Biblical Protections for Vulnerable Women

Deuteronomy is an explanation, most of it is, of what the Ten Commandments say by starting with a simple phrase in the Ten Commandments, then in the book of Deuteronomy, Moses is applying, showing how this principle in the Ten Commandments is applied to specific concrete circumstances they might run into. And what we're dealing with here is the commandment that says, you shall not commit adultery. He's describing in this set of events how they are to watch for this and also for the commandment about marriage, about family and home. Honor your father and mother so you may live long in the land the Lord your God gives you. And then the commandment you should not commit adultery. So in chapter 22, verse 13, he starts with this situation. If a man takes a 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. The girl's father will say to the elders, I gave my daughter in marriage to this man but he dislikes her. Now he has slandered her and said I did not find your daughter to be a virgin, but here is proof of my daughter's virginity. Then her parents shall display the cloth before the elders of the town and the elders shall take the man and punish him. They shall fine him a hundred shekels 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 as long as she lives. Here is a situation in which a young lady promised in marriage comes into a home and then her husband suddenly for some reason or other dislikes her. What the Bible is constantly concerned about in making these instructions and helping us understand how God deals with people is that he is always concerned about the weak and the people who cannot defend and protect themselves. Our culture is very much different in how the role of women are lived out, but that is not true for most of the world. What they are really talking about is someone who is using a situation to get dowry money. The money that a bride's father pays to the groom and his family for the bride. Ideally it was to be the bride's money. So when the bride had the money in this new home, it gave her a sense of security because if her husband was to drive her out, then she would have this dowry money to be able to make her way in life with it. That was ideally the circumstance. Oftentimes what happened was the groom and his family would take the money and spend it or use it on their own business or whatever they were trying to do and the bride had nothing for herself. One of the big problems in all the Middle East world is around this situation of dowries because once the girl has been given to the groom and her family, then the money that is transferred from the bride to the groom's family becomes theirs. In India this has become a very special problem because what happens there is often is what is happening in India is that many of the groom's families are not satisfied with the dowry and they want more. Or they suggest that this woman is not adequate and they want to be paid a better dowry. What's happening in India is what's called dowry deaths. I don't know if you've ever read about that or not, but there is an unusual number of young brides in India who in the kitchen cooking, suddenly their clothes catch on fire and they die. And then the groom and his family are able then to approach another young lady and get an additional dowry. It's such a big problem that I read in the paper that in 2010 there were 8,391 dowry deaths in India reported that year. Pardon? Well, it's not a particular religion, it's just a custom of people in their country who take the dowry. The dowry is intended to be for the bride's care. And in that situation, the bride's family pays for the dowry. In the biblical situation, the groom's family paid for the dowry. And so the dowry was given from the groom's family. In that situation, he's wanting the father in the biblical situation, he's wanting the father of the bride to repay him the dowry. So he gets it back. He wants a refund on the wife. In the Indian situation, it is the bride's family who pays to the groom a dowry. And then when she dies, he's free to find another. Of course, there are groups in India that are trying to fight this. And they give a pretty clear description of the fact that this is much worse than is reported here. In fact, in an article I read that they were writing, they said there are 25,000 brides a year who are either killed or maimed. What often happens is, you know how they wear those flowing clothes in India, is that someone will come into the kitchen when she's fixing supper, throw some kind of petroleum stuff on her, it catches on the flammable cloth, and then someone throws a match in and she either dies or is very badly burned. Twenty-five thousand a year. And someone else said that there was one bride an hour in India who is either maimed or killed in these dowry deaths. Well, I don't think so. They're making them every day over there. And now you see the terrible consequence that a helpless woman has in many cultures around the world. And the Bible was prepared to deal with this, because this instruction was given years and years and years before even our current time. And the helplessness and hopelessness of a young lady caught in a circumstance like this was overwhelming. So God made for Moses a specific instruction as to how to protect brides who might find themselves in a situation where they were not acceptable to the groom who married them. And this is the circumstance he's trying to deal with. When you get into the land and your men and women are marrying, you're going to find some unscrupulous men. They will take the dowry, and they will pay the dowry, and they will take the wife, and then decide that they could get a better deal. In fact, in the book of Malachi, the passage that we read so often says, God hates divorce. The reason Malachi is writing this passage was the people of Israel had gone back to the Holy Land and settled down, and they had brides that they had brought back from Babylon who were poor, like they were poor, because in Babylon they were slaves. So they come to this promised land where all these people owned the land, and they were divorcing their brides who were poor and marrying into families that were more wealthy so they might receive the land of financial advancement for themselves. And that's why Malachi is saying, you have disgraced God. God hates your divorce. It was divorce for the benefit of financial benefit for the man. That's why God was angry about it. So many of the laws in the Old Testament are primarily given to protect the people who cannot protect themselves or are in weaker situations than others would be. Now that's the situation here. A man takes a wife after he meets with her for whatever reason, sexually incompatible. She doesn't cook well. Whatever the thing is, it's wrong. He decides he doesn't want her. So he wants his dowry back from her husband. And to get the dowry back from the husband, then he concocts a story saying, when I got this bride, I found that she was not a virgin as her father said she was. Now there's some doubt about or question about what they do to prove that this bride was a virgin. Some people think it means that the cloth that she slept on had menstrual blood on it, so they would bring it to show she wasn't pregnant when she got married. Some think that it was the bedsheets that they lay on on the night of the consummation of the wedding. It was the responsibility of the father of the bride to promise to the family of the groom that his daughter was pure and a virgin at the time of marriage. That was the issue. So here, the bridegroom is proposing that his bride failed to live up to the promise that was made to him by the father. And it's the father of the bride who is being charged here. It is his responsibility to make sure that his bride, his daughter, was who he said she was. The customs of marriage for us are so different than they are in biblical times. And even as they are in the Middle East now. I don't know if some of you remember a couple of years ago, our son came here and he brought with him a Muslim family. The woman was a doctoral candidate in mathematics at the University of Nebraska. And her husband didn't have, wasn't working on a degree. He had a job whenever they were in Saudi Arabia that's just an ordinary day labor job. But he's married to a girl who's very smart. And she had gotten a degree over there and a full scholarship to go here. And she was talking, we were talking with her about the customs and their land. And she said, the way it works is my father, when I was at the place where I was ready to get married, I went to him and said, I would like to get married. Would you find me a husband? And so he goes out and looks around the community to find somebody he thinks is suitable. And the way he did it, he would go to the community where this young man's parents lived. Interview the parents. The parents of that young man would come to his community. Interview him. Interview his friends. Talk to the town around the town to say, is this a reliable and a substantial family? And she said, I never met my husband until the day we got married. And so the natural question everybody asks is, was that scary? She said, I trust my father. He's a wise man. And he wants what's best for me. Why would I not accept that? Now that's modern Saudi Arabia. If you can imagine what it would have been like 2,000 years earlier, where there was much stronger parental control and much stronger sense of responsibility to parents than it is today. So here's a young man whose family has negotiated with the bride's family to secure marriage. All the checks have been made. Talk to the neighbors, the community, the family. Everyone's agreed now that this is a proper match. She goes to be with this man that she doesn't know and never met. He's never met her. And the marriage then is given and consummated. And then he comes back to say, I want to charge you, not the girl necessarily, but the whole family with a lying misrepresentation of this bride to me. And he demands now that his money be returned and that he's able to secure another wife, maybe with a beggar dowry or perhaps with some other qualities he would better prefer. In this situation, protection is given to the bride. Here's what takes place. The family is required on the bride's side to prove that what they said about her was true. The custom was in their days for the bride's family to be able to have some proof of this. When the marriage was consummated, oftentimes in a tent nearby where the wedding ceremony was done, at the end of that time, the family oftentimes, as I've read, secures the bedclothes as a way of proving the virginity of their daughter. In an instance, they did that or retained bedclothes she slept on to show that she had her period. We don't know exactly which one it was, but something that made sure that he understood that there was proof. Now if he could do that, if the family could do that, then they presented the evidence in court. If he was trying to do something that was dishonest, then he paid for that. When the proof was given, they will fine him a hundred shekels, which is two times the amount of money he received from his bride's dowry. In other words, it cost him twice as much as what he got. That's the fine. It's given to the girl's father because this man has given the Israelite virgin a bad name. The second thing that comes from it, he is required to keep her as his wife. He may not have liked her, but he was required to keep her. Now in our culture, we would say, boy, that's a cursing sentence to require her to stay with him forever. But you see, we live in a culture where a woman has choices. This girl has been given to a man, he's been her bride, and to reject her would mean no one else would ever have her. It would also mean that if she left, her child that might be born would have no inheritance. Because she was the bride of this man, her child would be the firstborn and have the full inheritance that belongs to the man. Even if he got another wife, she would still stand in the position of her son receiving the inheritance, and this would be her support all the rest of her life. So here is a great protection for her. He may not like her, but she has security, and she has a place in which she can be sure that she has financial support all the rest of her life. And he must not divorce her as long as he lives. What the protection is given to her is that he does not ruin financially her life, but instead he must provide for her financial security all the rest of her life. Her dad has the hundred shekels which he might hold for his daughter. She has then the assurance that she will always have a place to live and financial support. She has the assurance that a child born from her as his wife, the first wife and the first son, he will always inherit a double portion of the land and the property of her husband. So what the Bible is doing is saying when this idea of adultery is accused, when you accuse it to someone who is innocent of it, the burden will fall on you, not on her. So the protection is given to her. Then he says, If however the charge is true, verse 20, 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 the town shall stone her to death. She has done a disgraceful thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father's house. You must purge the evil from among you. What the Bible is talking about is that the commandments that God gave them by which they must live are to be lived because they are vital to the purity of the people of God. The Ten Commandments are given to say these are the goals and the principles by which the people of Israel must live. Why? Because I, your God, am holy, and you, my people, must be holy too. God is trying to make sure that the people of Israel live in a way different than the culture around them, where promiscuity and adultery are rampant. Here is a people who live by the principles of God. They do not violate those. And any violation of it is not just a violation of that individual person, but it is a violation of the home and the family and the whole community. Sin is seen in the Old Testament in a similar way that we see a disease, like the flu. Whenever you have somebody that has a strand of the flu, you try to say to them, we'd like you to stay over here by yourself so you don't infect the whole community. And this infection of sin is a powerful thing. The more you are around sin, the more you are attracted to it. The more you are around wickedness and evil, the more it becomes a part of your life. I would imagine every one of you have watched things on TV and found yourself saying things that maybe you wouldn't have said five years ago or 20 years ago or 50 years ago. Our culture just infects us in ways that we don't really recognize all the time. And what God was trying to do is make sure that the people of Israel kept as a significant thing the purity of their own life, so that immorality is an infectious, deadly disease for the people of God. Verse 22, he says, If a man is found sleeping with another man's wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. You must purge evil from Israel. Again, the issue of adultery. And if a man and woman both are found in that way, the story Jesus had, when the lady was brought to him in adultery, they didn't bring a man. See, this is the world where males have a special privilege of living in that culture. God's command to them was to protect both the man and the woman and to hold both accountable for their behavior. Now whenever this is done in the New Testament, Jesus is confronted with the woman. He says something different to her than what might be found in this passage. Here it says, If they are found to be guilty of adultery, both are to be stoned to death. When Jesus applies this in the New Testament, he's applying it in a way that's quite different. And some people think that he may have said, I don't think these Old Testament passages are correct. And if you look to see where in John, I think that passage, I wrote that down, is in the book of John, chapter 8. Jesus was alone and he was approached by some people who had found and caught a woman in the act of adultery, having sex with someone who was not her husband. And they brought this woman to Jesus. Let me see if that's the right place. 8.3? Let's turn back one more page. But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives at dawn. He appeared again in the temple courts where all the people gathered around him. And he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the law, Moses commanded us to stone such a woman. Now see, that's not exactly the truth. What is commanded is that both people be stoned. So they took advantage of one side of this law to punish the woman and allow the man to go free. Now what do you say? They were using this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started writing on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, in other words, he wasn't answering, so they were trying to prod him into making a decision about what ought to be done. And if he said that she should be stoned, he would be responsible for instructing her death. If he refused to say that, then they could accuse him of violating the law of Moses. He straightened up and said to them, if anyone of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her. Jesus starts this by saying, you have selectively chosen to punish this woman rather than keep the law of Moses. You are playing with the law of Moses for your own benefit and for your own interest. You are not seeking to obey the law as it was written. Instead, you are using it. So, if you feel like you are perfect about this matter, then you throw the first rock. Again, he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until Jesus was left with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and said to her. Now, oftentimes people think when they read that first section, Jesus is his without sin, throw the first stone. They quote that as indicating that Jesus is not going to punish her for what she's done. That he's saying, okay, you've sinned, but anyone else who sinned shouldn't say anything to you. All sin is the same and we're going to overlook it. But that's not at all what took place. Jesus straightened up and asked her, woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? No one, she said. Neither do I condemn you, Jesus declared. Go now and leave your life of sin. You see, what he told her to do was she was not to commit adultery anymore. What he asked of her was to repent of what she had done, acknowledge that what she had done was wrong, and to leave behind her this life of disobedience and sinfulness. He was asking her to become obedient and pure and holy, just as in the Old Testament that was required of the people of Israel. I ask you, as you're living a life of sin, to stop it. Quit that and change your life. You see, in the Old Testament, the issue was the outside event. What happened when a person committed physically adultery? In the New Testament, Jesus said, I came to fulfill the law that every single part of it would be fulfilled. And then he said, it's not simply enough that you don't physically commit adultery. But if you have lust for someone of the opposite sex, you've already committed that. It is the inside of you that I want to see changed. The Old Testament, if you simply didn't have sex with someone who wasn't your husband or wife, no matter how much lust you had inside of you, you could say, I passed the test, God. But in the New Testament, Jesus said, that's not what we're looking for, for genuine holiness. What's really important is what is inside of you. So he says to the woman, I'm willing to overlook what you've done on the outside under one condition, that you change the inside of your life. I want you to put away any kind of effort on your part to attract a man or to yield to the temptation to commit adultery again. No longer is that to be a part of your life. What Jesus was asking of her was purity of heart and a change of behavior. Why? Because he said, you are to be perfect as I am perfect. You are to be fulfilled as I am fulfilled. You are to live by the standards of God as I am living by them. What Jesus was trying to do was to show that the action that she had done could be forgiven and her life could be changed once she was willing to say, I will give up this life of sin. Now, if you go to the book of John, you'll find that this is exactly what John is talking about. He is talking about the reality. This is the message we've heard from him in the clarity of you. God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. For if we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. In the darkness, what he's talking about is sin. We lie and we do not live the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, his son, purifies us from all sin. See, it's the idea not of killing the sinner, but of purifying them and changing them that the New Testament brings to the front for us. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves. See, John is very realistic. He is saying we are to live without sin and we're to be cleansed of sin. But if we claim we have no sin, we're lying. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. So, what do we do? Since we're all going to sin, if we confess our sins, that is, acknowledge that we've done it, admit that it's wrong and ask for forgiveness. That's what he means by that. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. For if we claim we have not sinned, we make him to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives. You see, John defines here exactly what Jesus was doing in the gospel of John chapter 8. He was purifying this lady from what had happened to her and acknowledging the sin and asking her to move to a life of righteousness and putting that sin behind her. What a powerful passage John gives us. We are to acknowledge the fact that all of us sin. This is a hard thing for us to do. Well, I mean, if I were to say how many of you sinned, you'd all hold up your hands. You know, we'd all do that. But he's asking us to acknowledge that there is something inside of us that is wrong. If you deny that, you're a liar and the truth is not in you. It doesn't matter what anybody does. There is no grades of sin in God's eyes. The act of adultery that the woman was caught in is the same as the act of greed, the same as the act of selfishness. For all have sinned. We cannot get away from it. No one should feel more guilty because their sin is looked down on more by someone else. All are the same. But if you admit that this is true and you confess, and it means to acknowledge the reality of it, the bad part of it, if you do that and you ask for forgiveness, he is faithful and just to purify you. That is, the moment you do that, the sin that you commit and you acknowledge is completely wiped away so that now you stand sinless before God in that moment. See, in the Old Testament, there was no way for them to do this. But in the New Testament, there is a way that every one of us, regardless of our sins, can stand before God as pure as if we never sinned. For He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us of all unrighteousness. There should never be a time in the life of a believer when they feel shame and guilt about their past. Never! Because in Christ is full and complete forgiveness. Don't let Satan, when you read the Bible, and you come across one of your sins that you're embarrassed about, don't let Satan hold that over your head. Because what he'll do is try to cripple you with that. If you've sinned, you simply say to God, I want to admit that I've done this. And I want to admit how weak I am. And I want to admit how much my own life has been controlled by Satan. Forgive me for what I've done. Give me the strength to never do it again. And the moment you do that, he erases that sin from your life and cleanses you. And you will have no more guilt from God. You will be reminded of it by Satan. And he will make you feel bad because of it. But that's deceptive. Because God has no charge against you. It's been cleansed and purified. So there should be no guilt. And if you feel guilt after asking for forgiveness, you will know immediately that that's the devil who's trying to control your mind and your heart and your life. Because the Bible says, if you confess your sin, acknowledge what it is, express your regret for it, ask for forgiveness. He is faithful. That is, he'll do it every time. He is faithful and just and will forgive you and cleanse you of all unrighteousness. So what the Old Testament could only do by destroying the person who sinned, the New Testament does by changing the person that sinned into a new, pure, holy follower of God. What a wonderful time it is to live in this New Testament era in which there is forgiveness and cleansing from all unrighteousness. Pray with me. So, Father, we all stand before you with histories of sin. Not one of us stands pure before you to say we have no sin in our past or even in our present life. We're not proud of that. For all of us can look back on things in our lives and say how disgusting that is. What was I thinking about? I hope no one ever finds out. Every one of us have those thoughts. But when we come to you, you have made us clear that when we acknowledge our sin, we ask for forgiveness, that you take away every bit of it. No guilt, no shame, and no stain. We praise you for that. The God who changes people from unrighteous to holy, from sinners to saints. We can do nothing but praise you for that. Amen.