Do not cook a goat in its mother’s milk. Deuteronomy 14:21
Huh?
There are over 600 commandments in the Old Testament part of the Bible. You might have thought that there were only ten.
Orthodox Jews still attempt to apply these mitzvot to their lives today.
Most Christians find these parts of the Bible absolutely irrelevant apart from the stories of people like Abraham and Moses. Yet, the first Christians would not be able to imagine other Christ-followers who did not thoroughly know and understand the ways of God revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures.
For instance the book of Deuteronomy is referenced over eighty times in seventeen of the twenty-seven New Testament books. To each temptation that Jesus faced as described in Matthew 4 he responds by quoting a verse from Deuteronomy.
At the Gathering Church we have just started a series, Growing in Wisdom: A Summer Survey of the Bible. This week we cover the first section of the Bible, what is often called the Law, the first five books.
What essential things do we learn about God, about others, about life from reading this part of the Bible? How can something written to a particular ancient culture in another part of the world matter to us today?
This Sunday, Exodus 20:1-17 will be our focus. Think Charlton Heston.