Sermon Tone Analysis

Today we are looking at the response of the people to the Decalogue and then understanding Paul’s negativity to the law.

The People’s Response

The people were frightened by all the sound, fire and smoke at the mountain knowing it to be God and so they said to Moses, you go or we’ll die.

Moses then functions as a mediator between God and the people and vice versa.

Listening to the words of Moses, then, was as if listening to the words of God Himself.

This listening was important for their welfare for it was more than simply hearing but obeying.

With that said, God and Moses were not saying that obedience was not the way of salvation but a response to have been saved.

This is not salvation by works, as is evidenced in the whole of Scripture but salvation that produces good works.

The people have been brought into a covenant relationship with God.

God brought the people to Himself by saving them from the Egyptians.

Notice the word ‘relationship’.

This is not firstly about the law, but relationship.

Most of what we have read here is the Good News of Moses and the rest is because of being brought into relationship with God.

Like all relationships it occasionally founders but God will, through discipline, keep bringing them back; this is part of the covenant promise to Israel.

Israel are to have faith in God mixed with awe and love, a life given to God.

God and Moses perceived the laws as comprehensible and achievable.

Not one of the commands is impossible.

God didn’t ask the Israelites to jump over nine-story buildings or to swim the Pacific.

No, every one of them is reasonable and doable.

If Israel will not keep the law—and we find out they won’t—it’s not the problem of the law; it’s not that the law is impossible.

The problem is in the Israelites’ hearts.

They do not have the will to obey.

Paul’s response to the law

What we have heard you would think, then, that the law is a very positive thing so, how do we interpret Paul’s negative version of the law?

Let’s go through the Bible verses concerned

Some Principles

(Taken, roughly, from Daniel Block)

Scripture: The Scripture cannot be broken.

Scripture: It’s unity

We recognise the essential, theological, and ethical unity of the two Testaments, a unity that is summarised in Jesus’ call for covenant commitment—that is, love—to God and to one’s fellow human being.

We have one Bible.

A friend of mine reminds me that the first principle of biblical interpretation is tear out one page, and that is the page separating the First Testament from the NT.

It is one story, one Bible, one God, one ethic, and it is summarised by Jesus: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your being and with all your resources, and you shall love your neighbour as yourself.”

That actually encapsulates the whole OT law.

What are God’s standards?

We recognise that without the background provided by the OT laws, Paul’s call for obedience to the law of Christ and Jesus’ call for adherence to the commands remain vague and empty.

In fact, without the OT law, if we commit ourselves to the law of Christ and the law of love, it often lands up being a completely subjective assessment of what that means.

Whatever God tells me in my heart, that’s the law of Christ; whereas harping back to the First Testament laws objectifies what that looks like.

The law of Christ is not antithetical to the OT law, nor is the law of love.

OT or NT or both?

Because we accept that Scripture is of God then we have to get Paul and the Psalmists to agree.

And the whole of Psalm 119 is about the law and how good it is.

176 verses!

So, is Paul right or the Psalmist?

Or both?

Law or faith or both?

What Paul says is in response to a particular group of people, called the Judaisers, who are trying to enforce the outward form of the law upon new Christian believers who are not Jews.

Paul’s point is that the law does not save.

Only faith in Jesus can save.

The law is not the way of salvation.

In fact, it never has been.

Trying to keep the law, whilst on the surface is possible, because of our hearts it is impossible.

The law cannot save.

It is what we do as a result of salvation.

The law of Christ is in our hearts.

The moral law contained within the Old Testament reveals the standard which we are to live by.

But again, if we think that by obeying them that somehow this will be pleasing to God then we are mistaken.

It is only faith in Him that saves.

Bibliography

Block, D. I. (2018).

OT312 Book Study: Deuteronomy.

Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

Leadership Ministries Worldwide.

(1996).

Deuteronomy.

Chattanooga, TN: Leadership Ministries Worldwide.

Thompson, J. A. (1974).

Deuteronomy: An Introduction and Commentary (Vol.

5).

Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Wright, C. J. H. (2012).

Deuteronomy.

(W.

W. Gasque, R. L. Hubbard Jr., & R. K. Johnston, Eds.).

Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.

Exported from Logos Bible Software, 22:50 24 July 2018.