This is the transcript of Restitutio episode 537: How to Read the Law with Sean Finnegan

This transcript was auto-generated and only approximates the contents of this episode.

Hey there, I'm Sean Finnegan. And you are listening to Restitutio podcast that seeks to recover authentic Christianity and live it out today. 

Tragically, many Christians skip over reading the Torah. They focus on the Gospels or epistles of the New Testament. However, the first five books of the Bible contain many rich insights into God's heart and how he asked Israel to live. In fact, it's. Impossible to understand the rest of the. Bible or even Jesus without first becoming familiar with. This episode will provide you an overview of the Torahs, instructions about holiness, sacrifice, justice, and sacred time. Here now is part six of read the Bible for yourself how to read the law.

Reading the law can be challenging. There are sometimes when the law is extremely detailed. Let me give you an example. Leviticus 11, verse 20. All winged insects that go on all four are detestable to you. Sounds sensible, right? Verse 21. Yet among the winged insects that go on all four, as you may eat, those that have jointed legs above their feet with which to hop on the ground. Of them, you may eat the locust of any kind. The bald locust of any kind. The cricket of any kind, and the grasshopper of any kind, but all other winged insects that have 4 feet are detestable to you. This this is an example of one of these parts of the law that's a little detailed, a little weird, and yet people eat insects. Even today, people are eating insects and just put it on a stick and crunch it right up. Love it, right? It's easy to get distracted while reading the law. It's easy to get sleepy. It's easy to struggle while you're reading the law. So what I would recommend is that the biggest thing is focus. Find some way to focus, which means usually eliminating distractions. You can eliminate distractions. So if you're around people who are talking earbuds. Or if you can get to a place where people aren't talking and and don't be super tired, I don't know why we do this. Like we we'll read like Leviticus on a day where we're just like exhausted. It's like you're not going to. You're not going to have any benefit if you're reading a sentence and then you're like, whoa, what did I just read? So. And you can engage your other senses. You read out loud. Now you're using your eyes, you're using your mouth, you're using your ears, you can stand, you can walk around, you know. But the big thing is to focus. And to really concentrate on what you're reading and then what I recommend you do is you keep track of stuff you underline, you circle, you write in the margins. I have a Bible for note takers that I basically filled with ink and just kept track of things and organized things. And it just keeps my mind engaged. So I'm not just like, alright, well, what's the next kind of sacrifice? So that's a little reader tip there. What is the Torah? What is the law? Well, as you know, the Old Testament has 39 books. Broken into thirds of history, poetry, and prophecy within the first section of history is the Torah. It's the first five books of the Bible. Now this is kind of confusing because the Torah, although it includes Genesis, exodus of Viticus numbers and Deuteronomy. There's no actual law or commandments uttered in Genesis. And most or half of Exodus is the narrative of the 10 plagues and Mount Sinai. So really it's the second-half of Exodus, Leviticus, numbers and Deuteronomy where you find the actual commandments of the law. But all of it's referred to as the law. It's also called the Pentateuch, which is a fancy word, means five books. And then it's also called the Torah. There are 4 main categories within the Torah. Sacrifice, justice and sacred time. This is the best dividing up of it that I could find. This is from the Bible project guys, especially Tim Mackey. If you're familiar with his work. He uses this and I think it's pretty helpful. So when it comes to holiness, we're talking about how God has the people dress. Literally talks about fashion in the law and how you supposed to have your tassels hanging down on your. He talks about sexual practices, you know, sex for married people, basically and not married to relatives, and then talks about food. What food is clean and unclean. It talks a lot about health and sanitation. This all fits into this whole idea of holiness. It's not just ethics. It's not just what's right and wrong, your morality, it's it's a whole comprehensive culture of holiness. That, you know, really just makes them different than the other nations and makes them God's people. Then you have this idea of sacrifice. There are animal sacrifices, grain sacrifices, oil it sacrificed. Give it up for God's use or just poured out. You have justice. There's tons of justice in the Torah, lots of criminal law, lots of other kinds of law about safety. You have to make a parapet around your roof. That's like a short wall around your roof. That's one of the loss. Why do they have that? Well, why do we have building codes? It's the same reason. So that people won't fall off your. Roof, then we have the treatment of the poor. The slave, the orphan, the widow. There's moral laws like the 10 Commandments, for example. That's all under justice. And then for sacred time, we have all these different periodic events. So the weekly periodic event is the Sabbath, which is Saturday. Saturday is the day where you're not supposed to. Then every month they have what's called the new Moon, and they mark the new Moon, which is when the moon you know goes, finishes its cycle. Then every year they have all other kinds of sacred times. So you have the the feast of unleavened bread, which kicks off with Passover. But then you have the feast, the feast of unleavened bread. Then you have the feast of weeks. Also called Pentecost. Then you have the feast of trumpets and the feast of booths, and then once a year, you have the day of Atonement, which is an annual fast. And that's a time for repentance and mourning and sacrifice. So it's a whole way of life. That's how I would recommend you think of the Torah. Think of it as a way of life that God gave to Israel to cover, like, not everything, but like as much as you could reasonably cover. Ancient 5 ancient scrolls he has in there, so it's a constitution I think of it as social engineering, where God says, you know, you're going to do things this way. You're not going to sow your your fields with two different kinds of seeds. Just one kind of seed. And then you have another field put a different seed over there, all these things. It just seem like why? Why can't I wear cotton and linen? Why is it? If one of. The because thus says the Lord and what it does is it generates a society that is separate in so many different ways from their neighbors. And So what is the anxiety? The anxiety is that God's people are going to just absorb into their neighbors. It's the fear of syncretism which which is where you take different components from different. Cultures and religions and you just mix them all. Yeah, kind of like the United States of America, right. It's kind of like, at least it. It was the theory of the United States. They called it the melting pot. But so God doesn't want there to be a melting pot in Israel. He wants them to be his people and to be distinctive and not to worship idols. Fee and Stewart say the Old Testament law is a covenant. A covenant is a binding contract between two parties, both of whom have obligations specified in the covenant. So that is a big word. I'm going to come back to it, but the Torah is is this covenant is. Part of this whole comprehensive way of life, and there are obligations that people have obligations to God. The people have obligations to each other. The people have obligations to people that they conquer even and to their nation, neighbors and all of these obligations are spelled out on the Torah. Then on the other hand, God has all these obligations to his people. Because, you know, they've got their stuff, they have to do well. God has his stuff that he has to do. He has to protect them and he has to watch over them and give them fertility and all, all the things that gods are supposed to do, God says he's gonna do in the Torah. And those are what we call promises. So we have commandments and promises, but they're really just obligations for the people and obligations. This all begins at Sinai. That's the beginning point where God. Had brought them out of Egypt. With the 10 plagues, every one of those plagues was targeted and one or more Egyptian gods showing that God, that Yahweh was better, he brings them out, he brings it to a mountain and on the mountain he. Introduces himself to his people, and that's Exodus chapter 19, it says on the morning of the third day there was Thunder and lightning. As well as a thick cloud on the mountain and a blast of a trumpet so loud that all the people who were in the camp trembled, Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God. Isn't that amazing? They took their stand at the foot of the mountain. Now all of Mount Sonah was wrapped in smoke because the Lord or Yahweh had descended upon it. In a fire. The smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln, while the whole mountain shook violently as the blast of the trumpet grew louder and louder. Moses would speak and God would answer him in Thunder. When Yahweh descended upon Mount Sinai to the top of the mountain, Yahweh summoned Moses to the top of the mountain and Moses went up. Then you always said to Moses, go down and warn the people not to break through to see Yahweh. Otherwise many of them will perish. This is a one time event. Where God torches a mountain and shakes it, I don't know where the trumpet sound came from, but there was a trumpet sound to it and it. Was just like. Whoa, this is not like the gods of Egypt. This God shakes the earth. This God tortures the mountain. This God answers Moses by Thunder. Like, how freaked out were these people? Right. Can you imagine being there? What it would have felt like being one of the Rando Israelites, just like. That mountains on fire. Moses. You sure you want to go hike that mountain right now? Right. They put a boundary around it and God says don't let anybody through. Don't let anybody through, and so God speaks audibly to his people, he says to them, I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. And the first thing you said, that's the intro, right? You say your name. Then the first thing he says is you will have no other gods. You shall have no other gods before me or besides me. That's the first thing he says. Literally the first thing he says Commandment #1, and this gets repeated over and over and over throughout the Torah. And so then we get the 10 commandments after the 10 Commandments we read in Chapter 20, verse 18 of Exodus. It says when all the people witnessed the Thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking. They were afraid and trembled and stood at a distance. My translation they ran away. You know, if you if you are standing at a distance, right. How'd you get there? You ran away and look, that makes perfect sense. I would run away too. I'm not condemning them. Actually, in Deuteronomy, which is the second telling of the same incident. You can read it in Deuteronomy 5. God says to Moses. They have spoken well. Oh, that they would always keep this fear of mine in their hearts. Like I was happy with the response of the people 1st 19 and said to Moses. You speak to us and we will listen, but do not let God speak to us lest we die. Verse 21. Then the people stood at a distance while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was. So that's the origin of Torah is that God comes down, he has the 10 commandments right. And then Moses goes up and he receives the book of the Covenant. And in the book of the Covenant are written all these different laws. The whole way of life and then Moses comes down to the people. They sacrifice an animal, they take of the blood and they sprinkle it on the people and on the book. And it stands for this covenant where they're coming together and saying, yes, all the things in here I will do. And God's saying yes. All the things in here I will do and they bond together for this covenant. Part of the Covenant is the Tabernacle. And they get to building that in the second-half of Exodus, which is like basically right after the whole giving of the law. How are we? To worship this holy God, it's not going to be the same as worshipping the Egyptian gods. It's not going to be the same as worshipping the Canaanite gods. It's not going to be the same as worshipping Babylonian gods or other gods from other the Phoenician gods. How are we going to worship this God? How are we going to do it? So God tells them you're going to build a tent, you're going to build a tent and it's spelled out in meticulous detail. Exactly how. To do it. What materials to use? How many curtains? How many rings on a rod? Everything spelled out beautifully, so you have a tent and then around the tent you have a barrier. A wall. So now you have a tent. And you have a courtyard. And then the the barrier around that, the purpose of the Tabernacle is that this is where God is going to meet with his people. It's also called the tent of. Meeting and it's a place where they made animal sacrifices. You don't just make your own animal sacrifice. You bring your animal to the Tabernacle and then someone else will actually do the the work on behalf of you. And depending on what kind of sacrifice it is, you might enjoy a meal as part of that, or it might all go. Up into smoke. And this Tabernacle also is where there was the pillar of fire by night, and a pillar of smoke by day to lead the people, it says in Hebrews 9. This is a really good description just briefly. Hebrews 9, verse 2 for a tent was constructed. The first one in which were the lamp stand. So you want to know what's in the tent, right? The lamp, stand the table and the bread of the presence. This is called the holy Place. So we got a a lamp stand and a table with bread on it. Verse three behind the second curtain was a tent called the Holy of Holies. In it stood the golden altar of incense and the Ark of the Covenant overlaid on all sides with gold, and which what's in the Ark. Does everybody want to know in which there were a golden urn holding the mana and Aaron's rod that budded, and the tablets of the covenant? Above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat of these things. We cannot speak now in detail. These preparations, having thus been made the Prisco continually into the first tent to carry out their ritual duties, but only the high priest goes into the 2nd and he but once a year, and not without taking the blood that he offers for himself and for the sins committed unintentionally by the people. That's a very good description of the different kinds of elements that were there. Why do you need a lamp stand? It's dark. It's a tent you can't see in a tent, so you got to have a light source. And that's the origin of the menorah. That whole structure of how they, how they do the Candelabra that is from the Tabernacle. Originally, the Menorah has, I think, one extra 1 extra candle on it for theological reasons. You know you have that and then you have this bread. And then inside you have the incense, the altar of incense, and then you have the ark of the covenant, and you're supposed to light the. Incense and it fills that internal most area the holy of holies with smoke. Then you can go in, right? So you're not even supposed to really even see clearly when you're in there because this is the holiest place. On Earth and you're going to sprinkle some blood here and some blood there and atone for the sins of the whole people? Incredible. We talked about Genesis before, but that's a little bit about Exodus. Let's look at numbers and continue on a little bit with this whole worship system that God sets up. Numbers talks a lot about guess what numbers you know. There's a lot of counting of the different tribes, and there's the census and there's the genealogy in there too. Numbers is really showing you the organization of the. So you have in the center of the camp, the Tabernacle in the center of the Tabernacle. You have the holy of Holies, right? And then outside the Tabernacle, you have this barrier, and outside that you have the the priestly families. And outside of that you have the Levitical families, right. And then outside of that, now you've got normal people groups, right. So the whole thing is like centered on this holy place in the middle, and that's all explained in numbers in great detail. Israel, whose name had been Jacob, his name, was changed to Israel. He ended up with twelve sons. And they were Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naftali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph and Benjamin. So one of his twelve sons was the boy named Levi. Levi becomes a whole family and they call any descendant of Levi a Levite. So if you're a Levite, you're a descendant of Levi, who is a descendant of Israel. Now, in the time of Moses, God had selected Aaron. That's the brother of Moses. He is a Levite already. Moses and Aaron are both Levites, he says to Aaron. You're going to be the. First high priest. And I want Moses to anoint you. I want. I want you. You're gonna. You're gonna wash. Moses is going to dress you. He's going to prepare. You do all these these things to like symbolize your ordination before God and then you're going to be the first high priest and then all the priests will be from your direct descendants. So Moses could not be a priest. Even though he was a Levite, he was from the tribe of Levi. He was not a descendant of Aaron. He's a brother, so he's he can't be a priest. He could be a Levite, but he's not a priest. So a priest is a Levite who's can trace their ancestry back to Aaron now. The Hebrew word for priest. Is Cohen so if you know anyone with the last name Cohen, they can trace their ancestry back. But you know, people are still here. It's incredible to think about that. Let's talk about the levite's duties. Numbers, chapter 18, verse 21. It says to the Levites, I have given every ties in Israel for a possession in return for the service that they performed. The service in the tent. Meeting from now on, Israelites shall no longer approach the tenant meeting, or else they will incur guilt and die, but the Levites shall perform the service of the tent of meeting, and they shall bear the responsibility for their own offenses. It shall be a perpetual statute. You see this? God says to the Levites. I've given a ties. So in Israel. They will give to the functioning of the whole worship system and the Levites are receiving that as income. It says it shall be a perpetual statute throughout your generations, but among the Israelites they shall have no allotment to get no land. Levis don't get land because I have given to the Levites as their proportion. Tithe of the Israelites, which they set apart as an offering to Yahweh. Therefore, I have said of them that they shall have no allotment among the Israelites, so the whole Levites as a tribe were set apart by God to minister to him and to facilitate the worship of him, much of which has to do with sacrifices. But the Levites weren't doing the sacrifices. All of them. Only the priests were doing the sacrifices, as we'll see in just a moment. So what was a non priestly evite to do? Well, according to numbers, their job was to set up the Tabernacle. To tear it down and to transport it, because these people don't have a home yet, they're wondering for 40 years, and then even once they get to the to the promised land, it's not like right away that they build a temple. It's not so Solomon, it's that's over a century later. Well, centuries of judges. But then you also have kings for. 80 years or whatever. Before Solomon even becomes so, that's a long time to have this portable system. Carried from place to place in the time of David. Once there is that relative stability, they still the Tabernacle, but he has now taken Jerusalem and he says alright, you Levites, your job have been to carry to transport, to pack it up, to unpack it. Your job is now to sing and to play musical instruments. So that's where a big transition happens for the Levites and we actually get some Levites in the Psalms. Like Asaf is a a Levite and I think Heman and Jeduthun. Some other we'll we'll talk about that later. Alright, let's talk about Leviticus and Leviticus. Guess what? It's all about the Levites. That's why it's called Leviticus. And so Leviticus tells you all about the sacrifices and about the priests. So the the priests are Levites that are able to go inside the Tabernacle and they're the ones that. Actually kill the animals and offer them. Up and they also manage holiness issues. So when somebody becomes unclean, you can become unclean for touching a dead person, touching the carcass of an unclean animal, a nocturnal emission muscle administration, childbirth, other kinds of bodily discharges and skin diseases, just to name a few ways that you could become unclean. What do you do? Well, you you have to go to the priest and the priest will tell you what to do. And generally it's to wash. And then there's some sort of ceremony involved to become cleansed. These are not to do with morality. It's not sin to be unclean, it just means that you're not in a state of purity to join in the camp of the people. And you know, God didn't explain to them, hey, there's this thing called germs. And let me explain how that, you know, he doesn't. He just sort of like, alright, this is how we're gonna and and guess what a lot of the rituals involve washing and water. Right. Actually cleaning yourself physically clean. Herself. Then the high priest, as I mentioned, he got to go into the inner room once a year into the Holy of Holies, and that was on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. It was an extraordinary privilege. So just to clarify, you have Israel, the nation of Israel, 12 tribes massive right out of Israel. There's the. One tribe called the Levites as the Levites. There's one clan or family who are the descendants of Aaron, and then out of that clan or family of the priests, there's one person who is the high priest. At a time. Let's talk about sacrifices. Let's talk about sacrifices. A person brings an animal to a priest. The person then places their hands on the head of the animal. Then the animal is slaughtered. It can't say for sure if you slaughter the animal yourself, or if the priest does. Maybe it goes either way it it was kind of ambiguous when I looked into it and then parts of the animal or the hole if it's a burnt offering. But generally parts of the animal. Are then burned on the fire. Parts of it are taken outside the camp, like the parts that nobody would want to eat. OK, and then parts of it would be cooked and distributed as part of a meal, celebratory sacred meal. So there are lots of types of sacrifices you have burnt offerings. In that case you butcher the animal and burn the entire animal. Then you have grain offerings. Well, guess what? That's not an animal. It's a grain. And a lot of times that was involving oil as well as grain. And you burn a portion, but the rest goes to the priests. Where do the priests get their bread if they don't have any farms because they have no land? Great offerings, super important to the priests, I'm sure. Then you have peace or well-being offerings. These would be animals that are butchered. They would burn the fatty parts of the animal, but then the meats, a portion of it would go to the priests. But the lion share would go to the family and that would be an offering where there would basically be a barbecue and you would rejoice and eat red meat. That's awesome. Then there were set offerings. To make purification for unintentional sins. And then there were guilt offerings used to make reparation for a sin against someone. Like if you were found guilty of something, you would then do what they call it guilt offering. Then they had holy day offerings like on the day of Yom Kippur, the day of Atonement. They would have a goat special goat that they sacrificed that day that wasn't. Common, but it was you. And there are certain other animals for that special day. And so it went in Leviticus 1711, it says for the life of the flesh is in the blood. And I have given it to you for making atonement for your lives on the altar. For as life it is the blood that makes atonement. So this is a a really key understanding for how they thought about sacrifices. They were thinking of the blood as representing the life of the animal the animal is making atonement on behalf of the person. Whether for a sin or even just for other reasons that are specified in the Book of Leviticus. Moving on to Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy is the second telling of the law. That's why it's Deuteros nomos second law. It's a Greek word. No Jewish person would call it the Book of Deuteronomy. They have their own name. For their books of the Bible as Christian as we call it Deuteronomy, it's a great name. It reminds you what it is like. Leviticus is a great name. It reminds you of talking about the Levites and the sacrifices, right? Dude? Rami is the second law. So it's 40 years later. Most of how already come down from the mountain with a book of the Covenant had explained it to the. People, they said we're going to do it. Well, they rebelled. They were not faithful, so then we don't even need to get into the golden calf. Leave that to your reading. Alright. So then we get to the Book of Deuteronomy. And deuteronomy? It's a new generation, and Moses is retelling the law and the Book of Deuteronomy is highly stylized in the form or structured in the form of an ancient covenant. And we know this because archaeologists have found other ancient covenants. Of non Israelite people that follow a particular pattern and so this is the pattern of a covenant document. It has a preamble, a historical review, individual laws and requirements, a deposit of the text, a list of witness. Blessings and curses, A ratification ceremony, and an exhortation. We find the same kind of thing, not like with the particulars, but like the same general contract idea with other ancient near Eastern communities around the same time and before. I love deuteronomy. It's such a great book, in my opinion. It really shows you the heart of God. It really shows you. What does God really want? So much of the earlier stuff is like just narratives about people, and Leviticus is. And you know, it's very detailed that we get to Deuteronomy. You really, I feel like Deuteronomy. You really see God's heart. I recommend, you know, check it out. I think Deuteronomy is is just so beautiful. Moses tells the people hero Israel. This is Deuteronomy 64. Yahweh is our God, Yahweh alone. You shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children. Talk about them when you are at home. When you were away, when you lie down, when you rise, bind them as a sign on your hand. Fix them as an emblem on your forehead and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. It's just incredible the exhortation. To remember these laws there, there's so much built into the book of Jeremy to convince the people don't forget this. Remember this? Write it on your doorpost. Put it on your forehead. Tell your kids when you're up, when you're down, when you're standing, when you're walking, talk about it. Right. There's just like a lot of reinforcement built in. To Deuteronomy, there are two major kinds of laws in the Torah, but especially in Deuteronomy, apodictic and Casuistic, a couple of fancy words for you to show off to your friends. Not bad, right? Apodictic laws are laws that are general commands, like the 10 Commandments. Just kind of like a positive. Like, don't steal. It's a nice apodictic command and then casuistic or case laws are dealing with specific situations. So for example, if if a slave ran away and came to. Your house. That person was, it says, should reside with you in your midst. In any place they choose in any of your towns, wherever they please, you shall not oppress them. It's a very specific case law. The case of a runaway slave. And it's interesting in America. Nobody followed this because they tried to put the slaves back to their owners. Here it's saying no. Like take care of the take the slave in take care of. But that's a very specific situation. Or how about this one? This is due around me 22 six if you come on a bird. Nest in any tree or on the ground with fledglings or eggs, with the mother sitting on the fledglings or on the eggs. You shall not take the mother with the young. Let the mother go, taking only the young for yourself, in order that it may go well with you and you. May live long. It's a. Very specific case, right? So that's an example of another one of these. Because now I want to kind of broach the subject of dealing with embarrassing or sexist laws, because we live in a very different culture than they did, and sometimes people struggle with this. I believe the law God gave Israel was good. I don't think it was punishment. I don't think it was an impossible. Thing that nobody could do, I think it was a way of life that he graciously gave them. It was a covenant that he gave them to live by. That was good for them. I don't think the proper way to. Read the law is. To think of yourself as like a modern person and then to to look at the law and be like, oh, look how backwards that is. I just don't think that's fair for any ancient document. I think what you want to do is read it. In light of. Its own situation, its own setting, and when you do that, it reads totally differently. I'm going to show you an example of this. But I want to just set a couple of standards out there for you. First of all, every ancient Near eastern, that's the part of the world Israel is in every ancient near Eastern civilization believed in patriarchy. That is, that the father of the household ruled over the household. The Bible never says you should do. It that way. It just works within that kind of world. That's the kind of world. That existed. And so the Bible has all kinds of laws that are going to prevent abuses within that system. They also all believe that slavery. And they were sexist. OK, like, that's just the way the world was. The Bible was not saying you should do it this way. It's it's saying, OK, if you're gonna have a slave, this, say, thou shalt have a slave, but it says if you have a slave and you injure your slave and you break your slave's tooth, set to slave free for the sake of his tooth. You know, I mean, so it it curbs abuse. So you can't just beat your slave mercilessly. But it doesn't outlaw slavery outright either, and if you and if you have an Israelite slave, you have to release them after seven years, you can't. Even keep them forever. So there's lots of this where where if you just like looked at it cold, you'd be like, Oh my goodness like. The Bible believes in slavery, but like so did everyone else in all of literally every other ancient civilization at the time. Everybody believe in slavery like the Bible. Believing in slavery is not significant. What's significant is the Bible treats slaves as if they have rights. And that they should be set free if they're abused. That's very different even than American slavery. And that was only a couple 100 years ago. So the Torah doesn't challenge many injustices that we would today. OK. But it does curb a ton of abuses that will happen in that kind of a society and protect the vulnerable. So I just. Want to show you one example of this just as a way to help you read this stuff and not stumble on it so much. Deuteronomy chapter 21, verse 10. I'm going to tell you right now this is going to offend you. All right. If I'm going to read it anyhow, it says when you go out to war against your enemies and Yahweh your God hands them over to you and you take them captive. Suppose you see among the captives a beautiful woman whom you desire and want to marry. And so you bring her home to your house. She shall shave her head. Tear her nails. Discard her captive garb and remain in your house a full month mourning for her father and mother. After that you may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. But if you are not satisfied with her, you shall let her go free and certainly not sell her for money. You must not treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her. I don't know if that offended you or not, but people read this. They're like, Oh my goodness, the Bible endorses taking captives in war and making them marry you, OK? Yes, it does. The standard operating procedure for captured villages in warfare was to rape the women. That was standard procedure. I shouldn't say procedure. That was a common response in that scenario. And and still is in many recent wars as well. This is incredible. This is like a. This is like feminist propaganda from thousands of years ago. You can't. What do you mean you can't have sex with your with your captured woman? You not only can't, you can't you sleep with her? You have to make her in a sense, like not attractive. Like the all this business here with shaving her head, pairing her nails, taking off the you know, and then you're gonna live with her, mourning for her parents, giving her space. You know, you can't touch her yet. Give her a whole month. She gotta mourn her parents, mourn her friends. All the men probably died in the battle. Or else she would have been taken captive. Think this actually dignifies this person, this, this, this says she's not an object. She's not a property. She's a human being. Give her her space and then you can marry her. Sure. But you can't just marry her and then ditch her and sell her. You have to give her actual divorce and that and a divorce gives her rights once again. The ancient concept that divorce gave her a paper gave her, well, not a paper, but a document so that she could operate in society. Also, this woman is going to become a member of the Covenant Community of Israel. She's not going to be treated like a Moabite or a philistine or an Amorite. No, she's going to be 1 flesh with this guy is an Israelite. Her kids are gonna be Israelites. She's now part of the whole system of God's people. So it's actually it's actually a huge step forward to protect women in this situation, even though by our standards today it's like, Oh my goodness, this is so primitive. This is so bizarre. And so that's kind of, I think, a good approach to take with this stuff. Two books I want to recommend to you if you are troubled by stuff you read in the law. One is is God a moral monster by Paul Copan? It's a great book. I read the whole thing. I liked it so much. Here's a part too, which I haven't read yet, but yeah, it's a it's a really great book. You can see from the cover that he's got a painting of Abraham and Isaac. This is a major moral issue that people raised today from Genesis 22. The Ichidai story of. The Binding of Isaac is really traumatizing. This kid, like, why would God ever ask this? He deals with it. Canaanite genocide. Why is God wiping out its whole entire tribe of people he deals with it, right? So there's a lot of those kinds of things that us, as modern people, we ask that Paul Copan deals with the other book there is by Dan Kimball, which is called how not to read the Bible. Making sense of anti women anti science profiles, pro slavery and other crazy sounding parts of scripture. So if you're looking for resources on this I would say those those are both good. Now let's talk about when you're reading. The law should you apply it to yourself. I want you to avoid 2 extremes. One is thinking that law applies to everyone today. Even if you were an Israelite. You don't keep most of the law because a lot of it is like if you're a woman, a lot of it is for men, and if you're a man, a lot of it is for women. And if you're not a priest, guess what? You don't need Leviticus at all because, like, that's for the. It's there's a lot of things that can't be done at all, because there's no temple, right? So nobody keeps all the law. No, they they say there's 613 commandments in the law, I don't know. I never counted. But nobody's keeping all 613, so thinking the law applies to everyone today. Now we as Christians also believe that because of what Jesus has done, he has brought the old covenant. To an end and brought in a new covenant. So we would say it was not even my covenant. I actually met an Orthodox Jewish lady once and I asked her. I said I'm Irish, Italian like, do I do? Should I keep the law? And she said no. Why would you keep? You're not Jewish. Why would you keep the law? That's the weirdest question. Name was. I'm like, alright. So just to confirm you're an Orthodox Jew. She said yes. And said you keep the law, she said yes, absolutely. But I don't keep the law, she said. Right, you got it. Simple as that. So even if you're an Orthodox Jew, you don't think that Gentiles should keep the law today. It's not going to hurt you. OK. Just for the record, I'm not going to condemn you if you wanna rest on Saturday and not eat shrimp. Whatever you do, you. But I'm just saying, don't put it on the rest of us that we also can't eat bacon or work on a Saturday. The one extreme is thinking the law applies to everyone today, and the other extreme is thinking that it's entirely irrelevant. You don't need to read it. Those are extremes. I encourage you to avoid both of them. Let me give you 5 reasons why the law matters and then. We will conclude. #1 the Torah teaches you who God is. Look, this is worth it. Even if this is the only reason why the law is valuable, understanding who God is, you're supposed to be in a love relationship with this God. You're not just supposed to be in like a fear relationship. Like, Oh my goodness, he's so. No, like, you're actually supposed to love God. How can you love someone you don't know? The law tells you who God is and what his preferences are. If you love someone, guess what? You want to know. What their preferences are? My wife's preference. Is to never be kissed. If I have raw broccoli breath. Maybe there's some of you also feel that way. You don't want to be kissed by somebody who's got raw broccoli breath. That's very important to my wife. That's her preference. So I have to honor that. If I love her. That's a silly one, but God has lots of other more important preferences #2. The new covenant includes many of the same prohibitions and commandment as the old covenant, so a lot of this stuff you read in there is still the same. You know, this commandment to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. It's in deuteronomy. The one to love your neighbor as. Yourself some leviticus. Right. So there's a lot of repetition in the new covenant that was also in the old covenant #3. The law shows how highly God values holiness over syncretism. Syncretism once again is combining a bunch of beliefs together like a a tray and a cafeteria, where you're like, oh, take a little Buddhism, little Islam, little Christianity. No, no, no, no, not with our God. Maybe if you're bajai, you're good. But like we're Christian and Christian, Christian guy is not going that direction. #4 understanding the Pentateuch is necessary for understanding the rest of the Bible. If you want to understand the rest of the Bible, you got to read the Torah #5 you can extract ethical principles. From laws, even when the particulars don't line up. Give you an example. This is a good one. Let's say you're sitting there on the road and you see your neighbors ox walk by. There's actually a law about this. It says you have to. Bring that ox back to your neighbor. Because it's his. It's lost. And you have a responsibility to go give it back, right? Like I don't. I don't see any wandering oxen in my neighborhood today. But I'm just saying, like, you could find a a wallet on the ground. So you just like, take the money out and just like, rejoice or should do you have, like, an obligation to go see what you can do to give it back to the person? So that might be an example of like taking a a principle from a law even though the the particulars don't line up, like with the oxen thing and seeing how you can apply it today. Let's review. The Torah, or Pentateuch includes Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, numbers, and Deuteronomy. Though much of these books contains narrative, especially Genesis in the first half of Exodus and a lot of numbers, actually the law was God's gracious covenant with Israel, detailing how he wanted them to live and be different than the nations around them. The Tabernacle was the worship facility. God had his people construct. Under King Solomon, the temple in Jerusalem replaced the Tabernacle. God set apart the tribe of Levites to manage the Tabernacle, and the offerings made there. They didn't receive a land inheritance. Instead the people supported them financially. God set apart the priests a subset of the Levites to manage the sacrificial system, maintain holiness and cleanse those who became unclean. The high priest was the only one allowed to enter the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. Deuteronomy contains the clearest expression of the covenant God made with Israel, updated for the second generation. Although some of the laws contained in the Torah seem backward or offensive to us, they limited abuse and protected vulnerable people amid A patriarchal and unequal society. And last of all, although most of the specifics of the Torah don't apply to Christians today, it's critical to understand to know God better and understand other parts of the Bible. And we are going to keep doing that next time we're going to look at wisdom literature. It's going to be a total change of pace and I hope you'll join me for that as we continue in this course on how to read the. Bible for yourself.

Well, that brings this one to a close. What did you think? Come on over to restitutio.org and find episode 537. How to read the law and leave your feedback there. Would love to hear your thoughts. On episode 3, how to read the Bible in context, Main Point Ministries wrote in overall great lesson, but totally disagree with Sean on the dietary laws. He says that Christians should not abide by them and the majority agrees with him. However, the majority of Christians believe in the Trinity, and yet he rejects the Trinity. So the majority isn't a barometer of truth. Yes, those specific dietary laws were given to the ancient nation of Israel, but also were the 10 Commandments, and I'm sure he has no problem with Christians keeping those. So the same is true for the dietary laws. This is a typical kind of comment that I receive. And have received for many years from those who are zealous to keep the law. And 1st I want to start by saying if you want to keep the law, go ahead, have a blast. The law is a great system. It's got many wonderful components to it and it will keep you out of trouble in a in a lot of ways, and I'm incredibly pro Torah in the sense of recognizing that the Torah or instruction of God is God's gift to the Nation of Israel. And so I have no problem with anyone that wants to keep the law. I would not forbid you from keeping the law. If you want to rest on Saturday, go ahead and rest on Saturday if you want to wear tassels, wear tassels. If you want to stop trimming your beard, stop trimming your beard. Whatever. I believe we have freedom in Christ to do or not do whatever aspects of the law we choose to do or not do. However, what this person is doing is much akin to what Paul's judaizers those who were tracking Paul from village to village and infiltrating his churches, telling the. Believers there, the Gentile believers there, that they needed to get circumcised and be taught to keep the laws of Moses. This was dealt with in acts chapter 15. I don't know why in Christianity there is such confusion about this in Acts 15. It's very clear that the Gentiles do not need to keep the law, and Paul was very pleased to receive that letter and to just distribute it to the churches. I believe that the New Testament. Doesn't even stop there. I think it goes even further than that which, you know, I won't press at this moment. I will say simply this if you don't want to eat the unclean foods of Leviticus 11. That's your prerogative, so don't eat them. But the problem that I see is when Pro Torah people start condemning other Gentile Christians for not keeping the law that God gave to Israel and thinking that they are under that covenant. Now this common term makes 2 main points. The first main point is that I said that the majority of Christians agree that we do not need to keep the law of Moses. And he points out that this is an invalid reason to do something. Popularity is no guarantee for truth. I'm going to go ahead and agree with them on that just because the majority of Christians believe something doesn't mean it's true. So I'm going to go ahead and just grant that point. But then he comes in with his own argument, and his argument is that because I don't have a problem with the 10 Commandments, therefore we should keep the dietary laws. I kind of want to grant this argument as well, but respond by saying I don't think we need to keep the 10 commandments. I think the 10 Commandments are the preamble of the law. The Book of the Covenant, and that the 10 Commandments were God's instruction to Israel, and that that is how they were told to live. And I say that because I think we need to be consistent here. And we are not told in the New Testament. We should keep all the 10 commands. What we are told is to love God and love our neighbor as ourself. There is no commandment in particular regarding the Sabbath in the New Testament that lines up with the 4th commandment of the 10 Commandments. So I I think I'm just going to grant both points to Main Point ministries. So nice job, but it doesn't dislodge my overall position whatsoever. The reason why I believe the law is no longer applicable to Christians today is not because of the majority of Christians believing that. It's because of reading the books of Galatians and Romans and Hebrews. And I think it's very clear in those books and I won't go through all the verses here with you at the end of this episode, but I think it's very clear in those books that the law is not required for Christians to hold to today. And I would even further make the case that it's also not required for Jews if they believe in Jesus. And on that point, some people might disagree with me. Some of that depends on your reading of the book of acts, especially the ending part of the book of Acts where Paul. Is seen in my opinion, to compromise and in other people's opinion to basically undermine Galatians and some other scripture. So that's kind of a technical discussion. We don't really need to get into that. But my reason once again for not believing the dietary laws are applicable to all Christians. Today is because. One God made that covenant with ethnic Israel, and if you're not an ethnic Israelite, then guess what? That covenant is not for you. Now we have been grafted into the promises of the Patriarchs as it says in the scriptures, but not into the covenant. We have our own covenant with God through the Messiah. Jesus Christ and through his sacrifice for our sins. And this is a different covenant than the old covenant. It's not just that we were added into the old covenant or else in Acts 15 they would have told the gent. Miles, you do need to keep the law. Why wouldn't they just tell them to keep the law? If they needed to keep the law, they tell them they didn't need to keep the law. So what gives? Well, the early Christians understood that to become saved and to become part of the family of God does not mean that you need to keep Torah. You can keep it if you want. You cannot keep it if you don't want. And then on that point, with the 10 Commandments, I would just agree with this commenter that Christians are not required to keep the 10 commandments. I know that they're incredibly popular in America in particular, but also other countries. And they have a lot of wisdom and insight into them. But I think if you affirm the 10 commandments, you're also affirming resting on Saturday. And most Christians don't do that. So I agree there's an inconsistency there. I would say the 10 commandments of the preamble of the Old Covenant Christians are not under the old Covenant. So therefore, Christians don't need to keep the 10 commandments. Now, does that mean Christians are allowed to worship other gods? No, it's very. It's clear that Jesus said that the father is the only true God. John 17 three is very clear that we are not to worship idols or to even participate in food sacrificing rituals and eating rituals for those gods. See first Corinthians 10. It's also the case that we are to love God, which means not caring. Were bearing his name in vain. And so on and so forth. So and we're told to honor our parents and that we should not kill because that's obviously not loving and we should not steal or lie or covet. But when it comes to the Sabbath, we don't find a clear command on that in the New Testament. Now I'm just going to be real honest with you. As it turns out, I do keep the Sabbath. I know. Just blow your mind there. I do. Keep the Sabbath. I work six days a week. I work Sunday through Friday and then I don't work on Saturday. Now sometimes I do break the Sabbath in the sense of working on Saturday. But then I really struggle with burnout because let's face it, a 12 day work week is brutal and I think God knew what he was talking about. Now I don't. I'm not keeping the Sabbath for because I think you have to. I'm keeping it in in the sense of just not working my job. I'm not doing any specific rituals or spiritual practices on Saturday, but I. In all honesty, I'm not working my job on Saturday. I do it because of the pattern I see in Scripture, and because if I don't take a day off, I burn out and I've come so close to burning out so many times it's not even funny. So I am actually pretty strict about not working on Saturday. I don't go to the church on Saturday. I don't take appointments on Saturday. If there's an emergency, I will be there just like. Just like in ancient Israel or even modern Jews, they if there's an emergency, they will make an exception on Saturday so. I don't know if that went the way you were thinking it would, but those are my thoughts on the law. Very pro Torah, but I don't think it's necessary for Christians to keep today. If you want to know more about what the Bible says about this and really get access to the full case for why I think you don't need to keep the law. Check out my class on YouTube called New Covenant theology and this is a class I Co taught with Doctor Jerry Werewolf and we really laid out the case of a covenantal understanding of interpreting Scripture. But in the process of doing that, we. Also did a couple of episodes on why Christians don't need to keep the law today, so at some point I may put that out on restitutio I may not. But it's already out there on YouTube. If you wanna take a look at that course. It's a perennial topic, so I expect it will come up again. But thanks for writing in and thanks for your thoughts. That's going to be it for today. If you'd like to support us, you can do that at restitutio.org. Thanks to those of you who are supporting us. I'll catch you next week. And remember the truth. Has nothing to fear.