Random Thoughts on Deuteronomy 1
I LONGED TO BRING the Book of Deuteronomy alive for the ladies in our Bible study, but I didn’t know where to begin. When I confessed my uncertainty, a friend from the group asked, “What do you want to us to learn?”
I knew right away. It was simple. I wanted three things.
First, I wanted God to open our eyes to the magnitude of Moses and what God accomplished through him.
Second, I wanted the Holy Spirit to show us why Deuteronomy matters today.
Third, I wanted God Himself to surprise us. I wanted Him to meet us in the pages of Deuteronomy, shining through even the dull, outwardly archaic, culturally distant passages.
Well, maybe I wanted four things. I thought it would be terrific to feel what Jesus felt when He read Deuteronomy and maybe glimpse how much the book shaped Him.
First off, I had to dispel some misconceptions about Deuteronomy.
They are:
1) It’s a second law.
The truth is, it isn’t. The name Deuteronomy means, “These are the words” It was mistranslated as “second law” in the Septuagint and the error was repeated in the Vulgate.
If it isn’t the second law, then what is it? Some commentators call it Moses’ farewell. Moses knows that he is about to die, and that almost the entire generation he led across the Red Sea to wait in awe at the foot of Mount Horeb while God came down in smoke and fire has died. Now a new younger generation, the children and grandchildren of slaves born and raised Egypt, are about to cross the Jordan River and enter into the land promised to their ancestor Abraham.
At this historic moment, Moses calls a community meeting to wrap things up and point toward the young Israelites toward their future. The bulk of Deuteronomy is his final address to the hundreds of thousands of now grown children he’d watched over during their forty years journey through the wilderness. “Theses are the words” he spoke.
Like a loving father, he reminds the twelve tribes of their family’s history with God. He retells events of God’s faithfulness and reminds them of God’s lessons. He repeats God’s laws and instructions for success and he warns them about the consequences of disobedience. With erie realism and keen prophetic eyesight, he predicts failures to come. But like an objective loving parent, he makes sure they know the difference between right and wrong and makes sure they can never plead innocence on the basis of ignorance. He wants them to be accountable and responsible before God for their choices. Instructing, exhorting, and warning, Moses carefully lays the foundation for a radically new community of law, a community different from all other nations; a community of truly unselfish brotherhood, justice, mercy and love. His vision is utopian; line upon line, precept upon precept, his teachings from God reveal plans for a nation built upon and sustained by their reverent love for and fear of a powerful and Holy God.
2) It’s full of old laws we don’t need anymore.
A little digging past the cultural differences between our thinking and the mindset of Moses’ 3,500± year-old revelation of God’s law, reveals that the core energy behind the Mosaic Law is love. The law God gave to Moses was to teach men and women in that time and place how to live together in mutual respect, with harmony and peace. The Mosaic Law is the foundation of Western Civilization and the basis of Western civil law today. Historically, communities that keep the Mosaic Law in the loving spirit with which it was given learned to live together in peace and harmony.
The early Christian community was patterned on the Mosaic Law. Jesus fulfilled The Law with love and He freed it, pared away every vestige of legalism, entered its essential core.He did not erase it.
Compare Moses first commandment, You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. Deuteronomy 6:5 with Jesus words, “‘You shall love the Lord Your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. Matthew 22:37
And for further example, compare Deuteronomy 15:4
However, there need be no poor people among you, for in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you, if only you will fully obey the Lord Your god and are careful to follow the instructions I [Moses] am giving you today.
with Acts 4:34
There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles feet and it was distributed to anyone who had need.
3) It’s all about works-righteousness, obeying the law, earning your way to heaven, it’s not about the grace and faith of Jesus.
In truth, the Old Testament Law and sacrificial system foreshadows and prepares the way for Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross. The law instructs our conscience; it reveals human selfishness and weakness; and it proves, by our failure to keep it, how humanly difficult it is to fully love God and one another. According to the New Testament, without the law’s instruction in right and wrong, we wouldn’t know that we needed a a Savior to atone for our trespasses and wash away our guilt and sin. As we acknowledge our sins and accept that Jesus died to cleanse us from unrighteousness, by grace through faith we are born again. Our first natural birth was from our human parents. Our second spiritual birth is by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit writes Gods law upon our hearts, He brings us into relationship with God and helps us to love truly God and one another. Love fulfills the law. The Law was a step in real-time history toward realizing God’s plan to save men from eternal death and to bring all who believe to loving union with God.
To be continued
