After the Sermon: Deuteronomy 32:48-34:12

6/29/26 | Will DuVal | DEUTERONOMY: Remembering God's Faithfulness; Responding in Obedience

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Welcome to the After the Sermon podcast where Pastor Will answers follow-up questions and we share your personal applications from the sermon for the benefit of the church. My name is Brian. I'm here with Lead Pastor Will.

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Hey, y'all.

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I want to remind you with this podcast that sermons are not just a Sunday thing. So wrapped up not just Deuteronomy, but the Torah yesterday.

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Man, end of a journey

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For sure. Significant years long steady.

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Well, let's see. Six months in Deuteronomy and six years in the Torah, I guess, because we split Genesis over to kind of parts. So yeah, it's been a fun ride.

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Awesome.

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Love it.

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So maybe quick recap of sermon from yesterday. I had a lot of recap.

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We did a lot of recap already in the sermon of, like I said, I try and always do that at the end of every book just to again, do kind of a flyover and remind us of where we've been and the overall kind of trajectory. Try and do a little bit of that even before we start the series. First week of the series, here's kind of where we're headed, but obviously can do it even more so at the end in retrospect, just walk through, "Hey, we've spent 23 Sundays in Deuteronomy in these 32 chapters we've done already and here's kind of what we've seen, what God's taught us all along the way." And so we had about eight or 10 minutes of recap, but the bulk of the sermon, of course, was finishing the book with an ironically appropriately titled Message Finishing Well. That was kind of my subtle subconscious way of having people kind of primed to think like, "Oh, this is going to be such a great sermon, such a great finish ending to the book." But what we were really talking about was not me as the preacher finishing well the book of Deuteronomy, but rather Moses finishing well his race of faith that God had him run, leading God's people and really leading us as he's written it down and recorded it for us.

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And we've learned so much from his example again for 136 chapters total. And you look at when Moses shows up in Exodus all the way through Leviticus numbers Deuteronomy now. And so Moses being, I mean, I was thinking about this and talking with somebody after the sermon too, like after Jesus obviously I think there's a case to be made that Moses is maybe the single most important figure human in the Bible and really in human history other than Paul obviously would have a good, strong argument for that. I mean some people would obviously, David, Abraham, there's other, maybe there's no, I don't know. I'm one of those, I kind of like getting lost in a good sort of goat debate of like who's the greatest of all time. Of course, Jesus is like the clear. Anyway, so yeah, but with Moses, is life coming to an end and how do we finish well like him?

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So anyway, we looked at Moses, how he accepts sort of his lot.

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Earlier in the book, we saw Moses kind of really pleading with God, "Please let me go into the land. I'm sorry, I'm repentant for what I did back in Numbers chapter 20 when I struck the rock and dishonored you in front of Israel." And God says no, it settled. And we talked about that too. We talked about part of why, is God just being really unforgiving or petty or vindictive or something here. No, part of the reason not only because of obviously Moses' sin, but part of the reason God chose not to forgive Moses and let him go in and step foot in the land before he died or whatever is to make a very powerful symbolic point. This is where we ended the message was that the law, Moses represents the law.

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Torah means law. Moses is the writer of the Torah. Moses received the law on Mount Sinai. He's like the figure of like, "Hey, this is what God wants us to do. We got to do it. " And so Moses represents the law. Paul explains this in the New Testament. And so the fact that Moses cannot get in the promised land is such a powerful point to us that the law cannot get you in to the promised land of glory and where we all want to get. So for us, we've looked all along at that promised land foreshadowing heaven and the greater sort of land of promise for us and our inheritance as believers. And it's not by works, not by law, but by faith in God's grace of his gift. Jesus, Joshua being the one that leads the people in, Joshua being the Hebrew form of the name Jesus, Yeshua, Joshua being the symbol not of law but of faith.

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Joshua's faith, he and Caleb were the ones there in Numbers 14 that the only two spies that were sent in that said, "Yeah, they're giant. They're big, but our God's bigger. We can do this. God promised. Remember let's trust him." And so Joshua being a symbol of faith and so it's by faith that we in the better Joshua and Jesus that we get in. So anyway, that was all kind of part of it. But yeah, how do we finish well? We finish well by accepting our lot and by reflecting on the journey. We saw Moses do some of that and by blessing those that come after us, Moses again, it's not about him and his legacy. It's about God and pointing people to God and by blessing those future generations of Israelites. And so we saw his blessing of the 11 of the 12 tribes and we got tons of questions about that chapter 33 in particular and Moses' final sort of words and of blessing.

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And then yeah, finally by passing the baton. And so Moses again, in humility, dies, he's mourned, but it's like, okay, next on deck, Joshua, here we go. And it's a great segue to, we'll obviously wait a while until January of next year, God willing, we'll go back. I pick the story up there with Joshua. But yeah, really blessed to have walked through not just Deuteronomy, but all five of these books over the last six years now and hope it's been a big blessing to y'all.

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Yeah. And as you mentioned, many questions about the tribes and the blessings of the tribes. One is a standout, Simeon.

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  Yep. That was the one I kind of primed people for. Multiple. I did point out, we're not going to go line through lines through every one of these tribes and blessings, but you should notice there's one of them omitted. There's only 11. Well, actually technically there was 13 because only 11 were named, but Joseph is named and then Joseph's two sons are named Ephraim and Manasseh. And we've got a question about that too. So anyway, but yes, Simeon was omitted. Why? That was one of them

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  From

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  Five or six cards.

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  Brooks wrote in, "Why is Simeon left out of the blessings?" Brett wrote in, "Why was Simeon left out of the tribal blessings? Steve? Why is Simeon omitted? Why are Zebulon and Isikar lumped together? Why are Efraim and Manasseh addressed as ...

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  Addressed as under Joseph rather than separately." Thank

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  You. Yeah. Yeah. Catherine wrote in, "Why was Simeon left out of Moses' blessings?" Dalton asked, "Will you run through deeper the blessings of the tribes of Israel? Why no Simeon?" Rubian gets sort of screwed, he wrote. "Levi's is huge. So is Joseph, why is Gad so notable and described like a lion and not Judah? Dan's is tiny and he is a lion cup. Why is Asher so notably awesome? Victoria also, why was Simeon left out? Why was Simeon left out?

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  All right. So let's start with Simeon because that was the most repeated question there. So you may recall that back in Genesis chapter 49, and I did mention in passing that in explaining how Moses arranges his tribal blessings here, that they seem to be arranged in not in birth order but rather in geographical order of where these tribes would be located I believe from south to north in the promised land once they take over their inheritance, roughly speaking, geographic. So I mentioned in passing Jacob's blessing of his sons, Jacob AKA Israel. So this is Genesis 49 if you want to go back and look at Genesis 49. Interestingly, I use the term blessing very loosely when it comes to Jacob's blessing, because if you go back and you read Jacob's blessing in Genesis 49, it's not quite half the tribes, but there's a number of tribes that Jacob is really pretty rough on.

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  I mean, just not high on, you're like, " Really, dad? That's my blessing. "Jacob's the one who had the 12 sons, the 12 tribes. And so Reuben, he's like, " Reuben, you messed up. "Reuben was the one you remember who slept with his stepmom.

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  Remember Jacob had four wives, Leah and Rachel and that whole thing and then both of their maid servants, Bilha and Zilpa. Anyway, so Leah gave him six sons and the others gave 222. And so Ruben sleeps with his stepmom, dishonors her of course, and his father and all that. So he's in the doghouse. Simeon and Levi, if you look back, I believe it's Genesis Genesis 34. Yeah. One of those chapters in Genesis where it's probably titled in your section header of your Bible, The Rape of Dinah, where Jacob is just moving with all his kids back into the promised land and they come into Shekham in Northern Galilee area. And Jacob's trying to build bridges, make alliances to carve out a place for himself in the promised land. Anyway, the prince of the city in Szechum falls for Dinah, one of Jacob's kids, the daughter, we hear about the 12 sons, the 12 tribes, but now this is Dinah, the girl.

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  One of the girls, we don't know how many girls he had. Maybe we do, but we know he had one at least. And Dinah is sister of Simeon and Levi. Anyway, Prince basically rapes her. He rapes Dinah and Simeon and Levi find out about this. They're so upset. Their sister was defiled, dishonored this way.

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  Their father Jacob, he's like, " Oh shoot, we can't let this screw up though. We're trying to sort of make treaties here and make nice, make friends. "So he's going to kind of like skirt over it a little bit, which anyway, there's a whole sermon already on that, so you can go listen to that. But Simeon and Levi are like, " No way, no way. "So they go and they, before Jacob can send word to Shechem about what's going on, the prince of Shecham wants to marry Dinah now. He wants to take her as his wife. Simeon and Levi go and they say," This can't be done because we're God's chosen people, we're different, we're special and we can't give our sister away in marriage to a bunch of uncircumcised heathens. And so y'all got to get circumcised. Not just you, Prince, but your whole village.

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  Whole village got to be circumcised. Long story short, they do it on, I think it's the third day when they're in their most pain. I mean, you think about circumcision, adult male, no anesthesia, no pain meds. They're all in their tents just nursing their wounds. Levi and Simeon come through town with their swords, just two of them, and systematically just go tent to tent and slaughter every man in the village. I can't remember if they got the women and children too, maybe, just as revenge for what they did at Dinah. Jacob hears about it. Of course, Jacob gets super mad at Levi and Simeon saying, "You've made me stink in the noses of the Shechemites of the people of this land now and they're not going to accept us and now we're going to have enemies and whatever." And so Jacob takes this sort of grievance all the way to his grave to where in his quote unquote blessing in chapter 49 of Genesis, Jacob's blessing of Simeon and Levi is basically, he says, "Don't let me get stuck next to these kids in Shield.

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  I don't want to meet them in the afterlife. I'm done with Levi and Simeon." Really harsh.

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  Okay, so fast forward now. I think that sort of curse Simeon also interestingly in the 40 years in the wilderness, I hope I'm getting this right. In the 40 years in the wilderness, remember they came out of Egypt and they did the census in Numbers chapter one, two, and it was like 603,000 Israelites or whatever. Well, then they're unfaithful at Kadesh Barnia and they're forced to wonder an extra 38 and a half years and most of the tribes during that time as part of God's punishment dwindle, some of them remain more or less the same. I think maybe one of them, one or two actually grow. So again, we can read into that, which you will. But Simeon in particular, I believe it was really, really shrunk and went from like, I don't know, 50 something thousand, 40 something thousand to like 20 something thousand.

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  So it's like 60% drop off in the population of that tribe. There's an indication one of the, I can't remember which, because there's so many little mini rebellions and grumblings in the book of numbers that we read, can't remember which one it was. I feel like it's one of the earlier ones and like numbers somewhere between chapters six and 11 or so. Maybe it was even Exodus. Anyway, where Israel is grumbling, they're hungry or thirsty, whatever it may be and hot and the wilderness and they complain and it says, "God got angry and a fire broke out from the camp." And basically it sounds like based on what we know of where they camped, because numbers one and two told us where the tents were and where they ... It sounds like God's anger broke out mostly starting with like Simeon. So you look at some of these little hints that we get all throughout the story and it's like, all right, it seems like this kind of curse on Simeon really did kind of linger and that's the kind of thing that like we don't, I don't know, in our modern day American autonomous way of thinking about things we don't really think about sort of like family curses and generational sin and how what my, even my parents, much less my great-great grandparents, what they did and who they were and whatever might still be affecting me to this day.

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  But I think that is one of the things we're supposed to kind of really read into this and realize is like just how connected we are in more ways than we realized to our own past and that sort of thing. And with Simeon, yeah it seems to still be having these kind of reverberations now so many years after Jacob's quote unquote blessing curse of Simeon still now you've got Moses getting ready to hang it up and he just totally leaves Simeon totally out of it. Now, interesting go back because Jacob said the same thing about Levi.

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  He really takes Levi and Simeon, he views them and treats them jointly in Genesis 49. So why then not only does Moses bless the tribe of Levi, he's got more verses about Levi than any other tribe in terms of their blessing other than I have to count them, maybe Joseph. I think Joseph's like if you want to go more by lines than verses, but there's like five verses for Joseph and I believe there's one ... Yeah, I guess there's four verses for Levi, but I mean, he's got so much about Levi. Why? Well, for one thing you could speculate and say, "Well, remember who's from the tribe of Levi?" Moses, right? That's his tribe, he and Aaron and his family. So is that why Moses is just kind of being more forgiving gracious on Levi? But there's this really pivotal story that hopefully, again, you'll remember and we all should remember from the book of Exodus, Exodus chapter 32 with the golden calf incident, right?

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  Moses is up on the mountain, too busy getting God's law and I'm joking. I mean, Moses is exactly where he's supposed to be doing what God wants and the people get impatient and they say, you know the story, they say, "We need a leader, we need a God." And so Aaron says, "Give me your gold." He makes him the golden calf idol and they worship that instead and they're breaking the commandments as Moses is getting them and he comes down and Moses yells at him, he breaks the commandments and protests, he's got to get new copies. He comes back.

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  Moses melts down the golden calf, he throws it in the water, he collects the dust, he makes the people drink it, eat it. So there's this whole punishment thing, but then the real punishment biggest is that God has Moses to make this kind of speech and say, "Okay, everybody who's on Yahweh's side, come over here, this side of the camp." And everybody who's still digging their heels in on this golden calf's stupidity, like y'all just stay over there. And long story short, the Levites, the tribe of Levi are the first ones who repent and who say, "Yeah, we got to get back on the right track here." They come over with Moses on his side and they strap on their swords and they go through the camp of the ones who didn't join in repentance and they just kill their cousins and great uncles and whoever, like these other fellow Israelites who wouldn't repent and who were rebelling against the Lord.

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  They get slaughtered, put to death, thousands of people die and because of it, because of Levi's faithfulness and sticking with Yahweh, repentance, doing the right thing and all of that, God blesses the tribe of Levi and says, "Okay, now I'm choosing you to be my special tribe going forward to serve me in these kinds of ways of basically leading the nation of Israel in the sort of protection of holiness and purity." I mean, if you want to think about that's what the Levitical priesthood was charged with doing is maintaining the holiness and the distinctiveness and the purity of God's people. That's what the priests were all about and that was kind of their initiation, their rite of passage into that was the golden calf incident. All that to say, the tribe of Levi gets redeemed in a big way. They go from worst to first, so to speak, maybe not first, but I mean, depending on how you want to think about the different blessings here, but yeah, so they're on the naughty list in Genesis 49 for Jacob, but their cream of the crop up there with Joseph on Moses' list at the end of Deuteronomy.

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  So you get this beautiful kind of picture of redemption and Simeon is the opposite is just like, yeah, they just, I guess, sort of maybe accept their fate as this cursed tribe. And we never hear of any priest, prophet, king, leader, no one coming from the tribe of Simeon in the rest of Israel's history. So yeah, it's so much fascinating kind of history and whatever else we could get into with that. So that's Simeon, all right? Let's keep going. Why are Zebulon ... This is Steve. Why are Zebulon and Issakar lumped together?

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  So for one thing, I think they're brothers, they're full-blooded brothers. They're all kind of half-brothers, but I think there's a lot of similarities with Zebulon and Isakar. I think their tribal allotment lands are kind of right beside each other. But interestingly, Zebulon is on the coast Isikar is inland. And so when we're reading it and we read now in Deuteronomy 33 verses 18 and 19 of Zebulan, he said, Rejoice Zebulon and you're going out and Issakar in your tents, I think the picture there is Zebulon going out, Zebulon's on the coast. They were known for kind of seafaring and maritime business so to speak, whereas Isakar trade and whatever cultivating the land. So then you've got verse 19, they should call peoples to their mountain, they offer right sacrifices. I'd have to do more research on that one to see if, I'm assuming there's a mountain in between them or something where at some point their sacrifices I guess were made before the temple came to Jerusalem.

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  Anyway, they draw from the abundance of the seas, that's Zebulon and hidden treasures of the sand, that's Isakar, but they're so connected, I think. And again, I'd have to do even more research on just kind of the history of, were there unique kind of alliances or whatever between those two tribes. But anyway, that's that. Why are a frame of Manasseh addressed underneath the kind of umbrella of Joseph rather than separately? So a frame in Manasseh are an interesting one because they remember are the two sons of Joseph and you have this really interesting story right before Jacob's blessing in Genesis 49 of all the tribes, you back up a chapter to Genesis 48 and remember Joseph was Jacob's favorite son, coat of many colors, all that, but you have this interesting story where because of it and he was lost for so many years in Egypt and thought he was dead and then he got rediscovered and so even more favorite.

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  And now I'm meeting my grandsons for the first time. I frame him anassa and Jacob was so happy. So Jacob's getting ready to die, he's bowing his head, all that and he calls Joseph and a frame of Manasseh, his grandsons, into the room. Long story short, he purposely switches the blessing where a frame, the younger son gets the better blessing, the right of the firstborn instead of Manasseh and Jacob, the kind of trickster all along, because that's what he did to Esau, his brother, you remember from that point on, there's so many different lists of the 12 tribes of Israel, but sometimes in those lists, it's about half and half, sometimes in those lists in the Old Testament when they list the 12 tribes, Joseph gets listed as one of the 12 brothers, right? I mean, he was. Other times, one of the other tribes, either the Levites, because they didn't get a tribal, they didn't get land, remember they were sort of ... That was part of Jacob's curse in Genesis 49 was, you're not going to have land when the inheritance gets doled out.

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  Levi didn't, but interestingly because they're now the priestly tribe, the special tribe, they don't need land because they're not going to farm. Everybody's going to do it for them. They're going to get the tithes and offerings of all the brothers when they come to the tabernacle or the temple later to worship, they're going to bring the food. So Levi's got an even better deal. They don't need land because they don't have to farm for themselves. Other brothers do the work, bring them the food. Whereas Simeon gets the raw end of the deal because they do still get land, but their land is completely basically surrounded, absorbed within. If you look in the back of, if you've got a study Bible or whatever, look in the back of your map at the tribal allotments, you'll see Simeon is this tiny little circle and it's right in the middle of this big allotment for Judah.

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  And so Simeon is landlocked, not just landlocked, but they're surrounded on all sides by Judas. So it's almost like Judah's kind of the babysitter, big brother, I don't know, they don't really feel like they have their own boundaries and sense of this is who we are as a ... So anyway, frame and Manasseh, back to them in some of those lists because of all this, Levi will get left off the list of the 12 tribes and instead of listing Joseph, because then you'd have 11, Afram and Assa will both be listed separately. Or I'd have to check sometimes maybe Simeon, like here in Deuteronomy 33 Simeons left off and you get Joseph plus Ephraim and Nasa both listed kind of, but they're listed underneath Joseph. So you could count that as 12 or 13 tribes that are listed. All that to say, Afram and NASA because of Jacob's blessing in particular in Genesis 48 and because Joseph was like you read Moses' blessing here and Jacob's blessing from both Genesis 48 and 49, a frame of NASA, they get these huge, look at Joseph's blessing, blessed by the Lord be his land with the choices gifts of heaven.

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  And he goes on from there like, "I want Joseph to be the most blessed of all the brothers in some ways." And he was. I mean, Joseph and his descendants frame of Manassa, they both end up being huge big tribes. Massa's the one that's got land both east and west of the Jordan river and frame's got a whole chunk as well. And so it'd be interesting, I'd have to look at this square footage, square mileage of if you added up a frame and Manassa's land territory compared against the other 11 tribes, Levi didn't have any land. I mean, a frame of Manasseh alone have got to make up at least a quarter of all of the promised land, so much land. And so anyway, yeah, they just oftentimes so much so our focal spotlighted in the Old Testament, so much so that a frame actually becomes a nickname for the entire group of the Northern tribes later.

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  You'll hear about the Southern tribe of Judah, even though really it was Judah and Benjamin, but it's like Judah becomes like the one that's like, we're going to just call it Judah. And then the northern tribes gets called either Israel or a fram. And so a frame becomes really like the dominant tribe of the north. So yeah, that's why that's kind of some more backstory reminders of Aframe Manassah and Joseph There. All right, let's keep going. Dalton ask about Nosimean, Reuben gets sort of screwed his words, not mine. So Reuben only gets one verse, short verse, verse six of chapter 33, let Reuben live and not die, but let his men be few. Now interestingly, if that's true, if that's the best translation, then Reuben's quote unquote blessing would be the only one that maybe doesn't feel like quite so much a blessing. I mean, Simeon's omitted, he really is the one that gets shafted, but Reuben, if it really says, but let his men be few.

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  Interestingly though, commentators will point out that the Hebrew there could also equally be read and maybe makes more sense to read instead of but let his men be few. And again, remember, Reuben slept with his stepmom. He did not get a blessing from Jacob. It was a curse. And so is Ruben really getting cursed here? "Oh, but I don't want you to grow. Let your tribe be few. You're not going to be big and powerful like the others. "But he does bless them with survival at least like, " I don't want you to totally die out. "Yeah, you can live but not die. I think though that the Hebrew can be read as let Reuben live and not die nor let his men be few. In other words, don't let his men be few. And I think to me, given the overall tone of the rest of the blessing that every other tribe that's listed, I mean, Simeon's kind of like, " If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything nice at all.

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  "Moses like, " I got no blessing for you so I'm leaving you out altogether. "So if he didn't have anything nice to say about Simeon and he really wanted him to not grow and just kind of die on the vine, he would, or not die, but just you can survive, but just, " I don't want you to grow. I don't want good things to happen to you. "I don't think he would have mentioned them at all. I tend to translate it not with the ESV, but I think it's the New King James translates it, nor let his men be few, which makes more sense to me in the context of blessing these tribes. Yeah, I want you to flourish. I want you to grow. And so you get a redemptive thing there with Reuben as well from Moses and if that's true then I think the P that I listed for them was proliferation, like the blessing of proliferation.

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  I want you to grow. Dalton points out Levi's blessing is huge. So is Josephs. We talked about that already five, six verses there, whereas some of them, most of them only get like one or two verses and we talked about why already. Why is Gad so notable and described like a lion instead of Judah? That is interesting that Gad is described blessed be, Gad crouches like a lion. He tears off arm and scalp. He chose the best of the land for himself. Gad was one of those east of the Jordan river tribes that was like, " Hey, we don't need to get west of the Jordan. I mean, this land is great. Let's claim this.

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  "Crouch is like a lion tearing off arm and scalp because Gad's territory was completely east of the Jordan that did make them more susceptible to invasion. Those tribes east of the Jordan were the first ones typically to be conquered when you think about the Assyrian captivity, the Babylonian captivity, because you got the Mediterranean sea on the West and so your biggest threats are coming mainly from the east. And so if they're east of the Jordan and they don't have those other river that people got to worry about crossing, it's like they were very susceptible. But because of that, they had to get pretty good. And you have all the Moabites and the Ammonites and all the Ites, a lot of the Ites anyway, are out there still east of the Jordan to contend with. So I think some of those like Gad and half of Manassah, like those tribes, they had to get good at defending themselves and they had to be like lions and tear off arms and scalps just to kind of stay alive as a tribe.

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  Yeah, it is interesting though that described as a lion, think of Judah and Jesus being the lion of the tribe of Judah and Jacob's blessing back in Genesis 49.

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  But the other interesting thing that one of the commentators was pointing out that I read is you can think of lions obviously as like brave and crouching and all of that. But then with Dan in particular in verse 22, Dan is a lion's cub that leaps from Bichon, that phrase that leaps from Bishan. The word Bishan I think is related or means serpent and Dan was called a serpent back by Jacob back in Genesis 49. So you've got Dan as a serpent by Jacob, a lion's cub and someone was pointing out that the two animals that we most associate with the devil are what, a serpent, Genesis three, and a lion one Peter five, prowling around, seeking someone to devour.

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  Sorry, that's first Peter ... Yeah, five. So that's interesting. And Dan interestingly is the tribe even more than Simeon and more than the others that really goes off the rails later. When we get to the book of judges, we're going to see this whole thing where there's basically a civil war and it's the other 11 tribes having to go enact God's judgment against the tribe of Dan for ... You remember that's where the whole thing with the Levite and his concubine and it's kind of like Sodom and Gamora, but worse, like the homosexual gang rape of the Levites concubine, they wanted to sleep with the Levit himself. Anyway, there's nasty stuff and Dan seemed to be the epicenter of it. You think about, and later when they do get kings and Israel has kings, it was within the tribe of Dan, I believe, where Jeroboam set up his golden calf that people could come worship rather than have to go all the way south to Jerusalem to the temple.

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  And so yeah, Dan seems to have this kind of curse of apostasy that they're kind of the ones more than other tribes that are like the quickest to leave Yahweh and go after other gods and just apostatize. So much interesting stuff that we just didn't have time for, but that's why we do the podcast. So yeah, Dan is tiny. He's the Lions Cup. Why is Asher so notably awesome Dalton wants to know?

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  It's another one I have to do a little bit more history and kind of digging on to say more. It seems like Asher and again, whether this was just like the historical actual son Asher, I have to believe. I want to believe that it probably was like going all the way back to the book of Genesis. And I mean, these are real people. I mean, they're names that stand for these tribes and obviously you get generations and generations later and maybe you lose some of that sense of, okay, yeah, but we actually descended from this one dude and what was he like? But you read from even Jacob's blessing in Genesis 49, same thing with Asher. It's like he's the favorite of his brothers. And it's like just because someone's like the best doesn't mean they're the favorite. I mean, Joseph was the one that got chosen.

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  I mean, you read the story of Joseph and everything he went through in Egypt and just his faithfulness and like forgiveness of his brother. I mean, Joseph was a magnanimous guy, great guy, right? Great guy. But we see this in elections in our country, like it's not always the guy that gets elected, right? And sometimes it's the guy that you just want to have a beer with, right Asher I think of as the guy you want to have a beer with. He's just like the fun loving brother that finds a way to comically relieve the tension and the family and now I'm reading a lot into this, right? But I mean, how else do you get to be your brother's favorites? Maybe he was really serving hearted. Maybe he's just always there to kind of help or encourage them or could be, but other things.

  (00:42:05):

  But I like to think of Asher as being sort of like just the fun loving one that everybody just if you're pairing off on a road trip and like, "Okay boys, everybody find a partner and make sure you don't leave without the ... " It's like, "I want to be with Asher." He's just a fun guy.

  (00:42:27):

  And was it Asher that I thought this was really interesting, this little note about most blessed of Sons be Asher, favorite of his brothers, let him dip his foot in oil. I was listening to, I think it was Skip Hitzik, one of my favorite pastors to listen to how he preaches these chapters, but he pointed out that I believe that of all the kind of tribal allotments in the land of Israel today, apparently more oil has been discovered in the tribal allotment underneath Asher's land than any of the others. It's just like crazy to think about the possible like little prophetic fulfillments of these things and dipping your foot in oil and also that if you look at Asher's tribal allotment on a map, it's in the shape of a boot. So it's like let your foot be dipped in oil. Anyway, just like crazy stuff that you're like, "Man, God would write that that way." So yeah, was that ... Oh, and then Catherine Lynn- Catholic application to the church.

  (00:43:36):

  Yeah. Can you walk through the 11 blessings on today's church? Let me try and just see if I can do this in less than two or three minutes. I mentioned some of them already, but just pull up my three 11 peas that I kind of had an alliteration for these blessings and just kind of cliffs notes of what Moses is praying for them here, proliferation for Reuben and you think about growth and the blessing, I mean, Jesus said, "I will build my church. The church is going to grow. The gates of hell will not prevail against it. " The blessing of protection for Judah, Jesus says John 10:28, "I guard my sheep. No one snatches them out of my hand. I protect them." He's the good shepherd. The priesthood for Levi, one Peter two, we are the priesthood of all believers now, the church. God's presence for Benjamin, one Corinthians three and chapter six as well, you are the temple of the Holy Spirit.

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  God lives in you. He is present with you and Jesus saying, "Go and great commission, make disciples of all nations. Behold, I am with you always, my presence, prosperity and preeminence, being a treasured..." That's Joseph, but preeminence we are. We're called that language in one Peter two. Peter says, "You are God's treasured possession, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, you're preeminent above called, chosen, special, beloved by God, prosperity." You think about walking on streets of gold, Ephesians one, the eternal riches that we have every spiritual blessing we have in Christ, pleasure and prosperity, Zebulon and Isikar, you think about pleasure, you think about Psalm 16:11 and David's saying, "At God's right hand are pleasures forevermore." That's our inheritance as we inherit relationship with God and all of that happiness and pleasure that comes with it, plentitude, talked about that flourishing, passion for Dan. I mean, if you want to put it that way, Dan is again, a lion's cub and he leaps from Bishon, but passion as a blessing.

  (00:46:26):

  And I mean, gosh, you see that all over the place in ... I don't know. I think about the writings of Paul and just how passionate he was about getting the gospel to others to be willing to suffer persecution and everything else for it and how we are called to that and that's part of our calling as Christ's followers, partiality, God's favor, power for Asher. He's going to have power. And again, you think about the Holy Spirit power that we have being indwelt with God's spirit. That's a quick sort of rundown of, I don't know, the 11 blessings just off the top of my head of how we see the ultimate kind of fulfillment of the church today inheriting each of these blessings from Moses as we are now the new Israel and the true Israel and every blessing is now ours in Christ the New Testament says, and including these.

  (00:47:33):

  So thanks, Catherine. Was that all of those? Yeah. Awesome. Okay. We got it. Let's just speed up now.

  (00:47:41):

  Yeah. Catherine Gooch also wrote why I was immunomated. Thanks, Catherine. Yes. Next one is regarding Jude. Catherine wrote Jude nine. What the heck? Jude nine.

  (00:47:53):

  What the heck?

  (00:47:53):

  Mike wrote, how does Jude one nine reconcile with Deuteronomy 34: six?

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  Yeah. So Jude is just a one chapter book so you can call it Jude one: nine or just call it Jude nine either way works. Makes sense. So that's that. But yeah, so here's the deal. Jude nine, well, let's back up to verse eight. "In like manner, these people also relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones. But when the archangel Michael contending with the devil was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said the Lord rebuke you. "All right, we preached through the book of Jude when we did our mini series on one hit wonders or maybe we called it, we called it little book. Little book big message, all the one chapter books of the Bible. So Obadiah, Jude, two third John and Philiman we did, I don't know, five years ago or something now, six years ago.

  (00:49:03):

  So you can go back and listen to more on this if you want. I'll just be quick here. Bottom line, this whole archangel Michael arguing with the devil over the body of Moses, what's going on, what's going on is Jude is pulling here from the pseudopigriphal assumption of Moses, the book assumption of Moses. Pseudepigophal means literally fake writing, but it's apocryphal. It's non-biblical. It's a book of the Bible, the assumption of Moses that is not in the Bible. However, some of these books that just because it's not biblical doesn't mean it's not true and didn't happen. I mean, there's lots of stuff still being written today that isn't in the Bible that is worth reading. So anyway, Jude had read this book and clearly took it as truth that this happened, this account of the archangel Michael coming down and arguing with the devil over the body of Moses.

  (00:50:12):

  Now the interesting thing is to think about if, okay, if that happened, Jude seems to think it did. If it happened, then why? What was going on there? Different theories. I think probably it seems like the majority and probably the best, strongest case would be to think, why would the devil want anything to do with the body of Moses? And I kind of alluded to this in the sermon as well when I said interpreting where Moses or Joshua, if you want to think about Joshua being the writer of chapter 34 of Deuteronomy, Moses, the servant died in the land of Moab and was buried in the valley. He buried him in the valley. He presumably being, again, God because we're talking about God and Moses, God and Moses are going back and forth and Moses didn't bury himself when he's dead. So God buried Moses in the land of Moab, but no one knows the place of his burial to this day.

  (00:51:15):

  And I asked, why might that be? Why did God make sure he buried Moses, not only to honor Moses in his contributions, his legacy, but also to protect his people from idolatry, knowing that there might be this tendency. Moses is the goat, especially if you don't know Jesus, if you're an Israelite or a Jew. And so to protect his people from the otherwise temptation to continue on worship or like in years down the road, worship Moses, go back and think about, ma, I mean, Moses is as good as it gets as a human being until Jesus. And so if you're going to worship anybody, it'd be him. So God's saying, no, I'm going to make sure he stays buried in a place y'all don't even know about. You're not going to find him. So probably Satan was wanting the body of Moses. Some people think either so he could sort of make a mockery or like, "Hey, look, here's your leader.

  (00:52:19):

  He's dead." But maybe even more so to try and tempt Israel to worship Moses rather than Yahweh. And the archangel Michael argued with the devil and won and Moses stayed buried.

  (00:52:41):

  And Jude's point is in making and alluding to this story is that even when he did that, Michael didn't like blaspheme, he didn't like badmouth or whatever the devil. Devil's an angel. He's a fallen angel, but he's like, "You still don't be careful with how you treat and talk about and blaspheming." So anyway, that's a whole nother ... Yeah, you had to go back and went. I'm not going to get too much on the whole blaspheming the angels and devils, but yeah, that's what's going on there. I guess Mike's question is more so about 34 verse six where it seems like God, because he's asking about reconciling them, did God bury Moses or did the archangel Michael? And I don't necessarily think that Michael had to be the one to bury him in order to be the one to argue for and defend the burial that God had done or something like that.

  (00:53:52):

  I don't know. It's one of those interesting like, okay, that really happened. So how did it happen? God buried him. The devil kind of like with Job like, "Hey, can I tempt him? Hey, can I dig this body up?" And God's like, "Look, we're moving on. I'm onto Joshua. Michael, you go deal with this. " So anyway, that's just maybe how the amusing about how that might have gone down.

  (00:54:19):

  Next one's from David. You wrote, "Is it possible that Moses wrote Deuteronomy 34: one to seven or eight before it happened? Who do scholars believe wrote that and the rest of chapter 34, Joshua or someone later?" Verse 10 says, "Since

  (00:54:38):

  Then." Yeah, great question. So it is possible and I don't know if I can quantify in terms of commentators that I read or what quote unquote scholars think or whatever, but it seems to be pretty split. I mean, modern day sort of liberal skeptical scholarship is going to say neither of them wrote any of it. It was all written a thousand years later and made up or whatever, but most of us probably think it's probably pretty split chapter 34 on whether that was Moses writing and again, I mean, how did Moses write Genesis one? In the beginning, God.

  (00:55:25):

  Clearly God had to give Moses a special revelation of these things that had happened, thousands or millions, depending on who you talked to years before Moses was even born, God gave him special revelation on that. You could say, "Well, yeah, of course God could do that for what's about to happen." Moses climbs up Mountain Ebo and he's about to die and he's like, "Oh, God's like, hey, you better go ahead and write this down and I'll make sure they won't find your body but they'll find the book or the tablet and they'll..." So it could be that or it could have just been Joshua later and remembering and he watched Moses climb up the mountain and he just pieced together the rest from there. He must have died up there and God buried him and we haven't been able to find it. So yeah, I'm not sure how much it's worth speculating too much about.

  (00:56:29):

  There's not really probably great alternative theories to who else it might have been if it wasn't Moses or Joshua writing that. But interestingly, because in most of these ancient earliest copies of manuscripts, Dead Sea Scrolls, whatever that we found of these books, it's just all one scroll and there's no chapters, no verses, no page breaks, really no punctuation. So you just go straight from end of Deuteronomy 34 right into Joshua, then Joshua. And so interestingly, some people will say, well, some have made the argument that Deuteronomy chapter 34 really should be Joshua chapter one, that we ought to have ended the book of Deuteronomy with Moses' last words at the end of chapter 33, his blessing, wrap it up there. And then Joshua should have opened maybe with Deuteronomy 34. It doesn't really matter. Again, it's all there, all inspired, all God breathe. Where you want to put the chapters and verses is not necessarily God breathe.

  (00:57:48):

  But that's an interesting, interesting, just I'm glad David pointed that out for us. And then verse 10 says, "Since then, since there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel." Yeah, I'm not sure what he's referring to there. Anyway, thanks, David.

  (00:58:15):

  And then three from Brad. Thanks, Brad. First one, you wrote your first point of your sermon yesterday dealt with finishing well by retiring and reflecting on the journey. For most of us, reflecting on the journey usually means focusing on the positive and minimizing the negative, yet God focused Moses on the negative for the benefit of Joshua and Israel. What are some tips to help Christians see the negative sin so God can use that for our good?

  (00:58:45):

  Be intentional if you're coming to the end of a season and I'm getting ready to wrap up my job here at this company and start a new one or wrap up schooling here, high school and transition to college or getting divorced and one day I'd like to be married again. To me, that's a natural opportunity to be reflective, self-reflective and say, "Okay, what did I do really well in high school? What did I do really well on this job? What did I do really well in this marriage?" And then also making sure you're intentional to ask a question, "What would I like to do differently next time? How do I want to improve? How do I want this to be different, better? How can I grow and learn from this? " So I think that's being intentional. Another way is by asking others. I just think that oftentimes we're either, depending on your personality, either our own kind of harshest, worst, most unfair critic, or we are way too generous and gracious kind with ourselves and we really don't want to take that long, hard look in the mirror that we need to.

  (00:59:59):

  So I think ask Looking those around you who aren't just your biggest cheerleader necessarily, but who are your most honest friend, the one who really, because if you really love someone you're going to be honest and asking them like, "Hey, where do you see room for growth and sanctification in my life?" And the only other thing I'll say about it is I think, well, two things, knowing God's word, so that's the standard. And so it's going to be very hard to get an accurate self assessment of strengths and weaknesses and room to grow if you don't know God's word and you don't know the standard. And the other thing I'll say is just to point out you don't have to wait until the end of a season, a transition. Maybe you're not getting ready to leave that job or that school or that move or friendship or whatever it is.

  (01:01:03):

  There's never almost a bad time to sort of pause and take stock and be like, "Yeah, so what's working well in marriage and what could be working better? What's working well in this friendship? And what do I wish was different?

  (01:01:20):

  Where do I need to grow this? " But I do think that being intentional, having those opportunities, whether it's an annual performance review at work, whether it's a ... I know a lot of couples that whether it's on their anniversary or just, I don't know, once a year they kind of go on a little mini weekend retreat and kind of just take stock and like, "Hey, how's family discipleship going forward? Are we overstretched, too busy? What needs to change in our family dynamic right now or our marriage or whatever?" I think those things are all just good and important to do, not just when you're leaving or moving or transitioning, but just almost not a bad time to do that. Good question.

  (01:02:07):

  Next one regarding finishing well by pointing people to the Lord. Isn't it a great witnessing opportunity for us when our lost friends and loved ones are dealing with chronic anxiety, systemic burnout and deep loneliness and we begin to see those struggles as opportunities to share Jesus with them.

  (01:02:25):

  Yes, it is. Yeah. Whether you're finishing or in the middle or beginning or if you see people who are hurting and you know they need Jesus, that's a great excuse to share him with them.

  (01:02:42):

  Yeah. And then lastly, he wrote, "You talked about Moses passing the baton to Joshua. Discuss some of the ways that Israel's journey to the promised land is a prophetic picture for Christians today in terms of a Christian's journey from bondage to heaven. Doesn't part of this prophetic picture include that Joshua's name and the name of Jesus both come from the same Hebrew root meaning, meaning Yahweh is salvation, making Joshua a direct shadow of Jesus in terms of leading God's people to the promised land.

  (01:03:13):

  Yeah. Joshua's for sure, and we'll get to this more when we get to the book of Joshua. He is for sure a prophetic picture and foreshadowing of Christ as was and is Moses as we've seen all throughout his writing and these books as well. And yeah, I think it'll be interesting because when we get to Joshua and they're actually crossing into the promised land, I think a lot of the ways that we've been talking about the symbolism of the promised land and for us that being heaven and our inheritance and the wilderness, I think back to Numbers ... The Book of Numbers was probably one of my favorite sermon series we've done and I do love even just the way we approached it and the subtitle Life and the Wilderness. And you remember we did the wilderness stories and we had ... But the whole thing from day one, Sunday one of Numbers was framed up as here's what this is.

  (01:04:23):

  You've got a people who've been saved from slavery and who are headed for glory but who aren't yet there. Well, what is that? That's us. I mean, that's the church. The church is the body of believers of those who have been set free, who've been redeemed, freed of our bondage to sin, headed, destin bound for glory, for heaven. No more tears, no more pain, no more sin, no more death, and yet not there. We're in the wilderness. We're in the in between. And so we had all the wilderness stories of just people like, "Hey, here's the wilderness I've been walking through and cancer and unemployment and divorce and whatever else. And here's how God has sustained me and brought me through it and keeps leading me and keeps giving me hope." And so anyway, it's been really cool to be able to ... And of course, Deuteronomy is unique because now the whole thing, the whole book occurs over the course of a month or two where they're sitting right there on the Eastern Bank of the Jordan.

  (01:05:37):

  They can look across and see the promised land, but they're not there yet. Moses wants to give them a chance to look back first, reflect on what has been, lessons, and then also look ahead and where God's bringing us and what we've got to do and who we've got to be in order to be successful when he takes us there. So anyway, again, what is that? I mean, that's us. That's where we're at, especially as I said for some of our folks as there we've got a very multi-generational church and we've got a lot of folks that are in their 70s, 80s, even 90s who might feel like rightfully that they're on the bank on the precipice getting ready to cross over and finally get to their inheritance, get to heaven. How do you finish well? Reflect back on where you've been, but also just have that hunger and that joy that keeps driving you forward because you know where you're headed.

  (01:06:45):

  And so anyway, yeah, it'll be cool to see though once we get to Joshua and they're in the promised land, the different kind of symbolism there and the different ways that we see pictures of how is this land of Canaan like heaven and also how is it not? Because again, it's just a symbol and it's going to break down. I mean, there's not going to be fighting and warring. And once we get to heaven, we don't have to go kill the Canaanites to enjoy it. I mean, it's just anyway. So yeah, just a symbol, but a powerful one.

  (01:07:19):

  And then we have a handful of applications, first one from the Jacksons wrote, "Thank you for the sermon calling me to remember God's faithfulness a couple weeks

  (01:07:31):

  Ago." Hopefully that's every sermon.

  (01:07:34):

  Yeah. Drew wrote, "I'm excited to tell more people about Jesus before the end of my

  (01:07:40):

  Race." Amen. That is for sure one way that we finish well is by doing the work that Christ has left us here to do. Great commission, pay it forward.

  (01:07:52):

  And lastly, from Victoria, she wrote, "She'll meditate this week on eternity and how I've been saved from

  (01:08:00):

  Hell." Yeah. I mentioned that in the context of verse 29, chapter 33, where Moses said, "Happier you owe Israel, who is like you of people saved by the Lord?" And I just thought, man, if I can meditate on that, if I could every time I stub my toe or I can't get my Bluetooth to connect or all my first world problems that I deal with and I get grumbly about if I can just find a way of capturing and meditate and remembering I've been saved from hell. I should be in hell right now and hell on earth as well and yet look at all the blessings and just really meditate on that and how happy I would be, how happy we should be all the time as God's people who've been saved by grace through faith.

  (01:08:52):

  Yeah, that's good. All right and one more bonus question from Thad, that's a good one. You wrote, "What do you hope the congregation takes away from Deuteronomy and what was your favorite part of preaching through the book?

  (01:09:08):

  I am glad Thad is always good about helping us finish well our sermon series by asking these kinds of good reflective questions. And I think what I would hope that we would take away from the Book of Deuteronomy at a high level is that God's law is good so nice. He gave it twice so to speak. That's Deuteronomy literally means second law, even though it's not a new ... I mean, it's a recapitulation of what he's told us and Exodus and Leviticus. And anyway, but God's law is really good and really important and also we've got something so much better because we are not good. We fail to keep the law first, second, third, every time. And no matter how many times he gives it, reminds it, we fall short. And so I think that was probably of all the sermons and principles that we've come back to time and time again through this series, probably the most frequent was that idea of obey and be blessed, disobey, be cursed, but then we fast forward to the New Testament, trust in Christ and be saved from your curse, from your ... And so I hope, especially the Easter message and just trying to make it really simple and really accessible, especially for people who might not even have an orientation to the Old Testament or even the Bible in general, like just trying to really not water it down but boil it down to the most essential kind of what's the heart of this, obey and be blessed, disobey and be cursed, repent and trust in Christ and be saved from your curse, from your disobedience.

  (01:11:17):

  Jesus took our curses on the cross so that we might have the blessing of eternal life that only he really deserves. So really, I guess also my favorite part of preaching through it, but I'll also say, I mean, just on a practical, honest level, it's always easiest for me to get excited about preaching at the beginning and end of series, kind of the book ends. So I would say all of the ... I love the kind of early preparation and commentary reading and research and outlining the book and how many sermons are we going to do and how are we going to break it down and how to make this one different than that one. And I love that.

  (01:12:10):

  And so probably even if you go back and we'll listen to my sermons from those first couple weeks and then the middle and then the end and listen to just the tone of my voice, I'm probably a couple pitches keys higher just with the excitement of like the energy in my voice and the first couple and the last couple, then the middle sometimes can feel like a bit of a drag. It's interesting. So sermon series for me are probably much like ... I mean the individual messages are kind of a microcosm of that as well, where you probably hear that even in any individual sermon that I preach too. The first five minutes of intro, the last five minutes of bringing it to a close and sprinting through the finish line, it's like you're probably getting more energy, more volume and all that. And then in the middle sometimes it can sometimes feel like a bit of a slog, especially in Deuteronomy when the middle section from chapters like five through 26, 27 are the law.

  (01:13:19):

  And oh, by the way, law that we've already studied back in previous books. So can sometimes feel like a slog, but yeah, so beginning and end is, to be honest, is probably one of my favorite parts to pray. And also, the beginning and end are so great. I mean, the beginning was rehashing their journey and filling in details that we didn't get in the Book of Numbers and you're like, oh wait, in the series of numbers, I didn't know that this little backstory of that Kadesh Barnea encounter or whatever. And then at the end, you just got so much good, the blessings and curses of chapters 28, 29, 30, and then Moses' wrap up. And I don't know, it's all good. But yeah, thanks to that and thanks everybody for joining us at every step of the journey. Hope has been a blessing to you.

  (01:14:16):

  Yeah. Thanks, Will. We hope that this has been edifying for you as you seek to be changed and to love God more as you apply God's word after the sermon. So go apply the sermon and continue to make disciples and Lord willing, we'll catch you right back here next week.