So we come to part two of our class on applying the Old Testament law. And I'll just remind you that like one of the membership vows that we all took when we became members is that we would obey Jesus. that you would obey him for the rest of your life? And whenever we have the interview for membership, we always try to make much of that question, because it's such a huge promise, like especially for young people who are professing their faith for the first time, you know, they could live another 90 years or something, right? And it's like, do you realize you're promising, like you pledge allegiance to King Jesus for the rest of your life? no matter what. And of course, we've all made that promise. We want to obey Jesus. He saved us. The question then is, what are we supposed to do? How do we obey? And that's what we're really grappling with, is we're grappling with how vast the Bible is, how many different commands and things there are in there, and the fact that a whole ton of these commands come in the books of Moses, the Pentateuch, in the Old Covenant. So what are we supposed to do with all these laws? Apparently the Jews, the rabbis totaled up all the laws and the number they came up with is 365 plus however many bones there are in our bodies, like 212 or something like that. You add those two together and it's like that's how many laws are in there. So we're talking somewhere in the ballpark of 600 laws, right? And so What do we do with all of these? How are we supposed to keep them, or in some senses, not? And there's a lot at stake here, especially for me, because Jesus said that if anyone teaches someone not to keep one of the commandments that is in God's word, that that leading astray of the people of God is a very severe thing. And so I don't want to do that. So last time was all about trying to navigate the change from Old to New Covenant. And this three bullet points are kind of the summary of everything I was trying to say. So if you're leaving a little murky in your mind last time, Hopefully these three points will clarify some. So on the one hand, we want to emphasize continuity so that the old and new covenants really are, both of them, expressions of the same underlying covenant of grace. So there are basically only two covenants between God and human beings in the entire history of the world. There's the covenant we call the covenant of works between God and the old humanity, Adam, and Adam broke that, and so now the entire human race is under a curse. But then there's the covenant of grace that goes really from Genesis 3.15, the first preaching of the gospel, all the way to today, and that covenant of grace is about salvation through Christ. So you're either under Adam or you're under Christ, the two covenant heads of the old human race and the new human race. And the big idea from what I was trying to say last time is that the Sinai covenant, that was just a shadowy manifestation of that great covenant of grace. It was a good gift and it was a covenant of grace. Remember how it begins, I'm the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. In other words, I'm the God who saved you, now obey me. It's all about grace, right? But it was a shadowy gift. It wasn't the ultimate manifestation of the covenant of grace. That comes in the new covenant, which will never pass away. So again, how were Old Testament saints saved? Just the same as us, looking to Christ. They just looked forward, we look back. Okay, so that's point number one, that there's one covenant of grace. The old and new covenants are part of that. But then, and can I just say one more point on that actually? Just that when we read the Old Testament, and we read like Exodus through Deuteronomy, we shouldn't be reading this as some sort of like foreign document to us. Like this kind of like, well isn't this quaint and interesting, like reading the laws of Hammurabi or something, and you're like, well wow, okay, so that's what they thought, or that's what they did. No. This is your God witnessing to your faith. Like this is very much a word of God still to us. And another component of why the Old Covenant matters so much is that both covenants, both Old and New, in other words, both the Old and New Testaments, the whole witness of the scriptures, manifest God's holy and excellent character. And they instruct us in how to reflect His character. Remember, like what are human beings? We are made in the image of God. which means we reflect God, if we're good image bearers, so that when people look at us and how we live, they say, oh wow, so that's what God is like. That's what we would want people to say, and that's why God gave us the law, so that we would know how to do that. God is not a faithless God, he doesn't commit adultery. God is not a slave driving God, hence the law of rest. We want to show his character. And so again, the law in the Old and New Test Covenants, if you really boil it down to the core, it's basically the same in Old and New. love God with all you are, love your neighbor as yourself. Like nothing has changed because both of those things are at the heart of what it means to picture God. So there's that underlying foundation which is actually the same foundation for the covenant of works too, right? So this foundation underlies every every covenant that God has ever made. Covenant of works, covenant of grace, both of them are grounded in who is God, what is he like, what's his character, how do we keep that character? But now the point of discontinuity. that at the death and resurrection of Christ, the old covenant passed away. And this is kind of shorthand, hopefully you remember what I mean by that. They passed away as the covenant that was in effect, governing God's relationship with his people. And that old covenant has now been replaced by the new. I'm not saying by this that the Old Covenant is now kind of irrelevant. That's really part of the burden of this whole thing, is the like, read your Old Testaments, and we're gonna talk about how useful they are in just a moment. And because of this big change, before Christ and after Christ, because Christ caused the Old Covenant to come to an end, and the New Covenant to begin, We now live out that core ethic of love of God, love of neighbor, be holy as God is holy. We live out that core ethic in different ways now than the old covenant people. And so some things that were required of Israel are not required of us. Some things that were not required of them are required of us. Like for example, doing the Lord's Supper. And so we have to know, this is the kind of the really big idea, we have to know where we are in redemptive history to know what exactly God is asking us to do. This is not saying that ethics are kind of culturally relative. It is saying that ethics are relative to where you are in God's story. If you're before Christ, you're gonna obey God in a slightly different way than if you're after him. Yeah. Oh yeah, we should do the mic thing, yeah. It is on, yeah. The Lord's Supper was grounded in an Old Testament practice. So is there any New Testament practice that is not grounded in an Old Testament practice? Yeah, great question. Is there any New Testament practice not grounded in an Old Testament practice? Wow, I have to think about that one a little bit. Yeah, I mean, Yeah, there's certainly echoes of just about everything in the old. I mean, I think. Wow, even the ones that are coming to mind, I can still think of echoes, like the one that came to mind was preach the gospel to all the nations. That was not a mandate given to Israel, but they were still to be a nation, a holy nation of royal priesthood that was in some way mediating the knowledge of God to the nations. And the hope was that the nations would come, just like the Queen of Sheba, to see the wisdom of God, the law of God. Yeah, great question. I have to think about it some more. But really, your question, the fact that it kind of stymies me, really does help to undergird my point that the core ethic of love of God and love of neighbor is the same. And so while there are some differences, we don't want to make too much of those. Yeah. Yeah, great. Any questions on this framework? Because we're going to now build this framework into something that's going to hopefully give us a process for thinking about the old covenant laws in a good way that honors those laws properly. So this is like the theological basis for everything I'm going to talk about. Okay, so the big question then, okay, I'm reading my Old Testament. What am I supposed to do with these laws? How do they apply to me? So here's the short answer. Use old covenant laws to understand what accords with God's character. That would be the second bullet point up there. And then imitate that character in accordance with the phase of history that you are in. And so this would deal with the first and third points in the summary from before. There's gonna be continuity and discontinuity. as we imitate God's holy character in the phase of history that we're in. And really there's no like magic formula here. When we get to the end of our class today we'll talk about some patterns that kind of give us a rule of thumb for figuring out what to do with each law, but really, each old covenant law needs to be thought through on its own terms. There's no simple like, oh yeah, we can get rid of all these laws, but these laws stick on, and these, you know, no, it's not like that. In each case, we need to ask these, I think, these two basic questions. How does this law reflect the unchanging character of God? How do we see continuity between Old and New Testaments here? And then how are things different now that Christ has come that would impinge on this law? And I just want to say, as soon as I say that, this does not mean that we can dispense with laws as we wish. And it also means that if a law, it also, I want to say, if a law shows something about the character of God that's unpopular in our culture, we still need to imitate that part of who God is. So like, we are not supposed to be worldly people, right? So we'll talk about that point, the cultural relative issue in a second. But these are like the two questions, and what we're going to do today is we're going to look through a bunch of laws and apply, or a few laws, and we're going to apply these questions and use them. But before we get there, I just wanted to highlight just a few important differences between our time and Old Testament times. This will help us with number two. So, some of the most important ones are that Christ, the ultimate sacrifice, has been offered. So, I'll just remind you. 1 Corinthians 5, 7 is Christ, the Passover Lamb, has been offered. And then Hebrews 10 has this whole section where it's contrasting basically the shadowy sacrifices that needed to be offered all the time, and the sacrifice of Christ, where it says, you know, this second, you know, holy sacrifice, the holy priesthood that Jesus now participates in, that he is the author of. He says, by that we will have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus once for all. The body of Jesus offered once for all. That's the key thing I want us to see. So the once for all sacrifice has been offered, like the atonement is complete. So that's a big difference. Because so much of Leviticus is, you shall offer the sacrifice and so you shall be forgiven. Offer the sacrifice and so they will be forgiven. Offer the sacrifice, et cetera. And we're not doing that anymore because of the ultimate sacrifice of Christ. Also, another big difference is that in that shadowy period, there was basically a complete and perfect overlap between the visible church and the state of Israel. Israel was both the people of God, the visible church, and it was a this-worldly government. But Jesus says explicitly that his kingdom is not of this world and the church is not a state. So this is a really big difference. And the sword is no longer entrusted to us as it was entrusted to Israel. Israel was allowed as a nation to put people to death for grave breakings of the law. That is not something that is permitted for the church. And we'll talk about how the punishment for disobedience differs now. It's gonna come up in a later point. So this is a big difference. We are not a state. The church. Third big point is that Israel was located in a holy land that was to be free of all idolaters who were to be put to death. So you have that in Deuteronomy 7 with the killing of the Canaanites, the execution of the Canaanites is a better way to put it, I think, that they're just execution for sin. And we could add Deuteronomy 13, that if anyone is apostate, they are to be put to death. In other words, Israel, the land of Israel is meant to be this like picture of the new creation. It was a picture ahead of time of what things will be like when Jesus comes back. That's what it was supposed to be. And so it was this holy land, this holy place where only holy people were permitted to dwell. No unbelief, no apostasy, no idolatry in the land. Zero. That's what it was meant to be. But that is not the phase of history that we're living in now. So, one biblical theologian describes the differences. Israel had a theocratic ethic. We now have a pilgrim ethic. And it corresponds to like with Abraham before the nation of Israel was founded. What was his relationship to the people of the land? Well, it was peaceable for the most part. He, you know, went to the sons of Hath and said, hey guys, could I buy some of your land for a burial place for Sarah? He wasn't killing the Canaanites. He was dwelling peaceably with the Canaanites. Why? Because it was not a period of this theocracy where God had set up this shadowy picture with the nation of Israel. Well, we're now in the similar phase to Abraham. I'll get your question in a second. So we're in a similar phase to Abraham where we're pilgrim people. And one day there will be a theocratic ethic once again when Jesus comes back, where there will be a holy place, the new creation, where zero unbelief will be, will exist. And in the meantime, this time of the pilgrim, of being a pilgrim people means that we are now living in the year of the Lord's favor, 2 Corinthians 6 puts it. We don't put unbelievers to death. We witnessed unbelievers. This is the chance for all these people who are living in wickedness to join the people of God before God comes in final judgment. So there's a really a pretty big difference between Israel and the church today. Yes, Ryan did you have a question? Not much of a question, more of a statement. We've seen the mess that happens when the church does have the power of the state sword in the papal states of the past. They make every theological discussion a primary theological debate. And if you disagree with that stance that the church takes, they will burn you on the stake. Yeah, no, thank you, and I think that's a massively, this is a huge failure to read your New Testament that the medieval church made. They are, in a huge way, mistaking their place in redemptive history. The Crusades, again, that's ultimately a hermeneutical failure. It's a failure of interpretation. It's a failure to understand that that provision of Joshua destroying the Canaanites was not an example for us to follow in this period. It's an example that will, it's a type, a shadow of something that will be followed in the ultimate way when Jesus returns. But in this present time, yeah, this is the year of the Lord's favor, of his grace, when his salvation goes forth, yeah. Would you say the Scottish Covenanters missed the boat and were way off? Yeah, I think they also are really, really missing. You know, they're praying prayers of imprecation against their political enemies. That is wrong. You cannot look at these individual human beings who, like Saul, are at the moment very much set against the church and doing evil things. We should decry the evil act. But we can't look at them and say, these are the enemies of God and I'm going to pray God's curses on them. May they die and all of this. What? Like, You have no idea if any of those people are God's elect that he's going to save. So we don't pray the prayers of imprecation against individual human beings in this present phase. We have no idea whom God will save. And Jesus himself prayed from the cross. Father, forgive them. So that's the paradigm for us in this present time. I think we can still pray the prayers of imprecation against Satan, of course, and his host, but then also collectives of people that stand against truth. So I think it would be right, for example, to pray imprecation. And that God would utterly thwart and curse the work of Planned Parenthood, for example, in an institution that just stands completely against the teaching of scripture. But the individual people who work for Planned Parenthood, we should be praying that God would convert them and save them. Those doctors that are doing such evil, those are not, we shouldn't see them as like, those are our enemies that we should fight against in any kind of physical way. Yeah, so hermeneutics, you know, the principles of interpretation really make a big difference, right, in how we apply the Old Testament. Okay, what about this question? What about cultural differences between our times and biblical times? And I just want to say right here that no law is given by God to go along with the cultural expectations of the times. Instead, Exodus 23.2 says, you shall not follow the multitude to do evil. So like, no. His law is completely, you know, set above the cultural winds that blow this way and that. So like if somebody were to say, well, you know, the Bible's view of women is just way passe. We know better now. And, you know, we are living post the women's liberation movement. And so therefore, we can just utterly flush that old, you know, culturally baggaged, you know, laden stuff down the toilet. No, like the Bible's view of women is based on creation. And so it exalts women as fellow image bearers, but also says, look, men and women are different. Something needs to be said in this time. And that we live out our image. We bear the image in different ways that are beautiful and good, that complement each other, particularly in marriage. So the differences between old and new covenants are not cultural. They're redemptive historical. They're about the different phases of God's grand story. It's not because like, oh, well, Greco-Roman culture is different than ancient or Eastern culture. So therefore we'll do things differently now. There's none of that. And in fact, we can say that the ethical requirements on the early church are the same as ours today, even though there are massive differences in our culture. Like we live in a secular world, you know, post the enlightenment, so-called. just absolutely mind-blowing differences between our phase of history and first century Rome. All you have to do is start sinking your teeth into history to realize, whoa, this was a different world. And yet, What's required of that first century Christian who believes in Christ is exactly what's required of you and me today in 21st century America. It's the same new covenant that we are in. So any questions about this? I'm taking a pretty strong stance against cultural relativity here. Hopefully you're hearing that. Why is this so important? Like, what if we go down the rabbit trail and we say, well, you know, some things are, you know, in the Bible are just kind of like, you know, coming from this Greco-Roman world where they had certain viewpoints, things they took for granted. What would be the result if we were to start going down that trail? I'm a little foggy this morning, but my first thought is that, first of all, culture is not supposed to mandate us as Christians. God's Word is eternal forever. It is the same today, yesterday, for the future. He has a standard and He requires it of His people. And the culture, whatever it is doing, is not our standard. Excellent. Yeah, be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Romans 12, right? So like if we are conformed to this world, we are missing the boat in a huge way in terms of what's our standard. Yeah, Anna? Yeah, I was thinking about, I know even some of the women in our church wear head coverings, but I mean, aren't there genuinely some things that are just culturally mentioned in the Bible that aren't really applicable? I mean, or that at least some of us would feel are not really applicable. Is that valid? As I was preparing this part of the Sunday School, I said, 10 to 1, at this point, someone's going to mention head coverings. You got it. I got it. And I was saying, at that point, I will say, that passage really confuses me. And I don't understand that passage. So I don't know what to say in response to that. Because I really do think, like what Gabrielle just said, we're not going based on cultural relative norms. Is that an example of like there's a principle that was being lived out by wearing head coverings that now we live out differently? In this time that the literal wearing of a head covering is not something that's binding on us, or is it really the case that there's something very basic and creational there that we just need to accept like, okay, this is something that we should do. I've studied it some, but not enough. So I don't know how to land on that one. Thanks, though. Yeah. Yeah, I think we would say that God's Word is from God, and so it reflects Him as someone who is unchanging and eternal. It's like, I mean, we should be surprised if we think that God is going to change in the matter of a thousand years, or five thousand years. God who has existed for all time, that's a drop in the bucket to the timeline. Well said. Thank you for that. I was wondering if there's some things that are mentioned that are cultural, but they're meant to give us an overarching principle. And I'm thinking of, like, I had cousins that were not allowed to braid their hair. Because it says, don't braid your hair, and they couldn't wear jewelry, things like that. But I was always taught that that was cultural. But obviously, there's more to that verse and context and everything that it's about interweaving. Yeah, and I think that particular verse, I keep getting these mixed, it's 1 Peter 3, but then there's also one in 1 Timothy. If I remember correctly, it's basically saying, let your adornment be not merely external. And so he's giving examples of like, if you're utterly taken up with you know how your hair looks and you know your dresses and jewelry and all this like you're really missing what it means to join yourself in godliness which is the real adornment but like the bible's not gnostic in the sense of um you know, the body doesn't matter, so who cares how we look kind of thing. And so I would even struggle to even see that passage as mandating no braiding. Like I think in context, I think you would have a hard case to make there. It's reading it kind of wouldn't leave to say that. Yeah, I'm not saying that's what you're doing, but yeah. But there are churches that read that very rudely. Yeah, there are a couple others we could bring up, since we're bringing up all the hard stuff that could press against what I'm saying. You know, greet one another with a holy kiss. Like, that's clearly a command. Like, is that something that is, you know, basically saying, greet one another warmly. You know, these are your brothers and sisters. Or literally, you need to, every time you see somebody at church, you need to give them a kiss. Again, I wish I had all the answers. I don't have all the answers. I know there are definitely churches that do that, too. That's right. Yeah, thank you. So anyway, maybe you're starting to see a few cracks in what I'm saying here. I hope you'll see those cracks not so much in my stance as in my understanding. But I think we need to be really, here's my burden before we move on. We really do need to move on. Anytime you hear a Christian dismissing something in the Bible as saying, ah, that's just that cultural thing, you know, or oh yeah, that was just the first century. Warning, like that is a sign that somebody is on their way to dismissing something very important in the Bible. We are, God has not changed, and God's law for us as the new covenant people of God has not changed in the past 2,000 years. Yeah. Right. Okay, yeah, so just to repeat the question, I mentioned dispensations of time, that doesn't have to do with dispensationalism. In fact, Westminster Confession 7, chapter 7, says, it uses the word dispensation to talk about the old and new covenants as different dispensations of the covenant of grace. This is not the same as what dispensationalists believe where Dispensationalists really divide those two covenants, old and new, and basically say there are now two peoples of God governed each by their own covenant and each with their own inheritance. The old covenant people still being in existence today, the old covenant still being in effect today, and therefore Israel should have the land, literally the land of Palestine, land of promise, today. And anybody who stands against Israel, say with the people of Gaza, is like opposing God. and then the New Covenant people, according to dispensationalism, they get the new creation. That stance, dispensationalism, radically wars against so much in the Bible. I don't have time to really refute that here, but I'll mention I did a Sunday school class on the biblical theology of land, like, I don't know, a year ago, that really tried to dismantle that. Okay, now, let's actually use the principles, if we can even recall the principles. The process is, how does this law reflect the unchanging character of God, and then how are things different now that Christ has come? So let's apply it. Let's see how many we can get through. And I always have this tension. Like on the one hand, I want to give you a handout so you can remember stuff. But on the other hand, I don't want to give you all the answers on the handout. So try not to look too closely at the handout right now. Besides, sometimes your answers go beyond what I've thought of and are even better than what are on the handout. And you might miss it if you just go with what I wrote. So if you look at Exodus 12, this is the great Exodus moment, when the people leave the land, when God appoints the Passover, so they slay the Passover lamb, put the blood on the doorpost, and in the midst of all that, all those commands about, here's what you're supposed to do so your firstborn aren't slain by the angel, he says this, Exodus 12, 14. This day shall be for you a memorial day, Excuse me. And you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations, as a statute forever. You shall keep it as a feast. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day shall remove leaven out of your houses. For if anyone eats what is leavened from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. On the first day, you shall hold a holy assembly. And on the seventh day, a holy assembly, et cetera. So he's giving the basic sketch, the basic provisions of the feast of the Passover. And he says, this shall be your statute forever. So, let's apply the law here. What is this showing us about God's character? What's this showing about what he wants his people to do? What's kind of the ethical core of this? Why is God appointing the Feast of Passover? It's so that we are thankful. So we remember to be thankful for his provision, for what he's done for us. Yeah, we want to be thankful. Israel should not be like, you know, enjoying all these gifts because they've been liberated and not remember what happened. Yeah. Yeah, Anna. I think it's pointing towards Christ on the cross, right? I mean, couldn't it be like more almost like a prophetic symbol of Jesus is going to be our Passover lamb? And so I want you to be thinking about this every single year, every single year, so that when he comes, you can see him, you can recognize what's going on. Awesome, yeah, and I think, yeah, that's something that's going on basically in every single one of these laws, actually, is wanting us to look forward to Christ and to anticipate the greater deliverance that is to come. That's sort of implicit here, but it is very much there in the whole of the Bible that there's gonna be a greater deliverance. Yeah, and and so there's basically like God doesn't he says this will be for you a memorial day And you need to remember what God has done for you. And even there's a way in which it's bringing them into the story of Israel, even hundreds of years later. So that all the Israelites, you know, saying, living hundreds of years after this event, are still in a sense reliving the event. Why? Because they also are eating the unleavened bread because Israel needed to leave in haste. They were making a new beginning where the Levin, you know, the way Levin works is you always have your starter that you kind of keep propagating. Well, they're starting over. And they're not going to have that old starter from the old land, the old life. And so now they're kind of reliving that. With zero Levin in their house and in their bodies. They're making, they're remembering the Exodus was this new beginning and they're even like enacting that. Yeah, thank you. And you just more or less kind of touched on what I was going to say is that God also gave us these physical things to handle, to remind the people of Israel and even with our sacraments to remind us that these are, you know, they were very real. There's a reality behind the sign. and the sensible signs show us the spiritual realities behind them. Yeah, good. Just as we taste the bread, taste the wine, and take them into ourselves, we are to receive by faith those things that they represent. Yeah, good, yes, there's a kind of a sacramental quality to the Passover. They are very much united, not just to Israel, but to the salvation of God for Israel. And so, like, there's this emphasis, we need to remember God's saving acts, and yet the second question is, what's changed now that Christ has come? Well, what's changed is that Jesus has now inaugurated the new and better Exodus. So Jeremiah 23 even tells us that how we remember God's saving acts is about to undergo a major transformation. I mean, just look what it says. Jeremiah 23, 7. Behold, the days are coming when they will no longer say, as the Lord lives, who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt, but as the Lord lives, who brought up and led the offspring of the house of Israel out of the north country and out of all the countries where you had driven them. And so this new and better Exodus that the prophets speak of, and that Jeremiah styles as being out of the north country, is what Jesus comes and fulfills when he sets us free from bondage to sin. So like what is the fulfillment of the exile coming to an end? Jesus coming and dying for us to break the power not of any this worldly ruler, but the ultimate bondage we're under, bondage to sin. And so Christ, our Passover lamb, has been offered. He has taken away the sin of the world. And so when we remember God's saving act, it would actually dishonor Christ to say, now we're going to remember the exodus out of Egypt. What? You're remembering the first exodus when the second exodus has happened, the great and better one. And so we need to remember God's saving acts. But that ordinance that says, you know, we shall do this forever, really that anytime you see the word forever in the Old Testament, sometimes you need to read it with some nuance. The word can really just mean kind of indefinitely in the future. And so like what changed, right? What changed is that now the ultimate exodus has happened, the ultimate passover has been offered, and so we remember in the Lord's Supper. That's particularly what Jesus has commanded of us. This do in remembrance of me. And so the great and elaborate Passover festival has now been massively simplified into this incredibly simple thing that we do. Giving and receiving bread and wine in the name of Christ, remembering Christ. There's no elaborate lamb being offered, there's no bitter herbs, there's no seven days of no work and the solemn festival on the first and the last day. All those particulars were part of the Old Covenant Passover. They're all important and they all have really interesting significance. but they're not things that are bound on us today. So any questions on how we thought through the Passover law? Is this starting to click a little bit here? We're not ignoring this law, it's teaching us, it's reminding us like, hey, we need to be serious about remembering what God has done, like this is part of what God has commanded his people. Okay, let's do another law, Deuteronomy 21. This is one of these shocking laws. You're like, wow. So Deuteronomy 21, 18. If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and though they discipline him, will not listen to them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives. And they shall say to the elders of his city, this our son is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey our voice. He is a glutton and a drunkard. Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear and fear." So what is this showing us about the character of God? I'm not sure I can answer your question, but what struck me instantly was the parable of the story of the prodigal son and how, wow, this guy was a drunkard, he was a glutton, yet he was welcomed back. Yeah, thank you for that. That actually is an extraordinary connection to this text. it will have relevance for what we're about to talk about. Yeah. God is holy. All ten of the commandments really matter to God. What was the consequence for egregious disobedience to one's parents? It's not like you're murdering somebody or something like that. No big deal kind of thing. God says this is a really big deal. And to the point that if it gets this bad, as bad as it's describing here, that the death penalty is prescribed. And so if you think that God cares about honoring your father and mother, you can say, uh-huh, a lot. And just pointing forward a little bit, do you realize Jesus died on the cross, capital punishment, he died on the cross for your disobedience to your parents, your dishonoring of your parents. That's what God thinks of your sin, right? And so it's urging zeal for honoring our parents. listening to them when they rebuke us, not blowing the wad, using all their resources to just live for our own pleasures, being a glutton and a drunkard, right? All these things are in there. And yet the part there about so you shall purge the evil from your midst and all Israel shall hear in fear is actually a helpful pointer for how we can think this through in the new covenant. So let's just read for a moment 1 Corinthians 15, 11. He's talking about, sorry, 1 Corinthians 5, 1 Corinthians 5, 11. He's talking about this man who's in egregious sexual immorality, and he's actually a member of the Corinthian church. And Paul instructs them about how to do church discipline, not to associate with such a one. And then he says, verse 12, for what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. In other words, the unbelievers leave that to God. But then he says, look, you guys who are supposed to judge those inside, purge the evil person from among you. And that's in quotes in the ESV, rightly so. Because he's quoting from Deuteronomy, not just from our text, there's actually a bunch of places where it says this. So what's it saying about why Israel's supposed to stone these people? So that there would be no evil person among you. In other words, that you keep the holy land pure of idolatry and wickedness, hardened wickedness. How is Paul applying that in the church? How do we live out that principle of purge the evil from among you? How do we do it? That's what church discipline is for. Yeah, church discipline is our enacting of this principle. So we're not having any stonings here. And the reason for that is not because God's now going light on sin. And in fact, if you understand church discipline as the equivalent of Israel stoning, then you will start to understand, wow, when I am under the discipline of the church, it's the equivalent of being basically put to death, like cut off. And yet it's better, right, because, and this is part of one way in which the new covenant surpasses the old, you're actually not put to death physically. So even though you're being declared spiritually dead when you're excommunicated, we no longer recognize you as one of the living body of Christ, there's actually still hope for you. And that Paul even says that in 1st Corinthians, so that, you know, I delivered him over to Satan in order that he might be saved. And so that hope that the person who's been put out is part of why we do church discipline is like, look, you can't have your sin. And in this case, we would say, you can't have the sin of dishonoring your parents in this egregious way without repentance. Like you can't have this without, and still be a member of the church. You can't have this and Christ. Because we love you so much, we're not going to pretend you can continue in this sin and then take the Lord's Supper. And that's love when we say that. Because if you finally repent of that and we welcome you back, then you really have been delivered from a great evil. And so I just want to remind us, Do you realize that disobeying your parents, if it becomes something that's an egregiously unrepentant thing, do you realize that that would be something that you could be subject to church discipline for? If it's at the level where it's so serious that it's disrupting massively the peace, purity, and unity of the church, God cares about this. Right? And so we need to reckon with, I think, this law and its high view of honoring our parents. I think I saw Ryan first. Go ahead, Ryan. I know our modern society would look at stoning as an egregious way to die. And I think that's a right way to look at it. It was meant to be, it was a deterrent. As to the new covenant discipline of throwing someone out of the church and giving them over to Satan, in some ways I find that to be worse. Because you're left to live in the ravages of sin and spiritual death. that will only choke you further and further. And for the elect who are thrown out, it is our hope that, as you said, that they would come back to the fold. They would be ravaged by the evil one to such a degree that they would cry out for repentance. Yeah, I think there is an element of like the significance of what we're saying and saying you are now outside not just of life, physical life, but of the true spiritual life that's in Christ. That's a way higher statement that we're making in Excommunication. Because when you're dead, I mean you're dead, that's the end of it. That's it, yeah. Living, it can just get worse from there. Yeah, thank you for that, yeah. Briefly on that topic of church discipline and everything, it's just the honor of Christ is at stake. And that's another reason that we have that in place, so that Christ's church is kept pure and he's honored. Exactly, and that's why Deuteronomy had this here as well. Yeah, and also I just point out, it says, all Israel shall hear and fear. This is another purpose of the discipline of the church, is so that all of us would realize, hey, but for the grace of God, so would I go. I shouldn't look down on this person who's being disciplined, but instead I should say, wow, that sin's in me too. I need to really be diligent to fight that sin and the power of Christ. So yeah, looks like we are out of time. I encourage you to keep your hand out because I will actually do the last two examples and then the general patterns thing because they're going to be super important for the rest of this class. But I hope anyway that the first two examples have given you some ideas of how we're both honoring the old covenant It is God's word, while at the same time, we're applying it differently from Israel because of where we are in Christ. So we're not throwing out the book of Deuteronomy, but we are saying that how we relate to Deuteronomy is different now because of Jesus. Hopefully that statement starts to make a little more clarity and sense to you. So let's pray and ask God's help. Lord, we do thank you for the guidance that the Bible gives us, that really the New Testament is such a faithful and helpful guide to how we are to read the Old in light of Jesus. And it really encourages us to read it carefully, to memorize and digest it, and to make it part of our lives and minds. We pray that we would honor the Old Testament law of God as Christians. and that we would uphold it and defend it. And at the same time, recognize that we are not keeping it in the same way Israel did. Lord, help us to be wise in these things. Help us to be holy. We know that that calling is even higher upon us as Christians than it was upon Israel. And we thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit who enables us to keep all that you've commanded. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.