If I had known you 10 years ago and said:
1 I think we should execute people who commit homosexual acts
I don't think the instruction for a man lying with a man for sex to be excecuted demonstrated no love whatsoever for the homosexual.
You have to remember that there were also the various offerings which the Hebrews could avail themselves of.
The consecration offering.
The sin offering.
The trespass offering.
The peace offering.
The existence of these offerings suggest to me that any repentant sinner among the Hebrews could go to the priests for a show of the prescribed atoning sacrifice on his behalf.
I find it hard to believe that some men who had homosexual sex did not afterwards decide to make things right between them and Yahweh with one of the offerings.
Impossibility of repentance is not written into the Levitical laws.
2 I ordered the stoning of someone for carrying sticks on a sabbath
Sometimes a person was made an example of.
Each and every person who broke the Sabbath could not have possibly been executed.
This was one of points of Jesus when He came. That is that no one could live up to the law. Did not the pious Pharisee even go out and untie his ass on the Sabbath.
The main purpose of the Law of Moses was to EXPOSE rather that to keep.
The Law was given to expose fallen man's desparate need for grace on a atoning world wide sacrifice in the Son of God, for the sins of the world.
3 Come round to tea and my slaves will cook you up a nice meal, or I will beat them, but not enough that they die within 2 days
I will not expound on the passage I think you may be aluding to. But in brief the passage teaches the PERSONHOOD of the slave RATHER than the mere property of the slave.
It was an improvement of the institution of slavery which God knew any ANE culture was going to practice.
By the way, can you find me an writing so ancient as the biblical book of
Job which affirms that the servant of a man is on equal standing before God with the master ?
The oldest book in the Bible
Job shows this patriarch's concern for the just treatment of his slaves -
Job 31:13-15 - "If I have despised the cause of my servant or my maid when they contended with me, What then will I do when God rises up? And when He visits me, what will I answer Him?
Did not He who made me in the womb make him? And was it not One who fashioned us in the womb? "
Can you produce a ANE document of this antiquity with an equal expression of fear before God at mistreating a servant ? If so your reply will contain that quotation, I hope. This writing goes back to about 2000 BC approximately 500 years before Moses wrote the Pentateuch.
Tired of reading yet anyone ?
Hang in there.
and then you met me today and I said
1 Treat homosexuals with compassion
I don't think the treating of any sinner with compassion has changed in TEACHING in the New Testament.
Look at Paul's writing. He lists homosexuality in the same breath with other sins. He does not indicate it as more or less and error but as run of the mill.
The strong implication is that if we realize the sinner's struggle with one kind of sin they also could struggle with another. Therefore they all need the Savior. Therefore they all need a loving presentation of the Gospel of Christ.
Too much reading for you yet? Press me on this point and I'll write more to demonstrate the point.
Would you say I had changed, or would you just say that your relationship with me has changed?
If you put the question to me, I would say that the fruits of the Holy Spirit are today what they were 2000 years ago.
And the bible says
"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." (Hebrews 13:8)
From the time He rose from the dead, Jesus is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.
I think the Apostle Paul would have called the Westboro Baptist Church a group of fleshly and immature disciples 2000 years ago. And in 2013 such hatred for sinners under the banner of Christ is still a display of fleshly spiritual immaturity.
Jesus hasn't changed. Is it like the New Testament didn't give us disciples a heads up long ago?
"But know this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be ... having the form of godliness, though denying its power; from these also turn away." (See 2 Tim. 3:1-5)
Read the whole section. It includes religious people who will have a FACADE of devotion but deny the proper spiritual power associated with godly living.