Loving Your Neighbor Requires Violence (Not Kidding)

Alright, so if you remember from last week, we did a lot of videos about Jonathan Lehman and his interview on CrossPolitik, which was remarkable.

It was absolutely fantastic. And a lot of people were asking me what I felt were the best parts. And when

I mean best, I mean the worst parts for Lehman, because the whole thing was like the stock market tanking.

Everyone was looking for the bottom, but it just kept getting worse and worse and worse. At one point, though, he gets backed into a corner.

Chocolate Knox brings a very clear scripture passage to bear on our modern situation, and he asks him about it.

And Jonathan Lehman's response was the response of a high schooler who had just found an atheist

YouTube channel that he really liked. And it was fantastic. This is what his response was. That's what the Bible says.

But no. That's what the Bible says. The Bible says that those that have sex with animals,

Leviticus 18, should be put to death. Let me ask you another question, though. It also says in the

Old Covenant that children that disobey their parents should be stoned. Yeah, so I mean, this is like the lowest of the low argumentation that you could possibly get from an atheist coming from the mouth of a respected

Christian leader who claims that he loves the law of God elsewhere in this interview. I don't know about you, but the way he brought that up to bear didn't really seem like he loved the law of God.

In fact, he was seemingly to use the law of God as if, look at this ridiculous law that the

Old Testament also says. How could you ask me about the Old Testament? That's kind of how he was using it. Again, very similar to a middle school kid who stumbled upon an atheist

YouTube channel starting to use the arguments of the biggest idiot he could find on YouTube against his youth pastor.

But the reality is that this law is actually something that we shouldn't shy away from, we shouldn't be upset about, we shouldn't be ashamed of.

None of the law of God is. And I'm about to explain why we should apply this law in our country today.

This is a good law that I think that we need today. And nothing that I'm about to say requires you to become a theonomist, by the way.

I know that's a scary word for a lot of people. People don't want to be a theonomist. And I'm telling you, you actually don't have to be a theonomist to understand that we ought to apply this passage today.

This is Deuteronomy 21, verse 18. And before, again, before you go the

Lehman route of, you know, I'm a high school atheist guy that found my favorite YouTube channel, understand that Jesus Christ quoted from Deuteronomy often.

Jesus Christ believed Deuteronomy. Jesus Christ taught Deuteronomy. Jesus Christ did

Deuteronomy in its entirety, perfectly. This is a good law. And Jesus Christ taught this law.

In fact, if we're going to be Great Commission Baptists and Great Commission Christians, we ought to be teaching everything that Jesus taught.

And this is part of it. So let's read it. This is the King James Version. It says this,

If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and that when they have chastened him will not hearken unto them, then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him and bring him out unto the elders of his city and unto the gate of his place.

And they shall say unto the elders of his city, this our son is stubborn and rebellious.

He will not obey our voice. He is a glutton and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die.

So shalt thou put evil away from among you, and all Israel shall hear and fear.

Now the atheist interpretation of this, and not even the atheist interpretation, like most of the mature atheists have moved on from this because they understand this passage now.

But like, you know, the YouTube atheist, the internet atheist, the village atheist types, they'll see this and they'll be like, wow, see your

Bible's so evil because it's telling you to stone children for disobeying their parents. This is the tack that Jonathan Lehman took.

Again, these were the words of a village atheist in the mouth of a great leader of evangelicalism,

Jonathan Lehman, when he was backed up into a corner, when Knox was bringing the scripture to bear and he had no response for it.

Instead of keeping his mouth shut like he probably should have, he responded like a village atheist. And the idea here is that you're stoning your kids because they didn't eat their broccoli at dinnertime.

That's the idea that you're supposed to get. Like, you know, they, they weren't sharing their toys. You told them to share their toys and so they didn't.

And so what you do is you stone them. That's, that's what he's saying here. Now, just thinking about this for one moment, you realize that God's not a monster.

God's not ridiculous. God is showing us how to love our neighbor. This passage is critical. If you're going to love your neighbor.

Yes. In order to love your neighbor, some people have to be executed and these are some of those people.

But again, God's not a monster. God's not ridiculous. He's not telling you to stone your toddler for not eating his broccoli.

And so we need to talk about this because if we don't talk about this, then the Jonathan Lehman defense of, hey,

I don't want to apply the biblical law. I want to apply my own fake law by using this as a, as a hammer to somehow point to the

God's law being ridiculous or something for our modern context. We don't want to do that. So we want to actually know what this is all about.

And if you notice, there's some keys here to this passage. People have talked about this for a very long time. This is nothing new. I'm not coming up with,

I'm not that smart to come up with something new here. But if you notice what's happening here is the rebellious son is an adult.

The rebellious son is a drunkard and a glutton. And the implication here is that he's incorrigible.

He's, he's, he's a, he's a, a petty criminal. He's causing chaos in the village and he won't listen to his parents.

His parents are like, son, stop being this rebellious person. Stop, stop doing the things that you're doing.

You're causing chaos in our little village or a little town or whatever like, like that. You're, you're not doing the right things.

You're causing things to be turned upside down. In other words, you're causing trouble, mayhem, things of that nature.

And he refuses to listen. And he goes, no, I know what you're, I hear what you're saying, mom and dad, but I'm going to continue to get drunk and do whatever it is

I do. Now, if you know people who are drunkards, you know that it doesn't just stay in their house.

They're not just drunkards in their house, mining their own business. Typically they're in the streets. Typically they're causing fights.

Typically they're stealing, they're causing trouble. Drunk, drunkenness doesn't often stay alone by itself. Sometimes it does, but some, most of the time it doesn't.

I would imagine in a culture where the villages were small, everyone was kind of close together. It probably didn't stay there.

And that's the whole point. This is, this is basically someone who refuses to live in a civilized society.

Someone who's consistently breaking the laws, consistently causing trouble, consistently just being incorrigible and won't stop.

And what this passage is saying is just because it's your son, doesn't mean that you don't have a requirement to keep the peace in your community.

It doesn't mean you have a requirement to actually solve the issue. And the idea is that if you're the kid's parent and you know that they're doing this, you still need to bring them into the elders to be judged.

And if they refuse to repent, then they're executed. Some people are not fit for living in civilized society.

Murderers are not fit to live in civilized society. Rapists are not fit to live in civilized society and that kind of thing.

And so this, this would also apply to people that just consistently are ridiculous people that are consistently causing trouble.

And we need to find that moral principle here, right? That moral principle here. And the moral principle is that there are some people that just need to be wiped off the face of the earth to meet their creator, creator, and be judged immediately.

And petty criminals that consistently cause crime and they just refuse to stop and they just keep doing it, keep doing it, keep doing it.

They're one of those people. So, and here's how I think this should apply today. Because if what you're seeing and when you, when you have, have you seen the videos of some thug, some hoodlum, some, some animal that just does a crime and then you get the story and it's like, this person has been arrested like 20 times.

And then he does something awful. Like you remember that video of that black dude who was walking by the old late little old lady and then just pushed her in the head, knocked her over, almost killed her by, by, by her hitting the what was it?

The the fire extinguisher. That guy had been arrested like 20 times or something like that.

At a certain point, there has to be a point where it's like, okay, that's it for you. You're, you're not fit for a civilized society.

You will not stop doing what you're doing. It is time to meet your creator. That person should have been executed before it got to the point of him pushing that little old granny down.

That person should be off the face of the earth. There should be no consistent criminals that just won't stop what they're doing after they get caught a number of times.

They're still just on the street and stuff like that. That shouldn't exist in our culture. We need to end those people, end those people.

And that's how you love your neighbor, by the way, because you don't allow someone who's going to hurt their neighbors.

And you know it because every time they get caught, they, they still do it. They don't ever, they don't listen to anybody and listen to their parents even.

And that's the, that's the whole idea of bringing their parents into this because it's like, look, if you won't listen to your parents, you won't listen to anybody.

That's the point. Like your parents, you should be listening to them. And so, okay. You know, so -and -so neighbor wants you to stop doing something.

Okay. I can understand potentially not listening to him. Ah, the elders of the city. Eh, you know, whatever.

But your parents even, like, this is like the last straw in this passage. It's like your parents are the people you should listen to and you don't listen to them.

Some people again are just not fit to live any longer. This is a principle, a moral principle that applies today.

Like we can't just live, we can't just strive with petty criminals forever because petty criminals have a tendency of continuing to cause more and more and more extreme levels of chaos.

And the reason that I think we need to bring this back is if what you're seeing in the streets today of people looting and, and, uh, they get, they get arrested and then released instantly.

And they're back on the streets looting and burning things down and starting forest fires and killing police officers, killing random people, stuff like that.

Like these people, they need to be given a few chances, of course, because not every, not the first offense is a death penalty offense, but eventually if they're just like,

I'm going to cause mayhem, no matter what God's law says, there are certain people like that that need to be put to death.

And we need to bring this back. This is, this is something that I'm not shy about. I'm not ashamed of. We need to bring this principle back because like murderers, like rapists, like other degenerates, because the

Bible outlines a variety of degenerates that need to be given the death penalty for their offenses. The incorrigible son, the person who's rebelling against even their own parents, like the most unnatural form of rebellion that you could possibly imagine.

That's what the Bible is bringing this, uh, this up here. That's why it's talking about his parents, right? It's not talking about your toddler that won't eat his broccoli.

It's talking about someone who's so twisted and so rebellious that it's unfathomable that they would even disregard their own parents, the ones that gave them life.

That person is not fit to live in a civilized society. And so they should be ended. There's nothing, there's nothing shameful about that.

This is a beautiful and good and righteous law that if we apply today, things would be a lot better than they are.

It's just that simple. It's just that simple. I'm not ashamed of it. And you shouldn't be either. Christ wasn't ashamed of it.

And so you shouldn't be ashamed of it. That's the reality here. So, um, if you don't want to sound like, uh, and again, remember nothing about what

I just said requires you to be a theonomist. I'm not saying you need to take this law word for word and put it in our constitution.

There's a moral principle here though, that I think we can figure out how best to apply it in our culture today.

And so if you don't want to sound like a, you know, king heathen on YouTube or some other idiot on YouTube, um, don't follow

Jonathan Lehman's practice of when you're backed up into a corner of a law you don't like, a law that you don't think we should disciple the nations with, um, then throw out the most ridiculous sounding law that from like the way of an atheist would.

Um, there's other laws that are used in this way, but this is a very popular one. Don't be like Jonathan Lehman. This is, I know he's a leader.

I know he's respected, but he's just dead wrong on this. I don't know why he did this. I don't know why, but, um, don't follow him in it because, because if we're going to disciple the nations, we're going to be great commission

Christians. We need to find the moral principles of the law that Jesus loved the law that Jesus followed and the law that Jesus taught.