Lesson 73 - The Death of Moses

Deuteronomy Lesson 73

The Death of Moses

Deuteronomy 34:1–12
Fellowship Chapel
07 February 2012
Charles Clough
© Charles A. Clough 2012
www.BibleFrameworkApplied.org

We come to the last chapter in Deuteronomy. Next week we’ll just summarize the Book. But this will be the last progressive chapter after almost two years. We’ve made it to the end. As we do that tonight we’re going to deal largely with chapter 34 with the death of Moses. This is an interesting chapter, and it has a peculiar relationship with the New Testament. So we want to go through that. So let’s look to the Lord and see if we can understand our way through 34.

On your outline after the table there, I have again some observations about this last section (chapters 31, 32, 33, and 34) because that’s the last chunk of text. As you can see in the big outline, we’ve gotten through a big exposition – the first exposition, the second exposition – those were all expositions by Moses telling the people what loving the Lord with all their heart, with all their soul looked like. But when we got to chapters 31 to 34, it’s all a transition; and it’s the transition into the rest of the Old Testament and the Bible. So we want to think about this because Deuteronomy sets up the theology for the entire Old Testament. We’ll see tonight it moves to the New Testament too. It’s a great connecting book. I’ve always found Deuteronomy easier to pick up on the key points than say reading Leviticus which is mainly to the priests with all the little technicalities. Numbers is more narrative. It’s background. But it seems like Deuteronomy puts things in a clear way.

It’s not surprising because Moses was talking to the everyday Jew. Leviticus was aimed particularly at the priests who were specialists. Numbers was probably written to give people a historical picture of what went on - Exodus too. So say from Genesis 12 with the call of Abraham on through the end of Deuteronomy, this is the foundation for the Old Testament. So that’s why underneath the table I’ve kind of emphasized again in this concluding section the fact that we can’t escape the cosmology and the basic ideas of the Bible.

There’s a movement – there has always been a movement for the last 50 years in evangelical Christianity to try to read the Bible and accommodate as much as possible to the existing culture. Not like the liberals; the liberals want to totally capitulate. Many evangelicals feel embarrassed by the Bible - feel like they have to apologize for the text. So they tend to – we’ll see an incident tonight with one of the translations that does this. There is this tendency. The way you have to deal with this mentally is you have to realize that the Bible presents a radically different view of the world than contemporary culture. Contemporary culture is either right or the Bible is right. They both can’t be right. They’re radically different.

In this outline is a reminder that this concluding session in chapters 31–34 is set within a cosmology and a philosophy of history that collides with the speculations of unbelief. I say, “No reconciliation is possible without abandoning the authority of God’s Word or evoking a complete repentance from the perverted natural and analogical histories of our secular education.” That’s just it. It leaves you challenged by this radically different view of history and what we’ve learned. The reason why I say that is because you need to be settled in your own heart that you’re comfortable with the kind of universe that Deuteronomy is presenting to you. If you don’t deal with that, when you read the rest of the Old Testament you will be out of step with it. You’re going to be uncomfortable with the rest of the Bible. So that’s why I emphasize this.

So I put down underneath that in that next paragraph the three chapters we’ve gone through trying to point out where this conflict comes from that we feel when we read Old Testament literature. In chapter 31 we have the observation of a theophany of God. Remember theophany comes from theos (God) and phaneroo meaning to shine. God physically shows up. I mean this is radical. Think about it. Who believes in a theophany today? Who believes that there is a God of the universe who physically makes Himself visible to men? That’s part and parcel of the Bible. It assumes – oh yeah, almost like it’s casual – of course He does that. In the New Testament, you see the same thing on the Mt. of Transfiguration. What happens when Jesus is on the Mt. of Transfiguration? Suddenly He’s transformed. There is this light; and there’s the Father and the Son. There are the disciples sitting there probably with their mouths wide open seeing this theophany - basically. God does that from time to time inside His creation. So in chapter 31 we have the observation of the theophany of God publicly appearing to Moses and Joshua.

In fact why don’t we turn to 31:14 because this is just one of many theophanies that occurred from the time of the Exodus up through the end of Deuteronomy. In Deuteronomy 31:14-21, remember that this is part of the transfer from Moses to Joshua.

^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 Moses and Joshua went and presented themselves in the tabernacle of meeting.

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.” That is a theophany. That strikes completely against a naturalistic view of the universe. “If there is any god, he certainly doesn’t do that.” Well yes, He does do that. Here is a real theophany – just like occurred on Mount Sinai.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 31:16, “And the LORD said to Moses: ‘Behold, you will rest with your fathers …’ ” He goes on to dictate what becomes chapter 32 of Deuteronomy. So two things happen. In chapter 31 we have the observation of a theophany of God publicly appearing to Moses. I use the adverb “publicly” appearing. What I am fighting for here in that sentence is to show that the Bible does not permit somebody to interpret this as private visions of these people. This is not Jewish autobiography. These are not people hallucinating. This is not somebody thinking this up. The claim of Scripture is that God showed up in a physical way with a voice that you could tape record.

Now nobody that has had a naturalistic education is going to feel comfortable with that; but that’s the way the universe is. That’s our God; and that’s what He does. He speaks in human language that can be recorded. And so the theophany of God publicly appearing to Moses and Joshua and dictating the national anthem. That national anthem is not the result of Moses contemplating his navel, going into some sort of private Buddhist meditation and making all this up. This chapter 32 was dictated by God Himself. These are God’s words – literally. This is information from the infinite omniscience of God. That’s why that song is so important.

In chapter 32 we have that song’s lawsuit content containing unique features such as - so here again you have big ideas that collide absolutely with unbelieving culture. You can’t worm your way around stuff like this. You have to confront this part of Scripture forthrightly.

So we have the song’s lawsuit containing unique features such the investiture of angelic agencies. Modern people have a problem with that, not because they have evidence to the contrary, but because we have a mindset that is autonomous. The investiture of angelic agencies involved in the geophysical realm—remember that angelic agents can show up as physical phenomenon. That was the fire at Mt. Sinai. If we were there with a camera and photographed Mt. Sinai, we would have seen fire and smoke and lightening apparently because the word fire—some electrical something or whatever. That’s what we’d photograph; but yet the interpretation of the text is that fire or corona or whatever it was - it wasn’t just an immaterial thing. It was angelic agencies. Go figure that one. You don’t learn about that in electromagnetic physics. But the fact of the matter is the Bible makes that claim. Angels show up in natural phenomenon.

The same thing happens in the book of Revelation when God judges geophysically the earth, the solar system - at least that and possibly out into the universe beyond. It’s angels doing it. When He wants to affect the solar energy He calls the angel of the sun. Now people tee-hee and laugh at this sort of universe; but this is the real universe. The phony universe is the universe that people speculate who are naturalistic empiricists. They dream of and speculate on this universe. We have the revelation from God, and God says: “You’re wrong. That’s not the way the universe is. I made it and it has features you know not of unless I tell you about those things and I have in the Word.” So we have an investiture of angelic agencies involved in the geophysical realm with a witnessing task to the Sinai contract. That means the angels are monitoring and learning from revelation just like we learn from revelation. Apparently they are very involved and when God speaks they want to learn from that.

The book of Ephesians says angels are watching us learning the wisdom of God by watching us. Now you wonder, “What are they learning from watching us?” They see things and how God works in our lives that apparently is of interest to them and they want to study that.

… the witnessing to the Sinai contract.

It is very specific.

And revelation of the ultimate end of history for Israel and the nations of the world.

That’s that song.

Now you know the liberal approach to the Bible is sort of - the Jews made all of this up. Well now, isn’t that silly? How can men in their own meditation have the audacity to claim they know how history concludes? Isn’t that an audacious claim to say that you know because you meditated that you know what the end of history is? Well, see how arrogant that claim is. And yet the claim is in Scripture - except Deuteronomy 32 is not the product of meditation. Deuteronomy 32 is a product of divine dictation. So therefore it’s credible. It would not be credible if indeed it was just the ideas of Moses.

Then in chapter 33 we have Moses’ supernatural blessing includes specific tribal features and resulting behavior after Moses dies. So it’s a prognosis of the behavior of different people groups. Now Moses isn’t making this up. The liberals of course wouldn’t go so far as to say Moses made it up. They say later editors put words in Moses’ mouth and made it up. So after Moses dies along with the description of the giving of the Law on Mt Sinai that challenges naturalistic empiricism and by challenging naturalistic empiricism it’s just what I said.

When you photograph Mt. Sinai you would have recorded on your video—you would have recorded a fire or electrical discharges or something that looked like fire. And yet the Scriptures interpret that and God interprets it all through the New Testament. You can’t get away from this. This is not just Old Testament. This is Acts 7 with Stephen saying this – that the law on Sinai was given through the medium of angelic agencies. So it’s strange. The universe is a lot stranger than we can have a clue about.

In chapter 34 we are going to see some more really weird stuff. The first section the first 4 verses (Deuteronomy 34:1-4) deal with the end of Moses’ ministry. This is in one sense a very poignant moment. It’s a situation—the end of a believer’s useful life. I think we can learn some lessons from this because this particular, very useful believer was being disciplined for something he did wrong. It appears from the text here that his life is prematurely terminated.

In one sense God loves Moses. God is graceful to him. He is going to do things for Moses right here, some extraordinary things; but nevertheless he’s not going to go into the land because of what happened. So we want to get our heads in gear here because this is neat because it applies to us in our lives.

The location for this – they’ve been over here in Moab. Moses is directed by God to come up here to Mt. Nebo and to look across to Jericho. Now in the text it says God shows him – he’s standing here at Nebo. God allows him to see all the land. Now this has to be a supernatural thing. You can’t sit on Mt. Nebo and look up here to Lake Gennesaret or the Sea of Galilee and look all the way over here and see unless it is a very clear day to the Mediterranean or look down here to the south. Yet that’s what the text says.

So we have to keep the map in mind and then watch what’s going on here.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 34:1, “Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is across from Jericho. And the LORD showed him all the land of Gilead as far as Dan …” That’s way up north. [2] “… all Naphtali and the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Western Sea …” That’s the Mediterranean. “… [3] the South, and the plain of the Valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees, as far as Zoar.” God is directing Moses in the last hours of his life. He wants him to see this.

Now on the outline I’ve given you Deuteronomy 3:27. Hold the place here in 34 and look at Deuteronomy 3. We want to get a sense of Moses here. The center spotlight is on this person.

So in 3:27, Moses is - earlier on telling the people of the nation Israel that he’s going to have to go up there. So obviously this was not done at the time of chapter 34. It was done earlier in his life – whether it was days or weeks before. Obviously by the time of 3:27 Moses is aware of what he has to do. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 3:27, “Go up to the top of Pisgah, and lift your eyes toward the west, the north, the south, and the east; behold it with your eyes, for you shall not cross over this Jordan. [28] But command Joshua …” So early on Moses knows that he has to go up here.

So back to 34:2. This appears to be a supernatural vision that God is giving to him. It says He showed him all the land. As I said it’s difficult to see that physically today from that position so we assume that this is special – almost like a video. The fact that God condescends to Moses to let him see that shows He loves Moses. It shows He’s gracious to Moses. So at the same time He’s disciplining Moses, He’s also being gracious. This is a feature you want to pick up from the Old Testament text.

Every once in a while, you’ll encounter these people that read 2½ minutes of the Old Testament and make these pontifical statements about God of the Old Testament is some cruel deity or something. Now people like that have never seriously read the Old Testament. But here’s an example of God loving a person almost in a father-childlike way. He knows Moses won’t walk into that land; but He wants to show Moses the land. So that verse 2 is a very unique thing.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 34:4, “Then the LORD said to him, ‘This is the land of which I swore to give Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, “I will give it to your descendants.” I have caused you to see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there.’ ” So there’s the boundary of discipline and the love of God along with it.

On your outline in verse 4 talking about “He swore to give Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” – by now you’ve seen this happen again and again.

The foundation of the Mosaic Covenant is the Abrahamic Covenant. The Abrahamic Covenant promised those 3 things. It promises a land, a seed and worldwide blessing. That’s an unconditional promise. It’s going to happen in history. That’s Genesis 12:3, Genesis 15, Genesis 17. Those are the details of that Abrahamic Covenant. So here you see the covenant continuity in the Bible.

The Bible has rationality to it. The critics and the people who make fun of the Scriptures don’t – evidently they’re either blind or haven’t really read the text to see that there’s a flow to history here.

There are three things in verse 4 I think God is getting at Moses.

1. It’s real historic geography. When He takes Moses into that visionary state where He does a complete survey of all the real estate. He’s not talking about a metaphor of spiritual blessing. He’s talking about literal acreage, literal real estate because it’s literal fulfillment of a literal promise. You have to be careful about getting metaphorical about these things. Yes, it’s a blessing. You know it’s a blessing because first it’s a physical thing that exists.
2. It is a large area involved. He starts counterclockwise. He basically has Moses look north, look south, look all over the Mediterranean then look down here. So it’s like he does a counterclockwise search.
3. Then the third thing is, it’s faithfulness of Yahweh to this previous contract.

Let’s go back through those verses because this is a good verse chain to see the internal consistency of the text. So if you start out with Deuteronomy 1, you’ll see that this is not an isolated point. This is a thread that holds the book together.

All the way back in ^NKJ Deuteronomy 1:8 it says, “See, I have set the land before you; go in and possess the land which the LORD swore to your fathers – to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – to give to them and their descendants after them.” So there’s the Abrahamic Covenant functioning. Then you come to ^NKJ Deuteronomy 6:10, “So it shall be, when the LORD your God brings you into the land of which He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you …” That’s why the Book of Genesis from chapter 12 onto the end of Genesis is there because that part of Genesis has three generations – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So Genesis lays the foundation for that.

Then you come to 9:5 and again you see: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 9:5, “It is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you go in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD your God drives them out from before you, and that He may fulfill the word which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” We won’t have to go through the rest of them. You get the picture that this is the glue that holds the whole thing together.

So in verse 4 of chapter 34, God concludes the last moments of Moses’ life is spent viewing the fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 34:4, “… I have caused you to see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there.”

“I am not showing it to you; I am causing you to see it …” which suggests it is a supernatural thing. “I won’t let you crossover.”

In the notes I’ve gone to Numbers 20 because I think it’s important that we understand the incident that led to Moses discipline his expulsion so to speak or his prohibition from entering the land. If you’ll turn to Numbers 20 - Numbers 20 is another instance where it looks on the surface to be trivial. At first glance you think, “What is the deal here?”

Why for this moment – basically Moses had a temper tantrum. Why in the moments of this temper tantrum Moses does this thing and all of a sudden it alters his destiny as a believer because God disciplines him for this? So we want to kind of get in our head what happened here.

^NKJ Numbers 20:1, “Then the children of Israel, the whole congregation, came into the Wilderness of Zin in the first month, and the people stayed in Kadesh; and Miriam died there and was buried there. ² Now there was no water for the congregation; so they gathered together against Moses and Aaron.”

So right away you’ve got a challenge to Moses’ authority. He’s the leader. The people are totally out of it spiritually because if they have no water, what do they expect Moses to do? Make hydrogen and oxygen molecules? Obviously what they’re doing is they’re blaming him for kicking them out in the desert. ^NKJ Numbers 20:3, “And the people contended with Moses and spoke …” That’s why the passage is complaining. It’s a strong Hebrew word for complaining. We have a slang word we use which I won’t use; but you know what it is. This is another theophany. Again we have verbal communication. “… saying: ‘If only we had died when our brethren died before the LORD! [4] Why have you brought up the assembly of the LORD into this wilderness, that we and our animals should die here? ⁵ And why have you made us come up out of Egypt, to bring us to this evil place? It is not a place of grain or figs or vines or pomegranates; nor is there any water to drink.’ ⁶ So Moses and Aaron went from the presence of the assembly to the door of the tabernacle of meeting, and they fell on their faces. And the glory of the LORD appeared to them.” By the way, another theophany here. You can’t get away from theophanies.

^NKJ Numbers 20:7, “Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying …” Again we have verbal revelation. [8] ‘Take the rod; you and your brother Aaron gather the congregation together. Speak to the rock before their eyes, and it will yield its water; thus you shall bring water for them out of the rock, and give drink to the congregation and their animals’.”

If you stop right there, notice the instruction – speak to the rock. This is a drama. God is going to—the design here of teaching spiritual principles with a physical drama. Paul in 1 Corinthians talks about the rock is really an early typology of Christ. Paul picks up on that from this passage. He says He was the Rock – Christ was the Rock from which we get the water of eternal life. Here they’re out in the desert and they will literally see they literal rock and there’s millions of people are there. So we are not talking about 20 gallons of water here. We’re talking hundreds and thousands of gallons of water to take care of the needs of this large group of people. So what he is supposed to do is speak to the rock before their eyes and yield its water. The idea there—God would be honored because then the rock would respond to the words of Moses which in essence are the words of God.

^NKJ Numbers 20:10, “And Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock; and he said to them, ‘Hear now, you rebels! …’ ”

By this time they’re ticked off so they’re going to do it their way. “ ‘… Must we bring water for you out of this rock?’ ” Notice the subject of the sentence. The point was that Yahweh was going to show them that He gave water to them out of the rock. So by this time Moses and Aaron, both of these guys, are hacked. They put up with their griping and groaning for some time. Now they’re not spiritually with it. So they say they are angry with the people.

^NKJ Numbers 20:11, “Then Moses lifted his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod; and water came out …” That’s the incident. You say, “What’s the deal here?”

Basically, it is that God asked Moses to do something because He reasons for asking him to do it that way due to His revelatory program. Moses didn’t do it that way. He ruined the typology. You don’t beat Christ to get water out of it. This is what he did. It appears like he’s mad. Aaron’s mad. They just whacked the rock. They’re mad at the rock. You can understand from the human point of view – probably all of us would react the same way. But that’s not what God called Moses to do here.

^NKJ Numbers 20:12, “Then the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron, ‘Because you did not believe Me’ …” Notice it is not just “obey Me.” “… to hallow Me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them”. That’s the incident. Moses now at the end of his life reaps the consequences for what we would say, “Gosh, it’s one thing in his career; and he gets whacked for it.” That’s the background.

So now in your handout under Numbers 20 you’ll say that—you’ll see Deuteronomy 1:25-27. Moses includes himself in the rebellious first generation. See, he’s not going to make it. So in one sense after we’ve talked about and talked about and talked about the first generation is all going to die; Moses is actually classifying himself as part of the first generation that is going to die.

In chapter 3:23-28 – that’s interesting. Let’s turn to Deuteronomy 3 because Moses wanted to enter the land. Gosh the guy spent all these years out in the desert. He was interceding on behalf of his people. He would like to see the end result. You can empathize with Moses. Look what happens in Deuteronomy 3:23-28. Moses had words with God about this discipline.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 3:23, “Then I pleaded with the LORD at that time, saying:”

So he’s not taking this discipline. He’s not assuming that the discipline couldn’t be altered if he would pray about it. So he’s taking it to the Lord. He says: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 3:24, “ ‘O Lord GOD, You have begun to show Your servant Your greatness and Your mighty hand, for what god is there in heaven or on earth who can do anything like Your works and Your mighty deeds? ²⁵ I pray, let me cross over and see the good land beyond the Jordan, those pleasant mountains, and Lebanon.’ ²⁶ But the LORD was angry with me on your account, and would not listen to me. So the LORD said to me: ‘Enough of that! Speak no more to Me of this matter.’ ”

How would you like God say that to you? You’re praying and He comes to you and says, “Knock it off. I’m not going to listen to you. I’m not going to hear you bug Me about it anymore.” This is kind of an interesting theology where God doesn’t want to listen to a prayer request and is not going to; and He says so. So, whatever lesson we can derive from that.

In the handout Deuteronomy 4, now Moses picks up on this and basically argues that if God could do it to him (to Moses), He could do the same thing to the rest of the nation. So by this time Moses has reoriented. “Okay, I know God loves me. God is going to take care of me. He is going to use this discipline as revelation on why you need to obey.”

So the principle is that God can prematurely end the believer’s life due to discipline but the believer does not lose his or her salvation.

Remember I said Deuteronomy sets up the theology for the rest of the Bible. So when you see God disciplining people, it doesn’t mean they’re unbelievers in the Old Testament. They may be unbelievers, but believers are also subject to God’s discipline. And, the nation Israel was.

Let’s go back to Deuteronomy 34. We’ve gotten through Moses and his almost pathetic situation. Now we come to the next section in verses 5 to 9 that deals with his death and the passing of the spiritual wisdom from Moses to Joshua. Here is the end of his life.

Strange things happen here. This again is one of those passages in the Old Testament that does not let us try to accommodate to a naturalistic interpretation of the universe. It just doesn’t do it. The Bible keeps over and over. Critics try to I call it skate on ice through Genesis 1 trying to relieve the tension and think they’ve done the job by taking care of Genesis 1. Friend, they’ve just started. You’ve got chapter after chapter after chapter. You haven’t solved the problem going to Genesis 1 and thinking you’ve solved the problem. You’ve got problems all through the text.

Now look at this situation. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 34:5, “So Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD.” It was a special death. It was according to the Word of the Lord. [6] “And He buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth Peor …” So when it says he died according to the Word of the Lord, that’s a fulfillment of prophecy. God said, “You are not going to cross.” So the first thing we know about this man’s death: not only was it due to discipline but it was done exactly according to the prophecy. It says: “… but no one knows his grave to this day.”

Now a certain version of the NIV translation—when you have a group of translators that are following a new philosophy of language when they do Bible translation. Wycliffe is having a problem. Larry Matthews mentioned it in one of their letters. There is a big split in Wycliffe. Some people work at with Wycliffe 25 or 30 years are resigning over this. It is a very serious controversy. The issue that led to it is when we translate Biblical text for a Muslim culture, we should not use the words father or son because the Muslims misinterpret that to mean their idea what we think we mean by the Trinity is the Father, Mary and Jesus – that the Father had sex with Mary and produced Jesus His son. That is their screwed up version of the Trinity. So to avoid that, the Wycliffe translators are dropping the Father and Son out of the text and trying to get an Arabic word that would mean not that screwed up meaning.

I empathize with what they’re trying to do. The problem is when you drop words that are in the text that were there from the very beginning, you are dropping massive connotation.

I ran into this when I was teaching out in Los Angeles a while ago – or in Albuquerque. I had in the room auditing the course was a Wycliffe translator to an Indian tribe. We got into the discussion about why in the NIV have we interpreted or changed the translation every time would translate man meaning adam for mankind—we translate it now in the NIV by people. The idea was that our target language, our contemporary language, is people. That is what’s meant. It’s not only men – men. It’s talking about all men. I understand that.

The problem is that we don’t say womankind. We say mankind; and there’s a reason for that. Who was created first? And, with whom is the federal relationship that caused sin in the world? And how was the woman created differently from Adam? See all that is there. It’s embedded. That is why you don’t just wipe off man because you’re worried what the feminists are going to say. It does create a problem for a generation who would see that and think that’s patriarchal; and that’s an insult to women’s rights. My argument to the Wycliffe translator was, “You let me take care of that. I am the Bible teacher. I have sit and explain what the text means.”

But if the text is ambiguous and we have difficult texts in the Bible - leave it ambiguous. The translator’s job is not to create commentary on the Bible. If you get a problem passage, leave it. What does Peter say about Paul’s writings? This is the apostle. Doesn’t he say Paul’s writings are hard to understand?

If you follow some of the Wycliffe translators here, they would have said, “Paul, you’ve got to rework your letters here because they’re hard to understand. We reject that papyrus of 1 Corinthians. You submit it to the editors; and let’s rework the language to make it clearer.”

Paul didn’t do that. The Holy Spirit didn’t do that. There are tough things in the Corinthian passages. And, he leaves it that way. God has a reason for it. I don’t know what the reason is. But, that’s respecting the text.

Here we have obviously in verse 6, we’re in the middle of the text that’s talking about the supernatural death of Moses. When you see the subject of the verb “bury him”, you don’t make that “the people bury him.” It is obviously God who is doing the burying here. That’s the context. So the NIV in one of their dozens of versions apparently translate it to make it look like it’s a normal burial. They buried him there. That’s not what the text says. The text says He buried him.

What do you notice in the rest of the clause that tells you there is something unusual about the burial? What do you see in this clause that if you are translating the verb buried, it’s a normal burial? How does that conflict with the rest of the clause? Nobody knows where he is buried. Now if they buried him they’d know where he is. So obviously the context tells you there is something going on here. Is it hard to understand? Absolutely! Leave the text alone. Don’t feel compelled to make it clearer for people because what you think is clearer may not be clear and it may not be the meaning of the text. So we have a difficult passage.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 34:6, “And He buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth Peor; but no one knows his grave to this day.” So if that is people, you’ve got a problem. You also have another problem, Jude 1:9. So hold your place. Turn all the way over to the end of the New Testament - that little Book of Jude. Here is a dramatic illustration of the principle I just pointed out – verse 9. We won’t go into all the context of Jude; but what do you make of this one? You talk about a hard text! Commentators stumble all over the place on this one. We don’t know what’s happening. Something unusual is happening here. We have to relax and let the text speak to us.

^NKJ Jude 1:9, “Yet Michael the archangel, in contending with the devil, when he disputed about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a reviling accusation, but said, ‘The Lord rebuke you!’ ” What on earth is that talking about? Something to do with the burial of Moses. Michael is one of the top archangels in God’s creation. Obviously when it says over in Deuteronomy that He (that is Yahweh) buried him; Michael was involved with this. Now what Satan wanted to do we don’t know; but Satan apparently had some ideas about what to do with the body of Moses. Now you think this is a normal funeral? This is a real graveside service here where you have cosmic angelic powers arguing about the body of this dear saint. We don’t know why. All we know is that for some reason his body was very important. Now we get a little bit of a hint as we read further in the text of chapter 34.

It says … We’ve seen now verse 5, the answer to prophecy. In verse 6 it’s the case of a divinely conducted burial involving strange things.

Now we have another thing. ^NKJ Deuteronomy 34:7, “Moses was one hundred and twenty years old when he died. His eyes were not dim nor his natural vigor diminished.”

Now you would think when you read that: why did the author of the text put that in there? If his eyes were not dim and his natural vigor wasn’t diminished; why did he die? This is the third unusual event (feature) of this act. There was no physical reason for Moses to die at that point. They’re basically giving us a clean bill of health. Why did Moses die? The answer is because God basically put him to sleep. This is a discipline unto death. It is the same as the Apostle John, same as the book of James. God can kill believers. That should not seem too strange to us because every communion service we read 1 Corinthians 11 where it talks about those who comes to the table out of fellowship and so on are daring God to take them out.

That’s why Paul says: ^NKJ 1 Corinthians 11:30, “For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep.” It’s because of the desecration of the communion. So it’s clear. Nobody is losing salvation here. It’s just they’re losing their physical life. We have all of this strange stuff going on.

Now in the notes under 34:7 where I point out his eyes were not dim nor his natural vigor diminished – he didn’t die of old age. Moses like Elijah had a special death and reappears in Matthew 17. Remember the Mount of Transfiguration? Who appears there with the Lord? Elisha who was taken in a chariot – we talked about his life was terminated quickly. He was standing there one moment talking to Elisha and then along comes a chariot and takes him to heaven. So there goes Elijah. So God ended Elisha’s life. God ended Moses’ life. Those are the two guys are the ones of all people – you know the dozens of guys that could have showed up – those two guys show up in Matthew 17. You see the Scriptures. You can’t mess with a section of Scripture without disharmony with the rest of the Scriptures here. There is continuity to this.

Now if you turn to Revelation 11 all the way back to the end of the Bible, there are the mysterious two witnesses at the end of history. There is some controversy about who these two witnesses are. Many commentators argue it could be – some argue for Enoch and Elijah. But others point out it could be Moses and Elijah.

^NKJ Revelation 11:3, “And I will give power to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy one thousand two hundred and sixty days, clothed in sackcloth. ⁴ These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands standing before the God of the earth. ⁵ And if anyone wants to harm them, fire proceeds from their mouth and devours their enemies. And if anyone wants to harm them, he must be killed in this manner. ⁶ These have power to shut heaven, so that no rain falls in the days of their prophecy; and they have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to strike the earth with all plagues, as often as they desire.” Now if that doesn’t bring about memories of the geophysical linkage to the Sinaitic Covenant, I don’t know what does.

^NKJ Revelation 11:7, “When they finish their testimony …” Again, here is a kind of death again. “… the beast that ascends out of the bottomless pit will make war against them, overcome them, and kill them. ⁸ And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified. ⁹ Then those from the peoples, tribes, tongues, and nations will see their dead bodies three-and-a-half days, and not allow their dead bodies to be put into graves. ¹⁰ And those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them, make merry, and send gifts to one another, because these two prophets tormented those who dwell on the earth.”

It’s like they have a second Christmas celebration because these two guys are killed. So whether these are apparently not resurrected because they’re killed … Some people who have studied this passage pretty intensively argue that it’s the spirit of Moses and the spirit of Elijah that showed up here in these people. One example of that is the spirit of Elijah shows up already in the New Testament in John the Baptist because remember Jesus had that cryptic remark that “if you believe, then John the Baptist was Elijah. There is a strange continuity – like John the Baptist had a personality that was a carbon copy of Elijah and what that’s all about. Again it just gives you pause to think that we don’t really know what we’re talking about. We just have to be submissive to the text and say, “Gee Lord, this is interesting - another feature here that I don’t understand.” That’s the way it is.

Now out of all this – not to be totally speculative here – I am showing you these two slides that we’ve seen dozens and dozens of times because this passage today we’ve seen today goes all the way Deuteronomy 34 all the way over to Revelation 11. There’s a thread. We stopped at Jude. There’s a thread that appears through Scripture. Why does that characteristic happen? It only happens in the Bible. Let’s think about this. This is absolutely unique. Nowhere in the world’s literature do you have anything like this.

So let’s remember two things again about Israel. It’s is the only nation that has a contract with God. That is wrapped up in the whole idea of God verbally revealing Himself; and it’s wrapped up in the idea that there’s a rhyme and a reason to history. That’s how we know the universe is rational because of the contractual words of God that say this is the way it’s going to happen. If you do this, this happens; if you do that that happens. There’s rationality. There are not a bunch of gods and goddesses up there – we don’t know which god or goddess is going to ascend to the councils on Tuesday afternoon and it might be different on Wednesday than it was on Tuesday. You don’t have that chaos inside the Scriptures. It is a tremendous difference. We want to remember that only the Hebrews so far as we know had covenants with their God. That’s a unique feature. No other nation had this.

And then, the quote I always show you from Yehezkel Kaufmann the as a corollary to the first characteristic – if you’ve got a contract with God there has to be a monitoring of that contract over time because contracts are measuring sticks of behavior. It provides a measuring for measuring behavior. In order to measure behavior, you have to have data points – data point, data point, check up, check up, contract performance checkup. Those checkups are the prophets of the Old Testament. They are giving the data points on the outworking of these contracts. They’re performance reviews. So Yehezkel Kaufmann not going into all the theology that I have.

What makes the history sui generis is the succession of apostles of God that come to the people through the ages. Such a line of apostle-prophets is unknown in paganism.

Now can anybody think why? Why would that phenomenon not be true of paganism? Because of the first one, there’s no contract. There’s no continuity. History doesn’t have rationality. It is just a gathering of the gods – whoever can beat somebody up inside the divine council. That’s all. There is no rhyme and no reason to have a continuity of apostle-prophets.

See this is the stability the Scriptures give us over unbelieving friends. Our unbelieving friends are living in a mirage world. They keep talking about the uniformity of nature; and it’s all predictable and so on. No, it’s not. You can’t prove that empirically. The only basis of root of stability in this life is the continuity of God and His promises.

Not even those great souls that rose among the nations to found religions and teach the good way such as Buddha or Aster are a type of the prophets of Israel. They’re not. Paganism does not know of a continuous long succession generation of prophets.

So just remind us of those two things. Albright - only one nation has a contract. That means there is rationality to history. It is revelationally based - something else to point out. That means that revelation is the source of the information for rationality. If you’re going to reject the Scriptures, you are left with no foundation for rationality other than your own opinion.

The second thing here is that because you do have a contract and therefore a guarantee for the framework for history; then you can have history checks – checkpoints. And that’s the line of prophets. We’ve seen tonight an example of that where a little event like the burial of Moses gets involved with angelic beings who fight over his body. Then it’s this guy who has the unusual funeral who turns out to reappear on the Mount of Transfiguration centuries later. We’re talking 14 hundred here. Jesus is in the first century so we’re talking 1,400 years. Talk about continuity. Here this guy shows up. And who’s showing up with Moses? The other guy that had a weird exodus from history: Elijah. It is comforting to see the continuity of the Word of God.

Then it says – back to Deuteronomy 34. We’ll finish up this chapter here. The impact of the death of Moses so struck the nation that they mourned for a month. That’s unusual because usually it was a week or something like that – a much shorter term.

Here it said clearly in ^NKJ Deuteronomy 34:8, “And the children of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days. So the days of weeping and mourning for Moses ended.”

^NKJ Deuteronomy 34:9, “Now …” See how orderly things are. “… Joshua the son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom, for Moses had laid his hands on him; so the children of Israel heeded him, and did as the LORD had commanded Moses.” There’s the continuity.

Now in the outline I point out a word about indwelling. This is somewhat controversial. The work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament is different than the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church Age. His indwelling was neither permanent nor universal in the Old Testament. His indwelling was involved with natural skills like carpentry, metalworking and political skills – different from the spiritual gifts you see in the New Testament. Moses prophetically identified Joshua’s giftedness. So we’ve already gone through Deuteronomy 31 where they made a public show of this.

Finally, in verses 10 to12, we have the epitaph of Moses. This is the Holy Spirit working through whoever finished the editing of the book. What a wonderful epitaph for this great, great believer.

^NKJ Deuteronomy 34:10, “But since then there has not arisen in Israel a prophet like Moses …” And it says why. “… whom the LORD knew face to face, ¹¹ in all the signs and wonders which the LORD sent him to do in the land of Egypt, before Pharaoh, before all his servants, and in all his land, ¹² and by all that mighty power and all the great terror which Moses performed in the sight of all Israel.”

The key here is that Moses had this face-to-face thing. We don’t have time tonight; but I put there Exodus 33:9-23. Go back and read that passage. It’s a stunning passage where Moses so pleads with God. “I want to see him. Show me.” God says, “Okay.” Moses requests, “I want to see your glory God.” So God says, “I’ll show you My glory; but you stay here on this rock. I’m going to put My hand over you so you can’t see My face. But you’ll see My back.”

Obviously this is a theophany where God walks by in His glory for Moses. Nobody has had that in the Old Testament. So here you have this wonderful man, a man who was trained under pharaoh. Probably God picked Moses and put him as a baby inside the dynasty of the superpower of that time so Moses would understand what a kingdom should be like. He wasn’t just a stoneworker, a Jewish stoneworker. He wasn’t somebody out herding cattle. He was a man who worked the inside, inner circle of pharaoh himself. That’s the training that Moses had. So when he confronted God, God didn’t have to explain to him how a kingdom functions. When God said, “I am the king,” Moses was prepared. When he saw pharaoh, pharaoh was the king. Well, Yahweh is the king. He was uniquely prepared in his education as a young man for this.

I conclude down there in your handout going back to Deuteronomy 18 where it says: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 18:18, “I will raise up for them a Prophet like you from among their brethren, and will put My words in His mouth, and He shall speak to them all that I command Him …”

Those are the doctrines of Revelation and Inspiration. “… will put My words in His mouth.”

You can’t bypass this. That phrase (put words in my mouth) collides with every single attempt to explain the Bible as a result of Jewish aspirations and thinking through. That’s not the claim here. That’s not the claim. The claim is that God put His words in their mouths. Information was transferred. So the doctrines of Revelation and Inspiration applied here would clash with the entire enlightenment neo pagan tradition that ideas originate only in human minds and that all literature suffers from corrupted textual transmission equally. That’s why people don’t buy into the Scriptures – they think.

New ideas originate only in human minds. How do you know that? What’s the basis for that claim that all literature suffers from corrupted textual translation so the Bible can’t be trusted? Well, the Dead Sea Scrolls put an end to that little canard.

Then that section in Deuteronomy 18 that we’ve covered before: ^NKJ Deuteronomy 18:19, “And it shall be that whoever will not hear My words, which He speaks in My name, I will require it of him.” We see that in the New Testament that he that does not believe in Jesus Christ is condemned. Why? Because he does not believe in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

So that’s the end of Deuteronomy. Next week if you’ll think about it we’d like to come to grips with some of these great ideas that we’ve covered all the way through these 34 chapters.

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Okay, any questions?

Question

Probably it’s both. The strong words he used for these people shows very high emotion as he comes to them when he talks about them as rebels. When you see Moses interceding for the people; he’s not that way. It’s a different kind of Moses at that point. I think it was cumulative stress; but you’re right in the sense that the center is obviously faith because he’s saying in the next sentence, “What? Are we supposed to do this for you?”

The nearest thing is the rod in his hand.

“Let’s beat the rock. Maybe water will come out.”

He missed the point of what God wanted him to do there. But it’s a lesson – again when God does something it seems like He does 34½ other things simultaneously. Moses doing that and then being disciplined provided a wonderful illustration for the nation Israel that no one was exempt from discipline. Talk about social justice here. There’s a picture of it - the top dog in the country gets disciplined by Yahweh.

What does that tell you if you are one of the little peons out in one of the tribes?

“Gosh, look what he did to Moses. What’s He going to do to me if I get out of line?”

That’s what I’d think. There are no favorites in other words. There’s social justice.

Question

Oh, yeah. There’s a big argument among interpreters; and I think it’s unfounded; and I think it’s silly.

Question

Because when it’s translated “H” there in that passage; the reason for making “H” is the translator is specifically saying this is deity. It’s identifying the pronoun. They wanted to make that point because of the confusion that came up over this whole thing.

So it’s an attempt by the translator to say, “Hey, this is a special thing here guys. Pay attention to the pronoun.”

Now what the translations do like the NET translation (I’m not sure they did it at that point) - what the Hebrew translators will often do to make the text flow more clearly is they’ll take out the pronoun and put God’s name there. They do that not so much to take liberty of the text as they try to identify - what is the antecedent of the pronoun. You’ve got a second third singular pronoun before the verb “bury.” What is the antecedent of the pronoun if it’s not God? Moses? Then you’d have the antecedent of the pronoun as Moses buried Moses. That doesn’t make any sense. Where’s the singular antecedent of the pronoun bury? It seems to me that’s all you have to ask and it clears up the problem of what the subject of the verb bury is.

You are right. There’s an argument going on. I was tipped off though I haven’t seen it myself. I was tipped off by a discussion among translators. NIV doesn’t have a set standard translation. NIV I think has gone through 11 editions. This might be edition 8 or something. They’ve gone back and forth.

Question

Right, and it’s not capitalized. Right. And it doesn’t have to be capitalized. The only reason why some translations capitalize it there is because they want to make the point that God is doing it.

Question

The King James doesn’t have capital letters. The New King James does. But the New King James came out after NIV did their thing. So the guys that worked the New King James wanted to face off against the NIV, so that’s why they capitalized it.

Question

Pronouns for God are not usually capitalized, that’s correct. But the only reason why it’s capitalized here is because some other translators made an issue out of it. So it’s clear the translators of the New King James decided they’d make an issue out of it. No, it’s just third. The original language has the third singular. And so you have to infer from context what is the antecedent of this pronoun. Or in the case of the verb – it’s the verb, third singular - what’s the subject of the verb?

Yes.

Question

Well, that is a criticism that is ignorant of what we’re claiming. People that argue that way simply don’t understand the argument. The argument is that if you don’t have revelation as a foundation for rationality, you don’t have any foundation for rationality. So therefore it’s arbitrary. So our challenge back to such a person is - where do you ground your rationality?

Question

That’s your senses. Maybe it’s not my senses. You’re trapping yourself in a subjective position.

The point is that their idea – Ann Rand in particular. Remember Ann Rand is an ex-Marxist so she comes out of a totally atheistic position. It’s been a long time since I’ve read Ann Rand. But I would rather suspect that her criticism is that she views religion as a product of man’s mind.

Question

That’s begging the question. That’s not the claim of the Scriptures. The claim of the Scriptures is that God has spoken and not just to individuals. That’s why I showed those two slides there. We’re not talking about a mystic contemplating his navel on Mt. Sinai here. We’re talking about a public revelation that millions of people heard at the same time. Now was that mysticism?

Question

And what foundation do they have for claiming that ground?

Question

That’s not the critique of LDS and Islam. The critique of LDS and Islam is that it’s making a claim to be continuous with Mosaic theology. We can go back in Moses’ theology and show it’s not consistent with Mosaic theology; and therefore it’s irrational. That’s the criticism. The criticism is that they’re the ones who have not shown consistency.

What does Deuteronomy 18 say? Deuteronomy 18 says that every prophet that God authorizes will be contiguous with Moses. That’s why in the section where you shall love the Lord your God with all your heat and with all your soul; it starts out with the first commandment. And how did Israel enforce the first commandment against prophets? They killed them.

What was the basis of the capital trial? It wasn’t because the people walked into a courtroom and said, “I got a feeling in my stomach because I drank something yesterday.”

The trial was about whether they rationally fit the Mosaic template. It didn’t; so kill them.

Question

No, that’s presuppositional apologetics. You can’t run a bridge across the Grand Canyon. Visualize the Grand Canyon. The idea here is - Christian apologists have tried and tried and tried to make a continuity bridge across. The problem with building a bridge across is that you have to accept that both are interpreting some part of reality in the same way. We are not interpreting any aspect of reality in the same way. We are not reality in the same way. We are totally different. So you have to show the difference.

The proof of it is analyze the logic of Acts 17. Did Paul in Acts 17 try to build a bridge to the Athenians? He did not. If you understand the Athenian mind, he is attacking them at point after point after point starting with the first verse – those whom you ignorantly worshipped.

“Let me preach to you.”

He doesn’t say reason to you.

“I’m going to preach to you.”

So he splits this. A lot of the effort Paul spends in Acts 17 is he’s trying not to build a bridge because these guys have built a bridge and are interpreting two words that Paul spoke (anastasis and Iesous), Jesus and resurrection. So they built a bridge, the amoeba bridge. They sucked up His two words and reinterpreted them as gods and goddesses.

So Paul says, “I’m not going to have any common ground here. I am going to take you all the through point by point by point and show you that you are wrong in the area of cosmology. You’re wrong about epistemology. You are wrong in the area of history. You’re wrong in the area of values. By the way you’re also wrong history is going somewhere and God has raised up this man Jesus from the dead.”

You can’t have much more of a non-contiguous bridge building there. It’s not to be offensive to people; it’s rather to show the depth of the difference.

Question

It’s sensory based but it has a basis for the sensory base. In other words the idea is that we have a reason all the way from Genesis 1:26 – Genesis 1 for a basis for rationality and sensory perception. That’s the triangle diagram I show – God at the top. That anchors your empiricism. That anchors your validity in sensory perception. If you don’t have that, you can’t tell true sensory perception from a mirage that you’re seeing.

Question

Yeah, but the difference is this is historic revelation from millennia after millennia after millennia going back to the last two slides. Where else do you see continuity like this? Show me.

Question

What you’re getting at here is that in the modern world all believers, myself included, are under the gun constantly.

Paul warns us about this when he says, “Walk not in the vanity of your mind like the Gentiles.”

Now that is a strong verse if you unpack what he said in that verse. He’s arguing that the world is vain. That’s a technical word. It’s not just vanity. It’s the word that’s in Ecclesiastes. It’s an indictment of the entire reasoning processes of the world system. He says don’t walk that way. You walk because of your revelational base.

We have a basis for revelation. It’s a circle. It’s the whole totality of the Christian position. If you have a God that created with language, right there you have a basis for rationality. You don’t have that by the way with cosmological speculations. You don’t have any basis for rationality in cosmology. You have it because it’s postulated.

How we know this is because Socrates and the Greeks - these questions go all the way back to the Greeks. The guys that you work with, they aren’t coming up with new stuff. The stuff that they are coming up with is the same kind of stuff that Socrates, Plato and Aristotle dealt with. That’s why those men are important to understand because Socrates got to the point and he answered the whole Greek mess.

He says, “There is no basis for you guys postulating reason and the world of ideals. We have to postulate that it’s there. We start with the assumption it’s there.”

That’s arbitrary. They were unable to provide a foundation for that. We have a foundation because of the creator-creature distinction. Drop that distinction and you haven’t got anything. It goes back to the fact that the creator creature distinction you have an omniscient mind. We have finite minds. We don’t have total knowledge. That’s the diagram you see with space and time. I point out that our knowledge is limited that way. The rest of it’s all speculation. The idea that you’re sitting there and saying we learn things empirically. We also learn things logically.

The laws of logic have never been empirically been observed. You can study mathematics and you have logical theorems like transfinite numbers. Nobody has seen a transfinite number. What’s a transfinite number? That all came out of logical reasoning. Is the universe Euclidian or is it Riemannian? What kind of geometry is it that we have out there light years away from us? We don’t know. Most of our equations in cosmology are built on Euclidean geometry. How do you know Euclidean geometry is right? We don’t know that.

Look at the panic that happened when Pioneer 5 got out beyond Pluto and all of a sudden the red shift doesn’t fit the distance that it is from us. Everybody is sitting there scratching their heads. Something is going on with the physics. How did that happen? We don’t know. The point that we’re getting at guys is that unbelief is profoundly arrogant. It goes around and makes these universal statements. It has no foundation. It’s all air.

Question

What he is getting at going from n to n+1, there’s the uniformity problem. Induction depends on the uniformity hypothesis. It assumes that the n+1 situation is going to be similar to the n situation; therefore we can run induction. But what you wind up doing there is an infinite series of generalizations.

Question

Well, the problem is deeper than that. The problem is, if you want to get down to it you have to assume continuity to get to that point because you have to presume that the chemical and physical process of the brain are the same as they were yesterday. We can take this problem of continuity all the way down to a molecular level. This is profound.

I’m not making this up to be cute. I’m just saying when you read the guys who have thought through this stuff, what you wind up with is exactly the way Solomon wound up in Ecclesiastes.

^NKJ Ecclesiastes 1:14, “… all is vanity …”

It’s just a lot of hot air. It doesn’t mean a thing.

Who has information about the after life? Who has ever come back from the dead to tell us what happens after we die? Jesus has. Name another person.

Ultimately what it does is the New Testament says what you have here is a profound spirit of antichrist in that it’s a denial. Anybody who denies revelation has to deny Christ because Christ is the incarnate One. So Christ is revelation personified. So if you doubt revelation you’ve already adopted the spirit of antichrist. Christ can’t be who He is once you deny the fact of revelation.

The bottom line with revelation is this - God who created us and revealed His words to us is the authority for my intellectual life. I am judged by how I use my brains. It’s an ethical matter how I use my brains. This is not an intellectual game to be played and then at the end we suddenly invent ethics and build on this and say, “Oh gee. This is good; this is bad. All the time when we are developing our philosophy and foundation and we were ethically neutral.”

That isn’t the universe. We are judged by how we think because God has the right to tell us how we think because He made us.

It gets back to the fact – every unbeliever believes in absolute authority. Don’t ever think and back up and be embarrassed when you confess that you believe the Bible is your absolute authority. Absolute authority never goes away. It’s only transferred in its location. Unbelief has absolute authority in the person you are talking to or an elite group or something. Absolute authority is either placed in man or it’s placed in God - period. It never goes away. It’s an inescapable concept. Everybody believes in an ultimate authority because if you argue long enough, you wind up at the basic authority point. It’s either God (a self-revealing God) or it’s a person expressing himself that this is what I believe and that’s it and I’m not going to argue any further.

It’s a profound difference between the autonomous mind and the submissive mind to the Word of God. Our time is up.

Question

I think some sort of because the text says Moses, you didn’t trust. I think that typology was asking Moses and Aaron to trust Me.

“Don’t have a human work. I don’t want you to come up and touch it. Talk to it because that’s what I told you.”

The idea of coming up and hitting with a rod is clearly in the context an act of unbelief which is works. So it has something to do with faith and works there that’s going on in the text.

Question

You have to think about it in light of how Paul picks it up New Testament. The idea is obviously God said this is an important thing I want you to do and I want you to do it by my protocol.

Who is the ultimate authority in that act? Yahweh or Moses and Aaron.

Now look at what happened.

“It’s going to be our authority. We’re going to decide how we’re going to do this.”

You sure did pal. Look what happened.

I know we ran over but good discussion and good questions.