Okay, so lesson three is entitled hero Israel because it is taken from the famous Shama, Shamao Israel, hero Israel that's in chapter six. It's a very, very famous passage. It's the great commandment. But you're going to find that command hero Israel all over the place.
It is found not just in Deuteronomy, chapter six. We're going to talk about it right now, our various are soon in this lesson, but it's found all over Deuteronomy and it's found all over the time. It's here in this section that we're going to be studying chapters five through 11. Now this section of scripture in the Romanum where one here I'm going to introduce to you kind of what's going on in terms of the structure and how we're moving into this next section of law.
But this section is so, so beautiful. It is so incredibly beautiful. It has so many passages of God's love for Israel, for God's love for his people. One of the things that gets me excited about this is that too many people have caricatures, false images of who God is in the Old Testament.
They think God is this cranky old man full of vengeance and wrath, telling people they got to die and all this horrible stuff in the Old Testament, then everything gets better when Jesus comes along and he's hugging people and telling them, I'm okay, you're okay. It's such a dark false dichotomy here. There's so much scripture in the Old Testament in Deuteronomy in particular in which Moses depicts God and explains that God is a loving father. So many times Moses says, God loves you, God loves you, God loves you.
It's like, am I reading the Old Testament? Am I reading Deuteronomy? Well, yes, you are. You are reading the Old Testament in Deuteronomy and God isn't a passionate father who loves his children.
So there are many verses for memorization, for prayer, too many people, like they don't. When they sit down and pray, Deuteronomy or to study the scriptures, very few people actually pick up Deuteronomy and say, I'm going to read prayerfully over Deuteronomy because they're afraid of it. They think it's all these weird laws. We'll talk about the actual laws themselves in the actual covenant constitution and the next couple of lessons.
But there are so many beautiful passages to pray over and to memorize. So I'm going on and on about this. I'm really excited about this lesson because it is very, very beautiful here. So here, Israel, chapters 5 through 11, we are moving into this new section.
All right, so enough of my little ramble there. What are we doing now in terms of the book and the structure? Well, this is Moses' second speech. Remember, in the introduction, we talked about how Deuteronomy is his last one in Testament.
He has a bunch of farewell speeches or sermons that he gives to Israel before he dies. He's going to go about Nemo and die. Last lesson we talked about his first speech, which was focusing on Israel's past. And we looked about how he focused on certain elements of their journey through the wilderness for specific reason, which is to encourage them not to be afraid of the people of the fortified cities.
God will deliver them into his hands. All against the home, these two kings were examples of how God will deliver these very frightful, powerful kings into their hands that they just trust. That's his first sermon or speech. This is now the beginning of his second speech, which focuses really on Israel's present.
What are they supposed to do currently presently as God's children? And that is to observe and follow the law. Okay, now that runs from chapter 5 all the way to chapter 26. We're actually going to take three lessons to break this down.
But in this section of chapters 5 and 6, Moses is constantly urging the people to love God unreservedly, to always cling to him, to get rid of idolatry over and over again. But it's really subdivided in a couple of ways here. I think it's very helpful. So here's a quote here from your Talbot Enerich of the Old Testament.
What follows is one of the most passionate exhortations to exclusive love and fidelity to the Lord in all the Old Testament. That's exactly what I was saying earlier, right? This is the most quoted portion of Deuteronomy in the New Testament. For example, Jesus will cite from this section three times during the wilderness temptation.
And there's the citations there. And I'm going to point them out as we go along. But what this quote is talking about is this particular section here, well, really the whole section in 5 to 26, but certainly 5 through 11. And this portion is quoted multiple times in the New Testament.
I shared with you that the Psalms in Isaiah and Deuteronomy are the top three winners, right, for most references in the New Testament. But when Deuteronomy is quoted so often, it's from this section, right? So certainly this quote mentions Jesus' citations of Deuteronomy in the wilderness, fighting Satan and defeating Satan. But of course, he got the greatest commandment.
It's also coming from this section. So it's very, very significant for us to spend this hour or more than I don't know how long this is going to be. It's just so awesome. All this time talking about how beautiful this passage is, the section of material and how it connects with what Christ is going to do throughout the wilderness and beyond.
So there's a lot to say. So how are chapters 5 through 26 further subdivided? Well, your nature Catholic study Bible says the central chapters of Deuteronomy set forth a covenantal stipulations that Israel is bound to observe general stipulations that appear in chapters 5 through 11, and specific stipulations following chapters 12 through 26. All right, now this is very, very helpful.
So the general stipulations, everything that we're going to talk about in this lesson here, really are based on the 10 commandments, which is talked about in chapter 5. And following chapter 5 is the loving obedience that we are to have in observing the 10 commandments, and then the various obstacles and challenges that might threaten our loving obedience to observing those 10 commandments. Okay, so the Shema is going to be in there. That's really the internal disposition that we need to have for obeying the commandments.
Then there's going to be various obstacles that are going to really turn our hearts cold and hard against God. So generally speaking, chapters 5 through 11 are these 10 commandments and how we're to observe them. Then you get into the specific stipulations that are all practical applications of the 10 commandments. And this is what's going to be very, very helpful for a lot of students of Deuteronomy.
You just read it from beginning to end. It's really confusing. I don't understand it. Is there a rhyme or a reason to all these different laws that are going on?
Or is it just a bunch of random things that Moses just wrote down or somebody just wrote down here? Well, no, there is a method to the madness. All the laws in chapters 12 through 26 follow the order of the 10 commandments. All right, so there are applications then and there for the nation of Israel as a state, like as a nation, one nation under God.
That's going to be really important. And so one thing to clarify here is that the 10 commandments are found in the general stipulations followed by exhortations to love God, right? One's Hall, Hart, and soul and strength. Then you get into the specific applications of those 10 commandments for Israel.
You do not find the 10 commandments in the covenant constitution itself. And that's important because as I'm going to explain in just a minute, the 10 commandments are eternal, immutable. They apply for everyone everywhere. But the actual laws for Israel pertain to them as a nation.
So when the nation ceases to exist, many of those laws are going to pass away as well. Okay, so we talked about this before in previous lesson. I think it was lesson one, if I remember correctly here, why certain laws pass away and other laws do not. The 10 commandments are much more universal, they are universal than these other specific stipulations.
And I think it's really, really important to keep in mind, right? So 10 commandments we're going to talk about now and the obedience towards those commandments that everyone must have is in the next two lessons, we're going to look at the specific stipulations, those practical applications for Israel then and there as they are being formed as a nation, right, as a secular state. Okay, it's not entirely secular because you know, there is no church separation of church and state for Israel. It's altogether, but nevertheless, you understand what I'm saying?
How are these laws going to govern them as a nation? All right, so let's get into chapter five then without any further ado and look at the decalogue. So the decalogue is also known as the 10 commandments, because literally, if you go back a lot of this stuff we talked about by the way in lesson seven of our Exodus Bible study, so you can go back and consult that we discussed a lot. I can't get into a lot of those things or repeat myself now because we have so much stuff to discuss in chapters five through 11.
But nevertheless, the decalogue is because it's called the deck of means 10, logo is words, the 10 words that you go back to Exodus, that's how they're introduced, these are the words of God. So we often commonly call them the 10 commandments, but the scriptural reference is the 10 words, which is actually kind of cool because remember Jesus is the word of God. John chapter one makes very, very clear, he is the word of God. You know, when God speaks, he speaks Christ, right?
So anyways, Moses is going to command Israel to obey these words, these commandments by beginning in chapter five verse one here, oh Israel. So that's the repetition of that word, Shama, famously in instance chapter six, but as I told you, it's all over the place in this section and in this book. Here, oh Israel, Shama, oh Israel, the statutes and ordinances of try speak to you, learn them, be careful to do them. And verse two to six really clear off eyes, really what is going on here in terms of the context?
I just have a number of things in your notes about these characteristics, but let's go to verse two, the Lord our God make a covenant with us at Hora, that's not Sinai, not with our fathers to the Lord make this covenant, but with us who are all of us here today. So not with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but with us, those that had left Egypt. The Lord spoke with you face to face to the mountain out of the midst of the fire when I stood between the Lord and you at that time to declare to you the word of the Lord for you were afraid because of the fire and you did not go up in the mountain. And then he said, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of bondage.
Okay, so here is real, what God has done for you. And the first characteristic of the deck of log is really important to keep in mind is that these 10 commandments are contextualized in the larger story of the Sinai covenant and the Exodus liberation. And the catechism goes into a lot of detail about this. I have a reference for you if you want to check out the catechism paragraphs 2052 and onward.
But one of the main points that it makes, and this is true here found by chapter five verses one through six, you got to understand the commandments in the context of covenant of relationship and of God delivering Israel out of bondage. The 10 commandments are not given by God because he's a big party pooper and he doesn't want us to have fun, right? A lot of people scoff at these sorts of moral laws because they want to do whatever they want to do because they're godless. But you have to understand that it's not God is not trying to keep his thumb on us, he's not trying to keep us down.
He wants us to be truly free. He wants us to be free from Satan, sin and death. And then all the typology we talked about in terms of the Exodus applies here. So Exodus is typological for our deliverance from Satan, sin and death.
Anybody who knows, anybody who has any modicum of self reflection knows that sin is slavery. It could be on a massive scale with addictions, right where you truly are enslaved to that addiction of whatever it might be, or it could be on a minor venial level where you've got a really bad temper and you're always flaring out or whatever it might be or you're very greedy, very selfish or whatever, you fill in the blank. It's slavery, right? You feel enslaved to that sin you want to get away from it but you can't.
The 10 commandments here in all of God's eternal law really helps us to be freed from that bondage. Just as they're freed from Israel, ultimately God wants to free us all from Satan, sin and death. In order to be in covenant with him, that covenant was established at Sinai and of course the new and everlasting covenant was with Christ and his Paschal Mysteries. So that really needs to be the lens by which we view these commandments and these 10 words that Dechal O'Goye, God wants us to be free.
He wants us to be truly human, to be truly alive and we can't be that way if we are enslaved to sin. So in that lens, I personally believe, I think this is true, Echadikus teaches us, in that lens of the commandments being the means by which we live freely and we live freely in relationship with God, that makes it much more understanding than just randomly, thou shalt not, thou shalt not, thou shalt not, and you just kind of feel like it's a big downer, right? It's not. So that's the first major characteristic I think it's important to begin with.
The larger story of liberation to be free from sin, to be free from God. We talked about all of that in Exodus.