Alright, thank you for coming this morning. This is great. This is back to almost, well I think it is back to normal. So praise God for that, for coming to church in person, right? And Pastor, I haven't seen him here this morning. Is he preaching this morning? Does anyone know? Yeah, well Kieran was here, so wonderful. Praise God. So let's get started with prayer. Lord Jesus, we thank you so much for this time to learn of you and your word and have some nice fellowship time with each other again. And we just thank you for your loving kindness to us in this COVID time and how all of us have recovered so nicely from that illness. And we pray that this would be it, Lord, that we'll soon be over it. Thank you. In Jesus' name, amen. All right. We're going to get started with Sunday School. I started this lesson two weeks ago with an introduction, and we're just going to continue with just a little bit, tiny bit more introduction before we get going. Hopefully most of you watched it online. There was quite a few views, I thought, on YouTube when I looked at it, so that's nice. Thank you for doing that. The study is called Weightier Matters and it's going to be a study of the Torah. As I mentioned last week, Jesus started his teaching ministry with a discussion of the Torah and its relation to the way the Pharisees had developed a practice of following the Torah strictly. I call it the the legalistic observance of Torah commands. So if you want to have a phrase that discusses what Phariseeism is, legalistic observance of Torah commands, that's not what we're going to be learning here today because we know that that was a failed system and that's what Jesus criticized it so passionately. that we've been learning about in Matthew. But we'll continue and praise God for His plan for us, instead of that plan, a beautiful plan from the beginning. We'll talk about the Word of God's unity and revealing that plan through time and God's promise and how He's accomplished it. for us. So Jesus began his ministry at the Sermon on the Mount talking about this issue and then he's also now come to an end of his ministry and that's where we got the term weightier matters because Matthew 23, 23 and 26 It's that passage where Jesus talks about, you know, you tithe your spices, but you're neglecting the weightier matters of the Torah. Justice, mercy, and faithfulness. So that's what we're going to be exploring. Yeah, let's go on and kind of like our theme verse for this study is Hosea 6.6. And I guess I'll continue with helping people learn just a little tiny bit of Hebrew during the study too. And the best way to do that is just to to say things in Hebrew as we go along and you can learn pronunciation, you know, and spelling and things like that. But the book of Hosea is pronounced Hosea in Hebrew. So Hosea 6.6 in the ESV, For I desire lovingkindness and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of Elohim more than ascension offerings. Our first goal from this theme verse then is to increase in our knowledge of Yahweh And our second goal is to increase in the doing of the weightier matters, which are at the top, justice, mercy, and faithfulness. So, why study the Torah? To increase knowledge, right? There's a lot of other things we could study. Anybody have an answer? Why would we increase our knowledge there? Well, Jesus defined what weightier matters means using that same definition, which is those aspects of the Torah he thought were most important, which were justice, mercy, and faithfulness. And I know those can be loosey-goosey words that are hard to define. what we're going to do as we go through. We're going to be as precise as we can and as appropriate in interpreting Torah commands in terms of justice, mercy, and faithfulness, and also in terms of the two greatest commandments. Those commands, how we are oriented toward God in relation to that command, and how we are oriented toward others in relation to that command. So we'll talk about that today, later. But one reason why we can increase our knowledge of Yahweh by studying the Torah is because this study is for Christians. This study is, I'm going to say, this study is for Christians who have grown up in the church. Like me, if you grew up in the church, what area of scripture do you have the least knowledge? Probably the Torah and the prophets. Jesus said in Matthew chapter 5, I haven't come to abolish the Torah and the prophets, but to fill it up completely. And so if we want to increase our knowledge, let's go to the place of Scripture where we have the least knowledge. That makes the most sense to me. So as we do that, what we're going to do is we're going to look at it like an onion and take off these levels. And we're going to start with the easiest stuff and we're going to go a little deeper and a little deeper and a little deeper. And I don't know if we'll have time to do all this, but if we do, great, and if not, we'll stop wherever we stop. But you'll notice that these levels aren't divided by theology, and by that I mean a system of theology. They're divided by a scriptural emphasis. So, just to explain. So you have the two greatest commandments. We talked about that two weeks ago, the first lesson. Jesus described those. We all know what those are. And then today we're going to start with the Ten Commandments with the context as explained in Exodus. A little before, a little after in Exodus chapter 20. Then we're going to talk about what I call the plus seven from Exodus 34. And if you guys want to write this down, you know, you could read ahead. That would be great. And then we're going to talk about the specific aspect of blood that's mentioned in Acts 15 and emphasized by the early church. And then we're going to end with the death penalty. And that would be an emphasis in the Torah itself on what commandments were punished more severely than others. I think that it's straightforward and reasonable. When you look at our civil law in the United States, which laws are more important than others? It's the ones that are enforced. And which ones are enforced more severely are the ones that are more important. So, if anybody else has a great idea on how to look into the Torah and, based on Scripture, sort of determine what are more weightier matters than others, please let me know. So, let's go back here, and as we look at this verse again, and its emphasis, I want to just start with the Lord's Prayer again. Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done. And that's really what we're thinking of here in studying the Torah and answering the question, is the Torah relevant for us? Because we can go back and we can read Exodus and just say, that was for them, that was for them, that was for them. And that's interesting, but a fairly boring way to read scripture, right? Is how is the Torah relevant for us? That's what our emphasis is going to be in this study. And I think one way that the Torah is relevant for us is when we pray. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We're asking God to help us to do Your will, help us to know Your will, and then help us to do Your will. But what is God's will? First off, God's will is what's revealed to us in Scripture. So that's primary in determining what God's will is. Not some emotional feeling that we get here or there, but what Scripture teaches us. And then another interesting question that I'd like to ask and see if anybody would volunteer to answer would be, I talked a little bit about how Torah might be relevant for our present, but is Torah relevant for our future? Does anyone want to offer a suggestion as to how Torah might be relevant for our future? I admit these are hard questions and I'm doing these hard questions on purpose because I grew up in the church and I either was explicitly taught or implicitly taught that the Torah was not relevant for my present and it certainly wasn't relevant for my future. So I don't think I was unique there. Right, right, yeah. So, let's go and read a passage of scripture now from the prophets, and see if maybe we can get an answer to that question, is Torah relevant for our future? We'll start with the prophet Micah, and in Hebrew that's Micah. We're going to read a passage from chapter 3 and going through about halfway through chapter 4. We'll start here. This is from the LEV. It's a literal English version and it keeps some of the Hebrew names and transliterated Hebrew for to make it easier to pronounce things in Hebrew. And by the way, this version of the Bible, literal English version, is free for distribution. I have it on a PDF if anybody wants it. I have a flash drive. I'll give it to you, and we can pass that around. It's a big PDF file, so it won't attach to an email. Obviously, it's the whole Bible. But it's completely free, and if you want it, you're welcome to it. So just come up afterwards if you want. And I also copied it onto this laptop here. So you guys could bring your own little flash drive and copy it off of here if you'd like. But we'll go to Micah 3.8 and start there. But as for me, I am full of power by the Ruach of Yahweh. And remember, the Ruach is spirit. and of judgment and of might to declare to Yaakov his disobedience and to Yisrael his sin. Please listen to this, you heads of the house of Yaakov and rulers of the house of Yisrael, who abhor judgment and pervert all equity. They build up Zion with blood and Yerushalayim with unrighteousness. Her leaders judge for bribes, and her priests teach for a price, and her prophets of it tell fortunes for money. Yet they lean on Yahweh and say, is not Yahweh among us? No disaster will come on us. Therefore, Zion, for your sake, will be plowed like a field, and Yerushalayim will become heaps of rubble, and the mountain of the temple like the high places of a forest. By the way, the prophet Micah wrote at the time, just before the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel by the Assyrian Empire. Now we go on to the next chapter. But in the latter days it will happen that the mountain of the temple of Yahweh will be established at the top of the mountains and it will be exalted above the hills and peoples will stream to it. Many nations will go and say, come and let us go to the mountain of Yahweh and to the house of Elohim, of Yaakov, and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his path. For the Torah will go out of Zion and the word of Yahweh from Yerushalayim, and he will judge between many peoples and will decide concerning strong nations afar off. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, neither will they learn war anymore. But they will sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one will make them afraid. For the mouth of Yahweh, Sivaot, has spoken. Indeed, all the nations may walk in the name of their Elohim, and we will walk in the name of Yahweh, our Elohim, forever and ever. So, a couple notes here. This passage is referring to the Millennial Kingdom reign of our King Jesus on Earth. And you'll notice that it says here at the end of verse 2, for the Torah will go out of Zion, which is Zion and refers to the mountain upon which Jerusalem is built. And the word of Yahweh from Yerushalayim So, the Torah is mentioned here prominently as being part of the Millennial Kingdom. How much, and in what way, and all of that, I mean, I don't know. I don't think anybody does, but it'll be good to know of it. At the end here, we have this name for God. I'll remind you from our Job study. Yahweh Siva'ot has spoken. And this is again a reminder of the circumstances upon which that Millennial Kingdom will come to pass. Siva'ot is translated usually in English as the Lord of Hosts. Yahweh Siva'ot, Lord of Hosts. And what it means, Siva'ot means, is a military commander at the forefront of his forces, leading them into battle. So Yahweh Sebaot is this aspect of Yahweh as a warrior, conqueror. And we know that that's how the Millennial Kingdom will come to pass. It's Jesus leading the forces, angelic forces, of war against the evil on our planet. And it will usher in this Millennial Kingdom where there'll be no war. And, you know, every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one will make them afraid. The mouth of Yahweh's Sabaoth has spoken. So this name of Yahweh that's emphasized in verse 5, that gives me a segue into our start. And that start in Torah study is going to be in the Ten Commandments. So the first commandment is where we talk about this name. Grant, question? the kingdom. So there's a constant switch there because obviously in the Jewish mind there was no church, it was just a continuation. So that switch takes place and it turns out to be a little difficult. Yeah, you do have to understand in the prophecy that there'll be a more immediate short-term fulfillment, which oftentimes from our time perspective has already been fulfilled, like the destruction that we talked about at the beginning of this passage. And then there's the future to us fulfillment, which hasn't happened yet, which is what it's talking about, the Millennial Kingdom. And Grant's right. I think that's an aspect of God's loving kindness, that in these very harsh prophecies of imminent destruction and judgment, God also brings in repeatedly hope. But the first commandment addresses this issue of who is God. And we're going to go ahead and get started. and in Exodus in our passage and talk about this. So the Hebrew name for the book of Exodus is Shemot. And Shemot means names in Hebrew. And the name of the book, names, comes from the first verse in Hebrew. Exodus 1, 1 starts out, now these are the names of the sons of Israel. So that's where the name of the book comes from. Names. Shemot. We're going to start with Exodus chapter 19 to get some back story and some background before the Ten Commandments. And I'll start reading here in Exodus 19.16. And I encourage you to follow along in your King James or ESV or what version that you're using. I'm going to read in the LAV and as and I'm going to try not to read too fast so that we can Contrast it to translations as we read through and that gives us a deeper understanding of the word Exodus 1916 so it came about on the third day when it was morning that there were thunder and lightning flashes And a heavy cloud upon the mountain and a voice of an exceedingly loud shofar So that all the people who were in the camp trembled. And Moshe brought the people out of the camp to meet Elohim. And they stood at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke because Yahweh descended upon it in fire. And its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace. And the whole mountain quaked violently. When the voice of the shofar sounded long and grew louder, Moshe spoke, and Elohim answered him with thunder. Yahweh came down on Mount Sinai to the top of the mountain, and Yahweh called Moshe to the top of the mountain, and Moshe went up. And Yahweh spoke to Moshe, go down, warn the people so that they do not break through to Yahweh to gaze, and many of them perish. And the next several verses, there's a little back and forth between Yahweh and Moses. Yahweh's telling Moses to warn the people and the priests not to approach irreverently and too close to what's going on. And Moshe's telling God, yes, we've taken care of that, you told us that, and we've warned the people. And God's saying, no, go warn them again. And so Moses goes back down, warns them again. And interestingly though, God asks Moses to bring Aaron back with him. So Moses goes down, warns the people again, and he brings Aaron back with him, back up the mountain. So then now we continue. the first commandment then, the beginning of Exodus 20. And Elohim spoke all these words, saying, now this is, remember, to Moses and Aaron, I am Yahweh, your Elohim, who brought you out of the land of Mitsrayim, which is Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other Elohim before me. This commandment is God declaring the truth of who He is, using His personal name, and declaring Himself as God, and declaring Himself as your God. So, as we go through these commandments, what I thought that would be interesting to do is to use a grid, and I'm going to call it a contemplative grid, because it's going to help us think through, in a deeper way, how these commandments would apply to us. And what we're going to do is, on the left, we have the orientations of self to Yahweh and self to others. And that comes from Jesus' two greatest commandments. To love God with all of your mind and all of your strength. And then the second commandment, which is to love your neighbor as yourself. So we have those two orientations. And then we also have what Jesus said were the weightier matters of the Torah. And those are at the top, justice, and mercy, and faithfulness. So we're going to take these commandments, and we're going to break them down and think of them in these terms to help us not to just blow through scripture as some interesting narrative, but really apply to our lives where we can and should And so this first one, I think it'll be really fun and helpful to break up into groups and actually discuss it. And this classroom is situated so that it's really actually perfectly situated. So we have three columns, and then we'll have two in each column, so there'll be six groups and We'll divide this left-hand side here. You know we'll just divide down the middle So we'll have one group on the front one group in the back. We'll do that same So what I'd like each group to do according to this chart so right up here Tom's group will be thinking about how this first commandment relates to our self-to-Yahweh relationship, and specifically how that relates to faithfulness. And then the group behind will do the self-to-others aspect, and how that relates to faithfulness in this commandment. Okay, so you guys, in your groups, do you want to write this down real quick? Write down what group that you're going to be in. Write down what orientation you're going to be discussing. Self to Yahweh or self to others. And then also write down which of the three weightier matters. So that back corner, that back corner is self, others, and justice. Okay, does everyone You're the self, others, and justice back there. Okay, and now what I'm going to do, now that you have written down what your assignment is, let's go back to the verse and put that back up. Okay, so this is the verse and the commandment that you're going to be thinking about in terms of the assignment that each group has. Okay? Pick a spokesman, because what we'll really like to do at the end is we would like to have a spokesman stand up and kind of discuss. You're going to have ten minutes. So, yeah. Okay. Okay, time to wrap up. We want to have time to hear from each group. Testing. Alright. Yeah, thanks. How about you guys go first? Yeah. Alright. It looks like Justice decided to go first. The Justice group. Justice, in relation to the self to Yahweh relationship. Okay, so first, we were trying to figure out if verse 2 kind of is attached to the command and we read a footnote in Dan's Bible and it said that that statement by Yahweh in verse 2 is kind of an introduction to get their attention and remind them of what he's done for all the commands. So it's kind of a, you know, look at me, I own you, I delivered you, listen to all these commands now. So it doesn't necessarily really go just with command one. It seems like it's for all. So that took up a bunch of our time to figure that out. I should have explained this too though, but in the Hebrew Bible there is a number designation for each one of these commands. And the first two verses are included in that first commandment number designation in the Hebrew Bible. That's why I included it here. So the justice, one way you could look at this is the justice aspect is that because Yahweh owns Israel, in this case, owns us, he delivered us, right? Because he bought and owns them and us, he is the one that gets to set the standard of justice. And so in our relationship to him, He's done his part, sort of, to rescue us, purchase us completely. Our part is to look to him as the standard for justice and follow that. Well said. Early came up and asked about the process of what we're doing here, too. And we had talked a little bit about this. And I'll just share what he said from your group, because I thought it was really excellent. He looked at it in the aspect of, Now that I have done this for you in rescuing you out of slavery, a horrible, unjust situation, and rescued you out of slavery, out of my loving kindness, how unjust would it be for you to turn your back on me now? I'm your God, I'm who rescued you, and I'm expecting Your honor, your obedience, I'm expecting relationship with you. And for you to turn your back on me would be very unjust to me as God. So I thought that was a really, really nice way to look at it. But let's go on to the next group, which would be self and others orientation in regards to justice. Back corner there. All right, so I acknowledged to my group I was a little late in getting here, but somehow I was nominated a spokesperson, so I'm probably going to fumble a little bit here, so I may pass. Got it. Got it. Thank you. I think that's one of the, like, the 11th commandment of group meetings, right? All right. It's in there somewhere. So I guess in trying to put the pieces together that we talked about and thinking about what Gordy and his group just shared, there is authority being established here in these first three verses. And for the folks living back at that time, they had seen how God brought them out, establishing that authority. He is ultimately the just authority. And as we think about how we as Christians have been brought out of sin and slaves to sin, we recognize the same thing in God in a different way. And then as that relates to others, King Shihai pointed out the fact that what's common here in the world is this idea of fairness. And I think for us our challenge is understanding and sharing what true justice is and where that ultimately belongs in the person of God, and overriding this idea of fairness, which, as Grant mentioned, is obliterated in our society today, and it can just be so wishy-washy in what's fair and what's not fair. And so I think that's a key point in terms of true justice, who it is, and our job is to point others to the author of true justice. Yeah, very key. Boy, that is so applicable to our modern environment, political environment, isn't it? Who decides what's just, right? So interesting comments. That's really good. Next would be the front here in the middle, would be the self Yahweh orientation in regards to mercy in this commandment. So in our group, we talked about the mercy that God had for us, or for Israel, as he brought them out of the land of Egypt and slavery, he was merciful upon them. Even though they weren't 100% following God's rules then, but he was merciful in bringing them out of that slavery. So therefore, because of that mercy he showed to us, we should have no other God. Right. Yeah. And just in a very real sense, God acted for them first. He rescued them from slavery first. Just like with us, he rescued us from sin first when we repented. So yeah. All right. And then in the back middle then, this idea of mercy in the self-others orientation. Yes, so when our group talked about it, we really felt that it starts with His mercy for us. And really, we touched on that a lot. But then because of His mercy, I mean, obviously in the context here, we see He saved them from slavery in Egypt. But then also as believers today, He's also saved us from our sins here. And so what that creates then in our relationships with others is we need to then display God's mercy to others so that He can reach them as well. And that was what we really felt was important about specifically what we saw in the second verse there. Right, yeah. And then also maybe remembering, too, that if God was merciful first and then explained his expectations after, that might be a better approach for us, too, in ministering to the hurt and wounded people of the world, wounded by sin, to show mercy first. And God has expectations, of course, for a repentant, a believer who is following Jesus. But just to remember, a lot of mercy first. Alright, let's do the front here. The self to Yahweh orientation in regards to faithfulness in the First Commandment. Well, this one seems like fairly straightforward. If you have no other gods before Yahweh, you're faithful to God. So that's kind of the first thing. And then we just talked about not having other idols and kind of what that means and how you spend your time and energies and stuff. And then I guess also, this has kind of been touched on with other groups, but talking about how in the chart the arrow goes both ways. So there is the verse, I brought you out of Egypt. That's God being faithful to the Israelites. And then the flip side of that is you be faithful to me as well. Yeah, that's good. Remembering, too, the promise that was given at the very beginning after the first sin to Adam and Eve. God is faithful, and this is a part of His plan, and He's moving forward with it out of His faithfulness. Right, that's good. And then the back corner. Self to others So I'll just quick throw out some random thoughts and ideas that that came to mind for our group and in regards to faithfulness And our example of faithfulness to others around us Probably an extreme Testimony of faithfulness to others would be obviously over the years Christian martyrs who've you know given their life to the end claiming Christ even in modern times right now And then, you know, being so faithful to Christ that they're willing to sacrifice their human temporary life for that. But even in our culture, modern contemporary culture, just being marginalized, that is a testimony of our faithfulness and not shifting who we believe in or what we believe in and just for, you know, just to be accommodating to someone else. And then that idea of sharing God with other gods. You know, we don't have that ancient concept of gods competing against gods. You know, trying to think back in Egypt of how powerful of a testimony that was to the Israelites to be let out of the land of Egypt in comparison to what we're dealing with in our everyday life. It's a little different, but maybe in regards to a church trying to accommodate other doctrines, other beliefs, or other sins and saying, well, this can be accepting, that would be sharing God with our world. And I think that's a challenge for our church and also individuals. I want to be friends with these people still, so I'm going to change my faithfulness to God in this relationship to these people to still continue a friendship. And they know that, too, by how we interact with them. Also, too, we thought of just the concept of kind of self-serving worship. I'm going to worship God in my own way without other people, whether it's just getting away from relationships to worship God because it's just too challenging, maybe. That's not the faithfulness God is expecting of us to Him. It involves other people and other sinners. That was really good. I'm glad you mentioned martyrdom, because that relates really closely to this First Commandment. Why did the martyrs suffer and die? Well, they were holding to the true Yahweh as He explains Himself in Scripture, who He is. They were protesting the development of a different God. We think of the Protestant martyrs. The system of Roman Catholicism that had built up over the Middle Ages developed the system of some other God. That was what the Reformation was all about. Go back to Scripture. Who does God tell us He is in Scripture and what He did for us? Go ahead, Grant. Right, right. Yeah, yeah. All right, well that's the end of this. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and that's walking the fine line is what studying the Torah is going to be all about, right? And what Jesus was referring to when he mentioned the way to your matters. You know, you can emphasize some things more than others, and boy, you can get way off into really erroneous teaching when you start emphasizing wrong things, right? So, thank you for coming this morning, and we'll continue with the study for many more weeks.