Lesson 22
Summary of Two ways – 11:1-32
We are finishing up the first section of Deuteronomy and next we’ll move
into another section of the book, entirely different. You’ll notice the sharp switch; it’ll be
almost like we moved into an entirely different book of the Scripture. Yet this second section is very pertinent
because it is going to give you the principles by which you as a Christian
citizen may live in the Church Age as well as any other age for that matter,
because it shows you the mechanics of a nation.
From chapters 12-26 we will explore the different mechanics necessary
for a nation to survive and we will explore the issues of our time in our own
society as they can be looked upon from the light of the Word of God. My study in this area has convinced me of one
thing that I have never personally, even in seminary, been exposed to some of
the riches found in this section of Scripture.
The reason is at seminary you are learning tools, etc. and you have to
major on knowing the language, conjugating verbs, learning all the grammatical
rules and syntax, etc.
It’s amazing because here you have a book that is the heart and base,
and foundation, of the entire Bible because the book of Deuteronomy sets up
categories for the rest of the Old Testament.
When you read Isaiah, Jeremiah, when you read many of these prophets
that a lot of people are fond of reading, when you read Daniel, Revelation, all
of these books basically have categories that have been inherited from Moses’
writing in Deuteronomy. That’s why
Moses’ writings are very crucial. It’s
like getting in on the basics of mathematics.
When you go through here you will understand many things from the New
Testament. We will understand why Christianity
is not a social gospel, because Christianity when preached correctly is always
a social gospel by itself. We will see
why before the Second Advent of Christ, the Church cannot transform society
because of certain blocks that are put in history by God. We’ll see why we have trouble as a national
entity, etc. It’s a very exciting
section to move into.
But before we do that we have had to go through chapters 5-11 because
it’s upon these chapters that the entire Old Testament is based. If you read your Bible carefully you will
never find a brand of spirituality that does not coincide with chapters 5-11 of
Deuteronomy. This is why it’s so
important because what has the emphasis been all during the chapters we have
been working with? The emphasis has
always been on the Word of God, not experience; ALWAYS the Word, not
experience. You always find this
equation, that the Word of God is considered of very much more value than
experience in Scripture. The reason for
this is very clear because the Word of God is the only criteria we can have for
evaluating ourselves. You cannot live
the Christian life without taking in the Word of God, without digesting the
Word of God, without applying the Word.
This is very important because a lot of Christians are looking for some
hyper-ecstatic experience to replace their laziness and failure to study the
Word of God.
Unfortunately I’m forced to say that there basically is no key to the
Christian life either. The only key to
the Christian life is continual intake of the Word of God. This is not a simply littler thing, a
one-shot deal, where you go to a spiritual life conference and make some great
profound decision. It involves day by day slugging it out, taking in the
Word. When you see this redound to a lot
of people’s sorrow is in college. I’ve
counseled college students that at one time were strong believers and they have
had their faith knocked out from under them; I counseled one this week who was
on the verge of becoming an atheist. The
reason was that during the four years of intensive indoctrination in college,
no systematic intake of the Word of God was happening, then they wonder what’s
happened, I don’t have any more faith. I
can tell you what happened, you lost it by your own action, by your own failure
to eat, and if you do not eat you will not live spiritually. The same principle applies physically and it
applies spiritually. I realize that
often business, school and all the other pressures come in and try to compete
with this but you know that you’re never going to let those pressures compete
for long with our physical food, and our physical intake without some
disastrous results, namely you will wind up on your back in the hospital. You know as well as I do that you wouldn’t
let this happen and yet Christians by the hundredfold let this happen all the
time in their spiritual life. They could
care less about the Word.
In chapter 11 we find the last part of this section. We found in chapter 5 the basis of
spirituality was a personal relationship with a holy God. It was a real relationship, a personal
relationship, and it was grounded on certain absolute truths. In chapter 6 we discovered the essence of
spirituality which was living in the Word.
Here it’s important to realize a manifestation of spirituality in the
Old Testament. By the way, I’ve had some
deeper appreciation for this as I’ve gone into the last part of Deuteronomy, I
often thought of the Mosaic Law as a legislative gimmick. I’m discovering, much to my amazement, that
many of these commandments in the Old Testament were not legislation; they were
given on a purely voluntary basis. This
is why the nation
In chapter 7 we dealt with the conflict of spirituality. We discovered the fact that you cannot be
spiritual, you cannot be filled with the Holy Spirit without bumping some
ideas; the battle largely is in the realm of the ideas; this is why Christian
parents have such a struggle. One of the
hardest jobs, talk about the sensational thing, going out to the mission field,
etc. if you’re a Christian parent you’ve got the hardest job of all because you’ve
got the problem of bringing children up who are exposed 90% of the time to
people who do not and will not believe the way you do. Your children are put through a gristmill six
to seven days out of the week. A lot of
it is fine but a lot of it is subtle poison and you have a tremendous job and
so don’t ever let someone embarrass you and think that just because you’re a
Christian housewife or a Christian father and you are a business man or a
laborer or something that you are low man on the totem pole. You have a tremendously significantly job,
and if you don’t do your job, guess what?
You’re not going to have any missionaries in the next generation; you’re
not going to have any local church in the next generation.
If the Christian parents of this generation do not perform it torpedoes
the whole program of God for the next generation. This is what has happened to fundamentalism.
The reason we have such weak fundamentalists today is because the generation
that lived from about 1920 and were parents between 1920 and 1940 were a group
of spiritual ignoramuses. All during
this time period you had people growing up who were exposed to modernism;
fundamentalism had depleted its strength by 1920 and for these 20 years you had
a very weak brand of fundamentalism in this country and you see the
results. Half of the conscientious
objectors come from Christian homes and they get into the service, they go
through basic training, they get to the point where they’re going to get their
assignment for
As you go through Deuteronomy and see what Moses demanded for a nation
to live peacefully, you’re going to have the formula for peace spelled out
clearly and it does not include internationalism, it does not include the
United Nations, and by the way, in
What happens in this city? Some
of the men on the police department go out to answer a trouble call, they get
to the scene of the trouble, someone is being robbed or something, they ask did
you see it, no, I didn’t witness it; would you sign our report, no I can’t, I
don’t want to get involved, etc. So what
happens? The police come to arrest this
person and they can’t touch them until someone signs a complaint; nobody dares
to sign a complaint so they let him off.
That’s the kind of citizen participation you have. Then everyone says it’s up to the police
department; it’s always up to someone else to do. It’s always passing the buck. One of the refreshing things we’re going to
see in Deuteronomy is exactly the opposite.
You will see God’s plan for a perfect nation.
Then in chapter 8-9 we discover two basic errors that we all make as
Christians. One is that we forget that
we are creatures and this is expressed by that verse, “Mans shall not live on
the basis of bread alone but on by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of
God.” This is the verse attacking the
idea that you are your own god, that I am my own god, that I run the
universe. The second error is forgetting
that we are fallen creatures, and if we forget we are fallen creatures at any
time we go into what is known as self-righteousness. And self-righteousness always looks down at
someone else and fails to recognize grace.
Now in these last chapters which we are going through and which we’ll
finish tonight, it’s the either/or of spirituality. And here we come to the
idea that again as Christians when we accept Jesus Christ we are put into union
with Him and we have in the old creation, in the world in which we live, a
sphere that denotes the will of God for us.
At any time we are either in the sphere or out of the sphere, there’s no
relative thing about this, it’s either one or the other. The only relative thing we find in the Christian
life is growth. You can have a baby
Christian in the will of God; you can have a baby Christian out of the will of
God. You can have an adolescent
Christian in the will of God; you can have an adolescent Christian out of the
will of God. You can have a mature
Christian in the will of God; you can have a mature Christian out of the will
of God. So there are two things to watch for in the Christian life, maturity
which is a relative thing, that’s different, everybody in this room this
evening has a different level of maturity, and how mature you are depends on
many things, how much of the Word of God you know, how much you apply in your
life, etc. Also in the congregation
tonight some are in the will of God and some are out, and if you are out you
get back in by 1 John 1:9. This is the
mechanics.
In Moses day the same thing was true, you had an either/or situation and
beginning in Deut. 11:1 we conclude this either/or section. “Therefore, thou shalt love the LORD thy God,
and keep His charge, and His statutes, and His judgments, and His commandments,
always.” Once again let’s review these
words because these words are going to take on deep significance. The word
“statute” is a voluntary admonition to the nation. This is an expression of the will of God but
it depends upon the citizen’s voluntary cooperation. For example, here’s one that will amaze you;
do you know that the income tax in
Now we come to the word “judgment.”
“Judgment” is a legal enactment and this was enforced by the government. When you read your Bible, here’s how to tell
the difference. If there’s a command
that says you shall do something, that is a statute. If you have a command of the form, if such
and such happens then we will do such and such to him, that is a judgment, that
is something that is enforced by the government.
Then we come to the third word, “commandment” and “commandment” is a
once and for all command given, for example, when the nation would go in and
God’s commandment was to clean out all the Canaanite sanctuaries, just
eliminate them. Once they had done that
it was over, they didn’t have to keep doing it.
That would be a commandment; that’s what these three words mean.
As [can’t understand word] nuance of the difference, turn to 1
Now beginning in verse 2 we have an interesting comment made, “And you
know this day,” this is Moses speaking to his generation, “Know ye this day
(for I speak not with your children who have not known, and who have not seen
the chastisement of the LORD your God) His greatness, His mighty hand, and His
outstretched arm.” There is a
parenthesis with the phrase (for I speak not with your children who have not
known, and who have not seen the chastisement of the LORD your God). You “know this day His greatness, His mighty
hand, and His outstretched arm.” And
this is addressed to the parents, not the children, and it shows you something
about the Old Testament. Emphasis was
upon seen evidence. Only the parents saw
this, not the children. And here’s the crisis.
Moses knows that when these parents get old and die their children will
have not had the benefit of actually seeing these things, and therefore how,
and here’s the great problem of spirituality in all times, how are people who
have not seen the works of God to respond to the works of God? There is only one way—respond to the Word of
God because the Word records those acts forever. This is why the emphasis as Moses closes out
this section, once again returns to the Word of God. Your children have not known and this in the
Hebrew would tend to say the children have never known, they’ve never seen these
things.
What are the things that the children have never seen? They’re spelled out for us. Here are four things that the parents saw
that their children did not see. They “have not seen the chastisement…” why the
word chastisement? The word
“chastisement” equals the discipline and I know many times I use the word
discipline and what I mean is chastisement.
But here the King James is using chastisement and it means
discipline. The difference is that
discipline would be the sense of severe teaching; chastisement is
punishment. God punishes us but He also
teaches us severely. Here the emphasis
is on a severe form of teaching. In
other words, in the service this would be boot training, severe training. In the nation
It’s the same thing here, the only way the children can understand the
works of God is to read it. What are the
works of God? Number one, verse 3, “And
His miracles, and His acts, which He did in the midst of
Verse 5, “And what He did unto you in the wilderness, until ye came into
this place,” the second thing is the
So these are four things that the parents have seen that the children
have not. Therefore, the children
themselves are going to have to get some doctrine passed on to them. How?
Verse 7, “But your eyes have seen all the great acts of the LORD which
He did. [8] Therefore shall ye keep all the commandments which I command you
this day, that ye may be strong, and go in and possess the land, to which ye go
to possess it.” This is the refrain
we’ve seen over and over.
Verse 9, “And that ye may prolong your days in the land,” so you see
what’s going to happen is that when this generation comes into Israel they are
going to have the problem of prolonging their days. Why?
Because under the Mosaic Covenant you have the either/or and this
chapter is going to end in this either/or.
You’re going to have the situation of military victory, you have business
prosperity, occupation of the land and you’re going to have testimony. Those are the four basic blessings of the
Mosaic Covenant, if, IF the nation
adheres to the Word. But if it doesn’t
happen, in spite of the military victory they’re going to have military
defeat. In place of occupation of the
land they are going to be dispersed, and that is what is meant in verse 9,
“that you may prolong your days,” meaning you may stay in the land that God has
given you. Now it’s forever given to
Israel by ownership but that doesn’t mean Israel occupies it all. For example, there’s no theological reason
why Israel today couldn’t be knocked out of the holy land. There’s no
theological reason that says they have to continue in the holy land until the
Second Advent. All doctrine says is that
before certain events of the Tribulation occur they have to be there. But it doesn’t say they have to continually
be there. They could be wiped out of the
holy land; I don’t think they will but they could be theoretically.
“And that ye may prolong your days in the land, which the LORD swore
unto your fathers to give unto them and to their seed, a land that floweth with
milk and honey.” So enjoyment of the
blessings of God depend on being in His will, depends in our case upon being
filled with the Holy Spirit, which in turn depends upon our confession our sin
which in turn depends on knowing what God’s will is. Did you ever stop and think, this business
about filling of the Spirit, what has to precede the act of the Holy Spirit
filling you? You have to confess,
confession of sin. But what precedes
confession of sin? Knowledge of the
sins, you have to know the will of God.
So here you have knowledge first.
How can you get to the filling of the Spirit without knowledge of the
Lord’s will? Do you see the fallacy, why
we say over and over and over again that the Word of God is the basis of the
Christian life?
I had a complaint about one of our Sunday school teachers that all the
person taught was the Word. And I said
that’s not a complaint, that’s a compliment.
This person was fouled up from a college campus and said they only teach
the Word, you’d think the Word was the first thing in the Christian life. I said that’s exactly right. The problem with this person was that they
were all fouled up that the Christian life was going to be I wake up in the
morning and the Lord leads me over here to do something, or the Lord leads me
over here. You can have all sorts of
feelings but the great criteria is knowledge of the Word and this is why you
have to have knowledge before you can have confession, before you can have the
filling of the Holy Spirit. So if we’re
going to move in the Christian life it’s totally dependent on our knowledge of
the will of God.
Now we come to this prolonging of the days and I think you see the
general idea here is that they know the will of God, they are to act on the
will of God, and if they act God will bless.
Verse 10 is why, “For the land, to which you go in to possess it, is not
as the land of Egypt, from where you came out, where you sowed thy seed, and
watered it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs.” What does watering with your foot mean? What kind of sprinkling system operates with
your foot? The sprinkling system they
had in the ancient world, the Nile valley was all flat land; how did the people
get water? The only way they could get
water was one of two ways, pump, which they couldn’t do because they didn’t
have pumps so what they depended on was flooding. At the spring of the year the Nile River
would come down and flood, sometimes a 20 or 30 foot crest would come down the
Nile and these people would dig canals off the river and that water, when it
came down, would just flood out into the valleys. This is still done today in many of the areas
of Egypt, and that’s how they watered these gardens and the crops which only
grew next to the Nile. All the rest is
just desert except for this green strip along the Nile. The reason is no water.
How they got water, they had a very ingenious device. They had this water in these small
reservoirs, and into this reservoir they’d stick two sticks up and put a wheel
on this thing, and on this wheel, about the size of a bicycle wheel, some of
them that have been found in archeology, they’d have a chain come off this
wheel and on this chain they’d have buckets.
The servants would get on this thing and just pedal this wheel around to
turn this chain and the buckets would come down, gather some water and put it
in the sluice and that’s how they irrigated their fields. So this is why slavery was such a big thing;
they had to hire many, many slaves to turn these wheels. That’s what it’s talking about in verse 10,
you “watered it with your foot,” and your land to which you are going is not
going to be this way.
What’s the point? The point is
that this is a man-made irrigation system, these are human works. So in order to supply themselves in the land
of Egypt they had to do it by human engineering and human gimmicks, but verse
11, “But the land, to which you go to possess it, is a land of hills and
valleys, and drinks water of the rain of heaven.” But the Hebrew doesn’t say “of the rain of
heaven,” the Hebrew says “drinks water according to the rain of heaven.” And this means that the whole irrigation of
Israel is dependent upon rain, dependent on God’s supply, not man’s works. So the very means of supplying the production
to their business is going to be dependent on God’s blessing, not upon man’s
works. The last phrase in verse 10, “as
a garden of herbs” is mentioned because in Israel there was one exception to
the rule I just gave you, they did use these wheels for small gardens on top of
hills where they had to get the water up, and they’d just have a chain of these
things, one above the other. But that’s
the only exception, all the other irrigation in Israel was done by God. That’s
the point, God is going to bless this nation, you don’t have to do it, the work
God is going to do, all you have to do is stand with your hands out and
receive. That’s grace and that’s a
picture of what this land is going to do.
Verse 12, “A land which the LORD thy God is caring for,” and it isn’t
past tense, this is the Hebrew participle and it means He continually cares for
this land. It’s His land and He’s going
to care for it in a special way and the Hebrew participle means He is
continually caring for it, moment by moment.
“The eyes of the LORD thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of
the year even unto the end of the year.”
Can’t you see the environment of grace in which they’re going to
go? And that’s the point. You might translate this in your experience,
God has His eyes on you; if you are a believer He has His eyes continually on
you and don’t think He doesn’t. You may
not think so and in moment of discouragement and despair, and trial we tend to
doubt that fact but never doubt it.
Jesus Christ died for you; Jesus Christ died to produce a lot of things
for your behalf and He’s never going to take His eye off you because you are
valuable in His sight. He would never have died for you if He didn’t intend to
bring you to glory. Therefore the Lord continually cares for you and you and I
today in the Church Age also live in a land of blessing.
Verse 13, “And it shall come to pass, if you shall hearken diligently
unto my commandments which I command you this day,” there’s one construction
here which we’ve had again and again in the Hebrew but I want to emphasize this
because of one problem. Back in the days
of the King James the translators did not know this Hebrew rule of grammar so
this is translated wrongly. This is one
exception to the general rule that the King James is a fair translation. But at this point there is an error, “And it
shall come to pass, if you will really hearken,” and the reason for this is
that the Hebrew has the verb here and if they want to intensify the mood of the
verb they add the infinitive after the verb.
Whenever you see the verb plus the infinitive it means intensify, not
the meaning but intensify the mood. What
do I mean by mood? The mood is condition
of a verb, if something is going to happen that’s a mood of possibility. Therefore when you add the infinitive on to a
mood of possibility it intensifies, if you really are going to do this, then do
something. If you have an order like an
imperative mood in a verb, so it orders you, thou shalt do this and you add an
infinitive and it would mean you’d better do this. That’s what they had of intensifying the mood
of adding the infinitive.
So here Moses adds an infinitive to emphasize, “And it shall come to
pass, if you really hearken to My commandments which I command you this day,”
this is an expression showing the fact that their blessing is highly
conditional, it is utterly dependent upon their obedience and response to the
Word. “…to love the LORD your God, and to serve Him with all your heart and
with all your soul.”
Watch what happens, verse 14, “That I will give you the rain of your
land in its due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that you may gather
in thy corn,” in the Old English “corn” was the word for grain; that does not
mean corn as we use it, it means grain, “that thou may gather in thy grain, and
thy wine, and thine oil. [15] And I will send grass in thy fields for thy
cattle, that you may eat and be full.” I
don’t know whether you caught the implication of what was just said there. Do you realize what this is saying?
I’m going to spend some time on this because I want you to see this out
of the Old Testament. In the Old
Testament God was a God of nature, and they believed that if the nation
responded to God He would literally, physically change the climate to
betterment. For example, in verse 14,
“the first rain and the latter rain,” the first rain comes in September and
October, you have the cold fronts that moved down through the Mediterranean Sea
and in the fall of the year they begin to pack a lot of cold continental air
from Europe behind them and this touches off the first showers, so you begin to
have showers in September and October and these are the showers that the
farmers need to set off the growth of the grain. They grow the grain and along come March and
April; these are the latter rains.
Actually it rains from about December on and these are the continuous
winter rains. These are the early and
latter rains.
But notice something, God says I control those rains, if you are
obedient, I will supply your rain. Now
watch what’s going to happen. Later on
these people are going to go in there, it’s a great rural population and the
farmers have worry, worry about rain, where is our rain going to come from and
they worry and they worry and worry and finally they begin to turn to somebody
by the name of Baal and who is Baal?
Baal is a god who claims to be able to give rain, he’s called the rider
of the clouds. This means that they
envision him as riding these big thunder clouds; they actually envision these
thunder clouds as more or less chariots for these gods. So Baal was worshiped and this led to Baalism
or Canaanitism. The reason was that you
had a believer, he’s in a jam, no rain.
What does God say? He says I’ll
take care of the rain if you take care of the spiritual issue. You leave the rain to me, you just tend to
your spiritual business and I’ll tend to the rain. But what happened? These farmers would get out of fellowship and
the whole nation would get out of fellowship.
So what happened? God just turned
off the rain. So then they turn around
and say no rain, what are we going to do, and they start going after Baal.
What’s the point? Many times God
will remove blessing from your life, He will remove blessing from a Christian
organization. You see this again and
again in history, the Christian organization without a spec of self-analysis
says we’ve got to hire a PR man, got to get our funds, we’ve got an expansion
program, we’ve got a building program, we need money, we’ve got to hire someone
so they can send out all the gimmicks and get people to give money to us. But isn’t it interesting, they never take
time to analyze. Why? God is able; God is able to supply the need.
Why isn’t He supplying the need? That
answer is never given. A question is
never raised. Here you see the farmers
did the same thing. When the rain
stopped they never said why did the rain stop, God is perfectly capable of
giving the rain, that’s what He says here in verse 14, “I will give you the
rain of your land,” I will bless you, I am capable, I am the God of nature.
Therefore if He is the God of nature and He capable there’s only one thing
that’s obviously wrong. God doesn’t want
to give them the rain. Why doesn’t God
want to give them the rain? Because they
are out of fellowship, that’s why.
This led in history to a tremendous belief in answered prayer through
physical things. Verses 15, “I will send
grass in thy fields for thy cattle, that you may eat and be full,” an obvious
reaction to rain. The point here is that
all during the operation of the nation Israel, and this will help you if you
have problems in the area of prophecy, Tribulation, rapture and revelation,
etc. Just remember a simple little
principle of interpretation of God’s Word; whenever you have Israel operating
you will always have the nation synchronized to nature. There will always by a synchronization going
on. Nature is a barometer; as Meredith
Kline said in his book on page 78, one of the greatest commentaries every
written on Deuteronomy, “the very state of nature would thus constantly serve
as a sensitive barometer of Israel’s standing before the Lord.” So anywhere in the Word of God you begin to
have God executing judgments through nature, or blessing through nature, you
link that with operation Israel. The
Church does not so correlate with nature.
Why? Because we are not located
at one geographical point, we’re all over the world. This shows you why the Tribulation has to do
with Israel and not the Church because what happens in Israel? How is God judging the nations in Israel? Through physical means! In the Millennium how does God bless? Through physical means! Therefore is it Church or Israel? Israel is always linked up to God’s blessing
through nature. You have it here and
this is where it starts, right back here.
This principle starts here in verse 14-15 and continues on through the
book of Revelation, all the way up to Rev. 21.
That’s an important principle to latch onto and remember. Verse 16, “Take heed to yourselves, that your
heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship
them; [17] And then the LORD’s wrath be kindled against you, and He shut up the
heaven,” now here you have the opposite reaction. Here you have a situation where God is going
to stop the rains, I will “shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and that
the land yield not her fruit; and lest ye perish quickly from off the good land
which the LORD gives you.” It’s just as
simple as can be, just as simple as can be!
And yet down through the Old Testament you’d be surprised, they have
people knocking heads against walls, they have people actually, as we will see,
they would come to worship Baal and the ladies, particularly, would take knives
and they’d slash their wrists and they’d slash their hands and slash their
face; this is the way the women used to pray to Baal. It’d be an interesting prayer meeting to have
that go on. This is the way these people
used to worship Baal, go through all this, when the principle before them was
so simple… so simple!
How are the children going to learn the Word? Verse 18, “Therefore shall ye lay up these My
words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand,”
and “lay up” is the Hebrew word for establish, it doesn’t mean store, it means
to get these things established, like you’d get an organization
established. “Get this word established
in your heart and in your soul.” What
does “heart” refer to? Once again going
back to the human soul, volition, conscience, satisfaction in personal
relationships, rationality and memory, those are the four areas that are
included in the word “heart.” Therefore,
how do you get the Word of God laid up or established in your memory? Bible memory.
It’s very simple. And
rationality, how do you get the Word of God established in your reasoning
processes? This is a littler harder;
this doesn’t involve just memorizing Scripture.
How you get the Word of God established in your reasoning is to think
categorically; for example divide up the plan of God into phase one, phase two,
phase three and sort out your Biblical truths in these boxes so that you can think through and begin to think
categorically. This is how the Word is
established in your heart.
How is the Word established on your soul? The soul refers to the details of life, so we
go back to the heart and it’s surrounded by the details of life. You have fellowship with other believers, you
have loved ones, you have sex, you have money, you have food, your job, your
relationship with government, you have health, you have the problem of
relaxation, etc. All these, the details of
life, that is included in the word “soul.”
How do you lay up for yourselves the Word of God on your soul? This means to establish patterns of behavior
toward loved ones in the area of sex, in the area of money, in the area of
food, attitudes on the job, attitudes toward the government, attitudes toward
health or lack of health, etc. All of
these; that’s how the Word of God is established on your soul.
Verse 19, “And ye shall teach them to your children, speaking of them
when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, when you lie down,
and when you rise up,” and as we pointed out earlier in Deut. 6 is a tremendous
passage because it tells you how they taught their children in the Word of
God. It did not mean they sat down and
talked about Bible stories. That’s not
what it’s talking about because if this were true you’d have talk about
them. But about isn’t in the Hebrew, in
the Hebrew it’s talk in them, “in,” not “about.” Therefore when you have this presupposition
in the Hebrew it means you talk in terms of, or in the framework of. In other words, all thinking, all analysis,
all attitudes are within the framework of the Word. For example, on any given subject you know
the Biblical viewpoint and you discuss it in terms of the Biblical viewpoint,
you evaluate it in terms of the Biblical viewpoint. Some of these comedy programs on TV that make
fun of the man, always the man, he’s the biggest clod, they must find out the
worst jerk they can and they bring him on and say hey, will you play the father
in this family; then they get some aggressive woman and she plays the wife, and
this is supposed to be funny. Do you
realize what’s happening to your mind while you’re laughing at this? You’re being brainwashed. Do you know what you’re being brainwashed
into? You’re being brainwashed into that
the woman is the head of the home. She
doesn’t want to be the head of the home, she never was designed to be the head
of the home and she’s out of place if she is the head of the home, but that’s
what you’re being taught and it’s the most subtle, effective form of propaganda
you could imagine because when you’re laughing your guard is down and that’s
exactly when you’re most vulnerable to anti-Biblical ideas. Laugh at it!
Always remember that. I’m not
denying it’s humorous but the point is what is the result of this after a long
time period? You know as well as I do
what the result is.
So this is an example of looking at something in terms of the Word of
God. And it doesn’t mean necessarily you
have to sit down with your children and go through all the Bible stories. It means basically that you teach them how to
think scripturally. Is this
important? I ran across a study done on
children and it was taking teenagers, I think was 15 years old and they
examined to find out the contribution of their ways of thinking and their
behavior patterns, etc. The church, 1%
influence; of course admittedly this is on a nation wide average and includes
non-church people. 15% Boy Scouts, Girl
Scouts and similar organizations. This
is the one that’s a shocker, 54% of the influence comes from the father,
particularly expressed at the dinner table.
That’s the study. In other words,
it wasn’t necessarily at the dinner table, what they’d try to do is isolate
times when the children would be relaxed, but times when the father was
effective in communicating whether he wanted to communicate something or not
and they isolated that down and found out the dinner table was the greatest
thing but of all the things in the family, the father had 54% of the influence
on his children. That’s amazing; that’s
in this day and age. Now do you see why
the most effective gospel program is to teach the Word of God in a local
congregation so that parents can go home and teach it to the children through
attitudes and actions and not have a makeshift kind of thing where we have all
this youth activity, youth clubs, etc.
They’re fine but it’s peanuts compared to this.
Isn’t it interesting that the Word of God perceives this same thing
because notice in verse 19 who is doing the teaching? The rabbis? The priests? The Levites? The Levites were the ones that
did the teaching to the adults, all through the city; every city had a team of
Bible teachers called the Levites and these Levites would teach the Word, teach
the Word, teach the Word, but who was teaching the children? Not the Levites, the parents. “And ye shall teach them to your children,
speaking in terms of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the
way, when you life down, and when you rise up.”
And as we have said earlier, this is an idiom for continual exposure to
the Word of God. This is why I said that
these programs in the public school are threatening your position as a parent. It’s not just the simple area of sex
education, that’s crucial, but please don’t miss the big point. The big point is that they are gradually
taking your children away from you and you are seeing it right under your nose
because gradually they are saying we are the authorities, we are going to teach
your children what we think best for the community. If you’re a Christian parent you ought to do
some investigating. Sooner or later
something is going to come up and you’ll wonder why you don’t have any
influence. Because over the years you
have sat by and haven’t done anything and watched this go on and gradually and
surely it’s just like you died as far as the influence. That’s what’s happening.
You see it here in the Old Testament.
You have responsibility. What
does the New Testament say? Bring your
children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Where in the Bible does it say let the state
bring up the children? Show me, you
can’t find it because it’s not there.
And isn’t it interesting in the Ten Commandments, what was the recipient
of the authority of the children? Honor
thy father and thy mother, not the government.
Why? Because authority and respect of government in the Bible comes
after authority and respect to parents.
You have divine institutions in Scripture. The first one is volition;
every member of the human race has volition.
The second divine institution is marriage; every member of the human
race has a right to marry. The third one
is family, and they’re installed in this order.
Divine institution number four is government, government comes last and
does not receive the authority due parents. Parents are given more authority in
Scripture than government. This is why
there is no explicit allegiance to government expressed in the Ten Commandments. It only says “honor thy father and thy
mother” and you can’t find one of the Ten Commandments that has anything to do
with government.
I want to show you in verses 18-19 that the Biblical concept is emphasis
on the family unit. Anytime a teacher in
the public school begins to undermine your authority you have all the right in
the world, as unto the Lord to go down and make it clear. You don’t have to be nasty about it;
sometimes you have to be, but you make it clear to them.
Verses 20-21, “And you shalt write them upon the doorposts of thine
house, and upon thy gates, [21] That your days may be multiplied,” here’s
spreading the Word of God around. By the
way, verse 20 shows you something, liberals say they didn’t have writing in the
time of Moses. Isn’t it interesting, one
of the commandments was that the father had to write the Word of God on the
house walls. How could he if he couldn’t
write, and yet this is a command given to every father, the head of every
family.
Verse 22, “For if ye shall diligently keep all these commandments which
I command you, to do them, to love the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways,
and to cleave unto him, [23] Then will the LORD drive out all these nations
from before you, and ye shall possess greater nations and mightier than
yourselves” and here we go back to the other promise. Not only will He physically bless, He will
take care of the military problems if we just take care of the spiritual
problems.
Verse 24, please recognize the domain of Israel, “Every place whereon
the soles of your feet shall tread shall be yours: from the wilderness and
Lebanon, from the river, the river Euphrates, even unto the uttermost sea shall
your border be.” This is what Israel
looks like in all its land; Israel doesn’t look like that today. Israel looks about like this, that’s about
the size of Israel compared to what it will look like when it attains its full
boundaries. [Verse 25, “Three shall no
man be able to stand before you’ for the LORD your God shall lay the fear of
you and the dread of you upon all the land that ye shall tread upon, as he hath
said unto you.”]
Verse 26, the conclusion, the blessing and the cursing. Behold, I set before you this day a blessing
and a curse: [27] A blessing, if ye obey the commandments of the LORD your God,
which I command you this day; [28] And a curse if you will not obey the
commandments of the LORD your God, but turn aside out of the way which I
command you this day, to go after other gods, which ye have not known.” Here it is simply expressed this bottom circle,
inside the circle is blessing, outside the circle is cursing. Inside the circle
God blesses you, filling of the Holy Spirit in today’s terminology, outside God
curses, God disciplines.
Verse 29, “And it shall come to pass, when the LORD thy God hath brought
thee in unto the land to which thou goest to possess it, that you shalt put the
blessing upon Mount Gerizim, and the durst upon Mount Ebal.” They’re going to have a great ceremony after
Moses finishes this sermon and you’ll see the Levites and they’ll get up there
and one part of the choir will sing one part of these cursings and as they sing
across this valley the other part of the choir is going to be on the other
mountain and they’ll sing against them.
It’s going to be a most fantastic ceremony described in chapters 27-29.
Verse 30, “Are they not on the other side of the Jordan, by the way
where the sun goes down, in the land of the Canaanites, who dwell in the
Champaign [Arabah],” I want to correct
this because there’s a mistake in the translation, “Champaign” is an Old
English word, it’s not something you drink.
This is the steppes, s-t-e-p-p-e and steppe is a grassy plain, “over
against Gilgal, beside the plains of Moreh?”
And that is wrong, it’s not “the plains of Moreh,” it is the trees of
the teacher. “Moreh is a teacher”, it
comes from Torah, Torah—the Law, the teaching, the “Moreh” is the man who does
it. That’s the Hebrew word for teacher. And the “plains” is not “plains,” it is trees
and it refers to a sanctuary, in fact, the very sanctuary that Abraham went 500
years before when he came into the land, he went there. So here we have come full circle after five
or six centuries they now come back to the very place where Abraham first went when
he came into the land.
This concludes chapter 11; next week we will begin the mechanics of the
nation and how to love the Lord your God with all your soul. So far we’ve developed the concept of loving
the Lord with your heart or your mental attitude; next week the application of
the mental attitude in specific areas of living.