40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Episode 159 (Deuteronomy 4:9-4:31)

Episode Date: April 4, 2019

We are told to fear God. Does that mean we are to live our whole life being afraid of God or is something else going on? What is the difference between listening to God and obeying Him? What is the connection between the fire at Sinai and the New Testament Pentecost? What prophecy is given in the prohibition to make images of God? Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network CHF City Events Upside-Down Spirituality Book Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 podcast network podcast. that means you can go to 1517.org slash podcast check out all the other podcasts that we got over there for you they're all sitting there waiting for you to sample them waiting for you to give them all a listen so you can discern which ones you want to fill your commute you're washing the dishes you're mowing the lawn mowing the lawn season's coming up you're probably gonna need podcasts to listen to while you mow the lawn you got a bunch of them over there just for you while you're doing that yard work while you got that you got that list of of spring cleaning and

home improvements to do. What you need is a little Christ for you in your ears so you don't get too frustrated. We got you covered over there, so check them all out. Also, Chad, coming up by the time this releases, I mean like literally in a week, me and you are going to be in Des Moines, Iowa at Grandview University talking about the hard sayings of Jesus. Yeah, we're ready to talk about plucking out eyeballs. That's what Chad's going to do. He's going to talk about why does Jesus say something like that? Why would he tell you to go do something like that? Scott Keith's going to talk about what Jesus means when he says, I came to bring a sword as opposed to peace. Well, that doesn't sound like the Jesus that me and Chad talk about at all. Maybe he's going to say something

heretical. You never know. We'll see what his interpretation of that is. You know, I was actually originally assigned myself talking about giving to Caesar what is Caesar. People said that that's not confusing and not that hard either. And then I got a flood of emails saying, how did you leave off Jesus calling a woman a dog on this hard sayings thing? So I said, fine. And I changed my own topic and said, I'll talk about Jesus calling a woman a dog. We'll talk about that. So I'm going to talk about it, all of that. Plus we're going to talk about the original sin, which I know you're all terrified of. We're going to talk about eat my flesh, drink my blood, turn the other cheek, all of those kinds of things. We're going to talk about it. You can

go over to christholdfast.org, go and click on the City Events page, and you can register for free. And we would like you to register because we'd like to know how many people are coming. That is April 13th, just over a week away from when this releases. So if you're anywhere around the Des Moines area, maybe you're in Ames, maybe you're in, I don't know what else is around there, but wherever it is, somewhere else in Iowa. If you're in the Midwest, just come. Yeah, if you're in the Midwest, just do it.

I mean, it's not like you live in Texas. All of Iowa can come. And also, if you're real far up in the Midwest, you have Minnesota. Even though I know there's people in Minnesota registered, check this out, for both of these events. So I know it's not that far. Register for both.

But we will be in Minnesota, in Minneapolis, May the 4th. We will be talking about the resurrection and the life afterwards. I'll be there, Jared C. Wilson, Eric Sorensen, a bunch of other people. You can go and register for that for free as well, May the 4th. Go do it.

chad today when we're recording this is a big day now when it comes out you know it will it will this have already happened but what today is is the release of upside down spirituality the nine essential failures of what of a faithful life of a faithful life there it is i almost got the title and the subtitle of that right without looking at it that's pretty good it's not bad it's not bad yeah today is the day april 2nd uh it uh well actually people who pre-ordered it probably well if they ordered kindle of course it's downloaded right now it's it's there for them if uh they pre-ordered it uh in in book form it's probably gonna arrive today tomorrow i think i shipped yesterday in fact i ordered a bunch of copies for my parents they they pass them out to

their friends and i got an email saying that uh they had shipped yesterday so it's uh it's gonna to be here and if you're one of those people that doesn't do that pre-order thing for whatever reason well now's the time to go get it get that you got that amazon prime click buy it two days later at your door is later is at your doorstep open it up check it out let me know what you think yeah if uh if if if you read it and you're the kind that writes reviews drop a line over at amazon i mean that stuff that helps a lot it doesn't have to be you don't have to write like a 5,000 word essay. Just put a line or two there

and it'll help get the word out about the book. This is the thing that people don't understand about reviews. It's actually the number one thing that you can do to help somebody out. If you've read any of Chad's books, if you've read Scandalous Stories,

if you've read The Sinner Saint Devotional, it really does help. If you go over to Amazon, you click that five star, even if you just say something as simple as, this book is excellent. that that goes a long way so if those are if you've enjoyed you know your god is too glorious or night driving or you're gonna get this book and read it or you've read any of the stuff i've written uh yeah amazon reviews go a long way it really increases your your visibility and that

actually goes for podcasts as well on itunes itunes is the primary podcast hoster and uh yeah if you've never if you've listened to this podcast but never went over to itunes and rated it uh and reviewed it that would be that would be wonderful and really help us out so get over there to amazon order upside down spirituality by chad bird uh you need you probably don't want to be the one that just hasn't read it you don't want to miss out you don't want to know the ways in which you need to fail to be faithful you don't want to be right it's this information that is crucial you need to know this all right chad where are we at in that uh in that moses sermon that we call of Deuteronomy? We started chapter four last time. I think we made it through the first eight

verses. So we're going to pick up with verse nine and continue plowing through the rest of the chapter. This chapter is really packed. I was looking back over the material. I had actually prepared all of chapter four last time. And of course, we didn't get through about a third of it, I guess. But part of the reason that it takes us a little bit longer is because this chapter is in some ways a summary of all the Deuteronomy. I mean, it certainly is the preamble to every single thing that's coming after it. So in looking over this chapter, in a sense, we're looking over the whole book because there's so much that is compressed into these 40 or 50 verses.

So we're going to jump right back into it. And if I think we will, actually, if we finish this chapter, Then we're going to jump into the next chapter, which is like Exodus 20 in that it is re-giving, re-telling the Ten Commandments, but it also has some distinctives, which will be interesting to discuss as well. So back to chapter 4, beginning there at verse 9, we hear a lot in this chapter about the necessity of the Israelites to give heed, to listen, to be careful, to be diligent. All those kinds of verbs that call people to really paying attention to what Moses is saying, because not only is what he's saying crucial and important, but it gets to the very heart of what makes Israel Israel. And that is God's selection of them, God's choice of them, and the various ways by which he has blessed them as his people. Verse 9 starts out, Give heed to yourself, keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things which your eyes have seen,

and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life, and make them known to your sons and grandsons. So one of the things that we hear in this verse, as well as in some of the other verses in the chapter, and various places all throughout Deuteronomy is basically you don't keep this stuff to yourself. You teach your sons, you teach your grandsons, you're passing this on to the Israelite generations to come. So know them, keep them diligently, and pass them on to your children.

So that's verse 9. Verse 10 is taking us all the way back to Mount Sinai or to Mount Horeb. He says, Remember the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, when the Lord said to me, assemble the people to me that I may let them hear my words so they may learn to fear me all the days they live on the earth and that they may teach them to their children. There's that teach your children thing again. Now, I think it's significant that he says,

I want you to learn these words, hear these words so that the Israelites may learn to fear me. I had an email from a relative of mine just this past week who was asking me actually about what it means when the Bible talks about the fear of God or the necessity of fearing him or that his words are given so that we may fear him. This relative of mine has a PhD in psychology. And so, of course, he deals with people who have all sorts of problems, and some of those problems are related to anxiety or fear. So he's asking just a clarification about what it means when the Bible calls us to fear Him. And he asked me, actually, if I'd written anything about that, and I gave him a short explanation back. I mean, I think it is something that people struggle with. We're

supposed to just live our lives afraid of God? What does it mean when we're supposed to fear Him? And it's one of those words that has a lot of different connotations. Like every word, context matters. Words can't be taken out of context, because every word typically has a multiplicity of meanings, and that meaning is determined by the way in which it's used, so the context in which it's used. And fear is certainly one of those words, one of those biblical words. So yeah, there's plenty of times in the Bible when the fear that's talked about has to do with what we would call being afraid. Afraid of doing something wrong, afraid of getting caught, afraid of getting punished, afraid of whatever it might be. That kind of fear is

certainly part of the meaning of this, but it has a range of other meanings as well. One of those more like what we would think of as reverence or awe. So when you fear God, it's more or less the equivalent of what we might call worship. So fear me, that is worship me, that is stand in awe of me, reverence me. In other words, act toward me and speak of me in such a way that you understand that I'm God and you're not, that I'm your creator, that I'm your redeemer, that I'm the one who is the gift giver to you and to your children. So that's another aspect of it. And there's even cases where fear is used as basically a synonym for a name of God.

So there's a passage, I believe it's in Genesis, where there's a reference made to the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the fear of Jacob, something like that. Anyway, it's a reference to the patriarchs. And so God's name is actually, instead of it saying God, it says fear. So in that case, fear is basically just, it's just another name for God. I mean, those are the three ways. Sometimes it's being afraid, sometimes reverencing or standing in awe, and sometimes it's just simply a name for God.

So there's lots of different ways in which fear is used. This particular context where Israel is to hear the word so they may learn to fear me all the days of their life, I think it fits really well with the stand in awe of me, worship me, reverence me, understand who you are in reference to your relationship with me as creator to creature, as redeemer to redeemed. I don't know if you have anything else you'd add to that. Well, first of all, it makes sense that that would be what Jacob, it'd be the fear of Jacob, considering he's the biggest dirtbag in all of scripture.

So it makes sense that that is the person he's terrified of. I am more and more convinced that Jacob is the worst. But in addition to that, yeah, I think that you can understand this, and this is very much bringing it down to a human level. So these things are not the same, but it is helpful that you've been, you've had this sort of fear before in your life probably to a lesser degree. I'll give you an example. I do quite a bit of public speaking. I've got up and I've preached hundreds and hundreds of sermons, and getting up and talking in front of people is not something I'm nervous about anymore.

I don't get nervous. I'm not that worried about it. However, two years ago at Here We Still Stand, I was nervous, and it wasn't because I looked out at that crowd of people and Chad was sitting there. That didn't bother me. It wasn't because Scott Keith or Rod Rosenblatt or anyone else was sitting there. is because one person was sitting right down the middle dead center in that room and it was steven paulson was sitting there at attention very much listening to what i was saying and that terrified

me and the reason that terrified me is because i don't know him as well as i know these other people and because he's been a big influence on me and i have a lot of respect for him and like sort of my worst nightmare would be to have him think that this guy's terrible this guy doesn't know what he's talking about right so was i afraid in the sense i thought he was like gonna go up there and rip the microphone out of my hand and correct me no did i think he was going to be mean to me no it was just that it's someone i respected and so i had this well i don't want to have them think ill of me because i i want their approval right um and so like i had what i would call a legitimate fear but not a fear as in something bad and terrible is going to happen to me but

just in this uh wow for the first time in a long time a little nervous about this so it's not a great example but like i think everyone's been in a situation like that where they're afraid but they're not they wouldn't necessarily call it it's not the same as we typically understand fear like Like I'm afraid of like, you know, walking through the woods at night or something. That's a perfect analogy. I think another analogy that works along the same lines is, you know, if we really love someone, say our spouse or our children, somebody who's close to us, then our greatest fear would be to do something which in some way reflects badly upon our relationship with them. So there's certain things that I would be terrified or at least afraid of doing because it would hurt my children or because it would hurt my wife. And so there's this connection between love and fear as well.

So that which we intensely love, we're also afraid of hurting that person that we love. And so we conduct ourselves in such a way that fear is given expression in our love for the other person. So there's a lot of different ways to understand fear. And probably toward the very bottom of these is this idea of just simply being afraid for punishment or something like that. I mean, certainly that's part of the biblical notion of fear, but it's only one small portion of it. There's a whole lot of other aspects to fear besides just being afraid that God is going to smack you in the head with some kind of divine sledgehammer. It's much more diverse, much fuller meaning of fear than what sometimes we get the impression of. You know, one of the other things that you were pointing out was just take heed to the words that God is saying.

And one thing that's interesting is that largely Israel will be a sort of oral tradition. So this will be a very big thing where they teach people these things and then they recite them and then they teach them and hand them down and stuff. I mean, the Ten Commandments are written and these books are written, but it becomes much more an oral thing. And this makes sense because what God is about is the Word. This is how he creates things. Jesus is the Word made flesh, and what he wants us to do, if you want to know what it is that God is really after from you, it is this sort of listening and this taking heed.

So much so, now you can correct me if I'm wrong here, Jack, because I'm not the Hebrew expert, but so much so that there's not even actually a Hebrew word that we would appropriately translate obey. Correct. Instead, what we would translate as obey is a word that would be more like listen intently or to take heed or listen from the heart. It is actually not an English word that we can translate in reverse for this word. And so I think that that can kind of change, especially in the Old Testament when you're talking about the commandments and this kind of stuff.

This could change your perception of what it is that God is after from you, that this word doesn't even exist. Because what you would think of, like, what is God after for you, most people would probably say obedience. Well, that's not really it, because it's not even a word. That's not even a word that's in the Old Testament. Typically, when we see the English word obey in a Bible translation, at least in the Old Testament, what we're reading is one word in English is a phrase in Hebrew, and it's to listen to the voice of. Yes. So to listen to the voice of is typically translated as obey.

And I don't know why we didn't simply, maybe it was to save words, you know, instead of having multiple words, we just have one word. But I love the Hebrew, the literal Hebrew a lot better. So when we listen to the voice of someone, then there's a lot of things going on here. First of all, they're speaking and we're listening. That's the one thing. and we're listening so as to let these words have their have their way with us and we're also acknowledging that the speaker of those words is one that we fear one that we uh want to strive to

to listen to to follow to to give heed to so it's it's in other words it's not simply kind of naked obedience that is being indicated by that phrase there's a whole lot more that's uh that's part of that and an essential part of that is that god is a is a word kind of god he is the kind of god who speaks and so we are a people who who listen so yeah it's i think it does add a much richer and deeper dimension to to our understanding of what it means for god to speak to us for us to listen to him than simply that one word obey which carries carries kind of just stark legalistic connotations that the Hebrew does not convey. Yeah, I think that one of the reasons we translated that, too,

is we just don't know what to do with a language where obedience isn't in the vocabulary, where what God really is after is your ear. That's just weird to us. This all makes sense in the sense that God is sending the word to us always. I mean, ultimately, in the person of Christ. This is why he says, when Jesus does appear, he says, this is my son with whom I am well, please listen to him. This is what God is always after.

He's after your ear. And this is why, you know, in the Greek, then later on, we'll hear like keep my commandments and we think do, but that keep doesn't mean do. So that's not what it means. It means to keep them, to hold on to them, to know them, to listen, like to not forget them, right? This is what God is always after, that you remember his word, that you constantly hear his word, that you listen to him.

And that is different. It's different when you think about famous texts like to obey is better than sacrifice, and you realize that what is really being said is that to listen to me is better than making sacrifices. To me, this is what God is after. He's after your ear, not necessarily some kind of rote, pharisaical, legalistic, standard obedience. And Mary is kind of the model for us here because we have that phrase a couple times in the Gospels about how she treasured up all these things in her heart. And I think the same references made in the Old Testament is when Jacob ponders the things that Joseph dreams about. So it's this idea of letting them sit in your heart, hearing and letting that word have its way with you, dwelling in it, abiding in it, keeping it in the sense you're hanging on to those words. So, yeah, it's a very different conception of what it means to, quote, obey when you understand it as letting that divine, powerful, spirit-filled word enter your ear and take up residence in your heart so that it does what God has sent it to do.

Yeah, and that might sound like a huge aside, like we just did a bunny trail, but I actually think that that is important for this book in particular, because what Moses is doing right now is trying to reiterate and recount all these things. He's setting forth a tradition here of like, don't forget these things, remember these things, listen to the voice of God. The way you're going to do this, you're going to teach your children, they're going to teach their children, and this is how this is going to work. In some sense, the whole book of Deuteronomy is like him trying to start this. And actually, that's a good segue to what comes after that, because that is precisely the point that Moses is about to make in the verses that follow this, because he says in 10 and following, he says, I want you to remember what happened when we were there at Horeb or Sinai. same place again uh god says you know we we gather together i said these words you verse 11 you came near you stood at the mountain and the mountain have that we have this real graphic description that the mountain burned with fire to the very heart of the heavens uh cloud and and thick gloom

so that it's this very intense picture of what happens during this theophanies during this god appearance in which the mountain you could kind of picture it as like one immense uh red hot burning coal that's kind of what the that's a picture i get anyway of what happens to mount sinai going all the way up into the heavens and you have you have the darkness but you have the light but you also have the darkness and this thick gloom that it talks about and then verse 12 it says in the midst of all this what happened well the lord spoke to you from the midst of the fire and you heard the sound of words but you saw no form only a voice so like i said this it fits with exactly what we're saying god is god is a voice kind of god yes there is a a theophany

yes there are all of these kind of pyrotechnics that are that are going on yes it's it's very visually impressive but they didn't see god they didn't see any kind of form any kind of visual form of god instead what they quote unquote saw was a voice and that voice was speaking from the midst of of the fire and it says goes on to say verse 11 that he declared to you his covenant which he commanded you to perform that is the ten commandments and he wrote them on two tablets of stone so in the in the uh in the visual appearance of god at sinai what that visual appearance consist of is creation itself being transformed, being, I guess you could compare it to the transfiguration of Jesus, just like his body was changed. So in this case, it's creation itself

that glows with the fire of God's presence. But unlike in the transfiguration where you're actually seeing God, in this particular case, in this, I guess, low-level transfiguration, What you're seeing is not God, but you're seeing the effects of God's presence. But the point of all this is not simply to visually frighten the people. The point of all this is that when they see all this, they open their ears and they hear God's voice speaking to them, His Ten Commandments, which I know we've talked about this before, but it was way back in Exodus, literally is the Ten Words. in the Bible, the phrase Ten Commandments never occurs, at least in the literal translation. It's

any time that the Old Testament talks about what we call the Ten Commandments, it refers to them as the Aseret HaDavrim, which is literally translated the Ten Words. Davar is a word, davarim is words, so these are the Ten Words that God gives to Israel. Yeah, and that goes, that's important because that does tie into, and this isn't me saying that there's nothing to do within the commandments, that would be ridiculous to say, but it's not primarily what they are, because a command is primarily about obeying, but a word is primarily about listening, and that is the case here as well. That's what God is—all the time you see, I mean, where some of God's main accusations is that you forget, and you forgot because you stopped listening. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, over and over, that's the criticism that's leveled against Israel. They forget, they don't listen, and that's why God keeps sending them prophet after prophet after prophet to speak His words over and over so that they listen,

that they open their ears and that his word is able to call them back to a remembrance of exactly the word that he's been speaking to them all along and what he has, what he's done for them. Yeah, this is the reason, the very reason that even today we say that it's important to go to church because you go there to what? To hear the word of God. This is why it, this is the primary reason you go, is so that you hear God's words, his word of law, his word of gospel, like that This is how we understand the entirety of theology is through this distinction that God speaks in two ways. But ultimately, it's about our theology says that God speaks. Yeah, God speaks. We listen. That kind of sums up the entirety of our life with God in many ways.

God is mouth and we are ear. He speaks and we listen. You know, I was thinking about this particular section about God speaking for the midst of the fire. and also thinking about the fact that they saw no visual form in connection with a couple of New Testament accounts that we're all familiar with. One of these is Pentecost. I think, I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure this is why at the original Pentecost, that is the New Testament original Pentecost,

that's why the Holy Spirit appeared in flames of fire. So you have the sound of the rushing wind, you have the flame to fire appearing on top of the heads of the disciples. This wasn't just to be some sort of impressive scene so that those who are around would be like, oh, wow, that's super cool. Look, there's fire on their heads. There's wind. And the reason this happened was because this was the fulfillment of the Old Testament Pentecost.

You know, remember, Pentecost was an Old Testament festival. It didn't begin in the book of Acts. uh that's why all the people there in jerusalem when it happened they were there for the old testament festival of pentecost and by the time we get to the new testament the old testament uh festival of pentecost had become for the israelites a commemoration of god's giving of the law so that's why everybody was in jerusalem for the celebration of pentecost was to remember what god did at mount sinai for the israelites how he spoke to them the ten the ten words the the Ten Commandments, and gave them the covenant. So Pentecost in the Old Testament,

at least by the time of Jesus, had become a festival that was centered around Sinai and the law. So when the flames of fire appear atop the heads of the disciples, and then they begin to speak in these other languages, well, it's pretty hard not to read that occurrence in light of what happened at the foot of Mount Sinai, in which you have fire and a voice. But that fire and that voice was speaking the Old Testament covenant, the ten words. Whereas at Pentecost in the book of Acts, we hear a much different message. We see fire, we hear words, and the voices that are speaking is the fulfillment of the law, that Christ is the end of the law, that God has come to establish a new covenant, and that Christ in his life, death, and sacrifice has fulfilled the law

for us by his act of obedience and by his suffering and death, providing atonement for for all of our breaking of the law so there's a there's a direct line that we can draw from what happened at sinai to what happened at pentecost in which you have the appearance of fire and then you have the sound of sound of the voice there's there's something completely there's something awesome about god telling the apostles to wait because he has an appointed time that he's going to send the holy spirit and that holy that appointed time is the celebration of the giving of the law and then that's when it shows up and he's like okay now go out there and preach the gospel there's something really cool about that because you might be like why did they wait like

why didn't this just go like i believe that god is actually waiting for that celebration the celebration of the law where he like then sends out the disciples and in all kinds of languages they go out and preach the end of the law that christ is the end of the law for righteousness and preach the gospel that's pretty pretty great yeah absolutely yeah i mean that he could have he could have sent uh he ascends 40 days after after easter and of course i mean in his uh divine freedom he could have sent the spirit on the 41st day the 42nd but instead he waits to exactly the day of pentecost to make this happen precisely for the reason that you uh that you noted there so i mean it's pretty it's pretty awesome in the way that uh was was just perfectly

uh as far as timetable goes perfectly situated to to bring the gospel into this very law-focused celebration and the other thing that uh i uh and this comes up actually multiple times in the chapter is that uh they saw no form this this is sort of the uh the underlying theme most of this chapter is first commandment kind of stuff so you saw no form in other words you didn't see god appear in any kind of visual form to manah in the hebrew so don't make a visual form of yahweh it goes on to say in verses 15 through 19 it has this whole list of various images that are not to serve as a model for any kind of likeness that we might make of god and it's sort of the reverse it's interesting because if you look at 17 18 and 19 it's the reverse order of genesis chapter one

genesis chapter 1 ends with the creation of man and woman but here it begins with man and woman so don't make a graven image of god in the form of male or female and then it goes on to list all the other kinds of uh examples or models that the israelites might make an idol out of so not people or animals or birds or creeping things or fish or the sun or the moon or the stars in other words nothing, either in heaven and on earth, is to serve as some sort of model by which an image of God was to be created. The reason I love this is because this isn't simply a prohibition against the making of statues that represent the true God. Hidden in this prohibition is actually a prophecy. So this is one of the beautiful things about looking at the Old Testament and

New Testament together. Here we're looking at the law, we're looking at prohibitions, but actually embedded in this law is a prophecy of the gospel because the the very reason that old testament images of god were prohibited was that god had not yet given to us the image that he wanted us to focus on and that's what we get in the incarnation so strangely unexpectedly in this prohibition against the making of images we actually actually have a prophecy of the image itself of the incarnation where God actually takes on human flesh. And so we look now at that image, the image of God, Christ himself, as God's chosen manifestation of how he wants us to see him. And then after that point, we understand why the prohibition was there. It was a preparation

for the incarnation. So that takes us through at least a few of these verses. I know we're not moving as fast as we thought to but there's some really good stuff that we need to make sure we cover along the way okay verse 20 and on says that it is a recounting of what god has done for israel so he spoke them at sinai and then he goes on to say that god took you out of the iron furnace out of egypt to be people for his own possession as it is today and then he goes on with with more or less another exposition of of this first commandment he says we've we've seen this before we've talked about this before but he starts out verse 21 by once more reminding the israelite that the lord was angry with me on your account and swore that i should not should i should not cross

the jordan that i should not enter the good land which the lord of god is giving to you as an inheritance instead i'm gonna die here i'm not gonna cross over the jordan but you are now verse 23 he says so watch yourselves lest you forget the covenant of the lord your god which he made with you and make for yourselves a graven image in the form of anything and then in verse 24 for the lord your god is a consuming fire a jealous god now i think that the reason that in this particular case moses brings this up about the fact that he's not going to be able to cross over is sort of a, by way of comparison, it's like he's saying, hey, God was angry with me on your account because of sin. Now, if God was angry because of that and wouldn't let me

cross over into the promised land, do you really think that once you cross over in the promised land, if you make these graven images, if you commit idolatry, that God is somehow going to overlook that? And the answer, of course, is no. It's a rhetorical question. Of course, he's not going to. Instead, you have to remember that your God is a consuming fire. He's a jealous God. In the Hebrew, jealous, which is kana or kina, kind of combines two different elements of what we would think of in English as jealousy and being zealous. So it's, I think the best way to understand it is the jealousy or the zealous protection that one spouse has for another. So, of course, if another man is trying to lure away a husband's wife, then in his jealousy, in his zealous protection of the marriage, he's going to do everything necessary to stop that from happening.

Because in his great love, he has sworn himself to his wife, they are one flesh. And that image is what God is going to continually use for his relationship with Israel. He's the divine husband who is jealous for his bride for her own sake. So it's not a kind of a selfish jealousy. Instead, it's the kind of selfless jealousy that will do anything necessary in order to protect the marital union between Yahweh and Israel. And idols are those who try to steal away the heart of his bride, Israel. And that's why the Lord will absolutely have zero tolerance for any kind of idolatry, because the minute that that begins to happen, the heart of Israel will go astray. So that's the reason God is protecting Israel.

He's protecting his relationship with Israel, and he knows that idols are a constant threat to the fidelity of his people. I mean, we've already seen that happen in the case of Israel. We're going to see it happen over and over throughout the rest of the Old Testament. And so God is going to do everything necessary to protect that marriage that he has with Israel. Yeah, and you notice that the way that he says that you—the way that you ensure that that doesn't happen is take heed or listen, lest you forget. Right. Moses' main concern is forgetfulness, right? That's how you get here.

That's how you end up—when you stop listening to the voice of God, you end up with a bunch of idols. This is how this works. Yeah, and I was going to bring this up later on, but I'll bring it up now. I think it's a good place to bring it up. Idolatry is not simply the worship of false gods. Idolatry is also the attempted worship of the true God in ways that he has not commanded. We saw an instance of that already in the case of the golden calf. The golden calf was meant to be an image of the true God, and yet it ended up being idolatry because this is not what God had given.

And so anything which is contrary to his word, which is connected with worship, is by biblical definition idolatry. So it's not just a matter of them bowing down to Baal or Asherah. It's also bowing down to that which is an attempted worship of the true God, but under false teachings or under false promises or anything like that. So I think that's a broader understanding of idolatry than we typically have. So God is wanting to protect his people against every form of that because—and this gets us really to the heart of Deuteronomy—because he loves Israel, and his love is a protective love. He's wanting to do everything necessary to make sure that what He has with them is not going to be threatened by any other gods, any other promises, any other peoples around them. Instead, what He desires is for their best. And so that's why we have all of these words flooding us over in Deuteronomy.

because through these words, God is protecting his people. He's loving his people. He's wanting to do for them, continue to do for them what he's been doing for them ever since he brought them out of the land of Egypt. That's it, man. And we made it through 24 verses. Still not quite where we thought we would be. I think next week we might just wrap up chapter four.

But hey, it's all good. We'll get there. Yeah, it's good stuff. We're not, this isn't a race. This one's a little bit of a jog. We're just kind of taking a stroll through the park of Deuteronomy. It's all good. Guys, if you would like to support the podcast, if it's been beneficial to you,

if you like these little strolls, you can do that by going over to 1517 or Christ So Fast, go to the donate page, and you can become a supporter. That's how this stuff all remains free. And if you are someone who has done that, thank you very much. You are the reason it's able to continue. Chad, I will see you next week when we record, and also I'll see you next weekend in Des Moines. All right.

Can't wait, man. See you then.