40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Episode 180 (Deuteronomy 31:1-32:52)

Episode Date: September 1, 2019

God gives Moses some bad news, Joshua is commissioned to lead, and Moses sings a song that will remain with Israel forever. Why do things go badly so quickly after Moses is gone? What promises are in the song of Moses? And why is God's concern for His name very good news? Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network  HWSS Conference Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the podcasts that are living over there. Also, while you're over there, you can go to the event page. You can go and click on Here We Still Stand, and you can register and get one of the last 20 tickets for that thing. We're only about seven weeks away.

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to see you there. Chad, me and you are going to attempt to do the final four chapters in Deuteronomy, not today but within the next two episodes two more weeks in deuteronomy and joshua here we come that's it that's it we're like you know we're at mile 24 in the marathon and we're not stopping now i mean we don't want to show up to the podcast pre-conference and here we still stand still being like well it's taking us a little longer in the desert than we thought i mean i i feel like a child of israel right now yeah you and me both i can smell the water of the jordan river i mean let's put it that way we are that close yeah i'm telling you man this is taking this is taking longer than we thought this is kind of appropriate yeah it is it is we know i was i've been i just

wrapped up a six-week bible study at uh at the church i attend and uh yesterday not yesterday sunday we were talking about deuteronomy actually and i brought up that deuteronomy is one of the top three books numerically that's quoted in the new testament so psalms is first and isaiah and deuteronomy so you know i guess it was it was sort of important to the new testament so it's sort of important to us too so we we've spent a little more time here although i think genesis probably has still is still in first place as far as time spent i think so 50 chapters long i think so but i do know this for all those who would accuse us of avoiding uh the law i mean i feel like we have spent a significant amount of time with this law yes we have yes we have we have uh we've been

swimming here for quite a while so uh let's get it done we're gonna we're gonna do uh 31 and 32 today and then uh next week we'll wrap up with everything that's left so let's jump right in And so we're here at the beginning of 31, and we're going to hear about how old Moses is and about the transfer of leadership that's about to happen. And then we're also going to hear about just Deuteronomy as a whole, what function the book is supposed to have in the life of Israel. And then we're going to have Moses teaching a song to Joshua, and we're going to hear about the purpose of that song. And that song is the song of Moses. That's the typical name ascribed to it. And that's what Deuteronomy 32 is all about. So we start out here with Moses saying to all Israel, he's 120 years old today.

And he says he's no longer able to come and go. And God has told him more than once that he's not going to cross over this Jordan. So we know that Moses knew, of course we know, all Israel knows that the time of Moses' leadership is coming to an end. And everybody knows also by now that the baton is going to be passed to his longtime servant, Joshua. so everybody knows that and this is this is kind of moses's last address or one of his last addresses to israel about how he's going to encourage israel and how god is going to be with joshua so he says in verse three that it's the lord your god who will cross ahead of you and he's going to destroy the nations before you dispossess them and then he says that joshua is

the one who will cross ahead of you so first he says the lord your god will cross ahead of you And then he says, Joshua will cross ahead of you. So it's, yeah, of course, it's both. Joshua is the leader appointed by God, but Joshua is doing the Lord's bidding. So through Joshua, God is going to be bringing his people into the promised land. Just, of course, like as we've pointed out many times through the New Testament, Joshua, which is, of course, the Hebrew name for Jesus, God leads us into the promised land. so that that is reaffirmed here and then he recounts a bit of history verse four he says

that god is going to do to the nations that are in the promised land exactly what he did to those two giant kings sihon and to and to og to what to the kings of yeah to sihon and to the kings of the of the amorites and so just as he destroyed them so he's going to destroy the people who are waiting for you on the other side of the Jordan. And then we have this refrain, which we're going to hear again once we get into Joshua, and it's repeated a couple of times here, to be strong and courageous. This is verse six. Be strong and courageous. Don't be afraid or tremble at them because the Lord your God is the one who goes with you. He will not fail you or forsake you you know that's a not just to be strong and courageous but this promise of the

ongoing divine presence i mean that's that's like one of those one of those themes that ties the entire scriptures together i mean we we hear it multiple times in the torah we're gonna hear it in joshua we're gonna hear it in the prophets and we're gonna hear it when we get to the to the new Testament as well, most famously at the end of Matthew's gospel, right? When Jesus says, all authority in heaven on earth has been given to me, and therefore go and make disciples of all nations by baptizing and teaching. And he says, I will be, I'll be with you. So this promise of God's presence with his people, either the people as their totality or with the people as individuals, this promise of the ongoing life-giving divine presence accompanying them

is just about as biblical a theme as you can find. And of course, it's summarized very well in one of the names of Messiah, in Emmanuel, in God with us. So Jesus himself is going to embody this theme that we find from Genesis to Revelation. So not only is God with him, but he actually is God, is God with us. So we hear it here in Deuteronomy 31, just like we're going to hear it in Joshua, in the prophets, and all the way into the New Testament as well. Then he goes on, Moses goes on, and he speaks directly to Joshua. And he repeats to Joshua the same thing that he said to all Israel. He says, be strong and courageous because you shall go with his people into the land which God swore to their fathers to give to them. He says, the

Lord is the one who goes ahead of you. He'll be with you. He'll not fail you or forsake you. So don't fear or don't be dismayed. So this is Moses just affirming and reaffirming everything that he's been trying to affirm and reaffirm all throughout Deuteronomy. Then we get to verse nine, and it shifts gears a little bit. We no longer have a direct address. Instead, it says that Moses wrote this law, which, just by way of reminder, anytime, I think anytime, probably at least 99% of the time in your English translations of the Old Testament, when you see the word law, you need to do an immediate mental translation. And instead of saying Moses wrote this law, you say to yourself, Moses wrote this Torah, because the Hebrew word Torah does not mean

law, or it doesn't mean exclusively law, and it really doesn't even mean primarily law. It means that which God has taught. So Torah means teaching, which of course can be history. It can be law. It can be gospel. It can be promise. It can be a lot of things, but it's God's imparting to us of his words in the form of teaching. That's what the Torah is. So Moses writes this Torah. He gave it to the priest, the sons of Levi, who carried the Ark of the Covenant into all the elders of Israel. So Moses doesn't, in other words, just preach all of this orally, but it's actually put down on paper. Well, actually not paper, on a scroll, on parchment probably. He puts this down on parchment. He writes this down and he gives it to the priestly leadership and to the elders of

israel and he says goes on to verse 10 he says here's what i want you to do every seventh year at the time when israel gathers for the feast of booths so this will be the sabbatical year which we've talked about before it's kind of like a mini jubilee so you have seven sabbath years and then you have the jubilee so the every seventh year is a sabbath year and it's a time of course for the release of slaves and the return of property to its ancestral owners and to the remission of debts, all that kind of stuff goes on. So every seventh year, not just like any time during the seventh year, but during the Feast of Booths, which was the longest of the festivals, took place in the fall. So every seventh year, when all Israel comes together, Moses says to read this

Torah in front of all Israel in their hearing. That's going to take about three to four hours. Of course, depending on how fast the reader is, but that's what's supposed to happen. Every seventh year, the fall festival of the Feast of Booths, Deuteronomy as a totality is to be read to everybody. Assemble the people, it says, the men, women, children. So this isn't just for the guys, isn't just for the girls, it's for everybody, kids included, are to gather and to listen to all of Deuteronomy read. and this is probably something that churches want to start implementing in their own services

don't you think at least every seventh year you know we'll say we'll like pick like the the third week in october the third sunday in october we're gonna go to church early and for three or four hours we're just gonna listen to deuteronomy i'm sure that would probably probably go over really well the only thing worse than that would be making the entire congregation listen to our commentary on deuteronomy take you know three or four weeks yeah everybody planning two weeks vacation in the fall we're just going to sit around here read deuteronomy and we're gonna listen to chad and dan talk about it that's right hours but anyway that's what's supposed to happen that way uh at least every seventh year of course you

You hear it all from beginning to end. That way, says verse 13, the kids who haven't known, who haven't experienced what people who are actually hearing this in the original setting experienced, they can relive, they can enter into that history through the recitation of Deuteronomy. Okay, so that's the first 13 verses. So they have this encouragement for Moses, again, pointing to Joshua as the one who's going to lead them. And then we have this law about Deuteronomy. Then 14 and following says, Moses picks up his, Moses's death is at the forefront of his mind, because he's going to

mention it several times here. He says, the time, the Lord said to Moses, the time for you to die is near. So get Joshua and go to the tent of meeting so that I can commission him, God says. So Moses and Joshua, they go up to the tent of meeting. God appears in the pillar of cloud at the doorway of the tent. And in this very public way, God says to Moses, I'm in verse 16 now, look, you're about to lie down with your fathers. It's kind of the Old Testament way of speaking about death, to be gathered to your fathers, to lie down with your fathers. And now listen to this transition. This is great. This is like, this is so, this is so Old Testament-ish.

You think maybe, you know, God is going to say, you have to lie down with your fathers, but Joshua is going to take over the leadership and everything's going to be, everything's going to be good. But no, that's not what God says. He says, behold, you have to lie down with your fathers. And this people will arise and play the harlot with the strange gods of the land, into the midst of which they are going and will forsake me and break my covenant, which I have made with them. And then my anger will be kindled against them in that day. And I will forsake them and hide my face from them and they shall be consumed. And many evils and troubles shall come upon them so that they will say in that day, is it not because our God is not among us that

these evils have come upon us? I mean, how would you, you're Moses, okay? And you know, you're about to die and god says you know i know that for the last 40 years you've you know you left your peaceful abode there shepherding the flocks of jethro in the wilderness and you risk your life to go down into egypt and you rescued israel after going through all the plagues and all that nonsense and now you're not going to get to go into the promised land and you're about to die but i just want you to know that as soon as you die and the people enter the promised land they're going to play the harlot they're going to go go after foreign gods

no this is this is the worst this is literally like on your deathbed someone coming up to you and saying hey i just want you to know everything is most definitely not going to be okay sorry damn yeah dude i mean i mean to do

all that stuff and then to have god be like well you can't enter the promised land and without you this whole thing is going to go sideways i know this is like gallows humor but i can't i can't help but laugh because but it will it is true i mean of course it all comes to pass just like just like god said it would but i'm just i feel this sympathy for moses you know i just poor guy well you know moses is interesting if you think about it it is true that moses dies and and things could go completely sideways for Israel.

But things were, like, threatening to go sideways for Israel the entire time that Moses was with them, and Moses was, like, the one guy. I mean, they're in the desert for 40 years, which is ridiculous, but he's the one that kept them mildly in regard to worship. I don't know if this is straight and narrow, but it's somewhat reigned in. I mean, to the point that he has to argue with God

to not destroy the people and all this stuff. And what you do see is that with the loss of that, it just goes nuts, which is somewhat a testimony to the faithfulness of Moses, who is by no means perfect. Obviously, I mean, he's not going into the promised land. But man, once you lose him, it is crazy after that. Yeah, it's like theological anarchy. Joshua is going to be a good leader. But all you have to do is you go to Judges and you realize just how quickly things just went to hell. You know, the book of Judges is that everybody did what was right in their own eyes and they no longer had a leader.

They were divided. They were tribes fighting tribes. You have just horrific things happening in the book of Judges. And so, yeah, I mean, everything that God says here is actually what what happened. And maybe Moses, when God is telling him all this, maybe Moses is like, yeah, I pretty much figured that. I mean, he does know the people by now. He knows what they're like. He knows what he's had to put up with. So maybe even when he's about to die and God tells him this, Moses is just kind of resigned to that fact.

Like he knows it already because of what his experience with Israel. and well what israel is going to do is they're going to become further and further removed from the exodus generationally so there's there's not going to be people that remember this or anything like that and there's not and then eventually there's not going to be people that remember anyone who wrote anyone who did remember it i mean so this they're going to get further and further removed from it and as they do they're not striving towards this promised land anymore they sort of have it there's not like a unifying thing like before like as a group we're like leaving x we're leaving you know egypt and we're going towards the promised land we have enemies

to defeat to get there and we have all the we have to stay together somewhat right there's no unifying thing and everything just goes to crap yeah yeah i was thinking about this uh even in my life and the lives of a lot of people that, uh, that I know, I mean, is it this even psychologically true? Uh, how many times has it happened to, to us where like, when we are, when we're really fighting to achieve something and we're, we're facing obstacles and setbacks and all the various things that come with achieving some high and lofty goal that we've set for ourselves, you know, we, we stay pretty focused. We know that we have to, if we're going to accomplish this, But then once we've accomplished the goal, then we kind of start to let our guard down and we're not diligent.

And pretty soon, yeah, things have really, really gone south on us. And I wonder if that's part of what was happening with Israel. I mean, it says here in the text itself, verse 20, it says that God is speaking. He says, I'm going to bring them into the land flowing with milk and honey, which I swore to their fathers. But what's going to happen is when they've eaten and are satisfied and become prosperous, then they're going to go whoring after other gods. They're going to turn to other gods and serve them and spurn me and break my covenant. So there's something to be said for the blessedness of conflict and struggle and fight. Because usually it's this kind of human nature that when things are going the way that we want them to, we kind of get lazy and lackadaisical and let our guard down.

And before you know it, things have really, really gone bad in our lives. And we see that nationally in the case of Israel. I think that that's one of the reasons why the people demand a king at some point, is that we need someone that's going to tell us that we have to do this and can't do that. We can't just all be independent. Now, God, of course, makes the argument, yeah, I'm that guy. and you just don't want that guy so you want like an actual figurehead but i do think that's part of the desire for one is that there's like man we need something that's just gonna rain all rain

us all in yeah i think that's probably what's going on there uh we see that with a lot of different groups right without a without a strong leader without someone that can kind of keep keep everything together then yeah a lot of a lot of groups just tend to fall apart and that's certainly the case and certainly the case theologically with with israel no moses and then everybody just kind of does their own thing and when people do their own thing that thing is usually related one way or another to idolatry yeah i mean yeah no moses it starts to get bad i mean but once joshua is gone it gets real real bad yeah yeah we devolve devolves quickly so anyway kind of with this in mind uh everything that god is telling moses

about what Israel is going to do, he does something kind of interesting here. So he says, what I want you to do, because of what I've told you, because of what Israel is going to be like, I want you to teach him a song. This is not, wouldn't be the typical way that we would think that you want to address this issue, but that's what God does. He says, I want you to, verse 21 says, that it shall come about, uh, when many evils and troubles have come upon them. So in other words, when they, when they reap what they, what they sow, when they, you know, reap the destruction

that comes from the idolatry, that this song that you're about to teach them will testify before them as a witness. And it shall not be forgotten from the lips of their descendants because God says, I know their intent, which they are developing even today before I brought them into the land, which I swore. So God knows the hearts of man. He knows what's going to happen. He also knows the future. And so he wants Moses to teach them this song. And that song is what we're going to get to in chapter 32. And this song is kind of like a, I don't want to, it's not a preemptive strike, but it is kind of this, it's this prophetic portrayal in song beforehand hand of what Israel is going to do. And it's God's way of reminding them that when all this

stuff happens, it's because they forsook his covenant. And it's also going to be his way of reminding them of what kind of God he is. And he's not going to destroy them completely, but that as the song will say at the end, he's going to actually, in the end, ransom them. He's going to redeem them from their evils. So we're going to get to the song in just a minute. Before we do just these closing verses of the chapter, it says Moses wrote this song that same day, and he taught it to the sons of Israel. But before we get to the song, he says that God commissioned Joshua, and we have this admonition once more to be strong and courageous. Moses writes the words of this Torah in a book, and it says that Moses commanded the Levites who carried the ark to take

this book and to place it beside the ark of the covenant. And it's going to be there as a witness against you. So this is, I mean, when we think about things, articles, items connected with the Ark of the Covenant, we think of like the Ten Commandments, you know, the tablets or Aaron's staff that budded or the jar of manna. But besides those three, those three were inside the Ark of the Covenant. But it seems that Deuteronomy was actually placed probably in some sort of clay jar because that's the way they kept scrolls and it was placed beside the uh beside the ark of the covenant which is kind of like a lot of the ancient treaties of of this time period you had a lot of when when treaties were signed between nations usually between a stronger nation and a

weaker nation so the weaker nation would keep a copy of that treaty in some sort of sacred place as a as an ongoing reminder of what they had agreed to do in reference to the stronger power So it's kind of like that, just in the sense that this is the covenant that God makes with Israel, and Deuteronomy summarizes that, reiterates that, puts it actually in ink on a scroll, and this then is going to be placed beside the Ark of the Covenant as a reminder of Israel's standing before God and what God has required of them. Okay, that is pretty much the rest of the chapter. The rest of the chapter just goes on to say that it's kind of an introduction, I guess you could say, to the song that what's going to happen after my death in the latter days is what I'm now about to teach you in this particular song. And so we'll go from there into chapter 32, which is the Song of Moses. So the Song of Moses is a pretty lengthy song. It covers most of the chapter, the first 44 verses anyway.

At the end, we have a little bit of other material, but beginning with verse 1 and going all the way through, actually, verse 43. That's the close of this Song of Moses. And I thought this was pretty interesting. So I was looking for New Testament references in the Song of Moses. And there's an easy way to do this. If any of the listeners read Greek, have a copy of the Greek New Testament, if you turn to the back of the, this is what I do a lot of times, I'm looking for like Old Testament allusions or quotes in the New Testament, in the very back of the Greek New Testament, at least the editions that are usually used, it has, it'll go like book by book in the Old Testament, and it will show, it will list all of the New Testament usages, like either when they quote that Old Testament verse or allude to it or echo it or something like that. So it's a great resource. But anyway, I was just curious as to how often

Deuteronomy 32 was either quoted or echoed or alluded to in the New Testament. And it turns out that this particular chapter is referenced in the New Testament more than any other chapter in Deuteronomy. So Deuteronomy is one of the top three quoted Old Testament books in the New Testament. And this chapter, the Song of Moses, is the most quoted or alluded to chapter in Deuteronomy in the New Testament. Depending on how you count, there's about 30 connections between Deuteronomy 32 and various New Testament texts. Some of these are direct quotes, such as vengeance is mine. We hear that quoted in Hebrews 10 and Romans 12, I believe. But there's a few other direct quotes, but most of these are like picking up kind of the language of Deuteronomy

32 and incorporating it into some New Testament text. So we'll come across a few of those. But that in and of itself testifies just to how significant this particular song was. And I suspect the reason why is that Israel would have known this song. So this isn't just like for us to read. It was actually incorporated into the worship of Israel. It's the same reason that the Psalms are the most quoted book in the New Testament, because people probably knew Psalms better than any other Old Testament book, because they were singing these. They were singing this part of the Bible. Well, they were also singing this part of Deuteronomy. And because words join to music, embed themselves in our memory better than just spoken words, it would make sense that

this particular song would be on the minds and the hearts of the writers of the writers of the new testament sounds like you're saying this song was a hit chad yeah it was it was on the yeah it was on like the top 10 list for centuries it's interesting i always told uh i tell worship leaders this all the time that the reason that the theological content of of the songs matters so much and the style in my opinion matters so little so i don't give a rip about the style really but i care a lot about the content is because songs are sermons and they're the sermons that people remember best people do not go throughout their week humming the words of the pastor that song that sermon was so great i just remember all of it and just go around humming it

in their car while they're dry no they don't do this there's songs that your church sings a great number of songs that you could sing without any hymnal or without any words on a screen. And what that means is that these songs are important and they matter because they do teach you something theologically one way or the other. They're telling you something. And you do remember it because it's put to music. And this is why, as you were saying, the Psalms are quoted so much is because these are theological songs. And so they're very important. And this hasn't changed. I mean, obviously, we're not writing scripture when write songs, but I actually would argue that people get their theology from the songs they

sing. It's at least equal to the sermons that they hear. Oh, yeah, I would. I would definitely agree. I've written about this before, something along the lines of that. If you if you really want to know what a church believes, you put your ear to the songs they sing instead of your like your your eyes to their official documents. Right. That's that's really good. Your songs are going to tell you what a church what a church believes either you know the good or the bad that's a that's a that's a great uh resource to look to for actually what a church is teaching because yeah i mean that's that's what we have in our hymns and songs yeah i would even argue uh don't even listen to the songs because again like the style doesn't matter just read them that's when

you know that's when you know whether you know yeah all right so uh let's let's we don't have a lot of time but i want to point out a few things here in in the song that i think are significant so let me just kind of let me give you a very brief overview of kind of the way that the song is structured and the point that it that it gets across so it starts out in about the first three verses with your kind of typical psalm type language about calling earth and heaven to witness and the teachings and the water dripping down like rain from heaven it has this proclamation of the name of the Lord. And then it shifts in about verse four and following to describe who God is in relationship to Israel. So he is a God who is faithful.

He's a God who's just, he's righteous, he's upright. But in verse five, we have after this description of how God is, we have a description of how the people are. It says they, people, have acted corruptly. They have not acted like his children, but instead are perverse and crooked generation. So those two verses, four and five, kind of summarize the main content. So God is righteous. His people are not. God is upright. His people are perverse. And then it goes on from there to kind of just flesh this out more or less. It says that God is their father. He's God redeemed them. He chose them out of all the peoples in the world. He chose them to be his own. He found them. He made them like the pupil of his eye, as it says in verse 10. We have the image of

a bird image, like the eagle stirring up its nest, hovering over its young. And God alone is the one who redeemed them. He brought them to the desert. He fed them when there was no food. He gave them something to drink when there was nothing to drink. And he did all of this for them. And what did they do? Well, verse 15 says that they grew fat and kicked and they forsook God and they began to sacrifice to demons. They neglected the very God who had redeemed them. So God sees this and he's jealous. They provoke him to anger. And so this fire is kindled. It It says it burns to the lowest parts of Sheol. And so what does God do?

Well, he brings upon them the very curses that he said he was going to bring upon them when we cover those in a few chapters ago. So all this bad stuff starts to happen. God stops from total annihilation of Israel because he wants to protect his name, his reputation. He doesn't want the nations which are around Israel saying, oh, it's because their God is so weak that he didn't destroy them. So God is concerned about the sanctity of his name. So he does bring upon them all this bad stuff. But in the end, he's actually going to judge the peoples who have inflicted hardship upon Israel. And in the end, he's going to actually, as the song ends, he's going to call upon not just Israel, but all the nations to rejoice with him.

because he is going to atone for his land and for his people. And I love the way the song ends. I mean, it doesn't end on a note of judgment, but it ends upon a note of atonement, both for Israel as a people, as well as for their land. So that's kind of the overall thrust of the whole song. So here's God, here's what he's like, here's the people, here's what they're like,

and here's what they're going to do. Even though God has done all these good things for them, They're going to do all these bad things in response. And what's going to happen? Well, God is going to do what he threatened them with. He's going to bring all this misfortune upon them. But in the end, he actually is going to remember them, and he's going to put a stop to his wrath, and he's actually going to atone for them in such a way that not only will they,

but also the surrounding nations will join them in rejoicing over the works of God. I mean, it's so many details here that we could get into, but it's a good summary of really, I guess, everything that comes after it in many ways. Because Deuteronomy 32 is like the doorway through which you enter into the whole rest of the Old Testament. And everything we were talking about earlier in the podcast, it comes to pass. You know, they do, they get into the land and they grow, as it says here in verse 15, they grow fat and they kicked. So it's kind of this image of, you know, God has been, they're like his chosen heifer or lamb or whatever, some animal that's precious to him. And he feeds it and it gets fat and like has everything, everything's just perfect for it. But then it turns around and it kicks God in the face.

It rebels against him. and so they are suffering because of their sins as a result of that and we see this happen in the life of israel so they get into the land they go whoring after other gods and as to bring up the book of judges again that's the cycle right they rebel and so god brings an enemy nation upon them the midianites the amalekites the philistines later it's going to be egyptians then still later it'll be the Assyrians and Babylonians and Greeks and Romans. So just like generation after generation, there's always a foreign power that is basically the sword in the hand of God to bring about the punishment that he had warned Israel was going to be meted out upon them. But in the end,

end of the song and at the end of the story itself, you finally have God redeeming his people, as it says here in verse 43, that he will atone for his land and for his people. So this song of Moses is sort of the whole biblical story that's summarized in 43 verses, until we finally get to the atonement, which is going to happen when he sends his own son to face the punishment for our sins, and the result of that is not going to be just for Israel, but it's for all the nations, for all the Gentiles. We have this cosmopolitan redemption that takes place where all the nations are called to rejoice in the saving work of God, which he has brought to fulfillment in his son. So it's an extremely forward-looking song,

And it's probably the reason why, if you turn to Revelation 15, it says that those who are gathered around the throne of God sing the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb. So it's like the Old Testament and New Testament are brought together in Revelation 15, where the song of Moses and the song of Christ, the song of the Lamb, are merged into one song, because the song of Moses has actually prepared us for the song of the Lamb. It's actually very, very good news that God does things for the sake of his own name. Because what this means is that God keeps his promises because he doesn't lie. He will not be a liar, which is great news for us because we break all the conditions of these promises, but God still lives up to his end of the deal because that's who he is. And so in Psalm 23, when he says, you know, he leads me in paths of righteousness for his namesake. Well, that's great news.

I'm glad he doesn't leave me in paths of righteousness based on my ability to walk straight. Right, right. Right? Yeah. So anytime you see that, you should be relieved. It's always better if God does things for the sake of his own name. Yeah, yeah, because that ultimately is,

I mean, for him to do something for the sake of his name is the Old Testament way of saying he does it for the sake of himself, because this is who he is. So he's being true to himself. He's not going to lie. He's not going to deceive. but he's going to be true to who he is as the God who loves this God, who's faithful.

And so ultimately our salvation will happen, not because of us, but because of, because of God, because of the kind of God that he is, the kind of God that is summarized in, in his name. Right.

And that is it, man. We are out of time. So guys, we kind of made it through these two chapters. We are thinking we're going to wrap up next week. So make sure you stick around for that. And then, you know, you'll be able to tell your friends to get ready to go and do a new book.

You know, you want to get back into some narrative? Well, we're going to be heading there. Guys, if the podcast has been helpful to you, you can support it by going over to 1517 and go into the donate page and you can become a contributor. Thank you so much to those of you who do that. You make it all possible. Chad, I will see you next week for the end of Deuteronomy. I'll be ready. See you then.

We'll be right back.