Deuteronomy 22 - God's Order in All Things

let's go to Deuteronomy chapter 22 and I want to put up an outline of what we're gonna be looking at in this chapter because it's fairly full this is chapter 22 of Deuteronomy you can see online that in verses 1 through 4 God through Moses is going to spell out some practical elements of what it means to love your neighbor you know you can say all day long love your neighbor love your neighbor love your neighbor but of course if you don't ever really kind of put it into practical terms sometimes we lose sight of it then in verse 5 just one single verse he's going to deal with the order and distinction of creation it's not the only time he'll deal with that verses 6 & 7 will talk about preserving the means of life we'll talk about the smarts involved in that safety measures are going to be dealt with in verse 8 he'll come back to the order and distinction of creation in verses 9 through 11 he's going to talk to them about remembering the Word of God in verse 12 and then verses 13 through 30 is going to be a whole host of really interesting and somewhat embarrassing sexual immorality topics so there we go are you ready chapter 22 verse 1 you shall not see your brother's ox or his sheep going astray and ignore them you shall take them back to your brother all right what did stop here what's this all about he's now he's giving I kind of like to call it putting feet or legs giving legs to an earlier command let me put on the screen for you an earlier command Leviticus chapter 19 verse 18 look at this you shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people but you shall love your neighbor as yourself I am Yahweh I am the Lord all right there it is love your neighbor as yourself that means love your neighbor in the way that you would want to be loved right that's essentially what that means but you know you can say that and I can say that and and and we can say hey man you know love your neighbor but if we don't give some examples of what that means it tends to kind of go over our heads and so what what Moses is doing now or the Lord through Moses is doing in these first four verses anyway is he's giving a rather simple yet very practical sort of outline of how real neighborly care and concern might be shown and he's using examples of things that would happen in their culture it's probably not something you and I are gonna come around you know with someone's you know animal wandering onto your property or seeing it along the road or whatever but that's the point that's being brought up here if one of your neighbors animals wanders off or more specifically wanders on to your land what are you gonna do well let's face it the easiest thing to do is nothing and here's why we're busy and it's inconvenient I mean to help somebody out with their animal it's thinking if I'm if I'm out on the road somewhere or I'm in my field or something as a farmer I'm there because I've got work to do right I'm on the road because I need to go to town and maybe pick up supplies maybe I'm out in the field because I'm working my crop I'm bringing my Micra maybe I look up from my own work and I see you know my neighbor's ox or something like that wandering along just you know and I know that it's not where it's supposed to be and I'm thinking oh man take care of your animals mister neighbor right I mean that's my friend I'm irritated I'm annoyed you know guys the guy keep this thing tied up what's his problem I got work to do right but notice what God says here in this first verse he says you shall not ignore it oh man so what do I gotta do well if III find this animal wandering around I I need to take care of it I need to take it back to my neighbor now the other natural instinct rather than doing nothing when I find something of my neighbors is to claim it as my own right Finders Keepers losers weepers right isn't that how it goes and that animals on my property and possessions nine-tenths of the law we like to say you know so this animal wanders onto my property I just kind of what I take it into the barn I tie it up and I say one more animal for me well so doing nothing or doing something which is keeping the animal are two responses of my own carnal nature God says I want you to go beyond your carnal nature and I want you to respond to this person as you would have them respond to you if it was your animal that was found and you would and and you would want them to return the animal to where it belongs and again it isn't the most convenient thing to do it's kind of like that feeling you get when you're done getting groceries and you walk out to your car and you unload the shopping cart and then you look up to see that the shopping cart returned area is across the parking lot and it's hot or it's raining or you're in a hurry or you happen to glance around the parking lot notice nobody else put their cart back and you're kind of thinking huh and we all know the feeling right we know what that's all about and and we just it's like I gotta get going and you know by the besides don't they pay people to come out here and wrangle these things right take them back in that's probably you know I I don't want to take the guys job away or anything like that what's interesting about this though is that this issue of abandoning a shopping cart is a topic that if you actually know I can't imagine you wanting to google this but I did and it's an interesting topic because it gets a lot of press I mean you'd be shocked how many people write on their blogs about returning shopping carts I found I found a quote let me show you this quote online this is kind of cute abandoning your shopping cart highlights selfishness and irresponsibility it shows someone who is entitled and thinks others should clean up after them the shopping cart can teach us a lot about Society and someone's character so there they kind of put us in our place didn't they you know now you might think that that quotes a little strong but what's interesting about this is that God felt that what his children do with someone else's property was important and he wanted them to care about others because you know okay so maybe a shopping cart isn't the best example the point is an animal that he's using here in this passage is his property and was very very important property back in those days and a lost animal could mean lost revenue or lost resources you know for the family so he goes on in verse two and he says if he does not live near you and and you do not know who he is the mean in other words the owner of this lost animal you shall bring it home to your house and that she'll stay with you until your brother seeks it then you shall restore it to him in other words you need to take care of it not just tie it up and let it starve you need to take care of it give it food give it water and wait till your brother comes seeking his lost animal verse three says and you shall do the same with his donkey or even if it's not an animal with his garment or with any lost thing of your brothers which he loses and you find you may not ignore it and it goes without saying you can't claim it as your own that's what you know I once watched a kind of a documentary sort of a thing about just people and they you guys remember phone booths back before we our phone booth was in our pocket or person they used to actually have phone booths some of younger people might be surprised at this that's where Superman changed but anyway they would this was probably done back in the 70s they took a they took like a quarter just as simple and they stuck it on the little counter thing there in the phone book and then walked away and just trained a camera on this thing just to see what people would do you know but that wasn't all of it what as soon as the person was in the phone booth and as soon as they grabbed the corner someone a woman would walk up to them and say oh I left some money in the phone did you happen to see it there and it was kind of an interesting sort of a reveal on the character of different people who had just the camera saw it just pocketed that money right did you see any money in the photo any money sorry and yet some people would go oh yeah I did hear that's your money no problem you know interesting sort of a thing but are usually our natural tendency is just to you know hang on to it so he says even if your your brother loses something and he doesn't live near you and so forth take care of it for him until he comes to back to get it verse four he says you shall not see your brother's donkey or his ox fallen down by the way and ignore them now here the man is with the donkey the person your neighbor is with his donkey he's either working with it or or Halling with it and the donkey or ox or whatever the animal is has stumbled and and things maybe have fallen over who knows but he says whatever it is don't ignore the situation you shall help him to lift them up again right now you might think oh this is inconvenient enough if this is your neighbor your neighbor who you probably know probably know right but do you know that the command even gets more personal than this we if we I won't make your turn there I'll put this up on the screen in Exodus look at this this gets way more personal if you meet your enemies ox or his donkey going astray you shall bring it back to him if you see the donkey look at this of one who hates you lying down under its burden you shall refrain from leaving him with it in other words leaving him stuck with this animal that can't get up you shall rescue it with him come alongside him and help him get his animal back up on its feet or whatever needs to happen to help but who are we talking about here now we're talking not about neighbour we're talking about enemy here the point if you're gonna struggle helping your neighbor you're probably gonna have a real hard time helping your enemy right if you have a natural tendency to want to help your neighbor you might be a little more open to the idea of helping your neighbor but here's the usual thing that's gonna come up in our hearts and minds why should I help him why in the world should I help this guy he's done nothing but ridicule me he's tried to hurt me he's stolen you know things he slandered me on several occasions I mean the guy is just you know he's not worth it he's not worth my time no worth hey I got thing I got my family to take care of I can come up with all kinds of excuses can't you couldn't we they gave you a piece of paper in there and numbered it from one to ten could you list 10 excuses why you shouldn't help your neighbor I could do it probably in 60 seconds because I'm good at excuses I don't need any help to make excuses but God says even if it's your enemy can you roll that through in your mind right now you're driving along to work and there's this person at work who's been going to the boss and bad-mouthing you getting you in trouble and you are in trouble because of this person and you see them broken down along the side of the road what do you do the heart of the Lord and I know we're not under the law but the heart of the Lord is pretty clear here help them help them take care of the situation whatever it may need you see these these first four verses of the chapter they make us pretty uncomfortable because they strike at the core of the existence of our sinful nature which can easily be very much in control of our lives if we allow it to as believers as you well know I am assuming you know as believers we are not obligated to the flesh any longer we've been set free from the tyranny and control of the sinful nature but we can still choose to go there and if I angry at somebody I probably will if somebody has made me mad and somebody slandered me and done something to hurt me or my family and I see them in a difficult situation my flesh wants to say ha he's getting his but God wants me to rise above that he wants you to do the same he wants us to look at that situation and say you know what this person is a sinner just like me and but for the grace of God you know there's no difference between the two of us I need to reach out and help this person I don't want to and I think that's fairly safe to admit I don't want to do this I don't want to help this person Lord but you know what you want me to rise beyond this sort of a base carnal response to this individual you want me to speak words of redemption restoration kindness even though I'm not getting any of that in return boy that's hard right can we just all admit I mean we're talking about some of the hardest most difficult things you can imagine and apart from the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives forget it now verse 5 is going to kind of seemingly change the subject matter here and it stands here in these verses on its own but it says a woman shall not wear a man's garment normal a man put on a woman's cloak for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God all right we need to take a look at this and we need to ask ourselves some questions about it because I'm sure most of you are aware that many even Christians have taken this command here in verse 5 as kind of a proof text if you will on women wearing pants particularly and that's where they kind of hone in the problem is what if what if pants are common for women in a particular society to wear then it's no longer men's clothing the fact is even in Old Testament times there were pieces of clothing that men and women wore in common even back during the time of Moses during the time of Jesus long robes wrapping garments they were common for both sexes sure there were certain elements or even colors that set them apart from one another but but essentially the garments were very similar and yet the point of this passage is not just about garments he's using garments as an example the point of the passage is preserving the distinction of gender and boy isn't that a subject for 2017 I mean good grief it strikes this sort of a verse strikes right at the center of so much controversy and disagreement that is going on within our culture right now not only are gender differences being blurred today they're being obliterated you know you guys got to understand gender differences have been blurred for a long time we just didn't really care because it didn't come out in quite as much of a in-your-face sort of a way but we've been we've been blurring gender distinctions for a long time for generations and and just little by little by little you know and yes it's it's gotten much faster and more significant in recent years but now we've we've we've graduated you know into what we've created these days which is the idea of sexual identification you guys familiar with that essentially that means that whatever gender I identify with others are obligated to respect my position as legitimate and real even if all appearances say something else doesn't matter if I'm biologically a man if I say I identify as a woman then you have to respect that and you have to afford me the usual allowances that you would give to a woman or your gonna get in trouble because the government's even behind this nonsense you know and they're starting to even put teeth to the laws related to some of these things that means basically you know think about it if a man who is clearly and biologically a man came here to Calvary Chapel Ontario and happen to say that he identified as a woman he we have two supposedly allow him to go into the women's restroom you know and have all of the usual sort of you know rites of a woman were in fact were obligated to even call him by feminine titles if he so desires and and it's madness it's madness let's just call it what it is you guys it's it's insanity and and this is being you know foisted upon us in our culture and the Lord is gonna have more to say about this whole idea of mixing things in a bit but note in this passage or in this verse verse five he is speaking of the preservation of gender distinctives a man is a man a woman is owned by the way you know they've come up they've said there's now there's more than two genders there are there are multiple gen that's what we're being told now there are multiple genders now you may not be a man you may be not be a woman you may be something else yeah so anyway that's that's the the craziness that's going on in our culture verse six goes on he says if you come across a bird's nest in any tree or maybe on the ground with young ones or eggs and the mother sitting on the young or on the eggs you shall not take the mother with the young you shall let the mother go but the young you may take for yourself then it may go well with you and that you may live long is this all about cruelty it's not actually it's about common sense imagine that it was a matter of like an egg-laying hen that you you came across and then in the Lord would say you know listen if you come across this hen who's laid some eggs you're free to take the eggs but leave the hen alone why the idea here is that if you take the hand or kill the hen to eat the hen your supply of eggs is going to be gone and it's it's really common sense but it speaks of preserving the Lord's provision you might remember when we were talking earlier God was saying to the Israelites when you go against a foreign country and you begin to chop down some of the trees to build siege works so that you can attack them leave the fruit bearing trees because that's my provision that's part of my provision so you know don't ruin the land don't ruin the provision that the Lord has made a hen or an animal that can lay eggs a fowl bird whatever you know that's the provision of the Lord so go ahead and take the eggs but leave the hen right the whole idea here is do not undermine the resources that God has given for the continuation of life that's the point now I suppose you could probably apply this to some pretty earth first sort of topics that and I'm not going to get into all the politics of that but you know there are there are environmental groups in our world that are very much opposed to the way we treat the earth and fundamentally they're probably right I don't agree with their conclusions then a tree has as much right to be here as you do personally don't believe that I think that's taking it a bit too far but what they have to say related to not shooting ourselves in the foot and and and eliminating the natural resources that the earth provides for us which by the way are God's provision for us there's a lot of smarts to that and we got to be careful as Christians not to thumb our nose that that whole idea you know do you understand that the book of Revelation it talks about the judgment of the Lord coming upon the people of the earth for ruining the earth you wear that you can look it up in the book of Revelation I don't have chapter and verse in front of me because I just thought of it but it literally speaks of God's wrath being poured out upon those who ruined the earth so you know this is something we need to take seriously God has given us things to sustain us and it is unwise for us to be short-sighted through poor stewardship related to those things verse 8 when you build a new house you shall make a parapet for your roof that you may not bring the guilt of blood upon your house if anyone should fall from it now what people what you and I may not understand is an American audience is that roofs were flat back in those days and they lived on top of them they bathed on top of them they it was kind of like a porch or a patio or you know a place for the family to hang it when the weather was okay and so people would go up on their roofs pretty regularly so God is saying through Moses here that if you do not provide this measure of safety which is in the form of this parapet or this stub wall if you will around the perimeter of the roofline you could be guilty of actually the shedding of blood because you're negligent by not providing this safety feature on your roof you know these are these are more commands in God's Word that come down to caring for people do you care for people do you care about people do you care about what happens to them and and just making life kind of safe and and and God's trying to speak to these people about a society where people look out for one another right where we care about one another where I care about how you feel and whether or not you can get from point A to point B safely and and that's we should care about these things that's why we have laws and ordinances and things in our culture to try to make life safer and I understand how laws easily get very burdensome and in fact even ridiculous at times but the the but the vast majority of the laws that are given in our land are actually pretty smart if you follow them so this is part of what this is talking about just caring for other people verse nine we're gonna return to the idea of not mixing things you shall not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seed lest the whole yield before fit the crop that you have sown and the yield of the vineyard you shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together you shall not wear cloth of wool and linen mixed together what in the world is this all about you know we read this today from kind of a modern American mindset and we're kind of like I don't get it what did God have against these things well do you remember when you go back to the beginning in the book of Genesis you'll remember that there is this phrase of repetition according to its kind or according to their kind and it begins in Chapter one of Genesis talking about the creation of the animals given each according to their kind and then when you get into Genesis chapter two and you see the the creation of the man it talks about how he gave names to all of the animals he kind of categorized them but for the man there was no companion no suitable companion according to his kind right and so God creates the woman so that there can be a companion after his own kind and so God is speaking about the order of creation that he made for us that is created according to their kind and this is a huge part of understanding not just creation but God's character please hear me this is not just to help you understand creation it's to help you understand God's character because you'll remember that the Apostle Paul I won't show you this but you'll remember in first corinthians paul spoke about god and he said our God is not a God of disorder you know what that means he is it means he's a God of order according to its kind right so he's speaking to the the people of Israel and he's driving home this idea of order and propriety by commanding his people not to mix things now the mixing of these things doesn't are they're not inherently immoral okay so we look that's why we look at these things in work we read them in our Bible and we're kinda like what's what is wrong with mixing fabric what is so Amuro about mixing fabric it's not it's not immoral these are not moral Commandments per se they are principles that carry a larger application than the one in which they're given and again it had to do with mixing things that were contrary and these kinds of lessons that God is laying out here in the word have a broader application through life and and and especially as the nation of Israel would grow up and begin to rub shoulders with the nations around them the pagan nations with their worship practices and their cultures and their societies of of incredible wickedness it was important for them to understand not mixing and order and so forth if they were to survive and what God is doing to the nation of Israel is very much like you and I would do with the child you know sometimes we don't teach children the broader idea behind something because they just can't grasp it right so we teach them a simpler principle which later on they can apply in a broader sense and so we might start with something very small something very simple and God is doing that with the nation of Israel at this point and he's talking about the clothes and and mixing seed and mixing fabric and and so forth and so on because there are think there is order in God's creation now again this speaks - right to the middle of where we are in 2017 we've cast off the order of the Lord haven't we I mean it's it's just it's crazy the things that we've cast off we've cast off the order of the home we've cast off the order of the family we've cast off the order of marriage we've cast off the order of sexual intimacy we've just cast it all out we've just let go of it all and were and we're reaping the whirlwind because of it but we've just we've let go of God's order husbands and wives do you know that largely I want to be careful not to use hyperbole but I will say that a lot of what is behind marriage problems is that we've cast off the order that God has laid out in the word related to the husband related to the wife and how they're to come together in marriage and relate to one another you know God's given us some wonderful insights in the scripture about marriage and yet we've just we've cashed up but it's order right now we understand order we understand order as it applies to other things we understand it as applies to a combustion engine I know that if I put something in the gas tank other than gas it's it's orderly to put gas in there it's orderly to put fuel in the crane or oil in the crankcase it's it's it's orderly to run at a certain you know according to the manufacturer's specifications but if I get out of that order do I have any right to pound my fist and say this isn't working and yet we do it with our lives we do it with our marriages we do with our homes we do with our parenting we've gotten out of order we've just taken God's order and we've cast it to the wind and God is speaking to his people about order after its own kind and he's using simple examples of a broader principle right so verse 12 verse 12 simply says you shall make yourselves tassels on the four corners of your garment with which you cover yourself and we're it not for the Book of Numbers we probably see this verse here as like an interesting fashion statement Oh God wants us to have tassels on our clothes so let's do that but we do have the book of numbers and what we read in numbers chapter 15 is speak to the people of Israel and tell them to make tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generation and to put a quart of blue on the tassel of each corner and it shall be a tassel for you to look at and look at this remember all the commandments of the Lord to do them not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes so what were the tassels therefore to remember do you know that remembrance is a big deal to God he cares a lot about remembering he talked a lot about remembering in the Old Testament in the New Testament we have a lot about remembering we have communion that was given to us to do this in remembrance of everything Christ did and when you read through the epistles particularly Peter but but others as well Paul writes to Titus that says teach these remind them of these things Peter says I'm gonna reminding you of these things as long as I'm in this tent of this body you know I'm gonna keep telling you I'm gonna remind you remember remember remember because we so easily forget and we have this incredible uncanny ability to recall frivolous and unimportant details that may cause us to win jeopardy but it's not going to help in our relationship with God you know from the understanding of remembering the things that are really truly important so the tassels were all about remembering and really it's kind of uh you know it's just given to them as a way of remembering that's all pretty simple isn't it now verses 13 through the end of the chapter I'll deal with various aspects of sexual immorality so buckle up verse 13 if any man takes a wife and goes into her and then hates her and accuses her of misconduct and brings a bad name upon her saying I took this woman and when I came near her I did not find in her evidence in her evidence of virginity then the father of the young woman and her mother shall take and bring out the evidence of her virginity to the elders of the city in the gate all right stop there we've got some explaining to do here because this is like so far beyond us culturally as to be like what in the world well first of all you have a situation as bizarre as it sounds of a guy who just is looking for an excuse to get rid of his wife he'll like her anymore for whatever reason so he begins to slander her saying that I think she was promiscuous before we got married and he bases this on the fact that he didn't find the evidence of her virginity and so it says in verse 15 that in that then that accusation should motivate the father and the mother of this young woman to come to the elders at the city gate which is where legal transactions when it took place and to bring with them this evidence now bear with me here please records from various cultures in the ancient Near East refer to a blood-stained garment or a bedsheet from the wedding night as evidence of a woman's virginity back in those days and so this evidence was something that a prudent mother and father would retain there are cultures and I don't mean to be purposely sensational or crude or anything I'm just telling you there are cultures where the parents camp out outside the wedding chamber on the wedding night because they want to go in there right afterwards and gather up the evidence believe me it's it is something that was a reality but this was evidence of a woman's virginity and this evidence was very important if this woman was ever slandered or accused of not being a virgin at the time of marriage and so the example given here is that of an Israelite man who has who's attempting to hide his dislike of his wife in the accusation of immorality on her part prior to the wedding and so the parents were then to come and provide this evidence and it says in verse 16 and the father of the young woman shall say to the elders I gave my daughter to this man to marry and he hates her so he's testifying notice what the real motive is here he's telling these guys it's not that he thinks that she's been sexually immoral it's because he's just society isn't like her and behold he has accused her of misconduct saying I did not find in your daughter evidence of virginity and yet this is the evidence of my daughter's virginity and they shall spread the cloak before the elders of the city how would you like to live in that time then the elders of the city shall take the man and whip him and they shall find him a hundred shekels of silver and give them to the father of the young woman because he brought a bad name upon a virgin of Israel and she shall be his wife and he may not divorce her all his days so this is the case where a woman is falsely accused you might say lucky girl right yeah she gets to stay married to this guy for all her days but it's interesting that he has to pay a fine in addition to being suffering this physical punishment because in some cases men would try to accuse their wives so that they could get the bride price back when they paid the bride price to the woman's father he would kind of marry her for a while and realize wow not so great so he'd accuse her falsely because if they if he could get away with it he could potentially get the bride price back and be free of the woman too so in this case because he has falsely accused her he has to pay additional money to the father because he slandered this girl now verse 20 goes on to flip the circumstances but if the thing is true in other words the accusation that evidence of virginity was not found in the young woman in other words after a thorough investigation which would be the responsibility of the elders it was proven that the woman had engaged you know in some kind of sexual promiscuity before marriage then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father's house and the men of her City shall stone her to death with stones because she has done an outrageous thing in Israel by whoring in her father's house so you shall purge the evil from your midst you're gonna recall that it's not exact but there was a similar situation that was faced in the New Testament by a man named Joseph who was betrothed to a woman named Mary but prior to their marriage it was discovered that she was with child I assume she began to show and in Joseph's case he sought to protect Mary he wanted to separate quietly and just break off the betrothal so as not to slander her in any well it wouldn't have been slander if he really truly believed it but Aaron he wouldn't have considered it slander but he didn't want to do anything that was gonna you know caused her additional pain tells you the kind of guy Joseph was very tender-hearted man but he had no desire to expose what he thought was her sexual indiscretion and in fact we know that it took a dream from the Lord to change his mind and get him to marry her anyway but in in but purity here's what you have to understand it when you read this passage purity in sexual matters of sexual fidelity was incredibly important in Israel it's not important in our culture but that's because we've gotten away from God's Word but it was very important in in Israel and it was something that would distinguish God's covenant people from the nations around them because remember the pagan nations were engaged usual in all kinds of sexual promiscuity and they did it in the name of worship pretty much every young woman would be required for at least a time to be a temple prostitute and it was considered to be a good thing because this would motivate the gods to bless us in other areas of fertility related to our crops and so forth and so on it was a horrible thing so God spoke to his people and said you're going to be different sexual purity is to be paramount in Israel because God dwelt in there mixed and and violations of sexual purity could be punished by death and then he goes on verse 22 if a man is found lying with the wife of another man both of them shall die and the man who lay with the woman and the woman so you shall purge the evil from Israel this of course is the case of adultery and it probably sounds again outdated from the standpoint of our American Way of life but but again here's something that we forget we forget that infidelity doesn't just undermine marriage it undermines family and under the undermining of family undermine society at large as a whole and we forget that we think that we can do things and they're just it's just me doing it and I didn't hurt anybody or or something like that a society that comes to the place of condoning infidelity will only end up condoning other acts of infidelity as well but understand something that Fidel infidelity or what you and I probably would more call unfaithfulness because that's what it is unfaithfulness begins in the heart let me show you the message that Jesus preached related to this situation it's from Matthew chapter 5 you have heard that it was said you shall not commit adultery but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart Jesus taught us that the sin begins in the heart and it is every bit as much of a sin in the heart as it in it as it is in the flesh and so just because a man has never touched another woman doesn't mean that he hasn't you know committed adultery it's it's having a lustful thought toward another woman or whatever that sort of a thing and that's where it begins an unfaithfulness that begins in the heart will ultimately play itself out in the flesh and unfaithfulness breeds unfaithfulness and it again it not only undermines the family it undermines society verse 23 if there's a betrothed virgin and a man meets her in the city and lies with her then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city and you shall stone them to death with stones the young woman because she did not cry for help though she was in the city and the man because he violated his neighbor's wife so you shall purge the evil from your midst but if in the open country a man meets a young woman who is betrothed and the man seizes her and lies with her then only the man who lay with her shall die notice here that it is a capital offense for this man to rape this woman and and he says in verse 26 but you shall do nothing to the young woman she has committed no offence punishable by death for this case is like that of a man attacking and murdering his neighbor because he met her in the open country and though the betrothed young woman cried for help there was no run to rescue her okay it is assumed that that that's what happened verse 28 if a man meets a virgin who is not be true to another man because betrothal was considered just like marriage and seizes her in lies with her and they are found then the man who laid with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver and she shall be his wife because he has violated her he may not divorce her all his days and and again I want to just bring out here in the case here of a woman who is not engaged to be married the penalty is for the man a large fine followed by a marriage that he cannot undo for life and I know that again you're probably thinking wow that penalty appears to cause more damage to the woman than it does to the man because she's got to live with this guy you know who raped her but I believe it's reasonable at this point to interject that the marriage would have to be agreeable to the woman and it would have to be agreeable to her parents I'm certain that they would have to agree to it and this would only be if the woman you know wanted to marry this man and the last verse of the chapter says this a man shall not take his father's wife so that he does not uncover his father's nakedness a euphemism there the final reference here to sexual purity that's given in this chapter covers a man taking his stepmother the man's father is presumed to have passed away leaving a wife or leaving his wife a widow and and you know sometimes men were married women who were significantly younger in fact we think that Joseph may have been significantly older than Mary we don't know for sure but we think that he may have been older and it was not uncommon so perhaps the woman being significantly younger than her husband one of the sons of the man who has died looks at his stepmother and maybe she's even closer to his age than his father's and he decides that he wants her and so forth he desires her but God forbade that kind of a connection and I want you to notice that the grounds of this this this command-r that it would stain the father's memory and it would show disrespect he says it in kind of a rather interesting way you shall uncover your father's nakedness but that was that was a means of showing disrespect for your father and and what you can see from this chapter as we kind of look at the summary of this chapter is that there are several aspects of healthy family life that God is speaking about here in this passage he's talking about respect respect for property respect for what belongs to others respect for the marriage covenant honoring the marriage covenant faithfulness purity these are the things that are that stand out in this chapter but these are the very things that are most under attack in our culture today and in our society in fact we've we've let go of all of them we've go of respect we've let go of honor we've we've let go of faithfulness we've let go of purity and and the family unit is almost gone in our society we you know thankfully within the church we see some good remnants of strength that remain but it's dying it's a dying sort of a thing the family unit has been so weakened that whereas families used to take care of one another now that burden falls to society at large which was never meant to take care of families individually you know we've now come to you know the welfare state which now has risen up to say well we need to take care of people well why do they have to take care of people because the family won't do it one of the most heartbreaking things for me to hear is people who have no family to count on none zero I'll talk to people you know say well do you have any parents around here no or they've got nothing what about siblings now I don't talk to them anymore families are so destroyed so destroyed people aren't anybody to turn to and yet it's interesting that what we see in the Bible over and over again is this reliance on family let me just end by showing you some quick passages from first Timothy and then we'll close if a widow has children or grandchildren these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents for this is pleasing to God what's the message here take care of your family take care of your family first Timothy 5:16 if any woman who is a believer has widows in her family she should help them and not let the church be burdened with them so that the church can help those widows who are really in need what's the message here families take care of families right first Timothy 5:8 here's the strong statement if anyone does not provide for his relatives and especially for his immediate family he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever why because unbelievers even do that so the idea here from the scripture is very clear we have a responsibility to take care of our family and we have a responsibility to take care of one another in the family of God you know we are a family and the family of God too we can't we can't say well you're not my blood relative doesn't matter by the blood of Christ were related we are family here in the family of God in the BIOS why the Bible says do good to all men especially to those who are in the family of God we need to preserve the idea of family because people it is family that preserves Society when family is lost society is lost you

Channel: Calvary Chapel Ontario

Views: 11,347

Rating: 4.6974788 out of 5

Keywords: Bible, Bible teaching, Thru-the-Bible, verse by verse, Calvary Chapel, Bible study, Christianity, New Testament, Old Testament

Id: W7ADFrFt12o

Length: 51min 11sec (3071 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 24 2017