Old Testament law established in the Pentateuch teaches us so much about God’s purpose and design for the functioning of families, from marriage, to headship, to parent/children relationships, to rights and obligations, and more. These laws of love will be summarized, and some of the contemporary attacks against these truths will be examined.

I'm speaking on the theology of the family in the writings of Moses, the Pentateuch, these five books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. I'll be doing it in two parts. This is part one, the theology of the family in the law of Moses. And then the second part will be in a breakout session tomorrow, the theology of the family in the historical narratives of those five books. Before Mount Sinai, before God descended on the mountain and gave the law to Moses in Exodus 20.

We don't know how much the people of God knew. We don't know how they knew it. We don't know how they transmitted it. But with the giving of the law all that becomes crystal clear because the law was a body of written revelation, which includes instructions for transmission. So suddenly we know exactly what they knew and how they knew it and how they were to transmit it because it was a body of written revelation.

So this represents a giant leap forward in redemptive history Because pictures of Jesus, these types and shadows of a savior are all over the law. Jesus is the fulfillment of the law, both in his perfect keeping of every commandment and in being the fulfillment of these prophetic pictures of the Lamb who was slain before the foundations of the world. So the giving of the law represents this giant leap forward in progressive revelation. God didn't give us the entire body of truth, all from the start that he revealed truth little by little over the centuries and the millennia cultivating of course in the coming of the Messiah Jesus Christ and the finishing of the revelation that he wanted his people to have and that includes revelation about marriage and family. We know more about marriage and family than the Old Testament saints did because revelation was progressive and we and we have it all.

Here it is. The Old Testament law from the Pentateuch teaches us a lot about God's purpose and design for the functioning of families from marriage to headship to parent-children relationships to rights and obligations and more. There is gold here so my job is to try to mine out some of the gold from these five books that Moses wrote. Let me give you a roadmap for our time. I have four major headings.

The first is the theology of the family in the Ten Commandments. You have to start with the Ten Commandments. It's the towering mountain peak in this mountain range. Second major point will be six different types of laws which teach about and regulate the family. The third major point will be some of the contemporary attacks against what God revealed about family life in the Pentateuch.

And then finally, the fourth major point would be a few closing thoughts. Let's ask the Lord to help us. God please help. Please come here. Pray for your spirit to be working so freely in me, in the hearts of your people.

Help me to speak, help the listeners to learn, to drink in and feed upon your word. I pray God that you'd be among us in a discernible way that we would sense your presence here that we would know your presence here. Please help us in Jesus name. Amen. Okay please turn in your Bibles to Exodus chapter 20 where we find the Ten Commandments.

This is major heading number one, the theology of the family in the Ten Commandments. What do we learn about family life and God's regulation of it from the Ten Commandments? I'm going to begin with the second commandment, which is Exodus 20, verses four through six. Follow along as I read, Exodus 20, verses four through six. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth you shall not bow down to them nor serve them now listen to this for I the Lord your God am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, showing mercy to thousands, to those who love me and keep my commandments.

God has revealed to us through this commandment that our worship has tremendous downstream generational consequences. I am not an island unto myself. It is a personal faith, but it's not only a personal faith. Whether I worship this God and how I worship this God will have a significant impact not only on my life but the life of my children, the life of my grandchildren, the life of my great grandchildren. So on the one hand I'm faced with the terrors of this warning.

I might live to see the devastation of my non-worship or my false worship down into the lives of my great grandchildren. It's possible I'll live to see that. Think about the terror of that warning. Think about living to an age where you see the devastation of the choices you made about whether you would worship this God and how you would worship this God. In your life, the devastation in your life, in your children's life, in your grandchildren's life, in your great grandchildren's life, you might live to see that.

But on the other hand, I have this glorious incentive that God is so predisposed to mercy and loving kindness that my worship in spirit and in truth can ensure blessing to thousands of generations. It's not Iniquity visited on three and four generations, but blessing on thousands of people, it's generations and generations. Iniquity visited on three and four generations, blessing to a thousand generations, there haven't even been a thousand generations yet. It means really forever. So I have the terror of a warning that I might live to see devastation in the lives of my great grandchildren, but a glorious incentive that blessing can flow through essentially countless generations if I worship this God according to how he has prescribed that he desires to be worshiped.

The other point I should make here is the point made by Deuteronomy 24 16. Listen to Deuteronomy 24 16. Fathers shall not be put to death for their children nor shall children be put to death for their fathers. A person shall be put to death for his own sin. So we're not guilty of the sins of our forefathers, but we are impacted by their sins.

It doesn't mean that my children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren can't feel the weight of their sins and turn and be forgiven and free. It just means that they can't be free of all the impact of my sins, the consequences of my sin. God is such a jealous God that he will not suspend the law of sowing and reaping because of his holiness. My children, grandchildren, great grandchildren will not be guilty, held guilty of my sins, but they'll be impacted by them. The law teaches us that sometimes in terrible ways.

If you've been alive long enough, you know people who have the evidence of this in their lives, maybe it's you. Maybe you have tremendous impact from the sins of your grandparents or your parents. So that is the second commandment. The fourth commandment. Look now at Exodus 20 verses eight through 11.

The keeping of the separated day. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work you nor your son nor your daughter nor your male servant nor your female servant nor your cattle nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them and rested the seventh day.

Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it, He made it a sacred day. God has revealed to us through this commandment that husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, being one and acting as one, are commanded to secure a day of restful worship each week for those entrusted to their care. It is a commandment to a father and it is assumed that his wife is one with him and will act as one with him." Think of a God who gives seven and a half weeks a year for rest and worship. Say, what do you mean? 52 weeks a year?

One day a week? 52 days? What is that if you put them consecutively? It's seven and a half weeks given to you by God to rest your body and to worship him. How sweet.

But the truth is that we're reluctant to engage it in the way that we should and when everyone is responsible for securing it then no one really feels responsible for securing it. So God has given us family structure and at the top of it is a father and his wife who is one with him, who acts with him to secure this on behalf of those entrusted to them. Down to their work animals. Down to their servants. Certainly including their children.

Explicitly including their children. Fathers and mothers are responsible for securing good for those entrusted to them. And rest and worship is part of that good that God wants to be part of family life. It's explicit in the commandment. The fifth commandment, Exodus 20, verse 12.

Honor your father and your mother that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you. Honor your father and your mother. God has revealed to us through this commandment that authority and submission in the home is his idea, his design, and that it is a moral category. God gives parents to children for their good and blessing but this only holds up and functions according to plan when the structure that God has established is upheld. Honor your parents.

One of the reasons you're to honor your parents is that God's intent to bless you and help you only holds up if you honor them. In many ways you take away their ability to help you and bless you if you will not honor them. So in Old Testament more broadly this is stated positively. Here it's the first commandment with a promise. The other commandments in the Ten Commandments don't come with a promise of blessing.

This one does. Or consider Leviticus 19 verse 3. Leviticus 19 verse 3. Every one of you shall revere his father and his mother. It should be an intense respect, a reverence for father and mother, an honor for father and mother.

And it's also stated negatively, very negatively, listen to Exodus 21, verses 15 and 17. Exodus 21, verse 15, and he who strikes his father or his mother shall surely be put to death. Striking being the polar opposite of honor." So here it's stated negatively, and the sanction is death. Two verses later, Exodus 21 verse 17, and he who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death. Cursing being the polar opposite of honor and the sanction is death.

Or listen to Deuteronomy 21 verses 18 through 21. If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother and who, when they have chastened him, will not heed them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city to the gate of his city and they shall say to the elders of his city this son of ours is stubborn and rebellious he will not obey our voice he is a glutton and a drunkard then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones, so you shall put away the evil from among you. And all Israel shall hear and fear." So we see that often family matters are not just family matters. Honor in the home has an impact on the city. So when there's persistent, there's persistent, gross, scandalous dishonor, You had to bring it out and it gets dealt with in the gates of the city.

He's stoned in the gates of the city. So is God serious about honor of children towards their parents? Finally, the seventh commandment. Exodus 20 verse 14, you shall not commit adultery. God has revealed to us through this commandment that he has walled off merit, the marriage relationship, making it exclusive, permanent, sacred, and closer and more intimate than any other relationship, human relationship, on planet Earth.

Marriage is different. Marriage is special. Marriage is exclusive. Marriage is closer, it's more intimate. God wants it that way and of course now we see back, we see this back through the lenses of Ephesians 5 and Christ and his church.

I have more to say about this later but for now that will suffice. So that's major heading number one, the theology of the family in the 10 Commandments. Major heading number two, six different types of laws which teach about and regulate the family. These are representative, meaning, and I'm now going to categories of laws, many of which fit into a category, and so I'm going to just pluck out a few from each category and show them to you as representative of the category. I have six.

Number one, laws which make the family secondary. The law of God positions family as important but never, never, never ultimate. Important, yes. Ultimate, never. Listen to Deuteronomy 13 verses 6 through 9.

This is astonishing. Listen to Deuteronomy 13 verses six through nine. If your brother, the son of your mother, your son or your daughter, the wife of your bosom, or your friend who has as your own soul secretly entices you saying, let us go and serve other gods, which you have not known neither you nor your fathers of the gods of the people which are all around you near to you or far off from you from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth you shall not consent to him or listen to him. Nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him or conceal him, but you shall surely kill him. Your hand shall be first against him to put him to death and afterward the hand of all the people." Friends, that says it all.

Though family is important in the law it is not ultimate. God is ultimate. God gets the place of highest honor. Someone entices you to worship another God upstream, your parents, you don't consent, you lead and they're being put to death. If they're downstream, your son or your daughter, you don't consent, you lead in them being put to death.

Your wife, she's one with you, you don't consent, you lead in putting her to death. God is first. God has the position that can never be given to another, not family. It is important. It is never ultimate.

That said, family life in the law is to be a wonderful part of following the Lord. Worshipping God together. In Deuteronomy 12, it speaks of the place where the people would gather to worship God at the prescribed feast, and it calls them to come and rejoice with their sons and daughters. Worship Old Testament worship don't think of it as this cold mechanical thing. The intent is that the people gather to rejoice in the presence of the Lord together as families.

God wants joy in him to be a family affair. That's part of the law. God wants joy in him to be a family affair. So that's number one. Laws which make the family secondary.

God always ultimate. Number two, marriage laws. They weren't thinking about Christ in the church but we, progressive revelation is at the end we have it all and we look back at marriage now in the Old Testament and we inform all those things with what we know that Paul says in Ephesians 5 about Christ and his church. We find marriage laws that speak of structure. The family is ordered in marriage law.

You can turn to Numbers chapter 30 if you'd like or just listen, I'll be reading Numbers chapter 30, verses six through eight. Numbers 30, verses six through eight. Follow along as I read. It's speaking of a wife and the commitment she makes. If indeed she takes a husband while bound by her vows or by a rash utterance from her lips by which she bound herself, And her husband hears it and makes no response to her on the day that he hears, then her vows shall stand.

And her agreements by which she bound herself shall stand. But if her husband overrules her on the day that he hears it, he shall make void her vow which she took and which she uttered with her lips by which she bound herself and the Lord will release her. He's talking about vows taken by a woman who is married or who then becomes married and what happens on the day that her husband hears the vow and that he can invalidate a vow and the Lord will release her from it. Now if you know how seriously vows are put forward in the law, and how serious God takes the fulfilling of them. These are striking words, a vow undertaken by a woman, but contradicted by her husband in this short window of time, the day that he hears of it, that the Lord will release her.

So in Old Testament law, it's assumed that married women will make solemn commitments. That's assumed in the text. It has a culture where married women are making solemn commitments, but their husbands have the authority to overrule those in a short window of time because the law puts forth a structure in the family. It's headship. A husband is the head of his wife, the head of his home.

The law puts forth responsibility and accountability within marriage. Listen to Deuteronomy 22 verses 20 and 21. Deuteronomy 22 verses 20 and 21. In this text a woman has been accused of not being a virgin when she enters into marriage. And that's where we pick up in the text.

But if the thing is true and evidence of evidences of virginity are not found for the young woman, then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father's house. And the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones because she has done a disgraceful thing in Israel to play the harlot in her father's house so you shall put away the evil from among you." It's not just that the sin is dealt with. It is where the sin is dealt with. Where's it dealt with? On dad's doorstep.

What is this teaching fathers and their help meets? You're responsible. How will you ever step over that threshold again after your daughter has been brought and stoned to death on the threshold of your house? How will you ever cross that threshold again? How would you live in that home again?

You're responsible. You're accountable. Old Testament law speaks of, establishes, rights in marriage. Listen to this one, Deuteronomy 24, verse five. Deuteronomy 24, verse five, When a man has taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war or be charged with any business.

He shall be free at home one year and bring happiness to his wife whom he has taken. A man has a right to be free from warfare or extra activities for a year and a woman has the right to be made happy for the first year. How do you like that for marriage rights? You have the right to be made happy. Or this, Exodus 21 verses 10 and 11.

It's speaking of taking a second wife. I'm not touching that with a 10-foot pole. I'm not the right person and I don't have the time. Exodus 21, verses 10 and 11. If he takes another wife, he shall not diminish her, the first wife's, food, her clothing, and her marriage rights.

And if he does not do these three for her, food, clothing, marriage rights, then she shall go out free without paying money. She has a right as a wife to food and clothing and marriage rights. They are secured for her in the law. The law provides sexual regulations. If you go to Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20, those whole chapters are the chapters for confining physical intimacy to marriage.

It talks about all different kinds of sexual immorality and it forbids them all. And the word translated uncleanness in many translations in those two chapters, Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20, uncleanness, uncleanness, uncleanness, over and over again is talking about sexual immorality in those chapters. Bible has code to speak discreetly of scandalous sexual things. We could take a cue from that by the way. But it calls it uncleanness and and that word uncleanness is a hyperlink to Deuteronomy chapter 24 where uncleanness, reference Leviticus 18 and 20, are grounds for divorce and the dissolution of a marriage and the only grounds for it in Deuteronomy 24.

In summary, the Old Testament law codified, it etched in stone, it put in writing the special nature of this closest human relationship in the world, giving it structure and responsibility and accountability and rights and sexual regulations. And it matters because it reflects Christ in the church. It matters because it reflects the righteousness of God, but it also matters because marriage is this picture before the world of Christ and his passionate love for his people. So that's number two, marriage laws. Number three, laws of transmission.

Please turn to Deuteronomy 6. Deuteronomy 6, laws of transmission. Again, this is representative. You find laws of transmission everywhere in the Pentateuch. Now, what has Deuteronomy 6 come before?

Deuteronomy 5. What's in Deuteronomy 5? The Ten Commandments again. It's the second appearance of the Ten Commandments. So Deuteronomy 6 is telling you what to do with the Ten Commandments.

Let me read Deuteronomy 6, verses 1 through 9. Now this is the commandment, and these are the statutes and judgments which the Lord your God has commanded to teach you, that you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess, That you may fear the Lord your God to keep all his statutes and his commandments which I command you. You and your son and your grandson all the days of your life and that your days may be prolonged. Therefore, hear, O Israel, and be careful to observe it, that it may be well with you, that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord God of your fathers has promised you a land flowing with milk and honey. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. And these words I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." We find that a transmission mechanism was built in.

It is a commandment for families to transmit the commandments. A commandment to teach the commandments. It is to be you and your son and your grandson. As a husband and a father I am to love the Lord your God. So we're talking about our religion here.

We're talking about the real thing here. And I'm to hide his word, these commandments in my heart, and then I am to teach his word, these commandments, diligently to my children. And it tells me how to do it. I'm to walk along and talk along. When I sit in my house, when I walk by the way, when I lie down, when I rise up, all the time the words of God are on my lips to teach my children to transmit the faith to the next generation.

Now just look further in the chapter, Deuteronomy 6, 20 through 25, when your son asks you in time to come, saying, what is the meaning of these testimonies, the statutes and the judgments which the Lord our God has commanded you. Then you shall say to your son, we were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and the Lord showed us signs and wonders before our eyes great and severe against Egypt, Pharaoh and all his household. Then he brought us out from there that he might bring us in to give us the land of which he swore to our fathers and the Lord commanded us to observe all these statutes to fear the Lord our God for our good always, that he might preserve us alive as it is today. Then it will be righteousness for us if we are careful to observe all these commandments before the Lord our God as he commanded us. Psalm 66 verse 16 is beautiful.

In Psalm 66, 16, the psalmist says, come and hear all you who fear God, and I will declare what he has done for my soul. I'll tell you what God has done for my soul. Fathers and mothers are supposed to do that. God gave them a system of worship that would elicit questions from children. Why do we do this?

What does this mean? And that just opens the door for us to say what God has done for our soul. We were slaves. God brought us out. God kept every promise.

That's number three, laws of transmission. Number four, laws of deliberate separation. Laws of deliberate separation. Family and religion are not separate categories. I do family stuff over here and I do religious stuff over here.

No, they are woven together. Look at Deuteronomy 7. We're just kind of continuing in the same section of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 7 verses 1 through 4. When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you go to possess and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Gergashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you.

When the Lord your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them, nor show mercy to them, nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods so the anger of the Lord will be aroused against you and destroy you. Suddenly mixing in marriage between believers and unbelievers is marked as deadly in Old Testament law. Number Four, laws of deliberate separation, coming out and being a special people, a peculiar people, a separate people.

Number five, laws of family usefulness. Laws of family usefulness. I find this an interesting category of Old Testament law about the family. The law of Moses envisions a life where the family business is kingdom business. Sweet.

The priests were by law an extended family tracing back to Aaron with immediate families having specific roles within the priesthood. This immediate family would do this. This immediate family would do that. The Levites who served the priests in the Old Testament system of worship were by law an extended family tracing back to Levi with sub-families, with immediate families having specific roles. When it was the tabernacle, certain families were tasked with transporting different parts of the structure and the items necessary for worship.

Certain families were gatekeepers, certain families were singers and musicians, and and and. In Numbers 10 in the wilderness, the tribes or the families, the 12 families that constituted Israel were to camp around the tabernacle in a certain prescribed pattern. Listen to Numbers 10, verse 14. Numbers 10, verse 14, The standard of the camp of the children of Judah set out first according to their armies. Over their army was Nahshon the son of Amenadab.

And what they're doing here is what was explicitly commanded in Numbers 2. It's not just that they're doing it, it's that they're doing it because they were explicitly commanded to camp around the tabernacle and to break camp in a certain order and their family is under a banner and they're called armies. The army of the families of Judah, the armies of the family of Benjamin, the armies of the family of Issachar. The point in each of these instances is that the closeness and structure of the family was an asset for kingdom advancement. Are you with me?

Okay, God has given us structure and closeness, and it's an asset for kingdom advancement. You're not starting from scratch with a bunch of disconnected individuals where no one knows who's who in the zoo, you already have structure, you already have relationship, you already have closeness, you already have certain disciplines, and it's a natural platform, a perfect platform for serving the Lord together in a particular way. That's what you see in Old Testament law. I think there's a lot for us to learn about that. That's number five.

Laws of family usefulness. Number six. Laws for the widow and the fatherless. These are interesting and instructive because they teach us what a husband and father has been designed to provide for a family. So if you remove the husband and therefore have a widow, the law comes in to provide to ensure provision for what he was supposed to provide.

If you remove a father, you have the fatherless and the law steps in to provide what he was supposed to provide. So it tells us so much about what husbands and fathers are intended by God, tasked by God to provide. Listen to Deuteronomy 10 verse 18. He, the Lord God, administers justice for the fatherless and the widow and loves the stranger, giving him food and clothing. So husbands and fathers are designed by God to secure justice and to provide for and to provide love for his family.

It says that here by implication. Or Deuteronomy 24 verse 19 when you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf of the field you shall not go back to get it. It shall be for the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands." Again, provision for the family. Major heading number three, some of the contemporary attacks. I don't know how many I'm going to give you.

I'm almost out of time. Number one, in a large swath of the church today, this is barely interesting and entirely academic. Why is that? Because they don't believe that the Old Testament has anything to do with the New Testament Christian. I don't even know how you understand the New Testament without the Old Testament.

Don't give a single inch to that thinking in your mind or in your home. Anytime you're standing in a stream of theology that puts a radical discontinuity, a radically disconnects Old Testament from new, run, run. Yes, we have a new covenant. It's a better covenant based on better promises to that. We all say amen, but it is built on foundational truth.

God has not changed between the covenants. Truth is truth between the covenants. God is God between the covenants. There is not an old covenant God and a new covenant God. Number two, the separation of parents and children in everything.

This is completely against Deuteronomy 6 and what we see in the Old Testament law. Push back on it, push back on it, push back on it. Number three, the lack of deliberate separation from the world that is drifting farther and farther from the Bible's ethic. In bygone days, where the truths of the Bible were more or less commonly accepted, you could say, well, we need to be 20%, 30%, 50% better in the world, but the problem with that strategy is that as the world takes a left turn, a sharp left turn, then just being 50% off the world has you moving fast. The world is not our standard.

Jesus Christ, conformity to Jesus is our standard. It needs to be a deliberate separation between us and the world. That doesn't invalidate anything about evangelism and the Great Commission. That's a subject for another day. Number four, the attack on gender roles has become an attack on gender.

It's moved. The battlefront has moved in a bad direction, in a wrong direction. Do you see what's happening? If we allow this, this moves us totally beyond gender roles. It will mean that we're no longer contending for male headship, we're contending for male.

If you allow those battle lines to be moved, you've already given up gender roles. We have to stand fast. Number five, the lack of lively transforming love for God in the hearts of parents is our greatest enemy. The lack of lively, transforming love for God in my heart is the greatest threat from my family. It's not Beyonce and her gyrating.

A few closing thoughts. First, the theology of the family and the law of Moses is beautiful, it's wonderful, it's compelling, they are laws of love. They are so very worth learning and obeying and defending. But Though we should love those laws, we should only trust Jesus. He has obeyed every law on behalf of his people.

As you work through these laws, sift through these laws, how are you doing at obeying them? What if your standing depends on obeying them? You're lost, we have nothing without Jesus. He has obeyed the law on behalf of his people. I love these laws, they're wonderful.

They put forth a compelling vision, but if you trust them, you'll be lost. We trust Jesus. God, I pray that you would add your blessing to anything that I've said that's true and helpful. That you would just emblazon these things on our hearts and help us to walk with you in them. I pray in Jesus' name, amen.