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…!”