[MUSIC PLAYING] The Bible from 30,000 feet,
soaring through the scripture from Genesis to Revelation. [MUSIC PLAYING] Would you turn in your Bibles
to the book of Deuteronomy, please, in your Old Testament? I trust you brought
a Bible, yes? Yeah. I love that. I love it when you do that. That's what we live by. It's what we stand for. Turn to the book of
Deuteronomy, please. That's the book that we
want to cover in our flight over the Bible this evening. Harvard University was named
after a minister of the gospel named John Harvard. It started as an
institution that would train men for ministry. Likewise, Yale University was
started by a Puritan clergyman, and Princeton
University in New Jersey has ties to the
Presbyterian Church. They have those things in
common, all three institutions. In fact, the motto, the
original motto for Princeton was the Latin [LATIN],, which
means under God she flourishes. It was all about
training people to be able to preach the
gospel more effectively. Well, fast forward
to the modern age, and you have in those
institutions something vastly different than
what they started with. They started with the
right spiritual intent. You'd be lucky to find a
spiritual emphasis anywhere on those campuses. They have become very
secular in their reasoning, very liberal in their belief
system and in their worldview. How did it happen? Two words-- incremental change. Incremental change. Didn't happen overnight, it
happened slowly over time. It was incremental change. And history
demonstrates that what happened with those institutions
happens with any institution, potentially, and any
individual, potentially. I call it spiritual entropy. Those of you that have
a science background, you're familiar with the second
law of thermodynamics, which is entropy, that in
a system, over time, things tend toward decay
and disarray and confusion. Energy is lost. It happens spiritually, as well. This is why the
apostle Paul wrote to a young minister of the
gospel named Timothy, 2 Timothy chapter 4, and he announced
in the New Testament the time will come when they
will not endure sound doctrine, but according to
their own desires, because they have itching
ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers, and
they will turn their ears away from the truth and be
turned aside to fables. Now, all of that
introductory remark is to set up the
book of Deuteronomy, because Deuteronomy is
Moses saying what he already said again. He is repeating himself,
though in a shortened version, of the first four
books of Moses, he is shortening that to one
book, the book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy is a Greek word
that means the second law. [GREEK], second, or two. [GREEK], law. It is the second
giving of the law. Thus, like you might
expect, it covers some of the same ground
of the first four, especially the previous
three books of Moses that we have already covered. There are 250 references
in the book of Deuteronomy to the first four previous
books of the Pentateuch. What we have essentially
in Deuteronomy is Moses, at the
end of his life, saying his goodbye to
the children of Israel, this time a new generation. Deuteronomy is composed of
three farewell speeches given over a single month
in the midwinter as the children of Israel have
settled on the plains of Moab overlooking the Jordan
River, overlooking the valley toward Jericho before they
enter the land under Joshua. Moses is speaking this
to a new generation. What happened to
the old generation? They died. They kicked the bucket. Their corpses are strewn
in the wilderness. They disobeyed
what God had said. They lacked the faith to go
in according to his promise, so their corpses were
littered in the wilderness. Thus, with the new generation--
so Moses has been the pastor of their mom and
dad's generation, and now the next generation-- there is the need
to reiterate some of the salient
points of the law, and to review the last 38
years of their history-- 38 years, 39 years,
40 all together-- and to reinterpret the law
for the new generation. You might want to
call it a briefing. Though it's not a
brief book, it really is Moses giving the briefing
to the new generation before they enter the land. One of the key
verses that I already mentioned during
our communion time is chapter 6, verse 12, which
says "beware, lest you forget." Now, why would he say that? Because he remembers their
moms, their dads, their aunts, their uncles, the ones now
dead forgot what God had done and lacked the faith to
go ahead with the promise. He doesn't want that to
happen to the new generation. Something else. Some scholars,
interestingly, have nicknamed the book of
Deuteronomy the gospel of love. And that is because,
unlike the other books, there is a repetition
of the word love in the book of
Deuteronomy some 21 times. And what he is telling
them is that you need to love the Lord your God. It's not just about keeping
rules and regulations, but it needs to be filled
with a heart of love, a motivation of love, which
will then prompt obedience. It's a terrific book. Adam Clarke, a
great commentator, said "it may be safely
asserted that very few parts of the Old Testament
scriptures can be read with greater profit
by the genuine Christian than the book of Deuteronomy." Now, Deuteronomy will be
mentioned in the Old Testament or referred to in
the Old Testament, the rest of the Old
Testament, 350 times. In the New Testament, it
will be referred to 95 times. So about 445 times this
book is pointed back to in the rest of the Bible. Did you know that
Jesus will quote from the book of Deuteronomy
more than any other of the books of the Torah? Now, I said there are three
farewell speeches, right? Easy to remember them. One deals with the past,
one deals with the present, and one deals guess what with? Future. The future. That sums up the
book of Deuteronomy. Chapters 1 through 3,
he reviews the past. Chapters 4 through 26,
regulations for the present. And chapter 27 to the end of the
book, readiness for the future. So it's what God
did, what God is doing through their
obedience prompted by love, and what God will do
for them in the future. Another way to look at it,
first part is historical, second part is legal-- the laws, the regulations-- and the third part
is prophetical. Or if you prefer to be more
accurate, one is historical, the second is
pedagogical because it's him teaching these laws to them,
and the third is prophetical. Whichever word you prefer. Let's begin with
chapter 1, verse 1. He begins by
reviewing their past. This is what God has done. It's the historical portion. Verse 1, "these are the
words--" let's stop right there, if you don't mind. The name of the book is? Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy. If this were a Hebrew
Bible, the name of the book would be [HEBREW] or [HEBREW]. And that means the words. Because it's interesting,
the Hebrew Bible names the books after the
first few words of the book. And because notice verse
1, "these are the words," the name of the book is called
The Words, or These Words, [HEBREW]. "These are the words which
Moses spoke to all of Israel on this side--" that is, the
east side-- "of the Jordan, in the wilderness, in
the plain opposite Suph, between Paran, Tophel,
Laban, Hazeroth, and Dizahab. It is 11 days' journey
from Horeb--" that's the mountain where Sinai is-- "by the way of Mount
Seir to Kadesh Barnea," that entrance point
of the new land. "Now it came to pass in the
40th year, in the 11th month, on the first day of
the month, that Moses spoke to the children of
Israel according to all that the Lord had given him
as commandments to them." And once again, I
mentioned this last week, but here we look at
the text, verse 2, how long was it supposed to
take from Mount Sinai, Horeb, to the promised land? 11 days. 11 days. They managed to turn an 11-day
march into a 40-year meander. Right? They went from
walking to wandering to whining to wailing. That sort of captures
their history. Now, distances in the
Middle East in ancient times were not measured by
miles or kilometers. They were measured
by hours or days. Now, if you're a
Californian, you get this, because when
I was in California, people said, well, how long
is it from here to there? We never answered the question. We'd say, oh, it's
about an hour. Now, the question, the
question is, how far is it? They're thinking of miles. But there, it doesn't
matter how the distance is. It matters how long it takes,
because we have something there that is very, very unique to
that part of a country, that's called congestion 24/7. So it just depends
on when you're traveling from here to there,
it could take you 20 minutes. It could take about
two or three hours. It just depends on the traffic. So they would measure
by hours and by days. Now, it would take about 20
miles you could cover in a day by walking in ancient times. That's how they would reckon
a journey, 20 miles a day by foot. If you were to do it by camel,
you could cover about 30 miles. If you were to go by caravan,
split the difference, you could cover about 25 miles. So it's measured that way. Remember in the book of Jonah? Jonah gets to Ninevah. And it says Ninevah was
an exceedingly great city, about three days'
journey in extent. Because that's how long it
would take to cover it by foot. So the children of Israel
are out wandering, walking, and moving at a slow rate. Verse 6, Moses continues. "The Lord our God spoke
to us in Horeb, saying, you have dwelt long
enough at this mountain." Horeb is the mountain range. one of the mountain peaks of
the Horeb range is Mount Sinai. I love that God says, you've
been here long enough. Don't you love it
when God says that? You've been here long enough. And sometimes God
may say that to you. You've been here long enough. It's time for you to move on. It's time for you
to pick up and move to a new place in your life
and stir things up and get out of your comfort zone. He says that to them. They had been at Mt. Sinai. Verse 7-- "Turn and
take your journey, and go to the mountains
of the Amorites, to all the neighboring places
in the plain, in the mountains, in the lowland, in the
South, on the seacoast, to the Canaanites and to
Lebanon"-- that's far north-- "as far as the great river,
the river Euphrates." He's telling them the land
that he has marked out for them to inherit. If you were to get a map and
a pencil and a little ruler and figure it all out, you'd
discover that originally, God promised the children of
Israel a significant landmass of 300,000 square miles. That's what God said
he would give to them. The condition was they had
to walk and take and possess the land God promised
to them, right? That was always the condition. It's yours, but you got to walk
through it and lay claim to it. At their very pinnacle
of their history, under King David
and King Solomon, when the kingdom was expanded,
and they became very strong, at their best, at the
utmost, at the highest, Israel only occupied
30,000 square miles. God said, this is
what I'm giving you. But this is what they took. They took at their
pinnacle 1/10 of all that God promised them
that they could possess. Sound familiar? God's promises must
be appropriated. They do no good just lying
on the pages of your Bible. Oh, you can underline them,
and you can memorize them. Good for you. But you got to
say, they're mine. I'm going to walk in them. I'm going to take that land. Verse 8-- "See, I have
set the land before you. Go in and possess the land which
the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to
give them and their descendants after them." I remember a story
about a father who wanted to bless his son
when he graduated from school. His son wanted a brand new car. Dad could afford it. But instead, Dad gave him
for his graduation a Bible. How excited do you
think that boy was, a teenage boy, all excited? Not so much. He was so unexcited,
he took the Bible and threw it across the room,
walked out of his dad's office. Never saw his father
until his father died. When his father died,
he came back home. There was that
Bible on the shelf. He took it out. And as he took it out, out fell
a car key to the other gift that you had to open
the Bible to receive. And that was the car he wanted. You had to take the
sweetness of the Word to get the second gift. God has given us all things that
pertain to life and godliness to the knowledge of him who
called us by glory and virtue. Those were the words of
Peter in the New Testament. All that God has for you is
found in the Lord Jesus Christ and in the plan God
has for your life. Be sure that you
follow that plan. Now, verse 26, he has
brought up the 12 spies that enter the land. And he says, "nevertheless,"
verse 26, "nevertheless you would not go up"-- we read that last
time, verse 34. "And the Lord heard the sound
of your words, and he was angry. And he took an
oath, saying, surely not one of these men
of this evil generation shall see the good
land of which I swore to give to their fathers." This is all review. Moses is saying, your
parents are dead. Your uncles are dead. Your aunts are dead. The old generation
died, because they refused to take the promises
that I had for them. "Except"-- verse 36-- "Caleb, the son of
Jephunneh, he shall see it, and to him and
his children, I am giving the land on which he
walked, because he wholly followed the Lord." Now, we can't be
sure, but I think this is a conservative estimate. About 1.2 million people
of the old generation died in the
wilderness, 1,200,000. Now, that would average out
to be 85 funerals a day. I'm not saying that it all
happened that way, that it was spaced out that way. It could have been
several at once. We don't know, exactly know.
but it would average out to be 85 funerals, or 7
deaths every waking hour year after year after year. You know what that would
be a constant reminder of? The wages of sin is death. This is the wages of sin,
every day the wages of sin, the wages of sin. So you can see that Moses
wants to review this with the young bucks
before they enter the land. I don't want you to forget
this very important component. The wages of sin is death. Chapters 2 and 3, Moses
reviews some of the places that they had been,
the events that took place in Exodus,
Leviticus, and Numbers, armies that were defeated. And there were two kings
that are constantly brought up in Israel's
history that they defeated. Sihon was one of them, and
Og, O-G, was the other. Og was the King of
Bashan, up north. Look at chapter 3, verse 10-- "All the cities of the plain,
all Gilead, all Bashan"-- this is all east of
the Galilee, up north-- "as far as Salcah
and Edrei, cities of the kingdom of Og in Bashan." OK, pause there for a moment. Remember there were 2 and 1/2
of the 12 tribes that did not want to settle where God told
them originally to settle, west of the Jordan River. They saw the highlands
up north, the grass fields, great pasture
lands for their flocks. And they said, we would
like to settle here. That was a compromise. They shouldn't have done that. The very first tribes later
on in Israel's history to fall to idolatry
where these tribes. They're largely
unprotected, isolated from the rest of the community,
surrounded by paganism. Those were the tribes
of Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe
of the Manasseh. But something I want
to notice, verse 11-- "For only Og king
of Bashan remained of the remnant of the giants." Notice that. "Indeed his bedstead"--
that is, his bed frame-- "was an iron bed frame. Is it not in Rabbah of
the people of Ammon?" To which you say, yes. It's a rhetorical question,
because it is, it was. Notice it says nine
cubits is its length and four cubits its
width, according to the standard cubic. The standard cubic
was 18 inches. The bed frame was 13
and 1/2 feet long. So it brings this
up and wants you to note that, because this
guy was one of the giants. So Solomon said, there is
nothing new under the sun. King-sized beds are
not a modern invention. I have a bed at home
called a California King, because it's a
little bit longer, and I'm a little bit longer. And it was developed
in the 1960s, I think. A furniture firm in
Los Angeles said, hey, let's extend it to 84
inches instead of 72. We'll call it the
California King. I'm glad they did. I fit in that property. This baby was a king-sized
bed, and he was a king. So it fits. But he was called a giant. And it bears record to
something those 12 spies saw when they checked out the land. They said, hey, there are
giants still in the land. Now you know how big. And this is why the
10 came back and said, we are grasshoppers in
their sight and in our eyes, as well-- even though that
really wasn't the truth. According to Joshua, Rahab
said, the people of the land are melting in fear
because of you. That's what they thought
because of these giants. If you were to compare
yourself to Og-- let's say you were up against
an army of giants like this, you would look at the giants,
and you would look at you, and you would say, poor us. But if you saw
how big God was in compared to the size of the
giants, you'd say, poor them. Again, like we said last week. It all depends on
your perspective. What are you measuring
according to? Are you measuring according
to your strength, your height, your stature, your size,
your ability, or God's? See, John said, greater
is he that is in you than he that is in the world. Measure that way. Only two did, and they
lived to tell about it. Martin Luther said, with God,
one is always a majority. And that's how David
lived his life. David saw a giant named Goliath. David was up a runt in
comparison to Goliath. But he approached
Goliath, and he said, "you defy the armies
of the living God," not "you defy the armies
of the nation of Israel." You defy the armies
of the living God. God's going to get you. And he did. He measured correctly. In verse 5, continuing on-- oh, wait a minute. Let's go back to chapter 4. We come now to
the second speech, the second farewell speech. Shifting from the historical,
we deal with the legal, that is, the laws that they
were to follow, going from what God did in the past. This is what God is
doing now in the present. These are the
regulations you were to follow now, so from the past
tense to the present tense. By the way, you and I
must always do the same. You and I have a history. We are to do what we did
tonight in remembrance of Jesus. We are to look back to
the night we were saved and all of those
great remembrances of our early faith. But we must always convert
the past into the present. We must always take
the past experiences and make them a
present expression. Because if we're always looking
back to the past-- go, oh, I remember what God did
when I was this age, or when this church was at
that stage, or I remember, I remember, I remember-- what about now? Are those still valid for
your present-day experience? If they're not, something's
wrong with your Christian walk. God should be as
vibrant and as real and as changing
things in your life as he once did and once was. So they're to take the past
and pivot now to the present. Verse 1-- "Now, O Israel,
listen to the statutes and the judgments"-- these
are all rules and regulations, "which I teach you to observe." And here's why-- "that you
may live and go in and possess the land which the Lord God
of your fathers is giving you. Shall not add to the
word which I command you, nor take from it,
that you may keep the commandments of the Lord
your God which I command you." It sounds like God doesn't
want people to mess with his word, mess
with his scripture, doesn't want you to add to it. That means we can't come
along and say, well, I like this part, but
I don't like that part. I like Psalms and I
like the red words, but I don't like the
Book of Revelation or the Book of Hebrews. And I notice a lot of people
selectively love the Bible and quote the Bible to
fit their own ideology. They use it, not finding
out what it says to them, but finding verses
they like that will say what they want to have said. That's so good. Jesus said, concerning the law,
concerning the Old Testament, I have not come to destroy
the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them. That's why I get
bothered when one of the premier Christian
leaders of our day and age says that Christians
must unattach themselves from the Old Testament, just
completely do away with it. Yet, if you read
the New Testament, they didn't seem to
follow that advice. They seem to quote
the Old Testament and build their theology,
using that as the platform from which to build. Jesus said, I didn't
come to destroy it. I came to fulfill it. In Revelation 22, some of
the last words of the Bible, God says, "if anyone
adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues
that are written in this book." I don't want to be that guy. "Whoever takes away from
the words of this book, God will take away his part
from the book of life." So don't mess with my words. I'm giving you the
revelation of who I am. It will be a
progressive revelation. Wait for it. The rest will come. Don't change it. Verse 9-- "Only take
heed to yourself, and diligently keep yourself,
lest you forget the things your eyes have seen, lest
they depart from your heart all the days of your life. And teach them to your children
and your grandchildren." Now, this is one of the
singular most important parts of the book of Deuteronomy. Because God says
through Moses, I don't want you to forget
what God has done, and I don't want you to
forget what God has said. I want you to obey them,
but hold that thought. Don't just obey them. Teach your children,
your next generation, to also listen to
them and obey them. It's one of the great themes
of the book of Deuteronomy. We're going to dip into
a couple of these verses. Now, the rest of this section
is a recap of the law. Let me sum it up. And then I'll just poke
at a couple of scriptures. Chapters 5 through 11 is an
exposition of the decalogue. Do you know what a decalogue is? 10 words, that's what decalogue
means, 10 commandments. The 10 commandments
given in Exodus 20 are recapped and
expounded on in chapters 5 through 11 of Deuteronomy. He's making sure the
younger generation has a good understanding. And so he gives sermons on it. Chapters 12 through 16-- ceremonial law. Some of that we've
touched on; Chapter 16 through 20-- civil law; and
then 21 through 26, social laws, many of which we have
looked at in previous books. Look at Deuteronomy
chapter 6, verse 1. "Now this is the
commandment, and these are the statutes and judgments
which the Lord your God has commanded to teach you,
that you may observe them in the land which you are
crossing over to possess, that you may fear the Lord your
God, to keep all His statutes and His commandments which I
command you, you and your son and your grandson, all
the days of your life, that your days may be prolonged. Therefore hear, O Israel,
and be careful to observe it, that it may be well with you,
and that you may multiply greatly as the Lord
God of your fathers has promised you, a land
flowing with milk and honey. Hear, O Israel, the Lord
our God, the Lord is one!" This is, of course, the great
Jewish confession of faith, called the Shema. It's called the Shema, because
shema means hear, or listen. And that's the first
word of this commandment. Shema, Israel, Adonai
Elohinu Adonai echad. The Lord our God,
the Lord is one. Now, I want you
to look at a word. The last word of verse 4 of
that sentence in verse 4 is one. The Lord is one. The word one is the
Hebrew word echad, echad. And some of you know the word. That's how you count in Hebrew. [COUNTING IN HEBREW] et cetera. So that's the
first counting word that a child learns, echad. However, the word
echad means one, but it doesn't mean an
absolute singularity. It rather means
a compound unity. Let me explain. There's another
Hebrew word, yachid. Yachid means an absolute
singularity, one and only one. Whereas, echad is a
combination that forms a unity. The Lord our God,
the Lord is one. So for example, it
is used in Hebrew to talk about one bunch of
grapes, echad bunch of grapes. It's a compound unity. Or the nation of
Israel is one nation, all the different people one
nation, a compound unity. It is used in the Old Testament
when God brought Eve to Adam and said, for this reason,
a man will leave his father and mother, be
joined unto his wife, and the two shall become echad,
one flesh, a compound unity. This is important to those of
us who believe in a trinitarian theology, that God exists
as one God in three distinct personalities, three
distinct persons, not modes, not one at a time,
all at the same time, co-eternal,
coexistence, all of them God, the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. The Hebrew allows
for that possibility even here in this great
statement of faith. Verse 5-- "You
shall love the Lord your God with all your
heart, with all your soul, with all your strength." Remember when Jesus
was asked, what is the greatest commandment? This was his answer,
Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 5. That's the greatest commandment. But do you remember what he did? He then pivoted and quoted
something out of Leviticus and said, aah, but there's
a second commandment, which is also as great, and that is,
"you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And on these two
commandments hang all the law and the prophets." He summed it all up-- love
God, greatest commandment; love your neighbor as yourself. That's Leviticus 19. Verse 6-- "And these
words which I command you shall be in your heart. You shall teach them
diligently to your children. You shall talk of them
when you sit in your house, when you walk by the
way, when you lie down, and when you rise up." We're to teach them. A more literal translation--
we're to repeat them. We're to repeat them. Great educators will tell
you that people learn things by repetition. Let me say that again. Great teachers-- [LAUGHTER] Got you caught up with that one. I do these things just to see
if you're paying attention. But sometimes people
will say, yeah, I am too old to learn
another language. I should have done that
when I was younger. Actually, you're not. According to
Cambridge University, in England, they said, all you
need is to see a word 160 times in 14 minutes, and you will know
it, no matter what age you are. They said, and I'm quoting,
"learning is simple when you repeat." They call it memory traces. You form these
pathways, memory traces that are the same in an aged
adult, up to a certain point, of course, as
somebody who's young. But notice how the repetition
is brought forth here. Notice the repetition here is,
when you sit, when you walk, when you lie down, and when
you rise up-- in other words, when you live. Because I just described
what you all do. Right now, you're sitting down. In a little bit, you'll be
walking out to your car. Later on, you're going
to lie down in your bed. And then tomorrow
morning, you're going to rise up from your bed. All those things,
you're going to be doing in the next 24 hours. If you have children
who live at home, they're going to watch
you do those things. And they're going to
watch you do those things, and they're going to hear what
you say during those things and watch your example
during those times. And the question is, are you
repeating the same behavior and words to stimulate their
taste for godly living? That's how you teach them. The most often quoted
scripture I hear when it comes to raising children-- you know it probably
all by heart-- is Proverbs 22, which says,
"train up a child in the way that he should go,
and when he is old, he will not depart from it." Did you know the word
train is the word hanach. Hanach is the word to train. And it literally means to
put something into the mouth. A very similar Arabic
word which comes from that same Semitic
root, the Arabs have a word for
taking date honey and putting it on the lips
and on the palate of infants to stimulate the sucking
reflex, to get infants to learn how to feed from
their mother's breast, by putting date honey
as that sucking reflex. That's the word hanach. So when he says,
train up your child, you could translate that
stimulate a taste for godliness in your child by
when you lie down, when you walk, when you
rise, your daily activities. By the way you live,
you repeat what you believe, what you hold
to, what your value system is. Your kids are going to watch
it, and you are either, by your lifestyle, going to
stimulate a taste for godliness or drive them away. So children are very, very
important here in this book. Verse 8 continues--
"You shall bind them as a sign on your hand." What? The commandments, the words. They shall be as frontlets
between your eyes. If you go to Israel,
you'll see these things. These are called phylacteries. And see that little thing
on the top of the head? That's a leather box. And inside that box are
scriptures that are written. There's the scriptures
inside that little box. They're placed on the head. They're placed on the arm. They take this very literally. If you wonder, how do they
translate their own Bible? Do they see it as figurative? Not really. They take it literally. They actually put a box of
scriptures on their head. Why? So they would remember the
scripture on their arm. So they'll remember
the scripture. So they are fulfilling
this literally. A good question to ask
yourself, what are you putting before your eyes? What are you setting
before your eyes? What are you looking at a lot? I can answer that
for a lot of you. It's in your pocket or
your purse right now. It's that little phone. It's that little screen. It wasn't true 10, 20 years ago. But it is now. Well, put that aside. I don't want to pick on that. What TV shows, what
entertainment, what things do you read and look at? What are you setting before
your eyes to remember? Make sure that you do the
scripture as well or more. Chapter 8, verse 1-- "Every commandment which
I command you today you must be careful to
observe, that you may live and multiply and go
in and possess the land which the Lord swore to your fathers. And you shall remember
that the Lord your God led you all the way these
40 years in the wilderness, to humble you, to test you, and
to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep
His commandments or not." Memory is the diary
we all carry with us. And so God tells them,
remember what I've done. Remember what I said. Chapter 10, verse 12-- "And now, Israel, what
does the Lord your God require of you, but to
fear the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, to love
Him, to serve the Lord." Again, notice all those verbs. "Love, or serve the Lord
with all your heart, with all your soul, and
to keep His commandments, the commandments of the
Lord, and His statutes which I command you today for good." This brings up a little
phrase, the fear of the Lord. And I would just say that's
a very misunderstood phrase. What does it mean,
the fear of the Lord? Let me tell you what
it doesn't mean. It doesn't mean that
you cringe before God. It doesn't mean you wake up and
go, God, I'm so afraid of you. Are you going to zap me? You're not the Scarecrow
in The Wizard of Oz. That's not the relationship
God wants with you. Fear of the Lord means a
reverence or a respect for him. The Hebrew word is
[SPEAKING HEBREW].. It's the idea of reverence. In fact, the Message
translation translates verse 12, live in his presence
in holy reverence. I like that translation
because it rhymes. Live in his presence
in holy reverence. So here is the fear of the Lord. It's a reverential awe that
produces humble submission to a loving God. That's the working definition
of the fear of the Lord, a reverential awe that produces
a humble submission to a loving God. The only fright, the
only being scared part, is that you love him so
much, you respect him so much, that you don't want to
do anything to displease him. You're afraid that would do
something that would displease the one that you love. That really sums up
the fear of the Lord. Now, before we get
into the last section, let me dip the airplane
down a little bit and get close to what is
called the scarlet thread of redemption. You've heard that phrase before? I had just finished
a book that we're going to release at the
beginning of next year, called Bloodline, which is
tracing the scarlet thread of redemption from Eden
to eternity, all the way through the scripture. And I want you to look
at chapter 18, verse 15. "The Lord your God will
raise up for you a"-- what? "Prophet"-- and notice it's a
capital P, it is in my Bible-- "raise up for you a
Prophet"-- capital P-- "like me from your midst,
from your brethren. Him you shall hear." In other words,
sometime in the future, a Moses-like spokesman is going
to come, "a Prophet like me." Verse 18-- "I will raise up for
them a Prophet"-- capital P-- "like me from among
their brethren, and He will put My words-- and will put My
words in his mouth. And He shall speak to them
all that I command Him." God will send many
prophets in the future, but this is a singular prophet. This is a singular
pronoun, and it emphasizes the ultimate
prophet, interpreted, obviously, by the translators as the
Messiah, hence the capital P. Now, this is why, when John
the Baptist comes on the scene, and John is baptizing
people by the Jordan River and making crazy pronouncements
and eating bugs and wearing weird hippie robes, and they
think he's Elijah, so they say, are you Elijah? And he says, no. And then they ask
him this question. Are you the prophet? Remember that? What are they referring to? They're referring to
this, the Prophet. I will send a Prophet. They interpreted this
to be the Messiah. Are you the Prophet? He said, no, I am not. Philip, in the book of
John, said to his brother, "we have found the one who Moses
in the law said would come." Where did Moses
say he would come? Deuteronomy chapter 18,
verse 15 and verse 18. Jesus and Moses share
some similarities. Let me explain. When Moses was a baby,
they tried to kill him. Right? When Jesus was a baby,
they tried to kill him. Moses left the
royal court of Egypt to identify with his people. Jesus left the royal
courts of heaven to identify with his people. Moses interceded for
the people of Israel while they were still in
their sin and rejection. Jesus made intercession, it
says, for sinners, Isaiah 53, as seen on the cross. Moses was the mediator
of the old covenant. Jesus was the mediator
of the new covenant. And interestingly,
Moses was not received by the Jews, the nation,
until he approached them the second time. The first time,
they rejected him. Who made you a ruler over us? And he fled to Midian. When he came back the second
time under God's anointing at that time, then they received
him, very much like Jesus. The first time, he was rejected. He came unto his own. His own received him not. But he will be received when
he comes the second time. So Moses and Jesus
share many similarities. However, Moses was great. Jesus was greater. "The law came by Moses,
but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." Let's look at chapters 27
through 34, final section, past, present, now the future. This is all about readiness for
the future, what God will do. It's looking ahead. Moses, in these chapters,
predicts the history of Israel coming
up, what's going to happen to the Jews
in the near future and in the far future, including
the Babylonian captivity. Chapter 27, Moses says, look,
once you guys cross this river, the Jordan River, and
you're in the new land, I want you to go
to the very heart of the land, the very middle
of the land, which is Samaria, and there are two
mountains there. You're to get some tribes
on one mountain, some tribes on the other mountain. One mountain was Gerasene. The other is called Ebal. And the tribes on Mount Gerasene
will shout out the blessings that God writes here. The other tribes will
shout out the cursings that God speaks here. And the Levites will be in
the middle saying, amen, as those blessings and
cursings are read-- which they did in the book of Joshua. Chapter 28, verse 1-- "Now it shall come to
pass, if you diligently obey the voice of
the Lord your God, to observe carefully
all of His commands which I command you today,
that the Lord your God will set you high above all
the nations of the earth. And all these blessings
shall come upon you and overtake you, because you
obey the voice of the Lord your God." Now, there's a huge word that
I don't want you to miss. It's actually a very
small word to us, but it is the big
word of the sentence. It's the word if, if. I'll do this if and only
if you do certain things. I'm setting you up to
understand something. The big word here is if. Verse 15-- "But it
will come to pass, if you do not obey the
voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully
all of His commandments and His statutes which
I command you today, that all these curses will come
upon you and overtake you." Verse 20-- "The Lord will send
on you cursing, confusion, rebuke in all that
you set your hand to do, until you are destroyed,
until you perish quickly, because of the
wickedness of your doings in which you have forsaken Me." Now, notice those
phrases, the phrase, until you are destroyed-- shamad is the Hebrew word-- and until you perish-- avad is the Hebrew word. What does that mean? Does it mean the nation will
end forever and ever and ever? No. He is not predicting
the end of the nation. He is predicting the end-- listen carefully-- to that
generation's relationship to the land. This is so important. You will not understand
the covenants-- and I'm going to just touch on
this before we close tonight. The covenants are so important
to understand in the Bible. There's two basic
kind of covenants-- an unconditional covenant,
a conditional covenant. Easy, right? An unconditional covenant
means there are no conditions. We call this a
unilateral covenant. A person declares
what that person is going to do,
irregardless of what you do. It's the covenant
I make with you. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that. That's a cool covenant. It's an unconditional covenant. There's another kind
of covenant, bilateral. It's a conditional covenant. And the word if is used
a lot in this covenant. That's where both parties
have to fulfill roles in order for that covenant
to stay in place. If you do this,
then I will do that. So there is a covenant we
saw in the book of Genesis in the Garden of Eden. We call it the Edenic covenant. The Edenic covenant is
a conditional covenant. God says, I will bless
you, Adam and Eve, if you don't touch that tree. If you do this,
then I'll do that. If you don't do
that, you're out. What happened? They were out. They disobeyed on the condition
that they failed keep. So that's a conditional
covenant, the Edenic covenant. Let's look at another
covenant, Genesis chapter 15. Don't turn to it. It's the Abrahamic covenant. It is an unconditional covenant. God even cuts up an
animal in that one. The unconditional
covenant, God says, I'm going to give you the land. I'm going to give you
and future generations of the nation of Israel
a land, and it is not conditioned on your obedience. I'm just going to do it. That's the Abrahamic covenant. We get to this covenant
of the law at Mt. Sinai. We call this the
Mosaic covenant, not because the children of
Israel made little mosaics. It's named after Moses,
hence Mosaic covenant. OK, so a the Mosaic covenant
is a conditional covenant-- if, then, if, then. If you obey, then
this will happen. If you disobey, then
that will happen. If we move a couple of chapters
ahead, chapter 29 through 30 is what theologians called
the Palestinian covenant. The Palestinian covenant is
tied to the Abrahamic covenant, which says, even when
you guys disobey and blow the Mosaic covenant-- I'm going to kick
you out of the land-- I'm still going to
be bringing you back. I'm going to bring
you back, because I made a covenant to Abraham
that I would give him and his descendants this
land, period, irrespective of their obedience or not. If you don't see the
covenants, you'll get all goofy in
your eschatology. You'll become amillennial. You won't see Israel's place. This is Israel's place. God made an unconditional
covenant in Genesis 15, reiterated several times
throughout the Old Testament. So their tenure in the land is
conditioned on their obedience, but their possession
of the land ultimately is conditioned purely
on the inheritance that God promises they'll have. That's how it works. Yeah, I'll kick you out. But then I'll spank you really
hard and bring you back. Chapter 31 is the
end of Moses's life. The entire Bible up till now
has been written by Mose, we believe, I believe. Now he is on Mount Nebo. He's about ready
to kick the bucket. You'll see why in a moment. He gives a farewell speech that
is the longest farewell speech in the Bible. Chapter 31, verse 1-- "Then Moses went and spoke
these words to all of Israel. And he said to them, I'm
120 years old today." Wow, can't we at least
say, happy birthday, Mo? "I'm 120 years old today. I can no longer go
out and come in." It means, I'm slowing down. "Also, the Lord
has said to me, you shall not cross
over this Jordan." So Moses has two statements. I'm old, and I can't
do what I used to do. I'm impaired because of my age. He is facing a transition. Those of us who are aging are
experiencing that, maybe not quite as much as
Moses, because I doubt we're going to live to 120. But here's what I love about Mo. He's 120 years old. He's still leading the
children of Israel. He started his
ministry at age 80. I want to encourage
people of any age, it's never too late to
start serving the Lord. You can just say, Lord, use me. I'll take that baton. I'll be faithful right
now, tomorrow, today, whatever days I have left. Did you know Michelangelo--
if you went to the Sistine Chapel-- some of us were
there on our tour to Rome a few months ago-- the
Sistine Chapel on one end has what is considered
Michelangelo's greatest work. It's called The Last Judgment,
very detailed, huge painting. He painted that at 89 years of
age; John Wesley, 88 years old, still riding on horseback,
preaching sermon after sermon very articulately;
Thomas Edison still researching and inventing at age 90. There's an old English
proverb that says, the older the fiddle,
the sweeter the tune. I think Moses at 120 was
vastly different than he was at age 60, 70, 80, 90. Yes, he was even
growing till then. Verse 7 or chapter 31-- "Moses called Joshua
and said to him in the sight of all of Israel,
be strong and of good courage, for you must go with this people
to the land which the Lord has sworn to their
fathers to give them, and you shall cause
them to inherit it." Why Joshua? He was the other one
of those two spies-- Caleb was one,
Joshua was the other. Joshua was a faithful man,
and Joshua was a man of faith. He was a faithful man. He didn't try to make a name
for himself, didn't try to say, Moses, you're getting
really old now. We need to kick you
out, get out now. He didn't try to push for
that or build his own kingdom. He was a faithful man. And he was a man of faith. He was one of the guys who
said, we can take this land, even though the
10 said you can't. Moses will die. Joshua will take the reins. God's plans never depend
on a singular leader. In a movement or a church,
when the leader dies, God never goes, oh no. God says, I've been
waiting for this. I've got it all planned out. Chapter 32 is called
the Song of Moses. It's a really long
song, a lot of verses. There's 34 verses. It's like a Bob Dylan
song, just keeps going. Right? But it kind of sounds
like a country song, because it talks about a bunch
of bad stuff that happened, and much more bad stuff
is going to happen. So it's kind of
like country music and Bob Dylan mixed together. Israel's failures,
God's judgment, are interwoven in this. What's interesting
about this is the dude writes a song at 120 years old. Come on, you got
to hand it to him. And it's a long song. I don't know many
80-year-olds that could write a song like this. But he puts this song together. And Israel is told
to latch onto this. And it sort of becomes
their national anthem. This bad, country,
Bob Dylan song becomes their national anthem. They're to learn
this Song of Moses. Chapter 33-- let's get rid of
the song for a moment-- chapter 33, blessings are
pronounced on the 12 tribes. It's Moses's last public
act before his death. Now chapter 34, verse 1-- "Then Moses went up from the
plains of Moab to Mount Nebo to the top of Pisgah"--
it's a mountain that you can go to today
and overlook the land, still to this day, it's
in the country of Jordan-- "which is across from Jericho. And the Lord showed him all the
land of Gilead as far as Dan." It must have been
a clear winter day. You can see snow-capped
Mount Hermon all the way to the north, the
undulating hills of Gilead. You could look left, and
you could see the Jerusalem mountains spread out. Verst 4-- "And the
Lord said to him, this is the land which I swore
to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, I will
give it to your descendants. I have caused you to
see it with your eyes, but you shall not
cross over there." Isn't that a bummer? After all that Moses has done,
put up with, you can see it, but you can't get in it. Hold that thought. "So Moses the
servant of the Lord died there in the land
of Moab, according to the word of the Lord." It ends on a sad note. Flavius Josephus was a Jewish
historian, New Testament era, writes this account. "Amidst the tears of the people,
the women beating their breast, the children giving way
to uncontrolled wailing, Moses withdrew. At a certain point
in his assent, he made a sign to
the weeping multitude to advance no further,
taking with him only the elders, the high
priest Eliezar and the general, Joshua. At the top of the mountain,
he dismissed the elders. And then as he was embracing
Eliezar and embracing Joshua and still speaking to them, a
cloud suddenly stood over him, and he vanished
in a deep valley." Close quote. Is that true? I have no idea. It's just what Josephus wrote. It's not in the Bible. Just thought you
wanted to hear it. Here's the great news. It's not the end of the story. The New Testament gives
you the rest of the story. Moses died. Jude said that the
archangel Michael contended with the devil
over the body of Moses. Remember that scripture? It's a weird scripture. Why does the devil
care about Moses body? And why would God dispatch
Michael, the big dude, to wrestle him down over it? Must be important. I believe it was. I believe it was. Because when Jesus
was transfigured on Mount Hermon in the
gospels, who appears with him? Moses and Elijah. Moses appeared with Jesus on
that mountain in the land. He made it. He didn't get to see it
before, but he was in it in the New Testament. Where am I going with all this? What the law couldn't
do, grace did. Under grace, Moses
came in the land. Under the law, he could
only see it, but not go in. The law couldn't bring
Mo into the land, but the Lord Jesus
brought him in. He was talking with Moses
and Elijah about the future. And I believe,
personal belief only, one of the two witnesses
in Revelation chapter 11 is none other than those
two, Moses and Elijah. God was keeping the body of
Moses for a future use, still our future, during the
tribulation period. I think Moses is
coming on the scene, and God protected that
body for that purpose. That's the life of Moses. Now it's over. Next time, we'll have
the book of Joshua. Father, we want to
thank you for your word. Thank you for the second law. Thank you for repeating
things that we often forget or neglect. And that phrase keeps coming
back, beware, lest you forget. Do these things in
remembrance of me. Take this meal in
remembrance of me. Lord, I pray that we would place
mile markers in our lives that would recall your grace, your
goodness, our transformation, our learning. And that's why you not only
said that the time will come when people will not
endure sound doctrine. A verse before that, you said
to Timothy, preach the word. Preach the word. That's how we don't forget. We expose ourselves to
the truth of your word. So thank you for hungry
hearts who do that every week in Jesus' name. Amen. We hope you enjoyed this message
from Skip Heitzig of Calvary Church. For more resources,
visit Calvarynm.church. Thank you for joining us for
this teaching from The Bible From 30,000 Feet.
