All right, so we're in our final podcast on this series of the first five books of the Bible. It's my attempt to just help you guys get a bit familiar with the Bible, get it into your reading and give you a little more confidence in small group leading. And so we come now to the book of Deuteronomy. This is the fifth book in the Pentateuch in the Torah. And I, you're not supposed to have favourites with the Bible, but it is a personal favourite of mine. I love so many things about Deuteronomy, which I will share with you, but yeah, we'll not let this podcast go too long. So let's get into it. Deuteronomy, the name means second law from Greek, think Deutero, Deutero's second and Nomos is law. So second law, which means it's kind of like a second block of legal material of law stuff compared to say the first block that mostly came through at Mount Sinai within Exodus and Leviticus and parts of Numbers.
So this is a second block of law. And what's going on is that Moses is there at the plains of Moab. So we've had numbers of all the action there taking on Balaam and Balak, defeating them. They're just of the kind of western, eastern side of the Jordan, ready to go on the promised land fulfillment of all those promises that God gave to Abraham and so on. And they are there ready to go. And Moses shares this block of teaching, this revelation from God's second law. if I read the first verse, starts with, these are the words Moses spoke to all Israel in the wilderness east of the Jordan. So this is gonna be a lot of words here. It's a big speech kind of thing.
Verse 3 says it's the 40th year, so all these years have passed since they left Sinai. And verse 5 says, east of the Jordan in the territory of Moab, Moses began to expound this law saying so on and so forth. And so it's about some big speeches from Moses there explaining this law. And in a way, kind of equipping the Israelites to head into this promised land. There's so much stuff they need to know before they go in. So how does it work? Well, it's a pretty long book, but let me break down the structure a bit for you, as simple as possible. So chapters one to three are like a historical backdrop for the main speeches. It's the story of what happened to these whites from that time in Sinai to the present. A short summary of those 40 years in the wilderness. So that reads pretty well. And it's a good way to recap. If you've forgotten what's happened in numbers 1-3 is a great little recap and it's kind of just setting a bit of the background. It's demonstrating God's faithfulness. It's demonstrating the ongoing sinfulness and stubbornness of the Israelites and Moses role as a leader and teacher and shepherd of that time. So 1-3 historical backdrop. Then you've got 4-11, which some great chapters kind of giving the theological backdrop for the laws that will follow the big principles. Foundational kind of things and so topics there is like who is God, what is God like, how does he speak, what does he say, what is human, what is the Israelites, what do they bring as people in relationship with God. IHeaps going on here, very rich stuff.
A few highlights I'll share with you. I love Chapter 4:6-8 that talks about how the nations will respond to Israel in the land. And you'll remember from Genesis 12, Israel's gonna, the descendants of Abraham are gonna be a blessing to the nation. So we just get a little foretaste, I think, of what a blessing might look like in 4:6-8.
He says, “observe these laws carefully for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations who will hear about all these decrees and say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him”.
And what other nations so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws as I'm sitting before you today. Great little passage there about the nations seeing this, the wisdom of God and his people following these laws. Um, it's, it's, it's an invitation. It's just hints towards the, the nations coming to God. Love that in Chapter 4, um, it's a great passage of, uh, about grace in, in Deuteronomy 9. Love the way this stands out just how it's reinforcing. It's not through Israel, Israel's goodness that they've been blessed in this way. So 9:5 says, “It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are going in to take possession of their land, but on account of the wickedness of these nations. The Lord your God will drive them out before you to accomplish what he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Understand then, it's not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people”.
So amazing that such words were preserved by the nation of Israel over the years, a testimony to them, but it shows it's God's grace that this blessing is from. And then another highlight in section four, chapter four to 11 is of course the 10 commandments. Now we met the 10, came across the 10 commandments in Exodus chapter 20. So this is a repeat, a reminder, a reminder of these 10 commandments. But there they are in chapter five, sitting in a foundational fundamental part of the book of Deuteronomy. And they're the same as Exodus. Just interesting though, you could worth having a quick look. You'll see that the rationale for the Sabbath command is slightly different in Deuteronomy compared to Exodus. Kind of builds on that both Exodus and Deuteronomy worth a look. But the 10 commandments are in there. So 4 to 11, big theological, big picture kind of stuff, loads in there. Then you've got 12 to 26, which are all the laws, lots of laws there.
And it feels like a big chunk, but once you get more familiar with it, it becomes more digestible. The laws are kind of connect to the 10 commandments. I think that's an interesting passion. say for example, chapter, commandment one and two about not worshiping idols and worshiping God only kind of has some parallels in the later chapters with laws about how to worship and what you're doing with worship of God.
Commandments like do not commit adultery about sexuality and morality kind of gets expanded on in later legal material there about many other categories of sexual morality and then in a commandment about Sabbath number three no four in the ten commandments is about all sorts of Sabbath laws and festivals and rhythm and routine and how does worship work there. So there's this pattern, beautiful pattern between the Ten Commandments and all these other laws.
But plenty of other highlights though in this long legal section, and two of which point really well forward to the rest of Israel's history and to Jesus. So worth knowing about chapter 17, which talks about the king in Israel. So in chapter 17:14-20 it explains there what the ideal king should be, what a king should be like in Israel, different to the nations and sort of living under God's law, his word, humble, a wise ruler, all sorts of stuff that the actual kings of Israel kind of stumbled over. They didn't follow this or keep this, but Jesus does. So, at Deuteronomy 17, really good words known. And also just next to that, Deuteronomy 18:14-22 talks about a prophet that will come than speak truthfully compared to false prophets. And you'll read there a lot of references that seem to be fulfilled in Jesus as he comes as our prophet speaking truthfully. So great highlights there. And I think just reading this legal material, different stuff about warfare and how cities are supposed to be set up, festivals dealing with crime, how to gather as a people, all this kind of stuff. It's really good. But, and I think what I often do when I'm reading it, I bear in mind, say Romans 3:20, that tells us that through the law, we become conscious of sin. So I'm reading this expecting my sin to be exposed, the law. As we read it, points out things in our own lives. Romans 3:20, we become conscious of sin. And also Romans 12:8-10 talks about how the law is really about love. That's the big picture. It's about loving your neighbour. And what we're often reading there is how to love our neighbour. Now, there'd be cultural gaps, of course, but that's the driving principle. It's a law shaped by love.
But there you are, that's 12 to 26, big section there. Then 27 to 34 is a whole lot of stuff that takes us through to the end of the book. It's got various things going on in 27 to 34. So you've got blessings and curses for what if the Israelites do things wrong or do things right in the future and a lot of that will be fulfilled. You'll see it fulfilled in Israel's history. But as it comes out, another important thing in this end material is just very clear that what's going on here is a covenant. You kind of get that during the book already, but 29 verse one is quite clear. It says, “are the terms of the covenant the Lord commanded Moses to make with the Israelites in Moab in addition to the covenant he had made with them at Horeb”.
Now this is really helpful. Like a covenant, I don't know if we've talked about this before, a covenant's kind of like a formalized relationship between two parties, where the nature of the relationship is set out, and the obligations, the expectations, and the consequences of what happens if we fail to meet those obligations or expectations. A covenant, there was clearly a covenant there at Exodus, building on covenants with Abraham and Genesis, and now here it says very clearly, there's a covenant here.
call this the Deuteronomic Covenant. And it's where, yeah, a whole lot of other expectations, obligations are laid out. So we have a covenant and covenant's a good thing to know about as you read through the rest of the Bible. We've got here also, just on that chapter about the covenant, a great little verse in 29, verse 29, worth you guys knowing, I think, just about the limitations that we have with knowing God and knowing his plans. This is a good one to remember, 29, verse 29 says, “to the Lord, our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever that we may follow all the words of this law”. I love that. There are secret things that only God knows, but what he has revealed, it's real, it's true. And we can base our lives on it. We can follow the words of this law.
And then we have, what else do we have? We've got some Joshua's taking over from Moses. We'll look into that more next time in the next book. There's the reading of the law. There's a song of Moses, which is kind of interesting, but I think part of this covenant set up thing, you kind of celebrate or mark this occasion with a song. Let's bring out a song. There's some dark notes to this song. He predicts trouble ahead, but it's a song. This has a ceremonial feel. And then Chapter 34 finishes with the death of Moses and because of sadly for Moses as he because of some sins he'd committed in the past he wasn't permitted to go in and see the promise land he could only see it from a distance so he's on a mountain he's looking over and then he dies.
And that brings us to a conclusion really, this whole big story of Moses that started in Exodus, the first chapters there, and it's gone through Leviticus numbers and now here at very end of Deuteronomy. Moses is very special character through all that. He's not a king, but he's like a king, and he's a prophet, and he acts as a priest even though he's not of the descendant of Aaron in that traditional way. He's a shepherd, like a pastor over the people, just a massive figure and many themes of Jesus sort of bound up there in the life of Moses. And so we finish Deuteronomy and this real cliffhanger, I think quite literally, they're all looking over the cliff onto the promised land. What's gonna happen next? How will Joshua go leading these people? Will they have a successful venture into the promised land? So it ends on a knife edge there.
So what do we do? Reading Deuteronomy. Look, it's great there for the history, that helpful recap. It'll just keep you getting orientated into the Old Testament and the Pentateuch, the Torah. There's heaps of rich theology about God, revelation, word, sin, grace, all that sort of stuff is in there, especially those early chapters. Got a lot of interesting laws. There's lots of ethics, how we live conduct, not as many things about mould and skin diseases and stuff that we had in Leviticus. That's quite, you know, provoking laws and to be honest, some of them you might find quite confronting because there's a big cultural gap between us and them, but really interesting worth discussing. And of course, lots of pointers to Jesus there. The King, the Prophet, yeah, the blessings, the nations coming in, the figure of Moses, loads of Jesus connections there.
So, read Deuteronomy, enjoy it. Hope that's helpful for you. Yeah, just building your confidence and familiarity with the first five books of the Bible. And we'll pause that series there. Pick it up later, hopefully, as we head into the next book of Joshua. But next time around, we'll go into some other areas, topics related to small group leading. Look forward to that. l group leading. Look forward to that.