Dennis Tuuri

From verse 20 down to the end of the next matching section. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Deuteronomy 22, beginning at verse 20.

But if the thing is true that evidence of virginity was not found in the young woman, then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has done an outrageous thing in Israel by whoring in her father’s house. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman and the woman. So you shall purge the evil from Israel.

If there is a betrothed virgin and a man meets her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones. The young woman, because she did not cry for help, though she was in the city and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

But if in the open country a man meets a young woman who is betrothed, and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die, but you shall do nothing to the young woman. She has committed no offense punishable by death. For this case is like that of a man attacking and murdering his neighbor, because he met her in the open country. And though the betrothed young woman cried for help, there was no one to rescue her.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We pray now that your word would transform us. We thank you for the indwelling Holy Spirit. May your spirit, Lord God, help us to understand this text, to be transformed by it, that our homes may indeed be built firm upon the Savior in peace and our community as well. In Jesus’ name we ask it.

Amen. Please be seated.

Christianity is the heresy of heresies, the underlying cause of the weaknesses, lethargy, sickness, and failure of the modern church. This is a statement from Peter Leithart. I don’t—I sometime have been accused of selling vaporware products that may or may not come to fruition. I plead guilty to that many times. But Matt D. and I are considering teaching a Sunday school class together going through Peter’s book that has this early on in it.

The book is called *Against Christianity*. And what he’s talking about is that we have this kind of vague, amorphous gnostic perspective of Christianity that has nothing to do with the church. And he doesn’t—by the church, he doesn’t just mean the worshiping assembly. He means the community, the body of Christ. Christians are not united. We read the phrase “one mind,” we’re of one mind, and somehow we interpret that to mean one set of intellectual assents to truth and doctrines, but really one mind means that we have joint purpose, joint desires, yes, a joint way of doing things, a commitment to shared goals and tasks.

That really is what the one mind reference is. And we’ve kind of gnosticized it and turned it into a set of intellectual components and some sort of worldview that doesn’t really have anything to do with our participation in the body of Jesus Christ.

Francis Schaeffer, talking about this many years ago, used the illustration that Christianity can be seen as kind of an upper room put on a house that’s already built. So a guy converts and he just adds an upper room, a little chapel, and maybe that chapel begins to influence the rest of the house, you know, but it’s sort of up there and it’s spiritual. It’s second story sort of stuff. And this, of course, is not what Christianity, what being a Christian is.

Being a Christian is having your entire house torn down. Anything raised apart from a knowledge of Christ—ripped apart. The whole foundations come out in a true witnessing to people, and the foundation is relaid. The foundation is Christ, and it’s our union with Christ and his people that then produces all of what’s in our house.

So everything in our house, everything in our lives, you know, are related to this foundational association with Jesus and with his church, his body, as opposed to being sort of a set of beliefs or intellectual understandings that don’t have anything to do with life.

Leithart uses the illustration of a more modern illustration: operating systems and programs. So, you know, Christianity is like a program that people run on their basic operating system of humanity, and that’s not what being a Christian is. Being a Christian is having a different operating system.

Now, I bring this up now because we’re in the midst of a whole bunch of sermons on the law and what do we do with the law in relationship to this? And the last thing I want is for us to look at this law and sort of have a view of it that we’ve got to layer now on some things to who we are apart from Christ, that we want to make ourselves religious in that way. This is not the purpose of God’s law. That’s not what I want to have happen here.

What the purpose of God’s law is to reveal to us the operating system. What union with Jesus Christ means, how it looks, how it looks in its various ways. How it looks in terms of worship and time and marriage and family and commerce as we’ll get to. You know, the next commandment, the eighth commandment, what it looks like in terms of how we treat one another. It’s this unity of life we have in Jesus Christ as the church that defines who we are.

And so, I don’t want these sermons to just be, you know, and the law is not given in a way where we can just sort of take it and say, “Okay, we’ll do these things” without it having affected our base view of who we are as people and changed it. It’s not written that way. Right?

Now, I, you know, I call these as others have done, the seven words. That’s what God’s word, or ten words. That’s what God says. They are words, not commandments. The word itself contains commandments, but these are strange commandments we just read, are they not? They’re thousands of years old. They’re hard to understand. What even is going on, right? And they’re certainly not, you know, like a law code that will cover every instance in terms of your interaction, you know, in your intimate relationships with the members of the opposite sex. It’s not really given that way.

God gives us enough so that we understand the operating system, right? The law’s purpose is to certainly understand it, but then understand it as part of a description of the eschatological hope of who each of us are. And again, Peter talks about this in the opening chapters of *Against Christianity*, that what we have in the church is the realized eschaton taking place now in the body of people who are united to Jesus Christ and to one another.

There’s no individual Christianity out there, me and Jesus kind of thing. Of course, you have a personal relationship with Jesus, but that personal relationship is found in the context of his body. And so, all these commandments help us to meditate on those things and to think through them. But please don’t just sort of tack on a new set of, you know, certain things you’re going to do and not do without looking at the core of who you are.

And the core of who you are, if you’re united to the Lord Jesus Christ and are a Christian and part of Christendom, the core of who you are will resonate with these truths of God’s word if I articulate them correctly. And they will—these words will strengthen you in your identity of who you are as a person, not just in some aspect, not just when you have, you know, when you get married or whatever it is. Your whole personhood is really being described as we read through these various ten commandments and Moses’ sermon on them.

Listen to what this is, you know. Psalm 119:129-136. The problem is not the law. The problem isn’t that we’re talking about the law. The problem is in us. And we have to—we seem to have this disconnect with programs. The law is a program, but instead of showing us a reflection of the basic operating system of who we are in Christ, we treat it as a program. But this is the beauty of the law.

Psalm 119: “Your testimonies are wonderful. Therefore my soul keeps them. You know, you don’t keep them at first, you know. The psalmist says, ‘I keep them because they’re wonderful. They resonate with who he is in Christ.’ Even the, you know, before Christ has come and finished his work, David is in union with him. And so these commandments are wonderful to us. That’s why we keep them. We don’t keep them because we have to. There’s that, of course. But they’re wonderful to us. They reflect life in Jesus Christ.

The opening of your words grants light. It gives understanding to the simple. So these laws bring us an understanding of who we are. ‘I opened my mouth and panted, for I longed for your commandments. Look upon me and be merciful to me, as your custom is toward those who love your name. Direct my steps by your word, and let no iniquity have dominion over me.’

You know, the end result of a meditation on these laws, these ten commandments, is that our paths are directed by an understanding of what it looks like to be united to Christ and what it looks like to be in rebellion to him.

‘Redeem me from the oppression of men, that I may keep your precepts.’ Now, the reality of the law comes in the context of the oppression of men. Yes, for a couple of you who are wondering, I will reference briefly the new movie *Black Swan*. There is an oppression of men that goes on in the context of our culture, just as it did in David’s culture. And to understand who we are in Christ is the answer to that. Yeah, knowing laws, keeping them, but what they reflect about life in Christ is the ultimate antidote to the oppression of men.

When another way to put it is: if at the center of our being, we’re just keeping a set of commandments. If that’s all it is to us, as opposed to a reflection of the basic identity of who we are in Christ and his church, we’re not going to be able to resist the oppression of men. That’s another way to put it. And the *Black Swan*, I think, can be seen that way.

“Rivers of water run down from my eyes, because men do not keep your law. What a waste of a man’s life not to keep the law. And what a dishonor to God.”

All right. So, that’s law and identity and trying to put this thing in perspective. And what I want to do today—and it’s, you know, I decided, well, this center thing of these three, “purging away evil.” You know, it sounds so Old Testament, right? And so I wanted to understand what it was. And so we’re going to look in a little bit at the different places where the Bible talks about purging away evil. What sorts of evil are purged away? What does it mean to purge away evil? But before we get to this specific list of verses, I want to talk about a little bit of the context found here in the seventh word.

So we’re again going to look at this word a little bit in kind of an overview. And the first thing we want to say is that some sexual sins are not the sorts of evil that are to be purged, or that the person who commits them are to be purged away. Right?

If you look at that handout that you have today, or if you just open your Bibles back up to Deuteronomy 22, we spoke last week quite a bit about the first half of this section, dealing with, you know, a man who takes a wife, hates her, and makes up a claim then of sexual infidelity. It seems to me that’s what’s going on there. It doesn’t say he finds her not to be a virgin and then hates her. He hates her and then makes this claim. So, so, and the way it’s treated is all about that. This text is all about punishing men who slander their wives.

And another thing to understand in terms of the first purging away evil would be the execution of a girl who has played the harlot in her father’s house, who has done outrageous things and who has entered into a marriage contract unfaithfully. Remember, this is an exposition of adultery. And a little later it’ll say a guy lies, takes a betrothed woman and lies with her, and she can’t do anything about it. He’s taken his neighbor’s wife is what the text says. Well, she’s not his wife. Well, yeah, she is.

So, you have to understand—again, old language, old terms. Betrothal is equivalent to marriage. Okay? It’s equal in terms of the adultery statutes. That’s what these laws tell us. And so that’s what the point of the law is. And the point of the law can be taken out to look at sexual chastity in general, but the point is this adulterous thing going on. And the girl essentially has done what the man does later in the text. If a man lies to the woman and she can’t do anything about it—she cries out, but nobody hears, you know—he’s put to death. Well, in this case, you know, she’s done that to her betrothed, to her husband, and so she’s put to death. That’s the context for that first purging away of evil.

But there are other sexual sins described here, right? Well, first of all, well, there’s a sexual sin of seduction. Now, it’s not that clear to us at the outset, uh, but if you look at—well, let’s see. I have some notes there on the handout that I’m not going to address, but I think that it would be good for you to consider to understand this text fully.

In the case of—in the case of—I make a reference here to the weaker vessel, for instance, in the second section, and one commentator has pointed out: so a man has humbled a woman by making this false charge, and he becomes her slave basically for the rest of his life as sort of the implication. And women are protected in these statutes, right? So the woman is protected from the false charge. Her parents are part of that. The court’s part of that. So there’s a lot about protection of women going on here.

Then she’s protected from losing her husband as a wager by him not being put to death, but being made to basically give her tons of money, his estate, can’t divorce her, etc. The same thing’s true if a man seduces a virgin. Same thing’s true. So women are protected as the weaker vessel. But, you know, don’t get your feathers ruffled about that. Weaker means more weak than someone else who’s also weak. You can make that case. And the reality is that both men and women are weak. That the marriage—we, men, women—are weaker in some sense that I don’t want to get into today, but you know, we sort of take that women are weak and men are strong. That’s not what it says. It says women are weaker. Doesn’t say they’re weak and we’re strong. We’re all weak, which means we’re all relying upon the grace of God to make marriages work and to make any of this stuff work. And that’s at the operating system level of who we are in Christ—the grace of God toward us because we recognize our weakness.

Additionally, it’s worth pointing out that in the next section, when the woman who has done this outrageous thing—folly in Israel—this is a phrase that’s also used in Genesis 34 of Shechem and Dinah, where folly in Israel, folly is foolishness. It’s—remember Nabal, Abigail’s first husband in the Bible, as a fool. And so folly—this is folly. What she’s done in Israel. And it’s a phrase that’s also used in Shechem and Dinah’s time, also in Joshua 20 in the account of Gibeah that Flynn A. preached on at the beginning of this month. And so, that’s interesting to point out and kind of instructive in terms of drawing parallels between this text and other places in the Bible.

But I want to I want to look down at the section that deals with sexual sin not seen as evil. And that’s found in verse 28 and following.

“If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed and seizes her and lies with her and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young girl 50 shekels of silver. She shall be his wife because he has violated her. He may not divorce her all his days.”

So now a parallel text to this is Exodus 22, and this is what it says there:

“If a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed and lies with her, he shall give the bride price for her and make her his wife. If the father refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equal to the bride price for virgins.”

Now that’s important, because people look at this law in Deuteronomy, this very law we just talked about, and say, “Well, a guy can rape a gal and he still can marry her.” That’s not what it says. The word that’s used here—if he seizes her, he grabs a hold of her—does not imply force. And I could do an extended word study here for you, but it’s the point is, this word has no implication that he has forced her. Okay? And if we look at the parallel text, the word is seduce. So now he’s certainly taken advantage of her, and both texts don’t prescribe any punishment for the woman whatsoever. The blame is laid upon the man.

But even in his case, it’s not an evil that needs to be purged away through the execution as some of these other sexual crimes are.

So, you know, this is important, because in Christian circles, we tend to think this way: that sexual sin is really bad. You know, it, of course, the text stresses chastity, right? And that’s important. But look, if a young guy and a young girl in the context of the church go off and have a sexual liaison, this is what happens. The girl’s father helps her to make this decision. There’s a dowry price that’s paid, assuming that she’s a virgin, right? This is what happens. And none of this is public.

You know, the Bible isn’t all about revealing all kinds of private sexual sins that are going on. It’s not like that. Certain sexual sins—adultery in its obvious form and its related forms—are what is the sort of evil that needs purging, not all kinds of other sexual sins. Now, they’re all, you know, in one sense, all violations, you know, need to be turned away from. But you see, it’s important that we make these distinctions because the text does. It says that there are certain sexual sins that don’t need to be purged.

One other thing before we move on to the next point on the outline: I wanted to talk a little bit about the concluding law. And where is it? Verse 30.

“A man shall not take his father’s wife, so that he does not uncover his father’s nakedness.”

Single verse. It’s a pointer back to the laws against marrying near relationships—you know, sister, brother, mother, dad, stepmother. In this case, the wording here indicates that it’s marriage being considered. Father’s dead, stepmother. You can’t marry your stepmother. And so, that’s a law. And it points us back to all these other degrees of how close a person has to be before you’re forbidden from marrying them.

And a couple of points: one, if according to God’s operating system, Christians can’t marry whoever they want to marry. There’s requirements, you know, the whole homosexual marriage thing—we fall into this trap. No. The Bible says there are certain people you can marry and certain people you can’t. Now, you can’t marry anybody of the same sex and you can’t marry anybody of the opposite sex who’s a close relative. That’s the way it is. Okay? So, it’s not some kind of right to marry anybody you want to marry. And when that’s pushed in the context of our culture, Christians need to understand: wait a minute, there are these laws.

Now, you say that’s Old Testament. Well, it really isn’t, because Paul, of course, refers to this very law in Corinthians when he tells them to excommunicate a man, to turn him over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, who does the thing that’s horrific by being with his father’s wife. It seems like it’s probably the same thing. I don’t think the Corinthians were engaging in kind of casual sex that way. It might very well have been marriage. But it’s the same thing here. Paul affirms the laws against marrying close relationships.

In every Christian culture that’s been developed upon a Christian operating system, Christendom has always had these prohibitions. Why? Well, I don’t know why exactly, but I think one reason is that God does not want the perpetuation of a family dynasty. You know, that you can’t just replicate your nuclear family. God says that your kids have to go off and they’ve got to marry somebody from another family because the way God wants societal progress to happen is not from repetition of your own strengths and weaknesses. It sort of gets inbred that way. You have to marry somebody from a completely different household.

See? And so this is God’s way. This is in the operating system. We want to understand that if we try to control our children and who they marry too much, we’re working against the thrust of this particular law in verse 30. We’re trying to perpetuate ourselves. Now, there’s all kinds of things we want to perpetuate. That’s good and proper. But you see, there’s a ditch on the other road, right? There’s a ditch in saying, “Whoever kids marry, they marry. Christian, non-Christian, who cares?” But there’s also a ditch over here.

The ditch over here, you know, has a couple of significant things. One, it has the view that all sexual sin is evil that needs to be purged. Not true, according to our text. And the ditch over here is, “I want to perpetuate my family exactly the way it is.” Bible says can’t do it. Illegal. God says no. It’s sexual sin. Can’t do it. That’s interesting to me, and I didn’t want to let that verse slide by without that kind of reference.

Now, one reason I say that is that I’ve given the references on your handouts. But when this is what happens: when Absalom’s in revolt, he takes his father’s concubines, right? And when Adonijah asks for his father’s concubines and he puts him to death because why? Because it’s a political ploy. They’re trying to control. They’re trying to assert kingly rights by taking the concubines. Okay? It—they want to assert their own dynasty, their own thing. And so I think that power—you know, we don’t think of it this way—but family power has a lot to do with all of this stuff.

I heard on the radio this morning that our governor has a concubine. It’s sort of interesting. Kramer and Abrams—even the liberal governor—your kids saw his wife is not his wife, you know, and so they came up with the word “concubine.” I’m like, “No, no, no. That’s not what the word means.” Anyway, so those laws are there.

And as I said, another sort of sexual sin that we think needs purging is when a woman has been, you know, violated or sexually assaulted. She’s done nothing wrong. And these verses assert that it’s very bad to put some kind of social onus upon a woman who has been the recipient of being sexually abused. And because somehow in our culture that’s developed, and as a result, women, you know, are very—many women in our culture struggle deeply with psychological difficulties because somehow we think that even being the recipient of wrong sexual relationships has some sort of evil attached to it.

It doesn’t. There’s no—when a woman is raped, the man is killed. The Bible goes out of its way to say that she has done nothing wrong. Don’t blame her. And in fact, it says if you don’t know if she’s done anything wrong or not—if it was in the country, as long as in the country, we assume she’s done nothing wrong. The presumption of innocence for sexual sin is asserted here. Do you understand?

If it happened in the city, she didn’t cry out, she’s executed, too. We have to make yourself means of resistance tactics. God says we have to do that. That’s who we are. We’re to resist evil properly, and that’s what you’re supposed to do. But it says that if it happens in the country, she’s betrothed and a virgin and she’s raped, then the man is executed and the woman’s done nothing wrong. And the presumption is that she cried out. A presumption of innocence, you know, is what’s going on here.

So, other, you know, sexual sins that don’t need purging is when there’s no sin whatsoever involved. And the Bible is what tells us about this. Okay? Master your stories is what’s going on here. Don’t purge non-evil.

You know, we know certain facts, and then we tell ourselves stories about those facts, and then we come up with emotional responses to them. And if all you try to do is control your emotional responses, repress the anger, the whatever it is, you’re not going to do very good. I counsel people all the time, and one of the most often repeated things I tell them is to master your stories. Don’t just work on the emotion. You don’t sin in anger when you reinterpret yourself a story that is based on a presumption of innocence of other people. Right?

The stories we tell ourselves is, you know, that guy’s a villain. That girl, you know, she may say that she wasn’t willing, but we know she’s a villain. Master your story. Put the presumption of innocence that God requires of us in those sorts of situations. We tell ourselves stories that we’re victims. “Poor me. What could I do?” The Bible says the way to correct improper emotions is to interpret facts in a particular way. And what these case laws tell us is in terms of sexual potential sins: we’re to assume innocence. We’re to master our story because otherwise we’re going to end up purging none from our midst, and then we’re in deep trouble.

*Black Swan*. So here it is. A few of you are interested in what I was going to talk about or not. There’s a movie out called *Black Swan*. And as I understand the story, there’s—you know, the idea is that in this, in Swan Lake, you have a white swan who represents purity, and she’s a woman entrapped in a white swan’s body in this particular telling of it, and she needs to have love with a prince or somebody to escape her swanness. And then there’s a black swan who seduces the prince and is the rival to the pure white swan. And in the movie, the white swan and the black swan are represented by two different characters in the movie. A lot of it has to do with fiction and fantasy.

I’m not recommending the movie, by the way. There is, as Jeffrey Overstreet, a Christian reviewer of it, you know, he called it soft pornography. There is that to it, and we don’t want to do that. But you know, so I’m not recommending the movie, but I watched the first half before I walked out, and it reminded me of—again—counseling situations that routinely come up in the broader church of Jesus Christ.

There is no white swan in the movie *Black Swan*. She is not white. She’s something weird. You know, she’s twisted. She’s repressed. She’s got a mother who dominates her. While she’s 22 years old, she’s not really a full adult. She’s repressed in various ways. And she’s losing her mind, okay, because of it. And whether or not the director is using this other dancer, the black swan, to seduce her because he needs her to be able to dance both the white and the black swan parts—so he needs her to kind of get in touch with her lower elements of this thing and become the black swan as well as being the white swan. Okay. And so there’s a character that it appears, at least, is trying to get her to get in touch with her black swanedness by giving her drugs, yada yada.

Well, the story is interesting on a couple of levels. One, the white swan is sometimes found in some of our Christian churches—this sort of white swan that isn’t good. It’s not really white. Sexuality is frequently like the horrible sin that can happen in the context of a congregation. The worst thing that can happen is sexual sin. And so our kids can grow up, and parents don’t want to talk about it. It’s all uncomfortable. They grow up, you know, really honestly kind of repressed. And you know, you take girls, and they grow up for, you know, 20 years, and you’re telling them, “Don’t wear your shirt, skirts too short. Don’t get men to look at you. Don’t you know, be sexually aggressive or look like you’re sexual or anything.” And then they get married, and you say, “Okay, have a good time.” You know how that works out for you?

There is a difference between protection and preparedness. And sometimes in churches like ours, you know, that take the Bible seriously and want to avoid sin, etc., we can overemphasize protection. We can produce not real white swans but people that are kind of have some real trouble in this area.

Bible speaks forthrightly about sexual activity, and it says it’s a good thing. And we have to—we have to know that’s good. Our children have to hear us saying it’s good. The operating system down here, who we are united to Christ, rejoices in proper sexuality in the context of marriage. And so this repressed, overcontrolled, anorexic white swan—there is no white swan. She’s some kind of strange albino swan or something. I don’t know.

And so it’s a warning to us. These texts are a warning to us not to, you know, not to purge, not to see things as evil that aren’t evil, and as a result end up with children who are not prepared for the black swans. Because the white swan in the movie is easily set upon by the black swan. When people are repressed that way and don’t, you know, aren’t able to think in terms of biblical terminology in terms of marital sexual joy and all that stuff, I believe we—like we leave them less than prepared for the encounters with the black swans.

And the black swans are out there. There are people—David, you know, we sang about it in our one of our songs. We trust in thee. Their who trust to thee their problems, toil, and care. Their bonds of love no enemy can sever. They’re always enemies in the Bible. The Psalms are full of it. There are enemies who want to actually take virtuous Christian women and make them non-virtuous. That is true. That’s that dada. And you know, horror as was the result of it.

So there’s there’s real—there’s real difficulties not just in not preparing our children for proper life and marriage, but actually leaving them set up for the assault by the black swan that will likely be more effective because they don’t have a connection to the operating system of who Jesus is, who his church is, which includes a proper relationship to sexuality.

There’s a difference between chastity and modesty, right? I mean, chastity is something emphasized in the scriptures—commitment to Christ. Modesty is a cultural norm. I heard a—I read in a magazine that there’s a cleric in Saudi Arabia who wants the burkas to cover everything but one eye because he says if women have two eyes they’ll be tempted to put makeup on them and look alluring. This guy—he’s that albino swan thing. I think he’s got some real problems in this area.

But you know, if you go to the South Sea Islands probably, you know, women and men dress with a lot less clothes when they go to church. Modesty is a matter of cultural norms, right? So let’s let’s make sure we keep those things separate and preach to our children chastity and understanding of the cultural norms. But you know, let’s not end up producing a bunch of albino swans. We want white swans who are able to resist the temptations of black swans. Okay?

A peaceful home and community. This is what we want. And a peaceful home and community requires the purging of evil. You know what God is giving us here? This is how you’re going to have a good family where you don’t have sexual tensions and suspicions involved. Okay? That’s death to a peaceful relationship. And this is how you’re going to have a peaceful community. If people are so committed to that kind of sexual sin—the sin of adultery—you just got to get rid of them. You got to cut them out.

And as we’ll see, Paul says the same thing in the New Testament. To have a peaceful, calm community in the church and in the home requires the purging of evil.

Well, what is this purging of evil thing? Well, the word purge actually is one of the synonyms for fire in the Hebrew language. And so to purge the evil means to kind of burn it out. It doesn’t mean that people were in fact, it explicitly says they weren’t burnt to death. But the idea is that God is this fire. In fact, I think the first reference to the word that’s used, translated purge here, is the fire where God is in the fire in the burning bush that isn’t consumed. So fire represents the presence of God. And the presence of God means the removal of some kinds of sin and evil.

Now, it’s interesting because this same word is used later in the scriptures to describe God’s people. God’s people are a flame of fire to the world. So, we have this purifying effect in the world that is both refining and also, as a result of refining a piece of metal, it becomes purer and brighter and more beautiful. And so when God purges evil—this kind of really pronounced evil of acts of adultery—from a community, he’s purging it. He’s refining the community. And he’s also making the community more beautiful.

So that’s that’s what the term is sort of has as its background. And as I said, it actually occurs three times at the center of our text. So, I’ve listed just, you know, here’s one of those lists again, but on your handout or notes for today, I’ve listed all the places where this is used, this kind of term is used, and I’ll go through them real quickly here.

Deuteronomy 13:5. What we have here is a prophet—a false prophet—but his things come true. But he’s inciting people to leave the Lord, to walk away from the God whom they serve. It says specifically in the context he says, “Let us go after other gods.” So the first evil that’s to be purged according to Deuteronomy is apostasy—advocates prophets who advocate apostasy to God’s people. You’ve got to get rid of them. So if you have a community where somebody says, “Let’s go and serve other gods,” a prophet, even though his things come true, it says the Lord is testing you. And you want to get rid of people that advocate apostasy.

So that’s that’s the first reference.

Deuteronomy 17:7. The next reference: “The hand of the witnesses shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. You shall purge the evil.” In this case, this is an actual person himself who is guilty of gross apostasy. Verse 2 of Deuteronomy 17 says, “If you have got a man or woman who does what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God in transgressing his covenant and has gone and served other gods and worshiped them,” then this penalty comes upon him.

So the penalty is apostasy. He serves other gods explicitly. So somebody who advocates the serving of other gods, someone who serves other gods explicitly, you know, openly, not just sort of by way of implication. This is defined as evil that needs to be removed from the body.

Deuteronomy 17:12. “The man who acts presumptuously by not obeying the priest who stands to minister before the Lord your God or the judge—that man shall die. You shall purge the evil from Israel.” This is what’s called contumacy—contempt of God’s authority. Anybody who is contemptuous of the national priest, the national judge, either one, and refuses to do what they said he should do in reference to some sin he’s committed, that man is executed. And so, you know, this is all—excommunication ultimately is for contempt of Christ’s authority through the local church.

Notice here though that this evil—closely defined—is rebellion against God’s national authority, not the local authority but the national authority. And for this reason, some denominations say you can’t excommunicate somebody unless the national—the denomination itself or a broader body—of the local church approves. I think based on this text that it’s not just any priest or any judge, but this is the national priest, the national judge.

And so if a person commits contumacy, you know, throwing off—again, it’s rebellion, right? You’re going to rebel against God’s appointed authorities in the church and state at the national level. This is an evil described that needs to be purged.

The next one is in verse 19 of chapter 19. And in this case, it’s the malevolent witness. Right? Remember, this is—we talked about this several months ago. This is a man who lies in court to get somebody he doesn’t like punished. And purging the evil here isn’t always execution. I mean, the execution in case he’s doing it to try to get a guy killed. But if he’s trying to do it to get the guy fined, then it’s fine for fine. Whatever he wanted to have happen to the other guy. But if he wants to murder somebody, then that’s an evil to be purged away. So murder in that particular form is also an evil that needs to be purged away.

And interestingly, when we read the text today, of course, it relates to aggravated sexual sins. When you take another person’s wife, when you commit adultery, it actually says it’s like killing a man’s life. In the Bible, marriage and betrothal unite two people into one. You’re like killing the guy or you’re killing the woman by having sex with their—with their husband or wife. And so this evil to be purged is those who falsely accuse others and essentially are murdering them through a plot.

Deuteronomy 21:21. This is the case of authority. Here you’ve got an older drunkard rioter, son. And the parents—the third time violator, so to speak, a hardened criminal, an incorrigible guy. This also is an evil that needs to be purged away from the community.

These are just all the occurrences of this particular phrase. And then here in Deuteronomy 22:21, the woman who essentially has committed adultery prior to the marriage—apparently during the betrothal—she’s executed. The adulterer is executed and purged away. And then in verse 23, the third occurrence—or verse 24—purging the evil away in the case of someone who has again committed adultery. And this case by lying with a betrothed woman and her consent to that means she’s purged away also. So those three occurrences are all related to the crime of adultery.

So we’ve got advocating apostasy, actually going after other gods. We’ve got rebellion against national authorities. We’ve got incorrigibility, which is like rebellion against the national authorities. By the way, the one who advocated going for other gods is equated with rebellion. So these are all about forms of rebellion against God. The purging of the evil shows us that what our culture takes now as not a punishable offense—adultery—is equivalent to apostasy. It’s equivalent to rebellion against God. It’s an evil that needs to be purged away.

Deuteronomy 24:7. Another important text. “If a man is found stealing one of his brothers of the people of Israel, and if he treats him as a slave or sells him, that thief shall die. You shall purge the evil from your midst.” Kidnapping is a capital offense in the Bible, which is why the whole slavery movement in America was such an offense where Christian men were engaged in kidnapping and selling people. This law clearly should have been known—that this shows us what evil kidnapping and that kind of slavery was.

So there’s another—it’s you know, it’s essentially taking all that a man is. It’s essentially the same as committing adultery with, you know, his wife or with her husband. And it’s taking all that he is and making him your property. Again, this is akin to murder or to adultery. And so, it’s an evil be put away.

The other occurrence is in Judges 20:13. Again, we’re back to Gibeah. There’s lots of associations between Moses’ sermon here and what happens later at Gibeah. And that was an evil to be purged away as well.

And then finally, the last instance is a quotation from Deuteronomy in 1 Corinthians 5. “God judges those outside. Purge the evil person from among you.” So now we know, okay, so this isn’t just Old Testament God of wrath stuff. This is New Testament. This is what Paul says we’re supposed to do. This is not part of the—this wasn’t an Old Testament program that would be changed or modified when Christ came. This is part of the operating system stuff now—this need to purge away evil.

Well, what is he talking about? Well, it’s interesting. And beginning in verse 9 of 1 Corinthians 5.

“I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people, not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolators. Since then you would need to go out of the world. So he says, look, you know, it’s a—you know, you’re going to run across people you’re going to have friends that do some of this stuff in the world. That’s not what I’m talking about. They’re not the evil that needs to be purged away from you.

He says, but I’m writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler. Not even to eat with such one. What do I have to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church who you are to judge? God judges those outside. Purge the evil person from among you.”

And he’s quoting from Deuteronomy there. Paul ups the ante. We saw the kind of big crimes in the Old Testament they had to purge away as evil. Now Paul adds other things, right? Swindlers, revilers, drunkards, although maybe the incorrigible son would have been included in that category. Paul says there’s a whole host of things now that in the context of purging out the evil we have to do.

Now Paul’s not talking about execution. He’s saying what the church can do. Why isn’t he talking about execution? Well, because the church doesn’t—is not the institution to do that. The state is. So, you know, in the case laws we’re reading, when you set up a theocracy that’s based upon God’s word, well, then you execute the death penalty for upon people in certain ways. Here, Paul is talking about the ecclesiastical death penalty, and he says it approaches a, you know, a number of people. So, it’s it’s this purging out the evil is a New Testament deal. It’s relevant to us, and it’s a warning to us not to engage in these particular things that are listed because those are things for which God says, you just can’t, you know, look the other way. You really have to address those things.

Purging the evil means the necessity of churches practicing excommunication. Now, you know, it may be that you want denominational constraints based on the text in Deuteronomy 17. Whatever it is, you have to have excommunications occurring in the context of a church, as the Paul tells us quite clearly. This is the equivalent, in these matters, for purging the evil from a congregation.

Now, immediately I have to say that there is repentance for the sins that would result in you not being purged. Right? And Paul tells us, again, this is true in 1 Corinthians 6. Here’s what he says:

“Do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolators—he talked about that in the purging list. Nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality. He didn’t mention that, but that was included under sexual immorality when he says these are evils that need to be purged. Nor thieves—that was in his list. Nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers.”

Paul uses pretty much the same list in what he’s going to say now as to those who were the evil that needed to be purged out by excommunication.

“And such were some of you.”

Now he just said homosexuals, adulterers, our very seventh word, adulterers. Such were some of you. But you were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God.

So there are people in this room who have committed some of the sins that are addressed in the context of Moses’ sermon on the seventh word. There are more of you that have committed the sins that Paul talks about and that the other lists in the Old Testament of purging the evil have engaged in. Right? But Paul says that when we repent from these things—such for some of you—that excommunication is lifted.

And we know that specifically the man who had taken his father’s wife that Paul originally addressed—he repented, and Paul urged his reassociation with the body. So, you know, purging the evil is important. Church discipline is important for all the reasons we’ve talked about. It’s important for a good solid Christian community. It’s important for building Christendom. It’s important for understanding who we are.

But it’s important to recognize that repentance from these sins is what the ministry of Christ’s grace also is preaching. And so, as we come to worship today, we come forgiven of all those sins that we’ve repented of—washed, sanctified, moving on, right? We don’t continue to commit those sins. We turn away because we know that’s not who we are in Jesus Christ.

Who we are in Christ are the people who are faithful followers, submissive to authority, and sexually chaste, bringing that into the context of Christian marriage. This is who we are in Jesus Christ.

“Do you not know?” Paul goes on in the immediate context here, “that your bodies are members of Christ? He says don’t take them and give them to sexual sin. He then tells them to flee sexual immorality. So Paul is saying that there are things that require purging. Sexual immorality is defined by these laws we’ve talked about. And he says that you’ve engaged in some of those things. You’ve repented. Now, don’t go back to that. Don’t feed that monkey.”

Devolution, right? DEV-O. My favorite rock groups from 20, 30 years ago, because their name meant devolution. The Bible teaches devolution—that men devolve away from the image of God. And when they do that, they embrace beastlike behavior. Don’t feed the beast side. That’s not who you are in Jesus Christ.

Who we are in Christ are people whose chastity is secured and solid, being informed by Christ’s work.

There’s a song, you know. My belief about music and songs is you just take control of them. You exercise dominion over. You take every thought captive. So when I read song lyrics, I think about them the way I want to think about them. I know sometimes they’re not—that’s not the way they’re written—but that’s what I do. There’s a song called *Uprising* by Muse, and I love the power in it. And I love the power that really the church should have as it attempts to build a context of who it is individually and as a community—Christendom, not Christianity—something solid and committed.

And one of the lines in the chorus is, “They’ll stop degrading us.” Christians are being degraded by the black swan culture in which we now live. Don’t do that. Don’t give in to that. Have a proper biblical view of human sexuality and don’t, you know, give in to the degrading that goes on. That’s what the opposition wants. It wants to break you away from the operating system, from your union with Jesus Christ, by having you do things that are unseemly and then casting doubt into your mind about your very walk with Jesus. That’s what they want to do. That’s the degradation that’s happening sexually, you know, in many, many ways in the context of our culture.

“They will not control us. We will be victorious.”

That’s true. The end result is that the body of Christ is victorious in time in history. Another lyric goes, “We have to unify and watch our flag ascend.”

Praise God that you know that’s what’s happening. The churches are unifying once more. Christendom is becoming important once more. Not Christianity. Churches are unifying together. The unity that we have through the Lord Jesus Christ to one another. And that unity is expressed in how we live our lives, and every little detail, right? The operating system affects everything. And every little thing that you do—you see—is to be understood in the context of our union with the Lord Jesus Christ.

The biggest, boldest things you do and the tiniest, smallest things you do—they’re all part of that operating system. They’re all part of the foundation, who is Jesus Christ. And the way we approach sexuality is part of that as well. The intimate details of our lives are addressed by God’s word because Jesus Christ is king over all things. There is not one space of ground on this earth. There’s not one activity you put your hand to do or your mind to think about that Jesus Christ does not claim lordship over. We consent to that lordship. We know that’s joy, peace, and blessing for us because we’re united to him and to one another.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we do pray that we would be a united church here at Reformation Covenant, here in Oregon City, throughout our nation and across the world. Lord God, united in commitment to bless and honor the Lord Jesus Christ in everything that we do and say, and particularly in terms of this great matter from which great evil and great fires need to be engaged in to burn away and purify your church, Lord God. And we pray that here particularly in the context of our lives in marital relationships that you would bless us, Lord God, with a proper view of sexuality that we pass on to our children and help us to avoid temptation and more than that, receive the great blessings of life in Christ. In his name we ask it.

Amen. Now, in the days of