BibleProject - Understanding The Law Part 2: The Prophets

Episode Date: October 21, 2015

In this episode, the guys continue their discussion of the law with a look at the prophets. The prophetic books in the Bible are an interesting follow up to the Torah. The prophets seemed to really be getting at God’s heart behind the law, and they were desperate to see Israel come out of their rebellion. Tim and Jon will wrap up their discussion by looking at Jesus’ response to the law. He was the answer to Old Testament prophecies, but he didn’t come to get rid of the law, Jesus came to fulfill it. As Jesus followers, we have to wrestle with what this means for us. In the first part of the episode (00:56-12:18), the guys talk about Jeremiah and Ezekiel’s response to Israel’s disobedience. They warned of consequences to rebellion, but their primary message was the radical heart change that needed to take place. In the next part of the episode (12:33-21:30), Tim and Jon talk about Jesus challenging the common interpretations of the law in the Gospels. He boiled down all of God’s commands to the great command: love God and love people. Jesus wasn’t focused on the letter of the law, but the heart behind it. The religious leaders of the day had becoming totally wrapped up in legalism and had lost sight of the purpose behind the laws. In the next part of the episode (21:46-33:57), the guys discuss the central debate of the New Testament: should Jesus followers have to follow the commands even if they aren’t Jewish? The apostles were divided on this, and it’s a question that Paul comes back to throughout his letters. In the final part of the episode (34:12-50:05), the guys wrap things up with a discussion on what the law should mean for Jesus followers today. Though these laws likely won’t affect our day-to-day lives, there is profound wisdom to be gained, especially when we understand God’s purpose for giving them. When we look at the context the laws were given in, we can see God’s heart for his people and his creation. Video: This episode is designed to accompany our video called, "The Law." You can view it on our youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BGO9Mmd_cU Scripture References: Matthew 5 Deuteronomy 6 Galatians Romans 14 Show Music: Defender Instrumental by Rosasharn Music Blue Skies by Unwritten Stories Flooded Meadows by Unwritten Stories

Hey, this is Cooper at Bible Project. I produce the podcast in Classroom. We've been exploring a theme called the City, and it's a pretty big theme. So we decided to do two separate Q and R episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the second Q and R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by July 21st

and send it to us at infoatbiboproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds and please transcribe your question when you email it in. Try to keep your question to about 20 seconds and please transcribe your question when you email it. That's a huge help to our team. We're excited to hear from you. Here's the episode.

Welcome back to the Bible Project podcast. I'm John Collins and we're going to be talking again with Tim Mackey and continuing the conversation on the law. We're going to pick up what we left off, talk about the prophets, and how they continue Moses' metaphor of eating a circumcised heart, and how they expand on that metaphor,

then we're gonna get to Jesus, and how he talks about fulfilling the law, how he summarizes all the law and the great command, and then we're gonna talk about his followers, and how they wrestle through how to also fulfill the law and how Paul the Apostle does that in his own life and how he encourages other people to do it as well. Our video on the law is at youtube.com slash the Bible project.

We got other videos there too, but hey, let's jump in. So Israel has failed to fulfill the law. And then we get to the prophets. And then the prophets are all looking back and then trying to explain to the people of their day why this is happening. And they came to the same conclusions that Moses came to. And the most important figures who addressed this are the two prophets, Jeremiah and Ezekiel,

who were contemporaries. They lived through the exile of Israel and the destruction of the city of Jerusalem. And they both said that all this horrible stuff is happening because of Israel's rebellion and disobedience. And they said, if there's gonna be any hope for a future, which they believe there was for Israel

and for God's purposes in the world, then God's people, the human heart would need to go undergo some fundamental transformation, some healing. And they use, they develop Moses' metaphor that your hearts need to be circumcised, which is an odd metaphor. Well, so yeah, and I was going to dig into that. So does he say both things? Your heart is hard, and then he also says your heart is your concise yeah So Moses diagnosis is the metaphor of having a hard heart. Okay diagnosis, which in the Torah is used to describe Pharaoh Yes, so anyway Torah so so Israel has become Pharaoh and not a compliment not a compliment Yeah, and so the solution that Moses sees is, after you guys go into exile, God will be faithful

and one day he will change the hearts of his people, which is in this metaphor in Deuteronomy. 30 that Moses says, God will circumcise your hearts, so that you can love him and follow him. Yeah, and that's such a strange image. It's a very, it's a metaphor of a metaphor. It's a metaphor of a metaphor. Well, think if you have hard hearts, that's the metaphor. By the way, let's talk about when in Hebrew, the word heart. Right. That's more a center of your not not not just of emotion but also your will your will. Choice. Yeah there's no word for brain in Hebrew you don't think you think you think with your side and feel all in your heart. Okay so a hard heart is really a heart spirit a hard yeah sense of self-stabberness pride sense of I know's best, don't tell me what to do.

And then let's talk about circumcision. Circumcision was just merely a sign to show that you're in. You're in with God's community, right? That's right. Yeah. so and it has its origins in God's promise to Abraham to take one guy who can't have kids And then he turns them into a nation like the sand You know in the desert something or stars in the sky and so Israel was to mark the Male organ with a symbolic sign removing skin as a symbol that their fruitfulness to reproduce was a gift from God. So Moses is merging these metaphors of taking away skin, skin, and then the sign of the

heart is being the center of will and feeling and choice. So Moses thinks there's something wrong with your heart and you need to have, like some serious removal of flesh from your heart. Not literally. Metaphorically. Metaphorically. Yeah.

And we're, yep, that's right. That's the metaphor. Your heart says there's something so fundamentally wrong with your moral sensibilities and your pride that part of your humanity is so corrupted that needs to be removed and we need to be replaced with something new. So why did Moses choose this metaphor of circumcision? Is there something, is there a connection between the faith that you have to have God in him being enough for your reproduction and taking care of your family, which is what circumcision was a

symbol of also just of you being in the family. Or is he is he doing something else am I reading too much into his use of that word? Yeah my own reflections on it have been that it centered on. They're both related to hope for the future. But I could be wrong about this. My conclusion has always been that Moses is innovating and adding a new layer of meaning to the symbol. Because there's nothing about the foreskin that's wrong. But it's true.

But now he's adding in counter to say there is something wrong with the heart. There is something wrong that needs to be cut away. So for the future of the covenant people, a whole piece of our will and stubbornness and pride needs to get cut away. So I could be wrong about that but that that's for in whatever the reading then I've done I've never seen anybody make a good case for more than that but I could be wrong. Yeah. So then we were in the profits and the prophets then also iterate on this image. Yeah, they pick up the idea and use their own metaphors.

So Jeremiah says that one day God will renew the covenant and he will write the laws of the Torah on the heart of his people. So that Israelites won't even need priests or teachers anymore and say, hey, you should follow the laws. And Jeremiah says, they will all know me and I'll remember their sins no more. So there's coming a great act of forgiveness for which all of Israel's rebellion will be finally dealt with and every Israelite will have this internal compass where love for God and obedience to God will become second nature. That's Jeremiah's hope. And then Ezekiel actually picks up the hard heart and says, yeah, God's going to remove your hard heart and give you a new heart of flesh.

And then he says that will happen because God's own life presence. The spirit is going to come into you and animate you. So just like the spirit, just like God's own... God's spirit. God's breath. His breath. And personal animating life president. Calling back to Genesis.

Calling back to Genesis. Yeah, yeah, that humans are dirt and divine breath. It gets put into us. And so now the new humans that love and obey God also need a new act of God's creative power to animate us with his divine breath. And that will bring about a fundamental change in the moral compass of the human mind and heart. So that's what Ezekiel says. So there's three metaphors now. Yeah. There's circumcising the heart. Yep. There's

heart transplant essentially. Heart transplant. And then there's writing the law on your heart. Yep. Which is calling towards the writing of a commandment on stone or on paper. The writing of the ten commandments, even specifically, describing them on stone. They won't be inscribed on stone, but inscribed on the heart. And those are three really great metaphors to dwell on as we try to wrestle through what doesn't mean for our affection and will and kind of desire to change fundamentally. Yeah.

Or what does it look like? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, there's something about the human condition that needs to be fundamentally transformed. And if you stop and think about it, I don't know, we're both beginning to approach middle age in life. And so... When does that start? I don't know, in your 30s. No. It's like third age now. Okay. So, if your 40s is middle age, then where? It is 40s middle age? I feel like. If you're going to live about 80 years.

I guess we're approaching middle age. We're approaching it. We're both in our 30s. Anyhow. I'll think, thanks for that reminder. Sorry, my point in bringing that up was the older you get, the more you have of your own personal history of just moral track record being, and not even- I just try not to think about it.

Yeah, I'm right. Like you have your own failures to look back on, your own mistakes, the things you wish you would have done differently, or you start to notice the things that you feel like you ought to be doing, but you don't find yourself doing. All the dreams you add about the kind of person you want to be in your 20s, you end up not being that person. So we all know this, we all have the sense of a lack of like moral will and moral will power and sometimes we're able to do it, sometimes we're not.

And I think that's what the story and these images are putting their thumb on, you don't have to be religious to know that like we're not, there's a deficit. There's a deficit of some kind when it comes to love and justice and goodness. And the Bible also recognizes that is diagnosing it and saying, yeah, that's a core of the problem. And also that God wants to do something about that to change us. So, yeah, the summary of the piece of so far, the Torah is a story of the pieces so far, the Torah is a story designed to show that Israel did not and could not keep God's law. Moses says, that's because the human condition is so broken and corrupted that we need to be transformed from the inside out by God's own life. He says circumcision of the heart. And so Jeremiah and Ezekiel picked that up,

developed it and said, yeah, when you God's spirit, we need God's law, written deep inside of us. And so it all points forward, but the Old Testament story itself never shows the realization of any of those hopes or promises. It's to unresolve tension that's you close the old testament. So let's talk about Jesus of Nazareth. Yeah, so Jesus comes onto the scene in a really important passage in Matthew chapter

5. He says, he didn't come here to announce the kingdom of God and say, oh yeah, we're done with the laws and the Torah, where we don't need the law. He said, I didn't come to set the law side or abolish it, but he didn't come to leave it alone either. He said he came to fulfill it. And then he gives a series of teachings where he quotes from like some of the 10 commandments. And actually, he says, if you're going to be my follower and live in God's kingdom, true obedience to this command will mean so much more than just the written command. So he talks about how don't murder is truly fulfilled with not even hating or resenting or speaking or thinking

not even hating or resenting or speaking or thinking badly about any person ever. That's actually the moral ideal that God was getting after with Don't Murder is don't nurse any ill thoughts or feelings towards another human. Yeah. And so he says, and that's the kind of humans that I'm here to Make in my community of followers in the kingdom and he says that What he's doing is to fulfill the law which means to fulfill the laws like it, you know, the don't murder to actually fulfill God's ideal in giving that law. To fulfill it himself to do it himself. To do it himself and then also create a community of people who would themselves follow him and so fulfill the law. And so there's two things I think these fulfilling it's fulfilling the storyline that has all these unresolved plot tensions of Israel not being able to fulfill the law.

And so here he is in Israelite and that Israel's Messiah here to be that Israelite who will live in a way that obeys and loves God and fulfills the law. But then also in his teachings, he's calling others to come and follow him so that they too can fulfill the law. So it's, but it's, so Jesus is so interesting because he's saying, I'm not here to set aside the law, but yet he does see himself in some way as an authority over the law to say what it really means and what it really was for and that he's here to do it. Which is a very... The gutsy move in Jewish culture. So, isn't there a story in the New Testament where Jesus is accused of breaking the Sabbath?

Yeah, his followers are. His followers are accused of breaking the Sabbath. Yeah, his followers are. His followers are accused of bringing some grain and working it out to eat the seeds and kernels on the Sabbath or where he heals somebody on the Sabbath. And just so Jesus enters into dispute with religious scholars about the Sabbath. Because at this point, the Sabbath laws in the Old Testament, they're not so clear as to what you can pick and not pick and what you just don't work.

Just don't work. And then you get this whole tradition around what does that mean and not mean. And so just to kind of, I guess what I'm queuing off of is you saying that Jesus sees himself above the law. So he's saying, he doesn't even say that passage, like he basically is like, look, I know what the Sabbath is for, and I'm not breaking the Sabbath. Yeah. So yeah, Jesus felt confident, even with a command like rest on the Sabbath, he felt confident to challenge current interpretations of what meant work and

rest and kind of cross those to put forward what he thought it meant to rest on the Sabbath and rest did not exclude he, laying or doing good or even working enough to provide for yourself if you're hungry and about to fall over. So the point is in that Jesus broke the Sabbath. The point is that he saw himself as an authority. One of my favorite scholars on Matthew, RT France, he puts it this way in a way that stuck with me. He said, most rabbis had debates about the Torah and positioned how their teaching was most faithful to the Torah. But the Torah is the fixed point of reference. And when you hear Jesus' teachings, it's reversed, where he makes himself the center and talks about the Torah's relationship to him and his teachings. Right. And that the Torah is fulfilled by what I'm teaching

and doing. And that kind of move is going to irritate a lot of people. Yeah, totally. Clearly, he earned a lot of enemies. Yeah. Uh, by his teaching and as it's spread. But in the same book, Matthew, he also agrees with Moses and the prophets by saying, yeah, the problem is the human heart. He agrees with the diagnosis. The problem is the human heart. He has that teaching. It's out of the heart that calm all this stuff. Well, and he has a lot of respect for the laws too and that the story of the rich young ruler comes, and he's like, what do I need to do?

And he's like, you got, like, what are the commands? Yeah, how you doing on the 10 commandments? Let's start there. Yeah, yeah, that's right. So the laws were a clear reference point, they were regarded as a divine word. And one of the unique hallmarks and trademarks of G.S.

his message was the way that he boiled all of the laws of the Old Testament down to what he called the great command. Which he was actually asked what's the most important command of the 600 and 13 in the Torah. And he answers a question by giving two commands but he calls it the singular the singular that's really great mistake and so because Jesus can't count or he's way too brilliant for all of us so the first one is from a Jewish prayer based in Deuteronomy chapter 6 called the Shema, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.

And then he says the second part of the great command is love your neighbor as yourself. So Jesus boils down that the fundamental, he agrees with Moses in the prophets. The fundamental problem is the human heart, that we don't love God and love others enough to always do what is right by others. And so Jesus says, here's the true North for the kinds of humans that God has always envisioned us to become. as always envisioned us to become is a human who always loves God by always loving others, and by always loving others is always loving God. And so he boiled it down and he made that the center point for all of his teachings. But you can see he's somehow in Jesus' mind But you can see he's somehow in Jesus' mind creating humans who love God and love others That will care that will deal with all the plot tensions of the Old Testament story and fulfill it That it's these kinds of humans that God has always called us to be but that we have failed to be. And Jesus is here to be that person

and make others into people who can do that too. So when Jesus thinks about loving God and loving others as being the greatest command, does he mean that's all you need to really worry about? Just focus on those two things and then everything else will work out. Or is he just saying, if I had to prioritize them as one, this one's the greatest, that's the one. Well, yeah, I mean, I think it's within the context of which of the commands is the most

important. So, if that's your true North, then in any scenario, you will do the right thing. If you truly are elevating God's honor and goodness and the well-being of others ahead of yourself, you will do the right thing. You will be the kind of human that God made and called you to be. I think that's what he means. Music So Jesus didn't come to abolish the laws. In fact, he had a lot of respect for the laws.

But also Jesus saw saw them within a storyline that pointed forward to something greater than the law that was needed. And he seemed to believe that he was greater thing that was needed. He was going to do something that solved the problem that Moses and the prophets identified. And that's about something to do with Israel and humanity's broken relationship to God because of all that rebellion and sin and also fixing the human heart. And so it seems Jesus saw himself as addressing all of that through his death, crucifixion at Passover,

dying as the Passover lamb bearing the sins of Israel and defeating, exhausting the power of human rebellion and the curse that results and so on. And then gives the spirit to his followers so that they can have a new heart. Yeah. Yeah. So the basic idea of God's spirit in the New Testament, it's picking up off of the divine life breath from Genesis chapter two, God animates the dirt with his own life. And Ezekiel's hope that God's own life breath would have to recreate humans again

to truly love and follow him. And so Jesus picks that up in his teachings about the Spirit and said that out of what he did at the cross in the resurrection that God's Spirit would come and create a new humanity out of his people. And the gospel of Luke particularly paves the way. This talks about the spirit more than any of the other gospels. And then into Acts, Pentecost, and the coming of the spirit. And then it's Paul and Peter's letters specifically that begin to fill out a theology of the role of the Spirit as transforming the heart of Jesus' followers. Now the early Christians were all Jews. And so as they are now receiving the Spirit and and and wrestling

through that new reality, they're still following Jewish customs because they're Jews. Yeah, still going to temple, still fully a part of the worship in Jerusalem, Sabbath, all that stuff. Still eating kosher. Eating kosher. Yep.

So we've been talking about all of this in context of Jewish people who practice the Jewish faith. Or even about Israel who's called to this covenant relationship that takes the forms of its religious traditions in the laws of the Torah. Yeah, and so then Jesus tells his disciples to go out beyond Israel and to make disciples. And so one of the implications immediately becomes, well, do these other non-Jewish followers of Jesus?

Do they need to follow all of these Jewish traditions, especially ones that were designed to keep the Jewish people separate from the Gentiles, because one of the purposes of the law was to keep the nation separate. So we got the kosher law, we got circumcision, we got Sabbath, as the big three, what do the non-Jewish followers do with those laws? Yeah, this was the central debate in the first decades of the Christian movement, and that debate and the tensions created are felt in almost every book of the New Testament. It's the central debate going on in the early church.

So the book of Acts frames it in terms of the Jesus movement is spreading. You have non-Jewish people who love Jesus, who hear about Him, want to follow Him, are finding and are finding themselves empowered and being changed by His own presence by the Spirit. And so the Jewish followers of Jesus say, well, that's legit. Yeah, they're really, Jesus is really after these people, he's changing them. So then they have this debate in the key kind of biblical chapter where it comes together

is in Acts chapter 15. And the apostles discerned by actually looking back at the prophets, in the writings of the prophets, that God always intended the family of Abraham and the God's kingdom to encompass all nations. And so they decide that the laws in the Torah that were for the purpose of setting Israel apart as a culture had played their role in the story, and that they were relevant for Israel for that part of the story, but now that Jesus has come and fulfilled them, I lived by them and brought the story to its fulfillment that non-Jewish followers of Jesus are not required to live by those laws. And it was a heated debate. Because not everyone agreed with it. Not everyone agreed with the apostles who were the appointed kind of deputized leaders of the movement that

Jesus appointed. So not everyone agreed. There were Pharisees who had become Christian followers of Jesus and some of them disagreed and some of them agreed. So Paul the Apostle then becomes the person and the author and the New Testament who was most passionate on behalf of these non-Jewish followers of Jesus. And so that's why we find in his letters the Apostle to the Gentiles. The Apostle to the Gentiles and We find in his letters the most thorough exploration of this whole debate and why he thought it was vitally important that non-Jewish followers of Jesus didn't, were not obligated to follow those laws from the Torah.

And how did that work out in his own life? Did he, did Paul stop following the laws? Did he only do it in certain circumstances? It seems like his default was to go to his own heritage. Yeah. Yeah, there's some places in Acts where he does some things with vows and when he's in Jerusalem and so on where he follows the traditions and the Torah. But he says why, though, and first letter to the Corinthians, he says,

Listen, if I'm among Jews, I always want any Jewish people I'm around to know about Jesus and follow him. So I'm going to live kosher, you know, and do that. But then he said, if I'm among Gentiles and non-Jewish people, I'm not going to live in a way that's going to create unnecessary obstacles to them knowing about Jesus and following Him. So he says, I become like someone who's not following the law. So his litmus test is, am I living in such a way that I'm hindering or helping someone correct?

See the good news of Jesus. Yeah. And in his letters to the house churches in Rome, and his letter to the churches in the region of Galicia, there were non-Jewish and Jewish followers of Jesus in those church communities. And so he gives guidance about how to sort out these conflicts about the Sabbath through

the food laws. And basically he just says, don't judge each other. For one person honoring the Sabbath and eating kosher is their way of loving and following and honoring Jesus. And for somebody else, you know, whatever, leaving town or doing an extra day of work on this abyss so that they can, I don't, he doesn't, this is not his example, but worshiping God on another day, that's how they love and follow Jesus, don't judge each other. You'll each be held accountable to your own heart devotion to Jesus.

Actually, where he nailed them, is he said, you guys as church commuters, you're not loving each other. You're actually becoming legalistic and bitter and backbiting each other and he says so ironically you're trying to fulfill the law, right, and you're actually breaking the great command of Jesus by being such jerks to each other and so in Paul's he just quotes Jesus He just says it the person who loves God and loves Their neighbor is the one who fulfills the law and if you're doing that You can be sure you're on good ground

At one point he does get really upset at people who are trying to Judy eyes is a term. Yeah, specifically circumcision. Okay. Yep. And that's because that just was adding confusion to the gospel or what it is. Yeah. Well, yeah, for the English, specifically, there were circumcisions.

There were some Jewish Christians who had come into this church community. And there were non-Jewish Christians there who would never circumcise. And there's what? You're trying to follow the Jewish Messiah, but you're not circumcised. And so for Paul, that was compromising because one, it's saying to be a part of Jesus' people, to be a part of Abraham's family, I have to perform these rituals. And for Paul, that diminished the good news of God's grace that apart from anything I do or don't do, God just has reached out to me in the person of Jesus. And the moment that I make my observance of a religious ritual,

in the moment that I make my observance of a religious ritual, like the requirement for God accepting me, Paul thinks you've lost the heartbeat of the whole thing. So he gets really ticked. He gets heated. Like, he says, I wish they would emasculate themselves, snip the whole thing, wish they would snip. But for him, it's not just because he was a jerk. That's so funny that that's in the Bible.

It isn't the Bible. He says I wish they would mutilate themselves. It's just like Paul venting a little bit. He's venting. He's ticked in the letter to the Galatians. And again, he gets a bad rap for being that emotionally intense. But I think he was just so truly enraptured with the love of Jesus. And he so wanted people to know the love and the grace of Jesus that when anybody, and when any religious person got in the way of that,

he just, it's kind of like that psychological thing where when someone who's a lot like you does the thing that you hate, because I mean, he just, that tradition, you know? That's true, that was, yeah, totally. It's probably the thing he wrestled with the most. I don't know I'm reading into this now but like or or flip it. I mean what I'm saying is I think it's because he was so transformed and enthralled by the love of Jesus that anything that hindered

another person from experiencing that he just got. Especially when they failed. When they were doing it in the name of Jesus. I'm really interested in your take on when people say, well, the Sabbath is now Sunday. What that whole tradition is. Because I have a lot of friends and I run into people at a time who are like falling in love with the Sabbath and they follow the Sabbath because they just see the wisdom in it. And then there's some people who go, well, and then also we're supposed to because God gave us the Sabbath and he commanded it. And then I think it gets kind of confusing because then

one of the retorts is, well, yeah, we follow it on Sunday and that's what church is about. And then there's this debate about, was the Sabbath switched to Sunday? And so is the whole worshiping on Sunday thing even about the Sabbath? Like, what's that all about? Yeah, it's kind of confusing how things get layered in. So there's the thing that we just talked about, the debate about non-Jewish followers following the laws that set Israel apart. Sabbath was one of the practices that set Jewish people apart in the Roman world, especially. We live in a world that's been so Jewish, slash, Christianized. We got weekends. We got two days.

Two days. Two days of rest. So in the Roman world, that was crazy. You work. You work. Yeah. And the only way you get out of work is by dying or becoming wealthy. We're getting sick.

Or becoming wealthy, okay. So, Jews were seen, yeah, as lazy or anti-social, that kind of thing. So it was one of the things that sat Jewish people apart. So the earliest Christians, after the resurrection and in those early decades, seemed to have had a shift where many of them stopped honoring the Sabbath, and especially non-Jewish, and it's not their tradition. And so Paul even mentions that as one of the debatable matters in Romans 14 and also in the letter to the Colossians. So, that's where it fits for Paul.

It's one of these debatable matters that non-Jewish followers don't have to do anymore. But as best as we can tell, the Christian day of gathering to worship and sing and, you know, take the bread and the cup and so on, started taking place on Sunday. Very early, based on the fact that the resurrection of Jesus took place on Sunday, which on their calendar was the first day of the week. So, and we have a reference to the Lord's Day in the book of Revelation. John says, I was on the island of Patmos on the Lord's Day, which is presumably Sunday. And then it's lost. And then I mean to just off top of my head, there's a couple early church historians and fathers who start mentioning on the day that Christians gather its Sunday connected to the resurrection day.

So it's not- So it wasn't a Sabbath reflection? It's not about Sabbath being shifted to Sunday. It's Sabbath became a debatable matter. And as Christianity became majority non-Jewish, it just wasn't. But Christians have their own practice of setting aside time to gather worship Jesus, take the breath of cup on Resurrection Day, and that practice became the mainstream. That's not shall answer. There's more to it than that, but that's the not shall.

Yeah, and it's not like they had a weekend and they're like, well, we're off Saturday and Sunday, which day should we go to church? Yeah, so I think, so now, I mean, again, there would be people that differ with me on this. I think it seems to me fairly clear that Sabbath is one of those debatable matters. You can do it if in your heart that helps you honor and worship Jesus. I think for Paul, it fits into that category. And so but also it's one of the laws so there's a principle of wisdom of God's wisdom in giving the 24-hour Sabbath which was

evening to evening. Yeah well it's an embedded in the creation story it's like it's it seems like a really big deal. Yeah, yeah, totally. So I think it's stupid not to, but once again, am I a part of the family of Jesus and accepted by God because I observed the Sabbath? And there I think we would be crossing a line. So that's a good segue into, I think, the final thing we should talk about, which is, you mentioned there's wisdom in the law. Yeah, and so let's say I'm a new Christian. I'm a non-Jewish Christian

and so I I realize that The main point then is to love God and love others and I can only do that through the power of the Spirit That's where I would begin, right? But then I've got this whole tradition of God's word, and in it are a bunch of laws pertaining to how I should live. How ancient Israel was to live. How ancient Israel was to live.

Yeah. And so, and then we also see in the New Testament letters, references to these laws a lot. So they seem to be still important. But if I go and try to obey all the laws, now I'm doing the year of living biblically and I'm throwing pebbles at poor ladies on the street. So like how, you know, tease us out.

Yeah, I think in a nutshell, Jesus and the apostles do quote from the laws. You'll see specifically what they'll quote from laws that already are themselves stated as principles that transcend ethnic groups. Like most of the 10 commands, not Sabbath, but don't murder or honor your parents. So Paul the Apostle feels free to pull out honor your parents to instruct non-Jewish Christians living in Ephesus. And it's not because he, his pre-supposition is, of course, going to follow

the laws, and this is one of them. This is a moral command that we could all agree there's a principle behind it. Yeah, yeah. For here's something that God said to Israel and it, this law will serve to guide you in loving God and loving others the way Jesus taught us. So kids, honor your parents. So it seems like what you're saying is then Paul is got a filter. He goes to the laws and he says, cool, if this is what God said ancient Israel,

and I know I need to love God and love others, the filter becomes, how do I apply this law to myself and my culture in such a way that I'm actually loving God and loving others. And some of these laws like honor your father, go through the filter without being touched. They just like, they just get right through. But then another law like, don't muzzle the ox, he'll quote it. And he'll put it through the filter and then he'll find a principle underneath of it. That's right. Yeah, that's a great, Yeah, that's a great way of putting it. So for Paul, his filter is, love God, love your neighbor, the great command of Jesus. So you can see this coming out,

in like one of his letters, Romans 13, he starts quoting the 10 commandments, don't commit adultery, don't murder, don't steal, don't covet. And he says, and if there's any other command, it's all summed up in this. Love your neighbor as yourself. So he quotes the Slyricus, quoting, he's quoting the Loviticus command that Jesus said, summarizes the great command. Then he says, love does no wrong to a neighbor.

Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. So for Paul, that's his filter, the great command of Jesus. Well, that's his filter, the great command of Jesus. And so, but he will also appeal to laws that seem very detailed or obscure, and discern a principle that will come into the service of the great command. So for example, yeah, he quotes that law in Deuteronomy 25 about not muscling in ox while it's working, treading in the grain fields. And a muzzle would be the thing that keeps him from eating Yeah, he would put a muzzle on an ox to not eat the grain that he's supposed to be grinding out Yeah, you know if you've got a hundred pounds of grain and the ox eats ten While he's working he just lost ten pounds of grain or whatever

So I don't know if my I don't know if an ox eats ten pounds of grain or whatever. So I don't know if my, I don't know if it's an ox eats 10 pounds of grain. You know, I have no idea. So what Paul does is skip the future farmers of America meetings when I was growing up. So Paul, and this is him first Corinthians 9, Paul still thinks that law is valuable as a source of divine wisdom, and he discerns the principle underneath it, that God cares those who work hard, share in the results of their labor.

And then he goes on to apply that to humans, specifically to leaders in the church, that they should be compensated for working, giving hours and energy to lead in a church. Pay your pastors. Why? We don't muzzle the ox. For Paul it just follows that you go to a law and do the ronomy and see and care what it says. And do you think Paul is then saying, so this is now a new law, pay your pastors, and now we need to put that in our law book and make sure we're checking that one off.

Or is he just saying, here's a principal, and here's the way the principal can be applied. But he didn't take a paycheck. So like, yeah, well, that's more in the particular, there's a way he's saying. To back to your first point, I guess I don't bring that up to try to be divisive. I just am saying, is he creating law or is he just creating principle? No, I think he, I think Paul sees the law as a source of wisdom to help teach God's people new applications of how to love your neighbor.

Yeah. So, because it would be, I think I grew up in tradition where I was trained to read the New Testament as more law. I see. Got it. So, like, there's all these things. It's like, okay, so we're not supposed to do that. Paul mentions, don't do that.

Paul mentions to do this. And now you're just kind of collecting these things. Yeah, so yeah, it's a good example. So I think you all of the moral commands that Paul gives in his letters, we know come from some worldview deep underneath that for Paul, this is a way of loving God and loving my neighbor. And Paul is giving specific applications of that in all these different moral. To the early church. Or exhortations.

And we know that that's his filter because he says, listen, all the commands that you could ever give are summed up in this. Love your neighbor. So do we need to do the same exercise or can we just rely on what Paul did and say, probably he did enough? Um, man, you know, for me personally,

I need to get underneath it. For following Jesus to make sense to me, I want to understand the moral world view underneath the commands in the New Testament, especially when they come into conflict with moral sensibilities of the culture I grew up in. So there's, because sometimes there's conflict, usually in the realm of sexual ethics. And so for me, I really want to know the moral principles underneath that make sense of

what I'm being called to do as a follower of Jesus. I think it's a vital step of Christian growth in following Jesus to learn how to think on the level of first principles. And I think those are the kinds of people that Jesus wanted to form, are people who have wisdom to know exactly how to love God and love neighbor in all the different possible situations and cultures.

So this kind of brings us back to that whole boiling, boiling a goat and the mother's milk example. Is that in the mission or the Talmud? The interpretation was well the principle underneath. Correct. Is it just cruel to bake an animal in the life source of that animal. There's just something twisted about that. And then you get all these kosher laws that come out of that. But back when we talked about that, we, you said, you know, there's good evidence now that that wasn't actually why that law was made so it's a danger

Mm-hmm doing the exercise of trying to find the wisdom underneath the law. Oh, sure Sure, there is yeah, you could be wrong. You could be wrong You could be wrong. So isn't it safer just to obey the law? How's written? Right, well sure, but I don't own an ox. I don't ever tread grain. And the, I mean, not, well, that's good to the second, that's getting to a earlier question of what's the value of those laws. But there may be way, there may be creative ways of loving God and loving my neighbor that I wouldn't think of. If you didn't do the exercise. If I didn't do that exercise.

Because what the laws, this is back to the salehammers idea about one of the roles in the law, was to give us a view of what the laws affected in Israel's life. So love of God and neighbor affected diet, affected the way I run my business, the way I treat employees, the way I design my house, to be a place that's safe, that prevents injury, build parapetries. I mean, really, like all of these laws, all of a sudden, get you thinking about, like, well, God cares about all these aspects of human community and life that I might overlook in a hyper-individualistic Western culture. And so there's immense wisdom to be gained from getting the principles done to the loss.

And can we get them wrong sometimes? I suppose so, but if you're true North is love God and love neighbor, you can't go that wrong. That's it on the law. We'd love to hear your questions about this topic. We're on Twitter at join Bible Proj and on Facebook, Facebook.com slash the Bible project. You can see all of our videos on YouTube. They're free. YouTube.com slash the Bible project. And our website is JoinTheBibleProject.com.

All right. See you next time. Now it's time to let you go.