The Law, the Church, and the Christian Life pt. 2

Transcription

1 LESSON 18 OF 24 OT511 Old Testament Theology 1 Richard E. Averbeck, Ph.D. Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois The following lecture has been produced for the Christian University GlobalNet and is copyrighted by Christian University GlobalNet, Grand Rapids, Michigan. All audio rights are reserved worldwide. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without the written permission of Christian University GlobalNet. The lecturer holds exclusive publication rights to all of the intellectual material in the lecture. Richard E. Averbeck, Ph.D.: We return now to Jesus and the Law and the fact that the Law is good from Jesus point of view. I want to make a few more remarks about that. Jesus readily and constantly, even in the six antitheses in Matthew 5 in the Sermon on the Mount constantly referred to the heart of the Law. What it means to have the Law written on the heart would be you don t only not just murder, but you don t hate either. The same thing is true with the commandment you shall not commit adultery starting in verse 27: You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to go into hell. Here we have this hyperbole again where He s stating it very strongly. He s not telling us to literally pull out our eye or cut off our arm, but He is telling us that we should take it very seriously. Now this is stating in terms of the focus at the heart of the Law what is the Law really about. It s more than just about actions, it s about what s in the heart, because what s in the heart leads to actions. But He also, in terms of dealing with the Law, gets down to some of the details. For example, He continues here in verses 31 and 32, It was said, whoever sends his wife away, let him give her a certificate of divorce [now this, of course, comes from Deuteronomy 24], but I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except for the reason of unchastity, makes her commit adultery, and whoever 1 of 13

2 marries a divorced woman commits adultery. Now, of course, there is a lot of discussion about this passage and the whole issue of marriage and adultery and so on. Let s begin by looking at the Law in Deuteronomy 24. Deuteronomy 24:1, When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, the expression is ervaht davar some indecency of a matter of some sort, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out from his house, and she leaves his house and goes and becomes another man s wife, the story is continuing here all of this is apodosis. It s leading up to the apodosis in verse 4. So she leaves his house and goes and becomes another man s wife. Then, in verse 3, and if the later husband turns against her and writes her a certificate of divorce too and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies who took her to be his wife, then her former husband who sent her away is not allowed to take her again to be his wife, since she has been defiled, she s gone to another man, so she has been defiled in relationship to him, for that is an abomination before the Lord, and you shall not bring sin on the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance. So the basic focus of this law is that the woman is married to the first man, he divorces her because of some indecency he finds in her, then she marries another man and he divorces her, or even if he dies, she can t go back for the first husband because basically the idea is that that s the same action as adultery. In adultery, if a woman is married to a man, she goes to another man and then comes back to her husband, that s adultery the move from one man to another and back again. And so here, what the concern is, to close any kind of loophole in this thing, you can t legalize adultery. You can t have a divorce, go to another man, get another divorce and come back again or come back to that first man after you ve broken that marriage bond. So it s a way of closing any kind of loophole in the laws against adultery. Now the expression certificate of divorce in relation to an indecency that is found in her Jesus refers to this certificate of divorce. That word indecency, that expression, is found in one other place, and that s really just in the previous chapter here in verses 23. I ll start with verse 12, chapter 23:12, You shall also have a place outside the camp and go out there, and you shall have a spade among your tools, and it shall be when you sit down outside, this is when he s going to go to the bathroom here, you shall dig with it and you shall turn to cover up your excrement. Since the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp. Remember the Lord is walking with them in the midst of the war camp. He s walking in the midst of your camp to deliver you and to defeat your enemies before you, therefore your camp must be holy; He must not see anything indecent among you [it s the same expression] or He will turn away from you. 2 of 13

3 Now what this means is some kind of nakedness of a matter, something s going on here. It s not clear what the expression actually means. In the New Testament passage, it s porneiea some kind of indecency. The context suggests that it could be anything from adultery to some kind of exposure and this kind of thing. Now in the New Testament world, which is being referred to in Matthew 5, there was a debate that went on between two major rabbis. One is Hillel, and the other is Shammai. Hillel believed that one could divorce his wife for almost anything, even for burning his food, for example this is actually referred to in the rabbinic literature. And then Shammai limits it to adultery. Now Jesus limits it to adultery here, but He even goes further, because in the Jewish context, if there was adultery, it s that you re required to divorce and even the whole issue of execution comes up if there is adultery. Jesus says it s not necessary. He s just saying you re allowed to divorce your wife for some unchaste reason. Now the context in Matthew 1 is important here, with Joseph and Mary as an example of thinking through some of the issues here. Matthew 1:18, Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph [so she s legally bound], before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly. Now we ve read in the Law already that this would be a case in which Mary should be executed, and he doesn t want that. In the Law, there s a lot of flexibility here. If the husband does not want the wife to be executed, he doesn t need to go through with that. There s a lot of flexibility built into this. Now Joseph wants to simply put her away secretly, quietly in other words, divorce her quietly. But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son; you shall call his name Jesus, and so on. The point is the angel appeared to him because he, as a righteous man, would naturally divorce Mary, and that is not what the Lord wants. So there s a revelation that s given to him a special kind of revelation. So what he s doing is he s dealing with this issue of divorce, even right there in the first chapter of Matthew. Jesus comes to this and says in chapter 5:31, Whoever sends his wife away, let him give her a certificate of divorce (this is from Moses in Deuteronomy 24); but I say that everyone who divorces his wife, except for the reason of unchastity, makes her commit adultery. Now in this what is sometimes called an exception statement what Jesus is saying is that s okay if there s been unchastity, adultery, whatever, then what you have is already a lack of fidelity. The marriage bond has already been broken. So what s natural? To give a certificate of divorce and to divorce. But if the marriage bond has not been broken to adultery, unchastity, then to divorce a woman would be to cause her to commit adultery in going and being 3 of 13

4 with another man; and the other man too, in being with this woman. It s not already been broken through previous adultery. Now if he divorces her, she is going to go have another man. The result is, he causes adultery to happen. And so what He s saying is: you divorce if the marriage bond has already been broken, but you don t do that unless that has in fact happened. Now there are other passages that actually refer to this as well. In Matthew 19, there s a parallel passage, starting with verse 1: When Jesus had finished these words, He departed from Galilee and came into the region of Judea beyond the Jordan; and large crowds followed Him, and He healed them there. Some Pharisees came to Jesus, testing Him and asking Him, Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all? And He answered and said, Have you not read that He created them from the beginning and made them male and female. And he said, For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So He quotes then from Genesis 2, So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate. They said to Him, Why then did Moses, see, they think they ve caught him in this now, They said, Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away? He said to them, Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning [from Genesis] it has not been this way. I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality [already this unchastity issue], and marries another woman commits adultery. If the woman has committed adultery, then divorce is legitimate because the relationship has already been broken. But it goes the other way if she has not committed adultery then he is causing the adultery that comes from another marriage. In the parallel context, in Mark 10, in verse 10 of Mark 10, In the house the disciples began questioning Him about this [again, this same issue that we just talked about in Matthew 19]. And He said to them, Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her; and if she herself divorces her husband [so it goes the other way too] and marries another man, she is committing adultery. So adultery goes either way, depending on which way the divorce goes, who gets the divorce, and so on. Then in Luke 16:18, we have another parallel: Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries one who is divorced from a husband commits adultery. Now this is not talking about a perpetual kind of adultery or anything like that. It s talking about, once you have done this, and you are marrying another person, then the act of coming together with that man or that woman is an act of adultery, unless there s already been the previous adultery, and then this was not anything new. Now, in this context, there s then this building up of these particular passages in 4 of 13

5 the Synoptic Gospels about this, and we get different angles on it, but the main point is real clear: that there is a limitation on divorce according to Jesus. It s the very conservative position, even more conservative than, say, Shammai, and He is very concerned that they think, really, from Genesis 2 and the original design of God in the first place. Now back then to Matthew 5, and [at] the end of chapter 5, there s an important passage that kind of helps us to see that Jesus goes beyond talking about the Law and talks more about how one should teach the Law. And this is what He is all about here. Remember back in verse 20, For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. So now He s talking about how those teachers of the Law are teaching the Law. And He is saying, here is how it should be taught. So in verse 43 of that chapter: You have heard that it was said that you shall love your neighbor [and then we get added to that hate your enemy, which is not part of the passage in the Old Testament], but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise in the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. So God shows grace and goodness to people who are even His enemies. So should we if we are going to be like the Father. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? (Matthew 5:46). In other words, anyone can love somebody that loves them back. The question for the one who is in the kingdom of heaven is: can you love someone who hates you or you have them as an enemy and could hate them? No, you should love them. That s what makes you different from other people in the world. It s no big deal if you love someone who already loves you. If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect (verse 47-48). Have a kind of love that overcomes all things. That s the idea here because that s the nature of God s love. So this is the way Jesus wants and does in His own teaching teaching of the Law. Now moving then to Paul, Paul and the goodness of the Law. There s some general principles of the Law s goodness that come out in the writings of Paul and the other writers of the New Testament beyond the gospels. Unfortunately, there are some of the same kinds of misuses and misunderstandings of the Law that the Jewish people used, that Jesus was rebuking, continued on into the church. And so in I Timothy 1, He wants to correct this. What s he s really talking about in this chapter is how do we teach talking about teachers of the Law. In I Timothy 1:3, As I urged you upon my departure from Macedonia, remain on at Ephesus so that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines, nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which gave 5 of 13

6 rise to mere speculation rather than furthering the administration of God which is by faith. So they re teaching, but they re teaching strange doctrines and myths and endless genealogical discussions, speculations. Verse 5, But the goal of our instruction when we teach the Law is love from a pure heart and a good conscious and a sincere faith. This really corresponds to Jesus two great commandments love God and love your neighbor. For some men [verse 6], straying from these things [these purposes, these goals in their teaching of the Bible], have turned aside to fruitless discussion, wanting to be teachers of the Law, even though they do not understand either what they are saying or the matters about which they make confident assertions. But we know that the Law is good [now, he s saying that the Law is a good thing], if one uses it lawfully, realizing the fact that Law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers and immoral men and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, with which I have been entrusted. So [He] wants them to be teachers of the Law, but He wants them to teach in such a way that corresponds to the goal, which is love from a pure heart, a good conscious, and a sincere faith. See, the Law is good if one uses it properly. The Law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers it s not to be used to condemn or to rebuke, or whatever, believers, that s the work of the Holy Spirit in the human spirit. The Law can guide believers, but there s no rebuke in the Law because we have been forgiven by what Jesus has already done for us. The issue is now the work of the Spirit in the human spirit according to the guidance of what is good, according to God s law. If this is going to be used to condemn someone this law it can be only used for unbelievers, and that s the point that he s making here in verses 8 and 9. Now there are three legitimate uses of the Law according to New Testament Scripture, and they have certain historical parameters to them. Now this is a long tradition in Christian theology to discuss the Law in terms of the three uses of the Law. So let s walk through them. The first use of the Law was that the Law was an essential part of God s original intention in regulating His relationship with Israel as a nation. The first use of the Law was to regulate Israel as a nation. It s not really transferrable to the church, because the church isn t a nation. It was meant to regulate the Jewish nation. The second use of the Law is the Law was effective of showing people that they were sinners. And this is a good thing, not a bad thing, if people are sinners and need to come to know the Lord. Now this does not mean that people who are in Christ never sin, but they would not be called the sinners 6 of 13

7 of the world. They would be called the redeemed who need to be sanctified. So this use of the Law to show sinners that they re sinful and in need of the Savior is the second use of the Law. This is one of the ways that the Law is good. It leads to repentance. Now we need to use the Law to condemn and convict sinners of their need for Christ, not to condemn believers. That s the negative point don t use it wrongly. The third use of the Old Testament Law is its use as a guide for the believer the one who already believes. Now I m going to walk through certain points here because they are really a summary of the issue of the goodness of the Law that we ve been discussing this first thesis. Ultimately, according to Paul, the purpose for teaching the Word of God is love, and we ve already talked about that passage a love that comes out of a pure heart, good conscious, and sincere faith (I Timothy 1:5). And the Holy Spirit uses the Law that He has inspired to be written to work on us, so we have a pure heart and a good conscious and sincere faith, to transform us so that we do love God and people well. Second, the Old Testament Law was in the Old Testament times, and still is presently today good. This is Romans 7; we ve already talked about that passage. In fact, it s not only good, but it s also useful according to II Timothy 3, where Timothy talks about the Old Testament Law and how it s got ongoing usefulness in teaching, rebuking, and in training equipping us. It also applies directly to the life of the Christian today in a new covenant written on the heart since. This is really how the Law comes across into the New Testament. The Lord, through the Holy Spirit, writes it upon the heart. And God sent his son to eliminate sin as a problem, in order that the righteous requirements of the Law that are in the Mosaic law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit (Romans 8:4). Those are the basic ideas and important issues that we need to deal with when we look at the goodness of the Law. Much more could be said about that. We need to move on, quickly, to the weakness of the Law. Now the Law always was good and it still is good and it s profitable and we never should compromise that principle. But we need to also say, just as strongly, that the Law is weak. It never has had the power to change a human heart, so therefore it s always had this weakness, because the human heart is corrupt does not necessarily live according to the Law. The Law cannot work in us to cause us to live according to the Law. Only the Holy Spirit can do that. That s why the Law is weak compared to the power of the Spirit to change a person s heart. Now the weakness of the Law in the Old Testament becomes clear in many different places. In the first place, it s assumed that when we have the Mosaic Law given in the Mosaic covenant context, that we re already under the umbrella (as the chart has shown when we discussed covenants of the Abrahamic covenant based upon God s work with Abraham and Abraham s faith trust in God Genesis 15:6). 7 of 13

8 This gets developed in the New Testament as one of the main places to talk about and to anchor a discussion about salvation by grace, through faith alone. Transformation happens through the work of the Spirit producing faith in the person. And in Romans 4 and Galatians 3, we see Paul using this to argue that salvation is by faith based on the grace of God, not by the works of the Law. How could it be otherwise since Abraham believed God and God had counted it to him as righteousness in Genesis 15:6 before there was the Law? So it could be not be based upon the Law. Also, it was even before Genesis 17. It couldn t be based upon circumcision either because in Genesis 15, Abraham wasn t circumcised either. So the arguments of the Jews in the New Testament days that the apostle Paul is dealing with cannot carry the day, because it s clear from the Old Testament itself that Abraham was saved by faith before circumcision or the Law. This is one of the basic ways that the apostle Paul preaches the gospel from the Old Testament the gospel of salvation by grace through faith. The Law, then, cannot work at the level of producing Abrahamic faith. No Law can change a heart, not even God s Law. It requires the work of God, through His Spirit, in the life of the person, to bring them to this. Nevertheless, it s still a good Law. It s a good standard to live by when you have Abrahamic faith. Now the preaching of the Law stands out in the Old Testament as well, especially in the book of Deuteronomy. In Deuteronomy we haven t really talked about that book directly so far; we want to talk about it a little here because it gets into this subject of the whole issue of how the Law actually was intended to work, even in the Old Testament. It was intended to work based upon faith, based upon true love of God. You will find in the appendix to these notes, a section on the treaty structure and a basic outline of the book of Deuteronomy. What we want to do here is walk through the statement of relationship section in Deuteronomy 4 11 in this book. And here we have four shemas. The shema that people are often familiar with is in Deuteronomy 6:4, which says, Hear O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! That verse reads shema yisrael Adonai eloheinu Adonai echad. Shema is the first word, Hear O Israel and so we call this the great shema. This passage goes on and continues. This is where we find based upon that principle that the Lord is one and the only God for us, verse 5, You shall love the Lord your God therefore with all your heart, and so on. That s where the first great commandment comes from. Now there are really four shemas in this section of Deuteronomy Deuteronomy If you go back to chapter 4:1, we begin here: Hear now, O Israel, that s the same word: hear, shema, O Israel, the decrees and laws I m about to teach you. Follow them so that you may live and may go in and take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you. So we have this exhortation to hear. Now this is the kind of thing that happens in preaching. Sometimes a preacher will go along and say, 8 of 13

9 Now here is an important point. Pay special attention to this! This is what shema is all about: Stop, pay attention here! He is expounding the Law here in Deuteronomy. He is not legislating the Law; the Law was already given 40 years earlier at Sinai. Now he s expounding, proclaiming the Law. This is what it says in Deuteronomy 1:5: Across the Jordan in the land of Moab, Moses undertook to expound this law, saying, to make it distinct, to expound it, to proclaim it, as opposed to legislating it. So that s what he s doing, and really what we have here is a set of sermons in the book of Deuteronomy, or at least sections of sermons. So we come to this passage then, with the first shema in chapter 4:1. The next shema begins in chapter 5:1, where again we read, Moses summoned all Israel and said to them: Hear, O Israel, the decrees and laws I declare in your hearing today. Learn them and be sure to follow them. The point, again, is we have this shema word right at the beginning, and this is another kind of Heads up, pay attention here. Here is where He s actually going to recount, again, the Ten Commandments. Now the third shema is the one that we re looking at here most directly, where it says in Deuteronomy 6:4: Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands; bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. This is the basic introductory section to this section of Deuteronomy. It s another shema statement, and the whole section kind of works out what that shema is about same as in the previous sections. We ll come back to that in a moment. The fourth shema is in 9:1, and it goes to the end of chapter 11. Again we have, Hear, O Israel [shema], you are now about to cross the Jordan to go in and possess nations greater and stronger than you, with large cities that have walls up to the skies. So he recounts some of the history here and says, You refused to go in at Kadesh Barnea 38 years earlier, now don t refuse again. Remember the drastic consequences of refusing to obey the Lord when He commands you to do something. So he s in this section of Deuteronomy Moses is preaching basic fidelity, obedience, love of the Lord. That s what this is all about this whole section of the book of Deuteronomy. Now let s return and walk through the principle command in 6:4-9, the third shema, what is called the great Shema. So the Lord is absolutely unique and 9 of 13

10 reliable. He s the only one. Therefore, if that s the case, focus all your devotion on Him. In other words, verse 4 sets up a principle, and the implications are, if He is the only Lord God, therefore why devote yourself to anyone else? The point is that you re to take every part of your life and focus it on devotion to Him. So we have in the statement, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. Now the word heart refers to the inner person. That includes all of the things that go on in you intellect, volition, emotions, and so on. Proverbs 4:23, for example says, Watch over your heart, for from it flows the issues of life. This is the place where you do all your thinking, the place where you make decisions, and that sort of thing. So in all of that area, you shall love the Lord your God. And then, your soul now that refers to the person. The word soul is hard to translate, but it refers to the whole person, including abilities, everything that you are as a person. And then a very unusual term at the end with all your strength is the translation that s given in the NIV. But it s actually a word that s an adverb love Him with all your exceedingly would be a normal translation of that word. In one of the targums, the Aramaic translations of the Old Testament done by the Jewish people early on in the Christian Era this Aramaic translation has, You shall love the Lord your God with all your mahamon. Now this is the word that s used in Matthew 6, when Jesus says, You cannot love God and mammon. And so what they suggest this means, at the end of verse 5, is that there is whatever you have in terms of resources to be devoted to the Lord is to be fully committed to Him. So if you have resources of any sort, they too are to be completely committed to him. That seems to be the idea. It s all your heart, all you think and feel, with all your abilities, and with everything that you have is to be focused on devotion to the Lord. Because who else is there to be devoted to? There s only one Lord (Deuteronomy verse 6:4). If, therefore, all your devotion is focused on him, you need to, verse 6, take His words personally. They should be on your heart: These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Now this is an expression that has to do with being preoccupied with what God has said. If you love someone, you pay close attention and take very seriously what they say. My wife keeps telling me that. The point is that there is a commitment to hearing what someone says if you really love them and this is one of the ways you show that you love the Lord is by paying close attention to His Word. So, in this course, when we pay close attention to His Word through this course and so on, this is something that truly blesses the heart of God taking His Word truly seriously. This is in fact, an act of true worship and devotion to God studying His Word seriously. That s the way it works. If someone pays close attention to what you say, hangs on your every word, you feel truly honored and blessed by that. That s true also, of God. Being preoccupied it needs to be upon your mind, that s the idea, upon your 10 of 13

11 heart. Now preoccupation would be a term for that. Now what I mean by that is if, for example, you could empty your mind of all thought and just have it go all blank and then let it go, and whatever comes back first into your mind, that s what you re preoccupied with. We need to be preoccupied with the Word of God; we need to be saturated with it in our lives. If that is the case, then the fourth step is naturally verse 7, where it says, Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Now it s only going to be natural to talk about them diligently and openly and effectively in your family if they re already on your heart, because you re fully devoted to the Lord because He is the only Lord to be devoted to. You only have one God; He is a single God. You focus all your devotion on him. That leads eventually to, you re going to be preoccupied with His Word, therefore you are going to talk about it. Now this word for teach is a special word. It s a word for teaching incisively, in a penetrating sort of way. Perhaps a good word would be to inculcate the Word of God into our home, our family, our children, in all walks of life. In other words, when you sit at home, when you walk along the road, when you lie down, and when you get up. And then, if that s true, you re just naturally going to display the Word of God publically in your life. This is taken by the Jews characteristically as a very literal binding these things on your arms in prayer so they have boxes that they ll bind on their arm and on their forehead in prayer. But that s really not (probably) what this is talking about. It s talking about living it out fully in all sorts of public occasions. In Exodus 13, we have this idea of binding on the heart, and it refers to talking about God s work in Israel at the festival of Passover and so on, where, that way you re binding it on your arm and on your head and so on. The point is that we re to live it out and to show who we are as those who belong to Christ. It is from this shema section, by the way, in Deuteronomy 6 and through chapter 8, that Jesus actually responds to the temptations of Satan in the wilderness in Matthew 4:1-11 and the parallels in the other Synoptics. He refutes all three temptations by quoting from passages: Deuteronomy 8:3, 6:16, and 6:13 in that context. Jesus, you might say it this way, is saturated with this section of Deuteronomy. Because what it does is it focuses on the main point of the whole covenant, the whole law, focusing your devotion on the one God, who is the only God that you believe in and that you worship. It s important to understand that here in the context of Deuteronomy where the Law is being preached, he s preaching it this way. See, true devotion to the Lord cannot really be legislated. It can only really be preached. You cannot legislate personal, moral, and spiritual righteousness. You can, however, give legislation that if people have this love of God and love of people the two great commandments what will happen is they will just naturally move in the direction of living out the principles of the Law, and that s really how the New Testament deals with this issue. If we have this 11 of 13

12 kind of love of God and love of neighbor, therefore you fulfill the whole Law and the prophets. And the Law and the prophets now are our proper guard in regard to all of this. So we have then, in Deuteronomy 6:5, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. Also in Deuteronomy 10, Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not stiffen any longer. So circumcision doesn t help, unless it s a circumcision of the heart. That is the point. In the Old Testament already, it was very clear that real devotion, real keeping of relationship with the Lord, was not based upon having the Law. It was based upon having Abrahamic transforming faith, and therefore the Law becomes a guide to people who already have faith. So the Mosaic covenant comes after the Abrahamic covenant. That s the way it was always understood to be. It comes out also in Hebrew 11, the faith chapter that refers to the Old Testament saints how they please God through faith, and by that faith, they lived out that faith. Therefore they did the works that were pleasing to God, based upon the faith, and that has power in the life, a transforming kind of power. We can see this also working through in Jeremiah 31, the new covenant, which we ve already talked about. The problem is that they didn t live according to the old covenant, the Mosaic Law covenant. Instead what they needed to do was have that Law (that s a good Law) written on the heart. That s what it says in Jeremiah 31. That comes through into the new covenant, inaugurated by Jesus, His death on the cross, and then through the power of the Holy Spirit gets worked into our lives based upon the Holy Spirit coming at Pentecost. In that new covenant day, there s going to be a time where the Spirit is going to come. In Ezekiel 36, the Spirit emphasis of that new covenant day is really what gets emphasized. So we have here in Ezekiel 36, starting in verse 22, the people are in exile in the days of Ezekiel specifically because they have not followed the Law; they have profaned the Lord s name. In other words, really given Him a bad reputation by not living according to His Law. So now in verse 22 of chapter 36: Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God, It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you went. I will vindicate the holiness of my great name which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, When I prove Myself holy among you in their sight. So He s going to act on behalf of showing His own name to be holy. Verse 24, For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands [the exile] and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on 12 of 13

13 you, you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you So now we re getting into this, all this cleansing and new heart, new spirit, similar to Jeremiah 31, but using the terminology of heart and spirit in a little bit different way. And I will remove the heart of stone from you and give you a heart of flesh, (Ezekiel 36:26) in other words, a soft heart rather than a hard heart. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes and you will be careful to observe my ordinances. You will live in the land that I gave your forefathers; so you will be My people, and I will be your God (Ezekiel 36:27-28). So He s going to put His Spirit in them in that day. This is looking forward to the new covenant day, like it s stated otherwise in Jeremiah 31, referring basically to the same thing. This comes together then in a certain passage in the New Testament, in II Corinthians 3. So now we move to the New Testament and the fact that this comes right on through this principle of the work of faith through the Spirit, being the foundation for real transformation anyway. In II Corinthians 3, we begin this passage where the apostle Paul is talking about his ministry amongst the Corinthians. It talks about them being a letter that is written from Christ, the result of our ministry. Now you get Ezekiel 36 and Jeremiah 31 mixed in this passage, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God. So we re talking about Ezekiel 36 there the Spirit of the living God writing on their hearts this covenant through this Spirit. Not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. Well that expression comes from Jeremiah 31, where the Law is going to be written on the heart. Ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit, so that we have this new covenant expression in Jeremiah 31. It s not by the letter but of the Spirit, for the letter kills but the Spirit gives life. So we re back to Ezekiel 36 again. So we get alternating references here in II Corinthians 3 to Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36. This course is a part of the curriculum offered through Christian University GlobalNet (CUGN). To learn more, visit us at So although the Law was and still is good, it is also weak. It cannot and never has had the power to change a human heart. It can t overcome our flesh, according to Romans 8; it cannot provide eternal hope, according to Hebrews; and it cannot motivate godly living. On the contrary, in our fallen nature, one of the very [important] points that we need to understand is that our fallen nature is corrupt; we are fleshly, so therefore, we are prone to rebel against God s Law. The only thing that can really change that is the work of the Holy Spirit changing our heart, our spirit, right in the basis of who we are our inner person. That s what Paul goes on and talks about then in Romans 6 8. All material in the preceding lecture is protected by registered international copyright and may not be reproduced in any form whatsoever without the written permission of Christian University Globalnet. 13 of 13