Introduction: Tomorrow starts Advent season. In the book of Deuteronomy which is the last of the books of the Law of God as written in the main by Moses (he cannot have described his own death!) a new Leader is promised. The book has a lots of ‘do’s’ and ‘dont’s’, all of which are very good for us to study but as Gentile Christians all of which while they are very relevant for us are not all binding upon us! The passage which I have chosen for us to consider today is extremely relevant for us and particularly as we enter the Advent season! The first six verses talk about the pure worship which God requires as revealed on the Sinai mountain. All false worship which was by then prevalent in the surrounding peoples is strictly forbidden. Some of the local religious practices were hideous and all were forbidden! Moses had been their leader for 40 years! They depended on him, but no one could have expected him to be there for ever. If people were then the same as they are today there would have been people jostling to take over when he died! In verse 15 the promise is made of another leader. Joshua was the next temporal leader of the Israelis as they entered Canaan, but he was not the same as Moses! Maybe David could, and should be considered to be like Moses, but in the Bible both in the Psalms and in the Prophets David is to be surpassed by the Messiah – and so into history, at the time which we are to begin celebrating, Jesus Christ of Nazareth steps into human history! Beware of false messiahs we are told at the end of the passage! On the other hand God says (v19) ‘And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him‘
9 “When you come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. 10 There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer 11 or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, 12 for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD. And because of these abominations the LORD your God is driving them out before you. 13 You shall be blameless before the LORD your God, 14 for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the LORD your God has not allowed you to do this. 15 “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen— 16 just as you desired of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’ 17 And the LORD said to me, They are right in what they have spoken. 18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. 19 And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. 20 But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’ 21 And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the LORD has not spoken?’— 22 when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.
Isaiah 9: 6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Prayer: Father, please help me to see and truly appreciate the OT promises which You gave to welcome in Jesus to our world.
As I read it! 