Lesson 79
The Grande Finale – 32-34
Turn to Deut. 32; tonight is the 79th time that we have
taught the book of Deuteronomy. In
For the last time we review what Deuteronomy is. Deuteronomy is a suzerainty vassal treaty
between Jehovah, or Yahweh as He is known in the Hebrew, and the 12
tribes. The format of the book is of a
legal treaty, it’s a legal format. This
is something that you must get used to. Too many Christians are too engrossed
with their salvation to think of the fact that it must have a legal base. Salvation just didn’t happen to spill out of
heaven; salvation is not an arbitrary act of God. Salvation is not something that he dreamed up
one day and said oh, this would be a fine idea to pull off so we’ll do it. Salvation is controlled by legal principles;
if there were no legal documents and no legal treaties in the Bible, you would
have no salvation. Salvation is a legal question before it is anything else,
before it is even an historical question.
The legal question takes precedence over all questions because the legal
question handles the character of God. You must come to grips with God’s
absolute standard of righteousness. This
absolute standard is covering all of the universe and you have to deal with it,
you cannot be sloppy with His absolute standard.
Therefore we have the legal form to salvation. We have this treaty form patterned after the
suzerainty vassal treaties of the Ancient Near East where you’d have a great
king make a legal binding doctrine with many lesser vassal kings. And these lesser vassal kings would bind
themselves to mutual allegiance and would pledge their love to the suzerain. Please understand that “love” in this context
means loyal obedience. That’s the nature
of the word “love” as used in the book of Deuteronomy. This is why, when the great commandment is
said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul,
with all thy might,” it’s talking about response to God’s objective words about
Himself and His will for us. So
Deuteronomy is one of these suzerainty vassal treaties.
A peculiar feature of these vassal treaties was that they were renewed
every once in a while. The first time
the vassal treaty was made was at Mt. Sinai.
It was made, Moses came down the mountain with two plates, by the way,
they did not have five commandments on one and five commandments on the other;
the two tablets were identical, had Ten Commandments on one and Ten
Commandments on the other. They were
carbon copies, one was for God and one was for Israel as usual for the
suzerainty vassal treaties. And remember
Moses broke those tablets and it meant that the first treaty had been
broken. It was later re-established by
God, again at Mt. Sinai. That was the second time that God made a
covenant. The third time is the book of
Deuteronomy and this covenant is made with the succeeding generations; the
generation that had outlived the forty years, the generation that were the
children of the generation of believers that had committed the sin unto
death. And this new generation going
into the land required a restatement of the treaty; that is the book of
Deuteronomy. We have, from time to time
as we’ve gone through this book, pointed to many evidences that Moses wrote it,
and not as many liberals and college professors of religion love to say, it’s a
product of the 6th, 7th, 8th century
prophets. This was written and is a
genuinely Mosaic document. It has to be
or Jesus Christ is a liar; that’s the choice.
In chapter 32 we have finished with the rib controversy proceedings, and beginning at verse 44 we have a
description by the compiler of the book, verse 44 on is written evidently by a man
who outlived Moses and who was telling us how it all wound up. Beginning in verse 44 he tells us what Moses
did. Verses 44-52 is the preparation for
the transfer of the treaty. The transfer
of the treaty means that a treaty, they are operating up to this moment under
the second version, let’s call it mark 2, mark 1 was broken, mark 2 and this is
mark 3; as of this moment they are operating on mark 2; mark 3 has not been put
into operation and can’t be put into operation until Moses drops dead. When he drops dead then mark 3 will be moving
into operation. Right now they are
operating under mark 2. And Moses in
verses 44 on begins to prepare the way to switch from mark 2 to mark 3. “Moses came and spoke all the words of this
song in the ears of the people,” and then the compiler adds the note, “he, and
Hoshea, the son of nun.” Now “Hoshea” is
another name for Joshua.
This introduces us to a principle of these two men’s lives, Joshua and
Moses. Joshua had two names, one was
Hoshea, the other one was Yeshua, and that’s the one you have as Joshua. As you
can see there’s a slight difference in the rendering of these two words, but
this word and this root means salvation; shua,
or Yeshua is salvation and this word means salvation and Hoshea means salvation,
and this was one way that Joshua is described, this is one of his names. The other name he had was Yahshua, and that word first word yea is
actually y, we’ll say yah, shua, and yah is the prefix from Yahweh,
so we have his name really means “Jehovah is our salvation.” The battle is the Lord’s, Jehovah is our
salvation, Jehovah is our deliverance.
This is what Joshua’s name means.
Other times he’s simply called as Hoshea, or salvation.
The two men, Moses and Joshua, each picture Jesus Christ. They are types of Jesus Christ. What is a type? A “type” is a very difficult thing to define,
except for the fact that God puts form in history; history is not chaos, as you
may have learned in school where you learn a few dates here and a few dates
there and things sort of statistically work out. That’s a human viewpoint analysis of
history. Divine viewpoint analysis of
history is a history that has total form and it means that God invests certain
historical events with a form that He wants us to understand because that form
teaches us about something future. So
therefore God has designed the plan of salvation so that two men, Moses and
Joshua, in their personal lives and in their character and in their ministry would
depict the work of Jesus Christ. Both of
these men together represent Jesus Christ.
Moses represents Christ as the mediator, “M,” and by mediator we mean
Jesus Christ stands between God and man; Jesus Christ is equal to God, Jesus
Christ is equal to man, Jesus Christ is undiminished deity and true humanity
united without mixture in one person forever, doctrine of the hypostatic
union. That is what Jesus Christ is, God
and man in one person forever. Now Moses
is the mediator, he is the one who has to be equal with God and yet at the same
time Moses has to be equal with man because he must bridge the gap, he must be
the mediator.
Now the doctrine of the mediator comes out of that tremendous climactic
event of the giving of the Ten Words, or the Ten Commandments. Remember after God got through verbally
speaking, and by the way, God verbally spoke that, Moses didn’t just walk up
into a cloud and dream up some sweet little thing and carve it on a rock and
bring it down, God spoke those words to two to three million people so if you
had been there with a tape recorder you could have recorded it. God spoke in Hebrew as He always does;
whenever God speaks in history, evidently from what we have from the Bible,
even in the New Testament, God speaks in the Hebrew language.
Now, when God spoke the Ten Words He spoke it to Moses and the people
together, but what was the people’s reaction?
We need a mediator, don’t let this God speak to us any more lest we die;
in other words, they were separated from God through their sin and they needed
one to stand between. Moses was that one
to stand between. Moses blew it along
the way and he committed the sin unto death and he’s going to get his in
chapter 34. So Moses is not the total
fulfillment of Jesus Christ. Moses is an
imperfect mediator.
We have another man come along by the name of Joshua. Joshua depicts Jesus Christ as the
conqueror. He depicts Jesus Christ as
the conqueror in the angelic conflict.
There is an angelic conflict going on because Satan has taken one-third
of the angels with him, Revelation tells us this, and he has gone along with
millions and millions of these angels on his side. This is introduced, the phenomenon of the
angelic conflict in history, which began before Gen. 1:2, it continues down
into Gen. 6 where the angels intermarried with human beings, and it continues
down into the age of Israel and now reaches its climax in the Church. And in the Church Age we have a tremendous
war going on all around us. This war
must be understood; if you are a believer you are a soldier in this war. People don’t like militancy when it’s applied
to Christian life. I have a friend in a ministry in the New York area, a
flaming liberal and he told me that in his congregation he wiped out all the
hymns like Onward Christian Soldiers, because they were militant and we don’t
have militancy in the Christian life, we’ve got too much militancy in the world
so we had to get it out of Christianity, we wanted peace. That is absolutely satanic; that is a satanic
statement. You have peace in Christianity
through war; the Christian life is a battle and it’s a battle involving angels
and their doctrines, the doctrines of demons.
So the angels operate in history, they teach various doctrines. And this is where the battleground lies in
our time. We don’t fight a physical war
like the holy war that Israel fought. We
fight an ideological war of ideas and this is why Christians are out of it 9
times out of 10, because they don’t even know where the war is. You’ve heard the sarcastic statement, suppose
they gave a war and nobody came? That’s
typical of Christians, God’s giving a war and where are the Christians. Here’s God, Bible doctrine, divine viewpoint
framework, science, history, philosophy, art, music, literature, fellowship
with believers, loved ones, friends, society, possessions, sex, etc. all the
rest of the things, the details of life, possessions and health, job, etc. So these are the details of life; now in
every one of those details you have a fight, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ
there’s a struggle in every single area of your life.
There’s no area that’s neutral and you’d better get rid of any ideas
that you have that something is neutral; nothing is neutral. It’s either for God or against God,
everything, art, music, science, history, and if you want evidence just look at
the Word of God carefully. The Word of
God calls Christians to ideological battle and it’s kind of amusing because we
always hear of these student rebels on the college campus. Listen, any Christian student who’s been
trying to get an education from the establishment for 20 centuries has been in
revolt; every Christian student basically is a rebel on the campus because he
cannot subscribe to the human viewpoint presuppositions of modern education. So in one sense all these yuppies and all the
rest of them are about 20 centuries late because Christians have been in revolt
against the academic establishment for generations. If a Christian student, teenager, gets through
the public high school system without human viewpoint he has done an amazing
thing. Our school systems are so loaded
with anti-Christian material taught by anti-Christians in class who themselves
may be believers but they’re just out of it, making statements like well, if
evolution is true it doesn’t bother me too much, etc. Listen, if evolution is true you can take
your Bible and put it in the nearest garbage can because if evolution is true
then Jesus Christ was a liar because Jesus Christ believed in a literal
Genesis. Therefore you can throw out
Jesus Christ, you can throw out Genesis, etc.
Evolution and the Bible have nothing in common, evolution is a pagan
doctrine beginning about 400 BC with Aristophanes and a few other early Greeks.
So we have paganism this way, we have paganism in history courses where
they teach the kids the United Nations is the solution to the world problems;
world government is a solution; this is satanic, God annihilated the first
United Nations in Gen. 11 and from Gen. 11 on in history world government is
always a satanic movement and a Christian must always be against it. So we have case after case in the educational
system where we are being bombed with heavy, thoroughly anti-Christian material
and it’s time a few Christians made waves in fighting it off.
So we have a battle and this is the holy war that the Christian is
engaged in, a war in which there is no compromise. In the Old Testament there was a holy war
that had physical counterparts, there was the actual shedding of blood. Now in our day the warfare is above the
eyebrow, it’s a terrific engagement, and there can be no compromise, no
vacuums, nothing shifts, everything has to be like it was in the Old Testament;
the doctrine of holy war, except the objectives are ideas not men. We have to distinguish, we are not fighting
people, we are fighting their ideas and it’s a struggle to the death, and if I
am to be loyal to my Lord I can never, never, never compromise in any one of
these areas. If this is the Word of God
I am called to defend it, regardless of what the ideas, or the pressure, or the
weight of my culture, I am called upon to oppose it. Now this is the war that we face as believers
and this is why we must understand the fact that there is an angelic conflict
going on and Joshua’s life is typical of Jesus Christ’s work now at the
Father’s right hand.
Verse 46, “and he said unto them,” Moses, “Set your hearts unto all the
words which I testify among you this day, which you shall command your children
to observe to do, all the words of this law.” “Set your hearts to the word,”
notice that expression, “set your heart to
the words,” this means to take your mind and how it thinks and set it, or fit
it, to Bible doctrine. It means to
orient your thinking along the lines of the standards of God, and this is the
process of education. See, on a non-Christian basis education has no
purpose. You may not think this but
think it through for a moment. If I were
a non-Christian why would I bother to get educated? Well, to do better on a job; big deal, that’s
technical, I mean truly a classical education. There’s no reason for it on a
non-Christian base, unless you happen to be amused by it. But there’s really no basis for education
apart from the Word of God. So here we
have the true meaning of education, you “set your heart” which is your
mentality, to the standards, the absolute standards of the Word of God in all
areas.
Verse 47, “For it is not a vain thing for you,” and the word “vain”
means insignificant, in other words, don’t despise this thing, don’t think of
it like a lot of Christians, well I know everything there is to know about the
Bible, after all I went to Sunday School for six years, they covered it all
there, we went from Genesis to Revelation.
Do you think that’s far out? I
know a man who sells insurance, he used
to be a minister, he said I don’t have to study the Bible any more, I’ve
studied it once, I know it all; and the guy was serious, I couldn’t believe
it. Listen, you can devote the rest of
your life, you can have nine lives studying the Word of God and you’d never get
to the bottom of it. There is material
here for study, study, study, study, and then do some more study.
“It is not an insignificant thing for you, because,” and look at this
statement in verse 47, “because it is your life;” Bible doctrine, the words of
God, they are your life. Nothing else,
not all the Christian gimmicks, not all the point system, Brownie points and
all the rest of it, all the nonsense that passes for Christianity. What counts is Bible doctrine, Bible
doctrine, and more Bible doctrine. I’ve
been criticized since I’ve become pastor because I don’t go around visit; I
visit people but that’s not my number one task and it’s never going to be my
number one task. If we are to maintain
true Biblical Christianity where do you put the emphasis? On what you know from the Word of God, that’s
the emphasis, Bible doctrine, Bible doctrine, Bible doctrine. This is what it means here in verse 47-48,
“it is your life, and through this thing ye shall prolong your days in the
land, to which ye go over the Jordan to possess it.” “Through this thing” means the Law, the Word
of God that Moses has taught them; “through this Word of God you shall prolong
your days in the land.”
Verse 48, “And the LORD spoke unto Moses that very same day, saying,”
now watch, God tells Moses to do four things, two of those you could do and two
you never could do. Why? Verse 49, “Get thee up into this mountain of
Abarim, unto Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab that is over against
Jericho, and [2] behold the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of
Israel for a possession. Verse 50, “[3]
And die in the mount where thou goest up,” that’s an imperative verb and God is
telling Moses when you get up there drop dead.
That’s what He’s telling him, go up there, take a good look and drop
dead. What God is telling Moses is give
up the will to live, you’ve had it. “…in
the mount where you are going up, and be gathered unto thy people, as Aaron,
they brother, died in Mount Hor, and was gathered unto his people. [51] Because
you trespassed against Me among the children of Israel at the waters of Meribah
of Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin; because you sanctified Me not in the midst
of the children of Israel, [52] Yet thou shalt see the land before thee; but
thou shalt not go there unto the land, which I give the children of
Israel.”
Now Moses committed the sin unto death described in 1 John 5. The sin unto death is when a believer engages
in a sin which, because of his position, is unduly embarrassing to the cause of
God. What it is it varies with the
person. If you want to find out what the
sin unto death is for you just sin every possible way you can think of and you
might luck out after about a thousand times and hit the sin unto death that God
has for you, in which case you will know it.
The sin unto death, let’s look at this; this does not mean loss of
salvation. At the point you receive
Christ God the Holy Spirit put you “in Christ,” that’s your position, it never
changes. Down here is the circle of
experience; here is the will of God for you, and sooner or later some people
reach the point where they commit the sin unto death and pop, they’re out. There are several other instances in
Scripture, Ananias and Sapphira committed the sin unto death in Acts 5. Saul committed the sin unto death. There were many believers in the Bible who
committed the sin unto death, but please notice they did not lose their
salvation.
We’re going to see a fantastic testimony in chapter 34 of the fact that
Moses, even though he committed the sin unto death, God loved him with an
absolute love. The trespass that Moses
did is given in Num. 20; it was a case where he violated the Word of God. It looks trivial on the surface; what it was
was he had 40 years of people bending his ear, blaming Moses, Moses, why did
you lead us out here, Moses it was great in Egypt, why have you led us out
here, Moses why did you do this, Moses why did you do that, and he had had this
for about 38 years and finally they came to a place where they had no water and
they had been through this before and God always supplied but instead of
trusting the Lord for it they turned around and started griping at Moses. The Hebrew is the crude word for gripe and
that’s what Meribah means. So we have
Meribah Kadesh, and this is what Moses did, he got to this situation and he
just whacked the rock twice, he was very angry at this time and he wrapped that
rock twice. God was gracious and the
water came out, etc. He supplied.
Incidentally that illustration provides you with something. Because God blesses does not mean you have
obeyed. God answered the problem, God
blessed Moses with water but it was in spite of Moses’ disobedience. So just because somebody wins 10,000 souls to
Christ, God blesses his ministry, does not mean that man is necessarily totally
obedient to the will of God. Watch that,
that’s the principle of Meribah, God will still bless in spite of a person’s
disobedience. Don’t misinterpret God’s
grace.
Now in chapter 33 we have a strange set of verses that have to do with
Moses’ blessing on the twelve tribes. To
understand the significance of Deut. 33 we have to take one of the customs of
the ancient world. One of the customs of
the ancient world was that when a father was about to die he would gather his
children around, like Isaac, Jacob; they would gather their children around and
orally transmit blessing. Once the
father had transmitted the blessing, even the father couldn’t revoke it. Remember we had the incident with Jacob and
Esau, after Isaac blessed Jacob he couldn’t say whoops, I made a mistake. Isaac had to go through with it, there was an
iron clad rule, the cultural form of this we’re not sure of, not exactly sure,
but the father, when he got up had to make an oral pronouncement once and for
all. When the father had pronounced that son A, you get this, son B you get
this, son C you get this and that was it.
That would hold in court. We do
have in archeology certain court records where this was used, where the
father’s last dying blessing upon his sons was held as legal evidence.
So now Moses is acting sort of as the father of the nation, but instead
of actually blessing these tribes he prays for blessing upon them. But there’s something else that we have to
understand about chapter 33 in addition to verse 1, “and this is the blessing,
wherewith Moses, the man of God, blessed the children of Israel before his
death,” we have to understand another principle. Besides the principle of blessing there is
the principle of the death of the testator.
The testator is the one who makes the treaty. When he makes the treaty you have man A,
ruler A would make up the treaty for his son, B; before the old man died he
would have it all out in writing what the treaty was going to be like, but the
treaty would not take effect until the father died. He would have to die and
when he died then his son was automatically invested under his father’s treaty. That’s how it worked. So therefore in the Bible we have a
parallel. In place of A we have Moses;
we don’t have his son, we have Joshua. The reason for this is that God doesn’t follow
family dynasties. This is the idea why
the monarchy was wrong in the Bible. God
has His own dynasty and in Moses’ generation God said look Moses, your
successor is going to be a man whom I have given the spiritual gift of
leadership to, etc. and he is going to follow you. So Moses made up the treaty for Joshua. Joshua couldn’t make his own treaty. Moses had to make it then after he made it he
had to die and after he died then Joshua would then be invested with the
rulership of the nation under Moses, his forbearer’s treaty. That’s how it worked, that’s the mechanics of
it.
To see how this opens up the New Testament turn to Heb. 9:15 and you
will see it applied to Jesus Christ.
“And for this cause He [Jesus Christ] is the mediator of the new
testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions
that were under the first testament, they who are called might receive the
promise of eternal inheritance. [16] For where a testament is, there must also
of necessity be the death of the testator.”
So here we have A would be Jesus Christ but B would be Jesus Christ. Here we have Jesus Christ in the role of
Moses and here we have Jesus Christ in the role of Joshua. Jesus Christ before He died inaugurated
communion. When we have the cup at
communion what do we say? “This is the
blood of the new covenant which is shed for you, do this in remembrance of
Me.” There [not sure of word] communion
Jesus Christ is setting in motion the mechanics of the new covenant. Now Jesus Christ has to die before the new
covenant takes effect. Therefore we have the death of Jesus Christ on the
cross. As the resurrection occurs and he ascends to heaven He now rules under
the covenant that he set up in His incarnation and now He goes on ruling under
that covenant, the New Covenant. So here
we have the parallel and by understanding the Old Testament form we can
appreciate communion, we can appreciate some of the ministries of Jesus
Christ. This is why you must understand
the Old Testament to understand the New Testament.
Back to Deut. 33; chapter 33 is a long detailed chapter and we are only
going to take excerpts from chapter 33, that will solve the puzzled look that
many of you have and you wonder how can Charles Clough finish chapter 33 and 34
in only 25 more minutes. Well, how I’m going to do it is we are only going to take
excerpts from chapter 33. The reason for this is we’re not going to go through
the details of the blessings on the tribes.
This chapter is divided into certain sections. Verses 1-5 is one section
that’s important and we’d like to go through this section. This presents something fantastic about the
character of God. In verses 1-5 you have a very rare portrayal of God as
King. This is important to prove the
deity of Christ, as I’ll show you in a minute.
But verses 1-5 expose the character of God in all of His glory, and He
is seen as the reigning, triumphant glorious King of Israel.
So verses 2-5, “And he [Moses] said, The LORD came from Sinai, and rose
up from Seir unto them; He shined forth from Mount Paran,” and now we’re going
to change the translation so watch it, the last part of verse 2 and the first
part of verse 3 are some of the hardest verses I have had to translate and you
look up various translations and they are all different. And you look down at the manuscript evidence
and they are all different, so it’s a very difficult thing. I am going by some modern Hebrew scholars who
have analyzed this passage in light of recent advances in the language. [King James: “and he came with ten thousands
of saints. From his right hand went a
fiery law for them. [3] Yea, he loved the people; all his saints are in thy
hand: and they sat down at thy feet; every one shall receive of thy words.”]
“The LORD came from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them; He shined
forth from Mount Paran, and then with Him ten thousands of holiness,” let’s
look at this, “with Him ten thousands of holiness,” it’s a noun for “holy,”
“with Him ten thousands of holiness. At
His right hand fiery rays for them. [3] Yea, O embracer of nations;” this is a
vocative, “O embracer of nations,” he’s talking to God, “all the saints are at
thy right hand” or “in thy right hand: and they sat down at thy feet, and they
carried thy words,” not received, “they carried thy words.” Verse 4, “Moses
commanded us a law, even the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob. [5]And
He,” not Moses, “And He [God] became King in Jeshurun, when the heads of the
people and the tribes of Israel were gathered together.”
Now the picture you have in verses 2-5 is the coronation of God Himself
as the King of Israel. And He comes to
His nation and He sits on His throne and the picture is fantastic, if an artist
could just read the Hebrew of this, this could inspire a fantastic
painting. This, to my knowledge, has
never been put in an art form and it’s fantastic because it’s one of the most
glorious pictures of all the Word of God, God, sitting down as the King of the
nation Israel. And it says God came from
Sinai,” please notice that this is after the Law was given. Here’s Sinai, here’s the point where the New
Covenant was made, when officially the basis for God’s Kingship was laid down.
And now God comes to make this legal proposition a historical truth. At Mt.
Sinai you have the legal basis for it all; now what you have in verses 2-5 is
an account of how God in history made that Law actual. So we have “God came from Sinai, He rose up
from Seir, He shined forth from Mount Paran,” now this tells us something.
This tells us that when God shined forth, however He shone forth it was
visible over hundreds and hundreds of miles.
These are whole areas of the eastern desert and it says God shined
forth, it means that His glory was visible in the heavens for hundreds and
hundreds of miles. This is what shook
the people in the land about them. This is why later on when you get in the
book of Joshua they come up to their enemies and they say hey, where were you
for the last 40 years, we’ve been here shaking in our boots for 38 years
because we know the power of your God.
Now where did they get that from? Well, they got it from the fact that
Pharaoh had a little accident with his military machine, and that report got
back to them, and also this physical glory of God was used, and this is only
two verses here, the glory of God, but I want to take you to some other verses
in Scripture to show you that this glory was so fantastic that it made an
indelible impression on the people for centuries, it was such an outstanding
display. This is where God really put on
the fireworks.
Turn to Judges 5, whenever God’s presence from this point onward in the
Old Testament He is always described as He occurred here. Here’s the song of Deborah, an interesting
story of why there was a woman judge in Israel.
She’s praising God for delivering her generation. But when she goes to praise God her language
goes back to the theophany at Mt. Sinai, and so in verse 4 she turns to her
Lord and says, “LORD, when thou went out of Seir, when you marched out of the
field of Edom, the earth trembled, and the heavens dropped, the clouds also dropped
water. [5] The mountains melted from
before the LORD, even that Sinai from before the LORD God of Israel.” This isn’t poetic language; this is the fact
that there were literal physical and earthly catastrophes that accompanied this
event.
Psalm 68:7, “O God,” now this is David, generations after Deborah, and
what does he do, he starts to praise God and immediately David falls back on
that theophany back in the time of Moses, and he says, “O God, when thou sent
forth before Thy people, when thou did march through the wilderness, Selah. [8]
The earth shook, the heavens also dropped at the presence of God; even Sinai
itself was moved at the presence of God, the God of Israel.” You see, a
tremendous powerful revelation of God.
Hab. 3:2, “O LORD, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid; O LORD,
revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make
known; in wrath remember mercy. [3] God came from Teman, and the Holy One from
Mount Paran. Selah. His glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of
His praise. [4] And His brightness was like the light; He had horns coming out
of His hand; and there was the hiding of His power. [5] Before Him went the
pestilence, and burning coals went forth at His feet. [6] He stood and measured
the earth; He beheld, and drove asunder the nations; and the everlasting
mountains were scattered, the perpetual hills did bow; His ways are
everlasting.” You see what a fantastic
powerful image they had of God. I want
you to see this because too few Christians think of the fact that the people in
the Old Testament had just as much empirical basis for their faith as you do in
the cross, in the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This was their “death and resurrection of
Christ;” instead of having the death and resurrection of Christ as their
apologetic for their faith, the people in the Old Testament had what happened
at the Exodus and what happened here as the apologetic for their faith, and the
whole Old Testament is built on that just like the whole New Testament is built
on the cross and empty tomb. The two go together. You can’t dump one without dumping the other
and you can’t dump either one without dumping the rest of the Bible.
Back to Deuteronomy to this magnificent theophany of God, “theophany”
meaning appearance of God. We’ll finish
verse 2 & 3. “…He shined forth from
Mount Paran, and with Him myriads of His holiness,” now what does this mean? It means that there were angels in His
presence, tremendous, thousands of these angels appeared and they were there at
the delivering of the Law and they were there and Moses and the people saw
them, myriads of these angels. You say
what did these angels look like? The
only hint that we have from the text is that these angels took upon themselves
the form of physical phenomena, for when they are described in Exodus and
Numbers and all these books what you see in the presence of God is clouds,
lightening and all these things that we would classify as natural phenomena,
and yet when the Bible analyzes it from the divine viewpoint framework they say
behind these natural phenomena were myriads and myriads and myriads of
angels.
Some of you are a little skeptical of me when I go through the area of
angels so I have prepared for you 13 references to prove that there were angels
at Mt. Sinai. The first one we won’t
turn to because this technically does not prove they were at Sinai though it
proves there were myriads of them, Gen. 28:12, Jacob’s ladder. You remember Jacob and his dream, he dreamed
of a ladder going up into heaven and who was on the ladder, “myriads,” the same
word, “myriads of angels going up and down,” up and down, up and down, thousands
of them. The word “myriad” is far greater
than a thousand and most lexicons take this word myriad to mean ten
thousand.
1 Kings 22:19, a rather spectacular passage, this is the angelic council
that evidently is ruling our universe, you who have read science fiction will
think of these great space councils that rule the universe; well that’s nothing
new with science fiction because we’ve got it right here in 1 Kings 22. Beginning in verse 19, this is a vision of
Micaiah the prophet, and he’s admitted to the glory of God and as he looks upon
the throne he sees the Lord sitting on His throne, “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. [21] And there came forth a spirit, and stood before the LORD, and
said, I will persuade him.” And we have
this spirit which is an angel come and is able to manipulate physical things in
history, in this case this one spirit is able to somehow to manipulate within
and through the psychological dynamics of hundreds of people and is able to
make these people say things to Ahab.
That’s one angel, that’s just one angel who was able to manipulate
through man’s psychology and cause a fantastic thing to shift in history. The next time you think of science as highly
deterministic and as though we’ve got everything down, you’ve got to take
another look at the Bible.
Job 1:6 is another case, we won’t go there, you know this, this is the
case of the angelic meeting when Satan was admitted to the council meeting,
there was a meeting God evidently called, periodically throughout history of
the angelic council that runs the universe, Satan dropped by for a chat and
they had a little discussion and it resulted in the book of Job.
Psalm 68:17 we have another reference to these myriads of angels. Here it gives you another number, “The
chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels,” and this means
it’s beyond count, “twenty thousand, even thousands of angels; the LORD is
among them, as in Sinai, in the holy place.”
There it shows you that there were thousands of angels present at Sinai. The Lord is present “as in Sinai, in the holy
place.” You’ll notice verse 18, if you
look at verse 18 carefully you’ll see it’s quoted in Ephesians and it has to do
with the angelic conflict.
Psalm 89:6-8, another case in point of the angelic council that rules
the universe, “For who in the heavens can be compared unto the LORD? Who among
the sons of the mighty can be likened unto the LORD? [7] God is greatly to be
feared in the assembly of the holy ones [saints],” now “saints” usually means
believers but in this case the word “holy ones” refers to angels, “God is
greatly to be feared in the assembly of the angels,” there’s the angelic
council, “and to be had in reverence of all those who are about him.” This is why He’s called the Lord of hosts. [Verse 8, “O LORD God of hosts, who is a
strong LORD like unto thee?”]
Daniel 7:10, again you will see the throne of God surrounded with His
angels. This is for the benefit of my
skeptical friends. “A fiery stream,” now
this is the vision of the Ancient of days, probably it’s this vision that make
artists think of God as an old man with a long beard. In Dan. 7:10 “A fiery stream issued and came
forth from before him,” now watch this, “a thousand thousands,” millions in
other words, “ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood
before him,” that’s 100 million, and “the judgment was set, and the books were
opened.”
These are the numbers of angels, fantastic groups of angels. This is why when we have a demon possessed
person in the New Testament you have “legion,” for they are legion; how can
there be 3,000 demons in one person?
There are, there’s a New Testament account of a person who had 3,000
demons and therefore the old adage that was in the Middle Ages about how many
angels can dance on the head of a pin?
That’s not a facetious question; I’d like to hear an answer to it
because it’s s legitimate question.
Matt. 26:53, I’m taking you through this for another purpose, I have an
ulterior motive in all of this, and the other one is to show you that you can’t
take something like angels and say well, isn’t that sweet, those poor little
deluded people in that day, they just believed in angels but we more mature
people of the 20th century, we’ve given up such naďve childish
beliefs. Please notice, however, how
equally distributed the doctrine of angels is and now look at what you have to
deal with. If you think angels are just
an account of certain primitive people, what do you do with Matt. 26:53 for
here you have Jesus Christ believing them, so evidently Jesus Christ also was
naďve and a victim of the culture of His time.
As the cross nears and the disciples sweat it out and they begin to say
Lord, Lord, can’t we get out of this jam, Lord, Lord, isn’t there a way in
which you can escape the last minute.
And Jesus says this fantastic statement: “Thinkest thou that I cannot
now pray to My Father, and he shall presently give Me more than twelve legions
of angels?” Now if we take an estimate
of 4,000, 4,000 to 5,000 men in a legion at that time in history, if you
multiply it by 12 it comes out approximately 50,000, so Jesus says I could have
gotten easily, at the flick of My finger I could have asked My Father for
50,000 angels and He would have sent them.
Is Jesus crazy or is He not? Are
there real angels there or is Jesus just talking through His hat. You have to say one or the other, Jesus is
crazy or you are.
Acts 7:53, here again we have an account of the angels in the days of
Moses. This is the martyr Stephen, and he says in his speech in Acts 7, “Who
have received the law through” or “by means of the disposition of angels,”
actually “the administration of angels.”
So Stephen says the Law was given through angels.
Gal. 3:19, “Wherefore, then serveth the law? It was added because of
transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it
was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator,” therefore there were angels
in Moses’ time in intimate connection with the Law.
Heb. 2:2, “For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every
transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward,” he’s
talking about the Law given by angels.
Heb. 12:22, speaking of us as the Church, “But ye are come unto Mount
Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an
innumerable company of angels.” And I’d
add Rev. 5:11 and Rev. 7:11. [Rev. 5:11,
“And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and
the living creatures and the elders, and the number of them was ten thousand
times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands.” Rev. 7:11, “And all the angels stood round
about the throne, and about the elders and the four living creatures, and fell
before the throne on their faces, and worshiped God.”]
Back to Deut. 33, by now you should be convinced that at least the
authors of the Bible believed there were angels, and in particular they
believed there were thousands and thousands of them involved in these strange
“natural phenomena,” (quote, end quote) that occurred at the time of the giving
of the Law. Incidentally, this is the
basis for saying that some Christians have done recently, that the medium
through which God performs His physical miracles in the physical creation is
through angels manipulating within these physical laws. These are described in verse 2.
Now we come to verse 3, “O embracer of nations; all of your holy ones,”
that’s the angels again, “are at Thy hand: and they sit down at Thy feet,” and
it means to prostate themselves, it’s the picture of a King on His throne and
the thousands of people in his court come in and prostrate themselves; these
are the angels worshiping God Himself.
“…and they bear thy words,” now what does this mean? It means that God as the King issues decrees
and they are the messengers and they carry His words. That’s what it means, they put them into
effect. Verse 4, and then “Moses
commanded us a law, even the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob. [5] And
he,” see the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob is the Law, and when
Moses finishes commanding it, verse 4, watch verse 5, “He became King,” it
doesn’t say He was King, “He became King in Jeshurun,” in other words God
became King at this point in history.
We haven’t got time to develop this but suffice it to say that the
concept of King in the Old Testament is not primarily a man. When we say “the King of Israel,” from this
passage, Deut. 33:5, 1 Sam. 8:7; we can show that God Himself was the King, not
a man. God Himself was King. Now
deduction: if God is the King of Israel, and if their prophet is to fulfill the
total condition, in other words, a greater fulfillment than this time, God is
King here and you have a physical ruler, but if the Messiah is supposed to be
better than Moses, and His reign is supposed to be described as God reigns,
when the Messiah comes God is reigning as Isaiah 52 and all the enthronement
Psalms say, what conclusion do you come to?
Messiah has to be God. Israel
looked forward to a divine Messiah.
Anything less than a divine Messiah would not have fulfilled the
Kingship function or else they would have been right back with Moses. They had a human rule with Moses and God
ruled, so what good would they then have to have a (quote) “fulfillment” in
history that will be no better than Moses?
Nothing, so you have to have something greater than Moses. What could be
greater than Moses but God Himself being the King? So therefore we have the humanity, here in
the Old Testament you have God, and you have Moses; you have the deity and the
humanity separated. The final
fulfillment is in Jesus Christ when you have deity and humanity united in one
person and that shows you the deity of Messiah, also taught in Isaiah 9:6.
From verses 6-25 we have the individual blessings on the tribes and we
won’t go into this, we’ll skip over this and come to 33:26. This is a short praise of God and the reason
I’d like to take you to this is that it shows you how to praise God, verses
26-29. Now in certain fundamental
circles every time you walk through the door and blow your nose or something
everybody says “praise God, praise God, praise God,” etc. Now that is not praising God. Praising God means that you describe what God
has done in history; you give a verbal testimony to what God has done. Any time you preach the gospel you are
praising God. That’s what it means and
if you say “praise God,” if someone walks up to you and says “praise God” the
only thing I usually do, I take it as an imperative, you want me to praise God,
okay, sit down and I’ll tell you the gospel or we’ll go through the doctrine of
the Second Advent or something; you told me to praise God and that’s what it
means. Try that on someone the next time
they come up to you and bend your ear with this “praise God, praise God, praise
God” business, well you just start praising God and go through the doctrine of
the atonement or something, angelic conflict or something like that and give
them an hour lecture. Then you’d be
praising God. So that’s what praising
God means.
Now in verse 26 there is a praise of God here, but the strange thing
about the praise of God is that it’s future; Moses is praising God for
something that hasn’t happened yet. He
is looking forward in history, he is looking down the corridors of time, and
saying I can see down the corridors of time and I can see that God has
fulfilled His Word and now Moses goes, as it were, in a time machine, all the
way down the corridors of time, turns around and starts looking back. That’s how the verbs are structured, they’re
all past as though this is all past, God has done this, God has done this and
he’s praising God for it. This means
thanking God in advance when you have the faith to believe that He’s going to
answer. When God inwardly gives a
testimony in your heart that God is going to answer a prayer, now you don’t
always have this assurance, please don’t try to manufacture this by some system
of autohypnosis. But sometimes when you
pray, many of you have had this happen, when you pray the Holy Spirit just
gives you the quiet calm assurance that that prayer has been heard and that
prayer will be answered. And when you
have that feeling, when you have that… it’s not really a feeling, it’s a
mentality and all the functions of the soul are in it, when you have that trust
that God is going to answer the prayer you have the right to do what Moses did,
and start right then thanking God and praising Him for what he has done.
In verse 26 he says this, “There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun,”
Jeshurun is another name for Israel, “who rides upon the heaven in thy help,
and in His Excellency on the sky. [27] The eternal God is thy refuge, and
underneath are the everlasting arms: and he shall thrust out the enemy from
before thee, and shall say, Destroy them.”
Let’s look at verse 27, I want to show you something about how they
praised God. They praised God from a
knowledge of divine essence, sovereign, righteousness, justice, love,
omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, immutability and eternality. There is
the attribute Moses has in mind; you see, you can’t praise God if you don’t
know anything about Him. Moses knew
something about Him and this famous thing that you hear Christians say, it’s a
wonderful promise in verse 27, “the eternal God is thy refuge.” Do you know what this means? It means that God has the whole scope of
everything, all at once.
I often used the illustration of an automobile accident with a high
speed film and imagine standing on a corner taking… as two cars collide, maybe
a head on collision, a rapid collision and you’re sitting there with a high
speed movie camera and you take a picture and after you develop the film, you
have this long strip of film, maybe each picture representing every thousandth
of a second time, or hundredths of a second time, as these cars approach and
you sit in your dark room after you have developed this film and you have this
long strip of film out, and piece by piece it describes these two comes closer
and closer and closer together, but you in the comfort of your laboratory can
sit there and spend hours on each hundredths of a second. You’re not panicked by the pressure of
time. If you were in the car you
wouldn’t have time to think, you would be rushed by the jam of time and
history, but God is outside of history, He’s in eternity, He has eternality and
so He isn’t jammed by the rust of time and so things that come smashing into
your life very rapidly, it’s as though God had a filmstrip of it all and could
sit there for all eternity and calmly look at each picture.
This is why it says the eternal God is thy refuge. It means that God has had all eternity to see
every single trial that will come your way, every single problem, every single
pressure, and He hasn’t been rushed by the jam of time like you are; things
happen so fast sometimes we can’t think, sometimes we can’t react, it just
happens, and there it is, it’s dropped in our lap, but it never takes God by
surprise. And so when these men praised the eternal God for the refuge they
think of this man like before the film strip who see this thing in all of its
[can’t understand word] and able to provide.
God is able to provide because He has the perspective of eternity. This is why the last parallelism on this,
“the eternal God is thy refuge” and then you see what the next one says, “and
underneath are the everlasting arms,” arms means sustenance or support. God is able to supply, God is able to give
you support in your life because He’s everlasting, because he has a
perspective. He knows the problem and He
has provided beforehand for every difficulty. “…and He shall thrust out the
enemy from before thee,” and actually literally all this is in past tense,
they’ve translated it future because of the way the translators just have, but
it’s all past as far as Moses is saying, this has happened, he says this has
happened, God “thrust out the enemy from before thee, and He said, Destroy
them.” The battle is the Lords, He says
“destroy them,” just like He tells Christians in 2 Cor. 10:5, go out there in
the world and smash the ideas, take an offense, not a defense; go out and
challenge, go out and conquer for Christ.
If you’re a student in a certain area you have a mandate for the
Lordship of Christ to bring that area of academics under the control of Jesus
Christ’s words. That’s what 2 Cor. 10:5
says. Same thing, “Destroy them.”
Verse 28, “Israel then shall dwell in safety alone;” it means that she
will in the Millennium and eternal state be without enemies, “the fountain of
Jacob shall be upon a land of grain and wine; also His heavens shall drop down
dew. [29] Happy art thou, O Israel! Who is like unto thee, O people saved by
the LORD, the shield of thy help, and who is the sword of thy excellency?” The word “saved” here means that God’s plan
of deliverance or salvation is by grace, and it means therefore that if you are
a believer, if you are going to live a life that’s honoring to Christ, you are
going to have to master the grace principle.
You are going to have to learn to live your life on the basis of God’s
grace and not on the basis of legalism, not on the basis of pushiness, not on
the basis of self-righteousness, and all the rest of it but on the concept of a
relaxed grace because God wants the glory for what he does; that’s the
objective of the ballgame. So you’re
just fouling up the game to throw in your works. God wants the glory.
The other word to note in verse 29 is the word “help,” remember when we
were going through the doctrine of male/female, I said that the woman was
created as the helpmeet for man, and when I said that the word for woman is a
strange word in Genesis because it’s used only of God. Here is the word “help,” that’s how it’s used
in the Bible and it’s only used one other time for a person other than God and
that’s used for the woman when she’s designed in Gen. 2 for the man. “Help,” God is “thy help, and who is the
sword of thy excellency?”
Now chapter 34 is what we would call the notarization of the
treaty. Remember for the treaty to go
into effect you have to have the death of Moses. Moses has to drop out before that treaty can
take over. Now in this chapter, this
very short chapter of the funeral of Moses, it is not a tacked on section. For years the liberals said oh, see, this is
another one of these situations where JEDP held a conference and sort of handed
out… you know how you deal out cards in a card game, so you deal out the hand
and that’s how JEDP built up the Old Testament, they had to sort of deal cards
to each other and build it up this way, and chapter 34 was one of these things
they tossed on the end. But where
archeology has vindicated the fundamentalists for we have always said that
Deuteronomy stands or falls as a unit and sure enough, a suzerainty vassal treaty
can’t be valid until you have tacked onto it the notification that the man who
made it has died. That has to be on the
treaty before the treaty can go into effect.
So chapter 34 belongs to the book of Deuteronomy. If the book of Deuteronomy ended where we
just ended, the treaty would never have this notarization that it was to be
enforced.
So chapter 34 has to be there as a notarization of the treaty, it is now
enforced because Moses has died, and so chapter 34 again is put in by the
compiler, whoever wrote it, he compiled this maybe after the time of Moses in
the time of Joshua explained this. “And
Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo,” and in verse
2 he is given a supernatural vision. Two
other men, three other men actually were given supernatural visions in the
Bible; one was Elijah, the other was Ezekiel and the third one was Jesus
Christ. God took all of them to a
mountain, but then somehow, maybe by refraction of the light, etc. was able to
bend their vision over the horizon because some of the points described here
are beyond the horizon. In other words
it looks like this, the earth has a curvature to it, and you got heights of
land here, actually Moses is over on one of these mountains and the
Mediterranean is described but the Mediterranean is below his line of
sight. So evidently since he can see it
God has somehow miraculously bent his light beam so he can actually see all
around and that’s how Moses was given… Jesus Christ, of course, was taken up
onto a high mountain and He could see the kingdoms of all the earth. So evidently there he had total global
vision.
Verse 3, “And the south, and the plan of the valley of Jericho, the city
of palm trees, unto Zoar,” he describes the various things and in verse 4 he
assures him that all will be well, that the Abrahamic Covenant will be
fulfilled. [“And the LORD said unto him, This is the land which I swore unto
Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed. I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes,
but thou shalt not go over there.”]
Now in verses 5-6 we have one of the most startling accounts in the
grand finale in the book of Deuteronomy.
You would expect that such a long book with all this detail would wind
up with a very surprising note, and in verse 5-6 here we have the surprising
conclusion to the book of Deuteronomy.
“And so Moses, the servant of the LORD, died there in the land of Moab,
according to the word of the LORD. [6] And he buried him in a valley in the
land of Moab, over against Beth-peor; but no man knows of his sepulcher unto
this day.” Who is it that’s the subject
of the verb “buried” in verse 6? God,
and here we have a strange thing. Moses
goes up there and God tells him when you get up there, take a look and drop
dead. When Moses goes up there he drops
dead and God personally buried Moses.
There’s a fantastic story behind the burial of Moses. Moses dropped dead and God buried him; when
God buried him, what happens to a body usually when you bury it? It decays, subject to biological decay. Who is behind the power of physical death in
the universe? Satan. Heb. 2, who has the
power of death? Satan has the power of death.
Somehow Satan was given the domain over death, and he, you might say,
administered this for God, and he’s one behind biological and spiritual
death.
Now here’s an astounding thing, if you’ll hold the place and turn to
Jude. You will find Satan versus Michael
arguing over the body of Moses. The book
of Jude, 1:9, “Yet Michael, the archangel, when contending with Satan he disputed
about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a railing accusation, but
said, [may] the Lord rebuke thee.” Now
here you have the archangel, now what happened was evidently when Moses died
his body was buried by God in a special way to preserve that physical
body. Satan said listen, I have just as
much right to cause his body to decay as I have anybody else, what, he’s a
special case or something. So at this
point Satan claimed the right to cause Moses’ physical body to decay, and God
said no, hands off. There are only two
people in history, actually three but two this side of the flood, who have had
a burial of this sort. One was Elijah,
and other was Moses, and their physical bodies, evidently are preserved today
in some place for reasons I’ll show you in a moment but their physical bodies
evidently are preserved in a miraculous way from decay. Sort of like the Pharaoh’s have this system
of embalming bodies that preserves them. Evidently God has a super-super way of
doing it and how He does it is a little trick, He has ordered Satan hands off,
and Satan doesn’t have the authority to decay, to cause biological decay of
these bodies. Well, Satan wanted it, and
Michael, the archangel, evidently stood over the body of Moses and said Satan
off, this isn’t your property.
Now there are two reasons for this, why it is that Moses body was
preserved and buried in this special way.
One is found in Matt. 17, the Mount of Transfiguration. You see details like this in the Word of God
and then some guy comes up and says somebody dealt a deck of cards and put the
Bible together; it just doesn’t ring true, too many detail interlock. Matt. 17:1-4, Jesus has just made the
statement in verse 28, by the way, chapter 17 is a bad chapter division in the
Gospel of Matthew, chapter 16 verse 28 should flow naturally into chapter 17,
Jesus says “Verily I say unto you, There are some standing here, who shall not
taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in His kingdom.” And so
Jesus promises the fact that they are going to see how He is going to come,
literally and physically in His kingdom.
And here is the fulfillment, [17:1] “And after six days Jesus takes
Peter, James, and John, his brother, and brings them up into a high mountain
apart, [2] And He was transfigured before them; and his face did shine like the
sun, and His raiment was as white as the light,” in other words, Jesus, for a
moment, is transforming from His natural body to His resurrection body, now not
really but in some way He is able to, you might say audio-visual presentation
here of what’s going on, He’s giving and audio-visual preview of the coming
Kingdom. And as He stands before them
and as they look, all of a sudden He starts changing in front of them, and now
His face starts shining and His body starts changing.
Verse 3, “And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elijah talking
with Him,” and look what they’re doing, they’re talking with Him… they’re
talking with Him! Often it’s been a
problem to realize why, how could the disciples know what Moses looked
like. Peter didn’t know what Moses
looked like; Moses had died centuries before Peter ever came along. Did Peter say well I know that’s Jesus but who
are these other two guys talking with Him.
How did he know that? By deduction,
there are only two men that could have been, if they were people and not
angels, there were only two men in the whole Old Testament that could have been
members of the theocratic kingdom and be available for that vision. One was Elijah who was removed without death,
and the other was Moses who was [can’t understand word], and I suggest that the
reason they knew that it was Moses and Elijah wasn’t necessarily from the
[can’t understand word], it was from simply deduction; they are the only two
men available for this vision.
But there’s a further reason why Moses and Elijah’s body have to be
preserved. After all, Matt. 17 is just a preview of the real thing; turn to the
real thing in Rev. 11. Here is the Great
Tribulation. We have the cross, the resurrection,
the Church Age, plus some time interval, seven years of the tribulation, Second
Advent of Christ, Millennial Kingdom.
During the tribulation described here in Rev. 11, the Church has been
raptured, removed from the scene, you have Israel now fulfilling its function
that it had in the Old Testament. Israel
is back in operation now and so we have the situation develop where Israel and
the Gentiles are in the fore in the book of Revelation. Now in Rev. 11:3, a strange passage, Jesus
Christ is talking about what He’s going to do during the tribulation, “and I
will give power unto My two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two
hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. [4] These are the two olive
trees, and the two lampstands standing before the God of the earth. [5] And if
any man will hurt them, fire proceeds out of their mouth, and devours their
enemies; and if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner killed. [6]
These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their
prophecy; and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the
earth with all plagues, as often as they will.” Now look at verse 6, whose
ministry is described in verse 6? Who
was it in the Old Testament that turned the rain off? Elijah.
Who was it that turned the waters to blood? Moses.
So scholars have taken these two strange witnesses that appear during
the Tribulation as a resuscitated, correction, not resurrected, resuscitated
Elijah and Moses. Now I say resuscitated
Elijah and Moses because these men are not in their resurrection bodies. Proof—next verse, “And when they shall have
finished their testimony, the beast that ascended out of the bottomless pit
shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. [8] And
their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city,” in other words,
they have not their resurrection bodies, they have natural bodies that are
subject to death. Who then would fit? I say Moses and Elijah.
And this is why these two men in the Old Testament have this very
strange burial where their bodies, evidently even now, are preserved some place
in the universe for use later on; when they appear in the tribulation they will
look as they did in the Old Testament and they will be using their natural body
which will die, be killed by the beast, and then of course be replaced by the
resurrection body.
Let’s finish Deuteronomy. Deut.
34:7, And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died,” now this
verse is put in here to show you something, that his death was supernatural,
and that when he died his body was in good shape, so it’s not the case that God
is kind of keeping some old hag half alive in a hill some place in the Middle
East. That’s not the point; Moses isn’t
decrepit, there’s nothing wrong with being decrepit, we’re all going to be
decrepit, so if you’re under 50 and laughing, just cheer up, you’ll be like it
too, that’s just the curse we all share. But the point in verse 7 is that Moses
one hundred and twenty years, and look what it says, “his eye was not dim, nor
his natural force abated.” He didn’t get
farsighted, didn’t have to have bifocals.
The word “natural force” means moisture, and it’s the word used for
skin, and it means that his skin didn’t age.
So it’s not like Cecil DeMille pictured him in that film with Charlton
Heston playing Moses, it wasn’t like that.
The point here was that Moses didn’t age. At 120 years this man was in his prime, this
is what was so fantastic about Moses. He
was in his prime at 120, absolutely astounding until you fit it in with the
program of God, that Moses body has a future to it and God is going to use it
for something fantastic in the tribulation.
Verse 9, “And Joshua, the son of Nun, was full of the spirit of wisdom;
for Moses had laid his hands upon him. And the children of Israel hearkened
unto him, and did as the LORD commanded Moses.”
That is to show that Joshua now takes up the treaty. The treaty is in [can’t understand words]
right there. And verses 10-12 are put on
to balance out the statement of Joshua, “And there arose not a prophet since in
Israel,” since—up to the time of the writing of Deuteronomy, “like unto Moses,
whom the LORD knew face to face.” And then verses 11-12 give you reasons for
it. [“In all the signs and the wonders
which the LORD sent him to do in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all his
servants, and to all his land, [12] And in all that mighty hand, and in all the
great terror which Moses showed in the sight of all Israel.”]
Now Joshua, great as he was, never could fill the shoes of Moses. Do you know why? What is verse 10 say? No man ever knew God “face to face,” Moses
could go into the presence of God and talk to Him, face to face, actually Jesus
Christ preincarnate, but he could carry on a conversation. Could Joshua?
No, everywhere Joshua wanted to find out the will of God in his day he
couldn’t go into the presence of God; Joshua had to go to the high priest and
go through the Urim and Thummim of the high priest. Num. 27:21 is a reference on that. So Joshua had to go through intermediaries
and he never could fill the role of Moses.
That’s the end of the book of Deuteronomy.