Deuteronomy chapter 1. While you're turning, listen
carefully. I want you to get this first thing. This is what Deuteronomy teaches. This is the purpose of the book.
Get it and you've got the message of the book. But once Moses brought
Israel to Joshua, once he put Israel into Joshua's hands, he
died. And Joshua brought the nation
of Israel into their divinely ordained inheritance in the land
of Canaan. Even so, the law of God is our
schoolmaster unto Christ. And once the law of God brings
us to Christ, puts us in his hands. The Lord Jesus Christ,
our great Joshua, brings us effectually into the possession of all that
God promised us in covenant mercy. Let's begin in chapter 1, verse
1. These be the words which Moses spoke 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 Hezeroth and Dizahab. The children of Israel are gathered
now at the very edge of Canaan. They had been here before. But
when they were there before, there was another generation
of people who did not believe God. And because they did not
believe God, they were sentenced under the judgment of God to
die in the wilderness. And that generation perished
after 40 years wandering, and now just one month before they
go into the land. They've come back to the edge
of Canaan, just one month. The whole book of Deuteronomy
covers a period of just one month. And Moses is about to give us
his last word from God. Here's a prophet who has one
more message to deliver, and unlike Any other prophet I know
of, he knew he just had one more message to deliver. He knew,
this is my last step, this is my last shot. And he delivers
it, not merely being inspired by his own personal awareness
that he would soon be taken out of this world, but he delivers
it being inspired by the Spirit of God. Now that being the case,
we shouldn't be surprised that as we read Deuteronomy, We read
it written in language that is so different from what we have
seen in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. Here, Moses seems
to be on fire in his soul. He speaks with passion. He speaks
with earnestness. He speaks personally. He speaks
with great care, and the care that he speaks with shows throughout
the book. The last chapter of the book
tells us of Moses' death. Look at chapter 34. Chapter 34,
verse 5. So Moses, the servant of God,
died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the
Lord. And he buried him in the valley in the land of Moab, over
against Bethphior, but no man knoweth of his sepulcher unto
this day. Now watch this. Moses wasn't
weak, his vision hadn't diminished, His physical strength and his
mental strength were just as good as they were when he was
a young man. Moses was 120 years old when he died. His eye was
not dim. He saw more clearly than he had
ever seen. Nor his natural force abated. Many question, others
openly deny, that Moses wrote the book of Deuteronomy and wrote
any of the rest of the five books that we have had before us in
Genesis through Deuteronomy. And I won't bother answering
their blasphemy at all. There's no question that Moses
wrote these five books and wrote the book of Deuteronomy. He claims
it. Our Lord refers to him by name
as being the one who wrote this book. And his name is mentioned
so often in connection with the themes there, I'm kindly inclined
to agree with a fellow I read about late last night. He was
once a bit of a He was involved in religious higher textual criticism
and all those things. After he was converted, somebody
didn't know he had been converted, and he was called on to give
a lecture dealing with those skeptical arguments about the
inspiration and authority of scripture. He opened the lecture
like this, as a group of young preachers in a liberal seminary.
He said, I am considered by some to be an expert in Old Testament
history and languages. And after much study and consideration
and thought, I am convinced that Moses wrote the book of Deuteronomy
and the first five books of the Bible. But if he didn't, there
was somebody else named Moses who did. Moses is connected with
this thing all the way through. The first word in the book is
about Moses, and the last word in the book is about Moses. Throughout
the book, Moses stands prominent, but he's not the message of the
book. He's not the subject of the book. He's not the theme.
He's just the messenger. The message of the book is Christ
and him crucified. This book, as I said, was written
during the last month that Israel was in the wilderness, just before
they took possession of the land. Now let me remind you again that
we have before us in these first five books of the Bible, what's
called the Pentateuch, a divine inspired visual aid by which
we are able to observe our own experiences in this world. These
things revealed here as God led Israel through the wilderness
to the land of Canaan show us a people who endured the same
trials, faced the same problems, met with the same obstacles,
dealt with the same enemies, and had the same trials and failures
that you and I have and encounter as we make our pilgrimage through
this world. Now the key to understanding this book is in its name, Deuteronomy. It means second law. It is the
second giving of the law. The first law was given at Mount
Sinai. It was given by God to Moses to give to the children
of Israel in ten commandments. And now in Deuteronomy, God gives
his law a second time. I can't help asking why. What
necessity was there? Why did the Holy Spirit give
the law twice? But if you want the answer, you've
got to turn to the Book of Romans. I want you to hold your hands
here at Deuteronomy, and let's look a little bit in Romans.
The Book of Romans is the commentary in the New Testament on the Book
of Deuteronomy. The Book of Deuteronomy is Moses'
exposition of the law, and Romans is Paul's exposition of the law
in its relationship to the gospel. Paul tells us plainly in the
Book of Romans and in the book of Galatians, that the law of
God has two tremendous, specific, clearly defined purposes. In
Romans 3, Paul speaks of the law. Now, folks often think that
God gave his law to keep us from doing what's wrong and to teach
us how to do what's right. If you ask the average fellow
on the street what the law is for, you go up to somebody I
was somewhere the other day in a shop, I think a garage, somebody
had Ten Commandments posted, and I'm tempted to ask. No, we
were at lunch, Sunday. I was tempted to ask somebody,
what do you reckon that means? What do you reckon God gave that?
I'll guarantee you the answer would be, well, teach us how
to live, teach us what to do, how to do right, keep us from
doing wrong. Ask the average man on the street, ask the average
religious legalist, that's the answer you get. But nothing could
be further from the truth. That was never God's intention.
He never dreamed that giving a set of rules could get folks
to do what's right. It was never God's purpose that
the law be a means by which people be kept from being evil and committing
evil. It certainly restrains evil because
of the punishment invoked by it, but that's all. The law of
God was never meant to be a means of life. The law was given, number
one, number one, and be sure you understand this. The law
was given to identify sin. Somebody says, do you think that's
a sin? It don't matter what you think.
It just doesn't matter. Do you think that's wrong? It
doesn't matter what you think. What does God say? That's all. That's all. What I think, what
you think, is totally irrelevant. The law identifies sin and condemns
it. Specifically, the law, Larry,
identifies sin in you and in me. identifies it in us personally
for ourselves. Look at verse 19, Romans chapter
3. Paul said in chapter 7, I had not known sin but by the law.
Here in chapter 3 verse 19, he says, Now we know that what things
soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law,
that every mouth may be stopped. That is, so you quit making excuses
for what you are and what you do. That every mouth may be stopped. And all the world may become
guilty before God. The whole realm of the most popular
form of what's called medicine in our day, psychiatry and counseling,
is designed and intended at its foundation to keep you from being
guilty. Somebody else is guilty. It ain't
your fault. You're in a mess you're in because your daddy
had a warped personality. You're in a mess you're in because
you were raised the wrong way. You're in a mess you're in because,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're in a mess you're in because that's
the mess you made. That's all there is to it. And there's no
excuse. Men do what they do because that's what they want to do.
They behave as they do because that's the way they want to behave.
No excuses for it. And the law was given to convince
us of this. The law was given to convince
us of our sinfulness and guilt. That's something of which we
must be convinced by God. Nobody else can do it. Isn't
it amazing? We have a tremendous capacity
for justifying ourselves in everything, a tremendous capacity, and for
condemning everybody else. It's called self-righteousness.
We never think that what we're doing is wrong. It's always what
the other fellow does that's wrong. Let me sit down and illustrate
it. We have a whole stack of words
we use to describe ourselves and our action. And when we're
talking about somebody else, we have a whole other stack.
Other folks have prejudices. We have convictions. Those fellas,
they're stingy. We're thrifty. Others try to
keep up with the Joneses. We're just trying to get ahead.
Somebody says, fella, he's a brown noser. I'm just friendly. She's flirtatious. Me, I just
try to be nice to people. That's the way we think and that's
the way we talk. The law of God steps in and says,
no, you're guilty. You're guilty. Your behavior
is sin. Your conduct is evil. But it
does more than that. The law of God is graciously
designed not only to identify and condemn sin, it's designed
by God to graciously force us to Jesus Christ alone. as our
righteousness and our redemption, our Savior and our Lord. Look
in chapter 3 verse 19 again. Once we're made to see that we're
guilty, helpless, depraved sinners, sinners who are utterly incapable
of altering their condition, we're informed that the cross
of Christ meets all our needs before the Holy Lord God. Romans
3.19. Now we know that what things
are of the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law.
That every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become
guilty before God. Therefore, by the deeds of the
law, by you obeying the law, shall no flesh be justified in
God's sight. For by the law is the knowledge
of sin. But now the righteousness of
God, watch it, without the law is manifested, being witnessed
by the law and the prophets, being attested by the law and
the prophets, even the righteousness of God, which is by faith, by
the faithful obedience of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all
them that believe, for there is no difference. For all of
us have sinned and come short of the glory of God. We're all
in the same mess, we all need the same grace, we all need the
same forgiveness, we all need the same righteousness, we all
need the same blood atonement. Now this is what we see clearly
set forth in the books of Exodus and Leviticus, and all the sacrifices
of lambs and oxen and goats and calves and so on. Those things
were just pictures of the sin-atoning sacrifice of Christ. His blood
shed for many for the remission of sins. The fact is there is
no way, there's just no way that God Almighty in his holiness,
in his perfection, in his purity, and sinful men can ever come
together except by some means or another, by some sacrifice
or another. God's holy law can be satisfied,
his justice satisfied, our sins fully put away by a just payment
for sin. And the only sacrifice that can
do that is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, God incarnate in
human flesh, and blessed be God, he did. Christ hath redeemed
us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, for
it is written, cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree. Christ
has suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, for this purpose,
that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh,
but quickened in the spirit. Now look at Galatians 3, I want
you to see this. The law then is our schoolmaster to bring
us to Christ. That's the law's function. That's
the law's purpose. The law is not a terrifying thing
to the believer, but rather it is that which we understand by
God's revelation to be the means used in God's hands graciously
to force us out of hope in ourselves to trust a substitute. Galatians
3.19. Paul had been telling the Galatians,
righteousness doesn't come by the law. If righteousness came
by the law, Christ is dead in vain. And so he raises this rhetorical
question. Wherefore then serveth the law?
It was added because of transgressions. Till the seed should come to
whom the promise was made. That is, till Christ should come.
And it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator. Exodus
20. God gave it to Moses as a mediator. Now a mediator is not a mediator
of one, but God is one. Is the law then against the promise
of God? Well, I perish the thought. God
forbid. For if there had been a law given
which could have given life, verily, righteousness should
have been by the law. That is to say, if it were possible
for God to tell you something to do, that's the way he would
have done it, if that would save you, if that would make you righteous.
He didn't kill his son for nothing. But the scripture hath concluded
all under sin. that the promise of faith of
Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. But before
faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto faith,
which should afterward be revealed. Wherefore, the law was our schoolmaster
to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
Now watch this. But after that faith is come,
we are no longer under a schoolmaster. I've used this illustration before,
but it will serve its purpose. You've met Bob Spencer. He was
my sixth grade teacher. I talked to him earlier this
week. He called. That fellow used to whip me pretty good. And when I saw him coming, I
straightened up because I knew what was coming. And if my mother
or dad found out about it, I got more when I got home. He had
complete authority to whip me, both by the law and by my parents.
He was in total control. He could do just about whatever
he wanted to. Because I was under his rule. Under his authority. He wouldn't think about striking
me now. He wouldn't think about it. How
come? Because he's got no right. He's
got no authority. Legal or otherwise. None at all. He has served his purpose as
a schoolmaster. Now he's my buddy. We're just
friends. Do you hear me? The law that
once terrified me is now the greatest friend I have. Do you
understand that? God's holiness that once held
me in utter dread of him is the very thing that makes me comfortable
with him. That righteousness revealed in
the law fulfilled by Christ in the gospel. Look in Romans chapter
7. Paul takes up this matter of
the law again. In chapter 6, he assures us that we who are
born of God are no longer under the law. In chapter 7, he tells
us in the first four verses that the law is dead to us and we
are dead to the law, because when Christ died, we died in
him. Not only people who do sinful
things. That's not all there is to it.
You are sinners. I am a sinner. That's not somebody
who does something bad. We are at the very core of our
beings by nature, rebels against God. centers at heart. That's
our nature. That's what we are. We act like
we do because that's what we are. The fruit's rotten because
the tree's rotten. The stream's bitter because the
fountain's bitter. We're centered by nature. Yet,
even though that is true, Christ Jesus has forever freed us from
all possibility of curse and condemnation. He's made us perfectly
righteous before God. He's made us perfectly holy before
God's holy law. He's made us free by His Spirit
to walk with Him in the nearness of resurrection life by the power
and grace of His Spirit and assures us of our absolute inviolable
security and everlasting salvation by His blood unconditionally. There is therefore now no condemnation
to them that are in Christ Jesus. You see that in chapter 8 verse
1? No condemnation, right now. All children of God, learn this
and learn it well. There is therefore, right now,
no condemnation. No condemnation. That means,
Samuel, God Almighty holds nothing against you. He has no charge to lay against
you. He has no reason to frown upon
you. He has no reason to ever raise his sword of justice against
you. No condemnation, because in Christ
we have fulfilled all the demands of God's righteousness and law. If when we were enemies we were
reconciled to God by the death of his son, if God did that for
us before ever we were reconciled to him in our hearts, much more
being reconciled shall we be saved through his life. And yet
there's more. Since Christ has totally, absolutely
met every demand of God's holy law as our righteousness and
as our representative and substitute, all that he is, I just want you to listen. I
know what I'm fixing to say. All that he is and all that he
possesses in his resurrection glory as the exalted God-man,
our Mediator and Savior, is ours in him by the free gift of God's
grace upon the basis of everything revealed in his law. All that he is and all that he
possesses is ours by the gift of grace upon the basis of righteousness
established and just to satisfy the law demands that we have
it because righteousness is ours in Jesus Christ the Lord. All
right, come back to Deuteronomy. That's what the book of Deuteronomy
is all about. While we live in this world,
we're living, waiting, expecting That glorious day called the
resurrection of the body, the adoption, the redemption of our
bodies when Christ comes again. And Deuteronomy shows the people
of God living in just that expectation. As Moses delivered Israel into
the hands of Joshua and assures them that Joshua would carry
them into the land and make them possess all its fullness, all
that God promised by a covenant to Abraham. The law of God delivers
believing sinners into the hands of Christ and assures us of everlasting
salvation by him. All the blessings of grace and
glory, all that God promised chosen sinners in Christ in covenant
mercy before the world began, shall most assuredly be ours. Now there are two themes recurring
throughout this book. The first is our utter weakness. inability. Though we are cleansed
by God, cleansed through the blood of Christ, cleansed by
the washing of regeneration through the Holy Spirit by the word of
the gospel, there is no ability in us, no ability in us right
now. I'm not talking about now before
God saved you, I'm talking about right now. There's no ability
in you or me, no ability in us to do anything in ourselves pleasing
to God. Sin mars everything. Sin messes
everything up. Our most sincere, dedicated efforts
to please God avail nothing. Nothing. One of the Mexican brethren
years ago, I was down there preaching, one of the fellows in one of
the churches stood up and had scripture reading, led the congregation
in prayer, and later Walter told us what he said. He said, Lord,
forgive me for what I'm about to say because I don't know how
to pray. Forgive this prayer. Our prayers need to be bathed
in the blood of Christ. Our worship needs to be robed
in his righteousness. Our best deeds are unfit for
God. Yet right along with this is
another thing, wonderful, a parallel. The Lord God Almighty is always
with us. God himself in the person of
his dear son by the power of his Holy Spirit has taken up
residence in us and will never under any circumstances for any
reason at any time leave us nor forsake us. He has put us into
an entirely new realm of life, so that now, though we live in
this body of flesh, we no longer live after the flesh, we live
after the Spirit. We've been born of God. In Deuteronomy
1, let's go back here and start. I want to give you four or five
things that I'm going to have to just... I'll give you the
basic stuff, and you can fill in the outline. As this book opens, the children
of Israel are encamped on the borders of Canaan, and Moses
calls them to obedience. That's the first thing. In verses
1-4, he issues a call to obedience. Obedience is something for which
you and I are personally responsible. We are to obey our God in all
things. Obedience is not the cause of
grace. Grace is never conditioned upon
obedience. but grace produces it. Grace
causes men and women in their hearts to long to do God's will
and to honor him. Grace causes men and women to
look upon all that God requires not as grievous but as joyful
and delightful. Grace is that which causes us
to walk before our God seeking his honor. Now, we shouldn't
fail to see three things peculiarly distinctly about this call to
obedience. First, this call to obedience
is issued upon the basis of God's free grace. It's issued upon
the basis of what God had done for his people. Even back here
in the legal dispensation, back here during these days of law,
during these days as Moses spoke. The very first thing Moses does
before he ever says anything about what we are to do, is he
reminds us what God had done. You see, God's grace never says,
obey me or I'll get you. It says obey me because I've
got you. God's grace inspires obedience, not law. Law stirs
up rebellion. It always has, always has. The
surest way on this earth, the surest way on this earth to get
any child to do anything is tell him not to. Sure as we're on
this earth, it stirs up the rebellion. It doesn't create it, it just
stirs it up because we're rebels by nature. Obedience is never
something that is produced from terror. That kind of obedience
is only outward and only temporary. Obedience from the heart is produced
by grace. Before Moses says a word about
what we are to do, he reminds the children of Israel what God
had done for them. He says in these first three
chapters, he said, brought you out of Egypt. He ransomed you
with blood. He brought you across the Red
Sea. He destroyed Pharaoh and his armies. He drowned them behind
you. He has led you through this wilderness these 40 years. Your
shoes have not worn out. Your clothes have not worn out.
God has fed you miraculously with manna from heaven for 40
years. Bread never failed. It fell every
morning on the ground, fell out of the sky according to God's
purpose. Imagine that. For 40 years, God
fed well over 2 million people every morning with flakes of
bread falling from the sky. He caused water to gush out of
the rock. He's been with you. He's protected you. He's delivered
you time and again from your enemies. And in a word, what
Moses says is this. The love of Christ constrains
us. That's what does it. What motivates
obedience? Gratitude. Gratitude to God for
his free election. Gratitude to God for redeeming
us by the blood of his Son. Gratitude to God for his daily
providence. Gratitude to God for delivering
us from bondage. Secondly, understand this, in
chapter 4, obedience is neither more nor less than faith in and
submission to the revealed will of God in Holy Scripture. It
is worshiping God alone as God. And that's what chapter 4 is
all about. Look in verse 2. He says, You shall not add unto
the word which I command you, neither shall you diminish off
from it that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your
God which I command you. In other words, he says, you
honor me and honor my word, submitting to me in the totality of your
life. And that's what faith is. It's
the surrender of our lives to the rule of God Almighty, tickled
to death that he's God. Tickled to death that he's in
control. And thirdly, the obedience of faith involves a renunciation
of all the imaginary gods of men. In this passage From chapter
4, verse 15 through the end of the chapter, Moses calls for
Israel, calls for us to worship the Lord Jehovah alone as God,
and he tells us to do so because he proved himself God. Who but
God could have brought you out of Egypt? Who but God could have
sustained you all this while? Who but God could have done all
these wondrous things for you? And then we get to Moses' exposition
of God's law. It takes up the bulk of the book.
Chapter 4, beginning of verse 44, going through the end of
chapter 28. Beginning in chapter 4, Moses gives us the law again,
but he's not just giving us the law. He's giving us an exposition
of the law. But not like I give an exposition.
I try to prepare a message and preach it to you, and sometimes
I have to come back and say I was wrong. I was wrong. I try to
seek God's will and seek God's message for you, but I am a fallible,
sinful man. Moses, though he was a fallible,
sinful man, wrote by the infallible inspiration of God the Holy Spirit.
So his exposition of the law gives us the law's true meaning.
In this passage, he deals with divorce, remarriage, fornication,
adultery, idolatry, witchcraft, sorcery, and such things as that. Now, you're looking into, why? Why go into such detail? It's
essential that we understand that the children of Israel were
about to go into a land and take possession of a land where they
would live all their lives in this world in the midst of a
sex-crazed, sex-saturated, perverse, wicked, depraved, degenerate
society, a whole lot like the United States of America in the
year 2003. That's where they're fixing to
live. What do you think is right? Well, do it, buddy. As long as
it's all right for you, it's all right. It makes you feel
good, that's all right. No responsibility for anything but what makes you
like yourself and feel good. And in the midst of such society,
God demands that we honor him. God requires that we live for
his glory. He expects it. And that's what
Moses is telling us all about. Well, how does he inspire us
to do that? How does he inspire us to do that? Look at chapter
6. Just catch the highlights, I
can't read the chapter to you. He begins, he inspires us, David,
to live for his honor, and this is where it begins. He says,
you can't do it. You just can't do it. You can't
do it. He says in verse 20, he says,
when your sons ask you at time to come, what do all these services
mean, all these ceremonies? He says, you tell them, you tell
them we were bondmen in Egypt and God brought us out. That's
where we began with God and that's where we still are and we never
get over it. He brought us out so that he
might bring us into the land. These ceremonies are all symbols
by which God constantly reminds us what it takes to bring us
out of Egypt and get us into the land to promise. That's the
explanation we're to give to our sons and daughters. And then
in chapter 7, he inspires this devotion and consecration to
God by assuring us that we belong to him exclusively. Look at verse
6. Watch this. Thou art a holy people unto the
Lord thy God. He hath chosen thee. to be a
special people to himself, above all people that are upon the
earth. The Lord didn't set his love on you or choose you because
you were more in number than any people. You're the fewest.
But because the Lord loved you, because he would keep the oath
which he had sworn unto your fathers, that the Lord bought
you with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of bondmen.
Moses says, don't you know you're not your own? You've been bought
with a price. So glorify God in your body and
in your spirits, which are God's. And throughout the book, he reminds
us of this continually. He reminded Israel that everything
God had done for them, everything God was doing for them, everything
God would do for them, was altogether a matter of free grace and had
nothing at all to do with them being better than somebody else
or doing better than somebody else. Look in chapter 7 again.
Let me find this here. I'm sorry, chapter 9. I wonder if we'll ever learn
this. Salvation is God's work from start to finish. Verse 4.
Speak not thou in thine heart, after that the Lord hath cast
them out from before thee, saying, For my righteousness' sake hath
the Lord brought me in to possess this land. But for the wickedness
of those nations the Lord doth drive them out from before thee.
Not for thy righteousness or for the uprightness of thine
heart dost thou go to possess their land, but for the wickedness
of these nations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from
before thee, and that he may perform the word which the Lord
sware unto thy fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Understand
therefore that the Lord thy God giveth thee not this good land
to possess it, for thy righteousness, for thou art a stiff-necked people." Doug, he says, I'm fixing to
take you to Gloria, but your goodness ain't got anything to
do with it. You're still a stiff-necked rebel. After 40 years of experiencing
unfailing grace, after 40 years of daily being taught directly
by God in the wilderness, The Lord says, now you've got to
learn something. As long as you live in this body of flesh, you're
never going to get to the place where you can stand on your own
feet. Never. Ain't going to happen. It is
only when we know our weakness that we can walk in God's strength
in Christ the Lord. This is what Paul had to learn
in 2 Corinthians 12. I had a call last night while we were eating
supper. A man not much younger than I am, out west, he called
and was troubled. He said, Brother Don, if you
don't mind me talking to you, because I'm so troubled. He said,
I am so weak. So weak. And I want to honor God. What
do I do about my weakness? And I called him by name and
I said, now understand what I'm about to tell you. Thank God
that you know it. Because right now, you're the
strongest you're ever going to be. Paul said, when I'm weak, then
am I strong. Lindsay, when I can't do anything, when I can't do
anything, I don't have any choice but to believe God. Can't do anything. His strength
is made perfect in my weakness. And then when you get to chapter
27, 28, Moses, he does something that I've had a hard time understanding
for years. He establishes an ordinance.
He establishes it by divine inspiration. But it's not an ordinance that
Israel was to keep at a set day. He didn't say keep this on the
first day of this month. It was an ordinance they were
to keep from time to time, I suppose, as they were aware of the need.
I suppose, I don't know. But from time to time, the Levites
were to go stand down in this valley, between Mount Ebal on
this side and Mount Gerizim on this side. And over here, six
of the tribes of Israel were together. And over here on Mount
Gerizim, the other six were together. And the Levites would speak for
God, and they would pronounce blessing. And these folks over
here would say, Amen! And they'd pronounce curses.
And these folks over here would say, Amen. What on earth are
they talking about? The Lord God Almighty demands He demands that you and I agree
with him in everything. In everything. And we're going
to, sooner or later. In conversion, he makes us take
sides with him. David said, Against thee and
thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight. In providence,
the only way on this earth Oscar, you and I can walk in peace."
He said, God did it. That means it's right. Only way
we can do it. Eli said, it is the Lord. But
he killed your boy. My boy deserved killing. But
it's your fault. I know. I've got to live with
that. But it's the Lord. Let him do what seemeth him good.
And then eternity. You turn to Revelation chapter
19 when you get home and read the first six verses. When everything's
done, the wicked are cast into hell, Babylon's fallen. John
said, I heard the voice of men sounding like thunder, rippling
across the ether, waves of the vast expanse of heaven. And they
were saying, hallelujah, hallelujah, the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. God has always done what's right,
and he still does. And then in chapter 29 through
chapter 31, Moses brings Israel and puts them in the hands of
Joshua, God's appointed deliverer. God has fixed things the way
they are, leaving us in this world, in this body of flesh,
constantly struggling with the world, the flesh, and the devil,
just like he did the children of Israel, so that we might be
constantly compelled to look to Christ. trusting him alone
as Savior and Lord and confessing. It is by grace and grace alone
that I stand here in confident hope of eternal life. And it
does it that way so that no flesh should glory in his presence.
Look in chapter Verse 10, he said, You stand this day, all
of you, before the Lord your God. Verse 12, that you should
enter into the covenant with the Lord your God. Verse 13,
that he may establish thee today for the people to himself. Now
verse 14, neither with you only do I make this covenant and this
oath. but with him that standeth here and with us this day before
the Lord our God, and also with him that is not yet with us this
day, those who shall yet believe on me. Verse 18, Lest there be
among you any man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart
turneth away this day from the Lord our God, to go and serve
other of these nations, lest there should be among you a root
that beareth gall and wormwood, and it come to pass, when he
heareth the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his
heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination
of my own heart." In chapter 18, Moses spoke of
Christ the Prophet, whom God would cause us to hear. In chapter
30, he declares that God will circumcise his people in the
heart. That is, that he calls us to
be born again by his Spirit. In the last part of chapter 30,
he calls the nation to faith in Christ. And he uses the very
words that Paul quotes in Romans chapter 10. He says, don't ask
who is going to establish righteousness. Christ has done it. The word
is near you, even in your heart and in your mouth.