And with that, I will answer any questions anybody might have. Trent, a man with what? Well, let me illustrate it this way. I know more about adultery than probably anybody in rapeseed's parish. Why? Because I have sat and listened and prayed and cried with several hundred people who have ruined their lives and other people's lives through adultery. I don't have to physically commit adultery in order to understand it. I understand adultery really, really well. I've counseled pastors and elders and teachers and lawyers and judges and whatever who committed adultery. And I've had people tell me sometimes in great detail their inner psychological agony that they've gone through and how they got into it. And so what I'm saying is that you don't have to actually walk in somebody's shoes to understand. If you listen with Holy Spirit discernment and Holy Spirit empathy, you can really grasp it. I mean, I've wept with those that we... So I think that the Apostle Paul, while he writes certainly with a profound knowledge of things, I think that St. Paul writes with the knowledge of a pastor who has listened to people and wrestled with people in their problems. And having said that, that doesn't mean that Paul was not married. It was normal in the Jewish world of the first century for a man to marry. In fact, it was so normal for a man to marry that people generally looked at scant said a man who was not married, but at the time he was a certain age and I couldn't name that age. So the tradition would be that Paul was married, the Jewish tradition, but if we look at the New Testament, I can't find a compelling reason except people say, well, he was part of the Sanhedrin. I'm not sure he was part of the Sanhedrin. He had close relationships with people who were in the Sanhedrin. It would have been required, I believe, for Paul to have been married. Were he actually a member of the Sanhedrin? Any other questions? I believe absolutely. I think that if a couple, what Barbara Adam repeating the question, because Sandy said, be sure and repeat the questions so we get them on the tape, what happens with the couple, neither of whom is a Christian, they're living together, they've had children together, and one of them becomes a Christian. Should they marry? And my answer to that is absolutely. And the reason is that they have lived as husband and wife. And even if now they're going to be unequal, they're just legalizing what they were actually entered into that way, and it's as far better do that. In other words, they are de facto marriage married. And so the state kind of recognizes that, that they are married, and that's what's called common law. They were common law married. What's the penalty for, let's see, what's the penalty for for fornication?
Let's see here. I'm a moment. The penalty for fornication is not the death penalty, and I'll have to look for it in a moment. But let me, in part of answering that, let's look at how seriously God wants people to be virgins when they're married. Turn with me to Matthew to Deuteronomy 22. Deuteronomy chapter 22 and verse 13, page 307. Deuteronomy 22, verse 13. If a man takes the wife, and after lying with her dislikes her and slanders her and gives her a bad name saying, I married this woman, but when I approached her, I did not find proof of her virginity. Then the girl's father and mother shall bring proof that she was a virgin to the town elders at the gate. Now, what in the world is that? Well, what it, what it is is this. In, in the ancient world of the Bible, the big deal was the engagement. The marriage was the minor part. The engagement is the big negotiation where the parents decide that Lulabel and, or in this case, let's see what I was going to use this. Mugetro boating's wife was, may I allow you? Okay. So the big deal is when Mr. and Mrs. Yule and Mr. and Mrs. Boating get together and decide their children are going to marry. They have a big party. Then there is a period of time of waiting and of abstinence. She still lives in her father's house. She still lives in his father's house. But they know their betrothed together and it's a binding contract. They can only be broken by divorce, interestingly enough. So then they come together for the wedding ceremony. And what they do is they stand before the witnesses and the mother and the fathers of the bride home. And having some kind of bandwidth and they make their pledge, they go back to a back room. And there is going to be some kind of special fabric placed on the bed. And what happens then is that the father and the mother go back to the bridal chamber after the bride and groom have come out and consummated the marriage by cutting the covenant. And they take that particular special fabric that they put on the bed and they save it. Why do they save it? Because that garment or that piece of cloth that they have put there has the evidence of the girl's virginity. What is the evidence of the girl's virginity? Well, you remember I said this morning that in all covenants there's the speaking of the covenant and there's the cutting of the covenant. And the shedding of blood is always involved in the covenant. In the case of a first marriage with a virgin, the covenant is cut on the wedding night by the shedding of the blood when that which occludes the birth canal is broken. And then the breaking of that which occludes the birth canal is the shedding of blood and the evidence of that shedding of blood is preserved on the cloth. And the father and the mother zealously preserved the token that the marriage was actually cut and blood was shed. And so this is where it is said, verse 15, the girl's father and mother shall bring proof that she was a virgin to the town elders at the gate. The girl's father will say to the elders, I gave my daughter a marriage to this men, but he just likes her. Now he has slandered her and said, I did not find your daughter to be a virgin, but here is the proof of my daughter's virginity. The interparent shall display the cloth before the elders of the town and the elders shall take the man and punish him. They shall find him a hundred shackles of silver and give them to the girl's father because this man has given an Israelite virgin a bad name. She shall continue to be his wife. He must not divorce her. Remember this was a culture that allowed the divorce for lots of reasons. He must not divorce her as long as he lives. To bring the accusation was to forever keep yourself from ever being able to divorce, verse 20. If however the charge is true and no proof of the girl's virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father's house. And there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done a disgraceful thing in this world by being promiscuous while still in their father's house. You must purge the evil among you. Now it's interesting if you go through and read further. The man has found the verse 22, sleeping in the other man's wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman who was dying and so on. If a man happens to meet in town, a virgin pledge to be married, she should blah, blah, blah, and so on and so forth. The point that I want to make is, in verse 21, and the word rate, verse 28 rather, I'm paste really, the word rate is probably too strong. The word, if a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her, we possibly could translate that as seduces her. And they are discovered, he shall pay the girl's father 50 shackles of silver. He must marry the girl, for he has violated her, had never divorced her as long as he lives. My point is that fornication is wrong but it's not as serious as adultery. And the reason that so is that we know, in the Old Testament, there is no death penalty for fornication. It's sex between two people, neither of whom are married. So fornication is a serious thing, but there's no death penalty for fornication. But there's a death penalty for v.c.ality, there's a death penalty for homosexuality, there's a death penalty for adultery. There's a death penalty for a woman passing herself off as a virgin and getting married when she's not a virgin if her husband wants to press the charge. By the way, this throws some light on the story of Joseph and Mary. Joseph is espoused to marry, they betrothed each other. And then he discovers that Mary is pregnant and he knows he's not the father. So he assumes that she has broken the betrothal. In effect, she's an adulteress. But Joseph being a just man determines to do what, to put her away quietly, privately, because he did love Mary. He didn't want to see her suffer, but he wasn't going to go ahead through with the marriage because she'd broken the contract. He could have had her put to death, but he decides to end it. But the angel of the Lord comes to him at night and says don't do this because she is a virgin and what she has conceived is by the power of the Holy Spirit and so he takes her and makes her his wife. So it's an interesting thing. So again, the death penalty and it's a really serious thing. And so the couple that's merely shocking and never been married, they're not guilty of adultery, but they ought to marry. I don't know if there's a long answer, but perhaps it was a useful answer because these Old Testament laws show us what sin deserves and God's method in the Old Testament dealing with them. Any other question or comment got to here, we got to start with Linda and then we go to Randall. Yes, I believe that to be true because regardless of the reason why the divorce occurred. The first person in a kind of like playing chicken and the first person to swerve, you know, when your kids used to do that in the 50s, you know, and they were driving their cars at each other and whoever swerved law. The question was that two people are married, a believer in unbeliever and they divorce and then the unbelieving spouse remarries is the believer free to marry and my answer is yes because when the unbeliever married, they ended the marriage by adultery. Their marriage was the adultery that broke the marriage bond and so the believer is free to marry. That's correct. That's why I always ask people some questions before I perform marriage that, well, you know, you've been married before. Okay, well why did it end? Well, the first question I always ask is, has your former, has your former spouse remarried? Once they tell me they have, then it's over. The marriage is ended, so they're free to marry. Well, I think it's, let me say what it's not and sometimes it's easier to say what it's not. It doesn't mean that there, that a clean child would be automatically saved. And it doesn't mean that an unclean child would be automatically lost. But it's probably in the area of saying a, first of all, it has nothing to do, I believe, with legitimacy or illegitimacy because scriptures would recognize every marriage as a real marriage and therefore any child born of that marriage would be legitimate. So it's not about illegitimacy. But I think that it's saying this and I think it's a good promise. It is a wonderful promise. Your children are not under the curse that would come down them on their bloodline through the unbeliever, but that curse is broken. That doesn't mean that they're saved or born again or automatically going to be self, but they're not defiled by being the child of an unsafe person.
He says, it's sexual immorality and he uses the word that's there as an interesting word. It's a broad word rather than narrow word. Adultery is a narrow and specific word in Greek and therefore in scripture. Adultery means that somebody who's married has sex with somebody that they're not married to. That's adultery. But the word that's used here includes adultery, but it's broader than that. It's broader than that. It's pornea. We get the word and it doesn't mean that pornography, I do not believe that catching your husband looking at pornography is the same as the person committing adultery. Nor does it mean that because your husband happens to notice Lula Bell walking down the street and gets a neck crit going like that. That may be adultery in the heart, but that's not grounds for a divorce. It's real adultery. It's physical. It's physical, sexual union with somebody else. Not adultery is a heart. If that were the case, everybody would be divorced sooner or later according to what Jesus is saying at least about nails. Well, yeah, I think you can say I can tell you one time. I won't get specific. I just say that I remember a question one time I was interrogating a man in front of his wife in front of his pastor who tried to stop me and I wouldn't be stopped. This was in another state. I pressed the question and I asked a specific question regarding contact. Contact in any way shape or form with a particular part of the body. I said, was there blank contact? I don't want to say the word. I used to like word by the way, but anyhow. Was there blank contact? I said, you need to answer the question. It was in his own living room in another state. I don't think we need to go here. I said, I'm in charge here. You need to be quiet. I can be very dominating when I believe God is leading me. I said, you need to be quiet. I want you to answer the question as I've asked you. He said, yes. Now, why did I demand to get explicit? Because he had committed adultery. He had had contact with a certain part of the body of another woman. Why was it necessary for him to confess that? Because there can never be healing, cleansing, and forgiveness and restoration without honesty. That's why. What I'm saying is, we don't need to go through a litany of every conceivable sexual sin there is. It would be gross and nasty and unprofitable, but it's simply saying that if there's physical contact having to do with certain level of intimacy, then yes, that's the sexual sin that's in view. Jesus says, that is ground for divorce that frees you to remarry. That doesn't mean you have to divorce because of that. And I always encourage people to reconcile, even if there's adultery, reconcile, reconcile. But obviously, it comes a point where it's foolishness and it's just trampling the marriage covenant under foot because somebody doesn't want to repent. I remember a woman many years ago, saying, how will I know? I said, God will give you sin. And I always believe this. God always gives a sin. This was the case of a man having another woman and refusing to repent. And I said, you just need to hold fast. Don't initiate. Just hang in there, hang in there. And when it's ready, if he's not going to repent, you will know. God will give you a sign. And it was Thanksgiving. It was about this time of year. And she came to me. She called me on the phone. She said, Bob, my husband's mother has invited his girlfriend for Thanksgiving dinner. And I said, I believe that's your sign. And she had peace about it. She didn't have peace about it at that point. My point is, I can't legislate for somebody else. But I do believe that God speaks and then can confirm that with someone else. And after many months, the husband continuing in this relationship with this other woman, when the husband's mother accepted the paramour at the Thanksgiving dinner table with the family instead of the wife, she had peace about falling for divorce. And it's all about personal peace, Tanya. I'll try to be real fast. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that's one reason why in an earlier non-technological time, people had cast iron skillets. And he just walked him over the head for doing that. No, hot grips, hot grips works well too. Anyhow, I counseled a woman one time who told me that she found out her husband had done something in the next morning. Is he sitting there thinking all was well? She was cooking the grips on the stove. She just took them and he was in his jammy sitting there at the breakfast table and she poured them in his lap. Well, but anyhow, you know, that's a terrible problem, isn't it? It's a kind of unsatfulness, but I don't believe that it's out in adultry. I think it's more in the area of physical and verbal abuse. And it may warrant separation, but I'm not sure that it gives the ground to divorce with the view to remarriage. The one thing again, you come back. I don't want to I don't want to legislate. I want to say that we need to give God time to operate because this is not a world where anything can happen. This is a world where only that which God is ordained to bless us for our good can happen. And therefore, it may be that a person needs to separate needs to say, you know, you have wounded my spirit deeply. I'm outraged with this. This is absolutely bizarre behavior. I know there's no physical contact, but you have trampled our marriage vows under your feet. And I feel the file by what you're doing and possibly to separate the deal is that the scripture gives a promise in the psalm that says, the rod of the wicked will not abide on the land, a lot of the righteous, less the righteous stretch forth his hand to do iniquity. And the point is that at a point, if you go with patience and carefulness, God will cause that other person to go ahead and go off the defense. And then you be free or God will bring that person to repentance. And the other thing I want to say is, which is not popular in the modern world, we have church discipline and you need to bring a spouse before the elders of the church and say, my spouse is into pornography and he is grieving my soul and I need your help. And then it's kind of like a woman going to her dad to take care of a problem with her husband. See, I think that my daughters have a responsibility if they're having trouble with their husband and he won't do right to come to me. It's my responsibility as the father of that girl to deal with their husband. In other words, there are other channels that you're not just left to your own, including legal civil. Yeah, I'm calling that separation. In the modern world, you know, once you separate your automatically divorced, there's a certain point uncontested. And I'm saying, well, we ignore the laws of Louisiana. We have to go by God's laws, but we have to recognize the legal facts that we're under those laws. We don't violate those laws. What I'm saying is that we're not free to violate the laws of the state of Louisiana. That's not what I'm saying, but I'm saying that just because the laws of the state of Louisiana permit us to do something doesn't mean that we're biblically permitted to do it. That's what I'm saying. Uh-huh. If a man happens to meet a version who's not placed to be married and rates are in there, discovered. Well, I think that we're reading more into that, perhaps in an English translation, and there's absolutely necessary to read into it. And there are two things I want to say. First of all, we have to understand, and this is why I'm not what's called a theonomist, that the theonomists are people that believe that the penalties under the Old Testament law should be followed by civil governments today. So we should execute adulterers and homosexuals and all, and I don't believe that. We have to understand that there is a pre-redemptive severity and harshness to the law of God under the Old Testament that functions as our school teacher to point us to the cross and make us appreciate Jesus. That's an important principle. The second thing is that we have to take these things in the context of the ancient Near East, and there's a certain sense in which this woman has now lost her virginity. And the penalty for that in terms is for the man who has to marry her, can never divorce her, and if he violates her, or abuses her, not only her father, but the elders of the community will treat him severely. They'll beat him because they could spank him, in effect they could whip him in public for his being abusive to his wife. The point is, in that culture, virginity is highly valued, and this man is stolen from the girl, and therefore the restitution that he makes is that he has to treat her right for the rest of her life. Now, it says one last thing, and this is important. We look at this and we say, well, there's no way in the world a woman could ever ever come to love a man like that. And the answer to scripture is, no, that's not true, a woman can love a man like that. And in our romantic culture, we have to allow scripture to speak, and scripture would say this. Two people, regardless of their past, regardless of what they've ever done to anybody else or to each other, if those two people will tonight, humble themselves before God and seek God's face, there is a miraculous power of the Holy Spirit to work a miracle in their lives and to bring healing. And people could actually have a good, happy marriage, even if it begins on such a dreadful footing as that. But you have to understand one last thing about rape, and that is that rape in that culture is not exactly the same as ours. There was never the issue of getting in, by the way, Peterson should not have been found guilty yesterday, or whenever it was writing. I believe guilty, but he should not have been found guilty, because it's only at the mouth of two or three witnesses that every word is established. The Old Testament law is a very simple law, and it requires witnesses, and so when you're in court in the case of a girl saying, he forced me. Well, you can't prove it, he can't prove it. Here's the deal. He's going to treat you right the rest of your life. You'll be an honored and blessed woman. Now, beyond that, I can't defend that except to say, you know, when I compare their legal system, their legal system, we don't have 26 weeks long trials in the Old Testament. And we don't get into things about he said, and she said, and all this, it's really clear cut. If there's no eye witness, compelling evidence is the glove don't fit, you got to acquit. I think that post-presentation is that we live in a very decadent society, and I'm in no way espousing Islamic law. Please, don't anybody think I'm going there. But I've got to say that the protectiveness that Islamic culture purports to give to females is something that we would do well to imitate a part of in our culture. And what I mean by that is this. In modern American culture, thanks to Henry Ford, people now are able to have a bedroom with four wheels. And so when a boy comes calling on your daughter and wants to take her out, we allow people to do since Henry Ford's invention of the automobile. We allow, we in effect are sending our daughter into a private room with a male. This is insane. And I'm simply saying that while we don't need to go as far as the Muslims get a American culture, not just in my generation, but in that of my parents, and most of your grandparents, left common sense. It's insane to allow a 14-year-old girl to get into the bedroom just because it has four tires on it to get in a bedroom with a boy and be gone for two to three hours. Are we insane? Are we lunatics? And so what's going to happen is this, whether there's force or not is not the issue in this biblical text. The issue is that the male takes advantage of the female. And it always happens that way. I mean, even if there's no force and even if there's mutual consent, when a 16-year-old boy takes a 14-year-old girl out for a ride to lover's lane, she doesn't have to give consent. Even if she says, sure, I want this, he's right here in a biblical sense. Is that helpful to flesh that out that way? Oh no, no, no, I'm glad you're doing that. No, she's lost her virginity, this man's soul or virginity. The point that I would make is that the Old Testament, because of the simplicity of its legal code, no 20 weeks of trial, because the simplicity of its code doesn't even attempt to answer the question which can't be answered, because it's just the two of them. What's their force or non-force? And what it's saying in a fact is, it doesn't make any difference whether it's force or not force, because even if it was consensual sex, he raped her. Because psychologically, he used his mind. He did certain things that created a climate where it was natural to her to respond in that way. Who's fault is that? Fundamentally, it's the fault of her daddy. In our culture, we need to be more like the Muslims and guard our daughters from men because men are just dogs. Yeah, that's correct. Well, absolutely, look at this. She gets actually a special treatment. She gets a blessing that other women don't get if you look at the next verse. See, she's not in the culture. The rest of the women have an insecure marriage, though, as men can say, I divorce you. I don't want, you know, you burn the mozza. You ruin the gefilse fish. And I divorce you, but he's got an issue or a certificate divorce. But in the case where the gas deduces the girl without the father's consent, and that's what you've got to read into this. Rather than picturing some brute, you know, breaking through the window, you've got to picture a boy taking advantage of a girl and doing that, which is not right because it does not have the blessing of the parents. Notice she gets a special dispensation. He shall pay the girl's father 50 shuckles of silver. He must marry the girl for his violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives. She can burn the mozza and ruin the gefilse fish all she wants. And he can never divorce her. She actually receives a special status. So when we look at it and really flesh it out in its context, it's not as harsh and just appears awful when we first read it, but it's not that way. And it's guaranteeing that she's going to be treated well. Does that answer everything? How about you saying you got a question? Yes, absolutely. That's correct. The thing I want to say is that the sad thing is, is our system better than theirs? No, it's not. Because what happens in our world? Look at the Colby Bryant thing. Just look at it. And all I'm saying is that in our world, I've been with rape victims on a number of occasions. Sandy and I have gone and ministered to rape victims and victims said, sometimes gone to police department with people. What happens? Do you want to know what happens? Zip. Nada. Nothing. His word for words. Now, if somebody's really underage, you know, that's that story, right? That's a different matter. All I'm saying is that their system, we can say, all this is awful. Well, is ours better? I think not. Well, we flush this out quite a bit. And I appreciate your coming. And these are issues that really are germane to us in the world we're in. Because we are in a world that has abandoned the traditions of 10,000 years of extant human history in favor of the lunatic asylum that Western civilization has become in the past, half century. Let's try. Father, we pray that regardless of the wicked and perverse times in which we live, that we will live Christianly. Lord, we pray for those of us who are parents and grandparents, that we will teach our children the values that you place on moral purity, that how damaging pornography is. Because it is literally writing, in this case, pictures of sexual sin. And it is always damaging. In Lord of casual speech, I grew up in a generation where women never cussed and never told dirty jokes. That's not how it is today. Lord, we're in a difficult time. Give us grace to act Christianly and to raise our children Christianly and to protect them in Jesus name. Amen.