‘THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY’
LED BY DAN BROOKS
Time: 6:00pm to 7:00pm
Where: First Baptist Church of Pine
Who: All are invited
Finally: Israel is just across the Jordan River from the promised land of Canaan. Moses has led the young nation out of Egypt and on a 40-year journey through the wilderness, and they have just defeated several enemies before setting up camp here. Three of the 12 tribes are already settling the land east of the Jordan, and the whole nation is almost ready to enter the land God promised to their ancestor Abraham (back in the book of Genesis).
Almost ready.
Forty years earlier, God had rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. In the wilderness, the people agreed to form a special agreement (a covenant) with their God: he would give them the land of Canaan and protect them as their God, and in return they would keep his laws. However, the people of Israel violated God’s laws almost as soon as he gave them. That generation forfeited the promised land (which you can read about in Numbers), and now a new generation is about to make the journey into the land instead.
Before they do, Moses rallies the people to remind them of God’s law—and why they should obey Him. This is how the book of Deuteronomy gets its name: it’s the “second giving” of God’s law.
Theme verses of Deuteronomy
I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse.
So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the LORD your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days, that you may live in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them.
by Jeffrey Kranz at loverviewbible.com/deuteronomy/