Like a giant multi-tentacled octopus, our society is full of influences attempting to lure us into lust and its attendant sins. How does the righteous saint live in society, but not succumb to all of the ungodly and ultimately damning sinful lustful temptations that assault a person everyday from every direction?
In this second video, we discuss how to use biblical strategies to successfully fight and overcome lust and all its attendant sins.
Deuteronomy 23:2, A child of incest shall not. Mamzer (translated in the KJV as bastard; NKJV one of illegitimate birth) means “a child of a prohibited marriage.” Contrary to popular opinion, this is not referring to one born out of wedlock (the result of fornication or premarital relations), but rather the fruit of an incestuous or adulterous relationship (The ArtScroll Stone Edition Chumash, p. 1054).
According to S. R. Hirsch, a Jewish Torah scholar, a mamzer was disadvantaged legally in no other way except that he was excluded from the assembly or congregation (qahal) of YHVH. According to The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, the Hebrew word qahal is equivalent to the Greek word ecclesia, which is commonly translated as church in the NT (ibid., vol. 2, p. 790).
What does Torah’s treatment of a mamzer say about YHVH’s view of the sanctity of marriage and the family and the upholding of such as a cornerstone institution within the assembly of the saints? Hirsch comments on this verse, “[A] mamzer accordingly represents, by his existence, a sin against those laws by which God wishes marriage in His qahal to be elevated out of the sphere of simply physical association by that which [the Talmud in] Kiddushin [73a] expresses” (Judaica Press The Pentateuch/Deuteronomy, p. 456).
In the Torah, premarital sex isn’t a capital offense. When it happened, the man was either to marry the young lady, or he was to pay a fine to her father. Incest, however, like homosexuality, was an abomination in YHVH’s eyes (Lev 18), thus it would stand to reason that YHVH would take a harder stand on the product of such a sexual union. The point is to teach his people not to get involved in such sinful sexual practices in the first place.
Would excluding certain individuals who oppose traditional marriage and define it in ways contrary to biblical definition now be politically correct in our society? Discuss the implications and what the saints can do to protect the sanctity of the congregation of the believers from those who would thumb their noses at the Word of the Creator of the universe, the very Author of the marriage institution.