David Pawson - Deuteronomy [1] - Unlocking the bible

if ever you get the opportunity to go into a synagogue look around for a very large cupboard at one side usually covered with a curtain or a veil this is a tiny model of one and if you were allowed to and you open the cupboard you'd find inside some Scrolls wrapped up usually and beautifully embroidered cloth and these little Scrolls would be the law of Moses first five books of the Bible what the Jews called the Torah or the instruction and here I've got it all beautifully printed out in Hebrew tiny tiny print but each scroll was named after the first words on the scroll because that's how they identified them when they pulled a scroll out of the cupboard they would unroll just the first little bit and see which one it was so that for example the book of Genesis what we called Genesis is called in the beginning and the book of Deuteronomy is simply called the words because the first phrase in the Hebrew is these are the words and the first noun is words so it was called simply the words that what the rabbi would call it but we call it the book of Deuteronomy when the Hebrew Old Testament was translated into Greek they had to think of a new name for this book and they made up this named you Tirana me from two words in the Greek language one is the word deutero which means second and the other was the word namaz law so that from then on this fifth book in the Bible was called Deuteronomy 2nd law and if you've read it through then you'll notice that the first most striking thing about it is that the Ten Commandments appear in this book as well as the book of Exodus the law comes twice in Exodus 20 in Deuteronomy 5 you've got the Ten Commandments and that's what gave the book its name the second law now why should these Ten Commandments be repeated a second time and not just the 10 but there are altogether 613 laws of Moses which he gave to the people Israel and their repeated Exodus and Deuteronomy why well the clue lies in the Book of Numbers which tells you that the book of Deuteronomy was written 40 years after the book of Exodus and that during those 40 years an entire generation died all the adults who came out of Egypt and crossed the Red Sea and camped at Sinai and heard the Ten Commandments the first time they're all dead because they broke that law so quickly that God said you will never get into the Promised Land you've got to wander around the wilderness for the next 40 years until all of you are dead and so an entire generation has disappeared and the new generation were only kids there were only little children when they crossed the Red Sea and when they cam dat's Annie I many of them would hardly even remember what happened when their fathers came out of Egypt and so now a new generation has to hear this law all over again a new generation must enter into the covenant with God and this happens to us to our children must enter into the Covenant we have with God for themselves because God has no grandchildren and you can't inherit these things you have to enter into God's promises yourself your parents may have been in the Covenant your grandparents you may trace a family tree right back but that doesn't bring you in and so Moses had to go through it all again there were actually three people and only three still surviving from the Exodus days Joseph sorry Joshua calleb and Moses himself Joshua was now 80 and Moses was a hundred and twenty so he is facing the need of an entirely new generation who didn't make that covenant with God who did say we will it was a marriage service at Sonia and they said we will to God God told them the conditions under which she wanted them to live how he wanted them to live and they said we will but they didn't and so they'd forfeited the whole thing now there's another crisis too it's not only the next generation but they have moved in space as well as time and they are now camped on the east side of the Jordan River and so they're about to go into the Promised Land and this is a second crisis because they've been on their own in the wilderness now they're facing a land that's already occupied by enemies and this produces the crisis and above all Moses is not going to go in with them he also has forfeited his right to go in he's a hundred and twenty and he knows he's got one more week to live God has shown him that that he's going to die in just another week he's got one week left with this new generation of the children of the people he brought out of Egypt and he's going to tell them the whole thing all over again furthermore they're actually going to see the miracle of parting the water all over again not the Red Sea this time but the Jordan it's almost as if God is saying I'm going to have to start all over again I'm going to have to show you my mighty hand in dividing a river so that you can go into the land and this is how you to live once you get in I've done a little very rough sketch to show you the kind of geographical situation it is rough isn't it I'm sorry but let me try and explain it that greeny blue bit is the Jordan River surrounded by trees that's called the Jordan jungle that's where the Lions and the Bears lived in the Old Testament times and the River Jordan meanders through the little bit of jungle to the dead sea this valley here is the deepest crack in the Earth's surface it goes right down through Africa the Great Rift Valley but it starts in the promised land and this part of it is about thousand feet below sea level you can actually get a pilot's license if you can borrow a plane and fly down there you get a license saying you've flown below sea level in an aeroplane but there it is this deep crack and their mountains are the side on this side the mountains of Moab and Mount Nebo here where Moses will die and he will die sitting against a rock on the top of Mount Nebo looking across this valley to the hills of the promised land but he would never get in here is the camp of Israel when Deuteronomy was spoken and written with the tabernacle in the middle and there just over the river from the first city they'll have to conquer Jericho that's down in the valley to further up in the hills is AI and Shiloh and Bethel but on this side of the hills of Judea they would only see wilderness that only see desert because it's in the rain shadow and it really is barren and empty all the raindrops on the other side of the hills on the Mediterranean side and that is green you can just see a little bit of green at the top but from there down to Jericho is just barren wilderness and desert there's a valley going up towards Jerusalem what he Celt I've walked right down from Jerusalem down to Jericho one day through that Valley it was a weird experience so quiet and deserted at the top of the valley is Mount of Olives and Jerusalem is just the other side the other thing you need to notice is that on the horizon further north are two peaks Mount Ebal on the north side and Mount Gerizim on the south side they are going to have to gather at those two mountains and repeat the Covenant of God Moses tells them when they get in they must stand the people must stand between the two mountains and then some must stand on one mountain one and the other and Michelle the blessings and the curses of the Covenant now the significance of this is that God brought them through the Red Sea first and then made the Covenant at Sinai he didn't tell them how to live till he saved them he redeemed them first and set them free first and then he said now this is how you are to live that's the pattern of the whole Bible God first of all shows us his grace by saving us and then he says now in gratitude this is how you should be living so this new generation we're going to see God rescue them and take them through the Jordan which at that time of year was in flood and impassable but what would happen would be that the meandering river in flood further up the valley would undercut a bank and the bank would fall in and temporally dam the river for a few hours that's how God would do it and to get them across that's what God must have done further up the river so that the bank caved in and dammed the river for a few hours to enable them to get across having seen that miracle they must then go on to their equivalent of Mount Sanja and repeat the blessings and curses of the law once again we see this God acts first and then he tells us how to respond to what he's done for us so it's a kind of repeat performance at the end of 40 years for an entirely new generation you follow me that's the background of Deuteronomy and it's written and spoken in this camp here this side of the Jordan while Moses is still alive and is still with them there are certain key phrases in the book of Deuteronomy which occur nearly 40 times one is the land the Lord your God gives you time and time again they are reminded that this land are going into is a gift an undeserved gift because the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof if you go into London to the Royal Exchange Building you'll find that written in stone above the Royal Exchange the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof when we argue about who owns this bit of land we should start by saying God does and he gives it to whomever he wishes Paul said this in acts 17 on Mars Hill in Athens he said it's God who decides how much space and how much time a nation has on this earth the earth is the Lord's and it's his right to give it to anyone he chooses and this is one phrase all the way through Deuteronomy the land the Lord your God gives you but the other phrase that occurs the same number of times is go in and possess the land and there's a profound lesson here everything you receive from God is a gift but you've got to go and take it otherwise you won't get it years ago I was preaching I put a bar of chocolate on the pulpit and I said that's for the first child in the congregation that comes out and gets it and from then on the children didn't listen to me at all their eyes were glued on this borrowed chocolate and none of them moved and finally a cheeky little boy ran up and he grabbed the chocolate and he took the toilet paper off before he got out of the pulpit and he was chewing it as he came down the pulpit steps and every other child hated him they were so jealous of him they were angry with him but they could have had it you see salvation is a free gift of God but you've got to go in and possess it there's a cooperation here God doesn't force it on you he says here's the land I'm giving to you now you go in and take it and presenting it was going to be a very costly thing they would have to fight for it they'd have to struggle for it so even though God gives everything to we have to make an effort to take it that's how both the old and the new testament work and we need to emphasize both God freely offers you this but you've got to reach out and grab it it's yours if you'll take it freely and that was the less now it's trying to make with that bar of chocolate now then was this land theirs to keep that's an important question and if you read you tirana me careful carefully you come to two conclusions number one I call unconditional ownership and number two I call conditional occupation and that is still the case even for Israel today and we need to hold both those truths unconditional ownership God says I'm giving it to you forever but that doesn't mean you can occupy it forever the occupation of it is conditional now if you got that that's a very important distinction it's yours unconditionally you can own it forever but whether you can live in it and enjoy it depends on how you live in it and we're going to see that you tirana me message is very simple you can keep the land as long as you keep my law but if you don't keep it even though you own it I've given it to you you will not be free to live in it and enjoy it you understand the difference then between unconditional ownership and conditional occupation the land could be taken from them even though they owned it forever because they were not living right in it that is a very important distinction which the prophets of the Old Testament are constantly reminding them about the prophets say you own this land but you're not going to be able to go on enjoying it if you go on living this way the Covenant linked the land and the law of God and still to this day the promises of God our conditional they're gifts to you but how you live in those promises determines whether you can enjoy them now one of the most interesting things about Deuteronomy is this hope you're not put off by all those big words and I'm sure that Fez Road you probably have never heard of it's in the Oxford English Dictionary and it's a well known term from ancient history whenever a king expanded his empire and took in other countries he would make a treaty with the countries he conquered and the treaty was called a suzerain treaty if you've ever been to the island of Sark in the Challenge Channel Islands you'll know that the family that governs that land is called a suzerain same word and a suzerain treaty was made between a king and a country that had now come becomes subject to him and roughly speaking the treaty would be an agreement that if they behaved themselves he would protect them and provide for them but if they misbehaved and didn't live the way he wanted them to then he would punish them and there are many many examples that archaeology has uncovered from the ancient world particularly Egypt when Egypt conquered another country the Pharaoh would make a suzerain treaty with them an agreement that they could still live with relative autonomy and freedom but they had to live his way and there's a pattern in these treaties which is very clear and the interesting thing is that when you look at these treaties from the ancient world of a king who now had a new people subject to him it's exactly the same outline as the book of Deuteronomy Moses when he was trained in the university region must have seen some of these treaties and studied them and here's Moses now presenting the covenant to the people of Israel in the form of a treaty as much say the Lord is now your king you are now subject to him and this is the treaty he is making with you this is how you to behave and the pattern of the treaty in the olden days was exactly as we have it on the board here there was a bit of a preamble this is a treaty between Pharaoh and between the Hittites or whatever and then there would be a historical prologue that summarized how these this king and this people came to be related to each other and after that little bit of history there would be a declaration of the basic principles on which the whole treaty would be based after that there were detailed laws in the treaty as to how they were to behave and then came sanctions meaning rewards or punishments what the king would do if they did behave properly and what he would do if they didn't and then after that they usually had a witness to sign it but they would call on the gods to witness the treaty and then finally usually it was divine witnesses that were called they would call on the gods in a religious ceremony to witness the treaty and finally there would be what we've called a provision for continuity what would happen if the King died and a successor would be named to whom the people would still be subject and finally all that would be settled in a ceremony when all these things would be written down and signed and agreed between the king and his new subjects now isn't that fascinating that all these treaties they've dug up are exactly the same shape as Deuteronomy so that Moses with his university training in Egyptian history was presenting the Covenant in a form that would be easily recognized by these people they would know God is now our king this is how it behaved and if we behave ourselves according to his laws everything will be fine which raises the interesting question what would God do if they didn't behave themselves the sanctions by the way the basic principles in Deuteronomy are the ten commandments then we have a whole lot of detailed legislation but what about these sanctions what would God do to them if they didn't live the way he told them to there were two things that God would do one natural and the other human the natural sanction was if you don't behave properly you get no rain now the land they were going into was between the Mediterranean Sea and the Arabian desert and God controls the weather and when the wind came from the West it would pick up rain from the Mediterranean and drop it on the promised land but if the wind came from the east it would be the dry hot desert wind which even today is called the hum scene and when the hamme scene comes it just dries up everything and turns the land into a desert and God said now that's one of my sanctions that will be the first one I'll use when you are misbehaving no rain and if you remember during Elijah's day it didn't rain for three and a half years because things were getting bad that was a simple way of God rewarding or punishing them but if that failed he would move on to something a little more fierce he would use human agents to attack them and what some of you may never have noticed in your Bible is this that when God brought the children of Israel across the Jordan into the promised land from the east he brought another people at the same time into the same land from the west and he brought them from the island of Crete and they were called Philistines put your hand up if you knew that that God brought them at the same time that's a minority of you will read your Bible carefully God says through Amos and Amos chapter 9 did I not bring you out of Egypt and the Philistines from Crete and so God actually brought a people who would prove to be the greatest enemy of Israel into the same land at the same time but he settled Israel in the mountains of the hills and he settled the Philistines down on the coastal plain what is now the Gaza Strip and incidentally at Palestinians claim to be descended from Philistines so God brought two people into the same place and he said if you behave yourself there will be peace but if you misbehave I'll tell the Philistines to come and deal with you it is as simple as that and all this is there in the Old Testament now that's a strange thing some of you may be quite surprised to know that God brought those two nations to live cheek-by-jowl in the same little corridor and one would punish the other well there would be immediate proof that God could bring enemies against people living in the promised land because he was going to have to drive out people already living there the promised land was not unoccupied it wasn't empty it was full of all kinds of people mainly amirite and Canaanites and they were already there and God told the Israelites you are going to have to drive them out to possess the land now it's at this point that we've got to deal with an objection to the Bible which is one of the most common objections somebody recently said that the church should ditch the Old Testament because it presents too many problems for Christians that if we would ditch the Old Testament stick to the new most people's objections to our faith would go because most people's objections to what we believe Center on the Old Testament you don't still believe the world was made in six days do you you know what I mean that's how people talk as soon as you say you're a Christian they go straight to a problem in the Old Testament and one of the most prompt common problems they go to is this how can you believe in a God who told the Jews to slaughter all the people living in the promised it's immoral it's unjust it's not right it's not fair and this is a very real problem too many people God brought the Jews in and he said go in kill everybody in there clear them out and take their land now is that an loving Heavenly Father but there is an answer to it and we must really tell people the real answer the answer is that the people living in that land deserved that and God had told Abraham an amazing thing you've read about it in Genesis 15 God said Abraham I'm going to have to keep your family and their descendants in a foreign country for 400 years until the wickedness of the amur rights is complete now there you've got the moral answer to the immoral charge that people make against God it wasn't God waited 400 years for the people to get so bad that they didn't deserve to live there and that they didn't deserve to live anywhere on his earth let's get this clear God's earth is for good people and his holy land is for holy people that's the message of the Bible and sooner or later God does not allow wicked people to go on occupying his earth he's very patient with them waits a long long time but he had to wait until the wickedness of the amur rights was total and only then did he say now I can bring you out of Egypt and tell you to go and kill them off and archaeology has revealed just how wicked they had become and the more you know about amirite society before the Jews got in there the more you realize they didn't deserve to live that it wasn't safe to allow them to live if I just tell you that we now know that sexually transmitted diseases were everywhere in Canaan when they went in it wasn't safe can you imagine going to live in a land where everybody had AIDS that's the kind of situation that they were facing as they looked across the Jordan in fact let me read just a versa - from Deuteronomy - you after the Lord your God has driven them out before you do not say to yourself the Lord has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness no it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is going to drive them out before you it is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you were going in to take possession of their land but on account of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God will use you to drive them out do you know Winston Churchill in World War 1 became Lord of the Admiralty and that night he was very pleased with himself and he got rather big in his thinking I'm going to drive the Germans out and he had the same feeling in the Second World War but it's interesting he stayed that night in a large country house in England and there was a Gideon Bible or a Bible by his bedside and he picked it up and he read the verses I've just read to you and God said Winston Churchill you're not going to drive the Germans out because you are better than them but because they are wicked that changed Winston Churchill's attitude it humbled him and he put him in his place and he never forgot that verse from Deuteronomy that he read in the Bible the Israelites were told you have to slaughter them you have to drive them out and there again the question is why why didn't God destroy them first himself why did he make them do it the answer is very clear because it was the way he taught them others will come and do it to you if you live like they do and what you've done to them others will do to you now let's just go back from that to ask this I could do with a glass of water sometime thank you you realize therefore that when you read Deuteronomy you're reading a kind of mirror image of life in Canaan everything God tells them not to do is what was already happening do you follow me so that if you read Deuteronomy carefully you can build up a picture of what was happening in the land before they got into it and I could summarize it in three words number one immorality there's so much in Deuteronomy about sexual immorality because that was precisely what was going on in the country they were entering there was fornication there was adultery there was promiscuity there was incest there was homosexuality there was transvestitism people changing clothes there was buggery sex with animals there was widespread divorce and remarriage and as I've said already venereal disease everywhere now Deuteronomy is telling them not to get involved in that kind of thing the second thing I would say is injustice we know that the rich were getting richer and the poor are getting poorer pride and greed with their selfishness was their exploitation and who was suffering the blind and the deaf people who couldn't get their share of wealth and particularly widows and orphans were being very badly treated everybody was out for number one and God said you're not to do that you ought to look after the Deaf and the blind you ought to look after the widow and the orphan and the third thing that was characteristic of Canaan was idolatry Ark autism superstition astrology spiritism necromancy this consulting the dead and above all fertility cults horrible things that worship Mother Earth mother nature and tried to produce fertility by sexual acts of worship in the pagan temples in that land there were male and female prostitutes and when you wanted a worship you went and you had sex with one of them no wonder people crowded the temples and all over the country were what the Bible calls a Shura or poles which were simply phallic symbols standing up and there's one in the middle of Basingstoke now an 8 foot high marble male penis and this was everywhere in Canaan and so occultism superstition spiritism was rife now all this says deuteronomy had defiled the land in God's sight it was his land and it was now totally corrupt it was defiled it was debased it was disgraced and God couldn't let it go on when I read all this I just find myself thinking my are whole world's going this way what will God do well that's really the background to Deuteronomy don't you go in and live like that or I'll send somebody else to slaughter you as I'm sending you to slaughter them it's not because you're good it's because they're bad that I'm doing this now let's just look at Moses for a moment he's facing a new generation their parents had failed they'd forfeited the land promised to their forefathers now Moses looks at their children he thinks will they survive will they make it will they live right going in and facing all this it's bad enough in the wilderness where the temptations were very few and far between but now they're going in among it all will they clean it up will they be ruthless in getting rid of all this or will they compromise and Moses knew he couldn't go in with some he's about to die has another week and he's afraid for them on the one hand that's hard fighting to be done it be a struggle to get in and possess the land on the other hand there will be strong temptations to overcome Moses had led them all this way and now he's got to say goodbye to them and so in the last week of his life he spoke three times to them the whole of Deuteronomy is made up of three long speeches which must have taken the best part of a day to give but there's an interesting thing the style of Deuteronomy is both spoken and written the spoken style comes across because of a personal it's warm it's it's if you read it through you got to read it aloud to get the flavor of it and when you read it aloud you realize Moses spoke all this to them and he's appealing to them he's speaking like a father to his child like a dying father to his children now sons remember when I'm gone that's how he talks and it's very warm and expressive and emotional and yet it is very well written - now I don't think it's fanciful to think that during the last six days of the last week in Moses life he spoke and wrote alternate days that on day one three and five he gave one of these discourses but on day two four and six he wrote it down probably spoke from notes because he was a well-educated and could write and read and so I believe we're looking at three days which alternated with three days three days of speaking alternating with three days of writing he would give a day-long speech or perhaps a whole morning and then he'd go back to his tent and he'd write it all out for them and then he gave the written account of his speeches to the priests and said keep that as longside the Ark of the Covenant you must never forget what I've said you must never alter one word of it but you must keep it and read it every seven years - the people Israel and that's how the book of Deuteronomy came we've got the three addresses he gave in the camp on the far side of the Jordan the first is all about the past looking back over the 40 years and beyond looking back over what their fathers did and then he comes to the present and he gives them the law all over again he gives them first the basic principles in chapters 4 to 11 and then he spells it out in detail in chapters 12 to 26 then the third and last time he spoke to them just before he died he provided for their future among other things he says I've appointed Joshua to take over from me I brought you out of Egypt Joshua is going to take you in and when you get in you must go to Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim and recite this law and take it upon yourselves but God will bring you in well now that's the outline of Deuteronomy it's a very simple outline and each address has two parts I've tried to indicate that by the subheadings here and we're going to go through these parts one by one just time to introduce you to the first where he looks back to the days when they came out of Egypt their fathers their parents and then he looks back at what went wrong he's going to say your father's failed don't you fail and in fact I think it's better to leave it there and we'll pick it up in the next talk

Channel: BlueXiphoid

Views: 15,832

Rating: 4.7288136 out of 5

Keywords: David Pawson (Person), Book Of Deuteronomy (Book)

Id: xKnm2yQWreI

Length: 37min 41sec (2261 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 14 2013