Joshua and Judges: Push to the Promised Land: Moses' departing song: Deu 32:1-43.

Title: Joshua and Judges: Push to the Promised Land: Moses' departing song: DEU 32:1-43.  

 

Announcements/opening prayer:

 

Calmly, as a father setting his house in order, did Moses prepare for his departure. During all his life his thoughts had been for Israel; and he was faithful even unto death.

 

Then, in a series of discourses, Moses repeated, and more fully restated, to Israel the laws and ordinances of God their King. His last record was a song of the mercy and truth of God in Due 32:1-43.

 

I encourage all of you to read this song again on your own, and imagine hearing it from the mouth of Moses on that day, just hours before his death. It is his funeral song and in it he is again teaching and warning Israel.

 

This song contrasts the unchangeable fidelity or devotion of the Lord with the perversity of His faithless people.

 

Be careful of the prosperity test. Failing is to become proud of what you have as if you deserve such things and to forget that they are gifts from the grace of God.

 

Israel will grow fat on the land and grow proud as it they are elected above other nations due to themselves. They grow self absorbed and inconsiderate. Failing the prosperity test puts you and your things at the center of the universe.

 

In verses 1-3 we have a solemn introduction as to the importance of instruction. This is the theme of the whole song.

 

Moses instructs them on the blamelessness and righteousness of their God and that it is folly to rebel against Him as was shown by their parents and by the judgment and blessings of God.

 

The song embraces the whole of the future history of Israel, and bears all the marks of a prophetic testimony from the mouth of Moses, in the perfectly ideal picture which it draws, on the one hand, of the benefits and blessings conferred by the Lord upon His people; and on the other hand, of the ingratitude with which Israel repaid its God for them all.

 

The song is done in the way only a genius like Moses could have constructed. It is pictorial, concise, rough, penetrating, and sharp. It is full on honesty, solemnly stated, contrasting the ugliness of man's rebellion against God and the beauty of God's covenants.

 

The people addressed are the Jews about to go into the Promised Land and not the wilderness wanderings which are viewed as long past.

 

In the Promised Land they will grow fat with prosperity and proud of their riches and fall away from their God who gave it to them. So then this song is a prophetic anticipation of the future.

 

Man begins his existence in bondage,

and rises from bondage through spiritual faith,

from spiritual faith to courage,

from courage to liberty,

from liberty to abundance,

 

from abundance to selfishness,

from selfishness to complacency,

from complacency to apathy,

from apathy to dependency,

from dependency back into bondage. [Clarence Manion]

 

DEU 32:1 "Give ear, O heavens, and let me speak; And let the earth hear the words of my mouth.

 

This is important enough to draw the heavens down as a witness.

 

DEU 32:2 "Let my teaching drop as the rain, My speech distill as the dew, As the droplets on the fresh grass And as the showers on the herb.

 

His instruction will be like refreshing, fertilizing, empowering water that enlivens the crops, if his instruction is mixed with faith.

 

DEU 32:3 "For I proclaim the name of the Lord; Ascribe greatness to our God!

 

Moses doesn't want to proclaim the greatness of God alone but invites them to join him in it.

 

PSA 29:1-2

Ascribe to the Lord, O sons of the mighty,

Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.

Ascribe to the Lord the glory due to His name;

Worship the Lord in holy array.

 

The Lord is blameless and righteous in all He does, and so it is folly to rebel against Him, verses 4-18.

 

DEU 32:4 "The Rock! His work is perfect, For all His ways are just; A God of faithfulness and without injustice, Righteous and upright is He.

 

The Rock is a foundation and a protection and the Rock is unchangeable, faithful, and sure. His ways are perfect, meaning blameless.

 

LUK 6:47-48

"Everyone who comes to Me, and hears My words, and acts upon them, I will show you whom he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid a foundation upon the rock; and when a flood rose, the torrent burst against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built.

 

DEU 32:5 "They have acted corruptly toward Him, They are not His children, because of their defect; But are a perverse and crooked generation.

 

"defect" - m'uwm = blemish or spot. They were not children of the Lord but a stain. They were corrupters.

 

ISA 1:4

Alas, sinful nation, People weighed down with iniquity,

Offspring of evildoers,

Sons who act corruptly!

They have abandoned the Lord,

They have despised the Holy One of Israel,

They have turned away from Him.

 

DEU 32:6 "Do you thus repay the Lord, O foolish and unwise people? Is not He your Father who has bought you? He has made you and established you.

 

The perversity of the rebellious generation manifested itself in the fact, that it repaid the Lord, to whom it owed existence and well-being, for all His benefits, with a foolish apostasy from its Creator and Father.

 

ISA 63:16

Thou, O Lord, art our Father,

Our Redeemer from of old is Thy name.

 

MAL 2:10

"Do we not all have one father? Has not one God created us? Why do we deal treacherously each against his brother so as to profane the covenant of our fathers?

 

God denotes His title as Father and Redeemer by the example of bringing them out of Egypt and out from slavery to the Pharaoh.

 

DEU 32:7 "Remember the days of old, Consider the years of all generations. Ask your father, and he will inform you, Your elders, and they will tell you.

 

Moses describes Israel going back to Abraham as the days of old since he is transporting himself to the future after several generations have lived in the Promised Land.

 

DEU 31:26 For I know that after my death you will act corruptly and turn from the way which I have commanded you; and evil will befall you in the latter days, for you will do that which is evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking Him to anger with the work of your hands."

 

DEU 32:7 "Remember the days of old, Consider the years of all generations. Ask your father, and he will inform you, Your elders, and they will tell you.

 

DEU 32:8 "When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, When He separated the sons of man, He set the boundaries of the peoples According to the number of the sons of Israel.

 

When God confused their language at the tower of Babel and they were spread out over the face of the earth He in time called out Abraham and from him Israel and He knew their number and He separated them from the nations as elected unto Him. After many generations those who have lived in the Promised Land after hundreds of years will have to admit that out of all those nations there was one, their own, called out by God and blessed. Moses wants them to remember, as their elders had informed them, and to never forget that God has redeemed them and blessed them and called them His children.

 

Those who occupied this land after the flood dealt treacherously with God and He removed them and planted His vineyard, Israel in their place.

 

All of us should remember and never forget what God has delivered us from, which is so easy to do, as Israel is such a clear example, and it is for this reason that the church has been given its one ritual, the communion, in order to bring Him and the covenant of His blood into remembrance.

 

DEU 32:9 "For the Lord's portion is His people; Jacob is the allotment of His inheritance.

 

God did this, because He had chosen Israel as His own nation, even before it came into existence.

 

As the Lord's people of possession, Israel was Jehovah's portion, and the inheritance assigned to Him.

 

DEU 7:6

"For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.

 

DEU 10:15

Yet on your fathers did the Lord set His affection to love them, and He chose their descendants after them, even you above all peoples, as it is this day.

 

DEU 32:10 "He found him in a desert land, And in the howling waste of a wilderness; He encircled him, He cared for him, He guarded him as the pupil of His eye.

 

The pupil or apple of the eye seems to have originated from the fact that one can see a reflection of himself in the pupil of another's eye when he looks into it. Hence there is a little me in the middle of God's eye and that refers to the most tender care.

 

This does not refer only to their wanderings in the wilderness in the Arabian peninsula, but in their entire history. This is metaphorical. Israel was like a man found wandering in the desert with no food or water and in danger from howling beasts and the Lord searched him out and cared from him and delivered him. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were all delivered when the odds were stacked up against them. Israel became like one in the desert when in slavery in Egypt and God delivered them. And, of course, when they wandered in the desert, God gave them food, water, and victory over their enemies and brought them to a land flowing with milk and honey.

 

How many times and in how many ways has God delivered you in the past?

DEU 32:11 "Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, That hovers over its young, He spread His wings and caught them, He carried them on His pinions.