Gooding, David: 6 - Bitter-sweet Song and Blessing

Our brief stay on the plains of Moab is now coming to an end. I hope your tents have been comfortable, but comfortable or not, our stay must end midday today. That presents to me a choice. If I had the ability, I would probably choose to select a verse or two or maybe three, and preach you a sermon, powerful, well constructed, that would burrow its way into your mind and heart, and which in years to come you would cite to your friends and even to your grandchildren. That's not a realistic choice for me. I have not those powers. And so I must choose the more prosaic thing, and that is to ask you to open your Bibles and to trace with me what are the features of the last two major items in the book of Deuteronomy? They are, first of all, the song, that bittersweet song that God told Moses to teach to the children of Israel, that by singing it, they might get its words upon their heart all down the generation. The second major item is the blessing that Moses pronounced upon the tribe as he said goodbye to them, and they went across the river into Jordan to take and enjoy their inheritance, and he went home to God. So let us consider first the song, and we shall read the verses together that give us the background to the tactics and strategies that God had in mind when he told Moses to write and teach this song. The chapter is chapter thirty one and verse 14. And the Lord said unto Moses, Behold, thy days approach that thou must die. Call Joshua and present yourselves in the tent of meeting, that I may give him a child. Moses and Joshua wed and presented themselves in the tent of meeting. And the Lord appeared in the tent in a pillar of cloud. And the pillar of cloud stood over the door of the tent. And the Lord said unto Moses, Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, and this people will rise up and go a whoring after the strange gods of the land, whither they go in to be among them, and will forsake me and break my covenant which I have made with them. And my anger shall be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide my face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall come upon them. So that they in that day say, are not these evils come upon us because our God is not among us? And I will surely hide my face in that day for all the evil which they shall have wrought in that they are turned unto other gods. Now therefore write you this song for you, and teach thou it to the children of Israel, and put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me against the children of Israel. For when I shall have brought them into the land which I swear unto their fathers, flowing with milk and honey, and they shall have eaten and filled themselves with wax and fat, then they will turn unto other gods and serve them, and despise me, and break my covenant. And it shall come to pass, when many evils and troubles are come upon them, that this song shall testify before them as a witness, for it shall not be forgotten out of the mouths of their seed. For I know their imagination which they go about, even now before I have brought them into the land which I swear. So Moses wrote this song the same day and taught it the children of Israel. Verse thirty: And Moses spake in the ears of all the assembly of Israel the words of this song until they were finished. The temperature of the book of Deuteronomy falls very markedly as we turn from what we were studying yesterday to what now we must study. Yesterday, in our imagination, we joined with the nation and all fell tribes at Shechem to witness the establishment of the law of God in that once pagan country of Canaan. And we heard the reverberations of their praise as they rejoiced in the Lord at this tremendous move forward that they saw in the future in their mind's eye. When the tribes would stand, some on Mount Ebal, some on Mount Gerizim, the Levites would rehearse the blessings of God, and the tribes would cry full-throatedly, Amen. Then the Levites would pronounce the curses on those who should disobey, and with willing hearts and ready voice, the tribes would likewise reply, Amen, so be. Oh, what a day of rejoicing. Face them as in a few months after getting into Canaan, under Joshua's leadership, the law of God was established in that once pagan country. Now they're about to go in, and God calls for Moses and Joshua, the two leaders of the people, to talk to them about his strategies for the succeeding years and centuries. We notice the sheer realism of it, for God is a realist. He cannot be content with merely empty, religious, evanescent fervor. And so he came to Moses and to Joshua, and came in all the glory of his immediate presence. The cloud of the Shekinah glory filled their tent. Oh, what an encouragement for Moses at the end of his ministry. What a tremendous encouragement for Joshua as he was about to commence his. That they should first stand in the presence of God and themselves feel in their very hearts the glory and the majesty of the God whom they serve. Israel would sorely need it from their leader. Their leaders should somehow be able to transmit to them the glory of God, the grandeur of God, the proportions of God, whose words they had to convey to this people, lest their gospel should become a very simplistic thing, worn and thin, with little jargon phrases that had ceased to have meaning. Now God informs Joshua and Moses of what will happen. And they have been there some years. Israel, in spite of their rejoicing, will gradually depart from the living God, and in unfaithfulness go a whoring after other gods, and conform themselves to the fashions of this world. And it would provoke God to his very heart. If God were some marble statue, you couldn't move his feelings. But since God is a God of love, and had loved Israel with spectacular love, and proposed to be loyal to them, any unfaithfulness on Israel's part would move him to his very infinite death and provoke his jealousy. And as we hear it from him, we remember the solemn word that Paul spoke to the church at Corinth. Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy by our compromises with paganism? Are we stronger than the Lord? You say, what's the point of that remark? Well, if we should provoke him to jealousy, the hand that will chastise us will be nothing less than the hand of Almighty God. I shall have to chastise them, says God to Joshua and to Moses. My hand shall be against them. For hook or by crook, says God. I must make them aware of what their unfaithfulness has done, till they turn around and perceive their troubles are because of this, that their God is no longer among them. That they have despised God. Difficult to think how anybody could do that, isn't it? Don't you agree? Reject God, I understand the atheist that does that. But despise God? What kind of a value system is it that despises the very creator of the universe, its billions of galaxies, and the infiniteness of his love? Despise. Yet Paul in the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch came to the end of his sermon as he saw the opposition gather like a dark cloud in the faces of his audience. They were going to reject God's offer of mercy now, through the Sa- through the Savior that the nation had crucified. And as he saw the opposition in their faces, and their determination not only to refuse the gospel themselves, but to try, if they could, to stop the Gentiles hearing it. He said, quoting the Old Testament, beware you des- you despisers and perish. How would any believer ever despise God, so lose his or her sense of value as to fritter away life on insubstantial idols and forget the last treasures of God, his Son, his Spirit, and his Word. What will God do? I must chastise them, says God. But yet, difficulties came up before the divine mind. What un- if under my chastisement, Israel will lose faith in me? Or come to think that I'm horrible. I was a few years ago with a friend in Tbilisi, in Georgia. That is the poor Georgia. There is another one in the west, but this was in the east, in Eastern Europe. I met there an American evangelist. She was a very brave woman. She had gone to Georgia in faith. Said she, I don't write letters home to raise funds. She said, I believe the Lord has sent me here, and he will provide. And mighty difficult it was, for Georgia was at the extreme bottom of the poverty pile. She managed to get a job in the gu- in government offices, and so pleased were they with her t- uh, her work that they gave her permission to teach in a kindergarten school and allow her to teach Bible stories to the children. She had witnessed for the Lord in the government office in which she was, and happening to meet us on a Sunday morning, she said, oh, I've got a dinner party tonight. I've invited some of my colleagues from work. I'm going to put on a dinner party. One or two of them are girls out of the office, secretaries, and I've been able to lead them to the Lord, said she. Now I've got some quite high-ranking members of this government department, and I've hired a room in the hotel, and I'd asked them to dinner. Would you come? I found a tremendous admiration for her welling up in my heart. How could she possibly afford in that expensive hotel on the meager salary she had to entertain in order that people should hear the gospel? We went. My friend and I. We sat, sat down at table and around it about fifteen or sixteen people, when a woman from the other side of the table fixed me with her eagle eye and said, what are you doing here? She was, in fact, the daughter of one of America's leading oil firms. She'd come to negotiate with the government for matters of oil in Baku. I didn't know that at the time. She was fearsome enough without knowing it. And I stumbled a kind of a reply. I said, well, ma'am, among other things, I, I hope to visit the Institute of Manuscripts here in Tbilisi, for they have some famous ancient manuscripts. One of the three great manuscripts upon which the Hebrew Bible is based until the Dead Sea Scrolls arrive is here in Tbilisi. I hope to ha- go and have a look at it. What do you think of the Dead Sea Scrolls, she said. Well, I said, depends who you are. Liberals think, but I couldn't get the word out of my mouth. I'm not a liberal, says she. I'm Orthodox. She was a duet. My father was Orthodox. I was brought up Orthodox. I shall always be Orthodox. But, says she, I think God is horrible. Look at poor old Moses, she said, in the wilderness. He made one mistake, and God quoted him hard. I think God is... What would you say? I tried to quote her an Old Testament song. I said, take that lovely song, you know, ma'am, I'm a Gentile, an old once-timed pagan Gentile, but I like this song. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. You can't quote that at me, she said. That's Christian. The voices around the table said, oh no, my dear, that isn't Christian. That's Old Testament. A song God had had written, that Israel, even in their times of per- persecution, might sing in their hearts to remember what kind of a God God is. There was another song, so that Israel might teach it their children, and liking the melody and learning the words before the bad days came. They would be warned in advance. They would be reminded of the lovely character of their God, be warned against apostatizing from him, and what should inevitably follow if they did. But then another problem, as expressed in this song. How would God save them when they'd gone astray. What tactics would he use with Israel to bring them back? For God's chastisements always had that in view. It was a question of tactics. And then, oh, how careful God had to be. For if he chastised and disowned Israel, what would the nation say? And they might say, well, there you are, that proves it. All that talk of Israel being a special nation chosen of God, that was all childhood nonsense. There is no God. And as far as world politics goes, it's a question of who has the big battalions. And we Gentiles have the big battalions. It's we that have overrun Israel and put them down. Their claim to be God's chosen people is an empty nonsense. How shall I stop that happening, says God in the song? And therefore the song records God's fixed determination. For that reason, among others, I shall one day restore Israel. And so the song in its way goes through Jewish history, their initial blessing, their departures, and then God's magnificent methods and tactics to get them saved, and finally God's claim to be vindicated at what we call the day of vengeance, at the second coming of the Lord Jesus. So now we notice, as we look at the s- at the song, it's chapter thirty two. let's just notice and go over some of these major points. It starts with a declaration of the beautiful character of God. Give ear, you heavens, and I will speak, and let the earth hear the words of my mouth. My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender grass, and as the showers upon the herb. Oh, delightful purpose. Seeing what Moses must now say in this song. But watch how it begins. This is not a poem of fiery denunciation. If only they'll listen to it. It's like a refreshing rain, a gentle dew, not some avalanche or, or tornado uprooting everything, or the gentle rain to nurture the tender grass. For I will proclaim the name of the Lord. Oh, what a blessed occupation for any preacher of the word. That took Moses back to his initial ordination, as he stood by the burning bush, and God came down and told him to go and deliver his people from Pharaoh and bring them into the Promised Land. And Moses, quaking in his shoes, said, but God, you see, if I go, uh, and tell the people, uh, that, uh, uh, you sent me to deliver them, and they say, this God, what is his name? What shall I say? This is what you'll say, said God. You'll say, I am has sent me. I am the God of their fathers. I am the I am. I am what I am. I will be what I will be, the eternal, unchanging God, a veritable rock of salvation. That's what you're saying. And then as Christians, we can't, well, how could you read it and then not notice it? Listen to our blessed Lord, accounting for his ministry to his father, a few steps away from Gethsemane and the cross. Thank you, Lord Father, says he, for these disciples you've given me out of Israel. They have believed that thou hast sent me. They were thine because they believed in you, and you've given them to me, and now they believe in me. And how have I accomplished that? And he recites his ministry to his father. I have declared thy name. Oh, what a delightful ministry was his in our poor, perverted world and amongst even Israel, who what now soon will put him to a cross, and he come to declare the marvelous, delightful name of God. And having begun his prayer that way, he finishes with the same remark. I have declared thy, the Father's name to you, says he to his apostles, and I will go on declaring it, that the love wherewith the Father has loved me may be in you, and I in you. Oh, what a thing. You preachers, you pastors, you shepherds of God's people, you Sunday school teachers. Oh, what an important thing this is to get into people's hearts, to declare to them the name of God, what God is like, so that God's spirit can make it real, and that it shall have this gracious effect upon the people of God. I have declared your name, he says to the Father, to mine that thou has given me, and I will go on declaring it, that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them. Ah, if it dawned on my dull heart. The love wherewith God loved the Lord Jesus is the love that God has even for me, and should I contain it? And what a vast bulwark it would be in my heart against the troubles and the trials of life. His work is perfect. He is absolutely just. Just in his benefits, good and holy and loving still in his chastity. For now, Israel has to hear him speak plain words. As for Israel, verse five and six, they have dealt corruptly with him. They are not his children. Look at their blemish. They are a perverse and crooked generation. Do you thus requite the Lord? O foolish people and unwise, is not he thy father that have brought, bought thee? He has made thee and established thee. Their behavior will become so bad, so perverted, so compromised with idolatry, that God would have to disown them. They are not my children. You see, Israel was, after all, a special nation, chosen to represent God amidst the pagan world. You and you only have I known, says God to the prophet Amos. You are my special people. You are to be my witnesses in this world of what the true God is like and what behavior he requires. You will thus pervert yourself, says God to through Amos, you are my people, you only have I known and chosen, therefore I will visit your iniquities. Here we must not let fancy get into our hearts. We must hear God say through Hosea, the prophet of Israel, lo ammi, they are not my people. Oh yes, God immediately adds a sentence or two later. One day, in that very place where it was said, you are not my people, you shall be called the people of God. But God had publicly to have it said, you are not my people. And then what will Israel do? Like a child who has been chastised by a loving parent, try to kick mother in the shins and say, you're horrible mother. What will God do to prevent it? The Psalm calls upon Israel to remember the past, and with a series of beautiful metaphors, and I leave it to the preachers to expound them. God retraces his ways with Israel from the time he chose and delivered them out of Egypt and brought them on eagle's wings to himself and trained them to go and how to make progress, as an eagle would train its little birds to fly. And they flew and entered Aenon and flew over the great mountains of pagan strongholds and superstition with all their cults and idols. And God blessed them, and they were triumphant. Remember the past, says God. Oh, remember. Remember it still. Will you not remember the past? And all the benefits? It's not I that's changed, has God. I am a rock. I don't change. It's you that have changed. But you see, says God to Moses and Joshua, when they get there and full of material benefit, they'll wax fat and sleek. And it won't be that their stomachs are so full that the brains don't work very well, but lives are so full. But God fades, and they lose a grip on his glory. And God is only a little prayer that they say before they get into bed at night. They don't take him seriously. Sacrificed unto demons which were no god, to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came up of late, whom your fathers dreaded not. Of the rock that begat thee, thou art unmindful. This forgotten God that gave them the birth. So God here inserts in the song that Israel was to learn to sing, his estimation. And the Lord saw it and abhorred them because of the provocation of his sons and his daughters. He said, I will hide my face from them. I will see what their end shall be, for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith. Perhaps you think that those words are the utterances of the stern God of the Old Testament, and Jesus Christ has showed us that God isn't really like that. He's much more kind and lenient with his people. And these are the words that the Lord Jesus took upon his lips. When a father brought his son to Christ and said, you know, the devils have got hold of him and torn him. And Lord, he said, I, I, I, I've lost my son almost. I can have no converse with him. We can't have any conversation with him. If you can do anything, do it. And our Lord said, oh faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I put up with you? For it stirred in our Lord's heart, in that man and his son, the lament of God that we are now reading together. God had a son called Israel, and Israel's son went over to the worship of demons. The converse between God and his sons was at an end. Perverse and foolish generation. And in our Lord's day, that perverse and foolish generation were to take God's own dear son and nail him to a tree. What will God do? How will he get them back? They provoked me to jealousy, he says. God, excuse my mouth, but God sometimes comes up. Well, it isn't comical, but it it is. They provoke me. Righto, says God. I'll set about provoking them this time. Oh. And I will provoke them with a foolish measure. I see. Until I can provoke them to jealousy. Ah, sounds like homeopathy to me, you'll say. They provoke God, so to cure them, he provokes them. Well, who on earth is he talking about provoking Israel with a foolish nation? Well, of course, this is what, uh, Paul had in mind, uh, did he not, when he penned the letter to the Romans. You'll see. Romans chapter eleven is the passage, and Paul uses the very same wordage. Romans eleven, let me read it to you. Verse eleven: I say then, did they stumble that they might fall, that is Israel? God forbid. They stumbled all right, but it's not the end. But by their fall, salvation is come unto the Gentiles for to provoke them to jealousy. All right, says God, I redeemed you and saved you out of Egypt. I loved you, I tended you, and you've forsaken me, and you despise my salvation. Right, oh. Then I'll go and save somebody else then. Through their fall, salvation has come to the Gentiles. And Paul, catching onto the notion of God's tactics, he says in verse, uh, uh and fourteen, but I speak to you that are Gentiles. In as much then as I am an apostle of the Gentiles, I glorify my ministry. If by any means I may provoke to jealousy them that are my flesh and may save some of them. Paul's day, of course, there were Israelites indeed who were a remnant. The whole nation hadn't gone antichrist. Paul was one of the remnant who did worship the Lord with some thousands of others. It was the nation officially that had rejected and still rejected the Lord. But I'm at it, says Paul, you see, I, I, I, I caught on. God is going to pro- provoke these Jews. And so I'm doing the same thing, you see. I'm going out to the Gentiles. And these Jews will have to see multitudes of old pagans coming to faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and enjoying his salvation. And in the end, they won't be able to bear it. It will provoke them to jealousy. I do my own little bit in provoking to jealousy where I can. You see? When I meet Jewish friends who have no time for Jesus Christ, they don't like him. I tend to say, ah well, I know you don't like Jesus Christ, but I tell you what, I, I, I was an old pagan in, in England, you know, we were all pagans at one stage, and I'm an old gentile, don't have the honor of being a Jew, but you see, I've come to believe, gentile though I am, not in just any old God. I believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. How's that, I say? Doesn't that please you? I say, I tell you what, you quote me another Jew in the whole of history that has led so many million pagan Gentiles to faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Show me one that's done anything like Jesus of Nazareth has done. It's unanswerable, isn't it? To provoke them to jealousy. But then how shall they get saved? For, says God in that same psalm, they are a faithless people. They're not really believers. If ever they're going to be saved, Israel will have to come and admit before God that in the only sense that means anything, they are not believers. You see, Paul is an example of it. He resisted the gospel of Christ. Thought it was a blasphemy that Christians should hold that Jesus is God incarnate. If you had asked him, he would have said that he knew about God. The great truth that God is one, and you stupid, ignorant Gentiles. With your three gods, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Paul thought he knew all about God. But on the Damascus road, he discovered he knew very little about God. He discovered that Jesus Christ is Lord. For the glory of God the Father, the eternal Word of God becomes flesh for our salvation. Paul, Paul discovered that in the only sense it really matter, Paul had been an unbeliever who nailed God incarnate to a cross. And speaking of his conversion, he said, ah, but how marvelous God has been with me and had mercy on me because I did it in ignorance and unbelief. What so, Saul of Tarsus, you say? An unbeliever? Yes, an unbeliever. Religious. But an unbeliever in the only sense that belief matters. Israel will have to be brought to the point where they confess it. Jesus Christ is Jehovah, and hitherto they have been unbelievers. But it can happen to ordinary religious folks, can it not? You may have noticed what I too, from time to time, have noticed. You come across some gracious lady, perhaps, and you talk to her about the gospel. Yes, she believes in God, of course she does. She believes the Bible. She believes the deity of Christ. She believes in the Lord Moses. And you pluck up courage and put it in the nicest terms you can possibly use so you don't throw it all in the face. But you get round to asking, and are you a believer? Are you saved? Do you know you're saved? Well, you can't know you're saved, she says. I do my best. And then you explain the gospel of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, how we cannot be saved by doing our best, or even by our efforts to keep God's law. We were sinners doomed to rot, and Jesus Christ, God's son, came to bear our sins in his body and bore the curse of the law for us, that we might be forgiven and know it. And as you talk to her about it, she says, well, if that is what you mean by believing, then no, I couldn't call myself a believer. Of course, she's made a big progress, hasn't she? What? She's discovered that she hasn't believed the gospel. There's hope for her that God will now show her as he showed Saul of Tarsus, that salvation is not of works or religious ritual or merit. It is through faith in the crucified Son of God. But then this passage, this song finally goes on to discuss the problem with God's discipline of Israel, that the nations will come to consider that the claim of Israel to be God's special people was always from the start a nonsense. So God explicitly says it here, lest the nations get the wrong opinion, then I shall act. And one day he will. There will come the day of avenging when God will vindicate Israel. And he will come with flaming fire, taking vengeance on those that persecute the people of God. And Israel shall be restored, an expiation made for their land. What a magnificent thing that shall be, says Paul, when the Lord comes and all Israel shall be saved. And there was a final stanza in this song, as Israel were to sing about their final restoration. Oh, rejoice, you Gentiles, with his people. And what a tremendous concert that's going to be, isn't it? When all Israel gets saved, Israel as a whole, that is, not every jack man of them, Israel as a whole is saved, and the Christians, with Israel now converted, join in the eternal praise of God, Gentile with Jew. God's song to help Israel through its time of serious failure and point the way to their conversion and their final vindication. We have not much time left for the blessing of Moses, and in my heart of hearts, I'm a little bit glad about that. You see, I do what all preachers do. They leave the difficult parts and then make an excuse that they haven't got the time, you see. Don't you ask me about it after this session, or I shall have to tell you there's so much of it I don't understand. The ver- the chapter, uh, with the blessing of Moses is poetry, of course. It is some of the most difficult poetry in the whole of the Old Testament, where even the experts agree that knowing exactly how this poetry should be translated is difficult, and knowing how it should be applied can be all- altogether, uh, uncertain. We can't be dogmatic. So you younger men and women don't necessarily choose, uh, to be experts in computers. Well, if you have to do, yes. Thousands of experts in computers. But if God has given you the gifts to learn a few languages, do learn your Hebrew and a little bit of Greek as a service to the church at large, so that we may be helped to come to a better understanding of Hebrew in general and Hebrew poetry in particular, and be able to more accurately to translate such passages as these. It's only a humble task, perhaps, but you know, when the Egyptians took Moses into the palace, his mother volunteered to be a nursemaid to Moses. And the biblical manuscripts in Hebrew are here and there and where else in our universities. It's a humble task, but worth doing if you can, to look after the manuscripts and the languages and the translation of Old and New Testament. But that, by the way. This is different, this blessing of Moses on the people, different from the song. The song regarded Israel as a whole, as a nation. I repeat, though it denounces their apostasy, not all Jews apostatize. Well, in the time of Christ, many dear Jewish believers, and in the early church, and Paul was one of them. And thank God, all down the ages, there have been believing Jews. Praise God for that as well. Uh, the song regarded Israel as a nation officially, and their history from that time to the Lord's coming. The blessing deals with individual tribes. And as would be apparent from what he said, as Moses blessed the individual tribes, he wasn't thinking of the long distant future. He was thinking of the future that lay immediately ahead of them. He brought them to this point, critical point in life that it was. Now he had to go to glory, and they had to go across the Jordan, with all the excitement and all the blessings and all the struggles and fighting that that would involve. And with a loving pastor's shepherd's heart, he sought to bless them. They weren't perfect. Ah, soon they would go wrong, but he loved them. And one thing he must do, as they now move forward into this new pathway for God, he must not defeat their courage. He must not so lambast them with his criticisms that they lose their faith. Or forgive me if I've done it this week. We have to talk about our faults, don't we? But if we talk about them in such a way as a believer goes off and says, well, I too, I'm no good, I fail, I no good, I give up. Oh dear, what a damage we've done. We must try to buttress people's faith as we preach God's holy word. And it's concern for individuals, not just the nation as a whole. If they go, here's uh, Asher, and he'll go to a part of the country that's good for growing olive trees, and he'll get involved in the olive oil industry. Good man, he's got to live, and God has given him this and this trade and this particular piece of inheritance. Oh, there goes Zebulon and his colleague. Ah, now he'll be situated in a part of the cart land where, uh, commerce and particularly shipping is handled. And if you want to find him, you'll find him in the shipping offices or down at the docks, you see. You say he's making money, is he? Well, of course he is. What do you think? Even Christians have to eat bread, and that generally costs. Of course he's making money, and God has given him the ability and the circumstances to make it, of course. Ooh, there is Gad. Now he's in agriculture in a big way. He had the foresight to ask for the territory east of Jordan. That's marvelous pasture land. Oh, he's got a really good piece of inheritance, your gad. Yeah. And Moses is thinking of them, his children, so to speak, and now they're growing up from him, he must leave them, and they're going out. And he prays God's blessing on them in all their different ways. And I would, I wish I could pronounce a blessing on you. We leave this conference and you go. Did I hear you say you're in oil too? What, not olive, olive oil? Is that what you were at? Well, God bless you, it's good stuff for the old diet. And, uh, you're in petroleum oil. We'll be careful of Enron and people like that, but do an honest job, won't you? That's also a very necessary thing. And you're in farming, sir? Cool how much we depend on you. God's blessing in daily life. You whispered in my ear you're hoping to get married soon. Well, God, his being good to you. Yes. That says Peter, I don't say it. You'll have to learn to behave with each other because you are, as God intends, joint heirs. That's your inheritance, isn't it? Joint heirs of the grace of life. God bless you. You're a fighter, are you? Oh, you're a fiery evangelist. Well, God bless you as well. And you're out for extending the kingdom of God, marvelous man or woman you are. Yes, a real fighter. Bit uncomfortable if you're too near such a fighter sometimes because, well, they're used to fighting, but uh, we need the pioneers, don't we? Yeah. God bless you. As now you go, eventually at the end of next week, from this time of waiting before God, in all the affairs of your daily life, your avocations, and the family, and marriage, and bringing up of children, God's blessing be on your heads. And Moses, wise man, introduces his blessing with a reminder, a general reminder, true of all the tribes, of the love of God. He says, God came from Sinai and from Paran, and his saints are in his hand, for he loves them. And the interpreters, uh, disagree. What is meant by saints, and all his saints are in his hand? Does that refer to his believing people? For all believers nowadays anyway are saints, aren't they? Well, if that's so, they certainly are in his hand. Marvelous, isn't it? Oh, the wonder of it. I'm delighted to be able to remind you. If you're a child of God, a saint of God, then you certainly are in his hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all, says our Lord, and no one shall pluck them out of my Father's hand. I and my Father are one. Ah, but some theologians, difficult men they are, and experts can say, ah, but it could refer, that word saints, to God's holy ones, all the myriads of angels that come with him in his glory. It could mean that, couldn't it? Doesn't really make any difference whichever you have it. Because, you know, these myriad angels, and now is to speak the sober truth. These myriad angels, what are they? But sent forth to minister, to be the servants of those that shall be heirs of salvation. Oh, you, you, you wonderfully blessed people. Call if an angel turned up just now and sat beside you, you'll be tempted like John, uh, the apostle when he saw an angel to fall at the angel's feet and start worshiping him. And the angel would take you and say, oh, please, please, please learn the etiquette of heaven. You mustn't do that. Angel though I am, and excelling in strength, I'm merely one of your fellow servants. But you have an angel as your servant. And he might even add, whether he knows it or not, there's a rumor going about that in the eternity to come you'll be above the angels, won't you? You're seated in Christ in heavenly places, above all principality, powers, might, and dominions, and every name that is named. Oh, what you shall be, my brother, my sister, when you get home to glory. So like the Savior. And if we didn't know better, we should be tempted to bow at your feet and worship you. Above the angels, with our blessed Lord. For God loves his people. Then God talks about their individual inheritances. And Moses is a realist, so with this I'm nearly done. Levi got a very large responsibility given to him. Why? Well, not by accident. Because when he was called upon by God in days past to stand for God's first, even though it cost him having to be against his family, he dared to stand for God. These are our Lord's conditions, aren't they? If anyone come after me and doesn't put in second place even his relatives, he cannot be my disciple. Our responsibilities and privileges and tasks that God gives us now will in some part be a response to our faithfulness in discipleship. And Joseph got a whacking great fruitful inheritance, dear old Joseph. Oh, but think of his past, how he was separated from his brethren, and having suffered many things from his brothers, when they came to him, he forgave them and put an end to all dispute. Good old Joseph. How fruitful he was, because he didn't avenge himself. Oh, how easily we believers get to fighting each other. Can you explain it? Let us know this, if we will be fruitful, strife must go, quarreling must go. We must learn to forgive one another as Christ forgave us. And then there were the Gaddis. I come back to them at last. When they were about to go into to Canaan, the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh came to Moses, and they said, Sir, God has given us our territory this side, the east of Jordan. We'd like to ask you something. Um, when you come to divide the land, could we ask that we should be given this territory east of Jordan? Moses took one look at them, and he exploded like a volcano. Wow. You horrible men, he said. You're proposing to do what they did at Kadesh Barnea and discourage the people from going into the land, and you'll bring God's judgment. Oh, why he, he went at it, did Moses. Now, I don't like being turned told off myself, even when I'm wrong, but when I'm right, I don't like being told off. Watch it, my brother, you'll see. Ha. These two and a half tribes, they stood there and they endured this. He was an old man anyway, Moses. And when he finished, they said, sorry, sir, but you have misunderstood us. We weren't proposing to slack and settle down here. We're prepared to go over with the other tribes and go right in the forefront of the battle and fight our way through until every enemy has been, uh, defeated, and then and only then would we like to be allowed to come back into our inheritance, uh, this side of, uh, Jordan. So Moses coughed. Well, well, why didn't you say that at the first, you see? He'd misunderstood them, hadn't he? Well, if you'll really do that, he says, then God bless you. But make sure you do it. Don't you try to settle down here while the rest are having to fight. You go and lead them, and then you can come back. Watch it when you go out of the tent now. You'll see a number of beautiful looking people. But if you should come across a man, and in your eyes he looks very decrepit, and you say, well, I think the man must be a hundred and twenty if he's anything, his beard and all the rest of it. Watch him. For if it turned out to be Moses, when he came to you and said, excuse me, I hear you've been slacking recently. You've been just sitting down, enjoying yourself, and you don't always come to the meetings of the church, and you omit yourself from the Lord's Supper, and you don't take part in evangelism. You're slacking, aren't you? Well, we, we'd need to have an answer, really, shouldn't we? Well, yeah, even to tell Moses, excuse me, sir, no, you've got this wrong. I- I- I'm not like that at all. Shouldn't we? I'm in the forefront of the Lord's work. Not specially gifted, but any cha- task that has to be done to help God's people or to help the furtherance of the gospel, then I'm, I'm there to help, right in the forefront. To see if I slack, it hurts you. And if you slack, it hurts the rest. And then Moses ended as he began, and I just read the blessing that he finally pronounced. It covers the whole of God's people, and it covers us. Listen to him. There is none like unto God, O Jesharan, who riseth upon the heaven for thy help, and in his excellency on the skies. The eternal God is thy dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms. Israel dwelleth in safety, the fountain of Jacob alone. Happy art thou, O Israel, who is like unto thee, a people saved of the Lord. God bless you indeed. Shall we pray? Now, Lord, we have lingered long over thy word, because thy word touches our hearts, and we sense affinity with thine ancient people, and realize that in talking to them, thou has been talking to us. And now we go our ways to our different homes and tasks in life, the church life, our joys and our sorrows, and our responsibilities. Fix in our hearts, blessed Lord, we pray, the wonder of thine unchanging character, that there is none like thee. Help us to realize that thou hast been so marvelously good, that the salvation thou has given us is utterly unique in the whole of the universe. So may we serve it until the Lord shall come. Amen.