohibition was symbolical, designed to teach a moral lesson ( 2Cr 6:14 ), may or may not have been the case. But the prohibition prevented a great inhumanity still occasionally practised by the poorer sort in Oriental countries. An ox and ass, being of different species and of very different characters, cannot associate comfortably, nor unite cheerfully in drawing a plough or a wagon. The ass being much smaller and his step shorter, there would be an unequal and irregular draft. Besides, the ass, from feeding on coarse and poisonous weeds, has a fetid breath, which its yoke fellow seeks to avoid, not only as poisonous and offensive, but producing leanness, or, if long continued, death; and hence, it has been observed always to hold away its head from the ass and to pull only with one shoulder." I didn't know all that, did you?  But hey God knew for He created these two animals that way.

Verse 11 says don't wear wool and linen together.  Here's Jamieson again:

"Although this precept, like the other two with which it is associated, was in all probability designed to root out some superstition, it seems to have had a further meaning. The law, it is to be observed, did not prohibit the Israelites wearing many different kinds of cloths together, but only the two specified; and the observations and researches of modern science have proved that "wool, when combined with linen, increases its power of passing off the electricity from the body. In hot climates, it brings on malignant fevers and exhausts the strength; and when passing off from the body, it meets with the heated air, inflames and excoriates like a blister" [WHITLAW]."  Yes, God cares about how your clothes treat you. He wants you comfortable.

And then verse 12 reminds the Israelites that they need to make themselves tassels on the four corners of their garment.  This command, says Guzik, was also to distinguish Israel from their pagan neighbors; in this way, an Israelite man was immediately known by the clothes he wore.

In David Guzik's opinion, each of these laws was meant to separate Israel from her pagan neighbors. He writes:  "When God commands Israel to not do these things, it isn't so much for the sake of the combinations themselves, but so Israel would not imitate the pagan, occultic customs of their neighbors."

Guzik continues:

"As Paul says, Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? (2 Corinthians 6:14)"

Now does that all mean that God cares whether you buy car A or car B? Does He care whether your team wins the championship or whether the other team wins it?  Here's what I think.

We know from our study above that God does care about the way you take care of little things. But notice the onus is on you to do things God's way. It is not on His doing things the way you want them to be without you having to do your homework.

I think God is totally aware of what you are going to buy or which team is going to win a particular game. But I believe He would expect you to do your homework, consider your resources, and your needs, and make an appropriate decision,  As far as your team wining the game goes, as a minimum God is not apt to let a team that has not practiced, gets drunk the night before, or has inter-squad jealousies, win a game. Unless of course, God wants to teach the other team an even stronger lesson in which God may let your unpracticed, still drunk, and squabbling team, win. In that case, most observers would call it a miracle.

So, in conclusion -- God does care about the little things in your life. He is fully aware of them. He expects you to do your part. His plan takes more into account than you can see or imagine.

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