Seder 133 Sermon: Deuteronomy 1---Moses' Rebuke

 In Jewish tradition the book of Devarim (a.k.a. Deuteronomy) is often described as Moses' final rebuke of the children of Israel.  The places listed in Deuteronomy 1:1 are associated with the nation's failures during the Exodus years, as laid out in the Targums.  There is implicit rebuke in verse 2, which notes that Israel spent 38 years on an 11-day journey.  

We have a tendency to view rebuke as a negative thing.  But in a sermon at Church of the Messiah on February 4, 2023, Kyle Kettering explained that rebuke can also be viewed positively, as encouragement that points to better results in the future.  A person who rebukes you is one who cares enough about you to do so and feels you are worth the time and effort. 

The book of Proverbs says that responding positively to rebuke is a characateristic of the wise.  "A rebuke goes deeper into a man of understanding than a hundred blows into a fool," we read in Proverbs 17:10.  Ecclesiastes 7:5 adds, "It is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise than to hear the song of fools."

Kyle passed along some interesting Jewish traditions about rebuke.  One said there was a reason that Israel was blessed by an enemy (Balaam) and rebuked by a friend (Moses), rather than the other way around.  Blessings from an enemy and rebukes from a friend are recognized as genuine, while blessings from a friend and rebukes from an enemy may not be taken seriously.

Another tradition says that the nations rebuked Israel after the rescue of Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego from the fiery furnace.  "You have a God like this, so why did you worship idols?" they wanted to know.  

Kyle reviewed the principle of rebuke in Lev 19:17 and the procedure for Chistian conflict resolution in Matthew 18:15-17.  He listed several purposes of rebuke:

• It can turn a brother away from error.
• It can create unity and harmony.
• It can take spiritual life to a new level.
• It can merit a reward---Proverbs 24:25.

He also talked about how to properly give rebuke, based on Matthew 18.  

Seder 133: Deuteronomy 1---Learning from History

 In the book of Deuteronomy Moses preaches his final sermons to the people of Israel at the end of the fortieth year of the Exodus.  Commentator Daniel I. Block calls this book "the gospel according to Moses."  It is a book often quoted by both Jesus and Paul.  

Deuteronomy belongs to a couple of different genres.  It is a farewell address, with Chapter 33 paralleling Jacob's blessings to his children in Genesis 49.  Jesus' upper room discourse (John 13-16)  is a New Testament farewell address.

Deuteronomy is also a document of covenant renewal, with a structure similar to ancient Hittite suzerain-vassal treaties.  At the end of the 40 years in the wilderness, it is time for the children of the Exodus generation to embrace the covenant for themselves.  The members of the new generation were either young children, or not yet born, when the covenant was ratiifed at Mt Sinai.  

In addressing this generation of Israelites, Moses highlights a few key lessons from the first 39 years of the nation's journey.  First he recalls when they left Mt Horeb (a.k.a. Mt Sinai) in the second month of the second year of the Exodus.  At that point God charged them to go and conquer the Promised Land, whose borders had the potential to extend all the way from the Nile to the Euphrates as they carried out their mission to bless all nations (vv 6-8).

By that point they had grown from an extended family to a small nation, too big for Moses to govern on his own (see Ex 18; Num 11), as God carried out his promise to give Abraham many descendants.  Moses needed a group of godly assistants to serve as judges under him then, and the same thing would be true in the Promised Land.

The Israelites were just a few weeks' journey from their destination when they left Mt Horeb, and Moses had encouraged them to take courage and carry out their mission (vv 19-21).  At that point Moses was asked to send a group of men to scout out the land (v 22).  Such a strategy certainly was not necessary, but it had the potential to get the Israelites excited about the land they would be invading.  (For more discussion, see my post on Numbers 13.)   

The fact-finding trip ended up revealing that the Israelites were not ready to conquer the land.  Instead they would remain in the wilderness for another 38 years, until all who had been counted in the military census of Numbers 1, except Joshua and Caleb, had died (Num 14:29).  

This episode in Israel's history continued to haunt Moses 40 years later.  The sequence of events begun by Israel's rebellion eventually led to Moses himself losing a chance to enter the Promised Land (Deut 1:37).   

Seder 13: Gen 15 and Ps 27---Waiting for God

Abram had traveled to the land of Canaan at God's direction, placing his life in the hands of the Creator of the Universe.  God had promised that Abram would be the father of a great nation, and Abram trusted in God's promise.  But he still had questions about how the promise would be carried out, especially because he and Sarai so far had been unable to have children.  In Gen 15:3, he pointed out,

"You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir."

God responded in verse 5,

"Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.  So shall your descendants be."

However, God didn't give Abram a detailed outline and timetable on the fulfillment of the promise.  So Abram faced the challenge of waiting to see how and when it would be carried out.

David, in Psalm 27:14, encourages readers,

"Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!"

In a short teaching at Church of the Messiah on June 13, 2020,   Jack Starcher noted that the word "wait" in Psalm 27:14 comes from a root meaning "to bind."  So another way to say "wait for the Lord" might be to say, "bind yourself to the Lord."  He reflected on what this kind of waiting might look like.  He said that it is not an entirely passive kind of waiting, but a faithful doing one's part while counting on God to see things through.

Hundreds of years later, Moses affirmed that the promise of Gen 15:5 indeed had been fulfilled:

"The Lord your God has multiplied you, so that today you are as numerous as the stars of heaven" (Deut 1:10).

Jack also traced the imagery of stars through the Bible.  In Psalm 147:4, we read, "He determines the number of the stars' he gives to all of them their names."  We can infer from this that God knew about each individual descendant of Abram, including the Messiah, who is called "the bright morning star" in Rev 22:16.