Lesson 75
Song of Moses – 31:24-30; 32:1-6
We will introduce and get into one of the most famous passages of the
Old Testament, probably one of the most important passages of the Old Testament
because every book of prophecy in the Bible is designed from this chapter. Also, this is one of the most debated
chapters in the Word of God in the history of what is known as higher
criticism. It is in this area where the
liberals have entirely dominated the field and where many young people are led
astray because of their insistence of taking religious courses, courses in the
Bible when they get on the college campus.
To do so is to ask for trouble and to waste your time in a course on
religion, or in a course on the Bible on the college campus is just that, it’s
a waste of time. You will spend your
hard earned dollars for tuition and you should use them to learn something
that’s significant, like history, physics, something like that; do not waste
your time taking college religion courses.
You will not get a chance to get into the Word of God, you will hear
nothing but one side, you will never get a presentation of the conservative
position and I have never yet seen one academic course on the college campus
where the conservative position was presented.
In verse 24-30 you have the deposit of the charge of Moses. Remember chapters 31-32, this section of the
book of Deuteronomy is the conclusion; this is the time when the treaty will be
provided in its continuity provisions.
In other words, there will be means set up in these two chapters for the
continuity of God’s relationship with the nation
Verse 25, “That Moses commanded the Levites, who bore the ark of the
covenant of the Lord saying, [26] Take this book of the law, and put it in the
side of the ark of the covenant of the LORD your god, that it may be there for
a witness against thee.” Here we have to
go back again to what we have learned in the study of archeology of the Ancient
Near East suzerainty vassal treaties.
For years and years the Christians have insisted that this book of
Deuteronomy is a secondary law code, that this book of Deuteronomy spelled out
and was the constitution of the nation
However, as we begin to study this we find even more parallels. One of those parallels that we have seen is
that when you get a suzerainty vassal treaty, say here’s the suzerain or the
great king, great power, and he makes this treaty, a mutual aid pact with a
vassal king, much like our international treaties today where you have, say the
United States goes into a pact with another nation, mutual aid, if we’re
attacked you come to our aid and if you’re attacked we’ll come to your aid,
etc. This was the same kind of thing,
suzerainty vassal treaties. Now there
were two copies made of this treaty; one went to the temple of the suzerain and
one went to the temple of the vassal.
This is why Moses had two tablets when he came down
Now Moses wrote a book and added to it here in verse 26 so now we have
the original tablets plus the book of the Law in verse 26. This is the treaty and it is that treaty that
sets up the legal format. Remember what
Albright said. One of the leading
archeologists of our times, Albright said, as you observe history it is
interesting that all the peoples in the ancient world made treaties but only
one nation in the ancient world made treaties with their God, and that was Israel. So therefore you see the relationship that
Verse 27, “For I know thy rebellion, and thy stiff neck,” now rebellion
here means that the rebellion against the Lord’s political and social rule over
the nation. The rebellion is a political rebellion; it’s true that it is a
spiritual rebellion but remember that everything that is spiritual in the time
of the theocracy, lasting from 1440 BC on down to 586 BC in its outright
manifest form with the glory of the temple, etc. it lasted all the way down to
the time of Jesus Christ in a modified form.
So you have this theocracy. While
the theocracy was occurring in history, while the
God was ruling that just as much as if Jesus Christ and been there
incarnate sitting in the
So in verse 28 as this
His last act, in verse 30, was speaking this song. Now this is technically called the Song of
Moses. If you’re ever reading literature
sometime and you hear about the Song of Moses, this is it. This Song, chapter 32, from verse 1 on down
through verse 43 is a Psalm. You may
think of Psalms as only being in the book of Psalms. That’s not true. Psalm 18 in the Psalter is identical to 1
Sam. 22 and you have many Psalms that are written in the narrative. This is a tip off as to how the Psalms were
used. The book, the Psalter, is actually
kind of a hymn book of the hymns of ancient
In the last month we’ve gotten rid of all this usual evangelical drivel
in the hymn book and replaced them with hymns that teach Bible doctrine. This subjective emotional type operation is
playing right into the hands of liberalism.
Liberalism emphasizes the subjective and the emotional and
fundamentalists are doing the same thing. We go exactly opposite to the course
of our culture; you have to know which way the world system is moving and turn
around and move in exactly the opposite direction. We know our culture is moving to stress the
sentimental, to stress the emotional, to stress the subjective, therefore we
area deliberately knocking the emotion, these things that the world is
emphasizing by moving in the opposite direction. The world stresses subjectivity; we stress
objectivity. The world stresses experience and sentimentalism; we stress Bible
doctrine. We deliberately set in tension
of opposition to the way the world is moving.
We do not intend to have these kinds of hymns where we have a lot of
emotion and subjectivism; we tend to have hymns that are objective.
Tonight we will examine one hymn as we will exegete partly from the hymn
book and partly from the Word of God to show you how at least one man who wrote
a hymn in our hymnal knew what was going on and knew the Word of God. Chapter 32 begins this investiture of the
witnesses to the treaty. The liberals
have always had great difficulty with chapter 32. The reason for this is that it is written
from the standpoint of history already accomplished.
For example, in verse 15, “But Jeshurun,” which is a Biblical name for
But we are not just on mere dogmatic grounds when we say the liberals
are wrong and fundamentalists are right here.
We are on the firm solid ground of the data of history, for tonight we
come to what is known as the rib
[pronounced reev] controversy; I’ve mentioned this several times, we’ll deal
with it now. The rib controversy: rib
comes from the Hebrew word, it means a lawsuit.
It is the Hebrew word for lawsuit.
We know from the Ancient East that we have the suzerainty vassal
treaties that when the suzerainty vassal treaty was broken, for example, you
have some vassal and he has gone on negative volition toward the suzerain, he
has broken the treaty, the suzerain will not start lawsuit proceedings against
the vassal king, and immediately upon entering into these lawsuit proceedings a
certain format is used. This was
discovered in 1962 by a French scholar named Julian Harvey who discovered these
rib proceedings in connection with
broken suzerainty vassal treaties. One
of these treaties was an Assyrian king who lived in 1200 BC by the name of
[long name: calls him Tn for short] the first.
He was an Assyrian king who lived in 1200 BC and he had made a treaty
with a vassal king by the name of [sounds like: Kashtilious] and he went on
negative volition as far as this man was concerned, and so we have Tn, and Tn
had problems with K. K broke this treaty
and so this Assyrian king initiated lawsuit proceedings.
We now have access to that lawsuit proceeding and can study in detail
how he applied lawsuit. Remember,
however, you can’t have a lawsuit without law, so therefore it wasn’t an
arbitrary act of this Assyrian king to enforce; he was enforcing law that had
previously been in effect. What had
previously been in effect? The
suzerainty vassal treaty that tied these two men together. So having had this law in effect he now
enforced the law when this man broke it.
And we find out that there’s a certain format that he had, a three part
format in these rib
controversies.
The first part of a rib
controversy is the introduction or the court proceedings. The second part is the judicial proof where
the guilty party, the proof comes out and is dealt with. The third part is the sentence or the
declaration of war, in this particular case with the Assyrian king, the last
part of the document said it’s too late for repentance, my armies are moving
and they are going to come in and clobber you, sorry, and that was all, that
was the end of his lawsuit. He judged,
he tried the person and he sentenced him.
This was the lawsuit proceeding.
But we have now found that this lawsuit proceeding form appears in the
Bible in several places. It appears in
the prophetic writings of God’s Word exactly the same way as it appeared in the
Ancient East, which again lends evidence to the fact that these prophets back
here in the Ancient East wrote just when we said they wrote because their
documents match the documents of that period of history.
The first place we are going to go is chapter 32 and I will give you a
rough outline of chapter 32 in this format.
Deuteronomy 32, from verses 1-14 gives the court procedure. In this court procedure, we’ll detail it out
later on, but 32:1-14 is the initial court procedure. It consists of 3 subsections: verses 1-3 is
the calling for the witnesses, this again was a usual clause in a lawsuit or a rib controversy document. In verses 1-3 the witnesses are called into
the courtroom. Verses 4-6 is when the
parties to the controversy are introduced; the introduction to the parties of
the controversy and verses 4-6, the suzerain and the vassal in this case,
Jehovah and Israel are introduced to the courtroom. Verses 7-14 is a preliminary presentation of
the case where the faithfulness of the suzerain and the unfaithfulness of the
vassal are presented. So you have
faithfulness of Jehovah and you have the unfaithfulness of Israel presented in
verses 7-14.
Now in we have a second section, in Deut. 32:15-18 we have the second
part to this rib condemnation. The first part was the court procedure; the
second part to this is the accusation, the formal legal accusation, the
spelling out of where the treaty was broken, point by point. And then in verses 19-26 we have the third
part of the rib controversy document,
that has the sentence or when the judge passes sentence and the accusation is
judged. This is interesting because this
parallels these Ancient Near Eastern documents.
You have the court proceedings, you have the accusation and you have the
sentence. The form parallels this
exactly. So now we have these three
items.
But now there’s something amazing and this is why what form criticism
can be used by Christians if it’s used correctly, why this benefits us in
exegeting the Word of God. It benefits us because when we compare these original
documents to the Word of God we discover there are certain differences. If we know what the standard treaty looked
like, and we compare the standard to the Word of God and there’s a difference,
what does that tell you? It tells you
that God was emphasizing something and that’s why He put these unique clauses
in.
So the rest of this chapter, chapter 32:27-43 are never found in a usual
rib controversy doctrine. This section is the gracious assurance, or
the grace clause. Those are never found
in secular rib documents. It is always tightly legal and yet when
Jehovah goes to bring His case against His beloved nation, He stopped after the
sentence and says Israel, you married this thing, by the laws of My
righteousness I should judge this, this, this, this, this and this and go to
it, but Jehovah stops at the end; at verse 26 you’re going to see He stops and
He begins to say but I am a God of grace and this legal proceeding that is
against you is only temporary and in the end I will bring you back to Myself. And here we have the grace of God manifested
in the grace clauses that are not found in the secular treaties but are found
in the Bible. Therefore we know the God
of the Old Testament is a God of grace, another reason idiot professors of
religion who always say the God of the Old Testament is a God of war; the God
of the Old Testament is a God of love, He has fantastic love and grace but
you’ve got to see it and you’ve got to understand the text.
So that is one area of God’s Word where these rib documents occur. Turn to
Isaiah 1 and we’ll see another case where Isaiah picks the same format up. In Isaiah 1 we have the same three parts that
occur, showing that Isaiah had exactly in mind what we’ve always said he had in
mind, namely bringing sentence against the nation for violation of treaty. Isaiah 1:2-4, here is the court procedure,
here is where he calls the witnesses, here is where he introduces the parties
to the covenant, he isn’t very diplomatic, he says in verse 3, “The ox knows
his owner, and the ass, his master’s crib, but Israel does not know; my people
does not consider.” Then verses 5-23 we
have the accusation. The first part was
the court procedure; 1:5-23 is the accusation.
And finally inv verses 24-31 we have Isaiah pronouncing sentencing upon
the nation. But again, as in Deut. 32
the format is interrupted by a grace clause.
So in verses 25-27 of Isaiah 1 we have a grace clause and the grace
clause says God’s judgment is limited by His grace. God, in His grace, will stop the judgment and
take the wrath upon Himself. Here again
we have a grace clause that is never found in secular treaties.
Now in Hosea 4:1-3, here we have it in three verses. In verse 1 we have the court proceeding;
verse 2 is the accusation, it describes where they have violated covenant, and
verse 3 is the sentence pronounced, so again we have the format there.
We have the format again in the prophet of Micah. Again we have the same
format, the same address. In Micah 6:1-6
we have the court procedure, here is where the court is set up, the call for
witnesses was made, the initial statement of the case is made. In verses 9-12 we have the second part of
this rib controversy proceeding, we
have the accusation, the areas of treaty breakage, the areas where they have
violated covenant. Then in verses 13-15
we have God pronouncing the sentence upon the nation.
Here are several cases where I’ve shown you from the Old Testament where
this rib controversy occurs, God has
a lawsuit against His nation. Now this
leads to five principles or five applications to this item; five
applications. Let’s get these because
these mean that we can take what we have learned so far and begin to set up
general principles as to how God works in history.
The first thing, God always legally rules the universe. God does not arbitrarily rule the
universe. You might say God is a
nitpicker for legal details, and that’s what comes out of all these proceedings,
before God judges He nitpicks every detail of the Law. God is a God of perfection and He’s not
sloppy in His judgments; He’s not unlawful in His judgments. When God judges it’s precise, not just
blanket, it’s precise judgment, exact to the detail. That’s the first thing we can learn from all
of these proceedings.
The second thing we can learn from it is that God is also a God of
grace. God is always tempering His
judgments with an escape, 1 Cor. 10:13, God always will make “a way of escape
that you may be able to bear it,” for the unbeliever is the cross of Jesus
Christ; for the Christian the escape is being in fellowship with Him moment by
moment. So we always have a way of escape; that’s the second principle that we
can derive from all of this.
The third principle we have, found in Deut. 18, a fundamental principle
about the Old Testament and that is that all the prophets of the Old Testament
were administrators of God’s treaties.
All the prophets of the Old Testament were administrators of God’s
treaties. What does this mean? It means that the liberal view of the Old Testament
prophet is wrong. For years the liberals
were telling us we’ve got to get back to the prophetic vision of the Old
Testament because there you have these prophets creating something new in their
age, something radically new and today when you hear the people on TV talk
about this is a prophetic or visionary thing, the word “prophetic” has become
“visionary” in our time to the point where the word “prophetic” means I’m
bringing about something new. But that’s
not the way the prophets worked in the Old Testament. The prophets were bringing something old, the
prophets of the Old Testament were reactionaries, not radicals. They were the most fantastic reactionaries of
their time because they didn’t call the nation ahead into something new, they
called the nation back into something old, and the something old was the Mosaic
Law.
This is why in Deut. 18:15 the authorization for Old Testament prophecy
is given. “The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of
thee, of thy brethren, like unto Me; unto Him shall ye hearken,” so there is a
continuity with Moses through all these prophets. Now we also know something else, that every
prophet had to memorize Deut. 32; this is probably why their writings reflect
the structure of this chapter. This is
why Deut. 32 is so crucial. Any
prophetic book of the Old Testament that you study has the structure in it that
Deut. 32 has; reason—because these prophets had to know Deut. 32. We have some evidence of this at Qumran, for
when the men went into the Qumran caves it was very interesting that Deut. 32
occurred on manuscripts where it was disconnected from other books of the
Bible, which means that Deut. 32 in that time, at Qumran, was considered an
independent Song and that the people would read Deut. 32 independently of the
book of Moses. In other words, it was a
very special Sc to them and had independent status.
The fourth principle that we can apply from this knowledge of our rib controversy: History is governed not by a static set of
principles but by a living rule of God.
History is not a machine that grinds on by some cold mechanistic bare
set of laws; history is ruled personally by God. This is the picture you get from these
treaties.
The fifth principle that we derive from these rib controversies is that the prophetic voice or the voice of the
prophet can only be addressed to parties to the covenant. For example, Isaiah and these other prophets,
basically must make their thrust to people who are already in covenant, they
can’t talk to the Gentiles, although they did, but it was because of other
mechanics of the Abrahamic Covenant, etc. but basically the thrust of the
prophet has to be to the people that are already locked into the relationship. This means that as far as the Gentiles are
concerned the only legal base the prophets of the Gentiles would have would be
the Noahic Covenant of Gen. 9.
Now we come to Deut. 32 and we’ll get into the first 6 verses. The first section of Deut. 32, verses 1-14;
this is the court proceeding. The court
proceeding will be divided into three parts.
We will study the first two of these three tonight. The first part of the court proceeding is the
call to the witnesses; that’s verses 1-3.
The second part of Deut. 32 is the introduction of the case. And the third part has to do with proving
that Yahweh or Jehovah is always faithful; the Israelites are the ones who are
unfaithful.
Let’s deal with verses 1-3, the call to the witnesses. “Give ear, O ye heavens,” remember now, this
was a Psalm and probably was sung. These
people learned Bible doctrine they’re singing, it wasn’t a time when they got
together and had ecstatics, it was a time when they learned by singing because
they had men who could unify music together with Bible doctrine. “Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak;
and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. [2] My doctrine shall drop as the
rain, my speech shall distill as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender
herb, and as the showers upon the grass, [3] Because I will proclaim the name
of the LORD: ascribe ye greatness unto our God.” These are the three verses of the call to
witness.
Verse 1, “Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak,” the two parties
here called are “heavens” and “earth” that makes us remember something that
occurs again and again in Scripture. The
modern ecologists are telling us that we have to revise our view of man and
nature. That’s true but let’s revise it along Biblical lines. In the Bible nature, or what we would call
nature, is very highly dependent upon man.
Man, don’t forget, is the lord of creation and we find this again in the
New Testament in Luke 19 where the Lord Jesus Christ is riding along, and the
mob starts howling, this is the Messiah, this is the Messiah, and the Pharisees
say Jesus, tell your disciples to shut up, tell them to stop this. And Jesus says I’m not going to tell them to
stop it because if I told them to stop it the very rocks would cry out. Remember that passage, the very rocks would
cry out. Do you think Jesus was just
using poetry?
We have the same thing in Romans 8, the same peculiarity of looking at
nature this way where Paul says the whole creation groaned in travail because
of the fall of man. This means what we
would call inanimate nature and animate nature, groans and travails in
pain. And it says it is on its tiptoes,
the word there is on its tiptoes, anxiously looking for the resurrection. All of nature is looking this way, which gets
us back to what we have covered again and again, the fact that nature evidently
is ruled by these spiritual powers and presences called angels and other things
in the Bible, spirits, etc. Remember in
many ways the heathen, the rank heathen in Africa, have a closer conception of
the nature of reality than the modern materialist of 20th century
America for the heathen in Africa looks upon his creation as a result of a
series of spirits that are working. It’s
true that he overdoes it but the fact is that the materialist has gone the
other way. There are spirits that
control nature.
I would suggest two things that Moses intends for us to learn from
calling to the heavens and the earth.
One, that all of creation is affected by man; all of creation is
affected by what man does, all of creation fell, physically and biologically at
the point of the fall it was effected. I
can’t name the mechanism, I don’t know how it was caused, but I know the Bible
reports it to me that that was what happened.
The death that is experienced in the animal kingdom, changes in the
plant kingdom are said by Scripture to have been caused by the fall of man.
That’s how powerfully far reaching is man’s significance in history; fantastic,
so much so that it’s downright scary.
Today w worry about man polluting the environment and we worry about
things like this; that’s true, very true, but the Bible goes even beyond that
and says it’s not just a case of man misusing his environment, the case is that
man can truly influence the whole structure of his environment by his spiritual
decisions.
The second thing that we learn about this is that all creation is a
witness to man’s doings. Eph. 3:10 says that there are principalities and
powers surrounding you right this moment that are looking at you if you are a
believer in Jesus Christ and they are learning from you. You might say well angels certainly know a
lot more than I do. No they don’t,
because you see, angels are not incarnate, angels do not have the experience of
you have of having your soul wrapped in a physical body and having to live this
way. This is an experience beyond the
realm of the angels. The angels do not
have this. The angels, apparently from
God’s Word, do not have an understanding of grace; you do. If you have received Jesus Christ you know a
little bit about what grace means, some more than others. But you have some concept of the nature of
grace. The angels evidently do not. So, “O ye heavens … and earth,” here’s where
Moses sets up the witness.
Then in verse 2 he says, “My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech
shall distill as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the
showers upon the grass,” now Moses’ point here, he uses the word for rain that
has to do with gentle rain, this is the gentle rain and it’s the word which
means small rain and not dew. Everyone
says that the Bible is wrong; it says that dew falls because they misunderstood
the Hebrew word. I did a word study on
that, that happened to be my field before I went in the ministry and I found a
verse in the Bible that says a cloud of dew; you can’t have a cloud of dew, so
therefore the word “dew” in the Hebrew text, the equivalent to that does not
mean “dew” as we mean “dew,” it means small droplets. So this is a penetrating mist, you might say,
that he’s saying.
And there are two items that I would suggest he’s trying to get across
here. There’s the doctrine, “My
doctrine,” this is the observer in the court, you might say the court
secretary, “My doctrine” as he opens the court, “shall drop as rain, my speech
shall distill as dew,” I would suggest there are two connotations to this. First, it penetrates; a gentle rain
penetrates. Secondly, it nourishes. So the doctrine here, “My doctrine” and “My
speech” the things that are proceeding through… that are going to go on in this
trial are going to deeply penetrate and they are going to nourish.
Verse 3 is why, “Because I will proclaim the name of the LORD: ascribe
ye greatness unto our God.” This is a
causal clause and explains verse 2. This
shows why the teaching will penetrate and nourish. It will penetrate and nourish because he
proclaims the name of God and the name of God equals the essence of God. We have a book in our library on the names of
God, there’s about 20 of them in the Old Testament, and so you can study the
names of God and derive quite a bit of blessing because the name reveals the
essence of the person. If they had a
person who acted like a clod they called them “Clod.” And if they had a man that acted very
graciously they called him by such a name.
This is why you have men like Jacob, means chiseler and a few other
things like that. Daniel means God is judge; this is his character or something
to do with his life. So when it says “I
will publish the name of the LORD,” it means that he is going to expose the
essence of God and this relates to the master plan of God.
The master plan of God for the universe is that God will glorify Himself
which means that all of creation will have a knowledge of God’s essence, sovereignty,
righteousness, justice, love, omniscience, immutability, omnipresence,
omnipotence, and eternality. These are
the attributes of God. Now that is
always the starting point for the divine viewpoint framework we talk about all
the time; what’s at the center? God is
at the center, around that Bible doctrine, around that all the details of life,
but in the very center you have to have the essence of God and this is why in
the Psalms again and again it goes back to the center of the divine viewpoint
framework, the character of God. And
this is why this doctrine is going to distill, because in the proceedings of
the trial that is about to begin, you are going to see the character of God
portrayed. It goes back again and again
to this essence. You must know the
essence box. If you do not know the
essence of God, if you cannot name, describe and define the characteristics of
God you can never be straight on salvation nor the Christian way of life; this
stands as the center of the mentality of your soul. This is one doctrine that you must master as a
Christian—the essence of God; if you master this all the other things come
relatively easy. It’s this doctrine, the
central one of all doctrines, the doctrine of doctrines, the essence of
God. And this is what he says that he is
going to expose and make this the central thrust of this whole courtroom
proceeding, that God will be glorified.
He will be glorified in all sorts of ways.
Now why is He going to be glorified, you say, in conducting a trial when
people are rebelling against His character.
Because it goes back to the principle of glorification in the Bible;
when it says that God glorifies Himself it does not mean that God always
blesses. God is glorified in the Bible
when He judges. God is glorified, for
example, in hell. Hell is a necessary
part of the eternal state. Why? Because there you have the exposition of the
righteousness and holiness of God. There
must be a hell for all eternity. These people that talk about hell as just kind
of fading out, don’t buy it. Hell is
necessary. If hell fades out in
eternity, God’s righteousness fades out.
So hell goes on for eternity because it’s there where the righteousness
and justice of God are fully exposed to creation. So we have hell; we have God
justified in hell, and I think the analogy in verse 2 is tremendous because
when the rain comes down, not only does the grass grow but the weeds grow, and
it’s the same thing in God’s Word.
When God promotes and reveals Himself, it always causes positive
volition to get stronger and negative volition to get stronger. For example, remember Pharaoh; Pharaoh
hardened his own heart first, then God revealed more and more about Himself
through each trial that He put on Pharaoh, and what happened? The Bible says God hardened Pharaoh’s
heart. In other words, God started where
man was negative volition, and He started to put the pressure on by revealing
His righteousness and just character, which made Pharaoh go more and more
negative, no, no, no, no, and so the more that God revealed His character the
more Pharaoh would rebel and rebel and rebel.
So the revelation of God glorifies God in sending things both ways, just
as the rain nourishes the ground and causes the weeds and the grass to grow
together, so when God reveals Himself those who would want Him are strengthened
and those who would reject Him are also strengthened. The act of God revealing Himself causes
people to polarize; in other words, this comes out, some of you feel this
oftentimes when you’re sharing Christ with an unbeliever. Some of you come from families where there
are people who reject Jesus Christ and you know just as soon as the
conversation moves into the spiritual areas, the whole room begins to polarize,
you can feel it. If you’re sitting in
the room you can actually feel this thing, people just polarize and you begin
to see that this is the sword that divides men.
Why? Because in the act of describing
the gospel to a person you are glorifying God because glorifying God means to
tell somebody or tell some part of creation about God and what he has done.
So in the act of evangelism we polarize the environment and that’s why
when he says this “shall distill as the dew” etc. it doesn’t necessarily mean
it’s going to be blessing. When this
trial gets through you’re going to see some people are badly hurt. By the end of this chapter some people are
going to go through hell; some people are going to be in a horrible state when
we get through this trial and you are going to say how can God be glorified in
that. He is because they are in this
state by their reaction to Him. And if
He proceeds to reveal Himself more and more, they proceed to harden themselves
more and more.
Verses 4-6 now, the second part of this first section, the introduction
of the case. And here in a few verses we
have some of the most beautiful language, the most beautiful descriptions of
God’s character that you will find in the Word of God. We have analogies set up in this chapter that
carry through the rest of the Word of God, all the way up into the New
Testament. That’s how important this
chapter is.
Verses 4-6, this is the introduction of God, “He is the Rock, His work
is perfect: for all His ways are justice; a God of truth and without iniquity, just
and right is He.” Verse 5 introduces
Israel, “They have corrupted themselves, their spot is not the spot of his
children; they are a perverse and crooked generation.” And then finally verse 6 is the despair of
the man as he looks on and he sees the trial about to begin and he says in an
eleventh hour appeal to the nation, “Do ye thus requite the LORD, O foolish
people and unwise? Is not he thy father who has bought thee? Hath He not made thee, and established thee?”
Verse 4, the introduction of God; verse 5 the introduction of Israel,
and then verse 6, the despair of the court proceeding as the man begins to
introduce the parties to the lawsuit, and he pleads with Israel at the eleventh
hour of the trial to reconsider and she doesn’t.
Let’s look at verse 4, the introduction of God. In your King James I notice it has in
italics, “He is the Rock,” if you
know the King James everywhere there’s italics it is a fill in by the
translators. The introduction of God is
far more dramatic than this in the original.
These are the two parties to the lawsuit, you can visualize the people
coming in, the judge sitting down, the witnesses sitting down, and the man, the
court clerk gets up, and says, “The Rock,” and that’s how he introduces
God. In other words, the character and
essence of God revealed in this word “Rock” as we shall see, is foremost in his
mind. He doesn’t say “He is the Rock,”
he just says there, “The Rock, His work perfect; for all His ways judgments; a
God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is He.” There are no verbs in verse 4, no verbs at
all. It’s all staccato; this is the way
the Hebrews write when they’re excited about something. When they see something
that’s vivid they’ll hammer away noun, adjective, noun adjective, noun
adjective, with no verbs, they’ll just leave all the verbs out, hammer away at
this thing. This is a series of nouns
and adjectives describing God’s character.
And so as God is introduced He is called “the Rock.” Now this is not just an accident. “The Rock” in the Jewish mind in the Old
Testament goes back to this terrain, here you have the Sea of Galilee, the Dead
Sea, along here we have tremendous caves.
These are the great cliffs and when this word is used in the Hebrew
these people are thinking of these great cliffs, and up from the cliff you have
these caves where they can hide from their enemies. This was the perfect shelter, they had a
perfect shelter there where they could run and no enemy in history has ever
eliminated the people from those caves.
This is why the Qumran community left all their precious gold, they had
a whole library; you should have seen what the Qumran community had inside
those caves. They had whole libraries
where they copied manuscripts. We have
the desks where they evidently had one man that would stand in the front of the
room and he would dictate and he’d have 30 or 40 scribes in that room start
writing their manuscripts and that’s how they made copies of the Bible in that
day. We know from the mistakes that were made that they were orally transmitted
and copied. So here we have these
caves. Now this is what the word “Rock”
connotes. So if you want the picture of
what God is to these people, think and imagine these long high cliffs and up in
the cliff you have these caves where people can hide in times of
adversity. That is the picture behind
this Hebrew word for “Rock,” and that’s the way to describe God.
Now to see how this carried over in their thoughts we’re going to take a
little tour in the Old Testament. Turn
to 2 Sam. 22:3, you’ll see how this word “Rock” is developed for the character
of God. “The God of my rock; in Him will
I trust: He is my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower, and my
refuge, my savior; thou savest me from violence.” You see the words that portray the
omnipotence of God, His loyalty and His character, powerful words, masculine
words, not this little Mickey Mouse stuff we have in the hymnal. This is strong and that’s the way the Hebrew
is. Look further down the chapter, verse
32, “For who is God, except the LORD? And who is a rock, except our God?”
There’s that word “rock” again, it’s always used for God, He’s stable, He
provides shelter, He’s strong and powerful.
Verse 47, “The LORD lives; and blessed by my rock, and exalted be the
God of the rock of my salvation.” We
could go to chapter 23 and look at verse 3, “The God of Israel said to me, the
Rock of Israel spoke to me, He who rules over men must be just, ruling in the
fear of God.” You see how it’s always
used of God’s character.
Now for an amazing statement in the New Testament; who is the Rock? 1 Cor. 10:4, where Paul picks up the imagery
of a rock and lo and behold, he identifies it with the person of the Lord Jesus
Christ. 1 Cor. 10:4 talking about the baptism
of Israel, which by the way, those of you who think baptism always means wet,
look carefully. The people that did not
get baptized were the ones that were wet; the people who were baptized in verse
2 were people who were absolutely dry, that’s the whole point of the
baptism. Baptism means
identification. Verse 4, “And did all
drink the same spiritual drink; for they drank of that spiritual Rock that
followed them, and that Rock was Christ.”
So here we have the concept taken over one step further. We’ve progressed from the idea of the cliff
with the caves in it, the crude physical form, over to the character of God and
now the character of God is narrowed down to that personality of the Trinity
that is always the one that does the plan of God. The Father is the planner, the Son is the
executer and the Holy Spirit is the revealer.
So now our attention focuses on the second personality of the Trinity,
He is the Rock that is talked about in the Old Testament.
We have one hymn in our hymnals, Martin Luther wrote this hymn and he
took it from Psalm 46. When he adapted
this he did not exactly go along with Psalm 46 but I want you to see how he
very quickly grasped the idea of God is Rock, and how when he set up the lyrics
to this hymn it wasn’t some frothy mealy-mouthed thing. This was something that really says
something; this is one of the great hymns of the church because it says
something and it says something tremendous about God. He says: “A mighty fortress is our God,” and
if you compare this with Psalm 46 you’ll see that this is this rock concept
again; Martin Luther caught on to this and he said: “A mighty fortress is our
God, a bulwark never failing, our helper He amid the flood, of mortal ills
prevailing,” why? Because in the last part of the first stanza he says, “For
still our ancient foe, doth seek to work us woe,” do you see where the Law
comes in; it comes into a conflict, there’s something powerful going on
here. There’s a fight going on. Martin Luther isn’t one of these zombie Christians
that says oh, I have the peace of God and I just kind of float between the
floor and the ceiling. Martin Luther had
both feet on the ground and his fists ready.
He was a fighting militant Christian.
So here you have it come out, why is God the Rock, why does Martin
Luther care whether God is the Rock?
Because Martin Luther knows where the enemy is, and you don’t begin to
look for shelter until you begin to have a sense and a respect for the enemy. Until Christians realize what Satan can do
and the powers of darkness, and the tremendous effect they can have, like
Martin Luther did, you will never appreciate why God is called the Rock in the
Old Testament. Martin Luther knew this
because Martin Luther knew Satan and he knew the devastation he could wreak in
your life.
I’ve noticed something very interesting when the congregation is
singing; if you pick out songs that have doctrine in them and songs that have
this strength about them, you usually find the men singing, and it’s been kind
of interesting to watch why the men do not join in on a lot of the hymns; I
don’t think the men understand why they don’t, but several of us up here have
remarked looking out on the congregation as we’ve changed and began to switch
the hymns over we have noticed the men have begun to sing. Why has that happened? I think it’s unconscious; I think the men
naturally sense the strength of the hymn and that’s why they’ll join in, where
these mealy-mouthed ones they’re effeminate, there’s something wrong here. We’ve noticed the switch, just in shifting
the emphasis of our singing over to those hymns that exalt doctrine and
something solid,
Back to Deut. 32:4, let’s look at some more words for God, “He is the
Rock,” and as I said when God is introduced to the trial it says “There, the
Rock,” that’s the way it’s introduced, “His work is perfect,” and in the Hebrew
there’s a fantastic play on words. The
word “perfect” here came to mean something.
The Hebrew word for perfect means complete, that’s the original meaning
but there’s a progression of thought in these words. I want to give you this progression of
thought so when these words are used for God you’ll pick up the nuance, the
slant the man is trying to tell you about God’s character. In the Old Testament when they think of
something complete the next step in their thought is that therefore it’s
stable. And the next step in their
thought is therefore they can have confidence.
Perfection means stability; stability means confidence, and that is why
it says the work of God is perfect, it is complete. We have ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ
on the cross when He said Father, “it is finished.” That was the finishing of the plan of salvation
and this is why we can trust. In the Old
Testament God is trustworthy because His works are perfect. We can trust His
works, they’re stable.
“… for all His ways are judgments [justice]” and then it goes on, “a God
of truth and without iniquity, just and right is He.” I want to give you another word here,
truth. Do you know what this word is,
this word for truth? You say it all the
time, “amen.” And “amen” in the Old
Testament means it supports something.
The verb “amen” means to support, it means to act as a pillar. For example, it’s said in many passages of
the Bible that pillars will amen the roof of a building. What does it mean? They hold it up, they give it support. So the first [not sure of word] word in amen
means actually it is support, it is a support and from this support we then get
the idea that it is support worthy or trustworthy. This is a strong concept of faith. In the Old Testament the Hebrew means “amen,”
it supports. What does it support? It supports you, that’s what it means to
support. In other words, it’s something
supports, it means that I can lean on it.
This is why in certain of these promises we quote, many of you have
memorized these great promises of the Psalms, “Trust the Lord,” etc. Do you realize what some of those verbs are
saying there? Those verbs are saying
pick up your burdens and put them over on the Lord. And then usually later on in the original
text in the Hebrew it says because the Lord is true. And in the English you never catch the force
of that, but in the Hebrew it’s there.
It says take your weights, the things that are bothering you in the
Christian life, move them over in the Lord because He’s true, but that’s not
what the Hebrew means; move them over in the Lord because He can support, He
can bear to have you lean on Him. That’s
what it means, and this is what it means when He is a God of truth, He is
trustworthy, you can lean on Him and have no fear that He’s going to collapse.
“…just and right is He,” this is the third set of words that I want to
go into because this again is a progression of thought. “Just,” why is this such a concern at this
point if we’ve introduced God as a Rock, why is there so much concern that He’s
just. It goes back to the fact that the
Jews in the Old Testament looked upon God’s character as indivisible. It’s true that He has sovereignty, righteousness,
justice, love, omniscience, eternality, omnipresence, omnipotence and
immutability, He had all these characteristics, but to a person of the Old
Testament, and you should be this way, don’t think of God as a pie and you can
cut Him up and divide Him. All these
attributes are synergistic, they work together.
So here we have these attributes and one of the attributes is
justice. Suppose we designed a plan for
God that included every attribute except justice. What would that do to the character
of God? God would be split in Himself,
in other words, He couldn’t bear with all His might for the program because His
sovereignty could agree with it, or cut out His righteousness and justice, His
love might agree to, His omniscience would agree to it, His immutability would
agree to it, His omnipresence would agree to it, His omnipotence would agree to
it and His eternality would agree to it but you must add two vital attributes:
God could not participate because God is indivisible and in order for God to
participate He must participate with all of His attributes going and the
attribute of righteousness and justice must be there.
Now this is why, when oftentimes you can find something else that’s
strange in your English Bible, 1 John 1:9, listen to it: “If we confess our
sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins,” now why in 1 John 1:9
bother about justice; you want God to be faithful, I can see why that’s there,
but why just, why is that word “just” in 1 John 1:9. Do you know why it is? Because if God is going to do something in
the Old Testament way of thinking it must be a just thing or He can’t do it. So when we say that God is “faithful and just
to forgive us our sins” this is the assurance that the sins are cleansed
completely, they’re completely cleansed because they are justly cleansed. If God were to have some cheap solution, if
you pardon the word, to cleansing sin, if He had some cheap solution like a lot
of Christians who say oh God, forgive me, forgive me, forgive me, you don’t
pray for forgiveness, God has already promised you forgiveness, you confess and
He will forgive. But if we have some
cheap solution to the problem then the Bible says you can’t have confidence
that it’s going to work. It’s got to
match His holy and just demands or it is untrustworthy. That is why 1 John 1:9 says He is “faithful
and just.” The moment you include
j-u-s-t in 1 John 1:9 you assure yourself that you have perfect legal cleansing
from all sin. This means that salvation
is perfect and just because Jesus Christ was just.
Remember in Romans 3 what does Paul say?
This cross of Christ I glory in it; why? Because God is just and the
justifier of them that believe. In other
words the thing that saved the plan of salvation in Paul’s mind was that it was
designed in such a way that this attribute of righteous and justice could go
in. That is why you have the series of
these adjectives here in verse 4, “He is the Rock, His work is complete, all
His ways are judgments; a God of support and without iniquity, just and right
is He.
Then verse 5, this is mistranslated in your King James, it’s a very
difficult verse to translate, I just spent about four hours on half a verse,
this is why it takes so long to work up some of these things. Verse 5 goes this way: “They have corrupted
themselves,” that’s Israel, in other words the first party to the lawsuit has
walked into the court room and then He’s described. The second party to the lawsuit walks in,
“They have corrupted themselves,” and then it’s this way, this is literally the
way it is, “not His son their blemish, a wicked and perverse generation.” This is what the Hebrew says, “not His son
their blemish” and we supply the word “with”, often times you have this in very
staccato type poetry, these prepositions will be left out.
The man is saying here, “They have corrupted themselves, they’re not His
sons with their blemish, they are a wicked and perverse generation.” That’s what he’s saying. The word “blemish” is the exact opposite of
the word in verse 4, “His work is perfect.”
There the work is perfect and complete and he says now look at Israel,
they’ve [can’t understand word] into the courtroom, they are not His
children. Why aren’t they His
children? Children bear the marks of the
father and when Israel walks into the courtroom her works are incomplete, they
bear a blemish. And the word “blemish”
was used for an animal that had an incomplete physical development about it and
it was therefore disqualified as a sacrifice.
So therefore in verse 5 what he’s saying is that Israel doesn’t bear the
image of her Father. This is just like a
lot of Christians walking around doing energy of the flesh works, walking
around with all their human good. Do you
know what, if you walked in the classroom the court would say huh, that’s not
the image of the Holy Spirit, it’s not the image of Christ I see in that
person; I see the energy of the flesh but I don’t see the image of the Father.
That’s the point that’s made here, they walk in but they are not his children,
they don’t bear His nature, they are “a perverse and crooked generation,”
twisted generation.
Verse 6, the final appeal of this man, “Do ye thus requite the LORD,”
and the word “requite” here is another powerful word in the Hebrew. These poetic portions of the Word of God are
fantastic. The word “requite” originally
meant to take a child who was nursing and to wean it; so the word came to mean
this is a child and I will wean the child that’s nursing on its mother. In other words the period of nursing is
over. Another way it was used was to
bear fruit, keep tending to a vine until it bore fruit and you’d use the same
verb. Do you catch the imagery of the verb?
The verb means to keep at something until you finally complete the
task. In other words, the baby stays
nursing at its mother until it’s ready to be weaned and then the task is
over. You keep after something to
produce fruit, until it produces the fruit.
And he says you’ve kept at the Lord until you’ve angered Him and until
He’s brought you in this courtroom. Why
did you do that Israel, that’s the accusation.
You angered Him and got Him angrier and angrier and angrier until
finally you wind up in the courtroom.
Why did you do that? That’s the
force of it.
“Why do you thus requite the LORD, O foolish people and unwise? Is He
not thy Father who hath bought thee? Hath he not made thee, and established
thee?” You can see the compassion go on. And as we end with verse 6, look at
something. Look at the two combinations
that you pick up here in God’s Word. You
pick this up over and over and I tell you that you have to have this quality in
your life, I have to have it in mine, the balance between grace and truth. On the one hand the whole document bears
witness to the fact that God is nitpicking when it comes to the legal
details. When it comes to truth God is
not sloppy, God gets all the details down but also He doesn’t do it coldly. In verse 6 this prophet is saying this is the
love of God the love of God is coming out here. We’ll see this later on. God does not relish in judging men; He is
exact in His judgment, He is devoted to the truth, but He’s also a God of grace
and He doesn’t like judgment. Verse 6
shows you the reticence. And this man
who is cast in the role of chapter 32 is the court clerk, the man who is now
writing this, is really expressing God’s attitude toward him. Why must you do this you silly people? Why did you get yourself into this? So you have the tension between grace and
truth. Grace is always directed toward people; you always love the person but
you can hate what that person stands for.
Some Christians have a long way to go before they keep this in balance;
either we always go overboard and compromise the truth or we go the other way
and become very nitpicky on the details and then lose our grace in our personal
relationships.