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Now, here's today's message from Pastor Skip Heitzig. You can see that Moses wants to review this with the young bucks. Before they enter the land, I don't want you to forget this very important component: the wages of sin is death. Chapters two and three, Moses reviews some of the places that they had been, the events that took place in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. Armies that were defeated, and there were two kings that are constantly brought up in Israel's history that they defeated.
Sihon was one of them, and Og, O G, was the other. Og was the king of Bashan up north. Look at chapter three, verse ten. All the cities of the plain, all Gilead, all Bashan. This is all east of the Galilee, up north, as far as Salcah and Endre, cities of the kingdom of Og in Bashan.
Okay. Pause there for a moment. Remember, there were two and a half of the twelve tribes that did not want to settle where God told them originally to settle west of the Jordan River. They saw the highlands up north, the grass fields, great pasture lands for their flocks, and they said, "We would like to settle here." That was a compromise. They shouldn't have done that.
The very first tribes. Later on in Israel's history, to fall to idolatry were these tribes. They're largely unprotected, isolated from the rest of the community, surrounded by paganism. Those were the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh. But something I want to notice, verse eleven: For only Og, king of Bashan, remained of the remnant of the giants.
Notice that. Indeed, his bedstead—that is, his bed frame—was an iron bed frame. Is it not in Rabba of the people of Ammon? To which you say, "Yes." It's a rhetorical question because it is. It was.
Notice, says nine cubits is its length. And four cubits its width, according to the standard cubic. The standard cubit was eighteen inches. The bed frame was thirteen and a half feet long.
So it brings this up and wants you to note that because this guy was one of the giants.
So you know Solomon said, "There's nothing new under the sun." King size beds. Are not a modern invention, you know. I I have a bed at home called a California King because it's a little bit longer, and I'm a little bit longer. And it was developed in the nineteen sixty s. I think a furniture firm in Los Angeles said, "Hey, let's extend it to eighty four inches instead of seventy two.
We'll call it the California King." I'm glad they did. I fit in that properly. This baby was a king size bed. And he was a king, so it fits. But he was called a giant, and it bears record to something those twelve spies saw when they checked out the land.
They said, "Hey, there are giants still in the land." Now you know how big. And this is why the ten came back and said, "We are grasshoppers in their sight and in our." Eyes as well. Even though that really wasn't the truth, according to Joshua, Rahab said, "The people of the land are melting in fear because of you." That's what they thought because of these giants. If you were to compare yourself to Og, let's say you were up against an army of giants like this, you would look at the giants and you would look at you and you would say, "Poor us." But if you saw how big God was in compared to the size of the giants, you'd say poor them. Again, like we said last week, it all depends on your perspective.
What are you measuring according to? Are you measuring according to your strength, your height, your stature, your your size, your ability, or God's? See John said, "Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world." Measure that way. Only two dead, and they lived to tell about it. Martin Luther said, "With God, one is always a majority." And that's how David lived his life.
David saw a giant named Goliath. David was a a runt in comparison to Goliath, but he approached Goliath. And he said, "You defy the armies of the living God. Not you defy the armies of the nation of Israel. You defy the armies of the living God.
God's going to get you." And he did. He measured correctly. In verse five, continuing on. Oh, wait a minute. Let's go back to chapter four.
We come now to the second speech, the second farewell speech. Shifting from the historical, we deal with the legal—that is, the laws that they were to follow. Going from what God did in the past, this is what God is doing now in the present. These are the regulations you are to follow now.
So, from the past tense to the present tense. By the way, you and I must always do the same. You and I. Have a history. We're to do what we did tonight in remembrance of Jesus.
We're to look back to the night we were saved and and all of those great remembrances of our early faith. But we must always convert the past into the present. We must always take the past experiences and make them a present expression. Because if we're always looking back to the past and go, oh, I remember what God did when I was this age, or when this church was at that stage, or I remember, I remember, I remember. What about now?
Are those still valid for your present day experience? If they're not, something's wrong with your Christian walk. God should be as vibrant and as real and as changing things in your life as He once did and once was.
So, there to take the past and pivot now to the present. Verse one: Now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the judgments. These are all rules and regulations which I teach you to observe. And here's why: that you may live. And go in and possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers is giving you.
You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you. It sounds like God doesn't want people to mess with His word, mess with His Scripture. Doesn't want you to add to it. That means we can't come along and say, "Well, I like this part, but I don't like that part." I like Psalms and I like the Red Words, but I don't like the Book of Revelation or the Book of Hebrews. And you know, I notice a lot of people selectively love the Bible.
And quote the Bible to sort of fit their own ideology. They use it not finding out what it says to them, but finding verses they like that will say what they want to have said. Jesus said, concerning the law, concerning the Old Testament, I have not come to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them. That's why I get bothered. When one of the premier Christian leaders of our day and age says that Christians must unattach themselves from the Old Testament, just completely do away with it.
Yet, if you read the New Testament, they didn't seem to follow that advice. They seemed to quote the Old Testament, build their theology using that as the platform from which to build. Jesus, that I didn't come to destroy it; I came to fulfill it. In Revelation 22, some of the last words of the Bible, God says, "If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book." I don't want to be that guy. Whoever takes away from the words of this book, God will take away his part from the book of life.
So don't mess with my words. I'm giving you the revelation of who I am. It will be a progressive revelation. Wait for it. The rest will come.
Don't change it. Verse nine: Only take heed to yourself and diligently keep yourself, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen, lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life, and teach them to your children and your grandchildren.
Now, this is one of the singular most important parts of the book of Deuteronomy, because God says. Through Moses, I don't want you to forget what God has done, and I don't want you to forget what God has said. I want you to obey them, but hold that thought. Don't just obey them. Teach your children, your next generation, to also listen to them and obey them.
It's one of the great themes of the book of Deuteronomy. We're going to dip into a couple of these verses.
Now, the rest of this section is a recap of the law. Let me sum it up, and then I'll just poke at a couple scriptures. Chapters five through eleven is an exposition of the decalogue. Do you know what a decalogue is? Ten words—that's what Decalogue means.
Ten commandments. The ten commandments given in Exodus twenty are recapped and expounded on in chapters five through eleven of Deuteronomy. He's making sure the younger generation has a good understanding, and so he gives sermons on it. Chapters twelve through sixteen, ceremonial law.
Some of that we've touched on. Chapter sixteen through twenty, civil law, and then twenty-one through twenty-six, social laws. Many of which we have looked at in previous books. Look at Deuteronomy chapter six, verse one.
Now, this is the commandment. And these are the statutes and judgments which the Lord your God has commanded to teach you, that you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess. That you may fear the Lord your God to keep all His statutes and His commandments which I command you, you and your son and your grandson, all the days of your life. That your days may be prolonged. Therefore, hear, O Israel, and be careful to observe it, that it may be well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord God of your fathers has promised you, a land flowing with milk and honey.
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Now let's return to today's teaching. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. This is, of course, the great Jewish confession of faith called the Shema. It's called the Shema because Shema means hear or listen. And that's the first word of this commandment: Shema Israel, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad.
The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
Now I want you to look at a word. The last word of verse four, of that sentence in verse four, is one. The Lord is one. The word one is the Hebrew word. Echad, echad.
Some of you know the word. That's how you count in Hebrew. Echad, sh'taim, shalosh, arba'chamish, she'shiva, sh'moni, teisha, eser.
So that's the first counting word that a child learns. Echad.
However, the word echad means one, but it doesn't mean an absolute singularity. It rather means a compound. Unity. Let me explain. There's another Hebrew word, yahid.
Yahid means an absolute singularity, one and only one. Whereas achad is a combination that forms a unity. The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
So, for example, it is used in Hebrew to talk about one bunch of grapes. Achad bunch of grapes, it's a compound unity. Or the nation of Israel is one nation, all the different people, one nation, a compound unity. It is used in the Old Testament when God brought Eve to Adam and said, "For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother, be joined into his wife, and the two shall become achad, one flesh, a compound unity." This is important to those of us who believe in a Trinitarian theology, that God exists as one God in three distinct personalities, three distinct persons, not modes, not one at a time, all at the same time, co-eternal, co-existent. All of them, God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The Hebrew allows for that possibility, even here in this great statement of faith, verse five: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. Remember when Jesus was asked, "What is the greatest commandment?" That's this was his answer. Deuteronomy chapter six, verse five: That's the greatest commandment. But you remember what he did. He then pivoted and quoted something out of Leviticus and said, "Ah, but there's a second commandment which is also as great, and that is, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' And on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." He summed it all up: love God, greatest commandment; love your neighbor as yourself.
That's Leviticus 19. Verse six, and these words which I command you shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children. You shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. Were to teach them.
A more literal translation: were to repeat them. Were to repeat them. Great educators will tell you that people learn things by repetition. Let me say that again. Great teachers have good.
You caught up with that one. I do these things just to see if you are paying attention. You know, but sometimes people will say, "Yeah, you know, I am too old to learn another language. I should have done that when I was younger." Actually, you are not. According to Cambridge University in England, they said all you need is to see a word 160 times in 14 minutes, and you will know it, no matter what age you are.
They said, and I am quoting: "Learning is simple when you repeat." They call it memory traces. You you form these pathways, memory traces that are the same in an aged adult. Up to a certain point, of course, as somebody who's young. But notice how the repetition is brought forth here. Notice the repetition here is when you sit, when you walk, when you lie down, and when you rise up.
In other words, when you live. Because I just sort of describe what you all do right now. You're sitting down, and a little bit you'll be walking out to your car. Later on, you're going to lie down in your bed, and then tomorrow morning you're going to rise up from your bed. All those things you're going to be doing in the next twenty four hours.
If you have children who live at home, they're going to watch you do those things, and they're going to watch you. Do those things, and they're going to hear what you say during those things, and watch your example during those times. And the question is: Are you repeating the same behavior and words to stimulate their taste for godly living? That's how you teach them. You know the the most often quoted scripture I hear when it comes to raising children.
You know it probably all by heart is Proverbs 22, which says, "Train up a child in the way that he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it." Did you know the word "train" is the word hanach? Hanach is the word to train, and it literally means to put something into the mouth. A very similar Arabic word, which comes from that same Semitic root. The Arabs have a word for taking date honey and putting it on the lips and on the palate of infants to stimulate the sucking reflex, to get infants to learn how to feed from their mother's breath by breast by putting date honey as that sucking reflex. That's the word hanach.
So when he says train up your child. You could translate that: stimulate a taste for godliness in your child by when you lie down, when you walk, when you rise, your daily activities, by the way you live. You repeat what you believe, what you hold to, what your value system is. Your kids are going to watch it, and you are either by your lifestyle going to stimulate. A taste for godliness, or drive them away.
So children are very, very important here in this book. Verse eight continues: "You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, what the commandments, the words. They shall be as frontlets between your eyes. If you go to Israel, you'll see these things. These are called phylacteries.
And see that little thing on the top of the head? That's a leather box, and inside that box are scriptures." That are written, and then yeah, there's the scriptures inside that little box. They're placed on the head. They're placed on the arm. They take this very literally.
If you wonder how do they translate their own Bible, do they see it as figurative? Not really. They take it literally. They actually put a box of scriptures on their head. Why?
So they would remember the scripture on their arm.
So they'll remember the scripture.
So they are fulfilling this literally. Good question to ask yourself. What are you putting before your eyes? What are you setting before your eyes? What are you looking at a lot?
I can answer that for a lot of you. It's in your pocket or your purse right now. It's that little phone. It's that little screen. wasn't true ten, twenty years ago, but it is now.
Well, put put that aside. I don't want. I don't want to pick on that. What TV shows? What entertainment?
What things do you read and look at? What are you setting before your eyes to remember? Make sure that you do the Scripture as well or more. Chapter eight, verse one: Every commandment which I command you today, you must be careful to observe, that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to your fathers. And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness to humble you, to test you, and to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.
Memory is the diary we all carry with us, and so God tells them, "Remember what I've done. Remember what I said." Chapter ten, verse twelve. And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? But to fear the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, to love Him, to serve the Lord. Again, notice all those verbs: love or serve the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, and to keep His commandments, the commandments of the Lord, and His statutes which I command you today for good.
This brings up. A little phrase, the fear of the Lord, and I would just say that's a very misunderstood phrase. What does it mean, the fear of the Lord? Let me tell you what it doesn't mean. It doesn't mean that you cringe before God.
Doesn't mean you wake up and go, God, I'm so afraid of you. Are you going to zap me? You know, you're not the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz. That's not the relationship God wants with you. Fear of the Lord means a reverence or a respect for Him.
The Hebrew word is Yirat Yahweh. Yirat Yahweh. It's the idea of reverence. In fact, the message translation translates verse twelve: "Live in His presence in holy reverence." I like that translation because it rhymes. Live in His presence in holy.
Reverence.
So here is the fear of the Lord. It's a reverential awe that produces humble submission to a loving God. That's the working definition of the fear of the Lord. A reverential awe that produces a humble submission to a loving God. The only fright, the only being scared part, is that you love Him so much.
You respect him so much that you don't want to do anything to displease him. You're afraid that you would do something that would displease the one that you love. That really sums up the fear of the Lord. We're so glad you joined us today on Connect with Skip Heitzig. Before you go, don't forget about Pastor Skip's brand new devotional, Soaring Above It All.
This one-year devotional gives you a panoramic view of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Helping you better understand God's Word and stay engaged with it every day. Request your copy as our thanks when you give fifty dollars or more to help bring clear Bible teaching to people around the world. Give today at connectwithSkip dot com slash offer or call eight hundred nine two two eighteen eighty eight. See you next time.
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