Man, Deuteronomy chapter 24 contains a lot of various laws, statutes, judgments, and
it talks about a variety of subjects.
And before I get into this, I just want to remind us of why the law of God, why the book
of Deuteronomy specifically, is relevant today.
And as New Testament Christians, why do we care about this?
Why is this important?
Because we know that the New Testament tells us that all scripture is given by inspiration
of God and is profitable for doctrine.
But what exactly is our relationship to the law in 2023 as New Testament Christians?
Well flip back if you would to chapter 12, because chapter 12 is the introduction to
this part of the book of Deuteronomy.
And so if we go back to the beginning of chapter 12, the Bible reads in verse number 1, it
says, these are the statutes and the judgments which you shall observe to do in the land
which the Lord God of thy fathers giveth thee to possess it all the days that you live upon
the earth.
And I really just want to emphasize that word, these are the judgments of God, right?
What does that mean, the judgments of God?
Well, if you think about making a judgment call, right?
You're making a decision about what is right, what is wrong.
And so when we read the book of Deuteronomy, we are reading the judgments of God.
We are learning what God determines to be right and what he determines to be wrong in
a given situation.
And so we can understand how God thinks about things morally.
And then that's going to help us as we go through our life, we're going to have to make
all kinds of judgments.
We're going to have to make decisions.
We're going to have to make judgment calls.
And we base it on the way that God judges things, the way that God makes a judgment.
We can make decisions and judgments ourselves.
Of course, in the New Testament, we are not under the law, but under grace.
And so in the New Testament, we do not seek to become righteous by just slavishly following
a list of rules, right?
We want to walk in the spirit and we want to follow Christ by doing the things that
are pleasing in his sight.
When it comes to the Old Testament moral law, obviously the morals of the Old Testament
still stand.
They're timeless.
When it comes to the rituals of the Old Testament, like things that had to do with the tabernacle
or the Levitical priests or animal sacrifices, those things are specifically done away in
Christ because Christ has already died on the cross and those things were pointing forward
to the cross.
So all those carnal ordinances are done away in the New Testament.
And then when it comes to the civil or criminal laws of the Old Testament, obviously we're
living in America and America has its own criminal justice system and civil laws and
so forth, but that being said, America would do well to use the book of Deuteronomy as
a pattern because the Bible says the law of the Lord is perfect.
So if you want to have a good legal system, you're going to base it as much as possible
on God's legal system.
So even if spiritually we're not under the law, even if spiritually we're not following
the rituals and ceremonies of the Old Testament, the judgments of God are still his, that's
still his opinion, that's still, and of course his opinion is supreme because he's the God
of the universe, right?
So his judgment is the final word, morally speaking.
And so the law is still very relevant to us today, even if we're not living in Canaan
land, even if we're not living in Old Testament Israel where this is the literal law of the
land, you know, we still can learn a lot and this will help guide our minds on so many
different subjects.
So I hope that helps going in tonight so that you'll understand the relevance of what we're
going to see here.
So first of all, starting out in Deuteronomy 24, we have this section about divorce and
I just preached a whole sermon about this recently, so I'm going to just go through
this quickly, but I do still want to spend a little bit of time on it.
Deuteronomy 24 one says, when a man had taken a wife and married her and it come to pass
that she find no favor in his eyes because he had found some uncleanness in her.
And that is the key here, this is not saying for any cause, for any reason, because later
the Pharisees are going to ask Jesus, well, can a man put away his wife for every cause?
And of course, Jesus Christ tells them, no, you can't, right?
God made them male and female at the beginning and a man is to cleave to his wife and they
too are to be one flesh and what God has joined together, let not man put asunder.
And Jesus rebukes that, but here we see that it's a specific situation where a man takes
a wife, marries her and it come to pass that she find no favor in his eyes because he finds
some uncleanness in her and this uncleanness has to do with basically her having committed
fornication, okay?
And we see an example of this in Matthew chapter one where Joseph believes that Mary has been
unfaithful because if you remember, Mary's pregnant and Joseph and Mary had been espoused,
that they have not yet consummated the marriage and so Joseph's never been physically with
Mary and so he doesn't understand how she could be pregnant.
He assumes that she has been unfaithful and that she has committed fornication and so
then he's going to do what?
Put her away.
It says in Matthew one, Joseph was minded to put Mary away privily.
He didn't want to make a public example out of her, but he wanted to put her away privily.
Why?
Because there was uncleanness there in his mind.
Now, of course, there was no uncleanness because it turned out that that which was conceived
in her was of the Holy Ghost and the virgin birth of Christ is what is taught there, but
from his perspective, he didn't know that at the time.
He found that out later when an angel came and appeared to him and explained to him,
don't worry about it.
Fear not to take unto thee Mary as thy wife for that which is conceived in her is of the
Holy Ghost.
When the Bible talks about going into your wife and finding some uncleanness in her,
this is also similar to what we saw in chapter 22 where a man went in into his wife and found
her not to be a virgin in Deuteronomy chapter 22.
What we would call this today, it says here, let him give her a bill of divorcement and
give it in her hand and send her out of his house.
What we would call this today though is not divorce.
We would call this an annulment.
The Bible does not use the word annulment.
The Bible calls this divorce, but I'm telling you in our modern vernacular, 2023 America,
we would call this getting an annulment.
So the Bible does make a provision for getting an annulment.
But this idea of, oh, my wife and I, we've been married for 23 years and it's just not
working out so we're just going to get a divorce, that is not biblical.
And in America, that is a new phenomenon that that would even be legal for people to
just get divorced for no reason.
It used to be that if you wanted to get a divorce in this country before the year 1970,
you had to go to a judge and you had to actually petition the court to get a divorce and you
had to bring evidence for why you had grounds for divorce.
And obviously the judges were granting more divorces than what would be biblical, but
at least they weren't just divorcing people for no reason.
But now you have what's called no fault divorce, where it's nobody's fault, it's just we're
just getting divorced because we're sick of each other or whatever, we just don't like
each other.
He's a jerk or whatever, she's a jerk, you know, but that's not biblical, my friend.
When you get married, you need to take that seriously and it's till death do us part.
And that is a serious lifelong commitment.
And look, if you're already divorced in the past, I'm not trying to beat you up about
your past because you're not going to get in a time machine and change anything, but
I would encourage you and admonish you and exhort you to stay faithful to who you are
married to now.
If you got divorced before, my advice to you is don't do it again.
Whoever you're currently married to, stay faithful to them.
Now if you're divorced and you're not remarried, then the best case scenario is that you would
reconcile with your spouse.
But here's a caveat to that.
Once one of the divorced people has already gotten remarried, that relationship can never
be reconciled again.
Let's see what the Bible says about this.
It says, let him give her a bill of divorcement and give it in her hand and send her out of
his house.
Verse 2, when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man's wife.
And if the latter husband hate her and write her a bill of divorcement and give it in her
hand and sendeth her out of his house, or, watch this, if the latter husband die which
took her to be his wife, her former husband which sent her away may not take her again
to be his wife.
After that, she is defiled for that is abomination before the Lord.
And thou shalt not cause the land to sin, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an
inheritance.
So here's what the Bible is saying.
Once a man and a woman have been divorced or they've had a marriage annulled or whatever,
okay, once that happens, if then one of those two people marries someone else, okay, then
at that point there's no hope to ever reconcile that marriage again.
Because if they marry someone else and then they go back to the original spouse, that's
an abomination the Bible says, okay.
Like you know, for example, my parents are divorced, okay.
They have both married someone else after they've been divorced.
Well, there is no hope of my parents ever getting back together again.
And if both of their spouses died, they're still not getting back together again.
That would be a super abomination.
So it's over at this point.
Does everybody understand what I'm saying?
And so there's a weird doctrine out there that I've seen on the internet quite a bit
where people are saying, oh, if you're divorced and remarried, you have to leave your current
spouse and go back to the original spouse because God hates divorce.
So go back to the original.
Well, God does hate divorce, but if you're divorced and you've married someone else,
you must stay with the person that you are currently married to.
That is what the Bible teaches.
If you've been divorced seven times and you're on your seventh spouse, well, then you need
to stay faithful to that seventh spouse until death and stop getting divorced for crying
out loud, you weirdo.
No, I'm just kidding.
You're not a weirdo, okay.
You just spent some time in Hollywood or something.
If you've been married seven times.
But the point is that, you know, it doesn't matter what you've done in the past.
If you are currently married right now, that's your spouse.
That's who you're married to.
And instead of getting mad at me, Pastor Anderson's mad that I got divorced 20 years ago.
No, no, no.
I'm just trying to get you to stay married to your current spouse.
That's what I'm trying to do.
What's my motive for preaching this right now?
Number one, I preach everything in the Bible, whether there's a reason to or not, just because
it's in the Bible.
It's like Mount Everest, because it's there.
That's why I preach that sermon, because it's there.
But number two, the reason I preach it is because I want the marriages that are in this
room right now to last a lifetime, because that is God's will.
And in America today, people don't take marriage seriously enough.
They don't take those vows seriously, and they're trading up spouses, and you get some
dude in a midlife crisis, and all of a sudden he wants to trade up for some other spouse.
No!
Stay married until death parts you.
That is what the Bible teaches.
That's what we want to stick with, okay?
And don't get sucked into this thing of, oh, I've got to go back to the first spouse.
Now again, if two people get divorced and neither one of them is remarried, then the
best thing would be that they could get back together.
That would be ideal.
That's a best-case scenario.
But once one of them gets married, they need to be faithful to that new spouse and just
move forward and do right going forward.
Now go to Jeremiah chapter 3.
Let's get a parallel passage on this.
Jeremiah chapter 3, to kind of back up what I'm saying here, Jeremiah chapter 3.
The Bible says in Jeremiah chapter 3 verse 1, it says in Jeremiah 3.1, they say, if a
man put away his wife and she go from him and become another man's, shall he return
unto her again?
Shall not that land be greatly polluted?
Now if this were the only scripture on this, you might say, well, this is just they say.
Who are they anyway?
They say.
You want to know why they say that?
Because they read it in Deuteronomy 24.
That's why they say that, because it's in the law of God.
So in this case, they are right, okay, that that's what's going on.
But then it says this.
It says, shall not that land be greatly polluted?
But thou has played the harlot with many lovers, yet return again to me, saith the Lord.
Now here's the thing.
God was not literally married to Israel.
This is a metaphor.
God's saying that, you know, humanly speaking, if a woman ends up being divorced by her husband
and going and being another man's wife, then they can't be reconciled anymore.
But he's saying, you know what?
That's kind of how things have been spiritually between me and Israel.
But still, in spite of that, you know, I'm giving you a chance to come back.
And people try to use this to basically teach.
I've literally heard preachers get up and say, well, you know, we need to stop preaching
so hard on divorce because God's divorced.
And they said God's divorced and remarried.
And so we can get divorced and remarried.
And you know, because the Bible says the pastor has to be the husband of one wife.
And they'll say, well, okay, but this pastor is divorced and remarried, but that's okay
because God did the same thing.
It's like, no, my friend, learn the difference between reality and a metaphor, okay?
God did not actually literally divorce Israel because he says in this chapter that, you
know, I gave your mama, I'm paraphrasing, he basically says I gave your mama a bill
of divorcement.
But here's the thing.
That's not literal, my friend.
It's a metaphor, okay?
God the Father did not literally get married to Israel despite what the dispensationalist
may tell you.
But the point is that Jeremiah chapter 3 verse 1 is pointing us back to Deuteronomy 24.
This concept that is a true concept that if a man put away his wife and she go and become
another man's wife, that if she comes back to him, it says, I mean, look at the wording
in verse 1.
It says, shall not that land be greatly polluted, okay?
And then you go back to Deuteronomy 24 and what does it say is going to happen?
Look at verse 4 of Deuteronomy 24.
Her former husband which sent her away may not take her again to be his wife.
After that she's defiled for that is abomination before the Lord and thou shalt not cause the
land to sin which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.
So notice the wording of causing the land to sin and then in Jeremiah 3 the land will
be greatly polluted if she goes back to the first husband.
Not only that, I want to point out that in Jeremiah 3.1 the wording is a little different.
It says, thou has played the harlot with many lovers yet return again to me, saith the Lord.
Notice he doesn't say, you became another man's husband but return again to me, saith
the Lord.
Does everybody see the difference there?
So that's another problem with the way people are twisting and misinterpreting this.
So if you look at the first part of Jeremiah 3.1 where it says, if she go and be another
man's, shall he return unto her again?
Shall not that land be greatly polluted?
That is all accurate because that is all pointing us back to what we saw in Deuteronomy 24 and
then he's just saying, you know, I'm in a similar situation with you spiritually because
you've played the harlot with all these lovers but come back to me.
But notice he didn't say, you became another man's husband.
And again, were they even literally married?
It's a metaphor, all right?
Quit taking things so literally, Nicodemus, you also don't have to go into your mother's
womb again to be reborn.
You know, let's go back to Deuteronomy 24 and move on.
I just wanted to emphasize that if you're not clear on what I just preached, you could
get the download of the sermon from a couple of weeks ago about divorce where I did a whole
sermon and I went a little more in depth.
Let's move on.
Look at verse number 5.
When a man hath taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war, neither shall he be charged
with any business, but he shall be free at home one year and shall cheer up his wife
which he hath taken.
I don't understand why his wife has such a bad attitude in the first place.
You know what I mean?
Like, what's the deal?
What is your problem, honey?
Takes a year to cheer you up?
Oh, poor little you got married, huh?
I guess that's just something that women sometimes struggle with, apparently, having a bad attitude.
But here's the thing.
You know, what I would take from this, though, when he says that he shouldn't be charged
with any business, you know, you're not going to send him to war or anything like that,
but he shall be free at home one year and shall cheer up his wife which he hath taken.
I think that the main application here is saying that marriage is going to take work
because if marriage didn't take any work or effort, well, then why wouldn't you be able
to just do all the typical business and go to war and do your business and do everything?
You know, taking a year and kind of slowing down on the rest of your life, focusing on
your marriage for a year, spending time with your wife, cheering up your wife, well, it
sounds to me like marriage takes work.
It takes effort.
It takes time.
So if we go through life not putting any investment, time, energy into our marriage, especially
in the early days, well, then we can't really expect to have a very good marriage if we're
just kind of out doing whatever and we're not investing time, energy, effort into our
marriage.
And here's the thing.
Most marriages, if they're going to end, they typically end in the first couple of years.
I mean, you'd be shocked how many people get divorced in the first year or two.
So those first two years are critical.
You want to make it through those first couple of years.
And so it's going to take some effort, put some time into it, put some commitment, try
and do your best to make that thing work.
Another common time for people to get divorced is the first few years after the kids leave
the home because a lot of people are staying together for their kids.
Kids move out.
Within those first two years, that's a transition, right?
Because now you've got the empty nest.
Things are different now.
Well, then I would recommend that when your last kid leaves the home, probably those two
years would be a time to slow down on other areas of life and put extra effort into that
relationship.
Because if we're going to make this relationship work in 2023 America where we have so many
things working against us culturally and so many bad influences out there, if we're going
to be different and beat the statistics, well, then we're going to have to do something different.
If we do the same thing as everyone else, we're going to get the same result as everyone
else.
We need a different kind of preaching that demonizes divorce and doesn't just act like
divorce isn't a big deal and doesn't give a list of 25 exceptions for grounds for divorce.
We need some hard preaching against divorce and then we need some people that put some
effort into their marriage and do a good job at this thing so that it doesn't crash and
burn because we want to beat the statistics.
Let's move on to the next thing.
It says in verse 6, no man shall take the nether or the upper millstone to pledge for
he taketh a man's life to pledge.
Here what we're talking about is collateral on a loan.
That's what we're talking about with a pledge.
He's saying you don't take something that is actually crucial to someone's livelihood
as collateral for a loan because you're taking away a man's livelihood.
When it says a man's life to pledge, what it means by life there is livelihood.
Look at verse number 7.
It says if a man be found stealing any of his brethren of the children of Israel and
maketh merchandise of him or selleth him, then that thief shall die and thou shalt put
evil away from among you.
Now typically thieves are not put to death in the Bible of course because stealing is
bad but it's not so bad that someone should get the death penalty.
We're not even Muslims that chop off hands or anything.
So if somebody steals, then they have to pay back what they stole.
So if somebody steals something and they're caught with that item or they get caught later
but they still have the actual item that they stole, not one like it but the exact one that
they stole, then they pay back double.
But if they steal something and they destroy it or sell it or they don't have it anymore,
then they have to pay back fourfold or fivefold depending on whether it's a grand theft or
a petty larceny, grand theft fivefold, petty larceny fourfold.
That's the punishment for stealing but this is not talking about stealing.
This is talking about what we would call kidnapping because this says he steals a person and sells
the person.
That thief shall be put to death.
We would call this human trafficking.
So this is the thing, part of my job as a preacher is to take the Word of God here that
was written about 35 or this speech was made by Moses about 3500 years ago.
Moses spoke these words.
We don't know exactly when the book was written down, this particular book of Deuteronomy
but he spoke these words on the brink of going into the Promised Land 3500 years ago,
around 1500 BC and then this was translated into English in the early 1600s and so some
of the vernacular is going to be a little different, right?
So therefore it's part of my job as a preacher to kind of put these things into today's lingo,
today's language and apply them to today.
And so today we would call this kidnapping and we would call it human trafficking, right?
Stealing a human and selling them, those are the words that we would use for this right
now.
Now what is the punishment for kidnapping?
Death.
What is the punishment for human trafficking?
Death.
That's what the Bible says.
And remember, what did I say at the beginning of the sermon?
Deuteronomy 12, these are the judgments of God.
What do you think should be the punishment for kidnapping?
Why don't you make a judgment call on that?
God already made the judgment.
So my judgments are not superior to God's judgments.
My opinions are not superior to God's opinions.
So therefore the Supreme Court is wrong because the Supreme Court has ruled about a decade
ago that no one will be put to death for kidnapping, that no one in America can be put to death
for child molesting.
They will only put people to death in this country for premeditated murder and nothing
else.
That's what the Supreme Court has judged.
That is a wrong judgment.
They're wrong to say, well, you know, that's just too much for kidnappers.
That's just too much for human trafficking.
That's just too much for a child molester.
No.
Child molesters, kidnappers, human traffickers should all be put to death.
That's what God has judged.
God has pronounced that judgment.
And people say, well, you know, we're free in Christ.
It's the New Testament, man.
We're under grace, not under the law.
But does that change the fact that kidnappers should be put to death?
And it just kind of blows my mind today how a lot of Christians, because the churches
that they go to, they teach such fluff instead of teaching the Word of God that they don't
even know the judgments of the Lord.
And so they're just biblically illiterate.
And so they're just like, well, we're in the New Testament, man.
We're free in Christ.
We're not under the law.
OK.
Well, let's tell that to the cop when you get pulled over.
Why don't you just tell the cop, hey, we're free in Christ.
We're not under the law.
We're under grace.
And you know what?
If these people actually thought about this and were actually a little bit more biblically
literate, then they're basically advocating for anarchy, because you'll try to talk to
them about the death penalty.
And they're like, oh, no, no, there's no death penalty in the New Testament, because
we're all worthy of death.
But if we believe in Jesus, we have eternal life.
Of course, spiritually, if we believe in Jesus, we have eternal life.
But are you telling me that there's no punishment for crime anymore in the New Testament, that
we're not supposed to have a government, that we're not supposed to have a criminal justice
system?
It's absurd.
I mean, there's only one word for it.
It's absurd.
It's crazy.
But these people, they don't even have a complete worldview.
They just kind of go to church, listen to their little cotton candy sermon, and then
when someone says something other than what America is doing, then all of a sudden it's
just like, well, that's the Old Testament, so you know, that doesn't apply.
We're free in Christ, so anarchy.
But no, if they said anarchy, that would actually make sense.
It'd be stupid, but it would make sense.
But these people aren't even making sense, because they're like, well, of course people
should go to prison.
Says who?
Well, okay, let's have the death penalty for murderers, but not kidnappers.
Says who?
Just because that's what America does?
Is America God now?
Folks, there are like 200 countries in this world, and they all have different laws.
And none of them is God.
None of them is perfect, but the law of the Lord is perfect.
And so it just blows my mind how biblically illiterate people can be, and then they get
mad at us, and they rebuke us, and they act like we don't know the Bible, because we're
for the death penalty, because they think, well, New Testament, no death penalty.
Okay, then what's the punishment for kidnapping?
What is it?
No, it's not death, man.
We're free in Christ, so what is it then?
What is it?
Just love the kidnapper, and just show him grace and mercy, and we just have anarchy.
What's the punishment?
Oh, I know, lock him in a cage for 40 years, 30 years, 20 years, 10 years, 5 years.
Says who?
That's just your opinion.
I'd rather be, if I were king, I would look at the Bible and say, okay, let's adapt this
thing to modern times, and let's adapt it to New Testament Christianity, and this kidnapping
death penalty thing, let's do it.
And guess what?
That has been the prevailing view in Western civilization for the last couple thousand
years, which is why in this country, guess what the punishment for kidnapping has been
in this country in the past?
People have been executed for kidnapping in this country.
It used to be the right way, okay?
People were executed for being a child molester.
That's why the Supreme Court even ruled on it, because it used to be a thing.
They changed it, because it used to be that pedophiles and kidnappers would be put to
death in this country, and throughout history, we've understood as Christians that the Bible
is God's word, and that the Bible can guide us toward having a criminal justice system
that is more righteous, that's more fair, because let's face it, some things about our
criminal justice system are really good, and some of them are not so good, but you want
to know how good our criminal justice system is?
As much as it conforms to God's ideas and God's judgments and God's statutes, that's
how good it is, and every time it deviates from those things, I would say that's negative
about our justice system, because see, I actually have a final standard.
I actually have something to measure it by.
I'm not just spitballing here and just throwing stuff at the wall, just like, well, I don't
care what you think.
The God of the universe has already told us what he thinks.
I would just defer to that, and so everyone here who has children probably believes that
kidnappers should be put to death.
Imagine taking your child to the store, and some goon grabs your child and throws it in
a van and drives off.
Think about that.
How do you feel about that person?
Oh, let's just forgive them, let's just love them, Pastor Anderson's so mean, he's such
a hate preacher.
No, you'd say, kill that sucker.
You don't want the, you know what you want the cops to do?
You want them to kill him and bring your kid back, right?
Well, let's just forgive him so that he can kill and rape and sell more children and string
out more hookers on drugs.
No, kill the sucker.
All right, beloved, let's move on.
Verse 8, take heed in the plague of leprosy that thou observe diligently and do according
to all that the priest, the Levite, shall teach you as I commanded them, so ye shall
observe to do.
Remember what the Lord thy God did unto Miriam, by the way, after that ye were come forth
out of Egypt.
And these verses are showing us that Deuteronomy is expecting us to go back and read Leviticus
in Numbers.
And so this is basically Deuteronomy saying, go back and read Leviticus in Numbers and
do what Leviticus says and understand what Numbers already taught you.
So it's referencing those other two books of the Bible.
Because Deuteronomy, the name Deuteronomy, the word Deuteronomy literally means second
law.
That's what the title of the book means because this is sort of a review where the law was
given earlier at Mount Sinai and now we're about to enter the promised land decades later.
And Moses is sort of reviewing things and recapping and clarifying things and adding
some detail.
And so he's not going to go off on a big story about leprosy here.
But he just says, hey, you know, remember what was commanded already about leprosy?
Go ahead and follow those teachings from the book of Leviticus.
What is it?
Chapter 13, somewhere around there.
Did I get it?
All right.
Chapter 13.
And you know, go back and read Numbers chapter 12, maybe.
I don't know if I'm right.
But anyway, go back and read those is what that's saying.
Verse 10.
Okay.
OJ Simpson, somebody can maybe get them this sermon in prison.
This would be a good part for him to read.
When thou doest lend thy brother anything, thou shalt not go into his house to fetch
his pledge.
Thou shalt stand abroad and the man to whom thou doest lend shall bring out the pledge
abroad unto thee.
Now this is not OJ Simpson's exact situation, but, uh, you know, if somebody has something
of yours in their house, it doesn't mean that you can break into their house to go get it
back.
And I believe that that's why OJ Simpson's in prison right now, because, uh, somebody
had, had bought some stolen memorabilia of his or some, it was some, somebody had received
some stolen property or something and he broke into some hotel room and, and took back what
had once rightfully belonged to him that had been stolen.
Am I, am I getting this right?
I'm in the ballpark.
All right.
I got, I got one witness.
Can I get a witness?
Anybody else want to verify that I'm roughly telling the truth?
All right.
We have two people that have backed up my story.
So anyway, you know what the Bible is saying is, you know, you don't break into someone's
house and take back what they owe you.
You know, somebody who's not paying you, you know, they, they're not making good on the
loan and, uh, or whatever they're holding onto some kind of collateral or pledge, whatever
they have that belongs to you in the house, you stand outside the hotel room, OJ Simpson,
and they have to bring it out to you.
You can't just break in there and take it by force.
And obviously the reason why OJ Simpson got nailed for that and went to prison for that
is because everybody pretty much knows that he murdered a few people.
And so it was kind of like a way of justice to kind of catch up to him later on, uh, for
that to happen.
So verse 12, if the man be poor, thou shall not sleep with his pledge.
In any case, shalt thou deliver him the pledge again when the sun go with down that he may
sleep in his own Raymond and bless thee and it shall be righteousness unto thee before
the Lord thy God.
So you know, if you owe poor people money, if you need to pay them, don't make them wait
on it and sleep on it and get it tomorrow.
Give it to them immediately.
People who are living paycheck to paycheck, they need to get that money immediately.
So get it to them.
Think about poor people.
Take care of poor people.
Don't oppress the poor is what the Bible is teaching there.
Verse number 14 thou shall not oppress a hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he
be of thy brethren or of thy strangers that are in thy land within thy gates.
He's saying, look, don't oppress workers even if they're foreigners because he's saying,
don't oppress the workers that are of your brethren, but also don't oppress the stranger
that's dwelling with you and working.
When the Bible says the word stranger, our modern word is foreigner.
So he's saying, don't take advantage of foreigners.
You should still treat them well, pay them a fair wage for their work and so forth.
So you know, I, you know, I don't think there's anything wrong with hiring illegals, sorry,
but I've done it.
Here's the thing, you know, I think we should all strive to be undocumented, but anyway,
you know, I've, I've hired illegals to do stuff for me, but here's the thing.
I'm not going to take advantage of them.
If I hire an illegal to do something for me, right?
And if I hired illegals to paint my house, maybe I'm not saying I did, but let's just
say hypothetically, let's just say hypothetically, at some point I had hired some illegals to
paint my house.
You know, just, this is totally just a hypothetical thing.
Here's the thing.
I'm not going to be like, Oh, these are illegal.
So I can, I can take advantage of them and I can get away with it.
That's wicked.
That's a wicked act.
You know, if you're going to hire undocumented workers or hire illegals, Hey, you better
pay them and treat them well and not take advantage of them.
But look, if you want to know where a lot of what's driving a lot of illegal immigration,
you know, if you look at the history of it, a lot of companies have literally just brought
busloads of illegals up from Mexico.
I mean, they're just bringing busloads of illegals up here to work in their factories.
And a place that's infamous for this is I believe it's called Greenlee, Colorado is
this meat packing industry up in Colorado where they just hire so many illegals and
they're just bringing up so many illegal immigrants from, from Mexico.
And they put them in this meat packing plant and the safety standards aren't very good.
And so they're getting injured, they're getting crippled, maimed.
They're getting hurt in these meat packing plants and they have no recourse.
There's nothing they can really do about it.
They don't speak the language, they don't, they're going to get deported.
They don't really have the same rights in a lot of people's minds.
But you know, I would say that that is a wicked business practice to sit here and bring people
up from another country just so that you can treat them poorly, pay them a ridiculously
low wage, abuse them, intimidate them, confuse them, lie to them about what their rights
are and then they can't even really figure out what's going on.
Cause think about it, if you're in another country, you don't know the language, you
don't really know what's going on.
You could be at someone else's mercy, but it better be mercy if they're a Christian
because it's just downright un-Christian to take advantage of people just because they're
here illegally or whatever.
And so it's easy for us as Christians sometimes to just get caught up in a lot of political
talking points and a lot of people are spending more time listening to conservative talk radio
than they are to listening to the word of God.
We need to be listening to the word of God more than we're listening to some talk radio
or political news or whatever.
And so the word of God says that there's one law for the stranger and him that's born in
the land.
One law, not a different set of rules for foreigners as locals.
One law for everybody is what the Bible teaches and the Bible says, don't oppress a stranger.
You were a stranger in Egypt, you've been a foreigner, don't oppress the foreigner.
Treat the foreigners well, okay?
And here's the thing, everybody tries to make a boogeyman out of illegal immigrants or Mexican
immigrants in general and make a boogeyman like, oh, so bad, so scary or whatever.
But you know what?
Most of these people are actually nice people.
They live in a messed up country and they're just trying to go somewhere where they can
make a little more money because they live in a country where it's hard to get out of
poverty and so they want to come up here and have more opportunities up here so they cross
an imaginary line and they come up here.
And here's the thing, you know, if they're coming up here to work hard and to, you know,
to be a part of America and to buy into our way of life, then you know, really there's
no issue with, you know, the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned as far as just people
in general coming here from all over the world.
You know, obviously we don't want to be invaded by Muslims and we don't want to be invaded
by people who, you know, want to change our way of life or tear down our way of life.
And obviously we don't want people to come up here and try to impose a foreign way of
life on us, but if people want to come up here and be a part of America, you know, more
power to them as far as I'm concerned.
I feel like there's just this kind of demonization of illegals or Mexicans or whatever to blame
a lot of things on them that aren't really their fault.
You know, if there are problems with the economy, why don't you blame the bankers and the Jews
and, you know, the boom and bust economy.
You know, it's a boom and bust economy by design, a bunch of Wall Street jerks are making
money on the way up and making money on the way down.
And then you're mad at some, you know, Mexican guy who comes up here and washes his sidewalk
with soap and washes his driveway with soap and has a perfectly manicured yard and goes
and does drywall all day and is just raising his family and just making money and just
being a normal citizen.
Now look, of course there are criminals coming across the border, but you know, that's going
to happen no matter what.
And a lot of times they're probably like working with the CIA or something.
The CIA has probably brought in more drugs than any Mexican ever dreamed of.
So Iran, Contra, anyone?
I mean, it's, it's, it's so funny how our government admits to this stuff like decades
later.
Yeah, we were bringing in drugs.
Yeah, we were, you know, yeah.
We overthrew all these, you know, good governments and, and, you know, turn it over to the Muslim
extremists and whatever they, they, they, they admit it like decades later, but they
would never do anything like that now, you know, all through the eighties, the government's
just shipping in drugs by the time, but they would never do anything like that now.
Right?
I mean, how do you think, have you ever looked at the numbers on how many drugs are used
in America and how much of those, of that, of that drug quantity is coming from foreign
countries?
Like how much cocaine is coming across the border?
You really think people are just like hiding this in their pockets or like in a, it's coming
in literal boats and planes and trucks to be coming in in those quantities, my friend.
And the government itself is the one bringing in the drugs.
Okay.
Don't believe me.
Just go back in time to where they'll admit that they were doing it, where they were busted
doing it in the 1980s.
But of course they would never do anything like that now, you know, now it's just the,
it's the evil, you know, Jose and Maria that are doing it, you know, and, and don't get
me wrong.
Obviously there are evil Mexican drug cartels and everything, and, and although they're
super wicked, they're violent people and those, all those that are murderers should be put
to death as well.
And so a lot of these cartel guys that are murderous, they should all be put to death
as well.
So that is what it is.
All right, let's move on.
Quite a chapter here.
Where'd we leave off?
I went on a little rabbit trail there.
Sorry about that.
Don't oppress the poor and needy.
Don't oppress the stranger.
Strangers that are within my land, within my gates.
Verse 14, treat them well, treat them the same.
Don't be a respecter of persons.
If you respect persons, you commit sin.
The Bible says it's a sin for you to respect people based on their wealth or their demographic
or their ethnicity.
The Bible says that's a sin to be respecter of persons.
Verse number 15 at his day, thou should give him his hire.
Neither shall the sun go down upon it for he's poor and set at his heart upon it.
Lest he cry against the end of the Lord and it'd be sin unto thee.
The fathers shall not be put to death for the children.
Neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers.
Every man shall be put to death for his own sin.
It almost seems like God believes in the death penalty.
Even in the New Testament, the death penalty is reiterated.
People will twist the words of Christ about this, but the New Testament reiterates the
death penalty.
Romans talks about in chapter 13 how we should obey human government.
It says that the power, the powers that be ordained of God, and it's talking about human
government, and it says that he beareth not the sword in vain.
He is a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.
If the government is ordained by God to use a sword to execute judgment upon evildoers
in the criminal justice system, what do you use a sword for?
Do you use a sword for putting someone in prison?
Do you use a sword to charge someone money?
Use a sword to cut off someone's head.
Use a sword to kill someone because the death penalty is biblical.
And so the Bible says in verse number 17, thou shalt not pervert the judgment of the
stranger.
Again, what's a stranger?
Foreigner.
Don't pervert the judgment of the foreigner, nor of the fatherless, nor take a widow's
raiment to pledge, but thou shalt remember that thou was a bondman in Egypt, and the
Lord thy God redeemed thee thence, therefore I command thee to do this thing.
When thou cutest down thine harvest in thy field, and hast forgot a sheaf in the field,
thou shalt not go again to fetch it.
It shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow, that the Lord thy God may
bless thee in all the work of thine hands.
When thou beatest thine olive tree, thou shalt not go over the boughs again.
It shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow.
When thou gatherest the grapes of thy vineyard, thou shalt not glean it afterward.
It shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow, and thou shalt remember
that thou was a bondman in the land of Egypt, therefore I command thee to do this thing.
Again, I'm not going to spend much time on this part, because I already did a whole sermon
on this within the last few weeks.
I did a sermon called Remember That You Were a Servant, and it was from this passage, and
we talked about this.
And so what this is talking about is part of God's plan for poor people to survive and
not starve, was that when they would go through and reap their harvest, they wouldn't go over
it a second time to glean it.
Everything that they missed the first time.
Because inevitably, when you are reaping a field, you're going to miss some of the fruits.
You're going to not see one behind a leaf or something.
And you're in a hurry, because harvest has to happen in a certain time frame.
It's time sensitive.
So you're kind of rushing through, you're getting that harvest done, you're inevitably
dropping things, missing things, forgetting things.
And so God says, leave that stuff there so that the foreigners and the fatherless and
the widows and orphans, they can come through there and they can pick that stuff up and
at least survive.
At least, you know, they're not going to make a lot of money doing that, but at least they
can not starve to death.
It can be a way for them to eat.
They can walk around and eat the things that are growing off the trees and the fields.
And that's why the Bible says it's legal to enter into anyone's field at any time if you're
passing through to just like pick an apple off the tree and eat it, right?
So, you know, you're walking through some apple orchard, you're allowed to just pick
it up and eat it.
You can even take a few for the road.
The Bible just says you can't put them in any container.
So you can't fill your backpack with apples.
But as many apples as you can hold in your hands, you can take them with you, you know,
because that's a way to just take care of poor people.
And remember, Jesus' disciples did this in the book of Matthew.
They're walking through a field and they just, they're just plucking the ears of corn and
eating them, right?
Because that was something that was allowed in God's economy.
Now I'm not saying necessarily to try this in 2023 America because you might get into
trouble, but it should be allowed.
Okay.
My kids think it's allowed.
So you know, sometimes you got to reign them in.
But all that to say this, these, these are a lot of, these are a lot of assorted miscellaneous
commands in here.
We talked to, we talked about divorce, we talked about marriage, we talked about kidnapping,
we talked about, uh, you know, lending and borrowing things and collecting on debts and
not breaking into people's houses to get it, but rather waiting for them to bring it out
to you.
We talked about mistreating foreigners.
You know, what, what's the point of this?
Why in, why in 2023 are we reading the book of Deuteronomy when we're not under the law,
we're not living in Old Testament Israel, we have our own modern way of life and criminal
justice system.
We're reading this stuff to get the judgments of the Lord.
Why?
Because we constantly go through life needing to make decisions about what is right and
wrong and people are constantly asking us our opinion about things.
And I believe that all of our judgments or opinions or views should be based on the word
of God.
And and, and you know, everybody gets all scared out there.
I know, I know you're not scared, but the people out there get scared when somebody
gets up and just preaches what the Bible says about homos being put to death or something
like as if someone like me is ever going to be given the reins of government anyway.
You know, it's just not happening.
But here's the, but here's the thing, my friend, if I were given the reins of any government
in some other universe where that would be possible, you know, you better know that I
wouldn't just sit around and say, well, here's what I think we should be doing and just dreaming
things up out of thin air.
You know, I'd be on my knees praying and then I'd be opening the word of God and saying,
what do you think about kidnapping God?
And then I'd read everything that the Bible says about kidnapping.
And then I'd say, okay, here's how we're going to handle kidnapping in America.
Now let me ask this, what did Jesus dying on the cross have to do with kidnapping?
I mean, not a lot as far as the criminal justice system is concerned.
Now here's what a lot of people would say, they'd say, well, you know, yeah, but Jesus
died to forgive our sins.
Well, here's the thing, let's say someone commits murder, everybody listening, let's
say someone commits murder and then that person believes on the Lord Jesus Christ and receives
Jesus Christ as their savior.
Then you know where they're going to go?
They're going to go to heaven.
But guess what?
They still might go to the electric chair first.
I mean, think about it, if somebody goes out and commits premeditated murder, I still would
want that person to get saved, amen?
But would we just say, oh, pardon.
I mean, think about it, we could just empty the prisons.
We just go through the prison and every single person who receives Christ as savior forgiven,
and all we have to do is just tell the judge, your honor, 40 people, we had a soul winning
marathon in the prison, 40 people have been saved, and so you must release them immediately
because Christ has forgiven their sins.
Do you think the judge is going to let them go?
Is it because he doesn't understand the Bible?
No, it's because you don't understand the Bible.
Because there's a difference between getting forgiven spiritually and being saved and going
to heaven and a criminal justice system that must punish violent crime so that we don't
live in anarchy.
Does everybody understand?
And people mix up these things.
And a lot of people would say, well, you know, these X group of people, I don't even want
to mention them right now because I'm just not in the mood, oh, these groups, you know,
I want, these people should get saved.
First of all, certain people are beyond hope of salvation, they're called reprobates.
But like, even if you want to get them saved, that wouldn't change the criminal punishment.
Now look, a lot of these human traffickers are probably reprobates.
A lot of these kidnappers are reprobates where they've been given over to a reprobate mind
and they're beyond hope.
But even if a kidnapper can still be saved because he's not over that line yet, even
if a kidnapper or a murderer or a rapist is not over that line yet, even though a lot
of these people are over that line, okay, well, guess what?
Then let's get him saved and let's get him to heaven and then let's put him in the electric
chair and we can send him straight to heaven and he can go sooner.
And it's just, people need to understand these are two different things.
Getting saved and going to heaven, having eternal life is different than, oh, you're
a murderer but go free because Jesus.
That is not a legitimate use of scripture.
These are two totally different things, right?
And here's what, you'll show people, well, the Bible says death penalty for a kidnapper
and here's what they'll say, they'll say, well, no, because we all deserve death because
the wages of sin is death and we're all sinners.
But see, there's a difference between us spiritually having sinned against God and spiritually
disorganizing death and on our way to hell, right, if we don't have Jesus Christ to save
us from hell.
That's different than you've robbed a bank so you have to be punished for robbing the
bank, you have to pay double.
Or you have murdered someone in premeditated cold blood, you're gonna be put to death now.
You have kidnapped someone and sold them overseas, you shall be put to death.
Totally different things and people that are mixing these things up, it's because of the
fact that they're often going to churches that are not actually teaching doctrine and
actually working through a book like Deuteronomy and explaining it or working through some
of the teachings in the New Testament about the Old Testament.
They're just, la, la, fluff, fluff, Jesus, love, blah, blah, and just make it super shallow
and then the members are out there like, they don't believe in the death penalty anymore.
It's wrong.
They're wrong and the Bible's right.
Father, thank you so much for your word, thank you for your judgments, Lord, so that we could
know your mind and your heart on these things, Lord.
Help us every day to be more conformed to your way of thinking, Lord.
Help us to see the world through a biblical lens and in Jesus' name we pray, amen.