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P6: How To Treat Your Neighbor - Exodus 20:13-16 | Bible Study
April 4, 2024 · 1 hr 3 min
P6: How To Treat Your Neighbor - Exodus 20:13-16 | The Torah Bible Study
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Empowering multimedia ministry for bold Christian living: Weekend Messages, Deep End Podcast, Deep Dive Bible Study. Tim Hatch, Lead Pastor, Waters Church, 26 years of pastoral ministry, book author.
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0:00 Alright, let's begin.Understanding Commandments 6-9 0:36 Good evening, everybody. Welcome into the Deep Dive Bible Study. My name is Tim and I'm so glad that you're here on youtube dot com slash tim hash live as we get into commandments 6 through 90:48 of the big 10 today. But we're also gonna cover some stipulations around those commandments because there's a lot of them and a lot of the laws of the Torah interact and inform1:00 each other. And so that's where we're going. It's Torah part 6 and I'm excited to get started. I know you are too, aren't you? Hit that like button, the1:12 subscribe button, the notification bell. Get notified every time we go live on your smartphone. I can't find mine. It's somewhere around here, but let's begin.1:23 The Deep Dive season 7 presents The Door of Life.1:36 Okay. So open up your Bibles if you want to or you can trust that I have all the scriptures on the screen because we are going into Torah part 6 and we're gonna look at 6 through 9 of theThe Commandment Against Murder 1:48 10 commandments. Now, the reason why we're doing 6 through 9 is because virtually all the commentators say that there's a change in, what you would call cadence, verbal cadence from the lord2:00 to the people of Israel from commandment number 6, which is about murder through commandment number 9, which is about false testimony.2:12 And the English actually draws it out longer than the Hebrew does. That's important because god is basically doing this for the people of Israel. Don't do this. Don't do this. Don't do this.2:24 Don't do this, like, for 4 times. Okay. And then like I said last week, we're gonna do 6 through 9 today. We're gonna be back in 2 weeks with the deep dive. So, we will be doing number 10 because number2:36 10 is very involved. It is the bookend of the 10 Commandments just like the first 1 is the bookend for our relationship with God and it and it informs everything about how we relate to God vertically. The last2:47 commandment, commandment 10, is not only the bookend for the horizontal commandments, how we relate to each other, but it is bookended pointing back to and holding together the2:59 container of the 8 Commandments between the first and the tenth commandment. So it's really cool. We'll get to that in 2 weeks. But today, we do this. Commandment number 6, you3:11 shall not murder. And I do have just for your, you know, information the Deuteronomy passage, just so you know. But they're the exact same phrase. Commandment number 7, you shall not commit adultery. Now, Deuteronomy3:22 does add, as you can see there, the word and the Hebrew word, wa, which is their intention in the text because it is informing you that these tie together. We commit we don't3:34 commit murder. We don't commit adultery. And we don't commit what's number 8? Theft. Do not you shall not steal, Exodus 20 verse 15. Again, in Deuteronomy, wa is in the beginning of3:46 the verse in Hebrew, the word for and. And then commandment number 9, you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. Again, Deuteronomy 5 verse 20 and is in the text3:58 on purpose. These all tie together. These all tie together. And then the last thing that I wanna just touch on right here in in commandment number 9 is is the first commandment of the second half of the law, the4:10 horizontal law, you will say, that actually references your neighbor right there in the text. Neighbor is in the text. Do not miss that at all. It's there for a reason. Okay?4:22 So god is speaking to the ancient Israelites. This is how you are going to relate to each other. You're not just going to have a relationship with me. You're gonna have a relationship with4:34 each other. And so much of Christianity needs to be informed by that reality. We are not on our own. We do not do, Christianity, you know, individually.4:46 The phrase, Jesus is my personal lord and savior. I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I understand the sentiment but you are not just personally saved, you are corporately saved. The4:58 church is our mother. The members of the church are our brothers and sisters. We belong to each other. We care for each other. We bear each other's burdens. We laugh with each other. We mourn with each other. We5:09 celebrate with each other. We are together. There are over 55 0, 1 anothers in the New Testament for that very reason. The very word that we talk about when we say5:21 church is. In the Greek, it means assembly. So this doesn't come out of nowhere in the New Testament. Jesus does not institute this idea that we are a community. No.5:33 The Old Testament does. God created a community through the, through the family of Abraham and through his lineage, through his family, all the nations or all the families of the earth5:45 will be blessed. Now, this is all the foundation for commandments 6 through 10 because we don't know how naturally to relate to each other. And if you're5:56 a parent, you get this more than anybody because you have to learn real quick that that child, which up until it starts talking and walking, is a bundle of joy, beauty, precious innocence.6:09 Then it starts to walking and talking. And now you have to set guardrails and you have to stop it from doing things. And something that we're going to be talking about today is how all of these6:20 commandments are fulfilled in Christ. They're also they are actually also committed, these sins that the commandments reference. These sins are committed against Christ in his6:32 crucifixion, and there's a lot of symmetry there that we're going to circle back around to at the end of this content. But I don't want to go too deep into that right now and I wanna get to the content because I've got a6:43 lot to get through. So we're gonna talk about murder. We're gonna talk about, we're gonna talk about adultery. We're gonna talk about theft. And we're gonna talk about bearing false witness because these are laws that6:54 not only were given in the ancient world, but they hold a society together. So let's talk about murder. Number 1, you shall not murder. First thing we're gonna talk about in this commandment is that it is7:06 definitely referring to taking an innocent life, an innocent life. That is an important distinction because killing is all over the Old Testament. Putting to death7:18 the murderer is part of Torah. So killing, not I'm sorry, murder, not just killing is mentioned. Couple of things you need to understand,7:30 about the text from the Hebrew, the word for murder is ratsach and that is a word that covers, death of a human through carelessness,7:42 intention or a wish to intentionally harm or put someone's life to an end or negligence. So murder is different in the Hebrew from the7:54 Hebrew for killing. The word for killing in Hebrew is a different word. It is harag. And the word here in this text is intentionally chosen to refer to the taking of an8:06 innocent life. Now, before we get into more of this text, this is a big 1 for our for for our culture right now. If you're listening to this in the future and you very well could be, we are on the heels of another8:18 mass shooting in America. A violent, murderous, mentally ill person in Maine went from place to place and shot up people at a bowling alley and8:29 several other locations and there was a manhunt statewide, shut the state down. We've we've got a problem in our culture. Everybody knows it. Everybody can see it. We have a problem with, of course, mass shootings I just8:41 mentioned. But we also have a problem with, just violence overall. We have protests that actually become violent by nature. We we have a a serious issue with, abortion. If you're a8:53 Christian, you can't be pro abortion. Period. Full stop. We have a serious problem with euthanasia being more and more, acceptable, maybe even propagated by politicians, assisted suicide,9:05 physician assisted suicide which is completely counter to the Hippocratic oath which is the first statement of that is do no harm. So we have a violent culture. We have a murderous culture. We have9:17 a killing culture. And by killing, I mean, murderous. Okay. And then we have the audacity to say to people that we wanna be against the death penalty. Wait. Wait. Wait. Before we we before we tackle that 1, how about we9:29 tackle the real bad 1, like, the real problem of intentional killing of innocent people. And this is why God mentions this 1, not just killing in general in the 109:40 commandments. Now people say, well, what's the problem that we're seeing? Where does this all come from? It's amazing to me that we don't see it, but it's as clear as day to me as a pastor. We9:52 have a we have a insatiable appetite for violence, and it has grown exponentially in our media and in our pop culture, over10:04 the course of the last 50 to 60 years. You you go back to movies and entertainment options from the 19 fifties to the 19 seventies and, you know, you had killings, of course, in certain shows. But today, it pull10:16 out, you know, the popular films from John Wick to kill Bill back in the early 2 thousands, and you have just blood everywhere. And we're on the heels of Halloween also at the time of this recording, at the time of this10:27 presentation. So, you know, Halloween has been co opted from All Saints Day to this bloody murderous kind of theme that happens on10:39 television. You see the release of all the Texas Chainsaw massacres, the Halloween movies, the Friday the thirteenth, the screams, and all the. You just we have in the human condition, okay, an insatiable appetite for10:51 murder and death. And then we glorify it. We put it on a big screen and we glorify vengeance. I was, I was amused last year this time when when11:03 Bill Maher was talking about mass shootings and he says, at this point, we have to look at our at our entertainment options. And and what Bill Maher did on real time was absolutely humorous to me as a Christian11:15 pastor because he basically reiterated the narrative of the moral majority in the 19 eighties that was talking about the fact that we're going to have a violent culture because we have11:26 violent entertainment options. And Bill Maher, 20 years ago, would have mocked that philosophy and a year ago, he was basically holding that philosophy and he went through a list of movies that talk about11:38 vengeance. He even mentions John Wick, the movie John Wick by name, which I've watched the first John Wick. No need to watch the rest because it's just a guy shooting people indiscriminately because they killed his dog.11:49 That's basically the theme of the John Wick movies. And so you have just murders of violence everywhere and it never ends. It just gets worse and worse. It's insatiable. That was the point that I made originally.12:01 And at some point, we have to ask ourselves, our insatiable lust for violence on the screen is helping life to imitate art in our culture12:13 because mass shooters see John Wick taking out his gun and just shooting everybody and then they act it out. Life imitates art. Some people on the political left side of the island, our culture wanna blame guns.12:25 And to me, that's ludicrous. It's like blaming a car for a car crash. You you don't blame the car, you blame the operator of the car. And and so, you have to take these things12:37 with rationality and honesty and integrity if we're going to see any changes, be made. But what we're talking about here when it comes to murder is that this original12:49 commandment was given in a time of another time of insatiable appetite for vengeance, for retribution. And really, the law steps in to say we're gonna13:01 put boundaries up. We're gonna put guardrails up around the inclination for humans to take vengeance. So we're talking about the taking of an innocent life. Now, I put in the parenthesis there present13:13 and future. Why do I say that? Well, number 1, because it was already a crime in the Torah and it was universally accepted as a crime in the ancient world, murder. It was just a matter of how. How was13:24 murder, a crime and what do we do as a result of murder? So in Genesis chapter 4 verse 8, the first sin against another man occurs. The the the very first sin was against God when Adam13:37 and Eve did not trust the word of God and they ate the fruit. The second sin is a murder horizontally. It is when Cain takes his brother Abel and kills him. Genesis 4 8, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed13:47 him. The Lord comes and investigates on the first sin. He investigates what happened with Adam. He now comes and approaches Cain. This is his second approach to Cain because he knew that Cain had murderous intent and he13:59 said, listen, sin is crouching at your door and you must defeat it. But he doesn't. He goes out and he kills his brother. And verse 10 come, the Lord comes to Cain and says, what have you done? The voice of14:11 your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground. Now look at that word blood because the word blood is demi in the Hebrew and it means and is I'm sorry. It means blood. It means it's in the14:22 plural. And so when God says your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground, the word brother is singular. The word the word brother is singular. The word blood14:34 is plural. It's almost as if in true English, you would translate it to say your brother's bloods or more proper English, your brother's bloodline,14:47 your brother's offspring is crying out to me from the ground. Here's why murder is so anathema to the Lord. It is because it doesn't just cut off that person14:58 from life. It cuts off every person that could come from that person. This absolutely speaks to abortion. Because in abortion, you don't just cut off the person's life in the womb.15:10 You cut off every person that that person could produce after they are born. This is an inherently evil sin to end to end the life15:22 of the innocent. Inherently evil. Life is to be preserved and protected at all costs. God is the author of life and we are not in the business15:34 of taking that away from him. Let's go to this passage from, Proverbs chapter 6 where it talks about the 6 things that the15:46 Lord hates and they are, if you will look with me, haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and then hands that shed innocent blood. God hates murder. Why? Because it is15:58 an affront against the image of god. Who bears the image of god? We do. Not monkeys, not cattle, not dogs. We do. Amazingly, we live in a culture where we love dogs more than16:10 humans nowadays. No 1 would ever think about aborting a dog, but we abort humans all the time. So has this shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes? This is a devastating16:22 evil, murder, because life life is not cut off. Lives are cut off. Okay. Back to our discussion, however, we have16:35 Cain committing this grievous evil against his brother. And then we have another couple of things to say on this. Chapter 9 of Genesis verse 6, god says to16:46 Noah after the flood, he enacts the retributive law. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. What is god saying? He's saying this is you're going to curtail murder16:58 by punishing the murderer with death. This is capital punishment. This is the foundation of that. And I bring this up because there are many Christians17:10 who will say, well, we have to get away from capital murder because 2 wrongs don't make a right. The bible begs to differ. The bible absolutely begs to differ. Now, we can make a moral argument against17:22 capital punishment on the basis of many innocent lives have been taken be on the basis of false evidence or, you know, the manipulation of evidence. And that argument, I hear. But when the in evidence is17:34 incontrovertible, when there is no doubt and there's a confession, we must punish the murderer, according to the bible anyway, with death. That is what god stipulates, not in the law. It17:45 comes before the law. The law backs up his covenantal agreement with with Noah on the heels of the flood, which, by the way, the flood was god putting to17:57 death a murderous culture that was evil in every facet of life. So you have in scripture clear, support18:09 for capital punishment and there is a difference. And this is what I'm really trying to get down to here between murder and killing, even in the Hebrew word. Okay. Moving on. So we're talking18:21 about the taking of an innocent life. Then we have to determine in the and God does this in the Torah. And the difference between intentional murder, which in our, judicial system, we call that first degree18:33 murder, or unintentional, which is second degree or third degree murder or manslaughter in our judicial system. And it's amazing how the Torah speaks to this 3000 years ago, but longer than18:45 that, 15 3500 years ago. God is giving this this, distinction well before our court system existed. And our court system18:56 draws the distinction and the stipulations for that distinction from Torah. We're gonna see that as we go through this content. We have to determine the difference, and the Torah does this, on how we19:08 can say this person took a life intentionally or did they take the life unintentionally. So the last thing that we're going to discuss on murder is just killing. And19:20 this is, in my opinion, a nonissue. Just killing is an a necessary thing in a world that19:32 is, saturated with sin. Now, there will be no there will be no killing in the in the, age to come. But what I really get alarmed with is when Christians19:44 want to enact the laws of the life to come with the life that we are in now. Hear me very carefully. A dirty world requires some dirt on one's hands to manage it.Adultery and Its Consequences 19:56 Our world is dirty because of sin. There's going to have some so there's gonna be a residue of dirt on one's hands even as we're cleaning it up and keeping it from falling to pieces. We we must make that stipulation20:07 clear because just killing is absolutely biblical. Number 1, you have holy war, in Joshua where God commands them to wipe everybody out, men, women and children. You have the the death of the murderer.20:19 The person who murders will be put to death. Of the adulterer, another capital crime. Of the false witness, another comp capital crime. So capital crimes exist and the death penalty is a20:31 biblical thing. Again, I'm not talking about the moral argument about when you have false evidence and you have, you know, people who shouldn't be put to death because the evidence was questionable in the first place.20:40 That or even I can hear and I can have. But when we're talking about clear and controversial evidence, just killing is the case. There everybody knows this. It's just a matter of how willing20:52 they are to come to the reality that they know this. Everybody knows that the Nazis had to be killed to be stopped. This was a this was an ideology that was unstoppable through rationality. It had to be put to death.21:04 We had to kill. We had to kill, in some cases, innocents and civilians as collateral damage of the second World War. That's why it's kind of alarming to me when everybody's freaking out about,21:15 Jews the the Jewish nation going after Hamas, you know, the Israeli nation going after Hamas. And, yes, there is going to be innocent bloodshed, unfortunate, not intentional on the on behalf of that those actions,21:28 but the Hamas terrorists specifically targeted the innocent. Okay. But everybody knows that just killing exists. We all know that we had to kill to end slavery in this country. Okay. We all21:40 know that a terrorist intent on killing others, maybe a mass shooter intent on killing others, has to be stopped with death. You know, the main shooter, it would it would21:52 have been a wonderful thing if someone at the bowling alley had had a gun and and killed him before he killed however many others he killed.22:04 Him killing 3 would have been far better than him killing 18. And if you disagree with that, I don't know what to tell you. This is as clear as as a as a true statement as can22:15 be. You have to kill at points to stop and limit murder. It brings me back to the 19 88 presidential election where Michael Dukakis, the governor from Massachusetts, who22:27 was very known for his, furlough program for murderers in prison. He let her murderer out on his furlough program and then that murderer went out and raped and killed a woman. Then he was asked about this, his22:39 views on the death penalty in, in the, presidential debate and the questioner said, if your wife, Kitty, was raped and murdered, would you favor the death penalty, in that case?22:51 And he very coldly said no. And overnight, his approval rating dropped and his lead over George H W Bush at that time dropped precipitously and he lost the election.23:03 My point in saying all this is that even the Lord's word here comes to speak to our hearts and confirm in our hearts what we all know. Just killing is necessary and so not all killing is murder.23:15 That's what I'm trying to tell you. Okay. So we are moving right along with the study here. There are different types of murder.23:28 Yes? This is not hard to imagine. There are different types of murder and not all murder is the same. So how do we distinguish that? First, there's intention of murder. Exodus chapter 21 verse 12. It says, whoever23:39 strikes a man so that he dies shall be put to death. But if he did not lie and wait for him, but God, let him fall into his hands, then I will appoint for you a place to which he may flee. But if a man willfully attacks23:49 another to kill him by cunning, you shall take him from my altar that he may die. So this is talking about intentional murder, which is an affront, an insult against God. It insults God when24:01 someone lies in wait for someone and kills them. Then there's unintentional murder. Deuteronomy 4 41. Then Moses set apart 3 cities in the east beyond the Jordan that the man slayer may flee there. Anyone who kills his24:10 neighbor unintentionally without being an enemy with him in time past, he may flee to 1 of these cities to save his life. Now, the question, of course, comes to us, like this. How do we know whether it was intentional24:23 or it was or it was unintentional? And that brings me to other portions of the Torah that speak to this. The Torah instructs the difference between intentional and unintentional killing.24:35 Number 1, the use of an instrument, betrays intentional killing. Numbers 35 16. If he struck him down with an iron object, and the letter says with a stone tool or with a wooden tool that could cause death and he died,24:47 he is a murderer. The murderer shall be put to death. Then if there's hatred and planning involved and, yes, the Bible stipulates about hate crimes and it says in numbers 35 verse 20, if he pushed him out of hatred or24:59 hurled something at him lying in wait so that he died or in enmity struck him down with his hands so that he died, then he who struck the blow shall be put to death. He is a murderer. It's very clear in the scripture.25:10 God is opposed to intentional killing but makes a makes a stipulation or a differentiation between intentional killing and, negligent killing such as25:22 someone's ox and this is in the Torah elsewhere. Someone's ox gourds another person or someone, unintentionally falls off of somebody's roof, you know, that person is liable, but they are not to be put to death. It is25:33 not it is not a capital crime. Then it talks about how to deal with the murderer. So this is gonna play into the ninth commandment bearing false witness. Numbers chapter25:45 35 verse 30 says, if anyone kills the person, the murderer shall be put to death on the evidence of witnesses. And here's where we get our judicial system for a trial of your peers, 12 being the number of25:57 any jury. It says, but no person shall be put to death on the testimony of 1 witness. Moreover, you shall accept no ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of death, but you shall be put to death. And you shall26:07 you shall accept no ransom for him who was fled to his of refuge that he may return to dwell on the land before the death of the high priest. City of refuges refuge were places where the unintentional murder may flee to26:19 find safety from the avenger of blood, the relative of the person who was killed unintentionally. And that person could come home only after the death of the high priest because the death of the high priest have it was26:30 stipulated, absolved him from his guilt. Now all that points to Christ because he is our true high priest and at his death, we are all absolved from our guilt finally and fully. But in the Old Testament, this was a26:41 stipulation to differentiate between intentional killing and unintentional, homicide. It's kind of amazing and it should be amazing to you to consider that these laws are 3500 years old26:53 and they are the foundation for our current laws as citizens of this country. We base our judicial system on Torah. That's really what is27:05 happening here. That's what we're learning. That's what we're discovering. We have the, entire criminal investigation system. Detectives finding27:17 motive, finding cause, finding, relationship to the deceased and and all of those intricate details, many times complicated details to determine guilt27:29 and to determine punishment. These things come from Torah. The ancient world did not have these things. The ancient world, yes, observed that murder was wrong. How to deal with it and how27:41 to clean it up. That was another story. Going back to numbers, verse 33 of number 35. You shall not pollute the land in which you live for blood pollutes the land and no atonement can be made for the land for the blood27:51 that is shed and except by the blood of the 1 who shed it. You shall not defile the land in which you live in the midst of the which I dwell for I the Lord dwell in the midst of the people of Israel. This idea of blood28:00 and land, that is also very common speech in the Old Testament. It goes all the way back again to Cain and Abel when God said the voice of your brother's blood or bloodline, plural, is crying to me from the28:12 ground. God is it God is offended by the death of a human being who was innocent,28:24 who was not deserving of death because they killed someone else. The reason why is because we are his image bearers and that blood shed into the ground28:36 is polluting to the place where god would dwell with his people. Ultimately, we are seeing the value of a human being. We're seeing the heart of god. We are seeing the heart of god to protect his creation, the28:48 the pinnacle of creation, mankind. And so murder, of course, is outlawed, and the Torah has plenty of more to say. We could spend a whole episode on that. We have to continue moving forward.29:00 Let's talk about adultery. This is commandment number 7. You shall not commit adultery. And when we talk about this, number 1 is the great sin. Now, I call it the great sin because all29:12 near eastern, ancient cultures called adultery sin. And they didn't just call it sin. They called it the great sin. It's kind of interesting because we think of this as unique to29:24 the Judeo Christian ethic but it is not. Even in the land of the east, even in the Islamic world, even in the Arab world, adultery is unthinkable and29:38 we there will be a spiritual component here that we will get to but the 1 thing that we want to point out point out here is that it is a high handed sin against god even in ancient29:49 areas and cultures before Torah is given through Moses to the people of Israel. We can go back to Genesis chapter 20 where Abimelech, who was the king of Gerar in the Nagesb and, Abram or Abraham at this point30:01 is sojourning through the land and he deceitfully informs Abimelech that Sarah Sarah is his sister when she's really his wife. Now, full disclosure, she is his half sister, the son of30:13 his, the daughter of his father but not his mother. But he tricks Abimelech and this is the second time he's done it, by the way. He also tricked Pharaoh king of Egypt when he went there, but he tricks Abimelech and30:25 Gerar in the promised land. And God speaks to Abimelech through a dream saying you're a dead man because the woman you have is another man's wife. And he said, I did this in innocence. And he says, I know and that's why30:34 I didn't kill you. And Abimelech calls to Abraham in Genesis 20 and says, what have you done? So you have this idea in the ancient cultures, ancient near recent cultures that even they saw adultery as sinful. Go to30:46 Potiphar's house and you have Joseph. This is before the law is given. Joseph speaking to Potiphar's wife, how can I, sin this great wickedness, this high handed sin against god?30:58 So all over the the world, the ancient world at least, adultery was considered a great sin in the eyes of those cultures. When God31:10 speaks this to the people of Israel, it is assumed it is sin. That's why these commandments are short. Murder, assumed to be sin. Adultery, assumed to be sin. God is just kind of cementing31:22 this into the context of Israel. Then there is this then there is more to say about adultery, but why God outlaws it is because, ultimately, it is about protecting31:34 the family unit. To commit adultery, Malachi talks about this, is to cover your household with violence. When you commit adultery, when you forsake31:46 the faithfulness, the fidelity of your union with your spouse, you are harming your entire home. And some of you, I'm pricking your conscience right now because this is in your31:58 story or this is in your parent's story or in your children's story. And you understand this experientially, not just theoretically, that adultery destroys families. It32:09 destroys children. It destroys more than just the sexual fidelity of the husband and wife. It is a far it is a nuclear bomb of a sin. It explodes. It's a mushroom cloud and then there's32:21 residue for miles into generations. We don't we don't have to discuss it in detail, but we can all talk about and think about David's great sin with Bathsheba. It doesn't just affect his32:33 heart. It affects his children's heart. His sin is then followed up by Absalom's sin in doing the same thing and Amnon's sin against his own half sister, Tamar.32:45 And you have the destruction, the nuclear bomb explode in David's life and the residue stretches for miles into the future generations. So God is protecting the family.32:57 It is a capital offense for that very reason. Now, let me just explain something too about capital offense because some people think that God is bloodthirsty in the Old Testament because of how many sins were punishable33:08 by death. Number 1, the punishment of death was a deterrent, not necessarily the program. Let me let me say it this way. The punishment of33:20 death was to inject fear into their hearts. It wasn't that god was saying, yes. Go get them. Kill everybody that sins. No. It was, I want you to see the seriousness of this sin33:32 so that you do not practice it because this sin will destroy you. And I have already talked about this, on this series repeatedly. The punishment of death is a33:44 picture for Christians of what happens to us spiritually because of sin. Sin brings death, spiritual death, but it brings death nonetheless. So the Old Testament is speaking to the spiritual33:55 realities that we have in Christ, in acknowledging that the wages of sin is death, Romans 3 23 or 6 23. And we understand these things34:08 cost us spiritually, cost us emotionally, cost us relationally and socially. And so god stipulates that death is the punishment to say this sin is great. This34:20 sin is grievous. And it is like you are killing yourself when you commit it anyway. The last thing I want to say about, adultery is that the later prophets, Isaiah34:31 and Hosea most notably, pick up on this idea that adultery is a picture of idolatry, spiritual fornication against God. And this is important because there is an analogy in the34:43 Old Testament as well as the New Testament. It is not just a New Testament reality, but it is also an Old Testament reality that God's people are related to him as a man is related to his wife.34:55 Hosea talks about this. Isaiah talks about this. And, of course, Jesus, John the Baptist picks up on this when he says I am the friend of the bridegroom. He is the bridegroom. The bridegroom has the bride, not the friend35:07 of the bridegroom. All of that imagery of Jesus being the man in this spousal relationship to his people is predicated on the Old Testament, which if I can pause for a35:19 moment and just make sure that we get something very clear. We do not study Torah as if it's this old shelved book on God's, you know, in God's library that we don't really have to talk about35:31 anymore. No. The New Testament and all the realities of the New Testament, we're gonna get this in false witnessing in just a moment, are predicated and built upon the stipulations of Torah.35:43 You don't have the New Testament and all the all the, laws, rules, and and social, realities of the New Testament without the Old Testament.35:55 Now, there is a reason, and we may get into it tonight and we may not, but there is a reason why there is differences there and we're gonna learn that as we continue to study Torah. But I36:07 just wanna make sure that you're understanding that. We study Torah because Torah is still applicable. It is still our Bible And we must learn from these words how36:19 to live in our culture today. Okay. Back to adultery. All over the the Old Testament, adultery is warned about because it is such a high handed sin. It is a high handed crime against God.36:31 The punishment, Deuteronomy 20 22. Both the man and the woman will die. Leviticus 20 10. If a man commits adultery with the wife of a neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulterer shall be36:43 put to death. Then the Proverbs writer, Solomon, warns repeatedly. Proverbs 5, Proverbs 6, Proverbs 7, Proverbs 8, repeated warnings against36:55 adultery and the adulteress in particular. Proverbs 5 3 to 6. For the lips of a forbidden woman drip honey and her speech is smoother than oil. But in the end, she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a 2 edged sword.37:07 Her feet go down at depth. Her steps follow the path to Sheol. She does not part of the path of life. Her ways wander. She does not know it. There is this, attractiveness to adultery. Right? There is this37:19 sweetness on the outside to adultery. Oh, that seems like a good idea and the bible is clear. Yep. That's what it's gonna look like. The adulterous woman's speech is like honey smoother37:31 than oil. It seems like a good idea but it leads to death. Verse 8 of the same chapter, keep your way far from her. Do not go near her door, lest you give your honor to others or your years to the merciless. Let37:42 strangers take their fill of your strength and your labors go to the house of a foreigner. And at the end your life of your life, you groan when your flesh and your body consumed and you say, how I hated discipline, how37:52 my heart despise reproof. And I could go on and on and on from Proverbs 5 all the way through Proverbs 8 on the warnings against adultery. The point being made, it is a38:04 grievous evil and the best course of action is to run. Run from it. Like, Joseph ran from Potiphar's wife. He ran so fast he left his coat and then she used that to accuse him38:15 falsely. But we must run. Paul says to Timothy, flee the evil desires of youth, the evil the youthful, desires of lust. You have to run from it. You can't38:27 make allowances for it. By the way, again, what I just said, the New Testament is predicated on the Old Testament. When Jesus talks about your eye gouging it out if it causes you to sin. This is coming from this language38:39 in, Proverbs chapter 5, 6, and 7 and the language of the Old Testament that outlawed adultery and, how evil it was. He is speaking from the text. He is not countering the38:51 text. Please never ever say that Jesus annulled the old testament and introduced a new and higher and better law. He never did that. What Jesus does is he rightly exposes the old39:03 testament so that we truly understand the weight of the law, the depth of the law, the seriousness of the law. Then we also understand our inadequacies to keep the law. We can't keep the law. We39:15 are powerless against the law. And then we look to the gospel and his blood to save us from the curse of the law. That is how we are to read Torah properly.39:27 So adultery. Now let's move on to theft. You shall not steal. When we talk about this law, it is important that we understand 3 basic realities.Show more In this video 0:00 Understanding Commandments 6-91:46 The Commandment Against Murder19:52 Adultery and Its Consequences39:31 Theft and Respect for Property43:10 Bearing False Witness and the Power of Truth
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