Why Moses Preached Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy is set on the eastern side of the Jordan (Deuteronomy 1:1), just before Israel enters the land of Canaan. Moses is about to finish his ministry, and he will not enter the land with them. He disobeyed God once, and because of that one act of disobedience he lost the privilege (Numbers 20:12). So, before they cross, he speaks to them. He gives them a summary of what God has taught and of why they must follow it, so that they do not end up as he has. Deuteronomy is what he said. It was spoken first and written down afterwards (Deuteronomy 31:9, 24).

If the whole of Deuteronomy had to be put into one sentence, it would be this: Moses is calling people to obey the Law. That is why he retells their journey through the wilderness, repeats the Ten Commandments (Deuteronomy 5:6–21; Exodus 20:1–17), reminds them of the golden calf (Deuteronomy 9:7–21) and sets the blessing and the curse before them on Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal (Deuteronomy 11:26–29). God did not tell Moses to write all this again or to teach it again. Moses took it upon himself to reiterate and recapitulate the crux of what he had already taught. And even when we say that Moses taught something, Moses was not the author of the message. God was the author. Moses was the mouthpiece. Deuteronomy has its origin in Moses, as the first four volumes have theirs in God, but it is not invented theology: Moses teaches nothing that God had not already taught.

One Work in Five Scrolls

We refer to the first five books of the Bible as five separate books, and for reading and reference that is perfectly all right. But we should read the Pentateuch as one book, because that is how it was written: by one person, not by many. Moses did not write five books. He wrote one work on five vellums, five scrolls of animal skin, so that they are really five volumes of the same book. He began writing in the first, ended in the one we call Deuteronomy, and gave none of them a title.

The titles came later. As the scrolls were copied and passed on, the first word of each was taken as its name, so the first book was simply called “In the beginning”. When the Law was translated into Greek in the third century BC, in the translation we call the Septuagint, the translators could not do the same. The first word in Hebrew is not the first word in Greek, because in translation the words do not stay in the same order: the thrust of the message survives, but the structure of the sentence does not. So they named each book by its most prominent content. That is why the fourth book is called Numbers. It begins with a census: how many men in each tribe, twenty years old or more, could serve in the army (Numbers 1:2–3).

The Hebrew title of that book is “In the Wilderness”, which is hardly distinctive, since all five books were being written in the wilderness. Even Genesis was written as they travelled through the wilderness, not at the time of creation. And the census occupies only the opening chapters of Numbers. If the title were left to me (not that anyone would ask me to give one), I would call it The Wandering Years, Two to Forty, which sounds like a film title. Or simply “The Rebellion”, “The Mutiny” or “The Revolt”, because that is what fills most of the book. What begins with God wanting to protect His people ends with the people themselves becoming God’s enemy. Still, titles are only names, and we need not rack our brains over whether they are appropriate.

What the Five Scrolls Do

Each volume of the Pentateuch has its own focus and purpose. Each has a particular thought running through it, something it emphasises. Once we see the core of each, we can see why Deuteronomy is different.

Genesis does four things. First, it establishes that there is only one God. The people coming out of Egypt came from a polytheistic society, and they were idolaters themselves, both in Egypt and before they went there (Joshua 24:14): Rachel stole her father’s household gods (Genesis 31:19), and Joseph had a cup he used for divination (Genesis 44:5). Moses was about to give them the commandments of God and say, “God wants me to lead you out of this land.” The first question would be: who is this God (Exodus 3:13)? So Moses had to establish that there is only one God, who created everything, and that He is God.

Second, Genesis shows that God created the world beautifully (Genesis 1:31), not for His own sake, but so that the human beings He would create could have a beautiful and happy life in it. They were not merely to exist or survive. They were to thrive.

Third, it shows how things became so ugly: through human disobedience, everything fell apart, and the world became a world of suffering (Genesis 3:16–19). The people Moses was leading were living proof of it, having just come out of slavery. Today the so-called intellectuals think they are asking the cleverest question of all: “If there is a God, why all this suffering?” Hannibal Lecter, in Red Dragon, makes the “intelligent” quip that God brought a church roof down on His own worshippers. It is not a new question. Genesis answers it: God created everything beautiful, and suffering came through human rebellion.

Fourth, Genesis shows that even after everything fell apart, God gave individuals the chance to have a relationship with Him. Seth, Enoch, Noah and Abraham decided on their own to follow God, and God was gracious enough to open the way for them and bring them into His plan (Genesis 4:25–26; 5:24; 6:9; 12:1–4). He always gives chances.

So Genesis is about individuals. Exodus is about one nation.

That nation was created through one man. God does not force His will on anyone; He wants people to follow Him of their own choice. So the nation began with the free decision of one man, Abraham, to follow God. That was not favouritism, as though Israel were God’s only favourite. God wanted the whole world to become the Kingdom of God (Genesis 12:3), and it had to start somewhere, with one person and his descendants. Israel was to be the prototype, the first among many.

The nation formed in Exodus was made up of people who had never thought of themselves as a nation. They were slaves, and now they were to become a nation, and a nation needs a constitution. It must know what is right and what is wrong, what to do and what not to do, how to govern itself and how to protect itself. A constitution takes in everything that happens within a society: individuals and their relationships with one another, society as a whole, justice and judgement, and even how to deal with foreigners who pass through (Leviticus 19:33–34). The constitution God gave them included personal, social and religious laws, and even food and medical laws (Leviticus 11; 13–14), so that the nation would be protected and would flourish. Through it, one nation could become almost like Eden, the nation God wanted, so that the world could become the world He wanted it to be.

Two things make a nation strong. The first is unity within: the nation flourishes, lives in harmony and has everything it needs. But that alone is not enough. A flourishing nation will always come onto the radar of a more powerful one, which will want to take what belongs to it: its peace, its joy, its harmony and its resources. So the second thing a nation needs is protection. Leviticus provides for the first, and Numbers for the second.

Leviticus is about the Levites and the festivals. The Levites existed so that God’s ideal of theocracy would become a reality. God had given the Law, and someone had to see to it that the people kept it and that it brought about the result God intended. The Levites and the priests did that. They taught the Law (Leviticus 10:11; Deuteronomy 33:10), and when a dispute arose, they helped the people resolve it (Deuteronomy 17:8–9). They were administrators and facilitators, there to serve the people. When people failed to obey the Law and repented, they were brought back to God (Leviticus 5:5–6). Anyone who was defiant, who wanted nothing to do with the Law, was put to death (Deuteronomy 17:12), so that no wickedness remained.

Leviticus also describes the society the Law was meant to produce. It was an agrarian society with two harvests in the year. For each harvest, people worked about six hours a day for about three months, then had three months off, then worked again. Their day was only twelve hours long, from dawn to dusk. There was no electricity, so when it grew dark they went to sleep. Of those twelve waking hours they worked about six, and the rest was for their relationships, for conversation and for being with other people. On top of that, God gave them festivals, and every festival of more than one day began and ended with a Sabbath (Leviticus 23:7–8, 39). Only the Day of Atonement, with the Festival of Trumpets, was a solemn occasion (Leviticus 23:24–32); everything else was a celebration. This was not the development model one political party boasts of, nor the one its rival boasts of. This was the theocratic model*. Isn’t that life? That is heavenly life.

There was no such thing as “community bonding” in that society. We talk about community bonding only when there is no community, and we have to organise something to bring people together. There, every activity was a community activity. The festivals also helped the people remember what God had done and what He had taught. Writing was not common then, and everything was passed on by word of mouth. Whatever did not become part of their culture would be forgotten. Whatever became part of their culture, they would keep practising, generation after generation.

Numbers provides for the second need. It begins with the census of the men and the setting up of an army, all of it done at God’s command (Numbers 1:1–3; 2:1–2). That army was meant to defend, never to attack. The taking of Canaan was a particular case, but once they had become a nation, they were to protect it, not wage wars to extend their boundaries. And the irony of Numbers is that while God was talking about protecting them from other nations, the people rose against Him, as though He were the one they needed protecting from. They treated Him as the villain. They rebelled against Him, against Moses and Aaron, and against the whole constitution He had given them (Numbers 14:1–4; 16:1–3; 20:2–5).

The way the Law came to them matters too. In Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, God gave the commandments in stages, as the people journeyed through the wilderness and as each situation arose, and Moses recorded them at once or a little later. Some were put into practice immediately. The tabernacle was put together as God commanded (Exodus 40:16–33). The Levites and priests were consecrated (Leviticus 8; Numbers 8:5–22), and the order of sacrifices was set (Leviticus 1–7). Every tribe counted its men of twenty and over and formed its army under its banner (Numbers 1:2–3; 2:1–2). Other laws could not be put into practice yet. The people were nomads walking through the desert, governed by God through Moses and Aaron: when Moses said, “Walk this way,” they walked that way, and when he said, “Take up arms,” they took up arms. So God gave many laws as hypothetical cases: if this happens, this is what you do. Most of those cases would arise only once they had settled in the land (Leviticus 14:34; Deuteronomy 12:1). The wilderness was the classroom, and the land would be life.

That is what makes Deuteronomy unique. Now they were about to settle in the land and put everything they had been given into practice. Had Moses entered with them, he could have taught them as each need arose. But he would not be there.

Why the Five Scrolls Are Called “the Law”

The five scrolls are called the Law, even though Genesis is not law at all. It is narrative. It tells of creation, and of various people and what happened to them. Why, then, is it counted as part of the Law?

The Law is an expression of who God is. It reveals His heart: how He wanted the world to be, how the world should have been, how it became what it is, and how it could become again a world like Eden, in which everyone has joy. Genesis gives the backstory. Without it we could not understand the commandments. That is why Genesis belongs with the commandments that follow it, and why all five scrolls together are called the Law.

A Second Eden

Israel’s story is told as a parallel to the creation narrative. It is almost as though they are the first human beings again. God is giving them, and through them the whole world, another chance to go back to the Edenic ideal*. Like the first human beings, they are given a fresh start and a land where everything is already there (Deuteronomy 6:10–11). Eden, with its rivers, was a place of plenty (Genesis 2:8–14). Canaan is described as a land flowing with milk and honey (Deuteronomy 6:3). The description is metaphorical, but the point is clear: everything is beautiful, and everything is in plenty.

So there is suspense in the story. Will these people be like the first human beings, or will they be different? Will they follow God’s commandments, or reject them? The land is in their hands. They can fulfil God’s plan and become a beautiful nation, or they can repeat history, be like Adam and Eve, and destroy everything.

Moses understood that this is what makes or breaks a nation. The principles of God either make a nation or break it. Eden could have remained a beautiful world, and what broke it was disobedience. So the one thing he tells them again and again is: be obedient. If they rebelled, everything would be lost again. All the groundwork laid until then would be in vain, and they would lose this second Eden, just as Adam and Eve lost the first. They had been slaves in Egypt for four hundred years (Genesis 15:13). They had experienced first-hand the suffering that human rebellion causes in the world. Now they were being given the chance to take the world back to the Edenic ideal, and Moses wanted them to succeed.

The Shape of the Story

The five scrolls can also be read from a literary point of view. Every story works in the same way. Characters are established, a conflict arises, the action rises to a climax and then falls until there is a resolution, the dénouement, where all is well that ends well. As human beings, we always want a resolution. It is like music: play the chord of C, then F, then G, and stop at G, and you are left wanting it to return to C. That return is the resolution, and in a story it is the moment we come out saying, “That was a good film.”

Numbers gives us no such resolution. God wanted His nation to be protected and to flourish, and the book ends in tragedy: Moses himself will not enter the land. The people had been at his heels, almost stabbing him in the back. He became so frustrated that when God told him to speak to the rock so that it would give water, he struck it instead (Numbers 20:7–12). Because of that one act, he could see the land from the mountain but would never enter it (Numbers 27:12–14; Deuteronomy 3:27). Numbers ends on a cliffhanger.

Deuteronomy is the resolution. It is not the resolution we want, but the one we need; it sounds like a line from Nolan’s Batman films. Moses takes his loss as an opportunity to show the people that he would be very happy if they went into the land of Canaan and enjoyed their lives there. That is the resolution we are given. And the parallels run right through it. Adam and Eve disobeyed (Genesis 3:6): are you going to obey? Abraham obeyed (Genesis 22:18): are you going to obey? Moses disobeyed in this one thing and must face the consequence (Numbers 20:12): are you going to obey or not?

A Sermon, Not a Second Law

Deuteronomy is a sermon. Moses is not merely repeating. He is commenting, building on what God gave, explaining and calling the people to obey, and that is what a sermon is. A biblical sermon begins with exposition: the text is expounded and clearly explained, so that people understand its content and its teaching. Then comes application, where people are helped to apply that teaching to their lives. Application does not cover every little detail; it applies the principle taught. The connection between what God said and how we are to live, that bridging, is what we look for in a sermon. The Law by itself says what to do and what not to do. A sermon explains it and makes it clear, so that people understand why they must follow it, and then calls them to obey. It is not theory; it has to become life. So Deuteronomy is Moses’ sermon, based on the events of their history and the teachings God had given. Otherwise it would be a mere repetition of Exodus and Numbers.

Sermons in that world were built this way. They began with the facts of history and built towards the teaching, as Stephen did before the Sanhedrin, starting from Abraham (Acts 7:2–53). Moses retells the journey with the same purpose. God brought them out and sustained them (Deuteronomy 8:2–4), and they themselves became instruments of His justice on nations that had rebelled against Him (Deuteronomy 9:5). The conclusion follows: you are a privileged people, and you have a responsibility. If you become like them, you too will be destroyed (Deuteronomy 8:19–20).

The people already had the scrolls, and they could have read their own history. But people are people. We have our Bibles too, and we would still rather be spoon-fed. So Moses tells it again, like the revision a teacher gives just before an examination: these are the essentials, and you must never forget them. And it is a word of caution. Today we take encouragement to mean being told that everything will be all right. Real encouragement teaches people everything, including the reality ahead, so that they are prepared to face it.

Like Paul in his letters, Moses anticipates the questions his hearers will ask and answers them before they are asked: “These nations are stronger than we are. How can we drive them out?” (Deuteronomy 7:17–18); “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me” (Deuteronomy 8:17–18); “The LORD has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness” (Deuteronomy 9:4).

Moses wants to imprint these things on the minds of the people one more time. Also, he is speaking to a completely different generation. Yet it is a generation that knew what the older generation knew. They had travelled with Moses through all of it, and everything he recalls was already in their minds. The generation that came out of Egypt has died in the wilderness. Of the men aged twenty or more who were counted in the census, only Joshua and Caleb remain; Moses and the other Levites were not counted in it (Numbers 1:47–49; 14:29–30; 26:64–65; Deuteronomy 2:14–15). Moses too is about to die. The generations overlapped, and among a nomadic people, with few written records, everything was passed on by word of mouth, from parents to children. So Deuteronomy gives them, in a nutshell, everything they need.

Its name, Deuteronomy, means “the second law”, and the name could mislead us. It is not a second law that replaces the first. There is only one law, and Deuteronomy is that law reiterated, retold from Moses’ perspective. It is like the covenant. People talk excitedly about the “new” covenant, because for some of us new always means improved. But the covenant has always been the same. It has been made with different groups of people, the last of them being the disciples (Luke 22:20), so for us it is simply the latest covenant. It is not new; it has been made with people closer to us in time. In the same way, the second law is the first law, repeated.

This is not just a repetition of Exodus 20. The intent is different, and so is the feeling. In Exodus 20, God gave the commandments, and Moses was only His mouthpiece: these are the commandments, go and tell the people, nothing added and nothing taken away. That passage is objective, with no feeling involved. In Deuteronomy 5 the material is still God’s, but Moses is now teaching it himself, with great emotion and personal concern for the people. Even the grammar shows it. “Fear the LORD your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name” (Deuteronomy 6:13) is in the third person, because Moses is the one speaking; if God were speaking, it would be in the first person. Deuteronomy is written from an emotional, personal and prophetic perspective. It is more emotional than didactic, and yet it remains didactic: it is there to teach. In that respect it is much like Paul’s letter to the Galatians, which is full of personal emotion (Galatians 1:6; 3:1; 4:19–20). It is, in Wordsworth’s phrase, a “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”. Genesis is a fully fledged narrative of events long past. Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers are fully fledged narratives told almost as the events happened. Deuteronomy gives the people the whole context in a nutshell, so that they realise what God has done for them, and then tells them again and again: you must obey.

Moses, Barred from the Land

Why was Moses not allowed to enter? He struck the rock when he was told to speak to it, which seems a very small offence. He had disobeyed God before, when he asked God to send someone else (Exodus 4:13–14), but that came out of frustration, not out of anger against God or rebellion. This time God said he would not enter the land (Numbers 20:12; Deuteronomy 3:23–27). It might even seem unfair, since God gave so many others chance after chance. Were Joshua and Caleb, who did enter, perfect? That is not the point. Moses was the leader, and pushed from every side, he had always stood for God. It almost makes us cry. Isn’t God merciful? But the leader had to own his actions. Was God angry with him? No. God calls him a prophet. He is close to him and speaks with him face to face (Numbers 12:6–8). Everyone knows Moses is a godly man, and God Himself testifies to it. The principle is very simple: if we rebel against God, we suffer the consequences, and that had to be impressed on the minds of the Israelites. Right at the beginning, in Genesis, God told human beings something, they did not do it, and they suffered the consequences (Genesis 2:16–17; 3:6, 17–19). Now, even through the life of a leader like Moses, God was showing them that this is how it will be. And because Moses was the one teaching God’s commandments, God’s own mouthpiece, he could not be allowed to set a wrong example. Had he not been dealt with, the very idea of justice would have fallen apart, and he could not have spoken to the people about obedience without a double standard.

God does not take disobedience as a personal insult. His concern is that the whole world be safeguarded. Everything that happened in the prophets’ lives was for the people’s benefit. Such events are called object lessons, and it might seem very unfair of God to put the prophets through so much. Hosea was told to marry a promiscuous woman (Hosea 1:2), which is itself a very euphemistic way of describing a woman of loose morals who would be with anyone for money. Is that unfair? Marriage is meant to have sanctity and faithfulness, so why would he marry her? Because it was to be a lesson for all Israel. Jeremiah was sent to the potter’s house (Jeremiah 18:1–6). Ezekiel was told to lie on one side for 390 days and on the other for 40 (Ezekiel 4:4–6). When people asked him why he was putting himself through such misery, lying on one side day after day, he could say, “This is how you have been.” He was even told to bake his bread using human excrement as fuel (Ezekiel 4:12–15). It is all utterly abhorrent. Did God hate these prophets? No. It was so that the Israelites would understand. It was personal for the prophets, but from God’s side it was not personal. The responsibility and the burden came with being a prophet. It boggles the mind and defies our understanding that God allowed people who followed and obeyed Him to go through all that. Yet these were people who never turned against Him.

So Moses, who could not enter the land, becomes an object lesson and a cautionary tale, and his mistake was a public one (Numbers 20:10–12). It is a powerful lesson, because the people do not merely grasp the principle in theory. They see a righteous man, a wonderful man, someone no one could point a finger at, lose a privilege because he disobeyed what God had said. His own life shows how it could have been, had he obeyed everything God commanded. He could have been among those who crossed into Canaan, and because of his disobedience he was not. He himself has fallen into the problem that has persisted through all of human history, rebellion against the teachings of God: he has become one of the disobedient. He does not want the nation God has formed so beautifully to fall prey to it. They, on the other hand, have the privilege of entering the land because God has been so gracious to them. They must not take it lightly. If they disobey, they will lose that privilege, the inheritance God has given them, and the privilege of being called the nation that belongs to God (Deuteronomy 4:25–26; 7:6).

Was he pushed to it? Yes. Who made him so frustrated? The people (Numbers 20:2–5, 10). Had they been quiet and humble, had they not irritated him so much, he would not have done it. There is even a trace of that frustration in what he says: “Because of you the LORD became angry with me also” (Deuteronomy 1:37). He as good as says, “Had you not been so aggravating, I might not have done it.” He is not blaming them for everything, but he is saying what triggered it. And it was his mistake, and he has to own it, because every one of us must take responsibility for our actions, whatever triggered them and whoever triggered them. God took him to task precisely to show that we are responsible for our actions, however many triggers life presents.

The Heart of Moses

Like God, Moses has a magnanimous, beautiful heart. He has led them for forty years (Deuteronomy 8:2), and he led them with a single intent, which was not selfish. It was only for the people. They never returned his concern, and they never appreciated him as a great leader, or even as a good one. At times he was the villain of the story. It made no difference to him: whether they built him a pedestal or trampled over him, he wanted them to have a wonderful life. He understood the theocratic ideal God had in mind, and he wanted Israel to become the nation that belongs to God, the first among many, through which all people would come to know God. For that he sacrificed a great deal. Many times people rose against him, and he went through hard times with no one to stand by him, and all through them he was faithful. Now the very people who caused his frustration are entering the land, and he can only look at it. That seems deeply unfair, and in his place we would be morose, angry and bitter. When we are miserable, we often take it out on others, transferring our misery onto them. We find none of that in Moses. There is a great deal of pathos, a sadness that runs right through the book, but there is no bitterness, no anger and no vengefulness. He does tell them that because of them he has lost his privilege (Deuteronomy 1:37; 3:26; 4:21), but he wants them not to disobey God, and he wants them to have a good life in the land. “I have lost a lot because of you, but I am not so vengeful as to want you to become like me.” That speaks volumes about the man. It reveals a beautiful heart.

So two emotions run through Deuteronomy. On one side are Moses’ own sorrow and disappointment that he cannot enter the land. On the other are his love and concern for the people, whom he does not want to suffer the fate that has befallen him. Those two do not usually go together. When we go through trouble, we think about our own problems, not other people’s. Here is a man who has lost a great privilege that should have been his, and yet he is not fixated on it. He moves on, and he wants the people, the very reason he lost it, still to enjoy it: “What I have lost, I want you to have, even though you are the reason I lost it.” That takes great maturity, love and concern.

Here is the fatherly heart of Moses, the heart of a parent: “I have suffered this much because of what I foolishly did, and I don’t want you to suffer the same.” His love runs in two directions. He loves God. He knows there is only one God, who created everything, and he understands God’s plan for the whole world to become the Kingdom of God. So he wants God’s will to be done, and for that, Israel must become a theocratic nation and then extend that rule to the world. And he loves his people. He wants them to be a good, beautiful and flourishing nation, with everything they need, through which God’s will is done. He is always on the people’s side, though never against God (Exodus 32:11–14, 31–32; Deuteronomy 9:25–29). There is anguish in it, even fear: would they fail? Their failure would not affect him, since he was not entering anyway. It would spoil everything for them.

He also wants them to understand his motive. They must not think that he is making laws to subjugate them. It is not Moses who is putting them under the Law; it is God, and Moses has nothing but concern for them. Nor is obedience to the Law a matter of God being a megalomaniac or an autocrat who gives arbitrary, whimsical commands and expects them to be obeyed simply because He is God. Parents who have no reason to give say, “Because I said so.” God never deals with people that way. Moses gives the reason himself: God asks for no great sacrifice, only that they observe His commandments “for your own good” (Deuteronomy 10:12–13). Every commandment has a reason, and the reasoning is practical and made clear to them: if you obey, these things will follow (Deuteronomy 11:13–15). This is not superstition, where an act and its result have no connection at all. It is cause and effect. The commandments are practical, not mystical, and God gave them with the people’s welfare in mind.

Deuteronomy, then, is the expression of Moses’ love for the people. The greatest way anyone can show love is to see to it that the person they love does not get lost: that they do not destroy their own lives. Moses’ love was not a selfish love. He loved the people by teaching them how to live, so that they would not be destroyed, and he would receive nothing from it in return. That is the greatest love. That is why he reiterates the Law: do this, do this, do this, obey the commandments of God, because this is how your land will be fruitful, fertile and prosperous, and how your lives will be well lived. Of everything Moses repeats, the call to obey is what he repeats most.

Why We Still Read Deuteronomy

If the teachings of Jesus are enough, and someone with no Jewish background needs neither the Law nor the Prophets to understand Him, why study Deuteronomy at all? The simple reason is that we have it. The Law, the Prophets, the Writings, the Gospels, Acts, the Epistles and Revelation have been bound together, and we hold them in our hands as the Bible. So we must understand every book of it rightly. Had they not been bound together, we would not be studying the Law at all. Nor would we need to show how the Law has been made out to be a villain, as though God had done away with it, or answer those who teach that Jesus stood against it.

The Law and what Jesus taught are exactly the same. The teaching of Jesus comes first, and it agrees with the Law because both come from the same God. Reading the Law is not essential for salvation, for following Jesus or for a place in the kingdom. The teachings of Jesus are a complete revelation, and with the Gospels alone we lack nothing. Yet since we have the Law, we gain by reading it. It shows us that what God did in and through Jesus was not the first time He had acted in such a way. The teaching is the same; only the package and the people it was given to are different.