These are the words of…

Well, I trust many of you have heard of an hors d’oeuvre before. An hors d’oeuvre. Children, you might have no idea what I’m talking about. If you have the pleasure of going to a very, very fancy French restaurant, they might offer you some hors d’oeuvres. It’s not dirt. No, hors d’oeuvre is like a little taster before the menu. Hors d’oeuvre is literally translated as “outside the work.” Seems like a strange thing for a menu item. Outside the work. It’s the idea of having something outside of the main meal to begin sort of getting the taste buds going, getting the appetite going before you dig into your main meal.

Well, in a sense, that’s what we’re doing tonight. We’re beginning a new book, and I’d like to offer us an hors d’oeuvre before we get to the book proper. Get a taste for the book. What’s it all about? What will we find? Why study it? All these sorts of questions to sort of whet your appetite somewhat so that you come, Lord willing, on a Sunday evening excited to hear more about a book that maybe you haven’t spent a lot of time meditating on before. A book, in some senses, which feels quite foreign, filled with all sorts of manner of strange laws and regulations and rules that sometimes leaves you scratching your head and wondering what it’s all about and how it’s relevant to me.

And so we begin with a book called Deuteronomy, and what’s in a name? Now, we all have names, and most of our names have meaning. My mum and I were talking about this just the other night. I have an amazing name meaning. You can talk to my parents about this afterwards. My name has a wonderful meaning. It means a small hollow. Yeah, that’s it, a small hollow. It’s very, a very significant name. Doesn’t really mean very much at all. It’s just a Gaelic name. Clift, a hollow, a valley, a hole in the ground, filled with dense meaning.

The book of Deuteronomy, the name of Deuteronomy, what’s it mean? Well, it’s actually got two names. It’s got the Greek name, which is what we kind of have before us, Deuteronomy. The Greek is Deuteronomion, which means a copy of the law or a second copy of the law. Because we know, don’t we, that back in Exodus, we read it this morning, Exodus 20, what do we find? The Ten Commandments. And in Deuteronomy, what do we find? The repetition of the Ten Commandments. This is the second giving of the law.

The Jews in Hebrew didn’t call it the second giving of the law. They called it, and this is our text, they called it, “These are the words of.” These are the words of. Devarim. These are the words of Moses. And they call it that because, in a nutshell, these are the words of Moses. This is Moses’ final sermon. They’re on the edge of the land of Canaan. They’re about to go into Canaan, and one person that remains is not allowed to go in. Everyone else is allowed to go in, but Moses isn’t. Moses is going to die at the end of this book, and he will be forbidden to enter the Promised Land. And this is his final farewell, his final goodbye. And so for that reason alone, it should encourage us to pay attention.

Now, there’s a few very brief reasons why we would want to study the Book of Deuteronomy. We’re gonna look at three major ones in the book itself, that reason why we should study the book, but there’s some very simple, brief reasons that we can say right up front.

One is that Moses is a very important figure in redemptive history, isn’t he? If I was to ask you who’s the most important prophet in the Old Testament or who’s the most significant one, I’d be willing to bet that probably most of you would say Moses. For the Israelites, he was the prophet of prophets. He led the people out of Egypt. He did the greatest signs. He brought the law. He did the most important things for the Jewish people. And so if this is his last will and testament, in a sense, if this is his final sermon, and it sure is a long sermon, so if we don’t stop after 8 hours, you can be sympathetic because Moses went on for days. But it would be worth paying attention because of the significance of who Moses is.

Well, another reason is because of how significant Deuteronomy is for the New Testament. If I was to ask you which books are the most cited in the New Testament, that would be an interesting thing to think about. There’s a book called A New Testament Commentary on the Old Testament, which is really, really interesting. And they’ve got, like, an index at the back of the book that gives you every reference of the Old Testament and the New Testament so that they line up and you see where they all are. And so I didn’t count them all ’cause it would’ve taken me way too long, but I copy and pasted the whole lot into an AI chatbot to total it for me, and Deuteronomy’s third. Third most references in the New Testament from an Old Testament book. The first is the Psalms with, like, 1,800. The second was Isaiah, no shock there, with something like 1,300. And then Deuteronomy was third with 693, if I remember rightly. It’s used a lot by the New Testament authors, which reminds us it’s significant. It’s a significant book.

The other reason, I think it’s the easiest reason, is it’s the word of God. Every page of the Bible is God’s word. We read that in Timothy, didn’t we? It’s breathed out by God. We don’t need prophets. We don’t need apostles. We don’t need miraculous signs because we have God’s word. And so we study the book. We give ourselves to the Bible. We give ourselves to the scriptures. And every page of it is equal. No part of the Bible is more inspired than another. All of it is God’s word, and so it’s valid and good and beneficial for us to consider every passage of the Bible. And it’s important for me as a minister so that I can say with the Apostle Paul, “I have not shrunk back from teaching you the whole counsel of God.” That’s my responsibility as a minister of Christ, is to teach you the whole counsel of God. You need to know everything. If I only ever teach you one aspect of the Christian life, you’re going to have a lopsided Christian life, aren’t you? We need to know Psalm 77 in dealing with spiritual depression as we started this morning. We need to know Revelation, which is important as well, but then we also need to know God’s law. We need to know every aspect.

And we could go on, but I’d like us to ponder this evening just three significant aspects of the book of Deuteronomy which show the importance of studying the book.

Firstly, Deuteronomy is our covenantal history.

Deuteronomy is our covenantal history. And it’s important to know our history. We all know the old adage, if you don’t remember history, if you don’t know history, what happens? You’re doomed to repeat its mistakes. It’s a classic adage and it rings true. When we forget our history and our past, we make the same silly mistakes.

One of the things we often talk about in theology is that every era is pretty much just a repeat of a former heresy. You can pick about five heresies in the world, and they just get repeated over and over and over again in the Christian Church and abroad. I recently did a class on an introduction to Reformation and post-Reformation Church History. It’s a fascinating class. And one of the things that was really interesting is we have these men that we know of, like Martin Luther and John Calvin, and we have their works and we know them, and we think we know them, and then you hear someone who’s an expert in the field talk about things that you had no idea about and you go, “Wow, this has really sort of put color, made the whole picture into color for me, and I understand so much better why this piece was written and why the man did what he did.”

Deuteronomy functions a little bit like that for us. You see, Deuteronomy is not the Israelites’ history, it’s the history of God’s people, and we are part of God’s people. This is our covenantal history. And this is why the New Testament authors feel very free to take Old Testament and use it as example. So in Romans chapter 15, the Apostle Paul says to us, “These things are written,” speaking about the Old Testament, “These things are written as examples for us.” Why? So that we wouldn’t make the same mistake. Or the Apostle Paul can write to Corinth and he can say to them, “Don’t be like the Old Testament people who fell away.” And the writer to the Hebrews can say, “Don’t fall away in the wilderness. Don’t miss out on the rest like the Old Testament people did.” And so the stories that we find in the Old Testament, and in the Book of Deuteronomy, are lessons for us. They’re examples for us to learn from.

And Moses himself does this. Do you notice that if you just sort of cast your eye over the little uninspired titles in chapters one through 3, look what Moses roots his whole sermon in. Verse 9, we start with the first one here, “Leaders appointed.” So this is a reference to Exodus 16:19 when the leaders are appointed. Israel’s refusal to enter the land, the penalty for Israel’s rebellion, the wilderness years, the defeat of King Sihon, the defeat of King Og, Moses forbidden to enter the land. What is this? It’s a history, isn’t it? Moses begins a sermon by saying, “This is what has happened to us over the last 40 years.” And he’s rooting his, the law that he’s bringing, he’s rooting the word of God that he’s bringing in the past.

And brothers and sisters, we get to do the same thing. We get to come to the Book of Deuteronomy, not as a foreign book from another group of people, but as our history from our family that goes all the way back to the Book of Deuteronomy. This is our past that we must learn from so that we would grow in faithfulness to God.

And this has a couple of very practical uses for us. Firstly, as believers, it’s really important that we know and learn our history, right? That not just Deuteronomy, the whole Bible. It’s all our history. But also church history. It’s important for us to know our family history all the way back to the beginning. Why? Because otherwise we’re going to repeat their mistakes. How many times has the Christian Church fallen into the same problems over and over again? How many times have we as Christians made the same errors our forefathers made because we refuse to listen to them? How many times, parents, do we warn our children of things and they say, “Oh, what would Mom and Dad know? They’re old”? I mean, to be fair, maybe I should turn this the other way around. Parents, how many of us said that about our parents? Why? Because we have what’s called epistemological hubris. Which, children, is just a really fancy way of saying we’re arrogant in our thinking. Because we think we know better. And what we actually do is we look condescendingly down on previous generations, and we assume they were generally moronic, but we’re really clever. And the only reason they made those mistakes is because they’re ignorant.

And what we’re being reminded when we come to the Book of Deuteronomy is that we are no different to the people in the Bible. The exhortations are the same, the commands are the same, the problems are the same, the struggles are the same, and the solutions are the same. And so we’re encouraged here to know and to learn our history. But not just to know it intellectually, but to imbibe it so that it truly becomes part of our history, so that it becomes part of who we are as we develop.

So that’s the first reason, because this is our history. It’s our history book. It’s like getting one of those genealogy tests that people do, and you go, “Oh, I’m related to King George. Isn’t that amazing?” We look and we go, “Oh, I’m a son of Abraham. I’m a daughter of Abraham, and I’m in the line of Moses, and I walk in the shoes of my forebears.” We’ve got to represent them well.

Secondly, the Book of Deuteronomy is our covenantal chukim.

And I called it covenantal chukim, and that’s because I wanted an H word, and it’s the Hebrew word for law. It’s our covenantal law. Now, I hope you heard me. I didn’t say this is the law Moses gave for the Israelites. This is our law. This is our law that’s been given to us.

Now, here’s the thing. It’s really easy to get in trouble if you don’t know the law, isn’t it? Now, you imagine if you just moved to New Zealand, and you had no idea of what the rules were in New Zealand. It’d be very easy to get in trouble. Actually, let me give you an illustration of this. I know of two men, both pastors. They’re always pastors when you’re a pastor. And they went to America. They went there for a conference, and they needed to cross the road. So they crossed the road, and they immediately got pulled over by a police officer. And he said to them, “You’re not from around here, are you?” And they said, “No, we’re from New Zealand.” He said, “Yeah, I thought so, because you’re jaywalking. It’s actually illegal to jaywalk in America, and I would ticket you except for your ignorance, so I’ll let you off this time. Don’t do it again.” Well, that’s very easy, isn’t it? Now, technically we know it’s illegal here, but everybody just jaywalks. It’s not really a thing anymore. But it is striking that if you have no knowledge of what a family requires of you or a church requires of you or a state requires of you, you’re gonna consistently walk in the wrong way and walk in the wrong path.

We’ve been given a covenantal law from a covenantal king. The King himself has said, “This is my law,” the law is contained in the Book of Deuteronomy, the second giving of the law, right? But it’s important that we understand how the law works, lest we fall into the trap of misunderstanding the way we understand the law and then applying it wrongly.

Now, sometimes the law is broken up into three categories. People talk about the ceremonial law, which is a reference to, like, the priestly stuff; and then the civil law, which is a reference to the sort of stuff that governs the country; and then the moral law, which is a reference to the Ten Commandments. And people say the Ten Commandments are binding to us, and the ceremonial and the civil are not binding to us as believers any longer because they’re fulfilled in Christ. And that’s been a very traditional and helpful way of thinking about the law.

I think there’s a more helpful way of thinking about it that I’ve been introduced to just recently, which is the concept of eternal and particular. There is an eternal law and a particular law for a particular people at a particular time. So, where do we find the eternal law of God? The Ten Commandments. We read it this morning. When God gives the Ten Commandments, who writes them down? God. Moses doesn’t write them down. God writes them down, and it says, “With His finger, He writes the Ten Commandments.” And He writes them onto tablets of stone. And it’s all a picture to show that this is an enduring law that never changes. The Ten Commandments, fixed in the mind of God eternally.

And what’s interesting is you then find Moses comes down with the Ten Commandments, and what does he do with the Ten Commandments? He then explains them, he preaches them, and he writes them onto what? Parchment. And it’s a picture of the fact that whereas the Ten Commandments are eternal, binding on all people of all places at all times eternally, the parchment that Moses is writing is the particular application of those Ten Commandments to the particular group of people in front of them.

Now, at this point, one of you might be thinking to yourselves, “Ah, so in that case, we only need to care about the Ten Commandments.” But just hold that thought. The structure of the book points us in the same direction. So in chapter 4, we get an introduction to the law. Very quick overview of the whole book of Deuteronomy for you: Chapter 4, you get an introduction. It’s a sermon introduction. He’s given his history. He gives an introduction to the law. Chapter 5, we get the giving of the Ten Commandments. This is the eternal law. Then immediately, Moses, as a good preacher, has a three-point structured sermon flowing straight out of that. His first point is, from chapters 12 to 26, he preaches the particular law. Then from verses 27 to 28, he unpacks the particular consequences of the law. If you do this, this will happen. If you don’t do this, that will happen. And then in chapters 29 through 33, he unpacks a particular covenant. So it’s just a blazing fast overview of the whole book. He introduces the law, he gives the eternal law, and then he applies that eternal law in three places, in three ways.

And so then you think to yourself, “Great, so I guess we can just deal with chapter four and five and be done. Skip to chapter 34, see the death of Moses, and we’re free. We’ve finished the book. We don’t need to worry about chapters, you know, 6 onwards.” How do we understand chapters 12 through 33? How do we understand the particular law?

Well, to understand what we do with the particular law, the best thing to do would be to ask a New Testament writer. In fact, the best thing to do would be to ask Jesus and say, “Jesus, how do you want us to understand your law? How do you want us to understand both the Ten Commandments and the particular exposition of the Ten Commandments by Moses?” You know, and wouldn’t it be absolutely amazing if the Lord Jesus Christ had taught on the law for us so that we understood how we… Oh, that’s right, He did, didn’t He? In the Sermon on the Mount.

And so if you turn to Matthew 5, you’re gonna see Jesus handling the law and showing us how we are to use the law of God. Matthew chapter 5. Chapter 21: “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder.’” Anyone know where that reference comes from? Well, the Ten Commandments, right? You shall not murder. And whoever murders will be liable to judgment. And then He goes on and does what? He takes the law and applies it to the people. He says, “This is what the law means.” So according to Jesus, the Ten Commandment that says, “You shall not murder,” you still have to listen to. Then verse 27, “You shall not commit adultery.” Another one of the Ten Commandments. And Jesus says what? “This is the fulfillment of committing adultery.” And again, He says, “These are binding upon you,” right?

But notice verse 38. “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’” That verse comes from what’s called the particular law. It comes from the law that Moses taught as an exposition, a sermon, an expansion of the Ten Commandments. Now, does Jesus say, does Jesus go, “You’ve heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ You don’t need to worry about that part because you’re not part of the Old Testament people”? What does He do? He teaches the principle of the particular law. He says, “This is what Moses said. Now let me take it and apply it particularly to you now.”

But it’s not just Jesus that does this. The Apostle Paul does the same thing. Let me show you. Turn to the Book of Romans. So this is Paul on the Ten Commandments. The Book of Romans, chapter 13. Romans 13:8, “Owe no one anything except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” Now, have you ever heard someone say, “Well, the fulfillment of the law is loving people, so just go and love people. Don’t worry about all the laws and stuff, just love people”? And they quote verses like this to say that. But what happens immediately after it? “For the commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet,’ and any other commandment are summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” What’s Paul’s point? Paul’s point is not just love people. His point is keep the law, because that’s how you love people. Loving your neighbor as yourself and God first is the fulfillment of the law. And what did Jesus say? “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”

He does a similar thing in the Book of Timothy, 1 Timothy chapter 1. 1 Timothy 1:8, “Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just” — and by just here, he means someone that’s perfect and hasn’t sinned, a fully righteous person — “but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners” — the same word used for Paul later on to talk about Jesus dying for sinners — “for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers” — here are the references to the law here, the Ten Commandments. Those who don’t honor their father and mother, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, for liars, a little bit further down. What’s Paul saying here? The Ten Commandments are still binding on you. You cannot set them apart. The eternal law of God continues.

Maybe you say, “Yeah, that’s fine. I agree, but what about the particular law?” Well, Paul also supports the application of all of the Mosaic law in principle form. If you have a look at 1 Corinthians, we see this in two places. 1 Corinthians chapter 5. 1 Corinthians 5:13. We’ll start at verse 12 just to put it a little bit in its context. “For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. ‘Purge the evil person from among you.’” And what’s around that phrase? Quotation marks, right? Why? ’Cause it’s a quote from the Old Testament, from the Mosaic law, from the particular law given particularly to the Israelite people. And what Paul does here is he uses that reference. He says, effectively, in the Old Testament, when someone was sinning against God, you purge them from the house. Now, back then, that meant you stoned them. “Now what I want you to do is apply the same principle in the church, because you have a brother that’s sleeping with his stepmother. Purge him. Remove him.” Now, he doesn’t mean kill them. He means excommunicate them, remove them from the church. And so Paul takes the principle from the particular law of the Old Testament, and then applies it directly into the lives of the believers before him.

And he does it again in chapter nine, and this one’s probably one you’re familiar with. Chapter 9, verse 8 to 10. “Do I say these things on human authority? Does not the law say the same? For it is written in the law of Moses, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.’ Is it for oxen that God is concerned? Does he not certainly speak for our sake?” — speaking about the apostles — “It was written for our sake, because the plowman should plow in hope, and the thresher thresh in hope of sharing in the crop.” What’s Paul do here? He says, in the Old Testament, the law was, whenever your ox is in the field working, don’t cover its mouth. Why? It needs to eat. It would be cruel for you to make an animal tread the grain and not get to eat it. And Paul takes that law of Moses and he extracts the principle of it, and then applies it to the New Testament teachers. And he says, “We’re working among you. We’re laboring among you. We deserve to get the benefit of that too. We deserve to be fed and cared for. Make sure you care for the ministers you’ve received.” So it’s the taking of the principle and applying it in the present.

Now, why is this important? Because the book of Deuteronomy is filled with particular laws. Like, we read these just the other day, if there’s a city in town that starts teaching false doctrine, starts teaching you to go worship other idols, go and burn it to the ground. If one of your family members says to you, “Come, let us go worship another god,” put him to death. We’re gonna run into those ones. Now, how do we understand that? Or, build a parapet around your roof. How many of you have fences on your roof today? Probably not enough. Now, we can probably all understand why you would want a fence on your roof when your roof’s flat and you spend time on your roof. There’s a principle here of loving your neighbor, because you don’t want your family member to fall off your roof and break their neck, and so you keep them safe. And we apply that to ourselves. What does this require of me?

So we don’t literalistically take the Mosaic law and apply it literalistically to our lives, lest we think we can’t have mixed fabric clothes. We’re probably all in a lot of trouble. Lest we think we’re not allowed to boil our baby goats in its mother’s milk. Not that any of us probably wanted to. But we take the principle that God is laying down for his people as good principles, and apply them for the sake of obedience. And what this teaches us is that when we come to the book of Deuteronomy, the whole law is for us, because it’s our law. Because we’re the people of God. We don’t ignore huge portions of the Bible and say, “Oh, that’s just Old Testament stuff.” So no, this is God’s law. It’s Christ’s law, given for his people, and it’s good for us, and we seek to conform our lives to it.

And I think this encourages us, not just to know our history, but to know the law of God. When was the last time you spent time meditating upon the second giving of the law? Don’t answer out loud, but ponder that for yourself. When was the last time you went, “You know what? It would be really good for me and my family, in family worship, to sit down and spend time unpacking the law that Moses gave.” Why don’t we? Because subtly, we’ve bought the lie of dispensationalism which says there’s a big old wall between the Old and the New Testament, and the New Testament’s where it’s really at, and we can kind of just forget the Old Testament. As one very well-known preacher who preached through the entirety of the New Testament in his ministry without once preaching through an Old Testament book. I mean, what are you doing for your believers? You’re making lopsided believers who don’t know their history. And the reality is you cannot understand the New Testament without reading the Old Testament. And to the degree that you dig into the Old Testament, the New Testament gains light. How do you read the Book of Hebrews if you’ve never read the Book of Leviticus? It just doesn’t make sense.

I can’t tell you how grateful I am for when I was, I don’t know, maybe 10, and we had to go to catechism each week, and our elders gave us an overview of the Old and the New Testament. What a blessing. And when I first went to Bible College, my first year in Bible College, we did an Old Testament survey, and I sat there and I listened to people, I mean, you’re talking 20s, 30s, 40s, men and women, training to be missionaries, saying, “Wow, I’ve never read this before.” Why? Because the Old Testament doesn’t matter. We’ve been given the law of God as a gift, and just as applicable as it was for them, or maybe I should say more so is it applicable to you and I, because we have more light. We get to understand not just the letter of it, but the spirit of it, and see it applied to our lives.

Thirdly, in the book of Deuteronomy, we find our covenantal head.

The Book of Deuteronomy contains our covenantal head. You remember after Jesus rose from the dead, He walked on the road to Emmaus, and there’s that cool story of Him appearing to the two men. And then just after that, He appears to the disciples and they’re filled with disbelief and wonder, and what does Jesus do? He opens up the word of God, and He shows them from the law, from the prophets, and from the history, and from all the scriptures that He is the Christ, and that He was to suffer and die. What does He do? He turns to the Old Testament and He says, “All of it, all of it points to me.” And brothers and sisters, that’s true of Deuteronomy.

Now, we’ve just finished the Book of Revelation, haven’t we? You remember what I told you the Book of Revelation was? It was the revelation of Jesus Christ. And I said to you, this is a long time ago, I know, but I said to you, “You can understand that two ways.” It’s His revelation that He gives us, which is true, but also it’s the revelation of Him. It’s Him revealing Himself. And can I say this? Deuteronomy’s exactly the same. It is the revelation of Jesus Christ in Old Testament form. And what’s cool about the Book of Deuteronomy is you see Jesus Christ everywhere, but there’s certain sections where He sort of like shines out in neon lights, particularly as it relates to His, what we call His threefold ministry, Jesus Christ as prophet, priest, and king.

And so in chapter 18 of Deuteronomy, if you turn back to the book, I’ll risk spoilers, but in Deuteronomy chapter 18, in verse 15, Moses writes these words: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers. It is to him you shall listen. Just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see his great fire anymore, lest I die.’ And the Lord said to me, ‘They are right in what they have spoken. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers, and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of the other gods, that same prophet shall die. And if you say in your heart, “How may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken?” When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.’”

What’s Moses prophesying? What’s the Lord saying through Moses here? “One day, I’m gonna raise up a prophet who’s greater than me.” Now, do you remember what happened when John the Baptist started preaching? What did the Pharisees ask him? Do you remember in the Gospel of John? “Are you the prophet that is to come?” And what did he say? “I am not he. I’m not the prophet to come.” Why? Because Jesus is the prophet to come. And what Moses is prophesying here is that one greater than Moses is coming, and it wasn’t Elijah, and it wasn’t Elisha, and it wasn’t Daniel, and it wasn’t Isaiah, and it wasn’t Jeremiah, but it is the Lord Jesus Christ who is the prophet of his people. And unlike the word of God directly unmediated coming to us, which makes us shake with terror, the word of Christ causes us to come to Him. You see, when the word of God erupted from Sinai, what did the people do? They trembled in fear. Why? Because there was no mediation. There was no one standing between them and God, and they’re sinners, and they’re terrified. And so God in His grace says, “I’ll send you someone who will speak to you, and you’ll listen to him.” And I wonder if you heard that echo. “It is him you shall listen to.” Who said that? Remember the Mount of Transfiguration? “Behold, this is my Son. You shall listen to him.” Pay attention. This is the prophet, God’s saying. In Acts 2, the same thing. When they stand up and preach, Peter says, “This is the prophet. Jesus is the prophet.” And so we see a prophet.

We see also a priest. In chapter 18, notice — we won’t read through it, but notice the provisions for priests and Levites. And in chapter 21, we read of sacrifices and atoning work being done. What is this all pointing to? Well, on one hand, it’s pointing to a priest who will take up a priestly ministry of caring for his people and administering the means of God’s grace to His people. But on the other hand, it’s a picture of the atoning sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, isn’t it? And this is exactly what the writer to the Hebrews will do. He will take the Old Testament sacrificial system, and he will say, “Let me show you how this is Jesus. Let me show you how Jesus is the high priest, how Jesus is the sacrifice, how Jesus is the fulfillment of the Day of Atonement.” And we’re gonna see that in the book of Deuteronomy.

But we’re also gonna see He’s our king. Have a look at chapter 17. In chapter 17, verse 14: “When you come to the land that the Lord your God is giving you and you possess it and dwell in it, and then say, ‘I will set a king over me like all the nations that are around me,’ 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 who is not your brother.” And then it sets the rules. It sets the laws of the type of king that God wants to be a king over His house. And then we meet these kings, don’t we? This happens. Israel comes to Samuel and they say, “We want a king like all the other nations.” And God says, “Sure, have a king.” And they get Saul, and everyone lives happily ever after, right? Oh, no, he turns out to be terrible. Ah, but then we get David, the man after God’s own heart, and it’s wonderful for a season. But then he too falls. And then we have Solomon who falls, and Rehoboam who falls, and on and on it goes. And the question constantly being raised is: Where is the true king? Where is the true king? Until Jesus stands up in Matthew 4 and in Luke 4, and as the King of God’s people, He goes forth and He goes to war for God’s people, and He goes to war against the devil and He wins. And where every other king failed in temptation, Jesus Christ stands firm. And we’re seeing a picture, a pointer here in Deuteronomy towards the true king that is to come.

And through the Book of Deuteronomy, we are going to see our prophet, our priest, and our king. And here’s the important thing to see, brothers and sisters. It’s really important that you understand this when it comes to the Old Testament. Jesus didn’t become who he became because Moses wrote the Book of Deuteronomy. The Book of Deuteronomy was written because of who Jesus Christ is, because the Son of God is eternal, and the mind of God was fixed, and the Son of God came. And because the Son of God came, everything in the Book of Deuteronomy was written exactly as it was written. And the Church of Jesus Christ is established the way it is established because of who Christ is, which means the Book of Deuteronomy is written because of what Christ intends to do in the church. We begin to see just how important the Book of Deuteronomy is for us.

There’s some challenging things in it. It’s gonna challenge some of our worldviews, some of our understandings. So, it’s little things that creep into our thinking from society, mystical things. And we’ll be challenged about prophets, and we’ll be challenged about spiritual insights, about how we understand the word versus spoken word versus illusions versus so-called promptings of the Spirit of God. The Book of Deuteronomy addresses these things. It addresses loving our neighbor. It addresses little things like how to care for our children, how to raise families to love the Lord, how to honor the Lord when it comes to marriage, how to prioritize God over our husband and wife. It’s a very practical book.

But, you know, at the end of the day, I think one of the greatest reasons we could study Deuteronomy is because we find Jesus in it. Now, I mean, that’s a little bit of a preacher’s cop-out, right? Because we could say that about every book of the Bible, but that doesn’t stop it being true. We find Jesus in a particular light in the Book of Deuteronomy that we don’t find in other books.

So, how will we study? Very briefly. Sometimes a meal is eaten very simply and quickly, right? You eat a steak and soup very differently. You know, like a simple tomato soup. I don’t even know if you’d call it eating at that point, it’s more just like drinking. But there’s a big difference between eating a bowl of tomato soup and eating a steak. One you chew, the other you kind of just drink. The same is true with the Book of Deuteronomy. There will be sections where we’ll need to slow right down and chew on it and sort of meditate on it. Maybe a verse at a time. Other times it’ll be two, three chapters as we blaze over a story of significance.

But I think here’s the key. If we’re going to benefit from it at the end of the day, and you can apply this to every sermon series, you need to read it, you need to listen to the preaching, you need to meditate upon the word of God, you need to discuss it, and you need to obey it. There’s five helps, five things you should do with every sermon, with every series, and with the word of God yourself. Read it. Listen to it. Meditate upon it. Discuss it with the people around you, with people in the church. Do you know, can I tell you how much of a delight it is to my soul when I’m walking through the church after service and I hear someone saying, “Oh, yeah, I heard this in the sermon.” Or when I take someone out for a cup of coffee and they say to me, “Oh, you said something the other day that really struck me in the sermon,” and they wanna talk about it. Or I hear of families discussing the word that they received because they’re seeking to learn and grow. But I think nothing delights us more than seeing people obeying it, taking the word into their lives, and being changed into the image of Christ.

And so let us see our history, our history, brothers and sisters. And then let us obey our law given to us by Christ. And finally, let us see our Savior for all His manifold beauty.