Deut No.1 A Trusted Leaders Farewell

There are several ways in which you can engage in Bible study, depending upon what your purposes are, and the time at your disposal. You can look into the Word of God, as we are doing on a Sunday morning, taking a little portion at a time, by the aid of the Spirit of God, putting it under the microscope, and examining just what treasures are to be found in the minutest particle of this inspired book. Or else you can do what the illustrious Campbell Morgan did some years ago in Westminster Chapel, and that is you can take a survey of the whole sweep of Bible narrative and pick out the salient features of each book, which has its own peculiar emphasis, and one at a time you make your way through a series of studies which would obviously just take over a year, assuming that you did one a week in the church.

Another way in which one can approach Bible study is to take one of the doctrines and to explore the doctrines taught in the Old Testament and illustrated and amplified in the New Testament. We did that some two years ago here in the Tabernacle, when we looked at the doctrine of God. And you had to be as agile as a butterfly to be able to flip over the various pages of Scripture as I alighted on one verse and then on another verse.

But there is yet one other method of approaching Bible study, and that's the one that I have opted for, and for the first time actually in nine years at the Tabernacle, this evening and on subsequent Thursdays as we look through the book of Deuteronomy. For want of a better term, I would call it the thematic approach, the thematic approach to the study of the Word of God. And by this you alight upon a particular topic mentioned, a particular theme in a book, and you restrict yourself more or less to that book.

And by listing out the themes, and in the weeks to come several themes, then you get a grasp at least of the gist of the teachings of that particular passage of Scripture. Now I've elected for that method, as we're coming to the book of Deuteronomy, for the obvious reason that it's rather a lengthy book and it precludes verse-by-verse exposition. And I didn't want to take it just chapter by chapter.

Some chapters are much longer than others, and some repeat what is already found in the books of Exodus and Numbers and Leviticus. So I'm going to take up certain topics that are found in this book and collate them, bring various verses together, and we shall bring, I trust, the aid of the Holy Spirit into our minds and our hearts as we fasten our attention on these particular themes of study within the book of Deuteronomy. But one or two more things about this book before we actually look at a theme of study this evening.

The word Deuteronomy actually comes from a Greek word which has got the idea of the second law. And in one sense perhaps it's a mistake to think of this book literally in those terms. Because the law to which illusion is made in this section of the Bible is not a repeat of any law, or rather it's not a revision of any law which Moses received from the Lord.

It is rather a reference back to what God did for the Israelites on Sinai as the nucleus of the law, the Ten Commandments were entrusted to Moses. So what you find here is an enlargement, an application of what you looked at in previous books of the first five in the Old Testament. And then the second thing that I'd like to say, again simply by way of introduction, is that this is a general book.

The book Leviticus, as its name implies, has a lot to say to that professional group of people almost equivalent to the clergy of the Old Testament era, the Levites. And the book of Numbers, well, that's a book which would particularly interest and impress itself upon the priestly caste. But Deuteronomy, that's a general book.

It's addressed to all the Hebrews. In one sense, so is Leviticus and Numbers. And we can all, in the Christian era, gain a great deal of teaching from those books.

But Deuteronomy in particular is addressed to the ordinary Israelites. And maybe that's the reason why of the books Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, I would say that of those four, Deuteronomy is my favourite. It's addressed to Mr. Average Hebrew.

As the circumstances of it being delivered will indicate, and I'll make reference to that in a moment or so. But something else that you might like to bear in mind is this, that this book has been under attack. There's hardly a book in the Old Testament nor in the New that at some time or other hasn't been criticised by the scholars, the liberal scholars.

And there were those people who said that Moses never wrote Deuteronomy. Actually, it was written according to the theory of some German theologians in the year 621, just before the reformation of King Josiah. Somebody wanted to completely revise the approach of the Hebrew nation to worshipping the Lord.

They wanted to make Jerusalem central in the thinking, in the religious thinking of the ordinary Hebrews. And so we're told there was a bit of cloak and dagger stuff. Somebody wrote this book and then they hid it in the temple, if you please, behind the fabric, behind one of the curtains.

And behold, on one occasion, looking through the temple as it was being cleaned out and rebuilt, this scroll was discovered. And the Hebrews wrongly, in Josiah's day, attributed this back to Moses, whereas actually it was the subtlety of some revisionist Jew who wanted things to be changed. Well, it's amazing what the critics have said about some of the books in the Bible.

And this was a particularly fanciful idea which caught on in Germany and spread over into this country at the turn of last century. And now it's more or less lost out of course. And there are a great body of scholars, praise God, within the evangelical fold who will take their position in this respect that Deuteronomy is in the Pentateuch, the fourth book of the Old Testament, largely written by Moses.

And that's perhaps the point that needs developing next. The fact that Moses wrote the book. Now obviously he couldn't have written it all.

There must have been one or two revisions of the book later on, because it records his death. And you don't generally record very accurately the mode of your own departure for reasons that are so obvious I won't insult you by going into them. But later on, possibly Joshua added to this book and maybe it was revised on one or two occasions.

In no way does that interfere with or alter the theory and the doctrine of inspiration. It's a book that encourages people. On 35 occasions, I think it is, you get the word, go in and possess the land.

On 34 occasions, the land referred to is the land which God promised to give you. And that gives me the opportunity more of telling you how Moses delivered this book. It's really the last opportunity that Moses had to speak to the Israelites, those people, those children, spiritual children of his, that he nurtured and led, chastised and inspired for a long period of time.

If you look, for instance, at the first verse of the first chapter, you will see how the scene is set. These be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel, on this side Jordan, in the wilderness, in the plain over against the Red Sea, between Paran and Tophel and Laban and Haziroth and Giz Ahad. Now turn right to the last chapter of the book and what do you read? Almost at the last verse, the 10th.

And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face in all the signs and the wonders which the Lord sent him to do in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land and in all that mighty hand and in all the great terror which Moses showed in the sight of all Israel. It begins with Moses and it ends with Moses. And compressed into these 34 chapters are really the last oracles of Moses to the Hebrews.

Have you got the picture? There is this respected, aged servant of God. The Jordan River is in front of him. The land that he longs to enter but he cannot can be seen ahead.

And all the thousands, tens of thousands of Israelites are gathered in front of him. And Moses in the plain of Moab gives at least three possibly split into a number of other addresses before he finally takes his leave of the Hebrews. They needed advice.

They needed the underlining of the lessons that they had heard from Moses in years gone by. The promised land with all that it contained was in front of them. Here was some scintillating opportunity for them to serve God and to rise to the fullest responsibilities that were theirs.

But God knew and Moses knew that within the hearts of the Hebrews was a possibility for rebellion and compromise of taking blessings and dragging them down to the gutter of muffing the opportunities that lay in front. And so Moses, elder respected statesman that he was gathers the people in front of him and he speaks to them at this critical time in their history preparing them for entry into the promised land preparing them for the leadership of someone who at the moment was inexperienced the one who would follow Moses the man by the name Now, what do in general old men do when they speak to younger people? Well, I put it to you it's exactly the same today. They reminisce.

If you have the pleasures that I have of visiting older friends you will discover that they tend always to go back to days that have passed sometimes with regret feeling that the days that passed are a great blessing to never be repeated in the present and if you're of younger years maybe you'll feel a little distressed at the thought that the best has gone and there's not so much of opportunity but be that as it may it's a natural thing for old men to review the past it's also a natural thing for old men to make their evaluation of the present and as I say, that's not always filled with optimism I think that there's a lot of days that you have yet to live and some old men will use the experience of the past and their evaluation of the present to predict and to advise upon the future Now, it's quite extraordinary as you read this book that you find there's a past element there's a present evaluation and there's a future and yet, you know as we are following through what Moses, inspired by God has to say today and in the weeks to come I want us not to think of this purely as a historical lesson as an old man addressing Hebrews that lived yesteryear that might have interest but the practical application will be limited indeed but I believe that the word of God is such a miraculous thing that as Moses spoke to the Hebrews yesteryear so by the Spirit of God the Bible speaks to us today because there are not parallels not contrasts between the Hebrews in the century in which Moses was ministering and ourselves they were the children of God are we not the children of God? they knew a great deliverance have we not known a great deliverance? they had a discerning leader have we not got an even more superior leader than they had? they were capable of taking the blessings of God and dragging them down to the ground and misusing them is not that same tendency in your heart? they were delivered from a great and terrible affliction has not that been the same situation with you and me? they've had tremendous experiences of God's grace which should have fortified them for present days so that they don't make mistakes does not the same apply? alas they made mistakes and still had to plot the course for the future and once again I say the analogy is obvious as it was for the Hebrews yesteryear so it is for us today and constantly in this teaching you are to run a parallel between what Moses is saying to the people in his day to what God is saying to Moses to the elect company of God today so this old man engages in a period of review retrospective that's the first heading that I gave to the opening out and it was good for the Hebrews to remember what they were delivered from there's a verse in the 20th chapter and the 4th chapter in the 21st of Deuteronomy which makes reference to Egypt and it says the Lord has taken you and brought you forth out of the iron furnace even out of Egypt you remember what had happened a pharaoh who knew not Joseph had arisen in Egypt some decade before Moses preached this address there was a policy of genocide the national solution not the last person to have this as far as the Jews were concerned how would he be able to cleanse the Egyptian empire of these rather difficult growing strong community of Hebrews well by getting rid of all the male children and in the matter of two or three decades exterminating the lot it was an iron furnace says Moses that God delivered us from and let it not be thought by any of you youngsters that God selected us because there was something peculiar about us that caught his eye that merited his attention rather than being amongst the greatest nation in the world says Moses we were the fewest of people chapter 7 verse 6 for thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God the Lord thy God has chosen thee to be a special people unto himself above all people that are upon the face of the earth the Lord did not set his love upon you nor choose you because you were more in number than any people for ye were the fewest of all people but the Lord loved you because he loved you there were those insignificant wretched Hebrews in the iron furnace of Egypt and the flames were hot and they were screaming in the torment of their Egyptian taskmasters and God saw that people and loved them and what's more says Moses reminding them that their origin after the great deliverance from Egypt where were you you were in Sinai that grotesque part of the world that waste howling wilderness to which Moses makes reference on more than one occasion verse 19 of the first chapter when we departed from Horeb we went through all that great and terrible wilderness which you saw by the way of the mountain of the Amorites you get the same phraseology in the eighth chapter and the fifteenth verse God led thee through that great and terrible wilderness wherein were fiery serpents and scorpions and drought where there was no water who brought thee forth water out of the rock of Flint and so often Moses goes back to the days that are past that journey can you imagine what it must have been like to bring thousands of people through a wilderness can you imagine what it must be like to take your step under the scorching rays of the eastern sun and feel all the water being burnt out of your body no one but a fool would go out in shiny eyes by choice without modern means of transport and support but for the Hebrews they were there as a nation of refugees thousands of them ten thousands of them delivered from Egypt the iron furnace there a few people relative to the strength of Egypt itself a lost people and says Moses never forget this you who have been blessed by God when you tend to be presumptuous remember your origin and should not the same apply to you my dear friend sometimes we feel yes spiritually maybe we've arrived and we tend to forget the sort of people that we were and maybe as a result of that we don't bring to God the honour and the glory due to his name not the intensity of worship do we offer him it's good to reflect upon what God saved us from and where he discovered us sinners lost and undone worms and no men so this is part of the way in which Moses reminds the Israelites of their original situation God found them in Egypt kept them in Sinai became like some great divine scout chapter one verse thirty three going before them to search out a place where they might pitch their tents in fire by night to show you by what way you should go and in a cloud by day and during the whole of that period and it seems incredible chapter two and verse seven they liked nothing the Lord God supplied all their needs and once again I remark that the same is true for the redeemed community in the twentieth century God goes before he knows the way that we take the steps of a good man they're ordered by the Lord he guides he guides with his eyes he keeps his hand upon us and how often we should look back not just to the place where God found us but to the years of our sojourn on this earth which are past and to the goodness and fidelity of a God who never broke his word who never went back upon a promise so the old man looks back but then he assesses the present and he does so because he's not starry-eyed towards the Hebrews he loves these people that's true they're part of him he's been with them for a long period but he's not like some indulgent mother or father who see nothing but good in their offspring Moses realises that within these people there is tremendous potential for good and also for evil and so he assesses them he assesses them honestly and accurately contrast what you're like now says Moses to what you were in those days then you were hardly significant as a people but now now look at you nations they fear you chapter 2 in verse 25 this day will I begin to put the dread of thee and the fear of thee upon the nations that are under the whole earth the whole heaven who shall hear a report of thee and shall tremble and be in anguish because of thee these people were fearful they had grown in numbers verse 10 of the first chapter the Lord your God has multiplied you and behold he are this day the stars of heaven for multitude the Lord God of your fathers make you a thousand times so many more as he are and bless you as he has promised you again Moses is contrasting the present situation with that motley group of people relatively speaking who left Egypt and he marvels at the difference but not only were they strong numerically physically they were also strong in spiritual potential let's move back to chapter 4 and verse 40 and there you find Moses amazed at what God has done for these people in fact I think we'll take our reading from the thirty third verse the thirty second verse makes it perhaps even more clear for us now of the days that are past which were before thee since the day that God created man upon the earth and asked from the one side of heaven unto the other whether there hath been any such thing as this great thing is or hath been heard like it did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire as thou hast heard and lived or hath God said to go and take a nation from the midst of another nation by temptation by signs by wonders and by war and so no verse thirty nine therefore this day and consider it in thine heart that the Lord he is God in heaven above and upon the earth beneath there is none else thou shalt keep therefore his statutes and his commandments which I command thee this day that it may go well with thee and thee and with thee and with thee and and with and with thee and with thee and with thee and with thee and and with thee and with thee and with thee Moses' estimation, there were hardly words to describe it. No other nation had been treated just like the Hebrews. So Moses stacks up the blessings that belong to the Israelites as he assesses their present situation.

And he moves on. And he looks on a basis of what they now are and what they now possess to what they can be in future days. And it's here that he starts to get worried.

And rightly so, because he knows that in times gone by when God has blessed remarkably, the Israelites have shown a tendency to amnesia. They have forgotten what God has done. There were occasions when they were praising God for bringing them out of the Red Sea and from the bondage of Egypt.

But it wasn't much long after that when they were saying to the Lord, why have you brought us into this wilderness? It was much better in Egypt. Here we're parched, we've got no water. In Egypt there was water to drink.

And Moses realized that though his people are filled with potential and have many blessings in the present, the possibility is that the future might be a reenactment of the past. So he warns against this as well as spelling out something of the scintillating opportunities that are there for the Hebrews in the promised land. And that land which God was leading the Israelites to was a unique one.

Let's turn to the seventh chapter and to the 22nd verse. And you will find there the directions that God is giving the Israelites concerning what they have now to do. The Lord thy God will put out of the land that you're going to, those nations before thee, little by little, so that, and this is to be their strategy, they may take over a land that's not gone wild, that's not at the mercy of the beast.

And as they put down the primitive tribes, so they can take up occupation. It's going to be a progressive thing and an exciting thing. Why? Because the Lord thy God, verse 21, is among you a mighty and a terrible God.

And the Lord thy God shall deliver, verse 23, those fierce primitive tribes into your hands. And Moses is getting very excited when he's in the 11th chapter speaking on behalf of God. And they're describing this land that he has never set foot in.

Verse 10 of the 11th chapter, for the land with which thou goest in to possess it is not as the land of Egypt, from whence he came out, where thou sowest thy seed and watered it with thy foot of the garden of herbs. But the land with which he goes to possess, it is a land of hills and valleys, and thinketh waters of the rain of heaven, a land which the Lord thy God careth for. And here's one of the sweetest verses in the Old Testament.

The eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year, even unto the end of the year. This is a special land for a special people, reserved by God. And the Hebrews are about to take up occupation.

But when they get there, the problem is, for Moses, that the people may, in time, forget that it was the Lord their God who delivered them. And so in the eighth chapter, he underwrites his warning. And in the 12th verse, chapter eight, actually we'll take it from the 11th verse.

Beware when you're in your land, that thou forget not the Lord thy God in not keeping his commandments and his judgments and his statutes which I command thee this day, lest when thou hast eaten and art full and hast built goodly houses and dwelt therein, when thine herds and thy flocks multiply and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied and all that thou hast is multiplied, then thine heart be lifted up and thou forget the Lord thy God which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage. Moses was so concerned that these people might forget in the future the lessons of the past. In the 10th chapter, again, he works it out even more clearly.

He's concerned that the sensitivity that God showed towards the Hebrews when they were in bondage in Egypt may not be shown towards other people in their dealings with them and that they may not sincerely worship the Lord their God. So the 16th verse of the 10th chapter, remarkable statement. Never get, and here I paraphrase, so taken up with the externals of religious practice in serving God that you forget to circumcise the foreskin of your heart.

Don't fish this next. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, et cetera. He's a God of compassion, verse 18, who doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow and loveth the stranger in giving him food and raiment.

Love ye therefore the stranger for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. And if the Israelites were to forget the goodness of God towards them, then far from finding blessing upon blessing, being theirs in the land of promise, there would be curses which would fall upon them. And so, though there's no need for you to turn to it at this moment, because we'll come to it in a later study.

The 28th chapter stacks up the blessings that are potentially their Hebrews and the curses that are theirs if they are in default of the covenant that they make with the Lord their God. So then, in summary fashion, the whole of the book of Deuteronomy can be reduced to this context, Moses speaking to 10,000s of Hebrews on the plain of Moab, ere they enter into the promised land. He can't go himself.

He's pleaded with God that somehow the Lord may give him opportunity to go through with them, but Moses has not had divine consent because of a willful act of rebellion on his part years before. But Moses is concerned that when the Israelites get back into that land, that they shall implement the commandments of God and shall know blessing upon blessing. And I argue that that has an application for ourselves in as much as I felt out right at the beginning of this study.

We're the redeemed company of the Lord's people. And there is a land, there is blessings for us to take up as we sojourn here on this earth, let alone all that God has in front of us for future days. And by living up, not to the Mosaic covenant, but to a greater covenant, that which is enacted by the Lord Jesus at Calvary, we can know blessings unfold in our own lives and know profit as we invest our time and our talent in the service of God.

It's good to have Moses looking back and evaluating the present and predicting the future because it compels us to do the same, to look back to where we were, where the Lord found us in the way howling wilderness of our own sins, reflect upon what God has done for us since those days, and remember our own rebellion and forgetfulness. See who we are now, the potential that we represent for good over its potential for disobedience, and then look towards the future and say yes. Like the Hebrews determined on hearing Moses to go forward in the will of the Lord and to possess the land and to bring about his purposes so we as a tiny section of the redeemed community in the 20th century are going forward, having learned from the past and from the present to exploit for our God all the opportunities that are in front of us in future days.

Next week we shall be looking at the dominant teaching in Deuteronomy concerning the word covenant.