Automatic Transcript Generated:
Speaker 1
So Marie is asking why did some rules from the Old Testament to exist? Why are things included in the Old Testament that do not pertain to us today?
Speaker 1
Yup, Yup. And thank you, Reef. Right. Asking because I know so many people struggle with this or ask this, why is there this? And you hear a lot of people say we don’t even need the Old Testament. We just need the New Testament. That’s what’s applicable to us today. And I’m not saying this put you down. Again, thank you for asking, but this is one of these questions with a lot of assumptions in it that I think the Angels, whenever they hear an asset, they’re like, what are you talking about? Because the whole Bible is an amazing gift for us. We just don’t know how to read it. We talked about earlier, like, there’s this veil that’s covering the world. And Paul talks about this veil that covers people’s eyes when they read the Old Testament. He said that was a problem of the Jews during Jesus time. And guess what? It’s still a problem for even us Christians today. It’s a matter of really understanding. How do you read the Bible? How does it open up to us? How do we pull out the huge truth that God wants us to have? Like, we’re just talking about Samson.
Speaker 1
Right. And old story, old test. But isn’t it relevant to us today if we put ourselves in his position or even just think of how does that story be translated into a modern world? But this question Marie asked is a bit more about, I think, also the laws, right. Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, all these long laws that don’t seem to apply anymore. But I’ll tell you, I’m a lawyer, and a lot of those laws and those books are actually laws that are on the books here in the United States or other countries. That’s the law that we follow even today, like laws against defamation, safety laws, health regulations. We have that in society today. So it’s not that God did some crazy laws back then, and thank goodness we’re not honored them anymore. No, I shall not murder.
Speaker 3
We’re not supposed to murder today, even though.
Speaker 3
Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 3
In the Old Testament.
Speaker 3
Don’T steal, don’t kill, don’t lie. I mean, we have all these laws still today, and even under the laws of Moses, too, all those other codes and regulations thing, some of them are still quite relevant. But what about the holidays? What about those things? Let’s talk about it. So first verse I want to bring up is 2 Timothy, 3:16-17, and it reads all Scripture. Let me go back and say that all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly finished unto all good works. So why is it there? Why do we have scripture so that we can be made perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. It’s all there to make us a better person, help us to learn about God and have a better relationship with him that will transform us. And then if we go to Colossians, sorry, one Corinthians ten versus eleven to twelve. If you read actually this whole chapter of chapter ten, Paul is citing all these different stories about the Hebrews, the Israelites out in the wilderness when God gave the laws and other stories in the Bible, in the Old Testament.
Speaker 3
And he says, now all these things happen to them, to the Israelites, to the people in the Old Testament as examples that they were written for our admission upon whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore, let him who thinks he stands take heed less he fall. So these things, these examples in the Old Testament are there for us in the end times us now that we will take heed. These are warnings for us to keep us from falling, to keep us from going as strange, to keep us from messing up, to keep us from doing the same stupid things Samson did. Why not let us learn from other people’s mistakes? But what about the law? So Colossians 2:16-17, it says, So let no one judge you in food or drink or regarding a festival or new moon or Sabbath. Right? So all these things to talk about, this is the law of Moses stuff, not the Ten Commandments, but all these codes, regulations, rules, which are a shadow of things to come. But the substance is of Christ. What does that mean? All these things were serving a purpose of telling us of what was going to come in the future.
Speaker 1
And actually, I think some of these things have not even yet been fulfilled. They will be very shortly, but they’re telling us something to come. They’re almost like prophecies many stories or I heard one person compared them to it’s like a play that the Israelites were acting out. And by acting it out, they were experiencing something that’s going to come. It’s telling them it’s giving them information, God’s giving them another way of learning. It’s incredible, right? Tactile learning. And this is also telling him about Christ. And Jesus came and said, I did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill the law. The law was fulfilled by Christ. So these things aren’t done away with. In fact, they’ve been magnified. And we now have to go beyond this law. The law now is not written in tablets of stone. The law is now written on our hearts. Jesus in Matthew five, in the Beatitudes, does it say, oh yeah, just be a nice person. Just go easy. Now he raises the bar in every way. And at the end he says, don’t just love your neighbor as you love yourself. I mean, that was the Old Testament law.
Speaker 1
Jesus says, I give you a new commitment now to love as I have loved you. So the New Testament is just upping the bar, upping the game, upping everything. That’s really what the New Testament is about. And the New Testament, if you read it starting from Matthew and all the way to Revelation, it’s non stop referencing the Old Testament. The New Testament really isn’t necessarily introducing new theology. What it’s doing is showing you the theology that was there in the Old Testament that the Jews and the Hebrews were blind to. And God was foreshadowing. He says, I’m eager, I want you to get to this place. I’m going to do these things. And it took like an Apostle, Paul and Peter and James and all these writers of the New Testament to open our eyes to these things, and especially Jesus by his teachings to really open it up to us. So, yeah, that’s my take. And when you understand these things and you go back and read the Bible, and suddenly now, every single word, every little story, every little thing is just going to have so much bigger significance because it is so relevant for us today.
Speaker 2
Definitely. Yeah. When I think about all those laws in the Old Testament, when you think about also just the context that they were written in, like you’re saying, if it’s the law of Moses and what was going on in that time.
Speaker 3
Like they were slaves.
Speaker 2
Like, they had completely lost the message of God and Salvation by this point in time. They were slaves for hundreds of years, and they weren’t even keeping the Sabbath anymore. They had lost so many things. And that’s why God had to lay things out. So in such detail. And just like you’re saying, a lot of these things that pertain to the temple, that was done away with it was just to show truths and other things. But God wants us to now understand these from the heart. And Jesus sums it up, that the law is to love God and to love our fellow man as ourselves.
Speaker 1
Exactly.
Speaker 3
To get to that point, I think we’re good.
Speaker 2
Then we’re fulfilling the law.
Speaker 1
That’s the everlasting gospel right there.
Speaker 2
And I’m so grateful that God has blessed us with that truth, that God is love.
Speaker 3
And that’s what he wants. His whole law is a lot of love and a law of Liberty.
Speaker 2
And it’s because God loves us, that he gives us some boundaries. But again, it’s only for our good, just like a loving parent would do for their children.
Speaker 3
So.
Speaker 2
Just like the rules you give your toddler are going to be different than the rules you give your teenager. And so sometimes I think, too, when you think of why were some of the rules different than now, it’s just based on where we’re at in Earth’s history, too.
Speaker 1
And actually there’s a Bible verse on that. Paul, I think, outright says but maybe Romans that the law was given to the Israelites sort of as like a caretaker or like a nanny. It was supposed to be their nanny where they were babies and now we’re in the New Testament and now we can handle the greater law that was shown to us through Christ and something that’s interesting too.
Speaker 2
I was just reading because when God gave God’s law which is the Ten Commandments written on stone by his finger he gives it first in Exodus 20 and we know that first law or those tablets of the Ten Commandments were broken because Moses came down from the mountain and sees the people in sin and he throws it showing that basically they broke the Covenant. But then we see God 40 years later rewrite those same ten Commandments in stone again in Deuteronomy and God says basically that he’s not done with Israel and what’s interesting is just because they didn’t fulfill the law, then God didn’t give up on his wall and say, let’s make a new law. No, it’s the same law. So the law of God is still binding.
Speaker 1
Exactly. It’s totally as well said the Bible is going to be eternal like it’s going to be there for us for all time, I believe. And God’s word is eternal. I mean, God’s word is just that’s why it’s so amazing because he’s God he could take the lives of people and somehow turn them into illustrations of Bible principles and he’s just working your life and now this person is forever example of this and that when you realize these things the Bible just becomes beyond disprovable of being the word of God and you realize there is an intelligence behind the whole book that brings it together and it’s a wisdom that’s beyond any earthly wisdom and it’s a wisdom that starts in Genesis and it ends, Revelation and it could be alive in us today.
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