Now in the chapter 5, Moses called all
Israel and said unto them, Hear, O Israel,
the statutes and the judgments, that you may
learn them, and keep them, and do them.
So, these three things.
You're to learn them, you're to do them,
and to keep them.
The Lord made a covenant with you.
Conditional covenant.
They're keeping His law, they're doing His commandments.
And the Lord talked with you face to
face.
And I stood between the Lord and you
at the time to show you the word
of the Lord, for you were afraid.
And God said, I am the Lord thy
God, which brought thee out of the land
of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
Thou shalt have none other gods before Me.
And now again, the Ten Commandments are reiterated
for us here in Deuteronomy.
As they were given in Exodus, this is
a repetition of the Ten Commandments.
And He said, And God wrote them in
the two tables of stone and delivered them
unto Me.
And it came to pass, that when you
heard the voice out of the midst of
the darkness, for the mountain burned with fire,
that you came unto Me, all of the
heads of the tribes.
And you said, Behold, the Lord God has
shown His glory, His greatness.
We've heard His voice.
But no man can talk with God and
still live.
Therefore, why should we die?
And this fire consume us.
So they commanded Moses to go and listen
to the voice of the Lord and come
back and tell them and whatever God said,
they promised that they would do.
Verse 29, Oh, that there were such a
heart in them that they would fear Me
and keep all My commandments always, that it
might be well with them and with their
children forever.
This is God's cry.
This is God's lamentation.
Oh, that the people would hear Me and
obey Me.
That they might be able to enjoy My
blessings forever.
I'm sure that God laments over us.
Oh, if you would only follow Me completely
so that I could do for you all
that I'm wanting to do.
We so limit that which God wants to
do because He loves you so much.
He is wanting to do so much for
you.
Jude says, Keep yourself in the love of
God.
What does he mean?
He means keep yourself in that place where
God can demonstrate His love for you.
God loves you so much.
He wants to demonstrate that love.
But you've got to be in harmony with
Him.
Oh, that you would obey His voice.
Oh, that you would be in harmony with
the plan and purposes of God.
For the eyes of the Lord go to
and fro throughout the entire earth to show
Himself strong on behalf of those whose hearts
are perfect towards Him.
If your heart is really completely towards God,
oh, what He wants to do in your
life.
Things that God longs to do for you.
And so God cries over the failure of
the people and thus His inability to bless
them the way He is desiring to bless
them.
So in chapter 6, now these are the
commandments, the statutes and the judgments which the
Lord your God commanded to teach you that
you might do them in the land whether
you go to possess it.
That you may fear the Lord thy God
and to keep all of His statutes and
commandments which I command you.
Hear, therefore, O Israel, and observe to do
it that it may be well with thee
and that ye may increase mightily as the
Lord God of your fathers has promised thee
in the land that flows with milk and
honey.
Hear, O Israel...
This is called the Great Shema.
The Great Commandment.
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is
one Lord.
Or Jehovah our God is one Jehovah.
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thine heart and with all thy
soul and with all thy might.
Now when the lawyer came to Jesus and
said, which is the greatest commandment?
Jesus quoted this.
The Shema.
The Lord our God is one Lord.
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart, with all thy soul,
with all thy might.
It is interesting that Jesus quoted from the
book of Deuteronomy more than I think any
other book in the Old Testament.
He was very familiar with this book of
Deuteronomy.
He used its passages when Satan was tempting
Him.
And he quoted often from the book of
Deuteronomy.
Now this Shema is almost for the Jew
his magna charta.
I mean, it's just whenever they would get
together, they would start to chant this.
In their worship and feast services, they would
chant this.
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is
one Lord.
And I mean, they'd really just chant it
over and over and over again.
But it is interesting.
In the Hebrew, there is a word for
one which means a compound unity.
And another word for one which is an
absolute unity.
Now, we might say that we are one
body gathered together here in Christ.
But we would use the word for a
compound unity because there's a lot of bodies
here.
But we comprise a oneness in Jesus.
So there is one body in Christ that
is made up of many parts.
The compound unity.
That Hebrew word for one, the compound unity,
is echad.
Now, there is another Hebrew word for one
which means an absolute one, indivisible one.
That word is yakid.
Now, as we look at this Shema, the
very heart of the whole Jewish faith and
religious system, the Lord our God is one
Lord.
If the word one Lord, the word one
there, is yakid, you can have absolutely no
argument for the Trinity at all.
An absolute indivisible one and no place for
the Trinity.
If the word echad is used for one,
you have then a compound unity.
Very interesting because you know that the word
echad is used.
The Lord our God is one Lord.
The compound unity, the Father, Son, Holy Spirit,
one Lord, one God.
Yet, the compound unity, the three persons of
the one Godhead, it's right there in their
very Shema, their chant.
The foundation of their whole religious system is
this verse of Scripture.
And yet within it, there is the idea
of the compound unity of God.
The Lord our God is one Lord.
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thine heart and soul and might.
Now, these words which I command you this
day shall be in your heart, first of
all.
Secondly, you shall teach them diligently to your
children.
Now you're to talk about them when you're
sitting in your houses and when you're walking
along the path and when you're lying down
and when you rise up.
And you shall bind them for a sign
upon your hand that they might be as
frontlets between your eyes.
And you shall write them upon the posts
of your house and upon your gates.
And it shall be when the Lord thy
God shall have brought thee into the land
that He swore unto your fathers Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob to give you the great and
goodly cities which you did not build, the
houses which are full of good things which
you did not fill, and wells that you
did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which
you did not plant.
When you have eaten and are full, beware
lest you forget the Lord that brought you
out of Egypt.
Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God or
reverence Him and serve Him and shalt swear
by His name."
Now, God wanted them to have His Word
and the thought of God just permeating their
very life and their lifestyles.
I like it.
I think that we need to have more
talking about God.
Now, when you lie down at night, now,
usually they, of course, had just one room.
The whole family would lie down in the
one room.
Just talk about God.
When the lights are out and it's dark,
just start talking about God and the law
of God and the commandments of the Lord.
When you wake up in the morning, start
talking about the Lord.
When you're walking with your children along the
path, talk to them about God.
When you're sitting down at the table, let
your conversation be about God.
Let it be just so much a part.
Not just a part, let it be the
totality of your life.
Just the Word of God and the things
of God.
Bind them on your wrist.
Put them in the frontlets.
And so they'd have little leather pouches and
they'd have the commandments in these pouches and
they'd tie them on their foreheads, these little
leather boxes with the law of God tied
there between their eyes.
They'd wrap them on their wrists.
They'd have the little mezuzahs on the door
and in the mezuzah a little copy of
the law on the doorpost.
They would just tack it up there.
And they do today in the Orthodox homes.
They go in and out of the house.
They kiss their fingers and touch the little
mezuzah, the law of God.
It's signifying a love for the law of
God.
I think that's great.
I love it.
Write them on your dashboards.
You know, just surround yourself with the Word
of God.
The commandments and the statutes of the Lord.
Let it become just that vital part of
your life, your living.
You know, it is an interesting thing in
Malachi.
It says, And they that love the Lord
spake often of Him.
And God kept a book of remembrances.
You know, the neat thing about it is
whenever you get together with your friends and
you start talking about the Lord, the Lord
always eavesdrops.
He loves to hear what you're saying about
Him.
And God keeps a book of remembrances.
And they shall be accounted as His precious
jewels in those days.
They that love the Lord spake often of
Him.
Oh, that we would just talk about Jesus.
When we lie down at night, when we
get up in the morning, when we're walking
in the path, when we're going places, that
we just surround ourselves with the awareness and
consciousness of Him.
Now He warns them not to forget, not
to go after the other gods, the gods
of the people that are around about you,
for the Lord God again is a warning,
is a jealous God among you.
Let the anger of the Lord your God
be kindled against you, and He destroy you
from off the face of the earth.
Ye shall not tempt the Lord your God
as you tempted Him at Massa when Satan
said, Hey, command this stone to be made
bread.
Or no, He said, jump off the temple
here.
We'll get to the place in a little
while, a mansion not lived by bread alone,
that comes.
But when He said, jump off the temple,
because it's written He'll give His angels charge
over thee, keep thee in all thy ways,
to bear thee up lest at any time
you dash your foot against a stone.
And Jesus said it is written again, Thou
shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
Jesus is quoting here Proverbs the 6th chapter.
He knew it.
Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God,
but you shall diligently keep the commandments of
the Lord your God in His testimonies and
His statutes which He has commanded you.
And you shall do that which is right
and good in the sight of the Lord,
that it might be well with you that
you may go in and possess the good
lamb which the Lord swore to give your
fathers, to cast out the enemies from before
you.
And when your son asks you in time
to come, I'm saying, what are the meaning
of these testimonies and these statutes and these
judgments which the Lord God has commanded you?
Then you shall say unto your son, we
were Pharaoh's bondmen in Egypt and the Lord
brought us out of Egypt with a mighty
hand.
And the Lord showed us signs and wonders
great and sore upon Egypt, upon Pharaoh and
all of his household before our eyes.
And He brought us out from there that
He might give us this land and so
forth.
It's interesting to me that God was always
seeking to strike questions in the mind of
a child in order that the child might
learn.
So they had many things that were deliberately
designed to create curiosity and questions in the
minds of the children.
God has put that curiosity into the heart
of a child and as a parent, use
it.
Take time to explain to your children when
they ask their questions.
Don't just brush them off and say, I
don't have time.
Sit down and answer their questions.
God has given them the questioning heart in
order that they might learn.
Take advantage of it and teach them the
ways of the Lord.
Now in chapter 7, when God brings you
into the land and casts out these enemies
that are bigger and stronger than you are,
and He delivers them from before you and
smites them and destroys them, you're not to
make any covenant with them, nor show any
mercy unto them.
Neither shall you make any marriages with them,
for they will turn away your son from
following Me that they may serve other gods,
and so will the anger of the Lord
be kindled against you, and you be destroyed
suddenly.
But you shall deal with them and destroy
their altars, break down their images, cut down
their groves, burn their graven images in the
fire.
For thou art a holy or a separated
people unto the Lord thy God.
And the Lord thy God hath chosen thee
to be a special people unto Himself above
all the people that are upon the face
of the earth.
And the Lord did not set His love
upon you, nor choose you because you were
more in number than the people, for you
were the fewest of all, but because the
Lord loved you and because He would keep
the oath which He had sworn unto your
fathers, hath the Lord brought you out with
a mighty hand and redeemed you out of
the house when you were bondmen in the
hand of the Pharaoh in Egypt.
Know therefore that the Lord thy God, He
is God, the faithful God, which keeps covenants
and mercies with those that love Him and
keep His commandments to a thousand generations."
Now earlier, we'd skipped over the law the
second time through because we'd gone through it
in Exodus.
But in the law, He actually brings judgment
upon the third and fourth generations to those
that hate Him.
But now here He declares that He shows
mercy to a thousand generations to those that
follow Him.
So, how important that we follow the covenants
of the Lord.
Now in verse 12, "'Wherefore it shall come
to pass, if ye will hearken to these
judgments and keep and do them, that the
Lord shall keep unto thee the covenant of
mercy which He swore to your fathers, and
He will love thee and bless thee and
multiply thee.'" So they are a special people.
They need to be aware of the special
privileges even as you today are a special
people unto God.
Separate, holy, chosen.
And God didn't choose you because you were
so good looking or because you were so
lovable.
But here is the sovereign grace of God
in choosing.
He chose you because He chose you, because
He wanted to choose you and He has
the right to choose whoever He wants.
Oh, how I thank God for choosing me.
What a thrill, what a blessing that God
has chosen me.
Now some people get upset for the fact
that God chooses.
But you really shouldn't.
God has every right to choose He wants
to associate with even as you have the
right to choose who you want to associate
with.
Why should I deny God the rights that
I want for myself?
There are some people I don't choose to
associate with at all.
Not that I'm snobbish or anything else, but
their lifestyles are just so diverse for mine
there's nothing that we could share in common.
I really choose not to have any fellowship,
close fellowship with people who smoke cigars.
I can't stand the smell.
No, I have that right to choose not
to get in a car and be polluted.
And God has the right to choose who
He wants to associate with.
That doesn't bother me at all.
It thrills me to think that He chose
me and He chose to associate with me.
That is what really excites me.
You say, but that isn't fair.
If God chooses not to associate with some
people.
I don't know if it's fair or not,
but that's the right that God has and
He has exercised that right.
And who are you to challenge the fairness
of God?
You say, but He may not have chosen
me.
Oh, how do you know?
Well, I'm not a Christian.
Well, why aren't you a Christian?
I don't know.
I've never seen the need to be one.
Well, do you want to be a Christian?
No.
Then maybe He didn't choose you.
But don't blame Him.
You haven't chosen Him either, have you?
No.
Let me assure you this.
He has never rejected anyone either.
But He certainly leaves the choice up to
you.
And He says, choose you this day whom
you will serve.
And He said, whosoever comes unto Me, I
will let no wise cast out.
So, if you don't know if He's chosen
you or not, just accept Jesus Christ and
you'll find out He did.
And then you won't argue with it anymore
because He chose you.
And after all, why should you argue with
that?
You say, but I don't want to accept
Him.
Well then, that's your problem.
He probably didn't choose you and you're in
bad shape.
But here God elected by His own sovereign
will to choose these people not because they
were so great, not because they were so
faithful or anything else, just He exercised His
power of choice, His love for their fathers,
the faithfulness of Abraham, that He made the
promise to Abraham that through him, through his
seed, would the Messiah come, all the nations
of the earth be blessed.
And so they are actually reaping the benefits
of the faith of their father Abraham.
Now, the warning, again, to keep the commandments,
do them, and so God will keep you.
And He will love you and bless you
and multiply you.
He'll bless the fruit of your womb, the
fruit of the land, your corn, your wine,
your oil, the increase of your cows and
the flocks and your sheep, and the land
which He swore to give to your fathers.
And you will be blessed above all the
people.
And there shall not be a male or
female barren among you or among your cattle.
And the Lord will take away from thee
all sickness and will put none of the
evil diseases of Egypt which thou knowest upon
thee, but will lay them upon all them
that hate thee."
Now, again, this is the covenant that God
is making.
It's a conditional covenant.
If you will obey, if you will do,
if you will keep.
Now, it is interesting, as you go back
into the commandments of the Lord, much of
what you read in Exodus and Leviticus is
health codes.
God tells them the kind of food they
ought to eat.
No junk food.
Now, it isn't really right for you to
just put all kinds of junk into your
body and then ask God to keep you
strong and healthy.
And so God gave to them laws that
dealt with their diet.
Laws that dealt with sanitation.
And then He says, now if you will
keep these laws, if you will do them,
obey them, then none of the diseases that
came upon the Egyptians will come upon you.
Why?
Because you're following the good health practices that
God has laid out.
I think that it is wrong to deliberately
dissipate our bodies and then ask God to
keep us in good health.
I think that He has given us good
sense to use.
And these promises of none of these diseases
were conditional promises upon their doing and keeping,
obeying the commandment and the law of God.
Thou shalt consume all the people which the
Lord shall deliver to you.
You are not to have pity upon them,
neither shall you serve their gods, for that
will be a snare to you.
And if you shall say in your heart,
the nations are more than we are, how
can we dispossess them?
Thou shalt not be afraid of them.
But remember the Lord thy God did to
Pharaoh and all of Egypt.
And moreover, God will send the hornets in
front of you to drive out the inhabitants.
He'll not destroy them all at once, lest
the wild beasts increased upon the field and
all.
But little by little, you'll conquer the land.
And the Lord will deliver to you and
destroy them with a mighty destruction and so
forth.
Moses continues with the warnings.
Now, these are important because if they fail
at this point to enter in, then who
knows what would have happened.
It's so important that they not become frightened
and that they not lose faith and hesitate
again.
It's important that they go in and conquer
the land.
So Moses is doing all that he can
to build them up and bolster their faith
and their confidence in God.
And all the commandments which I command thee
this day, you shall observe to do, that
ye may live and multiply and go in
and possess the land.
Thou shalt remember all the way the Lord
thy God led thee for these forty years
in the wilderness to humble thee, to prove
thee, to know what was in your heart,
whether you would keep His commandments or not.
Now, who was the proving for?
All the way through these forty years in
the wilderness, God led thee to humble thee
and to prove thee, to see whether or
not you'd keep the commandments.
Not to prove to God He knew from
the beginning, but to prove to themselves.
Now, many times God puts us through tests
not to prove to Him anything about us.
He already knows about us.
But it's to prove to us.
Sometimes we think that we are stronger than
we really are.
God puts us through a test to show
us how weak we are and how we've
got to depend upon Him.
We can't depend or rely upon ourselves.
We've got to rely upon the Lord and
God will often times just put us through
tests to prove us, to show to us
our areas of weakness that we would not
have confidence in our flesh but that our
confidence would be in the living God.
And so God's purpose was to humble them
and to prove to them whether or not
they would keep the commandments through the forty
years of wandering in the wilderness.
And He humbled thee and allowed thee to
hunger and He fed thee with manna that
He might know, that ye might know, or
make you to know that man does not
live by bread alone but by every word
that proceeds.
Oh, another one that Jesus quoted to Satan.
As Satan said, Command this stone that it
be made bread.
And Jesus quoted this particular verse out of
Deuteronomy.
It is written, Man does not live by
bread alone but by every word that proceeds
out of the mouth of God.
And thy raiment waxed not old upon thee,
neither did your feet swell for forty years.
Can you imagine that?
Wearing the same clothes for forty years.
And your feet not swelling in all of
that walking in the wilderness.
Boy, that's a miracle.
Through the forty years, your clothes didn't get
old and your feet didn't swell.
Thou shalt also consider in your heart that
as a man chastens his son, so the
Lord thy God chasteneth thee.
Now there are some people today who are
despising the chastening of the Lord.
They are teaching that you don't need to
be chastened of God.
That all you have to do is lay
claim.
Make your positive confessions.
That God doesn't chasten.
Well, there are certain ones that God doesn't
chasten according to the Scriptures.
You read it for yourself.
Some of you know.
I'm on the radio.
For the Lord thy God brings you into
a good land, a land of brooks, of
water, fountains and depths that spring out of
the valleys and the hills, a land of
wheat and barley, vines, fig trees, pomegranates, a
land of olive oil, a land of honey,
a land wherein thou shalt eat the bread
without scarceness, thou shalt not lack anything in
it, a land whose stones are iron and
out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.
And when thou hast eaten and are full,
then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God
for the good land which He has given
thee to have a thanksgiving.
Now, the warning though, beware that thou forget
not the Lord thy God in not keeping
His commandment and His judgments and His statutes
which I command you this day, lest when
you have eaten and are full and you've
built the good houses and you're living in
them and when your herds and your flocks
have multiplied and your silver and gold is
multiplied, all that you have is multiplied, then
in your heart is lifted up and you
forget the Lord thy God which brought thee
forth out of the land of Egypt from
the house of bondage.
And so the warning that the national peril
will come not during the conquest, not during
the development, but in the times of national
prosperity there are the real dangerous periods of
the history.
When you become strong, when you're possessing the
land, when you have eaten and are full,
when you have an abundance, when you have
a healthy bank account, then you are in
great danger, the danger of forgetting God, of
no longer trusting in God.
You no longer have to trust in God,
you think, because now you've got a bank
account, you think.
Who knows?
You know, you could go to the bank
tomorrow and they'd be locked.
What would you do?
We're not to trust in riches.
We're to trust in the Lord.
But the time of prosperity is the time
of danger, because the danger is that we
may forget God.
And we then are prone to attribute our
success to something other than God.
Well, it's because I was so diligent.
It was because I was so faithful.
It's because I was so good.
And we're prone to see the cause for
the blessings to be something other than the
true cause.
It's because God is gracious and merciful.
And God has given us the power and
God has brought us into this place.
And we forget that it was God who
did it for us and we begin to
think that we did it for ourselves or
it was something of us.
And we begin to give glory to something
other than God for His wonderful goodness to
us.
And so beware, lest in the time of
prosperity you forget God and you begin to
attribute the success of the nation to something
other than God and thus you begin the
evil practice of worshiping other gods.
The gods of silver and gold.
The materialistic gods of the world today.
For it shall be that if you forget
the Lord your God and you walk after
other gods and serve them and worship them,
God said, I testify against you this day
that you will surely perish.
God said, I testify against you.
You're going to perish.
And the nations which the Lord destroyed before
your face, as they perished, so shall ye
perish, because you would not be obedient to
the voice of the Lord your God.
So, these solemn warnings as Moses, this 120
year old man, is talking to the people
who are about to go in now and
conquer the land.
I'm leaving you fellas.
My time is limited.
He knew that the time would come.
Man, his time is up.
He can't cross Jordan.
God has told him that.
And so he's giving them this final charge,
final warnings, final instructions before he lays down
his mantle and Joshua takes up and leads
the people across Jordan into the conquering of
the land that God had promised.
So, Deuteronomy becomes an important book in the
history of the people.
All of the warnings are here.
As I said, you can never say that
God didn't warn you.
God is faithful.
We a lot of times ignore the warnings.
But God is faithful to warn us.
And you have never fallen into any trap
but what God warned you, the trap was
there.
You've never stumbled except God warned you the
stumbling stone was there.
God is faithful to warn us.
He warned them.
He laid it out even as He warns
us.
So, next week we'll continue chapter 9 through
16 of the book of Deuteronomy.
Shall we stand?
Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father.
Faithful to His Word.
Faithful to His people.
Faithful to His promise.
And if you will walk in His path
of righteousness, you will know the blessings of
the Lord.
For they will surround thee and encompass thee
like the air that you breathe.
Oh, that men would walk with God and
follow after Him and commit their lives fully,
totally, to obey His will, to be pleasing
unto Him.
May that be our commitment this week.
O God, that my life might be pleasing
unto Thee in all that I do, in
all that I say.
Let the words of my mouth, the meditations
of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight,
O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer.
And when I lie down and when I
get up and when I sit and when
I am writing or wherever, may there be
that consciousness of God and the talking of
God and of His ways and of His
goodness and of His righteousness that we might
live in the continual presence, consciousness of the
presence of God and thus be pleasing unto
Him.
God be with you.
Bless and keep you in His love and
grace through Jesus Christ.