02 | Song of Moses | Deuteronomy 32:4-6 | The Rock

INTRODUCTION

This sermon series in Deuteronomy 32 — “The Song of Moses | No Empty Word” …

… is a call to remember the greatness, faithfulness, and justice of the Lord across generations.

Through blessing, provocation, and judgment, the Lord remains the Rock

… righteous and unchanging

… while his people forget and rebel.

Yet even in wrath, God moves toward salvation …

… and this song, sung by Moses, is no empty word—it is our very life.

The Three Cycles

First Cycle = v1-14 - The Lord Blesses Israel

He makes himself known to them …

… he calls them to himself out of Egypt

… and he provides life for them in the land.

Second Cycle = v15-29 - Israel Provokes the Lord

Israel presumes upon the Lord’s provision.

Deuteronomy 32:18 ESV

You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you, and you forgot the God who gave you birth.

And so the Lord brings his judgement upon the people.

Third Cycle = v30-43 - The Lord’s Justice and Salvation

In the final cycle, the Lord does not forget his justice or righteousness.

On the other hand, the Lord calls the people to run to him for help.

“Vengeance is mine … the LORD will vindicate.”

The Lord will rescue his people from the very nations he sent for their judgement.

Salvation and the peoples’ greatest good is found in this: v39 See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me;

2:00

Last week

This morning is the second week in this first cycle of the song.

Last week …

Moses calls all of creation—the heavens and earth— to witness his faithful word …

… a word that falls like rain to nourish, warn, and lead his people to life through Christ.

This morning

v4-6 — We behold the perfection of the Rock …

We confront the corruption of those who forsake him

And, we consider the foolishness of forgetting the God who made us.

My Hope for this Series

That we would not only learn truths and have our faith strengthed:

I pray that the poetry of these images will stay with us in weeks to come …

… and will challenge us to recall, and to press into our imaginations, the reality the Lord is teaching us

… as we encounter such tangible and frequent reminders as rain and grass.

Appreciate the images, enjoy the poetry, call them to mind in the frequent rains of this summer.

Brothers and sisters, it should not be difficult for us to see our own story in the story of the people of Israel.

Let us give ear to the Word of the Lord in the Song of Moses.

PRAY

5:00

Remember v3?

Here in v4 Moses begins to recount the greatness of the name of the Lord.

THE ROCK

Read v4.

His work is perfect.

His ways are justice.

The Perfection of the Rock

First, the rock is perfect.

Psalm 18:30 ESV

This God—his way is perfect; the word of the Lord proves true; he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.

The image of the rock can mean a number of things.

Notice how the psalmist connects the images together.

The rock is perfect and secure; solid and true.

And, the Lord is a shield and refuge.

The Justice of the Rock

his ways are justice

It isn’t that his ways are judged as just by some external standard as might be intimated by the translation, “all his ways are just.”

It is that his ways are what justice actually is.

It is not that the ways of the Lord happen to have the attribute of justice.

It is that if you want to know what justice is, consider the ways of the Lord.

He is the extremity of justice, perfect and complete in its fullness.

I think this is important because we tend to fill our imaginations with our own conceptions of justice …

… and the common cultural assumptions around us.

And then we will assess the work and ways of the Lord by our standard.

But, in reality, we are to fill our imaginations with the way of the Lord.

We are to inform and transform our understanding of reality by remembering the greatness of our God and considering his ways.

That is more than just a slight tweak on our presumptions.

It is a paradigm shift.

We begin with the Lord and transform our imaginations.

We do not begin with our imaginations and stand in judgement over the ways of our God.

Just one example: We have a cultural presumption of justice as fairness.

If one child gets a gift that costs about $30, the other child should get a gift that costs about the same.

But Jesus himself reveals the error of this conception of justice …

… by including generosity under the banner of justice.

If an employer is faithful to pay the full, agreed upon wage for a days work …

… he is not unjust to give a full day’s wage to another employee who works only half the day.

He is not unjust, but generous.

But neither should the laborer who worked the full day presume that if he would just work a half day that he also would receive the same generosity.

The bonus was a gift, not a wage.

But this rubs up against our cultural presumption of fairness as justice, rather than affording to justice the possibility of generosity.

Can you see how this could begin to challenge our assumptions?

I want you to shape and develop a biblical imagination, but a series of cultural assumptions.

His ways ARE justice.

12:00

This is a metaphor rooted in the experience of God’s provision in the wilderness.

The Rock in the Wilderness

Remember, this is the Song of Moses.

The people are finally at the end of their wilderness wanderings, and one of the most vivid memories is when the Lord provided water from the rock.

Exodus 17:6 ESV

Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.” And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel.

What does Moses mean by reminding the people that the Lord is the rock?

The Lord isn’t going to call his people out to the wilderness to worship him and not provide for them in every way.

He is perfect and his ways are justice.

He is a shield and a refuge.

Will they trust him?

14:00

The rock is a core image for the people’s relationship with the Lord.

God’s faithfulness is core to the identity of Israel

… their very being and existence as a people is solely because God is faithful.

We’ll come back to that in a moment, but …

I’ve always found 2 Timothy 2:11-13 interesting: There is this proverb …

2 Timothy 2:11–13 ESV

The saying is trustworthy, for: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself.

That last phrase, it sure feels like the flow of the proverb would have it say:

If we are faithless, he also will not be faithful to us.

But, God is who he is.

He isn’t just because of some outside, constraining standard of justice and perfection.

He is faithful and just because he is God.

That is what he is.

The Rock is faithful. Our God is faithful.

17:30

The Rock was Christ

1 Corinthians 10:1–4 ESV

For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.

Do we want the ultimate image of perfection and justice …

… of faithfulness and provision?

This image is Jesus.

If the Lord Jesus, our Rock, would fill our imaginations, we will know perfection and justice.

As Johnathan Edwards has put it, Jesus is the admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies.

He is the beautiful coming together of all the greatness of our God—in that one God-man Jesus Christ.

19:00

What follows in v5 is in contrast to the perfection and justice of the Rock.

THE CORRUPT

Not mere moral corruption

It is not merely that they are morally corrupt.

It is not a mere personally, individual moral deficiency.

The passage is saying that their corruption is in relation to the Lord himself.

They have dealt corruptly with him.

Their corruption is relational and covenantal.

It’s not just sinning, but forsaking their identity as children of the faithful God.

21:00

Patterns of Israelite Corruption

There is a clear pattern of corruption that runs through the account of the Israelites in the wilderness.

Examples in OT

Golden calf (Exodus 32)

Exodus 32:1 ESV

Up, make us gods who shall go before us.

Grumbling (Exodus 16, Numbers 11)

Exodus 16:3 ESV

Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.

How corrupt! They are comparing favorably their treatment at the hands of their slave masters, up against the provision of the Lord their Redeemer!

Do you see why Moses says, “They have dealt corruptly with him!”

Korah’s rebellion against the Lord’s anointed, Moses and Aaron (Numbers 16)

Spies (Numbers 13–14)

Numbers 14:2–3 ESV

Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! Why is the Lord bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?

So, they dealt corruptly with the Lord’s promise that they would enter the land, take possession of it and flourish there.

Baal of Peor (Numbers 25)

And then you have their idolatry. Particularly with the baal goods in Moab, where …

Numbers 25:2 ESV

[the peoples of Moab] invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods.

Each time the corruption is not so much a personal moral failure as a failure of faith—to trust in the instructions and provision of the Lord.

26:00

Warnings From Israelite Corruption

Now, the New Testament takes up this account of Israel’s corruption as a warning to the church in our relation with our Rock, the Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 10:6–12 ESV

Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not be idolaters as some of them were; … We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.

Do you hear that? They were written for our instruction.

This song is a record of that story that WE would be instructed.

We need to learn this song that we would be warned of our own inclination to corruption.

Hebrews 3:7–19 ESV

Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, … Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways.’ … Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. … As it is said, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? … So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

The warning of 1 Corinthians and Hebrews is so helpful.

The warning is not merely against personal moral error …

… but against unbelief.

The concern is not that we would show ourselves to be good and not corrupt.

The concern is that we would show that the Lord is perfect and just and so worthy of our faith.

30:00

Read v5b

Crooked and Twisted Generation

Generation is an important word because it is indicative of procreation.

The term “generation” carries more than a chronological sense—it denotes a shared moral/spiritual identity.

How could these people possibly have come from the Rock whose ways are justice if they themselves are crooked and twisted?

How could they be a generation that comes from the Lord?

No, they are not his children.

Wait! If they are no longer his children, what are they?

What is this people if they are not the people of God?

They lose their very essence.

They are a people who are called by the name of the Lord.

What are they if they deny the Lord who has called them?

We will consider the senseless folly of abandoning the Lord in a moment.

Jesus uses the same language

Luke 9:41 ESV

Jesus answered, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you and bear with you?”

And Paul in his sermon in Acts 2.

Acts 2:40 ESV

And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.”

How do they save themselves?

By personal, individual self-righteousness?

No! By a call to repent and believe.

Yes, turn from your crooked ways, but turn to the Lord in faith.

33:00

Now, we come to the root of Moses’ argument in these verses of his song.

THE FOOLISHNESS OF CORRUPTION

Read v6.

What is the result of corruption?

What is the end of those who are a crooked and twisted generation who do no longer have faith in the Rock?

Forgetting Who We Are

Remember, it is the faithfulness of the Rock that made this people a people.

It was the Lord who found Abram with no heritage or descendants.

The Lord named him and blessed him and multiplied him.

It was the Lord who found the children Israel in Egypt (the great nation descended from Abraham by grace).

The Lord called them to himself and made them a people who belong to him.

It is the Lord who redeemed them out of the land of Egypt to himself.

This is what they are!

They are not a merely a people.

They are a people who belong to the Lord.

There is no meaning or existence to Abraham or Israel apart from their belonging to the Lord their God …

… their father who created them—made and established them.

Their forgetfulness is folly and senseless …

… not only because it is morally evil

… but because they are forgetting who they are!

37:00

When we do not live in light of the reality of God our maker and sustainer—when we fail to give thanks to him, to worship him—we become fools.

Read v7 again.

Moses is simply pointing out the wicked mismatch.

The Same Pattern in Creation

Romans 1:21 ESV

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

We ARE worshipers by nature and design.

When we become something less than those who give thanks to God our maker and provider …

… we become less than what we are

… we become less than human.

What does it mean to be an Israelite?

It means to be one who was called out by God to worship his name under the banner of his gracious provision.

To fail at this is to become corrupt, crooked and twisted.

What does it mean to be human?

It means to know the Lord God our eternal and divine maker and sustainer.

And to give thanks to him for his gracious provision.

To fail at this is to become corrupt, crooked and twisted.

Now, what does it mean to be a Christian?

It is to know Jesus Christ, our Redeemer and Lord, and to walk by faith in the way of his salvation.

To begin in Christ but to continue in some other way is to become to be not a people, no longer his children.

The Lord Jesus is our name. He is our Rock.

His greatness and our provision.

40:00

Gospel Faithfulness

1 Thessalonians 5:23–24 ESV

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.

Who is faithful? We are not!

We are prone to wander.

But as we will see in this song, with this corrupt, crooked and twisted generation …

… the Lord remains faithful to them on account of his own name.

They will come to know the grace of his perfect salvation.

Hebrews 10:23 ESV

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

We hold fast, not because we are morally perfect, holy in our own faithfulness.

We hold fast, because he who promised is faithful.

42:00

APPLY

Recapitulate the Main Idea

God, the faithful and perfect Rock, defines the identity of his people—but when they forget his, they forsake their identity and become foolish.

Right worship and remembrance are not optional; they are essential to being truly human and truly the Lord's people.

The scriptures use the account of Israelite corruption as a warning for the church.

We are a people formed by our Father in heaven, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is truly a corruption to wander in any way from faith in the Lord’s provision.

…

Next Week = the emotional movement from v5 to v6 to v7

From accusation — You are corrupt, crooked and twisted.

To gutteral reality — What folly to forget their God who made them, establishes them, is the core identity of what it means ot be a people!

A call to remember — Remember the days of old, the days of the Lord’s loving provision.

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