Sermon - AudioDeut 11-13 - Audio
Deut 11-13 - Daily Reading
Daily Insights - Please Comment
Chapter 11:
v. 1-7 - Moses is helping them remember their past in order to be remain steadfast in the present and future. When you look back at your past and see where God has worked in your life, how does it help you to stand firm in times of trial? How are you passing these stories of faithfulness to your children and others who may need encouragement?
v. 10 - To "irrigate it" literally means to water it with your feet as stated in the NIV. It could be that Moses was looking back at digging trenches by foot to bring water from the Nile to water the lands. In contrast God would water the land of Canaan by rain. In Egypt it took hard labor by foot to irrigate crops. Canaan would be the land of "milk and honey" where the crops were irrigated naturally.
v. 18-25 - Moses is once again reminding the Israelites of the importance of obeying God's commandments as noted in Deut. 6:7-9. God commands us to pass these things onto our children, through our example of living out the text. The two pairs of opposites (sit/walk, lie down/rise) suggest that this needs to encompass every aspect of our lives. We want to challenge you to get into the habit of daily sharing a story of God's faithfulness with those around you!
v. 26-32 - God is giving them a blessing if they choose to follow His commands and a curse if you choose to disobey.
v. 30 - The oak of Moreh is where the promise of land was first made to Abraham (Gen 12:6). The ceremony will implicitly acknowledge the fulfillment of that promise. (ESV Study Bible)
Chapter 12: deals with proper worship, expanding the understanding of the first commandment about having no other gods before God.
v. 8-14 - Once the Israelites enter the promised land, the way they will worship God will be different, especially regarding the place of worship.
v. 15-28 - Possibly up to this point, any meat eaten was sacrificial. Now, partly because of the distances that people would be from the central place of sacrifice, provision is made for non-sacrificial eating of meat.
Chapter 13: God doesn't want them to be tempted so He gives them three true to life examples of things that could happen to entice them to worship other gods.
v. 1-5 - This first scenario talks about the danger of false prophets and how God wanted the Israelites to deal with them.
v. 6-11 - The second scenario, the stakes are higher in that the rebellious person may be a relative, spouse or your friend. Allegiance to God is to take priority even over such close personal relations. (ESV Study Bible)
v. 12-18 - The third scenario punishes the entire city for the acts of "worthless fellows" who led the city astray.
4 comments:
Something jumped out at me today... Deut. 13:3 says "for the Lord your God is testing you.."
This has been on my mind all the time we have been reading.
In the old testament we read alot of how God sends curses and punishes the people for wrong doing..
I guess I have always thought of God as letting us, His people, pay the consequences of our actions and not Him sending them....in light of James 1:13-15
When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; 14 but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. 15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.
Help me understand more about Curses and Blessings. Is God the souce of the Curses or is the broken world?
Thank you,
Hi Terri,
Thanks for the question. The Hebrew word for test has the idea of testing or proving the quality of someone or something, often through adversity or hardship. The rendering tempt, used frequently by the AV and ASV, generally means prove, test, put to the test, rather than the current English idea of “entice to do wrong.” This is in line with the words of the book of Hebrews.
When it comes to the source of our punishment (Curses are punishment for sin), the answer is that both God and the world are the source of our punishment. When we do wrong at times we can see that the result of our wrong brings about punishment because of the fallen order or because of the natural order (you get a ticket for speeding--this is not God at work, it is the laws of the nation at work). There are also simple rules of the universe that when you break them (ignoring gravity for instance) that bring certain "punishments" when you break them. But the other part of all of this is that God does have a hand in punishment. Those outside of the faith will be punished in Hell according to Revelation 20 and 21; and also Jesus who talks about the end times in Matthew 13. However, when it comes to followers of Christ we know that God's punishment for our sin is now on the shoulders of Jesus Christ. God now looks at us as if we'd never sinned nor been a sinner because of Christ (Q&A 60 Heidelberg Catechism). While Christ takes our punishment that keeps us from being in relationship with God this does not mean that God no longer disciplines us. The writer of Hebrews tells us that God disciplines those he loves. In 1 Corinthians 11.25ff we find God's judgment being carried out against the Corinthian church.
So the bottom line is this: God disciplines his children. Sometimes he does so directly, sometimes he allows natural results of sin to do it.
Thanks for this!
Thank you Terri and Larry, I've been wondering about this too.
It has seemed to me, from what I know about our perfect and loving God, that it is not in His nature to tempt us - so, Larry, your explanation of vocabulary on that make sense.
What I'm still a little foggy about is what you had to say about God testing us. I always thought that God tested us, I think I assumed it from James 1:2-4
"Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing."
So just now I read the ESV Study Bible notes on James 1:2-3 to get a little more insight and that references Matthew 4:1
"Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil."
Does this mean that the Holy Spirit may lead us into situations where the evil one does the tempting? This seems consistent with Job - it was of the devil's initiative that Job was afflicted. The difference here though is that with Job, God allowed it, with Jesus, the Holy Spirit "led" Jesus. Is this why Jesus taught us to pray: "...and lead us not into temptation..."(Mt 6:13)? I always thought that was such a strange prayer request because I wondered why God would lead us into temptation, but now I see that He will do that so that our faith will be tested so that we will become "...perfect and complete, lacking in nothing."
Am I understanding all this correctly?
Thank you for your help :)
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