Category: Kingdom Values and Priorities

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God Wants to Preserve All Lineages

If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family. Her husband’s brother shall take her and marry her and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to her. The first son she bears shall carry on the name of the dead brother so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel.

Deuteronomy 25:5-6

Many people have, in our modern day wondered why this was a practice back in the day. God believes in monogamy. Why would His people practice this? We usually assume it was for less than…noble reasons. The practice, which was not permission to establish a harem, has nothing to do with a man’s (not) freedom to take multiple wives. This was also more than a practice. It is a command of our God and King.

The reason for the command is given right there in the text: so that [the brother’s] name will not be blotted out from Israel.

God wants the names of all people to continue on forever. This specifically is talking about people of Israel, but those of us that understand basic New Testament Covenant know that Israel was a root that has become a plant, which we now refer to as the “Church”. God wants the names of all people to carry on forever, not just those that are Jewish biologically. We know it won’t happen for everybody but it’s still God’s desire. I would refer to this desire of God’s as a “value” of God’s or a “priority” of God’s or a “purpose” of God’s.

God gave this command so that all people’s names would continue on. He didn’t give this command because men can’t have self control. That’s a lie. The law is there to reveal what we should do even when we don’t. The law doesn’t accommodate sin.

Also this command is not about about marrying multiple women in general. Men can’t just marry multiple women. A man can marry his brother’s widow if he has the ambition to not only work to provide for his own family so they can enjoy their lives and carry on the family name, but to also do the same for his brother that has passed away.

The children born wouldn’t go by his name. They’d go by his brother’s even though they are biologically his. He wouldn’t be working to build up his own reputation or his own wealth, but rather his brother’s and that of his brother’s children. That takes selflessness. Anybody want to raise someone else’s kids? Anybody want to take your own kid and refer to it as someone else’s until the day you die? I really wouldn’t. That would be tough.

It’s interesting that in this scenario, the authority of the name given overrides the biology. God created the biology and is pleased with it, but at the end of the day He is the final authority over it, and can do with it as He pleases. It obeys Him, not the other way around. In this case the child’s identity actually becomes that of the brother that has passed regardless of its biology.

To me, all of this flies in the face of the atheist doctrine of “survival of the fittest”.

When I was a child I loved watching National Geographic. It was so real. I didn’t know how to describe the feeling, but it just felt so real compared to the rest of television. I loved the first version of Planet Earth by BBC. However, annoyingly, much of what is being shown on nature shows and series today comes chained to 2 core atheist dogma messages: the bigger males get all the females while the smaller ones get zero, and therefore only the genes of the fittest survive. These are both lies.

Nature can reveal some things about Jesus. Jesus taught in parables about nature consistently, but He did so as someone who knew what Heaven was like. He wasn’t referring to nature as a final authority or model for us to follow. The Earthly metaphors He used were merely used as a means of communicating something about Heaven to people that were pretty disconnected from it.

Christians have been taught that all people have sinned, but even more so, all animals have been corrupted by sin. We don’t look to animals to understand what’s natural and healthy for us. They aren’t the one whose image we bear. I don’t want to be like an animal when I grow up. I want to be like Jesus.

God created marriage to be between one man and one woman, and therefore for the names of all people to be carried on forever. He doesn’t want only the supposed “fittest” to survive.

Anybody can get fit if they understand their royal identity in the image of God and if they learn to act on their royal identity by making healthy choices. There’s nobody that is ugly or stupid. Maybe they’re out of shape and uneducated, but those are temporary states. Some people have not taken care of themselves and some people wear sadness or anger on their faces, seemingly permanently, but it’s not actually permanent. God the Father can heal our daddy and mommy wounds. I guarantee it. Dogma debunked.

God wants everyone to reproduce sexually. Maybe not until after He gets back, because we know we live in a tumultuous time right now, and the more people the world has like Paul the better. But it is God’s longing that the names of all people are carried on through their family lineages.

I feel so honored by that. I feel so fought for. God’s not willing that someone big and mean should steal my family from me and take multiple wives. He is willing that, if needed, my brother should lay down His life for me and my family and cause my name to live on forever. He wants me to be remembered with honor and dignity.

Did I mention that we are all as precious as the blood of Jesus?

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The Nature of and Consequences of Adultery

…live the remaining time in the flesh, no longer for human desires, but for God’s will.  For there has already been enough time spent in doing what the pagans choose to do: carrying on in unrestrained behavior, evil desires, drunkenness, orgies, carousing, and lawless idolatry.  So they are surprised that you don’t plunge with them into the same flood of wild living—and they slander you.  They will give an account to the One who stands ready to judge the living and the dead.

1 Peter 4:2-5

The world is surprised that Christians don’t join them in their sexual sin. Occasionally some of us have found ourselves wondering what the big deal is.

Before we go any further I’d like to make myself abundantly clear: sexual sin is a very big deal. In 1 Corinthians 7:26 Paul refers to a “crisis”. I believe the “crisis” he is referring to is the rampant hook up culture of the day (See verse 2 in that chapter). It is similar to what it is happening in our own culture currently. According to the Bible, this is a crisis. But why?

In December 2009 the painting “Portrait of a man, half-length, with his arms akimbo” by Rembrandt sold for 20.2 million British pounds. It was the first time in 40 years that the painting had been seen in public.

Generally when someone pays such a high price for an item, they aren’t doing so on a whim. They are doing so because they are invested in the item in some sort of permanent way.

This is the honor we all have before God: God has paid the highest price possible for us. Him doing this shows He is permanently invested in us. In doing this, God is also showing us what is normal as far as how people should be treated. We are all called upon to follow His example in the way we honor people.

If I were to purchase the painting spoken of above, I wouldn’t carelessly throw it in the trunk of my car, let it become sun stained, and possibly ripped. I would certainly hire private security in order to protect such a valuable asset. Such care is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how God expects people to treat one another.

People are worth being permanently invested in and they are worth treating with care. So much so that God sent Jesus to die on our behalf. He didn’t carelessly toss us aside. He was permanently invested in us even though it was painful for Him to be so.

All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it;
surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

Isaiah 40:6-8

It’s true that people are physically attractive, and there’s obviously nothing wrong with that or with noticing that. A problem happens when we start to believe that there’s nothing else worth living for outside of that sexual experience.

The verses in Isaiah tell us that not only is there something else worth living for, but that something else is something that is enduring. It will produce lasting satisfaction, not simply momentary gratification. Love matters: living in accordance with God’s Word. God Word calls us to love people: to be permanently invested in people.

If a man commits adultery, he is sending the message to his wife and his kids that, in his judgment, they are not worth being permanently invested in. He can try to rationalize it all day long, but the reality is that his sons and daughters will be in danger of believing that they will always be alone. Their father wasn’t invested in their mother. Why would they expect their spouses to be any different?

They should expect differently because Jesus has commanded us to make disciples, and there are and should be men and women out there who believe that adultery is a gross and weird abnormality that wreaks havoc on all it touches.

Unfortunately the message that adultery sends does not always fall on deaf ears even though it is a lie. The consequences of adultery include an increase in rates of homelessness and prostitution in the generations that follow.

People are worth being permanently invested in even when it’s painful or unpleasant. The Hollywood lie of a “loveless marriage” is demonic. Do not let anyone deceive you into thinking that you’re doing anybody a favor by not being permanently invested in them. Do your best to value them even when they don’t value you back. Who knows what can happen? With God all things are possible. He can and has taken marriages where there is zero love and caused them to blossom as people chose to love each other even when it was momentarily unpleasant to do so.