I wonder how many women reading this post are wearing some form of pants? Actually, what I should do is ask, how many of you are wearing clothing that is traditionally women’s clothing? Some form of dress or skirt?
All of you wearing shorts, pants or jeans, why did you choose something so detestable? You think I’m joking? You’re not sure if I’m being serious.
In Deuteronomy 22:5 we read very clearly that “a woman must not wear men’s clothing.” Now it also says “nor a man wear women’s clothing.” So men, are there any of you wearing women’s clothing? If so, it seems that would be detestable too.
If this is true, then why do so many Christian women disobey this teaching?
Before we answer that, let’s keep reading more laws in Deuteronomy 22.
Look at verses 6-7, and God seems to have an interest in fallen bird’s nests. If a nest falls from a tree, he says, you can take the young birds as your possession, but not the mother. What could that be about?
And then in verse 8, he jumps to parapets around roofs. You must build parapets on your roofs. Reader, do you have a parapet on your roof? No…Neither do I. Are we disobeying God?
Then in verse 9, God commands them against planting two kinds of seed in one vineyard…not good…that will defile the fruit. Again, what is God thinking here?
How about verse 10, any of you ever had to do plowing with animals? Maybe some? Well, take note…don’t plow with an ox and donkey yoked together.
Verse 11, now check the tags on your clothing…any made with wool and linen mixed together? Or in verse 12, any of you have tassels on the four corners of your cloak? No??? Why not?
So many rules, and such a wide variety!
What do we do with these laws? We’ve been studying the biblical book of Deuteronomy at Faith Church, and we’ve come to a section of the book, basically chapters 21-25, that lists a whole bunch of seemingly random laws.
If you’ve read this blog for a year or two, you have most likely heard me talk about one of my seminary professors, Dr. Dave Dorsey. He was a beloved, long-time professor of Old Testament at Evangelical Seminary in Myerstown, PA. There were many things I learned from Dr. Dorsey, but perhaps the one that I go back to time and time again is related to these laws in the Old Testament. If I were to guess, this comes every couple months at Faith Church somehow or another. What I am referring to is Dr. Dorsey’s four-step method for describing how Christians can interact with the Old Testament Law.
There are plenty of these of these laws that come up in our day and age, even though we are 3000+ years removed from them. Above I listed some bizarre laws, but there are also familiar ones too, and we Christians can have strong opinions about them.
Jump over to chapter 23:19-20 – charge no interest. We hear Christians talk about this as if Christians are bound to follow this. I’ve encountered people appalled that Christians would charge interest of their brothers or sisters in Christ in their church family, as if the person who is charging interest is some greedy, abominable sinner. Are they?
But what about the Sabbath? The idea of not working on the Sabbath. That’s in the OT law. Shouldn’t we keep the Sabbath?
What about tithing? The idea of giving ten percent.
What about tattoos? What about eating shellfish? Pork? On and on we could go. Are Christians supposed to follows these laws? Why do Christians follow some and not others? What we are going to see in this series of post is that Dr. Dorsey’s four-part method helps Christians understand every law in the Old Testament. Check back in for part 2 where we’ll get started!
Let's Talk About Sunday 
The funny thing is, women did not wear pants in the time of the OT. Men didn’t either.
Right! We talked about this very thing at our sermon discussion class this past Sunday after worship. Actually what both men and women wore resembles contemporary women’s clothing! Fascinating how things have changed. And yet, there were enough distinctions between mens and womens clothing even then for this law to make sense at that time.