40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Episode 168 (Deuteronomy 13:1-18)

Episode Date: June 6, 2019

God says not to trust people or prophets if their words don't line up with what God has spoken. But what if they perform signs and wonders? Does that validate what they say? Is the revelation God has given sufficient? Why is God so harsh with idolatry and why does His judgment seem to extend so far? How does this point us to Christ? Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network HWSS Conference Donate

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 to 1517.org slash podcast check out all the things that we got going on over there we got a lot of new podcasts going on guys i'm actually recording if i sound different i probably do i'm recording a different location because we are up to some secret work over in the dallas area i'm in chad's homeland the great nation of texas so it's why this podcast can be so awesome both both of us are in texas that's right i think this is the first time we've recorded in texas we've recorded other places together but never texas so uh we're over here i can't tell you everything but i can tell you that in a couple weeks there's something real

great gonna happen we're working our fingers to the bone over here just for you for something amazing for you and yeah it has to do with podcasts it has to do with all the things that we do over at christ old fast 15 17 it's going to be glorious so i'm just this is a teaser it's the teaser uh but you're gonna you're gonna like it if you were if you're fooling around on instagram or facebook you might see some pictures of of us doing some stuff the one thing that you definitely want to do before it's too late is get that ticket to here we still stand i think we are down to like under 60 tickets that are left i think the hotel rooms uh might be booked up that doesn't mean the hotels whole hotel is booked but i think our slot is booked so you'll need to book

that that hotel directly with the hotel you get that room directly through them but if you want to go to here we still stand you do still have a little bit of time the tickets are moving and if you want 25 off we still have the the code for podcast listeners which is p net 19 p net 19 and you can come and uh and hang out with us and get 25 off that ticket all right chad uh what are we doing in deuteronomy today wrapped up 12 last time so we're going to jump into deuteronomy 13 today which is primarily if not almost exclusively concerned with with prophecy and the demarcation between what is true and what is false so it's a really it's just some pretty fascinating material we're going to talk a little bit about not just this chapter but prophecy in general and the

various ways that god revealed himself to his people verbally in the old testament through his chosen instruments. So got some good stuff coming up. And if we finish that, we're going to proceed to chapter 14. The first part of which is about clean and unclean foods, which I know we've covered before, but we'll touch a little bit, a little bit on that territory as well. So that's what we got coming up. So Deuteronomy 13 is really divided into three different sections. It discusses three different situations that might arise okay the first one is if you've uh if you got a a person who's a a prophet or a dreamer of dreams and they come up to you and they have a message that is contrary to what you've heard before and they might even have signs and wonders which

accompany this message then how are you to respond to that so let me just read that first section for It's verses 1 through 5 in Deuteronomy 13. If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes true concerning which he spoke to you, saying, let us go after other gods whom you have not known and let us serve them. Well, so if all that happens, you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the Lord your God is testing you to find out if you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall follow the Lord your God and fear him, and you shall keep his commandments, listen to his voice, serve him, and cling to him.

But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has counseled rebellion against the Lord your God who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery to seduce you from the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from among you. Okay, so this is the first section, these first five verses that talk about a specific person who, both by words and possibly also by some sort of miracles or at least seeming miracles, some kind of signs, is attempting to lead the people of Israel astray. So first of all, how do you figure out whether the guy is telling the truth or whether he's trying to seduce you away from God? and then secondly what if he when he's preaching or when he's prophesying or whatever he's doing what if he actually has signs that that like are supposed to prove his his legitimacy okay so that's that's the situation we got so let me say first of all that uh we got a couple of different couple of different ways in which a person can either be or claim to be a conveyor of god's message

The two that are listed here are a prophet and then a dreamer, or literally a dreamer of dreams. So that's a couple of the ways which in a legitimate, in a true way, God has revealed himself, his will to his people. Of course, the one that we're most familiar with is the term prophet. I think, Dan, you correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the first time that we heard mention of a prophet in the Bible was actually in reference to Abraham. And I think it was in the context of when he had the second time had told a lie about Sarah, that she was his sister and Abimelech took her and God afflicted the household of Abimelech and Abraham prayed for Abimelech because he was a prophet. I believe that's correct. So that's the first time we hear the mention of the word prophet. Now there, it's kind of weird because it's not connected with any kind of proclamation.

Instead, it's connected with prayer. usually when we think of prophets we think of guys like moses or later on we think of the major or the minor prophets like isaiah jeremiah ezekiel and hosea and all the rest of all the rest of the list and that is the primary old testament meaning of the word prophet a prophet is basically one who conveys to people what god would have him speak a prophet is not necessarily confirmed concerned with foretelling with like predicting the future a prophet is mainly concerned with simply speaking the words that god has given him to speak so he's just like in the ancient world if one king from a country wanted to send a message to another king in a neighboring country

he would send an envoy and this envoy would show up at the court of the other king and that envoy or that ambassador's job was nothing more than speaking the words that his authority his king had given him to speak that's basically the job of the prophet so he serves the king he serves Yahweh and so whatever the king Yahweh tells him to say that is what he speaks so he's the envoy or the ambassador or the mouthpiece mouthpiece of the king that's usually the way we think of prophets because that's usually the way it works in the old testament now interestingly if you if you look a little bit at the the jewish way in which the old testament is organized which of course they call the hebrew bible then they make reference to a much broader category of

prophets because what we call in most in most christian circles what we call the historical books like joshua judges samuel kings those in the hebrew bible are referred to as the former prophets. So even the writing of history, even the recording of what God said to the Israelites and what he did with the Israelites and the way that the Israelites acted toward God, either in a good way or a bad way, even that was understood. Even that recording of history, even historians of the words were understood to be prophets because they were writing down the history of God's dealings with his people. So you got all kinds of use of prophecy in the Old Testament, primarily those who give the words of God to the people, but also even those who record the history, or in Abraham's

case, someone who prayed for someone else. So that's one way. Now, a second way is this dreamer of dreams. And we've seen, of course, plenty of cases of that already back in Genesis, where God conveys his will through the use of dreams, whether that's to Joseph or to Pharaoh or in some other circumstances where God is reeling himself to people through dreams. So a dreamer of dreams in this case, I suppose, would be someone who is given a dream by God and presumably would interpret that dream so that he could speak the will of God which is given in that dream to the people. So that's a couple of the ways that God conveyed his word to the Israelites. Another one, this is like an earlier term, is the word seer, which just like our English word is real, of

course, a seer is one who sees. Well, in the Hebrew, it's exactly the same way. When you ra'ah, you see. And so when you're a ro'eh, you are a seer. That is, you're given a vision by God of that which he desires to speak to his people. Now, we learn in the story of, this is in Samuel, I believe it's a story of Saul, the choice of Saul to be the first king of Israel, that in former times, these spokespeople of God were called seers, and then at some point, their name was changed to prophets. So if you ever wonder what the difference is between a seer and a prophet, there is no difference. It's just a case of, in the earlier times, they were called seers and later times they were called prophets all right so with that kind of a as a as a broad

introduction to the various ways that god spoke to to the israelites let's look at this these first few verses so you've got a a prophet and or a dreamer of dreams and they come up to you and now this is this is moses more or less kind of i guess you could say pejoratively summarizing the message that they have. Because this false prophet, this speaker of falsehood to the Israelites is not going to come up and say, hey, let's go after other gods, which you haven't known, and let's listen to them. Instead, he's going to be a lot sneakier about the way in which he tries to seduce the Israelites away from the soul worship of Yahweh. Probably he's going to do it the way it happened actually throughout the history of the Old Testament. He's going to say, you know what,

Yahweh is awesome. He's great. He's done so much for us. And you know what else? There are these other gods over there as well. And they do a lot of great things for us. I mean, for instance, Baal, he's the god of thunder. He's the one that you really need to turn to if you need some rain for your crops. Or you know what, if you're having trouble conceiving children and you need a little help, well, there's this goddess named Asherah, who is a goddess of fertility. And so if you offer sacrifices and you pray to her, then she is going to lend you a hand in making sure that you're able to conceive children. So most of the time in which these so-called prophets or dreamer of dreams spoke to the Israelites trying to get them away from Yahweh, it wasn't to simply say, hey, don't

worship Yahweh anymore. What they were trying to do was say, let's worship Yahweh and these other gods as well yeah i mean what so one of the the things that is unique about israel is that god sort of is is in that god tells him that he's the only god for us as christians is it sort of like a yeah i mean yeah there's like one god like god is he's trinity but it's one one god that's that was not the common idea back back in the day they were like well i mean there's like all kinds all kinds a god a god for everything right uh when you're talking when you're talking about seers you know uh friend well there's two references that come to mind about you know these sort of sort of false seers false prophets that sort of thing and both of these things are things that the israelites

would have known about uh one is when moses does signs and wonders and they bring out some dudes do some signs and wonders too you know who knows what's going on there but you know they throw down the staffs you got snakes and like i mean all kinds of things that seem pretty incredible right where you're like, dang, I mean, this guy's got some legit skills. Probably that backs up everything that they're saying. I guess we have a real battle going on here. And the argument is that no matter what they do, if their words don't align with the words that God has given you, you reject it.

So you sort of have the signs and wonders thing with those guys, and then you have the idea of false seers or seers that are not in step with the will of God. And they just experienced this with Balaam, who is described as a seer, right? That's who he is. And he goes, and he does get them to go after other gods, and he does it real sneaky.

He does it by just sending some women down there, and, you know, a little bit of time passes, and the next thing you know, you're all intermarried, and you got, you know, both religions going on at once, and that's how this stuff happens. And so as God sort of gives this warning, like if you think about what happened not that long ago with Balaam, it's like, hey, no more of that. Like no more of this like, well, it's a seer, you know, like seers aren't always to be trusted no matter what they do and no matter what they say. What is to be trusted is the words that I have given you.

those are what you trust just because someone does something that seems to back up their authority that is not how we measure whether it's true or not way we measure it's true is does it align with what the god who delivered you from egypt the god who parted the red sea for you the god who gave you the law on mount sinai does it align with those things and and so this is one of like the early places where you see sort of our theological stance of uh yeah we test everything with scripture so if you hear some guy saying something or you hear me and chad saying something like well how do you know it's right well the only way to know is right it's not like how how good it sounds or if uh if we do something incredible to back it up which we have not attempted but uh but even if

we did uh no the way that you test it is you test it with the words of god is what they're saying what god has said yeah that's exactly right so you can summarize it like the divine word always trumps human wonders yes yeah and i this is a this is a very significant text that i don't know a lot of people are familiar with but i i've turned to it often when someone confronts me with a message from someone who's who's obviously speaking something contrary to the word of god but they also have these seeming wonders and miracles that accompany that well i mean how could anybody do kind of wonders like that unless they're actually unless god is on their side well here's the text that you go to right here it doesn't matter how impressive they may be in what they do

and i might add this it doesn't matter how impressive they might be even in their life i mean they like they might be one of these like super super moral fantastic people to be around But that is no, that doesn't legitimize everything that they say. Like you, like you said, ultimately you put whatever is spoken next to the word of God. And if it's conformity with that, great. What is said is true. But if it's not a conformity to that, well, then you stick with, you stick with the word because ultimately that is going to be, that's going to be the judge of everything that's

taught, everything that's preached, everything that's, that's prophesied. So, I mean, of course, we face this in the church today, and the Israelites did in the days of old. There's always those who are, in one way or another, trying to add to the Word of God to lead the people astray. And this doesn't always—keep this in mind, too—this doesn't always come from some sort of insincere motives. I mean, someone can be sincerely completely wrong. Yeah. I mean, so it's not like all these people set out, like they wake up in the morning and think, all right, how can I preach a false message that's going to lead people astray from God?

I mean, sure, I'm sure there are people out there who do think along those lines, but I would guess that the majority of times people are proceeding from at least as sincere of motives as humans can have, but they're wrong. So sincerity or the purpose behind someone doing something is no claim to legitimacy or to truth because we all do things sincerely wrong all the time so that's that's a reason why like the bereans did you you study the scriptures you like they compared everything that paul was saying with what the scriptures taught well that's what we continue to do today that's that was why one of the uh one of the cries of the reformation was sola scriptura right we stick we stick with god's word we study it in order that whatever we hear

can be placed next to that word and we can understand whether actually what is being said is true or not. Yeah, I had a very sincere guy who was a very nice guy, one time come up to me and he said, what do you think about divine revelation? And I said, well, you know, I'm for it.

In the sense that that's what I think the Bible is. You know, that's what the scriptures are. So I was like, yeah, kind of base everything I believe on it. So you believe in a continuing revelation for today. And I was like, as long as we're talking about the scriptures,

I think that that's where God has revealed everything he wants us to know about himself. And he's like, yeah, but for this time and this place, God speaking to us now things that he didn't speak before. And I was like, oh, no, no, no, no, I'm not into that at all. He's like, but you do affirm divine revelation. Yes. And he's like, I think we're saying the same thing. i said i was like no no we're not we are not saying the same thing i don't think we're saying

the same thing yeah it's amazing to me how we have i mean the bible is a big book you got all these books from all these different people from all these different time periods addressing all of these all of these various issues of life i mean you could study the scriptures non-stop for the rest of your life and never even get close to plumbing the depths of them and yet we want to turn from that to something else to seek some other kind of divine revelation well i'll tell you what once you've exhausted everything in the scriptures then you can look somewhere else yeah good good luck with that yeah no it is that way and like and this desire is not like i said i mean you said doesn't mean it's insincere this is just um there's a theology of of glory at play

and a lot of this stuff where I want to hear God speak specifically to me in a new way because the scriptures, you know, they're old and boring, man. You know, what about something? I need something that no one's ever heard of before. That's just the theology of glory coming out, man, where we want something sexier, something fresher, something new. And I think that that also happens when you don't realize how much is contained within what we do have.

I mean, the richness of what God has given. And, you know, to your point, like, well, once you explore all that. And I think that the attitude is like, well, I've read it. It's like, yeah, but man, there's a lot. I can read it again. Like, there's a lot there. I mean, it's why we do these podcasts, you know. There's a lot there.

Yeah, yeah. There's always more to learn. There's always deeper to dig. So, in other words, be satisfied with what we've been given because you're never going to exhaust the wisdom that's there. Yeah, I don't feel like God has been stingy in his revelation of himself. Yeah, it's not like he gave us like 10 pages. Right. He like gave us a book with a whole lot of books in it with, you know, like he's often said, it's all hyperlinked together, right?

So everything is connected. There's a whole web here. Everything is interconnected. So you jump back and forth, you jump up and down, you jump side to side, and you're making all of these connections in this huge matrix of wisdom and grace and direction for our lives. So stick with that, in other words. Stick with the scriptures and forget about any kind of revelation outside of these scriptures. Yeah. Okay, so that's the first six verses.

I know we spent quite a bit of time there, but that's all about a prophet or dreamer of dreams who tries to lead people astray. And keep in mind, the particular way he's wanting to lead them astray is away from the worship of Yahweh only to worship of Yahweh and, or to Christianize the language to the worship of Christ and something else, is the way we would say it. All right, now we come in verse 6 and 6 through 11 to the second section. Now, 6 to 11 is really some pretty hard words to listen to. But this is where, I mean, it's one thing, in other words, for us to say, yeah, some prophet or dreamer or dream comes along and tries to lead you astray. Yeah, forget that guy. Don't listen to him.

But what if it's your wife or your husband or a sibling? Or what if it's your own son or daughter? All right. So verse six and following says this, if your brother, your mother's son, or your son or daughter, or the wife you cherish, or your friend who is as your own soul, entice you secretly saying, let us go and serve other gods whom neither you nor your fathers have known, of the gods of the peoples who are around you, near you or far from you, from one end of the earth to the other end. you shall not yield to him or listen to him and your eyes shall not pity him nor shall you spare or conceal him but you shall surely kill him your hand shall be first against him to put him to death and afterward the hand of all the people so you shall stone him to death because he has sought to seduce you from the lord your god who brought you out from the land of egypt out of the house

of slavery then all israel will hear and be afraid and will never again do such a wicked thing among you now this uh this gets of course super close to home literally because this is talking about what if someone who is the closest person to you whether that's your spouse or whether it's your child or whether it's a dear friend what if they try and seduce you away from the worship of yahweh alone well here it's it's it's very clear uh that that is not only is that not to be tolerated, it is to actually be punished. And this doesn't mean, I need to add this, this doesn't mean, when we look at this contextually, it doesn't mean that you, as soon as they say that, you like pull your sword out and stab them through the throat or something, because there is a judicial

system that is set up. We read about this later in Deuteronomy chapter 17, where if there is a report of some sort of inducement to idolatry, then there's a trial. And it's only by the testimony of two or three witnesses that any kind of guilty verdict or punishment is rendered so even if something like this happens it doesn't doesn't necessarily mean that there's going to be some kind of automatic death penalty but of course it does mean there's going to be uh serious ramifications of this but it's going to be there they in other words the israelites had a judicial judicial system just like just like we have and so they have the the testimony of two or three witnesses. They have judges. They have ways by which the guilt or innocence of a

person can be determined and the appropriate sentence rendered if that person is found guilty. But the main point of this is that the reason it goes into such detail about these people close to you is because actually most of the time when a person is seduced away from the worship of God, it's because it's not because of some like random stranger it's because of the people close to them and if you're wondering you know how this might have happened well we got some great examples in the old testament read about the story of ahab or read about the story of uh solomon a solomon yeah read solomon especially the wisest guy who ever lived what happened to him well they started marrying foreign wives so this is verse six right or the wife you cherish so solomon married all of

these foreign wives who had their foreign gods and what did solomon do to make his wives happy he built temples for their gods in the city of jerusalem so you have even solomon in all his wisdom acting like a fool and being led astray because those closest to him in this case his wives were leading him astray. So the message of this is basically that be careful. Watch for prophets. Watch for dreamers of dreams. Watch even for those who are your closest friends

or your family members who might lead you astray. Because in the end, what matters is that you love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And that love is completely exclusionary. That love cannot be shared with other gods. And so if someone tries to seduce you away from that, you should view them in the same way that you would view someone who tries to seduce you away

from your own spouse so because what you're what they're trying to do is is to get a person to commit some kind of spiritual spiritual infidelity and of course the ramifications of this the the ultimate ramifications of this are stoning because really what idolatry is is basically a revolt it's like it's a revolt against the king so it's like uh betraying your country basically so it's like high treason to worship someone other than Yahweh because he is the he is the king of king of Israel Samson's strength was in his hair but his weakness was somewhere else yeah good way to put it yeah uh and and you see this happen over and over again it wasn't that long ago that Balaam convinced a bunch of women to do this thing that that really ended up being a bad deal for for the Israelites

And so you have this warning here Like sometimes people that you really care about Are going to lead you astray That's going to be tough But the people that are most likely To be successful In leading you astray Are people you care about

Which is why it goes into such detail here In verse 6 Your brother or your son or your daughter Or your wife or your close friend Because they're the ones who They pull your heart strings in other words So they're the ones who can be most successful okay so uh that's the second section so first section prophet or dreamer of dreams who tries to

lead you astray second section what if somebody close to you family or friend tries to lead you astray here's what happens now verse 12 the end of the chapter brings up the the third section and the third scenario where something bad could happen so verse 12 and following if you hear in one of your cities which lord your god is giving you to live in anyone saying that some worthless men have gone out from among you and have seduced the inhabitants of their city saying, let us go and serve other gods whom you have not known. Then you shall investigate and search out and inquire thoroughly. And if it's true and the matter established that this abomination has been done among you, then you shall surely strike the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the

sword, utterly destroying it and all that is in it and its cattle with the edge of the sword. so even the even the cattle die then you shall gather all its booty into the middle of its open square and burn the city and all its booty with fire as a whole burnt offering to the lord your god and it shall be a ruin forever it shall never be rebuilt and nothing from that which is put under the band shall cling to your hand in order that the lord may turn from his burning anger and show mercy to you and have compassion on you and make you increase just as he swore to your fathers if you will listen to the voice of the lord your god keeping all his commandments which i am commanding you today and doing what is right in the sight of the lord your god so this third

section which is uh 12 through 12 to 18 concerns what happens if okay there's this city of course they're not in the land yet they're still waiting to cross over but once they cross over and they they live in these various cities what if there's a city where some worthless men come in and seduce the population astray now it's kind of interesting i thought i'd throw this out there because this comes up in the New Testament, worthless men is literally in the Hebrew is bene belial. Now, are you familiar with belial in the New Testament? Belial later becomes a word for either the netherworld or for the devil himself. Now here, it has this meaning of kind of like useless or worthless. But over time, it has this much more sinister, satanic kind of meaning. But it has

its roots already here in the old testament these are worthless guys and if you look at it in the canonical perspective in the new testament perspective these guys are actually they're nothing more than mouthpieces for the devil in the old testament they were called the sons of baliel worthless guys so they come in and they have a message and this message is basically the same thing that we've heard in the first two section let's go and serve other gods well if that happens and if they seduce away the population of a city, then first of all, you don't just go in and completely massacre the population. You investigate it, you search it out, and you inquire thoroughly. And if it turns out after the investigation has happened that it is true

that the population has been led astray, then the same thing is to happen to the whole city that happened in the first section to the prophet or dreamer of dreams, or in the second section to family member or friend so here it's the whole city they are to be basically executed so all the inhabitants of the city are are taken out as are even the cattle of the city and the and then all the the spoil of the city is heaped in the middle of the of the city and burnt as a sacrifice like a sacrifice i would say to to the lord and not only that but like that city is a ghost town perpetually afterward. It's never supposed to be rebuilt, presumably as like this symbol, this ongoing symbol, like a monument of shame, if you will, to what happens when a city goes

astray from God and rebels in this way. Now, I could be missing something. I don't remember any specific instances in the Old Testament where this was carried out. It may have been, but nothing's nothing's coming immediately to mind where this actually happened but if it did then uh this would be in conformity with what Deuteronomy 13 those last few verses is talking about I can think of a time in the New Testament where this was carried out I I think that when you read stuff like this and you're like like what in the world is going like what this is an extreme way to deal with sin I think that all of this all this stuff points you to yeah this is how God deals with sin and when God deals with sin he deals with it in totality all of it it's

all assembled together and destroyed this is what happens at the cross where the sin of the world all all sin all idolatry all unbelief is it's all gathered up at the cross and destroyed And so when God is talking about the ways that he deals with sin, and it seems like it's so all-encompassing, that's exactly right, which is good news once you get to the gospel because it means that the totality of sin, yours, mine, the world's, has been dealt with in this way. Whenever you're in the Old Testament, you're like,

this is how I'm going to deal with sin, this is how I'm going to deal with sin. You're like, man, you're just wiping all of it out. I mean, it's the cattle, it's everything, man. And you're like, yeah, that is what happens at the cross. Where it's like, I do deal with sin, and when I deal with sin, I deal with all of it. And so I think that this sort of stuff really finds its culmination in the death of Christ, who becomes, what, the sin of the world. That's also why creation is involved in the death of Christ.

Things happening to creation are involved in that. That's why the heavens—the heavens, I've always imagined it this way. It's like the heavens put on the black garments of mourning at the death of Christ because the sun has darkened, right? And then you have earthquakes that are happening around the same time. Of course, you have the veil of the temple being torn in two. You have all this stuff happening in creation at the death of the creator because all creation is involved in the death of the Son of God.

We have that language, of course, in Romans 8 about creation already now groaning as in the pains of childbirth, waiting for the revelation of the sons of God. It's still groaning, awaiting this final resolution that's going to take place at the return of Christ. But even in the death of Christ, you have creation being involved. And of course, creation is still involved. Creation is still suffering from the ramifications of our sin. That's the reason everything that happens in the world that's wrong, whether it's in what we usually think of as creation, like earthquakes, tornadoes, fires, things of that nature, or even in the animal kingdom. All of this is nothing more than the ramifications of the sin that began with Adam and Eve, and then it spills outward from there.

So yeah, I mean, what you said is a perfect way to sum up that chapter. There is with sin no mercy. Sin must be dealt with. It must be dealt with not partially, but in totality, and that ultimately is where this chapter brings us to the cross, where sin is dealt with once and for all in the death of the very one who gave the law to begin with. So he comes to fulfill the very law that he gave. Yeah, I mean, the idea that God deals with sin on every level in totality and destroys it all is a terrifying thought to sinners. And it should be, because sinner I am, sinner Chad is.

It's a terrifying thought, unless it goes down this way, where a guy comes in and says, I will take all the sin and this is one thing that you have to that we get sometimes we're like well you know Jesus you know he's decided he would come and pay our debt or he would take our punishment and that language is fine and and and biblical uh the bible does talk that way but he doesn't just do that he does that by becoming sin so where is your sin at where is the sin of the world at where is the sin of the Israelites at well it's all it's all in Christ that's where it is it's all located there and then god takes care of sin right there and so then this idea that god deals with sin in totality becomes good news to me because he has dealt with

sin in its totality but not not through me he has got he has let me go but it has been dealt with and this is good news which means there is no more sin to deal with and this is great yeah yeah and it's amazing that we get that from a chapter that doesn't seem to have a whole lot of hope in it but i mean that that's the importance of looking at chapters like this in the totality of the scriptures the reason we have these laws the reason we have deuteronomy 13 or any section like that we have threats concerning sin is because this is always supposed to catapult us to the cross where we understand how sin was dealt with once and for all. And that's why for those who are in Christ Jesus, there is no condemnation because there is nothing left to

condemn because Christ has taken our sin and we can ask for it back. We can act in a way that we deserve it back, but we're not getting it back because Christ has taken it all into himself and he has become that sin. And therefore, because of that, because we are now in him, we are the righteousness of god in christ it's it's actually good news that god doesn't just wink at sin because then i have to figure out which sins he winks at which ones he doesn't and which ones i've committed that maybe he'll let slide and which ones i've committed that are a big deal no he's like they're all big deal they've all got to be dealt with i gotta destroy all all sin everywhere well that's terrifying and then you see the cross here's where i do this and

you're free yeah so the next time somebody this came up in the other night in our uh 1517 academy q a that we were doing about like how do you deal with these old testament stories where god seems to do these really destructive things and you get to the new testament he's he's the god of love you know is it like uh two different gods two different ways of dealing with humanity no anytime you read stories like this from deuteronomy 13 or the destruction of sodom or the flood, or what you read about in the book of Joshua, where you have all these people wiped out. Anytime that you see destruction and punishment happening because of sin, always understand that in connection with what we've been talking about, because that is going to drive you

to the cross where you see manifested the love of God and taking that bath and that punishment upon himself. So consistently through the scriptures, we have, yes, threats concerning sin, but we also have the promise of redemption that we have finally in in christ himself amen and i think we're out of time that's it we are out of time guys uh if you've enjoyed the podcast if you're if you're benefiting from it and you would like to become a supporter of what we do and when everything that's christ will fast 15 17 does you can go over to any of the sites uh go to the donate page and you can become a monthly supporter uh we do appreciate all those of you who do that you make all this possible uh chad we will see you next week all right see you then