Quoting Deuteronomy 30:14 in Romans 10:8, Paul makes a powerful rhetorical connection between Yeshua and the Law of Moses. The Torah gives life, but only to those who have already confessed Yeshua as their Master and Savior.
From Jay Carper at Common Sense Bible Study (https://CommonSenseBibleStudy.com) and American Torah (https://www.AmericanTorah.com).
This content is free, but I accept contributions via Paypal at https://jaycarper.com/paypal.
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From Jay Carper at Common Sense Bible Study (https://CommonSenseBibleStudy.com) and American Torah (https://www.AmericanTorah.com).
This content is free, but I accept contributions via Paypal at https://jaycarper.com/paypal.
Follow me on Truth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@AmericanTorah
Send me a friend request on The Torah Network: https://social.ttn.place/jaycarper
Follow me on Twitter: https://jaycarper.com/twitter
Connect with me on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/americantorah/
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LearningTranscript
00:00Finally, in chapter 10 of Romans, so Romans chapter 10 verses 5 through 11.
00:11For Moses writes about the righteousness which is of the law.
00:18The man who does those things shall live by them.
00:21But the righteousness of faith speaks in this way.
00:23Do not say in your heart who will ascend into heaven, that is, to bring Christ down from
00:27above, or who will descend into the abyss, that is, to bring Christ up from the dead.
00:32But what does it say?
00:33The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that is, the word of faith which
00:37we preach.
00:39That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has
00:42raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
00:44For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto
00:48salvation.
00:51For the scripture says, whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.
00:56Much of this was a quote from Deuteronomy chapter 30, let me go back there, read the
01:01context.
01:02Let's see, I'm going to read Deuteronomy 30 verses 10 to 14.
01:13If you obey the voice of Yahweh your God to keep his commandments and his statutes which
01:17are written in his book of the law, and if you turn to Yahweh your God with all your
01:21heart and with all your soul, for this commandment which I command you today is not too mysterious
01:26for you, nor is it far off.
01:28It is not in heaven that you should say, Who will ascend unto heaven for us and bring it
01:31to us, that we may hear it and do it?
01:34Nor is it beyond the sea that you should say, Who will go over the sea for us and bring
01:37it to us, that we may hear it and do it?
01:40But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.
01:47The context of this is about God's commandments, obeying all of them, and God is saying it's
01:52not complicated, it's not hard.
01:55God promised that his commandments are not too hard for us.
01:59So anyone who tells you it is impossible to keep God's commandments is ignoring what
02:04scripture itself says.
02:06Now of course it's impossible to keep them perfectly your whole life.
02:11We know that everybody sins eventually, everybody except Yeshua.
02:15So it's impossible to keep it perfectly, but God never expected us to.
02:20If God had expected us to keep it perfectly, he never would have included provisions for
02:25what do you do if you screw up, but he did.
02:28So the expectation for mistakes is built into the commandments.
02:34The point of this is that if you are submitted to God, if you are being faithful to him,
02:41then God expects you to obey his commandments.
02:45Like Yeshua said, if you love me, keep my commandments.
02:48If you love God, keep his commandments.
02:51John wrote that we know that we love one another, as Yeshua commanded, as the Torah
02:56commands, if we love God and keep his commandments.
03:01Because keeping the commandments is all about loving one another and loving God.
03:06The commandments are instructions on how to love one another.
03:10So Yeshua said, the two greatest commandments are to love God with all your heart, mind
03:15and soul, and to love your neighbor as yourself.
03:17Those were quotes directly from scripture, from Leviticus.
03:24And that's what God is saying is not too difficult.
03:27It's not too difficult to love him.
03:28It's not too difficult to love your neighbor.
03:31But Paul, in this passage in Romans, is connecting this with Yeshua.
03:35He's saying, who will go up to heaven, that is Christ, and bring him down to us.
03:41But Moses was talking about the law.
03:44So in a sense, Paul is connecting Yeshua with the law, the Torah, the law of Moses.
03:52And this really gets to the point of what it means to confess that Yeshua is your Lord.
03:59If he is your Lord, you will obey him.
04:02If you don't obey him, obviously you don't believe he's your Lord.
04:06Because Lord means master, and you obey your master.
04:10So how can you call him master if you're not going to obey him?
04:14Some people will say that, well, his commandments are different than Moses.
04:18There's this law of Moses, and there's the law of Christ.
04:21And that comes from Galatians 6.2, and there's another passage, I don't remember what it
04:25is right offhand.
04:28But is it really, is that reasonable to say that the law of Christ is different from the
04:32law of Moses?
04:35You know, I call this idea, I'm sure somebody else has used this term before, but I call
04:38it metanomianism.
04:39You know, antinomianism says we don't have to keep God's law anymore.
04:45Metanomianism says that the law of God, or the law of Christ, is different from the law
04:49of Moses.
04:50That God gave the Israelites certain commandments just to make them different, or because they
04:57needed rules.
04:58I'm giving you rules to follow because you need rules to follow.
05:01Not because they were inherent to God's character, or they were really part of God's real law.
05:09They were just this extra thing that the Jews have to do.
05:11So then when the scripture talks about the law of God, it doesn't mean the law of Moses.
05:16And when it talks about the law of Christ, it's talking about the law of God, not the
05:19law of Moses.
05:20So a different law, metanomianism.
05:24But that is totally unscriptural.
05:26Throughout the Old Testament, the commands of Moses, the first five books of the Bible,
05:31especially the book of Deuteronomy, which Paul is quoting from here, is referred to
05:35as the law of God, the law of Yahweh.
05:38So it's completely unscriptural to say that the law of God is different from the law of
05:44Moses.
05:46But what about the law of Christ?
05:47Could that be different from the law of God?
05:50Well the apostles didn't seem to think so.
05:53Almost everything they taught was taken straight out of Torah.
05:58They taught a lot out of the Psalms, and even the Proverbs, and the Prophets.
06:05But every instruction they gave people was based in Torah.
06:08You know, Paul made a couple of exceptions where he says, you know, it's not the Lord
06:12telling you this, but I'm telling you.
06:14But even those can be connected back to Torah.
06:17They're not something that Paul just made up.
06:19They really are based in Torah, even if they weren't explicit in the law of Moses.
06:26Paul even said, long after he was saved, long after he had completed most of his missionary
06:31journeys, that even then he would not even know what sin is if the law didn't tell him
06:38what sin is.
06:39And the law in that context is the law of Moses.
06:43So Paul, as a believer, as an apostle, was still keeping the law because he himself said
06:49we shouldn't go on sinning.
06:51Well the law tells you what sin is, therefore if you don't want to sin, you need to keep
06:55the law.
07:00And it's not just the apostles.
07:02Yeshua too taught from the Torah.
07:04He taught from the law of Moses.
07:07He spent his entire ministry explaining the law of Moses, and if he was going to do away
07:11with that at the end of his ministry, why would he spend years teaching you how to do
07:16something that he was about to throw out?
07:18That doesn't make any sense.
07:21In Hebrew, the word for law is Torah.
07:24So when Paul says, well, the word Torah literally means instruction.
07:30So technically any instruction of God is the law or the Torah of God, but more formally
07:35the first five books are called Torah.
07:39But when Paul says, refers to something called the law of Christ, in his Hebrew Jewish mind
07:45he's thinking the Torah of Christ, or the instruction of Christ.
07:49Well what did Christ instruct?
07:52Everything he taught was straight out of Torah.
07:55Let me read you one of the most famous passages, and I know you already know what I'm going
07:58to go to here.
07:59Matthew 5, verses 17 through 20.
08:04Do not think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets.
08:07I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill.
08:11For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will
08:15by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.
08:19Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so shall
08:22be called least in the kingdom of heaven.
08:24But whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
08:29For I say to you that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and
08:33Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.
08:38You will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.
08:41Let's keep one thing straight.
08:42The Pharisees were not keeping the law of Moses.
08:45They were keeping a lot of it, and they believed that they were keeping it all, but they were
08:48keeping their own rules.
08:50They had added things to the law, which the law says you're not allowed to do.
08:55They had even added rules that prevented people from keeping the law.
08:59So, Yeshua himself said that if you do and teach the law, you will be called great in
09:04the kingdom of heaven, which means you're in the kingdom of heaven if you are doing
09:07and teaching the law.
09:10But if you follow the steps of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, you won't even be in
09:14the kingdom.
09:15They were not teaching the commandments of God.
09:18They were not teaching the laws of Moses.
09:20They were teaching the laws of men.
09:22Don't smoke.
09:23Don't drink.
09:24Don't dance.
09:26These are the laws of men.
09:28And if you think these things are making you righteous, they're not making you righteous.
09:32They're not making you holy.
09:34They're just making you special, which isn't necessarily a good thing.
09:40So back to Romans.
09:46In verse, what is that, verse 8, Paul references something called the word of faith, which
09:54we preach.
09:56The word is near you in your mouth and in your heart.
09:59That is the word of faith, which we preach.
10:01He's already connected Christ to the law.
10:05And now the word that he preaches is the law.
10:11Not keep the law in order to be saved, because your salvation is more about asking forgiveness
10:18for your sins, submitting yourself to Messiah and calling him Lord.
10:23So once you do that, now, if you're going to call him Lord, Master, then now you need
10:30to keep his commandments.
10:32And the passage that he just quoted says it's not too difficult.
10:36And in fact, by connecting that passage to Christ, Paul is pointing out that Christ showed
10:44us how to do it.
10:46He showed us how to keep the commandments.
10:48And it's not burdensome.
10:49He said, take my yoke upon you, and my yoke is easy.
10:54It's not burdensome, which is exactly what Moses was saying in Deuteronomy 30.
10:59The law isn't hard.
11:02It's a struggle with our flesh that wants to do the wrong thing all the time.
11:07But it's not complicated.
11:08It's really not that hard when you train yourself to do it.
11:14The word of faith, essentially, that Paul is talking about here is, yes, your law, God,
11:20is just.
11:21I hear it.
11:22I submit to you, and I obey your instructions, your law, your Torah.
11:29Who is Lord?
11:31Well, Christ is Lord.
11:33What is his instruction?
11:35Keep the commandments.
11:36If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
11:40For salvation, the thing that removes your sins and gives you eternal life, only comes
11:49from submission to Yeshua, by saying, Lord, I am a sinner.
11:54I know I can't save myself.
11:55There's nothing I can do to make up for all the sins I've committed in the past.
11:59Forgive me.
12:01I will obey you in the future.
12:05And only then does that future obedience, the righteousness of Moses that Paul talks
12:09about here, that brings life, have eternal value.
12:14It might enhance your life if you do it without faith.
12:20If you obey the law of Moses, you'll have better relationships with your neighbors,
12:23with your family.
12:25It will make your life better, but it's not going to get you eternal life.
12:29That comes from submission to Yeshua, but that submission then brings you back to the
12:33law and obedience, and then it has eternal value also.
12:39This is Jake Harper from American Torah.
12:42Submit to Yeshua and keep his commandments as he showed us how to do it.