Day 200: Unequal Yoking 1

July 19
Today's Connected Passages: 

• Leviticus 19:19; 19:27-28; 20:22-26; 
• Deuteronomy 7:1-5; 13:1-18; 20:10-18; 22:9-12; 
• Judges 2:1-5; 3:1-8; 
• Ezra 9:1-10:17 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to the Canon Connected, where we read the connections, see the connections, and study the connections of the Bible. Greetings, I welcome you to day number 200 of the Canon Connected. And if you've been with us for any length of time, you're aware by now that I'm a teeny bit obsessed with numbers. I I see the world quite uh well through numbers, through data, statistics, especially when it comes to sports and otherwise. And so while 200 doesn't really mean anything, it's still one of those numbers that makes me realize, you know, just as we learned way back when we studied the 12 tribes of Israel and how heaven given to us in, you know, numerical dimensions is a perfect cube, and how God can even use numbers to teach us things like wholeness and completeness, which heaven is going to be, in contrast to the brokenness and the chaos of this world. Um, so much that we experience, you know, feels uh unfulfilled. It feels like there's something missing because we don't have um the wholeness and completeness that we're going to experience in heaven one day, and it's good for us to feel that way. But numbers are something God has used, you know, to communicate those kind of things, and they've been helpful to me. And that's one reason why I like them, I think. Uh but some of it's just personality quirks, I'm sure. So 200 means if you've been doing this since the beginning, then you've been doing this a long time. And I'm very thankful for that, as I always say. And I always do add, too, if you're newer to the plan, um, then we uh we are very glad you're here, and I hope you keep up with it. But today we are starting a new series of of just two days, and truthfully, I didn't plan it well enough ahead of time, and maybe next year we'll we'll tweak this kind of thing and put it with the clean and unclean things of the Bible that we talked about from the Old Testament not that long ago before we studied you know blasphemy and we studied confrontation, because this isn't an expressly you know clean and unclean thing of what we're gonna talk about these next two days, um, but it definitely could have been taught on the heels of that because we're gonna talk about what the Bible calls being unequally yoked. And if the wording of that or the semantics of that is confusing to you, and I know with a lot of my audience it's not because you were raised in churches like I was, where this thing was taught a lot and taught quite well, and the importance of it truly cannot be overstated. But if that phrase is confusing, we're gonna talk about it a lot over the next couple of days. But the basic idea in a nutshell is that when you're a Christian, you cannot have intimate relationships with uh non-Christians to the extent where it begins to lead you away from the one true God. Okay, and I say it that way because I do think there are times, you know, in all sorts of ways and cultures, you know, that Christians need to befriend non-Christians in order to try to influence them to follow Jesus. But there are so many warnings in the Bible about being unequally yoked, again, having these deep relationships with lost people and unsaved people, um, that we we've got to take them seriously and we've gone, we we've got to teach on them. And so the big one that we often talk about, at least when I say we, I'm speaking specifically to the kind of you know Christian subculture that I grew up in, which is a very good one, by the way. This is not a knock on it at all. But this was definitely taught to us as far as dating and marriage, and that definitely is a huge application of it. But as we'll see today and tomorrow, it's way beyond that as well. The idea that we're not supposed to be unequally yoked with any unbeliever, again, is very much the idea that we have to influence the world as salt and light to bring them to God, not be in relationship with the world and friendship with the world where it draws us away from God. And you can pretty well tell the difference, I think. We start with actually in the law, okay, and this is interesting because there are a lot of laws that we've talked about many times, not just with the Ten Commandments and that special episode I did with Chris, where we talked about why some laws are eternal and some of them were temporary. But we we can see from the law that things are again for their culture and their time, they're not the kind of same thing that we that we practice or we would we even can, you know, think is is normal or or or or or regular. And one of those is the kind of things you read in Leviticus 19. You must obey all my decrees. Do not make two different kinds of animals, do not plant your see your field with two different kinds of seed, do not wear clothing woven from two different kinds of thread. And I'll stop there before I get to the other part of Leviticus. That's just Leviticus 19, 19. And I think again, the idea, I don't I really have much doubt about this, that he's saying all of this as a you know visual illustration, a physical reminder of a spiritual reality. Okay, and even with unequal yoking, that's also a physical reality, especially when it comes to marriage. But the idea here is that God's giving them many different ways to see through their law how he didn't want them to intermingle and intermix with the pagan nations around them. He definitely didn't want them to marry, we're gonna see that. But even in any sort of friendship that would cause them to want to worship other nations' gods. That's that's a huge part of it. So he gives them very practical reminders built into their law. So the daily, trivial, menial, mundane part of their law, the things they had to know for every single, you know, you know, living every single day, daily life, we would say. Um, or just those reminders. He also says in Leviticus 19, do not trim off the hair of your temples or trim your beards, do not cut your bodies for the dead, and do not mark your skin with tattoos. I am the Lord. Now, without getting off on a big side trail about tattoos, I think it's pretty clear, and I definitely don't have much doubt about this either, that him talking about tattoos in this verse, Moses, God truly, Moses writing on his behalf, is not talking about tattoos in the same way we have today, meaning I don't think tattoos are sinful. Okay. I think he's trying what he's telling them to do is again, as we've said many, many times, is even in the way they presented their physical bodies, he wanted them to be different. And that was true with circumcision, but it's also true with how they cut their hair and how they marked up their body. Because the pagan nations, presumably in the ancient Near East, often put things on their bodies to communicate things about their God. And so to me, honestly, if I were really going to apply this in the 21st century in the United States of America, I think it would be more applicable to instead of telling people not to get tattoos, because you can get tattoos to communicate your faith or, you know, anything, your family or whatever, things that aren't sinful at all, and are even the exact opposite. But if I were to wear a shirt that says, as a Christian, I wear a shirt that says, I am strong, I am enough, listen to your heart, that sort of thing, that to me would be more applicable to this, because those kind of phrases are what the world says, and they're very opposite the gospel, in my opinion, because in the gospel, Jesus is enough, you know, Jesus is everything. Jesus, I am strong only in my weakness, because God is strong through me, and I listen to the gospel, not to my heart, because my heart is deceitful above all things. So if I want to be different than the world, I'm not going to wear shirts like that or parrot those kind of philosophies on Facebook or whatever, you know. That to me would be a very, you know, a more you know applicable way to understand this in 2026, when this reading plan was new. Leviticus 20, you know, says some of the same things. You know, it gives the more the the broad, the broad view of this, you know, do not intermingle with the customs of the people I'm driving out before you. What they do is shameful. You must be holy, for I am holy. I have set you apart for all the people to be my very own. They were supposed to be different and distinct, and they couldn't do that if they adopted the practices of foreign and and pagan religions. Um Deuteronomy 7 says the same thing. Uh he's going to clear all the nations ahead of you, Hittites, Gergeshites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hevites, Yebusites. And he says, Um, make no treaties with them, show them no mercy. You must not intermarry with them, do not be unequally yoked. The actual phrase that I'm thinking of from 2 Corinthians is in tomorrow's readings, but that's what the heart of this is, the same thing Paul is teaching there. Connected readings. That's the idea. Deuteronomy 13, very much the same thing. And he God has to remind him of this frequently, you know, that you see this so much in the Bible when God is giving a law or giving instructions, whether it's building, you know, the tabernacle or whether it's, you know, giving you know laws about the sojourner and the alien, or whatever it is, most of it is repeated because the people needed that sort of repetition. So Deuteronomy 13, Deuteronomy 20, Deuteronomy 22, all very similar, even to the time of the judges. Um, he says in Judges chapter two, um, why did why did you disobey my commands? So now I will declare that I will no longer drive out the people living in your land, they'll be thorn in your sides, and their gods will be a constant temptation to you because they wouldn't listen. You know, God's basically giving them over to the temptation to worship other gods. Um, for you for your part, you were did not make any covenants with the people living in this land. That's equally yoked when you make covenants with the people like Jonathan and David. They were equally yoked in friendship because they had the share of the same faith. But he's God's reaming these people out in judges because they had been making covenants with the people living in the land who were not worshippers of the one true God, hence sin, hence unequally yoked. In deep, intimate relationship with somebody who is going to lead you astray. Judges three says a very similar thing. And then Ezekiel nine is a very interesting one. We've already studied this one at least once, I think twice in the reading plan already this year, at least part of this story, because there is divorce, so we studied it then. We also studied this, you know, when we were at least rate allusion to it, a reference to it, when we talk about how, you know, um Ezra was just so, you know, uh in grief and in mourning over the people's sin. That's actually coming up very soon in the reading plan, a deeper study of just that part of it in chapter nine. But we talk about it here because again, they had been kicked out of their land for idolatry, which came from, again, the idea that they were worshiping, you know, other other gods because uh in part they had been intermarrying with the people around them. And this is what had led them, just like Solomon, we're gonna see that tomorrow. You know, Solomon's gonna, you know, Solomon's sin is gonna make an appearance in one of the readings tomorrow. But the idea is God kicked them out for idolatry, for rebellion, and a lot of it stemmed from intermarrying, and so God graciously allows them to come back after 70 years, and what do they do? Almost immediately start doing the very same things that make God angry, and may God have to judge them so severely. Their ancestors, you know, 70 years prior were doing this, and so Ezra is just heartbroken. He is his heart is wrenched, his soul is wrenched, and he has a he's like utterly appalled, and that is a word that it communicates deep grief, deep mourning, deep emotion because of what the people are doing. And uh and so he confesses to God for them, but then they have this mass divorce because they were not supposed to be married again to the people of the Canaanites, Hittites, Pharizzites, Jebusites, Emmonites, Moabites, Egyptians, and Amorites, and they were. And they would lead them astray because you cannot be unequally yoked in a relationship that's gonna do that to you. And of course, again, I understand, you know, you can have close friendships with lost people, and there is a sense in which Christians can go to the other extreme on this and insulate themselves and isolate themselves and and uh and absolutely not will have any impact on the lost word around them, you know. But you you have to use wisdom. This is why we have the Holy Spirit now. Well, and less law, more spirit, because the Holy Spirit's gonna guide us into how to be salt and light without compromising. And so again, the how this looks, definitely I think it's true of marriage. I'm not gonna, you know, balk at that one at all. I am a hundred percent convinced Christians should never marry non-Christians, okay? And if you are in that kind of relationship and you've and you and you've repented of it in it to whatever extent you can, my advice is very simply based on First Peter, you know, not from my own, you know, knowledge or wisdom or experience, is just to keep living for Christ in front of your lost spouse and and hopefully win them that way and pray for them. But um we're not supposed to be unequally yoked in that relationship. But in other relationships, I would say I would probably want to see it more on a case-by-case basis. And you have to know how strong the Christian is versus the influence the all-person is going to have on them and that all that sort of thing. So not a lot of hard and fast rules, but there's definitely a huge word of caution here for this. Anytime you're gonna get in any sort of meaningful relationship with somebody who is, you know, uh not a worshiper of the Christian God. So we'll see more of this tomorrow, and I think the the New Testament as well is gonna shed a lot of light on this and help guide us into what you know specific applications there could be in our lives. So I hope you'll come back and we'll be with us again tomorrow as we continue to keep on being unequally yoked. Read the connections, see the connections, and study the connections. Thank you.