1459 - "Keep the Main thing the Main thing-Make sure you know what is the Main thing!" Deuteronomy 6:1ff

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is Podcast 1459. We're making our way through the Word of God following the gray crimson river and the stories that are behind all of those teachings. And we're connecting the dots. As we go through, God is going to teach all of us more about who he is, what he's done, about his character, his nature, about really how we are to live in a way that's pleasing to him. And the way that is pleasing most of all to him is that we live a life of trust of faith. The book of Hebrews says in chapter eleven and verse six that without faith, without trust, without commitment to God, then there is no way to please him. And so God is pleased when we trust him, when we trust his promises, when we trust his word, when we trust his Messiah, and all the promises he gave about salvation and how he would deal with the sin problem. And so as we've come through the Torah, remember the word Torah doesn't mean law, it means instruction. And as we go through God's instructions to us, He tells us how to know Him, how to be right with Him, how to walk in His way and in His light. And as we do that, then we understand more about His great nature and about His character and about what He has done on our behalf, what He does every day on our behalf, every hour, and may God continue to allow us to find favor with Him. Today I want to talk to you about the book of Deuteronomy, and we're going to be looking at several passages out of the book of Deuteronomy. Remember, the name Deuteronomy is the Greek name, the Septuagint name. Remember that a couple hundred years before Jesus was born in Bethlehem, that Ptolemy, one of the descendants of the great generals of Alexander, that lived in the city of Alexandria in Egypt then and now, wanted the scriptures, the holy Jewish scriptures translated from Hebrew into Greek. And so he brought the Jewish scholarship to Alexandria and they produced the Septuagint, the seventy. And you can listen to other podcasts and find out why it's called the Seventy. But that translation not only affected the New Testament world and to which Jesus came that first century, but it affects us to today, because all of the divisions of the Old Testament come from the Septuagint, that is, those that we follow today, all of the books of the Torah, and all of the books in the order that we have today, the categorization, the law, and the history, and how the history is divided up, poetry, the prophets, major and minor, all of that is part of the Septuagint's categorization. And we follow that. All of the books of Torah do not have Hebrew names in our Bibles, they have Greek names. Genesis is the word for beginnings. Echhodas, that's a compound word. Ech, which is the preposition out or out of, and hodas, which is the word for way or path or road. Echhodas is the way out. The word Leviticus is pertaining to the tribe of Levi or Levi, which is the priestly tribe, and so you have all of the offerings and the garments and all of the ceremonial laws related to worship that the tribe of Levi, of Levi led. Then you have the word numbers. Numbers is the word arithmoi, where we get our word arithmetic, having to do with mathematics or numbers. And then Deuterot Nomas, that is the word for second, Deuterot, and then Nomas Law, the second law. It doesn't mean God gave another law, it means that Moses rehearsed it. For the second time he went over the law with them. And it was the summary of the law. Now remember when Jesus quoted the law, the prophets, and the writings, out of each one of those particular categories that are defined several times in the New Testament, Luke chapter 24 and verse 44 is the clearest delineation of the three categories. And so the law, out of the law, Jesus quoted more than any other of the books, the five books of Moses, Deuteronomas, the rehearsal or the summary of the law before the people went into Canaan. If you're wanting to know what God said and how he did it, yes, you read the book of Genesis and all of the books, but if you want the summary of God's dealing with his people, Israel, then you go to the book of Deuteronomy, which we'll do shortly. And then out of the prophets, it is Isaiah, the great prince of prophets, that you have Jesus quoting more than any other prophet. And then in the writings, the Psalms. Jesus was so familiar with the Psalms, it was the first book of all the writings. And so therefore, in Luke chapter 24 and verse 44, Jesus said, as he was explaining to them everything in the law, the prophets, when he comes to the writings, he just calls it the book of Psalms because it was the first of the scrolls of the writings. And so that shows Jesus' familiarity with the scripture. Only a learned rabbi would speak of it that way. And so we come to the book of summary. Before Moses went to be with the Lord and went up to Mount Nebo and God buried him there as he died, and the Lord took him home. He went over the law and he said, I know what's going to happen when you get into the land. You're going to act rebellious and you're going to ask for a king and you're going to be doing all of these things. It's not a matter of if, it's just a matter of when you do this. And here's what I want you to do. Here's what God says to do. And so the book of Deuteronomy is a tremendous digest of all of the five books of Moses. Now I want us to look at a key passage, if not the key passage in all of the book of Deuteronomy, to just get us started through the book, and that is Deuteronomy chapter six. Deuteronomy chapter six is a watershed because it is the way that after Moses went over the Ten Commandments in chapter five, he says, Now this is the commandment, and these are the statutes and judgments which the Lord, notice the word Lord is in all caps in chapter six and verse one. The Lord your God has commanded to teach you, that is, to teach you so you can teach others. And he says to teach you so that that you may first of all live them out, observe them, keep them, do them in the land which you are crossing over to possess. And he is teaching you these commandments, these laws, these statues, these judgments, so that you might obey them, so that you might look at verse two, learn to give God his rightful place. That is, learn to fear the Lord. Why? Because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, Proverbs chapter one and verse six. That's right. Without God at the center of your knowledge, your knowledge will be askew. It will be a deviation from truth. This is why the moment you leave God out of any part of creation, then you're going to go astray. This is what happened with Darwinism and the teaching, the hypothesis. It's not even theory, it's just a hypothesis that this is the way we came into being. Nobody agrees on it. Only God said, This is what I did. I brought everything you see, I brought it out of nothing by my word. Now that's easier, quite honestly, to believe and trust in than all of the crazy wild hypotheses that are promulgated today and are set forth as truth and reality. Because you if you say it often enough and you lie fervently enough, then people will believe you, and that's what they've done because evolution, transmutive evolution, is a lie. And it causes great shame to the people of God who have bought it hook, line, and sinker. Many who believe they know more than God because it doesn't make sense to them. And if it doesn't make sense to them, and someone with a PhD or with a term scientist behind their name or philosopher behind their name, they believe what they say more than the very words of God which are without error in any realm of reality. So he said, I want you to be taught the words of God so that you will live them out, so that you'll learn to give God his rightful place and learn to fear him, so that you'll keep all of his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, you and your son and your grandson, all the days of your life, that your days may be prolonged, that you might live a long and fruitful life. Therefore, hear, O Israel, and be careful to observe it, to keep it, that it may be well with you, not just to get along, but so it may be well with you, so you'll live long, so that you might multiply greatly as the Lord God of your fathers has promised you a land flowing with milk and honey. And then here is the great Shma. That's right, the Shma, the listen verse, the hear me verse. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord, that is, the personal name of God. Many refer to it as Yahweh, the Jews just say Hashem, hear, O Israel, Hashem our God, the name of the Lord is one. God is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your strength. That's the totality of your being. This is the greatest commandment in all the Bible, in the Old Testament and the New Testament. When the people came and asked Jesus, what is the greatest of all the commandments? Jesus said the same thing Moses did. He said, without even hesitation, which is the greatest? They were trying to trap him. They couldn't trap him. Here's what he said You shall love the Lord your God with the totality of your being, with your heart, your soul, your mind, your strength. Now listen, hear this. He said, This is the protas. This is the priority commandment. This is the priority that God wants for your life, to love him supremely, because if we love him, that'll take care of a lot of issues in itself. And then he said, It is the mega commandment. That's the word, Megale. It is the greatest commandment, it is the mega commandment, it is the one that supersedes all other, because if we give God the love he deserves, the worship he deserves, the place he deserves, his rightful place, then that will take care of a multitude of things. And so Jesus said, This is the protos, it's the priority in your life. It is the greatest thing you can do is to love God. It's not when a soul to Jesus. It's not even like the second one in treating others. Well, all of that will take care of itself if we'll just love God with everything that's within us. As a matter of fact, in the book of Revelation, he says the same thing to the church at Ephesus, where the Apostle John had been exiled from Tapatmas. The first letter went to them, and what did it have to do with? He said, You're doing all of these things. You really are doctrinally accurate, you are well disciplined as a church, you have done so many things so well, you work, you serve, it's all great. But let me tell you, you've forgotten the most important thing, and that is to love me supremely. You don't love me like you once did. You don't care for me like you once did. You don't put me as priority as you once did. No, it's become an end in itself. Service is an end in itself. Routine and ritual, even godly ritual, can become an end in itself. Some of you that are listening to me right now, you know in your own heart you're serving God just out of sheer willpower, and this is what you think you need to do and you ought to do, and you're doing it, but there's no love in it. You have made it a drudgery before God. It is no longer what it needs to be. Jesus said, Remember from whence you have fallen. Remember what it was once like. Remember when you first loved me, and then repent and return back to that time. Or if you don't, I'm going to come and remove the witness from your life. Because it's not about service, it's about love. And love will produce the kind of service that pleases me. And this is what he said: teach it to your children, teach it to your sons, teach it to your grandsons, teach it to your daughters, to your granddaughters, teach it to the generations to come, because if we don't, who will? I pray that God would help us to understand this and to walk with him. For on the way, this is Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org, then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's Questions at Tony C R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.