Deuteronomy 22:13-30 Bible Study | Episode 928

April 30, 2025

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

Deuteronomy 22:13-30  Bible Study | Episode #928

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

If you would like to revisit today’s Bible study, please visit our website at https://hopealive.buzzsprout.com/ to download the transcript. 

If this podcast ministered to you, please subscribe, and leave us a review on Apple podcasts. Reviews help us reach more people and spread the wisdom of God. 

Please follow us:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hopealivewithgod/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/hopealiveministry/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LakeComChurch/ -Lake Community Church

Transcript

This is Chad Harrison and you're listening to Hope Applying God's word to your daily life.

Hi, this is Chad Harrison and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life.

I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up.

His word to you and allow you.

To see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today in Jesus name.

Well, good morning. Welcome to Lake Community Church's morning Bible study. We, we are in Deuteronomy, chapter 22. We're going to do the rest of the chapter today and it's pretty long chapter, but,

you know, sometimes you just want to, sometimes you just want to look at it and read it. Now there's some precepts that we need to, to, to start out with.

The first precept is, is that we understand that under Old Testament law, especially under, under Mosaic law, that adultery is a,

is a crime and the punishment for the crime is to be stoned. So we know that. And the main way we know that really as Christian churches, as you've been taught through the years, is the woman caught in adultery.

That's the story with Jesus. And so we've been in that story. It's in John, chapter eight.

It's a great story that gives us a lot of understandings about,

about how Jesus, what Jesus's purpose was in coming. And it is, it is, it's just full of richness. And so we've, we've been going through it for, for at least a month and a half on Sunday morning at the church.

But we understand that that was the baseline law. That's the Mosaic Law as far as adultery. Not just the woman, the man too. And we're going to see that. But what I want you to see because oftentimes you'll hear people say, you know, the, the, the Old Testament law,

the Bible is, is misogynistic. It's anti woman. It was made to keep women down. I want you to notice that, that once you read it, you actually read it, you realize that's not true.

And in fact,

the reason people think that way is because of the way the law was enforced. Just like the woman caught in adultery, the woman caught an adultery, it should have been the woman and man caught in adultery.

Okay, because where's the man now? You know, I would like to believe if they were, if they were following the law completely, that they'd already stoned him. They were just bringing her because she would have been more.

A more sympathetic figure in the matter. But we all know that that's not the case. We know that that's not the case because. Because the way the law was enforced was not, again, was not equal.

It was not right.

The way the law was enforced was that it was enforced against women, against men. And so that doesn't make the law wrong. That makes the society wrong. That makes the people wrong.

That makes the. Those who are enforcing the law wrong. The law was not wrong and the law is not misogynistic. And you'll see that as we read through it, it'll just come to you.

It'll be obvious. Start out. And it starts out with a man falsely claiming that a woman is not pure when he marries her. It says if a man takes a wife and he goes to her and he detests her, meaning he doesn't like his wife.

Wife. Now, you know, there was the issue of. There was the issue of arranged marriages. And so you wouldn't necessarily just know the woman you were married to. But, but we've already discussed, and I've discussed it many, many times that, you know, well into the 90s, even the high.

90% of all marriages in the world are arranged marriages, okay. In world history, well into the 90% of all marriages were arranged marriages. And by the way, many, most of them really great marriages.

So that's not. Even though, you know, I'm not necessarily advocating for arranged marriages. I'm just saying that that's not necessarily a reason for divorce because we didn't know each other.

It's not necessary.

You can love someone and you can grow an intimate personal relationship with someone at any time. Why? Because we have the capacity for it and God has made that capacity within us.

And so that's not the issue. The issue here is he just doesn' like his wife. And he doesn't like her such that he's want to lie on her. How do I know?

He says, and he charges her shameful conduct and brings bad name on her and says, I took this woman and when I came to her, I found that she was not pure or not a virgin.

And it says, then the father, mother, the young woman shall take and bring out the evidence of the young woman's purity to the elders of the city gate. Now how did that take place?

Well, if you know anything about a Jewish wedding? They, they kept the evidence of, of the woman's purity because of her.

Well,

those of you who are got your kids in the car, we all know if, if you've got the bed sheets, then you've got evidence. And so it says. And the old woman's father shall say to the elders, I gave my daughter to this man as wife, and he detests her.

Now he has charged her with the shameful conduct, saying, I found your daughter was not pure. And yet these are the evidences of my daughter's purity. And they shall spread the clothes before the elders of the city.

Then the elders of the city shall take the man and punish him. And they shall find him 100 shekels of silver, which is a princely sum, it's a large amount of money.

And give them to the father, the young woman, because he has brought a bad name on the pure of Israel and she shall be his wife. He cannot divorce her all his days, meaning he can't divorce her and he's got to pay 100 shekels of silver.

Well, that's. That is a. A good. It is a good restraint against those who would do something like this. This is, this is definitely going to make sure that people who,

who would lie in order to change wives don't do it. Because the minute you do that, you use that as your methodology.

You're not only going to have to keep her all her days, but you're going to pay hundred shekels of silver. It's. It, you know,

it prohibits you from acting that way. It says. But if the thing is true and the evidence of a purity is not found on the young woman, then they shall bring out the woman of the door of the father's house and the men of the city shall stone her to death with stones because she has done a disgraceful thing in Israel to play the harlot in her father's house.

So you shall put away the evil from among you. Now that's on the other side of the story, is that you didn't need to be not pure. And so in reading this,

this is a protection. It's a. It's a protection for women. For women who, who, who did rightly. It was a protection for, for them. If a man is found lying with a woman married to a husband, and both of them, then both of them shall die.

Then the man that lay with the woman and the woman, so she shall put away the. So, so you shall put away the evil from Israel. Notice,

woman caught in adultery should have been both of them. The law says it should have been both of them.

Notice there's equality in this. There. It's equal. It's equal measures of justice for both sides. If a young woman who is a virgin is betrothed to a husband and a man finds her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out of the gate of the city and you shall stone them to death with stones.

The young woman, because she did not cry out in the city, meaning they're in the city,

a man comes to her if she doesn't cry out, if she doesn't. If she doesn't make it known what's happening. Because. And it's not like cities like we think of.

People could hear each other all the time, everywhere, okay? She doesn't cry out. That means she was complicit in the matter. And the man, he humbled his neighbor's wife. So you shall put away the evil from among you.

Notice both of them get stoned to death. All right, now. But if a man finds a betrothed young woman in the countryside and the man forces her to lie with her, forces her to lie with her, then forces her to lie with him, then only the man who lay with her shall die.

But you shall do nothing to the young woman there. Is the young woman no sin deserving of death. There's nothing in her that deserves death. For just as when a man rises against his neighbor and kills him, even so in this matter, meaning just like a man kills his.

Kills his neighbor, if a man takes a virgin young lady, and even. Even. Even if it's consensual,

he dies, she doesn't die because there's no way to prove that it wasn't that. That whether or not it was consensual or not. And you go, well, that's pretty harsh.

Yeah, it is. Meaning, don't do that. Don't do. If you're a man and you're in the countryside, do not do that. Because if she cry. If she cries out in the countryside, nobody's there to hear her, okay?

And so it's just going to be assumed that you raped her. It's just an assumption. By the way, in our law, we have that. In our law,

if you have relations with. If you're over the age of 18 and you have relations with somebody under 16 or under in the state of Alabama, then that's considered rape.

Second,

it doesn't matter whether it's consensual or not. It doesn't matter,

it's automatic, you're guilty of it.

And the reason is because of this law, it's to protect young women. Consensual or not, it doesn't matter.

And that was the law back then. And, and it's called strict liability, meaning you don't have to prove that, that he, he didn't. Whether he knew or didn't know her age.

If, if it happens and you're more than two years older than her and she's under the age of 16,

it's, it's strict liability.

And that's based off of this law. We find that in our own law, legal system. Even today I see it all the time.

And why is that?

Because it's assumed that she can't defend herself and so it's considered a sexual assault.

If a man finds a young woman who's a virgin, who's not betrothed, and he seizes her and lies with her and they are found out, then the man who lay with her shall give to the young woman's father 50 shekels of silver.

And he shall be, and she shall be his wife. Because he's humbled her, he shall not be permitted to divorce her all his days. Notice again,

two young people have relations with each other and they, it's, this is pure, you know, young people to dig together, dating,

however you want to put it. Two young people, they lie with each other. What, what is the penalty for that? 50 shekels of silver. You marry her, you cannot divorce her all your days.

That's pretty strong stuff. That's pretty strong stuff. And you know what?

Pretty,

pretty reasonable.

Pretty reasonable. It would definitely, it would definitely handle our fornication issues with young people.

You have sex with each other, you're married, you can't divorce. 50 shekels of silver.

That's a lot. That's a lot.

That, that, that would be definitely, that would definitely be something to, to maybe keep that from happening, you know, a little two thousand dollar fine and married forever. Can't get divorced.

Man shall take, not take now notice. This is the first Corinthians 5 issue where we, where we get the church discipline understandings from, from the Apostle Paul. A man shall not take his father's wife, nor uncover his father's bed, meaning at no point in time can you ever marry your father's wife.

If your father's dead, you can't marry his widow. If your father's alive, you can't marry a woman who is married to him even if they're divorced. Can't do it.

Now,

as we see this, you realize, you know what, the Old Testament law was fair,

it was straightforward, and it at its core was designed to protect females.

And so it's not really how those who would betray it portray it.

It's not really how they portray it, is it? It's not. And so I would say to you that,

that as you study and as you think about God, you realize that he. He. He. He really is right. And by the way,

most of this that we see right here, all except for the penalty for adultery,

all of this,

although there is a penalty in civil law for adultery, meaning that it cost you, you lose, you lose your half interest in the estate. You can lose up to all of it, but you don't, you don't have a claim for a half interest.

You, you can, you lose it for adultery.

All of this is still found in our law. And it's nothing wrong with it. In fact, it's very protective of women because that's who God is. And it's good stuff as you go today, I pray that the Lord will.

Bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.