JY: Welcome to GearTalk, a podcast on biblical theology. If today’s podcast sounds a little New Year’s-like, that’s because it was recorded on the second-to-last day of 2022.

TK: Welcome to GearTalk. It’s you and me, Jason. This hasn’t happened for a while.

JD: Yeah, I’m glad to be back, Tom.

TK: It’s really sweet. We’re just a couple days from the New Year and thought it would be fun to talk about last year and things that happened and then looking forward, one of the things I said to Jason is, “Jason, I’d like to ask what’s on your desk, what are you working on? And why? Why are you working on these things? Why does it matter?” But that’s not all that’s happened, as what’s currently on your desk—because you’ve moved a lot of things off and you’ve had a lot of family things going on. And so we thought—I thought—that it would be fun to focus on Jason’s work and family a little bit in this episode here. So Jason, tell us a little bit about this last year, particularly this last week for you guys.

JD: Oh, this last week. I had my first grandchild born, and that is definitely at the forefront of our whole family’s lives. We’re celebrating Hazel Jane, born to my oldest daughter and her husband. Just a joy. Teresa has been with them and I got to take my younger three kids out to visit this week. We are celebrating this gift of life, and it’s really such a joy to see my daughter just stepping into this role as mom with her very sweet, solid husband by her side. It’s been a great blessing and even a blessing that the birth went well and this little baby girl is doing well. So we praise the Lord for that.

TK: Seeing a bunch of pictures, we are eager to meet her in person. So I think to cap off your year, it couldn’t end better than that. Can I ask you a few questions about just things you wrote publishing-wise this year or were published and why we would care as people who love God’s Word? What they were aimed at.

JD: Well, I certainly will just overview a few things that I’m really excited about. I was able to contribute to 5 Views on Christ in the Old Testament. It’s a volume out by Zondervan, and different perspectives among professing Christians on how we find Jesus, exalt Jesus, see Jesus, make connections to Jesus in the Old Testament Scriptures. So I wrote what was called the redemptive historical Christocentric view and—

TK: Did you name that yourself, or did they ask you to do that?

JD: It wasn’t exactly my title. They were working to try to give titles and we worked together. So redemptive historical simply means that when we’re thinking about the Old Testament and seeing Jesus, we’ve got to put all of what we’re considering within the flow of the story itself that has its center and climax in the person of Christ. Everything culminates in him. And then Christocentric—by that I mean we enter into the Old Testament as Christians. It’s the only way that we can rightly understand what God has said. It’s a spiritual book that Paul says has to be discerned by spiritual people. So at the center is Jesus. We will not even understand the Old Testament rightly unless we have a relationship with him. And so everything starts with Christ and everything ends with Christ. That is all of the story, the promises, the laws climax in Christ. And he is to receive the greatest glory. The Spirit is the one who gave us the word, and the Spirit is always working to glorify the Son. And so as we engage the Scripture given by the Spirit of God, we should arrive at the glory of Christ. I think of 1 Corinthians 2:2 where Paul is an Old Testament preacher writing to the Corinthians, simply said, “I resigned to know nothing among you but Christ and him crucified.” I don’t think he was providing there a statement that, “This is unique in my ministry, how I’m addressing you.” No, this is how he handled himself always. He was also, though, not saying that the only thing he was going to talk about was Christ. No, he talks about lots of things beyond Christ himself. But what I believe Paul was saying there in 1 Corinthians 2:2 is that everything that he spoke about—whether it be the family unit, how the church was to act in corporate worship, what the ethics of Christians were, what the mission of the church was, to simply talk about the doctrine of God—he could not talk about any of that without considering how it related to the cross.

TK: I think that’s a good way to live your entire life. I mean, not just Paul, any one of us. How do I think about my work? How do I think about my neighbor? How do I think about purchasing something? In relation to God, his creation, Christ, the cross.

JD: That’s right. Yes, I think that’s how Paul lived his life and it’s how I commend readers of the Old Testament to magnify Christ, to be considering at every stage: how does this text relate to the cross? So I was really excited about that publication. There was another—

TK: Just want to push back here a little bit. In a 5 Views type book, and there’s lots of them out there, you’re going to get views in there that you would disagree with, correct?

JD: Oh, that’s exactly right. Some disagreeing even in greater ways more than others. I would really put a caution to readers as they enter into this book to know to not assume that all of these positions are even viable Christian options. People need to really consider the claims of the New Testament, how the New Testament authors were handling their Old Testament text, how the Old Testament authors were considering their Old Testament text, what the claims of the Bible are, and really wrestle with them up against the claims of these other contributors. Positively, one of the aspects of this book is each of us didn’t just provide an essay, but we got to respond to each other, and so you can read one of these other essays and then see how I and other authors responded, noting both strengths—

TK: Right, right.

JD: And weaknesses of these perspectives. So that’s one of the strengths of a 5 Views book, but with this particular volume, readers need to be warned that it’s not a matter of reading this text and just picking “Oh, I really like this view” or “This seems intriguing, I’ll take this one.” Every single view needs to be evaluated carefully up against the biblical text.

TK: That’s really good. So that’s obviously very different from you writing, for instance—you were finishing a commentary on Zephaniah, for instance. And that’s not five different views on Zephaniah, it’s one view.

JD: That’s right. By God’s grace, that was a biggie that was completed. It’s not yet published. It’ll actually take potentially 2 more years until Zondervan is completed with their editing and formatting of that book. But Zephaniah—it was an 8-year process. I worked on that single commentary for the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the Old Testament. Zephaniah is an amazing book that calls readers to seek the Lord together in order to avoid punishment and to wait for the Lord to enjoy satisfying salvation. That’s the main idea of Zephaniah, and it just delighted me to be able to craft this volume for church leaders to consider its message within the whole of Scripture. Peter said in Acts 3:18 that all the prophets spoke of the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. And it was really exciting for me to prayerfully wrestle hard with Zephaniah’s prophecy to consider how it was that he spoke of the sufferings of Christ and the church age.

TK: And this book, even if we can’t read your work for a couple of years, one of our goals here is to get the material out on our website, at least in an edited form that’s easy for church leaders to use, so you will be seeing things come out here. Tell Jason, you have a connection with Africa. How do you connect this book to Africa?

JD: Oh, it was really an unexpected joy for me. Not only serving in Ethiopia, having my youngest three children born in Africa and then adopted—this, I believe Zephaniah was a biracial prophet who had both royal Davidic Judean blood. His great-great-grandfather was king Hezekiah. But not only that, his grandmother appears to have been a black African, an Ethiopian. Kushite is the Hebrew term—a Kushite which is the Black African Empire. And his father was named Kush, which suggests his grandmother was likely a black African who married a Judean in the royal line and they named their son Kush. And within the book, Kush is not only the first empire that is mentioned that God has already brought judgment upon as Zephaniah anticipates many more judgments coming, it’s also the only region of the world that Zephaniah uses to elevate the great restoration that’s associated with the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promises—the in-gathering of the Gentiles in the days of the Messiah, what we call the church age. And I believe it is because of Zephaniah’s promises, prophecies in Zephaniah 3 that Luke sets apart the story of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8 as a clear statement of fulfillment. That what Zephaniah promised is now fulfilled, is now being fulfilled. That with the inclusion of a black African Gentile into the church, into the people of God, the end-time Day of the Lord new creation that Zephaniah and all the other prophets anticipated was starting to be fulfilled. And so that was really an exciting discovery for me to consider that one of the Bible’s prophets was biracial, and both Judean with Judean blood and black African blood. And that it elevates Africa as playing such a key role in redemptive history.

TK: That’s really beautiful. So now we’re jumping topics, but what are your plans in Ethiopia this year, moving from a book to a place?

JD: Yes, we weren’t able to go to Ethiopia this year. So my last trip was 2021 right after it opened due to the COVID shutdown. And I’m really excited this year, now going as this will be my first official trip as content developer and global trainer with Hands to the Plow. And we are now going to check out a new teaching site. Some of our Hands to the Plow team—Mark and Debbie Maloney are going to be traveling with me along with my son and a missions professor from Midwestern Seminary, and hopefully my sister. And we’ll be traveling in April to check out a new teaching site to present the translated first year of our Developing Leaders curriculum, which is focused on the Law, the first five books of Moses, which is another big accomplishment of this year. We were able to get the first of our six courses translated into the national language of Ethiopia, and so I’m going to be able to take that with us and present it to be able to show the new hosts who will be gathering all of our students, trainees for the next several years of leadership development. So I’m really excited about getting on the ground, letting more of the Hands to the Plow team and Midwestern Seminary—and I’ll be taking my students from Midwestern Seminary, along with local ministers who are associated with Hands to the Plow in future trips. So to be able to go get on the ground, let more of our Hands to the Plow team see what the potential is on site in Ethiopia and prayerfully consider the next stages of what God has for us in our Hands to the Plow ministry.

TK: It’s so good. I’ve been traveling in Asia for a number of years now and to be able to work together and see the Lord opening doors in Africa is really sweet. If you do go online, you can check out the Developing Leaders material. It’s intended to teach through pictures. Not intended to be simple, but it is intended for majority pastors and leaders, meaning the majority of pastors and leaders in the world have not been to seminary, do not have university education, and so taught at a level that most people would be able to say, “That works for me.” So I’m really excited that we’ve gotten this first part done and Jason, it was one of your students who did it, wasn’t it?

JD: That’s right. I’m just overjoyed that the Lord has brought me a student who is an Ethiopian leader who is at Midwestern Seminary working on his PhD, and he has been able to serve under me 10 hours a week this past fall and translate the Law section of our Developing Leaders curriculum into the national language of Ethiopia. And he’s just done a wonderful job. Right now we’re in the process of getting the pictures associated with the text and hopefully in the next few months we’ll be able to see that up online at the Hands to the Plow website.

TK: I’ll be traveling to Bangladesh the month before you take your trip or a month and a half before and we’re just wrapping up. We’re getting to the fifth of the sixth year, so we’ll be in the Epistles. I’m really looking forward to that.

JD: That’s awesome.

TK: Hey Jason, can you talk a little bit as we wrap things up here about the book of Deuteronomy? It’s been on your heart for some time and I’m kind of looking at things that as you think about your next year and tackling new tasks, this is kind of an old task. But it’s at least—there’s space on your desk, it seems like, for you to give yourself to this. So why do you like this book? And what would you have to say that hasn’t been said by lots of people who’ve written about Deuteronomy before you?

JD: Well, Deuteronomy has been a love of mine for years. It may have something to do with the fact that it is obviously one of Jesus’s favorite books, one of Paul’s favorite books. They cite Deuteronomy more times than almost any other books—the only near books are Isaiah and Psalms and Genesis. Deuteronomy is right up there toward the top, and one of the reasons I believe it was so important to the biblical authors and indeed, throughout the Old Testament, it is the most cited Old Testament book—more than Genesis, more than Exodus. Deuteronomy was the most foundational book. It really is elevated as a covenantal document. Covenant is merely the biblical term for a formalized relationship between two parties that is established on promises. It’s an unnatural—that is, non-biological—relationship and we see God enter into a special relationship with Israel. And Deuteronomy is a book that by its very nature becomes like a constitution. I call it the Constitution of the United Tribes of Israel, and as this formal document, covenantal document, it becomes foundational for all the rest of Scripture. All the prophets, when they begin to preach, whether giving instruction or confronting sin, they have Deuteronomy in mind. Over and over again, the prophets cite Deuteronomy, whether it be Jeremiah or Hosea or Isaiah—they’re citing Deuteronomy. Or when we’re reading the story itself, like from Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, when we’re reading the story, it is Deuteronomy that becomes—that is standing in the background, giving a lens for us to rightly read the story, to know when someone is doing wrong, when they are doing right. The authors are assuming that we as readers know Deuteronomy thoroughly.

TK: That’s exactly what Brian was saying in the last podcast about 1 Samuel.

JD: That’s right, the assumptions that he was referring to as we enter into a book like Samuel—we need to have texts in our mind, because the authors are assuming them. The more we know our Bible, the better we’ll read parts that are depending on those Scriptures. The same is true in the wisdom literature. The sages, the wise men, are writing about the fear of the Lord and the fear of the Lord finds its foundation in the covenantal material of Deuteronomy. And then the prophets themselves, when they foretell the future, they declare punishment and they consider blessing on the other side of punishment. They’re simply drawing on the blessings and curses and restoration blessings that a book like Deuteronomy lays out for us in Deuteronomy 26–28 and Deuteronomy 30. So one of the reasons that I have so loved Deuteronomy is because it lays out for me the biblical worldview in a way that no other Old Testament book does. It covers all of the story of salvation. It overviews it, it clarifies that Israel is by nature rebellious, in need of a Savior. It clarifies that Israel is rebellious and will end up in exile. That is, Moses already in Deuteronomy sets a framework for our understanding what we call the Mosaic law, the law of Moses. He sets a framework that tells us that the law, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:9, the law itself, this law covenant bore a ministry of condemnation. The result of the covenant, because it was given to people who had hard hearts, it would condemn them and destroy them. And one of the fascinating elements that a friend of mine in his doctoral dissertation drew attention to was that when Moses speaks in Deuteronomy about Israel’s exile that will come as a result of their sin, it portrays that exile in terms of destruction, of annihilation. And it uses vocabulary that appears to say all of the people will be decimated, and yet we know from the book also that there’s a remnant that will survive and that God will do a new work.

TK: Right.

JD: Whereas their hearts are sick or in the language of Moses, they are uncircumcised, they are stubborn hearts, what God will do is circumcise their hearts, enabling them to love, but he won’t do that until after their exile. And what’s striking is that the language that he uses for exile is death, which suggests, then, that if God is going to do anything on the other side of Israel’s exile, we have to understand it within the framework of resurrection. And what Moses does in this book is associates that period of resurrection with a prophet like Moses. This is a covenant mediating prophet that’s not Isaiah, that’s not Jeremiah, that’s not Ezekiel. No, this will be a prophet like Moses in that, just as he mediated a covenant at Mount Sinai, the prophet who will come will mediate a new covenant. He will have the Word of God in his heart and in his mouth, and in turn he will make—during his days the people will listen to him, whereas in Moses’s day, God’s given them ears, but they can’t hear. They have a heart, but don’t know God. They have eyes, but can’t see his glory. They are in the three words Moses’s three most favorite words—they are stubborn, unbelieving and rebellious. But in that future day, as it says in Deuteronomy 18:15, they will listen to this covenant mediating prophet like Moses. And as it says in Deuteronomy 30, in the day when they listen, God’s Word will be on their hearts, it will be in their mouths. And its associated with that transformation is associated with the prophet like Moses within the Book of Deuteronomy.

TK: That reminds me a little bit of the podcast we had with Patrick Schreiner months ago, but talking about Jesus in Matthew, how he is just portrayed as a new Moses.

JD: That’s right. He is portrayed as a new Moses who is leading a new Israel. And Moses in Deuteronomy anticipates that transformation. Moses anticipates the inclusion of the nations in the people of God. He anticipates a future resurrection after the death of exile. And he anticipates a Messianic-like prophet who is associated with the Word of God, and whom, when he begins to teach, people will follow. Moses—this book gives me a framework like no other book in the Old Testament does for understanding all the rest of Scripture. And because of that, I truly celebrate it and I’m excited to finally, in the Pillar Old Testament Commentary series, be able to get some of these thoughts packaged in a way that can help the majority pastor.

TK: And how long do you anticipate this taking? When is your—when are you due? When’s your due date?

JD: Well, the due date is much sooner than—

TK: Or we passed the due date.

JD: we’re not past the due date, but the due date is much sooner than the book will be finished. This could be another eight-year project. The commentary is not going to be like Zephaniah—not as detailed, but it will be thick and meaty, filled with doctrine and Christ-exalting theology. And I’m excited that I’m going to get to bathe myself in this book for some time and it will be accompanied by a number of shorter studies that we’re going to be able to turn around and get up on the Hands to the Plow website while I continue to discover things in this great book.

TK: I can’t wait, Jason. I can’t wait. Well, I think that’s good for right now. Gives you at least a small picture of last year and a look ahead at least as far as Deuteronomy and trip to Ethiopia and things coming up. Any final words Jason?

JD: Well, I’m just thrilled to be a part of Hands to the Plow. Excited that we as a team get to journey to Africa and excited about this next year of GearTalk. This has been a great joy, something that we started in late spring and have been able to carry on. And I’m just eager to see how the Lord’s going to lead us. Delighted to partner with you and to be a part of what God’s doing here at Hands to the Plow Ministries.

TK: Amen. And from both of us, say thank you to Jack Yeager who’s done so much work on these podcasts. Jack, thanks for doing a great job.

JD: Absolutely. Thank you, Jack. We are delighted with what’s been happening.

TK: So look forward to, Lord willing, being able to do this each week. Some special things coming up—the rest of Brian Verette’s series on 1st and 2nd Samuel. I listened to the first one two times, it was such a help, I thought.

JD: I was overjoyed with it myself. Encouraged by our brother and glad that he’s participating in this podcast.

TK: All right, Jason, well, I look forward to next time. Go love on your family and your new granddaughter.

JD: Absolutely.

TK: All right. See you next time.

JY: Thanks for joining us for GearTalk. If you have questions about biblical theology you’d like us to address on future episodes, email us at [email protected]. Also check out handstheplow.org for resources designed to help you understand the Bible and its teachings.

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