Hey, everybody. I'm Tim Mackie, and this is my podcast, exploring my strange Bible. I am a card-carrying

Bible history and language nerd who thinks that Jesus of Nazareth is utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you

have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 20 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've

been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission

of Jesus and the journey of faith.

And I hope this can all be helpful for you too.

I also help start this thing called the Bible Project.

We make animated videos and podcasts and classes about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology.

You can find all those resources at Bibleproject.com.

With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week.

All right, this is part three of a three-part series called the Torah Crash Course. If you

haven't listened to Parts 1 and 2, I highly recommend you go do that. It'll give you context for this last

lecture. This was a Friday night event that I did at Door of Hope where I served as a teaching

pastor many years ago. And this brings to its conclusion the overall survey of the Torah,

the first five books of the Bible. What we focus on in this lecture is the purpose of

the laws in the storyline of the Torah and in the storyline of the whole Bible. The covenant

the God made with the people of Israel at Mount Sinai, after he saved them from Egypt, is it's a long

section of the Torah.

It starts in Exodus, goes through all of Leviticus, a lot of numbers.

And then the last book of the Torah, Deuteronomy, is itself a recollection and a revisiting of hundreds of laws that were made back at Mount Sinai.

The classic number is 613 laws that God gives to Israel through Moses at Mount Sinai. The classic number is 613 laws that God gives to Israel through Moses at Mount Sinai.

Why? What's the importance of these laws? Many people often mistake the Old Testament as a book

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