Audio Transcript
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Why Remember? Audio Transcript
Remembrance: Moses Retells a Story The place of Moses and the Israelites within Deuteronomy – Why remember? (Deut. 1-4)
Content adapted from Yancey, P. (1999). Deuteronomy: A taste of bittersweet. In The Bible Jesus
Read (pp.75-105). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
I. Slide 1
Now we come to Deuteronomy, the second telling of the law. In
“Deuteronomy: A Taste of Bittersweet,” Philip Yancey shows us that this
was no mere repeating of the law; this book dramatically recounts Moses’
final three speeches to the Israelites.
II. Slide 2
A reluctant leader who had spent 40 years tending sheep in the wilderness,
Moses was abruptly called by God to emancipate the Hebrews from the
most powerful empire in the world. He did that and more, coaxing and
cajoling the freed slaves through four decades of immaturity in the Sinai
desert. Now, just as Moses’ life was ending, the Hebrews stood at the
threshold of the Promised Land, eager to take the reigns of nationhood.
Moses had one last opportunity to pass along historical memory, to purge
himself of grievances and pain, to bequeath to them the hope and grit they
would desperately need in his absence.
III. Slide 3
Deuteronomy stands as the last of the five “books of Moses,” the grand
summation, the first full-blown oratory in the Bible, and the record of Moses’
final words to the children of Israel. In forty tortuous years a stuttering
shepherd, shy of leadership and haunted by his crime of passion, he has
become one of the giants of history whose achievements changed the
planet forever. Deuteronomy gives Moses’ own account of that remarkable
transformation.
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IV. Slide 4
Moses – tired and forlorn – looks out at the endless crowd stretched out
before him and begins: “You are too heavy a burden for me to carry alone…
You were unwilling to go up; you rebelled against the command of the Lord
your God. You grumbled in your tents… You have been rebellious against
the Lord ever since I have known you.”
V. Slide 5
“Because of you, the Lord became angry with me also and said, you shall not
enter the Land, either. I told you, but you would not listen. You rebelled against
the Lord’s command. I pleaded with the Lord, ‘Let me go over and see the good
land beyond the Jordan that fine hill country and Lebanon.’ But because of you
the Lord was angry with me and would not listen to me.”
VI. Slide 6
But Moses knows, despite their rebellion and despite his own disappointment,
that God’s action towards them is full of grace. Above all, he wants them to
Remember: “The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because
you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all
peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to
your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you
from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh the king of Egypt. Know,
therefore, that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his
covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his
commands.”
VII. Slide 7
Remember! “To the Lord your God belong the heavens, even the highest
heavens, the earth and everything in it. Yet the Lord set his affection on your
forefathers and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the
nations, as it is today… He is your praise; he is your God, who performed for
you those great and awesome wonders you saw with your own eyes. Your
forefathers who went down into Egypt were seventy in all, and now the Lord your
God has made you as numerous as the stars in the sky.”
VIII. Slide 8
Moses continues, Remember! “The Lord will grant that the enemies who rise up
against you will be defeated before you. They will come at you from one direction
but flee from you in seven. The Lord will open the heavens, the storehouses of
his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your
hands.”
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IX. Slide 9
But also you need to remember this: if you do not pay attention to the commands
of the Lord your God, “The Lord will strike you with wasting disease, with fever
and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which
will plague you until you perish. The sky over your head will be bronze, the
ground beneath you iron. The Lord will turn the rain of your country into dust and
powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed.”
X. Slide 10
“Choose life!” Moses implores them. “Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the
Lord alone. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, and with all of your
soul, and with all of your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you
today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you
are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind
them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write
them on your doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
XI. Slide 11
“Remember!” Moses declares. “Remember! Remember! Love the Lord your God
with all of your soul and with all of your might. Remember…!”