Lesson 69 - Inauguration of Joshua with Divine Testimony

Deuteronomy Lesson 69

Inauguration of Joshua with Divine Testimony

Deuteronomy 31:1–29
Fellowship Chapel
10 January 2012
Charles Clough
© Charles A. Clough 2012
www.BibleFrameworkApplied.org

Tonight we’ll start back where I left off unceremoniously last week in session 68 with Deuteronomy 30:15. That’s that last third of the 30^th chapter. Let’s have a word of prayer; and we’ll start in chapter 30, verse15.

Deuteronomy 30:15—this marks the end of the challenge. In other words, Moses is closing out a challenge here. The nature of the text starts to change right about in here. Tonight we’re also going to finish chapter 31. You’ll see there’s a shift. It’s shifting from the direct exhortation to the nation more to transition. That’s why on the handout for lesson #69 tonight you’ll see that chapter 30:20 is the last verse of that 4^th exhortation. That’s the last. That’s the end of the direct exhortations. So beginning in chapter 31, this is the handover of leadership from one generation to the next – from Moses to Joshua. There are some formalities and there are all kinds of intrigue that goes on with this transfer of authority.

We want to pay attention to it because this last handover section has a song that was composed under the direct authorship of Jehovah Himself. That song becomes the nucleus from which the prophetic books of the Old Testament come. The prophets apparently knew this song even though Israel forgot it. The song pops up in the text of the Old Testament prophets. So it will be something interestingly different. Let’s conclude with these last few verses of chapter 30 so we finish off this last long exhortation.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 30:15, “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil, ¹⁶ in that I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments, His statutes, and His judgments, that you may live and multiply; and the LORD your God will bless you in the land which you go to possess.”

Now the interesting observation in verse 15 if you look at it, there are four nouns. There are two pair of contrasts. Look carefully at what’s contrasted. You start reading verse 15 and you’ll see the four nouns. So I want to ask a question here. See if you get this observation. Life is contrasted with death, obviously—and good is contrasted with evil. Now if those are the two contrasts, then what’s the difference? Why are there two contrasts? It seems intuitively obvious that they kind of go together. But if you look at the first pair:

^NKJ Deuteronomy 30:15, “See, I have set before you today life …” Then skip the good and go to death. “… death”. Just take those two nouns, life and death. Now is that talking about physical reality or is it talking about an ethical judgment? I think you’ll see that the first contrast between life and death is talking about physical reality. You’re dead or we’re alive. Both of those nouns describe states of reality. But the good and the evil – those two opposing nouns are describing ethical qualities.

So now I want to push this a little bit further because out of this as I point out in the handout #68 going to this diagram that we’ve seen ad infinitum; and we look at the end result where good and evil after God judges, good and evil are eternally quarantined or separated. That is a condition that is unique to the Bible. In other words there’s something powerfully stated not just in verse 15 but throughout the Scriptures. That is that the ultimate physical state of reality will correspond perfectly to the ethical state of reality.

Here we have of course the good. That’s the eternal state. That’s the New Heavens and the New Earth created fresh. There’s a new physical universe; and there’s no evil in it. Because there’s no evil in it; there’s no death in it. There’s no corruption in it. Now we don’t know what that looks like because we’ve never experienced it. There’s no human philosophy that’s ever been created that has that as the final goal.

The communist progressive idea that politics is going to someday bring in this wonderful state of affairs—none of those radical thinkers like Marx would ever think of the fact that there’s going to be no death there. See what we’re saying? Here in the good (which is an ethical statement) is going to be appropriately expressed in a perfect physical environment.

Simultaneously, and this is the dark side that we don’t like to talk about as Christians; but the dark side of this equation is that the evil will one day be expressed corporately, physically in a way appropriate to that—in other words, the Lake of Fire. That’s why you can’t separate Lake of Fire and hell from heaven and its realities. Christians sometimes do this. They want to soft-pedal this idea. But if you soft-pedal the idea, then you destroy the ethical correspondence between good and evil and the physical life and death.

Here is one of those places in the Scripture where it’s so easy to read, zip right on through, and never think through the implications. The Christian worldview is unique in that it ends up with a correspondence between the ethical condition, the spiritual condition and the physical condition. Right now it’s abnormal. Right now we live in a mix. Right now it’s very difficult for any of us to even conceive this.

Now in the context of verse 15 of course of chapter 30, Moses is describing something that would be partially expressed in the theocracy. That is that life – and by life here remember we’ve looked at how it is used, nephesh - the details of life, the economic details of life, the social details of life, the family details of life, the personal health issues of life; all those are wrapped up in that word. In the theocracy, the blessing economically, health-wise, militarily wise, social-wise—those blessings were all rooted to their spiritual condition. That never occurred in history before since the fall and won’t occur again until the Millennial Kingdom. So that unique period, this nine-century period of history, is so tremendously important in the Bible.

Then Moses after saying this, he says: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 30:17, “But if your heart turns away …” So here’s that contingency. Here again the last words of this 4^th exhortation - you’re saying but if your heart turns away so you will not hear. Hear what?

So let’s ask the question, what is Moses talking about “if your heart turns away?” If your heart turns away - from what? It’s if your heart turns away from revelation – the law of God, the Word of God. So it’s a warning that our hearts (believers’ hearts) can turn away so that you do not hear. Here is a synonym in this context of legal literature of obeying.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 30:17, “But if your heart turns away so that you do not hear, and are drawn away, and worship other gods and serve them …” Now look at the passive voice of this verb. The heart turns away so you don’t hear and then you are drawn away. So there are the Satanic deceptions that take place after the authority of the Scripture is forsaken. “… and worship other gods and serve them”.

Once again we go back to something that we see it again and again in the Scriptures. What is the central sin? The central sin always in the Bible is idolatry. It is much clearer in the Old Testament. Idolatry translated today means a change in worldview. The whole set of values is turned on its head. So he says, “All that happens when your heart turns away.” ^NKJ Deuteronomy 30:18, “I announce to you today that you shall surely perish …” Every time you see the word surely (the adverb surely) that’s the translator trying to translate usually the Hebrew with an infinitive absolute. It’s a Hebrew construction in Hebrew grammar. You use that when you want to state that something is certain to happen. “… surely perish; you shall not prolong your days in the land which you cross over the Jordan to go in and possess”. That means life will be shortened. So here is that death theme again.

Now in verse 19 we have a new element. It’s mentioned once before in Deuteronomy but we kind of passed over it. I know that in session 68 there were two blanks where the heart turns away and those of you who happen to have the handout from last week. First is the decision is to turn away from the Word of God. So that’s the heart turning away. First is the decision to turn away from the Word of God. Then an autonomous attitude sets in. Finally a wholesale alteration in worldview occurs. That happens today. It happened back then. It is always going to happen this side of the eternal state.

Finally, a wholesale alteration in worldviews occur. We see this with the young people leaving by droves the evangelical church. Part of it may be the church’s fault but a lot of it is they are being enticed by the world’s system because they’ve gone negative toward the authority of the Word of God. It is not something – the church can’t do anything about that other than keep teaching the Word of God.

But now in verse 19 we’re going to have a call to witnesses. This is going to become increasingly strongly emphasized as we go forward. In fact we’re going to finish chapter 31 tonight and when you see that you’ll see this witness theme come up.

Now let’s think of why witnesses are important. Maybe the easiest way to think about that is think about the debate between those couples that shack up and those couples who have a wedding service. Now what do you have in a wedding service that you don’t have when people just go shack up? What you have is a covenant, a contractual arrangement. A contract because every pastor does this when thy have a wedding service – what do they say during a wedding service? When they have the vows exchanged there is always an appeal to the people to be witnesses to encourage this couple. Same thing when we have a baptism – witnesses to encourage the person.

The role of the witness - why do we have a wedding service? It’s because it’s stabilizing that relationship. It’s fixing it to an obligation that is witnessed by lots of people. It’s not, “I thought this,” or “You thought that.” Well, no. There were 100 people that saw this happen. So the witnesses create an objectivity to a contract. So this is what Moses is going to do. Now the question is – who are these witnesses? You can’t have things that are witnesses. You have to have people who are witnessing something.

So now in ^NKJ Deuteronomy 30:19, “I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; ²⁰ that you may love the LORD your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days; and that you may dwell in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them.”

There are four or five purpose clauses here. He calls the witnesses of heaven and earth. Now you could say that’s the physical heavens and physical earth. But when you start reading the prophets and when we look at Deuteronomy 32, there’s something that doesn’t quite fit here with the nouns heaven and earth.

This is not, I believe, a metaphor. I believe that what Moses is doing here is he is calling for witnesses, the angelic realm that controls the physical environment. We know that the angelic realm controls and influences the physical environment when you read the book of Revelation when the apostle talks about the judgments and the sun changes its power and the earth and the sea and the earth and so on, these geophysical events.

What are the drivers behind the geophysical events? They’re not said to be F = m•a being solved differently. It’s not a problem of the physical equation. The problem is that the physical environment apparently is somehow influenced by angelic forces. The angels are now being introduced but in a way such they are not going to be worshipped.

This introduces a whole area of theology that dispensational theology leaves a door for development here whereas I think classical covenant theology does not. The reason I say that is because classic covenant theology deals and rightly so with redemption.

The problem is what about the angelic realm? There is no redemption in the angelic realm. The angels have never been saved – will never be saved. Is their existence meaningless because there’s no redemption? Surely not! The angelic realm is a non-redemptive area that knows nothing of redemption and does not experience redemption. Angels that fell, fell once and for all. There’s no redemption at all. Angels that stayed with God, stay with God. There is no grace shown them either.

So we are in the sphere of redemption. The angelic forces are not. The angelic forces play a tremendous role in history. The role they seem to play again and again and again is they are witnesses. They act somehow as God’s witnesses to what we’re doing.

I give you some examples in your handout. I mention the role of angels in Gentile history. In gentile history we have Daniel 10 for example where the king of Persia (modern state of Iran) basically is under the control of a very powerful evil angel. It’s like the whole geographical area of Persia is under the influence of this demonic power.

Then the role of angels in Israel’s history, 1 Kings 22. We’ve gone to that numerous times. I give you some other references. Also three New Testament references I list for you where the New Testament authors are also commenting on the Old Testament. They are pointing out Stephen in Acts 7 peculiar statement he makes. Here he is giving his swan song because he’s going to be stoned to death and he is condemning Israel. He says the Law was given by angels. Now you’d never guess that from Exodus 20. Exodus 20 doesn’t mention angels. Nor does Deuteronomy 5 mention angels. But Stephen says and the rabbis said there is a whole tradition that the physical fire and smoke on Sinai wasn’t just physical fire and smoke. The geophysical disturbances associated with the giving of the Law were actually angelic powers that were present at that particular point in time.

So angels have a role in Israel’s history; they have a role in gentile history; and they have a role in church history. There are the 3 verses there that show you the role today in the Church Age.

In 1 Corinthians 11 it’s talking about the role of angels watching the communion service and the behavior of women. In Ephesians 3 it’s talking about angels that are watching us apparently to learn something. Learning from watching us must be interesting but probably God’s patience and grace are what they’re learning. “How can God put up with these idiots?” But, the angelic powers are watching; and they’re beholding this. You can imagine – what is it that angels who exist over centuries of time, who watch God work century after century, millennia after millennia – what is it that’s so new about the Church Age? Something’s new. In the dispensation of the church, the church is not Israel. There’s something new going on here; and the angels are interested in it.

Then Revelation 1, 2, and 3 the angelic powers appear to be like inspectors for the churches because the author of Revelation (John) is told to write to the churches. Often times commentators say, “Well, write to the angel at the church at Sardis—that must be the pastor there.”

There’s an argument against that exegesis because angelos, the Greek noun angel, everywhere else in the Book of Revelation (nobody questions this) it always refers to angels. Well if it always refers to angels from chapter 4 to 22, why is it we don’t think it refers to angels in chapters 2 and 3? I think the reason we don’t is because it’s difficult. It’s difficult to understand how you can write a church a letter, an epistle, to a church in Sardis and have that letter actually addressed to the angel over the church at Sardis.

The argument here has been that Sardis—these cities had more than one pastor. And, there was no apparently any evidence at the time of bishops over large cities. So this is early in church history. So how come you have one angel over the entire city? He writes a letter to the church there.

My suggestion was – three or four years back when a pastor friend of mine did a paper on this. I suggested an analogy with the military. If you are an officer in the military and you’re are in charge of a unit, and that unit is going to be inspected which they are - so you have a team that comes in to inspect your unit and when that team comes in and inspects the unit they see all kinds of things. They can write you up for violations here, violation here. “This is good. The performance here was sort of mediocre.”

If you were the head officer of that unit, you get a report – an inspection report. But, that’s not the only copy of the report. The report is ultimately written not to the officer in charge; it’s written to the IG. the Inspector General, because the Inspector General is the one who takes that report and he sees the overall…this unit, this unit, this unit and this unit.

So my suggestion about the interpretation about Revelation 2 and 3 is that Jesus Christ is telling the apostle to go ahead, write the letter, write what I’m telling you and send it to the church in Sardis, literally and physically. But, understand that an angel is watching this.

This is an inspection report because they are all inspection reports. “This is what I see in Sardis and this is what I’m threatening Sardis” or Laodicea or wherever. “I threaten certain actions to take place.”

Now who in the book of Revelation is always the executor of God’s actions? Angels. So angelic beings have this sort of strange role. They’re in the background. God doesn’t want us to worship them. He doesn’t want us to get spooky about it. But there’s enough in Scripture to understand we live in a fishbowl. We’re being watched. There are powers and principalities invisible to us that we cannot sense; but that are very interested in God’s work in our lives. They are watching day after day, life after life, and century after century. Someday we’ll find out what is it you were looking for? What was it that you were learning from us?

So this calling to heavens and the earth I believe has a lot of implications. We’ll get into that as we get further into the text. So that’s the gist of the end of chapter 30.

So now we want to move tonight to chapter 31, which is the beginning of a whole section now at the end of the book.

There are some blanks I suppose. In chapter 30, verse 19 where it says “angelic realm,” the role of the angels there. Go back up two lines. The role of angels is history a much neglected biblical theme especially in reformed covenant theology that so emphasizes redemption to the near exclusion of the doxological processes throughout the non-redemptive angelical realm.

Doxological means God is praised. It’s the glory of God. The angels are not involved in redemption, but they are involved in worship. Worship is a doxological function. That is trying to get us to think in terms of this angelic background that goes on.

Now we turn to chapter 31and we’re going to in the next half hour hopefully go through chapter 31. It’s not that difficult. There are certain elements in chapter 31 we want to pay attention to.

In the outline I give you 3 sections to watch in chapter 31. I break it down into 3 sections.

1. The first section, Moses directives for leadership transfer to Joshua. So that first section the first 13 verses of chapter 31 are all the speeches of Moses. Moses is doing this; Moses is doing that; Moses is doing this. It’s all Moses speaking
2. But now the second section verses 14 to 23 is Yahweh’s prophetic revelation to Moses and Joshua. Here the speaker is going to be God Himself. It’s a dramatic speaking. This is not just a casual whisper. This is a public declaration on the scale of Mt. Sinai itself. You can’t be light handed with this.
3. Then finally, point b, that is the we have the deposit of the Sinaitic and Shechem testimony. Here we get into this witness thing.

You can see that there’s a shift as we move into the last section of the book.

“Okay, we’ve done our exhortation. We know what loving Yahweh is with all our life, with all our soul. Now let’s move on; and let’s deal with the end game here on transitioning the leadership.” So the first 13 verses … the first 6 verses Moses is addressing Israel itself. So he says:

^NKJ Deuteronomy 31:1, “Then Moses went and spoke these words to all Israel. ² And he said to them: ‘I am one hundred and twenty years old today. I can no longer go out and come in. Also the LORD has said to me, “You shall not cross over this Jordan.” ³ The LORD your God Himself crosses over before you; He will destroy these nations from before you, and you shall dispossess them. Joshua himself crosses over before you, just as the LORD has said. ⁴ And the LORD will do to them as He did to Sihon and Og,’ ”

This is an encouragement to the nation as a whole. So when he starts out - a couple of observations here. Notice in verses 1 and 2, you have two claims that Moses makes about himself. One of which sounds physically absurd; the second of which is dramatically spiritual. The first one is that he is 120 years old. If you plot the ages of the patriarchs in Genesis 5, in Genesis 10 and 11(that section there), the post-flood. Then you track the ages at death of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, come down to Joseph and then come down to Moses; you’ll see the longevity line is declining. But it hasn’t reached our truncated lifespan yet. So Moses was 120 years.

Here’s an example of the fact that these people that get gooey and slimy with the scriptural text because they are so afraid the Bible is going to conflict with archeology, it’s going to conflict with anthropology; it’s going to conflict with what science (as we all genuflect) so we’re going they alter our interpretation to try to make it fit. You endlessly wind up compromising the text in chapter after chapter when you do this. Verses like this verse 2 just pop up the text. What are you going to do with 120 years? Who lives 120 years today? Very rarely. But Moses is saying this. Is this wrong? Is this right? Is this a correct observation or not? Well, we have to argue that it’s correct. The Lord Jesus Christ certainly assumed it was correct.

Then that means we need to alter our picture of longevity because this is eyewitness evidence. The idea that you can judge texts like this because science says something is a fallacious piece of logic because this is an observation. Isn’t this part of the data? If you’re not going to accept this data, we challenge your data criteria. How come you’re selecting other data and making your conclusion without including this data? So this is legitimate data.

Then it says: “The LORD has said to me, ‘You shall not cross over this Jordan.’” That is the emblem, the piece of truth in Moses’ life that God disciplined him. Moses you remember earlier in Deuteronomy uses his own discipline to show the Israelites that when God says something - do it. “I am not able to come into the land because of what I did at the rock. I disobeyed the Lord. There are consequences to my disobedience. Sorry, but that’s it. I didn’t get off because I’m number one guy here.” God doesn’t give “off” favors to His favorites. Moses surely was a favorite man of God; but that didn’t absent himself from God’s discipline.

He says to remember that. Then he says in ^NKJ Deuteronomy 31:3, “The LORD your God Himself crosses over before you; He will destroy these nations from before you, and you shall dispossess them. Joshua himself crosses over before you, just as the LORD has said.”

In the Hebrew as I point out in your notes, the NET Bible which is one of the translations that Dallas Seminary has it on a computer so you can kind of see how language people translate a text. Then they defend why they translate it and explain. It’s kind of interesting Bible translation. In this verse 3 just so that it fits - the literal Hebrew reads. “And then as for the Lord and as for Joshua”. But if you spoke that way—why would you speak that way? Well just Moses said, “I’m not going to be here.”

Now there are only two people involved in this story. It’s God and Joshua. “What’s going to happen to God and Joshua just because you’re not going to be around Moses? Does that mean God isn’t going to be with us?” No. He said these things, as for Yahweh and as for Joshua these things are going to happen. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 31:4, “And the LORD will do to them as He did to Sihon and Og, the kings of the Amorites and their land, when He destroyed them.”

God hasn’t changed. Remember the attribute? What is the attribute that says God is the same yesterday, today and forever? Immutability - God’s attribute of immutability. He’s the same. He’s going to be a warrior. He doesn’t need Moses. God didn’t do those things to Sihon and Og because Moses was there.

See what Moses is doing? He’s divesting himself from the folks thinking that somehow they were so inspired by Moses. Yes, he was a leader; but he wants people to realize these things didn’t happen because I was there. They happened because the Lord did it. The Lord is going to be here with Joshua. So it is part of the encouragement that he gives.

Verse 5 is sort of an innuendo in the text. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 31:5, “The LORD will give them over to you, that you may do to them according to every commandment which I have commanded you.” You know what that is—Deuteronomy 7; that’s holy war. Then finally he says:

^NKJ Deuteronomy 31:6, “Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them; for the LORD your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you.” So that’s the end of Moses discussions to the nation – a quick summary.

Now he is going to start talking in verses 7 to 8 to Joshua. Just two verses here – but these two verses introduce something that has to happen before chapter 31 finishes. So let’s look at verses 7 to 8. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 31:7 Then Moses called Joshua and said to him in the sight of all Israel, “Be strong and of good courage, for you must go with this people to the land which the LORD has sworn to their fathers to give them, and you shall cause them to inherit it. [8] “And the LORD, He is the one who goes before you. He will be with you, He will not leave you nor forsake you; do not fear nor be dismayed.”

Those of you who have read the book of Joshua, does that look familiar? That’s the first chapter of the book of Joshua. That’s the commission. That’s how Joshua, the book, starts. Here’s why it starts this way because God through Moses is giving him this great encouragement. Now there’s something interesting about the way the first sentence is structured.

Notice it says: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 31:7, “Then Moses called Joshua and said to him …” Now the sentence doesn’t end with him. It ends with a prepositional phrase – in sight of all Israel. Now why do you suppose that prepositional phrase is tacked on to the sentence? This is because a theme in the Bible about leadership exists.

There are two levels of leadership that you see again and again. You’ll see this in the prophets. You’ll see this with the kings. The first element of leadership in the Bible, in the theocracy and also in Jesus’ career, is God picks the leader. We kind of refer to corrupt politics you know as smoke filled room and the kingmakers in the smoke-filled room pick the candidates. There literally was king-making going on in the Bible; but the kingmaker (single) wasn’t a smoke-filled room with a bunch of corrupt politicians. The kingmaker was God Himself. All the kings had to be authenticated - the legitimate ones - had to be authenticated by a prophet.

Now in the gospels, the four gospels, how did all four gospels start with Jesus or John? They all start with John. Why do they start with John? He is the king-making prophet. He is the prophet who identifies the Messiah. This is the same thing happening with Samuel and Saul, Samuel and David, Nathan and Solomon. You have the king-making prophet first. The king-making prophet is the one who says, “God has selected this person.” That’s what’s going on here. Moses is acting as the prophet. He’s saying basically, “I am picking Joshua. God is picking Joshua through me.”

But he’s doing it in the sight of all Israel. That is the second theme of leadership in the Bible. That is a leader isn’t accepted until the people accept him. This is why when you read 1 and 2 Samuel it takes David so long to attain the throne. I mean David was a teenager when God picked him out. But he didn’t finally get to the throne until after all the adventures. You start 2 Samuel; and you begin to see all about the intrigue between the tribe of Judah, the tribe of Benjamin and what was going on between these tribes. Who would align themselves with David? So the people have to become convinced that this leader really has been chosen by God. You can understand why. How can they follow in faith a leader if they don’t have confidence that God has picked that leader?

Now historically in the Church Age isn’t that exactly what the Church Age - for twenty centuries Jesus Christ’s leadership - He was picked out by John the Baptist. No question that God picked Jesus; but Jesus now century by century, believer by believer is gathering those people out of history, out of the cosmos, out of the evil world system who are convinced He is God’s Messiah. So we’re gathering. One day when He reigns, guess who will be all around Him. The people who from every tongue, every nation who have chosen and recognized Him. So this is a theme universal to Scripture.

So anyway, Moses wants the people to see. So he calls and says to Joshua in the sight of all Israel, “Be strong,” and he give him the commission.

The next and third section (verses 9 through 13) is the third thing that Moses discusses – the third group of people. He’s talked to the nation as a whole; and he has talked to Joshua publicly. Now in verse 9 is his interaction with the third group. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 31:9 So Moses wrote this law and delivered it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who bore the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and to all the elders of Israel.”

We’ve mentioned and commented elsewhere in the series - the two spheres of authority, the religious sphere and the civil sphere. The religious sphere is the Levites; the civil sphere is the elders. There is no such thing as the separation of church and state in the theocracy. The religious sphere was distinguished from the civil sphere, yes. The civil sphere could do certain things and couldn’t do other things. The religious sphere could do certain things but not other things. So God differentiated the religious from the civil; but He didn’t totally separate the religious from the civil for the simple reason that it’s the religious that gives you the universal sources of ethics. So the civil can’t operate without the religious.

So anyway, he says to the Levites and he’s going to give the Scripture primarily to the Levites because the Levites are the religious sphere. That’s their role. Then he says: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 31:10 And Moses commanded them, saying: “At the end of every seven years, at the appointed time in the year of release, at the Feast of Tabernacles, ¹¹ when all Israel comes to appear before the LORD your God in the place which He chooses, you shall read …” Watch carefully this verse. “… you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing. ¹² Gather the people together, men and women and little ones, and the stranger who is within your gates, that they may hear and that they may learn to fear the LORD your God and carefully observe all the words of this law, ¹³ and that their children, who have not known it, may hear and learn to fear the LORD your God as long as you live in the land which you cross the Jordan to possess.” This is a serious mandate.

In the Scriptures, in your hand out there I give you Deuteronomy sessions 25 and 26 and the kingdom of God has ethical structure by God so the Millennial Kingdom will have global laws. It’s the Feast of Tabernacles. The Jewish calendar was in the fall of the year. The spring calendar in the Old Testament (consisting of Passover, First Fruits, Pentecost) has all been fulfilled, right? Jesus was crucified – Day of Passover. You have the First Fruits, the resurrection; coming of the Holy Spirit coming on exactly the Day of Pentecost.

The problem is that the Jewish fall calendar is not yet been fulfilled. We assume that these fall holidays (Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement, Feast of Trumpets, Tabernacles) they’re going to be fulfilled too. Someday in the future, Israel is going to do something on those days. God is going to do something on those days.

Many Messianic Jews believe that on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) which happens in our October or September at that point the nation Israel will suddenly confess at the end of the tribulation they will confess that Jesus is the Messiah by reading publicly Isaiah 53.

At that point because they now say, “Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord,” Jesus Christ will return to earth. When He does it will be the Feast of Tabernacles. This will become the Millennial Kingdom. It will start in the fall of some year. This is going to be fulfilled literally in the fall like the spring part of the calendar.

But what Moses wants them to do in their day is – he says is when tabernacles that happens which is a fore view of the kingdom of God when that happens on the 7^th seven, that is on the sabbatical year; we went through and I summarized for you on the outline the gist of what we did back there in sessions 25 to 26. The point there that was when all debts, the charitable loans, went to zero. So it was a time of freedom.

This is why on the next slide I quote Gary North’s commentary from Deuteronomy.

For a newly released bondservant

Now think about this. Who’s there and what has happened in the 7^th year at Tabernacles? A profound event has happened economically in the nation.

For a newly released bondservant, the reading of the law would have reminded him of the importance of obedience. He had fallen into debt through no moral fault of his own at least in the opinion of his creditor. The way to avoid future debt bondage was to remain obedient to God’s law for the Law promised external blessings for obedience. The Mosaic Law was read to a nation of free men, and it provided the guidelines for remaining free. Would to God that every 7 years Americans citizens would have to hear and read the entire Constitution of this country.

We have politicians that haven’t got a clue. You wonder. These guys – do they ever read the Constitution? Apparently not, by some of the nitwit expressions that you hear them say. “I’m not bothered by the Constitution,” one man said. Obviously you’re not going to be bothered by it because you’re too ignorant to know what it says. So here we have in the Old Testament the constitution of nation (the law). Look at it. There are no exceptions in verse 12 - the whole nation. “I want the children there. I want the wives there. I want the strangers (who are Gentiles by the way living in Israel) there. I want all of them there so they can hear this reading.”

… because they all weren’t literate. As I say in my outline, the ceremony every 7^th year reveals what living under the law rather than living under tyrants looks like. An informed citizenry is the greatest restraint against tyrants.

This is what our Founding Fathers believed. So here’s one of those great sections in the Bible that give you a powerful dynamic that can be applied in any nation. It’s just the model nation. If this is the model nation run by God and they had to do this, how much more do we who have a human document that we’re trying to follow (supposedly) if we’re serious about following; then let’s just read it.

Now beginning at verse 14 to 23, God interrupts. Remember this whole thing started out with transfer of leadership. Now in the middle of this thing if you skip on down to verse 24, the last section: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 31:24 So it was, when Moses had completed writing the words of this law in a book, when they were finished, [25] that Moses commanded the Levites, who bore the ark of the covenant of the LORD, saying:”

It’s almost continuous with the verses that we just got through talking about in verse 9. So there’s an interruption and when you see an interruption in the text, when you see what translators call a pericope; when you see a pericope or a section, chunk of text that seem to interfere with the flow - so here you’re reading verse after verse after verse and boom, all of a sudden there is this chunk of text and then after the chunk of text we go back to reading and reading – this follows and so forth. That sort of says - wait a minute something is happening here. Why has God designed a text this way?

Well, let’s look at the text – verses 14 to 23. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 31:14, “Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Behold, the days approach when you must die; call Joshua, and present yourselves in the tabernacle of meeting, that I may inaugurate him.’ ” So now who’s doing the inaugurating of Joshua? It’s not just Moses. It’s Yahweh Himself. You’ll notice what He tells Moses to do. He says, “You come to the tent of meeting.”

Remember from the 40 years in the wilderness? The tent of meeting was the place where God’s Shekinah glory dwelt. I mean that was a physical thing there. You didn’t walk into the tent of meeting. That was the tent where if you walked in there you dropped dead because that’s the presence of God Himself – physically, the presence of God Himself. This is His sacred space. So apparently this is a very, very important meeting.

Basically what God is telling Moses, “I want you two guys to come down to headquarters. We’re going to have a little meeting here.” God is going to come down in a wonderfully, glorious fashion. “So Moses and Joshua went and presented themselves in the tabernacle of meeting”

^NKJ Deuteronomy 31:15, “Now the LORD appeared at the tabernacle in a pillar of cloud, and the pillar of cloud stood above the door of the tabernacle.” So now we have a theophany. Here is a physical appearance of God’s glory like that of Sinai. This is no small event here. This is a very important thing that God is doing. [16] “And the LORD said to Moses: …” Notice He’s not talking to Joshua directly. He has Joshua sitting there or standing there, but the conversation goes from Yahweh to Moses. So Joshua is sitting there realizing that “I’m supposed to be here because God is supposed to pass the mantle of leadership to me; but He’s talking to Moses.”

Joshua, he’s the junior of the two men, he ranks under Moses so he is about to assume command of the nation; but he has to sit there and listen to this conversation Jehovah is having with Moses. “Behold, you will rest with your fathers; and this people will rise and play the harlot with the gods of the foreigners of the land …” Notice how encouraging this would be to Joshua. Put yourself in Joshua’s place. “… where they go to be among them, and they will forsake Me and break My covenant which I have made with them.”

^NKJ Deuteronomy 31:17, “Then My anger shall be aroused against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide My face from them, and they shall be devoured. And many evils and troubles shall befall them, so that they will say in that day, ‘Have not these evils come upon us because our God is not among us?’ ¹⁸ And I will surely hide My face in that day because of all the evil which they have done, in that they have turned to other gods.¹⁹ Now therefore, write down this song.

First time we’ve called this a song. This is going to be chapter 32. We’re going to actually read the song. Unfortunately no one saved the music.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 31:19, “Now therefore, write down this song for yourselves, and teach it to the children of Israel; put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for Me against the children of Israel. ²⁰ When I have brought them to the land flowing with milk and honey, of which I swore to their fathers, and they have eaten and filled themselves and grown fat, then they will turn to other gods and serve them; and they will provoke Me and break My covenant. ²¹ Then it shall be, when many evils and troubles have come upon them, that this song will testify against them as a witness; for it will not be forgotten in the mouths of their descendants, for I know the inclination of their behavior today, even before I have brought them to the land of which I swore to give them.”

How would you feel if you were Joshua? I think I’d be a little discouraged. “This is the mess that I’m supposed to lead? You know, Moses, you know you’ve got it easy. You’re going to die. Your tour of duty is over; mine is just beginning and this is the message I get.”

So why do you suppose Jehovah calls Joshua front and center to headquarters and gives him this briefing about history? We have to think about why He does this. I think that we come to the same thing we’ve seen again and again in this book. Remember the chiasm of the Ten Commandments. You set that chiasm on. There are certain priorities. The life of this nation is going to be wrapped up in the first, second and tenth commandments - whether or not they are going to love the Lord.

Of course out of that we have this diagram that we’ve mentioned again and again. When the metaphysical and epistemological base of a society gets corrupted, the ethics and the politics fall apart. It always happens; it always will. I believe that God spoke this very graphic message with all the fireworks and the smoke and the voice.

Can you imagine what that sounded like? Wouldn’t you wish that Joshua had a tape recorder? Because God was audibly speaking here in the Hebrew language. This wasn’t a dream of Moses. This isn’t something they heard in the wind. These were actual words that God spoke. I believe that one of the reasons why God had Joshua overhear this briefing is because God wanted Joshua to understand reality. He did not want this man to take leadership position under some sort of false guise that everything was going to be cool and, “Joshua, you know, you can be such a wonderful leader and this whole nation is just do what ever you want to do.”

What He’s telling Joshua is, “The signa quo nom of this society is their relationship with Me. This nation is a group of sinners. We’re not dealing with saints. We’re dealing with sinners. We’re dealing with people with spiritual warts; people who are going to drift; people who are going to deny Me; and you’re going to cope with this Joshua – just like Moses had to cope with them. It means you’re going to have to trust in Me. If they forsake Me, there’s nothing you can do as a leader. Forget it! If they are going to do this to Me, your leadership will fail.”

I believe this is exactly what God wants this man who’s going to suddenly be saddled with the responsibility of these 12 tribes to understand. Don’t think of this in terms of human politics. It is not an issue of political dynamics. It is not an issue of social dynamics. It is an issue of spiritual dynamics.

So He gives this briefing, which can be construed as a very discouraging thing. So now we come down at the end. In verse 21 He mentions the idea that this song is going to be a witness. Remember I said that more and more emphasis in the text as we head to the end is going to be witness, witness, witness, witness—because this is the endgame here. So this song is going to be very, very important.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 31:22, “Therefore Moses wrote this song the same day, and taught it to the children of Israel.” Then in verse 23 He inaugurated Joshua. Verse 22 is sort of an editorial note because in one sense it’s disconnected because the song starts in 32:1; but all the way back here it says:

^NKJ Deuteronomy 31:22, “Therefore Moses wrote this song the same day …” The song was actually written at this inaugural ceremony of Joshua. The editor of the text here wants us to understand that so he chronologically corrects us. But then in verse 23 after this case of the theophany the grand theophany before the Tabernacle. Then we have: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 31:23, “Then He inaugurated Joshua the son of Nun, and said, ‘Be strong and of good courage; for you shall bring the children of Israel into the land of which I swore to them, and I will be with you’.”

Now the question is who is the he in verse 23? The commentators believe that God is the subject here. That’s why we said verse 22 is sort of a note. Moses wrote this song and so forth. But then God – remember He called Joshua before the tent of meeting with this grand theophany. Then we have: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 31:23, “Then He inaugurated Joshua the son of Nun, and said …” He repeats what Moses told him. That again is why the book of Joshua starts the way the book of Joshua starts.

Now we come to the end in this last section. That is the deposit of the testimony. Here we have this idea that a contract has got to be witnessed. So let’s look at what happens here – verses 24 to 29. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 31:24, “So it was, when Moses had completed writing the words of this law in a book, when they were finished …”

Now I have to stop there and make a comment. Notice it says he wrote a book. Not many years ago we had a young lady from this church whose parents had put thousands of dollars in a savings account for her tuition. Believing that they were following the Lord’s guidance sent this young lady to a so-called Christian college. About five months into the semester the dad comes to me and says, “Look at what my daughter is getting in this Christian college.”

What it was—was old-fashioned liberalism that was even old liberalism. It wasn’t even contemporary liberalism. The idea was – it’s called the Wellhausen theory of JEPD something started in the 19^th century or early 20^th century basically. The JEPD were four themes in the Old Testament. D, the last of the 4 letters (JEPD) D was Deuteronomy. The liberals always put D - Deuteronomy this book as the result of evolutionary growth in Israel and had to have been written after the prophets. Now why do you suppose liberals taught this in university campuses. The reason is their evolutionary view of society. You’ve got very advanced doctrine in the book of Deuteronomy. You’ve got so many specific prophecies that that couldn’t have happened way. It had to be manufactured after the fact.

That’s by the way incident with the gal and her dad. That’s why I told the dad. “You might as well take your girl out of the Christian college and send her to a state university. The tuition is cheaper. If you’re going to get unbelief, get it cheap.”

So here Moses had written this book as a book. So obviously you had a written language there. You had a book written then. This is the 14^th century BC. There is no problem with writing. Of course, he wrote. When they were finished: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 31:25, “that Moses commanded the Levites …” So now he goes back to the leadership, the Levites. We’re getting into protocols here. Watch the protocols.

“… who bore the ark of the covenant of the LORD, saying: ²⁶ Take this Book of the Law, and put it beside the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, that it may be there as a witness against you; ²⁷ for I know your rebellion and your stiff neck. If today, while I am yet alive with you, you have been rebellious against the LORD, then how much more after my death? ²⁸ Gather to me all the elders of your tribes, and your officers, that I may speak these words in their hearing and call heaven and earth to witness against them. ²⁹ For I know that after my death you will become utterly corrupt, and turn aside from the way which I have commanded you; and evil will befall you in the latter days, because you will do evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke Him to anger through the work of your hands.”

Now what Moses is doing here is, inside the Ark - what was there? Aaron’s rod. What else was inside the Ark? The two tablets. Now this is striking. For many, many years people kind of said, “Ah, this is kind of interesting – the two tablets.” Then all of a sudden archeologists began to discover that in the ancient Near East in the second millennium by the way when nations and pharaohs and the great kings made treaties, they made two copies. Guess where the two copies were stored. One copy would be stored in the temple of the pharaoh or the great king; the second copy would be stored in the temple by the priests of the lesser king. There would be two copies of the treaty both of which were kept in the religious priesthood sanctified temple areas.

Now isn’t it interesting? What is the Temple of the Lord? What is the Temple of Israel? It’s the same one. So both copies of the covenant are sitting there in the Ark. The Ark of course was right underneath the cherubs where you have the atonement happen. So the idea here is the law. This is the testimony. This is the very presence of God. His law, His word, is there physically. What Moses does now is, he says, “It’s not just the tablets inside the Ark. I want the scroll (That’s what the book is here. It’s a big long scroll.) standing right there by the Ark.”

Now we could say scientifically this scroll was the calibration standard for all other scrolls. Do you remember back in Deuteronomy 17 when we had that passage about the king? We made a big deal about the fact. What did the king have to do? First when he ascended the throne he had to get a copy of the law. Remember in Deuteronomy 17 he had to personally copy it. Where did he copy it from? This copy. This was the calibration copy; this was the scroll. All the other scrolls were subsidiary to this scroll. It was the Levites that kept the Word of God.

So Moses is arguing that we have a bunch of things here to bear witness to this contractual arrangement. As I said at the end of your handout the conclusion if God is going to have a trial in history (which He will); you have to have the Law; you have to have the accused; you have to have the prosecutor; and you have to have witnesses to the crime. The witnesses are now assembling. So now the Law is there. The Torah is in place. Israel is going to become the accused. The prosecutors could be angelic powers, but they are also going to be the prophets. The witnesses to the crime of course are the angelic powers themselves of course and this song.

So next week by God’s grace we will work with Deuteronomy 32. This is the great national anthem of Israel.

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I’ll have a few minutes here for Q&A - not a long-extended session. We’ll have a few minutes here for Q&A.

Okay, let’s go to the blanks.

Under Deuteronomy 31:11-13 All Israel men, women and children – an informed citizenry.

Down in verse 23 where He inaugurated Joshua, God is the subject so the beginning and the end of this pericope. That’s a noun. Let me spell it for you because you’ll this in commentaries and you’ll maybe wonder what it is. It’s p-e-r-i-c-o-p-e. In exegetical analysis of the text, a pericope is a segment of text that fits together. A lot of what they call discourse analysis, which is something in the last ten or 15 years that has become a tool. It can be misused; but I think it’s a good tool to force observations of the text, to watch these chunks of text.

Tonight we saw a situation where Jehovah’s statement plops in the middle of chapter 31. It’s like a sandwich. Then the chapter seems to resume where it started. You have this thing in the middle. When you see that you have to sit there and explain it.

The last one Deuteronomy 31:24-25 when he completed writing the Levites, it was a written scroll contrary to the old liberalism that on the basis of their evolutionary model of civilization. It was a written scroll. Moses could write. There was a written alphabet then.

Of course, now, people say, “Oh yeah. There is enough archeological evidence that Hebrew-Paleo script was around. They did have it.”

But really, a 100 years ago people went to universities were taught that there was no alphabet then.

“This is all just the Bible. It’s just made up kind of stuff.”

Again it was a lot people blowing hot air because they didn’t have any data to substantiate their claims.

Are there any questions as we come down now to the end here? Everybody notice that the trend is away from “how to love the Lord your God.” Now what are we going use to hold the coming generation to the Word of God? The emphasis is on witness of the contract. Maybe as you think about that if you’ll think about why that’s so important an element. It becomes an important element because we’re still struggling here with a contractual kind of relationship. You can’t avoid it. It’s there. This locks it up. The rest of the Old Testament follows this pattern.

Question

The question is - are people who live together before they get married more likely to divorce? I believe you are right because the place to search for that sort of evidence is the Institute for American Values. That’s the group in New York City that sponsors thousands and thousands of dollars worth of research. They’re the ones. I say I don’t know if they are Christian. I am impressed with their line of research. They are the ones that did that thing that you’ve seen me quote several times – the cost to the US economy of divorce and unwed childbirth documented by state including Maryland showing you in dollars and cents what goes on. That report is you know five or six years old. They’ve got another report out (apparently several of them), one of which examines the issue of why a family must have a man and a woman heading it and the difference in gender roles. It’s not just physical. It’s psychological why this is such a foundational relationship. I think somewhere in that report is what you’re saying there. They’ve got thousands of statistics. I would venture to say that somewhere in their publication you’d find that situation.

The new report that I just got in the mail is entitled And Baby Makes Three. It’s the story why parenthood completes marriage; but yet without the marriage there can’t be a growing culture. We’re talking about what we would call the dynamics of the family and the dynamics of children – raising them. That’s a whole other study where they’re going into the issue of what happens when you try to raise children with fragile marriages that are falling apart. Of course, as a schoolteacher you see the results of that. I think these are very sobering studies. I highly recommend them.

I talk to pastors. You know, you younger men, that are out in the front lines you’ve got to use information like this to talk to people who are raised in a culture hasn’t got a clue about structure. Everything is plastic. There are foul ups. Once you make the human mind the ultimate epistemological standard rather than God’s mind, then it’s whatever we think, you know. Everything becomes subjective. When people get tired of each other, well fine. Let’s blow it. Let’s move somewhere else. That’s the fallout of the whole thing.

Going through this book of Deuteronomy has made me personally understand far better than I ever did before why relationships have to be conventally controlled.

Our church for example, we have church discipline. We have church membership. Why don’t we just forget about it? Why don’t we just show up whenever we show up and if we want to get our 20-minute church dose each week we just trot in here any time on Sunday and leave any time we want. You can imagine the chaos. The net result is something like that. You can’t. There has to be structure - the ministry—working with the kids.

Think about the efforts that you folks put in every single week to get some sort of structure. You’d never have a ministry without it. Couldn’t! So these are all part of the same ball of wax I think.

Question

He brings up another point. Can you imagine this happening today where we have an integrated group age-wise? One of the interesting things that you’ve brought out here in that observation is that there’s no age discrimination. You wonder why. Why isn’t there an age discrimination? Recently in an evangelical Bible believing pastors at a summer camp I went to last year, one of the pastors there had second thoughts about completely relying on youth ministry, adult ministry and separating the church by age.

He said, “I’m trying in our church (this is in Denver) to work it so that the young people—they have their own little time together—but they get integrated with the church at large.

He said to make that a point; I’ll take them on a hospital visit so that they see death. They see we’re not talking here about just having fun at a party. Here’s somebody dying next week. Let’s talk about this. This is life.

His idea is to expose them to the gamut of life. But this reading at least in a small scale was certainly chronologically non-discriminatory because the text here makes it very clear that mom, dad, and children of whatever age had to stand there.

Can you imagine how long it took to read the Torah? To give you an idea take a stop watch and read Deuteronomy. That’s how long that must have taken. Now probably they broke it up. Think about this. Most of those folks were illiterate.

This is a revolutionary idea, isn’t it? If you go to Egypt, the education was for only the wealthy nobility, the elite of the country. Education was not thought of in universal terms.

Here in the Scriptures we have the idea of universal education. Think about why. Always connect ideas with foundations. What is different about Israel wanting universal education and Egypt a pagan society like Rome, Greece, all of the pagan societies who had no such concept of universal education? What was the difference? Why did one nation have universal education and the others, all of them, did not. That’s a clear, clear fact of history.

When you see such a clarity, then you think about what was the difference? What do you think? If you were to talk about this in the society of some of your friends, neighbors; everybody believes in universal education today. But what’s the foundation of it?

Question

What’s that?

The Word of God is a revealed truth; but the heart of the revealed truth is that you have a God who is the creator of everyone including men, women, and children. Men, women, and children are responsible to Him. The reason there was universal education in the Bible is because there was universal responsibility. There was universal ethical obligation. The ethical obligation wasn’t confined to the elite. Everyone was required to do this. So once again it was the moral and spiritual that drove the universality of the educational process.

Now let’s wrap this up quickly. Let’s think about what happens today? Can you maintain the idea of universal education without the spiritual drive of the Old Testament?

People are going to ask you, “Why bother?”

What are you going to say?

“Well, you can make more money because you get educated.”

Not necessarily. A skilled plumber, a skilled electrician can earn more than a college graduate in many areas. I mean, come on! Somebody with a - who do you think is going to make more money? A skilled craftsmen or some kid that has a B.S. in psychology?

So you see some things fall apart here.

Learn to respect the Word of God and some of these key ideas. They are foundational. We neglect them and are going to pay an awful price because there is a structure, a super structure, that is built on these ideas. Demean them, throw them out, neglect them, make fun of them and look at the results. The structure needs a foundation.

Question

He is pointing out how there is the consistency in Scripture.

“It’s not because back when you were a girl it was this way. Now I’m a 17-year-old and our generation is different than yours.”

Really? Do you still breathe oxygen? Blood still red? What’s changed?

That’s right. It’s the stability factor.

Folks, we’ll meet again next week by God’s grace and we’ll move into this song that Moses had to compose. If you are interested in music, it’s one of those things that frustrate music majors.

“Oh, why did God not preserve the music behind these things?”

In the Hebrew text by the way Hebrew scrolls there are these little marks. More that one Hebrew musical person has commented on the fact—they wonder whether these little marks in the songs off in the margins are notes to the musicians. We don’t know. We know that the songs start off some with the lyre. We have some of the instruments were used. But darn we don’t know what the music was. It’s interesting why the Holy Spirit didn’t preserve the music.