One Hour. One Book: Deuteronomy

and then he says verse 9 then the Lord your God will prosper you abundantly in all the work of your hand in the offspring of your body the offspring of your cattle the produce of your ground for the Lord will again rejoice over you for good just as he rejoiced over your father's if you obey the Lord your God to keep his Commandments and his statutes which are written in this book if you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and soul now watch very closely in verse 11 for this commandment which I command to you today it is not too difficult for you it is not out of reach Galatians 5 3 doesn't say it's impossible to keep the law there's an atonement law because he knew they were not gonna because the sin nature makes it impossible for you to be perfect please get out of your mind the Christian statement that if I kept all the laws I'd be perfect when I say I haven't made these laws too difficult for you they include the body of law as to how to deal with the fact that the sin nature will constantly manifest itself does that make sense so from the beginning God never expected perfection he expected allegiance what's the difference believers what's the difference does he expect you to walk every day with perfection he expects you to walk with him not just his roles he wants you to to care about when you've offended him not simply walk along like doing the wrong thing is OK with him God doesn't get out of his chair upset with you until you decide that wrong is really right right is really wrong and you can live that way and you're perfectly comfortable with it as long as you are inflicted with the guilt and you go back to conviction and that conviction leads you to change that's what we call a walk with God all right I just give you by way of introduction to Deuteronomy on the front flap of Deuteronomy in your Bible you may want to have a couple of notes first let's just talk about the authorship of the book it's clear that the internal evidence of the book argues that Moses is the author but the ending in my view proves that there was an editor involved in the book don't don't be the Sunday School Christian that is concerned about the idea that someone else touched the book after Moses what Moses gave us were the leaves of what God had done but let's suppose that Joshua or maybe Samuel or maybe even as late as Ezra somebody cleaned up the narrative and put it in the order that we have it today don't let that bother you in fact if you look closely I'm one of those guys who does not believe that Moses sat there weeping over the story of his own death as he wrote how he died I think somebody else put that on the book but I don't think you need to worry about that I think the fact that some Psalms are written by people and you don't know who they're written by doesn't make them not God's Word the line between believers and non-believers in terms of the evangelical sense of the Bible is is this God's Word not did Moses write it don't get yourself caught up in the authorship arguments because the fact of the matter is it's pretty clear to me that somebody added to this discussion let me just show that to you first of all when in verses 1 1 through 5 you find out that these claimed to be the words of Moses spoke in Transjordan that is the opposite side of the Jordan from where Eretz Israel or the Land of Israel is today it's in what today would be the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan now the point is that that in the verse opening verses these are the words of Moses but they're from the opposite side not coming into the land because Moses was told he couldn't come into the land right and if you look very carefully you'll find also in 444 2:49 chapter 4 verses 44 49 that some of these were given by Moses opposite of Beit PR in the land of sit home and some of them in 29 1 were given in the land of Moab which means in the area east of the Dead Sea north of the halfway point which is a deep water that cuts the Dead Sea in half the important thing is this these are things from the east side of the Jordan River given by Moses that's their essential seed form but Moses also says in the book that he wrote things that are being said in the book for instance if you were to look in 31 verses 1 & 2 this is Deuteronomy 31 verses 1 & 2 I would make a note in the beginning of Deuteronomy to say that Moses claims I am a hundred and twenty-one years old and I am no longer able to come and go and I'm not allowed to cross into the Jordan and it's clear that he's making reference that he's the author and he's the one who met with God and spoke concerning these things now the interesting thing is that if you go back to the first chapter and look at those first few verses what you will find in them is a clue as to when this book is put together you see in verses 2 & 3 of chapter 1 it is 11 days journey from Horeb by the mount by way of Mount Seir to Kadesh Barnea in the 40th year on the fifth on the first day of the eleventh month I'm having trouble with my words again on the first day of the eleventh month Moses spoke to the children of Israel according to all that the Lord had commanded him to give them let me just have you zero in on the verse to where it says it was an eleven-day journey here's what I want you to see this book the theme of this book is 40 years in replacement of eleven days that's the theme it could have taken us 11 days instead of taking us 11 days it took us 40 years that's the beginning of a you're not gonna believe what happened on our vacation it should've took us three hours to get there we got there in three days okay it's one of those stories so there's kind of a Beate little smiley face next to verse two that says hey eleven years eleven days but it was replaced by forty years and so what you're supposed to do is walk away with a 40-year journey replacing a love and a journey why is Kadesh Barnea mentioned it's mentioned because from Kadesh Barnea they move up with numbers thirteen and fourteen and go up into the land and they get the chance with the spies to go into the land through from Kadesh Barnea up through the wilderness of zin up into the hepburn plateau and they go all the way up in there and they get scared and they come back with their grapes and the point is that fear is what stopped them from obedience and by the way that's what stops most believers from obedience can I just make the argument that many people marry the wrong person because they're afraid they won't find the right one that many people will make a jump to whatever's easier because it's what's immediate one of the things we have to understand about our walk with God is that God thinks in agricultural terms it takes time it takes doing the thing over many days correctly to get the right result some of you are athletic you can take a good look at me and see that I'm not but some of you are athletic and you know this you know the only way to become proficient athletically is not to go out in one afternoon and become proficient at whatever it is it's to do it over the long haul and to continue to do right it has something to do with your eating I've heard I don't really know what that would be but and then it also has something to do beyond nutrition it has something to do with exercise right now most normal people some of you aren't normal but most normal people don't get that all that it all fired excited about spinach nutrition and hard exercise and in fact in my life most of the people that exercise spend more time moaning than the people that don't why because if you exercise you hurt so it seems counterintuitive that the way to get better is to deny myself things I want and hurt myself regularly but that's what we call exercise proficiency my point is this in almost every case in the Bible where God is at work he does things by what I want you to do is wait for my first rain then go rip up the soil yeah yeah then what then wait then I want you to drop seed in the soil yeah yeah then what then wait and I want you to water the soil yeah yeah then what wait so there's this long protracted way that God does work do you understand why it's so much easier to sell unbelief do what you want dump all the sugar in your body deal with it now and then how does the world compensate for unbelief a set of pharmaceuticals that will quell the symptoms of whatever you did day after pills for gluttony in other words what we try to do is curb the symptom rather than solving the problem because solving the problem requires a long term view of life so when I look at verse 2 what I see is a smiley face yeah it was only 11 days up to that place where we sent in the spies and then we could have walked in that's not really how the story went let me tell you the story and that's really what Deuteronomy does it tells you the law the stipulations of the law set into a larger story of how 11 days turned into 40 years now what's interesting is often in the book particularly in the first four chapters but often in the book Moses refers to himself as we we did this and I could give you a slew of verses or I and you or our our time together hid us but then there are a couple of others that learn like an 8 18 to this day you have this phrase that gets dropped in there seems to be a discussion that adds to the idea that there's an editor coming into this work why would the simple phrase to this day tell you that it's not moisés that's doing the final work on the book it's obviously somebody much much later because pop because Moses would not have said that that it would not have made sense to say it is like that to this day on the day that he's writing well yeah because it happened yesterday why wouldn't it be like that today but obviously it's so for instance take a look in chapter 2 for a minute turn to chapter 2 verses 10 through 12 and listen to these verses with me in verse 10 it says if I can find it let's see I'll start back in verse 9 then the Lord said to me do not harass Moab nor provoke them to war nor will I will not give you any of the land as a possession because I have given are to the to the sons of lot as a possession verse 10 the Amim lived there formerly a people as great numerous and tall as the on hakeem like the Anna keen they are also regarded as roughing but the Moabites call them ameen so you have this kind of wandering off and explaining there used to be this people now there's this people but this people calls the old people that what is that about well it may be prior to the time of Moses but that seems unnatural to the reading what it seems like is that there are some an Hakeem Giants there are some of the leftover second-wave Nephilim that we talked about that are in the land of Hebron in the Chevron plateau and there's also some over in Transjordan over in the Moabite territory in other words this is a mopping up of a of a second wave of a Nephilim infiltration after the Noah incident and the bottom line is all we have are these words about it but my point about the words are they seem to be a drop in or an insert to try and explain something whenever somebody puts a parenthesis into a text and says by the way this is the way it used to be announced this way it makes you feel like this is an editor trying to explain an original text after the fact it looks like an editorial note now you can't prove it from that but you can go to chapter 3 verse 14 and you can see something that may suggest the same kind of thing Yair the son of Manasseh took all the region of our gove as far as the border of the Geshe rights in the maja fights and it is called that is Bashan after his own name a vote Yair as it is to this day so it sounds like hvar year is after they've settled the land and they've renamed things let me say it this way one of the ways you see an editor's fingerprints and the narrative is this they tend to update the names of places now are there notes on the date of the work because you might want to know when this book was written so let me give you a couple of just skipping across the top again if you write down notes about the authorship and about the editors and about the date here's where this helps you you get into a Bible study and somebody says yeah well my my teacher in college told me that these things all came at the time of Hezekiah no some of them say they came from Moses so what a person is saying when they say that is that the writing is no longer historically authentic they're saying they disagree with the Bible newsflash you're allowed you want to disagree with the Bible fine but you cannot say it is the role of faith in practice and it's historically legitimate except for I only get to choose which verses are historically legitimate you got to take a position on this thing so by knowing Moses is stated in your notes in the beginning that will help you but then you don't want to be that Sunday School Christian who came up with you know Moses wrote it out and he put chapter 1 verse 1 and began writing because that's not how it works either this thing is more complicated than that truth often is let's give you a little bit of a sketch of how things started what we know for sure the date of the Exodus is set because first Kings tells the story in first Kings 6 through 8 of the date of the beginning of the temple and it tells you that God had started the temple and it gives you a length of time since the exodus from Egypt and since we have a bed mark on the temple we know how to count back to 430 years and get the time period for the bigot for the Exodus the Exodus by that dating is a 1446 BCE event if you take the Bible literally that is the date now if that's the case the internal record of the chronology from Egypt to Moab is a reconstruction that gets you to the date 1406 for Deuteronomy so you might want to put down 1406 but now let me tell you how I got there so you don't just put it down and somebody goes well how'd you get that oh no my teacher told me that's not the answer okay first you have inside the narrative that the people departed from Egypt on the fifteenth day of the first month as they as they walk out of Egypt which we know to be the month of Nisan and we know to be Nisan 15 in the year fourteen forty six and that will be Exodus chapter 12 the dating of Exodus 12 the dating of we quit Egypt today Lock Stock and bagels out we go that dating is given in Exodus chapter 12 verses 2 and verse 5 and in numbers 33 33 we see the comparison of that date so here's what I want you to know the people got to the mountain of the law first 50 days later that was Exodus 19 but beyond the Exodus 19 experience we know that they got there and it says Exodus 19 verse 1 50 days later they come to the mountain of the law and it gives you the date it gives you the first day of the third month so they left on the fifteenth day of the first month they arrived fifty days later at the first day of the third month of the you have year one of their journey out that year then puts them there in the spring spring summer of fourteen forty six when they arrived at Mount Sinai he was summertime I can tell you about summer in Mount Sinai the word boiling words boiling hot comes to mind 134 in the broad daylight then swoops down after the Sun Goes Down it will drop forty to fifty degrees inside of two hours the reason is there is no cloud cover so all the heat evacuates off the surface which means you are absolutely blessed hot hot hot all day with an arc between about 90 when the sun's low in the sky up to a hundred and thirty five back down to 90 and then when the Sun evacuates that 90 will drop to 50 so you are hot all day and freezing cold all night in other words it's an extreme environment that be a fair way to say it right so in this extremity they are there at the time the extremity of heat is coming on they are at the the base of Mount Sinai now if you kept reading you would make note that in Exodus 40 remember what's in Exodus 40 25 to 40 is the section on what the tabernacle and by the time they're actually putting up and operating the tabernacle and God is inhabited and inhabiting it that is nine months later so they have been parked there for nine months I know that because Exodus 40 17 gives you a time it says it was the first day of the first month of the second year so they are now a year out of Egypt and they spent nine months parked at the bottom and now they've got a tabernacle and it's it's operating now just before they go to make preparations to leave meanwhile back up on the mountain during that nine month period there's a one-month interval where the tabernacle is getting finished but there's still work to be done on the priesthood and so for one month of that period of time there's a time when in spring of 14 in in 1445 when Moses is up on top of the mountain and what he's doing is getting the Book of Leviticus and so when in your opening chapter of Leviticus we already told that story but here's the important part I know that in numbers 1:1 and in Exodus 40 17 that they start to get the Promised Land vision and they start to be told to get their act together in numbers 1 1 in the spring of 14 45 now numbers opens with a census and says I you know it's kind of the circle the wagons we're getting ready for wagons hell and for the first 10 chapters there's preparation to get ready that's the Book of Numbers but but in Deuteronomy they're gonna start telling you the story later on Deuteronomy is a story as best I can tell you that is set at the time of 1406 1405 and it's set in the Transjordan and it's set at the end of the fortieth year of the journey so if you've got 1446 starting the journey fast-forward 40 years you get down to 1406 and that seems to be it's January or February 1406 they have now gone through the whole forty years of what should have taken them 11 days and instead they are now standing overlooking the promised land there's a lot more that could be said about that but what's important is this we know that Aaron died according to numbers 33 38 in the fortieth year of the journey we know that Deuteronomy is largely dispensed during that year and if you read carefully the Book of Numbers you will find that the laws that were given during that time match the Deuteronomic law as they're preparing to go in the land okay lots of words so what's in the book what's the book about we have a book that that's created in 1406 written by Moses we have the parting counsels of Moses we've called it what kind of law what code of law is it in its constitutional code in other words it's focused on how God wants moral judgment to be worked out in the frame of a national testimony how does he want people to know him during the time of the Hebrew Scriptures he wants him to know that know him primarily by the moral code that's reflected in the Constitution of what makes to jo-jo and so what's important is that the land of promise was unconditionally given to Abraham and to his seed in Jack 13:15 and in genesis 15 7 as well as other places that the land was given to him into them in title however the domicile the occupation of the land they have the title to the land but living in the land is dependent upon their obedience right so the domicile covenants are specified in constitutional code of law specifically when you get to the end of the code in Deuteronomy 28 29 30 you're gonna start seeing the conditional covenant the condition of the covenant is obey and you get the land disobey and I will kick the stuffings out of you like Leviticus 26 said in detail the Levitical code is again reminded at the end of the Deuteronomic constitutional code and it says do what I'm telling you to do and you'll have life peace prosperity longevity you will have all of the things that you need and you will be a testimony for me to the world but in Contra distinction don't do what I told you to do and I'll send you all the way out into the world and then I will restore you when your heart is broken I will bring you back I will call you from all corners of the world and I'll bring you back restoration is in every one of the conditional covenant statements you will not find that people talk about it when says yeah you either do this or I'll kick you out and they leave the story there god never did he always said and then I'll find you and bring you back you will find it in that Leviticus 26 you will find it again in Deuteronomy when we pick up and look at the errata me okay so what's important is the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures tell you the story of exactly the prophetic truth of Moses mouth the reason that the reason that they recognize no prophet like Moses had come is because Moses was prophetic he said here's how it's going to go you're gonna disagree it with my law and disobey my law and then your land is going to be disrupted and Kings tells the story of how they did exactly that by chapter 12 the the country breaks up and they're at each other's throat but but in then he says if you continue to behave you behave like that I'm gonna cast you out of the land and second Kings tells the story of how they begin to be cast out of the land and they end up by the end of the period of the Hebrew Scriptures off in foreign lands but the same covenant that said if you disobey you'll be removed also said you'll be restored what's interesting is that you will find if you look carefully at the the Covenant of the domicile it ends in the complete full heart restoration of the people which I would argue hasn't happened yet people can say well they came back from Babylon yes but included in it as I will put a new heart within you and you will live the truth I see no record that that's how they behaved in fact I see another record of another stumble I see another record of self-willed self minded people that end up back in another national catastrophe under Rome and her again dispersed out into the nations and it's interesting that in the domicile agreements that we're going to read about in Deuteronomy you find that the people are in every part of the earth not in Babylon but in every part of they're not in Rome but in every part of the earth you can make a much easier case for the Roman diaspora and the dispersion of the Jews than you can that the Assyrians and Babylonians is what he's talking about because they weren't in every part of the earth they were in one part of the earth so all I'm saying to you is the promise is unmovable Abraham was asleep that land is titled to Israel and perpetuity not because of who they are or how they perform but because God said so but behind that promises you don't get to have the keys to the car that's titled to you unless you do what I say in fact let me just be prophetic you're not gonna do what I say and I'm gonna take those keys from you and I'm gonna kick the stuffings out of you and if you remember in Leviticus it was seven times seven times seven times seven times seven times setting up the reason why the Tribulation Period is drawn out that way in Revelation chapters 6 through 19 the important thing is this although they were told they would lose the land they were always told they would get it back and so we should look for that alright let's get into a little bit of the nuts and bolts of the book first in the first four chapters of the book I want you to understand that the book of Deuteronomy in its original form was actually a series of speeches the speeches themselves start with a preamble and move to a prologue of the faithfulness of a king and in chapters 1 through 4 chapters 1 through 4 matched this treaty style now let me tell you what's going on here the boxes reflect the overall picture of the projection of how the book is working but the the treaties there was a treaty style called a suzerainty treaty that was very common early on during the hittite kingdom and forward and what you have is a treaty between a lord and some vassals this is a great Lord a great emperor if you will has a treaty with various vessels and that treaty always was set up in five parts the first part of every suzerainty treaty was a preamble the second part of it was a prologue that gave you some of the conditions under which the King had shown himself faithful and the faithfulness of the king is celebrated the third part of a suzerainty treaty that comes contemporary from the time of moses and the time before moses in the time of Abraham was that a series of stipulations are put in that treaty that is these are the conditions all right I want to say that we have a great king I want to say that we have a great covenant together let me tell you about the faithfulness of our King and how wonderful he is then the third part was always here are the conditions under which the King will continue to be our Guardian this is the way a suzerainty treaties then we have the penalties and rewards here's what happens if we don't follow that king and we don't follow after his rewards here's what happens if we do here are the blessings we get if we do and then finally here's how legally there's a succession right that we are to acknowledge after the one who is giving us the message of the King how do we then move to a succession right to the next one this is a suzerainty treaty it's a common treaty from the period of Abraham to the period of Moses and they come from the period around the Hittite time and forward and what's important for you to know is that the ending structure of Deuteronomy appears by many scholars to be a treaty that matches this idea okay don't lose your you know sleep over you know how exactly this works what I'm saying is whenever it was edited to its final form it appears to be edited to a final form of a covenant treaty that's why we call this kind of literature legal code and covenant treaty the constitutional code comes as a covenant treaty between a lord and his vassals but the Lord in this case is the lord of heaven now what I want you to understand is it's given in a series of speeches so in Chapter 1 through 443 it's kind of like a singular speech let me give it to you another way what's called by scholars this the five speeches to me is actually five times Moses sits down and gathers the work into a single scroll so we could call this a scroll or a speech then there's a really long one 444 - 26 19 is the second speech or the second scroll and that's the one that has all the stipulations what we will call the 15 codes of law show up there that is I'm going to give you articles 1 through 15 of a legal document that looks like a constitution and reads like a constitution with a few case studies dropped in there's a couple of varying verses but basically that's the line of thinking then there's a section on what happens and this section becomes what we often refer to as the Palestinian covenant I don't like that terminology because I think it's preloaded with some modern historical interpretation but what I'm going to call the domicile covenant how do you get to live there and what are the stipulations gonna yield in terms of penalties and rewards and you'll see that in 27 through 30 and that's your third speech then succession rights become your fourth speech and that's 31 and 32 and then finally the fifth one has to do with blessings that come with the death of Moses what happened as a result of one who was so great and led us so you've got these five speeches or five Scrolls that look like organization clearly the last part seems to me to be edited later but I would say the final form of this is either set up to look like this covenant treaty where it's set up to look like it based on original scroll materials that are behind it and that's what you're seeing don't worry so much about this but just be conversant to know what the story is because what I want you to see is what's up here the boxes are what mean everything to me and in the first four chapters I want you to see that the whole thing is a review of the journey why is that an important factor well let me suggest to you there's a formula behind the book and the formula is the walk he's going to be the first part of our formula meaning a review of the journey and how we got to where we are and who and who we are who's included in this plus in verses 5 to 26 there's a whole set of statements of the 15 articles of law those are the articles but I'm going to say the walk plus obedience or lack thereof this is the formula plus the third section of the book which is the the constitute affirming the affirmation it's the Covenant that the people gave let me add a third word up here let me add loyalty that is that not only is this book going to tell us the walk but the walk plus the articles that we are to obey plus the loyalty that we are to affirm and when we get to that point what we should do is arrive at the blessings and these are the last words I'm going to use the word benefits let me say it this way behind the book is this this formula that is that the walk of the believers together in obedience when we add that to it with loyalty to the king who got us here well equal the benefits were supposed to get let me say that this is the formula that is opposite of the formula of the book of Judges the book of Judges is when every man does that which is right in his own eyes we end up in a mess and it starts off with a political and spiritual fragmentation that ends up in a total mess by the end of the book this book sort of gets better it starts off with a bunch of people that's a rabble in the desert and the heat and the cold and starts off with God giving them stipulations and teaching them there are some remarkable parts of this book and some things I want you to look at when you see this book that I think actually helped me a great deal and one of them I think is when you get down to the part of the book that deals specifically with the benefits so what I'd like you to do is uncharacteristically let's open our Bible to look at the Bible and go back to toward the end of the story let's go to the last part of chapter 29 of Deuteronomy just by way of introduction to the book they help us understand something because it's gonna help us with numbers it's gonna help us with Galatians it's gonna help us with what we read in Hebrews there is a mythology that Christians possess that the law was impossible to keep the law was not impossible to keep believe it or not it's actually possible for you to walk through life and not lie it's possible for you to walk through life and not steal I didn't say it wasn't hard I said it's passable have any of you gotten to this point of the day and haven't told a lie yet many of you wow you've gotten several hours and you haven't told a lie have any of you gotten to this but most of you gotten to this point in the day and you haven't stolen anything yet today okay don't give me the idea that the law was this mountain that was too high for anyone decline that's not what it says follow me in 29 29 put a box around 29 29 because it's an important key verse to what God is going to say he says the secret things belong to the Lord our God that is there our unrevealed truths in the universe does anybody have trouble believing there are unrevealed truths in the universe one of them is like you know how my wife thinks and things like that okay there are deep thoughts in the but he said seriously he says but the things revealed belonged to us and our sons forever that is the believer the one who's walking with God gets more truth on which to base their life than the unbeliever the unbeliever walks through life with blinders on because they have chosen not to believe what God has said you do not get the blessing of God until you believe that he is and that he is the one who is the rewarder of those who diligently seek Him let me add a layer to that the level to which you get that depth is the level to which you seek Him and it's not just academic although the part of it is academic you have to read it you have to know it but the other part is you have to believe it so in verse 29 he says there are two standards for what people know their secret things that belong to the Lord but those who want to know the secrets of God those who want to have them exposed are those that are his sons and he says and the purpose of them is so that we can run around telling the rest of the world what they don't know know what does the end of the verse say what is the purpose of knowing God's secrets that we would obey observe that we would do them in other words the end of biblical knowledge is lifestyle the end of biblical knowledge is shoe leather it's not the ability to argue apologetics better it's the ability to live better so that people listen to your argument so he says the secret things belong to the Lord but the things reveal belong to us and our sons forever that is those who are who are following after God will actually in fact get that truth and then it will produce that we may observe all the words of this law now if it's impossible to observe all the words of this law then it's a fool's errand to begin with but I want you to go a little bit further notice the details of the domicile arrangement put in there somewhere that this is not about whether God will still love the Jewish people he will love the Jewish people this is not about whether he will finish the program that he gave to Abraham he will finish the program this is about what's going to happen to them in the program and how you're gonna know they're getting through it okay so in verse one it says on that basis so it shall be when all of these things have come upon you the blessing and the curse which I have set before you and you call them to mind in all nations where the Lord your God has banished you that is so when you fail at doing this and he kind of opens up with a kind of a low note by the way when you find yourself the last team on the list of teams for win-loss when you find yourself at the bottom would you remember this when that has happened verse 2 and you return to the Lord your God and obey Him with all your heart and soul according to all that I command you today and your sons and so when you fail plus then you repent equals then at that point the Lord your God will restore you from in captivity and have compassion on you and will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you the Jewish people in their scattering is not a factor of Rome Babylon or Assyria it's a factor of God's use using those countries to scatter Jewish people around the world God says I'm the one who scatters you when you don't listen then it says in verse 4 if your outcasts are at the ends of the earth look at that it doesn't say Babylon if your outcasts are all the way at the ends of the earth from there the Lord your God will gather you from there he will bring you back but look what happens the Lord your God will bring you into the land which your father's possessed and you shall possess it he will prosper you and multiply you but that doesn't answer the whole problem because moreover or in addition to or can I say later after that the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants to love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul that you might live and at that time as he's gathering you in as he's changing your heart verse 7 the Lord your God will inflict these curses on your enemies and on those who hate you who persecuted you and you shall obey the Lord and observe all his commandments which I command you today so he says what's coming is a defection what's coming from that defection is a dispersion what's coming from that dispersion is a captivity what's coming from that captivity is a repentance what's coming from that repentance is the beginning of the memories that God had a land for us and they begin to return to that land what comes out of that is I begin to then prosper you not because you have the right heart yet that comes two verses later but because I've decided to prosper you because the kindness of the Lord leads us to repentance and then all of a sudden I turn my eyes on the world and I begin to curse them and what he doesn't say here but later prophets will insert as then they will blame you for what I do to them the rising of anti-semitic tradition every time Jews do better the world will hate them for it and as a result he says I will bring you in and then eventually I will change your heart and all of you will obey me there's a restoration in the domicile agreement everyone in the Christian Church talks about how God said if you don't obey I'll throw you out but they never point out that Leviticus 26 and again here in chapter 30 of Deuteronomy God never says I'll throw you out with and then you will return he always says that he always has restoration at the end and then he says verse 9 then the Lord your God will prosper you abundantly in all the work of your hand in the offspring of your body the offspring of your cattle the produce of your ground for the Lord will again rejoice over you for good just as he rejoiced over your father's if you obey the Lord your God to keep his Commandments and his statutes which are written in this book if you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and soul now watch very closely in verse 11 for this commandment which I command to you today it is not too difficult for you it is not out of reach Galatians 5 3 doesn't say it's impossible to keep the law people walk around in Sunday school classes and adult Bible fellowships and Bible studies and act like God made a law that was too hard for anybody to keep the problem is that's not what he says he says it's possible for you to do what I want you to do why because the law not only includes don't lie it includes Mishpatim or judgments as to how to recover when you do the laws not an absolute be perfect the law includes be perfect and you're not going to so here's what to do when you're not there's an atonement law because he knew they were not gonna because the sin nature makes it impossible for you to be perfect please get out of your mind the Christian statement that if I kept all the laws I'd be perfect when I say I haven't made these laws too difficult for you they include the body of law as to how to deal with the fact that the sin nature will constantly manifest itself does that make sense so from the beginning God never expected perfection he expected allegiance what's the difference believers what's the difference does he expect you to walk every day with perfection he expects you to walk with him not just his roles he wants you to to care about when you've offended him not simply walk along like doing the wrong thing is OK with him God doesn't get out of this chair upset with you until you decide that wrong is really right right is really wrong and you can live that way and you're perfectly comfortable with it as long as you are inflicted with the guilt and you go back to conviction and that conviction leads you to change that's what we call a walk with God or in other words in my vocabulary I call it Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday so when you get down here look at verse 12 it is not in heaven that you should say who will go up to heaven for to get it for us and make us hear it that we may observe it I want you to right next to that verse verse 12 Luke 16 there's a simple story of the rich man and Lazarus do you remember the story what's the story of the rich man and Lazarus who can tell me the story rich man dies Lazarus has been doing what while he while the rich man was alive he's laying outside the gate he's not doing well he's a poor guy they both died okay and in the story there are these two places one is a place of comfort the other one is a place of affliction and there's a gulf fixed between them and who can see who in this apparently they can see each other and even speak back and forth across the Gulf but in this scenario of the parable in Luke 16 what does the rich man want what's the point of the parable and what does Jesus say concerning the point of having somebody the poor man see he still sees the poor man as serving his ends that's one of the problems because it's so deeply and rooted in his life that he still thinks that poor man owes him to do something for him but but go beyond that he cares about his brothers right he's a rich man but he's not cold-hearted toward his family what does he want him to do go back from the dead and speak for man what's the point of the narrative what does Jesus say that closes Luke 16 s parable they have the law and the prophets they don't need somebody back from the dead they don't need somebody from heaven they don't need somebody to write sky right if they will not accept the word of Moses and they will not accept that which they have learned from their youth if the Word of God isn't enough then they can come back from the dead and yet they will not believe in Jesus could confidently say that and then he got up from the tomb later on and he came back from the dead and still they did not believe why because he said right here exactly what Moses had said it's not for heaven to do that it's not for heaven to do that now what's interesting is how the rabbi's took that verse verse 12 the rabbis at the time of Jesus took that verse to say it's not up to heaven to decide they actually took that verse to say it's up to the majority of the rabbis to decide it is not for the heavens to decide and they get that from here that is exactly the opposite of what Jesus was trying to say Luke 16 and what Moses was trying to say in verse 12 he's not trying to say heaven isn't involved in it he's saying heaven said everything it needs to say you can believe it or doubt God isn't in the business of bargaining you into heaven that's not what he's doing he's not in the business of bargaining you into obedience I think there's an awful lot of people in our culture who unfortunately grow up in the post dr. Spock era where all parents have to explain all rules to their children God says I'm God deal with it this is what I want you to do and since I'm God deal with it and by the way I don't have to convince you but I'm going to tell you that if you do it life is going to go better for you deal with it and he said I didn't make it too hard for you because I put in there a system for you to deal with all of the problems of your own heart but then he says I want you to understand don't be going to heaven trying to get something more than I already gave you then go to verse 13 don't go beyond the sea that you should say who will cross the sea for us to get it for us and make us hear it that we may observe it but the word is very near you in your mouth in your heart that you may observe it he says in verse 14 the thing that I've been saying about the Christian life as long as I've walked in it the problem isn't what I don't know the problem is I don't do what I do no how about you the problem isn't that I need some new seminar to teach me a new way to look at the Bible the problem is I need to do the things the Bible says and I don't want to and not specifically just doing right but remedy when I do wrong but coming back in conviction and change when I do wrong so there's a great story here now go down to verse 15 because I want to finish this up see I have set before you today what did I set before you hard things no life prosperity also death and adversity in in that I command you today to love the Lord your God to walk in his ways keep his commandments his statutes and his Mishpatim his judgments his fixes for when you don't that you may live and multiply that the Lord your God may bless you in the land you are entering in but if your heart turns away you will not obey you are drawn in to worship other gods and serve them I I declare to you today that you shall surely perish you will not prolong your days in the land that you are living you where you're crossing the Jordan to enter and possess it I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death blessing and curse choose life in order that you may live you and your descendants by loving the Lord your God by obeying his voice by holding fast to him would you please understand that each a part of verse 20 modifies the other part in other words you can tell me you love the Lord your God with all your heart but that should include obedience why do you call me Lord and not through the things that I say jesus said but that obedience isn't enough God's word isn't only effectively lived by those who do everything right or there would be precious few who are living God's truth the fact of the matter is I've never met anybody who pulled it off so the third phrase modifies the second the third one is and that you would hold fast to him the point is hold fast to me in your attempts at obedience make it holding fast not to your obedience or your ability but holding fast to me and the length of your days that you may live in the land which the Lord swore to your father's to Abraham Isaac and Jacob to give them do you notice that the end of this is that it's all about the length of your days to live in the land it's about domicile what he's saying is there is an unbreakable covenant of God with the children of Abraham he will love them he will care for them but they will not get what he intends them to have if they will not hold fast to him they will be broken away scattered abroad go through pain and then be gathered up until they're ready to open their heart there is no end point tragedy here except for verse 2 of chapter 31 I'm a hundred and twenty years old today I'm no longer able to come and go Moses goes look I got to get this over with this preaching has been fun and all but I'm a hundred and twenty and I need to quit so you end the book with a sense that God has laid out again these incredible blessings that come or benefits that come and that's what I want you to see the book as chapters 1 2 4 this is the review of the walk to remind you that the law is always set in the walk of life then there's 15 codes of law this is the standards of obedience so that you'll understand what is the mark you're shooting at if we don't give you any rules you're going to say well okay because you don't have any rules but but when you know what the rules are you can benchmark whether or not you need conviction and change or whether or not you're doing fine and he says so the walk plus obedience and then there's an affirmation of the loyalty to the Covenant so that you understand that your loyalty is not just to a standard of law but to a grasping of the the hand of God as he holds you you hold him back and say I want to walk with you and how does that end that ends with a hundred and twenty year old guy who goes you know I'm tired but this has been a great ride it ends with the blessings of obedience don't lose heart I'm coming back I went away to find the place Patel and I'm coming back I'm coming soon so leave the light on if your

Channel: One Hour. One Book.

Views: 31,682

Rating: 4.8031087 out of 5

Keywords: Book Of Deuteronomy (Book)

Id: otF4Wr_zEzo

Length: 54min 29sec (3269 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 10 2013