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Deuteronomy, chapter number 25, we're still going through an assortment of commandments. And we talked about last week, these are the judgments of God, meaning that we learn about what God considers right and wrong. Because all throughout our lives, we're making judgment calls. We have to decide what's right in a given situation. So even though we are not under the law, as the New Testament teaches us, even though we are not living in Old Testament Israel, about to enter the promised land, these principles are timeless. And these are truths that will actually elucidate our lives today. And we're going to run into things today that are going to be applicable here. They're going to be similar to these type of laws. And so it's important that we study these things. And so we need to remember that all scriptures given by inspiration of God is profitable for doctrine, including the book of Deuteronomy. So it starts out in verse 25, if there be a controversy between men and they come unto judgment that the judges may judge them, then they shall justify the righteous and condemn the wicked. So this is what it means to have justice. It's not just punishing the wicked, but it's also justifying the righteous. And both of these components are necessary to be just. The book of Proverbs talks about how it is an abomination to the Lord both to let the guilty man off the hook without being punished for what he should be punished, and it is also an abomination to punish the innocent. So we want to make sure that the people that deserve to be punished get punished, and so forth. God is a God of justice. And this is why it is so important that Jesus Christ came and died on the cross for us, so that we could go to heaven. Because God can't just sit there as the judge and just let things go and just not punish sin, right? Because a lot of people would like to believe that God's up in heaven and that he's just going to forgive everybody and just let everything go. And just because he's so loving that no one's going to hell, and they'll say, I don't think a loving God would send people to hell. But they're forgetting about the justice of God, and so God's justice is there demanding that sin be punished. And so because there's a demand that sin be punished and that it is unrighteous to justify the wicked and to just let the wicked go off scot-free, that's why Jesus Christ had to die on the cross for us as our substitute. Somebody had to pay that price for our sin. In order for us to get off the hook, somebody had to pay the price to satisfy God's justice, and Jesus Christ, of course, sacrificed himself. That's what gives him the ability to forgive us. But obviously in human government, if we had a society where judges were just constantly letting guilty people off the hook and not punishing anyone and murderers are just allowed to go free and robbers just get away with zero punishment, obviously our society would descend into anarchy pretty fast. And so we need to have rules and laws, and part of justice is punishing people who are guilty and also making sure that a bunch of innocent people aren't being thrown in prison or punished in other ways, we want to have justice, and there are two sides to that justice coin. Thankfully, when it comes to spiritual salvation, Jesus Christ has satisfied the justice of God, which allows him to grant us a pardon and still be true to his just nature. So the Bible says in verse number two, it shall be if the wicked man be worthy to be beaten, then the judge shall cause him to lie down and to be beaten before his face according to his fault by a certain number. So it's left up to the judge how many stripes or how many blows this man is going to receive for the crime that he has done, and another component of justice is not just exonerating the innocent and punishing the guilty, but rather is also that the punishment needs to fit the crime. This is why the symbol for justice is often a woman with her eyes blindfolded, and she's holding scales in her hand, and the blindfold represents the fact that we're not supposed to be respecters of persons in judgment. Justice is supposed to be blind. It shouldn't be looking at who we're dealing with, how rich they are, the color of their skin, whatever. It's supposed to just be based on truth, and it's blind to those type of things that don't matter, that aren't relevant, and so that's what the blindfold represents, and then the scale represents that the punishment needs to fit the crime. Now inherent in that idea is that all sin is not equal. All crimes are not equal, and yet evangelical churches all over America today are teaching this bizarre doctrine that all sin is equal. It is false, and it is absurd on its face. Common sense should tell you that murdering someone is a lot worse than stealing a pencil, but yet today we're supposed to believe that these things are the... We have this idea of big sins and little sins, but in God's eyes, all sin is equal, and if you just look at a woman to lust after her, that is just as bad as literally committing adultery with her. Here's the problem with that twisting of scripture and misunderstanding of scripture, is that when you teach people this idea that all sin is equal, and just stealing a pencil is like murdering someone, and looking with lust is the same as adultery, same as literal fornication. Here's the problem with that, is that now you're going to have people that think, well, if all sin is equal, then hey, I might as well just go all the way. I might as well just do the really big sin, because hey, I'm going to sin anyway, I did the little sin, might as well just do it. Because here's what I find about this doctrine that says all sins equal, it's never used to take little sins and make them seem big. It's not like, you just stole a pencil, it's like you murdered someone. That's never how this is used. It's always the opposite. What it's used for is to take great big sins that God is very upset about, that God condemns in the strongest terms, and to say they're no big deal. Because sin is sin, all sin is equal, and it's used to downplay heinous sins. And that's human nature. If you teach people this idea, well, all sin is equal, then what people are going to do, they're going to justify doing some really big sins. Because typically in my life, when I've heard this flowing out of the mouth of Christians, when they did something really bad, like fornication, or adultery, or they got drunk or something, and then they're just like, well, you know, you did the same thing because you, you know, got mad in traffic the other day. You know, and you had some unrighteous anger in traffic. So you're a murderer too. Yeah, I had an abortion, but you got mad at someone the other day. You were angry without a cause. And so what are they doing? They're downplaying murder, or adultery, or drunkenness, or drugs, or whatever, with this all sin is equal. That's what we're going to do as humans. We're going to sit there and say, well, you know what, I've already done this little sin. I might as well go all the way and do the big one. And that is wrong. That is bad, bad logic. All sin is not equal. Now, the point that Christ is actually making when he says, if you look on a woman to lust after her, you've committed adultery with her already in your heart. Here's what he's saying. Looking on a woman to lust after her is a sin. That's the point he's making. It's wrong. It's bad. It's a sin. And the point he's making is that everyone is a sinner. No one is good enough to go to heaven on their own merit. He says in that same chapter, except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. So you've got the scribes and the Pharisees dedicating their whole lives to strict religious observance, right? I mean, the scribes are sitting there just copying the Bible all day. I mean, just strict observance. The Pharisees are super separated, super strict, and you know what God says? Their righteousness is not good enough to get them to heaven. It will not be enough. They will not get to heaven with that righteousness. Your righteousness has to exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. How can your righteousness exceed the scribes and Pharisees if you get the imputed righteousness of Jesus? Because trying to do it in your own strength, you're going to end up being like the scribes and Pharisees, and you're going to come short of the glory of God. Whereas if you trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior, it's Christ's righteousness. It's his good deeds and good life and sinless life. That's what's actually going to get us to heaven, and that's why my righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. Not my own personal righteousness, which is of the law, but the righteousness which is through the faith of Christ. The righteousness which is of God by faith. The imputed righteousness of Jesus on my account exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. So he's saying, look, you may not have murdered someone, but you know, whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer. If you're angry without a cause, if you say to your brother, thou fool, he's saying, look, you're in danger of hellfire if you do these things. He's saying, look, even if you just do something minor, it is still a sin. And the same idea is taught over in James chapter 2 verse 10, when he says, whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he's guilty of all. For he that said, do not commit adultery, said also, do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law. Whether you've committed all the sins or a few of the sins, if you did everything right and then committed one sin, you're still become a transgressor of the law. You're guilty in general of just transgressing the law. And both of these scriptures, whether we're in James 2 10 or whether we're in Matthew chapter 5, are just saying, don't justify certain sins, small sins or minor sins, or don't justify them and think that you're sinless or something. Hey, any time you break any of God's laws, even if it's something small, even if you kept 90% and broke 10% or kept 99% and broke 1%, you're still guilty in that one area and you still need salvation, you still need redemption. And also, you don't want to justify those things, you want to clean up those things and get those things out of your life, and you want to be pure, not just in your actions but even in your thoughts, even in your heart, even just in what you say, and even just the little things in life. God wants us to be righteous. But then there's this great big logical leap from that that just says, all sins equal. But yet the Bible never said that all sin was equal because just by saying, if you keep this law and break this other law, you are yet become a transgressor of the law. You're guilty of all. It doesn't mean, therefore, killing 20 people is the same as cussing out 20 people in traffic. You'd literally have to be an insane person to believe that. This doctrine is literally insanity to say murder is the same as just, you know, no. Here's what Jesus is saying. If you look on a woman to lust after, you committed adultery with her in your heart, now committing adultery in your heart is bad. But is it as bad as actually going out there and literally committing adultery? No it isn't, because guess what? If you commit adultery in your heart, shame on you. If you commit adultery physically, literally, the Bible says you should be put to death. Now that doesn't seem like God is punishing these two things the same way. And in fact, in this passage that we're looking at here, God is talking about people getting a physical beating for their sins, and He says you beat them according to what they deserve. Because if they commit a small crime, they get a small punishment. If they commit a huge crime, they get a huge punishment. That's the way this works. Look, God's not just putting people to death over every possible sin. There are all kinds of crimes in the Bible that are punished with just a fine, or maybe they just have to bring a sacrifice down to the temple and offer a sacrifice. Maybe they just receive a beating. Other crimes, they're put to death. We talked about last week in Deuteronomy chapter 24 how kidnappers are put to death. Why? Because that is a heinous sin. Now look, these sins right here where people are being beaten for them, these are more minor things than kidnapping. We don't want to put thieves to death. Is stealing really worthy of the death penalty? Of course not. This is a really bad doctrine that says, oh, all sin is equal. Then why did Jesus tell Pilate, he that delivered me unto you has the greater sin? How could there be a greater sin if all sin is equal? Because it isn't equal, right? Why did Jesus say that the scribes and Pharisees were going to receive a greater damnation if all sin is supposedly equal? Why did 1 John chapter 5 say all unrighteousness is sin and there's a sin not unto death? There is a sin unto death. I do not say that he shall pray for it. All unrighteousness is sin. There is a sin not unto death. So there's a sin unto death, there's a sin not unto death. There's the greater sin. There's the greater damnation. At the great white throne of judgment, people who are unsaved are going to be judged according to their works, the Bible says. If all sin is equal, then what are we even talking about at the great white throne? Everybody just gets the same punishment, same condemnation. What's the point of even judging people by their works if all sin is supposedly equal? This is not a biblical doctrine. It's basically just taking one verse, whether it's James 2-10 or maybe twisting something in Matthew 5 and just kind of running with it, and it's a logical leap that the Bible does not call for and it contradicts the rest of the Bible. All throughout the Bible, God emphasizes justice in the sense of the punishment fitting the crime. By the way, I think the Bible's pretty clear that when people go to hell, everybody's not experiencing the same punishment in hell because of the fact that God specifically says in a parable about people being damned that he who knew his Lord's will and did it not shall be beaten with many stripes, but he that did not know his Lord's will and didn't do it shall be beaten with few stripes. In fact, there's even a great white throne judgment where people are being judged by their works before they're cast in the lake of fire. That would seem to indicate a difference in the level of punishment that people experience. It's hard for us to grasp these things about heaven and hell and the afterlife. Obviously, we can only go by what we have written in scripture, but if God's talking about people receiving a greater damnation and if Jesus Christ is saying, well, it'll be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for you talking to some of those cities of Judea in the New Testament where Jesus Christ is physically there preaching and doing miracles and they're rejecting Jesus to his face, the Bible's saying, man, it's going to be worse for you guys than it's going to be for Sodom and Gomorrah. Oh, wait, just kidding. Everybody gets the same punishment. Just kidding. All sins equal. That's not what the Bible says. And again, what's the agenda behind this all sin is equal doctrine? It's to downplay gross heinous sin that God specifically says, hey, this particular list of sins will get you kicked out of the church. Does every sinner get kicked out of the church? If so, none of us will be here on Sunday, myself included. I may kick myself out because I know what sin I've done, so I'm going to throw myself out of the church. If every sinner got kicked out of the church, then no one can come because we all sin. The thought of foolishness is sin and we all think something's stupid. We all say something's stupid. We all have sinned and if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not us. But guess what? We're not all living in fornication. We're not all drunks, right? We're not all revilers and extortioners. We don't all commit the sins that are on the list where God says, put away from among yourselves that wicked person with such a one know not to eat. If all sin is equal, then we either have to kick out everyone or no one. But guess what? They want to do. They want to kick out no one. And I've sat in churches where they say it's not biblical to kick anyone out of church for any reason. No one should ever be kicked out of church for any reason. No one should ever be disciplined for the church. I've sat in an independent fundamental Baptist church and heard that from the pulpit with no scriptural backing, just the pastor just, I guess, just dreaming that up or something and saying, well, you know, in the Bible they added to the church, but I don't see him subtracting. Ergo, we don't throw anyone out ever for any reason. He said we need to have a big front door and a small back door. But that's not in the Bible though. The Bible says, hey, you know, if you've got people living in fornication, they need to be corrected. You know, and again, I'm not trying to run your life as a pastor. I'm not trying to be all up in your business. But guess what? That's kind of a big deal when you're living in fornication and that needs to stop. And that's not allowed. And if we have a born again Christian in our church who's been going to our church and then all of a sudden, wow, they're living with someone that they're not married to, you know, they're sleeping with someone, well, we have to deal with that. You know? But, you know, sin is sin. All sins equal. But the point of that, again, is to justify things like abortion, homosexuality, drunkenness, drug, and just act like these are just garden variety every day just like when you, you know, lost your temper in the grocery store the other day. It's the exact same thing, you know, and it just frankly just isn't. So again, every lie is based on a little bit of truth. So the little bit of truth is that, yeah, looking with lust is sin. Yeah. Getting angry without a cause is sin. Yeah. Hating your brother in your heart is a sin. Yeah. These things are sinful, but where it's being taken overboard or blown out of proportion is saying, well, not only is it a sin, but it's just as bad. So think about it. According to that logic, let's say some Christian young person is, you know, on the verge of committing fornication and their mind has, their mind has already gone there. And then what if they just said, well, I might as well just do it now because, you know, thinking about it was just as bad as doing it. Do you see how absurd that is? Okay. Obviously there are different degrees of these things and that's why we have so many books of the Bible that go on and on differentiating the punishments of different sins because not all sin is equal. And part of human justice is that the punishment should fit the crime. You know, you'd be surprised, but throughout history people have been literally put to death for stealing, even in the United States of America, even in Europe, right? Because think about how in, uh, for example, France before the French revolution and even in England during that same time, people would be put to death even just for forgery and stealing and minor crimes. And then, you know, how about in the United States, rustling cattle's a hanging offense in these parts. Really? But is rustling cattle a hanging offense according to the word of God? No it isn't. But did that happen in America? Was anybody put to death? Was anybody hung from a tree for stealing cows? Yeah, they were. Is that biblical? Is that right? No, it isn't. So throughout history we've seen governments sometimes be too soft on crime, but we've also seen governments be too harsh on crime. You know, some governments don't want to give anybody the death penalty, or like in our case in the United States today, they will only give it for the most egregious cases of first degree murder. And usually you have to kill a bunch of people to get the death penalty, right? Whereas other governments have had as many as, you know, 150 things that will get you the death penalty, right? And those are two extremes that are both incorrect. We need the Bible to guide us as far as what appropriate punishments are for each crime. So here we're talking about the specific punishment of a physical beating, okay? Now corporal punishment, and the word corporal simply means bodily punishment, right? Because corpus is Latin for body, so corporal punishment is talking about you're being physically punished in your body, you're being physically whipped or beaten or flogged or scourged or whatever. This is biblical through and through. This is in the law of God, this is in the books of the Proverbs, this is in the prophets, this is in the New Testament, this is all throughout scripture, okay? This is, I mean Hebrews chapter 12 quotes Proverbs and says, whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. And it says in Hebrews 12, when it says that, it says, you have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you is unto children. So he's saying, look, this is what God tells children, that they should not faint or be discouraged when their parents give them physical discipline and he's saying, you know, we also should not faint or be discouraged when the Lord disciplines us because whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth even as a father the son in whom he delighteth. And so all throughout scripture we have physical punishment, corporal punishment. Now normally when we think of corporal punishment we typically think of a parent chastening their child, right? Because this is how this typically comes up for us today in 2023 America where we have a parent spanking a child. And that's an important component of this teaching but that's not what Deuteronomy 25 is talking about. Deuteronomy 25 is not talking about disciplining your kids. We have verses about disciplining your kids in Proverbs and in Hebrews and so forth. That's biblical. This is actually talking about adults receiving corporal punishment, not children, adults who have committed crimes against society. So not only is corporal punishment something that God advocates for parents to use to correct their children but also criminals are supposed to be receiving corporal punishment for their crimes from the civil government. That's what the Bible is teaching in this passage. This is someone who commits a crime and is brought to court and they're convicted in court. They're supposed to get the punishment of being physically beaten. Now why don't we do this anymore, right? This is something that we should have in our society. But for some bizarre reason, I can't figure it out because you know what, I was just born into this world and I didn't make it the way it is or anything. So I was just kind of born into this world and I'm looking around and there's no corporal punishment going on for criminals and I don't know, somebody screwed up somewhere. But it was way before I was born that they screwed up. So I don't know. I don't know what idiot allowed corporal punishment to stop in this country or in the Western world. What misguided moron got rid of this? Because let me tell you something, what we have today, it doesn't work and it's inhumane. But we're smarter than God. Like I said, I don't know how we got here. I don't know. But somehow we're smarter than God and we're somehow horrified by the idea of an adult man receiving a physical beating for his crimes. But you know what horrifies me more is taking an adult man and locking him in a cage for five years, seven years, eight years. And then not only that, even after he's been locked in a cage for seven years, eight years, which is inhumane, being put in an institution with a bunch of people and you're putting all these bad people together and then you're mixing good people with bad people and then they're just having to be there with all these horrible people and prison can often have a horrible atmosphere as a result. You're just spending just so much money of the taxpayer's money. How much money are we spending to just lock someone up for six years or 10 years or something? Think about it, we're just putting all this money. How much does it cost to incarcerate one person for a year in this country? Because it seems like it'd be a lot cheaper to just hit them with a stick and send them on their way. I mean, the stick can't be that expensive. You should pay the guy who's swinging the stick a fair wage because it's a physical job, probably takes its toll mentally a little bit, kind of a stressful job. You might have bad dreams at night or whatever, so I want to pay the guy well. But I mean, between paying the guy for flogging the guy for ... I mean, if we're paying this guy by the hour, even if he wants to sit down and kind of think for a while between each whipping, this guy should be able to whip at least like 20 people a day in a good day's work. Get the guy ambidextrous, flog some people with the left hand, flog the right hand. The guy doesn't need a gym membership, the guy's getting a workout, criminals are getting beaten and sent on their merry way. Now you say, oh, it's so cruel, it's so harsh, it's so barbaric, really? Because I bet every single person in prison right now would take a beating right now if they get to leave tomorrow. I mean, ask yourself this question right now, would you rather spend three months in prison or would you rather receive the beating that is equivalent to a three month sentence like that, you get a certain amount of canings that will ... a certain amount of strokes with the cane. I mean, I'd rather just get it over with, wouldn't you? Then I can keep supporting my family, I can keep living my life, I don't lose my job, I don't go to some weird institution hanging around with who knows who, bunked up with who knows who, dealing with all kinds of junk and just being dehumanized in prison. Man, I would rather take the beating, and I think most people would. I think if we went to prison and said, hey, this is your option, you're going to get a severe caning, but it's not going to kill you, it's not going to do permanent damage because you're going to lay down on your stomach, look what the Bible says here, it shall be verse two, if the wicked man be worthy to be beaten, that the judge shall cause him to lie down, to be beaten before his face according to his fault by a certain number. So basically, the guy lies down and basically he just lays on his stomach and they just beat the guy with a rod, or whatever they use, a whip, a scourge, whatever. But they beat the guy, and by the way, they have to do it in front of the judge. Because you don't want these judges just handing out all these really harsh sentences and then they don't want to watch or something. It's like, well, no, if you're going to hand out a harsh sentence, you're going to watch. Because otherwise, you might not be comprehending what sentences you're handing out because you don't want him to hand out these really radical sentences, but who cares, he needs to see what's happening so that he can give an appropriate punishment. And then it says in verse three, 40 stripes he may give him and not exceed. So there's a limit here, it's not that you're just going to beat the guy to a pulp, because you can only hit him 40 times, that's it, right? And we're not talking about kicking the guy in the stomach and damaging his internal organs or something, right? We're talking about just a part of your body that can withstand a lot of blows and a lot of impact. Your back, right? Your back is filled with muscles and your back is tough and sturdy, some of the biggest muscles in your body are on your back and on your rear end. And so your body is going to be able to take this. You don't have any internal organs on your back that are going to get damaged by this. And obviously, there could be some spots on the back that could really injure somebody, but obviously, God's saying don't beat someone to death. Don't just like damage their spine or you're not trying to injure, you're just trying to make them suffer so that they will not do this again. It's a deterrent. It's just pain and suffering so that they can have a wake up call, so that they can get their act together. Because you have people out there just doing horrible things. Now I'm not saying that there are things that are worthy of death, but they're just out there robbing and vandalizing and ripping people off and cheating and stealing. Somebody needs to beat some sense into these people, and you're like, oh, so barbaric, so inhumane. But I could just say prison is barbaric and inhumane, because there's no prison in the Bible. Nowhere does God prescribe prison sentences. So if God never prescribes a prison sentence, but he has these beatings, and honestly, it might be unpleasant to watch the beatings, but then again, you're not watching some guy sit in a cell for six years, are you? You want a webcam and watching everything that goes on in prison and watch everything that's happening, because then you might start feeling bad for those people, too. And by the way, the United States has a ridiculous number of people incarcerated right now. Way more than the rest of the free world. We have way too many people in prison. And what's the answer? To just not punish these people? People have to be punished, or they're just going to keep doing it. Does corporal punishment work? Do spankings work? Do floggings work? Well, the Bible says they work, so I believe what the Bible says. The Bible says the blueness of the wound cleanseth away evil, so do stripes, the inward parts of the belly. The blueness of the wound, when they receive those stripes, is indicative of what's going on in their heart, that there's some correction happening in their heart as well. Now look, obviously corporal punishment's not always going to work. The Bible talks about the fact that it's not always going to work, and it talks about how certain fools, you could bray them among wheat in a mortar with a pestle, and their foolishness is not going to depart from them. What does that mean? Those that should just bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, a lot of prepositional phrases there. What does that mean? It's talking about that little round, little stone bowl, and then you have that little round stone little deal, which is called the pestle, and it's called the mortar. And basically, you use it to grind things. You get those seeds in the trees. Is that mesquite? Is that what that is? Who knows what I'm talking about? You go on nature tours. Where's my tour guide here? I don't see him. Oh, there he is. Help me out, tour guide. But what are those ones here in the little pods? Mesquite? Yeah, because it's like those little pods, and they have the seeds in them, and you grind them up, and then you can taste it, and use it as a seasoning. Am I right? Okay, cool. Yeah, so apparently it is mesquite. But yeah, like you said, you could grind anything in it, but I've gone on these little Arizona little tours, and then they're like, hey, you know, and then you pick it up the tree and grind it and eat it and stuff. Who's done it? All right. A couple of people. The rest of you need to get out a little more and see Arizona a little bit, okay? There's a lot of cool stuff out there, a lot of fun little tours to go on. But anyway, you know, you're just, I mean, just get the image of the mortar and pestle, right? You're just like, you know, you're just grinding it, right? It's saying like, if you do that to the fool, he still doesn't get it. He's just stupid. He won't learn. He just won't get it. So look, there are certain people that can't be fixed. I get that. But in general, according to the word of God, corporal punishment is effective. Now obviously when we use corporal punishment on our children, that's not the same level of corporal punishment that you're going to use on a criminal, because again, the punishment fits the crime. You know, your kid takes a cookie out of the cookie jar. That's not the same kind of punishment you're going to give somebody who, you know, stole or, you know, robbed a bank or something or stole a car or something, right? That's a little different than like, hey, I told you to have four cookies and you had five. All right. Lie down. Forty stripes. Let's go. You know, blueness of the wound. No. Obviously, you know, a hardened criminal, some gang member out there, you know, some derelict who's been out there doing major crimes. I mean, when we talk about beat, we're not talking about giving them a, I'm not saying to spank the criminals and send them home. I mean, look, if we took the criminals out of prison, all right, let's go, the belt's coming off and we gave them the type of spanking that a child would get from their parents. That's not going to be enough. That's not going to reform some hardened criminal, right? So when we talk about corporal punishment for criminals, I mean, we're talking about they get beaten. I'm talking blood. I'm talking bruises. I'm talking they get whipped and throughout, look, throughout history, governments that have carried this out, I mean, that's the kind of beatings that they gave. They don't, they, when they came people in Singapore, you know, I mean, it was their bruising and blood involved. Absolutely, because we're talking about a serious punishment, okay? We're not talking about a spanking. Obviously, we should not be bruising and drawing blood on children. That's not what we're doing. When we spank our children, it takes a lot less to get the attention of a child than some hardened criminal, right? And obviously, the type of things that we're spanking our children for are not on the level of, you know, you've been selling heroin on the street or whatever. You know, it's a little different level of crimes that we're talking about here with children just getting punished in the home with a much milder spanking. We're not talking blood and bruises. But I mean, you know, when we're talking about criminals though, I mean, they need to get a very serious punishment in some cases and in some cases, maybe the punishment will be minor if the crime was minor. That's why he says right here, he says that they receive a certain number according to his fault, right? It's based on how bad what they did is. And so God gives specific punishments for certain crimes, but then other – there could be other crimes that we haven't really thought of yet. And so God just kind of leaves it open to the judges to decide who's right, who's wrong, and to punish the guilty party with the amount of stripes that they see fit. Look, if this were all prescribed to the letter in the Bible, you wouldn't need a judge. You wouldn't need a human element. You could just have a machine do it, right? They didn't have machines back then. But even today when we do have machines, you still need a human judge to interpret things and to make a judgment call and so forth. And so I'm spending a lot of time on this. I know I'm not going to finish the chapter because I spent so much time on this, but I think this is just important stuff in our day and age that we understand these things and deal with these things. So, you know, maybe I'll finish this on another Sunday or something, but I'd rather take our time through this part because I think it's important. It says 40 stripes he may give him, verse 3, and not exceed, lest if he should exceed and beat him above these with many stripes, then thy brother should seem vile unto thee. Okay, now, what does this mean that if you beat him with more than 40 stripes, this could make your brother seem vile unto you? Now, I think there are a couple of different ways to interpret this, but I think that what he's saying here is that the guy who's doing the punishing might seem vile if he's just sitting there just beating the fire out of somebody just 50, 60, you know, it could get to where like this guy's a heartless monster, this guy's a brute, what is he doing? You know, like my Bible has these little notes in the column and it seems to be acting like the one who's vile is the one who's getting the beating, like he's going to seem vile unto you, but I don't really, you know, I mean, I guess I could see how you could get to that, but I don't think that's quite as likely. I think it's more likely that we're talking about the guy who's doing the beating could start to seem vile if he's handing out these kind of excessive punishments, okay? Maybe even the judge could seem vile for even prescribing extreme punishments. Now look, we in the United States have the Bill of Rights to protect us from an abusive government, right? That's why we have the Bill of Rights, we have those 10 amendments to our Constitution that are there to protect us from government abuse, and one of those things in the Bill of Rights is that it says, excessive fines shall not be imposed and cruel and unusual punishments shall not be inflicted. Okay, now it's been a long time for me since I've studied the Bill of Rights. Can somebody help me out? Is that the Fifth Amendment? Who knows the Constitution in this room? No one, literally no one. Well, I don't feel bad anymore because there's, you know, I used to have this stuff on the tip of my tongue, but it's been a long time since I've read it and looked at it. Somebody help, somebody Google this because I want to know, okay, which amendment says cruel and unusual? Is it the Sixth Amendment? That's what it is. Yeah, is it six? I know, yeah, fifth is, you know, you don't have to incriminate yourself. Fourth is unlawful search and seizure. Sixth is jury trial. It's mixed in with, oh, Eighth Amendment, yeah, because sixth is jury trial. Seventh is you get a civil trial by jury if it's a dispute of more than $20. $20 ain't what it used to be. So it's the Eighth Amendment. Okay, there we go. Thank you. I don't know. Like I said, it's been a while. Sorry about that. Cruel and unusual punishment shall not be inflicted. Is that a biblical concept? Is it a biblical concept that governments should not inflict cruel or unusual punishments? And I would say that is a biblical concept, okay, because we find that in the Bible, God places limits on the types of punishments that can be doled out. Like right here, he says you can't give someone more than 40 blows, okay? But not only that, when you think about God's method of execution in the Bible, it is something that happens quickly because it's being stoned to death. That's not going to take long for you to die being stoned. It's going to go pretty quick, right? They're not throwing gravel at you. You know, we're talking about big rocks and just it's going to be over pretty quick because I don't believe that God condones of us as human beings torturing people. You don't see this in Scripture. You don't see God ever prescribing torture or slow, painful deaths where, you know, we just would say, for example, crucify someone. You know, you don't see anything like that in the Word of God to crucify criminals or something like that. You see punishments that are quick, you know, even if you talk about possibly burning someone at the stake, again, that's going to go really fast, okay? Whereas, for example, a lot of old Western kind of hangings, people would be hanging for hours or somebody who's crucified is hanging for hours. There are all kinds of methods of execution throughout history that have been long and drawn out. Or how about torturing people for information? This is something that we don't see taught in the Bible. This isn't something that God wants us to do. And so when we think about that, that God doesn't use these kind of torturous methods of killing, this kind of goes back to what we were talking about a few weeks ago about the one who's hanged on a tree, right? Now, of course, in the New Testament, Peter and Paul both, they really latch onto this thing of Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by being made a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone that is hanged on a tree. And of course, they apply that to Jesus Christ because when he was crucified, in a sense, he's hanged on a tree because he's hanging from something that's made out of wood, okay? But if we go back to the original context in Deuteronomy 21, we're not actually talking about crucifixion in that verse. What we're actually talking about is that after someone is executed, they are subsequently hanged from a tree, that is, their dead corpse is hanged from a tree after they're dead. How do I know that? Because if we study the Old Testament as a whole, that's what we're gonna see actually happening. Like, for example, in Joshua Chapter 10, Joshua kills the kings and then after he kills them, he hangs their bodies from a tree, okay, as a way to desecrate their bodies, as a way to shame them. What it really is, is it's giving their bodies unto the fowl of the air because it's considered shameful and accursed to have the birds eating your corpse as opposed to being buried a lot. Also being cremated is shameful, you know, in Scripture. You want to be buried as a Christian. Obviously, whether you're buried or cremated isn't gonna affect your eternal destination, it's just your physical body, but we should follow the Christian practice of burying our dead. And so we see that, for example, in Genesis, Joseph interprets the dream of the chief baker and he tells him in three days, Pharaoh is gonna lift up your head from off of you. Because he said the chief butler, hey, he's gonna lift up your head and you're gonna be back in your position, you're gonna be the chief butler, you're gonna be an important guy again. And then he's like, hey buddy, you're getting lifted up too, but in a different way, your head's getting lifted from off your body. You're gonna be decapitated and then you're gonna be hung on a tree and the birds are gonna eat you while you're hanging from the tree. So again, God is not teaching or condoning of slow torturous deaths of hanging people from a tree until they die or crucifying people or, you know, I don't know, putting them next to an anthill and pouring honey all over them or something. That's not the kind of execution that God prescribes. God prescribes things that are quick because he's not into us torturing people. And when it comes to us having to physically flog someone who's a criminal, again, he puts a limit on it and doesn't want it to be overboard or to go too far. And even elsewhere in the book of Exodus, when it talks about masters using corporal punishment on their servants, he says that there are lines that they cross where they have to let the guy go or where they could even be punished for manslaughter if they accidentally kill the guy. You know, he says if you're punishing the guy with corporal punishment, if you knock his tooth out, you gotta let him go free just for that one tooth knocked out. You know, so if you're a slave and you, you got punched in the face and lost tooth drive, yes. Freedom! You know, because you'd probably rather lose one tooth than be free, you know, or it said if you put out his eye, you gotta let him go free for his eyes' sake. So God is looking out for people and God's putting limits on corporal punishment. And when he does give methods of execution, they're not these slow torture methods because it's not our place to dole out those kind of punishments. You know, let the Lord punish people and do what he sees fit to people after they die. That's not our place to sit there and dream up all of these weird ways to punish people. And therefore, the Eighth Amendment says cruel and unusual punishments should not be inflicted. Why – what does it say? Unusual. You know, because that's what we're talking about, weird. What does unusual mean? Weird. Don't dream up some weird way of, hey, I got an idea. You know, because he doesn't want people sitting around dreaming up ways to torture people or give excessive painful punishments. So you don't need anything cruel where it's just sadistic or unusual, meaning dreaming up strange new ways to put people to death or to punish people. But this is standard. He lays down, he receives stripes, and 40 is the max. Now, why is it that in the New Testament you don't find this as 40 but you find it as 39? Right? That he received 40 stripes save one means 40 stripes minus one. Why is it that they only did 39? Because the Jews are superstitious. And so because the Jews are superstitious, they always take God's law and they make it a little bit stricter than what God actually said. So if God says 40, we'll make it 39. I mean, I'm surprised that maybe the next generation didn't just make it 38 just to be safe. But the idea here is that if you get carried away and lose count, you don't want to accidentally do an extra one. So if you do 39 and then you accidentally screw up and do an extra one, well, no harm, no foul, because you just did 40, and 40 is allowed. So they're doing this thing of like, hey, let's be a little careful and just do 39. Now is that really bad of the Jews? Is that wrong of the Jews, that bad of the Jews? In this case, it's probably not really that big of a deal, because given somebody 39 stripes or 40 stripes, at the end of the day, it doesn't really affect the price of tea in China, whether they got 39 or 40 stripes is not really a big deal. And they're not exceeding, so they're in compliance. But the problem is that the Jews then take this mentality and they apply it to everything else and they end up with all of these overboard, overkill laws. And then that's why they're constantly clashing with Jesus and his disciples, who aren't actually even breaking God's laws, but they're constantly being accused by the Jews, because they're not following the Jews' overly strict, radical, overboard interpretation of God's laws. And let me tell you something, it is possible to be too strict. Because a lot of people just think, well, why not, let's just be safe, and let's just be super strict just to be safe. It's possible to go overboard and to be too strict. Look, modest apparel on women is what the Bible prescribes. Women should be clothed in modest apparel with shamefacedness and sobriety. They need to be serious, they need to take it seriously and not think, what I wear doesn't matter. No, they need to soberly think about what they're wearing, and with shamefacedness, meaning they should be ashamed to go out of the house looking a certain way. They should have some decency and take care in the clothing that they wear so that they're not going out of the house in what the Bible calls, quote, the attire of a harlot. You don't want to be a harlot, but you also just don't want to dress like one. And you also don't want to just be all flashy. The Bible says that a woman should be adorned not with broided hair and gold and pearls and costly array, but, which becometh women professing godliness, with good works. You don't want to be just decorated like a Christmas tree. You want to be humble and sober, and you obviously don't want to be out there just showing off every curve of your body and showing off as much flesh as possible and just out there being immodest. Obviously that's what the Bible teaches, that's what Christians have stood for, that's what pastors have preached, amen. But can that be taken too far? Absolutely, because, Muslim. Think about it. Think about the way Muslim women dress. I mean do you really think that God wants you wearing a black sheet over your head like the opposite of Casper the friendly ghost? You're like, you know, some kind of a Scheherazade the scary ghost, right, instead of, I mean at least Casper had a white sheet. And he's got like this black sheet with just this little slit for their eyes. I don't know, you know what, those eyes are kind of just, they're just provoking too much lust. They need to come up, I mean you'd think in 2023 we'd get some high tech material where they can still see out and nobody can see it. Because I'm sick of seeing all those beautiful eyes and being tempted, you know, by basically that, you know, there's this black like cone shape because it all just kind of flows out. You got this black cone walking around and it's like, ooh, look at those baby blues. Cover them up, woman. Put a pair of sunglasses on her. Get her some mirror shades, right? Get her like some cop sunglasses. Folks, that's, you and I would look at that and say, that is stupid, that is ridiculous, there's no way that that is how God expects women to dress. There is no way that that's what God had in mind. There's no way that Sarah and Rebecca and Rachel and Leah were walking around like that. Like Jacob walks up to the well and just falls in love with a black cone, you know. And then, well, he's like, well, Leah was tender eyed because that's all he could see. No, he could see more than just eyes. It's crazy, right? So I mean, that right there is pretty wild, but you got millions of people doing it. Go to the Middle East, you see it everywhere. Even in a liberal country like Turkey, you see a bunch of those ninjas going around with that. A bunch of black cones, a bunch of scary ghosts. And that's in one of the most laid back Muslim countries. You know, you go to some of these other countries, man, you're going to see that everywhere. And you even sometimes see it in the United States, every once in a while you see it. So can modesty be taken too far? Absolutely, right? Even a good doctrine, even a good thought, even a good idea can be taken too far. So we don't want to just be like, well, the stricter the better. You know, if God says 40, let's make it 39, let's make it 35. Let's just go 30. Because what if you forget what's in the tens column? You know, because sometimes you forget, you're like, was I on 29 or 39? I could see screwing up the tens column. In fact, 30 is kind of scary, let's do 29. Because if you get the tens and ones column wrong, you're still okay. But again, this is, no, why don't we just do what God said? You know? And look, if a certain guy is like, hey, I'm bad at counting, so I'm going to do 39, then okay. Maybe he should get another job if he's that bad at counting, since literally you had one job counting. But even if they say, well, we're all going to do this, the problem is when they start imposing their overly strict rules on you, overly strict rules that aren't in the Bible, and then they're going to impose them on you and say, hey, Jesus, your disciples, they're not washing their hands before they eat bread. Well, where does the Bible say that you have to wash your hands before you eat bread? It doesn't. That's their rule. They're taking God's laws about cleanliness and they're extrapolating them in a way that God didn't. And they do this with everything. Like the Jews will say, oh, don't see the kid in his mother's milk? That means that we can't eat any meat with any dairy for any reason. That's not what the Bible's saying. What are they doing? They're taking it to an extreme. Oh, you can't kindle a fire on the Sabbath day? Why do you think God doesn't want you to kindle a fire on the Sabbath day? Anybody have any ideas? Because it's a lot of work? Because it's hard? Because you're supposed to be doing what on the Sabbath day? Resting. So you're not really resting if you're like... That's hard work. You're out there breaking logs and bringing wood over and chopping it and lighting it up and getting it going, rubbing two sticks together or whatever. That's what the Bible's saying. But according to the Jews, you flip a light switch, you just kindle a fire on the Sabbath day. And when you open your fridge and the light bulb comes on, you just kindle a fire. Kindle a fire on the Sabbath day. I mean, think about how crazy that is. Let's say there's a light on. Let's say there's a light on in your house and then you turn it off on the Sabbath day. You just violated the law because if he doesn't want fire started up, he doesn't want to put it out either. Because everything just gets extra... Oh, I mean, it went from, thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, to, just to be careful we don't ever say it, let's just never say it. And then a few hundred years go by and it's like, oh crap, we don't even know how to say it anymore. We don't know how to pronounce it. You realize that no one knows how to pronounce the proper name of God in the Old Testament. That's used over 7,000 times in the Old Testament. No one knows how to pronounce it because the Jews literally just totally stopped saying it to the point where nobody knew how to pronounce it anymore because they have it written down with no vowels. And if you let enough centuries go by, nobody knows how to pronounce it anymore. And now, you know, in the 1800s or 1900s, you have some German scholar come along, I think it was probably pronounced Yahweh, based on like nothing. Oh, no, no, no, he's a scholar, he has all this evidence. You know what he's looking at? He's looking at a bunch of ancient inscriptions and ancient artifacts and ancient writing that has no vowels in it. And even if it did have vowels, how would you know how to pronounce those vowels 2,500 years later, 2,000 years later, maybe 3,000 years later in some cases with some of these really ancient findings that they have of Semitic languages other than Hebrew? I mean, how in the world can you tell me that, well, it was probably pronounced Yahweh. It's funny, I don't see Jesus speculating about how to pronounce it. It's funny, I don't see the apostles speculating about how to pronounce it. You want to know what Jesus and the apostles, they just said the Lord. That's why in the New Testament, every single time they are quoting the Old Testament and they're quoting that four-letter name of God, they either say Lord or God. They either quote it as the Lord or they quote it as God. But you know what they don't do, they don't say Yahweh, they never do. So riddle me this, if this word Yahweh is never found in the New Testament a single time, then why should we use it? And if Jesus and the apostles translate the proper name of God as the Lord or God, wouldn't we do well to follow their example and do the exact same thing? Right, I mean, look, are we, but no, no, no, we're smarter than Jesus and the apostles. You know, poor Jesus and the apostles going around saying Lord and God, they were doing it wrong. They should have been saying Yahweh. You know, look, if Jesus and the apostles never said Yahweh once in the 27 books of the New Testament, then why would I say it? And I don't even think that's a real word. Okay, now, look, obviously those four letters are the name of God, the letters Yod, Heh, Vav, Heh, but nobody knows how they're pronounced. You know, historically, they've been pronounced as Yehovah or Jehovah or Hehova or some, you know, depending on whether we're speaking English, Spanish, German, whatever. That's traditionally how we'd identify that name. But you notice how the King James Bible over 7,000 times is translated as Lord or God. Does it hundreds of times as God, thousands of times as Lord. So why did our King James Bible do it that way? Because that's what Jesus did. Because that's what the apostles did. But now you got people now pushing for this name. And I, you know, is it possible that it was pronounced Yahweh? There's probably like a one in a hundred chance. I'll give it like a 1% chance that that's, that if we got in a time machine, that's how it was pronounced. I would say probably 99% just because of the fact that there's so many possible ways that it could have been pronounced. It's four letters. It's probably three syllables, not two, maybe even four syllables. Okay, we don't know. It's literally impossible to figure out, but they're like, doggone it, we're going to figure it out. And then what's funny is that it's like, well, nowadays, most scholars agree that it's Yahweh. What changed? Did we find some new discovery? No, no. What it is is that some guy said decades ago, Hey, I think it's Yahweh. And he was some really smart, educated guy who went and guessed and figured it out. And he basically, and look, he'll admit we're guessing. We're making assumptions. We're taking a shot in the dark, you know, we're basing it on what we think we know about how the language works, but we're dealing with pronunciations from thousands of years later or hundreds of years later. And so this is kind of the closest approximation, but you know what? Well, nowadays, most scholars agree on Yahweh. Really, what that means is it's just been around for a long time and people are just getting used to it. Like nothing changed. We didn't get some new information. It's just when something's around long enough and then scholars now are just like, oh, God, yeah, this is what they taught me, I guess it's just Yahweh. And then now they're changing the Bible. So we got 500 years of modern English Bibles, 500 years of the modern English Bible, Tyndale, Matthew, Bishops, Geneva, King James Version, right? All the other modern versions and everything, 500 years of the Bible in modern English. How many millions and millions of sermons preached, millions and millions of souls saved, thousands and thousands of missionaries sent all over the world preaching about the Lord and God and now all of a sudden a word that has never been in any Bible for the last 500 years in the English language, all of a sudden now the very first mainstream Bible version has come out now. The Legacy Standard Bible put out by John MacArthur who famously denied the blood of Jesus Christ and still continues to deny it, Mr. Lordship Salvation, Mr. Works-based Salvation, John MacArthur has come out with his new, just right before he goes to hell, he's so ancient, he's about to split hell wide open, but right before he goes to hell he just wants to give us one last gift, finally after 500 years a Bible that is smarter than Jesus and all the apostles combined because it has this new English word that nobody's ever seen before, Yahweh. What is that? That's probably not even a real word. And again, the Hebrew word is real, Yod-Heh-Vav, nobody knows how to pronounce it. Jesus didn't try to pronounce it, the apostles didn't try to pronounce it, you don't think they could have spelled out in Greek something like Yahweh. I could figure out how to spell it in Greek letters right now, super easy. Why not? And so if they didn't do it, neither should we. And so again, the Bible here shows us God's intent, 40 stripes, they're going to make it 39 because they like to change God's rules to make them a little more strict and sometimes they go way overboard, like with not pronouncing the name of God. And even today, by the way, one last little pro tip before I let you go tonight, whenever you see anybody typing online or an email to you or anywhere and they spell God G-D or L-RD, like they're like censoring God's name like it's the F word or something, they're like F star star star and then they're basically like L star R-D, like when you see somebody censoring the name of God, they are a Jew. And if they're pretending to be a Christian, they're a fake Christian, they're a Jew pretending to be a Christian. They're a crypto Jew because only Jews are scared to say the word God. Why would, look, are you scared to say the word God tonight? Are you scared to say the word Lord? No, because we call upon the name of the Lord all the time. We're praying to God, we're praying to the Lord, we're calling by the name of the Lord all the time. I mean when was the last time you said the word God? Probably singing the songs, right? Reading the scripture, singing the songs, praying to God, dear God. You're not like, dear, dear, and you know what they call God? They call him Hashem, the name. What is that? All right, I'm getting carried away, this sermon's over. Let's bow our heads in that word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for your word, Lord. Help us as we study your word, Lord, and going through this Bible study in Deuteronomy, Lord, help us to learn your truth, and Lord, help us to follow the Bible, and Lord, help us to make the Bible our final authority, not secular scholars and people who are not doctrinally sound, who are just speculating and making things up, Lord. Help the New Testament to be our final authority, Lord, and help these Old Testament scriptures to teach us more about you as we grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and it's in his name we pray, amen.