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- [00:00]
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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.
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And join the Journey.
- [00:26]
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Family. We used church candy for our new church plant the Garden, and the response blew me and my team away. At our new church Plant the Garden, we ran simple invite ads through none other than church candy, and hundreds of people responded. Seriously. People who had never even heard of us, who had never met me or heard me preach. They saw an ad on Facebook or Instagram. They showed up to a launch party or launch team training. Some of them have joined our team. Here's the best part. A good amount of them have started giving and tithing, which means the ads have paid for themselves. Our church plant is growing, and it's because we chose the right partner. We didn't have to figure out marketing strategies or spend hours tinkering with ad settings. Church candy handled it all, and it worked. You might not be planting a church, but if you're a pastor who wants to see more new faces on Sunday. And by the way, I've never met a pastor who doesn't want to see more new faces on Sunday. It's time to check them out. How about you go to churchcandy.com Manny and book a discovery call, Let their team show you what's possible when the right people hear about your church family.
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Welcome to day 133. We're, like a couple of days away from being done with the book of Deuteronomy. I am so, so, so proud of you today. We Got Deuteronomy, chapter 27, 28, 29, 20, and 34.
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Pretty short, concise.
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Not like a bunch of narrative, but definitely a bunch of drama. These curses are a lot. If you've done the reading for today, you already know what I'm talking about. If you haven't done the reading, then you have no idea what I'm talking about. Which means you need to stop this video, stop the recording, stop the audio, Go do the reading for the day. One of the reasons that I love the book of Deuteronomy is because when, when you get later into the Old Testament, you're going to realize that the authors love this book of the law. So when they talk about the book of the law, that's not the entire Torah. That's not Genesis, Exodus, numbers, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. That's actually Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy is known as the book of the law. There's actually this moment here in 2 Chronicles, chapter 34, verse 14, where they find Deuteronomy. They find the book of the law. It's kind of been hidden. It says this while they. This is verse 14, chapter 34 of 2 Chronicles. While they were bringing out the money that had been brought into the house of the Lord, the priest Hilkiah found the book of the law of the Lord given through Moses. Hilkiah said to the secretary, shaphan, Shapan, anyway, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan. Shafan brought this book to the king and further reported to the king, all that was committed to your servants, they are doing. They have emptied out the money and that was found in the house of the Lord and have delivered it into the hand of the overseers and the workers. Verse 18. The Secretary informed the king, the prince, the priest Hilkiah has given me a book, Shaphan. Then read it aloud to the king. This is most likely Deuteronomy. This is probably not the entire five books of the Torah, because it seems like he read it out loud. Then the king heard the words of the law towards close. Verse 21. Go inquire of the Lord for me and for those who are left in Israel and in Judah concerning the words of the book that has been found. For the wrath of the Lord that is poured out on us is great because our ancestors did not keep the word of the Lord to act in accordance with all that is written in this book. So the finding of the law brings conviction. The finding of the law brings joy. The finding of the law, it creates a turning of the heart. And so I never want there to be a reaction to God's word or to his presence that is foreign to me. Right. There are times where this actually just recently happened. I was in Alabama. I was in Birmingham, Alabama. And the presence and the Spirit of God affects everybody differently. That's true. I want to make sure that everyone knows like, that's true. But I was in a worship service, and my wife was just. I mean, just crying like, she's clearly impacted by the presence and the power of the Lord, the Spirit of God. And I immediately thought to myself, man, is there something that I should also feel in this moment? Is there just something going on in her life? And if that's true, that's awesome. That's great. And that's possible. That's likely. Or is there just something going on in the room that I'm not sensitive to? And so if Josiah is this impacted by just the hearing of Deuteronomy, I don't want to hear the exact same content and not be impacted. I don't want someone to hear Deuteronomy and it cut them to their core, and it bring conviction and it bring love for God, and then I hear the exact same book, and it does absolutely nothing and has no impact on me. Okay, so I do think there's a. There's a. And I'm not saying that all scripture should have the same impact on every person. I'm not saying every song would have the same impact on every person or that every Sunday is going to have the same impact on every person. However, even though that is true, there still needs to be a level of accountability where you start to go, wait, am I missing something? And if Josiah is so impacted by the book of Deuteronomy, but I find it to be boring, then I may wanna ask some difficult questions, like, man, am I not understanding the cultural context? Have I become, you know, have I become dull? Have I become calloused and insensitive toward the words of God and the things of God and power of God and the presence of God? So that's kind of just like my caveat, I guess. That's like the first half of my context clue. Second half of my context clue is the curses of Deuteronomy, chapter 28, seem so extreme and long. Okay. These curses are not short and harsh. And honestly, they may make some readers feel really, really uncomfortable. Let's go to Deuteronomy, chapter 28, because the curses are way longer than the blessings. Okay, chapters two to 13 are gonna be blessings. Deuteronomy, chapter 28, verse two to 13 are gonna be blessings. From chapter 28, verse 16, all the way to verse 68. Yo, chapter 28, verse 16 to 68, is going to be curse, curse after curse after curse. So go all the way to 28, and let's start at verse 16, and then I'll kind of give you some context for these. Man, you will be cursed in the city, cursed in the country. Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed. The fruit of your womb will be cursed. Crops of your land, calves of your herds, and the lambs of your flock. You will be cursed when you come in and curse when you go out. Verse 29, at midday you will grope about like a blind person in the dark. You will be unsuccessful in everything you do. Day after day, you will be oppressed and robbed with no one to rescue you. You will be pledged to be married to a woman, but another will take her and rape her. Oh my God. Yo. You will build a house, but you will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you won't even begin to enjoy its fruit. Painful boils cannot be cured, spreading from the soles of your feet to the top of your head. The Lord will drive you and the king you set over you to a nation unknown to you or your ancestors. Because of the suffering that your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters. You'll be cannibals. You'll turn into cannibals. Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children. And he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating. He's going to eat his own children because he's so hungry. He's not going to share with nobody. It will be all he has left. Because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of all your cities, the most gentle and sensitive woman among you, so sensitive and gentle that she would not venture to touch the ground with the sole of her foot, will begrudge the husband she loves in her own son or daughter the afterbirth from her womb and the children she bears. For in her dire need, she intends to eat them secretly. Because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of your cities. I mean, yo, the curses in Deuteronomy chapter 28 are prolific. I mean, if God was a battle rapper. Okay, this is. This is on some. This, this is. This is harsh Family.
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The wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos is out now and available everywhere. Books are sold. Literally. Today I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble or you can go to a Books a Million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is going to be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode.
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So with no context, I think these can be like really, really difficult to maybe read. I don't know if anybody else like having kind of the same, I don't know, issues that, that I was having. So that's before I kind of got some context. So let me give like big context clues. There's this thick three volume set that I actually have in Logos. I don't know that it's going to help that. I like, show you the COVID Yeah, it may actually. If anybody's like looking for something to add to their library, it's called. This is a three volume set called the Context of Scripture. I kind of zoom in. Like it's a three volume set that kind of looks like that. I've got a physical copy somewhere in here. I won't try to find it. But I also have like a set and Logos and it's got a bunch of just like ancient documents in here. And so they actually have a bunch of Hittite treaties. Okay. So if I like open up this resource in Logos, I can look at and all the Hittite treaties between Man, a bunch of different kings. Okay, so there's a treaty, I can't even pronounce these names. The treaty between Mursali and Dupi Tesub. Okay, There's a treaty between Hati and Musali. And then here's my favorite one, Supi and Aziru, okay, Form a treaty. Anyway, there's a bunch of treaties and they've been preserved in the original language. And so you can clearly begin to see all of the portions of a Hittite treaty that we talked about probably days ago. Historical prologue, stipulations, preamble, like all the sections are there. And when you get down to the curses in the blessings, all they go ham. Like, I mean, they go in and you start to realize, oh, like Deuteronomy. It's not just that Yahweh just hates these people and is like a scorned lover who's like, I am going to destroy your life in existence and rip you off the face of the planet. Like, the language may seem extreme and it may seem like a lot, but actually in context of a covenant, these curses were never meant to happen because.
- [13:51]
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A covenant is something that we in.
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Our modern society feel comfortable breaking. But in an ancient world, a covenant is something that is Unfathomable to break. It is not even fathomable to break a covenant. So you. The curses that are a part of every normal covenant, A, are there to show how serious the covenant actually is. But B, it's almost like it doesn't matter how extreme these curses are, because I, I have zero plans on breaking covenant with my suzerain if I'm a vassal. And so once you start to put these extreme like statements into some context, they're less jarring, they're still like attention grabbing for sure, but they're less like disorienting. And so, okay, those are my context clues. Now I do want to go back to yesterday because once we get to chapter 23, verse 19, all the way to 24 7, this is all going to be about stealing, okay? So obviously Yahweh is going to say, do not steal. Okay? That is going to be the eighth commandment. Do not steal is the eighth commandment. But underneath, do not steal. We're going to have interest on loans, we're going to have divorce. You cannot get this. I actually want you to go here, go to Deuteronomy, chapter 23. I hate going back to a previous day's content, so I feel like it's a little disorienting, but I just felt like I had to kind of show you this from yesterday. Okay? Get this one. Verse 5 of Deuteronomy 24:5. This is what God means by don't steal. He doesn't just mean thou shalt not steal. This is what he also means, verse 5 of chapter 24. If a man has recently married, he must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him for one year. He has to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he has married. Okay? How is that about stealing? Well, if a man is a newlywed and a woman hasn't even gotten a year to spend with this man and love this man and begin a family, and he goes off to war and he dies. You've robbed this, this girl, you've robbed this widow, you've robbed this girl of a life with this guy. If somebody's been patrolled and they've waited and now they're married, at least give them a year. Because anything less than that is what stealing, you're stealing the quality of life. And so I love kind of looking at these. We'll look at one more. Do not take a pair of millstones, okay? Millstones are for grinding. Mill, okay? Grinding grain. Not even the upper one as Security for debt. Because that would be taking a person's livelihood as security. Hey, I know you need collateral. Like, I know you need to take collateral if you are going to be loaning money. But you can't take a pair of millstones. Get this one. Not even the upper one. You can't take millstones. Why? Because it's a person's livelihood and you're stealing from them. If I steal from your ability to work, then I'm stealing from you. Okay, this is the wisdom. I really, really love that God just teases this stuff out. He says, of course, I could just tell you, don't steal. But it would be really helpful to kind of, like, explain what I would consider stealing. And so Yahweh says, hey, I consider taking millstones as security. Deposits on debt. I consider that. I consider that stealing because you're taking away from someone's livelihood. Okay, so Deuteronomy, chapter 27 to 30. We're nearing the end of the book. We've got. We've gotten all the blessings, we've gotten all the curses. We. And we've gotten the full law at this point. So the last couple of chapters, which we'll get into tomorrow, we're going to get the death of Moses, and we're going to get a song from Moses. And really, the last little movement from Chapter 31 to Chapter 34 is really going to set up the transition for Joshua to take command and to take over and to take the people into the land. And we'll get into that tomorrow. I'll see you right here as we jump into day 134, Deuteronomy, chapter 31 to 34 tomorrow. I hope that I helped you understand this section of Deuteronomy. And tomorrow we'll tackle an additional section of Deuteronomy. We'll close out the book.
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I'm so proud of you.
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Hey, if you're on a streak, do not stop. Like, don't stop. You're about to finish the whole Torah. You got one more day, and you finish the whole Torah, which is an incredible accomplishment if you're not on a street. Start one, please. Start one. Start one, start one. And my challenge is, if you do start one, let's see if you can get through Joshua without stopping. All right, family, I love you so much. I'll see you right here Tomorrow for day one 34, as we dive into Deuteronomy, chapter 31 to 34. It's going to be good. I'll see you tomorrow.
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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 want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.