Page 124 - Pentateuch
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The witnesses are set. One part of the future is clear. Like all other nations, Israel will fail to keep its treaty.
But disobedience is not the last word. Yes, vassal nations will forever break their promises. That is the
nature of life. YHWH, in His love and mercy, has given a different way for his people. They must trust in him
and in his Messiah. They cannot rely on themselves in the least. Even in painful refinement or death itself,
they must put their trust in him.
The best of all those thousands of Israelites, Moses himself, could not keep God’s law and earn the right to
enter the Promised Land. He died. Even more bluntly, he was killed by YHWH for his sins. Yet this death did
not mean God’s final judgment on Moses. He was “gathered to his people (32:50). These are not idle words
of uncertainty. Surely Moses carried with him the keen memory of God’s first words to him on Sinai. “I am
the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob (Exod. 3:6).” Surely he
understood the meaning of those words for the generations of believers who had gone before him. God is
the God of the living, not the God of the dead (Mark 12:27). Surely he anticipated his own reward, distinctly
chosen so many years earlier as he fled Egypt (Heb. 11:26).
Let’s Practice…
1. When Israel enters the land, they are to agree to____________________ and _____________________.
2. The result of Israel’s future disobedience would be _______________________________
3. What OT books confirm the failure of Israel to be obedient?
4. Instead of obedience, what did Yahweh require of Israel?
5. Who was to succeed Moses?
6. What did God give to Israel to help them remember the events to come?
7. What figurative name for God was used in this piece of writing?
8. How do the blessings on the tribes of Israel at the end of Deuteronomy contrast with the blessings on the
sons of Jacob at the end of Genesis?
9. How did Moses die?
10. Who had not yet appeared at the writing of the last chapter of Deuteronomy?
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