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22 “You shall not see your brother’s ox or his sheep going astray and ignore them. You shall take them back to your brother. And if he does not live near you and you do not know who he is, you shall bring it home to your house, and it shall stay with you until your brother seeks it. Then you shall restore it to him. And you shall do the same with his donkey or with his garment, or with any lost thing of your brother’s, which he loses and you find; you may not ignore it. You shall not see your brother’s donkey or his ox fallen down by the way and ignore them. You shall help him to lift them up again.
“A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your God.
“If you come across a bird’s nest in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs and the mother sitting on the young or on the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young. You shall let the mother go, but the young you may take for yourself, that it may go well with you, and that you may live long.
“When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, that you may not bring the guilt of blood upon your house, if anyone should fall from it.
“You shall not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seed, lest the whole yield be forfeited, the crop that you have sown and the yield of the vineyard. You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together. You shall not wear cloth of wool and linen mixed together.
“You shall make yourself tassels on the four corners of the garment with which you cover yourself.
“If any man takes a wife and goes in to her and then hates her and accuses her of misconduct and brings a bad name upon her, saying, ‘I took this woman, and when I came near her, I did not find in her evidence of virginity,’ then the father of the young woman and her mother shall take and bring out the evidence of her virginity to the elders of the city in the gate. And the father of the young woman shall say to the elders, ‘I gave my daughter to this man to marry, and he hates her; and behold, he has accused her of misconduct, saying, “I did not find in your daughter evidence of virginity.” And yet this is the evidence of my daughter’s virginity.’ And they shall spread the cloak before the elders of the city. Then the elders of that city shall take the man and whip him, and they shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give them to the father of the young woman, because he has brought a bad name upon a virgin of Israel. And she shall be his wife. He may not divorce her all his days. 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.
“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 woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he has violated her. He may not divorce her all his days.
“A man shall not take his father’s wife, so that he does not uncover his father’s nakedness.
(ESV)
Many of these laws seem outdated or inapplicable to our modern culture. Furthermore, one might say that since we are under the New Covenant we are no longer under the Old Testament law. Though this is true, the laws themselves still guide us with useful principles that reveal the heart of God. We find, in general, that God was not a fan of mixtures. This was first and foremost because His desire was for His people to be separate and holy.
Deuteronomy 22:10 GNB “Do not hitch an ox and a donkey together for plowing.
“This sounds to me like a humorous thing which the Lord is saying here. Actually I saw this done over in Israel. In fact, I have a slide that I took showing an Arab plowing with an ox and an ass yoked together. So they do this over there even today. God says that Israel should not plow that way. Someone may ask, ‘What is wrong with that?’ Well, an ox is an ox and an ass is an ass, and they do not go together. They don’t walk together—their gait is different, and they do not pull together.”
J. Vernon McGee
Why does God caution against being unequally yoked? What did Jesus pray for His children in John 17?
I do not ask you to take them out of the world, but I do ask you to keep them safe from the Evil One. 16 Just as I do not belong to the world, they do not belong to the world.
John 17:15-16 GNB
When we choose to follow God and He places His Spirit in us, we bear His image and conform to the likeness of His Son. We begin to change as He pulls our hearts away from this shallow world toward the Kingdom of Heaven. This process draws a clear line between those who are following the world and those who are following Christ. When you meet someone who knows Jesus, it is evident. They are full of grace and truth. They love deeply and forgive quickly. They pray for their enemies and those who persecute them. They exhibit the fruits of the Spirit.
If we say we love God, but hate others, we are liars. For we cannot love God, whom we have not seen, if we do not love others, whom we have seen. 21 The command that Christ has given us is this: whoever loves God must love others also.
1 John 4:20-21 GNB
The bottom line is: God hates mixtures. When we live our lives with a mixture of Godly words with worldly actions, it is evident that there is something missing. We have not really seen the beauty of Christ.
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