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Follow the Lord Wholeheartedly
Follow the Lord Wholeheartedly Deuteronomy 1:1-46 Key Verse: 1:29-30 “Then I said to you, “Do not be terrified; do not be afraid of them. The Lord your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes.” Introduction to the book of Deuteronomy The book of Deuteronomy itself as well as several Old Testament and New Testament references attribute the authorship of this book to Moses. It is the last of the five books of Moses, known as the Pentateuch, which tell us about the events from the creation, through the time of the patriarchs, the 400 years of bondage in Egypt, the Exodus from Egypt and ending with the 40 years of wandering in the desert before entering the Promised Land. The events recorded in Deuteronomy take place in about the last month of all that activity. The book is a record of 1) Moses’ last speeches to the Israelites, 2) his writing down this book, 3) the commissioning of Joshua as the next leader (the leader who take Israel into the Promised Land), and 4) Moses viewing the Promised land (but not entering it) and dying. The English title for this book, Deuteronomy, is somewhat misleading. Deuteronomy means “Second law,” and it actually comes from a mistranslation in the Greek Septuagint of chapter 17 verse 18. The correct translation is “Copy of the law”, but this was translated into Greek as Deuteronomium, from which we get the English word Deuteronomy. The Hebrew title for the book comes from the first four words of the book (actually the first two words in Hebrew) which mean “These are the words.” This is probably a better title because most of the book is comprised of Moses words concerning the consequences of either following or not following the Law of God. The setting for this book is the plains of Moab just north of the Dead Sea and just east of the Jordan river. They were directly across the river from Jericho, the first city Israel was to conquer as they entered the Promised Land. The theological importance of this book is tremendous. In the book, Moses is exhorting the people to obey, fear, love and serve the Lord their God by following God’s commandments. Throughout the book Moses makes references to many of God’s attributes or characteristics that should encourage the people to keep his commandments. Moses clearly reveals God’s faithfulness, love and mercy and at the same time, he contrasts these with God’s jealousy and hatred of sin. Because so many of God’s characteristics are so clearly displayed in this book, it is the third most referenced (quoted) book in the New Testament behind the book of Psalms and the book of Isaiah. In fact, there are over 40 direct quotations from this book in the New Testament with several other allusions to it. From a Biblical point of view, this is a very important book indeed. As we study this book, I pray that God may open up our spiritual eyes and ears so that we can see Him for who He and understand why we need to follow him wholeheartedly. In today’s passage we have a prologue which tells us who is speaking to who and when and where this is taking place (1-5). Then we have the beginning of the history of Israel from the time God told them to set out from Mt. Horeb (otherwise known as Mt. Sinai). We must keep in mind, that those Israelites who were 40 to 60 years of age were the oldest among these people and they were the only ones who could remember most, if not all, of what had taken place. They were the children of the first generation that had left Egypt. They were all little babies or maybe children 3-12 years old or teenagers when they had left Mt. Horeb (none of them was over 20 years of age). Now they were middle age or older adults, after having wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. They were about to enter the Promised Land. For those over 40, this was the second time in their life they had been in this position – the position to claim what God had promised to give to their fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, over 400 years before. Their parents had fail to claim this because they didn’t have absolute faith in the promises of God and they didn’t follow God wholeheartedly. This book is Moses’ final reminder to these people of who they were, who their God is, and how they should respond to this. He begins by giving them a history lesson. May God help us to learn from this history lesson to put our faith wholeheartedly in God. May he help us not to fear the people of this world, but instead remember all that He has done for us. First, go in and take possession of the land God has sworn to give you (1-8). If you look at verses 1-5, you will see that this chapter (and in fact all the chapters up to chapter 27) is a speech that Moses made to the Israelites. As we will see over the course of the next several months, Moses is pleading with the Israelites to fear the Lord their God and obey him wholeheartedly. If they do, they will be truly blessed, but if they don’t there will be curses that come down upon them. To begin with, Moses presents a history lesson. This lesson was very familiar to all the people, but for those 40 or older, it was a real story – it was the story of their life. Where were the people when this speech took place? They were very near the Promised Land. They were just east of the Jordan river, facing Jericho. It is important to note that they were in a land that God had already allowed them to conquer. God had given them victories over three enemies who were probably much stronger than them. They had defeated Sihon, king of the Amorites, Og, king of Bashan and five kings of the Midianites (see Numbers 31). God had already begun to show this second generation of Israelites that He was with them and that He would always remain faithful to His covenant promises to Israel’s patriarchs, and to them, if they kept his commands. About 40 years before this speech, God had told the Israelites to set out from Mt. Horeb and to begin the conquest of the Promised Land. In order to conquer the land, the Israelites had to remember just one thing: the promise of God. Look at verse 8. “See, I have given you this land. Go in and take possession of the land the Lord swore he would give to your fathers—to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—and to their descendants after them.” As we will see, they did not hold onto this promise or follow God’s command wholeheartedly. Instead, they fell into human thinking and began to fear men more than God. When they did this, they rebelled against the command of God and suffered a terrible consequence. Here we can see the first of many great Bible truths that are revealed in this book. That is, we must always remember the promise of God. The Bible is filled with these promises. However, the problem is, the moment weak human beings face a difficult situation, we forget all about these truly great promises and we began to lean on our own understanding. This causes us to leave God’s path and go our own way. This is always the wrong way. Proverbs 3:5-6 tell us the key to a victorious life. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” When Solomon says to trust in the Lord, he means to hold on to God’s promises, trusting that God loves you above all things and that in the end He always works for the good of those who love Him. God had promised to give the land they were about to enter to Abraham and his descendants – they were Abraham’s descendants. Moses is urging them to hold onto this promise so that they could conquer the land by faith. Second, God is a God of justice (9-18). Moses continues his history in verses 9-18. In these verses, Moses explains that Israel had grown so much that one person could not carry the burden of leading them all by himself. Moses needed the assistance of many wise and respected men who could act as judges for the people. We may ask why Moses would bring up this seemingly unrelated topic in this history. There are two reason. The first is that Moses was showing that God was keeping His promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God had promised to make Abraham’s descendants as numerous stars in the sky (Gen 15) and Moses tells the people in verse 10, “The Lord your God has increased your numbers so that today you are as numerous as the stars in the sky.” Moses was telling them, that God was keeping His promises. The second reason is a little bit harder to see, but it is no less important. Moses is telling the people about one of the great attributes of God. Look at verses 16-17. “And I charged your judges at that time, ‘Hear the disputes between your people and judge fairly, whether the case is between two Israelites or between an Israelite and a foreigner residing among you. Do not show partiality in judging; hear both small and great alike. Do not be afraid of anyone, for judgment belongs to God. Bring me any case too hard for you, and I will hear it.’” God is a God of justice for everyone – for Jews and foreigners alike, in small cases or in great cases, God always wants justice to be done. This is a very important Biblical teaching that we need to understand and accept. It is why we need the Gospel. Without Jesus, how can we stand before a God of absolute justice. The Bible tells us that there is no one righteous, not even one person. If we were to stand on our own before God, who is perfectly just, we couldn’t; we would all be condemned. However, God sent His one and only Son, to pay off the debt of justice that we owe God. God’s character of perfect justice should plant in us the fear of the Lord and help us to wholeheartedly follow His commands. It should also drive us straight into the arms of Jesus. Third, follow the Lord wholeheartedly (19-46). In verse 19 and 20 we see that the Israelites obeyed God’s command to set out from Mt. Horeb and headed into the hill country of the Amorites. They arrived on the southern border of God’s Promised Land, but before entering they sent out 12 spies to look at the land, find a route they should take and bring back a report about the land and its people. In this speech, Moses simply says the spies explored the land and “Taking with them some of the fruit of the land, they brought it down to us and reported, ‘It is a good land that the Lord our God is giving us.’” However, if you look back at Numbers 13, you will see that the report they brought back wasn’t quite this simple. They did say that the land flowed with milk and honey and the fruit of the land was very good, but they also said that the people in the land were very big, numerous and powerful. This was their conclusion, “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are… The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.” This report was a terrible influence among the people. They began to doubt the love of God and they even said to each other, “The Lord hates us; so he brought us out of Egypt to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us.” Human thinking had brought the whole Israelite community to the point of despair. They had completely forgotten the promise of God and everything that God had done for them to bring them to that point. So what did Moses do? Look at our key verses 29 & 30 along with verse 31. “Then I said to you, ‘Do not be terrified; do not be afraid of them. The Lord your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, and in the wilderness. There you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place.” First, Moses told them not to be afraid. Especially we should not be afraid of other people. This is another great Biblical truth. Jesus said in Matthew 10:28, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” And Paul said in Romans 8:31, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” There are countless other verses that I could quote from both the Old and New Testaments. The point is that fear is the opposite of faith. Scripture is very clear on this – in fact I have heard that there are over 365 times that the words “Do not fear” occur in the Bible. That is more than one time for every day of the year. God does not want us to live in fear. Next, Moses goes on to remind the people that God promised He would be with them and fight for them. They had already seen God do this. They didn’t fight the Egyptian army, and yet God wiped out that whole army right before their eyes. What’s more, God never left them. In fact, Moses said that God carried them through the wilderness “as a father carries his son.” God had been faithful in all of His promises to His people and He had demonstrated His great strength again and again, yet His people forgot all of this. This clearly shows us the destructive power of the bad influence of human thinking. The Israelites couldn’t overcome this way of thinking, so they rebelled against the command of God and refused to go in and take the land that God had promised He would give them. Sometimes, this might seem hard for us to understand, but if it is, I want you to honestly think about your life. Have you ever failed to do something you know God wants you to do because of human thinking or fear of what others might think? It is strange that we should imagine that our thinking is somehow better than the thinking of the creator of the whole universe or that we would be more afraid of one of His creatures than the Creator Himself. But it is true. We are all guilty of this to some extent. However, there was one man who did not fall victim to this type of thinking. That was Caleb son of Jephunneh. Look at verse 36. “except Caleb son of Jephunneh. He will see it, and I will give him and his descendants the land he set his feet on, because he followed the Lord wholeheartedly.” Why did God praise Caleb like this? Caleb was one of the 12 spies that were sent in to spy out the land. When the others gave their discouraging report, Caleb said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.” Caleb could say this because he had absolute faith in God’s promises and he followed God wholeheartedly. When the entire Israelite community decided to disregard the command of God and not go fight for the promised land, Caleb along with Joshua son of Nun (the person who would be the leader who took the Israelites into the Promised Land) stood up in front of all the people and risked their lives saying, “The land we passed through and explored is exceedingly good. If the Lord is pleased with us, he will lead us into that land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and will give it to us. Only do not rebel against the Lord. And do not be afraid of the people of the land, because we will devour them. Their protection is gone, but the Lord is with us. Do not be afraid of them.” Caleb shows us how we can overcome our human weakness – we must simply believe that God is able to fulfill his promises and follow him wholeheartedly. We must learn Caleb’s absolute faith in God and His power to fulfill of His promises. What happened next? The Israelites refused to listen to God, so God got angry with them. He solemnly swore that no one from that generation of fighting men would enter the Promised Land and he told them to turn around and head back towards the Red Sea. To my surprise, they decided to disobey God once again. Instead of turning around as God ordered, all the fighting men picked up their weapons and went off to attack the Amorites. Disobeying God is never going to lead to a favorable outcome. In this case, the Israelites were thoroughly defeated by their enemies, and what was even worse, God now turned a deaf ear to their weeping. In this passage we learned a few of the characteristics of God: God is a God of justice and He is a faithful God who is able to keep His promises. We also learned something very important about sinful human beings. We often don’t see God’s characteristics, rather we fall victim to human thinking which leads to fear and an inability to follow God’s command. Yet we saw one man, Caleb, who showed us how we can overcome our human weaknesses. We must remember that God is a God who can keep his promises and we must follow him wholeheartedly. May God help us to do so. |
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