“From Mountain to Mission”
Deuteronomy 1:1-8
September 5, 2021
Faith Presbyterian Church – Morning Service
Pastor Nicoletti
We begin, this morning, a series in the book of Deuteronomy. We will go through the first few chapters this fall, until around Christmas or Advent, at which point we’ll pause this series to return to it again next fall. Our goal for the next few months will be to make our way through Moses’s first speech of the book, which is found in the first four chapters.
This morning we come to the opening eight verses, which help us frame much of what is to follow, along with how we are to think of Deuteronomy’s role in its historical context, and also in our own context.
As I read from Deuteronomy, I will continue my practice of restoring the Hebrew covenant name of God, Yahweh, to the text, where it is present in the Hebrew but has been replaced in the ESV with the title “the Lord” in small caps. You can read about this in the preface of the ESV under “Translation of Specialized Terms.”
There are a few reasons I’ll do this, but one is that Yahweh is a personal name, while the Lord is a title, and that distinction was important in the time of the Old Testament and remains important today. For one thing, as in our other relationships, there is a relational intimacy that comes with using someone’s name as opposed to their title. For another, there is a specificity that was important at the time when this book was written and remains important today, in an age where people tend to think of God in vague or generic terms. The Bible does not speak of a vague God in general, nor is it just tweaking the ideas about the God that others in the culture around us may believe in. It is speaking about a particular God, Yahweh, who reigns over all, and is not to be mistaken for the gods of the nations.
With that said, we turn now to Deuteronomy 1:1-8. Please do listen carefully, for this is God’s word for us this morning.
1:1These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel beyond the Jordan in the wilderness, in the Arabah opposite Suph, between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth, and Dizahab. 2 It is eleven days’ journey from Horeb by the way of Mount Seir to Kadesh-barnea. 3 In the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses spoke to the people of Israel according to all that the Lord [that Yahweh] had given him in commandment to them, 4 after he had defeated Sihon the king of the Amorites, who lived in Heshbon, and Og the king of Bashan, who lived in Ashtaroth and in Edrei. 5 Beyond the Jordan, in the land of Moab, Moses undertook to explain this law, saying, 6 “Yahweh our God said to us in Horeb, ‘You have stayed long enough at this mountain. 7 Turn and take your journey, and go to the hill country of the Amorites and to all their neighbors in the Arabah, in the hill country and in the lowland and in the Negeb and by the seacoast, the land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates. 8 See, I have set the land before you. Go in and take possession of the land that Yahweh swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them and to their offspring after them.’
This is the word of the Lord. (Thanks be to God.)
“All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord endures forever.” [1 Peter 1:24-25]
Let’s pray …
Lord, we ask that your steadfast love would be upon us,
according to your promise.
Take not your word of truth from our lips,
for we know that our hope is in your revelation spoken to us.
Help us to keep your commands continually,
to walk in your ways in all areas of life,
to speak your truth to the people and the powers around us,
to find our delight in your testimony to us,
and to love your revelation to us.
Grant this now as we turn to your word together,
and all the days of our lives.
In Jesus name, Amen.
[Based on Psalm 119:41,43-47]
Introduction
As we come to the Book of Deuteronomy, we need to situate it in history. In terms of dates, the events described in this book took place either around 1220 B.C. or around 1406 B.C, depending on how one reads certain Old Testament texts. [Barker, 325]
But even more important than a date is where in the overall history of God’s work in the world this book occurs. In Genesis one and two we read of the creation of the world, and with it, the creation of humanity, made good and upright and after God’s own image. In Genesis three we read of humanity’s rebellion against God, plunging themselves into sin, and cursing the world with brokenness. In the chapters that follow God does not give up on his creation, but continues to work in and through humanity. And then, in chapter twelve, there is a major development. God calls Abraham. And God says to him: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” [Genesis 12:1-3]
In the chapters that follow, God repeats this promise, elaborating on it at times [Gen 15, 17, 22], stressing five main elements of the promise to Abraham and his descendants. He has promised to make Abraham’s descendants into a great nation. [Gen 12:2] He has promised to bless Abraham’s friends and allies, and defeat his enemies. [Gen 12:3] He has promised to be with Abraham and bless him. [Gen 17:7] He has promised to give Abraham the land of Canaan [Gen 12:1, 17:8], and he has promised to bless all families and nations of the earth through Abraham’s descendants. [Gen 12:3, 22:18]
When we get to the beginning of the Book of Exodus, it seems that the first promise has been fulfilled. Israel, descended from Abraham, is a great nation – a great multitude. But they are enslaved, without a land, dominated by a pagan nation, and God does not seem to be with them.
But then God acts. He sends Moses, and he delivers Israel, fulfilling a second promise he made to Abraham, to bless Israel’s friends, and to defeat their enemies.
In the rest of the Book of Exodus and into Leviticus and Numbers God gives Israel his covenant law and he teaches them how to be a people who dwell in his holy presence – how to live and how to worship in such a way that God, in his holiness, can be among them and bless them with his special presence. This is the fulfilling of a third promise Yahweh made to Abraham, that he would be with him and bless him. So Israel has become a great nation, they have seen God defeat their enemies, and God has set up his special presence as a blessing among them at Mt. Sinai and then in the tabernacle that he instructed them to erect.
And at that point God then turns to the next promise: the promised land. In the Book of Numbers he brings them to the edge of the land of Canaan. And he calls on them to go in and take the land, promising that he will be with them, and he will once again defeat their enemies. But Israel refuses. They fear the inhabitants of the land, and they refuse to go in.
As discipline for their rebellion and lack of faith, God says that while he will remain faithful to his promise to Abraham, he will not give the promised land to this generation. Instead he will give it to their children – to the next generation of the Israelites. And Israel wanders in the wilderness for forty years, until the first exodus generation has died out (with only two exceptions), and the second exodus generation has grown to adulthood.
And then, God brings Israel to the border of the promised land once again. And that is where the Book of Deuteronomy begins.
God has fulfilled his promises to make them a great nation, to defeat their enemies, to dwell in their midst and bless them. What remains is the promise of a land, and that through them God would bless all the nations of the earth. And with those promises in view, the second generation of the exodus stands at the edge of the land God has promised to give them – still in the wilderness, beyond the Jordan, but so close. [Barker, 330; Wright, 22]
And it is at that point that Moses speaks to the people the words of this book.
That is the historical context of the book.
Which brings us then to the book itself. As the opening line indicates, most of what follows in this book are the words of Moses – about thirty chapters worth. How are those words structured?
Old Testament scholar Christopher Wright (not to be mistaken with the New Testament scholar N.T. Wright, of no relation) – Christopher Wright explains that Deuteronomy is such a rich book, that there are multiple ways it could be divided – multiple structures that all seem to be going on at once. [Wright, 1]
On one level, the book is largely divided into three sermons given by Moses to the second generation of the exodus. The first sermon focuses on a historical review and a subsequent exhortation. [Deut 1-4] The second calls the people to covenant loyalty, it expounds the covenant law, and it gives covenant renewal. [Deut 4-26] The third sermon lays out possible blessings and curses for Israel, and ends with a concluding challenge. [Deut 27-30] [Barker, 328-329] From this point of view the Book of Deuteronomy is, as Daniel Block puts it, Moses, standing before the people as their pastor, delivering his final sermons. [Block, 57]
A second way to see the structure of Deuteronomy is along the form of a covenant, with similarities to vassal treaties of the second millennium B.C. Through this lens, the book begins with an overall prologue and then a historical prologue [Deut 1-4], it continues with the general stipulations of the covenant [Deut 5-11], then it gives detailed stipulations in the following section [Deut 12-26], next it explains the blessings and curses for loyalty to or breaking of the covenant treaty [Deut 27-28] and finally ends with witnesses for the covenant treaty [Deut 30-32]. [Wright, 2-3]
Yet another way to understand the structure of the book is in a concentric or chiastic literary structure, in which the first and last parts of the book correspond as one looks back and the other looks forward, the next sections in then correspond as an oration and a ceremony concerning the covenant, and finally the central core of the book is focused on the details of the covenant stipulations. [Wright, 3-4]
And still one more way to view the book is as an expanded form of the ten commandments, with chapters twelve through thirty expounding the ten commandments as different sections focus on different commandments or different sets of commandments. [Wright, 4-5]
Each of these frameworks gets at something true about the book, and each structure will come up and help us better understand Deuteronomy as we go through it.
Most immediately, as we come to the first four chapters this fall, we are coming to the first speech or sermon of Moses, the historical prologue of the covenant, and the portion of the book that looks back before looking forward.
And in the first eight verses we come to this morning, Moses gives us something of a first lens by which to view the situation. It is a framework of movement from mountain to mission.
Now, what do I mean by that? What is the mountain, what is the mission, and what is the movement described from one to the other?
The answer is summed up actually in verse two. There, in a sentence that might seem odd to us at first, we read “It is eleven days’ journey from Horeb by the way of Mount Seir to Kadesh-barnea.”
What is going on there?
Well, we should start with Horeb. What is Horeb? It comes up here in verse two, but then it comes up again in verse six, where Moses reminds the people what God said to them at “Horeb.”
Horeb is the name used in Deuteronomy to refer to Mt. Sinai – the mountain where God’s people gathered to hear God’s voice, to see his presence, to enter into a covenant with him, and to receive his special word for them. [Barker, 330] Horeb, the mountain, is the special experience of God’s presence and grace.
The other location mentioned is Kadesh-barnea. Kadesh-barnea is a town where Israel camped decades earlier, in Numbers 13[:26]. It is also the place where God first told Israel to go in and take the promised land. [Barker, 330] Kadesh is the place of mission – the place where Israel is called to take part in the world-wide redemption that God is carrying out in his covenant with Abraham.
And Moses references that promise to Abraham in verse eight – the promise with those five elements we considered at the outset, three of which have been fulfilled and two of which remain. Israel is a great nation, with God in their midst, having been victorious over their enemies of Pharaoh, Sihon, and Og.
And now, verses six through eight of our text describe the mission of God for Israel. Their mission was to take the land, to settle in it, and then to live there as a light to the nations. [Block, 66] This is the same mission God had given the previous generation at Kadesh … but they had refused it.
So in Horeb, we have the reference to the mountain that is the special experience of God’s presence and grace. In Kadesh we see the mission that God sets before his people to play their part in his work to redeem the world. And the rest of the verse stresses the movement between the two.
Verse two points out the journey from one to the other, but verse six stresses that it was God who initiated that movement: it was God who called Israel to leave the mountain for the mission.
And so Moses here reminds us that the first exodus generation moved from the mountain to the mission. But he also reminds us that they failed to make that transition. They refused to enter the land. And now, forty years later, as verse three highlights, the second generation is on the verge of moving from the mountain experience of God to God’s mission for them. And Deuteronomy is a book written at the border of that transition – it is written for the movement from one to the other.
And that is a movement that is quite physical and geographical for the second generation of the exodus – for the original audience of this book. But it is a movement that continues to be true spiritually and morally for God’s people in every age. We are called from the mountain experience of God to the mission of God. And Deuteronomy is written to help us with that movement. [Wright, 8]
It’s for that reason, Christopher Wright explains, that “Deuteronomy bends every rhetorical, literary, emotional, and moral skill to the task of equipping and motivating God’s people to live for the purposes of God in each generation.” [Wright, 8]
And that includes us. We too are called to live lives of movement from the mountain to mission. We too are called to come into God’s presence, to experience his grace, and then to go out, into the world, living our lives for the mission of God in the world. But we too often struggle with that movement. We may prefer one of those elements over the other. We may fail to see their connection. And so this morning we need to consider the movement of our text from mountain to mission, and the ways that both we and Israel can be tempted to reject what God has for us.
Temptation #1: God’s Mountain Without God’s Mission
One way that we are tempted to reject God’s calling is that we can be tempted to try to embrace God’s mountain while resisting God’s mission. We can be tempted to try to embrace God’s mountain while resisting his mission.
And this is a common temptation in our culture. Many people in our culture are searching for some form of spirituality. But what most people are searching for is a spirituality that will offer them peace and a sense of spiritual fullness … but that won’t require them to change the details of their lives too much. They want an experience of God, but they don’t want to be asked to do anything too difficult. They want mountain without mission.
And we Christians often fall into this pattern too. We can be tempted to seek a relationship with Christ that is all about communion with God – all about experiencing his grace and his presence, but then that rejects his mission for us, either on the whole or in part. Sometimes we can reject his call altogether. We want a relationship with God, but we don’t apply his presence or his word to any area of our life as we live it on a day-to-day level. That is fairly overt. Other times, it can be more subtle. We don’t reject the mission entirely … just in part. Maybe we like the call to doing works of mercy and mission in the world – feeding the hungry or defending the marginalized. But we don’t like the calling to live in a distinct way when it comes to the details of our personal lives. Or maybe, on the other end, we like trying to conform our hearts and minds and private lives to holiness, but the call to go out into the world, to get involved in the lives of others and serve them, and tell others about Jesus – the call to public witness – that’s the part you don’t like.
Whatever form it may take, the first temptation is to cling to the mountain, but then to resist the mission – either in part or as a whole.
Do you see that temptation in your own life? What does it look like for you?
For the first exodus generation, the temptation was pretty plain. They had the mountain experience of God’s presence. They more or less accepted the blessings that came with that. But then when they got to Kadesh and the mission was set out before them, they balked. They turned away from it.
And we should recognize that the second generation – the generation that Moses was addressing – they had a similar temptation. They too could have had the same fears. And they too could have preferred the mountain over the mission. They may not have been gathered at Mt. Sinai, but they had their own version of that in their encampment in the wilderness around the tabernacle. The tabernacle was, in many ways, a movable mountain for Israel, where God’s special presence descended among them [Jordan, 212-213]. And during their wilderness wanderings, the people encamped around it.
Going into the land meant leaving the tabernacle. It meant fighting, and working, and living out the mission God was giving them in a place where they would spend most of their time out of sight of the tabernacle. The wilderness had many challenges and difficulties. It was, after all, a place of discipline for Israel. And yet, it also, at the same time, was a sort of unique mountain experience for God’s people. And there could be a temptation for them to want to stay. But they were not meant to stay. God had a mission for them. And to drive that point home, Yahweh uses the same phrase we find in verse six of our text – “For long enough you have …” – he uses the same phrase in chapter two to tell the second generation that their time in the wilderness had come to an end, just as the first generation’s time at the mountain had come to an end. [Wright, 22, 24]
Mountain without mission was not a viable option for the second exodus generation. It wasn’t a viable option for the first exodus generation. And it’s not a viable option for us either.
It’s not a viable option first because it forgets what God is doing in the world. God’s work in the world didn’t end with Abraham. It didn’t end with Israel. And it doesn’t end with us. He has plans for all the nations of the earth. To resist the mission of the church in the world is to resist God’s purposes in the world.
Which brings us to a second reason that mountain without mission is not a viable option. It is a failure to love God. Those who want the mountain, presumably want it because they love God. But it ends up as a selfish, self-seeking love. It is a love about grasping at blessings rather than seeking to give blessings. And so, it is not really love at all.
It is certainly not the love with which God loved us. God loved us by giving. He gave his Son, who then gave his life, and then he gave his Holy Spirit. He gave us, freely, by grace, forgiveness of our sins, communion with God, newness of life, and life everlasting. That is how he loved us. He has given us more than we could have asked for.
He has given himself for us. How then, can we respond by refusing to give ourselves for him and for his kingdom? How can we refuse to do what he has asked of us? God has loved us. And God is worthy of our love. And love doesn’t just take. It seeks to love back.
And so we cannot ignore the call to personal holiness – the call to live lives that, as Jesus puts it, causes our light to shine before others “so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”
And we also cannot ignore the call to public witness – to point to the gospel of Christ both in word and in deed to the people around us, with the aim of making new disciples.
How do you tend to embrace the mountain while resisting the mission? And what would a renewed embrace of the mission of God in your life look like for you?
Sometimes it is the difficulty of the task that holds us back, and we need to seek God’s strength to do what he has called us to do.
Sometimes we have prioritized our own worldly missions far above God’s mission, and we need to seek God’s help in being willing to sacrifice our missions in the world for his.
Still other times, we might agree with the idea of mission in general, but we resent the form it takes in our own lives. You resent the details of the mission you have been called to, and you harbor a sort of nostalgic discontent for your time and place and particular circumstances. You think of how if you had been born into some other setting, you would do much better. You then, need to seek God’s help in accepting that God has put you where he has put you, in the time he has put you, around the people he has put you near, and that is what he has called you to.
Many of you will be familiar with how Frodo struggled with the same sort of thoughts in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Gandalf, the wizard, explained to him that dark forces were rising in the world. And that meant Frodo would face a hard calling. Reflecting on those circumstances in the world Frodo says to Gandalf, “I wish it need not have happened in my time.”
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live in such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” [Tolkien, 51]
One could imagine the second generation, standing on the border of the land, war with the Canaanites ahead of them, unknown challenges in the future – and you could imagine them saying “I wish [this] need not have happened in my time.”
For a variety of reasons we might think the same thing of our circumstances. But that is not for us to decide. All we can decide is what we will do with the time and the circumstances that have been given to us.
And so we must combat the first temptation, to embrace the mountain but resist the mission.
Temptation #2: God’s Mission Without God’s Mountain
The second temptation we may face is to embrace God’s mission while resisting God’s mountain. We see this when we try to do the work of the kingdom – when we try to live a holy life or impact the world for God’s kingdom – but in a way that resists some key aspect of the gospel.
One way this can happen is that we can be tempted to try to live lives of mission – working for good in the world – while resisting the authority of the gospel.
The Christian gospel declares that Jesus Christ is king. Similarly, the covenant at Mt. Sinai declared that Yahweh was king. That was a crucial part of the mountain experience. But we can be tempted to want to adopt God’s mission while ignoring his kingship.
For many non-Christians this can occur when you want the sense of purpose that comes with religion, but you don’t want a God who’s going to insist that you submit yourself and your entire life to him. But that tendency is not limited to non-Christians. Christians too can fall into this pattern, when we pick and choose which decrees and laws of God we will follow and which we will push aside – whether the aspects we tend to push aside are maybe the sexual ethics he commands or maybe the elements of social justice he commands.
It is a common temptation, but an impossible one. There is no kingdom mission without a king. And God is that king. We cannot embrace the mission while resisting his reign.
Another temptation is to seek the mission of the gospel without the humility of the gospel. And this temptation may be highlighted here for us here in our text.
Take a look at verses two and three. They seem to be pointing out that what should have been an eleven-day journey had become a forty-year journey for Israel. [Barker, 330; Wright, 22] And why was that? Because of the faithlessness of the first exodus generation.
And as a result, we can easily imagine a discontented sense of superiority developing in the second generation. After all, if the first generation had just gotten things right, then they wouldn’t have to deal with the conquest. The challenges they faced were really the previous generation’s fault. You can imagine the frustration. You can imagine them shaking their heads. You can imagine their sense of moral superiority.
And we see that same dynamic today. We see it on a larger scale as we look back in history, but we see it on a more immediate generational scale too. We see it in the way Millennials look at Boomers. We see it in the way that Boomers look at Millennials. We see it in the way that Gen-X and Gen-Z look at both Millennials and Boomers. Most of the time everyone is convinced that they could do better if they were in the circumstances of the others. Most of the time, perspectives are shaped by a frustrated sense of superiority.
But such a perspective looks at the mission and forgets the mountain. Because the mountain is a humbling experience. The mountain is not only where God shows his power, reminding Israel of their own weakness. It is also where God shows his holiness, reminding Israel of their own sinfulness.
We should note that Moses’s answer to this temptation – the temptation for the second generation to look down on the first – his answer was not to whitewash the first exodus generation. He didn’t paint a grand mythical picture of them and deny their failures. Not at all. His answer was to display that generation’s failures in vivid detail, and then to impress on the second generation that they too were capable of the very same failures.
Moses’s answer, in this book as a whole, is to repeat and expound and preach to the second generation the very same law that was delivered to the first generation, to make it clear that they were just as capable of failure, and then to urge them not to make the same mistakes themselves. [Barker, 326]
Moses’s response to the temptation to a sense of superiority was to point them to the humility of the gospel – the humility of the mountain.
A third form of the temptation to embrace the mission without the mountain is to resist the dependence of the gospel.
As the first generation of the exodus learned in Numbers 14, they could not carry out the conquest by their own power. And the second generation needed to remember the same thing. They needed to be reminded that they stood where they stood only because God, in his grace, had saved them and brought them there. He had rescued them from Egypt. He had preserved them in the wilderness. He had forgiven their sins through sacrifice. They were fully dependent on him, and they needed to do what he had called them to do in a way that was rooted in that dependance.
And so must we. Our mission to live lives of personal holiness and public witness for the kingdom of God must be rooted in a sense of dependence on the grace of God in the gospel. We are God’s people only by his grace. We remain dependent on that grace every moment. And we can only see true spiritual fruit from our efforts by his grace. The mountain was a reminder to Israel of their dependence on God’s mercy. And our approach to mission must be rooted in that same mercy and grace.
Fourth and finally, we can be tempted to mission without the relationship of the gospel. The mountain reminded Israel that their link to Yahweh was not just a mechanical one, where they had to give the right input to get the result they wanted from God. Their connection to Yahweh was a relationship. That was at the heart of it all: that God would be their God and they would be his people, dwelling together.
Some of us can be tempted to try to side-step that. It makes us uncomfortable. We agree to do the things God wants us to do, and admit our need for God’s grace. But the idea of relating to God as a person – of praying openly and honestly, of looking to the Scriptures not just for facts about God, but for his heart – that is scary.
But it is also essential. We are not just servants on a mission for God. We are sons and daughters of the King. And our heavenly Father wants to have a real relationship with us.
How are you tempted to the mission of God – to the tasks God calls you to – in a way that resists the mountain of God: that resists the authority, the humility, the dependence, or the relationship revealed in the gospel?
Our Calling: Mountain Leading to Mission
There are many ways we can be tempted to separate God’s mountain from God’s mission. But as we see in our text here, and as we will see throughout the Book of Deuteronomy, those two things are not to be, and cannot be, separated.
And that has been God’s way from the beginning. When God made Adam and Eve he blessed them with the mountain-top experience of his presence, and then he said to them not only to be fruitful and multiply, but to go out into the rest of the earth (which was not yet a garden) and to subdue it. Even before the fall, our first parents were called from the mountain to a mission.
And that pattern became even more pronounced after humanity rebelled and sin entered the world.
Abraham heard the voice of God and experienced the presence of God, and then God called him to go from his country and from his kindred and from his father’s house to a land he would show him.
Israel was gathered at the mountain of God and then, as we read in verse six, they were called to go in mission.
And the Church, gathered in the presence of Jesus, on a mountain, beholding his ascent in glory, was similarly called to go.
It was on the mountain, Matthew tells us, that Jesus gathered with his disciples after his resurrection. And when they saw him, Matthew writes, they worshipped him. What an amazing mountain-top experience that must have been.
And it’s then that Jesus says to them: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” [Matt 28:16-20]
Then, Luke tells us, Jesus ascended to heaven. And a cloud took him out of their site. And they stood there, on the mountain, gazing up at the sky. And two angels appeared, and said to them “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?” [Acts 1:9-11] Which sounds a lot like verse six of our text: “You have stayed long enough at this mountain.”
And now we too, rooted in the mountain-experience of the gospel, are called to take our part in God’s kingdom mission. We are called to receive God’s grace, to bow before his authority, to relate to him in love and worship, and then to go out and live the lives of personal holiness and public witness that he has called us to, in our particular circumstances, in this particular time and place.
Because God is at work. He is at work here and now. He is at work in the world, and he is at work in Pierce County. He is at work to make for himself a great people. He is at work to defend his people in a hostile world. He is at work to prepare for us an eternal place. He is at work dwelling in us and among us. And he is at work so that through his Church, all nations, and all families of the world will be blessed.
Let us take our place then, in the work that God is doing.
Amen.
—
This sermon draws on material from:
Barker, Paul. Introduction and notes to Deuteronomy in The ESV Study Bible. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008.
Block, Daniel I. The NIV Application Commentary: Deuteronomy. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012.
Jordan, James B. Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1988.
Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004 revised text one-volume 50th anniversary edition.
Wright, Christopher. Deuteronomy. NIBC. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996.
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