40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Episode 171 (Deuteronomy 16:18-17:13)

Episode Date: June 27, 2019

God is concerned with justice so He puts rules in place for Judges. How does the belief in ONE God separate Israel from the rest of the world? Why were early Christian called atheists? Why is the penalty for proven idol worship so severe? Why is there so much capital punishment in the law of God? 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 are going on over there. Also, if you want to come out to sunny San Diego in October, still some tickets left to Here We Still Stand. You can grab those. We would love to hang out with you.

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and then you won't be hanging out with us in san diego then you'll just be watching videos later on when they come out being like that looked fun you don't want that nobody wants that get over there and do it chad what is going on man well i am getting ready for a uh week-long trip yeah my uh my son starts naval academy this week so we're recording a day early because we're all taking off for uh annapolis maryland dc be hanging out with all the politicians later this week or at least i'll be in there i'll be in their back their backyard at least yeah well you know when we get done recording i'll give you a list of things i'd like you to discuss with them yeah yeah i'll I'll do a little lobbying while I'm there.

I'm sure I'll be rubbing elbows with a lot of powerful people. Oh, sure. Yeah. You're going as an ambassador for the nation of Texas, right? That's right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I told my son, I got him a, he has to have a little U.S. flag on his desk at his dorm room at the academy.

I said, that's fine. You need to make sure you get a Texas flag to go on the other side of your desk. You got to represent the Republic while you're there. That's right. That's right. He could have like a little American flag on the desk and then like a huge Texas flag on the wall behind him. There you go.

There you go. But yeah, that's what's going on in our lives. We got a busy week coming up, but it's all good. It's all exciting times. Yeah, well, right on, man. Well, what exciting things are happening in the book of Deuteronomy? Well, I guess a little bit of a segue here. We're not talking about politics, although we will later in the chapter,

but we are talking about judges. That's where we find ourselves right now in Deuteronomy. We talked about most of chapter 16 last time, and we left off with verse 18. So we've got two or three verses here that had to do with judges, and then a couple of verses that have to do with Asherah polls, which I think we've discussed before, but we'll touch on that as well. Then the next, that's only like, I don't know, five or six verses. and then we'll jump into chapter 17 which is uh where we're going to hear what you do with a

person who is been convicted of idolatry and then we jump into some other matters after that so but i really what i'm looking forward to the most actually is the last part of chapter 17 where it comes to a discussion of israelite kings so some actually some pretty fascinating stuff there israelite kings before they had them huh yeah that's right yeah there's a well i don't i don't want to i don't want to get too much into it but i mean it's it is really it's a fascinating discussion because like they don't have any and they're not going to have any for a long time but it's like hey if you ever do have a king you know if you go down that road well here's how it needs to be so it's almost like moses can already see what's what's coming yeah well people love kings

man. God knows it. Moses knows it. I love that power. All right. So, uh, back to verse 18 of chapter 16, we got, we got, uh, three verses here that had to do with, with judges. And most of this language we've encountered already in Deuteronomy says, you shall appoint for yourselves judges and officers. We're not sure exactly what the difference is between those two guys, but anyway, judges and officers in all your towns, which the Lord, your God is giving you according to your tribes and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment. All right. So it kind of makes sense, right? Got people scattered all over the place. And of course, disputes are going to arise. And so you need somebody who's going to be there to decide them. It's a whole lot better than

vigilante justice or every man doing what's right in his own eyes. So you're going to have these judges. And when you have judges, of course, you also have something else. You have the possibility of injustice. You have the possibility of bribes. You have the possibility of showing favoritism either toward the rich or toward the poor. So it goes on and says, you shall not distort justice. You shall not be partial and you shall not take a bribe because a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and perverts the words of the righteous. Verse 20 says justice, really literally it's in Hebrew, its justice justice but most english translations say something like justice and only justice you shall pursue that you may live and possess the land which the lord your god is giving you now

implicit in this and this is something i actually appreciate implicit in this command to appoint judges and the prohibition against bribes is that israel is not going to be there's an implicit acknowledgement here that israel is not going to be some kind of utopia i mean so there's never any there's never any idea that oh israel is going to be this perfect place where everybody's going to do what is right and everything will be just perfect and everybody's going to be equitable and there won't be any kind of problems that you know can't just easily be solved instead there is an implicit acknowledgement, yeah, that things are going to come up. There's going to be some serious decisions that need to be made, and because of that, we need these judges. And also, there's an

implicit acknowledgement that if you have human judges, you have the possibility of corruption. So you've got this prohibition against the taking of bribes, and elsewhere we've seen, I think earlier in Deuteronomy, we've had this language of that you shall not show partiality even to the poor. So just because someone, say there's a case against somebody who's rich and somebody who's poor, well, it doesn't matter. If you tend to be the type that wants to lean, the kind of judge who wants to lean into the direction of the poor, Deuteronomy prohibits that because it's supposed to be kind of a blind justice, right? You don't look at the person, you look at the situation, you look at the facts of the case, and on the basis of that, you make your decision.

Because a poor man is just as ready oftentimes to break the law as a rich man is. So this is this essence of justice that it doesn't consider the person according to their station in life or their power or their lack of power, but instead looks at the facts of the case. But the main thing I like about this is the fact that we do have an acknowledgement that Israel is not going to be a utopia. Because if we've learned anything about utopias, especially over the last century or so, is that anyone who strives to create a utopia will actually create hell. Because that just means that if I'm out to create my own utopia, well, then I'm going to do whatever it takes to destroy anyone who gets in the way of my will to create a utopia well it's like yeah

it's also this acknowledgement that god gave them the law chad is that not enough i mean if he i mean is the law just he told them how to act is this not enough all you need right just tell people how to act and everything will be good yeah i mean just give them the law and then bam you know everything's fixed you know uh god knows this is not the case he says here's the law now you're also going to need some judges because there's gonna be a lot of sin going on because this is what the law does i mean the law does not make people obey the law in and of itself uh and you're going to have disputes arise and not only you're going to have disputes arise then you're going to have sin making more sin where people try to bribe judges or get favors from their friends and all

this kind of stuff and so god is interested in justice and again like what he as he always says he's like this would be a good thing to do that you might live long and possess the land which given to you so the idea is that the the purpose behind this sort of thing is the quality of life of the of the israelites that corruption within your in this case your judicial system it creates a less desirable environment to live in yeah i mean that that's gonna have it's gonna have ripple effects that, that, that go out through all of society and going to make, going to make matters even worse. Yeah. It's, it's, it's one of the comical assumptions that a lot of us still have today is that if we can only make enough laws, then we'll be able to fix society. Right. So we

have this, I don't think if, I don't think it's always said explicitly, but there is sort of this assumption out there that if we just make enough laws to cover all the situations in life, then we'll be able to create a better society well that's not the i mean that's like a fundamental misunderstanding of the law i mean the law has its place of course but creating laws to tell people what to do and what not to do is by no means a guarantee that these laws are going to actually make the people do do what you're not supposed to do in fact as we as we know theologically it usually has the opposite effect you create laws about you create laws that pertain to the things that people are most likely to do and it does not make these people less likely to do it

it just means that there's consequences for it so this this is on a societal level we see that this is true but on an individual level this is true too i mean so when people look at someone and they're like, well, that person's just a big old sinner. Probably what would fix them right up is if I just gave them a bunch of law. That's their problem. And you're like, no, that's not how this works. You know, there's sort of an acknowledgment of that, even in the life of Israel.

You know, the number 613 is usually the number that is given for the number of laws in the Torah. And some of those are even repetitions, you know, so it's the same law repeated twice. But 613 is a typical number that's associated with how many laws there are in the Torah. And you think about it, that's actually not a lot. I mean, I have I've never looked into this, but my guess would be that most towns and municipalities, cities have way, way more than 613 laws on their books. And we're just talking about like a city or a small town. Well, this is like a whole nation.

This is God giving to Israel his laws and, you know, 613 times. Well, that's just like barely getting started, according to the legal systems today. So, I mean, there is a different understanding of law in ancient Israel. And it really even a different understanding of how judges were to conduct themselves. Of course, judges, I mean, they worked with the laws that God had given. But there's a much greater focus, at least in my reading of the Torah, a much greater focus upon the kind of judge that you choose. He's to be wise. He's to be discerning. He's to be just. He's to be fair. And of course, he's to consider the law.

But there's going to be a lot of cases, of course, where you don't have any kind of written code to exactly decide what is to be done. I mean, we even have cases in the Torah where people had to turn to God and say, all right, we got the situation. We don't know what to do with it. So what do you say? So it's a little bit different focus in the Israelite society about justice and laws and judges than we have in ours. Anyway, that's the first few verses. The chapter wraps out, wraps up with a couple of verses that have to do with idolatry, kind of the popular religious options of the day. So verse 21 and 22 says, you shall not plant for yourself an Asherah of any kind of tree beside the altar of the Lord your God, which you shall make for yourself. Neither shall you set up for yourself

a pillar, some kind of sacred pillar, which the Lord your God hates. Well, of course, this was, if you know anything about these Asherah trees or Asherah poles, these are referenced throughout the Old Testament, and we've encountered them already. This was sort of a, an Asherah pole was like an icon, this wooden symbol of a female fertility deity, which was very, very common in the culture of Canaan and in all the surrounding cultures as well. I mean, female deities were very popular, especially as they related to fertility. So this is basically saying to Israel, as we've heard multiple times, don't do that. Don't be like the nations who are around you, instead of looking to some goddess or another god for that which you think you need

from them concerning fertility or whatever it might be, well, you look to the Lord your God, because he alone is the source of everything, everything that you need. And it's worth saying again, just how weird this would have been in the ancient world. I mean, we have this still, like in the times of uh of the first century when when the jews were under roman domination one of the things the romans could never understand about the jews and the greeks were like this too they could never understand about the jews i mean what was what was so weird about them is that they only worship one god well it's just strange i mean who in the ancient world didn't worship multiple deities i mean it was like it was unheard of almost unheard of for a nation to be monotheistic

because everybody just was like never even questioned that you would have multiple gods that you worshipped so for israel to come along and number one only to have one god and number two not even to have an image of that one god that that that put the jews in a completely different arena religiously speaking so for i mean it might seem like obvious to us like well of course you wouldn't put like the symbol of a goddess beside the altar of yahweh i mean why would you do that but for for the jews and for the people around them that would have been like second nature of course of course you do because you want to cover all your options this god is good for that and that god is good for this other thing and this other god is one

you turn to for for this so israel stood out uh distinctively in the ancient world because of their insistence on monotheism now today we're the exact opposite right if we encounter someone who most worships multiple gods we think they're strange but not in the ancient world to encounter someone who worship only one god would have been strange yeah you don't you don't see a bunch of Raging debates between You know Atheists And

And believers And multiple gods going on The question is not You know In a debate forum Whether gods Exist It's

Do you believe in God? Just the way we phrase it is singular You know So I mean It'd be real weird If you saw You know Richard Dawkins

Debating some guy That believed In tons and tons of gods I mean, you could find that I mean, you could debate, you know, someone over in Thailand or something, you know And they still have that over there But the Western world, the debate is, does God exist? Yeah, so you can see even in our discussions with atheists today

The ongoing ramifications of, well, Jewish influence And then Christian influence throughout the centuries You know, one of the fascinating things is that About early Christianity, the early Christians and they were accused a lot of things uh but one of the things one of the most fascinating accusations leveled against the christians is that they were atheists yeah and they were called atheists not because not in the way that we think of it today of course we think of an atheist as denying the existence of any divinity but the reason the early christians were that is because

they denied the existence of all of the of the greek and roman pantheon it wasn't like they didn't believe in any god they were called atheists because they refused to believe in a multiplicity of gods well well the way that it presented to the outside world was these guys don't worship a god they worship some guy yes that was like walking around with them and then like they like somebody killed him and like maybe he rose from the dead maybe you didn't but he's still some guy yeah you know like i mean he's a man right so like the fact that you know for christianity that God, the incarnation is problematic for this whole thing.

And yeah, you'll get called an atheist because you're like, well, that's not a God, that's a person. Yeah, so we have to explain what Christianity is today to people who aren't familiar with it. But I think the situation that we face today is not quite the same that the early Christians face. No one's going around calling Christians atheists.

Right. But it doesn't matter what timeframe that you're living in. I mean, there's always going to be people who misunderstand Christianity today. I mean, our main problem today is not that people are called in as atheists. Our main problem today is that people

are just equating Christianity with a religiously moral system, and that's it. Yeah. Most people, when they think, when they hear, if they're not super familiar with Christianity, when they think about church

or they think about Christianity, the first thing that comes to their mind is not, oh those are the people that believe in the gospel right i mean nobody that i've ever encountered that is kind of wanting to know about christianity and they maybe know a little bit the little bit they know is not oh you guys are the ones who are all about christ crucified and risen now it's it we usually have a bad reputation for uh whatever our and whatever moral stance they associate with christianity that's that's about as far as most people get yeah it's funny I was listening to Jordan Peterson talk to Bishop Robert Barron.

He's a Catholic bishop. And that's an interesting conversation because it's one of the first times that he's talked to someone for an extended period of time that is obviously religious. And one of the things that Peterson said was that, and now Peterson doesn't go to church and hasn't gone to church in a very long time. And he said that where he thinks Christianity blew it

was that it became too much about grace and not enough about, you know, getting your act together. And I thought, you're not going to the churches I went to because that's all it's about. I don't know what you're talking about, you know? I mean, and he's talking about, like, very practical things, like, you know, don't be an alcoholic, don't watch porn, you know, like, get your life together.

I'm like, that's all it is? that's like 99 of what you hear in a lot of churches yeah man like this so that was a weird criticism from someone who uh doesn't go to church but uh that's that i just thought that was really odd yeah that is that is nothing out of the church that we're familiar with it's pretty rare for us to hear somebody criticize the church that's outside the church criticize the church for talking too much about grace yeah well and then of course uh you know robert barron being a catholic priest was like in total agreement i'm sure he was yeah probably what's happened is jordan peters has been reading a lot of christoph fast in 1570 probably

he's been hearing about some rampant antinomianism running around i'm sure all right uh so that's verse that chapter 16 we'll jump into 17 now um 17 1 through 7 we we talked about this in an earlier episode when we were discussing what do you do with the false prophet so you got this prophet that comes along and he claims to course speak in the name of yahweh but his real goal is to draw you away from the worship of yahweh alone to some sort of some sort of inclusion of other deities so in that discussion we we did touch on chapter 17 these first few verses this is a case this is a situation rather where you've uh you got somebody in your town and a man or woman it says and they do what's evil in god's sight but specifically

here's what it's talking about verse three this person has gone and served other gods and worship them or the sun or the moon or any of the heavenly host which god has not commanded okay so we we've got uh we got somebody who uh like i said either sex is a man or woman and uh they haven't just like done something wrong they've actually committed themselves to some kind of idolatry they're worshiping you know asherah or they're worshiping baal or they're worshiping uh malak or they're worshiping some of the elements of creation i mean you've got the sun moon the the heavenly hosts that are that are mentioned there which of course were the sun was like a big deal to worship in the ancient world so you've got uh you've got this person what do you what do

you do well you don't just like oh i heard i heard a rumor about uh you know that that that joe down the street is an idolater someone take my sword and cut his head off you know that's not the way it's not the way it worked instead it says if you hear about this then you inquire thoroughly it says you basically make sure that the situation is investigated and you don't just go by the testimony of one person it says verse six on the evidence of two or three witnesses this comes up of course in the new testament as well so you got you can't simply go by the word of one person so it's two or three or more witnesses that is the only way in which a person who's been accused can be justly tried for for the accusation so this is there's a there's a there's a twofold concern

here one is to prevent idolatry they don't want idolatry spreading and so if an individual is caught well then they make sure they deal with the situation but they don't deal this with the the situation in any sort of peremptory fashion instead they make sure there's a trial and that there's two or three witnesses and they investigate the matter thoroughly now that all being done if the person is found guilty then just like with other infringements of the law this person is going to be is going to be put to death and interestingly here it says verse seven that the they're to be stoned it says that the hand of the witnesses shall be the first against him to put him to death which i think is meant to be a dire warning against people who are considering

false testimony because you if like there's somebody you don't like let's say and uh you're trying to get back at them and you think well i'll just accuse that person of idolatry well if you're if you're brought forward as a witness and you testify to that effect not only are you lying but you're also about to be guilty of murder because your hand will be the first to to cast a stone cast a stone at this person so it's it's a warning against someone thinking that they can simply sin in one one way and not sin in another way if you're going to lie then you're also going be the one who's who's going to be guilty of murder if you have lied about this person that's the first seven verses of that chapter and that you know that seems rough i mean i i will grant

the listener um you're like oh man like idolatry uh and yes we're all idolaters so this is true but this is talking about like a more explicit act uh this is not uh idolatry on the on the heart level this is about uh you know this is about someone who is going out and worshiping gods that in many cases these gods have horrific practices attached with their worship we've talked about this at length that will be detrimental to society if they start bringing other people into this worship so i mean you have child sacrifice you have you have all kinds of of bad things that go down and so this isn't i mean yes god is is about you only worshiping him because he's the only god he is offended by your worship of other things however there is also an

element of this which is the spread of idolatry and we will see throughout the pages of the old testament that when idolatry spreads things are horrible the ramifications of it are really bad And so part of this is this is a first use of the law kind of thing, as we call it. It's a deterrent. It's to say, don't do it. Don't do this thing that, if it spreads through the community, will destroy the community. Don't do it because the punishment for doing it is death. So it's the reason.

It's just like laws that we have that says, if you do this thing, here's the consequence, and it serves as a deterrent to do that thing because you don't want, you know, uh everyone going 90 miles an hour on the freeway because we're all going to die if you do that uh so they put in deterrence not to do that because you're gonna i mean if you're going that fast you're gonna not just get a ticket but you're probably gonna get arrested and you're gonna lose your license and all this kind of stuff right so this is how it is with idolatry but the penalty is is severe but that's that's part of the reason uh the other reason of course, is that there is no life in the worship of idols. Eternal life is only accessed through

the one true God. And so there's also this deterrent of trying to root something out that, again, you could potentially bring other people into that would have not just temporal horrific consequences, which it would have, but also eternal consequences of having people worship idols yeah i mean that underlines the fact that israel we can't ever think of israel the way that we think of countries today right this isn't just like some kind of society i mean it is it is a society it is a a nation but at the same time it's also the people of god whose whose very existence is grounded in the fact that yahweh is the one who has chosen them and brought them out of captivity in egypt to lead him to the promised land so that they might be his people so

if idolatry spreads the very reason of their existence is annihilated so that's why idolatry is is uh the equivalent of what we would think of as high treason i mean you just can't nothing is really worse than idolatry because it cuts at the very at the very heart of what makes israel israel what distinguishes them from from any other people and that's so if things like this bother you like man you know so much for freedom of religion well there was there's no freedom of religion in israel any more than there's like freedom in the church today to well if you want to worship jesus if you want to worship jesus and also a hindu god or a muslim god or any pick any god that's not an option in the church right it just denies the very reason for the existence of

the church if we try and have jesus and another god well it's like that with with the israelites as well you can't have yahweh and something else without almost immediately destroying yourself and those who are around you through the idolatrous influences yeah i mean obviously there's we don't uh well the church doesn't you know uh execute someone for you know deciding they're going to be part of another religion but what the church should do uh is if if you if i you wander up in there and be like hey is it cool if i put this asher pole up there next to the cross like i'm i'm can i use your space to worship this other god well no you you're probably they're going to probably tell you like hey you can't be a part of the church if you're going to do that

that's not that's not how this works so you're going to be put outside the church if you if you do that and that's what happens here uh it's just even more extreme yeah yeah okay uh so that is the first uh first seven verses verses 8 through 13 pick up uh the idea of judges once more the basic basic concern here is okay you've got you got this case and for whatever reason it's kind of a hard case it's a difficult case for a person to decide uh you know it's kind of going back to our discussion in chapter 16 you got these village judges or town judges and and of course there's going to be you know some cases are easy some cases are more difficult we still have this today in our law courts so you got this really hard case and uh you're not

might be homicide or some kind of lawsuit or an assault or whatever it might be, verse 8 discusses all of those. So what are you going to do? Well, if it's that hard a case, that difficult to decide, it says, here's what you do. You, verse 9, you come to the Levitical priest or the judge who's in office in those days, and you inquire of them, and they will declare to you the verdict in the case. So you basically take it to the people who, it's a little bit unclear, either they are deemed those who have greater wisdom and knowledge of the law that's that's a possibility or it could be a case where you have this difficult case and so you go to the priest because the priest is the one who has the urim and thumim or however you want to say that the basically the sacred lots

or dice by which you can determine what god's will is so the urim and the the thumim which were kept in the breastplate of the high priest these were some kind of lots that were cast in order to determine what the will of the Lord was on a particular situation. So that it could be that this was why you went to the priest, so that they could use these divinely given objects in order to decide what the situation is going to be. And then verse 11 and 12 and 13 goes on to say, basically, if you take the case to these people, and this is what they say you are to do, this is what they teach you, this is the verdict which they render, well, then you don't have the option of saying, no, no, no, I don't like that decision. I don't like that verdict. Because if

you do, it says you're acting presumptuously by not listening to the priest who stands there to serve the Lord your God. And so the penalty for that is not good. So if you take the case to the priest and the priest decides this on the basis of divine will and you say no no no no well then actually it says the death penalty is applied to you so if you go that far then you listen to what the priest had to say based upon what god has to say and that is the that is there is like no further appeal there's no higher court that one can appeal to than the priest who turns to god for the answer one of the things that you see over and over again is that it sure seems like capital punishment is you know the punishment for a lot of things i mean it's it's all over the

place and there's a lot of there's a lot of laws that you can break where you get ended and i think that what that shows us is that god is sort of doubling down on this idea that the wages of sin his death you know uh the day you eat of that fruit you shall surely die i mean he's he starts off at the very beginning like that where he says i mean what happens when you rebel against god is death and whether that takes a long time to happen in the sense of eventually we die or if it's in a judicial way like this it's the same outcome in the end which is as we rebel against God as we sin that the outcome of that is death and I think that when Paul says you know the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life he's able to like you know really look back

on the law of God and be like well God is is fairly consistent in his proclamation that you rebel against me and what happens is you die again this is God showing you that sin equals death like Sin will kill you, and this is how this works. This is not a gospel passage, you know? This is a law passage, and you will die. And this is why Paul makes a distinction between the wages of sin being death, as in the thing you've earned is through what you've done and failed to do is death, but the thing that God freely gives that you haven't earned is eternal life.

That's a gift of God. And so when I read all this stuff, I just think, yeah, well, he said the wages of sin is death. And sure enough, that's what it is. Yes. And it's not like just a bad choice. Yeah. Yeah. It's just not like an unwise life choice. It has it has eternal ramifications. And I mean, this is this is the way the law drives home again and again and again.

The law is not about mercy. It's not about mere guidance. but instead it it cuts to the heart of the seriousness of of sin every single time yeah and you have here in verse 13 where it says all the people will hear and be afraid if this sort of thing happened and they will not act presumptuously again so you have two things going on like one is that to drive home the the point again that the wages of sin is death and also to curb everyone's behavior and tell them hey maybe don't do this thing even if you even if you're not good this does not mean that people won't do this thing righteously it doesn't mean

that like everyone will will be inwardly righteous and and not be uh rebelling against god but what it does mean is they won't they won't take to action and do these things which will be better for the society. Yeah. And, you know, when you read later in Israelite history, you realize the fruits of what happened when these kinds of laws were ignored. I mean, you take just one example among many, the King Manasseh. It's almost like Manasseh read Deuteronomy chapter 17 and thought, you know what, I'm going to do the exact opposite of everything this says, you know because he he set up asherah poles beside the altar of god and he established altars to all sorts of different deities there at the temple in jerusalem he uh he made his some of his children

pass through the fire so he sacrificed them to to malak i mean it's like there's nothing in these various prohibitions that manasseh didn't do like he was he would wanted to rebel in every single way so he just proliferated idolatry in in the nation of israel in the southern kingdom specifically and the thing is uh even though he lived to regret that actually as second chronicles talks about what happened as a result of his actions had implications not just for him as an individual but for the whole nation so it's like we were talking about earlier what uh what happens is that when idolatry is not only permitted but encouraged and pretty soon every single fabric of society begins to begins to break down so that's why we have these constant repetitive

warnings against against idolatry and that's why everything in one way or another always gets back to to the first commandment about having having no other gods no other gods before him and which is why when we get to the gospel, one of the aspects of the gospel that we sometimes don't really think about is the fact that in Jesus trusting his Father, in rejecting the temptation of the devil, for instance, to fall down and worship him, and instead worshiping his Father and his Father only, this was Christ's way of keeping not only the first commandment for us, but also all the other commandments as well. and then imputing that righteousness to us.

So when we hear things like we do in chapter 17 about idolatry and the repercussions that come from that, we jump also then to what Christ did in keeping that commandment for us and in being faithful to the Father on our behalf so that His obedience and His righteousness are ours. Yeah, I mean, once you obliterate the first commandment, the first commandment is a huge domino. And so once you decide that I don't have to worship this God,

once that's true, neither do you have to listen to what he says, which means you don't need to love your neighbor, which means you don't need to worry about orphans and widows, which means you don't need to worry about not perverting justice. You don't need to do any of these things. I mean, if that's not the God you worship, then forget the whole thing. And then you do have a society where you just do what's right in your own eyes, which we see over and over again is the worst kind of thing for everyone.

Yeah. Nobody wants to live in a society. Absolute mayhem. Exactly. And that's it, man. That's 40 minutes. Guys, if you enjoy the podcast and you'd like to help out with supporting the podcast, you can do so by going over to any of the sites and going to the donate link,

and you can become a contributor there. Thank you so much to those of you who do that and make it possible. We will see you next week. See you then. We'll see you next time.