Latest / Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture / Is the Sabbath a Restriction or a Gift? Sabbath as Trust in God's Provision (Rebekah Josberger and Renee Duffy)

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Is the Sabbath a Restriction or a Gift? Sabbath as Trust in God's Provision (Rebekah Josberger and Renee Duffy) · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

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  Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that
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  Speaker 1: deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become
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  Speaker 1: as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast.
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  Speaker 1: I'm doctor James Spencer, and through calm, thoughtful theological discussions,
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  Speaker 1: Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the
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  Speaker 1: world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions
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  Speaker 1: that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now onto
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  Speaker 1: today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everybody, welcome to this
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  Speaker 1: episode of Thinking Christian on Doctor James Spencer and I'm
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  Speaker 1: joined by the hosts of the Bible Unbranded podcast, Rebecca
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  Speaker 1: Josberger and Renee Duffy, and today we are going to
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  Speaker 1: be talking a little bit about the Sabbath commands, probably
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  Speaker 1: in Deuteronomy, but also just the law more generally, and
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  Speaker 1: how it points us.
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  Speaker 2: To theology, what it says about who God is, God's.
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  Speaker 1: Character, and I think a lot of times this is
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  Speaker 1: one of those things that I've run into is Eyes
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  Speaker 1: taught undergraduate students, particularly because of the way Paul teaches
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  Speaker 1: the Law and the New Testament. The law is sort
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  Speaker 1: of viewed with a little bit of suspicion. It's viewed
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  Speaker 1: with a little bit of like, ah, we don't need
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  Speaker 1: the law anymore. Of the law's passe, we've moved beyond that.
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  Speaker 1: And what I often find I have to do is
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  Speaker 1: sort of rehabilitate students to know the law is actually
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  Speaker 1: really crucial and important and it isn't what you quite
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  Speaker 1: think it is.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's kind of where we'll go today.
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  Speaker 1: But I'll open the floor and maybe I don't know
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  Speaker 1: whether either of you resonate with that as.
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  Speaker 2: You've taught or talked about.
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  Speaker 1: The law with other folks, or maybe I'll start with
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  Speaker 1: you have you have you had that same experience or
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  Speaker 1: what's your experience with people kind of thinking about the
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  Speaker 1: law maybe as a set of rules and dues and
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  Speaker 1: don'ts or what have you.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I will say that, like, my student experience hasn't
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  Speaker 3: been exactly that, But I think that's because the student
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  Speaker 3: population I've mostly been fortunate enough to teach are actually
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  Speaker 3: students who kind of come in with.
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  Speaker 4: No preconceived notion, which is kind of a.
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  Speaker 3: Fun place to start from. But where I where I
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  Speaker 3: have experienced that is like in my everyday church experience.
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  Speaker 3: I feel like that exact kind of notion is often
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  Speaker 3: perpetrated from the pulpit. This just kind of idea that like,
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  Speaker 3: it's kind of a it's an easy it's an easy
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  Speaker 3: thing to throw under the bus in service of raising
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  Speaker 3: high the grace of Jesus, which is deserved to be
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  Speaker 3: raised very, very high. However, you're actually kind of doing
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  Speaker 3: a disservice then to the grace of Jesus if you
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  Speaker 3: don't also have a really useful and at least sort
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  Speaker 3: of robust understanding of the theology that does come from
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  Speaker 3: the laws. So it is something that I feel rather
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  Speaker 3: regularly regularly as someone who studies the Old Testament primarily,
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  Speaker 3: and that there's that piece kind of shows up in
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  Speaker 3: the more like the culture of Christians who just think
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  Speaker 3: kind of flippantly about law and grace.
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  Speaker 1: Well, it is really interesting because I would say that's
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  Speaker 1: been my experience largely as well, except maybe when it
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  Speaker 1: comes to the Ten Commandments. Okay, right, because the Ten
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  Speaker 1: Commandments are far more.
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  Speaker 2: Intelligible I think to people.
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  Speaker 1: In other words, when it says thou shalt not steal,
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  Speaker 1: we get that right. It's not like you know, to
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  Speaker 1: reference back to our previous episodes. Not very many people
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  Speaker 1: have oxen, and so when they're reading don't muscle your
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  Speaker 1: ox and while you're trading grain, they're going, how in
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  Speaker 1: the world does this relate to me?
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  Speaker 2: Why is this even here? What does this look like?
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  Speaker 1: I think you actually have the opposite problem with the
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  Speaker 1: Ten Commandments, and Beck, you'll throw this question to you,
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  Speaker 1: But to me, it's almost like the familiarity has bred
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  Speaker 1: out a lot of the theology from these because it's
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  Speaker 1: just intuitive now that we shouldn't steal, it's intuitive now
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  Speaker 1: that we shouldn't kill.
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  Speaker 2: It's into you know, yeah, I am just normal human stuff.
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  Speaker 4: I agree. It's interesting that we're talking about Sabbath today
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  Speaker 4: because that's the one of the Ten Commandments that I
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  Speaker 4: get that people seem to trip up on where they're like, oh, yeah, yeah,
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  Speaker 4: but what about the Sabbath? And usually the hang up
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  Speaker 4: is it's at least the way it's expressed is this
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  Speaker 4: idea of there's something I'm going to do wrong and
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  Speaker 4: I don't want I don't know what it is, I
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  Speaker 4: don't know what we're supposed to do. Do we have
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  Speaker 4: to hold, like, you know, all those feelings And you
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  Speaker 4: get a little bit of push back on the Sabbath
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  Speaker 4: at least I do from from students or at church,
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  Speaker 4: which is really really interesting to me because the number
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  Speaker 4: one thing I hear from students is how tired they are,
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  Speaker 4: And I'm like always telling them, if you could serve
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  Speaker 4: a God who doesn't just offer you once a week
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  Speaker 4: nap day, which I don't read too much into how
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  Speaker 4: I you know what that means or what that's supposed
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  Speaker 4: to do, because that's through the lens of what are
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  Speaker 4: we or are we not supposed to do? Which is
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  Speaker 4: what you're talking about. Is that natural understanding of law? Yeah,
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  Speaker 4: wouldn't wouldn't you be really happy to sign up for
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  Speaker 4: that one? But serving that God? And yet that's the
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  Speaker 4: one I find that people kind of push back on
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  Speaker 4: the Ten Commandments because they don't know how they're supposed
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  Speaker 4: to fulfill it, and it's scary and they don't know
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  Speaker 4: if they have to those kind of ideas. And for me,
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  Speaker 4: that's just evidence of kind of a fundamental misunderstanding of
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  Speaker 4: both from both Old and New Testament, of what lat is,
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  Speaker 4: what it's trying to do.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting.
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  Speaker 1: We've almost boiled down law into its application. So in
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  Speaker 1: other words, you know the ones that are, like I said,
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  Speaker 1: the ones that are easy for me to follow, don't
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  Speaker 1: kill anyone. I feel like I've gotten that one down
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  Speaker 1: pat stealing mostly, you know, right, Like you know, you
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  Speaker 1: have some of these that you're just like, yeah, I
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  Speaker 1: don't I wouldn't do those anyway. So okay, But then Sabbath,
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  Speaker 1: So then then the question becomes, well, how do we
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  Speaker 1: do it? And we missed the whole point because we've
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  Speaker 1: we've focused on, well, the law is telling us to
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  Speaker 1: do things or not to do things, and so if
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  Speaker 1: I don't understand how to do this, how do I
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  Speaker 1: know I'm going to do it right?
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  Speaker 4: You know?
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  Speaker 1: Is it really going to work the way that it's
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  Speaker 1: supposed to? You know, does this rationale really still hold
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  Speaker 1: up in a you know, consumerist, capitalist society where we
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  Speaker 1: have to be busy twenty four to seven and you know,
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  Speaker 1: get alerts all the time. Like you can see why
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  Speaker 1: it's attention point.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, agreed. I don't want to get us off track
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  Speaker 4: of the Sabbath because I want to talk about that.
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  Speaker 4: But another one of the ten commandments that sort of
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  Speaker 4: opened my eyes to the fact that I might not
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  Speaker 4: be I might be reading them too. I don't know, uh,
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  Speaker 4: without the right questions in mind. But I remember translating
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  Speaker 4: them not for the very first time, but for the
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  Speaker 4: first time as a teacher, so you know, you're more
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  Speaker 4: you translate differently. You're like, oh, I have to know
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  Speaker 4: how to answer the questions. And I got to that
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  Speaker 4: felt not covet, And because we use the word covet,
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  Speaker 4: I assumed somehow I didn't even know. I assume that
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  Speaker 4: this is a special Christian kind of thing that's like
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  Speaker 4: way worse, like up there with murder. And then I
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  Speaker 4: translate it and it's just the word for desire or want,
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  Speaker 4: and I'm like, I was convinced I could at least
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  Speaker 4: avoid coveting because that sounds so bad, But nope, do
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  Speaker 4: I want things that my friends have and sit they're
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  Speaker 4: all day pinteresting them and wondering why they got them.
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  Speaker 4: And I didn't.
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  Speaker 5: Well, so that was like, whoa, maybe these aren't as
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  Speaker 5: like oh yeah, we just put those up on the
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  Speaker 5: wall and we all have those and those are just
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  Speaker 5: part of natural humanity, right want deeply in bread.
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  Speaker 4: So anyway, that's my it's my confession.
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  Speaker 2: No, it's good, I think. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Covening has always been a little strange for me too,
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  Speaker 1: because you get you do get in the New Testament,
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  Speaker 1: you know, you have certain translations of covening, which is idolatry. Yeah, right,
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  Speaker 1: and so it's like, well, desiring something that someone else
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  Speaker 1: has is idolatry.
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  Speaker 2: That's a strange one. But I think those are helpful.
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  Speaker 1: I really do, because just like Sabbath, it points us
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  Speaker 1: away from how am I supposed to avoid doing this?
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  Speaker 1: And it like, how do I even differentiate that from stealing?
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  Speaker 1: Like I'm just not on desiring it, but I'm not
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  Speaker 1: taking it like that.
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  Speaker 2: What's happening?
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  Speaker 6: You know?
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  Speaker 1: Like I think those curious parts where the parts that
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  Speaker 1: we don't get, sort of shove us into bigger questions
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  Speaker 1: of maybe I'm just reading all of these wrong.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: It's it's a really interesting conundrum with those commandments.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah. One of the cool places that my journey started
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  Speaker 4: with this was this thing. I think doctor Block has
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  Speaker 4: made it relatively well known. I don't know for sure.
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  Speaker 4: I have yet to teach it in a class and
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  Speaker 4: have students go, oh, yeah, I read that, unless I
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  Speaker 4: heard it from another class. But there's this mindset in
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  Speaker 4: the ancient Near East that is made known to us.
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  Speaker 4: You guys, have probably heard of it, of course, but
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  Speaker 4: it's called a prayer to any God, and it's an
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  Speaker 4: ancient prayer. We have a number of different copies of it.
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  Speaker 4: It's probably older even than the copies we have, but
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  Speaker 4: it's been preserved in a couple different forms, so it
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  Speaker 4: was probably I don't want to like compare it, let
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  Speaker 4: me compare it to like, you know, now I lay
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  Speaker 4: me down to sleep or something. It's probably in the water,
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  Speaker 4: in the cultural water, and it's a prayer in a
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  Speaker 4: polytheistic culture where there are many gods when something goes
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  Speaker 4: wrong in your life, and we can tell this by
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  Speaker 4: reading the prayer. When something's gone wrong in your life,
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  Speaker 4: obviously that's been controlled by the gods, and the petitioner
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  Speaker 4: doesn't seem to know which god, so it's, oh God,
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  Speaker 4: I may or may not know, that Goddess I may
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  Speaker 4: or may not know. And it goes on like that forever.
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  Speaker 4: So it's almost like Doctor Seuss when you read it,
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  Speaker 4: because it's just it just keeps going, and it's a
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  Speaker 4: sin I may or may not have committed, you know.
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  Speaker 4: And he talks about his eyes have looked on something,
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  Speaker 4: maybe his hands have touched something, maybe his feet have done.
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  Speaker 4: He doesn't know what he did, and he doesn't know
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  Speaker 4: what God is mad at him, and he doesn't know
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  Speaker 4: what he did, and then he doesn't know what to
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  Speaker 4: do to make it right. And it's kind of it
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  Speaker 4: seems to, you know, point us to one of the
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  Speaker 4: fundamental crises of humanity in the ancient world. And it's
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  Speaker 4: really interesting. I'll read that aloud in class. And then
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  Speaker 4: you read the Ten Commandments in either Deuteronomy or Exodus,
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  Speaker 4: and it starts with I am the Lord your God
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  Speaker 4: with his personal name. This is who I So he's
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  Speaker 4: identified right off the bat, and then you know, he
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  Speaker 4: tells them like, this is the kind of God I am.
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  Speaker 4: I'm the one who rescued you. And then he goes
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  Speaker 4: on to tell them kind of the ten things they
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  Speaker 4: need to do. I can't get all ten fingers in
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  Speaker 4: this frame here, right, but it's a pretty simple probably
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  Speaker 4: memory device, where like there's ten of them here you go,
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  Speaker 4: and we know that there's more than ten things they
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  Speaker 4: need to do, but just kind of boiled down. And we,
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  Speaker 4: interestingly enough, in our culture as New Testament believers, often
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  Speaker 4: look at that and feel relief that we are not
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  Speaker 4: bound to those ten things we are saved by Jesus Christ,
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  Speaker 4: and I believe the Old Testament characters were too. I mean,
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  Speaker 4: this God's plan for the world is universal, but these
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  Speaker 4: ten things that are given them are actually quite gracious
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  Speaker 4: and very comforting, because how else do you know what
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  Speaker 4: you're doing wrong in who you're wronging. And you see
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  Speaker 4: that being picked up over and over again when the
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  Speaker 4: psalmist will celebrate that. It points out the error of
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  Speaker 4: their ways, you know, those kinds of things like it.
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  Speaker 4: It gives them pinicition and boundaries in a world where
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  Speaker 4: that is absolutely long to four And that was one
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  Speaker 4: of those just moments where I thought, I really don't
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  Speaker 4: know that I do understand the grace that is given
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  Speaker 4: with the laws. And then if you guys want to
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  Speaker 4: jump into that, there was a second step, and that
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  Speaker 4: is when beginning to understand ancient Mary Stron laws I
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  Speaker 4: have read, I think just about all the ones there are.
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  Speaker 4: I love reading ancient eery Stern law like over and
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  Speaker 4: over and over again, translating pieces of it wherever possible,
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  Speaker 4: even if I have to like kind of learn the
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  Speaker 4: ins and outs of a new language, not solidly, but
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  Speaker 4: you know, love ancient eery Stern law. And one of
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  Speaker 4: the things that fascinates me is that whenever we have
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  Speaker 4: a preamble to the ancient Eary Stern laws, the page
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  Speaker 4: at the front that tell why they're being given. The
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  Speaker 4: impetus for ancient Eastern law is that it demonstrates the
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  Speaker 4: strength and the character of the king. If law, if
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  Speaker 4: kings are you know, we all know this probably, but
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  Speaker 4: we don't think about it too often. If kings are strong,
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  Speaker 4: they can get larger boundaries, they can their military, can
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  Speaker 4: you conquer more. But if they're only strong enough to
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  Speaker 4: get bigger boundaries but not strong enough to rule with
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  Speaker 4: justice in their land, they're just blopping from war to war.
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  Speaker 4: Then they're considered strong outwardly and big, but they don't
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  Speaker 4: have the majesty or the strength to also rule. And
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  Speaker 4: what a law does in the ancient and Eastern world
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  Speaker 4: and even today, it expresses the amount of sovereignty that
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  Speaker 4: a king has that they can uphold those laws. And
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  Speaker 4: then and then it shows the characters, so so many
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  Speaker 4: talk about it will reveal the the justice, which interestingly enough,
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  Speaker 4: that Hebrew is the same word for righteousness. I don't
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  Speaker 4: know that they're always used the same way. That's a
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  Speaker 4: whole nother study. But it shows the righteousness of God.
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  Speaker 4: So God's showing his character. And Deuteronomy four you've mentioned
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  Speaker 4: pray is the law, as you've vangelistic, it shows the
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  Speaker 4: world that His presence with them their wisdom. And that's
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  Speaker 4: that's an entire those two steps. I had to do
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  Speaker 4: an entire shift of mind of what is this thing?
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  Speaker 4: Am I glad that I'm not out from under it?
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  Speaker 4: Or am I going to look at it differently as
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  Speaker 4: this gift of what He's basic God basically showing who
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  Speaker 4: he is. You can't really do law, biblical law without
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  Speaker 4: doing theology because if he requires something, he's showing you
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  Speaker 4: what he values and who he is. So it's all
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  Speaker 4: theological all in my opinion as I study it.
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  Speaker 1: No, I don't disagree, and I would just tag on
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  Speaker 1: to what you just said there. You know, am I
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  Speaker 1: happy that I'm not underneath the law? I think the
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  Speaker 1: answer to that almost has to be no, because when
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  Speaker 1: you go through into New Covenant passages, the one I'm
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  Speaker 1: the one I love the most is Ezekiel thirty six,
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  Speaker 1: twenty six and twenty seven. I will turn your hearts
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  Speaker 1: of stone into hearts of flesh and I will put
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  Speaker 1: my Holy Spirit within you. And some translations say cause you,
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  Speaker 1: but I think it's probably more the sense of make
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  Speaker 1: you enable you, remake your heart.
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  Speaker 2: It's Asah there.
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  Speaker 1: And I will, I will enable you to keep my laws,
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  Speaker 1: my statutes, and my commandments. And so even as they're
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: you know, you're envisioning the spirit coming into our hearts
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  Speaker 1: and this complete and total renewal. You're not escaping the law.
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  Speaker 1: You're learning and being enabled to live underneath it. And
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  Speaker 1: this is the way it's pictured toward in those New
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  Speaker 1: Covenant passages. We see it probably something similar in what
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  Speaker 1: we know is the Great commission. Jesus is given all authority.
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  Speaker 1: We make disciples, and what is part of that making
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  Speaker 1: of disciples, it's teaching them to observe all Christ commanded.
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  Speaker 1: And so these are not things that we want to
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  Speaker 1: escape from. These are things that we get to live underneath.
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  Speaker 1: They're appropriate enabling constraints for us that allow us to
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  Speaker 1: live into God's order in ways that we couldn't otherwise. Yeah. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: just throw that out there as sort of a ruinder
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  Speaker 1: to your statement, and Renee, do you want to jump
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  Speaker 1: in You got anything?
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  Speaker 4: Sure?
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  Speaker 3: I'll just add what is probably no surprise to either
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  Speaker 3: of you that narratively each of these is happening during
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  Speaker 3: this like that really key transition moment for the people,
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  Speaker 3: and that they're being they're being given freedom. Their freedom
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  Speaker 3: from Pharaoh comes with this law that is also their freedom,
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  Speaker 3: which is what you're you're describing, is that this freedom
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  Speaker 3: being to follow the law, the freedom to fight against it,
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  Speaker 3: but to be able to live holistically inside of it.
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  Speaker 3: And then now they're going to be leaving the wilderness
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  Speaker 3: and leaving that that moment of they're not they're not
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  Speaker 3: in bondage to a to a man, to Pharaoh, but
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  Speaker 3: they're they're in bondage to this space. This isn't where
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  Speaker 3: they're supposed to be. They're heading somewhere else. And so
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  Speaker 3: as they head into that freedom that is their land
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  Speaker 3: there they reiterate that this is this is how you
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  Speaker 3: this is how you achieved freedom versus how you experience
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  Speaker 3: freedom is by walking in God's ways.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's good. That's a good point.
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  Speaker 1: It's interesting to think about when the when the law
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  Speaker 1: is given, it's given after they've got this sort of
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  Speaker 1: quote unquote political freedom. I did a fair amount of
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: study on the use of the Exodus in early American discourse,
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  Speaker 1: and one of the things you find is that it
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  Speaker 1: looks an awful lot like what you see in liberation theology.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: The Exodus is leveraged as a political narrative we need freedom, Well,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: why do you need freedom? So we can live life
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: on our own terms? And you go, well, I think
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: we missed something here. The Exodus is followed by the law,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: which means you're not living on your own terms, You're
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: living on God's terms.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: That was the whole point.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: But you see that use of the freedom and the
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: liberation of the exodus very seldom paired with the constraints
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: in liberation theologies, and that was very much the same
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: in revolutionary America. Something very similar in the Civil War,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: the use of the Exodus on the North and the South,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: both sides claiming to have been on the side of elimination,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: of tearing me, but really so that they could.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: Continue doing what they wanted to do.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: And so this aspect of law is part of what
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: I think we miss an awful lot when we're looking
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: at the Exodus.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: I mean, I love that point, Renee, It's a fantastic point.
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I've heard Becky say before, and I
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: really appreciate this, this idea that like we think of
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: the opposite of laws freedom, but actually the opposite of
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: law is lawlessness.
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: Does that sound Familia Becky? Am I getting that right? Yeah,
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: that we don't.
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: We don't actually crave lawlessness, We prave freedom, which ends
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: with them.
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I was. That's exactly where I was just
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: going to go with. Like, it's difficult in our culture
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: because we kind of want to throw off all parts
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: of rule that don't conform to what we agree with.
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: But let's be honest, our cries for justice are because
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: hopefully we're crying for justice in a number of settings
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: in our culture. We've watched that for a number of years.
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: But the justice that we're crying for is that the
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: law works consistently for all people groups, not that the
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: law is no longer relevant. Yes, And that's we kind
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: of get that confused. Because we do have the luxury
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: of so much justice in our country. You would not
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: want to live in a in a society where lawlessness rules,
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: and even more so, and I always have to confess
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: this most of my comprehension because I'm such an a
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: privileged Westerner that can kind of count on the law.
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: Like if a policeman comes up behind me, my heart
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: will race a little bit because I don't want a ticket,
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: but that's it. Otherwise I'm like, oh, these are these
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: people are coming to help me. I'm a very privilege
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: protected under the law. So I like it a lot
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: more than I realize.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: I like it.
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: But Netflix all these like old you know, vikings and
• 22:10
  Speaker 4: stuff like that shows so my bollership is highly influenced
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: by Netflix, but it helps me understand probably shouldn't admit that.
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: So you guys can distant yourself from that. But that
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: idea of like, oh, this is how protected I am
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: and we are, so that I don't know that we
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: really can understand the value of It's not just that
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: this is what I can't do. I can't steal something,
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: or it's I have recourse if someone else does. And
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: it's not just principle. Someone is going to enforce that principle.
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: And then one of the big things in the Old Testament,
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: especially in Deuteronomy, and this is where I think some
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: people start going off on this humanitarian thing a little bit,
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: but is that within this framework, it's because God doesn't
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: show favoritism. It's not supposed to be a corruptible framework
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: based on the things that the world usually gets corrupted
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: by power, wealth, other things like that. And there's a heavy,
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: heavy focus on that in Deuteronomy, especially watching out for
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: those who don't have the same social advantages or wealth
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: or position and making sure that they get the same
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: kind of justice. And honestly, I think it praised that way.
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: We all realize that's what we're that's what we want
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: to live under. So there's some beautiful, beautiful things about
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: the law that I think have to be re positioned
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: when when students start to understand that the law is
• 23:54
  Speaker 4: literally giving a snapshot of something about the character of God,
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: and if we as Leavers really do want to understand
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: God better and know him better and be more like him,
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: then the question ceases to be do I have to
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: uphold the law and becomes how do I what is
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: it showing me about God? Which is what we started
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: this whole conversation with. And then the safeguard that I
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: always have to remind people, including myself, is that fear
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: that we're going to get it wrong because we don't
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: quite understand it has a solution. It's already been taken
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: care of. There's this thing called grace that was fixed
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: on the cross. So we have this like incredible opportunity
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: to explore what God looks like in his instructions. And
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: if we mess it up, we're already we're being It's okay,
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: it's okay, already covered and yeah, anyway, now.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: I lead a Bible study on Wednesday mornings, and we're
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: going through the Book of Hebrews. So one of the
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: things that the Book of Hebers is really interesting and
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: is the way it frames some of these Old Testament structures,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: the tabernacle, the temple, the law, the priests, you know,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: in all the way that this works and sort of
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: pointing to the better that we now have in Christ.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: And what I've been trying to emphasize with the guys
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: in the study is, look, we're not saying that the better,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: you know, sort of supersedes what was before. We're not
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: saying that what came before was worthless or trivial or unnecessary.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: What we're saying is that it served a particular function that,
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: you know, was always pointing us forward to something else.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: And I think that even as we look at it
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: and we say, well, we have this sort of grace
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: and we can receive redemption and all the cultic mechanisms
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: that were built in that sort of atone for sin
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: and seek forgiveness and to worship. It's like these things
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: are gesturing us towards something better down the road. There's
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: still grace there, and yet even as we're grateful for
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: those things, we can still be yearning for something more.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: I love and Hebrews this one point where he says,
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: you know, the fact that we still had this outer court,
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: that we can only enter the Holy of Holies once,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: it should be a reminder and I'm paraphrasing here, but yeah,
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: it should be a reminder that we're not where we
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: want to be yet because we have to stay in
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: this outer court, where where we really want to be
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: is in the Holy of Holies. And It's like, that's
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: just such a beautiful picture. It's like, you don't disdain
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: being in the outer court. You're happy to be there,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: but you also know all but I'd love to be there, right,
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Like it is such a beautiful pictures.
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: I think, yeah, you know.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: So it's it's I think this being in the law
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: right part of what I think, maybe we don't fully
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: grasp all the time we're talking about the law is yeah,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: we want to we want to have the law. We
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: want to have an appropriate law. But more than that,
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: we want to be able to live under the law.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: And this is part of the yearning that we see
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: in the Old Testament, is the inability to live under
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: the law. The inability to keep this law so perfectly.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: Isn't about oh my gosh, I've disappointed God. Now I'm
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: going to hell. It's it's about I really this was
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: the ideal and I'm missing it. I'm missing something by
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: not being able to keep this and and that's lamentable.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: I think that's got to be an aspect of how
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: we think about it at least.
• 27:43
  Speaker 6: Yeah, including missing something like missing missing an abundance in life,
• 27:49
  Speaker 6: and also missing a closeness with God, right, because that's right.
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: Continually, the thing that they're the separation is what is
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: painful for peoples not able to go into approach until
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: they take care of what has happened.
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the number one thing. Yeah, I was absolutely
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: I was gonna back up on the point you made
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: just a minute ago about Hebrews, which I'm always insanely
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: impressed with someone who can master both Testaments just seriously,
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: so I don't. I read the New Testament as a
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: layperson and I love it, and I but you're gonna
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: have a lot to add on that. But one of
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: the things I consistently like to remind my students that
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: they it seems to make sense to them is that
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: if we if if Christ is better than it doesn't
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: mean a whole lot. If we say Christ is better
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: than a bad thing. It's like, right, I like spin
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: it better than liver, Like, okay, I actually love spinach
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: and hate liver. But you wouldn't know that. You don't
• 29:05
  Speaker 4: know what I'm saying. But if if like Psalm nineteen
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: suggests that Tora is like this, it's compared to like that,
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: or it's set by the heavens as this thing that
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: declares the glory of God, I would argue Torah is
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: the second best picture of God we have in the
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: entire history of the world, with Christ being the first.
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: And so it's better than the sun and the moon,
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: the star, everything, And it's better because what it reveals
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: about God is who he is, and we want to
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: know who he is. It's then his character is then
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: lived out through human behavior, and humans are broken. They're
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: living it out in a broken setting, and they make
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: mistakes with it. They're not It's just it's not going
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: to be this utopic thing you think it's going to be,
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: because the character of God on an imperfect person. Where
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: Christ comes and he's the character of God in the
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: person of God. Good doll done. And then you talk
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: about I've never quite made this leap, and I don't
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: even know if I want to make it right now
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: because I don't want to just take my theological paradigms
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: and plug him in somewhere instead of like looking at
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: the text. That's really uncomfortable for me. But as New
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: Testament believers, when you keep talking about the incorporating of
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: the Holy Spirit and stuff, which is so profound, but
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: we get to be imperfect, but we have the spirit
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: of God in us as we're trying to walk out
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: this law, and I don't know if perfect completion of
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: the law. And this is where I just haven't asked
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: myself this question. Inside the Old Testament text, enough was
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: ever what was expected or were acquired. You look at
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: all the characters that are called perfect or complete David,
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: et cetera, and they aren't. They don't keep all of
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: the law, but they're keeping the not the spirit of
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: the law. That's not where I'm trying to go with this.
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: They're walking with God and knowing him. Yeah, and you
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: mentioned even well, I'll leave it there. My brain's firing,
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: I know.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'll say this.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: I think one of the points that I tend to
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: make when I'm dealing with these kind of issues, because
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: We've had such a tradition of you, the Jews needed
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: to keep off perfectly in order to be saved. Nobody
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: can do that. You all fall short of glory of God. YadA, YadA, YadA,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: Like everybody knows that's narrative. But then you go to
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: first John one nine. Right, if we confess our sins,
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: he is faithful and justin forgive us our sins and
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: cleanse us of all and righteousness.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: Don't take that as.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: A straight condition, right, So that if we don't confess
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: our sins, he's not faithful and just forgive us. Right,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: if we take it as evidence and inference, right, that
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: part of the evidence that God is faithful and justine
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: forgiving our sins is that we do confess our sins.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: There's this recognition that we are part of.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: We could probably frame it like this, all those a
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: little dangerous, but obeying the law, part of being obedient,
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: part of being a righteous person is agreeing with God
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: that some of the things we've done are wrong in
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: turning from those It's a built in mechanism similar to
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: what you see in the sacrificial system. Right, there's an
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: assumption that the Israelites are not going to keep the law.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Like that's a big portion of the entire penitution. It
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: takes up a whole bunch of space to make it right. Yeah, right,
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: you have to have a way of a way of
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: sort of reorienting this. So you say, yeah, I have
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: done all these bad things, and here is what I'm
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: offering as atonement for these, is forgiveness for these I'm
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: worshiping you like it's a true act of contrition. And
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: I think that some of the people that are called that,
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: you know, Abraham always obviously comes to it through Isaac David,
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: you know, expresses contrition, real contrition in a variety of ways.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: You know, you see these things happen across time and
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: you go, okay, yeah, it isn't just about doing this
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: perfectly it's also about aligning oneself so closely with God's
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: order that you refuse to live for long misaligned with it.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: Something around that is kind of what I'd want to say.
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, one of my questions, and maybe I can ask
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: you this right now, And I don't have an answer
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: to this one. I have what I assume is an answer,
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: but I have found that other people think differently, and
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: I'm not sure how. So that's what I'm asking, This
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: assumption that you identify really well, that we often push
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: back on that the law was somehow made a given
• 34:15
  Speaker 4: so that people could live a good enough life so
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: that God could be with them. When I say that
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: out loud, it sounds totally contrary to the character of
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: God has explained everywhere else in scripture and the capability
• 34:35
  Speaker 4: of man, the idea that we could save ourselves even
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: if we got everything right, And I don't understand how
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: this sounds awful. There's a better way to say this,
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: but I don't understand how Christians can assume that. I'm
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: sure there's a way, because lots of Christians do. But
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: even where it's you know, the people break the very
• 34:59
  Speaker 4: first commandment, have no other gods before me? They make
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: or don't make another likeness that represents me, and they
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: make this golden calf, and God says, Okay, I'm gonna
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: wipe you all out and I'm gonna start over with Moses.
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: And Moses like, no, please, don't leave us and we
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: won't go anywhere without you, and God's like okay, and
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: this whole thing, this reconciliation happens, and when that reconciliation happens,
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: we don't see really any evidence of We see the punishment,
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: but it's not like and then Israel walked rightly and
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: so God was able to come down and live with them. Instead,
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: there's reconciliation and the next thing they do is build
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: the people, and then he shows up. So I have
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: had to jettison a long time ago, just on theological grounds,
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: the idea that like there was one way of salvation
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: and then God changed his mind like I can't fathom
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: my world. Oh no, I'm able to say, And I
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: know you weren't referring to that either, you were you
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: were building as a yeah, are there actually? Like? Is
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: are there? Actually? People believe that?
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: So I think there's a common misconception around it.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: So this was probably.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: Ninety seven ninety eight where I started doing research on
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: the new perspective on Paul. And this gets into E. P.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: Sanders and cupn Ol, noomism, and a lot of words
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: that people are listening to this may not even understand,
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: but essentially there is a movement within Paul and scholarship
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: to say that we got the Second Temple background and
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: understanding of the way that Jews thought wrong. And I
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: think so much of this is driven and sort of
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: anachronistically read back onto the Old Testament from this notion
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: that Second Temple Jews somehow thought that keeping will law
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: was saving them or justifying them using that very Christian
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: language that we have, and it's probably in my mind
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: as I've read through all of that different scholarship and
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: looked at different things.
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: What I would say is, I think the Jews.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: Were struggling to understand, how do we align ourselves with
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: God's order in this setting without the Temple? How do
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: we do it without remaining clean because we're being defiled
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: every day by gentiles, and so they start being more
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: stringent on what they can control, which is keeping various
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: aspects of the law, and they're hoping, I think, is
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: keeping them as aligned with God's order as they possibly
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: can be given the situation that they're in. But I
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: think overall there's just sort of a misunderstanding, probably partially
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: due to what law actually does some of the stuff
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: we talked about earlier. I think there's just a misunderstanding
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: what the law actually was meant to do and how
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: it was supposed to be enacted. And and you get
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: hints of this in the prophetic literature. You know, mercy
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: not sacrifice, right, Well, what do you mean you told
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: us to sacrifice.
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: Or temple the temple?
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: We like, what are we talking about here? God?
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: You told us to offer sacrifices what we're doing? And
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: He's like, no, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. And so
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: you get this sense that the law is not a
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: set of rules that if you miss one you have
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: to you know, you know, whip yourself, you know, or
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: something like that.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: What you get the sense of is that there is
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: a thrust of the law that involves some of the
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: things we've been talking about, knowing and understanding what it
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: means to live with God, and that when that law
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: is applied in a in a more stringent recipe like fashion,
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: right to bake a cake, you always have to put
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: the mix in the bowl first, and then you have
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: to add the A and then you have to like
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: when it gets to that point, then you kind of
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: know you've gotten a lot wrong. So I think that's
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: how it comes in. Becky, that's a real like, Okay,
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: thank you. That'd be my guess on it, say, my
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: relatively informed guess.
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's it, yep, and that makes sense. I yeah, yeah,
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: I just ye.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: Well, let's uh, so we don't let the episode get
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: away with us and get away from us without ever
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: addressing the Ten Commandments. Let's jump back into those real quick.
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: Or Sabbath.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think it's so here's a question
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: for both of you. So here's the way I sort
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: of have thought through the Ten Commandments over the years.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: And this is informed by the way I studied Sabbath.
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: So it may not it may not quite square, but
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: when I try to help people understand how I read
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: the law, this is how I do. So I don't
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: know that it's as interpretive as it is heuristic, right,
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: but I think two things have informed me. Number one
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: is the Sabbath. Number two is the sabbatical laws, right,
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: And so I tend to start by reading the law
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: and saying, these are divinely empowered practices.
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: They work and function because.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: Reality is the way it is, and particularly because God
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: is the way he is. And so when I read
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: something like thou shalt not steal, my tendency is to say, well,
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: what would it say if I did steal? If I'm
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: in Israel and I'm an Israelite and I'm supposed to
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: be sort of displaying the wisdom of God to the
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: rest of the world, and I'm out there stealing and
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: killing and committing adultery and coveting what other people have,
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: I'm suggesting that God can't provide for me sufficient. I'm
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: suggesting that they are are These are not humans, They're
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: obstacles to my own agendas. I'm suggesting that, you know,
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: the covenant that I made with God in marriage doesn't
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: mean anything, and I'm suggesting that God gave my stuff
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: to someone else, and it's my job to rectify his mistake.
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: There's always a theological sort of implication to doing the
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: opposite of what the tank commandments are asking you to do,
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: and so what you end up with is sort of
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: a back end way of helping people understand how this
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: relates theologically?
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: How does that?
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: How does that strike you? Maybe I'll go to Renee first,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: How does that strike you?
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: Renee? Does that?
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: I mean?
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: I'm I'm processing, I'm trying to process through each one
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: of those things, and like all of the like the
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: outcomes from it, like it.
• 41:49
  Speaker 4: Definitely, Uh, it's making sense.
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: It is helping people go from well, it's it's always
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: strike right that the Ten Commandments are given to us
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: in the negative, right right, like that that they're restrictive
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: in that particular way, and so thinking about the positive
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: helps Overwatching all of those things then can always bring
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: us to this place of who is in control?
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: Is it me? Or is it God?
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: So I think that even even being able to see
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: that and being.
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: Able to acknowledge.
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: My rightful place below, God shows up in each one
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: of those in a really helpful way.
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: What are you thinking, Becky? No, M Yeah, I'm curious.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: I want to hear you talk about the Sabbath. He's
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: gonna keep bringing it up until he does. I just
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: keep going. Sorry, I mean, if you were going to.
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: Rest find No, I think it's good. I think the
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: Sabbath was always interesting me. Not because I felt like
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: I needed a break, but because you could do comparative
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: work between Exodus twenty and Diuuronyomy five, and comparative work
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: that you really can't do with any of the other commandments.
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: It's not like there's no other differences. I wouldn't say that,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: but the Sabbath command really does have a.
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: Lot of differences.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: And so if you read, for instance, in Exodus, the
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: sabbath command is rooted in creation, and so what we
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: see really in Exodus is that there's the Sabbath is
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: a reflection of the created order. It's ordering time, right,
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: and so this time is to be sacred. If God
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: created the world in six days and rested on the seventh,
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: then you keep your seventh day sacred as well. It's
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: a way of ordering time. But you get a completely
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: different vibe when you jump over to Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy roots
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: the sabbath practice back into the Exodus, so you're to
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: remember the Exodus as you sabbath. The Sabbath is a
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: mechanism for remembering. It's a way of demonstrating that you
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: understand that you're no longer under the thumb of Pharaoh
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: and that you live in a different domain and kingdom now,
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: and that conditions some of the other differences that you
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: see between these two commands, for instance, like in Deuteronomy,
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: and an ad just popped up on my Internet Bible,
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: so now I can't see it. Such poor timing. But
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: there's a little phrase that comes in here in verse fourteen.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: The end of verse fourteen, so you know you're supposed
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: to sabbath. You know everybody's supposed to sabbath.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: On it. You shall not do any work.
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: You, your son, your daughter, your male servant, your female servant,
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: you or your ox, your donkey, or any of your
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: livestock are a sonjourner who's within your gates. That your
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: male servant and your female servant may rest.
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: As as you.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: That little as you isn't actually available in Exodus. Now,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: there's some other differences, but that as you is not
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: there in Exodus. And so that's brought up this question.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: You mentioned the humanitarian impulse in Deuteronomy, right, A lot
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: of commentators say, well, this is the humanitarian impulse. Look,
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: the God is commanding this so that the male and
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: female servants can rest as well. I tend to take
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: it a little differently. I mean, yes, their rest is
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: sort of a consequence of this. But the reality is,
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: if we look at Sabbath across the scriptures, part of
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: what you see is that it's not really a You're
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: not really taking a sabbath if you've got your slaves
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: out in the field, like taking care of things, right, Like,
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: how is this trusting God if I've just got my
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: workers out there doing it and I'm sipping back a
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: lemonade and just chilling right. And so what we see
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: in the in the Sabbath command here in Deuteronomy is
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: a move toward the theological that the practices that are
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: put in place, the way that the Sabbath is to
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: be exercised, is aligned with who God is, the way
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: that God is structuring the society. And I think the
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: difference the contrast between Pharaoh and God. Pharaoh requires ceaseless work.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: God of everyone, like of all the slaves. God is saying,
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: that's not how my world works. Everybody gets this break.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: Everybody treats this time as sacred. This time was made sacred,
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: if we read from Exodus to Douronymy, it was made
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: sacred by me at creation. And you're for jarn sure,
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: not going to screw it up by having your slaves
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: work on the Sabbath. Yeah, that's kind of how I
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: see that, the two sort of that whole narrative connecting
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: and so yeah, so the Sabbath in Deuteronomy, to me,
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: gives us real handles for understanding how to read all
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: of these commands in more of that theological register.
• 47:02
  Speaker 4: This is so exciting for me because my work for
• 47:09
  Speaker 4: so long has been so teaching focused that I haven't
• 47:12
  Speaker 4: always gotten to dialogue with other people who have worked
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: on the same things that I've been working on. And
• 47:21
  Speaker 4: so in my independent, little, I don't know, conclave of
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: my office, you know, I have spent years with this
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: Sabbath command and doing very similar things, and hearing you
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: talk about this, I'm so lit up I have I
• 47:38
  Speaker 4: would say, I do almost the same thing with it,
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: which which is so exciting to me. When people are
• 47:44
  Speaker 4: approaching the text with a similar mindset in methodologies but
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: not talking to one another, and finding similar things, it
• 47:51
  Speaker 4: can be very affirming that I'm not just out there,
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: you know, like making up my own theology, which is
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: always so scary. The one piece that I brought to
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: the question before I even started when I noticed, like, ooh,
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: there's a piece of the Ten Commandments that I can study,
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: that there's actually a comparative analysis that can go on.
• 48:14
  Speaker 4: And that was the Sabbath, soa same kind of thing.
• 48:19
  Speaker 4: All my study with law had already driven me to
• 48:23
  Speaker 4: believe and to test repeatedly every time I go to
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: anything like the Sabbath laws, that the reason something is
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: being given to us is because it shows us something
• 48:35
  Speaker 4: about the character of God. I mentioned this last time
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: we talked but Teronomy ten when he says, you know
• 48:42
  Speaker 4: the Lord your God at seventeen the lords r God
• 48:46
  Speaker 4: is God of God and lords of lords, the Great God,
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: a mighty and awesome who shows no partiality and accepts
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing.
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: And you're to love, and you know you almost want to. Therefore,
• 49:01
  Speaker 4: you are to love those who are aliens, for you,
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: yourselfs are alien working in Egypt. And so it's like,
• 49:08
  Speaker 4: I do all this, so you have to right because
• 49:13
  Speaker 4: you're emulating me. So with that idea, which I didn't
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: find in Deuteronomy ten, it's so little that I didn't
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: see it until after studying a lot of these laws.
• 49:25
  Speaker 4: I went to the Sabbath laws, and that's the one
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: little piece that I I'm kind of asking you, James,
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: to test off camera and see, like does this fit.
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: So instead of seeing a difference, there is one between
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: what's going on in Exodus and what's going on in Deuteronomy.
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: If they're both reflecting the character of God, and they're
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: both the same commandment, so it seems like maybe they'd
• 49:56
  Speaker 4: be reflecting something similar about the character of God because
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: he's asking them to do this. You talk about Sabbath
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: ordering time and structure, which one hundred percent, but it's
• 50:08
  Speaker 4: not just ordering things. It's ordering things to teach a lesson,
• 50:15
  Speaker 4: like to give the people a reminder every week. I
• 50:20
  Speaker 4: did all of this, and I made it perfect, and
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: it's it's finished, and I did it, so you don't
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: have to like you're not going to make it perfect.
• 50:29
  Speaker 4: You're not gonna It's that thing Renee was talking about
• 50:32
  Speaker 4: about the sovereignty of God and where are places under him,
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: and it has kind of this complex layer. I talk
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: to my students about this. I'm like, kind of it's
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: kind of like heaven in Genesis one, like it's all done,
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: it's all taken care of, and so you get to
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: kind of rest in that closest thing I think we
• 50:53
  Speaker 4: come to in the Old Testament as an idea of
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: a utopia, that God did it and it's complete. And
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: I think what he's doing in the Deuteronomy passage is
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: the exact same thing, but he's referring to something that
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: is much closer in the minds of the Israelites as
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: an example in their immediate context of his redemptive, redeeming, finishing,
• 51:21
  Speaker 4: freeing kind of power, in that they are no longer slaves.
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: He did the thing, he redeemed them, and they they
• 51:34
  Speaker 4: get to remember that once a week. And I can't.
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: I can't quite make the firm connection without forcing it.
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: That's kind of the weakness of where I'm going firm
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: connection between that redemptive finishing power of Genesis one and
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: that redemptive, literally redeeming, freeing kind of experience that the Hebrews,
• 52:09
  Speaker 4: that the Israelites experienced in the in the Exodus. But
• 52:15
  Speaker 4: they seem to be pointing to the same characteristics of
• 52:18
  Speaker 4: God worked out in two different spots in history. Yes,
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: is my pointing to something about the character of God that,
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: rather than being different, seems to be the same in
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: two different expressions. And I don't know, if I haven't
• 52:36
  Speaker 4: had other people test.
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: That idea, I don't disagree.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: They would point to a very similar character of God,
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: I think, if not the exact same. I think, you know,
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: the connections between creation and Exodus are such that it
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: almost needs to read that way. I would also say that,
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: while I haven't done the study, my haunches that when
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: we look at the bringing out of the people from Egypt,
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: which is the way the language just used here, Yeah,
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: you know, my wish would be that it's redeemed, I know, right,
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: because redemption then speaks to ownership, which speaks to sovereignty,
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: which you know all these things.
• 53:17
  Speaker 4: Well, and even if it isn't here he's talked about
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: the God the redeeming one of Israel at it.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, But my hunch is that what we're
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: looking at in all of this is a set of
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: concepts that are consistently overlapping and found in connection with
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: one another. So I mean, even as you were talking
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: about the ancient Near Eastern lack coats and what these
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: do within the context of a King, shows his character,
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: shows his sovereignty. It's hard not to conjure up the
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: image of God in Genesis one and recognize that, you know,
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: we're this reflection that the humanity is supposed to do
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: is intended to both demonstrate God's authority and mark humans
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: off as having a unique dignity and character, you know,
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: And then you know, you get into Sabbath. Obviously we
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: have Sabbath again here, we have, you know, the creation
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: of an order coming out of chaos. Within Genesis one
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: one through two through t through two three, you have
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: a very similar thing happening in Egypt, at least on
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: a conceptual level. That they are in chaos, that they're
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: in oppression, that there is no room for worship exactly.
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: All of these different aspects sort of start to pile
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: up conceptually at the very least. And then I think
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: we are intended to read a lot of that not
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: into the text, but we're supposed to read this text
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: in that context. And so I yeah, I agree. I
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: think there's a real richness here, and it's all you know,
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: sort of shoving us back to God is sovereign, God
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: is wise, God is benevolent.
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: Now you're free to worship. Yeah, and this.
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: Is what that looks like. It looks like Sabbath. Well,
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: it looks like a bringing back that ordering of time.
• 55:08
  Speaker 4: And it would make sense too. We talked last time
• 55:11
  Speaker 4: about you know, where you go to the bathroom in
• 55:14
  Speaker 4: your war camp, these very crystal clear, kind of human
• 55:23
  Speaker 4: samples of how you would remember that God is there
• 55:27
  Speaker 4: and how it would be driven home that to serve
• 55:30
  Speaker 4: a God who is sovereign, ordered, sufficient, and redemptive means
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: that we have the privilege to remember that through rest.
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: That's right, and that kind of you know, and of
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: course you went to the New Testament. Jesus is like
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: and Sabbath was made for man, and you're.
• 55:52
  Speaker 7: Like, no, oh oh oh, but what kind of in
• 55:58
  Speaker 7: my mind frees me up from question of but how
• 56:02
  Speaker 7: what will God count as Sabbath?
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: Nience?
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: That's right?
• 56:09
  Speaker 4: But anyway, well, I think there's just so much beauty there,
• 56:15
  Speaker 4: and I map every Saturday or Sunday.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: I agree, And maybe what we do, maybe maybe next
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: time we keep this going and we'll stick with Sabbath
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: for one more episode and can maybe expand it out
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: a little bit, because I think there are some interesting
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: structural questions to talk about with regard to the modern
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: day church. There's some interesting things we could discuss just
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: on our own personal rhythms of rest and those kind
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: of things. To display the character of God that is
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: gestured to in Sabbath or pointed back reflected in these laws,
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: what does it look like for us to do that
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: in our daily lives and how much improvisation can we
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: actually use in doing so. Yeah, so maybe we'll maybe
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: we'll pivot to that next time and just stick with
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: Sabbath for a little bit.
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: Seems good to sit with.
• 57:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I love it. Thank you.
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: Very cool.
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: Well, we're gonna have to call this episode done for
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: the moment, but we'll be back next time. We'll be
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: talking a little bit more about Sabbath. So, Becky, Rene,
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: thank you very much for being here. Everybody, thanks for listening,
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: and we'll catch on the next episode of Thinking Christian
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: Take Care. I just want to take a second to
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: lifeaudio dot com, you'll find dozens of other faith centered
• 57:30
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