Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How to Apply God’s Law | Torah | Deuteronomy 22:1-12

Episode Date: October 27, 2022

Are Old Testament laws still relevant to your life? Should you be responsible for following God’s laws? Even those laws that seem weird? In today’s episode, Patrick looks at Deuteronomy 22:1-12 to share how to apply God’s laws to your life. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Deuteronomy 22:1-12

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. When people ask me for my favorite verse, I usually answer with a joke verse. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I find the question too hard. But today, we're going to look at one of my go-to verses when I'm asked that particular question, Deuteronomy 22, verse 8.

Of course, people give me a curious look when I say that, so then I tell them to look it up. And when they pull out their phones and they read this gem of a verse, their faces quickly changed from curiosity to confusion. Surely I misspoke, this could not be one of my favorite verses. But the honest truth is that it really is. And I'm not actually joking, because embedded in this verse is an ethical principle that unlocked how to read God's law and apply it in the present. I guess I better read the verse to you.

Deuteronomy 22, verse 8. When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, that you may not bring the guilt of blood upon your house if anyone should fall from it. So first, let me describe what this law is, and then second, explore how it gives us principles for applying God's law to our lives in the present. In the ancient world, every part of the house was used. I mean, they didn't have giant houses, so you've got to use everything, even the roof. Because Israel gets very little rain. Their roofs weren't slanted like European houses. Instead, their roofs were flat, which meant that the roof was kind of like in additional room. When it got

terribly hot family members would sleep on the roof to catch a cool breeze. They might prepare meals on the roof or socialize on the roof. But given that most Israelite houses were built using a two-story design, a fall from that roof could literally be deadly. Broken bones could permanently disable someone in those days. A fall could cause infections that frequently took lives. And of course, if Uncle Boaz had a little too much to drink on the roof, he could easily fall on his head and die. Thus, Moses tells every Israelites to build a parapetepal. on the roofs. Parapets were like low walls that kept people from falling off of roofs, kind of similar to what we do to create protection around modern-day decks. But you have to remember,

these homes were not owned by mostly wealthy people. They were owned by subsistence farmers. Putting a parapet up and keeping it repaired could be terribly expensive. So it's not tough to imagine old ma'am Jephtha refusing to build a parapet. Oh, if Uncle Boaz gets drunk and falls off, that's on his head. If a kid's playing up there and takes a tumble, well, his parents should have been watching him. If Aunt Debra rolls off the roof in her sleep, well, why was someone who rolls in her sleep on the roof in the first place? I can't waste money on a parapet, so that's on them to keep themselves safe. Of course, you often hear a similar mentality today, maybe by individuals or businesses or even governments. They might say something like this.

Safety is the responsibility of the individual. It's not my job to put extra precautions into place. That's going to cost money I don't want to spend. Well, God's law says not so fast. He commands the Israelites, when you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, that you may not bring the guilt of blood upon your house if anyone should fall from it. The last part is the key. Moses says that if you don't build a parapet and someone falls off, you bring blood guilt on your house. This is a big deal because anyone charged of causing a death by negligence could actually receive the death penalty in those days. So if old man Jefftha doesn't want to build the parapet and Uncle Boaz gets drunk and falls off or a child takes a tumble or

Aunt Debbie falls off in her sleep, Moses is crystal clear. That's not on them. That's on old man Jephtha. Which of course should make us ask the question why. I want to lay out three reasons. First, most Old Testament laws expand on one of the Ten Commandments. These expansions help us understand how we should understand the commandment itself and how to apply it in real everyday life. Second, in this case, the law is expanding the Sixth Commandment. You shall not murder, which might strike us as a little strange, because the only obvious connection between murder and an accidental death by falling is death. But God's law wants us to think more deeply, and it does this by giving us case laws.

So this leads to the third point. Most of the laws in the Old Testament are what we would call case laws today. In other words, there are illustrations followed by specific judgments. The author expects future judges who are reading the law to use the case analogically. So when the judge is in a similar situation, he's supposed to apply the logic of the case law there. So what's the logic of this particular case law? And how does it relate to the commandment against murder? Thankfully, the Torah gives us the answer to its own question in the fourth chapter of Genesis.

After Kane murders Abel, God comes looking for Abel. And he asks Kane if he knows where his brother is. Kane tries to avoid the question by cynically asking, Am I my brother's keeper? The answer to the question is yes. Yes, you are your brother's keeper. In Deuteronomy 228, Moses shows that being your brother's keeper doesn't merely mean refraining from murdering him. Of course, that's the minimum.

That's the floor of the law. But Moses wants us to see the ceiling of the law. Being your brother's keeper means taking reasonable precautions to protect his life. It means spending money that you might not feel like you have to keep him. safe. Jesus actually set the ceiling of the law even higher. When he explained the commandment against murder, he said that anyone who hates his neighbor or curses his neighbor in his own head, well, that person has committed murder in his heart. But at a fundamental level, the story of the parapet law gives us an ethical framework for how the law against murder applies even today. We murder

our brother, not only when we intend to kill him, but also when our negligence causes his death. We have an ethical responsibility to be our brother's keeper. And whether we fall short of that by actively harming him or by passively harming him, we can still be held accountable for that. How does taking this seriously change how you run your business? How does this change how you think about safety precautions in your own house? How does this change how you think about your neighbor? You are your brother's keeper. Today, I want to be a lot of your brother's keeper. Today, I want to you to confess the ways you've failed the people God has entrusted to you. Maybe it was by commission or omission, by acts or by thoughts. And once you confess those things, receive Christ's forgiveness

and his spirit's power to live differently. Ask him for the wisdom to know how to live out the Sixth Commandment in your life. Before you forget, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talks newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes and you'll get an email every Wednesday that's going to help you beat that midweek slump and go deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.