All right, well, last Sunday I preached on Moses the Deliverer. Moses was the servant of God, you know, who led the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. They had been there for 430 years, as predicted by the Lord to Abraham in Genesis chapter 15. But in Exodus 14.30, it says, so the Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians. And Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Thus Israel saw the great work which the Lord had done in Egypt. Notice what it says. So the people feared the Lord and believed the Lord and his servant Moses. In Exodus chapter 15, you have a song of Moses in praise of that great deliverance, Moses and Miriam. And it says in Exodus 15 that Moses and the children of Israel sang this song to the Lord and spoke saying, I will sing to the Lord. And it was a song of rejoicing. But in Deuteronomy chapter 32, we find another song of Moses. Pen before he dies. In Deuteronomy 33, he will give his blessings. And in chapter 40, or chapter 34, God shows him the land of Israel, which he was not permitted to enter, but God shows him that land from Mount Nebo in Moab. And here's just a little picture, you know, of Moses. That's not really Moses, but of looking into the land. So you can let your imagination go with that. It says in Deuteronomy 34.5, so Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord. We don't know where he was buried, down in the valley somewhere. God buried him. But Mount Nebo in the territory of Moab was in the country of Jordan. And this is the national park that's there. And there's a little monument there, Mount Nebo, Memorial of Moses, a Christian holy place. He's not buried right there. We don't know where he was buried, as I said. But Joshua, the successor to Moses, helped Moses in the recitation of this song. It says later on in this chapter, verse 44. I don't know if you've ever taken the time to read it line by line. It's a sad song. It's depressing in many ways. It's dark. And it would utterly bring you down were it not for the goodness and the mercy of God. that shines through in it, and the ultimate provision of His grace in the atonement of Jesus Christ. But it begins, if you have your Bible, in Deuteronomy 32, verse one, give ear, O heavens, and I will speak. And hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. So Moses is calling heaven and earth to witness what he is going to say. And then he says, let my teaching, in the literal translation of that is that which is received. Who did he receive it from? God. So this is indicating this is divinely inspired. Let my teaching drop as the rain, my speech distill as the dew. But draw your attention again to those words, give ear, oh heavens, and I will speak O earth, the words of my mouth." Back in earlier in Deuteronomy 4.26, you find the same thing. Moses writes, I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that you will soon utterly perish from the land which you cross over the Jordan to possess. You will not prolong your days in it, but you will be utterly destroyed. Well, the major theme of this song, Deuteronomy 32, is God's covenant faithfulness. 2 Timothy 2.13 says, if we are faithless, he what? He remains what? Faithful. He cannot deny himself. He cannot deny the word that he has spoken. So Trent Rogers says, the song functions as a testimony against the people. By recounting and predicting Yahweh's faithfulness, and the people's faithlessness. And you see that stark contrast in this song. God's faithfulness and the people's faithlessness. You know, back in Exodus chapter 34, it says, the Lord descended in the cloud over the mount where Moses received the commandments and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord God, and that's literally Jehovah, Jehovah El, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but by no means clearing the guilty. visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generations. Sin has major repercussions. But in that text, in Exodus 34, when the Lord descended and passed by Moses, God spoke of his attributes. And he let him know that he is Jehovah, Jehovah El, the strong covenant keeping God. And that's what those words signify. So here in Deuteronomy 32, Moses ascribes greatness and perfection to God, even in the light of Israel's persistent rebellion. Verse three, for I proclaim the name of Jehovah. Ascribe greatness to our God. He is the rock. His work is perfect, for all His ways are justice, a God of truth and without injustice. Righteous and upright is He. Everything He does is right. Everything. So verse four is the first time in this song that he refers to God as the rock. Deuteronomy 32.4. He is the rock. His work is perfect. We read about the rock that followed them in our scripture reading this morning. in the wilderness, and that rock was Christ. James Smith says there are two rocks mentioned here. One represents the gods of the heathen in this text, or the false foundations on which sin blinded men and built their vain hopes. You'll find that in verse 37. The other in this text speaks of Christ as our strong, unchanging Savior, the strong covenant-keeping God who cannot lie. You know, when Moses went up on the mountain, you remember the scene? He asked God to see the glory. He wanted to see the Lord. He wanted to see his glory on the mountain. And God promised that his glory would pass over Moses. But because Moses was a sinful creature like all of us. He could not look upon the face of God and live. So God sheltered Moses there on the mount. in a cleft, in a rock, in order to protect him from death, from seeing the fullness of God's glory. And the same God who shelters us in the storms of life is the one who has, through Christ, sheltered us from his own wrath. Rock of ages, right? Cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee. Let the water and the blood from thy wounded side which flowed be of sin the double cure. Save from wrath and make me pure. Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling. Naked come to thee for dress, helpless look to thee for grace. Foul I to the fountain fly. Wash me, Savior, or I die. It's true of all men, right? You're either washed in the blood of Christ and you have your sins completely forgiven, or you will die, what the Bible calls the second death, the eternal death. In verse 15, you have the rock of salvation. In verse 18, speaks of the rock that begat them or fathered them. Psalm 92.13 says, those that be planted in the house of the Lord will flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age. They shall be fat and flourishing to show that the Lord is upright. He is my rock. And there is no unrighteousness in him. The question is, is he your rock? Is he your rock? Isaiah 26.4 says, trust ye in the Lord forever, for in the Lord, Jehovah is everlasting strength. That word strength, though, is translated, I believe, correctly in the New American Standard and some of the other versions, because it reads this way. Trust in the Lord forever, for in God the Lord, we have an everlasting rock. King James said everlasting strength, but a better word is rock. We have an everlasting rock, a rock that can't be moved. Then we go on here and we're not gonna go line by line, but in verses seven through 14, God called them and provided for them in the wilderness. And this really is a call to remembrance. And that's what it begins with that word in verse seven, remember, this table is the table of remembrance. Remember the days of old. Consider the years of many generations. Ask thy father, and he will show thee thy elders, and they will tell you. When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. For the Lord's portion is his people. Jacob, that's Israel, is the lot of his inheritance. He found him in a desert land and in the waste howling wilderness. He led him about, he instructed him, and then he says he kept them as the apple of his eye. The apple of the eye, I wrote a blog article on this a while ago, the apple of the eye is the pupil of thy, and it's very delicate and sensitive to any movement in its direction. It is the opening at the center of the iris through which light passes through. and the eye will shut instantly to keep it from harm, to protect it, because it is so indispensable. The pupil imagery, the apple imagery that he uses here, represents something that is cherished and protected. So when it says that Israel is the apple of his eye, it's saying that God cherishes them and protects them. And when we speak of someone as the apple of our eye, we are speaking of someone who is very dear to us. Hundreds of years later, a sentiment was uttered again by the prophet Zechariah, who said in Zechariah 2a, for he that touches you touches the apple of my eye. All the nations of the world that have touched Israel, go down through history, have tried to touch the apple of God's eye. And they all have fallen, just like a moss will fall. They were the apple of his eye. Had they walked with God, nobody would harm them. But they chose to harm themselves. Sin is such a delusion, isn't it? People harm themselves by their sin. Deuteronomy 32.5 says, they have corrupted, the Hebrew word shakath means ruined or destroyed themselves. They have destroyed themselves. They are not His children because of their blemish. That word means moral stain. You know, one thing you know about stains, if you get a stain in a fabric, if you don't take it out quickly, it'll settle in and it's almost impossible to get out. And this was their sin. It was just impossible to get out because it had set so long in them. God calls them a perverse and crooked generation. They're out of place. They're no longer upright. They're twisted. And beginning in the next few verses, in verse 16, you go down, the Lord predicts Israel's apostasy and judgment. He says, The Lord said to Moses in verse 16, Behold, you will rest with your fathers, and this people will rise and play the harlot with the gods of the foreigners of the land, where they go to be among them. They will forsake me and break my covenant, which I have made with them. That was the covenant that he made with Israel through Moses, the mediator on the mount. The Mosaic covenant, we call it. Deuteronomy 31.29, God said, Moses said, know that after my death, you will become utterly corrupt and turn aside from the way which I commanded you. And evil will befall you in the latter days because you will do evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger through the works of your hands, through your constant disobedience. And not only did Moses predict this, his successor Joshua also wrote about Israel's corruption. Joshua chapter 23 verse 16 says, when you have transgressed the covenant of the Lord your God, which he commanded you and have gone and served other gods and bowed down to them, the anger of the Lord will burn against you. You will perish quickly from the good land, which he has given you. And then he says something astounding in Joshua 24, 16. The people answered and said, far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods. Even though Moses said, this is exactly what you're going to do. And now Joshua says it. They said, far be it from us. We're not going to do that. We're not gonna go serve the gods of the land. For the Lord our God is he who brought us out of, and our fathers out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage who did those great signs in our sight and preserved us in the way that we met among all the people from whom we passed. So that we're strong. We're trusting God. We're not gonna turn aside. We know what God did. We saw what he did. Listen, that wasn't enough. Seeing the miracles that God did wasn't enough. Some people say, well, if only I saw God, I'd believe. No, you wouldn't. No, you wouldn't. Jewish history has proven that they could not stay faithful to God, even after he did all these great things to them. In Exodus 32, when they were up on the mountain, Moses, the lady coming down, what did they do? They made a golden calf. And they said, this is your God, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt. And as a result of their continued disobedience in the wilderness for 40 years, no one over the age of 20, except Joshua and Caleb, would enter the promised land. Hebrews 3.10, I was angry with that generation. And I said, they always go straight in their heart. And they have not known my ways. So I swore in my wrath, they will not enter into my rest." That was to be the rest that God would provide for them in the promised land. It's typical of salvation. Hosea 13.9 says, Oh Israel, you are destroyed. In real correct translation, Oh Israel, you have destroyed thyself. but your help is from me or in me. So it doesn't matter how far a person has fallen in the path of self-destruction, their hope, their only hope is in God. Isaiah 1.4, ah, sinful nation. A people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corruptors. They have forsaken the Lord. They have provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger. They have gone away backward." That means they were sinning openly. They're going in the opposite direction that God told them to go. And in verses 15 through 18, you see that defiance as they turned away from the Lord and they committed unthinkable abominations. Look in verse 15, but Yeshurun, this is another name for Israel, Yeshurun. And it really means the upright one. What Israel was called to be upright, So Yeshua is terminology for Israel in its ideal state, believing God. You grew fat and kicked. All the blessings turned into curses. You grew fat, you grew thick, you are obese. Then he forsook God who made him, this is Israel, and scornfully esteemed the rock of his salvation. They provoked him to jealousy with foreign gods. With abominations, they provoked him to anger. Listen, look what it says. The unimaginable. They sacrificed to demons, not to God. Not just sacrifices from the field, or calves and lambs. They sacrificed their children to demons. Judges 3.6. Well, actually, let me look, Deuteronomy 12.29. When the Lord your God cuts off from you before the nations which you go to dispossess and you displace them and dwell in the land, take heed to yourself that you are not ensnared to follow them after they are destroyed from before you and that you do not inquire after their God saying, how did these nations serve their gods? I also will do likewise. So don't go into the land and follow their ways. their perversions. You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way. For every abomination to the Lord, which he hates, they have done to their gods." He's speaking about the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, all these people. For they have burnt their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods. And God is saying, when you go there, Don't you do that with your children. Judges 3.6, Thus the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, the Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, and they took their daughters to be their wives. They intermarried and gave their daughters to their sons, and they served their gods. Those false gods. So the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord. They forgot their God and they served Baal and Asherah. They served Baal and Asherah. Psalm 106.36, they served their idols, which became a snare to them. They even sacrificed their sons and daughters to demons. And they shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan. I said, it's dark. It's very dark. And the land was polluted with blood, the blood of the innocent. Tye Jones says, we don't hate sin, so we don't understand what happened to the Canaanites. We don't hate sin as much as God hates sin, so we question, well, why did God tell him to go in there and wipe all these people out, all of them? because they were incurably wicked. They would offer their children to Molech and Baal. Molech was the Canaanite underworld deity, represented as an upright bull-headed idol with a human body in whose belly a fire was stoked, and in whose outstretched arms a child was placed to be burned to death. And it was not just infants. Children as old as four were sacrificed. I saw, and I just caught a glimpse of it. I didn't even want to read it. In Cosmopolitan magazine, that uppity magazine for women, they had a story in there about a woman having an abortion in a place dedicated to Satan. and going through a satanic ritual in aborting her child. Horrible, isn't it? To think about it. That's what the Canaanites did. Leviticus 21, then the Lord spoke to Moses saying again, You shall say to the children of Israel, whoever of the children of Israel or of the strangers who dwell in Israel who gives any of his descendants to Molech, he will utterly be put to death. The people of the land will stone him with stones. Jeremiah 19.5, they have forsaken me and made this an alien place because they have burned incense to other gods who neither they, their fathers, nor the kings of Judah have known. And they have filled this place with the blood of innocents, the innocent ones. They have built high places to bale, to burn their sons with fire for offerings to bale, which I did command or speak, nor did it ever enter my mind. It's not that God didn't know it. Who could ever conceive of anybody doing such a thing? 1 Kings 14, or 11.4, Solomon, right? The golden age of Israel. Solomon, so filled with wisdom. The magnificent one that he was called. When he was old, his wives turned his heart after other gods. And his heart was not loyal to the Lord his God, as was the heart of his father David. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom. You know who Milcom is? It's an alternate name for Molech. He went after women who worshiped Molech. The abomination of the Ammonites. Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord and did not fully follow the Lord as his father David. Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh. The abomination of Moab on the hill that is the east of Jerusalem. And he built a high place for Molech. the abomination of the people of Ammon, and did likewise for all his foreign wives. They burned incense." And guess what his wives did? They sacrificed to their gods. They sacrificed their children to their gods. So no wonder God says, I'm going to bring trouble after trouble upon you. Calamity after calamity. Judgment upon judgment will follow you. Verse 22, for fire is kingled in my anger and will burn to the lowest hell. That's the greatest depth. It will consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains. I will heap disasters on them. I will spend my arrows on them. They will be wasted with hunger, devoured by pestilence and bitter destruction." Not a pretty picture. Not a great prediction. But sin brings utter destruction, does it not? So God says in Deuteronomy 32, 35, Vengeance is mine. and recompense. Their foot shall slip in due time. Jonathan Edwards, the revivalist, preached what was regarded as one of the most influential sermons ever preached. Thinners in the hands of an angry God, And his text was Deuteronomy 32, 35. Their foot shall slip in due time. Sinners can go about their way, doing all these things that they do, contrary to God's word. Thinking they're invincible and there is no payday. coming. But God says their foot will slip in due time. What is he saying? The time of their judgment is in my hands. And they will slip. And they will fall into perdition, into judgment. Yet we see here in verses 36 and onward that God will intervene on behalf of Israel. And He has many times in their history. And He promised ultimate victory over their enemies. It says in verse 36, for the Lord will judge His people and have compassion on His servants. Did they deserve it? No. Did we deserve compassion? No. He will have compassion on his servant when he sees that their power is gone. Boy, how many times in the history of Israel have had their backs up against the wall and their power was gone. No power literally to survive except by the mighty hand of God. Stephen Cole says, God wanted Israel to remember and sing Deuteronomy 32 down through their generations. But it may have been a song that Israel wished they could forget. You've had songs that get into your head and you can't get them out until they just about drive you crazy. Like the Christmas songs do for Josh. He says, we don't know the tune of Moses' song, but God wanted it to stay in their head forever. He wanted them to remember and never forget what he had told them would happen if they continued on the path of their rebellion against him. The land and the people of Israel is the history of warfare. They're at war today. They face their greatest wars in the future. Egypt coming. Jerusalem. What does that mean? City of peace. where God put his name. During its long history, Jerusalem, City of Peace, has been attacked 52 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, besieged 23 times, and destroyed twice. City of Peace, brothers and sisters, not until the Prince of Peace, comes to Jerusalem. Will they know real peace? When archaeologists first began excavating the city of Jerusalem, they were surprised to discover layer after layer after layer of rubble, indicating that parts of Jerusalem had been destroyed according to their findings, at least 40 times. Because archaeologists, when they look at ancient mounds, which they call tells, because when one city would be destroyed, They would come and they would rebuild on that city, and the mound would get higher, the till would get higher, and they would build and build and build, and they'd go down and they tried to discover these burn layers, because most of these cities were burned to the ground. 40 layers of destruction they found. The layers of rubble in some places in Jerusalem were 60 feet deep. And remember, things collapse downward, right? So that 60 represents a lot more than 60. Bleak song, but here's the good news. Deuteronomy 32, 43. Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people, for he will avenge the blood of his servants and render vengeance to his adversaries. He will provide atonement for his land. and his people." I think that King James says, he will be merciful to his land and his people. But the word is the Hebrew word kaphar, which you get the word covering from. It means to expiate. It means to cleanse. It means to forgive. And it means to be merciful. So there's nothing really wrong with that translation. But I think the better translation, again, is he will provide atonement for whose land? His land. Whose people? His people. Make no mistake about it. When people come against Israel, when they come against the Jewish people, because God chose them to be the people from whom he would bring the Messiah to bless all the world, they're coming against the apple of his eye. and God will defend them, and ultimately God is going to provide atonement for his land and his people. Leviticus 16, kathar, same word for atonement, is used repeatedly. On the day of atonement. The day of atonement came when Jesus was crucified on the cross. He presented himself to Israel as their Messiah and they rejected him. Now, what did he say prior to this? Because you did not recognize the day of your visitation. Because you did not recognize the time when Messiah would come to you to die for your sins. This great temple that Herod built, this magnificent temple that took 40 years to build, will fall. And there will not be left one stone standing upon another. And you can go to Israel and you can see the rubbles in some places still standing or still there lying on the ground. And the only remaining part of the temple mount was the Western Wall, which was really a foundation, regarded as the foundational part of the temple. But all the temple complex itself fell, just as Jesus predicted, because they didn't recognize the day of their visitation. The Romans came and just utterly massacred the people, and that didn't end it. In 132, there was another slaughter by the Romans, and then they were dispersed all over the world. We'll pick up some of the things as we go forward with this, not to highlight the downside of Israel's history, but to highlight the downside of sin, but also the upside of what God has done for them and continues to do for them, and will do for them. So pray for the peace of Jerusalem and pray that the people of Jerusalem, the nation of Israel, would come to know the Prince of Peace, the Messiah, the Lord Jesus. Father, thank you for this time together. Open up our eyes, Lord, to continue to see things that you have promised They come to pass exactly as you said they would. We'll give you the praise, the honor, and the glory for all that you will do and accomplish in Jesus' name, amen.