Latest / Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture / More Than Rules: Deuteronomy and the Heart of God's Provision (Rebekah Josberger and Renee Duffy)

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More Than Rules: Deuteronomy and the Heart of 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, everyone, welcome to this
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  Speaker 1: episode of Thinking Christian. I am joined today again by
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  Speaker 1: Renee Duffy and Rebecca Jilsperger, and we're going to be
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  Speaker 1: talking about the Book of Deuteronomy.
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  Speaker 2: Now.
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  Speaker 1: Rebecca and Becky or I'm sorry. Renee and Becky are
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  Speaker 1: hosts of the Bible Unbranded podcast, and so this is
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  Speaker 1: kind of a joint effort between my podcast and theirs.
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  Speaker 1: But it's kind of nice because while I've studied Deuteronomy,
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  Speaker 1: I would not call myself a Deuteronomy expert. I've probably
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  Speaker 1: done more focused tech like the Sabbath Command and Deuteronomy
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  Speaker 1: six and even Deuteronomy four. Jumped in a little bit
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  Speaker 1: on the Instructions to the King and Deuteronomy seventeen here
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  Speaker 1: in some recent works, but the book of Deuteronomy as
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  Speaker 1: a whole is one of Becky's favorites, and so I'm
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  Speaker 1: excited to start this out. One of not even one
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  Speaker 1: of it is the favorite, and I think for good reason, right,
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  Speaker 1: because Deuteronomy is in a lot of ways sort of
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  Speaker 1: the backbone of the Pentituke. Right, You're getting this sort
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  Speaker 1: of overarching summary of a lot of the theological themes
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  Speaker 1: that the rest of the Pentituke discusses in Deuteronomy, but
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  Speaker 1: then it's also echoed throughout the rest of the Old Testament.
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  Speaker 1: And so maybe we can start out and just talk
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  Speaker 1: a little bit about your perspective of what this book
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  Speaker 1: actually is. So when you approach Deuteronomy, how would you
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  Speaker 1: describe what Deuteronomy is and what it's doing.
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  Speaker 3: I'm renee, do you want to do? Am I just
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  Speaker 3: doing this? Okay?
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  Speaker 2: Well, well we'll get to everybody.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like you can frame this out for
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  Speaker 1: us and then we can we.
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  Speaker 2: Can kind of hang off that.
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  Speaker 3: Okay, I am. I'm a I am zealously passionate about
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  Speaker 3: this book. It's almost embarrassing. But when you hear why,
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  Speaker 3: I think everyone kind of can get on board. It
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  Speaker 3: feels like what you said is one correct. It's kind
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  Speaker 3: of this theological backbone of the Pentituke and therefore kind
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  Speaker 3: of the scriptures. And when I think of a theological
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  Speaker 3: backbone kind of book like Isaiah or like Paul's writings
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  Speaker 3: in the New Testament, I personally get a little intimidated
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  Speaker 3: because I prefer narratival kind of like give me a
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  Speaker 3: good story and I can sort of get into it,
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  Speaker 3: like don't keep something way up here. It's not that
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  Speaker 3: I'm not smart. I can get things that are way
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  Speaker 3: up here. But as a believer, I sometimes feel like
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  Speaker 3: I'm scared to try to unravel all the complicated pieces
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  Speaker 3: to get meaning, because what if I do it wrong
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  Speaker 3: and distort the text somehow? This is just part of
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  Speaker 3: my deep, deep conservative roots and my own personality. What
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  Speaker 3: I've discovered with Deuteronomy is that it's incredibly simple in
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  Speaker 3: some ways, like that doesn't mean that if you read it,
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  Speaker 3: and it's difficult at first to figure out what's going
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  Speaker 3: on there. It's very removed from us in culture, and
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  Speaker 3: we're not used to looking at things the way that
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  Speaker 3: Deuteronomy is presenting them. But it is it is an
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  Speaker 3: invitation you asked to over a view. It's an invitation
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  Speaker 3: to know God deeply, like at an experiential level, and
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  Speaker 3: to celebrate his attributes or his characteristics. And the way
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  Speaker 3: that is done. And this makes sense considering the context
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  Speaker 3: that we're given. The way this is done is it's
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  Speaker 3: for a new generation of Israelites, because we're told in
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  Speaker 3: the text that all the last generation, unless they were
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  Speaker 3: really really little and are name to Moses or Caleb,
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  Speaker 3: all of the rest have died in the wilderness. So
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  Speaker 3: they know their history. But we know as human beings
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  Speaker 3: that history dies really fast, like you can know it,
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  Speaker 3: but until you experience something, it can be kind of
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  Speaker 3: mysterious or lost on us. So and they're about to
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  Speaker 3: go in the Promised Land instead of teaching warfare combat
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  Speaker 3: or you know, I always picture like a scene in
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  Speaker 3: Ulan where they're like doing all the training and stuff.
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  Speaker 3: You know that I can't remember the name of the song,
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  Speaker 3: but they're learning warfare because they're going to go into battle.
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  Speaker 3: They don't need any of those tactics. The things they
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  Speaker 3: have to be able to do are walk with God
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  Speaker 3: because he's going there and he's bringing them and he's
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  Speaker 3: going to do all the fighting and make sure they
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  Speaker 3: win because he's giving this land to them, So they
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  Speaker 3: have to know him enough to follow him. And you know,
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  Speaker 3: that's on a very simple level, but it's not so
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  Speaker 3: simple when you can't like see the figure of God
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  Speaker 3: walking with you. You have to understand who he is.
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  Speaker 3: So to these new generation of Israelites, he's teaching in
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  Speaker 3: a style, a couple of styles actually, that they're very
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  Speaker 3: familiar with who he is and that they can trust him.
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  Speaker 3: And I'm going to say the examples and the teachings
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  Speaker 3: he's given are at about an elementary school level. They're
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  Speaker 3: meant to be incredibly painable. And I'm not just saying
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  Speaker 3: that because Moses says that at the end of the book.
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  Speaker 3: I'm saying that of how they would have understood these
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  Speaker 3: and read them. And I'll be honest, there's only like
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  Speaker 3: maybe I'm going a guest, there used to be seven.
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  Speaker 3: Now there's probably fifteen that I feel like are attainable
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  Speaker 3: to me because from cultural gaps and I don't quite
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  Speaker 3: know what's going on with some of the stuff. And
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  Speaker 3: they're not just attainable and understandable to the population. They're
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  Speaker 3: all so something you learn. You're supposed to learn about
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  Speaker 3: the attributes of God through practice and experiencing them, much
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  Speaker 3: the way that we would teach our children. So when
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  Speaker 3: we're trying to teach our children something, our young children,
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  Speaker 3: even I have an eighteen year old right now, and
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  Speaker 3: even I don't usually sit down and explain it, although
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  Speaker 3: with my older ones I try that at some point.
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  Speaker 3: But you let them walk through it, you let them learn.
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  Speaker 3: Sometimes we talk about them learning the hard way or
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  Speaker 3: you can learn the easy way, and that's exactly what
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  Speaker 3: all these instructions in Deuteronomy are about. And we then,
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  Speaker 3: as New Testament Christians, impose something on them that make
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  Speaker 3: them feel incredibly scary, Like I, you know, I'll ask
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  Speaker 3: a lot of students what they understand about the law
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  Speaker 3: and about Deuteronomy, and they'll say, like, I'm so glad
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  Speaker 3: we don't have to live under the law, because the
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  Speaker 3: idea of law is that if you get it wrong,
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  Speaker 3: you're outside of God's favor, and if you get it right,
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  Speaker 3: all these good things are going to happen. And we
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  Speaker 3: tangle it all up with sin, which the text says
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  Speaker 3: all those things, but it's really about training people in
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  Speaker 3: who God is by them practicing a number of his
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  Speaker 3: attributes in very real, broken, real world situations, and if
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  Speaker 3: the cool thing, there's so many cool things, but if
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  Speaker 3: they get them wrong, it's learning the hard way. They
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  Speaker 3: can still learn who God is. And if they get
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  Speaker 3: them right, eventually it clicks in like, oh, yeah, that's
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  Speaker 3: God is to me anyway, so that it's not it's
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  Speaker 3: so cool.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that that framing of the law is
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  Speaker 1: really interesting. One of the texts that I've been thinking
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  Speaker 1: about an awful lot is Genesis twenty six y five,
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  Speaker 1: where Abraham is described as one who has kept all
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  Speaker 1: of God's laws and commandments and statutes. And you sort
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  Speaker 1: of sit back and you say, well, you know, if
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  Speaker 1: you if you eliminate sort of the text critical and
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  Speaker 1: the historical critical, like was this a later, you know,
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  Speaker 1: written thing, like why are they describing Abraham like this?
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  Speaker 2: But to me, that gets at the spirit of the law.
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  Speaker 1: You've read all of the life of Abraham where he's
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  Speaker 1: not done everything right, he's he's never really condemned, Like
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  Speaker 1: you don't get the sense in the Abraham narrative, and Renee,
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  Speaker 1: I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this, Like
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  Speaker 1: you don't get the sense in the Abraham narrative that
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  Speaker 1: God is continually disciplining Abraham along the way, right, you know,
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  Speaker 1: you go down to Egypt, you say your wife is
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  Speaker 1: your sister, and you come out of there with rewards.
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  Speaker 1: This is not punitive to Abraham, probably, but he learns something.
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  Speaker 1: And so there's this this trajectory where Abraham is learning
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  Speaker 1: to walk with the Lord, and eventually that becomes this description,
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  Speaker 1: this summary description of in Genesis twenty sixty five of
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  Speaker 1: he's kept the whole of the law and the commandments. Well,
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  Speaker 1: obviously he hasn't in a you know, you know sense
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  Speaker 1: of he's never made a mistake, but he has in
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  Speaker 1: the sense that his whole life now has been a
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  Speaker 1: traje doctory toward this notion. And he is the prototypical
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  Speaker 1: or paradigmatic sort of person that we should look back
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  Speaker 1: to and say, oh, this is how Abraham did it,
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  Speaker 1: this is how I should do it. So I don't know,
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  Speaker 1: Renee any thoughts on that, as we kind of.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, the Genesis narratives are frustratingly silent on morality,
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  Speaker 4: very very very often for a lot of people, and
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  Speaker 4: something that I currently like, like right now working in Jacob.
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  Speaker 4: Something that is really apparent to me that sometimes gets
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  Speaker 4: lost when we treat these individuals the way that you're
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  Speaker 4: describing with Abraham as someone to copy, is that in
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  Speaker 4: these narratives like the will of God is a determining
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  Speaker 4: factor and not a controlling one, and so it determines
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  Speaker 4: the outcome in the end, but it doesn't control the
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  Speaker 4: individuals in the meantime, and so they're allowed to be
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  Speaker 4: the people that they are, and that is.
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  Speaker 3: Okay with God. We go question mark, is that okay, yeah, we're.
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  Speaker 4: We're allowed to be the people that we are, and
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  Speaker 4: so were they and so exactly the experience you're describing
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  Speaker 4: happens to us every time we read, and that we
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  Speaker 4: read and we go, gosh, was he really supposed to
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  Speaker 4: do that? M Maybe it's not not really, not really
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  Speaker 4: the point. But when we get to Deuteronomy, then, since
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  Speaker 4: Deuteronomy is bringing this grand summary to the people so
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  Speaker 4: that it becomes theirs and they carry it on, what
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  Speaker 4: he's pointing out throughout it all is not who did
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  Speaker 4: what right, but who God is, And what's going to
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  Speaker 4: happen is they move forward because of the will of God.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, would you say Becky, like some of that with
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  Speaker 1: the law and some of this struggle that we have
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  Speaker 1: maybe with you know, Abraham obviously did things wrong, but
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  Speaker 1: he's not, you know, ever really condemned in these narratives,
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  Speaker 1: like there is a moral silence and a lot of
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  Speaker 1: places and its particularly Genesis. But in my mind, I've
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  Speaker 1: always sort of equated that to you know, the later
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  Speaker 1: prophetic calls like I desired.
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  Speaker 2: Mercy, not sacrifice.
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  Speaker 1: This idea that there is a pathos to keeping the
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  Speaker 1: law that transcends almost all of the jots and tittles.
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  Speaker 1: And maybe I'm not saying that correctly, but do you
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  Speaker 1: do you get the drift there?
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  Speaker 3: This first struck me really solidly, well it was. It
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  Speaker 3: was the second time it struck me. In my dissertation,
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  Speaker 3: I picked like five passages that dealt with family members.
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  Speaker 3: I was looking at the role of the father within
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  Speaker 3: his little household. And I won't go into all the
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  Speaker 3: details of that, but I had to restrict it further
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  Speaker 3: because family household is defined differently in Israel. But so
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  Speaker 3: I settled on these five passages and they were really
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  Speaker 3: disturbing settings. Like I was looking to see how righteousness,
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  Speaker 3: how a father would walk righteously in obedience a law.
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  Speaker 3: And they were like, just really disturbing. If a man
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  Speaker 3: has two wives and he loves one and hates the other,
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  Speaker 3: and I was like, yes, how do you fix that?
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  Speaker 3: And then it doesn't talks about how he's to treat
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  Speaker 3: his children, okay. Or if you have a stubborn and
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  Speaker 3: rebellious son. Or if you marry a woman and find
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  Speaker 3: something the nakedness of a thing iovat da var you
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  Speaker 3: don't like about her and you divorce her, you can't
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  Speaker 3: marry her again, okay, Like these are just disturbing settings.
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  Speaker 3: And then and I'm like, wait, if this is where
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  Speaker 3: we're supposed to get our morality and our sense of morality,
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  Speaker 3: I don't understand. And the indications of what they were
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  Speaker 3: supposed to do, don't go back and fix that setting.
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  Speaker 3: They're dealing with something else. And I want like the
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  Speaker 3: setting fixed. I want divorce fixed. I wanted slavery fixed.
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  Speaker 3: I want to polygamy fixed. I wanted disobedience fixed. And
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  Speaker 3: it's just the setting. And then when I started teaching,
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  Speaker 3: of course I was obsessed with a low I think
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  Speaker 3: about it all the time. I can't tell you how
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  Speaker 3: many times I've been teaching in one book, and then
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  Speaker 3: I start talking about Deuteronomy, like not because that's where
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  Speaker 3: I'm going. I've just renamed the book We're working on Deuteronomy,
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  Speaker 3: and so I get a little obsessed. I think about
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  Speaker 3: it a lot. But because of that, it was in
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  Speaker 3: Samuel and Kings that I noticed the pattern that you
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  Speaker 3: guys are talking about in Genesis. When I was reading Genesis,
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  Speaker 3: I kind of had a lot of tropes and narratives
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  Speaker 3: of what I was taught in my head. So I
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  Speaker 3: was like, Okay, this was good and this was bad,
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  Speaker 3: and we know this. I didn't know why. I just
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  Speaker 3: had been taught that. But when I got to first
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  Speaker 3: and Second Samuel and first and second Kings, I realized
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  Speaker 3: it's almost completely silent. It's not quite you know, it
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  Speaker 3: does call murder an adultery, wrong, shoot, but only one time,
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  Speaker 3: like all the rest of this. Yeah, it's not looking
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  Speaker 3: at things through the lens that I was looking at
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  Speaker 3: it through, which was did this person's sin or didn't
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  Speaker 3: this person sin? Was this person wicked or righteous? And
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  Speaker 3: who should? Deep down inside the question was who am
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  Speaker 3: I supposed to emulate here? How do I like be righteous?
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  Speaker 3: Because I love God and I want to do the
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  Speaker 3: right thing, and I think what And this is sort
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  Speaker 3: of my way of saying, I can answer your question,
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  Speaker 3: but I don't think about it in those terms anymore,
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  Speaker 3: because I just don't think that's what the text is about.
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  Speaker 3: The text is walk with me and know me. And
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  Speaker 3: it's not about well, I speak in hyperboles sometimes and
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  Speaker 3: my brain runs in a lot of different directions at
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  Speaker 3: the same time. But it's not about get it right,
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  Speaker 3: although it is about get it right. I mean, he
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  Speaker 3: wants you to do these things, but it's about practice
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  Speaker 3: who I am, so that you really understand who he is.
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  Speaker 3: Because when he tells us a definition of himself an Exodus,
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  Speaker 3: for example, when he's and I haven't memorized, but my
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  Speaker 3: brain banks out every time I go to look at
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  Speaker 3: Exodus thirty four or thirty two, thirty two, yeah, yeah,
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  Speaker 3: or yeah one of those about he's patent and you know,
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  Speaker 3: loving kind, blah blah blah ah, those good attributes. We
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  Speaker 3: hear those, but we can hardly fathom them, We can
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  Speaker 3: hardly identify them. In the behaviors of our family members.
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  Speaker 3: What might look like patients is actually, you know, just
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  Speaker 3: a disrespectful You just keep talking and I'm going to
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  Speaker 3: stand here politely. What trouble with concepts of love? What
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  Speaker 3: is love? What does it look like to be loving
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  Speaker 3: towards your child? Are you supposed to discipline them or
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  Speaker 3: have grace in this setting? And it's these are really
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  Speaker 3: difficult things to grasp. And in setting these scenarios in
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  Speaker 3: the middle of places where Israel is living in their culture,
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  Speaker 3: whether the culture is healthy or not healthy, God is
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  Speaker 3: inviting his people to respond in a way that demonstrates
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  Speaker 3: in the extreme cases. In other words, like He's going
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: to ask them to demonstrate maintaining human dignity to the
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  Speaker 3: law breaker, the criminal, or maintaining a level of respect
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  Speaker 3: when a marriage is not even near the marriage partners
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: aren't even near one another. In so Stratus, you've got
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  Speaker 3: a conquering warrior and a captive non Israelite woman and
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  Speaker 3: he's like, no, no, but this is what marriage is.
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  Speaker 3: You're the same or you know, all these these dignity,
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  Speaker 3: these respect, this proper use of authority, sacred sanctity of marriage,
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  Speaker 3: all these kinds of pieces that when you practice them,
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: it clicks with you. I mean, he tells us in
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  Speaker 3: Deuteronomy ten, love the widow and alien because you were aliens,
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  Speaker 3: and because this is what I did for you. So
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  Speaker 3: as you kind of do that, you realize, oh, that's
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  Speaker 3: who he is toward me. Now I get it.
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  Speaker 1: So anyway, no, it's helpful. So I think one of
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  Speaker 1: the things that I've chased down over the last couple
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: of years, which is interesting, is Andy Stanley wrote a
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: book called Irresistible. I don't know you've ever read it,
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  Speaker 1: but in it he essentially argues this won't be a
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  Speaker 1: direct quote, but it would be a close paraphrase. He
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  Speaker 1: essentially suggests that Israel is to obey.
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  Speaker 2: God for their own good.
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  Speaker 1: So, in other words, it's a quid pro quo sort
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  Speaker 1: of relationship. I'm going to barter with you, and I'm
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  Speaker 1: going to be obedient so that I can get good stuff.
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  Speaker 1: Now you reference that at the beginning when you're talking
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  Speaker 1: a little bit about the law. I think that's a
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  Speaker 1: drastically unfortunate way to read Deuteronomy, just drastically unfortunate. And
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: you know, framing God is a genie in a bottle
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  Speaker 1: that you rub the right way with obedience and then
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  Speaker 1: you get blessing is the absolutely wrong way to understand
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  Speaker 1: what we're reading.
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  Speaker 2: In the Old Testament.
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  Speaker 1: I think that there are two things that we're really
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  Speaker 1: holding intention as we think about keeping the Covenant, the
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  Speaker 1: Israelites keeping the Covenant, this is obviously going to involve action,
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  Speaker 1: and I think what you're getting at is that learned action.
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  Speaker 1: I see this in Deuteronomy seventeen, where the Israelite king
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  Speaker 1: is to write a copy of the law, have it
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  Speaker 1: approved by the priests, and then needs to read it,
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  Speaker 1: you know, constantly, so that he learns to fear the Lord. Okay,
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  Speaker 1: So that's this embodied moment where he's deeply, you know,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: imbibing of the law such that he now understands who
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: God is and can walk alongside him with an appropriate
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: degree of attention, so that as he's ruling, he's doing
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: so in response to who God is. Right, that's not
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: a quid pro quo relationship. This is an immersive experience.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Right obedience is a recognition that we are subject to God,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: subject to what God claims, and that we're going to
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: be loyal to Him regardless of what that seems like
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: it's going to work out for us or not. Right,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: And so the way I usually think about it is
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: like when I read Deuteronomy, and I get to let's
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: say Deuteronomy thirty right, choose life. The Lord is your
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: life and the length of your days. Like what I
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: see in obedience is it's living along the grain of
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: reality that God has established.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: You're you're getting in the flow.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: And when you're in that flow, because we're in sort
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: of a world where things have become disordered through sin,
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: we're not always going to experience that reality as prosperity
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: and health and goodness and wonderful like you know, it's
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: not all going to be puppies and rainbows, right. There
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: are going to be fits and starts. So that's one
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: side of this equation. The other side of the equation
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: is like something that I see in Ezekiel thirty six,
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: twenty six and twenty seven, right, that in the New Covenant,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: part of what's being fixed is our inability to keep
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: the law. And so there's a sense in which, yes,
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: there's a keeping. The Covenant is intended to be something
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: we do constantly with all we are and have. Right,
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: there's no remainder there, and so that needs to be fixed.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: But in the interim before it's fixed, God gives a
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: lot of grace and He recognizes the people who really
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: are trying to have soft hearts, who are trying to
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: keep this law, who are truly faithful to him. And
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: so we can read things like we read about Abraham,
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: or we read about you know whomever in the Old Testament,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: these sort of faithful people. Right, you go to Hebrews
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: eleven and you see all these faithful people, and you're like,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: I could think of a number of ways those people
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: weren't faithful, but.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: They're they're living faithfully.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: And I think there's this sort of tension that we
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: need to just reckon with of no, you can be
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: faithful and still sin and still be waiting for all
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: of this to be fixed.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: That's sort of part of where we are.
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: So I don't know, I always that different for us
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: to day though, that it's that difference, and I'm like,
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: that sounds like my life.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: I think the only difference is that now we have
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: the spirit.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right, we've.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: Been given that sort of way of we're no longer
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: slaves to sin. You know, I would take that to
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: like Romans five and six, Right, we're no longer slaves
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: to sin. We have the opportunity to live in a
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: new way and so we should be taking that we
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: have a different sort of empowerment than usually we see
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: in the Old Testament. And but I don't think it's different.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: I don't.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: I think there's a deep continuity. I think it's Dan Blockhaws.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: You know, the Old Testament is all about faith, so
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: is the New Testament. Right, it's there's this deep continuity
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: that runs across both testaments. And so I think to
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: get Deuteronomy right, we do have to understand what it
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: means to keep the Covenant, to remember the Covenant, and
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: and part of that is understanding who God is and
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: what it means to walk alongside him exactly.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I.
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: Uh that keeping and remembering and walking alongside there's a
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: piece that we read sometimes that we're not alone. You
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: mentioned Andy Stanley. I'm trying to sorry solidate Elvis in
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: my head. You mentioned Andy Stanley and the you know,
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: the idea that if you do good things, good things
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: will happen. And I understand where people get that from
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: the Old Testament. From Deuteronomy especially, it sounds like that,
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: and I think I know why Deuteronomy is framed that way,
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: and it's because Moses is breaking it down as simply
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: and as pastorally as one possibly could. And yet and
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: I'll talk about that again in another second, but you'll
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: see that that concept of I thought it was going
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: to be this way I'm misunderstanding is all the way
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: through the rest of scriptures. I mean, that's what Ecclesiastes
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: is about. That's all the way through, even when you know,
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: is it Tobacco that's crying out to the Lord and
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: is like, hey, do your thing, and he's like, I'm
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: gonna do my thing, but you're not, like it's the
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: way that God works. Isn't this tip for tat thing
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: that we think we're having set up in Deuteronomy and
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: the people are you know, you mentioned at the beginning
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: of the prophets, like this is the fasting that I desire,
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: And then he mentions taking care of widows and orphans,
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: and you're like, that has nothing to do with food.
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: Am I supposed to starve myself? So that like what?
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: And he's saying, these aren't the things you're missing them.
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: These are symbols of the things. And I think one
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: of the reasons that that's so easy to misunderstand from
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: Deuteronomy is that there's this very pastoral hard that runs
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: through the entire text. And this is where for me,
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: if I imagine this is what actually when you understand this,
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: it starts making it simple. If you imagine Moses is
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: literally not just a generation but like we're talking like
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: seventy years forty years older than these people. He's like
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: the lies gruu on the mountain that you go to,
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: like it really difficult, it's intense. And he's looking at
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: these dingbats that like have not seen the miracles that
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: he has seen. I mean, not until Joshua. Are they
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: going to watch watch waters part again? And they were
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: born and food fell out of the sky. This is
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: just what food was Like. They're just not well, they're
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: not wise from age, and they haven't experienced all the things.
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: And he's trying, I'm so hard to get them to
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: understand the urgency of things, and he's making it very simple.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: I love Deuteronomy for you mentioned that that's probably my
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: favorite biblical passage. I just love it. But he starts
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: in Deuteronomy four by saying, remember what happened when your
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: parents disobeyed. Don't disobey like them because they were all killed, Like,
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: don't disobey God, or you will literally die. And then
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: he does this really cool like parental thing, unlike you
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: who you did it right, You did it right, like
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: you've got it one time, you can do it again.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: Come on, I've got this.
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: And then he gives a very clear like cause and effect,
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: you will literally die. And I often think of myself
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: with my son right now, who's just turned eighteen, scariest
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: birthday of them all, because oh, that means freedom, and
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: he does he just doesn't understand the perils of this world.
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: And like when he leaves the house, I'm literally, son,
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: if the boy you're driving with is going one hundred
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: and twenty miles an hour, get out of the situation
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: and don't choose that time to hang out the car window, Like,
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: do you not understand you could? Yah, I'm not worried
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: about you getting arrested. I'll I'll get you the next gast.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: Case scenario in that situation.
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but you could die. And that's the kind of
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: thing and so and he's also saying, if you do
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: these things, you will live the most blessed life ever.
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: And I do think one thing that I didn't hear
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: in your description, But I don't think we would differ
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: on this is that there are specific promises to the
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: Israelite people for this time where he's like, yeah, that land,
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: that land is your land. I'm I'm going there, I'm
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: conquering it, I'm handing it to you.
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: The stories at the end of the Book of Judges
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: that are so gruesome and disgusting about you know, getting
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: raping women and cutting bodies apart and grabbing women out
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: of the like they're disgusting. Those kinds of things are
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: happening at the beginning of one of those tribal settlements.
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: They're not like, way, way, way later, this is what
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: they're going to enact, and God tells them ahead of time,
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: doesn't matter, I'm giving you the land. We can have
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: theological problems with that because they didn't really deserve it
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: or all that, but he says, I'm going there. If
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: you come with me, you will also get it. And
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: that's the piece that we fail to make the link
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: because the text isn't as explicit every time. Moses kind
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: of like leaves that part out because he puts the
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: carrot so close the carrot and the stick so close
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: to the bea behavior.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if that makes sense, No, there's no gap in
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: between there, So you're anticipating that. It's like this instant moment,
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: like it's going to happen, and you did this and
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: now you get it there.
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he's saying that crucial. Yeah, But what he's really
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: saying is not it's going to take longer. That's not
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: the gap I'm talking about. It's the reason. The reason
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: is if you do this, you'll be walking with me
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: and I'm going this way, and you will get all
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: these things understood.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: Got it.
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: Oh, it's not a for tech, it's I'm going to
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: do them. Do you want to be part of them? No?
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: It's a really interesting point because I think in this
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: you notice I keep going back to Genesis, which is
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: I'm glad, yees sad, I guess.
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: But no.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Genesis fifteen sixteen, Genesis fifteen six which is the one
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: everybody knows. Genesis fifteen sixteen. The iniquity of the Amrites
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: is not yet complete. So he's telling Abram that his
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: descendants will live in a land as slaves or foreign
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: deers Egypt because the iniquities and the Amni Amriits are
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: not yet complete. That's when they'll leave the land and
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: I think we totally miss that, missed the import of
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: what's going on there. You have this, Yes, this is
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: the Nahala. This is going to be the inheritance of
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: the people of Israel, and this is God's inheritance. But
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: there's someone else there right now. And so what God
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: is really saying is, look, you know, to the extent
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: that these people keep My covenant when they walk in there,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: this is to your point, where I'm going, this group
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: is going to be displaced. But He's being patient with
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: that group right now. Right they haven't yet reached the
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: level where there I'm done now, like this nation hasn't
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: had its time and space just yet. But when they do,
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: that's when we're all going to go in there, like
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: that's when I'm going to appear there. And I do
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: think we miss some of the theological import of that.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: I don't know, Renee, if you have anything else to
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: add on that aspect of it, because I know this
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: is kind of interesting even when we look at the
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: progression between Abraham Jacob and then on into the conquest.
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, what I keep thinking of is this another
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: element of this tit for tat we keep calling it
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: this like what looks almost like they're being promised a
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: genie in a bottle. Is also the theme and the
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: reminder that they need that. I think that this pairs
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: well with is that they are going to need him.
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: They can't actually do this on their own. So all
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: of these good things that they want, because people want that,
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: they're going to have to get that from him. And
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: the way that those things come, like you're saying, is
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: to be with him. So I think some of that,
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: some of that tit for tat and that like get
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: what you want by obedience, is also serving this purpose
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: of letting them know that just because you're going to
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: move into it, like right now you're in the wilderness,
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: you feel your need very presently, and when you move
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: into the land, you're going to feel it less. But
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: actually it's just as strong. Everything you get has got
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: to come from me. So instead of it being when
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: we look at it from our western abundance place, it
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: looks different like, oh I want more. If I want,
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: that's how I get it. But for them it was like,
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: you're going to every need that you have is going
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: to have to come from me. And so I think
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: that's one of what Becky saying, He's making it very simple, right,
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: because he's handing him this playbook to live by and
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: to extrapolate on for the rest of their time. And
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: so he's making it very simple in this way that
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: like everything, everything is from me. If it's good, then
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: it came from me. And obedience to me just keeps
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: you in that space where you want to be.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I just said.
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: I just wanted to add too that that whole thing
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: about the time of the their sin has not yet come.
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: We're talking about it on a positive which is really nice,
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: like hey, look at all this grace, but there is
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: a very clear from Israelite perspective like one, yeah, uh,
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: this is what happens, like as you're getting your promise,
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: you are being reminded, like the prophets will tell them
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: later that the judgment is every bit as certain as
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: the blessing if they live a certain way. So it's
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: this double edged anyway, Please keep going with what you
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: were going to say, Jane, No.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: You even have that.
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: It's really interesting because you know you have these you know,
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: the land needs its Sabbath sort of narrative within the
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: prophetic tradition, and so you you sit back and you're
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: kind of like, Israel's not really being treated that differently
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: from the rest of the nations. But what the theological
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: difference is is that they belong to God as a
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: special possession, that they have a notion of what it
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: means to walk with God because they've been made privy
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: to it through the revelation that God has given them,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: and now they're rejecting that and not doing what they're told,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: and so the implication is not it's okay, Israel, let
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: me pat you on the head and we'll just keep going.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: It'll be all fine, No, no, no.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: What they get is they get the discipline and then
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: the regathering right, and that's different than the other nations.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: There's an element of grace and restoration there because God
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: is going to be faithful to the Covenant, regardless of
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: whether Israel is faithful to the Covenant. But the implications
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: are still meeted out. It's not like they get off
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: scot free, and so none of this is just sort
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: of like, well, Israel gets it. It doesn't really matter what
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: Israel does. There's maybe a sort of a distorted sense
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: in which that's true, but they don't get it as if,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: like we've been talking about this quid pro quo. It's
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: not a barter, it's not a trade. It's going to
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: come through immense suffering and a recognition of sin, a
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: disciplining and refining. And I think that that does some
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: interesting things for we don't necessarily have to talk about now,
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: but like this understanding of suffering an ongoing dependence on
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: the Lord. You know, I'm thinking Deuteronomy eight, Right, be
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: careful when you go into the land and you're living
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: in houses you didn't build, you're drinking from cisterns that
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: you didn't dig, you're eating in fields you didn't plant,
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: that you not forget the Lord, right, because he's the
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: one who gave you.
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: The power and the strength. Right.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: So there's this ongoing dependence that they're supposed to remember
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: that he's still there. And I think that's that's sort
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: of the quintessential kernel that we have to keep before
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: us as we're reading through some of these what seem
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: like those quid pro quot kind of passages.
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that just I think Renee was saying about
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: they're still gonna desperately need him, And we see the
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: cycle all through the scriptures, Judges as a prime example,
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: but where you think start going okay and you kind
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: of forget your dependence. And just a side thought, I
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: was in teaching a class last Friday or the friday before,
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: and as we were praying at the beginning of class,
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: a student was praying and he just mentioned, you know,
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: help us not just to remember you when we need you, Lord,
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: but help us to remember to praise you for things too.
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: And I was like, yeah, yes, yes, yes, and that
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: is totally in line with what we're talking about right now.
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: But we have this notion underneath all of that that
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: God wants our praises and he doesn't want to be
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: just like the answer man. And yet he's utter dependence,
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: he knows prevented on him, and he's so okay with that.
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: He's so like, it's so contrary to our Western culture.
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: But no, I mean it circles back to a lot
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: of things we've talked about before. And I think, you know,
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: even when we talked about the image of God and
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: the sort of dual notion of yes, it confers dignity,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: but it also involves obligation. You know, you can't you
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: can't be the image of God without having God present.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: And so even just that relation finds a dependence. I'm sorry,
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: I think I cut you off her name maybe today,
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: Oh okay, okay, I thought it was how you start.
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: But this we've moved on from this just a little bit.
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: But a minute ago we were talking about the presence
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: of God and their deep, deep meat from Him. Maybe
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: we haven't really moved on from that. But if it's okay,
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: I want to take just a second to talk about
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: one of the specific laws, and it's we call it.
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: I call it the teenage boy law because it's it
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: feels like like, really we're talking about this in the Bible,
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: but it's one of my very favorites, so in Deuteronomy three,
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: and I'm just going to go ahead and read it.
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: And yeah, it's a little bit more explicit than we
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: expect our Bibles to be. But whatever. When you're in
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: camped against your enemies, so this is when they're out
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: at war, keep away from everything impure. If one of
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: your men is unclean because of a nocturnal emission, he's
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: to go outside the camp and stay there. As evening approaches,
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: he 's to wash himself, and at sunset he may
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: return to the camp. Designate a place outside the camp
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: where you can go to relieve yourself as part of
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: your equipment, have something to dig with, and when you
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your experiment.
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: Where the Lord, your God moves about in your camp
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: to protect you and to deliver your enemies from you.
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: Your camp must be holy so that he will not
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: see among you anything indecent and turn away from you.
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: And so many of us I think, I mean, that's
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: not a standard kind of law. You think of a
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: lot of other ones. But we come to that and
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: it's just weird. I don't I don't even I don't
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: even know how to if I need to explain how
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: weird it is. But there's this idea. You could look
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: at it as like, why does God care about where
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: you go to the bathroom. You could look at it as,
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: you know, why does he put so much pressure when
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: you're out at war and at camp? Why are his
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: standards so high? You can do all kinds of things
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: theologically with it, But if you kind of peel back
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: all the complicated pieces and let yourself just look at
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: it as a like I said, if I was going
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: to teach my son when he was in elementary school,
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: something this would be a phenomenal way to teach it.
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: So he's telling them when you go out to war,
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: which they only do a few times before this, and
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: then they're going to do like for the rest of
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: their lives as they go into the conquest. Your area,
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: your tent, your encampment needs to be handled almost like
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: it's a tabernacle. You know, it doesn't go into all
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: the details and we don't have E. Fodds and all
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: this kind of stuff, but like, literally, don't leave your
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: pooper around the tent area because God is walking in
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: it with you. And I love how I shared this story,
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: and it probably came back to bite me because when
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: students came over to my house for the last class,
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: that's all they talked about. And I was like, oh,
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: I was a little too vulnerable. But I had someone
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: over at the beginning of this year and I was
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: giving her a little tour of my house because I
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: love my house. And we walked downstairs and I have
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: three dogs and they're very housebroken, but this particular day,
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: one of my dogs was not. And I open up
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: to my long family game room that we haven't decorated,
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: but it's still this great space. I opened the door,
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: and there's a pile on my carpet, and I was like, Oh,
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: we're just gonna show. I didn't even know what to do.
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: Just shut the door and literally literally not the figurative
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: word use of this word, but literally, that is what
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: it's talking about here, because that's how horrifying, if not more,
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: it would be if you knew that God was walking
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: in your camp and you had piles everywhere, so you
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: take them outside the camp. And so what you're supposed
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: to remember is as you're in this camp with all
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: the fellow soldiers and you're going out against this enemy
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: that's you're not really equipped or meeting up to. I
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: don't care how big you are, and you're word about
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: what's going on. Every time you even go to the bathroom,
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: you're reminded that you're not really even going to be
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: the ones fighting because God is with you in your camp.
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: When you wake up in the morning, when you go
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: to do your business, it doesn't matter. When you're reminded
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: that your encampment, the last place in the world that
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: you would think would be holy because soldiers and men
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: and lots of them, is where God is residing at
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: that point with his people and it's just And that's
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: what I'm talking about about these laws being like teaching
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: techniques and like anything else. You can take a teaching
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: technique and strip it of all its meaning and just
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: do the rudimentary stuff.
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: But on the other hand, you can kind of be like, hey,
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: why are we doing this? Listen, here's why you do it, because, yeah,
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: God is here.
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: And at the same time, if you were to do
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: it all, it would shape you into something like like
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: you're saying, you know, like it's it would be it
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: would be impossible not to be shaped internally by the process.
• 44:14
  Speaker 4: So you do it even if you don't know why
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: and you don't know how it's all going to work out.
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: It's a necessity.
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I just think that's so beautiful, so beautiful.
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you think about the oddities and inconveniences
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: that that raises, right, Oh yeah, because that's what it is.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: It's that's really inconvenient, right, Like in old.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: Ways, it's just.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: I'm supposed to be I'm supposed to be fighting a
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: war and now I can't because I had a nocturnal emission.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: And I got to stay out I think seven days
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: or whatever. It's like it wasn't even my fault.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: It's like, fault has nothing to do with it being ostracized. No, right,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: we're protecting something that needs to be protected, and we're
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: recognizing that as essential as you may be to our community,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: and as important as you may be to our community,
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: you're not the secret sauce that's going to win the battle.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: And so you just hang out over here. It's okay,
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: We're cool. It's a whole different sort of cadence of life.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: You're you're creating there, and in that cadence, I think
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: a point renee, it's like it's going to form you.
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and the reason for it is the thing that
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: I mean, and the scripture tells you because God moves
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: about in your camp and you're like, okay, yeah. I
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: think sometimes we don't realize that that's telling us the
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: whole reason they're doing it, even though yeah, anyway, I
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: just I find the simplicity of that message just.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: I think it's something maybe we'll close up on this
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: because I think this is an important aspect of the
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: law that I've been kind of playing around with, and
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: you know, I look at but I think part of
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: what we often miss when we're dealing with the law
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: is that it's not always prescribing the ideal. A lot
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: of times it's restraining the inideal. And so when we
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: look at some of these things, and you talked about
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: this earlier, Becky, like I wanted to solve the you know,
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: I want it to solve the multiple lives problem. I
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: wanted to solve the divorce prom I wanted to solve
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: the adultry problem. Like, but that's not what it's always doing. Sometimes.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: What it's doing is it's saying, when these things occur,
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: not these things should occur, and this is how you
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: should execute on these it's when these things occur, there's
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: now another boundary that we're going to set so that
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: this doesn't get any crazier than it already is. Like,
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: there's a way for you to go the nth degree
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: on this. So if you marry a slave from a
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: conquered nation, there's a way for you to do that.
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: That's really abhorrent it we're not going to allow that.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: So we're going to set boundaries on this, and this
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: is how you're going to do that. So it's not
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: an authorization to say, hey, just go do it, but
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: it's a wrestling with the reality of when this occurs.
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: That's these are the these are the constraints around that practice.
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: Is that.
• 47:23
  Speaker 4: So?
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: I mean I get that out of like Jesus's statement
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: on divorce, Like the Pharisees are asking him, why did
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: Moses commanders to give a certificate or a divorce and
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: Jesus says he did it because of the hardness of
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: your heart. But that then he references Genesis one and says,
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: but the two are to become one flesh.
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: That's the ideal.
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: The certificate of divorce is sort of a mediating structure
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: where he's saying, no, we we kind of anticipated you'd
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: be jerks about this, and so we had to.
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: Put a fence up, right.
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: Is that?
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: Is that how you think about it?
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: Like?
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: Not anyone, not anymore. Although I'm not saying that that's incorrect.
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: There's a different paradigm and there are a lot of
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: notions and we don't have time to go into all
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: of them that I've had to kind of deconstruct. I'll listom,
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: but I won't deconstruct like do we have to obey
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: the law? That becomes an irrelevant question for me once
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: I understand what law is are these things just to
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: make us healthy because they're good for us? That's part
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: of it. But I don't think that's the that's the offshoot,
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: that's not the reason. Is he putting boundaries on these circumstances?
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: Or another way to say that is like, is are
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: all these laws reflective of the way that Israel's set
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: up by God is better than surrounding nations? Not necessarily?
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: Sometimes sometimes know, if I don't understand a law, is
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: it probably related to some cultic practice in the ancient
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: and eris world? And I can explain it that way?
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: Not necessary. So these are all the things I've had
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: to kind of deconstruct. It doesn't mean none of them
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: are true. What I have The paradigm I've come to
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: see instead is that that just replaces those those still
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: take they have relevance, they're just secondary. To understand the
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: difference between prescriptive and descriptive, so things that God is
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: telling you to do and things that are the setting.
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: That was the first important part for me. And we
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: think of all these laws, if you da da da
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: da da, then d D as pretty scriptive because they're
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: telling you what to do. But in each one of them,
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: except for things like the Ten Commandments, where it says,
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: don't that the things that have a setting that's descriptive.
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: It's describing a picture like a selfie of society, and
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: that's your setting for the thing he wants to teach you.
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: And then the part that follows is how you're supposed
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: to behave and the reason you're supposed to behave that way,
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: and that's the prescriptive part, and trying to find a
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: link between the two of them. I don't think it
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: always works. It sometimes works to say in this setting,
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: the prescriptive part puts boundaries around that. Instead what I'm
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: but that said, I think most of what the law
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: is doing is speaking to those in authority and telling
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: them to use their authority better or someone else, or
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: don't use it if you've already broken it. But instead
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: what I think is happening, and I can use Paul's
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: example here in the New Testament because it'll just be
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: clearer and more comfortable to Christians because Paul did it,
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: and Paul was an awesome rabbi. He talks about he
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: talks about one of the pieces of the law a
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: couple times, and he talks about the oxen that are
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: threshing grain. Ye, And it's not about animals. His law
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: is not about animals. He's if an oxen is threshing grain,
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: he should be allowed to like nibble while he eats,
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: because he should be allowed to profit from that in
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: some way. And then his conclusion, his application and the
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: reason he's even citing that law is for pastors. So
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: should pastors be recompensed for their work? Should they just
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: do it for free? Because it's ministry. No, even an
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: oxen gets some compensation for their work. And so looking
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: at that and then looking at a bunch of these,
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: I don't know if this is one hundred percent the rule,
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: but it fits better so far as a paradigm. Is
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: that the settings are explaining kind of a more extreme
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: example so that you can extrapolate backwards from all of those.
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: So it's actually about recompense for work, which is what
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: Paul says, right, and the reason it's picking oxen, I believe,
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: and this also comes from studying lots of ancient and
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: Eastern laws. They do not look that different than Israelite
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: laws in the way they're laid out, and a lot
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: of their themes and everything. There are significant differences, but
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: they're not. You can you can understand why the way
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: it does. But it's saying if an oxen can, if
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: oxen can eat while they're working, then could a child? Sure?
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: Could a slave? Yeah? Could a woman? Of course. It
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: doesn't matter where you go on the social stratus, you're
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: going to find something above.
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: It, above an oxen, above an oxen.
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: And I think that's one of the reasons this passage
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: about dignity, where someone only gets lashes and you're like,
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: forty lashes. I think you'd be dead at forty lash.
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: I would be dead at fortylaes. I do know some
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: cultures still do that today, Korean culture. I was just
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: talking to a student in my class and he's like, yeah,
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: that's our rule. But the text tells us that if
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: someone has broken God's law and they are deemed worthy
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: of punishment, so it's not just man's law, it's God's law.
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: They're an offender of God, they can't be given more
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: than forty lashes, which sounds too much to me. So
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: we all get distracted. But then the text tells us,
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: because that would degrade him, humiliate him. You can't strip
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: a person's dignity if you can't strip the dignity of
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: a criminal. Can you strip the dignity of a child?
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: Can you strip the dignity of a woman? Can you
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: strip the dignity of a handmaid? Can you strip the
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: dignity of a concubine? Can you know? And so oftentimes
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: the paradigm that works a little better for me is
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: trying to figure out what's being instructed, like Paul did,
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: what's this thing actually talking about? And instead of looking
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: at these laws on the surface as very topical, they
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: still would apply in that setting. I'm not saying they're
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: just symbolic. If an oxen's eating, I'm sure it gets
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: to working. I'm sure it gets to eat, right, But
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: you're looking at extreme examples. So, because remember these laws
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: are told, We're told in Deuteronomy, these laws are given
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: so that the judges can judge. Yeah, these settings are
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: you know, oftentimes the thing that is too hard and
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: so for the judge and so he'll have to ask
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: a higher judge will sometimes believe and get taken up
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: to Moses. They are things that are tricky. But if
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: you're looking at like human dignity, you now have a
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: snapshot of what human dignity looks like, we actually have
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: a lot of those in scripture, a lot of snaps
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: what authority looks like, a lot of snapshots of what
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: equality and marriage would look like, a lot of snapshots.
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: And so you can extrapolate that from those because they're
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: in pretty extreme settings and they're usually, like you said,
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: talking and this is a big thing with Dan Block.
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: He's where I learned so much of this front. But
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: they're usually addressing those in authority and telling them how
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: you exercise that authority. Really well, it's not always what
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: the topic is.
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really helpful. And I get that.
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: And the ox the oxen treading grain, you know, like
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: I don't have I don't ever muscle my oxen while
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: it's treading daring, so I don't have that problem. But
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: you get the sense that we're from us, right, I mean,
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: so many of us don't have oxen. But we through
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: that exegesis that Paul provides, we do now understand that
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: there's a something bigger at play. I'd be interested and
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: maybe we can get into this in the next episode.
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: But like, how do we read these commands with a
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: theological register? So I'm not out of time, so we
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: might we probably should carry this over the next episode,
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: but I'd be interested to start here.
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: Maybe next time is kind of talk about that.
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: So when we look at the mussling of Oxen while
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: they're trying to grain, one of the things that we
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: could sort of think about is what does that say
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: about the way we think about God's provision?
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: That's right, and.
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: So you you sort of okay, yeah, so I think
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: you drop it down.
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: Slaming them isn't cool unless you get to what in
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: the world does this mean about? What does God try
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: to show me about himself so that I can I
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: don't know. I would say fall in love with him
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: more sometimes maybe that love has a little bit of
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: fear in it, all of those things, but it's sure
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: it's a pretty reel like when you see it.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I think that that carries through even
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: beyond those if then commands like the ones with the
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: situation into something like the Ten Commandments, and it really
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: does transform the way we read those. So I think
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: that'll be an interesting topic of conversation. We'll have to
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: dive into it next time, though.
• 57:22
  Speaker 4: So.
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: Really appreciate this conversation. This is super helpful. I think,
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: you know, diving into the Book of Deuteronomy, like, this
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: is going to be fun. So thank you Renee and
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: Becky for being here. Thank you everybody for listening. Come
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: back next time. We're going to talk a little bit
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: about the law and extrapolating theology out of the law,
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: like what does this mean?
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: Who is God?
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: Out of the Book of Deuteronomy, which is going to
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: be fascinating. So join us next time and we'll catch
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: you on the next episode of Thinking Christian Take Care.
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: I just want to take a second to thank the
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to life audio
• 57:59
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• 58:02
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