Dr. Manny Arango (0:00)

Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the journey. To all my fellow pastors, I've got a question for you. Does your city know that your church exists? Listen, I get it. You're preaching, you're leading, you're discipling, you're doing ministry. We are in the same boat. And let's be honest, social media and marketing, not your strong suit. Not mine either. And that's probably the last thing on your mind. And that's why we chose to partner with Church Candy Marketing for our church. Plant the garden. We out here, y'all. They help churches get more actual guests walking through the doors on Sunday without your eye having to stress over ads or algorithms or trying to crack the social media code. Right now, Church Candy is helping nearly 400 churches reach their communities with simple invite ads. And it works. It's super effective. I can tell you from firsthand experience. So if you're tired of being your city's best kept secret, how about you do this? Go to churchcandy.com Manny and book a free consultation book a discovery call. Their team will break it all down and show you how to start seeing new faces at your church this Sunday. I'm in the trenches with you, trying to grow the church. And how about we just start a whole campaign? No more empty churches. So let's partner with Church Candy and get our churches full for the glory of Jesus. Let's go, family. Welcome to day one 27. We're in Deuteronomy, chapters four, five, and six. If you have not done the reading, go do the reading. Really, really good, strong, healthy reading today. If you have done the reading, good job. Let's dive in like always. I'm going to start with our context clues. Here we go. April 3, 1968. Some people may recognize that date. It is the day before Martin Luther King Jr. Is assassinated. Okay, so April 3rd, 1968. No. Or is it 1963? Wait a second. No, it's 1968. I'm wilding. I don't even know why I doubted myself. Okay, April 3rd, Martin Luther King Jr. Arrives to Memphis, Tennessee and gives his last speech. This is the day before he's about to die. Okay? He dies. He's shot to death. He's assassinated. On April 4th. But on April 3rd, he gives this eerie speech. It's almost like he knows he's going to die. This is actually lines from the speech. This is what Martin Luther King, Jr. Says as he's in a church in Memphis, Tennessee. Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now because I've been to the mountaintop and I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place, but I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go up to the mountaintop and I've looked over and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. Those are Martin Luther King Jr's last recorded words. Within 24 hours of these words, he'd be shot dead and killed at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. It's so eerie knowing that these are the words of a man who's about to die. It's like famous last words. When you know that someone's about to die, it's almost like you hang on every last breath. Like what they had to say was really, really important. What Martin Luther King Jr. Is doing here is playing on the theme of the end of numbers in the beginning of Deuteronomy. In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses is essentially saying, hey, I've seen. God's taken me up to the mountaintop. I've looked over. I've seen the promised land, and I'm not gonna go with you. And you could tell in the book of Deuteronomy, Moses is kind of bitter about that. I'm not gonna go with you. But I've seen the promised land, and God has something for you. And my job is to give you a final charge and a final push and encourage you and to prophesy and to preach to you, because I'm not going. But I've led you all this way. I've run my leg of the race, and I've seen what's ahead. And you totally are going to take the promised land. God's going to do it, but I'm not going to go with you. So it's a bittersweet moment It's a moment where a leader realizes, man, Joshua is gonna be the one to take you into the promised land because Moses struck the rock instead of speaking to it. He's not gonna be able to go into the promised land, but God allows him to go up to the mountaintop and see it. And now he's come down the mountaintop and he's giving three really, really, really important sermons to the people of Israel before they go into the promised land. That's the context that we need. And I've always, always, always loved. Sometimes when I teach Deuteronomy, I play this clip from Martin Luther King, Jr. Because it's an incredible moment where he knows he's not gonna be able to see the election of a first black president of the United States of America. He's not gonna be able to see all kinds of things, right, that he had a vision for, for racial unity and racial diversity. He's not ever gonna know, like, man, we commemorated his birthday as a national holiday. He's not gonna see any of that. But he gives this final charge the day before he's brutally and unfortunately murdered. That's the context of the book of Deuteronomy. Book of Deuteronomy is the exact same thing. It's three final sermons by Moses as he gives a charge to the people of Israel. All right? These sermons obviously fall into the format or the template of a suzerain vassal treaty. Okay? So a suzerain vassal treaty has six parts. Okay? The first part of a suzerain vassal treaty is what's called a preamble. Okay? That is the introduction of the suzerain. And this is Deuteronomy 5:6, which says, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt out of the land of slavery. God's iconic moment of salvation is that he saved the people out of slavery. You want to know who God is? I'm the God who has rescued you out of slavery. That is who I am. The second part of a suzerain vassal treaty would have been a historical prologue. This can be found in Deuteronomy 1:6 through Deuteronomy 3:29. 1, verse 6 to 3:29 is a historical prologue. It is the suzerain recounting all the ways that they've been faithful in the relationship with that vassal up until that point. Next, you're gonna get the stipulations of the covenant. What is gonna be required of you as a vassal in order to be in covenant relationship? The stipulations are going to Fall into two categories. Basic stipulations. And we're going to get. The Ten Commandments are going to be found in these basic stipulations. This is found in Deuteronomy chapter 4, verse 1 to 11, verse 32. Basic stipulations. Then we are going to get detailed stipulations. And this is where we're going to get the section of law code right in the middle of the book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 12:1, all the way to Deuteronomy 26:19. Now, what we're gonna see over the next couple of days is that Deuteronomy 12:26 is simply an expansion of the Ten Commandments, okay? And they're gonna be in order. Okay? So the Ten Commandments, you know, is the fourth commandment. This is the fourth or fifth. I don't wanna say the wrong thing. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm right. The fourth commandment. Yeah. The fourth commandment is about the Sabbath, okay? Keeping the Sabbath. So Deuteronomy chapter 14, verse 22 to 1617, are all going to be laws that expand the idea of the Sabbath. Then the fifth commandment is going to be about honoring parents. And so Deuteronomy chapter 16, verse 18 to Deuteronomy 18:22, all are laws expanding how exactly to honor your parents. Then the sixth commandment is not to murder. Okay? So Deuteronomy 19:1 all the way to Deuteronomy 22:8, are all expanding that sixth commandment not to murder. And on and on and on and on and on. So every commandment is gonna get an expansion in the detailed portion of the stipulations. Okay? So we got a preamble, we've got a historical prologue. We got stipulations, basic and detailed. Then we're going to have what's called a document clause. The document clause is going to require that a copy of this covenant or treaty be kept in the temple of the. Of the gods of both the suzerain and the vassal. And that is Deuteronomy chapter 27, verses 1 to 26. The whole. I'm pretty sure that's the whole chapter. And then for your classic Suzerain vassal treaties, you're going to have witnesses, okay? Other gods, okay? The sun, the moon, the stars. You're going to get witnesses. This is the only part of Deuteronomy that does not have a correlation with Hittite suzerain vassal treaties. Why? Because Yahweh has nothing as his equal that can swear by the, the validity of, of his covenant. Okay, it's kind of like, you know, every time I bought a house, you got to get a notary, a notary public. And so the notary is authorized to witness. You sign all these documents. You know, you're signing you for anyone who's purchased a home, you're just signing your life away for like 35, 40 minutes. Just, you know, signature after signature after signature after signature. And so the witnesses are there to. If, if, if the suzerain is making a treaty with a vassal, then you need gods. You need to create, you need to offer sacrifice to the gods so that the gods can witness this covenant being formed. Because a contract is an agreement between two people, but a covenant is a contract between those two people and God. But God doesn't have peers. Yahweh has no peers. Yahweh has no. Like, oh yeah, I'm friends with Buddha over there. Like, like, he's like, you know what? Call Allah and Buddha over to the treaty signing party. No, there. So there are no witnesses. There are no witnesses because Yahweh has no equals, no rivals, no peers, no friends. And then the last portion of a suzerain vassal Hittite treaty would be curses and blessings. And this is going to be Deuteronomy 28:1 to verse 68. Okay? We're going to get an entire chapter dedicated to curses and blessings. However, in Deuteronomy these are reversed. We're going to get blessings first and curses second. Okay? The order gets reversed from the normal format of the Hittite suzerain vassal treaty. All right, let's kind of get into some nerdy nuggets of just this section. Deuteronomy chapter 4, verse 6. I want you to go to Deuteronomy chapter 4 and we're going to read verse 15. You say, so this is, this is, this theme continues. You saw no form of any kind the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb. The Lord did not speak to these people at Horeb. Okay, so. But he did because he spoke to their parents. Okay? You saw no form of any kind on the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb AKA Sinai, out of the fire. Therefore, watch yourselves very carefully so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol in image of any shape. Those words idol and image are inextricably connected. Okay? Idols have to be made in the image of the God that they represent. Okay, so idols and image, like, I mean, these, these may as well be like interchangeable terms. Okay, Idols and images. So when God says, don't make for yourselves any graven images, he means idols, all right? These words are the same idea. Idols were always made in the image of the God they represented all the time, whether formed like a man or a woman, or like any animal on the earth, or any bird that flies in the air, or like any creature that moves along the ground. So don't make any of these things. Don't make them in the form of a man, woman, animal, nothing. And when you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon, and the stars, all the heavenly array, do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshiping things the Lord your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven. But as for you, the Lord took you and brought you out of the iron smelting furnace out of Egypt. Iron smelting furnace. What in the world? All right, let me make a. Here's my nerdy nugget. Let me make a connection for you. What do you need in order to cast idols? In order to make an idol of a God? Okay. In order to make an idol in the image of a God or goddess, you need an iron smelting furnace. That's what you need. So the way that you fashion an idol in the fire is you get an iron smelting furnace and you get that idol that's gonna be made of gold or silver or bronze or whatever kind of metal, and you melt it down, you fashion it. So you have to have an iron smelting furnace in order to create idols, to create idols made in the image of the gods that they represent. So what is Yahweh saying? He's saying Egypt was your iron smelting furnace, and I formed you into my image. You are my idols. So when people practice idolatry, it's not just that they are worshiping a graven image. It's that they are abdicating their responsibility of being the graven image. God does have idols. God does have images. They're called us, you and I. Adam and Eve were made in God's image. That word image is a provocative word. The word image there is supposed to make us think, oh, we're made in his image so that we could be his idols. Okay? And creation is designed to be God's temple. So because the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, and because the creation is his temple, every temple needs a what? An idol. So God places Adam and Eve to be his image bearers in a temple called Eden. Now, this same metaphor, the same imagery is being talked about again in Deuteronomy. And God is saying, hey, I use the iron smelting furnace of Egypt. But as for you, the reason you don't need to go fashion idols in order to worship me is because you are the idols. When people see you, they're supposed to see me. You are supposed to reflect my glory and how you carry yourself. The laws that you institute for your society. Everything about you is supposed to point glory or direct glory to me. You are my idols. Here's another slight caveat. Idolatry is not just worshiping other gods. So like BAAL or Asherah, it's worshiping the true God the wrong way. So if I worship Yahweh, but try to use graven images or idols in order to worship him, God says that's how the Egyptians worship, that's how the Canaanites worship. But worship is not about what makes you feel comfortable. That's like, there's certain people who are like, yeah, but I just need these songs, I need this playlist in order to worship. Or I need the worship leader to sing these songs. Or man, my favorite worship leader didn't lead worship at church today. And God is kind of like, wow. Like imagine, imagine God is asking these people to worship in a very, very uncomfortable way. No one in the ancient world worshiped without idols. They didn't worship without graven images. But these people are supposed to worship in faith, not beholding anything with their eyes. But they didn't think that the idol was a God. They thought that the idol represented a God. So they believed. Yeah, you know, BAAL is up in the sky somewhere. But we're gonna create an idol that represents BAAL by pointing our worship at the idol, it's actually worshiping baal. They didn't think that this idol was baal, they thought that the idol represent baal. And so that's how they were comfortable worshiping. It was very ordinary and common and comfortable to worship with the assistance of an idol. Man, I can't worship baal cause he's up there and I've never seen him. But you know what? This idol looks like him. So I'm gonna worship this idol and I'm gonna direct all my worship to, to baal, but I'm gonna do it through the idol. And God says, don't worship me that way. Cause anything that you make will fall short of the totality of my glory. There is nothing your human hands could ever make that will do God justice. So do not even try. I don't care how you like to worship. Cause worship's not about you. I don't care what gets you in the mood. I don't care what helps you meditate. Worship's not for you, and it's not about you. Worship is for God and it's unto God. So idolatry is not simply worshiping other gods. It's worshiping the right God in the wrong way. And there are people who worship the right God the wrong way. I have met Christians who say things like, I connect with God better, man. When I smoke weed, it's like, oh, got it. You're trying to worship the right God, but you're trying to do it your way. Tithing is a way that we worship God. So there are people who are like, no, I don't believe in tithing, but I give an offering. Oh, got it. You're trying to worship the right God, but you're trying to do it your way, man. I love God, man, but I don't know about that forgiveness stuff. Oh, got it. You're trying to worship the right God. You're just trying to do it your way. And God says, we don't worship me in your way. You may as well be worshiping the wrong God if you're gonna worship the right God the wrong way. You don't do this your way. I don't care what your way is. There's a prescribed way to encounter me, to interact with me, to talk to me. It's like when people, you know, there's. There's a lot of people who just like, feel comfortable calling God she and her and using feminine pronouns. And I'm like, God has preferred pronouns. It's he, him. That's God's preferred pronouns. They're masculine. God's like, I'm a father. And even that's anthropomorphic language. But God's like, no. When you talk to me, don't call me mother, don't call me she. Don't call me her. Like, you don't get to approach me your way. I don't really care what makes you feel comfortable because worship's not for you and it's not about you. Bible nerds. I have an announcement. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos, releases May of 2025 in pre. Orders are officially open. When I began to learn Genesis in its proper context, I learned that the creation account is not primarily about God creating something out of nothing, but rather God bringing divine order to the chaos of the cosmos. That one nugget was a game changer for me because I've been preaching to all the kids in my youth group that peace was a solution for their anxiety. But really, God's solution to chaos is never peace, but rather order. Peace isn't something that you stumble into, is something that you intentionally step into. And that starts with aligning your life with God's order. I think that this book is a game changer. It's nerdy, it's practical, it provides a very contextual understanding of the book of Genesis. And if you grab a copy, you'll learn why there's a huge dragon on the COVID Head to the link in the show notes to pre order or head to crushingchaos.com to see the really dope trailer that we made for this book. I think it's time for you to crush, crush the chaos in your life. And that starts with grabbing a copy of this book. Now back to the podcast, Iron Smelting Furnace. He's saying you are actually the, the, the thing that bears my image. And then we get the Shema. Okay, Famous Deuteronomy, chapter six, verses one through five. We're gonna get the Shema here. O Israel, Lord your God is one. Maybe we'll talk about that in a couple days. It may be a little out of order, but I don't want these episodes to get too long. All right. Timeless truth. God always communicates in whatever medium or method we will understand best. So when God is communicating with us, he'll use whatever he needs to use to communicate in our language. So he used the Suzerain vassal treaty because that's what everyone would have been comfortable with. But. But when we communicate with him, we don't use what we're comfortable with. We use the prescribed methods that God has actually set in place. Okay, so when he talks to us, God is incarnational. He'll use a treaty. He'll talk in a way that's consistent with Hammurabi's code. He'll talk to you in ways that you understand. But when you talk to him, you don't talk to him in ways that make you feel comfortable. You talk to him in the ways that he's actually prescribed. The suzerain vassal treaty is covenant language. The unfortunate reality is that current modern Western American culture is built on contracts and convenience. So we understand contractual relationships and we understand convenient relationships, but we don't understand is covenant relationships. And we'll get into that as the days progress. We live in a covenant breaking culture, which is seen by the rampant popularity of divorce in our culture. And Deuteronomy is gonna talk about divorce, and we are gonna talk about divorce. But I gave you context clues for today's reading. I gave you some nerdy nuggets. And our Thomas truth is that God communicates to us in ways we understand and we communicate with him in the ways he has prescribed, not in the ways that make us the most comfortable. All right, if you're not on a streak, you can start one. If you already did day 127, all you gotta do is add day 128. Let's get two days in a row going. Let's get a streak going. If you are on a streak, if you are, especially are on 127, day streak. I'm so proud of you. I'll see you right here tomorrow as we keep trekking through the book of Deuteronomy. Love you guys. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show at thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram hebibledepartment. If you enjoyed this episode and wanna dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses at thebibledepartment. Com. We'll see you back here tomorrow.