Deuteronomy

Big Idea: Give an overview of the Torah as a whole. Torah means law. God doesn’t just give the law as a list of commands to follow but as a story. God uses a journey to form His people into community that sees the value of and desires to follow His Law for the right reason.

Ask: What makes a story good?

I think all of those things are definitely true and yet they can be subjective. Some people don’t like mystery…others could care less for suspense or grand world building. As I have spent some time trying to think objectively about this concept this week I came up with a couple of things I believe we can all agree on.

Stories that invite us to see ourselves in them are most captivating.

They do this by setting up common struggles that we all face. Now, the best stories do this in ways that make you think about it and may not be immediately evident. The best stories use creative language, imagery, and scenarios to draw us in and make us invested in what is happening.

2. The best stories share deep life truths and move us to change for the better as they weave those themes subtly under the surface of the main narrative.

This is the way that the story can actually come off of the page and have an effect in real life as it moves us to change.

Here is what I mean:

There are a few movies that come to mind but there is one in particular that I think will hit most everyone in this audience.

Who in here has seen Disney & Pixar’s Car’s franchise? Yeah, ok, if you’ve got kids or grand-kids under like 18 you should’ve seen these movies at some point.

With Cars you get some fairly on the surface lessons: Cars one is asking us consider what is truly valuable. Is it the fleeting pleasures that wealth provide or is it the lifelong friendships that have the ability to shape our character. Cars two is tackling the very adult theme of balancing those two in tension. The reality is that you can’t just have one or the other but our life is a constant stream of decisions between work and progress and the investment into meaningful relationships. Meanwhile, Cars three is also tackling the adult theme of legacy. What are the things we will do to leave a lasting impact on the world? There is often a painful tension felt in letting go of being the doer so that you can be the teacher, but as painful as that might be, our true legacy is left in the change we inspire in others.

I used to love watching the Cars movies with my kids when they were little because it was able to communicate truths on multiple levels.

Now, I didn’t tell you that to give you movie recommendations, and we aren’t beginning a series on film interpretation so why do I share that with you?

We have been in the Torah for the last six weeks and today we are going to close this section as we prepare to launch into the historical books next weekend. If you remember, I said that Torah just means law.

And...

The Law is showing us how to live a life in right relationship with God and our fellow man.

We may be tempted to only see the explicit commands of these books as the law. Perhaps one section in particular comes to mind…the 10 Commandments. Maybe its the long sections of civil, ritualistic, purity, or priesthood laws that we think of…you know, those things we are tempted to skip over.

If we do this, however, we are missing the full picture of what the Law really is. Its like my kids when they were younger. If you asked them what Cars was about, Jack would tell you it’s about Lightning McQueen and Mater. Is he wrong? Not at all! But actually the beauty of those movies is in the deeper truths they are trying to communicate through all of the characters interacting together and the whole storyline.

Ya’ll, by the time we are finished reading these books in our Bible reading plan, we will have read somewhere in the neighborhood of 288 pages. We’ve read poetry, narrative, history, and prophecy. We will have seen over three dozen character arcs from beginning to end. We will have spanned at least 2,000 years of human history. Empires rose and fell in that time. We saw at least 40 different self-contained stories each communicating their own truths about life in the hopes of promoting change in us the readers.

So, if we only view what happens in the explicit commands as the Law, we are missing out on large sections of the book that are showing us who God is, who we are, and how we relate to Him and our fellow man in right relationship. Here is why I feel the need to make this distinction. Because, if you are like me, when you hear or read “The Law” in relationship to our faith, the words “Thou Shalt________” are the first thing to come to mind.

And yet, the first five books of the Bible are communicating a different picture of the Law. The Torah gives us the picture that:

The Law is the culmination of all of the stories, commands, characters, rituals, genealogies, and images of who God is and who we are.

That means those long genealogies we typically skip over are part of Gods Law. That means the creation account in Genesis one is part of God’s Law as it is revealing who God is and who we are in light of that. That means the architectural instructions for the ark and for the Tabernacle....you guessed it…that’s the Law too. And so as later Biblical authors mention “The Law” you can’t just think commands because that misses large sections of what God was communicating through the Torah’s five amazing and unique books.

Here is how that ties into the book of Deuteronomy:

You see...

The book of Deuteronomy is Moses’ final instructions to the children of Israel showing them how to live faithfully in the Land of Promise.

In the Hebrew Bible, the books name is Davarim which means “The words of...” While I believe that captures the essence of this being Moses’ final words, it sort of misses what those words are about. The Greek translation gets us closer to what the story is actually about:

Deuteronomy comes from the Greek language and translated literally means “second law.”

It should not be understood as a second set of commands so much as a re-statement and expansion on the previous commands given at Mt. Sinai.

What we see in the book is definitely the codified law commands like we see in the ten commandments. In fact, Moses directly repeats the ten commandments in the book of Deuteronomy. But, this isn’t the only way Deuteronomy communicates the law.

In the first eleven chapters, Moses communicates the Law by re-telling Israel’s story.

So, I think we should just take a page out of Moses’ book and do the same thing to close out our Torah series.

Weeks 1 & 2 we covered the book of Genesis

We meet the Creator of all the universe. We said that this story is not trying to communicate how everything got here nearly as much as it is trying to tell about the One who put it all here. We should see creation as more about numbering, ordering, providing structure and form and function. God’s act of creation was setting up spaces and giving them laws to govern their function.

He calls those spaces and laws good and then in subsequent days, he fills those spaces with things that will abide by those laws. As those things follow God’s laws they abide by their design and He then calls them good. This all changes however when man comes onto the scene and chooses to define what is good for themselves. For the next eight chapters of Genesis we watch the consequences of that choice spiral out of control.

In the first eleven chapters of Genesis, we are meant to see the consequences of mankind’s rebellion against his Creator.

The second part of Genesis details the beginning of redemption. This story is great because it shows that God isn’t finished with us because of our rebellion.

In Genesis 12-50, we see God use flawed characters to move His plan of redemption forward in spite of their constant failure.

We see that God is faithful to keep His promises and that our salvation is not based on our merits but His grace.

The book of Exodus opens with a picture of mankind in exile. We are far from the land of promise and yet this does not stop God’s redemptive plan from moving forward.

Exodus gives us the prototype of how redemption works as God saves His people from slavery.

God is not only saving people from the consequences of their rebellion pictured in the archetype of Egypt, but He is also saving people from the source of their sin: the rebellious nature that exists in our hearts seen as we redefine good and evil to fit our desires.

The book of Leviticus presents us with a problem that has existed since mankind was kicked out of the garden of Eden. True life is only found as we live in God’s presence and under His rule and reign. The problem is that sin cannot exist in the presence of a Holy God.

And so:

Leviticus is showing us how we can come into the presence of God to find forgiveness from our rebellion and life.

We should understand the book of Leviticus to be a book of theory. It shows shows us how to live in God’s presence theoretically. The next book in the Torah, however, the book of Numbers, is showing us what this looks like in practice. Learning obedience to God’s Law is a process. And so, God gives us the picture through this road trip of two different generations who are learning to follow after God and His definitions of good and evil.

Numbers is showing us how God uses the journey of life and the various trials we encounter to shape us into a people of faithfulness and obedience.

This brings us to the book of Deuteronomy where God is putting all of the lessons learned throughout the entire Law into one easy to remember concept.

Let’s look at our Story Overview of the book of Deuteronomy and then we will see what that concept is that enables us to live in faithful obedience to God’s law.

Story Overview

Deuteronomy one through eleven give an overview of Israel’s journey and show how God was teaching His people to love and obey Him that they might find life.

Here is an excerpt from this section that really summarizes everything that has happened from Genesis to this point in the story and why:

Deuteronomy 8:1–18 NASB95

1 “All the commandments that I am commanding you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to give to your forefathers. 2 “You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. 3 “He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. 4 “Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years. 5 “Thus you are to know in your heart that the Lord your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son. 6 “Therefore, you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to fear Him. 7 “For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing forth in valleys and hills; 8 a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; 9 a land where you will eat food without scarcity, in which you will not lack anything; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. 10 “When you have eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you. 11 “Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments and His ordinances and His statutes which I am commanding you today; 12 otherwise, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and lived in them, 13 and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold multiply, and all that you have multiplies, 14 then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 15 “He led you through the great and terrible wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water; He brought water for you out of the rock of flint. 16 “In the wilderness He fed you manna which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do good for you in the end. 17 “Otherwise, you may say in your heart, ‘My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth.’ 18 “But you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, that He may confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day.

From the very beginning we have been tempted to try and find life in our own wisdom and under our own strength. God is giving them hundreds of years of their own history showing that this never works out the way we think its going to. God is also warning them to not forget who actually saved them. Don’t return to thinking that you have brought this life and blessing. At every point in the story our wisdom and strength only serve to harm us. God is telling them that if you are going to continue to live in this land of promise, don’t forget who led you there.

I think we see an amazingly practical lesson from this section. It wasn’t in the wilderness that mankind first rejected God. It was in a garden paradise when everything was going perfect. We’ve seen through Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers how we are tempted to make our own way when things are going poorly and yet we must not forget that we are equally tempted to reject God’s law when things are going well. We can become convinced that our success and blessing is due to our own work and wisdom. I think God is giving us a cautionary warning to be on guard for this mentality when life is going well.

Do not be tempted to worship blessing and prosperity over the God who gives them.

The next section of...

Deuteronomy twelve through twenty six is a re-iteration of the laws given to Israel at Mt. Sinai.

You will see statements like this throughout this section: UNDERLINE ‘IN ONE OF YOUR CITIES’

Deuteronomy 13:12–15 NASB95

12 “If you hear in one of your cities, which the Lord your God is giving you to live in, anyone saying that 13 some worthless men have gone out from among you and have seduced the inhabitants of their city, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods’ (whom you have not known), 14 then you shall investigate and search out and inquire thoroughly. If it is true and the matter established that this abomination has been done among you, 15 you shall surely strike the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying it and all that is in it and its cattle with the edge of the sword.

Now, God has already given them instructions about Idolatry and what to do with it. Did you notice those words in verse twelve? “If you hear in one of your cities...” God is expanding on the laws given in light of their occupation of the land.

God expands on the law and even gives new commands based off of Israel’s new position in the Promised Land.

Chapters 27-34 of Deuteronomy detail the blessings and curses that will come as a result of obedience to or rejection of God’s Law.

This section also sees the election of new leaders, the death of Moses and the final preparations before entering the Promised land.

Alright, that’s the story overview for Deuteronomy and the whole Torah. You guys doing ok? I know that was a lot. Can we all agree on that? Honestly, if you weren’t taking notes, you’ve probably already forgotten most of what I said. As a side note, that’s actually why we are going through all of the trouble of putting these notes together…so that the next time you open up your Bible to read from one of these books, you can look back and see how it is you should read and think about the book from an overall point of view.

READ SLOWLY

Here is the deal though: I just covered like 2,000 years of history, over 600 commands and multiple large theological concepts. Its a lot. God knows that is a lot as well. Knowing that is a lot and that we are a forgetful people, God does something amazing and He simplifies everything down to one easy to remember statement for us and this is where I want to zoom into for today.

If you have your Bibles, turn to Deuteronomy chapter 6 and we will begin there after we talk about our:

Study Concept

We are going to talk about the concept of Word studies. Who in here likes words and how they work together? Anyone ever done a word study before?

The purpose of a word study is to try and properly understand a words usage and meaning within its biblical context.

Much like the study concept of literary Genre that we will visit over and over again throughout this series, we will hit the topic of word studies several times. Today, I want to talk about something called the semantic domain of a word.

Do ‘run’ bit...

How do you define the word run? Do the stick bit...

You can put one foot in front of the other quickly to move forward. That’s running.

You can run a business…that is more about leadership than movement.

You can run your groceries home…we understand that does not mean you are literally going to carry your grocery bags to the house by running. It denotes the trivial albeit necessary nature of the task.

You can run your mouth…that carries with it a negative and possibly critical connotation.

Even within the definition of running as movement there are different senses of the word…here is what I mean: You can go for a run (exercise), you can run from something (that carries a sense of danger to it but it also carries a sense of innocence because…) you can also run from the cops (that also carries the sense of danger but not necessarily the sense of innocence).

Pick up the sticks and show that is what a semantic domain is:

A words’ semantic domain is the broad range of meanings that a single word can possess.

So that is a semantic domain but...

A sense (also known as a lemma) is the particular meaning a word carries in the sentence you are reading.

You need to be aware of both of these things as you study a word in Scripture. Because we do not have any native Hebrew or Greek speakers in the room, this is where Bible Lexicons (just a fancy word for dictionary) or concordances come in. We actually have a software that we pay a lot of money for here at the church called Logos that is free for you. Ya’ll, we live in the 21st century and have more information at our fingertips than ever before. All the tools that we have access to means that biblical illiteracy is a choice in this day and age.

Let’s dive into the text though and see the process at work:

Deuteronomy 6:4–5 NASB95

4 “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! 5 “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

Deuteronomy 6:4-5 is what’s known as the Shema and was a prayer that was repeated three times a day by the Israelites.

This is called the Shema because the first word of the prayer “to hear” is Shema in Hebrew.

Let’s think about the semantic domain of hearing for just a second.

Hearing can refer to the physical act of mentally decoding sound waves as they enter your head.

Hearing can also refer to understanding something.

Here is why understanding the concept of word study is so important. Because, there is another definition that is understood in the Hebrew language that we can miss in English.

Look at Exodus chapter 19 with me:

Exodus 19:5 NASB95

5 ‘Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine;

See that group of words “you will indeed obey” and the word “keep” I know that looks like five different words in English…In Hebrew, however its all the same word. If you will shema shema my voice and shema my covenant.

Hebrew does not have a separate word for hear and respond. The assumption is that if you truly understand then obedience will happen.

We see Jesus carry this idea over into His teaching. Jesus gives this amazing parable about seeds that are sown onto different types of ground and he’s talking about how we hear God’s Word and respond to it and then he closes off the parable with these words:

Matthew 13:9 NASB95

9 “He who has ears, let him hear.”

His disciples then ask Jesus why he speaks in parables and listen to what he says: Explain as you go along:

Matthew 13:13–16 NASB95

13 “Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. 14 “In their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says, ‘You will keep on hearing, but will not understand; You will keep on seeing, but will not perceive; 15 For the heart of this people has become dull, With their ears they scarcely hear, And they have closed their eyes, Otherwise they would see with their eyes, Hear with their ears, And understand with their heart and return, And I would heal them.’ 16 “But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear.

Jesus was repeating Isaiah’s words from a time when Israel was doing all the right things but had completely missed the intent of the law. Their hearts were actually very far from God. So not only is hearing about understanding and doing but it also carries with it the idea of wholehearted devotion. This was the whole point of the parable:

Matthew 13:23 NASB95

23 “And the one on whom seed was sown on the good soil, this is the man who hears the word and understands it; who indeed bears fruit and brings forth, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty.”

Explain the shema concept at play - Did you notice the concept of hearing and responding?

“this is the man who hears the word and understands it (shema = hear)” and “who indeed bears fruit (shema = action/response)”

So, let’s go back and look at our text:

Deuteronomy 6:4–5 NASB95

4 “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! 5 “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

Jesus was once asked to reduce the entire law down to its most basic part and this is what He said. Jesus gave them the Shema!!! He said…it’s the thing you’ve been praying since you were a small child…you just don’t have ears to hear so you’ve missed it!

These two verses incorporate the entire law…that is to say every command but also every character, storyline, theological concept, ritual, and piece of architecture is summed up and kept by keeping this one command. Here is the deal, we aren’t even talking about verse five today either. Verse five is further clarification on verse four. I’m going to send you a resource this week that will help you do word studies over the words love, heart, soul, and strength if you are interested.

Let me say this another way:

If you are committed to the Shema you will keep the Law.

So, somehow if we understand and respond to who this one true God is and if we don’t have any other gods before him, we will keep the Law.

This is the point where we would normally stop and do a word study over that capitol LORD word. Luckily, we’ve already done that in week three of this series. You guys remember what I said was amazing about the story of the burning bush? It isn’t that a bush was burning and yet not consumed…the awesome thing about the burning bush story is that God introduces us to His name and what that name means.

We saw that:

LORD means that He will be who He will be. And what he will be is the transcendent creator of the universe who knows and defines what is truly good and evil.

LORD means that He stands transcendent above our sin and its consequences as the only power strong enough to rescue us from them. Through the Torah, we have also seen that He rescues us not based off of what we’ve done but because of his own grace and mercy.

Moses has just spent the first eleven chapters showing us how the LORD has disciplined his people over the course of their road trip. The New Testament says that God disciplines those whom He loves. In fact, there may be no higher expression of love than discipline. It takes real love to allow hardship in the lives of those you love to produce something greater in them.

The Shema is asking us to understand who God is, what He has done, and how deeply He loves and is devoted to us and then respond in light of that.

Ya’ll this may seem like a simple concept but we have to fully grasp this because its actually monumental. This is what separates Christianity from all other religions.

What separates Christianity from all other religions is that...

Our obedience is not based on an obligation to a list of rules but out of love for the one who first loved us.

Look at me really closely: Every single other manmade religion has at its roots a type of adherence to a set of rules as the way in which you find favor with some higher power. Given that we are very inclined to see the Law as just a set of rules…we have to talk about this.

For Islam its the five pillars

For Mormonism it is moral conduct and attendance at temple and mission

For Catholicism it is moral conduct and the sacraments

For Hindu it is meditation

Even for systems that have no perceived higher power (i’m talking atheism, agnosticism, or secular humanism), a list of cosmic or scientific rules must be kept if we are to live consistently within the closed system of which we a part of and dependent on.

Not for Christianity though.

Do love my wife and flowers bit…I did this the other day but it bears repeating.

The Torah…the Law…is not a set of rules that we keep but a story about a Creator who deeply loves us. Those list of rules that we do find in the Law is like the conversation where my wife told me she loves flowers.

Pictures of Christ & The Gospel

And here is where we have to look at the picture of christ not just in the book of Deuteronomy but in the whole Torah:

READ

Jesus came to keep all the rules that we’ve broken. Only Jesus truly loved God and kept His law. Over and over again in the New Testament, Jesus shows His power over creation. Jesus was pure. Jesus was a better High Priest. Jesus was the perfect sacrifice. Jesus was the better Moses and Abraham. Jesus was the one that the Joseph narrative was pointing to. Jesus sets himself up as the true Israel and the God who led them. At every point in the life of Jesus, he is fulfilling the law that we have failed to.

John chapter one tells us that Jesus was the Tabernacle representing God’s presence on earth. Not only that, but Jesus represented the totality of mankind’s sin and rebellion before God.

Jesus paid the price for our sin that we owed. And finally, Jesus, being the firstborn from the dead was resurrected to the life…the TURE LIFE…that God promises to all who follow Him. Jesus has promised to share that life with all who follow Him.

While our hearts are constantly inclined to love other things more than God, Jesus loved the Father perfectly.

Jesus is the perfect embodiment of love for God and obedience to the Law.

Honestly, as I think about how to close out this amazing section of the Bible known as the torah I can’t think of any better way than to just let Jesus close it out for us. So I want to close out by just reading this:

John 14:7–15 NASB95

7 “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.” 8 Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 “Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works. 11 “Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves. 12 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father. 13 “Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 “If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it. 15 “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.

Did Jesus come to abolish the law? No! Not at all. We answered that question back in the book of Leviticus. Its just that we now relate to the law through Jesus. Jesus was our purity our high priest and our perfect atoning sacrifice. We follow the law because we love God. We love God because of how he first loved us and God first loved us by coming as the man named Jesus and fulfilling the law on our behalf and taking the punishment we deserved for all the ways we have broken the Torah.

And so, I believe our response to the whole Torah…all of the commands, history, characters, storylines, theology, rituals, and yes even the architecture can be summed up in one imperative question that every person in this room will have to answer at some point:

Will you respond to the love Jesus displayed for you on the cross by submitting to Him as ruler of your life?

It is as simple as asking for forgiveness and saying yes to that question right there.

Let’s pray.