40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Episode 160 (Deuteronomy 4:32-5:21)

Episode Date: April 11, 2019

God explains what His name means and contrasts Himself with every false god. Do the "10 Commandments" apply to Christians? Is "10 commandments" the right way to view these words from God? Should the church "unhitch itself" from the old testament? Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network CHF City Events Become A Supporter

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. you can go over to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are going on over there. The weather is nice. Spring is upon us. I don't know why that's the season for podcasts, but it is. You're going to be outside.

You're going to start running again. You're going to start doing things out in the outdoors again. And you probably need those podcasts flowing into your ears. And maybe this podcast is not enough. I mean, this is only 40 minutes once a week. You probably need more than that. So I know you need more exercise than that. So, you know, go to the podcast network and check out what other podcast you can have flowing into your ears while you're doing stuff.

Chad, you know, when this releases, it'll just be two days away from Des Moines. So, I mean, if somebody listens to this right when it comes out and they're in Iowa, they really need to get on it. If they haven't registered for the event or they haven't made plans to come out, it's going to be crunch time for them. You need to make sure your weekend's clear so you can get out there on Saturday to hear Chad talk about plucking out your eye and cutting off your hand and stuff. Scott's going to bring a sword. He's going to be talking about bringing a sword. And then Chad's going to tell you what to do with that sword in regard to your body parts. It's a very violent city event.

It is. It's the most violent event we've done. So you can go over to the city events page at Christ Hill Fast, and you can register. If you're not in the Des Moines area, but you're up in that Minnesota area, we're also going to be up there on May the 4th. So just less than a month later, I'll be there. Scott will be there. Eric Sorensen, at least it's Patrick, Jersey Wilson.

It's going to be a good time. So you have two options if you're in the Midwest to come and hang out. Chad, we are desperately trying to get through Deuteronomy chapter 4. it's uh it's apparently the richest book in the entire bible because we didn't know that but it is apparently so because we can't get we can't get through it yeah it's like the deeper we wade into uh deuteronomy 4 the uh the deeper the deeper it goes but we're gonna we're gonna plow through we're gonna jump into chapter 5 because i know that everybody cannot wait to get to deuteronomy 5 yeah it's like it's like exodus 20 rebooted except with a few little changes in the

uh the 10 words so i'm we will get there i'm fully uh i'm fully devoted to getting through chapter 4 this week all right well let's jump in so we have spent a significant amount of time here and hopefully everyone has uh has profited from that at least to some extent we're going to pick up with about verse 32 and move forward. Of course, a big theme of the chapter has been the first commandment, especially the prohibition of any images from creation in order to depict the God who has spoken from the midst of the fire. And we see a little bit of that in the rest of the chapter, although it seems like beginning with verse 32 and following, as Moses is preaching, he's kind of shifting to a little bit different theme. And this particular theme is more or less

that God is unlike, the true God is unlike any of the other false gods to which Israel has been exposed and to which they will be exposed when they enter into the land of Canaan. So one of the things that you hear in 32 and following is the supremacy of Yahweh. For example, in verse 34, it says, has any God tried to go to take for himself a nation from within another nation by trials, by signs and wonders and by war and by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm and by great tears? There's like this long laundry list of the means that God used to bring his people out of Egypt. So has any God tried that as the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes and of course all of these are rhetorical questions no no the god has done that and

implicit in this verse 34 is that god did this and the egyptian gods were unable to stop him because of course they are nothing more than non-existent deities they're gods in name only and then but he's not done he goes on to talk about how there is no god besides him he lets you hear his voice out of the heavens, and on earth he lets you see the great fire. And verse 37, he says, because he loved your fathers, for that reason, he chose their descendants after them, and he personally brought you from Egypt by his great power. That word personally, by the way, in Hebrew, literally it's by his face. So he was face first, if you will. His presence was there leading Israel out of Egypt and driving out the nations that were greater and mightier than

Israel. So in other words, after really focusing upon the first commandment, the necessity of having one God and worshiping one God and not depicting this God and through any sort of earthly images, he goes on to talk about how distinct this true God is from all the false gods by a description of what he has done for Israel. And this is certainly a prominent theme that you have in the Old Testament. God is rarely described in any sort of what we would call abstract or philosophical terminology. He's usually described by means of what he does. So who he is is described by what he does. And we see this already back in Exodus chapter 3, when he discloses his name to Moses. So he does say, well, I am who I am, thus you shall call me

Yahweh, which means you are who you are. But in that particular context, the reason he gives for his name being called that is because he is the God who is actually with his people. So I am with my people. I will be with my people. And so that is more or less what my name means. I am who I am in the sense that I am the God who is for my people on their side. I give them my name. I give them my promises. And because of all these things that I say, all these things that I do, all these things that I have done, on the basis of that, well, you know who I am. I am the God who brought Israel out of the land of Egypt. And implicit in that particular activity is everything we need to know about God, that he cares for his people, that he loves them, that he's faithful to

his covenant, that he's not going to abandon them, that he's the God who has the power and the mercy necessary in order to accomplish that which he sets out to do for his people. So when you want to know who God is in the Old Testament, you look at what he's done. And this actually rings very true with the way that the Christian church has also expressed who God is in our creeds. It doesn't matter if you're looking at the Apostles' Creed, which we will look at a lot at Here We Still Stand this coming October, or at the Nicene Creed. Both of those creeds describe who God is and the persons of the Trinity by means of what they've done. I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. And I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord, who was conceived

and born and suffered and died and rose again and all of this. So in each of these cases, we have God being described, not in some sort of real ethereal and esoteric and mystical and abstract sort of way, but he's described most prominently by his activity. That's how we know who he is, and particularly that's how we know who he is for us. So that creedal language is rooted in the biblical language itself. When we get to know God, then we get to know him by the actions that he has performed on our behalf, and that figures here into Deuteronomy chapter 4. And that pretty much takes us through the main section of chapter 4, which ends at verse 40. The end of the chapter is, I don't exactly know why it was put here, honestly, because it's like a

a real jarring transition from one to the other. It ends in verse 40, talking about the land that the Lord your God is giving to you for all time. And then verse 41 transitions to something not completely distinct, but pretty distinct from what has been said before. And it's saying that Moses set apart three cities across the Jordan to the east. And these are the cities that we talked about when we covered numbers, these cities to which a person can flee who accidentally kills one of his neighbors. So these are the cities of refuge to which that person can seek refuge and seek justice and eventually leave when the high priest dies. I suppose it's put here because there's been so much talk about the land. God's bringing you into the land. He's faithful

to bring you into the land. And then Moses inserts here, oh, by the way, I know not everybody's going into the land because there are two and a half tribes that have chosen to stay on the east side of the Jordan. So we're taking care of them too, and they're going to have their cities of refuge. So that's verses 41, 42, and 43, which we have discussed at length in the book of Numbers. then 44 through the end of the chapter 44 through 49 is sort of a preface i guess you could say to what follows starts out now this is the law literally this is the torah we've talked about torah multiple times it just means teaching this is the teaching the god-given word which moses set before the sons of israel these are the testimonies and the statutes and the ordinances

which moses spoke to the sons of israel when they came out from egypt and then it sets the stage geographically. It says that they are across the Jordan. They're in the valley opposite Beth Peor in the land of Sihon. Then it goes on to talk about how they took possession of the land of Og, king of Ashan, who was one of those giants. Talked about that too. And then the rest of the verses basically locate Israel on the other side of the Jordan, says specifically where they're at. So this is sort of a, this is a way in which we can envision, if you will, and then later generations of Israelites could envision exactly where Moses was speaking these words. And location matters. I mean, you see that a lot in the Bible, that location, geography is extremely significant.

In the Bible, geography is theology. There are so many theological themes that are rooted in geography itself. The Holy Land, for instance, but a lot of other specific locations within the Holy Land or even a well or a field or a river or a mountain. All of these are ways in which theology is expressed geographically. And the reason the geography is so significant here is because they are literally at the brink of the promised lands. So they can more or less turn and look and see the land. They're looking at the promise that God is about to fulfill. And so while they're looking at that, Moses is going to speak to them all these words as a way of encouraging them, of reminding them, of setting before them what God has done, what he requires of them, and what he promises to do for them.

And then when we jump from this into chapter 5, he's going to bring them back, bring to their remembrance what happened back when they were at Mount Horeb or Mount Sinai, when God spoke to Moses and to all Israel, the Ten Commandments, or literally the Ten Words. So that takes us to the end of chapter 4. How's that? We made it. It only took us two episodes and ten minutes, but we did it. I like that we are men of our word, plowed through. Yeah, we like to do that on occasion, just to surprise people. Just to surprise people.

We're not always liars. No, no, no. This is most of the time. All right. Anything you want to add, or are you ready to jump to five? I think I'm ready, man. I think I'm ready to do this chapter five. Okay, so we got a big question about chapter five,

and then we have a whole lot of little questions about chapter five. So I'm going to throw out the big question first. and then I'm going to do a bit of introduction, and then I'm going to try and answer that big question. And as we're doing that, I want to look at a lot of little questions connected with the Ten Commandments in particular and some of the surrounding context. So here's the big question, and this has actually surprisingly been a, I don't want to say controversy, but at least a bit of discussion that's happened within the last year or so in Christian circles. and the the the even the the bigger question so this is this is not the the big question i was

about to ask the bigger question is what connection does the old testament have to to christianity you know this there was there was talk about our need to uh unattach or unhitch ourselves from the old testament just kind of be new testament kind of people so that was that was a bit of a controversy but part of that controversy that arose was well what relationship does the Ten Commandments have to the Christian church? So that is the big question that I'd like to ask. And I could phrase it this way. Do the Ten Commandments apply to Christians?

Or do the Ten Commandments, as we have them in the Bible, in Exodus 20 and in Deuteronomy chapter 5, do these Ten Commandments apply to the Christian church? So that's the big question. and then we'll have a bunch of little questions as we work our way through this so kind of keep that big question in your mind and i'm gonna uh i'm gonna put forward an answer and and and dan can jump in there and we'll see if we can work this out because i i think it's sort of an unasked question most christian circles i mean how many people have the 10 i've been in so

many homes that have the 10 commandments on their wall it almost always looks the same right it's It's this wooden frame, and there's a couple of gold plates, and the Ten Commandments are listed out there. Maybe you have some in your home. And, of course, there's sometimes a push to keep up monuments to the Ten Commandments. So the question is that maybe some of you had never asked, well, do these Ten Commandments, as we have them in the Bible, are they actually applicable to us?

And if so, in what way? And if no, then why are they not? So kind of keep that in the back of your mind. let me set the stage. Deuteronomy chapter 5 opens up this way. So Moses summons all Israel and he says, hear, O Israel, the statutes and the ordinances of which I'm speaking today in your hearing, literally in your ears. I'm putting these words into your ears so that you may learn them and observe them carefully. So more or less, listen up. I've got some God words, some divine words that i'm going to be putting into your ears so don't stop your ears but listen

let these words have their way with you and then moses says something really interesting here first excuse me verse two it says the lord our god made a covenant with us at horrib with us he says verse three the lord did not make this covenant with our fathers but with us with all those of us alive here today now this is fascinating verse four the lord spoke to you face to face at the mountain in the midst of the fire you know we talked a lot in chapter four about god speaking from the fire verse five he did this while i was standing between the lord and you at that time to declare to you the word of the lord for you were afraid because of the fire It did not go up the mountain. So we'll stop there. Now, what's fascinating about this is because it's as if Moses is engaging in hyperbole.

That's the only way that I can explain it here. That, of course, God made a covenant with the fathers and the grandfathers, the people who are standing there today. I mean, they were the ones who were actually there, but I think this is Moses' way of saying this word that God spoke wasn't just like for that particular time and that particular generation of Israelites who were there. It was actually with us, with us who were standing alive here today. That is who God made the covenant with. So never think in your minds that what God spoke or what God did in days of old for your fathers, your grandfathers, or for many generations ago, that that was somehow not for you. One of the things that we hear frequently in the Old Testament is that everything that God did for Israelites in the past, he did for Israelites in the here and now.

So for instance, in the Passover liturgy, the Israelites never speak as if God did something a long time ago for people who lived a long time ago, and we're just kind of remembering that. They always understood in their Passover liturgies that they were in Egypt, and that they were the ones who were passed over, and that they were the ones that God brought out of slavery. So God didn't just simply do this for generations long ago, but there's an understanding that everything that God did long ago, He also did for us who live in the here and now. So there's this way in which the activity of God for Israel is not temporal, not temporally binding in the sense that He only did it for one generation and not for another. So it's like this, similar to this in the case

of the giving of the Ten Commandments. He didn't just give it to that particular generation that lived that were actually standing there at the foot of Mount Sinai. He did it for this generation who's now at the brink of the promised land this is like he did it for all the other generations of the israelites who were who were yet to be born all of them were standing there face to face with the lord hearing his words out of the midst of the fire they to to them were given the words of of this covenant anything you want to jump in there with that or you want me to move on so you keep going i will i will give some thoughts on the unhitching from the old testament okay yeah well, that's actually what I want to go to now. Let me use one verse as kind of a jumping off

point for this discussion. So at the very end of verse five, it said, we have, he said, so this is about to begin the quote, and the quote begins with verse five, verse six, rather. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me okay so we've talked about this many times before but especially in connection with exodus chapter 20 because this is sometimes referred to as the first word or the not really the first commandment but in in the jewish reckoning anyway in the jewish numbering of what we call the 10 commandments this is actually the first and it's not even a commandment that's one of the reasons they don't refer to these as the 10 commandments but they are the the 10 words

because the first word is actually not a description of anything required of Israel, but it's rather the description of what God did for Israel. So I am Yahweh, and as Yahweh, I am your God. And here's how I showed you that I am your God. I brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. So at the very beginning of these 10 words, we have nothing required of Israel. Instead, we have a declaration of the good news that the God that they claim is their God and who claims them as his people operates in this sort of way. He goes down into the house of slavery, and he declares war on the false gods who are imprisoning them.

and he beats them, he destroys them, and he then brings his own people out of that house of slavery, leading them toward a land flowing with milk and honey. So that's the kind of God who's about to speak the other nine words. So the very beginning, we have a description of who this God is and what he does. So this is one of the reasons why I actually prefer the Jewish numbering of the Ten Commandments over any other numbering so sometimes people get confused because the reformed and broader evangelicalism has their numbering of the ten commandments and then lutherans you know and catholics have their numbering and they're like hey which of these is right and i actually don't

like either of them as well as i like the the way that the israel understood them or jews currently understand them even um and the reason for that is that one i don't view these strictly as commandments but as you were saying that there are 10 words and i do think that the word actually starts with the gospel before there is any kind of hey you know do this and don't do this kind of stuff um but actually starts with a declarative uh this is who i am and what i've done um and so that might i don't know that might get me in trouble with some of my some of my lutheran friends but that's actually the ordering that i prefer and the ordering that i'm not i wouldn't get into a huge argument about it but the ordering that i actually think is correct

it's it's really a strange thing because even though they're called the 10 words more than once never in the bible is a number connected with any of the commandments it's not like somewhere in paul's epistles he refers to the sixth commandment and he's talking about adultery or the Third Commandment, and he's talking about the Sabbath or anything like that. We never have that, and there's never like a list which spells it out directly that these are the ten words. So there's freedom for some disagreement, right? Yeah, and I think the danger is not including this part,

this declarative action with to be part of the words. that's that's the uh i think the the numbering is irrelevant you know like you were saying i mean there's it's never said there it could be 11 every 12 there could be eight there's that that's that's doesn't matter um i think you do lose something if you don't include the front end so because usually like you were saying when you have like a plaque with the 10 commandments quote 10 commandments on it this is not in them and i think that that's the thing that i would say like well that's a loss a little bit i think i think that that would be better if it was yeah i would agree for for the very reasons that you specified and also for for one more reason that's connected

with that and that is that it sets the giving of the law within a narrative context so this wasn't like the code of hamarabi or something or one of the other ancient near eastern codes where you just basically have all these laws listed out which more or less okay the king says these are the laws, don't do these things, or we'll chop off your arm, or we'll gouge out your eye, or we'll put you to death, or we'll do something else to you. All of those were just basically a list of laws, like if Code of Hammurabi, for instance, was posted in public, anybody could see these laws. But they weren't any kind of narrative context. So they were just like, plop down there for the people, do this, don't do that. Israel's laws are different. They're set within a very clear

narrative context and this narrative context to piggyback off what you said here's a narrative context about a god whose story is a story of grace and rescue and liberation so because of both those reasons that it sets this legal these legal words within an arabic context and that narrative context is full of the grace of yahweh i think i think both of those are significant for our understanding of which one of these is actually the first word that god speaks and i think that Maybe the reason, as Christians, we don't include that is because—interesting enough—because of the very reason that you stated, which is, well, God didn't deliver me from Egypt. That was Israel. But I would actually argue, well, in as much as Christ is Israel reduced to one man, in as much as you are in Christ, the Exodus has just as much to do with you as it does with anyone else.

I mean, this is—you have to view the Exodus as a gospel movement. So you are included in this. This is the move to bring about your Savior. You need Israel saved from Pharaoh. You need it. I need it. We all need it, right? So I don't read this and think, oh, well, that's not about me.

any more than generations later of Israelites would read it. They're supposed to read it and see themselves there. I think as Christians, and this is part of the unhitching yourself, I think it's dangerous to do that because when even Paul talks about it, I see myself there as well. This is my God who does these things for his people. Yeah, and that's the reason that the gospel writers, especially Matthew and Mark,

And, well, I guess Luke as well, and there's hints of this in John as well, but the gospel writers put so much of an accent upon Christ fulfilling the exodus in his life, death, and resurrection. So this is the fulfillment of the exodus. I mean, that's why Matthew, for instance, begins his gospel with all this talk about Israel being in exile, right? They're still in exile. Even though they're on their holy land, they're in exile. They're waiting for the Messiah to come and to exodus them into freedom. So all the Gospels—and this, of course, is found in Paul's epistles as well as in Revelation—the theme of the Exodus is pervasive throughout the Old and New Testament, and especially the second

half of Isaiah talks repeatedly about the Messianic salvation being an exodus event. So yeah, God, all of this is setting the stage for that exodus that is finally going to happen in in the messiah yeah you have you have to view it as god delivers israel from egypt to save them but also to save the world yeah also to save you and me yeah that's exactly right i mean it was everything that was done specifically for the nation of israel was done with a with a universal with a universal purpose absolutely yeah now the uh getting back to us what i said was the big question, do the Ten Commandments apply to us? I think for those of you who would like to read Luther and who maybe have not read this particular part, check out this. You can find it online if

you don't have any of the copies of Luther's works, but it's called How Christians Should Regard Moses. It's really short. I mean, I don't think, probably not 20 pages long, How Christians Should Regard Moses, in which he talks quite a bit about the church's connection with, especially with the Ten Commandments, but also with some other aspects of what he calls Moses, or really what he's referring to there are the Mosaic laws. So do the Ten Commandments apply to Christians? Well, the answer is yes and no. Because on the one hand, we'll answer the no first. On the one hand, do the Ten Commandments apply to Christians? Well, no, they don't. In this sense, that these particular laws were part of the old covenant and they were given to the nation of israel for

instance the uh the commandment about keeping the sabbath is not a command that's given to christians in fact we have both from the mouth of jesus himself as well as from the apostle paul the the clarity we need regarding the sabbath that the seventh day is no longer a day of commanded rest for Christians. So we don't live under that Old Testament law, which was part of the giving of the law to the nation of Israel. So on the one hand, the Ten Commandments, as they are—I want to be very clear here—the Ten Commandments, as they are given in the context of Exodus chapter 20 and Deuteronomy chapter 5, set within the Old Covenant, stipulations and regulations that are given to the nation of Israel do not apply to the Christian church. Okay? So that's the no part. But there's

also a yes here, because what we have in these laws are an explication, a making explicit of that which God has embedded into the very nature of humanity. Paul talks about this in Romans chapter 1 about how it is written on the heart, or it's in the conscience, even of the Gentiles, that which God wants them to do or not to do. So we do have several of the laws that are planted in human nature that are made explicit here, for instance, about not killing, and not committing adultery, and not stealing, and all of these universal kinds of laws that are placed within human nature, and which of course I talked about in the New Testament as well, they are made explicit in the accounts in Deuteronomy 5 and Exodus chapter 20. But the actual Ten Commandments,

as we have them here, as they were given to the nation of Israel, those do not apply to Christians because that was part of the Old Covenant. But what they bear witness to are the laws which testify to our conscience and which are written on us by nature and so to that extent the answer is yes so maybe you could say it better than than i could dan but that's i think that's that's important for us to realize because if we don't realize that then we we we do exactly what i was talking about earlier we rip these laws out of their narrative context and in their narrative context they were part of the old covenant which was given just to the jews just to the israelites and not intended for all times and for all places.

Instead, they give expression to some of the laws, which are for all times and all places. Yeah, well, I think, so the language that the apostles use, particularly Paul, in reference to this sort of thing, is a language of under. So he will say, are we under the law? This is just his way of saying, does it apply in the same way, in this covenantal way?

And the answer is no. His answer is no, we are no longer under the law, but under grace. And so it is impossible to read Paul and think that these things apply in exactly the same way as they did to Israel, when he explicitly says that they were under that and we are not under that, and so we're under grace. But you do have other things where Jesus says interesting things like a new commandment I give you, love one another, this kind of thing. You have Paul say over and over again, talking about the law of liberty or the spirit of the law as opposed to the letter. And what ends up happening is that the written code of the law is done away with as something that we have to obey. So we don't have to sit here and parse through it and figure out like how to perform every aspect of this.

Instead, it's sort of this. You're under grace, and because you're under grace, you are free now to love God and love neighbor. Love is at the heart of the law, and so what we've been free to do, and as much as we've been free to perform acts that would be in keeping with the law, it's really just boiled down to what Jesus would say is, love God, love your neighbor. That's sort of the spirit of the law uh which is what god would have us to do but the the written law the written letter um paul says no we're not we're not under that so we don't need to sit around thinking about the sabbath and like make sure we've kept it and what it means to keep it and and we need to sit around and like meditate on like we'll covet how do i parse this out make

sure i haven't done it it's it's just hey love god and love neighbor this is what we're this what we're after not not to mention the hundreds of other laws that we have right dietary laws laws of hygiene and laws about the land and laws about everything you know the hundreds upon hundreds of laws that we have outside of what we were what we usually think about in terms of the the 10 laws or the 10 words well there's a bunch of others so this is where this is where uh And some churches go astray in the sense that they're wanting to maintain a commitment to all of the Old Testament laws as still applicable in the Christian life today. And what happens when that takes place is that it still keeps people under the law. And it also denigrates that completion work that Christ has done.

So, I mean, we have it explicitly in the New Testament. Christ is the end of the law. So he has fulfilled all of this. And so for us to still be under some kind of law about keeping the Sabbath, or under some kind of law about what we can and can't eat, or under some law about what we can or can't wear, or some law about whether we have to be circumcised or not circumcised, or any of these other laws that were given explicit to the Israelites,

we aren't under those anymore. We are free from those. They've been fulfilled in Christ, as have all the other laws as well. So in him, we're free. And in that freedom, we live in the law in the sense that we live in love for our neighbor and in love for our God. And it's on those two commandments that the New Testament says hung all of the law and the prophets. Yeah, and by end of the law, I've said this before and had the objection,

well, I mean, Jesus says he didn't come to abolish the law. Are you saying that he abolished the law? No, no, no. I don't mean end in that way. That's not what it means. It means end as in Jesus was the thing that the law was trying to get you to. The goal of the law was to get you to Christ. It still is.

You're supposed to hear the law. If you hear it and you feel condemned, it's supposed to get you to Jesus. But once you get to Jesus, Jesus is not trying to turn you back around and have you start marching in the opposite direction from which you just came. This is not how this is supposed to work. So the law drives you to Christ, and Christ then does not drive you back to the law. Christ is the end game. Once you get to Christ, that's it.

I mean, if you want an illustration of what happens in churches when Christ is portrayed as someone that drives you back under the law, we'll just read galatians sometimes and notice how heated the apostle paul gets there right i don't know of any other place in the new testament where he is so irate i mean this is truly righteous anger on the part of paul where he is angry because what has happened is he goes in he he you know he he plants this church he gets everything just right he preaches them uh the pure unadulterated gospel and he's barely out of town before people come start coming in the judaizers and they start saying well yeah the gospel's great but we also need to keep the

the law. We also need to bring you back under the law. So Paul writes this letter in which he is just fuming. The ink on the pages of Galatians is steaming. He is so angry, and rightly so. Angry in the same way that I would be angry if I was a pastor of a church, and I took a six-month sabbatical, and someone filled in for me, and I came back, and all of a sudden people are saying, Jesus plus something else is what we need to do. Yeah, I'd preach like a series of 500 sermons against that yeah i would do my own kind of galatians preaching yeah what happens that we lose if we lose the gospel we lose everything and that's what was happening in galatia and this is this so this is why the answer of like should we unhitch ourselves from the old

testament is no because you do not want to cut yourself off from the thing that drives you to Christ, that would be a mistake. Absolutely. Not to mention the fact that the Old Testament is just overflowing with promises about the Messiah. So, you know, you've got both of them. You've got law, gospel, it's not like Old Testament law, New Testament gospel. It's scattered throughout the scriptures. And so the law in the Old Testament serves this purpose to drive us to Christ, and the gospel in the Old Testament serves this purpose also to give us Christ and the good news and and all the mercy and freedom that we have in him well i mean i know we have i know that old testament is in the title and you know new testament is in the title of the other podcast

but that's just because that we did that for you listener because that's how you're used to hearing it the reality is this is all just one collect it's one collection of a bunch of books and um and old and new testament are a little bit manufactured uh yeah there's a big gap you know You have the silent period in between, and yes, you have Christ saying, this is the New Testament in my blood, and this sort of thing. But the idea that you could just cut the book in half and get rid of part of it does extreme violence to the grand narrative that God is trying to put on display for us, extreme violence to it.

The New Testament makes zero sense without the Old Testament. One of the simple reasons it makes zero sense is that these guys quote the Old Testament. You have no idea what they're quoting from, and they're quoting it authoritatively. It would make no sense at all. I mean, so that's like a very, you know, that's a very basic reason why it doesn't make any sense to cut it off. But also, you don't know how we got here. I mean, the Gospels don't make sense apart from the Old Testament. You don't know what's going on.

yeah it's like reading you know some 500 page novel about this great story but you you only try and read the last half of the last chapter and think that you're going to know what's going on you don't know the characters you don't know the storyline you don't know everything's been leading up to this point so that that would be like reading the new testament without the old and which is why i think it's a great idea to have a podcast about the old testament that's right yeah that's what we got here all right guys that's it you know what we got through chapter four we were up in that chapter five guys if you want to support the idea that we should go through the old testament you can do that by going over to the donate button on any of the sites 1517

chrysler fast it all goes to the same place you can click on that become a supporter it helps us out keeps everything free and if you're one of the people that do that thank you very much chad i will see you in des moines this weekend head to the midwest see you there We'll see you next time.