Deuteronomy 11-16 Recap | OT Ep 23

In this episode, Austin and Ashley continue to discuss Moses' farewell sermon to the new generation of Israelites. They further explore God's covenant with Israel through Moses' teachings to the Israelites, emphasizing the significance of passing down God's commandments, the proper way to worship, and the consequences of straying from God's laws. They also touch on the concept of slavery in the context of freedom and the joy of celebrating God's deliverance from bondage.

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

Chapters

• 0:00 Moses' Farewell Continues (Ch 11)
• 4:35 Worshiping the One True God (Ch 12)
• 10:52 Idolatry/False Prophecy (Ch 13)
• 13:24 Do Not Worship How They Worship (Ch 14)
• 15:41 Free Slaves (Ch 15)
• 19:31 Festivals and Remembering God's Deliverance (Ch 16)

Transcript

Welcome back, friends.

This is episode 23 and we are going to recap Deuteronomy chapters 11 through 16. So remember that Deuteronomy is kind of like Moses' farewell sermon to Israel. He is laboring over and over to share with this new generation of Israelites to remember what the Lord has done, remember what I have taught you about his law. So chapter 11 starts with a therefore. And anytime you see the word therefore,

you must stop and ask yourself, what is the therefore there for? If you did that in your reading, give yourself 100 bonus points.

Moses has just reminded them at the end of chapter 10,

And now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven.

So Moses is saying, God chose you, loved you, rescued you out of Egypt, and has made you as numerous as the heavens. So therefore, you shall therefore love the Lord your God and keep his charge, his statutes, his rules, and his commandments always.

and he continues addressing this generation like they were in Egypt for the Exodus. But it is again just evidence that God's covenant he made with them extends to the entirety of Israel as a nation, not just the generation who passed away in the wilderness.

And notice that Moses calls their attention to the Lord's justice in His perfect discipline. Like the plagues He sent upon Egypt and how He defeated Egypt's army at the Red Sea, He even mentions the rebellion of Korah, where He had to discipline the Israelites for their disobedience.

Picking up in verse 8, we have another therefore. So what do we ask ourselves? What is the therefore, therefore?

Because you have seen all the great work of the Lord, you shall keep the whole commandment that I command you today, that you may be strong and go in and take possession of the land that you are going over to possess, that you may live long in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give to them and to their offspring, a land flowing with milk and honey.

Fun fact, there is actually no evidence of beekeeping in ancient Canaan, so the honey that's talked about here is likely a syrupy type substance made from dates, and the milk is likely goat's milk. So as Chad Bird says, goat milk and date syrup aren't exactly as romantic sounding to us,

But to the Israelites wandering in the wilderness, it kept their hopes kindled.

Moses points out here that the land they are going to possess is not like Egypt. This land, the land of Canaan, is full of hills and valleys, which drinks water by the rain from heaven, meaning the Lord takes care of watering this land.

And if you will obey the commandments, he will give the rain for your land in its season.

and will give you grass for the livestock, and you shall eat and be full. But take care if your heart is deceived. He will shut up the heavens so that there will be no rain and no yield, and you will perish quickly.

Therefore, lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul. Teach them to your children, write them on the doorposts, talk of them all the time. In other words, Moses is saying, I am dying. I was charged with teaching you this law and my mission is complete. Now you must talk about it and pass it down and teach it and memorize it.

Moses ends this section with, Do all I am saying before you today.

Chapter 12 has a lot to do with where the Lord wants to be worshiped in this land Israelites are moving into. God is very clear in verse two that the Israelites are to destroy every place where the nations, quote, served their gods or, you know, they worshiped their gods.

In verse three, God tells the Israelites to tear down.

their altars and dash into pieces their pillars and burn the ashram with fire.

Now, for those of you who aren't familiar, the ashram are either like these large wooden poles or wooden structures that are built around worship sites.

God tells them to chop down any carved image and destroy their name out of the place.

verse 4, Moses tells the Israelites, they will not worship the Lord their God in that way. So when Moses says that way, let's remember what he's talking about.

The first two commandments alone forbid the sort of worship, meaning like worshiping another God other than Yahweh or making idols. But then we have to remember that all these cultures actively practice human sacrifice and oftentimes that was sacrificing children and little babies, which you actually see come back into play at the end of this text.

Moses is saying to not even leave a symbol of the worship of the false gods of Canaan, lest someone mistakenly use one of those methods to worship the Lord. God is not at all interested in being worshiped in a way that seems right to man. God will be worshiped in a way that honors him and is pleasing to him.

Let's keep in mind the thesis of this podcast as well as the witness of Christ Himself in John 5 verse 39 where Jesus says, talking to the Pharisees, you search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life and it is they that bear witness about Me. God is so particular about how He is worshiped because He knows it will point to Christ.

So then in verse 5, Moses tells the people where they can worship the Lord. Verse 5 says, you shall seek the place that the Lord your God will choose out of all the tribes to put, and underline this in your mind, to put His name and make His habitation there. There you shall go.

So during this period of time, God only gives them one place to worship Him, which is where He will direct the tabernacle to be set. Later, of course, it would be Jerusalem where the temple would be built.

But notice where the text says that God will put his name in a place.

Some translations say that he will place his name in a certain place.

say that Jesus is the quote, place we are to worship. What I mean by that is we don't have a place where we have to worship God the way they did. The Israelites were to carry out their worship of God confined in one spot, the tabernacle or later the temple.

But even in the story of the woman at the well that Jesus speaks with in the Gospels, he was explaining to her that that place would soon be irrelevant.

and Jesus was saying that because he knew that all was about to be fulfilled and we would worship him wherever we are.

But going back to this text, when you do a little background study where the text is talking about in verse 5 about the name that God was going to place somewhere, the name itself almost takes on some sort of personhood.

It's similar to how in some places, Scripture says that God sets His glory in the tabernacle, or sometimes His angel in the tabernacle.

There are various places in the Old Testament where your Bible will read the Angel of the Lord. So the Hebrew for that phrase is Malak-e Yahweh.

Now the translation, the angel, the Lord is just fine, but there is something going on there. So Malak does indeed mean messenger,

but you only see the verbiage, THE messenger of the Lord show up at significant times. The church has taught throughout generations that when we see THE messenger of the Lord, scripture is referring to Christ.

Now in Orthodox Christianity, this isn't an issue.

because we believe God the Son, Jesus, is eternal. It isn't a problem for Him to have visited Earth before His incarnation into flesh. This is similar to how in Psalm 110.1, Scripture reads, the Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.

Something you can't see while you listen to me talk

is that in the English Bible I'm reading out of where the scripture says the Lord, that is actually capitalized. So have you guys ever seen that and wondered why Lord is all caps when you see that? Well, it's actually really important that you know the answer to that question. Whenever we see Lord in all caps in scripture, it is letting us know that the Hebrew there would actually have been the name of God, Yahweh.

So another way of rendering this verse, Psalm 110, 1, it would be, Yahweh says to my Lord. So guys, Psalm 110 is really saying that it God the Father talking about Jesus telling him to sit at his right hand.

Think also back to Genesis 1 verse 26, where the Word says, Let us make man in our image. Who is the us mentioned there? It's God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. That's who.

guys, take notice of these things and let that fuel your faith in our triune God.

Deuteronomy 12 rounds out by Moses discussing several things regarding their victory in the land, rituals with sacrifices, and more about proper worship. But I want to draw your attention to the last few verses of the chapter where Moses again is taking aim at idol worship. It sort of bookends the chapter and sets up chapter 13 by reminding them of how quickly they've fallen into this in the past.

That's right, Moses is telling them in that last verse of chapter 12, this is where we've messed up before, let's not do that again. Do not add or take away from the command of the Lord.

Now, chapter 13 starts off with someone, the scripture would call a dreamer of dreams or a prophet, who claims to have a word from the Lord, but their word is contrary to scripture or contrary to the law that the Lord has given.

Now this is not only talking about just blatant false prophecy, but anyone teaching that they should worship other gods is a big deal. This could be one of the most genuine people.

but they could be 100 % genuine and at the same time 100 % wrong. We saw in Exodus with the Egyptian magicians that their magic was genuine, they were able to do some signs,

But did their proclamation line up with God's word? No, then they are wrong.

This chapter goes on to say, even if it's a close person to you, their punishment for this is still the same.

God said that anyone teaching contrary to his law and his word should be stoned.

He even addresses if the entire city was drawn away to worship other gods. Then, of course, you inquire, you search, you ask diligently. Then, if you confirm that that is the case, you devote it to destruction,

Now keep in mind that this did not typically look like someone dressed with a pitchfork and red horns saying, don't worship Yahweh. In this society, it was a polytheistic society. So it would have sounded something like, yeah, yeah, worship Yahweh, he's great and all, but worship Yahweh and God plus something.

It's called being seduced because it sounds or looks nice on the surface. But what has God said? You shall have no other gods before me. Remember that God is just and wants the punishment to befit the crime. So causing someone to fall into disobedience to the Lord would equal death for the deceived and therefore call for death for the deceiver as well.

Stepping into chapter 14, the context is really all about the holiness of Israel, not earned mind you, but called for. God starts this chapter by saying, you are the sons of the Lord your God, which is to say, because you're mine, you don't do the following things.

You don't cut yourselves when you're in mourning

and you don't rip out spots of hair on your head when you're mourning. And both of these are clearly a sign that that was happening in the land they were going into or else why would God have brought that up?

Remember, pagan worship had a lot to do with trying to manipulate the God they're trying to serve and to doing something for them. So it's probable they thought they had to do something to the effect of, if I do this and I'm in enough anguish, he'll take notice of me.

Yahweh, the Lord, the creator of heaven and earth is not that way.

He does not need you to hurt yourself in order for him to take notice of you.

Moses then goes back into the dietary restrictions and really gets specific this time. Remember all of this is because they were a holy people and needed to be different from the nations around them. In verse 22 and going to the end of the chapter, we see the concept of tithing being fleshed out more for Old Testament Israel. As a sidebar, the concept of tithing is still something that is applied.

but it is not a command for us in the way that it was for them. Thus, doesn't look the same for us either.

I want to be really clear, I'm not saying we shouldn't give

because that would be the opposite of what Jesus taught.

And for me, I think the tithe is still biblical since it predates the law itself. However, the Israelites were bound to it in their covenant with God in a way we are not.

But the tithe is the one place that God says to test him.

Normally God says, not test the Lord.

But however much you give, know that God loves you and doesn't need you to tithe in order for Him to take care of you. Jesus tells us to give with a cheerful heart. So pray and consider what God would have you to give to help the local church as it seeks to spread the gospel in our communities.

In chapter 15, Moses brings up the Sabbath year.

every seven years, every creditor should release what he has lent to his neighbor. Which by the way, how long does something typically stay on your credit report? Seven years. That's interesting, isn't it?

Verse 4, there will be no poor among you, for the Lord will bless you in the land, if only you will strictly obey voice of the Lord your God.

So is saying, hey, I'm gonna bless you so much that there should be no poor among you.

But if there is someone who should become poor, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your brother. You shall give to him freely and without a grudge.

Before we move on, we are about to see the term slave or bond servant again. And just because our country has such a terrible connotation when it comes to the word slave, I just want to point out that this type of slavery in America was wrong and goes against what the Bible teaches. The type of slavery that we are going to talk about was the type akin to the kind that into with credit cards today.

You don't have the money for something, X amount for X amount of years until your debt is paid. So the borrower in this context is literally a slave to the lender for X amount of years until their debt is paid.

So in verse 13 it says, when you let him go free from you, you shall not let him go empty handed. You shall furnish him liberally from your flock, from your threshing floor and your winepress.

Give to him, as the Lord has blessed you, because you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord God redeemed you.

Now we have arrived at the gospel glimpse for this section. I'm going to read verses 16 and 17 to us.

talking about that same slave that has paid his debt. But if he says to you, will not go out from you because he loves you and your household since he is well off with you, then you shall take an awl and put it through his ear into the door and he shall be your slave forever. This was a very physical manifestation of a greater reality that this slave was a permanent part of the house now, that he would be there forever

to give ear to the Master's call. On one side of the coin, we see us as the slave, and after being liberated from our debt of sin, it is our joy to remain in the Master's house and serve Him forever. On the other side, we see Christ as the greater reality of the most humble servant who owed no debt, but was paying our debts for us and was pierced to pay it in full.

Whose ears did not need to be pierced, because in Psalm 40 verse 6, the Messiah says to his father, in sacrifice and offering you have not delighted, but you have given me an open ear. Chad Bird says it this way, what that ear piercing symbolized, Christ made reality. He had no need of piercing for the ears of this anointed servant were always open to the voice of his father.

willingly and everlastingly doing His will to accomplish the salvation and freedom of humanity.

Friends, that is what you call a twofer. That is a double gospel glimpse if I've ever seen one. So I'm just gonna end chapter 15 right there, because I don't think I can top that any further.

Moving into chapter 16, the first 17 verses God, through Moses, is reminding the Israelites to keep the festivals that are laid out for the people in the books of Exodus and Leviticus.

Like Ashley reminded us, this is a new generation and Moses is trying to make sure this new generation has all the instructions afresh before going into the land.

I'm not going to go into great detail on these festivals because Ashley did such a great job explaining those in episode 16. So if you want to hear more about those, please go back and listen to that episode.

What I would say is we shouldn't feel that scripture is droning on about this because

God is reminding the people that the only reason they even get to have these festivals and go into their own land is because God freed them from Egypt.

This is really a get to not got to situation. Don't get me wrong. God is commanding them to remember these things. But guys, imagine being them just for a moment.

They get to celebrate because the creator of the universe care for them enough to break them free from bondage.

I mean think about it, what do they have to offer him?

In Psalm 50 verses 10 through 12, God says, for every beast of the field is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the hills and all that moves in the field is mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world in its fullness are mine.

God set His love upon them because He loved them. It really is as simple as that.

Now Christian, none of what I just said should be too hard for you to imagine.

All of that happened when Christ saved you.

You were in bondage to your sin. You were slave to your flesh. And for the love He set upon you, not because you could offer Him anything that He needed, He died for you. That is a love we should pour ourselves out to tell the world about.

With that gospel glimpse in mind, God warns the people one more time in this chapter not to worship or even appear to worship as the other nations do. Why? Because what God has done for the Israelites and what God has done for me and for you, Christian, is too great to be co-mingled with the world.

And guys, that's going to do it for today. May His grace abound to you and to me as we study to find Jesus in the Old Testament.