God's Guidance for Blended Families

to Deuteronomy chapter 21, I want to begin reading at verse 15. The law in the Old Testament is not the law like we would think about the law in the Constitution or the laws passed by the legislature in Washington or the state legislature. They're really far more broad than that. They're focused on personal behavior and decision-making, decision-making about the ordinary circumstances of life. What God is intended to do is to show us how he would treat people and how he does treat people so that we will understand what he's like as we make the choices in our own lives. When Jesus comes to teach us in the Sermon on the Mount and by his own lifestyle, he puts these practices, he puts these instructions into everyday practice and choices. So we see from Jesus' life the personal living out of the things that take place here. What God is dealing with, with the people of Israel, is he wants them to be unique. He wants them to be holy as he is holy. And holiness is expressed not in church services. Holiness is expressed not in the things that we talk about with church, but holiness is expressed in the daily choices that you make in your interaction with people around you. God's holiness is also illustrated by the way he reacts to people in this world. His holiness, and the word holy simply means to be something other than what human beings are. So God's nature and character are exemplified in his choices, what he does, how he lives. Now they're also exemplified in ours. And in living in this world, he wanted people, the people of Israel, to make choices that indicated to the rest of the people around them that God, who was the controller of his people, was different than all the other gods in the world and all the other people in the world. So each of these things that he brings up is a way by which we understand how God treats people and how he wants us then to reflect that treatment. There are practical everyday discussions in this chapter and then in the next few chapters too. He started out this chapter talking about how do God's people deal with a murder that occurs or a death that occurs when they don't know how it occurs. And he started by talking about how important life is and it belongs to God and no human being has the right to take it apart from God's instruction. Then he talked about the rights of women who are vulnerable to the abuse of other people. He talked about a woman who has no rights and authority and how the man who has the ability to abuse her and misuse her would be required as a follower of God to treat her with respect and care and to give her a life that would provide not only safety and protection but also fullness. Now he changes and starts talking about the dimensions and each of these, like the one about murder, has to do with thou shalt not kill, that commandment in the scripture, so that it's sort of an extension of the idea of what murder is. The idea of a woman who's vulnerable taken in captivity and brought sort of as an extension of this idea about marriage and the family commandment five, honor your mother and father. So it's a commandment about the home and relationships people have in that. Now the second two commandments are also about the fifth commandment, but they're extensions of what it means to have a family that operates correctly. How does a family operate the way God wants it to? Verse 15, if a man has two wives he loves one but not the other, and both bear him sons but the first born is the son of the wife he does not love. When he wills his property to his sons he must not give the rights of the first born to the son of the wife he loves in preference to his actual first born. The son of the wife he does not love. He must acknowledge the son of the unloved wife as the first born by giving him a double share of all he has. The son is the first sign of his father's strength. The right of the first born belongs to him. Now what he's talking about is the traditional custom among Jewish people that the first born child would get two portions of the estate of their father. Let's say a father has a $100,000 estate and ten children. Then they would divide it up so that each child would get $10,000. But the first child, the oldest child, would have a double portion, the $20,000, and the rest of the $80,000 would be divided among the other nine that are left. It was their custom. It was the way they were supposed to do that. The oldest child also would assume responsibility for leadership of the family when the father died. He would take the property that the father had. It would be his responsibility to care for it and pass it on to the generations that succeed him. Property was a very important thing to them because it was the source of all their future because it was the means by which they could grow things to live on. So owning that property and having control of it was a very important ingredient in the life of the whole family and of the culture of Israel. So he's saying here a situation it would be maybe more like we would see families that are divided, say someone has a home and then they have a family and then they get divorced and have another family, a divided family. What do you do about the children that are born into those families? Sometimes in our culture we don't have this situation of bigamy where a man can marry someone and then marry another person. But as you've probably discovered, when a couple gets married, as things go along, sometimes they get along well and sometimes not so well. Things don't go as you thought they were. You can stand in front of someone and say I love you and say I promise to be faithful to you as long as I live till death do us part and you mean every word of it. But as time goes along, sometimes those relationships don't go the way you think they would. In this situation he's talking about a man who has two wives. The situation in the Bible is oftentimes open to bigamy because of the fact that many times during the wars the men were killed and there was a surplus of women available and without being married to someone they often faced a very disastrous life. So the Bible did not suggest that bigamy was an option, but it made an opening for this situation when it did occur. The Bible is far more flexible sometimes about things than we see. For instance, nowhere in the Bible does it say you should have two wives or you should have many wives. But the fact that some people did, God made instructions and rules that allowed them to be able to work within the structure of what he thought was the right way to handle that and to do it. So here's a man who has two wives. He finds himself, as time goes on, favoring one of those wives more than the other. The difficulty is his favorite wife has a son, but his wife that is out of favor for him has the firstborn son. Now he's trying to decide how to settle his estate. The wife that he loves has a great influence on him. She wants her son to be able to have this double portion because it would protect her and it would also give her the place of having someone to take care of her. The wife who has the genuine firstborn son now finds herself not only not accepted by her husband, not loved by her husband, but now she finds herself in a position where she's afraid that he might give this double portion to someone else and her own son would be left with a smaller part of the estate, if any at all. So the scripture provides for circumstances. Remember, this is about the fifth commandment, to honor your father and mother, and about how a home should be established. So God says in a situation like this where there is a danger of someone using their own emotions and feelings in place of what was the law, what they should do, they should set aside their feelings and emotions between the mothers of these two children and to do what was right regardless if it was what they wanted to do. They should be fair by the law. Make sure you live in obedience to the laws of your community and you treat each of your children with fairness. Now, we don't have this situation with bigamy, but I can tell you, if you know people who have been married and divorced and married again and have families that are mixed, sometimes the treatment of those children is very, very difficult. It's difficult because you're going to like some of them more than you like the others, and sometimes you're going to find yourself choosing one to be favorites. And if you have a home where the husband has children and the wife has children, the husband, especially if they've lived a long time before they're married again, they're used to treating that child in a very special way and there's a special relationship between the father and his son or daughter and between the mother and her son or daughter. And whenever they get together then, suddenly these two families find it difficult in the blended family because it's difficult to blend. It's like the cake that we had tonight. You have chocolate and vanilla and you can stir it a little while, but you can still see the chocolate and you can still see the vanilla. And then the children are in a position where they feel a loss of their parents. Suddenly this parent that I have is paying attention to somebody else who's not their child, and then the people who are on the other side feel like they're not getting enough attention. And it can be a very tension-filled relationship. What the scripture is talking about is that in raising children in a situation where there is this divided tension, the responsibility of the father in this instance, because they had more authority and power over the family. In our structure, the demand would be of both people. Both father and mother must make sure that the children in this home are treated with absolute fairness and received and accepted, each as if they were their own. Their emotions and their feelings are not to determine the relationship they have with the children. What God wants is for the home of the people who are followers of his to be able to deal with these situations differently than you would see in people who do not have God's guidance. Now, we know in the New Testament how this is to work. We don't see in the Old Testament the specific instructions God gives. But here is his demand on us. You should make sure that you love other people, that you put their interests and needs ahead of your own. That's what he asks here of the man. You put the interest and need of your oldest son, even though it's not the need that you have with the wife that you love more than the other. You make sure that you put that child's interest and need ahead of your own desires and your feelings. That's what love is. Love is sacrificial, self-denying service to other people. What we would say to couples in this situation is whenever you get into a mixed marriage, a blended family, that you make sure that your primary goal is to make the person who is not your child by birth more important to you than yourself. Not more important than your own child, but more important to that child than yourself so that they would feel that if there is anybody in this family that really loves me, it's the person who is not my parent by birth. When you're able to do that, you see, you erase this issue of feeling alienated or separated. In the New Testament, love is the ingredient by which we are bound to another person. Now, in these situations, you don't always find that it's pleasant. If this man makes sure that his firstborn son receives the due inheritance, he's going to find the wife that he loves is going to be upset with him. But you do the thing that is right because God has told you that it's right. The same thing is in blended families. You love that child who's not your own by birth, and you make sure that they know they're cared about and loved, and you may be criticized by your own child, you may be criticized by the spouse, but you do that because you know that love is the primary binding ingredient in all human relationships. And you ask for guidance from God to be able to be sure that you give to that child what is their due responsibility from you. Here, he's talking about money. It may not be that that's the key ingredient in a relationship in a home like that, but you're making sure that you give them what God asks you to provide for them, regardless of your own feelings or emotions. So what God is trying to do is to say, among my people, there will always be people that live in obedience to what is right and what God has demanded of them. And this will set them apart from all the other people in the world. The Bible makes it clear that raising children according to God's plan is the purpose that God has for homes and families. We are to be models and examples to all the people around us about how to raise a child and how to be able to have a family. That's our responsibility. Now, there's another side of this difficulty. I don't know if you've discovered this or not, but sometimes when you have children, there are some that are obedient, and there are some that just are rebellious and stubborn from the day one. They don't want to do anything you want them to do, even if it's bad for them. They don't want to do it. There's just a nature in all of us that allows us to make choices like this. So God addresses what you do with a child, not just it's stubborn or a little bit resistant, but who actually comes to rebel against what you stand for and what God thinks a person ought to be. In verse 18, Now, I want to start by looking at the last part of verse 20. He's not talking about a child who misses curfew and just won't come home when he's supposed to. Here is a young man that is able to go out and drink and live a wild life. So he's talking about a grown young man here. A man who's now on his own. Profligate means simply that it's a nice way of saying he goes out. He runs around with people who are not like they ought to be. He is having sex with whoever he wants to, whenever he wants to. He's maybe cheating people, maybe stealing things. He's a man whose life is completely out of control. Not a man who's simply doing some things that are not proper. He's a man who's a danger to his community. A kind of guy who's going to do something that will be dangerous for himself and dangerous for his community. It didn't happen this way overnight. His children, his father and his mother have been trying to help him all of his life. He's had plenty of opportunities to know the difference between right and wrong. And he's consistently chosen to rebel against their authority. So when he was a young boy growing up, they tried to discipline him. They tried to do the things that would help him to be right and learn how to live correctly. But he consistently resisted and refused to do it. Now he's become a young man. We don't know in the story as to whether or not he's the firstborn child of the family or the only child of the family. But if he was, and with his lifestyle of drunkenness and gambling and running around with prostitutes, he stands great danger of using the family heritage or the family inheritance and destroying it, wasting it, so that all the other family members might lose what their father has kept for them. So he now becomes a danger to this whole family. Because if he's the firstborn, for example, he would get control of the assets of the family. And everyone else, the other children, would suddenly lose out. It's very rare for people in the Bible days to have one child. So the other members of the family might see their own future endangered by this. For a person who's not responsible enough to take care of their property is a great danger to that family as well as to the community. So I want you to see in this story that he's not talking about someone who's just a little bit disruptive or just doesn't do things quite right. Here is a young man who is out of control because he is flaunting all of the instructions of God. He's flaunted all the instruction of his parents. And now he lives himself in a life that is a danger to all of the community and certainly to his family. The family has tried everything to be able to get this child to obey them. He has been a stubborn and rebellious son. He did not obey his father and mother, will not listen to them when they discipline him. And they have done everything that they can to control him. They have the option here, they're not required, they have the option then to take him to the community elders. Now if you live in a small town like most of these people that were living in the Bible times, of, I don't know, 100, 200, 300 people, you know everybody. You've ever grown up in a small town like that, Pea Ridge, Arkansas, where I grew up in that town? I mean, you know, if anything happened at school, everybody knew it by the time you got home. There weren't any secrets. Everybody knew what you were doing. They knew what you were doing in the morning, in the evening, at night. And if something bad happened, almost everybody knew who did it. And they didn't even have to see them because you knew who the kids were that did those things and you knew what they were trying to do. These are small town people. The family comes to the city leaders and says, Our son is completely out of control. He's been the one that's stealing. He's been the one that's lying. He's been the one that's fighting. He's been the one that's caused so much difficulty in our land and in our community. And then the community elders, they are to take charge. The men of the town will stone him to death. He's now faced with a situation where they have the freedom to stone him. They don't have to, but they can say to him, If you refuse to do the things that you're supposed to do, you cannot live in our community this way. You have a choice. You can live by the laws that God has set down and your parents have told you, or you can die. We will not allow you to destroy your family and this community. Now, there's never a time that I know about in the Scripture that this process was worked out. And there may have never been, in all of the history of the Bible, a situation in which a young man was stoned because he was unwilling to live in obedience to his parents. But what God gives us here in this story is a picture of how important it is for all of us to live under the discipline and authority of God. This action that says complete disobedience and disregard for authority is a destructive danger to a family and to a community. Now, we've seen in the things that have been tragic in our own land what it's like when young men and women decide that they're going to do whatever they want to regardless of the consequences to people. It can make for devastating circumstances. So what they have here is a place by which when the family has done all that they can do, the community around them comes with this young person and says, this is not acceptable behavior. And they had the authority even to take that person's life. What it said to the young man in this story, or the young woman, is there is a limit to which you are able to bring to our community the destruction that you're doing. Now, in the New Testament, it's quite different than that. What God does is these rules and instructions are not for our culture in the New Testament, but for the life of the church. So you see over and over again where Jesus talks about the fact that whenever there's somebody in your church that has a fight with another person, they're not to come to church and even give their offering before they straighten this out. He says to the church, if you have people who are not getting along with each other, some of you who are leaders in the church should go sit down with them and say, we can't have this in our church. It's destroying the fellowship of our church. You need to submit yourself to the authority of God. You need to live as God tells you you should live. You should apologize for what you've done. You should forgive the people who are around you. Whatever the issue is, follow the instructions that God gives you and live in submission and authority to him so that the world will see in my family people have learned how to deal with conflict. See, almost everyone in the world I know can get along fine when everything is wonderful and everyone's doing exactly what you want them to do. You know what's hard? It's hard for all of us whenever there are people who are not doing what we want them to do. And whenever they don't do what we want them to do, we get upset and angry. Now, the rest of the world knows that same thing, but what they do out there is they fight and quarrel and separate. In the community of faith, we're to confront the issues that are different. We're to accept the fact that we have a part of this responsibility. We're to confess to each other our sin and our failure. We're to forgive each other, and then we're to reconcile in a relationship of trust and love. Unheard of anywhere in human nature except the kingdom of God. That's what God intended. So the church is not to be a place where there's no difference of opinion or no conflict or no quarreling, but it is to be a place where when those things occur, there are certain rules by which we discipline ourselves to live in obedience to. And Jesus set out for us those rules. You address a brother who's done something that offends you. You go to that person and ask them to reconcile with you. You take someone else with you if that doesn't work. And if the person's unwilling to reconcile, then the church is to say, we can't ask you to be a part of our church because the behavior here is disruptive. So we're going to ask you not to be a part of our church. That's so foreign to the way we do things. We value not confronting or facing conflict more than we do godly results. But God is very clear that what he wants among his people are a group of people who are disciplined in submitting and surrendering to the authority of God for the resolution of problems. And if they're not willing to do that, they need to be excluded from the group. Here, the penalty is physical death. In the New Testament, with regard to the church, the person is simply to be told, a person who acts like you needs to find another place to be. Now, in the book of 1 Corinthians, Paul shows us one of those examples where a man there in that church was living with his stepmother and having sex with her. Paul writes to the church and says, Even pagans know that that's not the right thing to do. So you have a man who is acting worse than pagans are acting. You know what the rules for a life is, and this is out of bounds. You go to the man and you tell him that that can't be. He must stop that, change his behavior. If he doesn't, you must tell him he can no longer be a part of this group because he's living in violation of the clear instructions I've given to you. And when the world looks at your church and sees someone living like that, they say, Why would that group be any different than I am or my pagan friends? So you have an obligation to make sure that your church represents to the world the moral standard that I have set for you, that I live for myself. And if you don't, then your church and its power and authority and witness will be destroyed. So in this story, it's the young man who will run the life of the community and family or the community that's at stake. That's the serious issue. What Paul looks at in the church of Corinth, Corinth was a community of people who had the most prominent thing in the community was a big temple that sat on the hill where temple prostitution was practiced. And this church of believers, followers of Jesus, were in this community where temple prostitution was accepted as a normal kind of behavior. And they were preaching that this was not what God said should happen, that there were moral standards with regard to sexuality. Now, here's a man in the church who is doing something worse than the pagans are doing. And that's why Paul said he must be told that his behavior is bringing shame on the whole body of Christ. And if he's going to be a part of your community of faith, he must change his life. If he's not willing to do what I tell him, then he must be removed. Because the church ought to be a place where people are pledging first and foremost to live in submission and obedience to God and to the teachings of Scripture. So what Paul is talking about and what God is talking about in both of these instances is the preservation of the family in a community where there is danger to that family and community. And demanding that the people involved focus on one thing, living in obedience to what God says is right. Now, does that mean that everybody who does something wrong should be thrown out of the community and killed? No, it wasn't that. There's only someone whose life was so radically different that it was an endanger... it endangered both the family he lived in and the community he was a part of. Does it mean for in the New Testament that we look at each other's lives and find someone who's sinning and jump on them? No, it doesn't. It means that if you said to God, I commit my life to you, which is the way you get in the church, then you must live a life that reflects that. Now, does it mean that people can't sin? It means all we will sin. But the acknowledgement of that, I have failed God, and I admit my failure, and I ask for forgiveness, and I say to you I want to start again. See, that's what makes the person a follower of Christ. Not sinlessness, but the willingness to admit what you've done and to make it right and to start over again when you do. What you have in this story is a person so rebellious that they say, I'm going to do exactly what I want. I don't care what anybody thinks. If you don't care what God thinks, then he is really not your Lord. If you care what he thinks, then you're wanting to do exactly what he wants you to do. And you're heartbroken about your failure to do it, even though you will do it over and over again. We all do. But what God wants is for us to passionately desire to be faithful to God. For a life contrary to that is destructive to the person, to their family, and to the spiritual community that separates them apart. And the spiritual community has a responsibility to protect itself against spiritual destruction. That's what the story is about. And the story simply says to children being raised in that culture, we want you to know how serious rebellion against God really is. And so I've given it the place of capital punishment if you fail consistently to be submissive. And by giving it the place of ultimate punishment, God has raised it to the place of saying this is a very important thing to me. The fact that people in Israel didn't ever do it doesn't make any difference. It still, in God's eyes, is of very serious significance. And that's what He wants us to say. Purity and submission to God, discipline and obedience ought to characterize the people who follow God because that's how He is. So we should be that way. Would you bow please for a moment to pray together? And all of us stand to look at this because I found in my own life that it's very difficult sometimes to be submissive to God. It's very difficult sometimes to know what God wants and to choose it all the time. In fact, it's impossible. But what I have found is that I can be submissive and desiring obedience with all my heart. And that's what God wants. He does not want perfection from us. But He wants a desire for obedience that controls everything. So you ask yourself, am I resistant to what God wants from me? Do I desire with all my heart to obey Him? God sees this as the most important ingredient in our lives. We ask, Father, that we might reflect to the world around us your character and your nature. They might see that we desire to live like you live, that we value submission to you, that we want to be a part of a community that reflects your nature. And so we ask, give us this. Make it a passion for us. In the name of Christ we ask it. Amen.