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See, I have taught you decrees and laws as the Lord my God commanded me, so that you may follow them in the land you are entering to take possession of it. Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, \u201cSurely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.\u201d What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him? And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today? (Deuteronomy 4:5-8)

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Yesterday we heard how obedience to the law is tied to life.\xa0 Today, Moses gives more and different reasons for a life of obedience.

The overarching theme is that Israel\u2019s keeping of the law is their way of witnessing to the nations around them.\xa0 The first reason to keep the law yesterday was so that Israel itself might have life.\xa0 Today the reason is to show their life as a life in God that other nations might just want to partake in themselves.

So firstly, God is near to his people.\xa0 Near enough to care how they lived\u2014not only with him as the first table of the law speaks to, but also with one another as the second table of the law speaks to.\xa0 Israel was to love their God AND their neighbours.\xa0 This is a call to be in relationships of flourishing: in communion, in shalom/peace/flourishing with God, neighbours, even the Creation itself.\xa0 It all started by God being near enough to his people to know them and be known by them in a dialogue of prayer.

This was secondly, therefore a righteous set of laws: a set of laws that promoted and guarded righteousness not just in relationship to God, but also in society.\xa0 It\u2019s not strange that Western law codes are based in no small part on the ethos and values of the Judeo-Christian legal ethic.\xa0 We are not a law unto ourselves (as if our individual choice was all that mattered), nor is it just about us and Jesus.\xa0 The law concerns all of life and all of relationships, even our relationship with the Creation!\xa0 This law is holistic, relational, and interested in a life of flourishing Shalom for all. \xa0This is what God means by justice and righteousness.

In keeping this law, the Israelites would thirdly appear wise and understanding to the nations around them: able to govern society holistically and well with harmonious attention to the relational flourishing of all\u2014even with the foreigners within their gates.

But again, beyond the values embedded in this law like the dignity of image bearers, neighbour love, and peace/shalom/flourishing for all (from which come our modern notions of human rights), one value outstrips them all as central: God himself.\xa0

One critique that Christians rightly raise in regard to new laws produced by our Western governments, is that if they are no longer based on Judeo-Christian values, what values are they based on?\xa0 Often when one drills down: the values are missing.\xa0 And so the means become the ends.\xa0 Efficiency or progress or choice for their own sake become the values we drive at, never thinking to ask whether these \u201cmeans\u201d of getting somewhere are actually going to drive us to the sorts of \u201cends\u201d we might wish to arrive at, like Shalom and human flourishing.\xa0 More often they turn out to bankrupt the Creation, set people against one another, and make us lonely cogs in someone else\u2019s wheels.

There is much wisdom to be gleaned from the laws of Deuteronomy, but this perhaps is one of the more important ones for our cultural moment.\xa0 Deuteronomy helps us to recognize that living righteously is about more than progress, choice, and efficiency.\xa0 It is about communion and conversation with our God who is near to us and who calls us to be in communion and good, relational conversation with the Creation and our neighbours as well.\xa0 There is a wisdom to this.\xa0 An attractive, witnessing wisdom.\xa0

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