Lesson 72
Final Challenge – 30:11-20
Finishing up Moses’ invitation in Deut. 30; setting this area in
prospective for the next book we will handle after Deuteronomy is Joshua for
the administration of the first phase of God’s theocracy in the nation
Again let’s remember what an invitation is and let’s remember that in
this invitation that began back in Deut. 29 and from verses 1-9 Moses gave them
the factual basis of the invitation.
This is a model; here we find in terms of the Word of God what a true
Biblical invitation is. And invitation
is a presentation of the facts of history, of the Word of God and a challenge
to respond to those facts, either positively or negatively. In verses 10-15 Moses clarified exactly what
it was that he wanted them to choose. In
verses 16 through the end of chapter 29 he dealt with the problem of negative
volition and what would happen if they chose negatively toward His
covenant.
In chapter 30 he is concluding in this section which ends in verse 14
with what will happen if you choose for the covenant; if you choose to go in
under the covenant. He has finished
explaining the various things, the blessings that God will give them. Verses 1-3 summarized what theologians call
the Palestinian Covenant, which really is not a separate covenant; it is an
amplification of the Abrahamic Covenant.
The Abrahamic Covenant in Gen. 10, 15, 17, 22 gave three things
basically to the nation
In Deut. 30 we have had just the amplification of the Palestinian provision
for the land. God has said that after
the cursing and the blessing and all these things have come, it will be
absolutely certain history that this nation
One of the choices of that plan is that God’s administration in the
world will go through the nation Israel and so it will come down to a time when
Messiah comes again to set up a 1000 literal year Millennial reign, after which
there will be the Great White Throne judgment and the eternal state. But that 1000 year reign is a culmination to
history and it’s an important culmination to history because it is our message
to the masses today that seek for justification, for a just society, for a
society in which there is no more war, for a society in which there’s no more
social injustice, for a society that’s balanced, for a society with freedom.
And that vision of a perfect society is given in this 1000 year
Millennium. It’s not just a vision
because that is the goal of history. And
yet even after 1000 years of perfect environment the Bible says that Satan is
released for a short time and the masses that have lived in a perfect society
for 1000 years turn and revolt against the Lord. So that answers the problem can a just
society solve mans’ problem; the answer is no it can’t because even here, with
a perfectly administered society, when Satan is once again released you have
this destruction.
In verses 11-14, the last section of this dissertation on positive
choice we have Moses conclude, as he did with the last section. Remember when he dealt with the negative
choice, he concluded verse 29 of chapter 29 and said “The secret things belong
unto the LORD our God; but those things which are revealed,” and those things
that have been revealed “belong unto us and to our children forever, that we
may do all the words of this law.” In
other words, God has secret aspects, we can never know omniscience, some people
think you become omniscient when you die and go to heaven; you’re going to know
everything. You will not, you’re not
going to become omniscient at the point of death; that would turn you into a
god. You’re going to be learning for all
eternity. So you learn a certain amount
of information now and you will continue to learn for all eternity; this is the
corollary to being a creature. There are
secret things that God has.
Now when Moses finishes this section dealing with the positive side, he
does just what he did when he dealt with the negative side, namely, he takes
verse 29 of chapter 29 and he expands it in a different way. So in verses 11-14 we have this expansion at
the end of section on His positive choice.
“For” he says, this is why you should hearken unto the Lord, because
“this commandment which I command thee, it is not incomprehensible [it is not
hidden from thee], neither is it far off.”
Verse 12 refers back to the incomprehensible clause, “It is not in
heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, [and bring
it down unto us, that we may hear it, and do it?]” We didn’t have time to amplify that but this
comes out again and again, that heaven in the Old Testament stands for the
unknown, unrevealed councils of God.
To see this turn to Proverbs 30:3, you’ll see much the same expression
made again. Here you have the same image
of heaven as the residue of the storage of the omniscience of God. This is a section of Proverbs of Agur, the
son of Jakeh, “I neither learned wisdom, nor have the knowledge of the Holy
One. [4] Who has ascended up into heaven, or descended? Who has gathered the wind in his fists? Who
has bound the waters in a garment? Who has established all the ends of the
earth? What is His name, and what is His son’s name, if you can tell.” Here again you see the fact that total
knowledge, absolute truth, is unavailable to man unless God gives us pieces of it,
verbally. And when God gives us pieces
of His absolute knowledge that’s stored in His omniscience, God takes part of
it, if you will, and gives it to us. We call that the Bible. The Bible is the revelation of God; it’s not
the Bible contains the Word of God; the Bible is the Word of God. Liberal theologians, for example, if those of
you who have the RSV look carefully in the preface you will notice the hedging
that goes on in the preface of that translation because many of the translators
of the RSV were neo-orthodox people and therefore they didn’t believe the Bible
was the Word of God, they believed it witnessed to the Word of God, that the
Word of God was something way up in the heavens somewhere that you couldn’t
understand.
To see this and the significance of it go to John 3 and grasp one of
those passages that you may never have understood before, it will make a lot
more sense. John 3, Jesus’ discussion
with Nicodemus. This is the famous
dialogue between the Lord Jesus Christ and Nicodemus; Nicodemus being a PhD in
his area in his day; he was a man that saw there was something about the person
of Jesus Christ that attracted him, and yet having this typical academic pride
he didn’t want to really come out and say it.
So he said in verse 2, “The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto
Him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God; for no man can do
these miracles that you do, except God be with him.” In verse 3 Jesus immediately responds back to
Nicodemus and says Nicodemus, I know what you want, you’re worried about the
kingdom and you want to know how you can get in the kingdom and I tell you that
“Unless a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” What is the kingdom of God that Jesus
referred to? Was it some spiritual thing that nobody could see, spooky, shadowy
kingdom of God? No; the kingdom of God that would have been understood in the
time of the writing of this text was a literal social, political, physical
kingdom.
It was this Millennial Kingdom, and Nicodemus knew that this was the
culmination of the history of his nation, but he knew that before that Kingdom
there would be a judgment and some would be excluded and some would be
accepted. He said Lord, how can I participate
in that perfect kingdom. And Jesus said
in order to participate in that you have to be born again. And Nicodemus responded, remember he took it
physically, verse 4, showing that he wasn’t thinking of spiritual kingdom here,
he was thinking of physical things, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can
he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?” Jesus said
unless a man be born of water and of the Spirit he cannot see the kingdom of
God.” Now that phrase in verse 5 is
important. Some people have taken that
as a fact that that proves you cannot be saved unless you are baptized, unless
you are born of the water—baptism, and born of the Spirit, those two have to
occur together. But Nicodemus would not
have so understood it. That’s reading
into the text our present knowledge. But
put yourself back in Nicodemus’ shoes, what would he have done had the word
come to him. What information did he have from the Old Testament about this
future kingdom?
Turn to Ezekiel 36:25; this does not refer to baptism. The Scripture must
be interpreted as it would have been understood in the day in which it was
written. What Nicodemus had accessible
to him, these prophecies of that future kingdom? He is predicting the future kingdom, remember
Ezekiel has borne witness to the collapse of the theocracy, and now he’s
speaking of the resurrection of it in the millennial kingdom. And he says, “Then I will sprinkle clean
water upon you, and you shall be clean; from all your filthiness, and from all
your idols, will I cleanse you.” Verse
26, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you;
and I will take away the stony heart,” etc.
The water there is used as it always is used in the prophetic literature
of the Old Testament, for cleansing. The
water is the divine pronouncement of cleansing and forgiveness of sin. So when Jesus says to Nicodemus, Nicodemus
you have to be born of water and of the spirit, what would have come to
Nicodemus’ mind is the prophecies he knew then of the kingdom. Jesus was talking to a man who knew the Old
Testament, and He didn’t have to into the details, this man knew this
already.
To one who knew Ezekiel 36, what would being born of water and the
spirit mean? It would mean that he would
be forgiven of his sins and secondly after being forgiven from his sin the Holy
Spirit would come to dwell. He would be
regenerated. That’s how Nicodemus would
have taken it. Baptism is a picture of
that but Nicodemus would not have taken that water literally because it wasn’t
literal in the prophecy, not the way the prophets used the word “water.” We come to this statement and then something
else is said. Verse 6, “That which is
born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit,”
showing that it’s origin is not physical but spiritual, not however saying that
the thing doesn’t result in physical change.
Verse 7, “Marvel not that I say unto you, Ye must be born again. [8] The
wind bloweth where it wills, and thou hearest the sound of it, but you can’t
tell from where it comes, and where it goes; so is every one that is born of
the Spirit.”
Now you have to catch the way the Apostle John writes. When John records the words of Jesus he
probably of all the writers in the Gospel, John records the words of our Lord
directly. Matthew, Mark and Luke
sometimes will record the words of the Lord by indirect quotation, so it sounds
like the Lord speaks differently in the different Gospels. But that’s because in the Greek we have no
way of telling whether the man is quoted directly or indirectly. In the Greek they didn’t have any quotation
marks like we have in English. In
English you can tell, so and so said quote, dot dot dot dot dot, end quote and
you know that’s what he said. Or I can
say so and so said that dot dot dot dot dot and I would summarize what he
said. But in the Greek you can’t tell
this and this is why Jesus and many of the men appear to speak differently.
However in this chapter of John 3 we have a little hint that many
scholars have pointed to that suggest that John the Apostle most faithfully
records the style of the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ and that is that
when John records the words of Jesus you can’t tell where Jesus’ words ends and
John’s picks up. For example, I would
challenge you to read the rest of John 3 and tell me where do the words of the
Lord Jesus Christ stop and the words of John the Baptist start, because by the
time you get to the end of this chapter it’s John the Apostle that’s talking;
when you start the chapter, however, it’s Jesus talking. Somewhere in the chapter they switch and it’s
a challenge to find it out. It’s a very
difficult problem of interpretation here, where they switch.
Now how do you explain the fact that John spoke, evidently so much like
the Lord Jesus Christ. The best
hypothesis that’s been advanced is that John was one of the youngest of the
apostles and John being a younger man, probably a teenager at the time the Lord
Jesus Christ picked him, he was a young man, that John was swayed. Jesus became his hero and so as often you see
this, a person who has a hero will tend to adopt the personality, the forms of
speech, the forms of action and the mannerisms of his hero. So John the Apostle evidently has taken over
in himself the forms of address of the Lord Jesus himself. You see this sometimes in the other Gospel
writers, Matthew, Mark and Luke when they quote the Lord Jesus Christ,
oftentimes it sounds like John, for there’s a passage in Matthew’s Gospel that
says something about the light has come into the world, etc. and it sounds just
like if you took that verse out of context you’d swear that was from John. Therefore, apparently the Lord Jesus, if you
could quote Him directly, would sound most like you see Him in this Gospel,
John’s Gospel.
Now in the middle of this discourse when he’s accurately portraying the
Lord’s conversation the Lord often taught by the use of a word that had two
meanings. In the Greek there’s a word
for wind, there’s a word for spirit, and they’re the same word. So the Lord Jesus Christ takes over the word
for spirit, He’s talking about a spiritual birth and He says Nicodemus, it’s
like the spirit that blows where it lists, and you hear the sound thereof, but
you can’t see it. And Jesus blends the
two together in this illustration, “it comes and where it goes; so is every one
that is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus
in verse 9 asks a question that’s very relevant to this passage in
Deuteronomy. “How can these things
be?” Verse 10, “Jesus answered, and said
unto him, Are you a master of Israel, and you not know these things? [11]
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we
have seen; and ye receive not our witness. [12]] If I have told you earthly
things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you heavenly
things?”
What does Jesus mean by “earthly things” and “heavenly things?” What’s the difference? What He has just said to Nicodemus is
Nicodemus, look, you have the prophecies of the Old Testament, what does Ezek.
36 tell you? How does one get into the
kingdom; you have to be born of water and of the Spirit; you know that
Nicodemus, it’s an earthly thing. What
is an “earthly thing” now? An earthly
thing is not something that’s physical and the heavenly things are spiritual,
that’s not the way these words are used.
The “earthly thing” is something that is available to man that has
already been revealed, and Jesus is saying look Nicodemus, I haven’t even
revealed any new truth to you; I’ve just simply gone back to the Old Testament
prophecies and you don’t understand them, now Nicodemus if you don’t understand
the Old Testament what are you going to do if I start adding to it? That’s what Jesus is saying to Nicodemus
here. He says you are a master of
Israel, you don’t know these things; I have just simply built on the prophecies
of the Old Testament, certainly Nicodemus you ought to understand that, and if
you don’t you’re going to be in trouble when I add to the revelation. And in a way, as John often writes, these individual
personal events become types of national behavior, Nicodemus here representing
the nation Israel and you have the situation of what happens to him as an
individual basically happens to the nation; they understood not the earthly
things and so therefore they wouldn’t understand the heavenly things when they
were made earthly, in other words new information from God’s omniscience made
clear to man.
So we have the picture then summing up of earth and heaven as they are
used in Scripture. Earth means it is
already revealed; heavenly things are things that are secret. These are things
that have not yet been revealed, though they may in the future. In the New Testament we have nine mysteries
revealed of heaven. So the heavenly things become earthly things when they are
revealed. When you speak of heavenly things and earthly things you’re not
talking about one thing is more physical than the other; that’s a platonic
problem that people always have when they come to God’s Word. Don’t make that division here; that’s not the
division that’s intended.
Back to Deuteronomy now. So Moses
is saying, when he concludes his invitation, the people, he says, I have
expounded to you these doctrines; I have made the issue clear, there is not an
excuse under the sun for not obeying this thing, for these things are not in
heaven, verse 12, and when he says they are not in heaven it means that they
are not hidden in God’s omniscience, they are not unrevealed things that you
have to send an angel up to find out.
Why do I major on this point?
Because if you will go into any liberal church today, if you read the
writings of the liberals, if you take a course in religion or Bible as
literature on the college campus, I’ll lay 9 to 1 odds that you will pick this
concept up; modern theology says that the things have never become earthly,
they’re still heavenly and all that we’ve got down here is man’s subjective
responses, reactions and opinions to his environment; that’s all we’ve God and
God really has never taken any of His heavenly things and verbally revealed
them. This is the difference between the fundamentalist, between the orthodox
Christian and all of liberal Christendom today. We are in a vast minority
group; we are a very, very small minority group here. But you’ve got to see the point. Modern or the new theology does not believe
in earthly things. To them nothing ever
has come from God’s omniscience down into the realm of man’s intellect; it’s
always stayed up there and man’s intellect has strived on just man’s own
thoughts about himself and about God and the surroundings. That’s the content of new theology.
But I want you to see here in verse 12 that wasn’t the concept of the
Old Testament. You may argue that the
Bible is wrong but at least be fair in your representation of the Bible. The people of the Bible did not believe the
way these existentialists’ theologians believe today is wrong, to read those
ideas back into these men; these men believed in a literal revelation from
God. They may have been wrong, and
that’s for you to judge; you’ve got to choose that. You can say they’re wrong, of course you
can’t be an orthodox Christian and say they’re wrong. But the point is, you can say they’re wrong
but don’t you misrepresent what they say.
These men had no question in their minds that God had personally spoken
to them.
Then Moses sums it up in verse 14 by saying “But the word is very near
unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that you may do it.” Now watch that phrase carefully because it
will protect you against a common misinterpretation of that verse in the New
Testament. Oftentimes this verse is
twisted to get you to do certain things and I’ll explain in a moment. But you want to understand when he says “in
thy mouth and in thy heart” he means that you know it; that’s what he
means. If you turn to Deut. 31:19 you’ll
see how mouth is used. “Now, therefore,
write this song for you, and teach it to the children of Israel;” remember in
Deut. 6 they would teach things to the children, “teach it to the children of
Israel; put it in their mouths,” it is in apposition to “teach.” Putting it in their mouths means that you’ve
communicated it to them to the point they can verbally understand it. I have read in a book recently that when you
think, if you take careful measurements of the electrical signals that are
coming through your nerves to your larynx that there are actually signals that
are defined patterns of talking, even though your silent; you may be thinking
about things, as your brain functions it is transmitting down to your voice
box. And so although your voice box, of
course, you’ve decided that you’re not going to speak and so you don’t really
speak, still those signals are available, so that as you think in [can’t
understand] one to one relationship, as your brain functions your lips can also
function.
Now this is what was recognized in the Old Testament, that as you think
in your heart your mouth is in one to one relationship or linked to it. So they said in verse 19, to put it in their
mouths meant that they would know it and be able to verbalize it because
knowing in the Bible means that you are able to think it through to the point
when you can verbalize it and tell someone else about it. You can think through your faith. That’s what
it means to have faith in the Bible; do you see why I keep saying you have to
know the Word, you have to know the
Word because there’s no other way you can believe in the Bible.
Turn to Rom. 10:5 and you will be prepared to understand that enigmatic paragraph
that is often used by evangelists to get people to walk down the aisle, sign
cards, and raise their hands. I feel
it’s an illegitimate application. This
is another illustration of what happens when you have people who study the New
Testament without any preparation in the Old Testament. You cannot understand the New unless you’ve
got a firm foothold on the Old Testament.
“For Moses describes the righteousness which is of the law, that the man
who does those things shall live by them. [6] But the righteousness which is of
faith speaks on this wise, Say not in your heart, Who shall ascend into heaven?
(that is, to bring Christ down from above); [7] Or, Who shall descend into the
deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead).” You might even say that verses 6-7 is commanding
you not to believe. What do I mean by
that? What he’s saying is that the Word of God, when the word of faith comes
Paul is saying don’t you jump if you don’t understand it; if you can’t
understand the gospel, if you’re in the position I don’t understand this thing,
it’s too deep for me and I’m just going to believe it, if you say these things,
“say not in your heart” these things.
Understand it, then believe but don’t believe until you have understood
the issue; don’t believe until you have understood the issue!
I have seen more deformed Christians that have been prematurely shoved
into the kingdom by high pressure salesmen of the gospel who have forced them
to believe on emotional compulsion and these poor people have never understood
the issue. So they find themselves born
again because the Bible says faith is a grain of mustard seed, it only takes a
little bit, and by God’s grace they get in, but they get in and they are
perpetually deformed forever after; it’s like having a premature baby and not
caring for it. Do you know what happens
in the hospital with a premature child?
They have to put it in the incubator and you have to sit there and sort
of sweat it out while that child gains weight, etc. and his systems adapt to
the premature environment. It’s the same
thing spiritually; people that are shoved into the kingdom by emotional
pressure, what happens. I’m a pastor and
I spend hours and hours trying to work with people that have been shoved into
the kingdom, changing their diapers, blowing their nose, doing this, doing
that, because they do not understand the grace of God and the first time they
get hit with a problem, boom, it’s all over, they want to throw it overboard
and everything else. It’s horrible to
work with these people; I’d rather work with an unbeliever than to work with
people like this. It’s horrible to say
that but that’s exactly the way I feel from working with people that have been
shoved into the kingdom. And that’s why
Paul says, don’t say this thing, “who shall ascend into heaven?” Don’t say I don’t understand it so I’m going
to believe it anyway, don’t say that, but rather… what does it say in verse 8,
here he quotes from Deut. 30, “The word is near thee, even in thy mouth, and in
thy heart; that is, the word of faith, which we preach:” now isn’t that
interesting? Paul takes that verse from
Deut. 30 that had to do with the Law that Moses preached, and then he had the
audacity to take that and say you know, that’s what I preach. So here you take Paul identifying himself
with Moses; what Moses preached Paul says I preach, there’s no difference
logically in the message, none whatever, emphasis in a different area but no
logical contradiction; absolute unity of the Word of God from Genesis to
Revelation.
Then he goes on in verse 9-10 and makes this statement that is so often
misunderstood. “That if thou shalt
confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that
God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. [10] For with the heart
man believes unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto
salvation.” Often you will have people
say that unless you confess Christ before men you haven’t been saved; unless
you walk down this aisle and confess Jesus Christ openly and publicly there’s
every reason to doubt your salvation. Well eventually that might be a bona fide thing to say, but not when a
person is first born again. Sometimes
it’s true when a person has first trusted in the Lord and if the evangelism job
has been thorough and adequate, he will immediately begin to stick up for
Christianity and stick up for the person of Jesus Christ in front of others,
and confess Him, that may be. But on the
other hand it may not be for a little while.
It takes time to grow, time to overcome natural shyness, etc. We have a lot of people this way and time and
the Word matures them and they eventually will, but the point still remains is
that that’s not what Paul is saying here in verses 9-10. This is not an evangelistic coming down the
aisle, getting up and testifying for Jesus in front of men.
What he is saying based on what we know of the Old Testament ways of
speaking is that verse 10, a mouth confession is made unto salvation, it means
that you are able to verbalize. You
see, it’s an “if” clause in verse 9, “if you confess with your mouth,” and “if
you believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be
saved.” It’s true, that’s an “if”
clause, it’s true that’s a prerequisite for salvation. If you’re going to say you’d better be clear
on the verse because if you’re saying this requires a public confession then
you’d better be honest to the text and say no man can possible come into the kingdom
of God unless he walks down the aisle.
That’s the only way to take that unless you take it this way. You take the “if” clause, “if you confess,”
what does it mean? Confession is
necessary and belief is necessary, what is he saying? Those are prerequisites for salvation but
this confession here is not the confession in front of someone, the confession
here is that you are able to verbalize it to someone. Just like back in the Old Testament, teach
your children and put it in their mouth… put it in their mouth. What does it mean? So they understand it and can verbalize
it. And what Paul is saying here is that
until a person is able to understand it to the point of being able to verbalize
and explain it he can’t believe it.
That’s pretty strong language and if only some of the evangelists of our
time would grab hold of this we’d have a phenomenal change in the whole
approach, that the New Testament commands a person to understand thoroughly,
and then put your trust in it, after you’ve understood… after you’ve understood.
Back to Deut. 30, in verses 15 through the end of the chapter he
concludes with a challenge for these people to believe. He says, “See, I have set before thee this
day life and good, and death and evil,” and I pause for a moment in this verse
to draw your attention to the way these words are used in the Old Testament,
again, to steer you away from errors of interpretation of the New. When he says “life and good, and death and
evil,” please notice the union of the physical and the spiritual. “Life” is physical life here and “good” is
the same word in Ecclesiastes and it means the normal pleasures of life. In the Old Testament life, physical life is
looked upon pleasurably.
We’ve had this come up in a very interesting way in mission work. One of the first things that happened when
the American Board of Missions to the Jews was getting involved in Jewish
evangelism and presenting Christ to the Jewish people, they had a problem
because many of the Jewish women and the men would come to the meetings dressed
appropriately; in other words, they would dress in their various styles of the
time, but many of the Christians who were involved in this were the legalistic
fundamentalists of the East, and of course the ladies had their skirts down to
their ankles and combed their hair with a fan and never saw what a stick of
lipstick looked like and a few other things, and this was the kind of people,
and they become highly insulted when these Jewish people, Christians, would
walk into the assembly dressed normally and attractively. And they’d get all shook up about it, so one
of the Jewish men that was working, I happen to know him personally, was
telling the fact that you’ve got to watch, see these Jew people have been
brought up to believe that life is to be enjoyed and there’s no problem in
enjoying it. And when you see the word
“life” in the Old Testament they always identify it with the good, things that
are pleasurable and attractive. It’s a
relaxed way of life and you get it from the Old Testament. This is why again,
when we went through the feasts, do you remember when they had the worship
feasts, they got together and they had a feast, they had a good time, they
enjoyed themselves; it was a time of enjoyment.
So to the Old Testament viewpoint and the New Testament really if you
understand it, life means pleasure, and the person doesn’t really live until
they enjoy themselves. Living in the
Bible isn’t just existing; living in the Bible is getting real satisfaction out
of life. Jesus said “I am come that they
might life and have it abundantly,” abundant life, a pleasurable,
pleasure-filled life. And that’s the
connotation of the word “life,” and death, “evil” and the word “evil” here
means things that kind of stick in your craw.
The word “evil” here is things that are disagreeable and that is
associated with death, the two go together; life and pleasure, death and
displeasure. And that is the way you
have it set up in the Old Testament. This
is why in the Old Testament salvation could never, never, never, never have
been conceived of just a spiritual experience, a mystical experience. To them
there couldn’t be salvation until the physical things of life could be enjoyed,
and this is why in salvation in the Old Testament you know nothing of a
spiritual resurrection; it’s always a physical, literal resurrection, because
you’re not saved, you’re not delivered, you’re not enjoying life until you can
enjoy the physical things of life. And
that is why they looked forward to a resurrection physical body in which you
are to enjoy yourself. It’s not
salvation just to be in the presence of the Lord without your body. Final salvation comes about when that soul is
reunited with the body in a resurrection body and there’s no salvation until
that has happened. And that’s why in the Old Testament there’s a mystery of why
people live like this and they die and the next thing you see in the Old
Testament is resurrection; none of this going to be in the presence of the
Lord, that’s strictly true for the Church Age but it wasn’t true for the saints
of the Old Testament. They went to
Sheol, Abraham’s bosom section.
That’s why heaven is a new concept; heaven comes in in the New Testament
when the Lord Jesus Christ ascended to heaven and so we go to be in His
presence. We don’t stay there outside of
our bodies because at the rapture He brings us back to get our resurrection
body. Salvation would not be complete unless it were physical. You’ve got to appreciate that view of the Old
Testament. It will keep you away from a
lot of these cults that are going around saying salvation is something
spiritual, oriental religions coming in and saying it’s nirvana or something;
that’s not the Old Testament, oh no, the Old Testament is very materialistic in
this sense, very materialistic.
Verse 16, “In that I command thee this day to love the LORD thy God,”
now this particular phrase is going to amplify the word “love.” “Love” in the Old Testament is different from
the way it’s usually used in the New Testament.
“I command thee this day to love the LORD thy God,” again I repeat what
I have said several times in this series on Deuteronomy, that love was a
political concept of loyalty. Love in
this book is not a sentimental thing; it means that you are loyal and
submissive to the suzerain. You have the
suzerainty vassal treaties and the vassal king, the little king that would make
a treaty with the great king, would say “I love you,” and he wasn’t writing
love notes to the king when he said that.
We have actually in archeology today letters written to Pharaoh saying
we love you Pharaoh. Now it’s not
talking about we love you so and so in some silly, trivial trite way. What he meant was I am loyal to you Pharaoh
and I will stand here forever as your vassal king. That was what the content of the word “love”
meant in this sense.
To show this Moses amplifies the verb “love” in verse 16 by giving you
two other verbs, “to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments and His
statutes and His judgments,” if you bracket the word “to walk” all the way down
to the word “judgments,” inside that bracket you would have an explanation in
context of what it means to love the Lord as far as the Bible is
concerned. Loving the Lord means this:
being in loyal obedience to His Word.
This is why sometimes I get irritated when I hear somebody say so and so
is having trouble, so and so is doing this but so and so loves the Lord. This is a little cliché that goes around and
it’s cheap and it shouldn’t be cheap. If
you understood what this phrase means, loving the Lord, you’d never use it that
way, so and so loves the Lord. That’s
nonsense. So and so loves the Lord when
so and so knows the Word of God and is loyal to it. That’s who loves the Lord, and all this
emotional jazz that comes across in fundamental circles, so and so loves the
Lord, is ridiculous; it’s blasphemy against the concept. People who know the Word of God and apply it
are ones who love the Lord and don’t ever buy this; you get it in devotional
literature, Christian magazines that talk about this business of love the Lord
and all the rest of it. You respond to
His Word.
You say that’s Old Testament, that’s not New Testament. Come on over into the New Testament, to the
Gospel of John. John 14:21, this is a
briefing of the disciples by the Lord Jesus Christ hours before He was to die.
Remember He was talking to Jewish people who knew the Old Testament, and
therefore when He said “you love Me” they would do what? They would automatically set it in the same
category that the word “love” was set in in the Old Testament. So in John 14:21 Jesus recites the same
commandment, “He that hath My commandments, and keeps them, he it is that loves
me; and he that loves Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and
will manifest Myself to him.” Same
concept, no change from Old Testament to New Testament.
So that’s one area of the word “love” and that is the female said of the
word “love.” The Old Testament concept of love presents the female side of the
picture. In the New Testament we have
the male side of the word “love” and John presents that too in that “God so
loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” That half of the word love, agape, is the male role [blank spot] and
God Himself reveals the male side of love because there He says God loves the
unlovely, the unmeritorious and the unwilling.
And God Himself initiated the action of love, it was the male side of
love; the male did the initiation and produced the response. We see this a little bit in the Old
Testament. Who saved the nation Israel from Egypt? Who was it that took the initiative? It was God who initiated the love by an
action and when He initiated the love, that had to come first, the initiation
by the male you would say. Then the
female came and responded.
And this is the commandment in Deuteronomy after the nation has been
redeemed, after God, in the male role, has taken it upon Himself to initiate
it, then He turns around and says do you love Me. Do you respond to Me? Are you loyal to Me? And that’s the female side. But you always get the male side first in the
plan of salvation and that’s typifies and one reason why we have divine
institution number two, marriage, so that men and women might, in their life,
participate, be forced to participate in this so they’d understand a little bit
of it. This is Ephesians 5. But the whole idea there is that the marriage
situation is set up so that both the male and the female would have an
experiential participation in this love, both from the female and the male
side, and would understand the aspects of the plan of salvation. And so in the plan of salvation you have God
doing the initiating, we do the responding.
So the concept of love now presented in the Old Testament here is the
female side, against the New Testament when the cross of Christ is introduced
emphasizes the male side.
Deut. 30:17, “But if thine heart turn away, so that thou wilt not hear,
but shalt be drawn away, and worship other gods, and serve them, [18] I
denounce [declare] you this day,” in verse 17 I’d like to point out something
that comes again and again in the Word of God and that is that you are not your
own lord. There are only two options in
the life, either God controls or the decay of the old creation takes over. Gal. 5:16 tells us the lusts of the flesh are
against the lust of the Spirit, the two are contrary one to the other, so you
can’t do the things that you would. If you study the sequence carefully in
verse 17 you’ll notice a progression.
“If your heart turn away,” there’s volition, they go on negative signals
toward the Word of God, “If your heart turn away, so that you will not hear,”
decreased perception as a result of negative volition, “and,” not a “but” but
“and you shall be drawn away.” Those of
you who have had a little English, do you notice what’s happened to the voice
of those verbs? The first two verbs are
active voice; the third verb in the sequence of verse 17 is a passive. When a verb is passive voice where is the
action coming from? The object is producing
the action back on the subject; the subject receives the action, passive
voice.
Here in verse 17 the voice of these verbs suddenly switches and the
person who has gone on negative volition with decreased perception suddenly
finds himself “drawn away,” not that he actively does it but he sets himself
into the situation where spiritual forces begin to operate and twist him and
tear him away from the theocracy as the nation went on in history. This is a
prediction, incidentally, of the apostasy under the prophets. First you have negative volition; second,
decreased perception, and then thirdly you yield to the doctrines of demons;
the powers of darkness come in and lead you astray. Do you know how you can
lead you astray? Because already you
have chosen, by negative volition, to blind yourself, and then of course God
comes in and allows these powers of darkness to take you off, worship other
gods and serve them.
This of course happens to unbelievers, when an unbeliever reaches the
point of God consciousness he goes on negative volition, Paul says in Romans 1,
if he goes this way then immediately he is judged and his perception begins to
decrease and God takes his hands off, doctrine of common grace removed, and
once common grace is removed, partially here in Romans 1 as a result of this
negative volition, then they are led away and they give themselves over to
their lusts of the flesh and all the rest of it takes over. It’s prophetic but the man, the creature, made
in God’s image is free only to serve God or to serve in the satanic world
order.
A lot of people misunderstand this; they always think that volition
means that I am free to be my king.
That’s not true; there are only a finite set of options that you have
left and you can either choose to submit to God and have freedom or you choose
to rebel against God and strangely enough, that sounds like you’re going to get
freedom by revolting against God and yet it always winds up that you are deeper
in the abyss with less freedom. We find
this doctrine expounded in detail in Eph. 2:1-3. We have this illustrated in history. When you
have the great revolutions in history, apart from the American Revolution, you
always notice something. After it’s all
over there’s less freedom after than there was before; it’s very interesting
how that works because when you revolt against authority it seems to be 9 times
out of 10, unless the authority is very corrupt and completely out of it, you
wind up setting up anarchy, setting up rebellion, setting up chaos and in the
end you lose.
It’s the same thing in the Christian life, when you receive the Lord
Jesus Christ God puts you in union with Christ.
God, however, says that you have this bottom circle of experience. Now you go on negative volition and you get
out of fellowship with the Lord, immediately you lost the filling of the Holy
Spirit, the old sin nature takes over, the flesh takes over and you’re not
free, you’re not free at all; you’re a slave and a victim to the lusts of your
own flesh. There’s no escape from it,
you can try operation bootstrap all you want to and you’re never going to solve
the problem because salvation comes by grace; salvation in the phase two sense
of the word, filling of the Holy Spirit, returns when you go on positive
volition again. So freedom in the Word
of God is a function of your volition.
Verse 18, “I denounce you this day, that ye shall surely perish, and
that ye shall not prolong your days upon the land, to which thou passeth over
the Jordan to go to possess it.” And verse
19 is an important summary to this chapter.
“I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set
before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore, choose life, that
both you and your seed may live.” Now
“heaven and earth” is a reference to these angelic powers that are acting as
the witnesses to this treaty. We know
from study of archeology that these suzerainty vassal treaties at the end
always had a section called the witnesses.
In the pagan cultures the witnesses were the gods. You see, a treaty was the law and the law has
to have lawmakers; law has to have law enforcement. So the treaty that was made
between the suzerain and the vassal couldn’t be enforced by the suzerain or the
vassal, ultimately, it had to have a higher backing in back of it and so they
appealed to the gods. You can read these
treaties, you can go the library and get Pritchard’s Ancient Near Eastern text
out and read the treaties and there you’ll see these treaties with the gods,
and the appeal is made to these gods, [can’t understand word] a witness to this
and let the man who violates this treaty be cursed. It’s an appeal to the gods.
But in the Old Testament you wouldn’t have an appeal to the gods,
there’s only one God. So therefore they
[not sure of word] it in the words “heaven and earth,” but to see that this is
not just a dark thing, something that is just symbolic of heaven and earth but
actually includes these things, go back to Deut. 4:19 and you’ll see there that
all the nations except Israel are placed under an administration in history of
angelic powers. “And lest thou life up
thine eyes unto heaven, and when you see the sun, and the moon, and the stars,
even all the host of heaven, [that you] should be drive to worship them, and serve
them, which the LORD thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole
heaven.” There’s something here that’s
not immediately obvious, but suffice it to say that the word “stars” in the
Bible is used both of the physical stars and of the angels which is why you
have heard me say that these angelic powers and these spiritual forces
evidently are related to the things we call planets, galaxies, etc. and it’s
one reason why we have what is known as astrology. People like to knock astrology and say it’s
baseless; a lot of it is quacks but a lot of it has a true root in history, but
that’s not for Christians to dabble with because God has said that the sun and
the moon and the stars of verse 19, I have given the Gentiles, the nations,
these are the powers that control these nations. It’s not that there’s a secret ray or
something coming from Cyrus or something, and this little star is affecting us
in the physical way, but evidently there are spiritual personalities identified
with star clusters and groups that are active in influencing the history on
earth.
So see this a little bit more turn to Daniel 10 and you’ll see the
famous prayer of Daniel and the coincidence of these angelic powers and the
political kingdoms of this world. To
remind you what we are doing here, we are looking at the angelic powers that
control the nations, that are back of history.
Daniel 10:13, this was Daniel’s prayer and he prayed for three weeks,
and he was in such intense prayer that he fasted. Now some of you, because you have come out of
churches of liturgy, when you hear the word “fast” you think that means giving
up bubble gum and giving up all the rest for lent, but that’s not fasting in
the Bible. Fasting in the Bible means this:
it means that you are so preoccupied with a spiritual task that eating and the
normal activities of life don’t even enter your mind. Think back to the 40 days of Jesus in the
wilderness. Remember when it was that
Jesus was hungry; not all during the 40 days.
After the 40 days was over, the text says, Jesus became hungry and the
angels visited Him. Jesus was not hungry
during the 40 days of not eating and drinking when He went out in the
wilderness. He was so fantastically
preoccupied with the battle, with the struggle with Satan that He had no time
for eating, drinking or anything else.
And then the feelings of hunger came upon Him at the end, and that’s
when He hungered, and that’s fasting.
Daniel had fasted and prayed for three weeks, an intensive prayer life,
and finally the answer comes, but then in verse 13 the explanation for the
delay. The angel was three weeks
answering Daniel’s prayer and the angel explains to Daniel, “But the prince of
the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days,” that’s 21 days, three
weeks, “but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me and I
remained there with the kings of Persia.” Now isn’t that interesting, thee are
angels talking and he’s talking about the angels with the exact terminology
that you would use for a physical king. In Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28 you have the
same thing. In Ezekiel 28 you have the
prophet ostensibly addressing the physical political king of Tyre and yet he
addresses Satan because Satan stands behind that king. So there’s that intimate connection in the Bible
between world rulers and the spiritual powers that hide behind these rulers and
manipulate.
So as far as the Gentiles are concerned they are apparently under the
dominion of these angelic forces, including our own nation. It’s no accident that the nations of the
Gentiles always have the same symbols nationally. What is our symbol? The eagle.
That basically was the symbol of the Roman legion; the symbol of the
British Empire is a lion, always after these animal forms, the same animal
forms that appear in the book of Revelation before the throne of God. There are a lot of connections here that you
can study on but I want to move over now, I’ve shown you what happens with the
Gentiles and the angelic powers before them and now I want to show you Israel
and Israel’s relation to them.
So turn to Heb. 2 and I also would list Acts 7:53; Gal. 3:19, parallel
verses. Heb. 2:1-3 tells us that this
law of the Old Testament, verse 2 was “spoken by angels …, and every
transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward.” The
angels administered the words and the law to Israel. So you have the angels not only over the
Gentiles but in a special way they administer to Israel in history. On the way back to Deuteronomy I want to stop
at a few places in the Old Testament. As
we move back through the Bible I’m going to stop and pause at a few references
where these angelic forces are exposed.
Psalms 89:5, this refers to this
strange angelic council in the presence of God who administer history for
man. Don’t take into account a
mechanistic view of history. It’s true
that history goes on by sociological principles but don’t ever let out of your
understanding and sense of understanding the fact that behind these
sociological principles stand these spiritual forces. This is why fundamentalism has said again and
again that social reform must by done by spiritual means because the social
problems themselves are caused, or at least augmented, by these spiritual
forces in the background. They have to
be dealt with. “And the heavens shall
praise thy wonders, O LORD: they faithfulness also in the assembly of the holy
ones, [congregation of the saints.]” It
says “saints” in your Bible and you tend to think that’s believers, not it
isn’t; the word “saints” there in verse 5 refers to angels. Verse 6, “For who in the heavens can be
compared unto the LORD? Who among the sons of the mighty,” the sons of El,
that’s angels, “can be likened unto the LORD?
[7] God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the holy ones, and to
be had in reverence of all those who are about him.” This is the angelic assembly that stands in
the presence of God, seen in the book of Revelation and several other places.
1 Kings 22, here is a meeting of this angelic council, verses 19-22,
because of a problem in history. “And he
said, Hear thou, therefore, the word of the LORD: I saw the LORD sitting on His
throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him on His right hand and on His
left. [20] And the LORD said, Who shall persuade Ahab, that he may go up and
fall at Ramoth-gilead? And one said on this manner, and another said on that
manner,” and there was a discussion within the council. Verse 21, “And there came forth a spirit, and
stood before the LORD, and said, I will persuade him. [22] And the LORD said
unto him, Wherewith [by what means]? And he said, I will go forth, and I will
be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, Thou shalt persuade him, and prevail
also; go forth, and do so.” And the rest of the chapter discusses what happened
in history as a result.
Chalk it up to mythology, chalk it up to phony views of history but I
tell you that this is the view of the authors of Scripture. History is not how it appears to you but
behind what you can observe in the political and social realm stand these
forces that are manipulating.
We’ll conclude now in Deut. 30. These are what occupy the heavens and
the earth, to which Moses calls witness.
When we get into the prophetic literature of the Old Testament I will
take you back to the prophets and show you how they go back to Deut. 30 and
when Isaiah begins his book he says “hear O heavens and earth, the Lord has a rib with you,” and the word “rib” in Hebrew means a lawsuit. Isaiah, Hosea, Micah, the social prophets of
the Old Testament were not innovators, these men came up to the social
questions of their day and said you people stand judged because you have
violated this covenant and God is suing you for breach of covenant and He does
so in front of His angelic assembly. And
this is why Micah does this; Hosea does it; Isaiah does it. They all go back to this verse, verse 19,
heaven and earth is going to witness against you and act as the administrators
of this.
If you want to see this further turn to Deut. 32:1, “Give ear, O ye
heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth,” this is
the song of testimony and there again the song itself is addressed to the
witnesses of the treaty, hear heavens and hear earth. In other words, history, your life, my life,
the life of our country, the life of the world, is going on, you might say in a
fishbowl, and people are looking, the angelic forces are observing history
because history is meaningful not just to men but also meaningful to them
too.
Next time we’ll start with verse 20.