Deuteronomy 1-34 – Study Guide

Introduction

A young girl stands, paralyzed in the toy section. In her hand is a crisp $20 bill just received from Grandma. Her eyes dart back and forth between Option A: Sparkle Unicorn Palace and Option B: Dino-Mite Science Kit. She’s doing mental gymnastics.

“If I pick Unicorn Palace, I’ll never know the joy of baking-soda powered volcanic eruptions.”

“If I go with Dino-Mite, I won’t be able to have tea-parties with Unicorn royalty.”

She knows she can’t them both, and that’s the really annoying part. Whatever she chooses determines what she will not have; and it’s driving her crazy.

Mom is trying her best to sell the Unicorn Palace and Dad is reading the ingredients on the shampoo bottle for the 14^th time. Finally Mom snaps. “Pick one or we’re buying you toothpaste and calling it a toy.”

It’s at this moment that her face lights up! She’s spotted Option C: Glow in the Dark slime Lab and the entire process starts all over.

Raise the Need, State the Destination, Give Signposts:

Today we conclude our study of the Pentateuch in the book of Deuteronomy: a book all about choosing. Deuteronomy is a collection of sermons Moses preached to Israel in the plains of Moab just before they entered Canaan. It is a second reading, or repetition, of the Law which was first delivered at Sinai as Israel was freed from Egyptian slavery.

One of the most important books in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy explains everything coming before it and it foretells everything that comes after it. Deuteronomy explained Isreal’s history: they were descended from Abraham and heirs to the covenant God’s with Abraham. Deuteronomy prepared Israel for her future. Moses would soon die and Israel would enter Canaan under a new leader, Joshua. Deuteronomy also prepared Israel for an event 700 hundred years after Deuteronomy was written: Israel’s disobedience in Canaan and their subsequent exile into Assyria and Babylon in the 8^th century B.C.

Think of Deuteronomy as ancient Israel’s constitution while in Canaan. It tells how they came to be: God chose them. And it told them how to remain in Canaan: choose God.

As we work through this book, we’ll do so under three headings:

1. God Chose You
2. You Will Wander
3. God Sends A Better Moses & A Better Covenant

1. God Chose You

The opening chapters of Deuteronomy recap all that the nation has gone through since leaving Egypt:

• Chapter 1 catalogues Israel’s journey to Sinai then from Sinai to their rebellion on the borders of Canaan.
• Chapters 2-3 cover the wilderness wanderings of Israel and several battles along the way.
• Chapter 4 exhorts the people to obey God and Chapter 5 restates the Ten Commandments.

It’s as if Moses is saying, “Ok, Israel. One more time, let’s remember all that God has done for us.” And why has God done all of this for Israel? Deuteronomy 7:6

⁶ “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.

God has done all this for Israel simply because he chose them. They were his sovereign choice. Out of all the nations of the world, God chose to make a covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And why did he do that? Next verse:

⁷ It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, ⁸ but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

They were not chosen because they were large, or mighty, or wise, or righteous. In fact, if you flip over to Deuteronomy 9:6 God says this:

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.

Why did God choose Israel? Simply because he decided to do so, because he is the sovereign God who does what he pleases.

This has been a central doctrine in all of the Pentateuch.

• God sovereignly creates the world. No one forces him.
• God sovereignly curses the world after man’s sin.
• God sovereignly chooses Seth, Noah, and Abraham.
• God decides when to judge Sodom and Gomorrah and when to allow Isaac to live.
• God sovereignly overrules the evil done to Joseph and saves Jacob’s family from famine.
• God sovereignly redeems Israel from Egypt and will now lead them into Canaan.

Deuteronomy calls Israel to remember that God sovereignly chose them. And this becomes the pattern for understanding why God chooses anyone.

If you’re new to Christianity, you may have some misunderstanding of what Christianity teaches. We do not teach that God chooses people who are better than other people, or smarter, wiser, stronger, or more beautiful. He doesn’t choose anyone on ethnic grounds, or even moral grounds. To be a Christian is not to be “better” than anyone else. In fact, to be a Christian is not to compare yourself to others at all. It is to recognize that God owes you nothing, yet he freely gives you all you have and more. Now, I want you to see how revolutionary this is:

• If God doesn’t choose us based on anything we have done it kills pride. If you know you weren’t chosen for anything in you, then you can never feel superior to anyone else.

• God’s choice secures assurance. If our salvation didn’t begin with your goodness, then it can’t end with your failure. Your relationship with God is secure precisely because it’s out of your hands. Put another way, if you could lose your salvation, you would.

• God’s choice fuels our gratitude, especially in hardship, for we know that material comforts are no necessary sign of his love, and neither is the absence of them the sign of his hatred. In fact, because God wants to give us eternal happiness in himself, he may have to take world riches from us.

• Because God chooses, we can evangelize without presumption or manipulation. We can’t presume who God will call to himself. It may be that he intends to use us to call those we would not. And, when we share the gospel with others, because we know God is the ultimate chooser, our only responsibility is to be a faithful witness to the truth, not a greasy salesperson.

And so, Deuteronomy tells us that God chooses Israel, and he chooses us, not for any foreseen good in us, but because he pities sinners.

2. You Will Wander

Having recounted God’s gracious choice of Israel, Moses begins warning the people in Deuteronomy 8:11

¹¹ “Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, ¹² lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, ¹³ and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, ¹⁴ then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery…

¹⁷ Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ ¹⁸ You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day.

Moses warns that God is giving them the very blessings they will be tempted to put before him. The moment God gives them homes, land, and herds they will forget him. Therefore, from Deuteronomy 5 all the way to Deuteronomy 26, Moses rereads all of God’s covenant which Israel must keep.

In Deuteronomy 28, God lists out all the blessings Israel will receive if they keep covenant and the curses they will incur if they forget the Lord. Covenant obedience = blessing. Covenant breaking = curse.

And chapter 30 begins like this:

And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you,

Do you know what’s happening? God is telling the people, “You are going to forget me. You’re going to break the covenant. You are going to incur all the curses, and I am going to drive you out of Canaan into exile.”

Even though God graciously chose Israel and even though he gave them his Law which is good, nonetheless, Israel still forgot the Lord. They wandered from his laws and therefore he would cause them to wander from Canaan.

• 1406 BC – Joshua led Israel into Canaan.

• For next 350 years, Israel went through a repeating cycle of apostasy, oppression, repentance, and deliverance by through judges such as Deborah, Gideon, Samson, Jephthah.

• 1050 BC – Saul is anointed as Israel’s first king, succeeded by David and Solomon from 1010-930 BC This is when the first Temple is constructed.

• Solomon, taking wives from other nations, led Israel into idolatry and the nation was split into a Northern Kingdom (Israel) and a Southern Kingdom (Judah).

• From 930-722, Israel essentially spiraled downward into worse and worse idolatry.

• Jeroboam set up golden calves in Bethel and Dan.
• Omri worshipped Baal and used the state to sponsor false worship.
• Ahab and Jezebel assassinated the prophets of God (1 Kings 18)

By the time of in 744 BC, we read this in 2 Kings 17:

¹⁶ And they abandoned all the commandments of the Lord their God, and made for themselves metal images of two calves; and they made an Asherah and worshiped all the host of heaven and served Baal. ¹⁷ And they burned their sons and their daughters as offerings and used divination and omens and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger.

Not only did Israel forget the Lord, they embraced the very idolatry of the Canaanites they had driven out 700 hundred years earlier. And God brought upon them every last curse of Deuteronomy 28.

You know what the Old Testament is? It’s the story of how God’s law, though it is good, and though we must obey it, can never save us. The Mosaic Covenant could never give God’s people hearts that love and obey him. The law of God can only expose our weakness and our sin; it can never give us the righteousness we need to be right with God. And it’s not because the law is weak: it’s because we are.

From Moses to Christ, God took 1,400 years to prove to us, in the downfall of Israel, that we cannot earn our way into his presence. Friends, the law of God is not a ladder to climb… it’s a mirror to show you your sin. As we look into the Law of God we learn that we are no better than Israel. We’ve all broken the Ten Commandments, just as they did.

And therefore, Deuteronomy doesn’t end in despair, it ends in prophecy.

3. 3. God Sends a Better Moses & a Better Covenant

When Israel was in Egypt, they needed a deliverer. So, God sent Moses. He led them out of slavery and gave them the Law of Sinai. He interceded when they worshipped the golden calf. But here’s the problem:

Moses could take Israel out of idolatrous Egypt, he could not take idolatry out of Israel. They grumbled in the wilderness, worshipped idols in the land, and Moses died on the borders of Canaan, never going in.

Moses was never the true deliverer, and the Mosaic Law was never the solution: it only diagnosed the illness. Therefore, Deuteronomy ends with Moses’ death even as it points forward to One greater than Moses.

Turn over to the final chapter of the Pentateuch, Deuteronomy 34:

Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho. And the Lord showed him all the land…

We don’t know who, or when, but a later editor added this to the end of Deuteronomy. I think it was Joshua. Verse 10:

¹⁰ And there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face…

Deuteronomy ends, looking for a prophet who is greater than Moses.

• A prophet who doesn’t just speak God’s words – but is the Word of God. (John 1:1)

• A Deliverer who doesn’t just lead us out of slavery, but who crushes the slave-master, sin at the cross. (Rom. 6:6-7)

• A mediator, who doesn’t just pray for us when we sin—but who ever lives to make intercession for the saints. (Heb. 7:25)

And this better Moses brings with him a better covenant:

The Old Covenant had a mediator who died outside of Canaan, but Christ is our eternal mediator.

The Old Covenant was written on stone, but the New Covenant is written on our hearts.

The Old Covenant demanded obedience in order to gain life. In the New Covenant, God’s Spirit gives us life that we might obey.

The Old Covenant required daily sacrifices for sin, the New Covenant required only one—the sinless blood of Christ has forever put away our sin.

The Old Covenant only offered limited access to God. Once a year, only the High Priest could go into the inner sanctum of the Tabernacle. In the New Covenant, the veil was torn in two, and we can now boldly approach the throne of grace in our time of need.

Church, the Old Covenant was national, directed primarily toward the physical descendants of Abraham, but the Covenant Christ brings extends to all nations, peoples, tribes, and tongues.

The Old Covenant ended in exile. The New Covenant will culminate in our entrance into the true Canaan, the New Heavens and the New Earth.

Hebrews 8 says this:

Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises.

What is this better promise? The Old Covenant said, “Obey, and you’ll live. Disobey, and you’ll die.” The New Covenant says, “Jesus has obeyed. And Jesus Christ has died—so you live.”