Thru the Bible - #152-Deuteronomy 1- Israel's History after the Exodus

Transcript

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Welcome to Bereen's Corner, the podcast where we go through books of the Bible chapter by chapter and verse by verse. Wherever you are in the world, thank you for joining. Grab a glass of water, a cup of coffee, a tea, and let's get into today's lesson. Alright, welcome back, and thank you all for joining me as always. Thank you for continuing this chronological journey through the scriptures. Open your Bible to Deuteronomy, and today we'll be looking at chapter one. Now, I know usually I would introduce the chapter, then I would bring the reader in, and then after the reader, we would we would go through and break down the lesson. But because this is a lengthy amount of scripture, we are not going to bring the reader in today. I will be your reader. I will read and we will go through the chapters as I read to kind of trim off just a little bit of the time. The title of today's lesson is Israel's History After the Exodus. Now, the last time we were together, we concluded the book of Numbers. If you remember, the book was named Numbers because the sons of Israel were numbered in chapters 1 and 26. We see how God had them wandering in the wilderness for about 40 years. God was weeding out the doubtful and unbelieving so he could make sure they did not enter the land of Canaan. What was happening is that God wanted the older generation to die off so the younger generation that was full of faith and fire could take over. I believe even in today's time, there are sit there are situations where that is needed. That there's an old guard, and sometimes the old guard has to die off in order for the new guard to take over. An example, uh, we all know about racism. You know, there has been racism almost since man has been on this earth. And there were people in times that were more racist than others. And I remember, you know, you will hear people say, you know, what we need is for that old generation to die off, so the new generation can love up on each other and get rid of that racism. Well, that's kind of what's happening here, you know. Uh the younger generation is full of faith, they're they're on fire for God, but the older generation was full of doubt. Now, today, we start Deuteronomy, we pick up where numbers left off. Now, in the Greek Septuagint, Deuteronomy is translated as this is the repetition of the law. Now, this is not a second law, but a partial restatement of former laws already given by Moses. Now, Moses was re given the law to the younger generation that were about to cross the Jordan. If you remember, they are now right at the verge of the promised land. Uh now this book is the last words of Moses as he is not allowed to cross the Jordan. And we will break down uh this uh lesson in 24 parts. Part one. Who is speaking? We see this in verse one. These are the words which Moses spoke. I always like to point out who is speaking. Part two. Israel was still in the wilderness. We see this in verse one. These are the words which Moses spoke to all Israel across the Jordan in the wilderness, in the Erabah, across Suf, between Peran and Torfel and Laban and Hazaroth and Dizadab, or Dizahab, I think you may you may pronounce it. Part three. Remember the law that God gave at Mount Horab? You all remember that? This location was an uh 11-day journey from there. We notice that in verse 2. It is 11 days, it was an 11-day journey from Horab by the way of Mount Seir to Kadesh Barnea. So we see that from that point A to this point B was 11 days. In part four, it has been 40 years since Moses started leading Israel. Notice verse 3. It came about in the 40th year, on the first day of the 11th month, that Moses spoke to the children of Israel according to all that the Lord had commanded him to give them. So if we remember, Moses grows up in Egypt from basically being a newborn to 40 years old. At 40 years old, we go all the way back to Exodus now. God shows up in the burning bush. He tells Moses that he's gonna be the guy. And I'm sorry, I said one to 40. I meant 80 years old if I said 40. From from newborn to 40, he is in Egypt. And then from 40 to 80, he is uh living, he he he he he excuse me, he escapes Egypt running from Pharaoh because he had killed the guy and he meets uh Jethro, his father-in-law, and Jethro gives him his daughter to marry. So he uh is a sheep herder and working for his father-in-law for 40 years. Now at 80 years old, the Lord appeared to him. So I got I I kind of you know was talking fast and got jammed up a little bit. So sorry about that. So now it has been another 40 years, so from 40 to 120, and that's where we are now. So Moses has led Israel for 40 years, which brings us to part five. Moses reminds Israel of two victories God had recently given them. Notice verse 4. After he had defeated Shahan, the king of the Amorites, who lived in Hezban, and Og, the king of Bashin, who lived in Ashtaroth and Edra. So Moses is reminding them of two victories that the Lord recently gave them as a reminder. Part six. Moses expounded the word of God. Verse 5 says, Across the Jordan in the land of Moab, Moses undertook to expound this law. So Moses is giving them the law which is the word of God, and he is expounding on it. And that is something that we are to do. We are to expound on this word of God, to break the word down, to break it apart. And in other words, we are called to exegede the scripture. Part seven, it's time to move. Notice verse six. The Lord our God spoke to us at Horab, saying, You have stayed long enough at this mountain. So the time is up. The Lord says, You have been here long enough, it is time to move on. Part eight, there was a specific route God gave them to take. In verse 7, I'm gonna go back. I'm gonna go back to verse 6 and then hit verse 7. The Lord our God spoke to us at Horab, saying, You have stayed long enough at this mountain. Turn and set your journey and go to the hill country of the Amorites and to all their neighbors in the Erabah, in the hill country, in the and in the lowland, and in the Gav and by the sea coast, the land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon as far as the great river, the river Euphrates. Part nine. It was time to take possession of the land. We see this in verse eight. See, I have placed the land before you. Go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to give to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to them and their descendants after them. So it's time to take possession of the land. It's the Lord telling them, We've made it, I got you here. Now go take possession of the land. Which brings us to part ten. Israel was blessed, and they were so blessed that Moses could not bear the burden alone. We see this in verses nine through twelve. And I spoke to you at that time, saying, I am not able to bear the burden of you alone. The Lord your God has multiplied you, and behold, you are this day as the stars of heaven for a multitude. May the Lord, the God of your fathers, increase you a thousandfold more than you are, and bless you just as He has promised you. How can I alone bear the load and burden of you and your strife? Now, this is Moses talking. Now, these people have been a burden to Moses, and to remind us of how drained Moses was, let's uh look back at numbers. So hold your finger right here and let's turn go back to Numbers real quick. Go left in your Bible, go back to Numbers chapter 11, and let's uh remind ourselves of how much of a strain these people were on Moses. Numbers 11, verse 14. I alone am not able to bear all this people because it is too burdensome for me. Remember, Moses said that back then that these people are just of a burden onto me. They're too burdensome. He couldn't take the burden on alone. Which brings us to part 11. Moses said to the people to pick wise and discerning leaders. We see this in verse 13. Choose wise and discerning and experienced men from among your tribes, and I will appoint them as your heads. So the so Moses wants them to carefully pick men who can lead. He said, wise and discerning men who can lead, and I will appoint them as your heads. Now you got to remember a lot of the reason why Moses is doing this is because Moses' time is coming to an end. Which brings us to part 12. What Moses wanted was good, and the people agreed. Notice verse 14. And you answered me and said, The thing which you have said to do is good. What was the thing? Well Moses just said, pick wise and discerning men. Part 13. The people chose and Moses approved. Verse 15 says, So I took the heads of your tribes, wise and experienced men, and appointed them heads over you, leaders of thousands and of hundreds, of fifties and of tens, and officers for your tribe. So Moses is even given the number fifties and hundreds and tens. He has an exact number of with what they chose here, and Moses approved. Which brings us to part fourteen. The men submitted to Moses, and he instructed. Notice 16 through 18. Then I charge your judges at that time, saying, Hear the cases between your fellow countrymen, and judge righteously between a man and his fellow countrymen or the alien who is with him. You shall not show partiality in judgment. You shall hear the small and the great alike. You shall not fear man, for the judgment is God's. And the case is too and excuse me, and the case that is too hard for you, you shall bring to me, and I will hear it. And I commanded you at that time all the things that you should do. Now listen to what's happening here. Moses is appointing these leaders in the tribes. There are twelve tribes, and he is pointing leaders that can be the judges. That's what he was just talking about. Why? Because there's they have grown over this time, over this 40-year period. They have grown, and Moses cannot bear this alone. It's just like a pastor in the church. There's a reason why a pastor doesn't run everything in the church. The pastor is responsible for bringing the word of God to the people. But then you have the elders of the church. They're responsible for other matters. You know, making sure the heat is on in the in the winter time or the air is on in the in the summertime, making sure that the making sure the doors are locked or unlocked, making sure that the offerings that they take make it to the bank, making sure that the parking lot is shoveled. You know, they are in charge of hiring the people who come and they plow the the parking lots. Now, some of you may be listening to this somewhere where it never snows and say, now what is brother Barin talking about, you know, talking about snow. But the thing about it is that uh where I live, there is snow. So that is just a reality uh that there is snow. Or, you know, if you live somewhere where you know there's a nice fall and there's a lot of uh, you know, a lot of trees where you are, you know, maybe in your church, and they're responsible for making sure that the leaves are taken care of. You know, there are women in the church who make sure that you know they are making gifts for the elderly and setting up rides for people. The point I'm making is that everyone needs help, and a man isn't to do all these things alone, and Moses is in the same situation. He's saying that, you know, these, you know, this is too much of a burden for me. So now he has these elders that are gonna go forth and they're gonna judge the small matters. But Moses said, But the hard things, the things that are just too hard, bring those things to me, and I will judge. Which takes us to part 15. God told the people not to fear. We see this in verses 19 through 21. Then we set out from Horeb and went through all that great and terrible wilderness which you saw on the way to the hill country of the Amorites, just as the Lord our God had commanded us, and we came to Kedish Barnea. And I said to you, You have come to the hill country of the Amorites, which the Lord our God is about to give us. See, the Lord your God has placed the land before you. Go up, take possession, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has spoken to you. Do not fear or be dismayed. It's very clear here. The Lord has He has them round on the edge of the land. They are looking at the land. The Lord says, Listen, I have given you this land. He is speaking through Moses and telling the people, Do not fear, go and take the land. The land is yours. Which brings us to part 16. Spies were sent to look over the land. We see this in verses 22 through 25. Then all of you approached me and said, Let us send men before us that they may search out the land for us and bring back to us word of the way by which we should go up and the cities which we shall enter. The thing pleased me, and I took twelve of your men, one man for each tribe. And they turned and went up into the hill country and came to the valley of Ishkor and spied it out. Then they took some of the fruit of the land in their hands and brought it down to us, and they brought us back a report and said, It is a good land which the Lord our God is about to give us. Now men went out to spy the land. Do you all remember when that happened? Let's go back to Numbers again. Hold your finger right here and go back left in your Bible to Numbers 13. And read verse 1. Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Send out for yourselves men, so that they may spy out the land of Canaan, which I am going to give the sons of Israel. You shall send a man from each of their fathers, tribes, every one a leader among them. So Moses is reminding them of what happened. This is what happened. The Lord told you to take the land, and then you went and sent out spies. Which brings us to part 17. The people were not willing to obey God. Verses 26 through 28 say, Yet you were not willing to go up, but rebelled against the command of the Lord your God, and you grumbled in your tents and said, Because the Lord hates us, he has brought us out of the land of Egypt to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites to destroy us. Where can we go up? Our brethren have made our hearts melt, saying, The people are bigger and taller than we, the cities are large and fortified to heaven, and besides, we saw the sons of the Anakin there. Now, if you remember when we went through the book of Numbers, you remember what happened here. They sent out twelve spries, only two said, Let's take the land as the Lord our God has said. But the other ten came back and brought this report, and they were afraid. And they said there were giants in the land. We were grasshoppers in their sight. They were giants in our sight, and we were grasshoppers in their sight. They saw us as small, and we saw ourselves as small. So the so what is happening here is that some of the people who are here who are hearing this, they may have been little children, but now they are of age. They are 18, 20, 25, 30, they are of age now. So this thing that happened, remember, this is a retelling. So Moses is letting them know what happened and how they got here. Which brings us to part 18. Moses had to remind the people that God himself would fight their battles. Verses 29 through 31 tell us, Then I said to you, Do not be shocked, nor fear them. The Lord your God who goes before you will himself fight on your behalf, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness where you saw how the Lord your God carried you, just as a man carries his son in all the way which you have walked until you came to this place. So Moses had to remind the people that the Lord Himself was going to fight for him, fight for them. See, you remember when they were in Egypt, how did they get out of Egypt? The Lord sent Moses and Aaron, and then Pharaoh's heart was hardened, and then the Lord sent all of those plagues, and those plagues were going against the gods that Egypt was serving. That's why remember, if you remember, when we went through uh Exodus, we talked about how every one of these plagues that God sent was very strategic. It was destroying the myth that the Egyptians believed in their God. And the and Israel saw this with their own eyes, and that's what is being reminded here. The Lord Himself fought your bouse. Israel didn't fight at all to come out of slavery when they were in Egypt. It was the Lord who brought them out with a mighty hand, and he fought for them himself. And they were and he is reminding them of this. Which brings us to part 19. The people did not believe or trust the Lord. Verses 32 through 33. But for all this you did not trust the Lord your God, who goes before you on your way to seek out a place for you to encamp in fire by night and cloud by day to show you the way in which you should go. Do you all remember that? In the daytime he was a cloud, and they followed the cloud, they followed the cloud, the Lord was showing them where to go, and at night he was a pillar of fire. So even at night they could see the Lord and see how he was leading and guiding them. Part 20. The people angered God with their disbelief. We see this in verses 34 to 40. Then the Lord heard the sound of the words, and he was angry and took an oath, saying, Not one of these men, this evil generation, shall see the good land which I swore to give your fathers, except Caleb, the son of Jephanah, he shall see it, and to him and to his sons I will give the land on which he has set foot, because he has followed the Lord fully. The Lord was angry with me also on your account, saying, Not even you shall enter there. Joshua, the son of none, who stands before you, he shall enter there. Encourage him, for he shall cause Israel to inherit it. Moreover, your little ones who you said would become a prey, and your sons, who this day have no knowledge of good or evil, shall enter there, and I will give it to them, and they shall possess it. Remember, we talked about the little ones. But as for you, turn around and set out for the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea. So this is what the Lord said back in Exodus, and he's reminding them here the little ones, and now these little ones are of age. The Lord is saying that they are gonna inherit the land. But the old that older generation, that generation that came out of Egypt, they are not gonna see the land because they angered the Lord. Part 21. The people admitted they had sinned. Notice verse 41. Then you answered, this is Moses talking to the people, reminding them, then you answered and said to me, We have sinned against the Lord. We will indeed go up and fight, just as the Lord our God commanded us. And every man of you girded up his weapons of war and regarded it as easy to go up into the hill country. Then we get to part 22. Moses warned the people not to fight in the hill country. Look at verse 42. The Lord said to me, Say to them, Do not go up nor fight, for I am not among you, lest you be defeated before your enemies. The Lord said, Listen, they've already angered the Lord. So the Lord said, I'm not with them. So they're wasting their time going up into this hill country to fight. You need to command them not to go up. Which brings us to part 23. Not listening to the word of God got the people crushed. Look at verses 43 through uh 44. Actually, let me go, let's go back to 42. The Lord said to me, Say to them, Do not go up nor fight, for I am not among you, lest lest you be defeated before your enemies. So I spoke to you, but you would not listen. Instead, you rebelled against the command of the Lord and acted presumptuously and went up into the hill country. And the Amorites who lived in a hill country came out against you and chased you as bees do, and crushed you from Seir to Hormai. So, see what happened was is the Lord told them that the victory is yours, but they wouldn't listen. They were too afraid, and they made all these excuses. Then, after they angered the Lord, then they said, Okay, Lord, okay, Lord, now we're gonna listen to you and we're gonna go up and fight. See, that's how Israel was, and that's how we are sometimes. Sometimes the Lord is commanding us to do a thing, and we don't do it, and the Lord has opened the door for you. Maybe it was a job you should you should have gone for, and that you had a dream about it, and the Lord spoke to you in in a dream because the Lord doesn't speak to us the way he did Moses in this time, but you were too afraid to do it, and you you saw it, and you know, and but you woke up and you were scared and said, Well, I don't know, maybe that wasn't the Lord, but then you wait a day or two later, and then you say, Well, you know what? Maybe I will do what the Lord said, maybe I will go after that job, but it's too late now. You've angered the Lord. The Lord is saying, Look, I had that thing for you. I had it lined up for you. I had the battle already won for you, but you did not want to listen. That's what Israel did. They didn't want to listen to the Lord, but then later, after they'd angered the Lord, they said, Okay, okay, Lord, now we're gonna do what you said, but it was too late. Which brings us to part 24. The people returned to the Lord, but it was too late. Notice verses 45 and 46. Then you returned and wept before the Lord, but the Lord did not listen to your voice, nor give ear to you. So you remain in headish many days, the days that you spent there. See, they went out, they went crying, uh, they want to come out to the Lord weeping, but the Lord said, I'm not listening. I gave you the chance, I gave you the opportunity, I gave you the instructions on what to do, but you did not want to listen. You were a stiff-neck, hard-headed people. And as you all know, Israel will repeat this same cycle over and over and over all throughout the scriptures. All right, that brings us to the end of Deuteronomy chapter one. I hope that you enjoyed this lesson. I hope that you got something out of it. I hope that it was fruitful to you. And I appreciate you for listening. As always, I ask you to pray for me. Pray that I stay steadfast in the scriptures. I pray that I stay on that straight, narrow uh lane. Uh pray that the Lord is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path, and that he keeps me going, going through his scriptures as we learn together. And as always, wherever you are in the world, I appreciate you very much, and I am praying for you as well. All right, that brings us to the end of today's lesson, Deuteronomy chapter 1. That is all for now. God bless. Thank you for listening to Berean's Corner. We appreciate you joining us as we dive into God's word and seek biblical truth together. If this episode encouraged or challenged you, be sure to subscribe, share, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. 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