So today we're going to start the law and looking at the places where the law occurs in the Pentateuch, of course we get Exodus where we get the giving of the law at Sinai and a significant piece of the law in the book of Exodus. The whole book of Leviticus, what I have up here is one of the very few narrative story moments in the book of Leviticus. And then we've seen how throughout the book of Numbers, law gets sprinkled in, sometimes reiterated law, sometimes new law that's given uniquely in the book of Numbers. And then Deuteronomy is the second giving of the law. The law encompasses a significant portion of the Pentateuch.
And here we are at the end of what feels, you know, in the last few weeks of class, and we're not going to be able to cover every single law that appears in the Pentateuch. But I have a real heart for helping ministers really think through carefully, what do we do with biblical law? And I can talk about Old Testament law kind of as it's set up in the Pentateuch, but or we can think more broadly of commands of God, rules, all right?
Because that's... That's often the pushback I get about Old Testament from the get-go. The Old Testament is just a bunch of rules.
I like the New Testament. Okay, well, clearly you haven't read the New Testament because there are lots of rules in the New Testament. So we can, there are kind of two things I want us to think about when we think about law. One is what is Old Testament law and how does it relate to the New Testament?
How does it function for Christians? That's an important point. But I think...
even more broadly than that, we have to, as ministers, be able to have an invitational way to invite today's believer into a walk of faithful obedience to the commands and rules of God that have been given to us throughout the biblical text. So we're not just talking about Leviticus, right? Or we're doing kind of Leviticus and Deuteronomy here or the whole Pentateuch.
We have to realize God has told us to do things throughout his word. And so how can we begin to think about bringing people into a discussion of Old Testament law specifically, and then bigger than that, I think, is... just the discussion of rules and commands and living in obedience to God throughout the word.
Okay, so I might start with something like this. I'm talking about Leviticus. And here we have Aaron's son Nadav and Avihu or Nadab and Abihu is often how it gets said in English. But Nadav and Avihu took their censers, put fire in them and added incense, and they offered unauthorized fire before the Lord. We don't know exactly what that means.
Commentators disagree, but something clearly was wrong. Contrary to God's command. So fire came out from the presence of the Lord and consumed them and then died before the Lord.
Moses then said to Aaron, this is what the Lord spoke of when he said, among those who approach me, I will be proved holy in the sight of all the people. I will be honored. and Aaron remains silent. So this is a significant moment, of course, narratively in the text and what is happening and the emphasis on the priesthood, which is a significant emphasis of the entire book of Leviticus.
But often when, you know, I have students read something like that or, you know, any what feels like random, outdated, whatever kind of word you want to put put for a law in the Old Testament, I typically get a response like this. And this was actually written, I think, once in a student paper. I'm glad we can ignore this Old Testament passage because the New Testament makes it better.
I mean, I'm glad because of Jesus, we can approach God without fear and without all these specialized rituals and kind of just do away with the Old Testament. And if I don't understand it, I just ignore it. That's generally kind of the response I get. So I would ask you at the beginning of our discussion on the law. to think about answers like that you may have given at some point in your life, answers like that that you may have heard preached or been the recipient of from a congregant or a friend.
What do you affirm there? What do you critique there? And really the question I want us to get at by the end of this class, and you're going to try to articulate this for a ministry context. How do I clearly articulate engagement with the Old Testament law? And again, I think we can make it even bigger to just the idea of God pronouncing commands on us, but than specifically for the Old Testament law.
But how do we do that engagement faithfully, thoughtfully, and seriously? And I think there are reasons why we don't just ignore the Old Testament law, though it might be true of our experience that we ignore the Old Testament law, but we shouldn't. And how as ministers do we engage deeply, faithfully, thoughtfully, and seriously with these parts of the Bible, but with our mind toward ministry, with our mind toward inviting people into the life of God, into the life of Christ.
So what I want to do today is just do really quickly a look at some key New Testament passages. Now, I'm not going to hit on every New Testament passage, but Paul and Jesus specifically, what they talk about and say about the law that often kind of comes back to us in these discussions. But I want to start with the...
purpose of the law, if I go to these verses in Leviticus, you can pause right now and look them up if you want, then you'll see these verses in Matthew and first Peter are quoting these verses in Leviticus, but Hebrews 10 and Romans 12 also speak into this. If I were going to just encapsulate the purpose of a law and particularly Levitical law, the laws in Leviticus, because these all come from Leviticus, but I think we can explain it to all Old Testament law. This is the purpose.
The purpose is to make God's people holy because I am holy. Now we've already talked about this when we were in the Mosaic Covenant. So if that's a little shaky, go back there and watch some of those videos potentially.
Look up these verses. But the idea is that we have a holy God who is coming down to dwell among his people. And for us to draw near to him as opposed to push away from him. I just used at church yesterday morning with kids, I used the idea of a magnet, right?
Opposite poles repelling. So God is holy. And in my sinfulness, as I come toward him, I'm like a magnet that's going to, I'm going to push against him. I'm going to rebel. I'm going to walk away from him.
Because sin cannot be, sin cannot be in the presence of God's holiness. So if I want to be able to draw near to God, think of magnets coming together. If I want to be able to draw near to God, the holy God, I have to be shaped into his image of holiness, into who he is. And so, I mean, with this idea kind of as the core purpose of the law, let's then go to some of what Paul tells us.
So Paul talks about in Galatians, you can go read Galatians, all of Galatians really kind of is sort of dealing with this. Because, of course, one of Paul's, the major question that Paul... helps early Christians to wrestle with is what about Gentiles? How do we go from being what has been felt very exclusive to now being inclusive? Like anybody, just anybody can come and they, what, did the rules change?
We don't have to follow all these laws anymore. What's going on? So that's really the whole purpose. That's the whole discussion of the book of Galatians and in large part Romans as well.
Here's specifically what Paul says in Galatians 3 is that the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ, that we may be justified by faith. So it is in Christ that we are justified by faith. The law, though, was what brought us to Christ. And how did the law do that? Well, expands on that in Romans 7 in significant ways.
And again, this is more than just here. I feel like I'm. proof texting, but I just want to kind of boil it down for you.
It's important that we hear Paul say in Romans 7 verse 12, the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. You know, I too often hear Christian preachers say, you know, oh, that Old Testament law was just horrible. Aren't we glad we don't have to do that? But wait a minute, Paul.
Paul is never saying that the law is bad. What does Paul say? Well, back in verse 7, he says, what then should we say? So that's built on what's come before, that the law is sin.
Whoa, right? I mean, that's, I've heard some sermons that come close to preaching the law is sin, right? I mean, oh my goodness, if you follow the law, you're just an old legalist, it's horrible, it's sinful. You know, that's the feel that we can get. By no means, Paul says, yet if I had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.
Now let's be careful. It doesn't say I wouldn't have sinned, but I would not have known what it was to covet if the law had not said you shall not covet. So Paul is not saying that the law created sin.
It's that the law revealed the truth about what sin is, right? I mean, go back to Genesis chapter 6. I mean, Genesis 4, the world figured out how to sin really easily. It's just that the law began to expose.
No, no, no. That. is sin. That's what Paul is saying here. But sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.
Apart from the law, sin lies dead. Sin is not revealed for what it is. But sin actually then took the law and worked sin even more deeply into me, which is then what he says on to verse 13. Did what is good, that's the law, then bring death to me?
So in between these two verses, verse 12, the law is good, is holy, it is righteous, it is good. Did what is good then bring death to me? By no means.
So again, Paul's really pushing back. He's posing questions that they're asking, they're saying, they're insinuating this. And he's saying, no way. It was sin working death in me through what is good.
That's the law. In order that sin might be shown to be sin, so that's what the law was doing, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. So sin is what, I had a teacher who used to say, it wasn't the law that was bad, it was that the power of sin in us was so strong and actually corrupted the law itself.
made the law something, manipulated the law, and used the law to make sin sinful beyond measure. Because now I know what it is to sin and I continue to do it. And I even act as if the law is the thing that can set me free. And we see that that is never what has happened.
I think I often emphasize the fact that the law was external to us in the Old Testament. And it requires an internal transformation to be able to truly keep the law. As an external thing, the law is going to, I'm going to push against it. I'm going to rebel against that. So when we think about the purpose of the law, be holy as I am holy, we've talked about this idea of the law shaping us into God's people.
And going to Galatians, it leads us to God. And going to Romans, it leads us away from sin. It tells us what sin is.
It's just that sin is so powerful that it makes me want to do that. So that's the rest of Romans 7. I know what I'm supposed to do, but I don't do it. I know what I'm not supposed to do, but I do it. That's this idea of sin working so powerfully, even though the law is telling me don't do that.
Do that. Don't do that. Do that. Sin, it's grasp.
It's in the grasp and the bondage of sin what the law is telling me. don't do that, I do. And what the law is telling me, do this, I don't do it. So that's what the rest of Romans 7 tries to work out. So I really want to emphasize the fact that we think about Old Testament law, and this is something that Paul emphasizes as well. The law does not start our relationship with God.
So I don't get in with God because I kept enough of the commands. That's never been true. That was never true with God's people.
And that's one thing that, of course, Paul emphasizes going back to Genesis chapter 12, God offers relationship to Abraham way before the wall, right? God says, I will bless you. He offers him the promise of relationship.
I will make your descendants great way before the wall was there. And so even for the Israelites, It's just the fact of them being born into Abraham's family, into the family of Israel that brought them into relationship with God. It wasn't that they kept it.
Okay, now that you've kept enough laws, you've checked enough boxes, now you can start your relationship with God. That's not how it worked. Even, I love to go to Rahab, for example, when she is brought into God's family at the beginning of Joshua.
What does she say? Your God is God in heaven above and on earth below. There you go.
That was the extent of Rahab's faith. She hadn't kept all the laws when she was a prostitute. She didn't have to complete a checklist before she was okay enough to start her relationship with God. She made a statement of faith and she responded to God's people.
And that is what started her relationship with God. Now, of course, the expectation is then throughout the law. Once you are living among God's people, you are required to follow the full extent of the law.
Not because that is what gets you in, but because, now this is a word that I wore, does the law maintain that relationship? That's a little tricky, right? I mean, the law, if it's shaping us into God's people, if I'm rebelling against being shaped into the one who can be in relationship with this God, who doesn't pull away.
In that way, yes, it's my continual response to and obedience to the law that shapes me into God's image, into his image of holiness, that then allows me to stay close to God as opposed to me running away from God. My continued disobedience from God is not about God walking away from me. It's about me just pushing myself farther and farther from God, that magnet repelling me away from my true source of connection.
But I flip against God, again, magnet kind of picture, and it moves me away from him. And so in some ways, the law does maintain that relationship, not in a checklist sort of way, but in what it's doing to shape me, my continued obedience to the law, my continued walk towards God, that long obedience in the same direction kind of idea is what the law is doing in us. Okay, I also want to go to after Romans 7, you get Romans 8, which is important to make that move. Romans 8, 1, therefore, so this is after all that discussion in Romans 7, Um, therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus, the law of the spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. Now, again, what he was saying in chapter seven was not that the law is sin and death.
The law is good, but sin. used the law to bring about death, to make sin utterly sinful. And so what Christ does in us, the spirit, the law of the spirit that gives life sets me free from the sin that is manipulating the law. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, that's a key statement, God did by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering.
All of these law imagery here. And so he condemned sin. Here we are now in verse 4. And so he condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law, and I think we could even say capital law here, the Old Testament law even, might be fully met in us who do not live according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.
So when we live in the power of the spirit, we are set free to meet, to fully meet the righteous requirement of the law, not because it is We're required to. It's an external thing. We have to check the boxes. But because we are being shaped, transformed from the inside into people who don't just want to keep the law, which is what was in Chapter 7, I want to do it, but I don't.
I don't want to do it, but I do. But we are actually able. The righteous requirement of the law.
can be, might be fully met in us. This is what God gives us power to do. So the purpose of the law, it's a means for relationship. It doesn't bring us into relationship, but it does shape us so that we can be in relationship, but it is also a means to holiness.
And those two things are on, honestly, aren't two separate bullets, but this idea of shaping us into the image of God that he created to bear, created us to bear. This is the essence of be holy for I am holy. We've hit this before, so if I'm going too quickly, we can have some discussions about it. Remember, holiness as the image of God stamped upon my heart, holiness as Christ in me, this is about who I become and how I am shaped for obedience.
That is ultimately then what holiness becomes for us. I'll take you to Ezekiel. I think we've looked here before.
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. It's changing us from the inside out. Ezekiel is already telling us it's what we need. And I will put my spirit in you and move you.
to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my law. That's what the Spirit does in us. What the law telling me, oh, don't do that.
Do this. I rebelled against that. But what the Spirit does internally is he moves me in that direction. He moves me to do what I should do.
He moves me to avoid what I shouldn't avoid, to follow the decree, to be careful to keep the law. You will live in the land I gave your forefathers. You will be my people and I will be your God. That picture of relationship that we have seen. This is what the covenant with the mosaic covenant, the law at its heart.
This is what the covenant is all about. Now, some would argue that how Paul talks about the law and how Jesus talks about the law are different. And I don't disagree with that.
But... I want to show you how we shouldn't be too quick to say, well, Jesus says this about the law and Paul says this and they're very different from each other. I think we can see some very significant points of connection. So, again, going to New Testament passages that speak on the law, Jesus on the law in Matthew 5. This is probably the one that we know best. And, of course, I love going to Matthew 5 through 7 when we're talking about that big concept of obedience to God's commands, his rules.
But I say, do not lust, right? Whatever the commands that Jesus lays out that take the law and move us deep into a deeper understanding that requires internal transformation. But Jesus starts here early in Matthew 5, early in the Sermon on the Mount. I have not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill them.
We've talked about this idea of fulfilling the law, of filling it up. right? Bringing it into its fullness. It's not enough at the end of the day just to put a check mark and say, great, I didn't murder anybody today. No, Jesus says, but were you angry, right?
Did you hold the seed of a murder in your heart? Because if you weren't, you disobeyed that command. You're moving toward, it's not just enough to not murder. Jesus is trying to fill up the command to make us into the people that he that he created us to be so that we're not even angry. Another idea of fulfilling is to make it come true in us because Jesus lived that perfectly obedient life, even unto death.
We, Jesus made that come true in and for humanity. So that same power, the spirit of Jesus Christ is what lives in us to empower us to make a life of perfect obedience. perfect love for God, perfect love for neighbor come true in my life. That doesn't mean I become omniscient.
It doesn't mean I'm not a limited human. It doesn't mean I don't make mistakes out of ignorance and frailty, but it can mean that I actually don't have to, um, I don't have to live a life of sin against God. That I think is what Jesus is teaching us. Paul, I think it completely affirms what Paul told us.
The righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us. Jesus has come to fulfill the law, make it come true in the life of humanity. Going on in Matthew 5, I'll let you read this.
But for I tell you, this is an important point, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and teachers of the law. You will certainly not enter the kingdom of God. Let me jump later in Matthew to Matthew 23. Woe to you. So this is in the little apocalypse.
Woe to you, teachers of the law and the Pharisees, you hypocrites. You give a tenth of your spices, a mint, dill, and cumin. I mean, you don't just tithe your money.
You tithe your mint and your dill and your cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law, justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, mercy, justice, mercy, and faithfulness, without neglecting the former. So Jesus isn't saying, oh, that's a stupid little thing that you do.
Quit tithing your mint, dill, and cumin. Pay attention to the big stuff. No, Jesus is saying, don't do the little stuff and ignore the big stuff. but do the big stuff and the little stuff, but kind of have them prioritized.
You strain out a gnat, but swallow a camel. You strain out, this is a, this is an original language word pun, you strain out a gamla, but swallow a gamal. These two words. So both of these are unclean animals and they're so careful they literally strained their drink so they wouldn't accidentally swallow an unclean bug, a gnat.
And yet it's as if you're sitting down to a whole meal and eating a camel because you are ignoring justice and mercy and faithfulness. We could go into this more, but I think, again, often what gets preached is Jesus was against those legalistic Pharisees. Jesus was against the Pharisees who had made the system of the law more important than. than the relationship with God.
The rules had become more important than the relationship with God and others and practicing the fullness of the law. And Jesus wasn't about getting rid of the little things because they don't really matter. That's not what Jesus is saying. That's often how Mark chapter 2 gets interpreted when they're going through the grain fields and they pick some heads of grain on the Sabbath. And he gives an example of David in the Old Testament as well as the priests.
And then he says the Sabbath was made for man, was made for humanity, not man for the Sabbath. So humanity was not made to serve the Sabbath. I think we could take out Sabbath here and put in law generally, but specifically talking about the Sabbath.
We were not made to serve the Sabbath. The system is not that which we sit under. However, the Sabbath was made for us.
How was it made for us? It was made to shape us. It was made to form us. It was made to create us into the image that we were created to bear.
That's what it does in our lives. But we... but we don't sit under it to serve it for its own purposes.
So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath. Jesus sits above even the law. That doesn't mean though that Jesus did not fully obey the law. It's important to note here that what they're disobeying is not a law from the Pentateuch.
They're going against how the Pharisees have then kind of parsed out the details of what it looks like to rest. Well, resting would be not harvesting. And if you pick up a handful of grain, that's harvesting. So that would be work, right? I mean, that would be not resting.
So we see that idea. And if we go back to Matthew 12, this idea, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. And so doing good for others, doing good for animals even, is the example that we have here of healing.
of course, Jesus does on the Sabbath, because bringing life, doing goodness, as living into the obedience and the description of what God gives as goodness is what is significantly important. So I want to stop there. I think, yeah, I want to stop there.
As having hit on some of those major New Testament passages, I want you to kind of be thinking about all of this. The next thing I'm going to do in the next video... is walk through some different ways that we want to process the law.
And these aren't necessarily going from the biblical text, but kind of maybe ways that we can lay out an understanding of the law. Some of which you've already heard me say, but I'm going to kind of maybe systematize it just a little bit. That might help you and might generate some good conversation for us.