But let's begin with a word of prayer. Father, we thank you for this time that we have to meditate on your word, to consider these final words of Moses. We just pray, God, that your Holy Spirit would just enable us to fully appreciate this Old Testament book and, Lord, that we might learn from it. And we ask this in Christ's name. Amen. Here we have, in chapter 31, this is the beginning of the final section of the book, and in this section Moses announces to the people, to the congregation, that he is not going to be entering into the promised land with the rest of the people, but instead Joshua will be going with them in his stead. And that must have been a difficult announcement for Moses to make, especially in light of God's reason for it, and Moses knew that. But nonetheless, Moses submitted to the chastening hand of God. We see in the first eight verses of this chapter, we have Moses' final charge to Joshua and to the people, And we read, beginning in verse 1, and he said unto them, I am 120 years old this day. I can no more go out and come in. Also, the Lord hath said unto me, thou shalt not go over this Jordan. Wasn't going to be able to go into the promised land. The Lord thy God, he will go over before thee, and will destroy these nations from before thee, and thou shalt possess them, and Joshua, he shall go over before thee, as the Lord hath said. So here Moses reminds the people that he's not going out, he's not going with them, he's not going over Jordan as chastening for his rebellion against the Lord. And he says Joshua will go in his stead, but he also encourages them by reminding them that the Lord is going with them. Moses won't be, but the Lord Jehovah God will be going with them and Here's a promise that God is going to assure that those Canaanite nations will be destroyed from before them. And here we have some of the words of exhortation that Moses gives to the people. A well-known passage, be strong and be of good courage. Fear not, nor be afraid of them. For the Lord thy God, he it is that doth go with thee. He will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. Now it's a great promise for the children of Israel as they passed into Canaan land and great application for us as well. Our Lord will never fail us or forsake us. And then we have, beginning in verse 9, the written law, the law that Moses recorded, is then delivered over to the priests and to the elders for their safekeeping. So the law has been recorded, and now it's being handed over These are the autographs, the original autographs, Moses' writings, and they're being handed over for preservation to the priests and the elders for safekeeping, and they did an unbelievably fantastic job in keeping God's Word safe and preserving it. Then we see, beginning in verse 14, the glory of the Lord appears unto the congregation and God speaks to Moses out of this glory about his death. So God, tell, how would you like to have the Lord describe the way you're going to die? Well, that's what he did for Moses. We see also in the second part of verse 16, and then the Lord reveals to the congregation the apostasy of the nation. Now, they're just going into the land, and they're challenged not to participate with what the Canaanites are doing, and then God informs them that they will fail, and that they will forsake the Lord, and they will go after other gods. And we see near the end of this chapter, the Levites are then instructed to store the law, the record of the law, and the Ark of the Covenant for safekeeping. Now we have in the next chapter, in chapter 32, this is the great prophetic song of Moses. And it's an overview in one song. We have one section that deals with Israel's history and another section that looks ahead to Israel's future. So it's a historic and a prophetic song, an overview of Israel from God's point of view. And we also see in this chapter that there is a contrast between God's integrity and Israel's rebellion. So Moses speaks, he sings rather, he wrote a song, he wrote prophecies, he wrote a song, and there is a contrast between God's integrity, God is faithful, God is holy, Israel will prove themselves to be sinners and rebels. And then we have in verses 17 through 14, a description of God's great love for Israel. And this is kind of special in the book of Deuteronomy. There's not much mentioned in the Pentateuch about the love of God until we get into the book of Deuteronomy. And there we're told that God kept them as the apple of his eye, that he led them and he fed them, he protected them, and that God would be all that Israel would ever need. And then God inserts, but Jeshuan, Israel, waxed fat and kicked. After all God did for them, they turn out to be rebels. And we see also in verses 15 to 33, Israel's apostasy is described and their future judgments are described, how God is going to judge them for the rebellion. And then again at the end of the chapter, Moses' death is announced once again. Not only did God speak to Moses about his death, but he wrote his own obituary. He wrote about his death and his life as well. Then we have in chapter 33, here Moses blesses the various tribes of Israel. And they're in this section, it's just blessing one tribe after another, but there are a couple of verses that really stand out in this section, and one is, one section is, begins in verse 26. There is none like unto the God of Jezioron, a name for Israel, who rideth upon the heaven in thy help, and in his excellency on the sky. The eternal God is thy refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms." Now I'm sure that passage was a great encouragement to Israel to know that their God is eternally their refuge and their comfort and the everlasting arms that support them and hold them up And even to today, there are many Jews that read the Old Testament Scripture, even though they may not know Christ as their Savior. Imagine what a passage like this would mean to them when bombs or missiles are flying over their houses and all the sirens are going off around them. That's pretty, that's not unusual for the nation of Israel. They've lived so many centuries like that. And then we have another passage in verse 28. Israel then shall dwell in safety alone. The fountain of Jacob shall be upon a land of corn and wine. Also his heavens shall drop down dew. Happy art thou, O Israel, who is like unto thee, O people saved by the Lord, the shield of thy help. And here again God just speaks that there's no nation on earth like Israel. They have a nation delivered, saved by the Lord, God shields them, God protects them, God gave them a land of corn and wine, milk and honey, and they will dwell safely in that land. That's their ultimate promise. They haven't dwelt safely in their land alone for a long time. But that is their ultimate promise to be fulfilled in the kingdom. Then we have in chapter 34, now we have not just the prediction of Moses' death and the description of it, but a narrative of it. In verse 1, it says that God brought him up into Mount Nebo and showed him the promised land. In verses 5 through 7, we're told that Moses died at the age of 120 and was buried, and nobody knows where he was buried, except there are probably a few guys on the internet that will, for $150, share with you where he's buried. But that's been an object of mystery through the ages. And then in verse 9, Joshua is seen as the God-appointed leader of the nation. And then a wonderful passage in verse 10 where we read about Moses who had a face-to-face relationship to the Lord. Nobody had that kind of a close relationship to God, face-to-face, talking to the Lord. So Moses was a very special leader in God's sight. Special leader or not, though, his sin deserved chastening, and he willingly submitted to it, and that's one of the reasons why he's a great man. Not for sin, but for his submissive spirit. And so then we have the end of the book of Deuteronomy, and the stage is now set for the book of Joshua. So we see in Exodus and Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the children of Israel have escaped, they wander in the wilderness for a while, then they're brought up to the edge of the promised land, and then in Joshua, they're carried into the promised land. But I thought what we'd do is now maybe look at some of the typology that we've seen of Israel's history in the Pentateuch. Interesting, a lot of our hymns, a lot of the old spiritual songs, misinterpret some of the points of this typology. But we want to begin with Israel's slavery in Egypt. That pictures the believer's slavery to his sin nature. Just as the Jews were in bondage, So too, the Christian, before our salvation, we were slaves to sin. And also, in the book of Exodus, Egypt is a type of the world, the world system. It's a picture or a type of the world system that has God's people in bondage. And then we have Pharaoh as the leader of that world system, a type of Satan himself, the adversary of God's people. And then we have the slaying of the Passover lamb. God gives instructions to the Jews. They were to, each family unit or group, neighborhood unit, depending on the number of people, they were to take a lamb, have it all prepared ahead of time, and then they were to slay the lamb and they were to apply the blood to their doorpost. And the slaying of the Passover lamb is a type or a picture of the death of Jesus Christ. And even the Apostle Paul in the book of 1 Corinthians refers to Christ as our Passover. He's our Passover lamb. Blood of an innocent victim is shed for the guilty and applied by faith. And we see that application is also a picture. Applying the blood to the doorpost is a type or an illustration of a believer, or a sinner rather, applying the blood of Christ by faith to his own life. And then we see the exodus, and that's a picture of deliverance. It's a picture of redemption. The one who applies the blood of Christ by faith is redeemed by the blood, just as the children of Israel applied the blood of the Passover lamb, and they were redeemed or delivered and made their exodus out of bondage in Egypt. And then we have the deliverance at the Red Sea. And this is not a picture of their redemption, but rather this is a picture of the victory that God gives over our enemies. When the children of Israel were at the Red Sea and surrounded by Egypt, their enemy, that was about to destroy them, God's message to them was stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. And that's a picture of how we experience victory over our enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil. It's not by self-effort. We don't defeat Satan. We defeat him by standing still and trusting God for the victory that he already accomplished on the cross of Calvary. And then there's the period that we saw so much in the book of Numbers, that 38 years of wandering in the wilderness. And this is a picture of a redeemed people. Remember, Israel applying the blood was a picture of a redeemed people. And now the redeemed people are seen in the next phase wandering around aimlessly. learning how to walk by faith, but not trusting in the Lord, not totally surrendered in every way, in every aspect of their lives to the will of God or to the Lordship of Christ. Redeemed, but not fully surrendered. And there at Kadesh Barnea, we have a picture of the believer challenged, challenged to absolute surrender to the will of God. The first generation, they pictured those who were redeemed by the blood, but they refused to surrender, they refused to trust God, they refused to walk by faith, and as a result, they were turned away and they wasted the next four decades or so of their lives, and every one of them died in the wilderness. But the next generation, also pictured as those who, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, did surrender all, and they trusted God, and they entered into the land. And so, this land, entering into the land, When Israel entered into the promised land, they were entering into the inheritance, the physical inheritance that God had for them. And where our songs often miss the point is that We sing them. We have several songs like this in our own hymnal. And in their typology, it seemed to be prominent that crossing the Jordan and entering into the promised land was a picture of death. And then when you get into the promised land, that's a picture of entering into heaven. And they're almost right. But crossing Jordan isn't a picture of entering, it's not a picture of death, rather it's a picture of a believer who died to self and reckons himself to be dead. So that he can enter not into heaven itself, but enter into our spiritual heavenly inheritance that we have in Christ today. And so we want to keep this typology clear. And I know several, a lot of folks kind of struggle with this because we read, and it looks like the typology is saying, and it does, that when Israel applied the blood, then that was a picture of their salvation. But then they get into the wilderness and they sure didn't act like saved people. And the typology does not mean that everyone, all, however, a couple of million of them that left Egypt, it doesn't mean that they were all born again. Typology is a comparison. And the comparison is Israel was redeemed physically out of a physical enemy, Egypt. And their physical redemption Their physical deliverance is a picture of our spiritual redemption, not by the blood of a lamb, but by the blood of Jesus Christ. So, what happened to them physically is a picture of what happens to us spiritually. They were physically redeemed from a real physical enemy. We are spiritually redeemed by the blood from our spiritual enemies. And they were brought into the promised land to inherit physical land. Well, we are delivered and redeemed, and by faith we can experience our spiritual blessings in Christ, our spiritual inheritance. So what Israel did and experienced physically, we experience in the spiritual realm. It doesn't mean that everybody that left Egypt was born again. That will get you very confused if you try to fit all those pieces together. So this brings us to the end of our study or our very quick overview of the book of Deuteronomy. some beautiful typology and some great lessons for us all. So let's close in a word of prayer. Father, we thank you for this wonderful book. We thank you, Father, for the many truths in it. We thank you for the lessons we can learn from the life of Moses, from his faithfulness, and even from his failures. Father, thank you for the lessons we can learn about you and your holiness and your love as well and your mercy and grace towards undeserving sinners. And God, we do thank you for the blood of Jesus Christ and all that we have in Him as a fulfillment of that which the type only pointed to. And we thank you for this in Jesus' name. Amen.