Today’s Chapters: Deuteronomy 18-22
Pete’s Thoughts:
Deuteronomy 18
When the people met with God in Horeb they could not stand to hear the voice of the Lord directly. Thus they told Moses to go up and intercede for them. God promised a time would come when He would meet with mankind face to face. He told them there would come a Prophet like Moses who will speak with the power and authority of God Himself because He is God Himself. God also told the people how to tell if a prophet was from God or not. The difference is distinct in two ways – 1. The prophet speaks with the authority of other gods/without God’s authority and 2. what the prophet says does not happen. God will never lie to us because it is not in His character to lie. Therefore, if He tells us something is about to happen, it will happen just as He says, not so with false prophets.
Deuteronomy 19
As we have looked at before, justice is important to God because He is just. It is important to Him to have proper witnesses when accusations are brought against people. It must be by the testimony of two or three people at least, anything else is just hearsay.
Deuteronomy 20
This is an amazing chapter on faith. Guidelines may seem like an odd section to look at faith but read through it again. The nation was told not to let their heart faint nor be afraid for God goes to battle with them. The first verse tells the nation that they will face armies with more men and horses and chariots that the Israelites had. In face of this, they were told to trust God, a change for their faith to grow. Verse 13 doesn’t say, “if the Lord delivers the city into your hands,” instead the verse says, “When…” That is a big difference – faith verses blind-hope.
Deuteronomy 21
The last verse of this chapter is very important for Christians today. God tells the Israelites not to allow bodies to be left hanging overnight. This verse is applied to Christ when He paid the penalty for the sins of the world on the cross – “he who is hanged is accursed of God.”
Deuteronomy 22
If our culture today paid lived according to this chapter the graveyards would be filled to over flowing. God set down strong penalties for sexual impurity because He designed sex to be pure with in marriage, anything else is wrong and defiles what God made to be holy.
