After the Sermon: Deuteronomy 16:1-17:7
4/20/26 | Will DuVal | DEUTERONOMY: Remembering God's Faithfulness; Responding in Obedience
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Welcome to the After the Sermon podcast where Pastor Will answers your follow-up questions. We share your personal applications from the sermon for the benefit of the church. My name is Brian. I'm here with lead pastor Will.
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Good morning.
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We want to remind you with this podcast that sermons are not just a Sunday thing. So before we kick off the questions, Will, would you mind just a quick reminder recap of the sermon from yesterday?
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Quick recap. We were in Deuteronomy chapter 16 and first couple verses, seven verses of chapter 17. And our title for the sermon was Remember the Lord, and that was kind of the unifying theme of Moses' call to Israel to when we get in the land. Let's remember the Lord, the one who brought us there. And he laid out a couple different means and ways of doing that. The bulk of the passage that we spent the bulk of our time on were these holidays, these religious festivals that God had already commanded them to keep back in Leviticus 23. And so I was pulling quite a bit from that sermon two years ago in Leviticus. But Moses focused in on reminding them about the three sort of high holy days, or I guess it's not necessarily that they're holier because the day of atonement was the holiest day and it's not actually one of the festivals that is mentioned here.
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The festivals that Moses singles out, these three from Deuteronomy 16 were the ones that all the Jewish males had to come together and congregate and travel to be therefore to celebrate. So it was the feast of the Passover or unleavened bread, as it's sometimes called the festival of weeks and then the festival of booths. And so we looked at the kind of symbolism and what's the, again, the underlying principle for why God wants them to ... What does God want to remember in each of those specifically? And then how might we apply that principle to our own lives and our own remembrance of the Lord and specifically what he's done for us? So that was most of it. Remember what the Lord has done. Then we looked at kind of this calling to remember what the Lord expects of us and got a couple laws about pursuing justice and righteousness and being law keeping children of God, and then finally remembering who the Lord is and ended with some laws concerning how to sacrifice, how not to worship the Lord when God implements the death penalty for those who worship other gods and things like that, because God is so holy.
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So remember what God's done, remember what he expects of us and remember who he is, what he's like. And so yeah, that was the message in a nutshell. And let's see what kind of questions we got.
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First one is from your wife. Two from her. Thanks, Polly. She wrote in, why did we pray that we believe in the Catholic church? Asking, because I'm guessing someone wondered this.
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I think she was referring to our creed from yesterday, the apostles creed that we recited together in the service that mentions, I believe, in the holy Catholic church or whatever. And we laughed because you had put
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In
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Lowercase like we should with an asterisk and an explanation.
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That is the true Christian church of all times and all places have this slide pulled up.
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Right.
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Yeah.
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But to her point, I'm confident that there was at least one person who didn't
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Even
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Think to see the asterisk. So yeah, as you mentioned in your fine print there, Brian, that the word Catholic just means universal and especially ... So we typically differentiate it with a lowercase C just referring not to the denomination of Roman Catholicism, but to just the word universal. Now, of course, when the apostles creed was written, there was ... I'm not sure they were actually referring to the Roman Catholic Church as such. It wouldn't have probably been called the Roman Catholic because that was probably, I'm assuming, began being called out after the great schism with the Eastern Church, Orthodox Church in the 11th century. And otherwise there wouldn't have been a need to call it that because there was only one church, presumably. I mean, there was some weird culty, heretical offshoots. But anyway, so yeah, that's why we remind ourselves in some of these creeds like that, Apostles Creed, that we all belong to the same universal body of Christ, whether we are Catholics or Protestants or Orthodox or whatever denomination you might belong to, if we hold to the same gospel, which again, we can argue about whether or not we actually do with some of those churches, but I think most of us would have enough of a view of Catholicity of God working through other churches than just mine that we would say, you know what, there really are born again, saved Catholics and Orthodox believers.
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And certainly within our evangelical Protestant and even other stripes of Protestants. And so anyway, it's a reminder that God's plan of salvation is bigger than just my West Hills or something like that, so narrow.
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That's good. Her next one, she wrote, "Well, God forget those who aren't saved. I assume forget doesn't mean inability to remember, but rather won't neglect." What word should we use for what God does to those who aren't saved?
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That's a good question because I ended the message throughout the message, exhorting us to remember the Lord, remember the Lord, and then ended with the gospel, the good news that even when we forget the Lord, even when we forsake him, that he promises never to forget us, that he has us written on his heart and he doesn't forget or forsake us. And this is a good question because does God forget those who don't belong to him by faith? And I think the answer is no, that he also does not forget them, but the difference is, I think the word, to answer a question, what word we should use instead of God doesn't forget you, is to say that God will cast them off in the same way that God promises not to cast off those who belong to him, that he will do just the opposite to those who reject him and yet he doesn't forget them in the sense that I think the Bible is clear that hell is a place where the fires are unquenchable, burned forever, and that those who reject the Lord will spend the rest of eternity in vain trying to repay for their sins.
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And in that sense, I think we could say that God never forgets in the same way, and we've got a question later from Brad about God forgetting the sins, selectively choosing to put the sins of those who repent and come to him in faith as far as the eastest from the west, the bottom of the ocean, all that. And so God says, "I'll remember your sins no more." I think in the same way or the converse way, for those who refuse to repent and come to him in faith, God remembers their sins eternally, that again, they will spend the rest of eternity in vain trying to somehow atone for or pay back or be punished for their sins and yet never meet the end of that repayment and never be afforded the opportunity again to have their sins now forgotten by the Lord that ... Yeah.
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And so in the same way that God no longer remembers our sins because he sees us through as clean and forgiven through the blood of Christ, if that is not the lens through which God sees you, then he sadly will remember you forever, but remember you as the sinner that you are and remember you through the lens of your offense against him. So it's a really scary proposition and scary when you put it that way. And we sometimes talk about being separated from God eternally and I do actually think that to be more accurate, we'd have to say that those in hell are separated from God's goodness and love and mercy forever, but they're not separated from the Lord. They're actually suffering in the presence of the Lord, specifically his justice and wrath against sin and his holiness, that that is all that they are now experiencing in hell as sinners.
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And so again, it's not that God turns a blind eye and forgets them. It's that God actually turns his face toward them, but it's his face of anger against sin and wrath and will punish them accordingly, which is again, a terrifying proposition, not something that's comfortable that we like to talk about, like to think about being the reality for the probably vast majority of humanity of those who live.
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Hell is way more populated than heaven. But anyway, that's the truth.
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Next one is from Deborah. She wrote in, "The Pope has reportedly placed a prayer room in the library of the holy city from Muslims. Reminds me of the Asherah polls. I feel as though it's allowing the worship of Allah is inappropriate. Is there any scripture that I may look at to clarify this?
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" Well, this was news to me actually, and so thanks for bringing it to my attention, Deb, and I had to do a little quick kind of Googling on it anyway. And according to AI, the Catholic diocese of such and such, a dedicated prayer room for Muslim scholars was open in the Vatican Apostolic Library as confirmed in October 2025, the room described as a quiet space for visiting Muslim scholars to pray, facilitate inner religious dialogue within the "universal institution." So anyway, I think my quick take on it, having just learned about this a few minutes ago, is I would share absolutely the same kind of concerns and assessment that Deb does here. And I really appreciate her appropriate, I think, connection with the Ashrables that we actually just read about from Deuteronomy end of 16, from this week where Moses says, "You shall not plant any tree as an ashraside the altar of the Lord your God that you shall make, and you shall not set up a pillar, which the Lord your God hates." What's the principle there?
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The principle is you don't worship me alongside other gods and you don't intentionally make accommodations and room and space for interfaith dialogue when the interfaith is ... Again, it's a different faith.
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At this point, we're not talking about some sort of ecumenicalism where different denominations within the one faith, the one body of Christ and different kind of beliefs on second tier doctrines or something like that amongst Christians were talking about fundamentally different faiths, fundamentally different gods. I had a conversation with a friend just a week or two ago where he was saying, "Well, my view is we're all kind of worshiping the same God in different ways." The classic thing. And I just said, "Well, I don't know how much you've studied Islam, but here's their view of God and what God's all about his deal." Here's our view, the Christian's view and these two things, there may be some overlap, but it's certainly not as much overlap as I think you're painting it to be. And I think the differences specifically in our view of Jesus, I mean, we unapologetically, it's the center of our faith is saying, "Jesus Christ is Lord.
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He is God." And for you to deny that is to fundamentally misunderstand and misrepresent who God is. You cannot say that ... It's one John four or five says that any spirit that does not confess Jesus' Lord is not of God. It's demonic actually. And so that sounds like strong language because it is. And so I think, frankly, I do think that those who suffer under the false religion of Islam have been ... Most are, I view as victims of false preaching, false teaching of others a lot, probably haven't even studied it for themselves a lot, probably don't know the alternatives. I mean, obviously most of the world's Muslims are living in places where it's a closed country and a lot of them, they don't even know the alternatives, I'm sure. But still doesn't change the fact that, yeah, this is the Pope's decision or the Catholic church's decision in the pursuit of some kind of so- called interfaith dialogue to make it easier for Muslims to pray to a false God when they come visit the Vatican is, to me, extremely disturbing.
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And so that's my view on that. And I appreciate the heads up on that, Deb. Something else to pray about for that church, Catholic church.
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Any scriptures?
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Well, I think the one, I mean, Deuteronomy 16:21 and 22 is an excellent one. I mean, I think every ... The first and second command, I mean, especially the first commandment, you shall have no other gods before me. And again, I would really challenge whoever's making these decisions, and not that they're listening to me, but to really consider the God of Islam and consider the God of Christianity, even Catholic Christianity, and can these two gods really be the same God? I don't believe they can be. And therefore, one says, "Here's my son. You have to believe in him to have anything to do with me. " And the other says, "No, that's not your son." He's not God and he's just a prophet, just a teacher, whatever, and tramples the underfoot, the blood of Christ, as Hebrews says. And so if that's the case, then you're ... I mean, not to go Old Testament and put them to death or whatever, because they won't go down that, but at the very least you don't ... I mean, as believers, we don't make it easier for people to disobey God in his word.
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I mean, Jesus said, "If anyone leads these little ones astray, it'd be better for him to have a millstone tied around his neck and thrown into sea." And who are you ... Think of the Catholic church. I mean, there's so much confusion already in our pluralistic society and we all want to be tolerant and accepting and whatever. There's all this confusion. So how many people do you think are led astray by this decision to say, "You know what? Actually, there's a lot of legitimacy in Islam enough so that we're going to make it easier for people to practice their religion and pray here and whatever." Yeah, there's probably too many scriptures to mention that could come to mind, but it's John 14: six. "Jesus, I am the way the truth of life. No one comes to the Father except through me. "So what are these Muslim visiting Muslim scholars doing?
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They're not coming to God through Jesus, so they're not coming to God then. So why are we making a prayer room for them? It's not real prayer. And if you're not praying in Jesus, then you're not praying to God, not the real God. So
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Yeah, that's I think the conclusion we have to come to as Christians, Bible believe in Christians. So I mean, otherwise you're just going to start picking and choosing which parts of the Bible you want to believe and what are we left with. So yeah, thanks, Deb.
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Then we have five from Brad, his first one, multiple scriptures, including Hebrews 8:12 in Jeremiah 31:34, state that God will choose to forget our sins and lawless deeds. Psalm 103: 12 declares that God removes our transgressions from us, "As far as the east is from the west." In Isaiah 43:25, God says, "I even I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake and will not remember your sins." In light of this, isn't there a difference between remembering that we are grossly sinful versus remembering the details of our specific past sin when even God himself chooses to forget our past sin once we truly repent?
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It's a really good question. And I was thinking about it and for me, and maybe, I don't know, I might need to think and talk more about this, but here's what I would say. I would say the amazing thing is that God, as Brad mentions, has voluntary selective amnesia and chooses to forget our sins and remember our sins no more. And yet I can't think of a place off the top of my head where God calls us to remember our sins no more. So obviously we're not God, so God forgetting our sins doesn't necessarily mean that we ought to do the same. And I would make the case that as much as we know there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, no more guilt of sin, I would certainly make ... We all agree and believe one John one: eight: nine, if we confess our sins, he's faithful just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from that sin and unrighteousness.
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So we know all that. That's the beautiful truth of the gospel. And yet, again, I can't think off the top of my head of a specific passage or whatever where God says, "Now, I want you to go and remember this sin no more, your sin." And so maybe this will be aired and somebody will email me or I'll get on and actually Google for it and I'll find something. But what I take from that is that I believe that we remember our ... I think to forget our sin is to minimize the weight and impact and effect and power and beauty of the gospel, and that sins forgiveness. If we truly forgot our sins, then yeah, I think we'd be suffering under this delusion that we're sinless people. So I don't think that God calls us to forget our sins. I think that he calls us to remember them for the exact reason that he wants us to remember just how much that we have been forgiven and therefore just how wonderful and merciful and good he is and Jesus is that he would forgive that.
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And so again, that's a very tricky thing. I mean, to remember your sin ... And again, how are you going to share your testimony with someone if you remember your sins no more? I mean, you can't do it. I mean, the testimony by definition is this is what God is ... And this was yesterday's sermon. It's like, remember your testimony, remember what God has done, his past pardon of your sins. You can't do that if you don't remember the sins. Like, wait a minute, what did God forgive? What did he forgive anyway? I don't remember. No, I have to remember this is who I was.
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And it's a Brad's thing about sort of maybe vaguely remembering I was sinful, but I don't need to get into the specifics. It's like, I don't know that that's helpful. To me, it's like, no. Let me tell you exactly what I did and who I was and the kinds of stuff I was into before I met the Lord. Because again, I just think that it magnifies his grace all the more. I think when we minimize our sin, it minimizes his grace. And so Paul says, "I'll boast in my weakness that the grace of Christ may be even more on display." And so yeah, I think that ... Anyway, I think that's enough on that one.
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Next one. How does true repentance, change of direction, differ from simply being sorry for our sin or being sorry that we were caught in our sin?
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Yeah. Those are kind of three tears, right? There's maybe regret. I don't know if you want to try and put different words to him. Regret is like, "Oh, I really wish this hadn't shaken out the way it did with me getting found out about this. " Then there's remorse is like, "I feel bad, not just that I got caught, but I feel bad that I did that. " But then that's still a step short of repentance, which as Brad said, is a change in direction is like, I can't keep going in this direction. I can't keep falling in this same way and slipping in this same sin. I see the damage that it does to others around me, to myself, and most of all, to the Lord. Not that you do damage to the Lord, but that our sin grieves his heart and I don't want to do that anymore and I want to do and be different.
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And so yeah, those are all different things and have implications, tired, implications for how we think about our response to our own sin. So yeah, as Brad said, called to repentance, not just certainly not regret and not even just remorse, but repentance.
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From Deuteronomy 16 and 17, you preached yesterday on how God called Israel to have holidays to commemorate events like the Passover, the Festival of Weeks, and the Festival of Booths. In what ways can celebrating holidays today become ritualistic without acknowledging and remembering the very purpose for the holiday? Christres or CEOs? What are CEOs?
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CEO, Christmas Easter only
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Or Christmas Easters. Yeah. So here's what I'll say. I'm never going to tell anybody like, "Yeah, don't celebrate the holiday because it could become too ritualistic and you forget what it's actually about. " And again, we don't see God doing that with his own people. We certainly see Israel throughout their history at times, just going through the motions and God will say things like, "Your Sabbaths mean nothing to me anymore. Your offerings, your sacrifices mean nothing to me anymore." So he'll say that, but he still doesn't say, "So just stop keeping the Sabbath, stop keeping the Passover." No, he commands us to, for them in the Old Testament, old covenant, it was, "No, I command you to keep these festivals. You must remember and do this, but to do it in remembrance and to do it in the right way, in the right heart posture for the right motivations and all that.
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" So again, I'm not going to certainly not going to tell people, "Hey, look, if you hadn't been here since last Easter or last Christmas, you're not welcome here or something like that. " No, I mean, be here, but we're going to pray that God would touch their hearts and move them to actually remember what this is all about, why we celebrate Easter, why we celebrate Christmas, why we so ... And I would say, if I went really wanted to push it, I would say in that sense, they're not really celebrating the holiday anyway yet, because again, we talked about how the holiday, that word really is a combination of portmanteau of the words holy and day. And so to view it as a day that's holy, that is set apart unto the Lord for remembering something he's done, then if it's just about the Easter bunny or Santa or whatever, that's not a holy day.
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I mean, it might be a quote holiday. It might be a day they got off work or they might have some family traditions or whatever. They might even be able to answer some of the quiz questions about, yeah, do you remember why Easter and something about Jesus resurrection? But again, if that's not the reason we're not there to commemorate and celebrate and remember the resurrection or Christ's birth or his death or whatever that Pentecost, sinning of the spirit, then it's not a true holy day in the truest sense. So I mean, that's something that even not just the Christures, not just the folks that are only there a couple times a year, but frankly, for any of us as Christians, maybe even more so that we have the temptation to get desensitized to every Lord's day. I mean, that's kind of our closest, I guess, version of a Sabbath, like a weekly day dedicated to the Lord like a Sunday for us.
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And some people view Sunday as the Sabbath and all that. So even something like that. I mean, I think absolutely there are plenty of faithful, I should say faithfully attending, maybe not faithful, but faithfully attending church goers there every Sunday going through the motions and who have really forgotten what Sundays are supposed to be about. And for them, it's about connecting with their friends or it's about being seen as a good person or it's about this is just what we do or discipline for my kids or any number of things where this is keeping the pastor in check and making sure he's not going, exerting my influence. I mean, there's any number of just Christians that go off the rails and forget completely. This is about worship. This is about corporate worship about God's people coming together in his name to remember him, who he is, what he's done, and to praise him for it.
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And so yeah, from that standpoint, we have to be careful about every Sunday or whatever, becoming ritualistic for us. So yeah, thanks, Brad.
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You said yesterday that we are called to remember what the Lord expects of us, like justice and righteousness, but isn't it impossible for us, just like it was for Israel, to truly employ justice and righteousness without the power of the Holy Spirit?
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I don't think so. I believe that people can not just pursue, but can actually execute and be conduits of God's justice, even devoid of certainly the filling of the Holy Spirit. Now, if we want to talk about the idea of being under the influence of the Holy Spirit, and like Jesus said in John three, I mean, the spirit blows where it will, you don't always know when it's coming and going. Just because someone's not a born again believer filled with the spirit doesn't mean that God is not moving, stirring in their heart, tugging on their heart, guiding, directing them, calling them, all those kinds of things. And so I think the spirit is at work in others' lives and even unbelievers' lives in ways that we don't always perceive or understand. But even that aside, is it possible for someone to not be a Christian, to not be filled with the Holy Spirit and yet to be a person of justice?
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Let's leave the righteousness aside for a minute, right? Because maybe that one is a different question like, do we really have any righteousness of our own or are even our quote unquote righteous deeds, our attempts to do the right thing and to be good, really like fill the rags of devoid from faith in Christ.That's maybe a little bit of a different question, but justice, just like right and wrong in fairness, I think there are plenty, lots of non-Christians that are in spite of, certainly not because of, but in spite of their faithlessness that are still people that are committed to justice, that are, maybe not even professionally, but certainly that too. I mean, I think there are judges, where Deuteronomy 1618 through 20 here call us to appoint judges and officers in all our towns or Israel, let's say, who are going to judge with righteous judgment.
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Obviously, ideally, that is for us now to think about the principle behind that, that's a Christian. If I go to the ballot box and we vote on our local judges or Missouri state justices or whatever, Missouri Supreme Court, State Supreme Court, ideally, I mean, if somebody, if I've done my homework and research and they, again, claim, I don't know their heart, claim to be a Christian, hopefully they are, that should have a profound impact on their ability to and their commitment to judging with righteous judgment.
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But can a non-Christian still judge with righteous judgment? And again, I think the answer to that has to be yes. I believe that there are non-Christian judges that, not because of their Christian convictions, but just because of their own, whatever their moral guiding principle is, I mean, it's probably some sort of latent ... I mean, Judeo-Christian values still have an impact on, as much to the kind of secular, progressive, humanist chagrin, there's still enough of a grounding in our legal code and in our collective kind of sense of what's right and wrong in Judeo-Christian moral values in this country for now, we could record this podcast again 10, 20 years from now, and that might have changed dramatically, sadly. But for now, there's still enough people that just believe, "Hey, it's wrong to murder and rape and steal and even abortion." Even if it's just on scientific grounds, not like because the Bible says that God knew us and knit us together on our mother's womb, I don't believe the Bible, but I believe science, this is its own unique DNA person, human person, and therefore we need to protect life in the womb and we need laws that do that.
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I mean, so it's possible for someone to judge with righteous judgment and pursue fairness and justice, liberty and justice for all and all that without being a Christian. So again, I'm not to say ... I guess I just leave it at that. Now, employing righteousness, like I said, might be a little bit of a different conversation because can any of us truly be righteous without the power of the Holy Spirit?
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Yeah. And even you could debate everything that I just said. Is it the power of the Holy Spirit that's actually prompting and pulling that non-Christian toward the side of justice and that's still kind of working on that person's conscience to help them know right from wrong? Maybe. Yeah. Again, maybe it's, again, the influence, external kind of influence of the Holy Spirit more so than the internal empowering of the Holy Spirit because they're filled with the spirit and living under the spirit and all those things. But I mean, you could probably attribute anything good in this world, this fallen world of ours, ultimately to the influence of the spirit. So in that sense, yeah. I don't know. I'll leave it there. But thanks for the opportunity to think that through a little bit more, Brad. And yeah, thanks.
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Brad's last question. You also said that every time we sin, we forget who God is. Would it be fair to say that for those who are saved, it's not so much that we forget who God is, but we choose to ignore who God is? Isn't actively choosing to ignore God and the influence of the Holy Spirit even worse than passively forgetting him?
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Well, I think it could be. I think, well, let's go back to the Holy Spirit. I think that if you're there in front of your computer and you're tempted to look at stuff you shouldn't, and you hear that voice of the Holy Spirit, kind of chime in and say, "Hey, you know that's wrong." And then you do it anyway, in that case, yeah, you're ignoring, but do we also forget passively, do we all also, maybe in that example or maybe my son spills his juice after I told him, "Hey, be careful with that. " And then he spills it anyway and I blow up and I yell and scream my head off at him. I'm not saying I've done that, but hypothetically had I, would that be ... I mean, it's not like I'm consciously thinking fruit of the spirit, patience, peace, love, bearing with.
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And then I choose, "Yeah, screw it. I'm going to blow up at him anyway." No, it's just like this is ... I'm forgetful and I live ... I don't always constantly live under the spirit and operate ... I think I used the analogy before of having a new operating system. The hardware is the same though. The body didn't change, but yeah, you've got the spirit now, you've got this new operating system, but you still got the old one that you've tried to shut down and say, "I'm dying to the flesh so that I can live unto the spirit and let the spirit take control and lead and make the decisions and everything." But every once in a while, that milk gets spilled or whatever and it just comes out of you or whatever it might be and then ... So no, I think it can be either.
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I think it can be a forgetting, "Oh, shoot, that's not who I am anymore. I know who God is. I know what he expects. I know what he's done for me. I'm remembering these things." But then I do think there are, to Brad's point, yeah, I mean, there are also probably times for all of us too when it's like, no, we feel the tug of the Holy Spirit, go share the gospel with this person and we just chicken out anyway, we consciously choose to ignore, "Well, that's probably not God. That's probably just, I don't know, that's probably my own guilt telling me I ought to do that or that's the voice of the pastor from Sunday in my head, not the voice of the Lord or whatever." And so we'll maybe sometimes willfully ignore. And to the extent that we do that, then for sure I would say that's worse than passively forgetting.
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I think about where Jesus said, "Whoa, do you say it in chorusing?" Because if the work's done and you had been done in Sodom and Gomorrah, they would've repented a long time ago and been spirit and you think, "Okay, so we're judged according to what we know. " So yeah, the more we know and the more consciousness and conscientiousness we have about what's right and wrong and about what the Lord wants from us in any situation and all of that, then yeah, the less excuse there is to not act accordingly and act in godliness and holiness. And so yeah, that's certainly not a reason to bury your head in the sand and say, "Well, if God's going to judge harsher based on how much we should have known and did actually hear him saying, Hey, do this, don't do that, and just ignored it instead of forgetting it.
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Yeah. No, we want to know the Lord because we want to please him. We don't operate out of a sense of how can I minimize my sin or my punishment from God or something like that. It's no, because God doesn't operate that the way. God's not up in heaven looking for excuses to punish us. He sent Jesus to prove that, that like, no, I'm looking for excuses. I am going to make a way to forgive you and to overlook sin and to allow you to live positively, proactively in a way that pleases me. And so anyway, we seek to increase our knowledge and our sensitivity to the spirit and to live and step in and keeping with his guidance in a way that actually brings him honor and glory and pleasure and brings joy to God, which is amazing to think that we can bring a smile to God's face by the people we are and by the way that we live.
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And so yeah, we want to do that by not forgetting him and certainly not ignoring him. Thanks, Brad.
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And those are Brad's questions. Yeah. A
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Bunch
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Of them. Yeah. I got a couple of my own just as I went through the passage. And again, if someone else had preached my message and I was sitting there, some questions just even textually about Deuteronomy 16 and 17 that quickly come to mind, I won't answer them. The interesting question about, there's an emphasis, I think Moses repeats it two, maybe three times in those first eight verses about Passover to say that you shall offer the Passover sacrifice at the place that the Lord will choose to make his name dwell there. And he has that phrase two or three times, like this emphasis on you've got to come to this specific place to celebrate Passover. So I kind of anticipated, maybe somebody will ask what would be a good question like, "Okay, so what about Jews today?" Because there's no temple anymore and 99% of the world's Jews don't go to Jerusalem to even to offer their Passover sacrifices and it's not a sacrifice anymore.
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So let's start with that. They don't sacrifice a lamb like they used to. I mean, they might cook one, but they don't sacrifice. So what's with that? And what do we make of that? And what I would say is, obviously as the Christian that I am, this is one of probably your best kind of questions to a Jewish friend is to say, put it to them like, "Yeah, what's with that? " Because what we would say is, of course, Jesus fulfilled the Passover, Jesus fulfilled the temple. He said, "My body is the temple. I'm the temple. Something greater than the temple is here. You don't need a temple anymore." Jesus fulfilled the sacrifices, Hebrews 10, once for all sacrifice, no more need for all these constant animals, bulls, goats every year. And so we would have to say, and some people, again, this is going to sound, I don't know, intolerant or something, I don't know, offensive.
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There has not been a legitimate Passover celebrated for the last 1,993 whatever years now that Jesus' Passover celebrated with his disciples at the Last Supper was the last legitimate Passover that was ever celebrated because once He fulfilled it, it's done. You want to make a cameo on our podcast, Bo?
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We got Beau walking in.
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Yeah. Bo's walking in to bring me lunch. Yeah,
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Come on, bud. What are you delivering?
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You want to come say hey on the podcast? Is
(49:21):
That Rosalita's?
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Thank you, bud. Hi. All right, let me quickly run through the rest of these. So you got, what about this leaven thing? Because I made the connection with leaven and sin, right? There's four or five different times that Moses says like, "No leaven in the sacrifice." But Moses says, "Here's why you're going to eat unleavened bread, the bread of affliction for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste." So that's what the leaven was about is like, you don't have time for the yeast to work in and the bread to rise and all that. So I didn't talk about that. Why not? Talks about it in the text. What about this command that they must not leave the meat out overnight? Is there some symbolism in that, that you must eat the meat of the Passover lamb that evening that you cook it and not let it stay overnight?
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Why? Is there symbolism in that for us with Jesus? I might read some into that like, don't sit on this calling to receive the lamb of God, don't sit on it. Well, maybe later I'll receive the lamb. No, receive no.
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Why is Passover in verse eight here, a solemn assembly to the Lord your God? Shouldn't it be a joyful? Because with the feast of weeks and the feast of booze, he says it's a joyful assembly, rejoice together. But why with Passover is it a solemn assembly? I mean, of all things that we would think this is a joyful, this is when God freed us from Egypt. This is when God freed us from our sins, the Passover lamb forgiven. So that's an interesting question someone should have asked. Why only the males, the Jewish males were called to come for these three holidays? Why didn't the whole family need to travel for the holiday? It's a good question. What's an Asherah? I still don't think I fully really explained the Ashrapole pillar. And then finally, why the death penalty? That's a big one that like maybe someone who, again, I mean, I just mentioned God's really that holy, it's to serve another God, we deserve death.
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And Christians, we can get on board with that. But like for a lot of people, they'd hear that. And I think a reasonable question would be like, don't you want to just like try and correct them first? If you found out, "Hey, this person started worshiping another God," why not give them three strikes in your out kind of system like, "Hey, that's not the real God. Yahweh is the real God. Throw away, burn the Ashropole, whatever, but don't do it again." 30
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Day waiting period or
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Something. Yeah. Why can't God be a little merciful, little gracious and give him another chance? So those are all really, I think, good questions worth asking, answering. I'm not going to do it now though, other than the ones I touched on. But yeah, thank those of you all who submitted questions, Brad, Polly, Deb, would love to get more, would love to get more. We've got some ideas, strategies maybe coming to help boost some question numbers, but we've still squeezed a good almost hour out of it. So thanks for listening.
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Yeah, we hope that this has been edifying as you seek to be changed and to love God more as you apply God's word after the sermon. So go apply the sermon, continue to make disciples and Lord willing, we'll catch you right back here sometime next week.