Now we started off reading in Deuteronomy chapter 22 and you're probably thinking like
what in the world are we reading Deuteronomy chapter 22 about if you're talking about dating
because I didn't say anything about dating in there.
Well, one of the things that we saw in here and one example I just want to point out briefly
is just how valued purity is in scripture and in God's law and we see that here in
the latter portion, kind of in the middle of the passage here, we'll end up rereading
it but God places a high value on purity, on virginity, on these things and, you know,
maybe you've made mistakes in the past but don't just say, you know, just because you
may have committed a sin before, don't let that drag you down just to be like okay well
what's the use anyways, now I'm just going to keep on sinning.
Don't have that attitude.
You want to say okay this is what the Bible says, I've made this mistake or maybe you
haven't made this mistake and praise God for that.
Either way, you want to try to follow as closely as possible to that standard where God has
a purity and hold that in regard very highly and this whole sermon is going to be focusing
around this concept of maintaining purity and keeping everything pure and upright when
you go out and date people because that is the number one problem and it's a huge problem.
It's a huge pitfall.
I'm worthy of getting at least an entire sermon dedicated to this topic because, you know,
today the world treats fornication as not a big deal, as something that everybody does,
you know, they're talking about giving contraceptives to children and, you know, even in grammar
school and high school they're going to do it anyways so let's just think it'd be safe.
No, no, no, they're not going to do it anyways.
No, it doesn't have to be like that.
No, if parents were raising their children properly they wouldn't be doing that.
They won't do that.
And if we have a proper fear of God in our life, you won't do it either.
And that's the truth and the Bible is very, very, very serious about fornication.
It is not some minor sin.
It's not some little thing that everybody does.
Let's get an example here in Deuteronomy 22 of how highly valued virginity is, impurity
is.
Look at verse number 13.
It says, if any man take a wife and go in unto her and hate her and give occasions of
speech against her and bring up an evil name upon her and say, I took this woman and when
I came to her I found her not a maid.
Now it says if I am not a maid, it means I found her not to be a virgin.
So the example that's being set forth here is that, hey, here's a man, he married someone,
he thought that she was a virgin.
He thought she's pure.
And it's going to deal with a situation where someone just says that versus it actually
being the truth.
So he's saying, here's his accusation.
I married her but she wasn't a virgin when I met her and I didn't know it and she was
presented to me as being chaste, as being virgin and she wasn't.
So verse number 15 says, how to handle this, then shall the father of the damsel and her
mother take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel's virginity unto the elders of
the city in the gate.
Now I'm not going to get into detail on what that is but typically this would be something
that would be received after the wedding, after the consummation of the marriage that
proves that the damsel was a virgin at that time and that the wife's parents hold on to
that as proof that our daughter was virgin.
Verse number 16, and the damsel's father shall say unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto
this man to wipe and he hateth her and lo he hath given occasions of speech against her
saying I found not thy daughter a maid and yet these are the tokens of my daughter's
virginity and they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city and the elders
of that city shall take that man and chastise him and they shall immerse him in a hundred
shekels of silver and give them unto the father of the damsel because he hath brought up an
evil name upon a virgin of Israel and she shall be his wife, he may not put her away
all his days.
So there is no, again we talk about divorce this morning, there is no cause for divorce
here at all even if he's not pleased with his wife and the fact that he brings up and
tries to tarnish her name and in so doing what's he doing, he's tarnishing her parents
and what we see here is that the parents, the father especially is responsible for the
purity of their children and especially of their daughters and fathers need to take this
to heart, you know I take this to heart is that it's no one else's responsibility but
your own.
If you leave your kids to themselves, they probably will go out and do and commit fornication
and to lose their virginity and things like that when you just leave them to do things
that will happen but when they have a father, when they have parents that are there to raise
them right and to watch over and protect them because there are lots of situations that
girls can get themselves in, young girls because they're naive, because they don't completely
understand the way things work, they don't completely understand that there are evil
guys out there, they don't understand the danger that they might even be putting themselves
in because they're young and they still need the protection of their father to help watch
over a dad that knows, hey there's a lot of things that go on in this world and I'm going
to make sure that my daughter doesn't fall prey to one of those things.
So in maintaining purity, it's a dad's job to make sure that you're not leaving, you're
not giving access to your daughter alone with any guy, ever.
Never should happen.
That's dad's job and we see here, dad's the one saying no, no, no, she was pure, I made
sure because it's hard work, you got to watch over your kids and make sure that you're instituting
whatever rules you need to institute to be able to monitor your children and say no,
I made sure, there's no way that this could have happened and I know that she was virgin,
and I know that she was pure and she was brought up right.