Where Are We?
January 28, 2020 · Pastor Miles DeBenedictis
In this teaching
Introducing a verse-by-verse study of Deuteronomy, Pastor Miles argues that the Bible contains the deepest truths for life and can be trusted as authentic, using Deuteronomy's ancient treaty format as evidence for Mosaic authorship. He shows how Deuteronomy sets the stage for the whole Old Testament and addresses humanity's principal problem—sin—and God's perfect solution in Jesus.
- Scripture contains everything needed for life and godliness, and the Spirit who inspired it gives understanding to those who study it prayerfully.
- Deuteronomy ("second law") is Moses' second giving of the law, delivered 40 years after Sinai as Israel stands on the border of the Promised Land.
- The book's mid-2nd-millennium BC suzerain-vassal treaty format gives us reason to trust its authenticity and Mosaic authorship, against higher-critical skepticism.
- Deuteronomy establishes God's covenant relationship with Israel and sets up both the prophets and the need for the New Covenant.
- The Bible addresses enduring questions of free will, moral responsibility, suffering, and evil that humanity still wrestles with today.
- Our compulsion to resolve natural and moral evils points beyond materialism to a God-given longing for a world without suffering.
Readable is a lightly edited reading copy; Verbatim stays close to the spoken words. The audio and video are the record of what was said.
These are the words which Moses spoke to all Israel on this side of the Jordan in the wilderness... It is eleven days' journey from Horeb by way of Mount Seir to Kadesh Barnea. Now it came to pass in the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, that Moses spoke to the children of Israel according to all that the Lord had given him as commandments to them, after he had killed Sihon king of the Amorites, who dwelt in Heshbon, and Og king of Bashan, who dwelt at Ashtaroth in Edrei. ()
When the culture says you can't trust an ancient book, where exactly does that leave us—and where does Deuteronomy place us before God?
A Theo-Philosophical Approach to Scripture
As we begin a study in Deuteronomy, I want to offer an introductory caveat. Those who have been part of this church for any length of time know I tend to approach Scripture from what I'd call a theo-philosophical point of view. I come at the text with a strong theological basis, but I also believe those theological understandings should frame how we understand reality, see the world, and live within it. Theology should change our philosophy.
I teach this way because I'm convinced the Bible gives us the deepest and most important truths for life. Peter writes in that God's divine power has given us everything that pertains to life and godliness through the knowledge of God. Everything we need to live this life in a godly, full way is contained in the Scriptures. And since these are deep truths, it takes much for us to wrap our minds around what the text says, what it means for us, and how it should change the way we think.
The Tension of Teaching in Our Culture
I feel a tension every time I prepare to teach, because we live in a culture constantly telling us that the things contained in Scripture are irrelevant for 21st-century thinking. Many would say people are uninterested in deeper things, that we lack the attention span to grapple with higher-level thought. As a result, over the last four decades most churches in the West have changed dramatically. The average sermon today is about twenty minutes, and we're told church needs to be more highly produced, more entertaining, and non-confrontational.
There's a temptation to aim at that target, but I can't do it. If you want to compete with the entertaining structures of our culture, you're going to lose. A couple of years ago my wife and I and some friends went to a Coldplay concert, and I thought, if the church wants to compete with this, forget it. Our goal is not to compete. Our aim is to make it possible for people to come into contact with the transcendent God who has revealed Himself in Scripture.
Interestingly, in the same forty years the church has lowered the bar, we've seen a steady decline in attendance—especially among those younger than me. There's a connection. But I don't believe people are dumb or lacking attention. People binge-watch forty hours of deeply intricate stories. The problem is that what's put forth as media is often dumb and numbing; people engage with it to escape rather than do the hard work of facing the realities of life that the Bible addresses.
Engaging the Text Yourself
We're now going into areas of Scripture that many churches never deal with. Most churches in the West spend nearly all their time in the New Testament. We're going to wrestle with challenging concepts. We may not be the most highly produced church—we're not Saturday Night Live or Hillsong—but we're trying to make it possible to lay hold of the reality of who God is.
It's always been my conviction that what we do together on Sunday is important, but it's more important for you to personally engage with the Bible on a daily basis. Many don't because they feel they can't understand it. I understand that. But we believe all Scripture is inspired by God and useful, and the same Spirit who inspired holy men of God to write these things can give us clarity, wisdom, and understanding as we study them. I know this from experience: for the better part of my first fifteen years of ministry I had no formal education, yet God by His Spirit enabled me to grasp and teach the Scriptures.
So sit with the text and ask, "God, would You give me wisdom and insight?" We've made Bible journals for Deuteronomy available—the text on one side, space for notes on the other. My encouragement is that you spend time in Deuteronomy prayerfully throughout the week, writing down thoughts and questions, asking what God might be speaking through the text.
What Deuteronomy Is
We practice systematic expositional Bible teaching here—verse by verse, chapter by chapter, book by book, letting the Scriptures set the agenda. Over the last twelve years we went systematically through the New Testament, using the book of Acts as our chronological guide, finishing last September with 1, 2, and 3 John. Now I wanted to turn to the Old Testament, and I kept coming back to Deuteronomy as a roadmap.
The name itself tells us what the book is. Deuteronomy is a compound of two Greek words meaning "second law." In German, where I once taught, they simply call it the fifth book of Moses. But why "second law"? In Exodus, God called Moses to bring Israel out of slavery in Egypt. They came to Mount Sinai—also called Horeb—and God gave Moses the law, which Moses preached to the people from onward. That was the first giving of the law. This is the second giving, about forty years later.
That timeline shows up in the opening words. says it is "eleven days' journey from Horeb... to Kadesh Barnea." Then says, "Now it came to pass in the fortieth year." The eleven-day journey took them forty years. Some of you have been on that path a while. Israel had wandered in the wilderness for forty years—the story of Numbers—and now they stand at the edge of the Promised Land, bordering blessing. Moses gives them the law again before he dies on Mount Nebo, looking across into the land he would not enter.
A Treaty Between God and Israel
Scholars tell us Deuteronomy is written in the exact format of a formal treaty from the mid-second millennium BC—roughly 3,400 years ago. It is an official document ratifying a formal relationship between the Lord God and Israel, a treaty written in what scholars call a suzerain-vassal treaty form. This matters for several reasons.
First, the very specific format indicates the time and place in which it was written. There were critical scholars, primarily out of 18th- and 19th-century Germany, known as higher critics, who argued these books weren't written by Moses or in his time. But the treaty format dates this book to about 3,400 years ago—precisely the era in which Moses is thought to have lived. That adds weight to the theory that Moses is the author.
Second, the format tells us something about the author. Moses was born a Hebrew during a time when Pharaoh, fearful of the Hebrews' growth, decreed that every male child be thrown into the Nile. Moses' mother placed him in an ark in the river, and by God's providence he was adopted into Pharaoh's household, raised there into his late thirties or early forties, and trained in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. He was politically trained in the ancient Near East, where he would have known the treaty formats of the day. We know these were the formats because archaeology has produced at least fifty actual treaties from that time following this same pattern.
Third, the format informs us about the relationship God designed to have with His people. This covenant gives insight into how God desires to relate to us—He wants a covenant relationship. Today the only covenant relationship we readily understand is marriage. Deuteronomy establishes this covenant between God and Israel and sets the stage for everything that follows in the Old Testament.
Why Deuteronomy First
This book sets up the rest of the Old Testament. Many people want to study the prophets—Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Hosea, Malachi—but what the prophets are doing is applying the teaching of Moses in Deuteronomy. Isaiah, 2,700 years ago, looked at his world, saw the nation walking away from God, and warned, "If you don't repent, God is going to expel you from the land." Where did he get that? From Deuteronomy. God told Israel that obedience to His law brings blessing and disobedience brings curse and expulsion. The prophets simply applied this to their day, and when the people refused to change, exactly what God said would happen came to pass.
So Deuteronomy is a formal, official treaty—a covenant mediated by Moses about 3,400 years ago, just before Israel crossed into the land God promised their forefathers. Six hundred fifty years earlier, God called Abraham, promising to bless him, make him a great nation, and give him this land (, 15, 17). That promise passed to Isaac, to Jacob, and to Jacob's twelve sons, who became the twelve tribes. Now they stand at the border, and God lays out how He and His people will relate when they enter the land. Deuteronomy also establishes the importance and reason for the New Covenant—the New Testament.
Reason One: We Can Trust the Bible
So what does this 3,400-year-old story have to do with your life in the 21st century? At the very least, here is the first point: we have reason to trust the authenticity of the biblical message. This is important because many in our culture tell us we don't, which makes some of us uncomfortable sharing what we believe.
If you research Deuteronomy in January 2020, you'll likely start with Wikipedia. There, in the third paragraph, you'll read: "Virtually all modern scholars reject Deuteronomy's attribution to Moses," dating the book between the 7th and 5th centuries BC. Follow the footnote and you'll find it points to a PhD dissertation by a professor who doesn't even believe Jeremiah was a real historical person—a skeptic from the start.
I'd suggest that's editorializing, or fake news, whatever you'd like to call it. Yes, some scholars contest Mosaic authorship—but many others affirm strong support for a mid-second-millennium date around 1400 BC. You wouldn't know that from Wikipedia. So follow the references. Ask who is saying this and whether they have an agenda. We're being told not to trust the Bible by people who haven't trusted it for a long time, and many believers feel pressured to stay quiet—especially when their kids come home from college quoting a professor. The Bible will have little authority in your life if you don't think it's authentic, and that's exactly what we're witnessing in our day.
Reason Two: It Addresses Questions We Still Wrestle With
But it can be argued these events are factually based—so what does this book say to my life today? Point two: the biblical message addresses issues and answers questions we continue to wrestle with today.
This week I was listening to an audiobook on free will by an atheistic author who believes free will is illusory and that we live in a deterministic world. That worldview affects how you understand moral responsibility—and Deuteronomy deals heavily with moral responsibility, including a major theme we call the principle of retribution. The author writes, "I cannot hold you responsible for behaviors that you could not possibly control," arguing that with the same genes and circumstances you would do exactly what a Jeffrey Dahmer or a Manson did. Yet he still wants a justice system—how can you, if there's no moral responsibility?
Even that atheist, Sam Harris, has a theology, and it shapes how he lives. The point is, we have not progressed nearly as far as we like to think. Deuteronomy not only acknowledges the existence of evil; it addresses evil, sin, morality, holiness, justice, and retribution.
Reason Three: It Names Our Problem and God's Solution
Point three: the Bible identifies humanity's principal problem and provides God's perfect solution. As you prayerfully read the text, sit with commentaries, and ask your questions, you discover this. Spoiler alert: the principal problem is sin, and God's perfect solution is Jesus. Deuteronomy prepares us for that reality.
Reason Four: We Long for a Resolution
All thinking people will agree we face considerable problems in this world, and one of the biggest is suffering. Our problems fall into two categories: natural evils—fires, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes—and moral evils—theft, exploitation, murder, the things people do out of malevolence. We all see these, and here's the fascinating thing: we feel compelled to deal with them. We want to stop natural evils or at least ease the suffering they cause, and we're driven to confront moral evils. Even an atheist who denies free will is intensely concerned with morality.
Have you ever asked why we have that compulsion? Point four: we feel compelled to address the evils of this world because we desire and expect a resolution. This desire makes zero sense under evolutionary materialism. If we're just the highest animal, the product of random chance and mutation over billions of years, why this drive? When did you last see chimpanzees worried about other chimpanzees or trying to rescue a gazelle? Humans were created differently—in God's image—and there is something in us that remembers a world without suffering and longs for one.
This is the ultimate theo-philosophical worldview of the Christian. If pure natural selection is true, there shouldn't be the drive to rescue something as small as a baby bird fallen from the nest—the box, the towel, the heating pad, the syringe. Yet we feel compelled. People want to save the world, to fix climate change and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. I understand the drive—but why do you have it? God planted it there, and the Bible addresses it. Under pure natural selection, you should look at another human suffering and say, "Nature selected them; might is right; eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die." These are two very different worldviews—one based on the Bible, the other on a supposed human rationality that flows from a fallen heart. We must judge these things according to Scripture.
Closing Prayer
Lord, I pray that You would give us wisdom as we think about these things. Give us a desire, each of us here, to think critically and deeply about Scripture, to consider what it has to say and what You desire to teach us from it. Lord, would You give us that desire, and continue to do a work of transformation by Your grace in us, that we would reflect Your nature in this world. We pray this in Jesus' name, and all those that agree said, "Amen."
We are beginning today a study in the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy. A lot of times, when we come to the Scriptures, especially an Old Testament book, there are questions about whether or not we can trust the message. Well, open with us to as we consider that question.
Good morning, Cross Connection Church! One of you loving souls gave me a gift this morning in memory of the 2019-2020 Green Bay Packers, and I greatly appreciate that. Thank you so much! I have heard from a few of you about their loss last week. Thank you for reminding me; it's very helpful. I will temporarily shift my allegiance to the Kansas City Chiefs.
So, some of you are okay with that? Good! Patrick Mahomes, we'll see if he can deconstruct another defense. But that's next week. Hopefully, you'll be here first next week, or your team will lose.
Before we open the Scriptures today, we are going to be starting a new book of Scripture. As I've been thinking about where we're going in the text of Scripture and reading quite a bit over the last several months on this passage, I felt it necessary to give an introductory warning, if you will, a kind of caveat to my message.
I have a tendency, when I look at the Scriptures—and those of you who have been a part of Cross Connection Church for any length of time know this—to think about the Scriptures from what I would call a philosophical point of view. I will explain what that means as we go through the Scriptures.
I approach the Scriptures from a strong theological basis, believing that these theological understandings should help us frame our understanding of reality. They should affect our worldview and the way we live within the world, ultimately changing our philosophy. I tend to preach the Scriptures more like a theo-philosophical lecture, and I wouldn't share the things from the Scripture the way I do if I didn't think it was very important for us to grasp the Scriptures in this way.
The Bible gives us the deepest and most important truths for life. The Apostle Peter, in the New Testament, in , says that according to God's divine power, He has given us everything that pertains to life and godliness through the knowledge of God. We receive the knowledge of God in the revelation of God, which is found in the Scriptures. Everything we need to live this life in a godly manner, in a right manner, which will be the right kind of life—a life that is full—is contained in the Scriptures.
Since these are deep truths, it takes much for us to wrap our brains around them and to fully understand what the text says, not just what it says but what it means for us and how it should change the way we think. The temptation in coming to the Scriptures this way and delivering a message that is more like a theo-philosophical lecture is to tune out and start thinking about something else, like the Kansas City Chiefs. However, these things are really important.
As a communicator of the Bible, I feel a certain tension every time I prepare to teach. When I come to the platform to teach, whether here or somewhere else, I feel this tension because we live in a culture that constantly tells us that the things contained in the Scriptures are irrelevant for 21st-century thinking and living. Not only are there many in our culture who would say that the things in the Bible are irrelevant, but there are also many who believe that people don't really care and are uninterested.
In these deeper aspects of life, I don't believe the notion that people are not smart enough to engage with profound ideas. However, I have read sociological writings suggesting that many individuals lack the attention span to grapple with deeper concepts and engage in higher-level thinking. As a result, the church has changed significantly over the last four decades, and really throughout my entire lifetime.
People are often told that church needs to be more highly produced. While some of that may be true, there is a prevailing belief that church cannot go deep; it needs to be surface-level, or perhaps even shallow. Consequently, there has been a noticeable shift in most churches in the West. The average length of a sermon today is about 20 minutes. This is not the case here, and I appreciate your patience with me.
Many churches have adopted a style that simplifies the message, aiming for entertainment and avoiding confrontation. If you look around and listen to some of the messages coming from churches or watch certain televised church services, you can see this trend. There is a temptation, as a pastor, to aim for that kind of affirmation. However, I feel a real tension because I cannot do that, nor do I want to be boring. I hope that I am not when we delve into the Scriptures.
Our job as communicators of the truths of the Bible is not merely to entertain or to compete with the entertaining structures of our culture. In fact, if you try to compete with those structures, you will inevitably lose. A couple of years ago, my wife and I, along with some friends, attended a Coldplay concert. As we were leaving, I thought to myself that if the church wants to compete with that, it is simply not worth it.
Our goal is not to compete; rather, our aim is to facilitate encounters with the God who made us, to connect people with the transcendent God who has revealed Himself in the Scriptures. What is interesting to me is that over the last 40 years, throughout my lifetime, as the church has...
In many ways, we have capitulated to the mindset of the culture that suggests we need to bring the bar down. It needs to be just entertaining; it can't be confrontational. It's basically surface-level, very quick, and brief. In the same period that the church has been doing this—when I say "church," I'm talking about the church corporately, not necessarily here—we have seen a steady decline in church attendance. There is a connection, especially among those who are younger than me.
Particularly, guys who are 40 and younger have kind of checked out on the whole church thing. They feel that they don't need it because it seems irrelevant. The message doesn't seem to have any direct impact on their lives today. However, I don't personally think that people are dumb or lacking attention spans. The fact that people watch 40 hours of binge-watching deeply intricate stories tells us that they are not necessarily lacking an attention span. It's just that what is being put forth as media or as the things we should engage with is often dumb.
In many ways, a lot of the dumb things that have been presented are meant to numb people. They engage with them because it numbs them from all the other stuff going on in life, instead of doing the hard work of actually dealing with the realities of life that the Bible addresses.
I mention all this because, as we get ready to go into the book of Deuteronomy, we will be engaging with some challenging topics in a portion of Scripture that many churches never deal with. Most churches in the West spend all of their time in the New Testament, which is the last third of the Bible. For the last number of years, that's where we've spent most of our time. Now, we are going to explore some areas of Scripture that present very challenging concepts and ideas.
These portions of Scripture describe events from that period of time that can be difficult for us to think about. Here at Cross Connection, we may not be the most highly produced of churches. We are not as entertaining as Saturday Night Live or other popular shows, and we are not like Hillsong. However, what we are trying to do is make it possible for us to grasp the reality of who God is as we delve into the Scriptures. In some ways, we hope to encourage and help you do that beyond what we do on Sunday mornings. It has always been my conviction that what we do when we gather together is important.
Going through the Scriptures on Sunday is important, but it is even more important for you to personally engage with the Bible yourself and to do that on a regular daily basis. A lot of people don't do that because they feel like they just don't understand the things of Scripture, and I can completely understand that. However, we believe that all Scripture is inspired by God and is useful. If it is inspired by God, by His Holy Spirit, the Bible says that holy men of God were inspired; they were moved by the Holy Spirit to write these things. If it is inspired by the Spirit of God, the same Spirit of God who inspired these things can give us clarity, wisdom, and understanding as we study them on our own.
I know this from personal experience because, for the better part of the first 15 years of my ministry teaching the Bible, I had no formal education. I have been able to understand, grasp, and teach the Scriptures primarily because God, by His Spirit, is able to do just what I'm talking about. We should sit with the Scriptures and ask God, "Would you give me wisdom, insight, and understanding in what the Scriptures say?" We should go through them carefully and slowly.
At the end of the service today, if you're interested, we are making available a Bible journal for the book of Deuteronomy at the connection point outside. Inside is the book of Deuteronomy in the English Standard Version. It's not the translation I typically use, but it is a great translation. On one side is the Bible text, and on the other side is an area for you to take notes. My encouragement to you would be to spend some time in the book of Deuteronomy prayerfully and carefully throughout the week. Write down some thoughts, questions, or insights from the Scriptures as you go through them.
These journals are available for free, but we have a limited number of them. If you don't think you will use it, please don't take one. However, if you would like one, please take one. Don't take six for your neighbors and friends, but if you would like one, these will be available after the service. I hope that it will be helpful for your own personal study of the Scriptures.
A little over a year ago, some friends of mine who work with another ministry gave me the entire New Testament, and it has been a real blessing. After that, I received the Old Testament as well, which has also been very helpful. The whole point of this is just to open the Scriptures with a pen and a piece of paper, read the Scriptures, and prayerfully think through what is being said and what God might be speaking through the text. I hope that you will take advantage of this opportunity.
That serves as an introduction to where we're going. If you do have your Bible, would you take it out and open to the book of Deuteronomy? If you don't have a Bible, you can raise your hand, and one of our ushers will bring you one. Deuteronomy is the fifth book of the Bible, so if you open to Genesis, the first book of the Bible, and keep turning right, you will pass Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, and then you will arrive at Deuteronomy.
Would you stand with me as you're turning there? For some of you, even if you set out to start reading through the whole Bible, you may never have gotten to Deuteronomy because you hit Leviticus and got stalled. So, this might be new for you.
, and we're just going to read the opening four verses, which we'll probably spend a couple of weeks on. , : "These are the words which Moses spoke to all Israel on this side of the Jordan, in the wilderness and the plain opposite Suph, between Paran, Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth, and Dizahab. It is an eleven days' journey from Horeb by way of Mount Seir to Kadesh Barnea."
Now, all those names—you're all thinking, "Yeah, I know exactly where all those places are."
It came to pass in the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, that Moses spoke to the children of Israel according to all that the Lord had given him as commandments to them, after he had killed Sihon, king of the Amorites, who dwelt in Heshbon, and Og, king of Bashan, who dwelt in Ashtaroth and Edrei.
God, I pray that you would give us wisdom and understanding, not just into the text of Scripture, but into the point of Scripture. We do believe that this is inspired by You and is useful for doctrine, reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, that we would be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
We believe, as Paul wrote, that all these things happened thousands of years ago to the children of Israel, and they are examples to us who are living in the day and age in which we are living. So, I pray, God, that you would give us understanding minds and hearts as we look at these things, and that you would inform us by Your Spirit how we ought to apply these things.
May Your word have its work in us, transforming us so that, in a greater way today, this week, this year, we would reflect Your nature in this world. So, God, do work in us, we pray. We ask this today in Jesus' name. Amen.
Amen. You may be seated.
If you're new to Cross Connection Church and have been attending for the last eight or ten weeks, then you have joined us during a time of year when we deviate from our customary way of going through the Scriptures. From just before Thanksgiving until about the middle of January, we focus more on topical teachings, often discussing Christmas, and then transitioning into the new year by talking about our vision as a church.
As we come to the Scriptures today, we are returning to what is more of our custom and also what is more comfortable for me: systematically going through whole books of the Bible. What we do here at the church, and what I have experienced since I was a little kid attending this church, is referred to as systematic expositional Bible teaching.
So, what does that mean? Well, "systematic" means we go verse by verse, chapter by chapter, and book by book through the entire Bible. "Expositional" means we take the Scriptures and hope that they will set the agenda, providing us with a roadmap and laying out all the points as we go through the text. This is the approach we take here at the church.
Over the last twelve years, as I have been pastoring this church, we have used this format to go through the New Testament, which is the last third of the Bible. We have covered the books from Matthew through Revelation, using the book of Acts, the fifth book of the New Testament, as our guide. Acts provides the early history of the church, primarily from the perspective of the Apostle Paul, following his life and ministry.
We finished our study of the New Testament last September when we completed the books of First, Second, and Third John. Having done that, I wanted to turn to the Old Testament, where we will be for quite a while—probably until Jesus comes back or I die, whichever comes first. Because of our custom of going through the Scriptures in a systematic way, I have been looking for a good outline or roadmap to help us set the stage.
We can start on page one with and go through Genesis, Exodus, and just keep going. That approach is valuable; a lot of churches have done that. However, I wanted something that could provide us with a roadmap for the Scriptures. The more I thought about it and prayed about it, I kept coming back to the book of Deuteronomy for reasons that will become clear as we go through this.
Deuteronomy is an important book in Scripture. It is the fifth book of the Bible, which might seem like an odd place to begin, but I think it makes a lot of sense. It sets a through-line or a map through the whole of the Old Testament and prepares us for the New Testament. The Old Testament is the Old Covenant. That word, "Testament," is a term we don't use very much; it could also be called the Old Covenant. We don't use the word "covenant" as often, but the Old Covenant is the relationship that God established with man through the nation of Israel in former times, through the Pentateuch, the Law, and the Torah.
The New Covenant is that which Jesus established, and we celebrate it regularly here when we partake of communion. On the night before He was crucified, Jesus sat with His disciples for a meal. At a certain point, He took the cup and said, "This is the New Covenant in my blood." He establishes the New Covenant.
Now, why do we need a New Covenant? Well, because of the Old Covenant. We will be thinking about that a lot as we go through Deuteronomy and what these things meant.
What exactly is Deuteronomy? The name of the book actually articulates what it is. The word "Deuteronomy" is a compound of two Greek words: "deuteros" and "nomos," which means "second law." I thought it was interesting that I lived in Germany for a while, teaching in a small international Bible college there and attending a German church, a Calvary Chapel in Germany. They would teach in English, which would then be translated into German. The name of the book of Deuteronomy in German is "Das Buch von Moses," which means "the book of Moses." So, it is just the fifth book of Moses. You have "one Moses," "two Moses," "three Moses," "five Moses"—those are the first five books of the Bible. That's very helpful and easy to remember.
Deuteronomy means "second law." Now, you might ask, "What is 'second law'? What's that all about?" As you read through the Bible, starting with Genesis and Exodus, you come to the book of Exodus, where you are introduced to this man, Moses, who we will get to know more about here.
In the story of Moses, you might be familiar with it if you saw Charlton Heston in "The Ten Commandments," the animated feature "The Prince of Egypt," or the one with Christian Bale. God called Moses to go to Egypt to bring the children of Israel out of slavery, where they had been for more than 400 years. After they came out of Egypt, the whole story is given to us in the Book of Exodus. They came to a mountain called Mount Sinai, which is also referred to as Mount Horeb. We just read that name in .
They arrived at the mountain of God, Mount Horeb, and God interacted with Moses. The great legislator, the great lawgiver, gave him the law to bring to Israel. Beginning at and continuing through the remainder of the Book of Exodus, Moses rehearsed or preached the law to the children of Israel. This was the first giving of the law by Moses.
This is the second law, the second giving of the law by Moses, and it happens approximately 40 years after the first time he delivered that message. This is also seen in the opening words of . It is fascinating that we read in that it is an 11-day journey from Horeb, which is Mount Sinai, by the way of Mount Seir to Kadesh Barnea. This text tells us that it is only 11 days from Mount Sinai to the Promised Land.
Then, in , it says, "Now it came to pass in the fortieth year." The 11-day journey took them 40 years. Some of you have been on that path for a while; we'll talk more about that later, but that's just something to consider. So, 40 years have passed since Mount Sinai, since Exodus, since the law was given to Israel. They have wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, which is the story of the Book of Numbers. Now they are at the edge of the Promised Land, bordering the land of blessing.
This picture is from the modern state of Jordan, looking across the Dead Sea into the modern state of Israel. This would have been very similar to the view that Moses would have seen when he died at the end of this book on a mountain called Mount Nebo.
He is looking into the Promised Land with a view similar to that of the children of Israel, who are right on the edge of coming into blessing. Moses is giving them the law. Scholars who study the Book of Deuteronomy will tell you that it is written in the exact format of a formal treaty from the mid-2nd millennium BC, about 3,500 to 4,000 years ago. The format of this book, the way it is written, follows this treaty format. It is an official document ratifying a formal relationship between the Lord God and Israel. Effectively, it is a treaty, and it is written in that way.
This may mean very little to a lot of people, but I find it fascinating that the Book of Deuteronomy follows this mid-2nd millennium BC treaty format, which scholars refer to as a suzerain-vassal treaty. You might wonder why this matters. You could be forgiven for thinking that those are just big, meaningless words that you would hear Alex Trebek say on Jeopardy. However, there are actually some important things that we can deduce from the way this book is written.
There are a few reasons that this actually matters. If you're taking notes, you might want to jot these down. The first reason that this format matters is that the very specific way in which the Book of Deuteronomy is written gives us some indication about the time and location in which it was written. It helps us understand where and when this whole thing took place. Why is that important? Because there are some critical scholars, primarily from Germany in the 18th and 19th centuries, who, if you read theological books, are generally referred to as higher critics. They held to what is called higher criticism of textual sources.
These scholars went through the text of the Bible and began to assert that these books weren't actually written by Moses or in this time and place. Thus, you have this whole movement of higher criticism in the 18th and 19th centuries, which calls into question the authenticity of the records.
Scholars will tell you that this book follows a very specific treaty format from the mid-2nd millennium BC, approximately 3,400 years ago. When we see this, it tells us something about when this book was written, which is around the time Moses is thought to have lived. This adds weight to the theory that Moses is the author. We will get to why that matters in a moment.
The second reason why this specific treaty format is important is that it indicates something about the one we believe wrote it. We read in the opening words, "These are the words of Moses." Now, who was Moses? If you watched "The Prince of Egypt," you know that Moses was a Hebrew born during a time in the land of Egypt when the Egyptians, according to Pharaoh, were fearful of the growth of the Hebrew people. The Hebrews lived among them but did not integrate into Egyptian culture; they didn't worship the gods of Egypt or follow the customs of Egypt. Pharaoh was very concerned and worried that this group of people would grow strong enough to overthrow Egypt.
As a result, he gave a decree that every male child was to be killed and thrown into the Nile River. Of course, the Hebrews were not willing to kill their children. Moses' mother technically did what Pharaoh had commanded; she placed her son into an ark, a little boat, and set him adrift in the Nile. They positioned him in such a way that one of Pharaoh's family members would see this little child. Ultimately, by what I believe is the providence of God, Moses ends up adopted into the dynastic structures of Egypt. He lives in the household of Pharaoh and is raised until he is about his late 30s or early 40s.
Being raised in the household of Pharaoh, the Scriptures tell us that he was trained in all of the wisdom and knowledge of the Egyptians. He was politically trained in the ancient Near East, in that period of time, where he would have known the treaty formats of the day. We know that these are the treaty formats of the day because we have at least 50 examples from that era.
Archaeological studies have uncovered fifty actual written treaties from that time that followed this same pattern. The second reason that this format is important is because the individual who we believe gave these speeches and ultimately penned this book was trained in that geopolitical context in the mid-second millennium BC.
The third reason that I think this format in the Book of Deuteronomy is important is that it informs us about the relationship that God designed to have with His people. This treaty or covenant that this book outlines gives us insight into how God desires to relate to us. God wants to have a covenant relationship with us. The only covenant relationship that we understand today, being in the 21st century, is the covenant of marriage. God desires to be in a covenant relationship, and there are certain things that bind people to a covenant, as we will see as we go through this book.
The Book of Deuteronomy establishes this covenant between God and the people of Israel and sets the stage for everything that will happen in the Old Testament. The reason I believe that the Book of Deuteronomy is helpful for us as we study the Old Testament is that this book sets up the rest of the Old Testament.
Many people, when they go to the Old Testament, want to study the prophets—Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Hosea, Malachi, and all the others. They want to study the prophets, but what the prophets are doing is applying the teachings of Moses in Deuteronomy. They are looking at their world in their day. This is what Isaiah was doing 2,700 years ago in the eighth century BC. He was observing the people of the nation of Israel walking away from belief in God or not following God's precepts and His law.
Isaiah says that if they do not repent, God is going to expel them from the land. Where did he get that? From Deuteronomy. That is exactly what the Book of Deuteronomy says. God told the children of Israel that if they live according to His law, they will be blessed, and if they do not, they will be cursed and expelled from the land. All of the prophets are essentially looking at their nation in their moment and applying the scripture from Deuteronomy, saying that if they do not change their ways, this is what will happen.
A lot of times, people wouldn't change their ways, and what would happen was exactly what God said would happen in the book of Deuteronomy. The book of Deuteronomy sets up a study for the whole of the Old Testament, but it also establishes the importance and reason for the New Covenant, the New Testament. That is why we're coming to this text now.
All of that establishes that the book of Deuteronomy is a formal, official treaty. It is a covenant mediated by Moses thirty-four hundred years ago between God and the children of Israel, just before they crossed into the land that God had promised to their forefathers. Six hundred and fifty years before Moses, God called a man named Abraham and said, "I want you to come and follow me. I'm going to bless you, and I'm going to make you a great nation, and I'm going to give you this land." These words are found in Genesis chapters 12, 15, and 17.
That promise moves from Abraham to his son Isaac, from Isaac to his son Jacob, and from Jacob to his twelve sons, who become the twelve heads of the twelve tribes of Israel. Now, six hundred and fifty years later, they are standing at the border of that land, getting ready to enter. God says, "Okay, I've called you, and I'm giving you this land as a blessing, as an inheritance, and here is how we are going to interact with one another when you come into this land." That is what this book is all about.
Some of that may not make a lot of sense right now, but don't worry; we will get into the text and explain who Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all these people are. We will start to understand that more fully. Some of you may be thinking, "So what? What does any of this mean, and why does it even matter to me, a thirty-four hundred-year-old story? How does this have any bearing on my life?"
At the very least, what I've just talked about shows one of the reasons that this is important: we have reason to trust the authenticity of the biblical message. I bring up all of that information about the mid-second millennium BC treatise, about Moses, and about this covenant with the children of Israel to make this point. When we come to the text, we have reason to trust the authenticity of the Bible. This is an important point because many in our culture today are telling us that we actually don't have reason to trust the authenticity of the biblical message, which makes some of you feel very uncomfortable when sharing with others.
People believe this stuff, and why would I say that? Well, if you are going to research any topic in January of 2020, where do you go? Google. If you go on Google and you type in "Deuteronomy," the very first thing that's going to pop up is an article from Wikipedia, the compendium of all human knowledge.
Let's say you click on Wikipedia's article for Deuteronomy and start to read about the introduction to this book. This is where most people begin their research, which is all well and good because there's a lot of great data and information on Google and Wikipedia. However, if you begin to read the information, some of you are doing this right now; you're fact-checking me. I will pull up a screen real quick.
If you go there, you're going to find this in the third paragraph: virtually all modern scholars reject Deuteronomy's attribution to Moses. That's challenging. Why? Because your pastor just told you that Moses wrote it thirty-four hundred years ago. You’re going to look up Deuteronomy, and if you're not, your kids will, because they're in a comparative religions class. Their professor told them that you can't really trust the text of the Bible because Wikipedia says virtually all modern scholars reject its attribution to Moses.
As for the date of the book, they date it much later, between the seventh and fifth centuries BC. Oh look, there's a footnote there—footnote number three. If you follow that footnote, you find out that it points to a PhD dissertation from a now professor at the University of Michigan. In his dissertation, he does not believe that Jeremiah was an actual historical character; he was just a figment, a fictional character that was produced. He does not believe that the prophetic books were written by actual individuals who lived during their day.
So, this is a skeptic already. You can take that down if you'd like, but we're told you cannot trust this book because virtually all scholars agree that it wasn't really written by Moses. I want to suggest to you that this is what we call editorializing, or you could call it fake.
Is it true that there are some scholars who can test the authorship by Moses? Yes. Is it true that there are many other scholars who say no? Actually, there's a lot of support for the fact that it was written in the mid-2nd millennium, around 1400 BC. Yes, but you wouldn't know that if you went to Wikipedia. A lot of people just go to Wikipedia, and again, no knock on Wikipedia; I like Wikipedia and use it for quite a few things. However, you need to follow the references. Who's saying this? They may not even be a Christian; they may have an agenda.
We are being told that we cannot and should not trust the Bible and its accounts by people who haven't trusted it for a very long time, or maybe never trusted it. There's no wonder why many, maybe even some of you here today, feel very pressured to just keep quiet about what you believe regarding the Bible. Perhaps you've had your own kids come home from college and say, "Well, didn't you know that my professor said..." and you respond, "Oh, Wikipedia says..." We feel like we shouldn't say anything.
The sad fact is that a lot of churches have just been doing a lot of entertaining, trying to be like Saturday Night Live, instead of actually doing the hard work of getting into what the text of the Bible says and whether it can be trusted. You see, there are good reasons to trust the biblical account. I recognize that there's a lot to unpack here, and this is more like a college-level lecture, but it's for a very important reason.
The Bible will have very little place of authority in your life if you don't think of it as authentic. I would suggest that this is exactly what we are witnessing in our day: the Bible is seen by a lot of people as really having no point, no relevance in their lives. This perception has been shaped by the belief that for the better part of the last 50 years, you can't trust it; it's not authentic.
We need to understand the counterfactuals to that statement. But this still begs the question: Okay, so it can be argued that these events are factually based, but what does this thirty-four-hundred-year-old book have to say about my life living in the 21st century? Why should I even care?
Care point number two on your outline: the biblical message addresses issues and answers questions we continue to wrestle with today. This is one of the things you find when you start to open the pages of Scripture, including books like Deuteronomy. The biblical message addresses issues and answers questions we continue to wrestle with today.
For example, this last week, I was listening to an audiobook on the topic of free will by an atheistic author who does not believe that free will is real. He thinks that free will is illusory and believes that we live in a deterministic world. That view is a philosophical worldview, and it affects how you understand moral responsibility. Incidentally, the book of Deuteronomy deals a lot with moral responsibility. One of the major themes in the book is something that we refer to as the principle of retribution.
The book of Deuteronomy emphasizes that we have moral responsibility and accountability to God. This is what the book of Deuteronomy sets as a basis for us: we are morally accountable to God. This is why I say that we have a philosophical mindset where our theology informs our worldview. Our philosophy changes the way we live in this world.
If you believe that we have no free will and that we live in a purely mechanistic, deterministic world, then you'll come to conclusions like this. The author in this book states that a desire for retribution has no ultimate basis if there is no free will and everything is determined. He writes, "I cannot hold you responsible for behaviors that you could not possibly control." He argues that if you had the same genes, the same biochemical makeup, and experienced the same circumstances, you would do the same thing as, say, a Jeffrey Dahmer or a Charles Manson.
He goes on to say that we still need to have a justice system, but how do you argue for a justice system if you say we ultimately have no moral responsibility? These things are important. Your theology, and that person—even though he's an atheist—has a theology, and it will affect the way that you think.
In this world, we have not progressed as far as we like to think we have. The Book of Deuteronomy not only correctly acknowledges the existence of evil, but it also addresses issues and answers questions related to evil, sin, morality, holiness, justice, and retribution. All of these themes are found in the Bible, particularly in the Book of Deuteronomy.
Point number three in your outline is that the Bible identifies humanity's principal problem and provides God's perfect solution. This is one of the insights you discover as you start to go through the Scriptures. As you open a book like this and prayerfully read through the text, writing down your thoughts and questions, you may sit down with commentaries or books by scholars, pastors, or teachers. By asking those questions and looking into these matters, you realize that the Bible identifies humanity's principal problem and provides God's perfect solution. Spoiler alert: the principal problem is sin, and God's perfect solution is Jesus. The Book of Deuteronomy prepares us for that reality.
I am running out of time, but let me try to wrap this up. In light of all the observable data, I believe that all thinking people— and I think you are thinking people—will agree that we are faced with considerable problems in life. One of the biggest problems that people face is the problem of suffering. We are all confronted with this, and any thinking person will look at the data. They observe the news, see what is happening in their own lives, and notice things occurring in other people's lives. They may conclude that we live in a world that is broken, filled with all kinds of problems.
On the list of our problems, there are various issues that generally fall into two categories. The first category is what we would call natural evils. These include fires, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, and other natural disasters. The second category is moral evils, which encompass actions such as theft, exploitation, murder, and rape— all the things that people do out of malevolence. Thus, we have natural evils and moral evils, and we all see these things around us.
Here's the fascinating thing: as we humans see and think about these issues, we have a compulsion, a drive within us to try and deal with problems. We strive to stop natural evils or, at the very least, to ease the suffering of those affected by them. We also feel compelled to address moral evils. Even atheists, who believe there is no free will, can be highly moral individuals. Sam Harris is an example of this; he is deeply invested in morality.
Even people who do not believe in God are driven to confront the issues of moral and natural evils in this world. Have you ever stopped to consider why? Why do we have this compulsion to address these problems? We are aware of suffering—not only human suffering but also our own suffering and the suffering of other humans in different places. We are conscious of the suffering of non-human sentient creatures, such as animals, and we feel compelled to try and fix those issues.
Point number four on your outline is that we feel compelled to address the evils of this world because we desire and expect a resolution. I want to suggest that the desire and expectation for something to resolve natural and moral evils makes no sense if you believe in evolutionary materialism. If you are merely a materialist who thinks everything happens by random chance and mutation over billions of years, then this drive we have to deal with the suffering in the world is illogical.
When was the last time you saw chimpanzees worried about other chimpanzees or concerned about a gazelle, trying to fix that problem? They aren't. Why? Because humans were created differently by God, in His image. We have a desire for things to be different; we long for a resolution to the suffering in this world. There is something in us that remembers a world without suffering and yearns for a world without it. This is the ultimate philosophical worldview of the Christian when they come to the Bible.
There is an explanation for this compulsion. If it's just random chance and mutation over billions of years, if pure natural selection is true, then there shouldn't be the drive to help something as small as a little baby bird that has fallen out of the nest. You feel the compulsion, and some of you probably experience this with your kids. You try to rescue that bird; you get a little box, put a towel in there, use a heating pad, and buy a syringe at the store to try and feed it and nurse it back to health. Why do you have that compulsion? What is driving you to do that?
There is an inward drive within you that is placed there by God. Why is there this compulsion in our culture today to try and save the world? We ought to deal with climate change and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. We have to fix these problems now. I understand the drive, but why do you have it? There is a very clear reason: God planted it there, and the Bible addresses these issues.
However, if you believe in pure natural selection, then when you see another human being suffering and dying, you should just say, "Well, they were weak, and nature selected them not to transfer their genes to the next generation." You might adopt a "live and let live" attitude and just keep going. It's all about "might is right," and you might think you just have to eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.
These are very different worldviews: one based on the Bible and another, oftentimes, based on human rationality, which I would argue comes from a fallen heart. We have to judge these things according to Scripture.
God, I pray that you would stand with me. Lord, I pray that you would give us wisdom as we think about these things. I pray that you would give each of us here a desire to think critically and deeply about Scripture, to consider what it has to say, and what it is that you desire to teach us from it. Lord, would you give us that desire? Continue to do a work of transformation by your grace in us, that we would reflect your nature in this world. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
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