Latest / How to Faith a Life Podcast with Faith Womack / Why You're Missing the Point by Skipping This Book

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Why You're Missing the Point by Skipping This Book · How to Faith a Life Podcast with Faith Womack

0:00
SPEAKER_00: If you're listening to the How to Faith a Life podcast, where we wrestle with questions on how to live a life of faith, from everything from books to Bible studies, even Bible study tips, this is your place to wrestle with the hard questions and dive deep into what scripture really says for the Christian walk.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: Make sure you've subscribed to this podcast and your favorite podcast streaming services, review this podcast so other people can find it, and share with other believers who want to ask the hard questions.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: Now, with all that said, let's begin.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: Hi friends, welcome back to the podcast.
0:24
SPEAKER_00: I'm so excited because today we have Katie McCoy.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: Now, Katie holds a PhD in systematic theology from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary where she served on faculty for five years.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: Her research includes the patterns of justice for women in the Old Testament laws as well as an intersection of theology, gender, and women's studies.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: She's got so many interesting stuff in the works, but especially Forever for Our Good is a new Bible study that just came out through Life Way and it focuses really on God's love all throughout Deuteronomy.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: I think this is a powerhouse Bible study that so many of us need to go through.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: If we can't do it together, we need to go through it in our Bible study groups with our churches.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: It is just solid.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: And so I was like, Katie, you've got to come on.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: This would be so great to talk about.
1:07
SPEAKER_00: And I'm so excited to pick your brain today.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: Katie, thanks for joining us.
1:10
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for having me.
1:12
SPEAKER_01: Your listeners don't know this, but we've already been having like the best conversation before you've even hit record.
1:17
SPEAKER_01: That's my talk.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: I just like, I'm like, I into the topic, you know, and then it's like, wait, we need to actually hit record.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: That's not good.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: Okay, what I love about your approach to Deuteronomy is how love-focused you are.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: I think so many of us feel really uncomfortable in God's law.
1:34
SPEAKER_00: Like, I know way too many years of my like reading through the Bible plan.
1:39
SPEAKER_00: I would kind of just like rush through the law and feel uncomfortable in some parts and just wait until I got to the gospels.
1:45
SPEAKER_00: Just wait until I got to like the Psalms or, you know, lighter, fluffier stuff.
1:49
SPEAKER_00: But what would you say to the Christian that's really like drudging through God's law and really kind of stuck and confused with what they're reading and what it means for them today?
2:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're not alone in that if you do a Bible reading through the year, you know, around February to March, you've got to just kind of power through somehow.
2:08
SPEAKER_01: Leviticus Numbers in Deuteronomy, it feels like we're being transported to a different world because we are.
2:14
SPEAKER_01: We're in a completely different cultural context.
2:17
SPEAKER_01: We're in not only a different era, a different geographical region, but there are so many things that feel obscure because we're reading it through Western 21st century American eyes.
2:29
SPEAKER_01: And the first thing we don't realize is how much that cultural clash influences how we read scripture.
2:38
SPEAKER_01: So one of the things we we have to do is familiarize ourselves with the cultural landscape, in a sense, that we are encountering when we counter biblical law.
2:48
SPEAKER_01: But when we do that, we also have to keep in mind, now keep in we have the New Testament and and we we like hanging out in the New Testament.
2:57
SPEAKER_01: We're New Testament Christians, but what we often forget is Jesus said he not only came to fulfill the law, but then the apostle Paul said in Romans 8 that we who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, we are fulfilling God's law from the Spirit, and then all throughout the Old Testament, especially the prophets, saying, How is God going to transform us?
3:22
SPEAKER_01: He's going to give us a new heart.
3:24
SPEAKER_01: Why?
3:25
SPEAKER_01: So that we will obey his commands.
3:28
SPEAKER_01: And what are those commands?
3:29
SPEAKER_01: Well, these are the commands we find in Deuteronomy.
3:32
SPEAKER_01: So we kind of owe it to ourselves to at least know what they say, right?
3:37
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it'd be a little bit like showing up to a movie 20 minutes in, and then you sit through it, you're basically hanging with the plot.
3:44
SPEAKER_01: You kind of know what's going on, but then right at the end, everybody around you is just gasping in shock.
3:51
SPEAKER_01: Like, can you believe that?
3:53
SPEAKER_01: That is amazing.
3:54
SPEAKER_01: I didn't see that coming, and it all makes sense now.
3:57
SPEAKER_01: And you're sitting there going, Okay, yeah, okay, I get I get it.
4:01
SPEAKER_01: I've hung with the plot here, but because you missed the setup, you've missed so many connections that God is making in the drama that is scripture.
4:11
SPEAKER_01: So think of the Pentateuch as that first 20 minutes in a movie.
4:16
SPEAKER_01: If you miss that, there's gonna be so much that doesn't make sense.
4:21
SPEAKER_01: You can you know enough to hang with the plot, right?
4:24
SPEAKER_01: But there there is this depth and richness of the setup that Jesus is fulfilling and it goes all the way back specifically to passages in Deuteronomy.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: What would you say to the person that's like, okay, but I feel really lost and overwhelmed, especially with the cultural stuff and uncomfortable like opening up commentaries, those overwhelm me as well.
4:45
SPEAKER_00: Like, what would you say to that person?
4:47
SPEAKER_00: How do you even just get started?
4:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so one thing that I hope the the Bible study Forever for Our Good does is it it helps introduce you to studying the law, specifically studying Deuteronomy, but understanding the why of the law.
5:02
SPEAKER_01: And and one thing we often, I know I was very surprised by faith, is that the first several chapters, I want to say the first like 11 chapters, we're not even dealing so much with commands as we are dealing with a heart posture.
5:16
SPEAKER_01: And and that, because we know our New Testament letters, it follows that pattern, doesn't it?
5:22
SPEAKER_01: It's here is who God is, what he has done for you, here's how God wants you to relate to him.
5:28
SPEAKER_01: And now, on the basis of that relationship, because of that covenant love, live out an obedient, faith-filled life that glorifies the God who made you his own.
5:41
SPEAKER_01: And so, what I would encourage the person who's a little intimidated by Deuteronomy, and I do understand, is for them to know this is actually the same story just told at a different point in redemption history.
5:53
SPEAKER_01: It's the same story.
5:55
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna see grace running throughout Deuteronomy in ways you could not possibly imagine.
6:02
SPEAKER_01: And it is staggering.
6:04
SPEAKER_01: It just, it's it's heartstopping.
6:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm assuming that's where you got the title.
6:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
6:09
SPEAKER_01: So the the title forever for our good came from a phrase in Deuteronomy.
6:13
SPEAKER_01: The actual phrase is Moses talking to the people of Israel and and saying that God's commands were given for your good always.
6:22
SPEAKER_01: And I thought, how perfect is that?
6:23
SPEAKER_01: For your good always.
6:24
SPEAKER_01: We don't think about laws like that.
6:27
SPEAKER_01: So then it was just kind of forever for our good, that God's commands are forever for our good.
6:32
SPEAKER_01: And and not only for our good, but also for the power of our witness to others.
6:38
SPEAKER_01: You know, whether we're talking about being Christ's ambassadors, as we're called in 2 Corinthians 5, or the people of Israel who were blessed by God so that God would reach the nations through them.
6:52
SPEAKER_01: It is this reinforcing of our identity and our purpose that we have been given the promises and the blessings of God, not only to receive, but to share, not for ourselves alone.
7:05
SPEAKER_01: And so what I think you'll see in the book of Deuteronomy is not only this cohesive story in all of scripture, but the cohesive purpose and identity of God's people throughout his whole plan of redemption.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: You do a really good job of highlighting God's love throughout it, and I don't know, yeah, just like how it truly is for our good.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: It's not something to dread, but I think a lot of us dread it and we don't enjoy it.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: But then we get to the New Testament, and like you said, we'll see like Paul in Galatians 3 quoting Deuteronomy 21 or whatever it is, right?
7:41
SPEAKER_00: And you're like, okay, so they're using it, it's important, but I don't know how to understand it in context.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how to deal with it for today.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: So what would you say to the Christian that's like, okay, I get that sometimes the laws are fulfilled in Jesus or on the cross or all these various things, but like, what about all the other stuff?
7:58
SPEAKER_00: What about all the weird stuff around women?
8:00
SPEAKER_00: What would you say to that reader?
8:02
SPEAKER_01: So two things first, uh, let's put a pin in the laws about women and come back to that.
8:06
SPEAKER_01: But first, uh, the broad context of any law, when you encounter a nation's law at any point in history, you are essentially seeing a value system expressed in real life.
8:20
SPEAKER_01: You are seeing the values that that society places on uh property, life, people, certain types of people, certain types of other people don't have those same rights.
8:32
SPEAKER_01: We see that all throughout ancient legal codes as well.
8:36
SPEAKER_01: So when we're encountering the laws of Deuteronomy, we're seeing God's value system on display.
8:41
SPEAKER_01: We're we're seeing this is an ideal society, even when something happens that should not have happened.
8:48
SPEAKER_01: So let's say there's a crime committed, nobody knows who committed the crime, there's a there's a law to address that.
8:55
SPEAKER_01: Oh, one of the there's a set of laws right before, it's either right before or right or after the blessings are and curses, where it's talking about all these things you should not do.
9:05
SPEAKER_01: And the common theme is they're hidden.
9:08
SPEAKER_01: Nobody else would know you're doing them.
9:10
SPEAKER_01: Like move a boundary line in somebody else's land or put a stumbling block in front of a blind person.
9:17
SPEAKER_01: It's things that only God would have seen.
9:19
SPEAKER_01: And what you're seeing with that, what's the value system on display?
9:22
SPEAKER_01: God commands integrity from his people, uh, total honesty from the heart, even when no one is around to witness it.
9:29
SPEAKER_01: So when we encounter God's law, we're encountering God's character.
9:33
SPEAKER_01: And the the challenge for us is to recognize okay, what is God telling us about his character in this ancient Near Eastern culture thousands of years ago?
9:44
SPEAKER_01: And it's challenging to translate that to our times, but what we do find is that there are timeless principles that we can draw from God's law.
9:55
SPEAKER_01: And you'll see, oh, the incredible compassion to the poor, to the most vulnerable.
10:02
SPEAKER_01: It is everything that I believe this generation of young Americans that are drawn to, you know, the Zoran Mandanis of the world, they're looking for justice in society that can only be found with the ethical framework that we have in Deuteronomy.
10:21
SPEAKER_01: I know that's a bold claim, but I stand by it.
10:24
SPEAKER_01: Now, your question about women, this is so fascinating because a lot of times the laws that we encounter in the Bible, it's not necessarily saying, okay, here's an ideal situation, or this is exactly what God wants women to experience.
10:40
SPEAKER_01: A lot of the laws are in response to some type of injustice, and it is restraining human sinfulness.
10:50
SPEAKER_01: So for instance, there's a law in Deuteronomy 25, I believe, that it essentially outlaws sexual slavery.
10:59
SPEAKER_01: Now that is staggering in the ancient world.
11:02
SPEAKER_01: The assaults of vulnerable women in times of war was just a given, and tragically it still is today.
11:10
SPEAKER_01: But in God's society, his people, even if the woman was foreign, orphaned, didn't speak the language, didn't understand the customs, was captive, if a man desired her, he couldn't just use her as an object, he had to respect her as a person, he had to marry her, and she could never again be a slave.
11:33
SPEAKER_01: She would forever have the status of an Israelite wife.
11:37
SPEAKER_01: Now, when we look at that through the lens of our 21st century Western perspective, it's really easy to miss that.
11:45
SPEAKER_01: It's easy to see to judge it by today's standards.
11:48
SPEAKER_01: But what we what we miss with that is just how countercultural that was.
11:54
SPEAKER_01: Because what other God, what other legal system would have written into the law protection for a person who in any other society at any other time was a legal non-person.
12:06
SPEAKER_01: Only the Lord, only the Lord, the Lord who values every woman because she is created in his image, regardless of even if she is a pagan who is completely far from him.
12:18
SPEAKER_01: And that's the God we serve.
12:20
SPEAKER_01: It's it's truly staggering.
12:22
SPEAKER_00: And I love how, like, even just that little anecdote connects to obviously Ruth and Naomi and the bloodline to Christ.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: And so knowing those little parts, knowing Deuteronomy 25 or whatever you said it was, that automatically takes the rest of our reading from the book of Ruth to Matthew 1 so much deeper.
12:40
SPEAKER_00: What would you say you think, just broadly speaking, not throwing the Capital C church under the bus, but just I feel like there's a lot of Christians today who do not spend much time in the Old Testament, particularly the law and the prophets, and then they just like miss so much in the New Testament.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: What would you say are some of the biggest things we will miss if we don't go through Bible studies like forever for our good and actually finally dive deep into Deuteronomy?
13:04
SPEAKER_01: What a fantastic question.
13:05
SPEAKER_01: I think one of the big ones for our time now is understanding justice and compassion according to God's definition and not the world's.
13:14
SPEAKER_01: So we live in a world that is obsessed with justice.
13:18
SPEAKER_01: So we want justice.
13:19
SPEAKER_01: We hear about acts of social justice and um economic justice and these types of things.
13:24
SPEAKER_01: And because we have largely as a society kicked out God, we no longer have a transcendent truth to hang concepts like justice onto.
13:35
SPEAKER_01: We don't have anything to anchor it into that is higher and objective than just our time, place, and culture.
13:44
SPEAKER_01: And as a result, what happens when you don't have at least a sense of a higher theistic being?
13:52
SPEAKER_01: When you get rid of that, we have total secularism.
13:55
SPEAKER_01: The only thing that is left is power, the dynamics of power.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: Who has it, who doesn't, who should have it, who doesn't have it.
14:03
SPEAKER_01: And that's largely what we see in so many young people forming their sense of what is just, what is right, what we should do in the world.
14:15
SPEAKER_01: They're hungry for it.
14:16
SPEAKER_01: And that I believe an impulse of common grace that we recognize something is wrong in the world and we need to fix it.
14:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
14:23
SPEAKER_01: But without the framework to do that, without the objective standard of right and wrong as God defines it, we end up, maybe even people with believing that they're doing something that is right.
14:36
SPEAKER_01: It can quickly become unjust, exploitative, all these unintended consequences, or imposing a framework upon the world that is completely antithetical to a biblical framework of human beings, sin, right and wrong, justice and mercy.
14:54
SPEAKER_01: So we go through a lot of the passages and the laws.
14:58
SPEAKER_01: In fact, I think out of all of the laws in Deuteronomy, I want to say 17 through 26, there's only like a few verses that we don't touch on, but but they're grouped almost topically.
15:09
SPEAKER_01: So the goal with that is we're not just going to read through individually or or chronologically.
15:15
SPEAKER_01: We probably should.
15:16
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you you should read them, but what I hope to do is to group them together in a way that shows here is how God understands orphans and widows.
15:27
SPEAKER_01: Here's how God understands, here's a big one, foreigners among you.
15:31
SPEAKER_01: That's a hot total hot topic.
15:33
SPEAKER_01: And you know, spoiler alert, it doesn't fit into our partisan conversations one way or another.
15:40
SPEAKER_01: And and this is where we were going to be formed by something, Faith, aren't we?
15:45
SPEAKER_01: We're going to be formed deeply by some influence.
15:50
SPEAKER_01: And that can be what we see on social media, different influencers, what we see on the news, depending on the the news sources you consume.
16:00
SPEAKER_01: It's like you're living in two different countries sometimes.
16:02
SPEAKER_01: So, how are God's people supposed to be different?
16:05
SPEAKER_01: We're formed by the law of God.
16:07
SPEAKER_01: And you look at everything that that the psalmists talk about about how the law of God is what keeps us safe, what keeps us on the right path, what what gives us life, what helps us understand the world.
16:21
SPEAKER_01: It's these laws in Deuteronomy.
16:23
SPEAKER_01: And so I I would challenge, and I mean this in a positive way, like a fitness challenge or a healthy food eating challenge, you know, that kind of challenge to your listeners.
16:36
SPEAKER_01: Take it to the law of God, and you will be shocked at how the Holy Spirit uses it in your life to form your perspectives for things happening here and now.
16:46
SPEAKER_01: I love that.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: Hi friends, I'm gonna hijack my own podcast really quickly to give a shout out to this sponsor, which is honestly many of you guys.
16:54
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16:58
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17:06
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17:14
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17:16
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17:20
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17:22
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17:23
SPEAKER_00: We just started small groups, which has been really cool.
17:25
SPEAKER_00: We're finishing up this four-year-long series, going through the Psalms super in depth every single week, and that will just live there on Patreon.
17:32
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17:34
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17:38
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17:41
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17:43
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17:53
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18:04
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18:08
SPEAKER_00: And like I said, there's a million and one different studies, and they'll all just live there for years to come.
18:14
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18:21
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18:23
SPEAKER_00: Make sure to mention in the chat that you came from the podcast.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: And speaking of, let's get back to the podcast.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: Why do you think, like you mentioned the challenge aspect of it?
18:30
SPEAKER_00: I think like there's so many of us that like have a hesitancy to go into the law because we don't view like obedience as something that is inherent with love.
18:39
SPEAKER_00: And you do a really good job of talking about how like obedience is part of this relationship with God that's that's shaped by his Shema, his love.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: And like they're inherent, this like hearing versus listening and obeying, you know, like that kind of thing.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: This is where the rubber meets the road, right?
18:53
SPEAKER_01: This is where, you know, we can study, we can do all the commentaries, we can do all the word studies, but then it comes down to how we're gonna live.
18:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that's what the end of Deuteronomy does too.
19:02
SPEAKER_01: Choose life, choose life that you may live.
19:04
SPEAKER_01: You know, when I I think about this correlation between God's commands and responding in obedience, I think of a couple of things.
19:12
SPEAKER_01: First, when Jesus said in John, if you love me, you will obey my commandments.
19:17
SPEAKER_01: Now, there's a couple ways we can understand that.
19:19
SPEAKER_01: First way we can understand that is almost like a guilt trip.
19:22
SPEAKER_01: Like, if you really love me, you'd obey my commandments, kind of thing, right?
19:27
SPEAKER_01: And I think we often can can hear it through that lens, but I really believe Jesus is speaking more in terms of a promise.
19:35
SPEAKER_01: If you love me, then you will obey.
19:38
SPEAKER_01: Love is the key, love is the impetus.
19:42
SPEAKER_01: Um, and ultimately we do things that are in the direction that are that is according to our loves.
19:50
SPEAKER_01: We are shaped by our loves, we are led by our loves.
19:55
SPEAKER_01: If you have kids, even if you're completely stressed out and tired, you are going to do what your children need.
20:02
SPEAKER_01: Why?
20:02
SPEAKER_01: Because you have a deep love for them that is unlike any other love for other people in your family or your friend network.
20:10
SPEAKER_01: There are things that we do that are shaped, formed, and led by our loves.
20:17
SPEAKER_01: And so this connection between love and obedience, it's really inextricable.
20:22
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus not only said that in in his ministry, but we see that in the apostles, don't we?
20:28
SPEAKER_01: We see that certainly in the book of first John, that the one who truly loves God has a pattern of increasing obedience.
20:36
SPEAKER_01: And that obedience is an expression not only of the relationship of c of a covenant that that that person has with the Lord, but but the proof, the proof of that relationship is expressed in obedience, in c in faithfulness.
20:51
SPEAKER_01: And this is where marriage is it is the living, breathing metaphor of God's relationship to his people.
20:58
SPEAKER_01: Because you can say you're faithful to your spouse, but no matter what you say, proof of love is ultimately faithfulness, right?
21:07
SPEAKER_01: It's that it's that love that is driving and determining how you live your life in a thousand different ways.
21:14
SPEAKER_01: I think we're uncomfortable with that because we we almost think that that is somehow incongruent with grace.
21:20
SPEAKER_01: But it's not.
21:21
SPEAKER_01: It's not.
21:22
SPEAKER_01: We see the the grace of God running all throughout Deuteronomy, we see the grace of God running throughout the book of Romans.
21:28
SPEAKER_01: And and in both Deuteronomy and Romans, again telling the same story at different points in redemption history, we see the correlation between the covenant relationship that God has established with us, the relationship change now of how we were we relate to God differently on the basis of the covenant love he's given us.
21:47
SPEAKER_01: And then we express or live that out or demonstrate that by faithful, faith filled obedience.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
21:56
SPEAKER_00: Is while you're writing this and organizing and researching.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: And all of that, did you feel or sense like a change in the way that you truly understood Deuteronomy?
22:06
SPEAKER_00: Like wrestling it through it?
22:08
SPEAKER_00: You just it's so there for you.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: And then I want to like pick your brain about like the New Testament's use of the of Deuteronomy, but first, like what was your experience going through and having to like teach this?
22:18
SPEAKER_00: Not just say Deuteronomy's for good, but actually like put it the feet to action.
22:23
SPEAKER_00: Like, how did that transform you in your biblical love, appreciation, like knowledge, all the things?
22:30
SPEAKER_01: You know, every time I study the law of God, I find myself drawn in a new way to the God of the law.
22:39
SPEAKER_01: And and I find myself, I don't even know how to say it, but it's like I read it and I'm going, I've been a Christian for for so many years.
22:47
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, I want this God.
22:49
SPEAKER_01: I want this God who thinks like this, who acts like this, who expects his people to act like this.
22:54
SPEAKER_01: Like, this is good.
22:56
SPEAKER_01: This is, but it's not good like in a flippant way.
22:59
SPEAKER_01: It's like this is tough goodness.
23:02
SPEAKER_01: This is goodness that looks unflinchingly at the worst of the world and restrains it and restrains it on behalf of the people that it is easy and convenient to just discard and set aside.
23:18
SPEAKER_01: One of the most uh fascinating juxtapositions is realizing there's in there's a day, I think, called like the king and the kidnapped or something like that, but there is a law that protects the person who has been kidnapped, a person who, along with that, has escaped slavery.
23:35
SPEAKER_01: So escaped being kidnapped or escaped slavery.
23:38
SPEAKER_01: And oh, how amazing is this?
23:41
SPEAKER_01: Thousands of years before we recognize the evil of human slavery.
23:46
SPEAKER_01: Biblical law says if someone escapes slavery and comes to your country, don't allow them to be extradited back to the the nation or of where they were a slave.
23:57
SPEAKER_01: Let them live in peace with you and work with you.
24:00
SPEAKER_01: That's incredible.
24:01
SPEAKER_01: That it that is revolutionary.
24:03
SPEAKER_01: But then along with that same book, there is a stipulation saying that every king has to write out the law of God for himself.
24:12
SPEAKER_01: So what is this saying?
24:14
SPEAKER_01: It's saying that whether you are the lowest of the low of society or you are the ruler of that society, no one is above God's law.
24:24
SPEAKER_01: And God's law protects everyone, not on the basis of their social status, but on the basis of being an image-bearer of God.
24:32
SPEAKER_01: It is incredible to see.
24:35
SPEAKER_01: And so all of that just makes me go, I just this this God is amazing.
24:40
SPEAKER_01: He he is truly spectacular.
24:42
SPEAKER_01: And then realizing too, Faith, how the law of Deuteronomy uh it helped form, so first of all, it formed the ethics of the church.
24:52
SPEAKER_01: They were the ones who fulfilled the law, and the early church transformed the ancient world uh to the point that with no no technology like we have now, within a just a few hundred years, they they influenced the ancient Western world to go from accepting certain practices like human slavery, forced prostitution, accepting those things as just part of life, to those things were criminalized.
25:20
SPEAKER_01: They were outlawed.
25:22
SPEAKER_01: And how in the world did that happen?
25:25
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't just like it stopped, it's that there was a moral revolution over things that were so common they were invisible, except to the people of God.
25:35
SPEAKER_01: And so that that's deeply transformative to look around at our world and realize, you know, I think the world is waiting on Deuteronomy-formed Christians to to influence their society with the light of God's life.
25:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that.
25:53
SPEAKER_00: It and it really, yeah, it comes back to a worshipful response to that God revealed in scripture.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: Like over and over again, you just keep coming back to, well, it's his character, it's his goodness.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: And so I love that.
26:04
SPEAKER_00: I'm always saying reading the Bible should lead us to worship, and people are like, what does that exactly mean?
26:09
SPEAKER_00: It's like, but you just like fully put it to words.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: So what would you say to, you know, in regards then to the New Testament use of Deuteronomy and um the really the law?
26:19
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we see so much going on there, and I think so many Christians are like, well, it just doesn't apply to me anymore.
26:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I just committed right.
26:29
SPEAKER_01: It's like a lazy reading.
26:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
26:31
SPEAKER_01: And you know, there's there's two aspects of that where that is true.
26:34
SPEAKER_01: We are no longer under the ceremonial laws.
26:38
SPEAKER_01: So the ceremonial law is referring to like the sacrificial system because Jesus fulfilled all of that.
26:43
SPEAKER_01: Because ancient Israel was a theocracy, they were actually ruled by Yahweh.
26:50
SPEAKER_01: We're no longer under the same civil laws, although I think we could say that the civil laws, in terms of, you know, protecting and punishing certain things, they helped form the basis of what we would we would call just just just laws or like even natural law, like murder is wrong, that kind of thing.
27:07
SPEAKER_01: But we are under the moral law.
27:09
SPEAKER_01: And the moral law is something that Jesus summed up in the the greatest commandment: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
27:19
SPEAKER_01: The second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself.
27:23
SPEAKER_01: Now, because of our very Western take on love, we tend to infuse that with what do you want to say?
27:31
SPEAKER_01: Niceness, being nice, not offending.
27:34
SPEAKER_01: And so this is another thing where Deuteronomy helps us understand what are the apostles talking about?
27:41
SPEAKER_01: What did the apostles mean when they say we are to love God?
27:45
SPEAKER_01: What did Jesus mean when he said commit the command to love God?
27:49
SPEAKER_01: Well, that command occurs in Deuteronomy 6.
27:52
SPEAKER_01: And so we see what does loving God look like?
27:55
SPEAKER_01: It looks like following all of his commands, it looks like patterning our lives after these precepts.
28:01
SPEAKER_01: And so, even the idea of how are we formed by the love of God, how are we expressing our love for God, we can't just assume that, you know, it's what is it, same vocabulary, different dictionary?
28:14
SPEAKER_01: We may have to have our definitions of love challenged.
28:18
SPEAKER_01: And so how the New Testament is using it is formed by Deuteronomy.
28:23
SPEAKER_01: Don't forget, Paul, Hebrew of Hebrews, he knew this book.
28:26
SPEAKER_01: He knew this book backwards and forwards.
28:28
SPEAKER_01: And with that, Paul said that love, what was it he said in Romans 4?
28:33
SPEAKER_01: I think it was Romans 14, where he was talking about, you know, this is the fulfillment of the law.
28:39
SPEAKER_01: Love does no wrong to one's neighbor.
28:42
SPEAKER_01: You know, in our culture today, we can easily look at that and interpret it through the lens of so-called tolerance.
28:50
SPEAKER_01: You know, well, if you love your neighbor, you you would never be so intolerant as to tell them that their choices are sinful in God's eyes.
29:01
SPEAKER_01: Like that, that's not really loving your neighbor, is what our culture tells us.
29:05
SPEAKER_01: But what does Deuteronomy tell us?
29:07
SPEAKER_01: Deuteronomy talks about um getting rid of all idols from our own lives and seeking out, you know, where is their idolatry happening and and calling people to repent.
29:17
SPEAKER_01: That's love.
29:18
SPEAKER_01: These are the things that in our own time, our own cultural values that we've been influenced in ways we don't realize.
29:28
SPEAKER_01: It does we're not bad.
29:29
SPEAKER_01: We're just we're like every other generation, we we are born into a culture with blind spots, with things that need to be reformed into alignment with scripture.
29:40
SPEAKER_01: And so I I think as we are encountering what the New Testament says about the law, yes, we are free from obeying the law as a means of pleasing God.
29:50
SPEAKER_01: But what scripture also says in the New Testament is now now we are free to fulfill the law.
29:55
SPEAKER_01: Now we are free to love our neighbor as ourselves and love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
30:01
SPEAKER_01: Why?
30:01
SPEAKER_01: Because Jesus has taken our sin nature and done away with it, done away with the law of sin that keeps us from fulfilling the law of God.
30:10
SPEAKER_01: So yes, we're free from its bondage, we're free from the demands of the law as a means of having right fellowship with God.
30:18
SPEAKER_01: Jesus has done all of that for us, but now we're free to fulfill it.
30:22
SPEAKER_01: And and that's again, it goes back to the beginning.
30:24
SPEAKER_01: It's like we at least need to know what it says, right?
30:27
SPEAKER_01: If this is what we are here on earth, left on earth to fulfill in order to bring about the kingdom in this world, to to bring the kingdom with us in the rated rule of Christ and all of the liberation that that entails.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: Well, we need to know what this law says.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was sitting there quoting it all the time.
30:45
SPEAKER_00: I mean, even in the wilderness, wasn't it all that he quoted in the wilderness temptation?
30:49
SPEAKER_00: Was it all together?
30:50
SPEAKER_01: Oh girl, I can't remember.
30:51
SPEAKER_01: Oh girl, I'm so glad you brought this up because yes, when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, he quoted scripture back to Satan.
31:00
SPEAKER_01: We now we know this, and and it's good and right that that we that we interpret that story this way.
31:07
SPEAKER_01: You usually hear it.
31:08
SPEAKER_01: Here's how to overcome temptation.
31:10
SPEAKER_01: When you are faced with temptation, you quote scripture, and the the truth of scripture is is the weapon, and that is true.
31:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, the New Testament is Galatians 5, 6, uh, you know, the the sword of God, which is the the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.
31:28
SPEAKER_01: But why did Jesus quote exclusively from Deuteronomy 6 and 8?
31:32
SPEAKER_01: He could have quoted from the Psalms, he could have quoted from Genesis, he could have quoted from the prophets, he didn't.
31:38
SPEAKER_01: He quoted from Deuteronomy, well, here's what was happening, I believe.
31:42
SPEAKER_01: And this was this was a moment for me, Fay.
31:46
SPEAKER_01: This was like one of those you just end up worshiping God at the end of it.
31:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, at the point when Jesus is tempted in the wilderness, he is being tested.
31:55
SPEAKER_01: And we know from the book of James, to be tested, it's the same word in the Greek as to be tempted.
32:01
SPEAKER_01: Satan tempts, God tests.
32:03
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus, by being tested in the wilderness for 40 days, he was mirroring the the life of Israel as a nation when they were tested in the wilderness for 40 years.
32:17
SPEAKER_01: So right away there are all these correlations and it's setting up setting us up to understand Jesus is the fulfillment and the correction of everything that God intended Israel to do and be.
32:30
SPEAKER_01: Jesus does everything that God intended Israel to do in the wilderness.
32:34
SPEAKER_01: So it is symbolic, it's rich with symbolism.
32:38
SPEAKER_01: So when Satan comes with these, if you are the son of God, if you are the son of God, notice it's so funny.
32:45
SPEAKER_01: It's not um uh, hey Jesus, go murder somebody, right?
32:49
SPEAKER_01: It's not it's not the same.
32:50
SPEAKER_01: It's a illicit like particular command, right?
32:54
SPEAKER_01: It is proving who you are, demonstrating the relationship that you have with God, prove it to everybody and do it this way, not God's way, this way.
33:05
SPEAKER_01: What does Jesus respond with?
33:07
SPEAKER_01: He responds specifically with Deuteronomy and only Deuteronomy.
33:13
SPEAKER_01: And here's why I think that is significant.
33:15
SPEAKER_01: The book of Deuteronomy, if we could sum it up in one word, it is covenant.
33:19
SPEAKER_01: It is about the covenant that God has made with his people and the covenant obedience that we are to have in response to the covenant of God's love.
33:29
SPEAKER_01: When Jesus quotes Deuteronomy, he's demonstrating not only that he is the God in the flesh who fulfills God's covenant with his people, but he is also the God man, fully, truly man, who fulfills our side of the covenant to God.
33:49
SPEAKER_01: He fulfills both sides of his own covenant.
33:53
SPEAKER_01: He fulfilled the part of the covenant that we couldn't even get started.
33:58
SPEAKER_01: What other God?
34:00
SPEAKER_01: What other God?
34:01
SPEAKER_01: And and that one story in Luke 4 now, because of Deuteronomy, it it now just has a different depth, it has a different richness.
34:11
SPEAKER_01: We we're catching what God is trying to say to us between the lines almost, yeah, and and how deep it is of not only his salvation, but I gotta tell you, the Lord is like poetic and dramatic.
34:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he is deeply poetic and deeply dramatic because it's like it's this weaving stuff like a like a movie script sometimes.
34:35
SPEAKER_01: And you step back and you're like, that was so fast.
34:39
SPEAKER_01: He just connected these dots thousands of years later.
34:43
SPEAKER_01: And the Jewish reader of the Gospels would have made that connection.
34:49
SPEAKER_01: We Western Gentiles in our culture, we have to do a little bit of digging, we have to do a little bit more homework, and that is what this Bible study will equip you to do.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: I love it, and praise the Lord for that.
35:03
SPEAKER_00: Man, what a good nugget to end on.
35:06
SPEAKER_00: There's so much that we just miss because we don't, we don't know the Old Testament, we're not in the law, and we just skim read past Deuteronomy.
35:14
SPEAKER_00: So I am so excited for everyone to go check out Forever for Our Good.
35:19
SPEAKER_00: Y'all, it's on lifeway.com.
35:21
SPEAKER_00: It's also on Amazon.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: Check out Katie McCoy.
35:23
SPEAKER_00: Dr.
35:24
SPEAKER_00: Katie McCoy, I should say.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: I've been just calling you Katie because I love I love you know it's one of our baby names if we had a girl.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: It's just so it's a good one.
35:32
SPEAKER_00: Where can everybody find you and follow you?
35:33
SPEAKER_01: Best place is blonde orthodoxy on Instagram.
35:37
SPEAKER_01: So blonde with an E, Blonde Orthodoxy.
35:39
SPEAKER_00: Oh, so good.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for coming on and sharing with us.
35:42
SPEAKER_00: Again, it's forever for our good.
35:45
SPEAKER_00: I'll have it linked below in the description boxes.
35:47
SPEAKER_00: Go check it out today, guys.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: You've been listening to the How to Faith a Life podcast with your girl, Faith Wilmack.
35:52
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35:57
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35:59
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36:03
SPEAKER_00: But if you want to hang out with me and do in-depth Bible studies, like I talked about earlier, you're gonna wanna find me on Patreon.
36:09
SPEAKER_00: That's where I spend most of my time teaching with weekly Bible studies, longer form teaching, behind the scenes content, and honestly, just a great community of awesome believers who love God's word and want to go deeper.
36:20
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36:24
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.
36:26
SPEAKER_00: Bye guys.