Mobilizing in Moab: Diligent Obedience

Notes:

Introduction:

“School is in sessions”

Importance of keeping the Word

Listen to the statutes and rules I am teaching, v. 1

Don’t add to it, or take away from it, vs. 2

Passing on the word

Sound of word v. 12

Teaches words, v. 14

Word as Witness: vv.5-8

“Sure this great nation is a wise and understanding people.”

What nation has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is to us?

What great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today?

What is the criteria for greatness?

Not wealth, power, grand architecture, form of government, no great wonders of the world.

NOT in the Laws of GOVERNMENT, but LAWS OF COVENANT

“The relationship was a moral and spiritual one, for the Lord was close to the Israelites.” Craigie

WISDOM and DISCERNING PEOPLE

NOT smart and reactive

Or intelligent and theological

Big Speech Begins now:

Picture of gods of the Canaanites: sun, moon, wind, earth…

You heard words, but no image!!

Revelation is WORD: Question about worship without Lord’s Supper?

They must know YOU! YOU are my image.

v. 1: Law in the context of Education as opposed to Legalism

Don’t take away, don’t add

Bill Arnold, “They do not live to keep the Torah; they keep Torah in order to live.”

v. 3: “You eyes have seen what the LORD your God did at Baal-peor… who followed the Baal of Peor.”

Went to bed with the enemy and started worshipping other gods.

Bill Arnold: “The deity was the head of a fertility cult centered around sensuous feast in conjuction with the immoral sexuality that appears also to have been associated with sacrifices to the dead.”

v.4: “But you who hold fast to the Lord your God are all alive today.” Past generation is dead.

v.5: “I have taught you the statutes and rules… that you should do them in the land…”

v.6: “Keep them and do them.”

Purpose of Keeping them:

NEW Purpose: Nations will marvel around Israel. Israel known as WISE.

vv.7-8: No other nation could claim God is as near as God is to us AND

no other nation had SO RIGHTEOUS of laws.

Emphasis on What they Saw

Emphasis on What they should DO

9-14: Not what they SAW, but what they Heard

v. 3: “Your eyes have seen what the LORD did at Baal-peor.”

Remember What You DID See

Power and giving of the Law

Remember What you DIDN’T See

Didn’t see God!

v. 10 … they stood before Yhwh …

v. 11 … they drew near and stood at the foot of the mountain …

v. 12 … Yhwh spoke to them …

v. 13a … Yhwh announced to them his covenant

v. 13b … Yhwh wrote the Ten Words upon two stone tablets

v. 14 … Yhwh commanded Moses to teach

Arnold: “The things they saw are actually the words they heard.”

v. 9: “Only take care, and keep your soul diligently,

- lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen.

- lest they depart from your heart.”

Emphasis is on the VOICE of GOD. Something they HEARD

To remember is to see is to hear is to do is to live.

“Forgetfulness opened the door to failure.” Craigie

What is it that they saw?

So it’s completely illogical to make an idol. The whole point is that you see my word by hearing my word. To create an idol is to control me, to put me in a box!

God isn’t in the fire or the fog, they are a result! “What Israel saw was no form, image, or likeness of YHWH at all, making idolatry truly impossible.” Arnold

Keep in mind the rest of chapter 4: “I formed you, you did not form me.”

Be careful looking up!

4:19: When you look up, you see sun and moon and stars, and start to bow down to them and serve them!

4:20: “The Lord has take you and brought you out of the iron furnace.”

vv.13-14: First instance of covenant.

HIS covenant.

HIS Mediator

Power of Poetry:

Empowers the Imagination

Wonder of God’s Word

As Rituals and Rules:

Rituals= “statute, decree, law, rule, instruction”

Boundary markers

“Inscribe” a record or official register of property, and thus secondarily ‘rule, ruling,’ and in the contexts of ‘regulation, statute.’” Arnold

Summary: “(1) connote the whole of Yhwh’s regulations so that they are used synonymously, but more likely (2) reflect a convergence of religious Yhwh-bound regulations and a collection of non-Yhwh legal traditions, the latter of which may not be purely “secular” but are at least focused on specifically non-religious features of the culture.” Arnold

The Whole shabang!

As Revelation

‘saw’ words, not form

As Relationship

Signed Covenent

Illogical Idolatry

Don’t repeat Baal-peor

God forms you, you don’t form God

Result of Obedience

Reputation!