After the Sermon: Deuteronomy 22:13-25:12 (excerpts)

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

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Good morning, afternoon, evening. Whenever you may happen to be listening to this, this is Pastor Will and thank you for listening to our After the Sermon podcast. Want to begin by giving just a quick, quick recap of this past weekend's message. I won't say yesterday because yesterday was Memorial Day. So we're releasing this episode a day later than usual. Thanks for bearing with us and tuning in even after the fact. Sermons are still relevant on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays at every point after the sermon. So thanks for listening. But our sermon from this past Sunday was from Deuteronomy chapters 22 through 25 titled the sermon Sex and Marriage really could have gone broader because it was kind of a three point message pulling out various laws. I think we looked at, gosh, probably somewhere between two and three dozen different laws related to sex, to marriage, to other sexual bodily physical propriety is kind of how I subtitled it in the sermon purity laws regarding sex and relationships and bodies and things like that.

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So won't dig back through all of it, but Pastor Thad is going to be finishing the rest of the laws from chapters 22 through 25 with you this coming Sunday. So look forward to that. But we had lots of follow up questions from this past weekend's sermon as I expected and frankly asked for because there was just so much to try and get through and too much frankly to try and get to all in comprehensively in one message. And because again, as I mentioned on Sunday and various Sundays throughout our study of Deuteronomy, I really don't want to get so bogged down in the weeds that we lose sight of the forest for the trees. And so while we want to do justice to understanding the various laws and precepts that God's given us in the Old Testament, we recognize that they're just that. They are the Old Testament.

(02:33):

They're no longer binding on us today as new covenant believers in Jesus. He's fulfilled the law, but there are principles here. So a lot of our questions though are concerned with, the devil's always in the details, right? So how do we apply the principles that we tried to pull out from Sunday still today? So let me take these first three questions kind of all together because I think they're all hitting on the same thing. So first anonymous question was how do these laws in Deuteronomy apply to how women should be treated today?

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How should West Hills respond to women facing such situations? Specifically Deuteronomy 22 verses 23 and 24 doesn't line up with what I have learned about trauma responses for sexual abuse and chapter 22 versus 28, 29 seem so counterintuitive to how women should be protected from abuse. The passage was very hard to swallow, especially as a single woman. So let me just real quick reread the specific verses she references there. Verses 23 and 24. "If there is a betrayed 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, you shall purge the evil from your midst.

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And I think I suspect when this person asks and says, "It doesn't line up with what I've learned about trauma responses for sexual abuse." I would imagine what she has in mind is that kind of even biologists and also sociologists will tell us about sort of the fight, flight or freeze response that we have in high stress situations, whether that's an animal being hunted or whether that's frankly sadly a woman being preyed on by a sexual predator or abuser or something like that and that fight or flight or freez. And so what if the woman freezes and she gets raped and she doesn't cry out and yet maybe it's because there's this physiological response in her that froze her up and she was prevented from it. I'm reading into that, but I think that's probably a fair summary of what's being asked here. And then verses 28 and 29 in that same chapter, "If a man meets a virgin who is not betruthed and seizes her and lies with her and they are found and the man who lay with her, she'll give the father of the young woman 50 shekels of silver and she shall be his wife because he's violated her.

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He may not divorce her all his days." And again, this person asking the question says so counterintuitive to how women should be protected from abuse. Are you really sending her in to now be committed in marriage forever with her abuser? And let me go on. That's our first person asking the question. Second question may be asked in a slightly different way. How should we with modern sensibilities and a long historical awareness of abuse of power in millennium long of male dominated societies wrestle with such apparent and different consequences for men and women in the Bible as an example, cut off the woman's hand for grabbing male's genitals, but the only consequence for rape was a fine and a wife. So the cutting off the woman's hand for grabbing the male's genitals was from chapter 25, verses 11 and 12. We looked at that as well and yet this person asking the question is saying that the only consequence for rape was a fine and a wife.

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Now we did talk about how stiff the fine was equal to five or so years worth of common laborer's wages, earnings and obviously if you want to think of it as a consequence that you have to take this woman as a wife now.

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If she agrees and her parents agree, then that's a lifelong thing. It's hard to equate that to something like losing your hand. But anyway, this person is asking different historical context, seems like too easy an answer sometimes and I hear that. I hear that. And then the last one was actually an email I got that I just wanted to quickly kind of maybe read or summarize. This person reached out to me and said, "I know your heart for God and his word and your heart for women. I appreciate your willingness to tackle hard passages in scripture, but I'm currently aware of at least one woman who was left feeling tremendously vulnerable, unsafe, unprotected after your sermon this morning. I would bet that there are more. I know that the purpose of your sermon was not to make statements about how sexual assault should be handled within the church today, but my fear is that perhaps that happened unintentionally and not in a good way, especially for women who have already been victims of assault.

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  I hate the idea of a woman feeling fearful. The West Hills is a place where they would be blamed for their assault. I hate the idea of them not having confidence that their pastors would believe, love, shepherd, and protect them. And most of all, I hate the idea of women not having the confidence that their heavenly father loves them and deeply cares about these things. I feel like the congregation as a whole and the women specifically would really benefit from your assurance of these things in the positive maybe in your After the Sermon podcast. And so I actually called the person who sent that email to thank them for sending the email and for pointing out that they had had a conversation with other congregants who left feeling really angry or confused or just whatever reaction that might be and to thank them for letting me know that and offered to reach out to those people personally if it would be helpful and she didn't think it would.

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  But I did tell her, yeah, I want to read your email on the podcast and I want to address it. And I acknowledge that more than anything, I acknowledge that in light of some of these really, really ... And I mean, I think I mentioned it on Sunday. If not, I'll mention it now that some of these laws and the one in particular about if a man, again, sexually rapes a young virgin who's not betrayed, that the consequence would be that he would pay a fine and then take her as a wife just seems as going back to the first question submission we got about how counterintuitive it is and what we know about trauma responses and all that, that is probably the hardest law in all and maybe passage in all of the Bible. I think back to our tough text series that we did years ago at the church and we had a sermon on tough laws from the Old Testament.

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  And I don't think I included this one, but I should have because I really think that this is maybe perhaps the single toughest law to really, if you're really going to take it seriously and feel the weight of it. And then as these women asking these follow-up questions are pointing to you like this is just ... Sometimes it does feel like a cop out to say, "Well, it was a different time and place," and just chalk it up to historical context. I mean, that is what I said on Sunday and to be honest, I think I have to double down and say it again, just that we are so far removed from the ancient Israelite and any kind of ancient society and context that it is extremely hard, maybe impossible for us to grasp the reality of the situation that this young girl who was sexually assaulted would have found herself in her situation.

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  And again, I mean, I think the way I put it on Sunday was now you're facing a situation where you're really, it's the least, what is the least bad option here? I mentioned obviously God could have called for the death penalty for the man who victimized her and then what for the girl?

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  She's been defiled, she's been violated, she's like it or not, I mean, unless God was going to command someone else, that he has to marry her and provide for her and protect her and provide her with children and provide all the other sources of security that marriage offered her, which God can command anything. He could have done that, could have been some kind of Kinsman Redeemer sort of situation where he said next of ... I don't know, God could have figured out how he took care of her of this poor girl victim in some other way, but if God wanted to perhaps for this to be another visible kind of example to his people and to us of redemption, perhaps of how only God can take the worst possible thinkable circumstances and things that we've done and turn them and somehow use them for good.

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  Obviously, he did that most of all on the cross with Jesus and using the worst thing that's ever happened to accomplish the greatest good for us and the history of the world. And so is that part of what's going on here where God is saying, "I'm going to take this horrible, horrible, worst thing almost imaginable of someone assaulting this young, vulnerable girl, but I'm not going to give up on her or on him and I'm going to use it to bring about good for both of them." And I mean, that is certainly within God's power to do. And so maybe that's part of what's going on in the background here. I think the main thing that I wanted to make sure that I said though here on the podcast and what I said when I called the person who sent the email in particular just about knowing that there were women that were there that were offended and hurt by the sermon.

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  And again, of course I'm not going to apologize for God's word. I still believe even when I don't understand it and I wouldn't have written it that way and frankly, a lot of us probably wished that certain ones of these laws hadn't been included, but you know what, that's why it's God's word and not mine. And so I can't and won't apologize for it. What I will say is historical context, different time and place and I will also say that and on that note, I think God is giving Israel exactly what they wanted and needed at that time. I think that absolutely if God was to come down on Mount Sinai today at the state of civilization as it is today and God was to give laws to his people today, they would be vastly different than what we find in the Old Testament because we civilization and God's people are vastly different.

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  Obviously at this point we have the benefit of 2000 years of following Christ and that's part of what I wanted to say is like it's just a reminder too that we don't need God to do that because he already came back 1,500 years later in the person of Jesus and fulfilled the law. And so now we no longer, as Paul tells us, we're under the law, we're under grace, we're under Christ. And so I just wanted to make, and I should have done an even better job on Sunday of emphasizing and making sure everyone knew like we don't follow these laws anymore. And as hard as it might be for us to understand, much less to accept and swallow and comprehend that these laws were good 3,500 years ago. They would not be good if we tried to apply them today. We don't aply them today.

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  We play by a completely different set of rules and all the practical things that come with that. And I said already on Sunday, God hates rape, God hates sexual abuse. There's nothing even about the passage One of the things that I think the email touched on is I hate the idea of women thinking that they would be blamed for their assaults or not having confidence to come forward and be protected and things like that. I think part of what we see in Deuteronomy actually is God saying, "No, I do care and you do need to come forward. If there is a violation that happens, you need to open your voice and cry out and because God cares for justice for women." And so again, I don't say that to place blame on any women who might even be listening to this now and thinking, "Okay, wait, so now you're blaming me because I was abused 20 years ago and I've been too ashamed to ever say anything to anybody and you're blaming me.

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  " No, I'm not saying that. And God's not saying that to the email's point, what I am saying is God sees, even before you cry out, God sees, he cares. God is a God of justice who will right every wrong, if not in this life, he will in the life to come and God offers again, redemption and a path forward. He doesn't want you to be stuck in guilt or shame or that just victimization and trauma and the freeze mode and all that like God wants to bring healing and redemption. I think that's frankly what we see in his law in a different way 3,500 years ago than it would be today. And so today we do, frankly, we have more modern and evolved if you want to call it that. Civilization has evolved. We have better ways than Israel was capable of 3,500 years ago.

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  We have better ways of dealing with abuse and assault and trauma and rape and all these things today than they did then. Praise God for that. And so yeah, all of that to say, God loves you. He sees. He cares. We as a church love you. We want to be able to see you and hear you and care and step into whatever hurts anyone listening to this might be caring with them and we want to be a source of an extension of God's grace and his healing and his restoration that he wants to offer you. And so if that means coming and talking to me or another pastor or elder or another woman at our church, if you feel more comfortable or whatever it might be and just to know that you're going to be cared for, you're going to be heard, you're going to be offered hope and healing.

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  So I hope that's helpful. Could talk a lot more about all those questions. Let me try and get to one or two others here before I take a break and then come back and record segment two and Brian will splice them together. So another question we've got here, I'm curious if there are applications from the second point. That was the one about physical propriety and what to do when you have a nocturnal omission or when you need to go number two and you go outside the camp and you bury it and just things have their places and all that. And this person's asking if there's an application when it comes to masturbation and pornography. I think this would be relevant, though not often talked about to the church today. And I would agree absolutely relevant and I would disagree that it's not talked about often, at least in our church.

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  I can't speak for other churches and I only listen to the sermons of the handful of churches that I listen to, but we talk about things like sex and masturbation and pornography and addiction and things like that at West Hills actually probably more frequently than for some people's taste that they prefer. And part of that is just my own internalizing and application for myself of the principles of God's word and having been open in the past both from the pulpit and podcast and whatever else and sharing my testimony in our newcomer entry point class and just my own struggles with sexual addiction and throughout my life.

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  And because of the data bears that out, that 70% of men who are not just nominally Christian but actively attending church at least once a month, 70% of men polled say that they've looked at pornography at least once. Not only have they attended church once in the last month or more, they have looked at pornography once or more in the last month. And so that's a staggering statistic, more than two thirds of church going men are that in the thick of the battle with pornography. And so yeah, I think to quickly though go to ... I think it's perhaps the number one discipleship in our churches today is sexual discipleship and in particular for men, but increasingly for women as well. So we talk about it a lot and I'm happy to talk about it again now on the podcast and to say, yes, I think that there are specific applications from this passage in Deuteronomy and those applications would be that kind of as I alluded to, everything has its place, right?

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  Semen has its place, feces has its place, eunuchs and foreign non-believers have their place according to these passages that we were studying from Deuterteronomy. And so I think sex has its place, as I said, in marriage, that was the main point. Sorry, something like masturbation would be therefore, if not completely ruled out, it would at least ... I don't want to get into the specifics of how masturbation in the context of a marriage, but if sex is made for marriage, then you can extrapolate what you will from that ramifications for masturbation. Same thing with pornography. Pornography is almost ... It is by definition, it is taking sex out of the context of these two people who are married to one another and saying, now in all likelihood, the people that you're watching have sex are not married and certainly you're not married to them while you're watching it.

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  And so all those things would be ruled out. So I'm going to pause there for now. We'll come out and pick up part two here after my dentist appointment.

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  All right, we're back and no cavities at the dentist. So good news. Praise God. Let's get to some more of these questions. After the sermon, what do Jews today do with passages like this? When did laws like this stop being practiced? It's a great question. I don't know exactly. I would have to guess you think about even still in Jesus' day, you have the story from John eight of the woman caught in adultery and they're getting ready to stone her and there's all sorts of other complications with that passage because for instance, according to the law, they should have brought the man out too if they're both caught in adultery. Both are supposed to be stoned according to Deuteronomy 22. And how did the witnesses ... Did people actually catch them in the act? Anyway, but they're getting ready to stone them to death. So it seems like still we're practicing in Jesus' day and yet we know the Romans were ... I guess they were somewhat hands off.

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  They just didn't care that much about what the Jews did to each other as long as it wasn't really messing with kind of Roman authority and rule and all that. And yet, for instance, the Jews had to go or felt the need, desire, whatever, to go to Pilate and get Rome to be the ones to crucify Jesus even though according to Old Testament law, I mean, if Jesus was, in their opinion, truly blaspheming, then they had every right under God's law to be the ones to stone him and put him to death. And so all sorts of interesting things there with just kind of how Jewish legal rulings and punishments and all that got enforced vis-a-vis their occupying overlords, whether that was the Romans or eventually any number of other ... Well, and previously, obviously there was the Assyrian captivity and the Baylonian captivity and how did they enforce these laws during all of that and when they didn't necessarily have legal autonomy over ... I mean, these people were ... The Pharisees or ruling Jewish leaders of the day weren't ... Yeah, they weren't the ultimate authority in some of those places.

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  All that to say, I have to believe that ... So I was thinking about this and going back to my Ephesians series and the subtitle of that sermon series, that Jesus Changes Everything. And you think about how literally Jesus changed everything even about Judaism from the standpoint of Jesus foretelling, prophecying the destruction of the temple within a generation of when he would die. And then sure enough, in 78, the Romans come in and destroy the temple never to be rebuilt again to this day and therefore the entire Jewish system of worship and sacrifices and the whole temple system was overthrown in a day. And so Judaism had to adapt and you have all these new, bizarre interpretations of, well, this is why we don't actually follow the sacrifices that God commands in the Old Testament. The only way for there to be forgiveness is through the blood of the animal and all of that.

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  And yet they're no longer shedding the blood of animals. And again, today they would say, not just because they don't have a temple or something, but because, oh, that's old and now we have a different way of understanding the fulfillment, not in Jesus for them, but of the whole sacrificial system and all of that. But all of it to say, I'm going to make a historical guess and say it was probably right around that same time when Judaism was already shifting within a generation or two of Jesus and adapting in all those ways that probably you're no longer than, I'm guessing, seeing stoning for adultery to death, for instance, or things like that. Because again, today there's no Jews anywhere in the world that today would say, "Oh, we need to implement Deuteronomy 22 here and bring the adulterous couple out and stone them." So yeah, I'm curious now, I'd like to do a little bit more research on that if somebody who's listening to this and wants to So I'm sure I could probably find it pretty quick if I just Google along the line, which maybe I should have before we started recording, but I'll circle back if I hear more about that.

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  Okay, let's move on. Can you discuss these two scenarios that exemplifies several of these laws? First one, in Jesus' genealogy, Judah and Tamar and its impact on King David.

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  And then second, would there be laws broken when David's son Absalom rapes the daughter and the result? I'm a little some words missing in this email, but I believe the reference in the second one would be to David's son Abner, who was the one who raped Tamar, another Tamar, David's daughter. And Absalom was Tamar's full blooded brother and half brother Abner raped Tamar. And so anyway, I guess asking for how would some of these laws from Deuteronomy 22 to 25 be implemented in the cases of Jesus' genealogy, Judah and Tamar. So quick refresher on that story. Judah, Israel's fourth son, Jacob's fourth son, Judah.

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  His son was married to Tamar, son dies and then this law of Levera marriage was supposed to kick in even though the law hadn't been given. The text makes it clear that already pre-Moses, pre this Deuteronomy 25 through 10 law of Levert marriage, pre that there was already this expectation, maybe just culturally or whatever, God had somehow impressed it upon them. I don't know that, hey, this is what you do. If your brother dies and doesn't give children to his widow before he dies, it's your job to go and do it. And then you had this weird story of Onan, the other brother who went in to his brother's wife, but every time he would do it, he would pull out and spill his seed on the ground and God got mad at him for doing that and killed him. And so fast forward and you've got Judah, the dad now who goes, and Tamar dresses up like a prostitute, veils, hides her face and basically convinces her father-in-law, Judah, to have sex with her and she gets pregnant by him so that she can have a child and pass on the family line and have all the security that we talked about of being provided for by her children and her old age and the joy of childbearing and child rearing and all that.

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  But crazy story, all of it to say there's just sin all across the ... It's just sin everywhere, Onin's sin and Judah's sin and frankly tomorrow's sin and tricking her father-in-law. Judah has that great line where he's like, he's going to bring her out and stone her to death when he finds out she's pregnant. And then he finds out it's his kid and he's the one who knocked her up and he's like, "Oh shoot, she's more righteous than me. " And that's true. She as much as Tamar's I would say sinful, Genesis 38 is just sin across the board. I would say Tamar's sin was probably less than Judah's. And anyway, that's what you see time and time again.

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  You got any number of those kinds of examples including David himself whose sin led to the whole relationship with Basheba that resulted ultimately in Solomon being born down the line. And so Jesus' own line, just time and time again, you have these examples of sinful people that God redeems their sin. The law going to the second question here, example of David's son Abner raping and the daughter and the result. It is interesting. I just reread that story in my Bible on a year plan a week or two ago now. And it is interesting because after Abner rapes that tomorrow, David's daughter, so she tries to ... Actually, sorry, before he does, she tries to tell him, "No, my brother, don't do this, you'll defile me and this is such a thing ought not be done." And she says, "Why don't you just ask our dad, David, for my hand in marriage and he won't withhold you from me.

  (35:16):

  " Now it's an interesting thing because David would have legally, according to God's law, been required to not give Tamar to her half brother, Abner, because that's half incest and that was against the law. And so maybe Tamar knew that, maybe she was just trying to buy time, maybe she thought Abner wouldn't know that. Maybe Abner did know that and that's why he said, "No, you're wrong and David won't give me to you or you to me. " And so that's why he took her by force instead, or maybe he just was caught up in the moment and didn't care. We don't know.

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  But the interesting thing to think about is, okay, what about when that law would come into potential conflict with the law from Deuteronomy 22 about the man meeting the unwed virgin and assaulting her, raping her. And then the path forward is that the father has the right to make the man marry her basically, to take her as a wife. So would that have happened in this case with Abner if it would have been an incestuous relationship? The other factor to think about with that is, well, just the reality that in that case, it's interesting tomorrow after he gets done raping her tomorrow, it says that Abner then hated her worse than he had loved her and the word love is more lust. He was filled with a lust for her. I want you, I got to have you. And then as soon as he's done having his way with his half sister, it says his hate was even greater than his lust had been.

  (37:16):

  And he leaves her and she actually calls out and says, "Don't leave me for this defilement or embarrassment or disrespect or dishonoring is worse than what you just did to me and raping me, like to leave me. " And what's interesting to think about is would Tamara have had this law in her mind where like now because I've been violated by him, he's got to stay with me. He's got to marry me. He's got to take care of me or something like that. And yet he's walking out on her and immediately just doesn't want anything to do with her and just ready to throw her away like a piece of garbage. And it's just a terrible, tragic story all around. And again, just if you take nothing else away from it, you can take away that God hates sexual sin and God wants so much better for his people than this.

  (38:20):

  Let's move on. Many of the laws and instructions in the Bible texts were difficult to listen to and difficult to relate to. What is the pastor's responsibility to address difficult texts directly rather than avoid them? I would say yes, the pastor's responsibility is to address them and not just avoid them. In many ways it would have, I guess maybe it'd been easier for me to just skip over this passage or skip over Deuteronomy because it includes this passage or because most people think it's boring or fill in the blank because other passages are more relevant to people's daily lives or something. But time and time again, I've said and we'll continue to come back to you for me, for us as a church, it's either God's word or it's not. And if the Bible is God's word, then that's what people need to hear, not what I think they want to hear, need to hear, not what seems relevant, not what's easy, but what the Bible says.

  (39:21):

  And so this is what God's word says and so I'm going to try and preach it trusting that even when it is difficult, even when it does shock us, enrage us, frustrate us, upset us, what will fill on the verb that it's all ultimately for our good and for his glory. Next question, you talked about how God wants sexual purity just as he wants spiritual purity. In what way does a Christian's compartmentalization of sin habitually sinning on Saturday night and praising God on Sunday morning impact the person's ability to be sanctified? I would say it impacts it greatly. There's no such thing as truly compartmentalizing our lives. It's a great word and a great ... I'm glad this person ... I think I can say it as Brad introduced or asked this question, but this idea of compartmentalizing like, "Oh, well, I can keep my sexual side of me different from my spiritual side or my emotional side separate from my social side." I don't know, like physical, like what I eat is somehow different from ... It's like, no, you just got one life and we are just one being.

  (40:43):

  We are physical, we are emotional, spiritual, social, relational. We have all these different sides of us. They're all intertwined and you can't just divorce one from the others like that. And so you're really, I think you can make the argument and people do ... And I think I probably said it before myself is like, you're really only as sanctified as your least sanctified part of who you are. I mean, if that is your sort of vice or whatever is like, "You know what?

  (41:23):

  I live a really upstanding Christian life except for this one area that I just really, really struggle with and carnal and fleshly and give in and what. " Then that's how sanctified you are and that's where God wants to most meet us and target and address our sin problem and grow us. And it's like David says in the Psalms, like, "When I tried to cover over my sin, my bones wasted away, but when I brought it to the light, God began to bring healing." And so whatever part of your life you try and sequester off and say, "I'll just leave this part of me locked behind the closet door and that skeleton stays in that closet or whatever." It's like the house is going to start smelling. You can't just compartment like the whole house is going to be filled with that rotting corpse of a stench.

  (42:30):

  And so many other scriptures we could bring in, man, what looks on the outward appearance, God looks on the heart, every part of our heart. And so God sees us to the core, he sees all of us and he wants all of us to be wholly devoted to him. And so anyway, yeah, let's leave it at that. You spoke about obedience and everyday things like bodily discharges. How does Christ reshape the way we see ordinary obedience, not as legalism, but as a response to God's grace and holiness well said, pointed out I think one of the beautiful things about so many of these laws in Deuteronomy about like what to do when you have a nocturnal omission or which two foods not to eat together or whatever or fabrics to wear together. I think again, it was intended by God to just be these daily for a woman on our period or whatever, like monthly, like these regular recurring reminders, you could never get that far away from being reminded of who God is, of who you are, of his calling on your life, of who you belong to, what you owe him in terms of obedience and worship and all.

  (43:44):

  And so we do. We need to find ways of recovering that wherever we can in our day and age when sadly, just in a technology age when in so many ways it should be easier than ever be reminded of God and to be reminded to pray and cry out to him and connect with him and so many ways to do it and yet we are in some ways more ignorant, forgetful, overlooking than ever. And I think to the legalism point and the question is that's exactly what Jesus came to confront because so much of what Judaism had become by Jesus' day was they had taken God's law and the people who were at all interested in kind of obeying it, like it seems like there's this culture mainly derived from the Jewish leaders, this culture of just legalism and of just adding heaping law on top of law and my tradition, my oral interpretation of the law that then becomes even more important to me than the law.

  (44:53):

  And you've just underneath all of it, you've buried God's heart, you've buried the principle, you've buried the whole reason for why we make the tassels on our robes in the first place and you've buried it underneath. The whole reason was to remember as we're walking around and we feel it brush against our ankles, like the 613 commands and God's goodness and giving us his guidance to how to live, but instead you've buried it under, "Oh, your tassels aren't big enough and let me inspect that and how many inches they're supposed to be. " And Jesus is like, "Gosh, what are you doing here?" So anyway, yeah, still to this day, we struggle as Christians with falling off one side of the horse or the other on that, whether it's legalism or licentiousness and Jesus is offering us a third way of faithful obedience that is a response of worship to what God has done for us.

  (45:46):

  All right, last question on this one. A portion of the sermon dealt with women who have been mistreated or even wronged. How should this direct us today to look for opportunities to reflect Christ justice, mercy, and compassion toward people who have been overlooked or mistreated? In so many ways, more than I could count and we can start with women and those who have mistreated or degraded or abused or belittled women because that was certainly a part again of what came out of the sermon and some of the response even to the sermon and just wanting to make sure that women felt valued and cared for and protected and all of that at our church. And so you can start there, but I mean, you can just go on from there. I know Brad has a heart for that as a lawyer and as someone who's devoted his life and his career to caring for the overlooked, the mistreated and for pursuing justice.

  (46:45):

  And we won't all have a career in that, but we are all called to that in some capacity. Got a couple more here. Why do some Christians consider contraception unbiblical? Are they an abomination?

  (47:00):

  I have a whole podcast on Ask the Pastor from years ago on contraception. So I'm going to say, I'm going to give you the one word answer and then I'll just refer you to that for the full 20 or 30 minute treatment. The one word answer is maybe I'll give you another one answer. Sometimes some forms of contraception are unbiblical and abomination. I would say most are not inherently so. I would say most of it really depends on the heart and the person's motivation for using contraception. So it can be, but I don't believe inherently so. And so anyway, if you're the person that asked this and can't with a Google search, find on our previous podcast episodes, that one, let us know somehow and we'll make sure to get that to you. Do men need to ask God's forgiveness for involuntary nocturnal emissions? No, because it's not a matter of moral impurity, but rather ritual impurity.

  (48:21):

  I think the text and other texts in the Old Testament make that clear, similar to a woman being on a period. Now, if we're talking about a true nocturnal omission, the man was unconscious asleep and he wakes up and whatever, that's different than again, something like masturbation where a man is conscious and in that case, purposefully spilling his seed to use the euphemism. And so in that case, you may be talking about a case of needing to seek God's forgiveness, but yeah, I'll leave that there. Okay. And last but not least, end on a high note from Sarah. "Will, I have read the Bible completely but never taught or studied through Deuteronomy. I was wondering about King David's lack of regard over sexual promiscuity. I know he was chasing but not by the standards of Deuteronomy.

  (49:25):

  God finally did so by taking hembas Sheba's child and that's true But anyway, then she says," You are a great teacher and that was a challenging topic. Appreciate your teaching. "And anyway, I just appreciate that encouragement and especially with a tough passage and with hearing some of that feedback of like, " Hey, I wish you would have said more about this. "It was encouraging to me to hear others that just said," Man, thank you for handling that in as sensitive maybe as possible given the time constraints and everything else that you were trying to get to, trying to be sensitive to it and handling it in a biblically faithful, pastorally sensitive, but sanctifying and personally applicable way. And that's what we try and do. Don't always do it great, but I appreciate y'all listening and your grace and patience for the rest. God bless you and may God continue to use his word in your hearts and in your minds even in the days ahead after the sermon to bring you closer to him.

  (50:38):

  Pray in Jesus' name. Amen.