The Supremacy of God's Justice and Prophecy

Chapter 18. I think most of us understand that the words of the Bible are important words to us. And so we read the words and pay attention to them. But I don't know if you've ever noticed that actually the structure sometimes of the Bible is important too. In this passage that we're reading, Moses is talking about how the people of Israel are to be structured when they get into the land of promise. Starting in chapter 16, verse 18, he starts by talking about how they should get justice. They're to appoint judges and officials, each tribe and each town, and they're to give justice. Follow justice and justice alone so that you may live and possess the land the Lord your God has given you. Justice will result in God allowing them to live in the land. That's how critical it was. And then he takes a step backwards, it seems, to say don't worship other gods. It seems like justice, and then the next section after worshiping other gods is about the courts, court system. About the Supreme Court. If you don't get justice with the local courts and you go to the big court. But in between, he starts talking about worshiping other gods, which sounds like it's a little out of place. What he's really doing is telling us something of value and importance. Justice and judges who make that justice are critical, and that only comes whenever God is in a place of absolute supremacy. So when he talks about the judges, and then he moves to talk about the importance of God's place being supreme. Then he goes to the law courts, that's the Supreme Court of the nation. He moves back to say the law court of the final appeal also must be controlled by God. He must be in control of the entire justice system. Now once he establishes this, then he moves to talk about the political king, so that justice precedes the political realm. There's kind of a progression. So in the court, in the system that God sets up for them, justice is a primary foundation stone on which all the political system will be built. The courts should be built on that, and then justice should control what the king does. Now in many of the ancient places in the world, the king had absolute authority. He could do anything he wanted to do, but here the order that he puts out lets us know that even the king is subject to the justice that God demands of his people. This was unique among all the people in the world at Israel's time, and these stories are written. They held up before them the supremacy of God's demand for justice, even for the king. The king was subject to God's justice. Now he moves to talk about the religious world. He starts by talking about the priest and the Levites. He moves now from the political world to the religious or spiritual world. He talks about the priest and the Levites, how they're to be ordered and structured, and the priest's and Levite roles are to care for the spiritual life of the people of Israel. The Levites are to teach the law, what does God require of people, and they are the ones to teach the instructions from God. These people bear the responsibility of explaining what God wants them to do, but there's always the problem of sinful human nature. And so he follows this admonition to the Levites to teach the message of God and to make sure they do it right by talking about the things that would stand in the way of the Levites teaching correctly, sort of a test by which the people of Israel would know if the Levites are doing their job correctly. Verse 9 of chapter 18, When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. He starts by talking about the emphasis all the way through the book of Deuteronomy on the fact when you get into the land of promise don't begin to imitate the people that are there. Now he moves to the spiritual direction. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or his daughter in the fire. Now the practice of sacrificing children was a practice that was common or was practiced at least by the Canaanites before the people of Israel came to settle there. It wasn't necessarily that they practiced this as a way of appeasing the gods even though sometimes people might have done that. But they also sacrificed their children as a way of determining what God's wishes or will was for them. And it was a way of discerning the will of God or the way of controlling God's reactions. What he calls detestable things here come in two categories. They come first of all by people who want to know the future. The Bible sees it as a great sin for people to try to figure out what the future is going to be. You know why that is? Because only God is in charge of the future. And when you try to figure out what God is doing and try to figure out the future, you're putting yourself in the position of God. If I can figure out what's going to happen down the road, then I know what God knows. And this is putting God out of control and placing yourself in control. So the things that they would do to be able to figure that out were to be able to offer their children as sacrifices in the fire, have divination, that is try to divine the future, figure out what's going to take place. And they would do that, you see people do it with cards and you see it, people, all kinds of different ways to try to figure out the future. You see on television or movies all the time where they look at your lifeline and predict what your future is going to be. See, that's saying that I can do what God alone can really do, because nobody really knows that but God. And when a person puts himself in a place to act as if they can know what God knows, then they put themselves on a plane of being equal or level with God. This he calls detestable, sorcery. Now sorcery is a little bit of difference, because what sorcery tries to do is to control the future. Who is it that controls our future? It's God. He alone has the power to control the future. All the things that people do by means of witchcraft or by means of some thing on earth to try to control what's taking place in the future are efforts to usurp the power and authority of God. When people think they can figure out by the zodiac signs what the future is going to be, they're saying there is someone besides God who knows the future. This is an insult to God. Whenever you think you can figure out the future, for example, if you see a ladder and you don't want to walk, you walk under it and say that means there's going to be bad luck, you can make bad luck take place, or you can remove bad luck by throwing salt over your shoulders. All those are detestable to God, because God alone knows the future and He alone determines the future. I want the people who are called by my name to trust me and me alone for the future of their lives. When they say to me, I give myself under your control, I want them to trust that I know the future and I'm going to control the world that they face. And whenever they don't, it means they've become just like the pagan Canaanites who occupied this land before they came. What the Bible tells us is that it was this very thing that caused God to run the Canaanites out of the land and give it to the people of Israel, because those people engaged in these things. We can figure out the future, and we can cast spells to control the future, and we can do things that make things happen for us or against us. The Bible jealously guards the idea that there is one force at work in the world that controls everything, and that is Yahweh God. And anytime we look to any other source to try to figure out what the future is going to be for us, or to try to control the future, I can make good luck happen to me, I can make good things take place. We have taken over God's role, and this is what idolatry is. It is placing something or someone in a place that belongs only to God. So when you enter the land of promise, you will find people all around you who will try to do this. You can go to towns, any big town, and you drive down the street, and palm readers there, people who have all kinds of businesses to kind of help you figure out the future. This is an abomination to God. He calls it detestable in His sight. And we as followers of Christ must shy away from even the appearance of acting as if there is some rival to Yahweh God. There is none. Now, anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord, because of these detestable practices the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you, and you must be blameless before the Lord your God. And He made a promise to the people of Israel, if they succumb to these very things, He would drive them out of the land too, just like He did the Canaanites. These practices of thinking that we can control or know the future are insulting to God. Now, if the Levites should participate in any of these events, and the people of Israel did it. The king one time wanted to know what the future was, and he went to a witch to have her bring Samuel up, so he could find out the future. Because of that, the Lord removed him as the king of Israel. There is no forgiveness for this. God insists that we trust Him and Him alone. Now, these detestable practices might be creeping in to the teachings of the priests and the Levites. They might pollute what is taking place in the religious life of Israel, and it certainly did. All through Israel's history, their lives and their religion would be mixed with the religion of the land, the Baals, the gods of Baal. And what was detestable to God about the worship of Baals was they thought by worshiping Baal, they could control the future rain and sunshine to raise their crops. That's why worship of Baal was so detestable to God. You are depending on someone else to do the very job that I alone can do. So if you find the Levites are teaching you things that would cause them to incorporate into it these ideas of sorcery, divination, omens, witchcraft, casting spells, mediums, spiritists, people who consult the dead, any of these things are detestable to God because these detestable practices, the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you for those very things. So you, in this regard, must be blameless before the Lord. But you know what happens? Sooner or later, evil permeates everything around us. And so the people who are teaching, the Levites who are teaching, would sometimes stray away from what God wanted them to do. So he gave the people a check against that, just like justice was a check against the kings. So there is now a check against the priest to make sure that they're doing what their job was supposed to be. Beginning with verse 14, The nations you will dispossess, listen to those who practice sorcery or divination. But for you, the Lord your God has not permitted you to do so. The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brothers. Now Moses is calling himself a prophet. He's a prophet, and the prophet is first of all to be someone who is a part of the family of Israel. They were never to accept someone as a prophet or a spokesman for God who is not a part of the community of faith. Now, the prophet is the one who speaks the message of God and speaks the truth. The prophet was necessary because the priest and the Levites would sometimes stray away from the intended teachings of the scripture. And the prophet was to come and point out to them the ways in which they'd strayed from what God was asking and demanding. He was the warning signal to check against the misapplication by the Levites and the priests of exactly what the right teaching of scripture was. So the true prophet would first be someone like Moses. Now Moses was the model for the prophet. He was a man who was humble. The scripture said he was humble, more humble than any man in his time. He was a man who led the people out of Israel safely. He would be a leader for them. He was a sacrificial person. He even gave his life for the nation of Israel. This sacrifice of his, this humble spirit of his, this speaking the word of God clearly and plainly to the people, and this element of his own lifestyle was to be the model for any prophet who would appear in the nation of Israel. So they would know that there was someone who brought the word of God to them, and they could check by the character and nature of their lifestyle. The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. Two qualities. He will be a follower of mine, and he'll be a part of the nation of Israel, and he will speak the word that I have to give to you. You must listen to him. For this is what you asked the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, Let us not hear the voice of the Lord our God, nor see great fire anymore, or we will die. He's talking about what happened on the Mount Sinai whenever the Lord came to speak to the people of Israel. The mountain was trembling. The thunder was loud. The lightning was flashing. And God was speaking. And the people of Israel said to Moses, We're afraid. We're going to go far away. We want you to stand up and talk to God. They were afraid they would die hearing God. So they said to him, We want you to go listen to God, and we want you to hear what he has to say, and you come and talk to us. He said, From the beginning and God's wanting to speak to you. You didn't want to hear him. You said, Send us a man to speak the message. And so that's the way God's going to do it. He is answering your prayer. And the man that he sends will be someone like myself who will bring to you the word of God. Verse 17, The Lord said to me, What they say is good. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. Now, when he makes this statement, I will raise up from them a prophet, singular, like you from among their brothers. Many people see this as a prophecy of what happened in the New Testament when Jesus was raised. Someone like Moses. Someone from among the people of Israel who was to be the prophet. He didn't say, I will raise up prophets, plural for you, which would lead us to see Isaiah, Jeremiah, and all the other prophets of the Bible. Even though those prophets did speak the words of God, there is something more here. That is that there was to be at one time someone who would come who would be the definitive prophet like Moses had been for the people of Israel to allow them to build their nation on. And of course, when Jesus came, he was that for us. He is the one on whom the church is built, the foundation stone of the church. As Moses was that building stone on which all the people of Israel were built, the whole nation of Israel. So, Christ is that stone for us. Now, he begins in verse 17, a series of statements that stand out. I will put my words in his mouth. That's the first mention of the word. I will tell them everything I command him. If anyone does not listen to my words, that's the second time he uses that, that the prophet speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account. But a prophet who presumes to speak. Now, the Hebrew word, this translated speak here, is really the same Hebrew word as word. It's just a verbal form of that word, a word being said. So, there's the third time that that's used. I have not, but the prophet who presumes to speak in my name, anything I have not commanded him to say, in the word say, is also the same word as word. For a prophet who speaks, again, it's that word used again in Hebrew, who speaks in the name of other gods must be put to death. You may say to yourself, how can we know when a message, it is also the Hebrew word, has not been spoken, that word again is used. If what a prophet proclaims, and it's again the word, in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, this is a message, it's again that Hebrew word, word, the Lord has not spoken that word again. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of them. Now, you'll notice, as I drew your attention to it, how repetitious this passage is using this one thing, word. There will be someone come like me who will be able to speak to you the words that I have for you. You remember how John's gospel starts? In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. It's not a mistake that John starts that way. He's trying to draw our attention to the fulfillment of this promise. Jesus Christ is the final word from God, the fulfillment of this prophecy. That's why when someone else says there is a new book that's come to us from God, we have to say it can't be. The Book of Mormon can't be the word finally from God. For the prophecy, even that Moses made years ahead of time, was God saying in the day I will send a prophet as the final word that I have to speak to you. That's why we say that the Bible is closed with the story of Christ and the gospels and the records of what Christ's gospel means in the letters of Paul. For the final word has been said. There is no other book, there is no other extension, for the prophecy of Moses was simple and clear and plain. The word of God will be spoken to us in someone like Moses. Someone who delivered his people from captivity, which the death of Christ on the cross has done for us. Someone who tells us the very words of God, and this is the message that Jesus gave us. Someone who leads us through the desert times of our lives to the promised land that he's bringing us to, as Moses did and as Christ leads his people. When Jesus was getting ready to leave, he said to us, I have to go, because if I didn't, the Holy Spirit would not come to you. What God has placed within us when we give ourselves to him is he places within us his spirit. And the spirit of God is to help us understand the words that Jesus spoke. The spirit of God is to remind us, the scripture says, of what Jesus had to say. It is the spirit of God that continually gives to us the words of God. Now, the preacher might preach and the teacher might teach, but you can be sitting in a service and the teacher, preacher preaching, and you listen to this and you think, well, I don't know, I don't know what I'm doing. And you listen to this and you think, well, that's probably something good. And the person next to you can feel the power of God from the words that are spoken until their whole life is shaken. Because the spirit of God takes the word spoken or read by the teacher, preacher, brings it into the life of that person and speaks that word to them with power and authority. And so the word of Jesus Christ becomes living and alive in us. This was the prophecy. You are living in a time in which Moses could only dream and hope would come to pass. When the very words of God would be spoken with clarity and certainty with no confusion. For the spirit of God tells us what is true and right. The prophet was to check the Levites. If the Levites are teaching things that are contrary to what the instructions of God, the prophet is to come and say, thus saith the Lord. The Holy Spirit within us testifies with our spirit inside of us as to the truth of God. So that when we hear something, if we're close to God and listening to him, his spirit says to us, that's not right. His spirit checks our spirit. His spirit guides our spirit. So for us, the living prophet is the spirit of God, who does nothing but continually bring us the word of the word. The message of Jesus, who was the word. What Moses is saying is, there's always going to be a need among my people for the truth to be spoken. You can't count on the Levites to do it. So God is going to send you periodically a prophet who will say to the people of Israel, you strayed from the Lord and unless you return, destruction is near. In the New Testament, the same thing is true. We cannot trust ourselves to be faithful to God. We cannot even trust those around us to always teach and preach the things that are true. But one thing without fail, the words of Jesus Christ will never be wrong. And if we misunderstand them or don't catch it, the spirit of God takes the place of that prophet to bring to our mind the truth of what God has to say. We can confuse and we can forget and we can distort the message written in the scripture. But never does the spirit of God get deceived or tricked into saying anything that's wrong. You have inside of you, if you're a follower of Jesus, a constant assurance that the truth of life is inside you. So the important thing for us is we must know what the words of God are in the scripture. The Holy Spirit can't guide us to those things that are true if we don't know that they're in the scriptures. So when he speaks a word to us and we know that reminds us of what the Bible says, then the words of the spirit and the words of the scripture are coinciding. They are truth. And that assures us that we will never, ever be misled. Where you get misled is listening to some person apart from the scripture and apart from the spirit of God. And if the voice inside of you asks you to do something that is contrary to scripture, you have heard the voice of Satan himself. Don't listen. The word of God will remain pure when we hear the word and it's confirmed by the spirit of God. God sent his people into this land with great danger. He sent us into the world with far better equipment, for we have all now the words of God, Old Testament, New Testament. And now we have the word of God living inside of us. By means of the spirit of God. So that there's never any reason for us to be misled or to get off track. Because the word of God is with us. Living and alive. Do you bow your head please for a moment? I don't know if you read the Bible every day, but you should. It is your, it's your safety net. For you can hear people talk around you about all kinds of things that are not true. But if you know the message of God in the scriptures, you can tell when people are just talking about things they think are true. And the difference between that and what is true. So many people base their lives on lies and they don't even know it. So the scripture is critical for you to know. You should never have a time in which you quit reading the scripture. However little amount you read day by day or how much it is, you must constantly be listening to the words of God. And then you have to practice listening to the spirit make those words alive. How do you do that? By reading the scriptures. And when you read it, you say to God, please help me understand this and show me how I should change my life to fit what you say to me. That opens the door for the spirit. And he will bring the scriptures alive to you personally. Father, give us a passion to hear your words. That your words might guide our life. Our footsteps. Our purposes. Our passions. For only then do we know that we'll be able to find life. In the name of Jesus, we give thanks to you for the gift of your word. Amen.