Deuteronomy 3-10 Recap | OT Ep 22

In this episode, Austin and Ashley explore the themes of God's Word, the significance of Moses' intercession, the importance of obedience, and the nature of God's covenant with Israel. They discuss how the Old Testament points to Christ, the dangers of idolatry, and the lessons learned from Israel's history. The conversation emphasizes God's desire to dwell with His people, the significance of the Ten Commandments, and the importance of loving God and fearing Him rightly. Ultimately, they highlight God's faithfulness and goodness throughout Israel's journey.

Reading Plan - Old Testament in One Year
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tSmSv3JOd-gCJS6VSFMtu-iv14NZ45_M/view?usp=sharing

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro: Focusing on Christ
• 1:22 Continuing the Story (Ch 3)
• 2:37 The Importance of Obedience (Ch 4)
• 11:40 Moses as Mediator (Ch 5)
• 15:34 The Greatest Commandment (Ch 6)
• 18:17 Exclusive Relationship with God (Ch 7)
• 21:23 Lessons from the Wilderness (Ch 8)
• 22:51 Not Because of Your Own Righteousness (Ch 9)
• 24:57 God's Faithfulness and Love (Ch 10)

Transcript

Hey everyone,

My name is Austin. And my name is Ashley. Welcome to the Clean Slate Podcast. Where we're finding Jesus in the Old Testament.

Hey friends, we're so happy to have you back with us for episode 22 where we're going to recap Deuteronomy chapters 3 through 10.

Before we jump in today, I want to remind you guys of something we have spoken about in the past. When we read any book of the Bible, but definitely when we read something pertaining to Old Testament Israel, we have to remember that context is key.

There are certain things that Moses says or God says that are specific to Israel.

That does not mean there aren't things we need to learn. This is God's Word, and there are things that point to Christ, help us see God's character, and indeed, there are some things that do pertain to us.

In our study together, we are focusing heavily on Christ and how the Old Testament points to Him, but we do try and help with some of bigger context-related things as well. As you seek to study deeper and understand context, your best friend is a theologically sound study bible.

We have a pinned post on our Facebook page that has several resources you can use, including links to some really great study bibles. I'm going to turn it over to Ashley, who's going to get us started on today's recap.

The stories recounted by Moses thus far and in chapter 3 should still sound somewhat familiar to you from Leviticus. We are still in the historical accounting of Israel through chapter 4 verse 43. But you may notice that there are details Moses shares in Deuteronomy that give more context to the stories that we've already heard. In small group we were talking about Moses and how he interceded for the people so many times.

But why didn't he ask God to change his mind about him entering the promised land? Well, as you read through chapter three, we see that he did in fact ask God to do that.

In verse 23, it says that Moses pleaded with the Lord, but Moses says the Lord was angry with me because of you people. And remember that Moses was banned from the promised land for his own disobedience, but he was driven to that point by the complaining Israelites for years. So I'd say it's both. In verse 26, we see the Lord answer back and said, enough from you. Do not speak to me again on this matter. But,

As we've already read, the Lord so kindly lets Moses go up the mountain and look at the promised land that the Lord has given to them.

Moving on to chapter four, Moses starts with, now, Israel, listen to the statutes and the rules that I am teaching you and do them that you may live and go and take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers is giving you. And it ends up saying basically, do not add to the word or take away from it so that you can keep the commandments of the Lord. You have seen what the Lord has done to those who worship anything other than him.

But you who held fast to Yahweh are all alive today. Moses goes on to command obedience from this new generation in Israel. Is it because God needs their obedience to regain his power? Is he like Zeus and depends on the prayers of the people to maintain his strength? No, God doesn't need his people. He desires to dwell with them.

So he gives them this law to follow. Why? The first answer and the answer that applies to all Christians in verse one, do these things so that you may live. God's word is where life is found. John one verse 14 says, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, glory as of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth.

Jesus is the Word that became flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus is where life is found.

The second answer at the end of verse one does not apply to us, but to Israel as a country. It says, in and take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers is giving you. This land possession was not through military strength or strategy, but to the comprehensive obedience of the statutes and rules that the Lord had given them.

Moses goes on to talk about what people would say about the nation of Israel. That the nation that follows God's word is so wise and understanding. And he reminds them of the nearness of God to them. In verse seven, what great nation is there that has a God so near to them as the Lord our God is to us? Think about the culture of other nations that we've seen up to this point. Those nations are reduced to mere speculation about what their God's desire from them

Whether they are pleasing their gods or not, did they recite the incantation right? Did they sacrifice enough babies to earn favor in the sight of their God? Did they ask the right God to do the right thing? Israel never had to wonder what the Lord wanted of them or what their future would hold. God is not some abstract deity. He has made himself known to creation and spoke to Israel himself.

Moses talks to this new generation as if they were there when the 10 commandments were given at Mount Sinai. These 10 commandments were the

only ones spoken audibly to all of Israel by God himself and were written by God on the two stone tablets. The rest of the covenant was spoken to Moses who was instructed to write them down and teach them to Israel.

Moses speaks to them in this way, about these events.

because God's covenant extends to the entire nation of Israel. He says, the Lord spoke to you and he declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform. He has made himself known to you, even you young Israel, in that his power and majesty is revealed in creation and his law is written down for you. And many of you have seen what happened recently, but

All of you have heard the word by your fathers.

Picking up in verse 15, Moses says specifically that the Lord purposely took no form on the day he spoke to them so that they would not make any image or an idol to worship. Moses says do not make an image in any figure in the likeness of male or female or animal or bird or fish or the sun and moon and stars or all the heavens.

because you may be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them. Do you hear that same list of the creation account here? God is the template for all creation, infinitely higher than all He has made. Therefore, we cannot claim the right to make likenesses of God as though we were His creator. But rather than attempting to describe God as some abstract visual,

of something that would honestly pale in comparison to his actual glory. God is not described here in how he appears.

but he's described in what he does. verse 20, but the Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace out of Egypt to be a people of his own inheritance as you are this day.

verses 25 through 29, you need to tuck away in your brain for later. I'll read them to us now. when you father children and children's children and have grown old in the land.

and you act corruptly by making a carved image in the form of anything, and by doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, so as to provoke him to anger. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that you will soon utterly perish from the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess. You will not live long in it, but will be utterly destroyed, and the Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the Lord will drive you.

And there you will serve gods of wood and stone, the work of human hands

that neither see nor hear nor eat nor smell. But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find him if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul.

spoiler alert, we will see that this does indeed happen. They become idolatrous and the Lord scatters them among the nations. But this is what drives them back to the Lord.

In verse 32, Moses continues to describe God as what he has done. And I love this set of rhetorical questions. Ask anybody of all time from creation to now, from one end of heaven to the other, whether such a great thing as this has ever happened or was ever heard of. Did any people ever hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire as you have heard and still live?

Has any God ever attempted to take a nation for himself from another nation that they were enslaved to?

By asking these rhetorical questions, Moses is trying to draw attention of Israel to God's majesty and power in that he did these things and it was not hard for him.

Verses 41 through 43, Moses actually names three of the cities of refuge east of the Jordan. We talked about the cities of refuge in the last episode because remember that two and a half tribes settled in the land on the border prior to entering the promised land. Remember that in Numbers 35, there are a total of six cities of refuge and we will later see the other three named in Deuteronomy chapter 19.

in verse 44, we are starting a new section, if you will,

from here to the next several chapters, actually through about chapter 11, we're going to see some stipulations put on Israel. If you remember how Ash and I have spoken in the past of the covenant that God has with Israel, is really a lot of an if this, then that type of covenant.

If the Israelites will do God's will and uphold His law, then they'll be blessed. If they do not, they'll be cursed.

Now remember, God always tilts toward grace and mercy in that He is patient and long-suffering.

This isn't a bad deal or covenant that the Israelites have made with God, but like Hebrews 10.31 says, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Making an agreement like this with Yahweh is dangerous if you do not keep your word.

how thankful we are that our great High Priest, Jesus Christ, has paid our debt for us and we don't live in an if-this-then-that covenant now.

if this is the righteousness of Christ that has been imputed to us so that the then that is we are treated as if we are righteous.

As John MacArthur put it, on the cross, God treated Jesus as if He had lived your life, so that He could treat you as if you had lived His.

All right, back to the text. So verses 44 through 49 remind us of the geographical location of where these things took place regarding the giving of the law and the statutes.

In verse 1 of chapter 5, Moses says, Hear, O Israel! Whenever you see this in the text of Deuteronomy, pay attention. This introduces a new section or a new thing Moses is going to discuss. In verse 2, Moses reminds the people that God made a covenant with them. And in verse 3, Moses reminds them that this covenant was not only those who died in the wilderness, with everyone who is there today.

Verses 4 and 5 give us a glimpse of Moses as mediator and what a beautiful picture of Christ it is. Moses represented the people to God since they were afraid to go up and since God gave Moses the law, he represented God to them in the reading of it.

Christ, a better Moses, represents us, like I mentioned, on the cross, and He not only represents God to us, He is, as the ancient creed testifies, true God from true God. He is God, and He walked among us.

Verse 6 is a direct quote from Exodus 20 verse 2, and it says,

Jesus tells us in John chapter 8 verses 34 through 36,

Just how God set the people free from Egypt and then goes on to give them the law? Jesus sets us free from sin when we repent of our sins and put our faith and trust in Him and then He bids us obey.

God does not ask you to clean up before coming to Him. He asks you to come to Him and He is faithful and able to write His law in your heart so that you want to obey it.

As we say in the South, don't put the cart before the horse. Don't try to figure it out. Just come to Jesus, put your trust in Him to save you, and He will take care of you.

Moses then goes on to remind them of the Ten Commandments that God gave them at Sinai.

All of the commandments were important, but I want you to notice in this week's reading that Moses unpacks two specifically in his retelling.

Moses focused on the second commandment, shall not make for yourself a carved image. And the fourth commandment, observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy. I thought that was interesting because both of those things would have implications in Israel's future. In particular, the idol worship that will be a major problem for Israel later in the Old Testament.

Moses then reminds them of the events of the giving of the law for the next several verses.

Something I found super insightful is verses 25 through 29, which is the retelling of that particular part from Exodus, where the Israelites saw Mount Sinai and how there was fire and smoke and they feared God. God had invited them all up, but they rightly asked, who has seen God and lived?

God says in verse 29, Oh, that they had such a heart as this always to fear me and keep all my commandments that it might go well with them and with their descendants forever. Notice God wished that the people would always have this right kind of fear, this justified fear of him. The type of fear or lack thereof that Israel as a nation would go on to have is the very thing that caused them to stumble. As Proverbs 1 verse 7 says,

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, fools despise wisdom and instruction The right fear of God protects all of us and keeps us humble. It helps us to see His Word rightly and with it the world around us.

Moving into chapter 6, the opening section of that chapter through about verse 9 is Moses telling the Israelites that in order for them to live long in the land and multiply in it,

They need to, quote, love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. In verse five.

If that sounds familiar to you, it is exactly what Jesus quoted in the Gospels when answering the Pharisees question, which is the greatest commandment.

Jesus said that doing that and loving your neighbor as yourself sums up the teachings of how to live a righteous life.

Notice that when Christ says that in the New Testament, he is essentially summing up the whole 10 commandments.

I am of the belief that when Jesus said, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, He is referring to the first table of the law or the first tablet. And when He says, love your neighbor as yourself, He is referring to the second table or tablet of the law.

I think it's not disputable that in order to walk this commandment out well,

you need to have God first because the second part of the law flows from the love of God.

gospel glimpse for this recap is looking at how this chapter has to do with Matthew chapter four, verses one through 11. And that story of Jesus life, Jesus goes out into the wilderness and is there tempted by Satan. If you remember his out there for 40 days with no food then Satan comes to tempt him

turn stones into bread because he was hungry. Two, throw himself down from the top of the temple and God would send his angels to catch him. And three, bow down and worship Satan, and that Satan would give Jesus all the kingdoms of the world as Jesus' possession.

In all three cases, Christ used Scripture from the book of Deuteronomy to answer him. Two from this chapter, verses 13 and 16.

and one from chapter 8, which is verse 3.

Here are a few things I'd like us to notice about the similarities of Israel's temptation and Christ's temptation. So Israel wandered for 40 years and Jesus wandered for 40 days. Israel was tempted by food or lack of and Christ likewise was tempted by food because he didn't eat for 40 days. Israel was tempted by false worship. Christ was also tempted to worship something other than the Father.

In each of these trials, Christ was obedient where Israel failed all three.

In this way, Jesus showed us that He is the Son whose heart was truly devoted to the Lord, and as such, His righteousness brings us blessings.

In chapter 7, the exclusive relationship Israel is supposed to have with the Lord is worked out in the context of conquering the land of these other nations and Israel's response to that. In verse 2, the Lord says those people conquered must be devoted to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them.

you shall not intermarry with them giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons. For they would turn away your sons from following me to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you and he would destroy you quickly.

We have seen time and time again Israel's tendency to stray into idolatry. So Moses is warning them here not to intermarry with them because why? Because Israel did not need to put themselves in a situation to be tempted to worship other gods. Verse five he continues, but thus shall you deal with them. You shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their ashram, which is a wooden pillar that stood near the altar in Canaan.

and burn their carved images with fire.

Here's where that exclusive relationship comes in. Verse six, for you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.

It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, you were the fewest of all peoples. But it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers.

To follow that thought, let's go back to Genesis chapter 15 verse 16. The Lord is speaking to Father Abraham, who is still Abram at the moment, and God says about his offspring, and they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.

The ESV Study Bible says here, Israel's covenant with God is exclusive, and thus covenants with other nations are prohibited.

The listed nations inhabit Israel's land promised by God. They are being punished for their sins. The God of justice is using Israel as his executioner and any mercy shown to those whom God is judging will not only compromise God's punishment, but will also make Israel vulnerable to follow their evil ways.

So we are seeing a tandem situation going on in which we see God fulfilling his promise to give them the land of Canaan and executing his divine judgment on these other people groups.

The rest of the chapter deals with any reservations that this new generation of Israelites may have about conquering the promised land. That the Lord will clear these nations away before you, quote, little by little, and any idol that they see should be burned with fire.

Moving into chapter 8, Moses talks to them about the fact that the wilderness wanderings were not only a punishment, but also a test. It was a test to reveal the state of Israel's heart.

This testing was also to teach Israel that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Real life derives directly from God and trusting his word. Israel had to go through the wilderness to learn that if the Lord alone will provide in times of desperation, that the Lord alone will provide in times of plenty as well.

A warning ends the chapter in verse 17.

Moses warning includes the phrases to remember and if you forget.

Now we tend to think of those words as absent mindedness, but they are verbs that indicate action. Remembering would equal obedience and forgetting would equal idol worship.

Idolatry is an act of action against the Lord, not simply an act of forgetfulness.

And Moses says that that action would result in their perish, like the nations the Lord is driving out before them.

Chapter 9 begins by telling us all that will happen. Israel will soon cross over the Jordan and dispossess nations greater and mightier than they, as the scripture says. And God will drive out the inhabitants of the land before them.

God warns at verse 4 not to think that it is because of their own righteousness the Lord has done these things, but rather the wickedness of the peoples living in the land.

Moses continues on and further explains that it is also because of the promise that God had made to their forefathers. six, says, Know therefore that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people. Remember and do not forget how you provoked the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness.

from the day that you came out of the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the Lord.

Moses continues on to recount the story of how when he came back down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments, he threw them down and broke them since the people were in the very act of worshiping an idol they had made.

Moses reminds them that more than once his intercession saved them from God's wrath. Chapter 10 kind of continues on the same where Moses is reminding them of the other times that they had utterly failed God's commandments. When I was reading this the other day, I had sort of a chuckle. I felt like Moses was really letting them have it and kind of unloading 40 years of frustration.

And a little bit of that may be true, but then you have this beautiful close to the chapter. Moses goes on to explain that all that he is calling him to do,

you know, keeping the law and obeying the Lord, that it's all for their good. He explains that despite all the things he has said, God set his heart in love on their fathers and chose each and every one of them to be in his chosen nation. He calls him to circumcise their hearts because God is a great, mighty, and loving God.

I want to close out the recap today by reading the last six verses of chapter 10. Starting in verse 17,

You shall fear the Lord your God. You shall serve Him and hold fast to Him, and by His name shall you swear. He is your praise. He is your God.

who has done for you these great and terrifying things that your eyes have seen.

Your fathers went down to Egypt, seventy persons, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven.

Friends, God has done all that He has done for Israel because He is good and does what He says He's going to do and He loves them. Let that be your takeaway from all the things Moses has said up to this point.

God fulfills His promises, amen.

That's going to do it for today's recap guys. May his grace abound to you and to me as we study to find Jesus in the Old Testament.