I'd say it's about 15 years ago when the advent of premium TV happened. And I don't just mean like HBO and Cinemax and all of that. That's been around forever. I mean when movie and TV watching habits shifted from everybody goes to the theater to see their big long-form stories to everybody starts watching these premium TV series. I think HBO's Rome, maybe Deadwood, these were two of the first ones that I really remember. And then gradually these epic stories kind of started to displace the movie industry and stars started to flock to these, and Netflix did them, and I don't know, Apple did it, and now Disney's doing it. And the one thing that you'll notice, though, about almost all of these shows is that while they were groundbreaking structurally initially, that is, you just had no idea what to expect in terms of the rhythm and beats of the storytelling over these seasons, because we'd never seen anything like this before. Gradually, they started to give the audiences something more familiar and they took on patterns that became kind of predictable. But one of these patterns that you noticed was that around episode seven or eight of any given season, you would get this retrospective, this flashback episode, where you step away from the advancement of the plot and you gotta go and learn about how we got here. And whenever we get to those, I'm like, ah, come on, move forward. I want to know what the mystery is or the secret thing is. But then after I begrudgingly watch the retrospective flashback episode, I'm like, oh, actually, that really helped. Okay, I get it. This is that episode in our conversation on the temptation of Jesus. I understand that it is way more fun to keep moving forward, but this is one of those places where the flashback is going to help. Here's where we need to go. On its surface, the temptation account in Matthew chapter 4 is made up of three simple parts. It's a duel, a sword fight between these two brilliant celestial beings, one of whom is brillianter yet because he knows all things and he's God in the flesh. But as they thrust and parry and duel all around the rocks atop the cliffs of insanity, there's a Bible battle going on. Satan tries his hand at it once, and it's frankly pretty ugly. He quotes from Psalm 91, if you'll recall, and he slightly butchers the passage on purpose. And contextually, he flips the meaning of the whole passage on its head to have it mean the exact opposite of what it actually meant in the first place. Whereas Jesus uses much less elaborate quotations from Scripture. They're very through the front door, and there's no real clever contextualizing or anything. It's just, hey, devil, obviously, this. And all of those quotations are from a part of the Bible that we just don't really hang out in very much as uh Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, as Christians. It's Deuteronomy. It's kind of obscure. We sort of get through the fun part of the narrative after Genesis and Exodus. And then I remember there's like some wandering around or stuff before the Israelites go and conquer the Holy Land. And so that's where we're at right now as we look at Matthew, or rather Deuteronomy chapter six, which is what Jesus keeps quoting from. He's in Deuteronomy 8 once, and he's in Deuteronomy 6 twice, just a couple verses apart. Well, as we've asked before, why? You got a whole Old Testament with all kinds of elaborate stories. Why does Jesus keep concentrating his Bible dart throws that he's doing in this tight little area? So, retrospective. Deuteronomy is partially a narrative book that does account for this transitional time as we're getting ready to go into the Holy Land. And we've got a covenant that has been made after the Exodus. So, of course, the Exodus is when Moses leads the people out of slavery in Egypt. They get to the other side of the water, and now it's kind of like a what do we do now? And as we've discussed, there's whining and complaining and a real wrestling with the idea that God is now our king. He is our salvation and our sustenance out here in the wilderness. And do we really trust him to do the stuff that he said? Well, I don't know for sure. And they wander around uncertain of where to go next. Moses ages and gets more frustrated. Years go by. A new generation is born. I mean, maybe you could argue even two, by the way, we gauge generations today, are born. They have new problems, they have new questions. And you just basically have this glob of human national potential energy meandering around in the middle of nowhere. And it's going to become kinetic somewhere at some point. I mean, God promised it, and historical reason dictates that. And Deuteronomy is the book that gives us a lot of the details of what that meandering looks like. Well, because so much time passes, it would seem there are some questions about what the actual deal is that was struck between God and people. And struck isn't even really the right word because, I mean, God didn't go to Moses and be like, all right, let's begin the negotiation. It's very one-sided. God's like, hey, here's the deal. I'm going to be your God. You're going to be my people. If you obey me, I'm going to bless you. If you disobey me, I'm going to punish you. Either way, the result's going to be the same. Everybody's going to know that I'm God. That is, again, an amalgamation of a whole bunch of different expressions and articulations and recordings of this covenant between God and Israel to distill it down to that simple version that I'm giving you. So by the time we get to Deuteronomy chapter six, the people in the wilderness have begun to take on a little bit of a character of their own. There is a bit of identity beginning to develop. They've been through some crazy war stories and some tough stuff. And they've gone through amazing high points in faith and crushing low points in faith. And so in Deuteronomy chapter 5, one chapter before where Jesus keeps quoting from in his conversation with the devil in Matthew chapter 4, we flip back there and maybe we just start skimming through this. Okay, so what do we got here? All right, Moses summoned all Israel and he said, Hear, O Israel, the decrees and laws I declare in your hearing today. Learn from them and be sure to follow them. The Lord your God made a covenant with us at Horeb. It was not with our fathers that the Lord made this covenant, but with us, with all of us who are alive here today. The Lord spoke to you face to face, out of the fire, on the mountain. At that time I stood between the Lord and you to declare to you the word of the Lord because you were afraid of the fire and you didn't go up the mountain. And then he said, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. Wait, I've heard this before. You shall not make for yourselves an idol. Oh, I know that one too. Okay, let me skip ahead a little bit. You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God. These are Ten Commandments. You can't have another Ten Commandments. Oh, wait, it's the same Ten Commandments. Oh, I see what we're doing here. This is a second enunciation of what happens in Exodus chapter 20, where we get the first reading of the Ten Commandments. Okay, okay. So Moses is reminding everyone of what the foundational points of the covenant are. He's laying this out very clearly. And well, I suppose what you could call this is a renewal of the covenant, a clarification that this covenant, this deal wasn't just for whoever walked across that dry ground to get away from Pharaoh. This deal moves forward and it's going to last for a really long time. And so he lays all of this stuff out. He reiterates the same kind of language about, you know, obey, be blessed, disobey, be punished. And then we get into chapter six, where Jesus keeps quoting, I think this is a really big deal. These are the commands, decrees, and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, so that you, your children, and their children after them may fear the Lord your God, as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy a long life. Okay, that follows the covenant structure once again. Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you, and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers, promised you. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. Ah, yeah, I recognize this too. These commands that I give you today are to be upon your hearts, impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads, write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates. Oh, that's this passage. This is the one that in Mark chapter 12 in the dialogue between Jesus and the religious leader guy is like, oh, what's the most important command? Oh, love the Lord your God with everything you got. Uh, Matthew 22, this comes up. Luke, uh, is it 10? Is it 12? I think it's 10. Luke 10, this comes up as well. And so we totally recognize this language. This is the greatest, most importantest commandment. Well, the Shema is the name for this that's historically assigned to it. And it's like the creed, the statement of faith, to use Christian language, it's not a neatly analogous one-to-one, but it's like how Christians conceive of creeds, except for the Hebrew people, and it still is. So Deuteronomy 6 isn't just some rest stop on the way to get somewhere more interesting. This is the renewal of the covenant. This was the moment at which, or the heart of the moment at which it becomes clear that this covenant with Moses is extending forward. This is the cipher by which we interpret and make sense of all the stuff in the Old Testament, the narrative that's confusing and sometimes morally baffling for us as we read it through the lenses of the 21st century or through the lenses of the new covenant in Christ, like this is what makes sense of the Old Testament story. Everybody would have known it. Everybody would have known it. And so Jesus then, instead of quoting from the middle of nowhere and just random out-of-context sort of Bible-y things that sort of mean what the text says, be careful that you do not forget the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. Oh, we're getting right up to Jesus' quote. And what is the devil trying to get Jesus to do? To forget the Lord who did all this stuff, to forget the Lord who is initiating and orchestrating this redemptive plan. Fear the Lord your God, serve him only, and take your oaths in his name. Huh. That sounds a lot like a lot like uh this whole business about worship the Lord your God and serve him only. In fact, that's exactly what Jesus is referencing, which means when Jesus dismisses the devil's temptation here, he is doing so with the language that is absolutely foundational and binding to the heart of what the covenant between God and his chosen people is all about. Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you. For the Lord your God who is among you is a jealous God, and his anger will burn against you, and it'll destroy you from the face of the land. Don't test the Lord your God as you did at Massah. Be sure to keep the commandments of the Lord your God and the stipulations and decrees he's given you. Do what's right and good in the Lord's sight, so that it may go well with you, and you may go in and take over this land that the Lord has promised you and your forefathers. And he goes on to explain what all of that looks like. Now, look, two quick asides, as we gotta land the plane here for the sake of time. One, I know that any time we get into the Old Testament, language about conquest, dang, that raises a ton of questions. And look, I'm not poo-pooing that. I'm with you. I'm one of these not a big fan of violence kind of people. I'm kind of one of these don't like war, anti-war types. So, I mean, for me, this is morally very challenging. There are answers to that, but I'm gonna wrestle honestly with those questions with you as we move along. For now, for time, I just have to ask you to be willing to hit pause on it. We'll address that when we come back that way later on. A second thing that we got to note really quickly is that a lot of people in this day and age look at these kind of passages and they're like, oh, well, this is a covenant for us right now in America and my job. And if I do vaguely Christian things that involve the Christian subculture and maybe making some donations and tweeting in support of Christian causes and things I like and voting a certain way, then God will bless me and my country and I'll get things. Because look, he made a covenant with his people right here. And well, how is that any different than me? Um, we'll get into this more deeply too, but it's fundamentally completely different than us. We are not under this covenant. If we were, I don't think we'd like it very much. We're under a new covenant in Christ, and the ground rules are very different, so we should not misread this as some kind of promise that if we behave properly as Christians, we get free stuff or blessings or we win wars or something like that. That just isn't what this is teaching. What this is teaching is that Jesus was not just hand-waving the devil's temptations, he was going to the core of God's redemptive plan, the covenant by which God made manifest what he was going to do with his chosen people, a covenant that points directly to who Jesus is and what he's going to accomplish. The original audience would have registered all of that stuff. They would have known that Jesus was making a larger claim than just to be somebody who was well behaved. This is him passing almost a rabbinical test, an intellectual, rhetorical, moral, historical, cultural, covenantal test that thwarts the work of Satan that was intended to wreck and screw up the work of God. Everybody should be really excited at this point as Jesus is drawing on these crucial passages from a part of the Bible that we often overlook. All right, there's your retrospective episode. I hope that helps set up everything as we get into the concluding points surrounding the temptation and soon make our way on to the next chunk of Matthew chapter four. All right, you know this, but I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. I super appreciate you and look forward to doing this more soon.