God gave Israel a law so good that keeping it was the evangelism strategy — and since Jesus wrote the whole book, "what would Jesus do" requires knowing the whole thing, including the parts we've been trained to skip.
Central Image
Learning to box: technique is what separates a fighter from someone who puts on gloves and hurts himself. God didn't tell Israel to go punch stuff — he gave them the details, drilled into them, before they ever had to get in the ring.
The Turn
The assumption: the law is the harsh old part, grace is the good new part, and we don't have to deal with the old part anymore. The overturning: David loved the law, God called it the best legislation in the world, and when Israel actually kept it, that's exactly what happened.
Outline
The problem with WWJD (the opener)
The bracelet told people to do what Jesus would do and gave them nothing else. That's not an instruction — it's a direction to a boxing gym with no coach. Whatever Jesus would do got real squishy real fast and ended up being whatever felt right with a holy face on. The summer series has been about recovering the part of the Bible that has the actual details — the Torah, which doesn't mean "law" in the penal sense but means instruction.
Deuteronomy 4:1-8 — Moses's last speech to Israel
Statutes and rules shows up three times. Keep them and do them, keep them and do them. Moses tells this ragtag group of ex-slaves — nobody, not even a country yet, surrounded on every side by civilizations that had been codifying law for five hundred years (Hammurabi, Egypt, the Hittites, the Assyrians, all of them fond of their codes the way you're fond of a golden retriever that walks up to you) — that if they live by these laws, the nations around them will look and say, "what a wise and understanding people." God designed the obedience itself to be the witness. He called it evangelism by law.
What actually happened: David, Solomon, the Queen of Sheba
Under David — who wrote songs about how good the law was, how it was better than honey on the comb — and under Solomon, who walked in his father's ways at least at the start, Israel had a run of prosperity so absurd that silver counted as nothing. Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived, and the word got out. The Queen of Sheba came from somewhere deep in Africa because she'd heard about it. God made the promise in Deuteronomy 4, and 1 Kings 10 is where you watch him keep it. The promise wasn't sentimental — it was a strategy, and it worked.
What we gave up
Israel didn't hold it. Solomon didn't even finish his own reign before it started going wrong. And the American church in the 20th century, in its drive to give people the gospel and keep everybody feeling warm, left the same thing behind — the capacity to think about law, about civil government, about social policy from a biblical framework. The result is Christians who can't agree on the big picture of anything because the rulebook's been declared irrelevant. Culture is downstream from religion; politics is downstream from culture. The church steers the nation, always. If the steering went wrong, the church let it happen.
The canon bookend: Deuteronomy to Revelation
Moses opens with don't add to or take away from this word. John closes Revelation with the same warning. That's not a coincidence — the guy who wrote Revelation knew Deuteronomy 4. The whole book is tied together, beginning to end. If you don't understand the first part, you'll do weird things with the second part — you'll take "turn the other cheek" and turn it into social policy that eliminates police and armies, because you don't have the framework the law gives you. Jesus was giving interpersonal instruction, not civil governance principles. The old law tells you the difference.
What to do with it
The law can't save. No law can. But it can keep you from being stupid. It can keep you from being the person who gets in the ring having only ever watched other people box. The teenager parked in a car at midnight wondering what Jesus wants them to do has already waited too long — the decision was supposed to be made a long time before that. Same for all of us. If you want to make real decisions in real life without getting your face kicked in, you have to have already thought through the details. Read Leviticus. Read Deuteronomy. Read them as if somebody was still expected to do it right now. Every law in there walks back to the Ten Commandments; the Ten Commandments walk back to love God and love your neighbor. The details are what let you actually apply it — solve disputes, go right instead of left, make Christians look like people who know what they're doing. And when that happens, people will ask.
The Landing
He gave us a book, and he really meant the whole thing. Knowing it and living it in the details is the only way the world beats a path to our door — and finds something when they get there.
Questions to Think About
- Did you wear a WWJD bracelet, make fun of one, or get handed one by a well-meaning youth minister? What did you actually think "what Jesus would do" meant?
- Moses tells Israel in Deuteronomy 4 that if they keep these laws, the nations around them will look and say "what a wise and understanding people." What did that promise require Israel to actually do — and what did it assume would happen if they did?
- When Solomon was governing Israel by God's law, the Queen of Sheba showed up from somewhere deep in Africa because she'd heard about it. What does her showing up say about the order of witness and obedience — which one came first?
- Toby said that if you're parked in a car at midnight wondering what Jesus wants you to do, you've already waited too long. Where in your own adult life have you made a decision too late — already in the moment, already half beat up — because you hadn't thought it through ahead of time?
- He grew up being told the law was mean and harsh and that grace replaced it, then read what David actually said about it and realized he'd been handed someone else's opinion about Scripture instead of the Scripture itself. Have you inherited a reading of part of the Bible that turns out to be more about the interpreter than the text?
- Toby argued that Christians can't get on the same page politically because we threw out the Old Testament and lost the capacity to think about law and civil policy from a biblical framework. Is he right — and if he is, what would recovering that actually look like in practice?
- The sermon's claim was that the church steers the nation — always, whether it intends to or not — and that the nation's current direction is downstream from what the church knows and believes. Do we actually believe that about ourselves, and what does it mean for how we think about what we do here?
- Toby asked the congregation to read Leviticus or Deuteronomy as if somebody was still expected to do it right now, as if it still mattered. Do that this week — pick a chapter, read it that way, and bring back one thing you found.