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This is the law Moses set before the Israelites. These are the stipulations, decrees and laws Moses gave them when they came out of Egypt\xa0and were in the valley near Beth Peor east of the Jordan, in the land of Sihon king of the Amorites, who reigned in Heshbon and was defeated by Moses and the Israelites as they came out of Egypt. They took possession of his land and the land of Og king of Bashan, the two Amorite kings east of the Jordan. This land extended from Aroer on the rim of the Arnon Gorge to Mount Sirion (that is, Hermon), and included all the Arabah east of the Jordan, as far as the Dead Sea, below the slopes of Pisgah. (Deuteronomy 4:44-49)

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It's a strange thing that such specific and lengthy details are given, again, about where the Israelites are when this great, long Deuteronomy speech of Moses is given.\xa0 The commentaries just skip over these verses, as if to say: we\u2019ve already talked about all this, there\u2019s nothing new to see here.\xa0 And yet, it is here.\xa0 So, why?

In reflecting on much of our present church conversations about ethics and law and righteous living, I wonder if maybe there\u2019s something more to this grounding in geographical space and time than meets the eye.\xa0

Jesus is the Word of God, made flesh in a real place and time amongst a particular people\u2014as we\u2019ve reflected on already in these opening chapters of Deuteronomy.\xa0 My sense is that the law, which is also the word of God, is always to be worked out and lived in just that same way.\xa0 That is: embodied\u2014made flesh, lived\u2014in a place and time, just as it is here in Deuteronomy.\xa0 The law does not necessarily come to us as an abstract, unalterable, eternal truth from time in memoriam.\xa0 It comes to us \u201cwhen [the Israelites] came out of Egypt and were in the valley near Beth Peor east of the Jordan.\u201d\xa0 It comes to us in a real time and in a real place among a real people.\xa0

What do I mean to say by this?\xa0 Well, we have a tendency to work out the implications of legal and ethical questions of righteousness in theory\u2014in the abstract\u2014apart from any real human situation where the names, actions, and circumstances of real people are known to us.\xa0 When we then attempt to rigidly shoehorn the real, concrete lives of people into this perfect, but abstract Bible-based code we\u2019ve made: people get squashed and cut up by the sharp edges. It brings death.

Thankfully, this is not how the law of the Bible works.\xa0 Don\u2019t get me wrong: Paul is clear on this\u2014the law still brings death.\xa0 But as Moses will often say: this law also offers grace and gives a context for life.\xa0 The law is to support and lead to the Shalom of a people in a place and time, not make them slaves again as in Egypt.

As Jesus will later say of the Sabbath, this law is made for man, not man for it.\xa0 It\u2019s given to a particular people in a time and place. \xa0But as the times and places of the people change, so must (and does) the law.\xa0 You can see this happen across the pages of the Bible.\xa0 Even some of the laws of Deuteronomy are already different than those same laws in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers.\xa0 And changes will continue to happen along the pages of scripture.

The form that the law comes to us in then: as a law spoken to a particular people in a particular place and time\u2014says something to us about the law itself.\xa0 It is particular, not abstract or universal.\xa0 And it is changeable: subjective\u2014if you will\u2014to the lives of the subjects it means to govern and support.\xa0

Principles like this inherent in the form of the law, mean that we must ever be vigilant to the ways that the Bible\u2014God\u2019s living word\u2014speaks anew in Spirit-fired ways to the ever-changing times, places, people, and yes\u2014even culture\u2014among whom it is spoken in each present moment.\xa0 It is no sin to be a \u201crevisionist.\u201d \xa0This is, in fact, what it means to be attentively faithful in the times we\u2019re given.\xa0 Said in more familiar language, this is one of the ways in which we are called to be \u201cReformed and ever Reforming.\u201d

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