The Garden Within | DEVARIM דְּבָרִים - Portion 44

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Teachers of Torah have coined the Hebrew term PaRDeS (פרדס – a word literally meaning “garden” or "orchid") to refer to a four-tiered system of biblical interpretation, which reveals that each word, verse, and story in the Bible could be simultaneously understood on four different levels.  

Through this year-long course, we will explore the very words of God from these levels of the garden.  The name The Garden Within was chosen for this teaching series because it adopts the PaRDeS system of learning and because it delights in the spiritual pleasure through reaching new understandings and being pierced by lightning flashes of the intellect. The pleasure gained, of course, also refers to the nearness we feel to God when learning His Word.

One of the primary goals of The Garden Within is to demonstrate that the “stories” in the Torah are not merely one-time occurrences, temporal incidents undergone by specific individuals long ago. Rather these stories are archetypal in nature, reflecting or representing various physical and spiritual energies ever present in all aspects of reality and within each and every person.  That is, the Torah is deeply personal and speaks directly to each individual reader for where they are in their life.  So, come, take a walk with God in the Garden of the Torah!

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Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the garden within tonight as we continue our journey through the Torah's 54 portions, and especially through that garden perspective, that is the pardays, which is a Hebrew acronym for the primary four ways of levels of interpretation within the Hebraic context. Peshat, Rhamez, Durash, and Sod. So this evening we do begin a new book in the Garden Within, and it is the final book of the Torah. And so we enter into that fifth and final portion of the Torah as we make our home stretch in completing another cycle within the Torah study. But let's get started with the blessing, and then we'll talk about where we are at. Let's pray. Baruchata Adnai Elahenu Melakoilam, Ashe Kidishano, Bomisvita, Vesevanu lesokbidibre Torah. Blessed are you, Lord God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with his commandments and has commanded us to be immersed into the words and the matters of Torah. Amen. So this week brings us not only to the book known as Sefer Devarim, the book of Deuteronomy, but it is also the name of the portion. And it covers Deuteronomy chapter 1 and goes through chapter 3, verse 22. It is the Torah's 44th division of the 54 divisions. And the word Devarim, as I said, is both the title for the last book from the scroll of Moses in Hebrew, as well as the title of the first portion from within that same book. Devarim in Hebrew is a plural word that's given away by the Eem ending that I am. That lets you know that a noun is plural in Hebrew. And so Devarim means words. That's one way of translating it. It can also mean things like matters and those kinds of things. But words is a good translation. The English-speaking world calls this book Deuteronomy. The Hebrew title for the book comes from the opening phrase in Deuteronomy 1, verse 1, where it says, These are the words. These are the Devarim, which Moses spoke to all Israel across the Jordan in the wilderness. Another ancient name that the Hebrews called this book is Mishneh Hatorah, which means the repetition or the teaching, but meaning kind of like the teaching through repetition of the Torah. It's similar to what the Greek Septuagint named the book, which is where we get the English title. The Septuagint named it Deuteronom, which means a second law or a second giving of the law, a repetition of the law. And again, that is where our English Bibles get the title for the book. The book of Deuteronomy is primarily dominated by, for lack of a better term or way of describing it, Moses' farewell address to the children of Israel. As, you know, they're right on the border. If you think if you look at a modern-day map and you look at the nation of Israel and you look at the nation of Jordan, what separates them? It's the Jordan River, right? Like often many boundaries are things like a river, the Jordan River. All right. So Moses, you find on a modern map the city of Jericho. And you kind of go, not quite straight across, but kind of go across Jericho, cross over the Jordan River into the country of Jordan. That would be ancient Moab. That's where they are at. And Moses, as we've seen and read, realizes, has been told, informed, he's not going to cross over the Jordan and enter into the promised land with Joshua and the others. And so before Joshua leads them into the promised land of Canaan, Moses has these words. During the course of the book of Deuteronomy, Moses is going to review a whole lot of things that happened in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, including the giving of the Torah at Sinai and the trip to the Promised Land. He'll reiterate several of God's laws in the way, and he will also introduce some new ones. There are some new ones that come up in Deuteronomy, but primarily Moses is kind of looking back and reviewing. The book follows, then this is kind of important. I hopefully have said it enough that you know it by heart, right? Is governed by the concept that to fully grasp the gospels or to fully grasp the New Testament, right? You need to understand the first century Galilean world that was Jesus' world, that was the world of the apostles, to really grasp um Second Temple Judaism again. That's the Sitzim Laban of the Gospels and the New Testament. Well, in a very similar manner, to kind of really get your head around the Old Testament, you really need to understand ancient Near Eastern and Mesopotamian worldviews and culture and so forth. And one of the things about Deuteronomy is that it follows the general pattern of an ancient Near Eastern covenant treaty document. We have those from archaeology, and in many ways, Deuteronomy follows that pattern perfectly. Again, think modern-day Jordan, roughly, not exactly, roughly across the Jordan River from the modern city and yet also ancient city of Jericho. All right, and that's kind of where this situation is going to be taking place. Okay, so with that, uh let's kind of dive in to talking about Deuteronomy tonight. Kind of wanted to do two main things, really. One is really set the tone of what the book is about, uh, and kind of flush that out, uh, where Moses is coming from, what some of the goals of the whole book are, not just this week's portion. Make sure we get a good grasp on that to kind of set us up for success in Deuteronomy. Uh, and then uh I think there were a couple of kind of uh sun and scripture moments, if you will, or aspects that uh hinted at, foreshadowed, pointed to the Messiah that we did not cover when we were doing the Torah series, the Sun and the Scriptures. So uh have you enjoyed the Sun and the Scriptures where we were really plunging into the Torah and mining it for where does it talk about our Messiah? Um, this could be the last couple of portions that we look at uh would kind of tack on to that. There's aspects that we didn't cover in Son of Scriptures that I thought were were worth pointing out because it's also still kind of gets at the heart of what the book of Deuteronomy is trying to do, uh, but also how it finds its fulfillment, of course, in our Messiah. All right, so words from the heart. Uh, one of my favorite sayings from the teachings of the rabbis, it comes from the Talmud, a portion of the Talmud known as uh Folio Berchot, or tractate Berchot, uh in Folio 6b. Uh and it basically says in so many words, words, devareem, right, words that emanate from the heart enter the heart. And what that's really meaning is that when a person speaks from their heart, that it will actually go into the heart of the hearers. Or at least it has a much better shot at making it into the heart of the hearers. And you probably know this intuitively from experience as a hearer, right? You know when you are listening to someone, and it can even be a preacher or a teacher of the Word of God, and you can tell that they're either just reading something or they have uh kind of they're kind of mailing it in. There's no passion into it, there's no uh depth to it or whatever. And so it kind of goes in one ear and out the other for you. And likewise, you've probably heard speakers, and again, not just religious speakers, it could be a political speaker, it could be uh uh a valedictorian speech at high school, right? Uh but you can tell if they are truly speaking from their passion uh and from their heart and from their true experience, and this is something that is like life-changing and transformational for them, and it's just oozing out of them, it makes it much more engaging for you. Even if it doesn't convince you of their argument, it still engages you, right? You want to listen, you want to hear it, right? It goes from their heart to your heart. Okay, and that's this phrase. Um, it's a simple yet powerful saying that resonates forcefully when we apply it to the book of Deuteronomy, because what I'm arguing is this is what Deuteronomy is for Moses. The book of Deuteronomy is seeing into Moses' heart. Okay, so you have again the idea. I want you to picture uh however it is you want to picture an old man Moses who knows he's at life's end, but in many ways, scripture's pretty clear, he's still healthy. He's still got all his faculties with him, he's still strong, like he could, he still sees, he's still all with it, but yet he also knows his time is up. He's just reached the end of his time in this creation. And so he's come to terms with it, he's come to peace with it, and so this is really from his heart. What he wants the people, uh, the nation, not only the actual individuals that he's been leading for 40 years, but those that will come after him, generations and generations, and all the way up to his spiritual descendants, like you and I, right? This is what he wants to be remembered for. This is what he wants, you know. You you get the call, and hey, uh, mom, grandma, dad, granddad, who fill in the blank. Isn't much time left, but they're with it. You might want to get over here, you know, gather around the bedside. And again, they're with it enough to know what's happening, and so they're gonna have a conversation with you. Think how much you would cherish that conversation, that time together, and how much you would take to heart what they were telling you, them knowing this is gonna be the very last thing I ever say to you before I die. These words right here, and I'm actively in full capability of all of my faculties, this is what I'm choosing to say to you as the last thing ever, right? You probably would remember that, right? And it probably would go straight to your heart, and it would be something that you would then tell your children, and you would try to convey it to your children uh with that same kind of importance, and hopefully they would continue to do that. That's Moses, that's the book of Deuteronomy, okay? Uh it may not be how Deuteronomy is typically understood because it's a second giving of the law, right? It can at times seem like, well, this is a whole bunch of law, or isn't this just a whole bunch of review of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers? Uh, but uh, as we're gonna see when we go through it, yeah, but no, right? Uh even when Moses tells you an event that we've already read in Exodus or that we just finished up in numbers, he does so with just enough nuance that you know he's getting at something in there, right? And he wants you to pull from it. And and then as the book progresses, it's not just regurgitation, some new stuff appears, but also part of that new stuff is Moses gets prophetic. He even begins to speak uh prophecy in the sense of not only forth telling, but even foretelling. Uh, and that'll become very important when we get to the New Testament uh because the apostles will look back to many of the things Moses foretold in Deuteronomy as finding their fulfillment in their day and age with the Messiah. Uh, and so a lot of things are going on. Uh, and so Moses began reciting, if you will, speaking the book of Deuteronomy on the first day of the Hebrew month of Shvat, uh, the month I was born in. And according to tradition, he dies on the seventh day of the Hebrew month of Adar, uh, which is the month of Purim. Uh, and so that means he transmits the entire book of Deuteronomy, uh, speaks this whole uh kind of farewell testament, if you will, to the children of Israel, according to tradition, in 37 days. This is another kind of thing to kind of keep in mind with Deuteronomy, and Moses, you know, won the heart thing and uh the end of his life, and this is what's most important, but that it's a 37-day period. Uh and alluding to this fact uh are the words that come straight from Moses' heart, that these words come from his heart, is the numerical value of the Hebrew phrase the heart, which in Hebrew is Haliv. Uh if you take Haliv, the heart, and you add up the letters, guess what? They equal 37, right? For the 37 days that Moses spoke from his heart. And as Rabbi Yitzek Ginsberg has noted, uh, if you take Haliv, right, the heart, and you permute it, right, which is one of the methods of pardays, and you permute it, you come up with a phrase which is basically taking Haleiv and rearranging the three Hebrew letters and the ways, different ways they can be uh ordered, and it's then you have the phrase hevo haliv la Hav, which is our phrase, uh related to our phrase, but it means the vapor of the heart is inflamed. The vapor of the heart is inflamed. And when the heart is inflamed, when it is inspired, when it is filled with passion, uh, it produces and fulfills the dictum, words that emanate from the heart enter the heart. Uh we're taught that the Torah was given in fire as Mount Sinai was on fire until the heart of heaven. That's in Deuteronomy 4, verse 3. And so too, when we speak words of Torah, when we speak words of holy scripture, whether it's memorizing them, discussing them, interpreting them, engaging them, it should reflect this level of passionate intensity, uh, which in turn enters the hearts of those listening and awakens their soul. All right. So whenever you uh engage the word of God, I always tell people like if you're gonna study with someone or learn from someone, you always want to do so from someone where you are convinced that the word of God is their passion. If the word of God isn't their passion, then you don't need to be learning from it because it's not gonna be coming from their heart. And therefore it's not gonna be entering into your heart. You want someone whose passion, whose you know, borderline obsession is the word of God. Because then you know that what they are speaking is a flame, right? And it sets it sets and it'll set you aflame as well. So Deuteronomy contains, as we talked about, not only like a summary of Israel's history from the moment that they left the nation of Egypt until Moses' death. It does do that for sure. Uh, but it also gives a summary of many of the mitzvot, many of the connections, many of the commandments that were encountered during that period. Not all of them, but many of them. And it also introduces some new ones, uh, but also a constant stream of things like blessings and curses, warnings and rebukes and prophetic messages pepper throughout the book of Deuteronomy. So again, think about a very wise grandfather kind of personality, very um, you know, filled with wisdom and desire for you, desires good things for you. Well, they're not just gonna pump you up, right? They're also gonna tell you things you need to look out for. They're gonna be honest with you about what they see as some of your weaknesses and where you need to kind of strengthen that, what you need to pay attention to, uh, and then speaking prophetically, what you need to be on the lookout for in the future, lest these things happen. Right? And so all of that kind of gets wrapped up. Uh, had Moses delivered his parting words in some kind of harsh or perfunctory manner, um, they wouldn't have accomplished their goal. But the people understood then as hopefully by the Holy Spirit. You and I will understand now that the message of Moses and that what he wished to impart reflected his genuine concern for the nation, for the people of God, not only in that generation, but for all future generations. And since the message came from his heart, it has the greatest potential of hitting the target of entering into our hearts. This insight draws our attention to one of the greatest mysteries of this book of Deuteronomy. That is, it has a style and a syntax that is different than the first four books of the Torah. This is something that you may not catch in the English, because when they translate a Bible into English for you, they want you to feel from Genesis to Revelation that this is one style, this is one kind of level of vocabulary, like, and all that's fine, it makes sense. I'm not criticizing it, but it loses kind of the ability to give you the nuance of some of the things of each book. Deuteronomy does not in the Hebrew read like the first four books. Okay. Now, for critical scholars, this was fodder for things like, well, it's not part of the original Torah, it's much later, blah, blah, blah. Um, but I don't think it's that way at all. I think it's more like, again, this would be spoken in that intimate, heart-to-heart kind of way that we've been trying to emphasize. And I would hope you would understand that that would carry a different tone than say, let me give you the narrative of the creation and the origin of the universe, or let me tell you um about uh the ten plagues and the narrative of that. That's gonna have a different, if you were writing that, like you would, you know, whenever you write a probably we don't write letters anymore, right? But if you were to write a letter to your spouse or to one of your children when you have been away for a while, I mean, hopefully that would read differently than say writing to your boss and letting him know what you've been up to at work while as you're traveling abroad for the company, right? Let's hope your vocabulary and your tone with your company is a little different than with your wife, right? So just know that part of what I'm talking about comes from the style and the syntax of Deuteronomy. The first four books, for instance, were dictated by God to Moses, word for word, right? Often on Sinai, we would hear that in Exodus. Write this down, write do it, you know. Know, according to the pattern and all of those kinds of things. And so they're written in the third person. The uniqueness of the book of Deuteronomy is that we're to envision it as being spoken from Moses' own mouth, that is to say, in first person. And so the tractate Megila in Folio 31B talks about like the importance of kind of understanding Deuteronomy the best we can as a first person kind of narrative, and that that's how it originally came. And even if it comes down in some of the wording that we have now, not being in first person, to still kind of hear it, first person communication. The expression of the rabbis coined to express this exalted spiritual level of Moses that he had at the end of his life is often called the Shekinah. And that is the flowing presence of God, and that it spoke through the throat of Moses. That Moses reached this level is all the more remarkable when we remember that at the burning bush, he was arguing that he was incapable of leading the people because he was not articulate with his speech. And even after returning to Egypt, and despite God's personal assurances that he would be with them, Moses complained that no one would listen to him as in Exodus 6, verse 12, he had uncircumcised lips. But his ultimate accession, ascension to the level where even those words that came from his heart were perfectly aligned with God's will should inspire us as we enter into the book of Deuteronomy. So let's do that here. The symbolic meaning of northward. The book of Deuteronomy is considered as it were to be, again, the last will and testament of Moses. Again, it follows that Mesopotamian, ancient Near Eastern kind of last will and testament, covenant treaty kind of pattern and language. And in it, many of the mitzvot, the connections already given are reviewed, new ones are added. And Moses reviews history from different angles. And that's going to be important for us as we go on, so that even if he hits something that we would say, yeah, yeah, we've already covered that in the Torah, we need to realize he's coming at it from a different angle, a different perspective. He's wanting us to see it, understand it, grasp something from it that we would not have before. And so, as part of Moses' appraisal of the 40 years in the wilderness, he relates how God said to them in Deuteronomy chapter 2, verse 2, enough. Enough of your circling this mountain. Turn yourselves northward. So basically, after 40 years, finally God says, Enough. We're done kind of wandering aimlessly through the wilderness. We're done circling this mountain. We're done, you know, we're gonna get to the destination finally. And then turn yourselves northward. And here I want to kind of use a little bit of our in the garden perspective to look at northward has a lot of symbolism in biblical writings in the ancient Near Eastern world and in Torah symbolism. And so we'll kind of highlight some of those and how this simple phrase, enough, enough of this running around, right? Enough of this aimlessness, turn yourselves northward. Okay? The mountain in this verse is none other than Mount Saire, S-E-I-R, where Israel had camped for a prolonged amount of time. Now, Rashi in the Kumish comments that turning northward, right? Rashi is a commentator who is big on the Peshat level, right? The plain meaning, the simple meaning, the grammatical meaning, the most obvious meaning. And so Rashi's like, hey, they're just being told to travel north on their way to enter into the promised land, to enter into Canaan, to enter into Israel. But other commentaries focus on the more metaphorical, symbolic, and allegorical meanings of the word northward. And so I'll give you a sample of some of these explanations, these midrashic durash level, right? Um, and one Talmudic discussion, uh the evil inclination, uh, our sinful nature, our impulse at times to look out for numero uno, uh, to at all costs protect me and mine and not worry about you and yours, right? That that is often described as a mountain. And the righteous, those who were in a right relationship with God, uh, in retrospect, they will look at the evil inclination as a mountain, and they will be amazed that by God's grace and with God's help and through God's working, they were able to conquer and overcome such a formidable challenge in their life. While those who made no attempt to defeat their evil inclination, who made no attempt to mature spiritually or wrestle with their sinful nature in retrospect, will look back and see it as a molehill and be amazed that such a small little challenge seemed so impossible for them that they dared not overcome it. And therefore, this verse can be interpreted to mean for both those in the right relationship with God, again, primarily by grace and through faith, as well as those who have a less than upright relationship. The meaning is: look, you've been circling, you've been focused upon this mountain, this issue, this stumbling block for far too long. The time has come for you to move on. So again, when we're looking in the year 2026, deciding, hey, I'm reading the Torah and I'm reading it in time, and I'm wanting these eternal words of God, uh, where our Messiah said, not one jot or tittle is going to pass away. I still want it to apply to my life and mean something for my life, even though I'm not an Israelite, wandering in the desert, about to enter into the promised land. That's where we can take meaning from it. And that's where we can pray about it this week, journal about it this week, take confidence at living in the times of the text, that this is what God is helping enable us to do this week with the energy that's being given to us. And that is whatever it is that we found ourselves circling around, and it's it's time to move on, right? Enough's enough. So what is it? What's enough enough for you right now? What's enough, right? What do you need to move on from? That's where the Torah is going to speak to you this week. That's when if you begin to think about, oh, okay, that's what I actually need to be thinking about in my prayer life this week, in my devotional life this week. Even when I'll read other scriptures, I want to let that inform me this week. Like, where am I finding myself wondering aimlessly where I finally just need to get a move on? It is stated in the Talmud that one who seeks to be rich should turn to the north. Uh, this statement is based on the fact that in the tabernacle and later the temple in Jerusalem, the table of the showbread was situated on the north side. Another meaning for the word north in Hebrew, um, the word for north in Hebrew literally means to be hidden. The root of this word appears uh in one of the steps of the Passover Seder in what's known as the Hagadah, the telling, the liturgy of Passover. When children uh bring back to the table the broken piece of matzah that was hidden at the beginning of the Seder, actually comes from this word for north. Therefore, the verse can be understood to mean that if one merits prosperity, they should not flaunt their good fortune, but rather maintain a modest attitude towards their blessings. Now, the mountain of Sair, where they find themselves, the literal mountain that they are encircling, it was the inheritance of none other than Esau and Edom, from where Rome and the Roman Empire descends. And so the fourth and by far the longest exile experienced by God's people, that of Rome, is referred to as the exile of Edom. And this verse alludes to the way to survive any exile. Turn yourselves northward. That is, by hiding in the Torah, by hiding in the Word of God. This would give the people the strength and inspiration to hold on to tradition despite the evil intentions of those who would try to destroy them. So when we face exile, when we face alienation, when we face ourselves kind of again in a wilderness, how do we survive, right? We hide ourselves in the Word of God. And it's interesting to note that the Hebrew word for a compass, right? Boy Scout days, like go into the woods and find your way out with this compass. The Hebrew word for compass is matzpen, m-a-t-z, p-e-n, matzpen. It comes from the same root as zephon, north, which kind of makes sense, right? All compasses naturally point to the north. So it makes sense in Hebrew a very concrete language that the word for a compass is related and intimately connected to the word for north. And from this we can extrapolate that the word of God, the Torah, it is what helps us navigate the crossroads of life. It is what points us to the true north. And another explanation compares the meaning of northward as a metaphor for the Hebrew Yerat Shamaim, that is the awe, the respect, the fear of God, the fear of heaven. God telling the people that they have been circling the mountain for far too long also alludes to those who are religious for reasons other than true awe, love, and respect and fear of God. Circling the mountain, hence at wrote observance and routine rather than inspired thought and action. And so, in a similar vein, this verse can be interpreted as hey, enough playing around. Enough playing around with the stumbling blocks in your life, enough playing around with that which tempts you, enough playing around with the sinful nature, enough playing around with the evil inclination. It's time to move on to a more serious view of life. So that is the crux of Deuteronomy 2, verse 2, which also gives you something very practical in your life for today. Now I want to look at some of the ways I think we see peaks of Messiah in the text. So Deuteronomy chapter 1, verse 8. It says, See, I have placed the land before you. This is who Moses is speaking to them, and those descendants after them. And so the word translated here from the Hebrew behind descendants after them. This is a significant messianic word, right? It has heavy messianic overtones. The Apostle Paul definitely loves this Hebrew word that gets translated here as descendants. That is the Hebrew word zerah, zerah, which means seed. Messiah is the seed of the patriarchs. He's the seed of Abraham. When God is making his covenant with Abraham back in Genesis chapters 12 through 15, right? And it kind of kind of try to quickly set the context to Abraham and this covenant. So right before Abraham, in the flow of Genesis, you have the Tower of Babel. And then God being perturbed enough with what happened there that he scatters the languages. And this is in Genesis 10. You probably don't catch it because it's listing 70 names that you can't pronounce, so you don't care and you don't read it. It's important. Those are the 70 nations of the world. From Babel come 70 nations. This is all Genesis 10. It's all right there in Genesis 10. You flip over to Genesis 32. And God will talk about that. He'll also talk about it in places like Psalm 82 and some other places. But he'll talk about that after Babel, he disinherited the nations. He said, fine, this is how you want to roll, and I can't flood you people anymore. You're on your own. Except he didn't leave them completely on their own. He had a divine council. And from that divine council, he established angelic beings who would be over each of those seventy nations. Then comes Abraham because what does God then say? Israel will be my inheritance. They will be my people. So no longer is it the nations, it's about Israel. But then God reveals his plan through Abraham. His plan is ultimately that through your seed, and this is Paul loves this because he doesn't use the plural seeds, uses the singular, meaning only one. Through your seed, Abraham, will be one who will then come and gather all the nations back and bring them all back into my inheritance. Through your seed, Abraham, the nations will have salvation. They will be redeemed. They will be grafted in once again to be my people. That's the covenant of Abraham. Okay, and Zarah is one of the words that's very important in all of that. Paul will pick up on this in places not limited to, but an example. Galatians 3, 16. Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed, Zarah. God does not say and to seeds, plural, right? You already know how to recognize a plural Hebrew word, and you should have noticed it doesn't have the thing that would tell us it's plural. It doesn't say seeds, meaning many, but rather to one. And to your seed. Paul says, that's the Messiah. That's the Messiah. That's Christ. And so the passage can be understood either as a promise to give the land to the descendants of the patriarchs or to give the land to the descendant singular, the Messiah. The two readings, though, are not mutually exclusive. It's not a both and or not an either or, but a both and. The land of Israel is promised to the many descendants of the forefathers. It is the heritage, it is the inheritance of the Jewish people forever. And since Messiah is the true king and ruler over all of Israel, the land belongs to him personally as well. He is the king over the land, which is why it's so powerful when we travel to the land of Israel. We indeed are walking on holy soil because we are walking upon the very land of the seed, the Messiah, the King. The head of heads. Deuteronomy 1 13. Moses says, Choose wise and discerning and experienced men from your tribes, and I will appoint them as your heads. So as Moses recounted his tenure leading Israel, he reminded the people that he had commanded them to choose men whom he could appoint as heads over them. So you get this idea of kind of tiered authority. Paul's going to pick up on this too. Tiered authority. You're going to have God as, of course, the ultimate authority. Then you're going to have Moses. And then Moses, remember, couldn't handle everything. It got to be too much. So his father-in-law Jethro says, hey, you need to start a Sanhedrin. It's no coincidence, by the way. Now you know why are there 70 on the Sanhedrin? Oh, now you're beginning to make an interesting connection, aren't you? Because of the 70 nations, it all starts to fit together. Okay. It'll also fit together when Jesus feeds 4,000 and has seven baskets left over. When he feeds 5,000, he has 12 baskets left over. 12 and 7 nations in Israel, right? Okay, so here you're going to have this tiered authority. You have God, you have Moses, you have the Sanhedrin, and then even under the Sanhedrin, it's broken down. And as Paul will eventually show us, it's broken down all the way to the family. Okay? So as Moses is recounting his tenure leading Israel, he reminds them of this. And these heads were to help him lead and administer justice. The term head is used metaphorically. Moses likens the leaders to heads, just as the head is the authority over the human body, kind of like, you know, the brains of the operation. Though Moses appointed many heads over Israel, he was the head over them. And he was the head of heads, if you will, and God naturally was head over Moses. The Apostle Paul uses the same headship imagery to describe the Messiah when he says, Messiah, Christ, is the head of the church. And he encourages us as members of that body to stay connected to the head. Colossians 2, 19, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by joints and ligaments, it's you and me in the body of Christ, the body of Messiah, grows with a growth which is from God. And so just as Moses was head over Israel, Messiah is head over the church. And just as Moses was head over heads, Messiah too is head over heads. Beneath his authority there are other leaders and communities and congregations that constitute, that make up his church, his body on earth. And even breaking it down to the smallest unit of headship, the husband is to be head of the home, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11. Messiah is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Messiah. Fear no man. Deuteronomy 1, verse 17. Again, Moses kind of trying to establish when you make it into the land of Israel, you make it into the promised land, when you make it into Canaan, right? You're going to be a nation and you're going to have to set up a society and you're going to have to have important things set in place. And this is part of it. You shall show, you shall not show partiality in judgment. You shall hear the small and the great alike, right? You shall not fear man, for the judgment is God's. The case that is too hard for you, you shall bring it to me. It's part of the rule, right? You bring it, it's like levels of courts of appeal, right? If it's too hard for the lower court, it goes to the next court up, and it can be appealed all the way on up. And Moses is saying, Remember when we established this and something got too hard? You brought it to me, and I heard it. Like the daughters of Zeholaphat. Remember those gals, those five gals, right? It was a case no one else could handle, so it went to Moses, and Moses couldn't handle it. So what did Moses do? He goes all the way to the Supreme Court, if you will, he goes to God. So as Moses recounts the journey here, he's commanding the heads over Israel not to show partiality when they make judgment. And he also says, You shall not fear man. What does it mean to fear man in judgment? It means to show preference to one particular party, giving them the answer or decision that they would want to hear out of fear of their position of influence, prestige, or power. On a more practical level, treating the wealthy with respect while treating the poor with the disrespect demonstrates the fear of man as well as the practice of partiality. James, the brother of Jesus, our Messiah, he saw impartiality as a sign of wisdom derived from heaven, and that favoritism was specifically a transgression of the law. And he gets that from here. So in James 2, verse 9, but if you show partiality, you are committing sin. You're trespassing Deuteronomy 1.17, and are convicted by the Torah as transgressors. And Jesus was well known for his impartiality. He moved freely from the company of the most prestigious of sages in the temple courts to the company of sinners and tax collectors. It's what scandalized him. He could be known as the greatest teacher who could stump the most sophisticated, and yet he would be found among the most common. He received all equally, and on one occasion the disciples of the sages and several wealthy men from among the Herodians met him in the temple, and they said to him, This is Matthew 22, verse 16, Teacher, we know that you're truthful, we know you teach the way of God in truth, we know you defer to no one, that you are not partial to any. Which is an allusion back to our text in Deuteronomy 1.17. Jesus did not fear men, he was not impressed with their prestige, nor did he fear the harm people might do him. In fact, he told his disciples in Matthew 10 and verse 28 Do not fear those who kill the body, but are unable to kill the soul, but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body and hell. Footprints in the sand. Anyone got this poem, Footprints in the Sand, anywhere? Yeah. Maybe on your refrigerator, right? Uh framed or something like that. Right? It's it's a classic, right? And it has somewhat of a biblical basis, and we'll find that biblical basis somewhat here in Deuteronomy. Um, but I'm going to give you a revised version that we might call butt prints in the sand. All right, but we'll get there. So as Moses again is recounting the journey of the people so far, right? That's how Deuteronomy begins. Old guy, gather around, right? Let me tell you, you know, and he begins to recount the story. He retells several of the incidents along the way in which Israel rebelled against God, or where they rebelled against the authority of Moses, the one sent by God to be their redeemer. Okay? So he's kind of wanting to say, don't do this again. Don't, don't rebel against God, and please, please don't rebel against the redeemer that he's going to send you. And he reminds them of the incident with the spies. And he warns them again, again, against repeating that same kind of folly. And as he retells that particular incident, right, he's telling us something we just read in Numbers not that long ago. Remember, he's telling us because it's got a different angle. As he retells it, he reminds them of how faithful God has been to bring them from Egypt to the land. And he reminds the Israelites of how he pled with their fathers, and he points out that God has carried them through the wilderness. And so you have in Deuteronomy verse 131, and in the wilderness where you saw how the Lord your God carried you, just as a man carries his son, in all the ways which you have walked until you came to this place. Sort of sounds a little footprints in the sand-esque, does it not, right? And maybe this is the very words that inspired Mary Stevenson to write her famous poem, Footprints in the Sand, which, if you don't know, it's not taped on your wall, your refrigerator, or the mirror in your bathroom. The poem and the poet relates a dream in which she's given a vision of her life as a line of footprints stretching back through time. And she can clearly and discern two sets of footprints. One, of course, belonging to her. She's walking through history, walking through her life, walking through time, and the other belongs to the Lord, belongs to God, right? So she sees these two distinct sets of footprints as her and God marching through her life together. And as the poem goes on and she looks at the footprint, she realizes that, quote, sometimes there were two sets of footprints, other times there were one set of footprints. The poet notices that during the difficult times of sorrow and anguish and defeat in her life, this is where she thought the second set of footprints vanished, only to reappear when the troubled times, the hard times were passed. And so the poet inquires about this, even complaining to the Lord about this. And she says, I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life, quote, there have only been one set of footprints in the sand. And she interprets those to be her footprints, that God has gone missing in action when she needed him most. He has hidden himself. And so she says, quote, Why, when I needed you most, you have not been there for me. Then as the poem goes on, the Lord explains that the poet is looking at the wrong set of footprints, and he replies in the poem, quote, The times when you have seen only one set of footprints in the sand is when I carried you. And the ubiquitous proliferation of this poem is evidence that it has brought comfort to countless souls. And it seems to be the very thing Moses is telling Israel when he told them that God had carried them, quote, just as a man carries his son. There is something in the text of this, for sure. Surely the Lord does carry us through our difficult times of sorrow and anguish and defeat, even if we're like the poet and don't necessarily recognize it at the time or even in hindsight for a while. But Moses' words of comfort fall in a greater context of rebuke. It has a footprint of the sand aspect to it, yes. But it's got an edge to it. Despite God's fatherlike care and nurture, Israel still rebelled against him. And they rebelled against the Redeemer that he sent to bring them into the promised land. So here is an anonymous parody on the footprints in the sand, again, that I would dub butt prints in the sand, that better encapsulates the sense of Moses' words to the children of Israel. It still has some comfort of the footprints in the sand. You don't gotta forsake it. Not a total grinch, but it's got a little more. So I will read it to you now. One night I had a wondrous dream. One set of footprints there was seen. The footprints of my precious Lord, but mine were not along the shore. But then some stranger prints appeared, and I asked the Lord, What have we here? Those prints are large and round and neat. But Lord, they are too big to be feet. My child, he said in somber tones, for miles I carried you alone. I challenged you to walk in faith, but you refused and made me wait. You disobeyed, you would not grow. The walk of faith you would not know. So I got tired, I got fed up, and there I dropped you on your butt. Because in life there comes a time when one must fight and one must climb, when one must rise and take a stand, or leave their butt prints in the sand. That'll become more clear as you go through Deuteronomy that that is the intent of Moses. Now, the parody poem, a little less comforting, is the message Moses wants to convey to the generation that is about to enter into the land. Because it's a lesson based on their history, at least the generation before them and the history of their people. It is also the message that Messiah conveys to us through his teachings and the gospels. He places high demands on those who would follow him. Your righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees and the sages, and challenges us to walk in faith. Though he does not drop us on our rumps, he may occasionally place us in that location with a well-aimed kick. Fortunately, God does not drop us when we fail, but instead graciously picks us up again. And though Israel rebelled against him again and again, he bore them to the land, and he still fulfilled all of his covenant promises, especially through the seed of Abraham. As disciples of the risen Messiah, we can be confident in the sufficiency of his grace and intercession. He is with his disciples always, even through the great wilderness of exile. So we'll close looking at Deuteronomy chapter 2, verse 7. For the Lord your God has blessed you in all that you have done. He has known your wanderings through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you. You have not lacked a thing. We will end there as we have begun. Sefer Debareem, the book of Deuteronomy, and we will continue it next week. Let's close with the blessing. Baruch Atta Adonai Notain Hatarah. Blessed are you, Lord God, who has given to us the gift that is the Torah. Amen. Hi everyone. Thank you for engaging this teaching. You know, we at Emmanuel have as one of our goals to make our teachings available online to anyone, everywhere, at any time, whether that's through a podcast or our YouTube channel or an MP3 download. It is our gift to you, and we want you to use it however you see fit. So if you feel motivated or desire to support future teachings, you can do so with the donate button at the bottom of our teaching page. That's found at immlutheran.org forward slash teaching. 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