Latest / Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies / Deuteronomy - The Romans of the Old Testament | James Browning | Week 01

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Deuteronomy - The Romans of the Old Testament | James Browning | Week 01 · Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies

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  Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 5pm or Wednesdays at 7pm if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us online@madisonchurch.org be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast. Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
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  Speaker B: All right, everyone, for those of you who don't know who I am, my name is James Browning and I have the pleasure of being one of the teachers this quarter. But before we get into this lesson, I'd like to start with a prayer. So please bow with me. Lord, thank you so much for everything you've blessed us with, for blessing us with such a beautiful day that we get to live our lives for you, for giving us a country that we get to come and gather together to learn about your Word. I pray that you help us to truly understand your Word, to truly understand your truth and let it go on to affect us in our lives so that we can live out your will. In your name, I pray. Amen. Okay, as you can probably tell, the lesson or what we're going to be learning in this class is the book of Deuteronomy. Now, I will have to say, when I learned that I was going to be teaching on Deuteronomy, I was ecstatic. This is my favorite book of the Bible. I love Deuteronomy. Now, I know that's not very common. In fact, I would probably wager that most Christians have not read Deuteronomy, let alone studied it in depth. And so that's why I'm so excited, because I get to share this great joy I have in a book that I really love. And so as you can tell, there's this title, the Romans of the Old Testament. Now that comes from One of the reasons why I love Deuteronomy is because what you can see, and what Old Testament scholars have noticed is that just like Romans has affected our Christians theologies in a very real way, it affected the New Testament author's theology. And you can see this in how often it's referenced or quoted or riffed upon throughout the New Testament authors. A really great example of this that we'll get to in a later class is Jesus himself. When he goes through his trial in the wilderness for 40 days, the devil comes and tempts him three times. Each time, he quotes a Bible verse to the devil. Every single quotation is from the book of Deuteronomy. So you can see just how much this book affected Jesus, thinking on what it meant to live as a human, to truly follow the will of God. And that's why Old Testament scholars often refer to Deuteronomy as the Romans of the Old Testament. And it's why I actually like to refer to it as the language of the New Testament. And so this is why I'm so excited about this class. So in this class, I have a few objectives, and I'm going to keep repeating these so you don't have to remember them. The first one is, I want you to leave with an understanding of how Deuteronomy can help you with ethical guidance and a physical explanation of a spiritual reality. That will be more clear after this lesson. In particular, the second objective I have is when you're done with Deuteronomy, when you're done with this class, you understand the literary framework, the design patterns, and the central themes found throughout Deuteronomy. The reason for this is oftentimes this book is where those design patterns and themes are first introduced, and they get reused constantly in the rest of Scripture. So once I'm hoping that once you see that in Deuteronomy and understand what those look like, when you go on to read other parts of Scripture, you recognize them and can learn a deeper meaning in those passages. But if nothing else, what I hope is that. You learn how the New Testament authors interpreted and applied Deuteronomy's teachings in their passages. Because I fundamentally think that to truly understand what the New Testament authors had to say about what it meant to be a Christian, you have to fundamentally understand Deuteronomy through their eyes. So before we can really get into this, though, we have to answer a very important question. That question is, what parts of the law apply today? Now, this question is important to Deuteronomy mainly because of the 34 chapters found in the book. 21 of those chapters, we were called the Mosaic Law. And this question what parts of those laws apply or what parts matter? What parts should we care about? Is a question I often either hear implicitly or even explicitly when I start teaching about the Old Testament. And this is the question that I had a lot of trouble with when I was first baptized as a 19 year old. When I first started reading the Scriptures in the New Testament, this question kind of started coming up in my mind because I started seeing a tension in the passages that I saw. So I want to kind of introduce why this question, I think, comes up so often and what that answer will be. So let me read some passages. I'll read Hebrews, chapter 8 verses, verse 13. And that reads, in speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete, and what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. The second passage, Romans, chapter 7, verses 1 through 7. And that reads, or do you not know, brothers? For I am speaking to those who know the law, that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives. For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives. But if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage accordingly. She will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law. And if she marries another man, she is non adulteress. Likewise, brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passion, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. The final passage I'm going to read is Galatians, chapter 3, verses 23 through 25. And that reads, now, before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then the law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. So those are strong words, right? We are no longer under the guardianship. We have died to the law. The law is obsolete, vanishing away, right? And those are the passages I first read as a Christian. And it made sense, right? Law is gone. Old covenant. We're in a new covenant. We don't have to care about those passages anymore. We don't have to care about the law, which would mean we don't have to care about 21 chapters of Deuteronomy. But then I kept reading, and this is where the tension started to arise, and I started asking this question. So I'll give a couple of examples. So the first one is First Peter, chapter one, verse 13 through 17. And that reads, therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As abundant children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. Since it is written, you shall be holy, for I am holy. And if you call on him as Father, who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile. So Peter is here writing to a group of Christians, and he tells them, don't be conformed to your old passions, right, as you were living outside of Christ, but rather be holy. And the authority that he uses to say this, he then he quotes a passage, be holy, for I am holy, I being God. Now, that passage is found in Leviticus. Actually, it's used three different times in Leviticus. First time it's used in Leviticus chapter 11. The entire chapter is about the food laws, the kosher laws. So that seemingly might imply that what it means to be holy might be somehow applied with those laws. The second time it's used is In Leviticus chapter 19, a set of a bunch of random laws, actually, with no real common theme, but the very first law that comes after this phrase, be holy for I am holy, is the command to follow the Sabbath, right? Something that obviously we don't do today. So how does that apply? Why would Peter call us to do something that doesn't seemingly apply? And then the last time is in Leviticus chapter 20, which is another time where the chapters go talking about the kosher laws that somehow that is supposed to apply to us and teach us how to be holy. So you kind of start to see the tension a little bit, but we'll put a pin in that. And go to the second example. Go to Romans, chapter 13, that's verses 8 through 10 that reads, Owe no one anything except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet. And any other commandment are summed up in this word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. Now, this is a very common idea among Christians, right? We know this, right? Great. One of the greatest commands, love your neighbor. As yourself. In fact, that command is actually found in Leviticus 19, right? One that we just talked about that Peter quotes. But I want to look at the language that Paul chooses here. Love another has fulfilled the law. Think about that. What that implies is that the law is somehow something we need to fulfill. Otherwise, if the law is not something we need to fulfill, there is no reason for us to do the command. So somehow Paul is implying here, even though in Romans 7 he says that we're dead to the law, that it is still something that needs to be fulfilled. And the way to do that is by following this particular law. But it actually goes farther, right, because he says that you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, and you shall not covet are summed up by, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. That phrasing does not mean you don't do these, you only do this law. That phrasing implies that those laws are applications of the first law. And in order to do the first law, you also have to do those laws. Again, the tension becomes even tighter. What does Paul mean by we still have to fulfill the law in this way? We'll put a pin in that, though. The final example is in the sermon on the mount. Matthew, chapter 5, verses 17 through 20, and that reads, do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. So Jesus here has his disciples around him, and he starts and says, I have not come to abolish the law of the prophets. And if that wasn't clear enough, he uses a metaphor. He says, not even an iota will pass away until all is accomplished. So what is an Iota? An Iota is the smallest Hebrew character you could use, meaning that not even the smallest part of the law will pass away. And if that wasn't clear enough, he then goes on to explicitly say, the one who relaxes the command and teaches others to do the same is the least in the kingdom. But the one who does the law and the prophets and teaches others to do the same will be the greatest. And this is the tension that leads to this question that wracked my mind for months when I first became a Christian. Right? Because on one hand, you have this very strong language. You are not under the guardianship of the law anymore. You have died to the law. The law is obsolete. And on this command, on this side, you have all these examples of Jesus and the New Testament authors either using the law explicitly to have some kind of authority, as if we should be following them, or Jesus himself explicitly saying that we should be following them in some way. Now, in order to fully understand Deuteronomy like we want, we first have to answer this question and fix this tension. So let's do that. There are some answers I've heard not quite on board with, but these are ones I've heard when I was researching and really going through this problem. First answer is none, right? You heard the strong language, right? Not under the guardianship. We've died to it. It's obsolete. So none of them apply. This takes many forms, I've heard. I've heard as much as it's only these particular parts of the Mosaic Law, right? All the ones that have explicit commands all the way up to. I've even heard people say that the entire Old Testament, because it's under the Old Covenant, doesn't matter, shouldn't be read, doesn't apply. It's only there for historical knowledge. Now, you might think that that sounds a little crazy, but I heard these at congregations that I've been to, people in the church. I never really bought this answer. In order to come to this answer, you have to have very convoluted ways of explaining the examples and many more that I showed. So I don't like this answer. It doesn't really go well. The next answer I've heard, which works a little bit better, is some laws apply, but only the ones that the New Testament authors explicitly quote. Right? This works a little bit better, right? The basic argument is that all laws don't apply at first, and then as the New Testament authors quote them, they are brought from the Old Covenant into the New Covenant, thus making them apply again. That fixes some things, but it doesn't quite get to all of them. For one, Jesus does not say, some laws pass away and some are not. He says not even an iota will pass away. That's one problem. The other one you can find over In Romans chapter 7 if we were to keep reading. So if you're Romans chapter seven verses, seven through 12. That says what? Then shall we say that the law is sin? By no means. Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin, for I would not have known what it is to covet. The law had not said, you shall not covet, but sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law. But when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. So I don't know if you quite see the problem here. So Paul, right, the previous passage we read, this is where he says that we have died to the law. He's now going on to explain why the Old Covenant failed, why those laws fail for us. And the example he uses is the law, do not covet, which is then quoted later in Romans 13 as something we should still be doing and following. So this answer would say that that law still applies, that we haven't died to that part, even though it's used as an example by Paul as the reason why we had to die to it. So it doesn't quite fit that whole, these laws are obsolete part of the equation either. So for that reason, I don't really like this answer. Now, this last one is the answer I've heard the most. I would say it's probably the most common one I've heard. I also don't quite like it either. So the basic premise is that you can take the laws and you can break them up into three categories. They're ceremonial, right? These are the tabernacle rituals, sacrifices, the Sabbath, those kinds of things. We don't have to do those anymore. Jesus died for us. He's our sacrifice. Those we died to, they're passed away, obsolete civil laws, right? Don't muzzle an ox while it's treading out the grain. There's a law that says, make sure your roof has a fence on it in case someone goes up there and falls off. There's a law that says, hey, if you see a donkey, make sure you grab it and take it back to whoever it is. Those you would say, right, don't apply anymore because we're not ancient Israelites. Most of us are not farmers. Most of us are not living in 2000 B.C. they don't apply anymore. But the last ones, the moral laws, do not covet, do not murder, don't commit adultery. These moral laws, they do still apply. There's only a couple. There's a couple problems with that one. Again, you go back to Jesus and he says, not even an iota will pass away, and none of them will pass away. And then you go back to Romans, chapter seven, like we just said, and one of the moral laws is his example for a law that we have died to, that doesn't quite fit that either. And then finally, there's a passage in First Corinthians that's a fairly good example of a law that seems to apply. In First Corinthians 9, verses 8 through 12 says, Do I say these things on human authority? Does not the law say the same? For it is written in the law of Moses, you shall not muzzle an ox when it is treads out the grain. It is for oxen that God is concerned. Does he not certainly speak for our sake? It was written for our sake because the plowman should plow in hope, the thresher thresh in hope of sharing in the crop. If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you? If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we even more so. What's Paul talking about here? Well, in this chapter specifically, Paul is answering a very important question at the time, which is, should we pay ministers? Should we pay the people that can do all of their life to spreading the Gospel? And Paul answers, yes, we should. And he to give authority. To his answer, he quotes this law, which for all intents and purposes is a very civil law. You shall not muzzle an ox that treads out the grain. And he takes some kind of wisdom from it, which is, you should pay anyone doing work and applies it to this particular problem of paying ministers. So that, again, is why I don't quite like this answer either, because it doesn't quite fit how the New Testament authors seem to talk. So again, we're left with, how do we fix this tension? Well, to fix it, you have to understand something very specific that I think a lot of people implicitly know but don't explicitly say. You can read Scripture through one of three lenses, right? Sometimes you can read them with all three lenses or just one, right? You can read something as law, you can read something as wisdom, and you can read something as prophecy in the Bible. Now, when you read something as law, right, you're reading it as a binary, right? You either do it and you're good, or you don't do it and you're sinning, right? You either do it and you're a Christian or you don't do it and you're not. Really great example of this baptism, right? Acts, chapter 2, verse 38. When Peter tells the people to be baptized, baptized, wash away their sins, receive the Holy Spirit. We read that through the lens of law, right? The lens of you're either baptized and a Christian or you're not baptized and you're not. One of the problems that often comes up when going to talk about the law is translation. Actually, the law of Moses is actually the Torah of Moses. And Torah does not mean law, it means teaching. Oftentimes we think about law as like a king putting up an ordinance. You could say, right? Like the king puts up something and either you're doing it and you're breaking the law, or you're not doing it and you're going to get kicked out or go to jail. That's actually a different Hebrew word altogether. That is not the word for Torah. And so people often make this mistake when they go to read the law that they immediately put on this lens of the law and they want to read it like that. But as we'll see, that's not always the case that you should be doing that. The second lens is this lens of wisdom. And implicitly, people do this all the time. But it's not really talked about that much, I think, at least I observe. And that's when you write, you're reading Scripture and you're not treating it as a binary, right? You're not treating that you should do it or not do it. You treat it as there is something deeper. There's a deeper meaning here, something I need to extract out so that I can then apply it to my lives. Great example of this. The narratives or the parables, we would never treat those as binary laws. We're always reading those to extract wisdom out. Another great example, First Corinthians, chapter 9. Like we talked about, Paul takes this law and extracts wisdom from it. He's not reading it as law at that point. He's reading it as wisdom, as something that he can use to apply to a current circumstance. Another fantastic example, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, right? If you read it, he goes through example after example of taking a law and going through this ordeal of extracting some wisdom out of it, right? Do not murder. He comes to the conclusion that actually what that's talking about is don't Be angry, right? If you're angry, then you're actually sinning. It's not the law itself that matters. And so in it, he's reading this scripture not as law, but now as wisdom that he can apply to his current circumstance, okay, prophecy. Now, this is the one that people, I think, don't quite understand as well, mainly because we don't really talk about prophecy all that much anymore. Most of the time, people think of prophecy as this prediction thing, right? Isaiah 53, great example of this, right? Where Isaiah comes and he predicts that the servant will die and he's resurrected and then Jesus comes along and he does it, right? It's predictive prophecy. But that's not always how, at least the New Testament authors thought of this concept of prophecy. It's not always what we think of the prophets. Talking about a really great place where this is actually explained in pretty good detail is Hebrews chapter eight, if you go with me over there. So Hebrews chapter 8, verses 1 through 6 reads. Now the point and what we are saying is this. We have such a high priest, one who is seated in the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man. For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices. Thus it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. Now, if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all. Since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law. They serve a copy and a shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, see that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain. But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the Old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. So here the Hebrew writer is obviously talking, comparing the priests of Judaism to Jesus, what Jesus is doing. But in it, he makes a keen observation that tells us how, what he means, what this means to read some scripture as prophecy. Right in there in verse five, he says they serve a copy and a shadow of the heavenly things. This comes from an observation that the Hebrew writer makes. And you'll see it. You see there in his quotation that if you go to Exodus, Moses very famously is commanded to build a tabernacle. He makes this observation that Moses is not told what to build. He's not given instructions on how to build something like Noah did with the ark. He's shown what to build, right? In the mountain, God shows him what to build, implying that what he builds is not some made up thing from God. It's something in heaven or some spiritual realm that is then copied onto earth to have a physical representation of it, right? That's why he calls it a copy or shadow. It is a way of explaining something very spiritual that's going on in this case, how Jesus acts as a high priest for us in a physical domain that we can fully understand. And that's a lot of times what it means to read something through the lens of prophecy, right? It's reading like the sacrifices, as why Jesus had to die. It's a physical representation of why Jesus had to die. Or for example, Stephen, in Acts, right, if you go read when he is stoned, he gives this long speech about how terrible the Pharisees are. And in it he makes a quote, a reference to a passage in Deuteronomy, which is that Moses says there will come a prophet just like Moses. He then takes that passage and he looks back at how the Israelites treated Moses, right, Very famously, at the very beginning of Exodus, right? The Israelites come and kick him out because Moses tries to come and help them and refuses his leadership. And Stephen makes this observation that just like them, the Pharisees rejected Jesus, just like them. That's what it means to read that through the lens of prophecy is an explanation of why Jesus was rejected, because God's messengers are always rejected. So it's these three lens that you can use to read Scripture. So how does that apply to our question? Well, if you ask the question, what laws apply today? Well, if you're reading it through the lens of law, none of them apply today. If you're reading the Mosaic law as a binary, as either you do it exactly like it says, and you're good, you're a Christian then, or you don't do it, and then you're sinful and you're cast out, then it doesn't apply. That's wrong. It's obsolete, vanishing away. We're dead to that, right? We have a new covenant, one that says to be a Christian, you give your allegiance to Jesus and accept that grace that he gives us. So you can't read the law as law, it seems like, but as wisdom and prophecy, all of the laws apply. That's what it means, right? It's like Paul when he takes this random law, don't muzzle an ox while it's treading out the grain. And he takes it and he reads it as wisdom and applies it. That's what applies to us. It's like Stephen, when he reads this random passage in Deuteronomy about how God is always going to give prophets as a prophetic way of saying that there will one day be the prophet. And we're going to talk way more about that in a future lesson. And so when you read as wisdom and prophecy, all of the laws now apply. And that's why I have this first objective here, right, for the class. In this class, we're going to try to understand Deuteronomy through these two lenses of wisdom and prophecy. And hopefully we're not really going to be covering going to be able to cover all of Deuteronomy. So hopefully, when you lead this class the end of the quarter, you have the tools to go and understand Deuteronomy yourselves through this lens. I'll say that that I hope that this lesson helps you understand the first objective. If you come back next week, we're going to be talking a lot more about the second objective. So next week we're going to be talking about the literary framework and the structure that you find throughout Deuteronomy so that we can lay the foundation for when we actually go and read it. But until then, thank you for your time.