Lesson 9

“Proof” of the Old Testament – 4:9-24

 

We’ll start the conclusion of the section of this book called the historical prologue.  You want to remember that Deuteronomy is a book whose outline is in a legal format.  In other words, if you were to sit down and outline this book, the result of your outline would be exactly equal to a legal document of the ancient world called an international treaty.  And the outline of this book is very important because it shows you that this book was written in Moses’ day.  90% of the ministers today in the pulpit are liberals; this means that 90% of the people that you will hear from the pulpit will decry Mosaic authorship of the first five books of the Scripture.  If you take a course in religion in college the religious professors will teach you that Moses did not write the first five books of Scripture.  And Christian tax payers are footing the bill for public education.  Christians have this spineless attitude that they’ll let government use their money any way they want.  Christians should make some noise about this but they don’t. 

 

Nevertheless in public and private education people are being taught that Moses did not write these five books.  Not only is this blasphemy because it contradicts the words of our Lord Jesus Christ; if Moses did not write these Jesus Christ is wrong.  Not only is it blasphemy against the person of Jesus Christ but it contradicts the facts of the case.  The book of Deuteronomy outline is an outline that could only have been created somewhere between 2000-1000 BC.  The outline as shown by scholars recently is strictly in the format of an international treaty which was outdated by 1000 BC and therefore it could not have been written late. This book was written early and therefore is proof that Moses could have written it.

 

Deut. 4 is part of a section in the Scripture and we want to review the sections of Deuteronomy.  The first section we call the preamble because it corresponds to the preamble of every international treaty of the day and this was a very short section, the first five verses, 1:1-5.  Then we have the historical prologue which was 1:6 through chapter 4.  Then we have the stipulations form chapters 5-26 and then we have various concluding business that teach about how this treaty will be enacted in time, how it will be put in force over the nation.  But these sections of the book of Deuteronomy are important because they are akin to an international treaty and by understanding this outline you can understand what God is saying to the nation through this book.

 

The historical prologue section, chapters 1-4, the purpose of this section in an international treaty was to simply obligate the party to the treaty to the great king.  In other words, you would have a concept like this: you would have a great land like the Hittite Empire, and the Hittite Empire was ruled by a series of royal family.  One was Suppiluliumas, we’ll just call him King S, and King S decided he would make a treaty with Tyre, and he would therefore establish a treaty that would control it.  For example, the United States Government would enter a treaty with some nation, say South Korea, and to control our legal relationship and obligations to South Korea we would establish a treaty.  This is exactly what happened in Scripture.  King S would establish a treaty with Tyre and when it got to the historical prologue, which corresponds to Deut. 1-4, King S would say to the King of Tyre you owe allegiance to me because of what I have done for you.  It’s not a question of I’m commanding you, you owe it to me because I have supplied you with raw materials, I have helped you economically, I have done this and that for you, I have come to your aid when you were being attacked, etc.  Therefore you owe allegiance to me. 

This means that the purpose of the historical prologue was to obligate the addressee of the treaty to the lord of the treaty.  Similarly God is doing the same thing in chapters 1-4.  He is saying Israel; I want you to see what I have done for you.  And you want to understand this because God is not arbitrarily laying out a law.  The law is grounded from start to finish on grace.  God has first done something for the nation, and then He obligates them to obedience.  Keep this in mind because this is where this lordship thing got started, this business about Christ isn’t Lord at all until He is Lord of all.  They go back to the Old Testament to back themselves up.  When was the Law given?  The Law was given after redemption; the Law was given to a redeemed people, therefore it has nothing to do with the way of salvation and no one was ever saved by keeping the Law.  The Law hasn’t the foggiest thing to do with salvation, not a thing to do with salvation. The law is given to a redeemed people and spells out the way of life of a believer in the Old Testament.  That’s what the Law is for.  The Law was given as a modus operandi of the nation Israel so they could design and construct legislation at a maximum efficient pattern. 

 

So we have this historical prologue and we see several things.  In 1:6-2:1 we saw God’s grace first in that it was rejected. We spent a lot of time in this section and showed that God, by His grace, led the nation up to the boundary of the Promised Land and they rejected; they said no God, we know that we are saved, we know that we are saved forever and yet God, we do not want to serve you.  So God says okay, you are saved forever, I can’t destroy your salvation but I’ll make you the most miserable set of believers that ever lived.  So for 38 years they went out in the desert and scooped dirty water out of a hole and that was their destiny as a believer, as will be the destiny of any believer that rejects God’s will for his life.  He will wind up to be the most miserable person alive.  The most people in the world today are not unbelievers; the most miserable people are believers out of fellowship because God’s hounding them and God will continue to hound them until they day they die or get straightened out.  From 1:6-2:1 is a case in history where a whole nation was miserable for 38 years.

 

From 2:2-3:29 we have God’s grace again and this time it was shown in the fact that He removed the discipline after 38 years and began to move the nation up into the land.  Here they were chasing giants all over the Jordan.  We saw the Anakim, the Rephaim, etc.  We saw some guy that was about 13½  feet tall and saw how long and wide his bed was, etc. 

 

From 4:1 is the lesson that the nation is supposed to learn.  In other words, here is God’s grace, here is God’s grace, and now Moses turns around and says look, God has given His grace to you again and again, now what are you going to learn from God’s grace.  So the rest of chapter 4 deals with what you are to learn from God’s grace.  Let’s look at it.  We have gone through the first eight verses which deal with God’s layout.  In other words God has given Israel as a nation a perfect way of life.  In 4:1-8 we found that here you will find the key to a lot of legal problems that we face as a nation today, because in Deut. 4:1-8 we found the basis if law. 

 

There are only four bases for law.  There is direct revelation. If you’re a politician and in office or in the legisla­tive branch of government you have only one of four basis to operate from.  Direct revelation, and this would apply only to a legislator in Israel.  By the way, Israel didn’t have any legislative branch.  Israel only had an executive and a judicial department in their government.  God was the legislative department; God made the laws.  Wouldn’t it be interesting if God was our Congress, God made the laws, God set the policy, and the people just carried them out?  This is only true for Israel.  Another base for law is consensus; consensus of your nation or consensus of some ruling party based on Scripture.  This happened in Great Britain; it happened in the United States up until about 1930.  Since 1930 we have lost concept number two.  Up until 1930 if our law was not made by Christians it was made by people who were influenced by Christianity, whose basic system of think, basic concepts of right and wrong were grounded in God’s Word.

 

Then we come to point 3 and that is you can have laws if you give up the first to, you can try to establish law on a consensus based, say on sociology, as the Supreme Court is trying to do right now.  Or you can base it on force; you can base it on some other base.  But I want you to see clearly that once you give up the impact of Bible Christianity on a society, you are asking for trouble and we are asking for trouble as a nation today because when men give up the concept of Scripture this immediately means that we have to experiment to find a base on which to make law.  And one of the great examples we can have in our time of how people can get hurt in this kind of experimentation is a lot of our welfare programs.  The poor people in this country are going to be hurt permanently by a lot of these programs.  I was told that in the streets of Harlem in New York City that some of these welfare programs will tear apart these poor people because they are promising things they cannot give and after you promise somebody something you can’t deliver you have lost your authority.  That is where we headed.  People get hurt when you move over to concept 3.  The first time this was actually enforced in the modern world was the French Revolution.  

 

Finally we come to individualism.  That’s the only other base and this will lead to anarchy.  This is what the left-wing radical students are saying on the college campus today.  And in a way they are right because if you give up a Biblical base, what authority do you have to tell someone else to keep in line.  You don’t have any authority.  They are saying to the college administration, what right do you have to tell us what to do, who gave you that authority. And the college administra­tion can’t say a thing because they’ve already given up concept number two.  I have no sympathy for college administrations.  The students have said why stop at 3, let’s move over to 4, that’s all the left-wing is saying.  You’ve dropped the Biblical base and if you have a right to make law then why don’t we have a right to make law, we’re students on this campus.  Now I disagree with them, don’t misinterpret me; I say that they are out of line but they are out of line not because of the administration, they are out of line because of God’s Word.  This produces a relaxed environment.

 

This works wonders if your life, you can take this principle over into your life and apply it and relax because this means that if you are in society and you see something called law, and it concerns you and says do something, and the person who told you to do this may be the most despicable person you ever knew.  You may disrespect the policeman on the corner, you can’t stand him personally and it’s very hard to obey somebody you can’t stand.  Some children can’t stand their parents and vice versa.  But nevertheless, the relaxed concept of Scripture takes us back and destroys that mental attitude.  You have an old sin nature and when someone tells you to do something and you hate their guts, what does that old sin nature do immediately?  I am not going to do it!  That’s what it does. 

 

Under the Scripture concept you have a way out of this box, you don’t have to react against them, you just remember Rom. 13 and you say I’m obeying this law but not because of you, I am obeying this law because of what Jesus Christ told me to do period.  In other words you obey authority because of what Christ has told you. That’s why you obey authority.  So if you have some clod over you and you can’t stand his guts, just remember that he’s not really over you, Jesus Christ is over you and so you obey as unto the Lord, not as unto men.  And it produces a relaxed mental attitude because you don’t have to fight this guy all the time.  You just say you ought to be thankful I’m a believer because I’m obeying because of who and what Christ is and what He’s done for me.  If you do this it develops a wonderful mental attitude, you’ll never be frustrated about some jerk that orders you to do something you don’t like because you know that you’re obedient because Jesus Christ told you and you do it as unto the Lord and you move on.

 

And you don’t let personalities bother you.  Some people let personalities bother them; you shouldn’t let personalities bother you.  Because somebody has a warped personality and you can’t stand their guts, and it annoys you every time they walk in the room, and if you let this bother you you’re not operating Biblically.  You don’t have to fight it, just do it as unto the Lord and move on.  Forget that they are even there; just look right through them to Jesus Christ.  This concept of obedience to authority produces a relaxed mental attitude and you don’t have to worry about fighting people all the time because you do it as unto the Lord.

 

As we move on from Deut. 4:1-8 we come to the second section, 4:9-24.  This section is, I think, one of the most crucial sections in the Old Testament because in this section, more than in any other section of God’s Word you have spelled out for you why it is that people believed in the Old Testament.  This is the proof of the Old Testament. 

 

Now I want to ask you a test question.  I don’t expect an answer but just think to yourself.  If tomorrow someone were to produce the body of Jesus Christ, would you still believe?  If you are operating Biblically you’d say no.  In spite of all the evidence of answered prayer and all the rest of the evidence would be totally disqualified because if they found the body of Jesus Christ it would discredit all of Christianity, 1 Cor. 15 Paul agrees to that statement.  Therefore the proof of Christianity doesn’t rest on answered prayer; the proof of Christianity doesn’t rest on personal experience, the proof of Christian rests on one element, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.   Our faith is not a system of doctrine.  It is a system of doctrine that is grounded on historical facts. 

 

This is why we insist, and why were are called fundamentalists because down through the 19th and 20th centuries we have been the people that insist that if Jesus Christ was not God, if Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead, then let’s tear up the Bible and forget it.  But the liberals said oh no, even though Jesus did rise from the dead we’ll just carry on.  And they’re being very dishonest.  You have no right to carry on the name of Christian if it was not historically true that Jesus literally physically rose from the tomb, 1 Cor. 15.  So you see our faith hinges on historical fact. 

 

Now that is not new to the New Testament, it is in the Old Testament and we see it in Deut. 4, for the Old Testament faith rested not upon the Law, not upon fulfilled prophecy, the Old Testament rested on one event.  God speaking the literal Ten Commandments to people in Hebrew language, and a million of them sat there and heard him. That is the faith of the Old Testament.  If God did not literally speak to the people so that if you had a tape recorder there you could have heard his voice, the Old Testament should be thrown out and discarded. 

 

The whole Bible hinges on crucial points and in chapter 4 we’re going to see some of these points and you watch how Moses develops this.  Verse 9, “Only take heed to yourself, and keep your soul diligently, lest ye forget the things which your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life; but teach them to thy sons, and thy sons’ sons.”  One grammatical correction in the translation.  The phrase that you see “all the days of thy life” goes with the command to “keep your soul diligently.”  It does not go with “lest they depart.”  This is just stuck at the end of the sentence for various syntactical reasons which we don’t want to go into from the pulpit.  But verse 9, that clause links up with the verb, “take heed;” you have the comparative verb, “take heed” is a command, “take heed and keep.”  Those are the two main verbs, those are the imperative verbs, those are the commands.  This command is to last “all the days of your life.” 

 

As we read through this I want to show you some things that you probably don’t usually get in studying the New Testament.  This is why you should always study the Old Testament in balance with the New Testament, because it will keep your life balanced; you won’t get off on certain things. Remember, the New Testament is written against heresy. Always remember that.  The New Testament epistles by and large have been written to correct errors.  When you correct errors you don’t have time to give the whole truth, you’re just giving the truth that clobbers this heresy. 

 

For example, the Gnostics behind Colossians, the book of Colossians is written against the Gnostic heresy.  You have to understand this.  Ephesians was written against the same kind of thing.  Corinthians was written against the problems of sexual fornication, etc. and what happens in a sexually loose society; Corinthians is written against this.  You have to understand this to appreciate it.  So as you read through the New Testament you’re constantly shifted from heresy to heresy, you’re fighting this, you’re fighting this, you’re fighting this. But in the Old Testament you have the perfect system developed in all its entirety.  So by studying the Old Testament you get a solid base.  Then you go over to the New Testament and pick up your elements and build on them. 

 

So here in Deut. 4:9 you have one of the techniques that carry over in the Christian life.  “Take heed to yourself, and keep your soul diligently … all the days of your life,” and this goes back to a principle which we explained in Titus, and that is that living the Christian life depends on being alert.  It depends on using shock and alert.  Unfortunately in our day people confuse piety with mysticism.  Everything goes as long as you’re sincere.  So and so is a wonderful Christian because they’re sincere.  Well friend, you can be sincerely wrong, and I can cite you about ten examples out of the book of Acts where people were sincerely wrong.  I can cite one example where Peter was sincerely wrong.  Do you know who corrected him?  Paul did.  The infallible apostle was corrected by another infallible apostle.  How about that.  Paul and Peter had a little argument because Peter was a very sincere person but he was wrong and Paul had to correct him.  Sincerity is fine but sincerity without doctrine is nonsense.  You have to couple sincerity with doctrine, so don’t buy this business that so and so is a wonderful Christian because they’re so sincere.  They may be a wonderful Christian but that doesn’t guarantee they’re right.

 

What guarantees they are right is they know God’s Word and know how to apply it and this requires mental activity, some thing that some people find very difficult, to actually have to sit down and think for two minutes every day.  This is tremendous work and this is required in the Christian life, to think, think, think.

And this is what Moses is talking about to “take heed to yourself, and keep your soul diligently,” requires some thought, “lest you forget the things which your eyes have seen,” what is it that their eyes have seen, “and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life.”  What are these things that he’s talking about?  Mt. Sinai, he’s going to go on to explain this.  And he wants these people to go over and review and review and review and review, he wants them to go over the truth of the Passover every day of their life, over and over and over it again, and not only in their own life but “teach them t thy sons,” and not only “each them to your sons, but teach them to your grandchildren.” 

 

What is it they are to teach? The things which they have seen because what they have seen on Mt. Sinai is the base of the Law.  Let’s apply this before we go any further.  Let’s apply this to the Christian life.  What is it that we should teach over and over and over again?  The doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  We have to review the cross and resurrection again and again and again.  This is why we have communion, to review and review in a very graphic way what Christ has done for us. 

 

The Old Testament is God’s Word from the Creator who made us, and He understood that when He made us we would forget.  You forget things, I forget things and we have to be reminded again and again and again and the great truth of the Old Testament is that this has to go on continually throughout your entire life.  I heard a Christian, a former preacher, he said I don’t bother with the Bible, I know it all, I studied that when I was a new Christian, I don’t have to study it any more.  That tells me why he’s no longer in the ministry.  You are never too old to study God’s Word and you have to study and study God’s Word again and again and again.  You can’t get enough of God’s Word. Every once in a while you have some Christian say oh, don’t teach Christians too much of God’s Word because they’ll get spiritual indigestion.  Can you imagine someone telling Paul that?  Paul, don’t come to Thessalonica and teach the doctrine of eschatology because these poor Thessalonians might get spiritual indigestion.  Some of them got worse than that, when Paul was teaching the book of Acts a guy fell asleep and fell down and killed himself.  People did all sorts of things when Paul was teaching.  You want to see that repetition is the key to Scripture;

 

“Teach them to your sons, and to your sons’ sons.  Verse 10 gives the content.  “The day that you stood before the LORD thy God,” the word “specially” is in italics, it’s not there.  Verse 10 is the content of what they are to review and review and review.  “…before the LORD thy God in Horeb, when the LORD said unto me, “Gather me the people together, and I will make them hear my words,” look at that, I’m not going to tell them, I’m going to make them hear my words. I’m going to have a sound system that’s so tremendous that the person sleeping under 15 blankets in his tent, when I have spoken the Ten Commandments he’s going to be at attention in the front of his tent.  He is going to hear my words.  And God, to use modern vernacular, He socked it to them at Mt. Sinai.  He called them to hear, He didn’t just say “thou shalt not kill,” He said it in such a powerful way that the earth shook.  And these people may have been sleeping in their tents but when the tent fell down and the earth started shaking they realized somebody was saying something.  So they woke up and they heard what God had to say.

 

We come now to this Sinai incident, and notice some more details.  “I will make they hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children.”  The word “fear” in the Old Testament doesn’t mean you’re afraid of God coming around and hitting you.  The word “fear” means respect.  God does not ask for you to be a sentimentalist.  Jesus Christ never asked you to believe on Him because you feel sorry for what He did for you on the cross.  You don’t believe in Jesus Christ because you feel sorry for Him.  A lot of evangelists tell these big sob stories, oh, look at Christ on the cross, how He suffered for you, and you feel sorry for Christ and you believe on Him.  That’s not what Christ is asking you to do.  He’s saying you trust in Me because you recognize you have to.  You may have sentimental feelings about it but you just keep those to yourself. 

 

We respond to God’s Word, that’s what He wants, respect.  The friendship and the personal com­mun­ication with Him come as we grow in Christ.  But the starting point is in the Old Testament is that God demands that we respect Him and we cannot respect a person until we know the person and we cannot know the person until we have studied God’s Word.  So you have to go over and over the character of God, all the attributes of His divine essence.  When we know these we respect Him for who He is. 

 

Verse 11, “And ye came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness.”  From that word “and” in verse 11 to the end of the word “thick darkness” is a parenthesis of description.  These parentheses of description are frequently put in the Hebrew text and they are put in there by the author to vividly describe… if you’re an artist and interested in painting Scriptural things, learn a little Hebrew because it is the most picturesque thing you have ever imagined, to read through the Old Testament in Hebrew.  The authors draw one picture after another and here it’s in the participle and you see this parenthesis, “and the mountain burned,” that doesn’t send you very far in the King James language, but if you read that in the Hebrew it’s giving you a picture.  It’s not just it burned, it’s a participle and you’re brought right to the scene of this mountain and it’s burning, it’s continuous action, and that’s what the author wants you to see.  He wants you to see in front of you this mountain, there it is, it’s burning, burning up into a mushroom cloud into the heavens.  That’s what he wants you to see, he wants you to see this picture. 

 

Verse 12, “And the LORD spoke unto you out of the midst of the fire.  Ye heard the voice of the words but saw no similitude; only ye heard a voice.”  Let’s check the word “similitude” because Moses has a big point here.  He was saying that you heard something but you didn’t see similitude.  The word “similitude” in the Hebrew is temuwnah and we want to understand this word because it says something.  It does not mean God doesn’t have a form.  Turn to Exodus 33:20 you will see where God does have a form and Moses saw that form.  By comparing this with Num. 12:8 we know that Moses is talking about temuwnah;  temuwnah is not here in the text but when Moses refers to it again he calls it that.  Here’s God speaking, just imagine if you were there on Mt. Sinai and saw this. 

 

Verse 19, God said to Moses, “I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before you, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before you, and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. [20] And he said, Thou canst not see my face; for there shall not man see me, and live.” You can correct that, who is the one man who has seen God and lived?  Jesus Christ in His resurrection.  In the resurrection body we are qualified to look at God’s face.  Verse 21, “And the LORD said, Behold, three is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock; [22] And it shall come to pass, while My glory passes by, that I will put thee in a cleft of the work, and will cover you with My hand while I pass by; [23] And I will take away my hand, and you shalt see My back; but my face shall not be seen.” 

 

There Moses saw the form of God. What was the form of God? What did God look like?  Just like He looks in every vision of the Old Testament, as He looks in the book of Revelation, i.e. the temuwnah of God is the person of Jesus Christ.  And all the visions of the Old Testament, if you compare them to Rev. 1 where it is identified as Jesus Christ and you compare what you see in Rev. 1 with what you see in the rest of the Old Testament, you will see that what was seen in the Old Testament was Jesus Christ.  When Isaiah was in the temple and he saw the seraphim saying “holy, holy, holy to the LORD of hosts,” John in chapter 12 says what did Isaiah see? He saw the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

 

So Jesus Christ was the one seen, Jesus Christ is a form.  Now obviously God did not have the incarnate body; God did not have the incarnate body until Christ was physically born, but in the Old Testament temuwnah was a foreshadowing of what Christ would look like.  I think it would be to your advantage to just take a few minutes and look at Rev. 1 and read through it carefully because if you ever want to see what God looks like, He’s there.  John painted a picture of Him for you in Rev. 1.  If you read that you will correct this image we have of some sweet little man that’s a scarecrow holding a sheep or having kids on his shoulder, etc. That’s the gentle side of Jesus Christ.  But you want to balance that; you want to see the fierceness of His glory and His justice and you will see this in Rev. 1.  This is the temuwnah of God.

 

Going back to Deut. 4, why is it that God did not show this temuwnah to the people.  He could have.  Why didn’t He?  Why was God so careful never to show His form at this point on Mt. Sinai? For one simple reason: idolatry.  Man over the centuries have insisted on making a statue, we do it right now do the present day, making statues of things and calling them gods and worshipping them.  In order to cut this off God was very careful at Mt. Sinai, He said listen, I have a form but I’m not going to show it to you now.  All I want you to do is hear My voice, just hear My voice.  By way of application to us today, how do we hear His voice?  By studying God’s Word and that should be a sufficient reason for studying God’s Word because it’s His voice and you come to know God by His Word. 

 

Verse 13, “And He declared unto you His covenant, which He commanded you to perform, even ten commandments; and he wrote them upon two tables of stone.”  Now the Ten Commandments, I want to give a word of explanation because in verse 13-14 we have a shift.  Something has happened in these verses, and I want you to be careful as you read through here.  In verse 13 it says “He declared unto you his covenant,” God did not speak the entire Law to the people.  God declared His covenant only in that He gave them ten, and in the Hebrew word it’s dabar, and that’s the word for things or words, not commandments.  We call it commandments but this is what God was saying.  We would maybe say ten clauses, ten phrases, ten statements would probably be better, ten statements.  So the Ten Commandments summarize God’s covenant.  That is what the Ten Commandments are doing. We are going to get into the Ten Commandments but at this point I want you to see what God is saying.  He only spoke the Ten Commandments to the people, nothing else.  He didn’t speak the Law to the people. 

The Law was imperfect and I’ll show you one area the Law was imperfect because it allowed for divorce and Jesus Christ came to the divorce issue and the Pharisees said Moses allowed divorce, and Jesus said sure he did, because of the hardness of your heart.  In other words, Moses adapted the implication of the “ten words” to sinful men.  That is why God’s will [can’t understand word] His grace, because we have sin natures and allowances have to be made.  You can never reach a state of perfection. 

 

So the Law in itself has provision for sinful men. What’s one of the great provisions in the Law for sinful men?  Sacrifice.  It had a whole system of sacrifices.  So the Law provided for men’s weaknesses and controlled it.  But the “ten words” are something different; the “ten words” are spoken by God and are perfect and absolute.  There are your absolute truths, the Ten Command­ments.

 

Now watch the shift; when you begin to read verse 14 what happens.  Verse 14 is a parenthesis.  Do you see the difference?  Who’s speaking in verse 13? God is speaking in verse 13.  Who’s speaking in verse 14?  Moses is speaking in verse 14.  “And the LORD commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgments, that ye might do them in the land which you go over to possess.”  We went over this, let me review again. 

 

What is the difference between statutes and judgments?  Statutes refer to commands given to your conscience, no one is going to hound you, no one is going to sit in a room and say are you keeping those statutes?  Statutes are given to the Old Testament believer; it’s strictly up to him, strictly up to his conscience.  Judgments, on the other hand are the civil law of the land.  Here’s the civil law of the land and this is enforced by government.  If you don’t obey the judgments of the Old Testament you were judged.  But you could disobey the statutes.  This difference is shown in 1 Kings 6 where Solomon is said to have walked in the statutes but enforced the judgments.  Did you catch how the two verbs shifted?  Did you catch these two words, be careful, two different words, two different concepts, two different meanings. 

 

Statutes are commands given to do this.  For example, a farmer every third year would leave a part of his field open for the poor.  We’ll see what a real welfare program looks like in the Old Testament.  We’ll see what a godly divinely authorized welfare system looks like; you’ll see it in the Law. There is such a thing as a welfare system; God has designed one and it’s not like what you think it is.  But here is this farmer and he would only harvest part of his field and he would leave the harvest left-over so that the poor people could come in and take their share of it.  This was statutes, no Department of Agriculture of Jerusalem didn’t come out and say hey, you’ve got to leave so many acres for these people.  Nothing like that.  No Department of Agriculture to enforce this.  But the judgments were enforced by government law, by order and edict. 

 

These are the two words that Moses taught, but notice Moses taught these.  Who is Moses?  Moses is a mediator.  Moses mediates between the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man and when he mediates he changes things a little bit.  For example, this book, Deuteronomy, is different than Exodus.  You read the same law in Exodus and you read the same law in Deuteronomy and it’s different.  You say wait a minute, how can God’s Word contradict itself?  Because Exodus was written to a people who lived in the desert, Deuteronomy is written to a people who live in the land, a rural people and you see the Law shift and adapt to the changing environment. 

See, the Law is a changing thing, but the “ten words”… these are the absolutes; through prophecy, through the prophets, this is the role of the prophets, to take God’s absolute truth and adapt it to the situation that people find themselves in and he did so by creating these statutes and these ordinances or judgments.  So the “ten words” are “God says,” but these things are the “man says.”  Do you know when in history this is going to be changed?  In the Millennium, and then you will have a perfect government and the man who does the legislating will be you absolute law, Jesus Christ.  So you want to see this and feel the difference. 

 

When we’re talking about the Ten Commandments we’re talking about absolutes; when we’re talking about the law we’re talking about a thing adapted to the environment in which the believers found themselves. 

 

Verse 15, “Take ye, therefore, good heed unto yourselves; for ye saw no manner of similitude” or temuwnah “on the day that the LORD spoke unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire.”  Now take heed therefore, “take “good heed unto yourselves” is important to understand this and to get this concept of what it means to “take heed” and lay it down more specifically, turn to Prov. 13 and you will see the three ways in which a person takes heed to his soul.  The book of Proverbs is the law in shoe leather; Proverbs is the law applied to life, common sense but it’s there.

 

Prov. 13:3, here’s how to keep your soul; “He that keeps his mouth keeps his soul,” the word “life” is the word nephesh or soul, so that’s the first way in which a person keeps his soul, to watch his mouth; gossip and maligning, etc.  This is James, to watch your big mouth.  It’s very hard to watch and James says it’s the mark of maturity when you are able at last to control the tongue.  It’s the smallest member but the most kinetic energy passing in a small member that is in the entire body.  So, keep your big mouth and that will keep your soul.  In other words, it means guard or protect your mouth.  That’s the first meaning of “keep your soul.”  “He that keeps his big mouth will keep his soul.” 

 

The second meaning, turn to Prov. 16:17, “The highway of the upright is to depart from evil; he that keepeth his way preserves his soul,” and the word “way” means your overt activities of life.  These are the activities of your life, the details of life, the things you do, where you go, etc. this keeps your soul; that’s the second thing.  So keep your mouth, keep your overt activities under control. 

 

Prov. 19:16 is the third area, “He that keepeth the commandment keepeth his own soul, but he that despiseth his ways shall die.”  This verse by parallelism with the last part of verse 16 is referring to mental attitude.  Those are the three things involved in keeping your soul.  Actually we should renumber them.  Mental attitude should be first; mouth should be second and overt activities should be third.  That’s the natural way it flows.  But you start keeping yourself in the Old Testament terminology by watching your mental attitude.  This means if someone has offended you, don’t worry about it, just trust the Lord and move on.  Don’t let it get to you; watch your mental attitude.  The battle begins on the inside and this is why it’s so wrong to talk about legalism, especially to children and saying you shall not do this and you shall not do that, without at the same time showing them that it goes back to how they think.

 

Suppose you were able to enforce, by just sheer brute force, a child within a moral code.  What would he do when he got out from under you?  Ask someone in the service what happens.  In every unit in the service there will always be about 10% of hell raisers and these are little kids that just got away from home and they think they’re going to run the world; they’re trying to impress everybody.  The trouble is, the older men in the service, it doesn’t impress them at all.  But you have these little brats and it’s probably the first time they ever had a bottle of beer and they go out and get drunk and that’s very impressive, look it, I’m a big man now, I can go out and get drunk.

 

I had a couple in my detachment when I was in the service and it’s very interesting talking to them; they came from Christians homes and instead of being exposed to the Christian way of life their parents said you won’t do this and you won’t do that and that’s all. You have to say you can’t do this and you can’t do that but you have to give reasons for it.  These kids are never given reasons, never told to confess their sin, never told how to be filled with the Spirit, never instructed in the basic mechanics of the Christian life so they get in the service and you ought to see what goes on.  Why is this? Because they have built their life on legalism and they get away from the parents and they say thank God I’m out of that house, now I am going to live the way I’ve always wanted to live and there’s going to be nobody telling me what to do and what not to do.  And they are in trouble from morning until evening.  Why is this? Because they’ve got nothing on the inside; they don’t realize the battle begins in the mind and in the Old Testament it does. 

 

[Blank spot] it may get gruesome as we go through the book of Deuteronomy but I just have to relate this to you because it deals with life as it is.  Let’s not live in a hot house; life is tough out there and the Bible states it as it is and we won’t go into the details of verses 17-18. 

 

Verse 19 is the second reason, you shall “lift up your eyes unto heaven, and when you see the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them,” so the second reason, not only is not only the images, but the worship of a planet, what we call astro-religion, a common phenomenon of the ancient East.  Notice the last part of verse 19, a very puzzling verse that scholars have puzzled over for at least 300-400 years trying to find out what is meant by the last part of verse 19, “which the LORD thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven.”  The word “divide” means He has caused them to inherit it.  He has caused them to inherit it; what has He caused them to inherit?  He’s caused them to inherit these natural things. 

 

The key to interpreting what is going on here is the next verse because verse 20 reads in the Hebrew: “But you the LORD has taken and brought you out of the iron furnace, to be unto Him a people of inheritance,” do you catch the thought?  In other words, you have Gentiles over here; here are the Gentiles and here is Israel.  In verse 19 the Gentiles are the recipients of the stars.  In other words God has said these people have rejected and rejected and rejected, I reject their culture, I am not looking to their culture and they can go and be polluted.  That’s Romans chapter 1 and 2; if they want to be polluted, fine, I give them that as their inheritance.  “But you the Lord has taken for an inheritance of Himself.”  So here you have the Lord inheriting Israel.  The Gentiles inherit the stars but the Lord inherits Israel.  This means and speaks in the Old Testament, verse 20 underlines and is the Old Testament equivalent of that famous verse in the New Testament, “I am the way, the truth, and the life and no man comes unto the Father but by Me.” 

 

This is the exclusivism of the Old Testament.  In other words, what the Old Testament is saying in verse 20 is that every religion on earth is wrong except Old Testament religion.  There is your exclusivism.  In the New Testament it comes out in John 14:6, which was one of the verses that led me to Jesus Christ while I was in college.  But this is the exclusivism that all faiths are declared wrong and by the way, you can apply that today because most of your religions today were in existence, except Islam, when did they form?  They formed under the Old Testament economy. 

 

Verses 21-22 are parenthesis; we’ve covered this material before.  Verse 23, “Take heed unto yourselves, lest ye forget the covenant of the LORD your God, which He made with you, and make a graven image, or the likeness of anything, which the LORD thy God hath forbidden thee.” 

 

Verse 24 will introduce the next section which we’ll cover in detail next time, “The LORD thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God.”  This means the other side of the coin to eternal security.  We talk a lot about eternal security but always balance eternal security in your mind with discipline, Heb. 12.  At the time you receive Christ you are put in Christ; that’s your position, but it has two sides to it.  It means that you are in Christ all right, but you’re in God’s family and He is going to discipline you.  Therefore eternal security says if you are a Christian and you get out of God’s will God is going to hound you and hound you and cause your life to be miserable and you’ll get further away from Christianity, etc. and God may even kill you, sin unto death.  But God is not going to permit His children to run around without some cause/effect relationship going on.  “The LORD our God is a consuming fire,” doctrine of discipline.  Next week we’ll show how this relates.

 

Verses 9-24 give you the base of the Old Testament faith.  There’s one miracle and only one here and it is used that these people may keep their soul.  The miracle is God speaking at Mt. Sinai. This is the proof of the Old Testament, if God never spoke at Mt. Sinai, throw out the Bible, just throw it out, and stop playing games.  But if God did speak from Mt. Sinai, then what He said is obviously very important and that’s why the Old Testament is also important.