Understanding God's Design for Marriage and Sexuality

I want to begin reading at verse 23. The book of Deuteronomy seems troublesome to a lot of people. I hear people say, you know, when you start reading the Bible, you get to Leviticus and Deuteronomy and you just bog down. And people seem to have a negative approach to these subjects, but what the Bible is trying to do, what the Bible is trying to do in these passages is to make it clear to us that God expects to be able to control and direct all of our lives. When He talks about what kind of clothes to wear, when He talks about the kind of food that you eat, God wants us to understand that He has plans for all of our lives. We tend to push God off into the spiritual arena and say, okay, I'll pray and read the Bible and I'll go to church. But God is as much interested in what you do on Tuesday as He is in what you do on Sunday. And the behavior that you have during your lifestyle is critical to God. And that's why in the book of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, there are specific concrete demands on almost every part of human life. Because when God is the Lord of your life, He's not just the Lord of a little bit, He's the Lord of everything. And so these particular things that God deals with lets us know the areas of concern over which He is trying to work with you and me. In this passage, He's dealing with the issue of sex. Sex in our world is a powerful thing, as it is in every age, every generation. But for some reason in the church, we're sort of afraid to talk about this. We're afraid to talk about it because we've kind of pushed this off into an arena where it is something that is evil or something that's wicked or something that's not proper for people to talk about in public. And there's a kind of a principle. If you read something in the Bible and you find it embarrassing, then it probably means you have the wrong way of looking at it. Because if God sees it as something that is written in the Scriptures, He thinks it's perfectly reasonable for people to talk about it. I remember one time on Sunday morning, I had a passage I was talking about. In fact, I think Roz, your son, had brought his girlfriend to church that Sunday. And it was about a man losing his semen on the ground. And I was preaching about that, and they thought they were terribly embarrassed about it. But you know, young adults like that, they probably have seen in the movies a whole lot more damaging things than that. But in church, it just seems like we shouldn't talk about that, even though it's in the Bible. What God is trying to show us is the things He talks about in the Bible are real things, and they're part of our human lives. And He expects us to be able to understand what He's trying to do to govern one of the most powerful drives in human nature. So here He's talking in the middle of this about marriage and marriage violations. This is the fifth commandment, that you're not to commit adultery. And He's talking about all the kind of issues that will be raised by the marriage issue. What is it about marriage, having a proper marriage, that God thinks is critical or important? And one of the difficulties that come with this is whenever you read the scriptures about these subjects, sometimes people think, well, I can never measure up to all these things. Because when you read the Bible continually, you will find things that will tell you that you're doing something wrong. But you know, you can read a passage on gossip, or you can read a passage on all kinds of things and people say, well, yeah, probably I shouldn't do that. But you read a passage about sex, where it tells you you shouldn't do something about sex and everybody says, whoa, you know, if you dilated that, you're really a bad person. Anytime you do anything contrary to what God wants, it's a violation of His instructions for you. And one is not more important than the other to God. The key ingredient is to understand what He's trying to tell us is, this is how a person who belongs to me lives and manages this part of your life. In verse 23, He says, if a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death. The girl because she was in town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man's wife. You must purge the evil from among you. Now, the idea in the last line is to say for us, what God is saying is, I want you to live sexually the way I tell you to live, because your sexual relationship is between a husband and wife. And this is a sacred thing for me. I have to say in our culture today, maybe more than it has been any other time, sex is seen more as recreational activity and as a pleasure activity rather than a marital activity. And that whole concept is shaped in a way that distorts what the Bible is trying to say. Sex is a given in a marriage relationship as one way by which the couple binds themselves together. They become one physically in this act, and it's intended for that relationship as a relationship building event. And so you see a lot of jokes in TV where, you know, the couple has sex and the man or woman gets up and runs out as soon as the morning is over because they don't want that binding relationship. This is the distortion of what God intends. And when it's a recreational activity, it doesn't bind you, it often causes you to get away from each other because you don't want to be bound. And when you've done something that binds you, like signed a contract, you didn't really want to buy that, you'd like to tear it up as soon as possible, and that's what happens when it's a recreational activity instead of a symbol of your unity as a couple. So here he's talking about sex used in a recreational activity. There's a young lady in town who's betrothed. Now we don't, we would say that's an engagement, but it really isn't because it's so different in our culture than it was in the biblical culture. In the biblical culture, the betrothal was a wedding in legal sense and in spiritual sense, and yet there's not a wedding ceremony yet. Sexual relationships were not consummated in the betrothal, but the legal and spiritual dimensions meant that they were husband and wife. So here you have a virgin who's pledged to be married, and that means that she is married for all intents and purposes except for the marriage ceremony. So if she were to get out of the betrothal, she would have to get a divorce. It's that serious. That's what happened with Mary. She was engaged, we say when we look at that, but she was betrothed. She was really given to Joseph to be married to him, and the scripture says when he found out she was pregnant, he was going to divorce her quietly. He had to have a divorce, and quietly he was trying to do it because if it had been discovered that she was with child, according to this Old Testament principle, she should have been killed. And so he didn't want to have this happen to her. And that's how serious Mary's circumstance was. She was put in a position by God to face such condemnation that she should have been stoned to death, and she had nothing to do with it. Here the young girls in town now, when we think of town, we think of a town like ours. You could be in the house next to mine, or the yard next to my house, and we have all the windows closed, all the doors closed, the air conditioner on, the TV on. We wouldn't hear you if you were hollering or screaming. But they didn't have triple pane glass in Jesus' day. They lived in houses that were right up next to each other, because they were all crowded in a little town, and they wanted to be together for defense and protection against marauders who might come. So if you're in a town, you're really close all the time to people who would be around you. And if someone grabbed you, and the word here that they use for what happened to her is to say that she was raped or grabbed, seized, and lie with that person. The idea is that it's a violent act that takes place. So if a man meets her and takes hold of her and sleeps with her, then both of them will be guilty of this crime against God. She could have screamed if she wanted to in town, and someone would have come. So she didn't resist. The man's guilty because of him having slept with a woman who belongs to another man, who has been committed to another man. So both of them have done something contrary. With the act of sex, it was contrary to what God planned. Sex is the relationship between a husband and wife that are committed to each other for life. And because they had done that, they are to be killed. Now the act of killing people for adultery is emphasized in the Old Testament because it was the way by which the people of God were to remain pure. The community of faith was to live without this kind of behavior. So God is saying, I want to eliminate you from this culture. You know how hard it is to keep your mind straight when constantly on television and around you, you see immorality everywhere. It causes your kids, when they see it, to find it attractive and appealing. It causes adults to be tempted. I don't know what the figures are, but I've seen figures that say, even in churches, a significant number of men and women in churches are watching pornography. And it's changing our view of sex instead of this view within the marital structure as simply a recreational activity that people get involved with. It's distorting that. God knew that if you had people who lived this way among his people, it would be a perversion and distortion, and he had to remove them. So when two people commit adultery, here that's what this act is, then they are removed from the community, and the actual punishment was to execute both of them. The next one, verse 25, he changes with a little bit different tune, but if in the country a man happens to meet a girl pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die. Now here, this is in the country, so the girl could not have cried for help. All the way through the Bible you'll find that God is very concerned with helping the person who is weakest, and here the girl is in the weaker position, and she is given the benefit of the doubt. So it's in the country, if she had hollered, no one would have hurt her. Do nothing to the girl, she has committed no sin deserving death. This case is like that of someone who attacks and murders his neighbor. For the man found the girl in the country, and though betrothed, engaged to someone else, screamed, there was no one to rescue her. So she is not to be punished because of what this man did to her. She is given the benefit of the doubt. She could say before any court that came to her, no, I refused, even though she had been a willing participant in it. She was given that freedom because of the position she was in, not to be able to protect or defend herself. The Bible always takes the side of the person who is less able to defend and protect themselves. So here, the man receives the punishment, and the girl is relieved of responsibility for whatever happens. So she finds herself pregnant, and that's what they're concerned about. She finds herself pregnant, and she tells what's happened to her, then she's protected from what takes place. Do nothing to the girl she's committed, no sin deserving death. A case like this, that someone who attacks and murders his neighbor, the man found the girl in the country, and though betrothed, the girl screamed, there's no one to help her, and she has not done anything deserving of death. If a man happens to meet a virgin who has not pledged to be married, and rapes her, and here the word is translated rape in the English language, but in the Hebrew language it's a different word than what's found above when he talks about rape. Here the word is used simply to say he handles her, or takes hold of her. So here it's a girl not pledged to anyone, she's not engaged to anybody, and she is taken against her will, and he has sex with her, and they're discovered. Here the girl is at the disadvantage, even though she's not married, it's not adultery for her, she's at a disadvantage because if she's pregnant because of this, no one else is going to marry her. And the child will grow up without any kind of inheritance, unless something is done. So the punishment comes to main responsibility for the man by what he's done. So he shall pay the girl's father 50 shekels of silver, which is the amount that you would normally pay for a dowry. In other words, he is forced, the man is forced to pay a dowry as if he is marrying this girl. Then he must marry the girl, for he's violated her. Now this strikes us as an odd thing in our culture, because we think the last thing in the world you want to do is be forced to marry someone you don't really care about. But in that culture, where there were maybe multiple husbands or wives in a family, she is protected. She will have someone who will take care of her for the rest of her life, because once she has experienced this rape, she will never be able to marry again. No one will have her. So she is given to this man. He must marry her. He must pay the dowry. And she will now be his wife, so he cares for her the rest of her life. Her child, if the child is born from this union, will have his part of the inheritance or her part of the inheritance from the family. And he can never divorce her as long as he lives. He is required to accept the responsibility for what he has done. He accepts the responsibility for the woman all of her life. He accepts the responsibility for the child, then, for the rest of that child's life. What it does is it brings to the focus for the man the seriousness of the nature of raping someone. It's not something you can do one day, turn your back on it, and walk away the rest of your life. There is a consequence that comes that means you will take care of the consequence of that act for the rest of your life. God is always in these rules helping us understand that violating the basic principles he's given, somebody has to accept responsibility for it. And living outside of the instructions of God means that a person is required to accept those responsibilities. The last verse, verse 30, a man is not to marry his father's wife. He must not dishonor his father's bed. And here he's probably talking about a stepmother. Women didn't live very long in the Bible days. Having children was very hard for them. The work was hard for them. And they often died before the male did. And so it was very common for people to take on another wife. And sometimes the wife, it's not like at all the way our culture is. You might find a 35-year-old woman that's never been married, you know, out in the workforce. But then, girls married young. And they were all married by the time they were up to 16, 17, 18 years old. So here he's talking about a guy that has a mother and his father's now his mother's dead and he marries again. And may have married someone as young as he is or even younger. And the attraction between the old geezer and the young girl is not nearly as strong as it would be to a guy that's about her age. And so the temptation would be quite strong for the son to look at his attractive mother-in-law or his stepmother and find her appealing. In fact, that's what happened in the book of Corinthians. There's a guy in that church who was having sex with his stepmother, as the case was there. And so it was not an unheard of set of circumstances, but here the Bible is really clear. You are not to defile this, even though she may be your mother and living in your house, there is a rule because the relationship of sex defiling the father's bed, the relationship is between a husband and a wife. And to violate that is a very serious matter. See what all of these are trying to do is to say, here is what sex is intended for my people to be. The people around them didn't see that way. They had at the temple where you could have sex with somebody, male or female, they had all of these different ways by which sex was expressed, just like it is in our world. But he said, if you're my people, there are specific concrete ways in which I expect and demand that you live your life with integrity and purity for me. So God thinks he has the right to tell his people exactly what they should do with regard to the issue of sex. It should not be something in the church that we're afraid of. We must take control of instructing people what God's plan is for every part of their life. And if we don't do it that way, our culture will be changed from the way God wants it to be. Now, in the church, this principle still applies to us, that marriage is the relationship we're to have, it's a context in which sex is to be expressed, and to take it outside of that is a violation of what God intended it to be. It is not the worst sin that you can commit in the world, God didn't rank them that way. But it's very important for us to help people know what you do to be able to live a life that allows God to bless you. And if you violate anything that God asks, all you do is acknowledge it, ask for forgiveness and don't do it anymore. That's what Jesus said, they brought him a woman, caught in adultery, he didn't ask her to be killed, but he said to her, now what I want you to do is to leave here and never do this again. That's the remedy. If you ever find yourself violating any of these sexual principles, all God asks is you stop, acknowledge your sin, and say to God, hey, never again. God forgives us, he cleanses us of all unrighteousness, and he continues to lead us once we acknowledge his authority over that part of our life. God is interested in everything we do, that it be in obedience to what he's taught. If you intend to be a part of the community of faith, let's bow our heads. So help us understand, God, that our male and female characteristics, our nature, and even sex between us is under the control that you have over us. Help us to admit that we are indebted to you for the instructions about how we're to do this part of our lives. Help us to see how important it is that we turn away from what the world sees and how it defines this part of our lives, and we are to embrace what you say is right. In the name of Jesus, we ask this, amen.