After the Sermon: Deuteronomy 21:1 - 22:12

5/11/26 | Will DuVal | DEUTERONOMY: Remembering God's Faithfulness; Responding in Obedience

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Welcome to the After the Sermon podcast where Pastor Will answers follow-up questions and we share your personal applications from the sermon for the benefit of the church. My name is Brian and I'm here with Pastor Will.

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Hey everyone.

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We want to remind you with this podcast that sermons are not just a Sunday thing. So we can start off just with a brief summary of the sermon.

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Let's do it. We were in Deuteronomy 21 in first half of chapter 22 yesterday in part, was it four? Three. Four? Yeah, three. I think I have a part four that I've already started working on for two weeks from now. Anyway, of our series within a series on the God of the law with the premise being that all of these seemingly random and miscellaneous and often bizarre and weird laws that we find in the book of Deuteronomy and elsewhere in the Old Testament for that matter from God are not random, not miscellaneous and not certainly completely irrelevant today for us because it's in God's timeless word and because there are principles that we can undergirding all of these laws that we tried to get at and the three main principles were that God requires atonement from us. God requires kindness of us and God requires holiness from us.

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But even more so than the principles of what they tell us about what we are expected of in accordance with God's law, each of these laws tells us something about God and who he is and what again, he desires and demands. And so yeah, God is kind. God is holy. That's why he calls us to holiness and to kindness. And because we don't live up to that standard and we're not always kind and we're not always holy, therefore God requires atonement, which is kind of where we brought it full circle. So that was in a nutshell, the message from yesterday, but tons of little interesting, fascinating little laws included. So lots of great follow-up questions appreciate. We'll try and go about three, four minutes on each of them, see if we can keep it to that. And that way we can get through all of them and I don't know, we'll shoot for about an hour, see what we can do.

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We got 16 questions, so buckle in.

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First one from me, how can there be atonement without blood?

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Yeah, very good. The first nine verses there of Deuteronomy 21, you have this interesting story of an unsolved murder out in the open country, seemingly very specific kind of law, like a lot of these, where you find a body we've ruled out natural causes. It's clearly foul play. This person was killed. We can't maybe say murdered per se. You think back to week before last with manslaughter versus premeditated murder. So we don't know for sure if it was an intentional killing versus the other manslaughter, like swinging an ax, accidentally hit him and I just got scared and I panicked and I fled. But in any case, there's a dead person, body. And the principle is like we looked at Genesis four and Genesis nine and God's saying like Isaiah 26:21 where God says, innocent blood cries out to me from the ground. And if somebody was unjustly killed even if it was an accident or whatever, innocent blood that shouldn't have been put to death like capital punishment, that's a problem.

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That's a problem for God. And so there has to be atonement. There has to be a payment, a sacrifice that's made for that. So interestingly in this passage, you have the atonement being made by the elders and the priest of the nearest city. They bring a heifer that's never plowed and they come down and kind of thought somebody might even ask about that. Like why? Never plowed. Why have to go to a valley that's never ... Or sorry. Yeah, the heifer can't have ever been used to plow and have a yoke on it. And then you have to bring it down to a valley and wash your hands in this river of a valley that's never been plowed. Anyway, I think it's all emphasizing the purity of the sacrifice. But then interestingly, they're called to break the heifer's neck and not slit its throat and sprinkle blood everywhere like you normally would do for a sacrifice.

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And so I mentioned how in Hebrews 9:22, the author of Hebrews tells us that under the law, almost everything is purified with blood. And as best I can tell, this is like really the best possible or the best law that we can look to of something being purified, being atoned for without blood specifically because the point is that the elders and the priest of that nearest city are to wash their hands over the dead heifer as a symbol and a way of saying, the blood is not on our hands. Okay. Both this heifer really and the death that the heifer is atoning for the unlawful death of this body that we just found out here in the open country and we don't know what to do with it. It's a way of saying, well, human life is sacred and so we can't just bury it and move on.

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  Something's got to be done.

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  We've tried, we've made an inquiry, we've tried to find the killer and figure out was it murder or manslaughter and what to do with you? We don't know what to do, but we can't just move on because the blood's crying out to God from the ground. And so it's a way of atoning for and appeasing God's really wrath against this unjust death while also again, symbolically making the point that the blood, may it not be on our hands, may it not be on the hands of Israel, hold us guiltless for this blood. And so I mean really, I guess if you wanted to bring it all together and point it back to Jesus and give the shortest possible answer to the question, you could say, "Well, really all atonement that happened in the Old Testament was really just a prefiguring and a looking ahead to Christ ultimate atonement anyway." I think I've used in sermons the analogy before of like, it's almost like a line of credit at the bank where it's like, but ultimately the one that's going to pay the ultimate ... All the blood of the animals and the bulls and goats for thousands of years was really just kind of like a line of credit tied back to the bank account that ultimately Jesus was going to have to make the deposit into, that all those other sins would be paid for by his blood because again, Hebrews makes it clear that by the blood of bulls and goats, nothing can truly be cleansed and forgiven.

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  I mean, you might be able to cover over the stain of the sin and the guilt and whatever and sort of appease your own conscience and God's wrath for a time or whatever, but it's like sweeping it under the rug, but to really get that dust and junk and skeletons out from under the rug and remove it, you had to have Jesus' blood. Does that make sense? So yeah, hopefully that's helpful.

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  Definitely. Next one that we have is from Bill Billings for your question. He wrote in, "In Deuterteronomy 21, the elders are required to atone for the blood of someone slain in the promised land of the covenant community. In the sermon, you seem to imply that the blood of aborted infants was the responsibility of West Hills. From what I remember, the logic goes that Christian voters have an equivalent responsibility for the decisions of this nation as the elders of Israel had for their land. Hopefully everyone listening to this will agree that the USA is not the covenant community of Christ, nor is America the promised land that we will inherit. We should certainly lament the murder of the unborn pray for the end of abortion and proclaim the gospel to those who are considering or chose abortion. Beyond this, how can the church practically be like the elders of Israel as we seek to care for moms and the unborn?

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  Going further, an uncritical application of the same logic would mean that West Hills and really the church in any Christian majority democracy is responsible for every sinful action a government takes. That is likely not what was intended. So can you elaborate on the limits of equating biblical law and US legislation?

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  Yeah. Thanks, Bill. I think the biggest word that I would take issue with from Bill's ... And it's a really good question, fair question. And again, I probably wasn't clear enough about exactly what I meant in the message. So for that, I apologize. But the word that Bill uses three or four times that I would change and take it is responsibility. Like he says, you seem to imply that the blood of aborted infants is the responsibility of West Hills. Christian voters have an equivalent responsibility for the decisions of the nation. And then he says later there," The church in any Christian majority democracy is responsible for every sinful action of a government it takes. "I would change the word responsible and responsibility to implicate it. And what I mean by that is like I said yesterday, we can't just wash our hands like Pontius Pilate tried to of Jesus' blood and say," Well, even though the crowd is chanting his blood being on our heads and our children's heads and whatever, and so Pilate's trying to say, Okay, push all of the blame and the guilt off.

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  "Responsible to me is a strong word that I wouldn't use because then it makes it sound like it's the church's fault or West Hill's fault that abortion ... I wouldn't say it's our fault. I would say however, that we are implicated that there is a shared fault and blame and burden and guilt and that we ... I mean, washing your hands of that is saying," I don't take any of it. I don't take any of this responsibility, any guilt, any ... I'm not implicated in this at all. "Again, the point I'm making is we just can't do that. We cannot sit back and pretend like abortion is not our problem just because I haven't had an abortion because the fact of the matter is I live in a country where abortions are being performed hundreds per day, thousands. I have to do the math, not thousands per day, but hundreds I think.

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  Anyway, I am implicated in so far as we all have power, thank you. Oh, prime fact check, almost 3000 abortions per day. So yeah, check my math, but yeah, horrible. So for me, I have to feel the weight of that. And as Christians, I think we have to say that we have to acknowledge that we have power. We all have a relative amount of power. We have a voice. We do live in a democracy, not only through our vote, but through other means. I mean, we have power in between elections. I mean, that's where most of the fight is being fought is in the hearts of those around us. It's in the collective culture that we live in and how we influence and shape that or don't and just sort of like don't engage in culture and we fail to be light and salt. I mean, that's Jesus Matthew five, we're called to be light and salt and Jesus didn't call us to be like the community at the Essence and Gumran who just kind of left Rome, they've got their influence.

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  It's too polluted we're going to go out and be our own separateest thing. And Jesus said, no, we're called to be in the world but not of the world. And so anyway, yeah, maybe that clears up some of the concern or confusion. Like I said, I wouldn't personally use the word responsible to say that the blood of aborted infants is our ... Well, now that I read it, changing his phrasing in his sentence a little bit, I mean, I would say that we ... Here's what I'll say. We do have a responsibility to the unborn Christians that was, I read Proverbs 31: eight, open your mouths for the rights of the destitute, those who are passing away, the marginalized, the persecuted. We are called clearly by God to be a voice for the voiceless, to speak up on behalf of those who can't speak for themselves.

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  And I mean, to me, the unborn in the womb is by far the number on demographic of people that fit that category of vulnerable, marginalized, at risk, in need of advocacy, of justice, of someone of people, churches, to stand up and say, no, we will not stand idly by while this kind of slaughter genocide, whatever it continues to take place.

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  Beyond that and Bill's question, he said, hopefully everyone listening to this will agree the USA is not the covenant community of Christ, nor is America the promised land we will inherit. Amen. Absolutely. Yeah, I don't know. Some others, Christian nationalism is a real thing and sadly spreading. And so some may even listening to this may not agree with that and we'll continue trying to show them from scripture how they have way more to look forward to than this America and that there are really Christians in other countries and that most of America is not actually Christian and nor has it probably ever been majority. But all that to say, my point, and this is why I gave the stats of at the time when Roe v. Wade was voted into law, here's what I will say is, and let me go ahead and address, is it Cody's question as well, his first one?

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  John

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  Is early.

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  John. Yes. Will you go ahead and read that one so I can go ahead and just tackle this too?

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  John wrote, "How do we properly understand what we are communally accountable for? It feels/seems wrong that I am accountable for other sins just because we're both Americans."

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  Yeah. So here's the point that I was trying to make with that with something like abortion, for instance. It's just one, I mean, it is the greatest single greatest social justice issue in our country ever and certainly still today the fact that abortion is still legal and certainly pharmaceutical abortions are practically, whether they're legal or not, still getting tied up in court, but happening in every single state and so

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  Cody's was ... Yeah, you're right. Very similar too.

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  Cody had a similar one too. Yeah. What was his?

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  Thinking about the principle behind collective guilt, atoning for sin.

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  Oh yeah, you're right. Yeah. Well, let's come back to that one

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  Because that's a little ... But let me stick with Johns and Bills for a second and just say the point that I was trying to make is America is not the church America is not God's promised land, promised people, chosen people, chosen nation, all that. The church is. Israel was God's people in the Old Testament. The church is God's people today, period. That's very clear, biblically we need to be able to agree on that. The point I'm making is when you have 87% of Americans claiming to be the church, claiming to be Christians, claiming to be God's people and whether they know it, realize it or not, they need to, that by even claiming that label, I'm a Christian, that identity should ... Again, first of all, I'm not operating under the illusion that 87% of America was ever Christian. They weren't, or that 68% of Americans today, just because they check a box on a survey, are Christians.

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  They're not. They don't even know what they're saying. But if they did, if the word means anything the way that it's used in God's word, Christian, the way that we and the church use it, it is to say, I belong to Jesus, which is to say, I have one king, his name is Jesus, and I have a president of this country, I have other affected or voted in lawmakers and this and that, and that's all fine and good, but all of my decisions and all of my votes that I cast and all of the higher law that I answer to is Jesus' law because he's my king. And so the point that I'm making is if it is impossible that 87% of Americans were actually Christians when Roe v. Wade was passed or at least that they were acting as Christians, that they were acting and voting in accordance with their beliefs, that their elected lawmakers were acting and voting in accordance with their professed beliefs and the same is still true today That's the point I'm making is that until we figure out what the actual percentage of actual Christians are and we never will, but if there was actually a majority of any country that was Christian that voted in accordance with and acted and advocated and opened their mouths for the rights of and did all of these things in accordance with their Christian beliefs, abortion would be impossible.That's what I'm saying.

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  It'd be illegal, right? It'd be illegal. And so that's the point I'm making is we as Christians, not as Americans, but as Christians in a nation that's not a Christian nation, but that is a nation that does have lots and lots of Christians in it, again, allegedly 87% five decades ago and allegedly still 68% today, I'm just pointing out that can't be true because the proofs in the pudding and look at the kind of country we live in where these are the laws. I mean, it is just completely godless and unjust and evil. We have evil laws in our country and the blood that they lead to is to some extent, to the extent that we're not doing enough as Christians, the blood is on our hands. We have to do more. That's the point I'm making.

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  And so yeah, again, another word I could take issue with from bills about equating biblical law with US legislation. That's not what I'm doing at all. I'm not trying to ... However, I am saying if we lived in a country where even a majority, much less 87% or 100% of folks were actual real Christians, then the laws would have to look different of our country of US legislation because biblical law for the Christian, the law of love and all everything, love God, love neighbor, and everything else that falls underneath that, that's going to trump everything else and that's going to influence and effect the way that politicians vote and govern and the way that we vote and who we vote on and all of that. I hope that makes sense. Could probably say more, but hopefully clears it up enough for Bill and for John.

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  And then Cody wrote in, "Thinking about the principle behind collective guilt and atoning for sin, you mentioned one Corinthians five: two, as he means we could apply this principle as a church, as the means probably." You also mentioned fight against abortion. What about on a smaller scale, like as a dad or a church member or even as an elder, how might we apply this principle? Are there any limits to this principle in these spaces?

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  Yeah. So Cody's asking about applying this principle of collective guilt even more personally, I think

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  As a dad, a church member, et cetera. What a great question. And that's probably what I, even more so than something like abortion, I should have maybe gone even more personal for the day-to-day for most of us and done that. So here's the principle. As a dad, when we go over to someone's house for dinner and my son breaks their kid's toy, it's not enough for me to say, "I wash my hands of this. " That's my kid. He's his own individual, unique human being. I can't be responsible for everything that ... It's like, no, yeah, I am responsible. That's exactly what God put me in charge of is responsibility for my kid. You have this principle elsewhere we read back in, I think it was Leviticus or Exodus, I can't remember now, probably Exodus where there was a law about if your ox gets, or maybe it's your donkey.

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  If you got an animal that gets out of your yard and goes over to your neighbor's yard, I think it's an ox because it gores him to death, a bull gores him to death and he dies. The blood is on your hands. God holds you and the community holds you guilty for that animal if you knew that it had the tendency to gore people, to be angry and you should have kept it locked up and for the safety of the community. Okay. Again, I'm implicated in that. Like I said, same thing for me as a father, I know my kid is insane and just terrible. And so if I'm taking him over to someone's house, I've got to know that and keep a metaphorical chain on the ox so he's not breaking all their toys or just let them, I need a night off, go for it and I'm just going to have to pay him back whatever toys you break, I'm going to buy them new toys.

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  But one way or another, he's my responsibility, right?

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  Yeah, the metaphorical blood is on my hands and you can just apply that to so many things as a mother or father, as a parent, as a husband, as a husband, my wife's I have authority, I have leadership in the home so her actions, the way she represents herself in public for instance, is not just a representation on her, it's on me and our marriage. And so those things are all true. I mean, Cody asked about as a church member saying, if you're a member of a church that is in the news for sponsoring the local LGBTQ 5K or whatever, like you are accountable, you're liable, you're someone who by virtue of your membership of that collective body entity, a singular entity, this church, you're not necessarily saying that I agree with every single statement, every single word that's ever come from the preacher's mouth from the pulpit or the elders docket from their decisions they make or this.

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  But I mean, I would say as a member of that church, you have a responsibility to the extent that you hear and see things coming from the pulpit or the elders meetings or the decision or this or that that are concerning, troubling, whatever you do. You have a moral responsibility to speak up and to say something. Now, hopefully again, even with that, a lot of the decisions that we make as churches, for instance, are I would say non-moral to the extent that you're voting on a budget, you're voting on architectural plans for the renovation or this or that.

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  So there has to be obviously room for like, "This particular curriculum that you're using in the kids' ministry isn't my favorite one." Okay, well make your voice known and then realize at the end of the day you're not in charge of picking that curriculum and someone else will answer for that curriculum choice before the Lord and that's not you. And you did what you could, right? You made your voice known and then you figure out from there whether or not this is a big enough issue to leave a church over. And while I can't in good conscience be at a church that is using this children's curriculum. And so anyway and frankly, yeah, some of those decisions, I don't want to scoff and laugh at that. I mean, some of those decisions, I think you have people that fall on both sides of that horse.

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  I mean, you have people that just can never be happy and they want to make all the decisions, but they don't want to have to be the ones to make them or enforce them or actually attend a meeting or whatever. And And then you have other people who have stayed frankly way too long at churches that do not deserve your tithing, your service, your volunteering, your membership, your heart, your tacit approval by virtue of your attendance or that sort of thing. Like you should have stood up mid-sermon long time ago and said, "You're not preaching the gospel anymore or whatever." And so anyway, yeah, I think God will absolutely hold you accountable as that person accountable as a member of that collective body for saying, "Why didn't you either make the truth and your voice known or leave?" Anyway, so many other examples to get practical that you could give on Cody's, but that's a great question.

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  Thank you, Cody. And I think I'll leave it there.

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  All right. Next one is from Brett who wrote in with regards to chapter 21, verses 13 and 14, and letting the new wife go if you no longer delight in her after marrying her. Is that just another case of God addressing the reality of the culture? It seems to be inconsistent with biblical principles of marriage. Please explain more.

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  Yeah. So I think Brett's mainly asking about divorce and the ability or the accommodation you might say that God makes here for this Israelite man to let his hypothetical wife go if it doesn't work out. Yeah, that was verse 14 of Deuteronomy 21. The prisoner of war kind of captives the beautiful woman that you take home and she purifies herself and then you take her as a wife. But if you no longer delight in here, let her go. I would say Jesus makes it clear, I can't remember if it's in Matthew five or Matthew 19 where I think it's 19 where they're asking the Pharisees are asking about divorce and he says they say, "Well, why did Moses permit us to divorce?" And I think we're going to get to that. I think it's Deuteronomy, don't hold me to this 24 or 23 or 24.

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  It's coming up here where you've got a few verses about if you want to divorce someone, your wife, here's how you do it legally under the Old Testament law. And Jesus says it was because of your hardness of heart that God, but he said, "From the beginning, it was not so. God created him and a man shall leave his mother and father cleave to his wife too. She'll become one flesh." So again, Jesus is saying like, "Don't get divorced. You've heard it said, if you want to get divorced, here's how you do it. " I tell you, don't do it. That was Matthew five, don't do it except in cases of pornea. And so Jesus is saying Moses let you get divorced. And of course, when he says Moses, he doesn't just mean Moses. I mean, he means God. Moses was the messenger. This is God's law.

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  So in other words, God, God did accommodate for your hardness of heart. Your hearts were not yet soft enough, ready enough for the cold hard truth of just how permanent and binding marriage ought to be.

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  But again, this is what Jesus is saying. I came not to, like he tells Matthew five not to relax, loosen the law, but to actually make it to set the bar higher and to show you where the bar actually should be set. God's law 1,50 years ago through Moses when Jesus is talking, like God's law was so much of it was accommodating. It was accommodating for your hardness of heart, your sinfulness, like your polygamy, your asking for a king when rejecting of God's king, all the different things we went through. And so anyway, yeah, that's to Bret's point, is that just another case of God addressing the reality of the culture? I'd say yes. I'd say yes. Thanks, Britt.

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  All right. Then Polly wrote in two. Thanks, Polly. First one, how do we reconcile kindness to the woman when it speaks of humiliating her?

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  Yeah. So that's the end of verse 14. "If you no longer delight in her, let her go. Where she wants, you shall not sell her for money, but you shall treat her as a slave since you have humiliated her." Again, this is not God saying, "Hey, go humiliate that foreign woman of the people you just conquered." He is what God's saying is the kindest thing you can do once you have taken this woman into your home and married her and tried to be married to her and to make it work in marriage. But if you no longer delight in her, and again, we'd have to look at the Hebrew word for that and what does that mean, delight in her.

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  But I think the point is God's saying he's not calling the Israelite man here to humiliate her. He's saying, "Look, don't you realize you've humiliated her? Don't you see it through her eyes, what you've done, right? You killed her husband or maybe she wasn't married before, but you killed all her nation in battle. And then you've ... I tried to make the case yesterday for how this could actually have been the kindest thing to do is to take her into your home and to introduce her to the real God, Yahweh, all that and give her a chance. All right, you've tried to be kind, but now you no longer delighten her. She doesn't please you. Maybe that's because she hasn't truly made a clean break with her past. And no matter how much you try to relate to her as husband and wife, she still sees it through the lens of, I'm a prisoner of war, I'm a slave, I'm kept here against my ... I mean, who knows what the scenario might be where she's not into it and therefore she's not pleasing you or whatever.

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  You don't delight in her. It's not the marriage you dreamed it would be. So like, look, gave this a shot, not working. Why don't you go on? But God is saying that act, that process, that's humiliating to her.That's humiliating. Now she got a shaved head.

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  She's not good enough to be an Israelite apparently. So she's not going to be accepted in this community and yet you've already taken her and asked her to make a clean break with her former community and everything she knew growing up where she's supposed to go, I mean, it is. It's humiliating, she's left even more vulnerable and all of that. And so I think this is where, again, God's saying in God's kindness, he's saying, look, if that's the way you want to go and the marriage doesn't work out, you let her go wherever she wants. And he kind of emphasizes that in the text, not just let her go, but let her go wherever she wants and you don't get to sell her, you don't get to treat her like a slave. And so when you think about that, even in the rest of the law we read a couple of weeks ago when a man would let a slave go, someone who is working as an indentured servant or a slave and then every seven years, if it's a brother, sister from Israel, you got to let him go.

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  You don't send them out empty handed. You got to send them out with money. So if the point in verse 14 here is you don't treat her as a slave, it's like, well, if you're sending your slaves out not empty handed, how much more so do you send out a wife that you've divorced? It's like, I don't know what kind of alimony he would have been paying her, but anyway, the point is God's saying, look, you don't make her stay humiliated to stay married to you if the marriage is totally unloving and you don't delight in her and she doesn't delight in you. And because of your hardness of heart, you can get divorced, but you've already humiliated or don't humiliate her even more. Let her go with dignity. So I hope that's helpful. Thanks for the question.

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  And then she's another one. Most of the examples given of showing kindness are pretty difficult compared to just go and do something nice for someone, smile at them, give them a hug, et cetera. Can you think of modern day examples of things that are actually a kindnes to someone that may not seem like at a face value but that we should be doing?

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  I think the most obvious that comes to mind for me is truth telling. I think white lies, kind lies, or whatever you want to call it, have become way too commonplace and just socially acceptable and preferable in our society and frankly, even in the church a lot of times I think yes, we are called to speak the truth in love with love, with kindness, with kindness, but the thing that you're doing, I mean, the kindness is the way you do it, but the thing that you do is you tell the truth, Ephesians 4:15, speaking the truth and love.

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  So I think that's where the silly examples of someone's at a dinner party and got salads stuck between their teeth or whatever and the real friend will let you know so you don't go through the whole evening with stuff stuck between your teeth. Who cares about that? But what about the real examples of like, "Hey, here's a difficult truth that I'm seeing in your life that because of our own sin and blinders, we don't all see ourselves as best we should as accurately. And so we need people around us to tell us those difficult trees at times." So I mean, that to me is by far the most obvious thing that comes to mind in hearing Polly's question there is that speaking the truth, even when it doesn't feel like it's done with kindness or done with love, maybe it's done imperfectly, but you're hearing that truth and that the person's faithfulness to share it, that that is an act of kindness and that is an act of love.

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  Even frankly, I mean, obviously you want it to come from a place of love and selfless care for the other. I think God certainly can even use that truth even if it comes from a place of judgment or looking down your nose or condemning or something like that. But in any case, yeah, just, "Hey, here's something I'm seeing in the way you treat your wife. Here's something I'm seeing in the way you treat your kids. Here's something I'm seeing in the way you treat your parents." Or, "Hey, here's something I'm seeing in your relationship to the church or lack thereof or whatever it might be that you're phoning in the workplace and being a bad example of how Christians ought to do everything with excellence as under the Lord." I mean, just go down the list of ways that we sin daily and to have somebody speak that truth that you don't want to hear but you need to hear that's kindness and yeah, I'll leave it there.

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  All right. Cody wrote, "What is gentle parenting? Why is it not biblical?" Then I asked a similar question, why is gentle parenting not biblical? Can't discipline be done with a gentle heart?

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  Good questions. I typed into Google, "What is gentle parenting?" So here's what Gemini gives me. Gentle parenting is a non-punitive approach to raising children that emphasizes empathy, respect, understanding, and firm boundaries. It focuses on building a secure and trusting relationship by coaching children through emotions rather than punishing or controlling them. Method aims to foster self-regulated, confident, independent children, et cetera, et cetera. And then let's see, Brown University Health is just the first hit that comes up. What is gentle parenting? Gentle parenting is all about the parent-child relationship. Yeah, parents meant to display empathy, respect, understanding by communicating, connecting with their children. Key components of developing this connection include parent as teacher, appropriate developmental expectations, avoiding punishments and behavioral rewards, developing boundaries, et cetera.

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  And it goes on for that. The reason it's called gentle is because of that word non-punitive. And so yeah, any form of certainly corporal punishment, like spanking would be completely diametrically opposed to this approach. And the reason it's not ... So again, to your question, Brian, about parenting with, I think you said gentleness of heart or something, like yes to that. Fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithleness, gentleness, self-control. So we are called to be gentle even in our punishing, but gentle parenting is not just parenting with a gentle heart. It's a specific methodology that a priority rules out any form of corporal punishment, or frankly, does not like the idea of punishment as I just read for you avoiding punishment and avoiding behavioral rewards as well. So you're trying to get kids to be just intrinsically motivated instead of externally, like fear of getting a spanking or joy of getting some candy or whatever.

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  And the very simple, straightforward reason that I say it's not biblical is like I said, because Proverbs 13:24 says it's kind of the one we get spare the rod, spoil the child from. It says a father that doesn't use the rod hates his son. If you discipline lightly, it's unloving toward your child. And the author of Hebrews picks that up and I think it's Hebrews 12, talks about how God disciplines us because he's a parent and he loves us and for what parent doesn't discipline the Son he loves. And again, using that word discipline, but I mean the words actually used in Hebrews are much firmer and more explicit. It's talking about corporal punishment. And so yeah, these things are, you can't both refuse to spank and refuse to punish in those ways and also follow these, in my opinion, clear commands from scripture. And I know there's been a lot of attempts over the years going back even sort of the pre-gentle parenting, like whatever the early, like when I was a kid even, you had some of that already creeping in even at the church and people trying to then reconcile that and come up with creative interpretations to those kind ... I mean, 13:24 is just one.

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  I mean, there's a half dozen Proverbs one-liners about the exact same thing about the importance of disciplining and punishing and spanking and the rod and those kinds of things in parenting. But people of course are going to come up with, "Well, let's look at how a shepherd uses his rod and context and well, this Hebrew work can actually mean this or that. " But it's just very clear and we did a whole Ask the Pastors episode on spanking and whether or not it's biblical or something years ago, a couple years ago and so I'm not going to rehash all that. But yeah, that's my quick thing on ... And again, I'm not an expert on gentle parenting. I'm just reading what the internet tells me it is and my best understanding from what I've seen here and there. But Cody mentioned that there's a good gospel coalition article on it and I mean, I appreciate almost all of what they put out.

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  I didn't read it before this, but I'll have to check it out and I'm assuming that their article was challenging a lot of the premises of gentle parenting. I certainly hope so. I'm hoping I pitched an article to my editor at the Gospel Coalition on this very topic a few months ago and I just got to find time to sit down and write the article. But anyway, it's going to be on ... There's this great line and I won't be able to remember the reference now, but it's like first Kings ... No, it wouldn't be first Kings. Second Kings early on in Second Kings when we're meeting David's kids for the first time and it's talking about one of David's sons who I think it's Absalom who it said David never did anything to displease him or something like that. And obviously I have to dig it out and go deeper when I write the article.

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  But that's kind of my view of gentle parenting is like, "It's all about the connection between you and the child and the relationship so don't do anything to displease them or whatever." And it's like, "Well, David tried that and let's see how that worked out with him in Absalom."That's a great way to raise kids that just think they're the center of the universe and anyway, yeah.

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  Next one is from an anonymous congregant who wrote in, "With passages like the on rebellious children, how should Christians understand the practical application today after Jesus fulfilled the law?" Obviously the response is no longer stoning, so what has been transformed by the cross and what principles still carry over?

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  Yeah, I tried to speak to that in the sermon and I think I said, "Hey, obviously we don't bring our kids out to the elders of the city to have them killed anymore, but the principle still remains that the children of God's people, so Israel, Old Testament, church today, Christian parents have to make it known and clear to their kids that actions have consequences, that you are not the ultimate lawmaker and setter and establisher and you're not a law unto yourself child and as I said, that we call our children toward holiness. Now, again, we understand that without a changed heart, without Christ coming and transforming their heart and the Holy Spirit, living in and empowering their actions, to a certain extent, yeah, they're set up for failure and fighting a losing battle.

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  We hope like Paul tells us and his explanation of why God gave us the law in the first place as a mirror to show us our sin and our need for a savior, that our hope is that by standing up to our kids and disciplining them and helping them see the divergence between the expectations and their behavior to help them understand, wow, yeah, I need help. I need guidance, not only that, but I need help even being able to have certainly the desire to want to obey, but even the power and the strength, like the ability to live the way that mom and dad have called me to live in accordance with God's word. So yeah, that is, I think, the practical application and the principle that runs underneath that. Yes, we don't have to stone our kids anymore. Jesus took the stoning, the cross, he fulfilled the law, all that, but that principle of that call to holiness is still there.

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  And we got two anonymous questions, congregants who submitted questions. "You got me. Can women wear jeans?"

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  That was kind of the one I planted about like, "Hey, some of y'all should be asking this. "

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  "And can I wear a man's blazer? I buy them from the thrift store."

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  Well, if you buy it from the thrift, as long as you're getting it on the cheap, now that does have a sauce place in my heart. I'm such a cheapskate, but so I do want to be careful obviously about being anyone's conscience for them, about being black and white where I mean, obviously there's no thou shalt or thou shalt not regarding blue jeans or blazers in scripture because that wasn't the fashion back then. But what's the principle? Again, what's the principle? The principle is God's people don't blur the lines between men and women. God has made a very sharp, bright, clear line between men and women, male, female, and we don't apologize for that line regardless of just how hostile the rest of culture gets regarding the line and wants to blur the line and wants to make us apologize for it and all that we hold our ground and we say there's man and woman, they're different equal in value, worth dignity, all of that, but different in role and calling and in biology and that means different in the way that we ought to present ourselves publicly.

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  So yeah, when it comes to something like clothing, again, this is one Corinthians 11 with headcoverings in Church for Women and any number of different passages that speak to this, but that's the principle. Now, if you want to go specific and go precepts and ask, is it a sin for a woman to wear blue jeans today, to wear a blazer today? I would say it can be. I think at the very least we need to acknowledge that and I think that's an unpopular answer. I think it's an uncommon frankly answer in most of the evangelical world today. I mean, this ship has sailed so far and a lot of that frankly is because of just how short term our memory is. We forget that these were very real active questions and conversations even just like 50, 60 years ago, like in the late 60s, early 70s of with the sexual revolution and the women's lib movement and all that, first wave feminism, that's not that long ago.

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  My parents were teenagers through that and even young adults. And so the fact that we just would even laugh at the question I think is sad because I think it should still be a life question. I will say this, I said this, someone was joking with me on the way out of church yesterday and said like, "Well, it's a good thing I wore my dress today instead of I put on a pair of jeans and thought, no, I'll dress up. It's Mother's Day." And she's like, "You weren't really saying that it's sinful over a woman to wear jeans." And I'd said, "It can be. I think it can be for sure.

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  I think some of it is a conscience issue. I think some of it affects other people's consciences and that's a whole nother thing that we don't talk about enough either. It's like Paul says, look, it doesn't affect my conscience to eat, meat, sacrifice to idols, but if it affects yours, I won't do it. " So if we've got someone in our church that thinks women wearing pants or blazers blurs the line between ... And they're a little more conservative. You could call them a weaker conscience on that according to the principles Paul lays out for us in Romans 12, one Corinthians 12, all that kind of stuff is not 12 is Romans 14 and one Corinthians eight, I don't know, I'm going off the top of my head wherever it is, the meat sacrifice according to those principles, women in our church ought to be sensitive to that and I'll say, "You know what?

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  I don't want to be a stumbling block to you as far as your judgment of me as..." So that's something, that's a factor that at least has to come in. Now, you could ask the question, "Well, where does it stop?" I mean, you can't make everybody happy and that's true, but here's what I will say. And here's what I did say yesterday to that woman as I said, I can tell you this much for sure, the very first woman that put on pants was sinning. The very first woman that decided, "I'm going to put on jeans today." That was a sin for her. The motive in her heart that led her to do it was sinful. She blurred the lines. So if you want to say, "Well, now it's socially appropriate for women to wear jeans." We've had 60 plus years of this now, the ship has sailed.

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  Is it really a woman degrading or downplaying her femininity to wear pants or to wear a blaze or whatever? Again, it's funny, Polly and I just went to a fundraiser for our kids' school on Saturday night and there was apparently a lot of back and forth on this mom's text thread, they care about what they wear and what are you going to wear? And it said summer cocktail. What does that mean? And anyway, one of the moms was wearing a suit and they were just joking about the color of the suit and just how you're the only one who could pull this off. The rest of us, it was yellow, would look like just like a fat banana in this or whatever. Anyway, but even just thinking a little bit more intentionally about, because I don't often pay attention to this kind of stuff. She was the only woman there I think in a suit.

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  All the guys are wearing suits. All the women are wearing dresses and then you had this one woman wearing a suit. I would say personally for me, I would like to think that if I was her and I'm a Christian, I wouldn't have done that. That feels like, not feels like, that has the appearance of, hey, I'm just looking, if an alien walked in the room and trying to figure out what's going on here and say, what's good? I see all these tall, stronger with beards and short hair people in wearing this. And then I see all these curvy and shorter and higher body fat percentage, like all the things that make us men and women, no facial hair, nobody hair, like wearing these flowy dresses. But then I see this one person who if she was undressed would look like this category, but because of what she's dressed like, she looks like this category.

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  That's a blurring of the lines. I think that is exactly what this principle and what God's talking about here when he says, "Don't do that. Just don't do that.

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  Wear things that reflect and celebrate and maximize and make the most of your femininity, your masculinity." Now again, we don't get to, I mean, I guess some people out there, celebrities who are setting trends and setting culture and setting fashion attire and what people dress like I just think and it'd be great if we have more Christians who are influential, who were doing that kind of stuff because maybe we would see less of this kind of blurry of the lines and the cross dressing. And I mean, I made the joke about it yesterday, but like I did read an article just not long ago about how men's leggings is becoming a real thing and men's yoga pants or whatever. And I'm just like, yeah, that's a problem.

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  Christian men, not inherently, that's the point. It's not like there's nothing about if we lived in a world where starting from scratch and then this is just what men wore and this is what women were and the men were the one in the leggings and then I wore leggings, then I would be doing what all the men do and celebrating and embracing my manhood. And so that would be fine, but we don't. And so to be the one pushing a new trend and especially when it's a trend that has belonged exclusively monopolized by the other sex, the other gender for so long, leggings, you just don't do it. So yeah, that's a lot of talking.

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  I do wish that more, probably both, but especially women would really think more intentionally about this and take God's word more to heart with some of this. I feel like the more I've studied God's word, I've become more conservative on this. I have a lot of respect for the old school churches. I mean, I grew up in a church where we had a couple women that wore head coverings every Sunday morning and wouldn't be caught dead in anything but a dress. And anyway, I've got a lot more respect for that now and for those women who like good for them for maybe it's not quite as comfortable, maybe it's fashionable, whatever it is, but their conviction and their conscience and their allegiance to God and his word and desire to embrace their femininity is what's most important to them. So yeah, I'll leave it at that.

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  Next one is from Callie. She wrote in that vein, "Thinking about your comments on chapter 22, verse five in the weird curvy lines we've drawn around gender conforming attire in the church, e.g. We allow women to wear pants. Technically, if we were adhering purely to biblical standards of attire, men shouldn't be allowed to wear pants either. How do we explain this? "

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  Yeah, we'd all be wearing cloaks and robes

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  And togas or something. It can't be that Christ fulfilled this in the same way we think about the kosher diet because we still don't endorse full on cross-dressing. But if we say it's that the standard changes somewhat along with culture, we open the door to applying that logic in far more problematic ways. Thoughts?

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  I'm trying to get my head around her question completely. I think I spoke to it already a lot a bit. It can't be that Christ fulfilled this in the same way that we think about the kosher diet because we still don't endure doors full on cross. So I think what she's saying there is like, we don't worry at all about kosher diet stuff anymore, like all foods are clean.

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  And so that's where I would say it's a little bit similar because we don't worry about women's cloaks and men's cloaks. Again, the exact specific ... But I mean, what's the principle behind the kosher food laws? It's that we think about holiness even in the way that we eat and even our food can be a reminder of our calling to be different and set apart. Again, I would say that yes, actually it is exactly.That principle exactly should be in place for us when we go into our closets in the same way that a Jew 3,500 years ago was supposed to approach the dinner table thinking to themselves, "I'm a Jew." This meal is a reminder that I am one of God's people. I'm different. I'm not like most of the people on this world and to celebrate that and to embrace and to love that, even if it means I got to give up bacon, right?

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  Yeah, that ought to be somewhat of the experience of maybe the woman walking into her closet to get dressed in the morning. I am one of God's daughters, one of God's people and I don't dress like everybody else like all these other women. I don't even have like the same way that a Jewish person wouldn't have had bacon in the pantry fridge, they didn't have them. A woman today shouldn't have a lot of the clothes that other women who aren't Christians have in their closets because it's not modest.That's a whole nother obviously thing that is majorly emphasized in scripture when it comes to how we dress and women in particular with modesty. But yeah, maybe even beyond that, maybe even beyond the modesty thing, like when I go shopping, that ought to be on my mind as a woman and as a man. I ought to be thinking about, I'm a man.

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  Let me buy some clothes that accentuate my manhood. Same thing for women. I'm a woman. How can I embrace that in the clothes that I buy and wears and put on today when I get dressed? So yeah, hopefully, yeah, I'll stop there.

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  Well, the one thing that she did say, the standard changes somewhat along with culture and we could be opening the door to apply that logic in more problematic ways. And that's true. I mean, that is part of what I'm saying is like the more that culture does blur the lines, that's why I'm saying I don't think we can just sit there and say, "Well, the ship has sailed and like, oh, all women wear jeans, so I'll wear jeans." It's like, well, what about when all men wear leggings or when all culturally outside the church, let's say. Basically what I'm saying is the church should be the lagging, like you think about with something like technology use, like there's the early adopter, there's like the innovators, the ones making the changes, that's sin when it comes to blurring lines, like the first woman that put on pants, sin.

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  Then you got the early adopters like, "Oh, I didn't invent the iPhone, but I was the first one waiting in line to go buy it. Early adopters." I'm saying Christians shouldn't be early adopters. We shouldn't be middle adopters. We should be lagging. We should be the last ones saying like, "But wait a minute, wasn't there a reason that our forefathers dressed this way and wasn't there some wisdom here that's like what we talked about two weeks or last week with moving the boundary markers that the men of old have set for us. We ignore that to our peril. We ought to listen to ... We ought to be conservative in those ways, conserving what's best of the past and being very wary and skeptical and late to get on board with the latest trends because we don't trust that in a secular culture, a godless culture that they're going to be God honoring.

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  So yeah, thank you. Speed quick.

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  One more.

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  Couple, two minutes each on these.

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  Why can we take baby birds from a mother that seems unkind?

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  Thank you for asking that, Brian. Because the baby birds are going to die anyway if you take the mother. So if you think about it, you got the mom and the birds. If you take the mom, the babies are going to die without her anyway to feed them, to teach them to fly, et cetera. But you're hungry. You want to take one of them. Don't take both. This is God's way. That's the kindness in the law. Don't take both of them. Allow that mom to go have more birds. Maybe she'll set her nest farther away next time and you won't eat them. So it's what a kindness that God shows and yet he's also kind to us. We got to eat. So go ahead, take the eggs, take her young and you can eat. Yeah, certainly we could ask and go more on that and like, what about, I mean, if God really wants to be kind, shouldn't we all be vegetarians, whatever.

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  It's like then you get into the fall. And anyway, so I mean, originally we were vegetarians and then the fall. Yeah, but hopefully that explains

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  That. Gotcha. It's helpful. And then from an anonymous congregant who wrote in, should we be mixing clothing fabrics, being mindful of what our clothing is made of. I've seen things in social media about chemicals impacting health and even talk about natural energies of fabric and different fabrics "canceling each other's healthy energies." What should Christians make of the idea that things have energies?

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  Wow. Interesting.

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  Interesting

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  Question. Certainly the chemicals, that's a real thing. That's science observable. You can start to see how many of these chemicals from this fabric are actually getting absorbed by our skins and what not to wear and all that. So sure, pay attention to that. I think probably a lot of that is overblown and just bored stay at home moms that need more to worry about, to be honest. But the energy thing, it's another one where I want to be careful just mainly speaking about the stuff I don't know about because on the one hand my initial, if I'm honest, knee jerk gut reaction is that it sounds a lot like voodoo to me. It sounds a lot like all of the kind of Eastern yogic karmic energy, like just Eastern mysticism stuff blending into pseudoscience, but I know that we have chiropractors, for instance, at our church that practice ... I can't remember food testing, whatever the kind of stuff is where you hold a vial of this and a vial of that.

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  It's wild.

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  And we measure how the- Pretty cool. I don't know. It's

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  Again, wild, cool, crazy. I mean, different adjectives depending on who you are and what you know about it. I'm going to plead the fifth a little bit and say, I don't know enough to ... I know that we have wonderful people at our church that are very into it. I know we have wonderful people at our church that think it's just the most crazy crock pot voodoo kind of stuff and you're just stealing people's money if you're doing that. So we've got both those and they know both of them know way more than I do about all the kind of stuff that go into this. I will say that I, as skeptical as I, just based on where I'm coming from background and everything about it, the more that little bit that I have seen and read and heard and just about even like I just think plants for instance, there's even scientific data now starting to show that plants communicate with each other and just crazy stuff that like again, 50 years ago people would have been laughed at if they're like, "Hey, can I have grant money to do this study on whether or not plants talk to each other?" But it's like, so this idea that, I mean, again, a plant is a living creature, I mean, we know animals communicate with each other so you don't have to be human to communicate.

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  I'm just opening up my own mind a little bit wider to not immediately scoff and reject out of hand this idea that fabrics that come from plants and living sheep wool and this and that, like the energy thing, I don't know, it's still, I'd have to read more than like a viral TikTok mom blobber to blogger to vlogger, whatever to be convinced on anything. But if the science was there that like, "Hey, look at this, I could be convinced." So yeah, but I mean, if 50 years from now, the studies were there and we were saying, "Wow, look at..." Because again, already my wife's like, "I don't want our kids wearing polyester, like the chemicals." But if like 50 years from now we were all like, "Man, can you remember when 50 years ago people were wearing fabrics of mixed wool and cotton and whatever linen?" And we were all like, "Hey, we didn't..." The smoking thing, like when everybody used to smoke and then it's like, "Hey, that's terrible for you.

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  " It's like, remember when people used to smoke, that's crazy. We might be looking back and being like,

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  "Man, we're all wearing clothing of the same fiber, just even for scientific reasons, even non-Christians." And then that might be just yet another thing where we get to look and say, "Look, this is 4,000 years old. God was trying to tell us way back then because he knew wisdom that we didn't." And it wasn't just about the holiness and being different and set apart. It wasn't arbitrary. It's like there's a real reason to not wear linen and wool together. It's possible. It's possible. Who knows? I mean, we still don't know. Everybody's getting cancer these days and we don't know why. I mean, it's a lot of chemicals, but maybe there's some energy or some blending of things. I don't know. I don't know. I'm not smart enough to know how science works, but somebody one day will put it together and all truth is God's truth and we'll be like, "Hey, look, God knew what he was doing 4,000 years before we did."

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  And last one is from Cody. He wrote, "Why do we keep finding repeated principles from earlier in Deuteronomy that we will also find later in it? Should that affect how we read the book?"

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  Yes, it should. And the short answer is because we're stupid and forgetful. I said it a couple times already throughout the series and every time a law gets repeated, we'll have to say it again and because it's important. Repetition in the Bible happens because something's important and for God, it's God's way of saying like, "No, but really important. Like you might not have listened the first time I said this. Let me say it again." And also because like I said, we're stupid and foolish and we don't listen. It's Proverb two, wise people listen to God's word and good counsel, foolish people ignore it to their peril. And so we might've ignored it the first time so God's going to make really sure, "No, I want you to hear me on this. Let me tell you again." And also even when we do hear and try and listen, we're forgetful, right?

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  We need the repeated reminder and so the same reason that we preach the gospel every single Sunday because we need the reminder

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  That we are sinful and yet God is loving and he sent us Jesus and we've been set free from sin. Don't live as a slave to sin anymore. I mean, all these things are like, "Yeah, of course I know that. Of course I believe that. I trust that. And that's what makes me a Christian." But it's like, okay, well then why'd you send five minutes after you woke up this morning? Because I'm forgetful, because I need to remind myself of the gospel every single day and we need it every single week on Sunday and we need ... So we'll keep those reminders coming and thank y'all for all the great questions if you listened all the way to the one hour and 20 minute mark or whatever we're at, 10, 15 minute mark. Thank you and keep those questions coming and keep listening and keep being reminded and God bless

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  You. Yeah. And we hope this is edifying for you as you seek to be changed and to love God more as you aply God's word after the sermon. So go continue to apply the sermon and make disciples and Lord willing, we'll catch you right back here next week.