God's Promises (Deuteronomy 1)

I wrote this in the middle of the day, and this afternoon I had the fortune of seeing a rainbow, the first full one I've seen in years. I thought it was fitting after reading Deuteronomy 1, which got me thinking about God's promises.

In the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses spoke to the people of Israel according to all that the LORD had given him in commandment to them… (Deuteronomy 1:3)

Picture Moses standing in front of thousands of people, all of Israel, which is “as numerous as the stars of heaven” (1:10). I don’t know how public speeches worked back then without microphones or sound amplification but I can see Moses standing in front of his people, crying out with all his might for people to follow the God of all glory and saving power:

You shall be careful therefore to do as the LORD your God has commanded you. You shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left. (Deut. 5:32)

By now Moses is very old, and led a very long and fascinating life: growing up as Egyptian royalty, then living for decades as a quiet Shepard, then meeting the God who created him and leading his people out of slavery and out of bondage in Egypt, and then for the forty years before this speech wandering around in the wilderness with a bunch of ungrateful people that are too stubborn to enter the Promised Land. And now, finally, they can enter, but he can’t.

Moses was very intelligent, probably formally trained by the Egyptians, the best of the best; one can easily imagine that he was quite eloquent too. Somehow he managed to lead a group of people who were wandering in circles for decades who probably wanted to kill him.

Moses’ speech begins by reminding Israel that they have been on the doorstep of the Promised Land once before, and God withheld it from them because of their cowardice and lack of faith. Moses starts with this event, as if to say, “Remember that? Let’s not do that again.” He’s asking Israel not to rebel against God, and for the next few chapters he’s going to give us several examples from Israel’s history in which they rebelled against God, and we’ll see through all of Israel’s stubbornness and unfaithfulness God is merciful and compassionate and forgiving.

So Moses begins:

“The LORD our God said to us in Horeb, ‘You have stayed long enough at this mountain. Turn and take your journey, and go to the hill of the Amorites and to all their neighbors in the Arabah, in the hill country and in the lowland and in the Negeb and by the seacoast, the land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates.” (Deut. 1:6-7)

It’s easy to see who’s in charge here. God is the on – not Moses – who rescued Israel form Egypt and God is the true Leader. He says what Israel should and shouldn’t do and Israel – and, by extension, Christians – should listen to Him! God is not an impersonal, uncompassionate force imposing His will on us and pushing us to our extremes for His sadistic enjoyment. He’s a loving Father, and even earthly, lazy dads know how to provide for their kids – “how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:11).

God still speaks to us today and we are foolish to ignore His advice. Often His will doesn’t makes sense to us and we ask, “Are You sure, God?” We like – no, we love to feel like we’re in control and when God asks something crazy of us its hard for us to humble ourselves and admit our lack of control. But honestly, who are we to question God? Really ponder that. He made everything. He made up Chemistry. I got a “C” in Chemistry.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

neither are your ways my ways,

declares the LORD.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways

and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)

The next verses in Isaiah really shows what God’s word and instruction – like His instructions to Israel at Horeb, thousands of years ago, or His instructions to us, today – accomplishes, and it is exceedingly good:

“For as the rain and the snow come

down from heaven

and do not return there but water the

earth,

making it bring forth and sprout,

giving seed to the sower and bread to

the eater,

so shall my word be that goes out from

my mouth;

it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,

and shall succeed in the thing for

which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:10-11)

So basically, it is good to do what God tells you to do. Here in Deuteronomy God’s commands are based on His promises. He has promised Israel land and He has promised them children and generations, among other things. Both of these larger promises are emphasized by Moses.

See, I have set the land before you. (Deut. 1:8)

It’s important to see the way God puts this: He has set the land before Israel, Israel has not earned it or worked hard for it – in fact, they didn’t have intentions of going there until God told them He would lead them there!

Since the story of the great exodus of Israel is prototypical for God’s salvation throughout history, it’s easy to see how our situation is the same as Israel’s with our exodus from our slavery and bondage to sin, and how it is God who sets us free, not us! He does it all, we do nothing. We are too spiritually dead to even realize we need saving (or to dream of it!). God puts the greatest dreams of freedom and salvation into our hearts and then achieves it on the cross. God is not one to shrink back from His promises. His words and His intentions are the same – unlike ours are, very often – and if we look back to Isaiah 55 we see just what that accomplishes.

So, standing on the doorstep of its dreams, Israel gets cold feet. God commands:

“Go in and take possession of the land that the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them and to their offspring after them.” (Deut. 1:8)

Go in and take possession – that means there will be some fighting involved. Israel sends spies into the country before them, and upon hearing their reports many of the people become afraid: the enemy sounds too strong and terrifying.

This is an interesting situation, and I’m not sure whether the decision to send spies was necessarily sinful or an act of doubt, but it certainly leads to both sin and doubt. Before Israel knew the great enemies it was to face God’s promise had been made to Israel – He didn’t promise under the condition that the enemy would be weak, or non-present, God promised it, and Isaiah 55 says that’s going to do something. But even having this promise does not help Israel when they get an idea of the circumstances: they quickly see too many enemies, how could victory ever be possible?

Sometimes in order to be faithful to God we have to focus on His promises and reflect on them even when all circumstances point to failure. God intentionally creates situations that seem impossible for a few reasons: 1) to increase our faith, and 2) to reveal His power and glory.

In Judges 7 (Judges comes only two books after Deuteronomy) is an awesome story of such a situation. God has called a less than manly man, Gideon (“O mighty man of valor”) to lead his people in battle. Before battle God says to Gideon:

“The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over me, saying, ‘My own hand saved me.’" (Judges 7:2)

So God orders Gideon to send home whoever is afraid and doesn’t want to be there. 22,000 men leave and go home, still leaving a reasonable army of 10,000.

And the LORD said to Gideon, “The people are still too many. Take them down to the water, and I will test them for you there…” (Judges 7:4)

God’s test for Gideon is to see which of his men drink their water like a dog, lapping up the water. I wonder if Gideon was praying to see a lot of hands lapping up water, but things turn out a little differently. Only 300 men lap up the water, the rest kneel down to drink. God says:

“With the 300 men who lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hand, and let all the others go every man to his home.” (Judges 7:7)

These 300 men win the battle against the Midianites because of God’s power and strength, which has no limits.

Now this event hasn’t happened yet in Israel’s history as Moses gives his speech, but the people have plenty to boast in God about, and plenty to be confident in, but they still rebel. The people, after all they’ve seen God do, say:

“Because the LORD hated us he has brought us out of the land of Egypt, to give us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us.” (Deut. 1:27)

Does God hate His children? No. There are certainly situations where we may wonder that but it is no different than the confusion felt by a child who is taken to get a vaccination. A vaccination is painful, and the child has little idea why they are going through that pain – they may even blame the parent or wonder why they would allow them to suffer in such a way, but as we get older we realize that we needed that vaccination in order to stay healthy. It is the same with our heavenly Father, and our present sufferings, which will pass. God does not delight in our suffering, just like a human parent, and He will certainly see us through it.

As the people rebel Moses attempts to stir up faith among them:

“Do not be in dread or afraid of them [the enemy]. The LORD your God who goes before you will himself fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness, where you have seen how the LORD your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you went until you came to this place.” (Deut. 1:29-31)

But Israel chickens out, so God is righteously angry. How can the people who saw Him split the Red Sea not believe in His power? As punishment God commands Israel to go back into the wilderness, where they will be forced to wander until the current generation has passed.

This chapter ends on a really interesting note because it’s a situation we can easily fall into and repeat. With God’s punishment facing them the people of Israel declare they will now do the Lord’s will, even if it’s a little late.

“We have sinned against the LORD. We ourselves will go up and fight, just as the LORD our God command us.” (Deut. 1:41)

Instead of being obedient to God’s will – which in this case would be accepting punishment as well as blessing – Israel tries to work its way out of its punishment by doing what it was supposed to have done in the first place, only now God is not with them.

We do the exact same thing with God’s punishment facing us – punishment for sin that we rightfully deserve. We say, “Sorry, God, I’ve screwed up. Let me make it up for you, I will feed the homeless, I will give to charities, I will read my Bible every day, I won’t fight with or insult my siblings…” We make up lists of good things to do to make up for what we should’ve been doing all along, and are “good” lists are full of things we should already be doing but don’t because our hearts are cold and dead. No, we can’t make up anything to God, which is why He came down as a man to accept our punishment for us.

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

If we try to achieve God’s promises on our own – like Israel attempting to achieve the Promised Land without God, or us trying to achieve heaven and salvation on our own – we will fail. Israel, just like us, goes to battle against God’s will and is sorely defeated:

Then the Amorites who lived in that hill country came out against you [Israel] and chased you as bees do and beat you down in Seir as far as Hormah. (Deut. 1:44)

Sin brings shame and shameful defeat. Sometimes even our attempts to do what is right can be sinful if we go against God’s will.

But for us there is hope in Christ, who bridges the gap between us and God and intercedes for us, and in Him all the promises of God are fulfilled. And Jesus sends the Holy Spirit who by we se God’s saving power not only intellectually, as a fact, but with a changed heart that longs to serve and love Him.

Introduction to Deuteronomy, Part 2

Moses’ farewell speech is a whole book, a book that is thirty-four chapters long. It is one of the most oft-quoted books in the Bible: 83 times in the New Testament. Only 6 New Testament books do not allude to it directly. Why is this? What makes this book so great?

We need to consider Deuteronomy in its historical and biblical context. It is the last book in the Pentateuch, the collective name for the first five books in the bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Tradition has attributed all five books’ authorship to Moses but modern scholarly work has called this into question. However the greatest Old Testament scholar who ever lived, Jesus Christ, attributed them to Moses so I’m going with Him. Together the five books cover thousands of years of human history and God’s works and interactions with people in that history, all the way from the beginning of creation to the beginning of sin and evil to the beginning of God’s redemptive plan to restore and renew mankind and bring it back to Himself.

GENESIS is not a horrible rock band with Phil Collins but the first book of the Bible named for its first word “in the beginning.” In it we are told that God created the universe and everything in it and He made it good (ch. 1 and 2). He made mankind different from the rest of creation, “in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27). Instead of staying servant to God, man reached for independence apart from God by rebelling against His word, bringing evil and sin into the world. As a good, loving, just, holy God God can no longer live among mankind and He casts them out of the garden He had lovingly made for them. But even in His punishment God makes a promise (3:15) to destroy this problem of evil and sin.

So time moves on and the earth fills up with people and consequently fills up with evil; we get an extreme example of one way God could fix the sin problem (see Noah, ch. 6-10). The narrative of Genesis takes leaps and bounds through many generations and peoples and cultures to finally settle and focus on one family, the family through which Jesus Christ, the answer to the sin problem promised in Genesis 3:15, would come.

That family begins in an evil country in an evil city with an evil guy named Abram who probably worshipped the moon or other crazy things as a part of the culture of the Chaldeans. One day, thousands of years ago, in order that His promise thousands of years before might come true thousands of years later, God calls this man Abram out of his life of idolatry and sin and out of his home and country, saying:

“Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.” (Gen. 12:1-2)

The whole Bible is about God’s redemptive plans to reconcile the world to Himself, and here in the book of beginnings we get the master plan: out of the evil people of the world God will take one and make him righteous and make him a father to many children (which is particularly hilarious in Abram’s old age), thus carving out a people for Himself that will not sin and will not rebel against Him.

But this is not the end – God’s plan is not just to save a certain people, a “chosen people”, no, ultimately the nation of Israel, the people descended from Abram and (more specifically) his grandson Jacob, was chosen to bring God Himself into the world through Jesus Christ so that all nations will be blessed. For that is how horrible our sin problem is, it requires God to lower Himself to our level where He was hated, tempted, and eventually murdered.

God’s plans for salvation begin right in Genesis, right from the beginning, and the Pentateuch focuses on the origin of the nation of Israel and its (long) journey to a land promised to them by God.

Genesis ends with Israel growing but not where God wants it – they are growing in the land of the Egyptians, a powerful and influential culture who could very easily turn all th Israelites to worship their many false gods. God wants to give Israel its own land where they can be a light to the nations of the one true God.

EXODUS continues the narrative of God’s people as the Egyptian opinion of its Hebrew neighbors turns from good to bad. They enslave Israel and force them to do manual labor for fear that Israel might turn against them (Ex. 1:8-10). They are enslaved for centuries and God’s promise seems lost and His power seems weak and laughable to the nations. This is when God lifts up a man named Moses to lead His people out Egypt in spectacular ways that will be talked about forever. In fact people still talk about those events to this day, even if they don’t believe it.

After God leads His people out of Egypt He wants to lead them to the land He has for them but Israel’s stubbornness and sinfulness is quickly revealed. They continually complain and gripe about the wilderness and being led out of Egypt (e.g., Ex. 16:2-3). As a result God leads them in circles in the wilderness for forty years to test them and make sure they will stay faithful to him.

Leviticus and Numbers pick up the narrative of the time in the wilderness. They are also Law books, which is the other important thing to happen before Israel enters the Promised Land.

God gives the Law to Moses for many reasons, the first one being to point out sin. In the New Testament in his letter to the Romans the apostle Paul talks about the Law and its purpose:

Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by work of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. (Rom. 3:19-20)

And:

Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. (Rom. 7:7)

Basically the law is given so that we can see our sin and evil – if there is no standard of right and wrong then people could do whatever they feel like and claim that it is “right” in their eyes. This inevitably leads to chaos and anarchy (see the book of Judges). This why the law is good, but it is bad in that it cannot stop people from doing wrong. It can only tell them they are doing wrong. As Paul says:

So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. (Rom. 7:12)

The Law given to Moses was also given for Israel’s protection (there are many practical laws like ‘wash your hands before you eat’ which we now do naturally because we know what germs are) and to set God’s people apart from the rest of the world (this is why many laws seem obscure and not morally wrong). God wanted something to be different about Israel.

LEVITICUS is largely a Law book, a book recording the laws and commandments of God. Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy also have their fair share of laws and commandments.

NUMBERS is a Law book, but also a narrative of the time in the wilderness, and a collection of records of the number of people in Israel during its time in the wilderness.

This is where Deuteronomy sticks out and why it is loved. Many of the commandments in Deuteronomy are not mere “Don’t do this…” statements, they get to the central issue, the human heart, which is what God cares about.

For forty years God kept His people and Moses from entering the Promised Land and at the beginning of Deuteronomy those forty years are up. Moses is close to death. He meditates on all that God has done for him and his people (ch. 1-3) and what the Law means (ch. 5-11) with a few more laws (ch. 12-26). It ends with a song of praise by Moses and his death.

G. Ernest Wright says that Deuteronomy asks a lot of questions (taken from the Interpreter’s Bible Dictionary):

“What is the meaning of God’s great acts in saving and preserving a chosen people who so manifestly do not deserve or merit his gracious consideration?”

“What is the meaning of the covenant and the revelation of God’s will within it?”

“What are the peculiar temptations of the nation in its land, and wherein lies its true security that its days may be prolonged upon the good earth which God has given it?”

If we were to read the Pentateuch and skip the rest of the Old Testament we might be rather optimistic about mankind’s ability to succeed in its requirements lined out in Deuteronomy. If one wanted a testimony of God’s worth and power the first five books alone have enough to leave awe and fear in a person. Deuteronomy is a book about a beginning and a great opportunity for mankind to pursue God and not give into sin. If so, everything will go right for His people.

You don’t have to read much further in your Bible to get severely depressed. Israel does get its land but it begins to screw things up right away, intermarrying with the people of the land and turning to their gods and idols. The book of Judges is a frustrating cycle of God’s people turning from God, then getting into trouble and needing help, then turning away from Him again. The rest of the Old Testament has similar depressing events.

What does this mean? Did God just not choose the right people? Did He back the wrong horse? Were the hopes and promises in Deuteronomy written in vain? Was the Law given in vain?

This is the ultimate problem with the Law: it condemns but cannot fix. It cannot take a heart of stone and turn it into a heart of flesh. The heart of man is the root of the sin problem and the Law is not able to fix it. But it wasn’t mean to, because God had a master plan from the start. A master plan that feels far off, especially when we walk through bloody scenes of death and revenge in the Old Testament. These are honest accounts of what humans can do to each other, and often when evil is happening we can’t see any way that God could still win.

Deuteronomy says that the greatest commandment is this:

You shall love the LORD your God will all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. (Deut. 6:5)

We can easily agree that ourselves and everybody has fallen short of this. We now to our very bones we have. Paul says “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23) and if to not love God with all our hearts and souls and might then we have all sinned. This is the greatest commandment because it is the heart of all the others, if you follow this one perfectly you will never break any of the other laws. However even if somehow you follow all the other laws but neglect this one you have lost the heart of the Law. To follow the Law without a love for God is stupid. It’s a waste of time.

So we are all condemned, and judging by Israel’s history there’s not much hope. There’s no hope in our generation because we can see that we are unable to completely follow the Law and there’s no hope for the next because, as the wise King Solomon points out, “there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecc. 1:9).

Does this leave the law unfulfilled? Is the law only for our judgment? As a matter of fact the law was fulfilled when God answered His promise to crush sin by coming to earth to dwell among us. The law was fulfilled by the second member of the trinity, Jesus Christ, by the power of the third member, the Holy Spirit, to the glory of the first, the Father.

After Jesus was baptized the Holy Spirit led Him into the wilderness, just like the people Israel. There He was tempted like them in similar ways for food, water, comfort, even power. Jesus is directly confronted by the serpent who tempted man to fall and rebel thousands of years before, but instead of failing like every man and woman before Him, Jesus says “No” to the serpent’s words.

Jesus rebukes Satan with three quotes, all from Deuteronomy (8:3, 6:13, 6:16). Jesus did what we – and Israel – could not, that is, He loved the Lord with all His heart and will all His soul and with all His might. He fulfilled the Law, never sinning once against God.

Not only did He satisfy the Law’s requirements for holiness, He also satisfied the requirements for justice and God’s righteous judgment on all of us who have failed and sinned and rebelled. Jesus did this by taking my sins and your sins to the cross to be crushed and destroyed in His perfect body:

For our sake he [God] made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Cor. 5:21)

If Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law let us turn our hearts and minds to Him as we begin Deuteronomy, let us see Christ more clearly and exalted, while ourselves more humble and penitent, because through Christ we are free from the law, and, as Paul writes:

But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. (Romans 7:6)

Praise God! Amen.

10/19/09