All right, let's get going, shall we? Let's pray. Father, thank you for being able to come together and just enjoy each other's company. And thank you for the love that you've given us for each other. I just pray that that would continue, that we would actually work at it, Lord. work at loving each other and caring for each other. It's very important, and especially in troubling times, as we see the day approaching, we want to be sure that we are Christ-like and that when others come and see us, they know that we love each other. That's very important. Bless this time, I pray now, in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, continuing on in Deuteronomy, we're in the middle of Moses' second address. We're in chapter 17 tonight, Deuteronomy 17. And we'll pick up at verse five. It's chapter, starting in verse, it starts about forbidden forms of worship and then regarding worshiping other gods or foreign gods, that type of thing, in verse five of chapter 17. You shall bring out to your gates the man or the woman who has done this evil, worshiping a foreign god or other god. You shall stone that man or that woman to death with stones. On the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses, the one who is to die shall be put to death. A person shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness. A little more on this when we get down to chapter 19. But just this idea that this is very important, it needs to be done, but there need to be multiple witnesses to make sure that this is a certain thing. It has to do with deterrence too. We'll talk about that just a little bit more later on. Verse eight, legal decisions by the priests and the judges, and we kind of went over this earlier, but if any case arises requiring a decision, between one kind of homicide and another kind, this is very important, you know, not just your little minor scuffles between people or little legal issues, but this has to do with homicide, one kind or a legal right or another, a kind of an assault of another, a case within your towns that is too difficult for you, then you shall rise and go up to the place that the Lord your God will choose. Again, the Lord will choose where the Israelites will worship, and as in this verse, where difficult cases are, that's where they'll be judged, a central place of worship and eventually a central place of judgment, okay? And when I say eventually, I mean the Millennial Kingdom, okay? Interestingly, too, here, the Lord's kind of giving him, you shall arise and go up to the place that I shall choose. Jerusalem's always referred to as up because it is at a higher elevation than a lot of Israel. But as we saw before, they worship in four or five different places before they settle on Jerusalem. And of course, that comes in David's time. David captures from the Jebusites and establishes his throne there. And that ends up being the capital of Israel. and worship center of Israel. Regarding this, let's turn over to John 4, about where to worship. John 4, 20, this is the woman at the well. And this is in Shechem, and I've pointed that out to you in the past. Okay. Shechem's right here. It's between Mount Ebel and Mount Gerizim. They're probably closer than what that shows on the map. But the woman at the well took place at Shechem is what we believe. Okay. And it's Mount Gerizim. This is a satellite view from today. It's called the ballast today. It's under Palestinian control, but it's in Israel. Okay, and They're in the north and can I move that down you see Mount Ebel I put it in the center there you kind of see that and Then Mount Gerizim is here. You can see that in the green. Okay. There's a Samaritan Museum there Okay, kind of interesting Down in the bottom, in the lowland, I guess, Joseph's tomb, and it didn't show up on this map, but right near Joseph's tomb is Jacob's well, which you can go to still today and see those things, okay? So you got Ebel to the north, up above Mount Gerizim to the south, and then the town down in the valley, okay? And that's where we are here in John 4, 20, where we have Jesus and the woman at the well. And she says, our fathers, I'm in verse 20, 420. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and she says, and that's Gerizim, she's referring to there in the south. But you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship. Now, of course, we're, you know, 1,400 years later, okay, or yeah, about 1,400 years later. Jesus said to her, woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. Now, why did they worship on Mount Gerizim? These are kind of like half-breed Jews. They had been captured by Assyria, and they'd come back, and they had been intermarried and stuff, and they didn't want to go up to Jerusalem. Okay, and they chose Mount Gerizim, I presume because that was the mountain that the blessings were given from, okay? That's just kind of a guess, but who wants to go on the cursing mountain, right? You know, be on the blessing mountain. But I don't know that that's why they chose it, but they did, okay? And this is where she says, you know, this is where we worship, but you say, you know, you need to worship in Jerusalem. And the Lord sets her straight on this, He says in 22, you worship where you do not know. There's no truth behind what you're doing. We worship what we know. for salvation is from the Jews, okay? We worship at Jerusalem because the Lord has told us he's going to find a place for us over and over and over again. I've kind of been stressing that as we're going through Deuteronomy, to the place that the Lord your God will choose, okay, which ends up being Jerusalem. Okay, so he's just telling her, we're worth worshiping in truth and you're not. You've decided to worship there maybe because it's the blessings or for whatever reason, but you're not worshiping rightfully, okay? I guess you could put it that way. Verse 23, but the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. It doesn't really matter where you worship, it's that you are doing it in the spirit and truth of the Lord, okay? For the Father is seeking such people to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth. The woman said to him, I know the Messiah is coming. He was called Christ. And when he comes, she had this right, he will tell us all things. Okay. Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he. Okay. Now, just for fun, let's turn over to Zechariah 14. And we're going to the future here. Zechariah 14, 16, okay, and this is speaking about the Lord's Day in this chapter, and then it moves on past the Lord's Day. No, it wouldn't be past the Lord's Day. The Lord's Day really encompasses, I like to think of it as 1,007 years, okay? It encompasses the millennium, and it encompasses the tribulation. So you get seven years here, and 1,000 years, 1,007 years. I actually heard another guy say that. It made me feel good. Zechariah 14, 16, then everyone who survives, and we're talking about the tribulation, okay, of all the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feasts of booths. And if any of the families of earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, there will be no rain on them. Okay, so there's coming a time when the Lord is going to have us all go up and worship in Jerusalem for that thousand years, okay? Or we don't get any rain, okay? Kind of fascinating just to think about that. All right, back to Deuteronomy. Laws concerning Israel's kings, chapter 17, verse 14. 1714 when you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you and you possess it and he keeps telling them that you need to possess it and you dwell in it and you say I will set a king over me like all the nations that are around me and Don't we like to be like everyone else? You know and even when we're little kids going to school we want to have the same jeans and the same tennis shoes as all the other kids and I mean, that's what we experienced. I think, I mean, I remember our boys coming home and saying, how come we don't have, you know, everyone wants the same pair of Nikes, I guess. But it starts at a young age, we want to fit in and be like everyone else. And, you know, as a Christian, we're gonna come out from among them, we're not necessarily gonna be like everyone else. It's a different row to hoe. Something to think about, but it's something that our nature tends towards. Verse 15, you may indeed set a king over you, whom the Lord your God will choose, one from among your brothers, you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you. Wow, that's a novel thought. That didn't happen last week. Who is not your brother? only he must not acquire or multiply, depending on your translation, many horses for himself, or cause the people of earth, I'm sorry, cause the people to return to Egypt, in order to acquire many horses, since the Lord has said to you, you shall never return that way again." And again, you remember Egypt is often a picture of sin, okay? Don't go there again. 17, and he, the king, shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire or multiply for himself excessive silver and gold. And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law approved by the Levitical priests. So remember I had my little book here, a book of standards for the brand new aircraft mechanic, and we're all supposed to get this because this is what we call the standard aircraft handbook, and it's got all kinds of fancy information in there. he was supposed to write for himself a copy of the law. Each king was supposed to do this. And he had his own copy of the law to refer to, to know how to govern the people. And this is where that's expressed, is right here in verse 18. MacArthur has this to say. He says, multiply, multiply, multiply, or acquire, acquire, acquire. Restrictions were placed on the king. He must not acquire many horses, he must not take multiple wives, and he must not accumulate much silver or gold. The king was not to rely on his military strength, okay, the horses, he was not to rely on his military strength, horses, he's not to rely on political alliances, wives, that's where they came from, a lot of those wives were political alliances, okay, And then he's not to rely on his wealth, silver and gold, for his position and authority. He was to look to the Lord. Solomon, this is MacArthur's tale, Solomon violated all those prohibitions, while his father David violated the last two. And Solomon's wives brought idolatry into Jerusalem, and of course this resulted in the kingdom being divided. All right, chapter 18. Provisions for the priests and the Levites. The Levitical priests, I'm in verse one, all the tribe of Levi shall have no portion or inheritance with Israel. They shall eat the Lord's food, offerings as their inheritance. They shall have no inheritance among their brothers. The Lord is their inheritance as He promised them. And I should have put my picture back up again of all the tribal allotments, but you won't find Levi in those tribal allotments. They had their own towns, and they were to receive the offerings that were presented to the Lord, the food offerings, that was their portion. Verse 9 in chapter 18, abominable practices. When you come into the land that the Lord your God has given you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering. This was Moloch would demand that, or they, that was the priesthood of Moloch, I guess you could say, demanded that, and they would do horrible things, burning their infants. Anyone who practices divination, or tells fortunes, or interprets omens, or is a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a medium, or a necromancer, that's one who calls up the dead, or one who inquires of the dead, whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations, the Lord your God is driving them out before you. Okay. We do a lot of these same things in our society today. Okay. I mean, we get to our kids at, we don't burn them with molach, but we abort them. That's just a national thing that we do. It's considered legal, basically, in our country. We've got right to die laws. Oregon's kind of led the way, it seems like, on some of that. There's about a dozen states, I think, that have that right to die law. Canada now has the maid. Medical assistance in dying, okay, that's become real popular. And so we get them as infants and we get them as the aged, you know, they're not what we want, so we just get rid of them. Horoscopes, fortune tellers, Ouija boards, on and on. We have apps that cover all those things. You can find apps that will help you with all those things if you want. It's very prevalent in our society. I'm reading a book about Joseph Smith. This describes him completely. Really? He was into that stuff? Oh, so much. Really? Yeah. I thought it was just women. More than that, huh? No, it was the idolatry she's talking about, the Ouija boards, all the stuff he was, yeah. Really? That's interesting to know. You know, I read something recently that Mormons, you know, there was a period there where they were growing in number, and since the internet, they've slowed down a lot, because if people do any research, you can find that kind of stuff, and find out, you know, who the founding father was, and what they were about, what they were like, and it's, yeah, it's awful. It's like, you wanna follow someone who, that's, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And like Loughton says, and how do you lose golden plates? All right, thanks for that. Anyway, what's popular right now is the movie Wicked. Should we be caught up in that stuff? Should we go into that kind of stuff? I think not. We're to fill ourselves with the word of the Lord, not with that kind of stuff. So we need to consider You know, there's a great big calling card, apparently the gal in Wicked who plays the good witch is a very popular singer or something? Singer, is that right? Very Ariana, yeah, very popular with little girls, and all the little girls want to go see this. What a hook. It's terrible though, I mean, you know, we should not be, We need to protect our kids too, our grandkids, whatever. All right. 1815 speaks about a new prophet like Moses. MacArthur here points out the use of the singular pronouns emphasizing the ultimate prophet who is to come. Okay. I had to look up what a, you know, singular pronoun was, but it's the him and the he and the his, okay? I don't remember that stuff, and if I did learn it, I got an F in that class anyway, almost for sure. Maybe I got a D, but probably not. 1815, the Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brothers. It is to him you shall listen. Just as you desired the Lord your God at Horeb or at Mount Sinai on the day of the assembly when you said Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God and see this great fire Anymore lest I die remember the whole mountains on fire and the Lord was speaking out of it and it terrified him And the Lord said to me you are right and what you have spoken they asked Moses to be a mediator. He went over that last week for them Okay 18 18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you like you Moses from among their brothers and I will put my words in his mouth and he shall speak to them all that I commanded him and Whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name. I myself will require it of him or I Myself will call him into account Maybe a little easier way to understand that NIV has it. So let's turn over to Deuteronomy 34. Joshua wrote this, okay? It's the last chapter, and Moses has been up on the mountain and died, and we don't know that Joshua wrote it. We think Joshua wrote it. Let's put it that way. Someone wrote the final chapter there, kind of summing up things that Moses did and whatnot, okay? And so we'll assume it's Joshua, but... He says, and there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, okay, past tense, okay, whom the Lord knew face to face, knew intimately as we talked about last week, okay. This means that later prophets like Samuel, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, okay. None of them equaled Moses in his intimacy with our Lord or in the signs and wonders that he performed until Jesus' comes, okay? Moses was, and you see that in the New Testament, I mean, where the, I was gonna look this up, I forgot, but where they talk about, we have Moses as our father, Moses was the big, you know, that they really look back, he is the greatest, he is the greatest prophet, and they would look back to him in that way. Now let's turn over to John 1.45, okay, and we're going to look at this prophet that's going to be raised up. Just a couple verses in the New Testament here. It says, Philip found Nathanael and said to him, we have found him, of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. So this is it. This is the prophet we've been waiting for. Let's go to Acts 3.22. And this is Peter in his address on the day of Pentecost. And he's going to quote this Deuteronomy 18.18 that we just looked at that said, I will raise up for you a prophet like Moses. So Acts 3.22. And Peter telling this, he says, Moses said, the Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him and whatever he tells you. And it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people. And so, of course, we see what happened to the Jews. And then later on in 70 AD, because they rejected their Christ. They rejected this one that Moses told him was coming from their own brothers. And they had other hints, even when the wise men showed up, they knew that this guy was gonna be born in Bethlehem, and they sent him there, but they never went and checked him out themselves, okay? Then Stephen, in his address, Acts 737, just the next page over for you. And so Stephen, he says, this is the Moses who said to the Israelites, God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. So both Peter and Stephen are preaching this early on in the church when it's first getting started that, hey, you missed him, he was here. And that's who Moses talked about, okay? MacArthur, continuing on in this regard, says, both the Old Testament and the New Testament interpret this passage as a reference to the coming Messiah who, like Moses, would receive and preach divine revelation and lead His people, okay? Moses also was a type of Christ, okay, in a number of ways. He was spared death as a baby. Moses was in the bulrushes. Jesus was taken to Egypt. Both of them renounced their royal court. Moses, at 40, walked away from the royal courthouse, maybe kind of ran away from the royal courthouse of Egypt. And Jesus left heaven to become our incarnate Lord. Both had compassion for their people. You can find quite a number of verses that way. Both made intercession for their people. We've seen that numerous times, Moses praying for the people. We know our Lord's at the right hand of the Father right now making intercession for us. Both spoke to God face to face. And both were mediators of a covenant, the Sinai covenant with Moses and the New Covenant with Jesus. So we see he's a type of Christ. All right, back to Deuteronomy chapter 19. Laws concerning cities of refuge. When the Lord your God cuts off the nations whose land the Lord your God is giving you and disposes them and dwells in their cities and in their houses, you shall set apart three cities for yourself in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess. So just setting aside those cities of refuges that they could run to in case, and we talked about this, I think, last week. I probably could have just dropped it out. But on down to verse eight. If the Lord your God enlarges your territory as he has sworn to your fathers and gives you all the land that he promised to give your fathers, Provided you are careful to keep all this commandment, which I command you today, by loving the Lord your God and by walking ever in His ways, then you shall add three other cities to these three." And I just see here this theme of walking, which is real prevalent to walk or walking in the New Testament, okay? Third John 1.4, I have no greater joy than to hear my children are walking in the truth. And that's a prevalent conversation in the New Testament. Are we walking in the truth? Am I walking in the spirit? And a question to ask ourselves, am I walking in His ways? Am I walking in truth? Okay, we want to walk in truth. We see the lady from the garrison there in Shechem, you know, talking about worshiping in garrison. She wasn't worshiping in truth. It was just what they had manufactured. Okay. Joseph Smith manufactured a whole religion. The question is, is it truth? You know, and that's why we want to stay so close to scripture because, you know, God's word is truth. And we just don't manufacture stuff up out a whole cloth and run with it Jonathan mentioned purgatory this morning. Okay. Well, it's really tough to find that in Scripture, you know, it's kind of Manufactured but it makes a lot of money for the church. Okay, it really did that down through the ages So it worked really well for them if you want to build cathedrals in Europe But there's no truth there. Okay. Am I walking in his ways in his truth? Okay property boundaries next Deuteronomy 1914 you shall not move your neighbor's landmark Which the men of old have set in the inheritance that you will hold in the land that the Lord your God is given to you To possess. Okay, just a rule of thumb there, but you know, my dad bought some property up in the Hale and he bought four and a half acres and no buildings, but had the test holes dug, so it was approved for, you know, the PERC test had passed, so he had a place for a septic. Well, the neighbor had actually moved that brass marker Okay. And it wasn't where it was supposed to be. Anyway, when the dust all settled, Dad lost an acre. He lost his PERC test because the line now went right between the two holes, okay, that were dug out there. And, you know, there was nothing he could do about it. It was just, had three and a half acres. And he even called the guy he bought it from and he said, and the guy who he bought it from said, well, I've been paying taxes for four and a half, for 20 years on four and a half acres. So Amos said, too. But he didn't know anything about it either. It had happened way back. And don't move the markers. It's not right. I think this guy wanted a boat landing is what he did, but on the Nehalem. And so he moved the marker. They knew who did it, but I don't know if they proved it, but whatever. Laws concerning witnesses, Deuteronomy 19, 15. A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or three witnesses shall a charge be established. If a malicious witness arises to accuse a person of a wrongdoing, then both parties to the dispute shall appear before the Lord, before the priests, and the judges who are in office in those days. And the judges shall inquire diligently, and if the witness is a false witness, and he has accused his brother falsely, then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to your brother, okay? So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and the rest shall hear and fear, and shall never again commit any such evil among you. Your eye shall not pity, it shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. Okay, which just gets coded quite a bit. But yeah, if he had been a false witness and you were gonna wind up, you know, in prison for five years, well, if they prove he's a false witness, he goes to prison for five years, whatever, okay, you understand that. The point here I think that's important, and we'll see this multiple places, is that it's a deterrent, okay? The rest of you shall hear and fear, okay? You're gonna purge the evil from your midst. Back in the day, one of the signers of the Constitution, I guess, yeah, Benjamin Rush, he spoke against this and said he did not believe in capital punishment and that it was a deterrent. And apparently, from what little I read, he actually talked Benjamin Franklin into going along with him. and that's some of our early capital punishment laws were softened and whatnot because of people like him. But he's fighting against what the Lord says, and we see this multiple times, that this is to be done as a deterrent, and that the Lord considers that deterrence works, okay? Regardless of what man thinks, okay? Kind of interesting stuff. All right, chapter 20, laws concerning warfare. When you go out to war against your enemies and you see horses and chariots and a larger army than your own, you shall not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God is with you, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. You know, you're speaking about trusting in the Lord and that he is sovereign. The king is not to rely on his military strength, again, his horses, or his political alliances, his wives, or his wealth, his silver and gold. for his position in authority, but he was to look to the Lord. And I asked the question, where does my sense of self-reliance come from? Is it in myself or in my wealth or property or who I know, or is it in the Lord? Where does my sense of self-reliance come from? And the Lord was clearly wanting, you know, we're going up against a bigger army, he says here. You just rely on me. I'm going to take care of it. Don't worry about these other things. You don't need those other things. I'm going to take care of it. Think of Gideon. He whittled that army down to next to nothing. 300 men against, I don't remember the numbers. There were huge numbers. We need to look to the Lord. All right, exceptions to the rule for fighting men, 20 verse 5. Then the officers shall speak to the people. Now they're lined up for war, so to speak, okay? Is there any man who has built a new house and has not dedicated it? Let him go back to his house, lest he die in battle and another man dedicate it. Is there any man who has planted a vineyard and has not enjoyed the fruit? Let him go back to his house, lest he die in battle, and another man enjoy its fruit. That seems like an easy out. Man, I plant a vineyard every year. Is there any man who has betrothed a wife and not taken her? Let him go back to his house, lest he die in battle, and another man take her. And the officers shall speak further to the people and say, is there any man who is fearful and faint-hearted? Let him go back to his house, lest he make the heart of his fellows melt like his own. And that would be disturbing to see people start to run who are truly afraid. It could cause the whole army to turn. Gideon used this, applied this as well, if anyone is afraid or faint-hearted. I've heard stories of people that wound up, say, in Vietnam and stuff, and guys that were, you know, there's guys that you can see go to battle, and you can see them as a warrior. And there's other people that you think, he's best staying in the office, or whatever, you know what I mean? They're just not the warrior type. And it's just really very, very hard on them. Some people just aren't meant for that. Bible knowledge commentary, I have this to say. It says, cowardice here was reckoned to be a spiritual problem. Since there was no court-martial, the officers removed a faint-hearted soldier before he had opportunity to defect in battle and or cause other soldiers to become disheartened too. We need to remember Joshua and Caleb. we can say that they believed God, and it was counted to them as righteousness, okay? In Numbers 14, it says, they said, the Lord is with us. Remember, they went as two of the 12 to spy out the land, and they were the only ones that gave the good report, and they trusted the Lord, okay? Totally trusted the Lord. And then when we get to Numbers 32, speaking of Caleb and Joshua, it says, they have wholly followed the Lord, okay? You know, where do we look for our strength? You know, it needs to be, and so most of us don't go to battle physically, you know, but then we have other battles that we fight every day. There's things between family members and other people and maybe in the office at work. There's all kinds of battles that we fight as Christians, okay? Are we trusting the Lord for all those things, okay? Or are we looking to our wisdom or our gamesmanship in the office or, you know, any number of ways to win that battle, you know? The battle's the Lord's and we need to trust Him for those things. It's just, boy, our knees, being on our knees in prayer. But it's neat to see men like Joshua and Caleb that trusted the Lord Spoke openly. No, we can do this, you know, they were honored for that Okay, next section. I entitle it myself rules of engagement because that's really kind of what it is 20 chapter 20 verse 10 When you draw near to a city to fight against it offer terms of peace to it now There's a caveat here down in verse 15 You're only gonna do this with cities that are far away not cities that are in this land area that I'm giving to you Okay, a little more when we get farther down, but okay, verse 11. And if it responds to you peaceably, this township that's outside the borders I'm giving you, and opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you. You're just going to make them servants. But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. And when the Lord your God gives it into your hand, you shall put all its males to the sword. But the women and the little ones, the livestock and everything else in the city, all its spoil you should take as plunder for yourself. And you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies. which the Lord your God has given you. Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not cities of the nations here. We get to 16. But in the cities of these people that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes. but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Pesurites, the Hivites, or Hittites, however you want to say it, Hivites, Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded. Remember back to Genesis 15, 16 when the Lord's talking to Abraham and he says, you know, I'm going to make you a great nation and you're going to be like the stars, the sky, the sand of the sea. And then you're going to go down to Egypt and be down there for a long time. And then he says, and you, they shall come back. Your people will come back in the fourth generation for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. Okay, and so he's been watching these people, and they're very sinful people. He's already talking about it 400 years ahead of time. Of course, God is kind of outside of time, so it doesn't matter, but he still knows where they're gonna go. He says, we're gonna take care of this problem, and you guys are gonna do it, and I want you to destroy them completely, okay? Saul got in trouble for not doing that. All right, 2020. Only the trees that you know are not trees for food you may destroy and cut down that you may build siege works against the city that makes war with you until it falls. He's just thinking about the future here. The Lord's just looking ahead for them for the future. Proverbs 21 five says, the plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty. And you leave those fruit trees up, you got food. Once you've conquered, that's something you can have. You take them all down. The Romans cleared all the trees out around Jerusalem when they came in there. And they were known for that. They would take everything to build siege works. But then there was nothing to eat on as far as fruit trees go. So just one of the rules that the Lord had put out there. Chapter 21, there's atonement for unsolved murders, not gonna look at that. Marrying female captives, inheritance rights of the firstborn. We get down to this rebellious son in verse 20. And the parents are speaking and they say to the elders of his city, our son is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey our voice. He is a glutton and a drunkard, and he lives in the basement. And then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones, so you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear and fear." Now, there's your deterrence again, and very serious about someone who is just Disobedient, a glutton, a drunkard, rebellious, not a good kid. And the parents are fed up, apparently. They go to the city council, and they stone him to death. Very serious. Lori did playground duty in Pendleton. And I used to say, you know, if you could just whack one of those once in a while, maybe the rest would settle down. But she couldn't. The most she could do is send them to the office. And the office couldn't do anything with them either. There was no deterrence. Now, when I was in third grade, I had Mrs. Ut, U-T, Ut. And she had a paddle. And she used it. And I remember her taking Bruce over her lap in front of the whole class and laying into Bruce because of whatever he'd committed. And no one wanted to do that. And likewise, I had coached Drexler as a freshman. And you don't snap towels. First day of class, he tells you, you do not snap towels. Man, I tell you, it was like the first or second week. Some kid snapped a towel, and we all bathed together. Everyone showered together back in the day. There was all these naked kids running around, guys. So it was today, yeah. Anyway. This kid snapped a towel, and coach took him into his office, which was all glass. Everyone could see, and there's two coaches in there. He bent over, grabbed his ankles, and he hit him with this paddle that had big 3 quarter inch holes drilled into it. And he had those marks on his cheeks when he came out of there. There was no question. And no one snapped the towel after that. I mean, the rest of the year, no one. Everyone lived in fear of Coach Drexler. Everyone knew that if he said something, you know, it's like, jump how high, you know. You did what Coach Drexler said, and there was no question. It was a deterrence, and it worked. Okay. Lord knows what he's doing. Okay, a man hanged on a tree is cursed, okay, 21-22. And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the Lord your God has given you for an inheritance. It'd be a defilement to leave him up there. Let me read this to you out of Galatians 3.1. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree. Okay, and that's where that comes from. He did that for us. Galatians 3.13. 313. Chapter 22 just has various laws, laws concerning sexual immorality. I'm not going to go into all that. Same with 23. Those excluded from the assembly because of birth defects, things like that. Uncleanness in the camp and then miscellaneous laws. Next, we're going to go to 2417. You shall not pervert the justice due to the sojourner or to the fathers, or take a widow's garment in pledge. But you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you." Isn't it good to be redeemed by the blood of the Lamb? Therefore, I command you to do this. When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back and get it. It shall be for the sojourner, for the fatherless, and the widow, that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat your olive trees, you shall not go over them again. It shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow. years ago helped a farmer shake cherry trees. We put this big tarp down that was mechanized, went all around the tree. And kind of was that angle, an angle, and all the cherries would roll in. And then he had this shaker that he'd hook up to the tree. And he'd find the resonant frequency of that tree and then turn up the amplitude. And man, the cherries would just come bombing out like crazy. Well, don't go back and do that a second time. After another week or so, there's more cherries that are up there that are going to get loose. This didn't leave many cherries, I'll tell you. Don't go beat your tree a second time the next week. Just leave that for the sojourner, okay? For the fatherless and the widow. Verse 21, when you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not strip it afterwards. It shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, therefore I command you to do this. And just a question to ask, you know, am I looking out for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow? This is a pretty common theme in the Old Testament. We see this quite a bit, especially in the Pentateuch. There you go. Yeah. Good, good application there. So my looking out for those people, we have them in our church, some of these different kinds of people, sojourners, widows, fatherless. Raphael, we could call him a sojourner. He's here from Venezuela as a pastor. He's a sojourner. He's struggling to get along. you know, fatherless. We've got kids that are living with grandparents and things like that in our own church. They're kind of fatherless. I mean, they got a grandfather, but you know, might be a way we could help them. We certainly got widows in our church, you know, things to the, am I looking out for them? The Lord cares. He cares that we care. Chapters 25 and 26, going to kind of leave those alone. Laws about marriages and miscellaneous laws again. Offerings of firstfruits and tithes. Down to 27.1. This is instructions about the altar on Mount Ebel. We got our map up here. Remember, Mount Ebel is in the north there. And this is an artist's rendition of that altar, what it may have looked like. And this is what they believe to be the actual altar that they've found. Archaeologists have found this. And you see how big it is referenced by those people there up on Mount Ebel. If I go back to my map, See where it says altar of Mount Ebal up there to the right of the green Okay, that's the location there And so they have they have excavated around this thing and stuff. I'll show you something more after a little bit here Okay verse 1 chapter 27 now Moses and the elders of Israel commanded the people saying keep Whole commandment that I command you today. Keep the whole commandment And on the day you cross over the Jordan to the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall set up large stones and plaster them with plaster." Now, I can't find where they did this. They pulled stones out of the Jordan, and they did set up a monument the day they passed over, okay? I can't find that they plastered any stones until you get to Joshua chapter 8, and they're up in Shechem here, okay? This is just right above Shechem on Mount Nebo. And there they did it. And they wrote these laws. And I don't know if they wrote all these laws. There's a lot of laws to write here. Or if they just wrote the Ten Commandments. I don't know. It'd take a lot of plaster and rock to get it all written up there. But whatever. In Joshua 8, verse 32, you'll see where they did that. Okay? But 27.3, and you shall write on them all the words of this law when you cross over and enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, a land flowing with milk and honey, as the Lord, the God of your fathers has promised. Later in the chapter, we have instructions for the curses from Mount Ebal and blessings from Mount Gerizim. And now moving on to chapter 28, blessings for obedience. Verse one, and if you faithfully obey, and that word obey is gonna happen six times in this chapter, three times it's gonna be in regard to obeying. If you obey, you'll be blessed. And the other three times is if you do not obey or will not obey, you'll be cursed, okay? So here's the first one. And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. That's a pretty big deal. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you if you obey, there's the second, the voice of the Lord your God. Now, listen to this here. Blessed shall you be in the city and blessed shall you be in the field. Blessed shall you be the fruit of your womb, and the fruit of your ground, and the fruit of your cattle, and the increase of your herds, and the young of your flock. Boy, that's really nice to be blessed in all those ways. Verse five, blessed shall you be of your basket and your kneading bowl. Daily needs, I think you could put that in. Verse six, blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out. This is good. Down to verse 13, and the Lord will make you the head, and there's more blessings there, but the Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you shall only go up and not down if, here's our third one, you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today to be careful to do them. Okay, now he's winding up his second recourse, What's the word I've been using? His second address is the word I've been using. He's giving me these blessings here. Now we get to the curses in verse 15. The curses go from verses 15 to 68. This is a long chapter. The blessings only go down to 14 or so. Now, verse 15, but if you will not obey, this is the first of the not obeys, okay, the voice of the Lord your God, to be careful to do all His commandments and His statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. Now listen to this, this is the very same thing I just read. Verse 16. Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field. Cursed shall you be in the basket, and in your kneading bowl. Cursed shall be the fruit of your womb, and the fruit of your ground, and the increase of your herds, and the young of your flock." It's all cursed, okay? Verse 19, cursed shall be when you come in, and cursed shall be when you go out, okay? So it goes on, and we'll touch on some of it. I want to point something out to you. This picture we got up here, when they're excavating it, they found this thing. It's only about an inch square. It's lead, and it's a tablet. And you can kind of see on the left side of the upper picture, the left piece, they're showing the front and the back. But on the left piece, you can see there's a multiple layer there. This is a lead tablet. And they haven't opened it, but they have done, some sort of, I don't want to call it x-ray, I don't remember what they call it, where they're able to slice it into pieces and they can read what's been printed on it. And it's a little tablet about curses from Yahweh. And it has some of the curses in it. There's like 43 words in this thing. So this is a little bitty lead tablet. And they found this in this excavation here. and it has to do with the curses. It's just kind of fascinating. This is like not that long ago, 2009 or 16, I don't remember the dates, I didn't. Okay, there's your cursed tablet. Okay, so back in our chapter 28, verses 20 to 45, I'm just kind of summarizing quickly. These are the bad things you don't want, okay? Confusion, frustration, pestilence, wasting disease, fever, inflammation, fiery heat, drought, blight, mildew, without rain, defeated, a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth, boils, tumors, scabs, itch, madness, blindness, confusion of mind, not prosper, oppressed, robbed, continually, et cetera, et cetera. You get the idea, okay? And this goes on clear down to verse 68. Verse 45, All these curses shall come upon you and pursue you and overtake you till you are destroyed because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God to keep his commandments and his statutes that he commanded you. Down to 62. Whereas you are as numerous as the stars of heaven, you shall be left few in number because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God. Here's a statistic. In 1939, they estimated there were 16 million, 16.6 million Jews. Today, there are 14.8 million Jews because of the Holocaust. They still haven't recovered from that, okay? And think about these curses. God's Word is true. When He says something, He means it, okay? Okay, 28, did I read that? Yeah, 2862. Whereas you are as numerous as the stars of heaven, you should be left few in number because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God. And it's the question to ask, do I obey the voice of the Word of God? Okay. All right, and that ends Moses' second address right there. And we'll probably finish up Deuteronomy next week. Some things that we talked about, am I walking in his ways and in his truth? And where does my sense of self-reliance come from? Am I looking out for the sojourner and the fatherless and the widow? And do I obey the voice of the Word of God? Do I obey His commandments, His statutes, His precepts, those things? Those things to think about. All right, let's pray. Father, thanks for Your Word. We thank you for the history that we see here, the evidence of what you said and that has come to pass, and how we know that when you say something, you mean it. Your word's truth, and we can know that for sure. You're sovereign over all. You have the power and authority and wisdom to carry out all these things in a righteous way. We're grateful for that and Your justice. Lord, we know You mean business, yet You care about us and You love us, and You want us to come to You and to know You and walk rightly before You. Help us to do these things that glorify You, Lord. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.