31 verses 1 through 13, then Moses went out and spoke these words to all Israel. I am now 120 years old and I am no longer able to lead you. The Lord has said to me, you shall not cross the Jordan. The Lord your God Himself will cross over ahead of you. He will destroy these nations before you and you will take possession of their land. Joshua also will cross over ahead of you, as the Lord said. And the Lord will do to them what he did to Sihan and Og, the King of the Emirates, who he destroyed along with their land. The Lord will deliver them to you and you must do to them all that I have commanded you. Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them. For the Lord your God goes with you. He will never leave you nor forsake you. Then Moses summoned Joshua and said to him in the presence of all Israel, be strong and courageous, for you must go with the people and to the land of the Lord's swore to their forefathers to give them. And you must survive it among them as an inheritance. The Lord Himself goes before you and will be with you. He will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged. So Moses wrote down this law and gave it to the priests. The sons of Levi, who carried the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord and to all the elders of Israel. Then Moses commanded them at the end of every seven years in the year per cancelling debts during the Feast of Tabernacles when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God at the place He will choose. You shall read this law before them in their hearing. Assemble the people, men, women and children and the aliens living in your towns so they can listen and learn to fear the Lord your God and follow carefully all the words of this law. Their children who do not know this law must hear it and learn to fear the Lord your God as long as you live in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess the Word of the Lord. He will never leave them nor forsake them. He will never leave us or forsake us. In the year of Village Church we are taking a tour through Deuteronomy as a church. To learn more about God, learn more about the way he works with the people in a situation similar to ours. To see how he never leaves, how he remains near. Because Israel was in the midst of the same things, some of the same things of Village Church is in the midst of changing leadership, changing population, geographical questions. And a need to renew commitment to what the community is about. So we are going to listen to this book, we are going to learn. I mentioned Vito before, he is going to be interspersing our tour through, interspersed with our tour through this book. He is going to be doing a series for us on the Ten Commandments from Deuteronomy 5. I am excited about that, I am excited about hearing that. I am also excited about going through this book, which we are learning is actually a suzerain vassal treaty, an emperor over a conquered people treaty. To learn about God, we saw last week how being rescued by God is inseparable from being conquered by God. I want people to be rescued by God, but I would be less than honest to if I didn't tell you that it entails being conquered by God. You want to be rescued by Him and entails a conquering by Him. The very form of this treaty insists that to be rescued by God is to be conquered by Him. Now we are reading this morning from a part of the book that follows the formal declarations testifying to the repository of this very covenant treaty. It is self-referential, this work, and if you notice that, this passage. The editor is reporting what happened after to show how God is providing for the succession of leadership in Israel. This is the beginning of the last section of the book, chapter 314, showing this succession, this transferring of leadership. In fact, let me give you those views who are interested in reading along in your own personal reading. Let me just give you a brief outline of the book to help you place yourself. They are important when reading the scriptures to be placed. Place the book you are reading historically and to also place where you are in that book. Let me give you a brief outline, I am indebted here to Richard Pratt, theologian for this. But what we looked at last week was chapter 1 verses 1 through 5. That is a preamble describing the covenant mediator, in this case Moses. Chapter 1 verse 6 through chapter 4 verse 43 is the historical prologue that describes the covenant history that is taken place. Chapter 4 verses 44 through chapter 26 all the way up there describe the stipulations of this covenant. The general commands, which we know as the Ten Commandments, followed by specific commands and applying those, how they play out, probably the most foreign part of the Old Testament scriptures for someone in our position to read. But we are going to look at it and we are going to see what it means. And then from chapter 27 through chapter 30, we have the sanctions of the covenant ratification, how you are going to be blessed if you keep this covenant, how you are going to be cursed if you don't keep this covenant. And then finally, chapter 31 to 34 covers succession in this covenant community, this transfer of leadership about when they are just before they are going into the land, this transfer over. This is a ceremony that is being described and you will notice that our passage this morning begins this last section. This is a succession ceremony, a new leader is meant to take over. And it is not Moses' son, this is not really a kingship that is happening, it is a covenant mediatorship, if I can put it that way. In the ancient world, you know the death of leaders, very frequently ushered in periods of political unrest, instability, and arki, actually not just ancient world either. God was showing here, they are really taking care of them, he cares about his people, he wants to take care of them in this time of transition, so they are having this ceremony. And if we look at this passage, what are we supposed to learn about leadership in this covenant community? Well, the first thing that we learned is that the leader is a significant, you know, the fact that a big deal is being made of Joshua here is significant. And for good leaders, that's important because their leaders, their mediators of this covenant, they'll lead you into new places, they'll call you into a new lifestyle. Maybe sometimes they'll do things that just please you, that garner your displeasure, but you have to realize during those times that they are there to take you into a new land, into a new place, that's why they're there. That's why God uses human leadership. So the human leaders of this covenant need to be able to garner people's displeasure at times. But at the same time, verses 1 through 6 tell us something very important about leaders, and that is that they pass on. Leaders have failings, leaders have limitations, sometimes God ordained prevention as in this passage. And, you know, in preaching Deuteronomy, I'm obviously inviting you to make comparisons between us and this covenant people from long ago. But while I'm doing that, I don't mean to imply that I compare favorably to the great Joshua, their new pastor. He was a great man, a very faithful servant of God. I don't pretend to compare, except in this one point, in this one point, I invite you to compare me with Joshua. He and I both die. Now, you know, I'm here, I'm here in the village church, I'm here, I'm really here, until, you know, I'm chopped down with hatches. But eventually the end will come, you know, and I will pass on. But the important part of this treaty and what God was trying to get through them is because the treaty is made with him as the suzerain, he will never leave or forsake them. The assertion in verse 3, the Lord goes before his people is a very striking comment because it pictures the Lord as their general. He's trying to say that the real general is not Joshua, it's God, God himself. I'm sure it was very strange for this proto-nation to be making a covenant with somebody who was invisible, who wasn't standing there before them, but that's what he was doing. So, in this circumstance of having frail but significant leaders, human leaders, God gives a provision to them to sustain them in this new life in the promised land. And it's tied up with leadership, or it's put it another way to put it as a question, how is the human mediator of the covenant to mediate? And what we find in this passage is that leaders need a word from the outside, something that theologians call a revelation to guide them. And you can see, I'm just going to bring out three points of it from this passage, look at verse 9.1, Moses wrote down this law. This is very self-referential aspect of this book, very recursive. Moses writing down this law, this point of ceremony that they're celebrating here, this transition, he's writing it down, always important to write this down so there is a written record. A second point also from verse 9, you notice that the custodians of this law are the priests and the elders. That is, the code was so important that the most senior personnel, both religious and civil, were entrusted with it. And it's very interesting because it was normal at the conclusion of a secular treaty for the suzerain to hand a copy of the treaty to the vassal to be lodged in the sanctuary of the vassal under the care of priests. So you might see why it is that God was very interested in using this cultural form to talk to his people. He's like, that's right, take care of this, write it down, take the utmost care of it. And point 3 from verses 10 to 11 there, this word, this law, this revelation that Moses received as a prophet, is to be read periodically for the preservation of the people. So again, this shows you why God liked this cultural form of the treaty so much and he wanted to adopt it because in secular, suzerain treaties, directions were given in the treaty, to read for the vassal people to read it at regular intervals. And you see what was there, men, women and children were supposed to be attending to this law, not just the leaders, okay, even children, even children should learn Deuteronomy, that's what they're saying. Now if you're a parent, that's probably not on your mind at the moment for what your children should learn, but that's what's being said here, in this community, even children were supposed to be attending to the law, apparently it wasn't too hard for these kids. And reading it every seven years like they do, it's linking it to the year of release, a very joyful time, they're trying to say this, trying to get across, this is a joyful experience to hear in a formal way, these scriptures, these laws, they're Bible, okay, and you might be saying, whoa, every seven years, that doesn't seem like very often, you know, well, how often do you get around to Deuteronomy? I say seven years, I'm pretty good, and there were informal times of interacting with this law that came out in the judgments that went on, but formally it was a periodic interval. In other words, folks, a written revelation was meant for their foundation. Moses got it, he wrote it down, so exactly as a prophet here. And it was meant to be also carefully preserved and read by all. In this way, the leadership was tied up with something that doesn't change, doesn't die, the written scriptures. And I want you to see that we, alike wise, in our own quest to see God remain near to our covenant community, we have to realize that it's through attendance to the scriptures as our reliable source of truth. Now, as soon as I say that, but that's the message here of this passage, I know I'm coming up against some obstacles in trusting this book, because I want to tell you to trust the book, and I know there are at least obstacles to come up with that. And so I'm going to try to address a couple of these this morning, because there's a lot of misinformation out about the Bible, it's annoying. But in our brief time this morning, I would like to dispel at least some of that, because it matters a great deal to me that you trust this book. Why does it matter me to meet that you trust this book, because God remains near to us through that trust. Trust the book, too obstacles, and trusting the book. First, the obstacle that is unreasonable to trust this book, because it has died, but the truth therein has changed over time. And the second is that it might be unspiritual to trust the book. Okay, that is unreasonable. In 1964, the Beatles came over and appeared on an Ed Sullivan show. That very same year, Gerhard Bonn arrived, published a commentary on Deuteronomy, then was translated English, and so it arrived in America. Okay, both imports arrived on American shores to similar enthusiasm. Both left their mark. Both of them actually were culminations of a phenomenon. And this commentary of Von Rad was a culmination of work that explained Deuteronomy the book as a composite of various elements and traditions that were finally, finally written down in the seventh century BC. Much later, and so probably inaccurate, in reporting the speeches of Moses by the Jordan River in the late second millennium BC, we're talking, you know, 15th century, 14th, 13th century BC for Moses, the idea of this commentary was that it was obviously written much later, 7th century BC. And the argument of this scholar, actually what became a body of scholar, started with what seemed like the obvious fact that Deuteronomy was an extraordinarily discontinuous book. That anyone could read, who could read, could see that there were interruptions, there were gaps in sense, and there it showed a long and complicated history of composition. And you add to this that there were references to geography of Canaan in the book, when they weren't supposed to have entered yet, and they said, oh, this must have come from a later period, and also Moses predicted things that were going to happen in Israel's future. So obviously this was from a later period they thought. But then folks, but then in 1931, V. Korostek undertook a juristic analysis of ancient Hittite treaties. The Hittites being the superpower of Canaan at the time, along with Egypt, in the 14th and 13th centuries BC, the time of Moses, the sign of Joshua. 1955, G. E. Mendenhall published a small, but very significant monograph in which he noted a striking similarity between these Hittite treaties and the covenant that Yahweh made with his people in the Old Testament. And then Meredith Klein came along and built upon this work to show that Deuteronomy was a unified work and completely consistent from a work in Moses' time. So a lot of the earlier argumentation, because of these things about Hittite treaties coming to light, about discontinuous sections, just falls to the ground. And the fact that the reason I was pointing around with the laser printer last week is to show you the Hittites were so big in Canaan, the Hittites in Egypt were fighting it out over Canaan. In fact, at one point they had a war during these times, late second millennium BC, in which they were fighting over Canaan. So Egypt understood Canaan, and if you think about it, Moses, with his upbringing, would certainly be someone who would be aware of the geography of Canaan. And that came to light, suddenly that argument didn't really hold water, because Moses would certainly know about geography of Canaan. It was hot news at the time of Canaan. So you put all these things together, and you realize that we constantly believe that Deuteronomy is an essentially finished work coming from right after Moses' death. And we came for one simple reason. Caesar and Vassal treaties meant nothing until they were written down. The authority of these Vassal treaties lay in their being in written form, being written down in plaster on stone or upon leather for portability. So if Deuteronomy describes a covenant renewal and is a covenant renewal document, it would have been written down soon after the renewal ceremony. Otherwise, it wouldn't have meant anything. If there was this ceremony in the Jordan, in which God renewed this covenant with Israel, and leadership passed from Moses to Joshua, then it was intended to be ratified and intended to be written down. Otherwise, no one would be bound. There would be no covenant. This was God's point in our passage this morning. Yeah, I'll use a hitite treaty to talk to you, even though it'll bend as the church folk, because the hitites were right. It has to be written down. God blessed the hitites for this cultural form. They got it right. It's got to be written down. It's got to be taken care of. It's got to be given regular attendance. So it had to be either an intentional forgery from the 7th century BC, or which no scholar is going to admit because of the ancient elements in it. Or it has to be current with Moses and Joshua. So I'm trying to say that the nature of the book's self-reference, along with the ancient hallmarks, means that it was current. What does this mean, folks? It means you can trust it. It means you can trust it. And when it says throughout the book that these are Moses' words, you can trust them. And that's why it's useful to us, because we know a certain amount of what was occurring in their lives at the time. We can see how their truth applies to us. And this extends to scripture in general that you can trust it, you know. The reliability of scripture is something really misunderstood. You know, you take your Bible's literature course in college, and you hear, well, you know, the Bible has all these contradictions. And then it doesn't make sense to you that it's trustworthy source of truth anymore. They would be foolish to trust it. And I would say there are certain difficulties, but there are not assertions that are unreconcilable. And if you just had a little humility about how much you know, there are no statements that you can't imagine how there would not be solutions for if you were there. But if you have to presuppose that there are errors, and only by doing that, can you configure them to be errors. And everyone has bias here. Folks, don't be so naive as to think that you're coming to this text in an objective way. There's too much at stake in your life if the Bible is true, and you know that. But you can get a sense of the kind of game that people play with the Bible, only if you kind of look at the history of the charges that are made against it. I mean, for example, there are no set of documents in the world that have been subject to closer scrutiny than the gospels of the New Testament, for example. And in each generation, you have folks that come along and say, you know, that couldn't be true about one thing or another. That's an obvious contradiction. Then you wait a while, and further discovery makes it make sense. And if you're honest, you realize you didn't have as much knowledge as you thought you did. But no one at that point writes a headline about that. They just go on to the next one. So just give me a, give you an example. On the way to Jerusalem in the gospels, Jesus passes Jericho, and there are some healings of some blind men among them, Bartimaus. And for a long time, you know, it was taught that, oh, this is a contradiction here. There was a there was an outright mistake in the gospels because Mark and Matthew, Matthew following Mark, say that Jesus healed them as they were leaving Jericho. Whereas when you read in Luke's gospel, he says that he healed them as he was drawing near to Jericho. As Jesus disciples were leaving Jericho, they met the blind man, and Luke 18, Jesus was approaching Jericho. Although the Greek isn't as clear there in Luke, it seems like that's what he's saying. Well, so what do we have here? Outright contradiction. Well, yeah, until he started excavating around Jericho, which happened in the 1950s, what did they find? They found that, you know, there was the ancient site of Jericho, which became a mound with seating generations, and there was herds, you know, kind of luxury palace located a little farther away on the way to Jerusalem. That was, became the newly populated Jericho. So it actually turns out that in Jesus' time there were two Jericho's. And if you were coming down from the north and turning right to go to Jerusalem along the Wadi, you would go through first the, or pass the ancient Jericho, not very populated. And you would go through the New Jericho, which means on that path there would be a time when you were both leaving Jericho and entering Jericho at the same time. And add to that the fact that Matthew's concerns more with the Jewish audience, people who would be aware of the ancient Jericho might very well be citing the ancient Jericho, whereas Luke, who has an international audience, is going to cite the one that the international audience is familiar, which is the populated Jericho. Well, what do you know? It's fair to say that every problem in synoptic harmonization, as we call it in the Gospels, has a plausible solution. You know, this is not well known. It's not put forth. I want to put it forth to you today, because you can trust these words. You can trust the book. Now, you know, some of you might be saying, yeah, well, Jericho, who cares? You know, I don't care about historical reliability. It just does not seem spiritual to me to be so attendant to a book. I mean, it's a book. What does that have to do with spirituality? Why, you know, isn't spirituality beyond that? You know, you can get away from that. Now, if you feel like it's somehow unspiritual for God to reveal himself through sacred writings, I would suggest that you do not understand how much God loves creation and material things. He always wants to work through the dirt and the grit of our lives. He loves creation. He loves material things. He wants to redeem your physicality. It's not something that he wants you to get away from. He wants to redeem it. So he loves using the stuff that fills up your days. And reading, it's not something that's arbitrary. It's not something that's dirty. It's not something that's unspiritual, or some spiritual. It's a holy gift, according to this passage. You know, before there was loss and translation, Bill Murray had the starring role in another movie that somewhat serious movie called The Razor's Edge. It was a remake of Somerset Mon's novel about a soldier who was disillusioned after World War I and went to seek enlightenment in India. He ends up in a Himalayan monastery. And there he's under a spiritual advisor who finally tells him, I cannot advise you anymore. You have to go up the mountain to meet your greater spiritual advisor. So Bill Murray, you know, shrugs up this mountain. Arduous journey gets near the top. He's in his lean to. You see him sitting there. And what we see is Bill Murray reaches enlightenment. Bill Murray is very good at making a smirk, kind of Buddha-like smirk. So this was actually the most effective part of the movie. When Bill Murray smirk, he realized he's reached enlightenment. He's sitting there with his little book. I assume it's the Vedas, it's a Hindu scriptures. And what does he do when he smirks? He realizes there is no greater spiritual leader. The greater spiritual leader is within. And he opens the books and starts tearing up the pages and throwing them away. What is that a picture of? He's graduated. He's graduated from the writings. He doesn't need them anymore. He's gone beyond that. And that might be kind of the way in which you're thinking. Again, I gave you that quote in the beginning of your bulletin from the Bhagavad Gita. This beautiful passage in which Krishna is kind of arguing with Arjuna, trying to get him up, and says Arjuna, as is the use of a well of water where water everywhere overflows. Such is the use of all the Vedas to the seer of the Supreme. As so beautifully put, as is the use of a well of water where water everywhere overflows. What is he saying? He said, you know, you get to a certain point. If you really get to be the seer of the Supreme, then you don't need a scripture anymore. It's like going to a well for water when water is flowing all around you. You graduate from these scriptures. Well, let me tell you, perhaps I don't need to tell you, that you never, ever, ever find that idea in Christianity. Never. And some folks, you know, they come in to Christianity, even Christians, and they have this idea with them. Well, you know, you get the basic idea of the Bible, and that's all you really need it for. You know, when you get really mature, you can dispense with regular attendance to the scriptures. Don't really need that anymore. That's not really how God works. You never find that kind of progression in the Bible. In fact, you know, they also make reason why we're called the people of the book while we walk around this book in our hand, which seems so obnoxious. The reason why is because this is just the way our Lord Jesus walked. This is just the way Jesus acted. That's just what he did except this scriptures is authoritative. Now, if you contrast Jesus with Bill Murray, which, you know, might be easy to do, but the attitude there, if you, even if you don't accept him as Lord, if you're here, you're just, you know, wondering about Christianity, I think that anybody must grant that Jesus was one of the most advanced, spiritually advanced human beings, whoever lived. And if you look at his life, do you ever come him, do you ever see him graduating from or departing from or even denigrating the Hebrew scriptures? No. Now, his attitude was just the opposite. That's why I put that other meditation there in the front of your bulletin. You can't get a clear testimony in Matthew 5 of the scriptures as absolute as authority for Jesus. And he lived that way. He was often saying it is written as a reason for doing something. When he was tempted, he quoted scripture. When he was in his hardest trials, he went back to the scripture. He kept quoting the scriptures. So even for Jesus, who, if anybody could have thrown it out, probably he could have. Even for him, he takes this, this Bible as his authority. And this is for someone who, according to these scriptures, was never out of fellowship with the Father. So what do you think? Do you want to be more spiritual than Jesus? Can you leave off? Can you graduate? Well, there are other objections that you could raise at this point. Why couldn't God reveal the truth inside of me? Hasn't God revealed himself in other ways? Doesn't the Bible even say that? Has God revealed enough in scriptures? Does working this way turn us into vegetables? Does it turn our minds into mush? These are all good questions that we don't have time to deal with this morning. That's why we have this Q&A section downstairs. You want to ask any of those or any question at all? You come down there. You play dunk the preacher. I sit there and you take a shot. It's on the other side of the hall downstairs. Love to see you there. But I need to move on. God says, I want to really get to the heart of why it is so important to God for these words, for Deuteronomy to be preserved and attended to. It's because of what they attest to. You see God says in verse six and in verse eight that he will never leave them. Never leave them. These are particularly poignant words because he goes on to describe in the next passage how they're going to fail their future failures. How at verse 16 they're going to break a covenant. Yet Moses can stand there and say that God will never forsake them. How can he do that? Folks, this is why Deuteronomy was preserved. This is why leaders of this covenant must attend there unto in this book and lead their bias. Why I'm going through it? That's why I want you to esteem and actually fall in love with this book. Because it testifies that the reason God would not forsake him. And so the reason he will not forsake us. What the book testifies about is how God remains near. You know, one time Jesus Christ got into an argument with the Jewish leaders. And he just yes, something like that. So frustrated. He says, look, you know, if you believed Moses, you would believe me. Because Moses wrote about me. Moses wrote about me. He says John 546. What does he mean? There have been 40 years of preparation for entering this Promised Land. These people, I'll tell you, they've been through a lot. They had to learn a lot to get in, okay? Kind of like a village church. They have been through a great deal. And a lot of things that had to be brought into place in their lives for this next step of them entering the Promised Land. And in a very strange and eerie twist, there was one more thing that had to be in place for these people to enter the Promised Land. There was one more item. Moses, their leader, had to die. Moses had to die for them to enter the land. He was forbidden by God, he says, from entering the land. He couldn't go in and he was their leader. So they couldn't go in until he died. Moses had to die for the Children of Israel to enter the Promised Land. Now, it was a sad day. But because of who Moses was representing in his 10-year-s shepherd, because of who he was writing about, it bespoke in even Saturday. The even Saturday took place about millennium later, when the true shepherd, the real leader, who never left the people of God, died on a cross. So that they could enter life, Jesus the Christ. But it was a sadder day. You know why? Because Moses was well loved when he gave his life. The people lined up when Moses died to well. And their courage almost failed. They loved him so. But Jesus, who never failed like Moses did and only loved in his leadership, died a despised criminal. The people lined up to spit on him. Moses died to people's tears. Jesus died to people's tears. Moses was good. He was very good. He lasted 120 years. That's a long pastoral shift. Great job. But he couldn't go on after that. Like Joshua, like me, like I, he couldn't take them all the way into the Promised Land. Into their salvation. There had to be another. And there was another that Moses wrote about. And now acted out. Moses in his last act as their shepherd died for their entrance because he went up to the mountain to die. They could enter the Promised Land. And because Jesus went up to the cross and died, you can enter eternal life in the covenant community. Jesus, the true shepherd gave his life. And because of that, Moses could speak, verse 6, to them and to us. Be of good courage. God will never leave you. Despite the changes that go on in your life, the fluctuations, the discontinuities that upset you so, he will not leave you. Because this shepherd, this mediator is also holding up the other side of the covenant. God himself keeps the promise of the covenant. He's holding up the other end by his sacrifice for any failures that would keep you out. Would you stand up, me now, please? We're going to go to the communion table now and respond to this. Really, commemorate what Moses was commemorating and going up to the mountain. And that is what Jesus has done for us.