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[0:00] I wrote an Old Testament book in the New Testament. So, you know, that's another little statistic you might keep in mind if you think that Deuteronomy is...

[0:12] That's another reason why we're studying it. Indeed. Where was that? 3014. 3014. This is what Paul quotes in Romans 10.

[0:26] The word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart. So you may obey it. Remember, Paul says that if you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth, he picks that up from this verse.

[0:44] And that that's what hearing is. And I might say that one of the reasons I wanted you to go into groups tonight and talk is to check what you heard in your heart and to give you an opportunity to say it with your mouth, you know, to one another.

[1:06] So that confirms that. You know, he said, for reasons that we'll go into before the week is out, but because most of us are, you know, we have a massive input system.

[1:23] And, but what we need is to have the input, but then to give expression to it in our relationship. So, it was good.

[1:37] Interesting, the story of that evangelism, isn't it? How it was lay evangelism. Not, not just lay evangelism, but strictly lay evangelism, you know.

[1:52] And not multi-million dollar evangelists with multi-million dollar programs, but a woman with a child strapped to her back going to the next village.

[2:08] It's something terribly important. But the time's up. Oh, didn't you say, sorry, didn't you say this morning that they had evangelized in that place for a hundred years and not one person had been there?

[2:22] Yeah, that's where your story starts. That's what. Oh, and this is after the hundred years. Yeah, this is what he started to do. He said, the work of hospitals, somebody else can do it.

[2:35] The work of schools, somebody else can do it. The work of socializing, somebody else can do it. I want to go in there and tell them the gospel. And that just revolutionized the whole thing.

[2:52] What priority would we give? Also, their culture is so utterly sinful. And by the way, it's beautifully written.

[3:05] Yes. Yes. It's impressive. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Let me pray.

[3:19] Amen. Remember that prayer about the words which we have heard with our outward ears may be so grafted deeply in our hearts that they may bring forth in us the fruit of good living to the honor and glory of the name of Jesus Christ.

[3:56] That to our God as we come to the end of a day of words and words and words we ask that your word in the midst of it may be grafted deeply in our hearts that having understood it, having a will to obey it we might have the affection and longing and love to give expression to it in all the circumstances of our lives and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be us for all to remember. Amen.

[4:47] I guess we'll get on the way. Turn to... Acts chapter 7 See, the story is repeated in this among all the millions of sermons that have been preached in the Christian church by Christian preachers this is one of the earliest and it's interesting to look at it hot to see and it's also a interesting reminder for preachers that it should be appropriate that at the end of their sermon they either survived or were taken out in stone today it would be it would probably be a lot more helpful to the church generally instead of thanks for your sermons as they walk out the door and you don't know what they think if they'd either you know murder you or do something it would be for good reason or for bad however we don't get this kind of response that Stephen got to his but

[6:20] Stephen is before the Sanhedrin in chapter 7 as it opens and I guess I guess it wouldn't hurt to read it by paragraphs you read one and I'll read another would that be alright?

[6:50] and there are new paragraphs in my translation starting with verse 2 4 9 11 17 20 23 27 does that more or less correspond to what you've got in the book?

[7:10] then the high priest asked him are these charges true? to this is the cry brothers and fathers listen to me the God of glory appeared to our father Abraham upon Jesus to us at Tanya before he lived in Haran leave your country and be able to God's dead and go to the land that I will show you so he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran after the death of his father God sent him to this land where you are now living he gave him no inheritance here not even a foot of ground but God promised promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess the land even though at that time Abraham had no child God spoke to him in this way your descendants will be strangers in the land not their own and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years but I will punish the nation they serve as slaves

[8:27] God said and afterward they will come out of that country and worship me in this place then he gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision and Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him eight days after his birth later Isaac later Isaac became the father of Jacob and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs because of the patriarchs were jealous of Joseph they sold him as a slave into Egypt that God was with him and rescued him from all his troubles he gave Joseph wisdom and enabled him to gain the goodwill of Pharaoh and king of Egypt so he came and moved all of Egypt and all of his house then a famine struck all Egypt and Kenya bringing great suffering and our fathers could not find food when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt he sent our fathers out sent our fathers on their first visit on their second visit

[9:45] Joseph told his brothers he was who he was and Pharaoh learned about Joseph's family after this Joseph sent for his father Jacob and his whole family seventy-five in all then Jacob went down to Egypt where he and our fathers died their bodies were brought back to Shechem and placed in the tomb that Abraham had bought from the sons of Harmor at Shechem for a certain sum of money as the time of the year for God to fulfill his promise to Abraham the number of our people of Egypt greatly increased then another king who knew nothing about Joseph became ruler of Egypt he dealt treacherously with our people and the rest of our forefathers by forcing them to throw out their newborn babies so that they would die at that time Moses was born and he was no ordinary child for three months he was cared for in his father's house when he was placed outside

[11:00] Pharaoh's daughter took him and brought him up as her own son Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action when Moses was forty years old he decided to visit his fellow Israelites he saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian Moses stopped at the home people who realized that God was using him to rest again but they did not the next day Moses came upon two Israelites who were fighting he tried to reconcile them by saying men you are brothers why do you want to hurt each other?

[11:50] the man who was mistreating the others pushed Moses aside and said who made you ruler and judge over us? do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?

[12:05] when Moses heard this he fled to Midian where he settled as a foreigner and had two sons after forty years had passed an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai when he saw this he was amazed at the sight as he went over to look more closely he heard the Lord's voice I am the God of your fathers the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob Moses trembled with fear and did not dare to look and then the Lord said to him take off your sandals the place where you are standing is holy ground I have indeed seen the oppression of my people in Egypt I have heard their groaning and have come now to set them free now come I will send you back to Egypt this is the same Moses whom they had rejected with the words who made you ruler and judge he was sent to be their ruler and deliverer by God himself through the angel who appeared to him in the bush he led them out of Egypt and did wonders and miraculous signs in Egypt at the Red Sea and for 40 years in the desert this is what this is that Moses who told the Israelites

[13:43] God will send you a prophet like me from your own people he was with he was in the assembly in the desert with our fathers and with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai and he received living words to pass on to us but our fathers refused to obey him instead of rejecting him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt they told Aaron make us gods who will go before us as for this fellow Moses who led us out of Egypt we don't know what has happened to him and that was the time that they denied my own form of a calf they brought sacrifices to it and had not the celebration in honor of our other hands and made but God turned away and gave him over to the worship of the heavenly ones this agrees with what is written in the book of the prophets did you bring me sacrifices and offerings 40 years in the desert

[14:49] O house of Israel you have lifted up the shrine of Moloch and the star of your god Rephan the idols you made to worship therefore I will send you into exile beyond Babylon our four fathers had a tabernacle testimony with them in the desert it had been made as God directed Moses according to God and the scene having received the tabernacle our fathers under Joshua brought with them the nature of the land and the nations God drove out before them the rain in the land until the time of David who enjoyed God's favor and asked that he might provide a good place for the Lord of Jacob but it was someone who built the house for him however the Most High does not live in houses made by men as the prophet says heaven is my throne and the earth is my first stool what kind of house will you build for me says the Lord for where will my resting place be has not my hand made all these things you stiff-necked people with uncircumcised hearts and ears you are just like your fathers you always resist the Holy Spirit was there ever a prophet your fathers did not persecute they even killed those who predicted the coming of the righteous one and now you have betrayed and murdered him you who have received the law it was put into effect through angels but have not obeyed it in one moment two more paragraphs of the cross when they heard they were furious and mashed their teeth at him but Stephen the foe of the

[16:56] Holy Spirit looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God and looked he said I see heaven open and the sun on the hands standing at the right hand of God at this they covered their ears and yelling at the top of their voices they all rushed at him dragged him out of the city and began to stone him meanwhile the witnesses laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul well again you see how the faith of this people is always deeply anchored in history and the events of the day are the result of the dialogue of centuries all coming together and that the and that the way of God and the way of man diverges all the time that's that is the pattern of

[18:11] I'd like just to pray for a minute and then just be quiet Father as we read your scriptures we have I think almost trained ourselves to edit and accommodate them to what we think and what we feel and what we know and what we've accomplished and what we've experienced and to commend you in so far as you fulfill and give strength to what we have done then Lord if we read your scriptures again and find out that what we have done is to consistently disobey your Holy Spirit what we have done is to consistently rebel against your purpose what we have done is in accordance with the demands of death to whom we seem to submit without question so our God as we read through

[19:34] Deuteronomy together and as we think about it would you grant to us the grace to glorify your name to seek to find in our own hearts a place of obedience and trust and to seek by the by all that remains to us of our lives to bring glory to your name either with all the prosperity that we enjoy or even in the midst of our brokenness and hurt help us to bring glory to you that you are the Lord our God you are the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ you are the God by whose

[20:37] Holy Spirit you are present with us you are the God that informs our minds and inflames our hearts so our God as we have these two the gift of these two hours to spend together we ask that as we as we try and bring ourselves under the teaching of your word that you will meet us not just with the chaos and confusion of our minds or of our times but that you will meet us in the ordered purposes of your love in the circumstances of our different lives we ask this in the name of our Lord Jesus Amen thank you all let me just give you the results of that yesterday today

[22:05] I mean it's I mean it's obviously and I'd like some of you teachers to comment on this it's obviously we live in the information age you know that in our minds we carry general impressions but on our computers we have the exact answers so we may not know the answer but we know what button to push to get the answer and do you think that do you think that affects us I know Cedric works with computers and and you teach and some of you do other things how do you think I mean basically this group here must be in the top 10% of biblically literate people in our society generally we must be in the top 10% now

[23:12] I'm not being in the least derogatory because I but I I'll just go over and you can you can most of you did well on the first and last questions Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers and Deuteronomy and the first and great commandment which is thou shalt love the Lord thy God the Greek translation of the Old Testament which came out I mean which was prevalent in the time that Christ was born is the Septuagint which in a kind of this is this is kind of Jewish mysticism comes out to make statements like this but that what happened was 70 scholars sat down in different places and translated the Old Testament and they all came up with exactly the same thing so that gave it authority so it was called the Septuagint for that reason some of you suggested the Pentateuch which you quote is the five books is Genesis

[24:28] Exodus Leviticus Numbers and Deuteronomy but the Greek translation of the Old Testament was the Septuagint the patriarchs we just read in that passage are the twelve sons of Jacob but but also there's several others that are patriarchs too some of you got patriarchs and prophets confused and included people like Elijah and Elisha and Isaiah and things like that but the patriarchs are actually the fathers of the nation another name for the Old Testament I guess this isn't I mean you could debate answers for this but I was trying to think of the book of the Old Covenant you know like the New Covenant and the Old Covenant the book in the Old Testament is sometimes called the Old Covenant Jacob's other name is

[25:28] Israel and so he is the patriarch because he's the father of the twelve patriarchs and the nation was named after him so the name of Aaron's brother is Moses the mountain on which the law was given is Sinai or Horeb the man who led the way into the promised land was Joshua he didn't do very well on that question but then you should do better on it by the end of the week but do you have any comments on that question of this being the information age I mean I just I mean it once was important for instance to know I remember in public school having to know the one times table to the twelve times table off by heart that that was just everybody had to know that

[26:32] I don't I don't know if kids still do that or not but what what do we do about information and knowledge as something that you yourself keep memory work was important to that you would have that in you that that kind of information is no longer important to us is it I consider myself a really good example of that condition that I know where to find a lot of answers but I'm not sure that I've got a lot do any of you have any comment on that or experience of it that you could I find as far as Bible is concerned I don't I haven't memorized a lot of it but I get pretty well find what I'm looking for in it by using concordances and stuff like that so I know sort of where to look for it just as people on the computer do but I don't

[27:39] I could quote you both in first if somebody said is that a loss for us do you think as a culture or is it just part of the only way we can accommodate the massive amounts of information that belong to the information age I think it's adaptive we've got to the point where all you can really carry are the indexes you can't manage the amount of information that's being poured out at us constantly you have to be able to go to guides and indexes and from there do your search know where to find the answers not necessarily know you can't carry that amount of information you can't carry a significant amount of even a map of the world can you name the countries of the world could you ever I mean there might have been a time when a good scholar could but they didn't change every five minutes and I think that this is the type the movement of information has changed all of that not only does the information itself change quickly but it comes to us more quickly and

[28:54] I don't think that the human mind is really set up and adapted to that if this room were full of people under the age of 20 they would have a very different view of information they do information bits they don't understand the comprehensive system of information that we were taught and the way that we organize information they don't even do that anymore or at least it's my observation that people for the most part don't they've learned a new way of coping with information and they don't you may be just proving the futility of spending so many days on due rhymes to I'm not sure about that because I think that we retain relatively little of what we read but we retain more of what we explain and speak and the loss of the oral tradition has meant that we ourselves carry less firmly what we hear and

[29:59] I think that applies to the injunctions in the Bible to speak of the history of Israel tell the history of Israel because as you teach it you learn it far better than you ever learned it the night before an exam yeah it's interesting I've gone through my mind because I come from the whole educational structure where memory work for instance is dismissed as irrelevant because we're moving into this whole new age but I often feel very blessed because my background was in the theater where I had to memorize and I found that I have been very much formed and shaped by having things within my memory whether it be poetry or Shakespeare or whatever and to to the point that I thought it was in teaching confirmation I've gone back to having adolescence who were at the height of the memory course of memorizing and finding the rest of the very formative in that and I regret the fact that I wasn't as a youngster that part of my biblical training wasn't that because I think there is something

[31:20] I don't dispute anything what you're saying but I think that as people of the book that we lose something when we don't have that is something that we inwardly digested that is there and that is working on our minds and our hearts and I think there's a challenge for us as people to rediscover some of that because it's a different type of information you're dealing with and something that's to be curated inside and very practically if I'm ever talking to someone about my faith I find I get together with some girlfriends and two of us are Christians and two of us are not we get into great discussions of each other's birthday dinners and you know it's not impressive to them if we're trying to make a point or explain something and we have to get out our indexes you know if I just had it inside of me and was able to speak more confidently I could share my faith so much better it's fascinating one of the things we're doing is contrasting once again the cultural times that we're living in and Deuteronomy gets back to the basics about teaching it to your children and your children's children and the history is the history when I was at the university examined one student did particularly poorly on it so he complained to the professor that he came to university to learn how to think and not to memorize all this stuff the professor's answer was how can you think if you don't know nothing

[32:59] I think the way we have information now we don't learn how to spat over information and so we're a victim of its availability to us Cedric you've got to come as our computer expert and answer all this because Cedric may be the man of the future it was the exact opposite to what James said I grew up in Hong Kong and half my high school years we had to learn completely by memory all the books from the Chinese sages and that was part of our matriculation exam so for three years and books stacked high you had to recite it in old Chinese it's not even literal Chinese and actually I rejected it again physically I can't even take off a book like that anymore

[34:00] I found out after three years of reciting reciting reciting I knew absolutely nothing I cannot quote a single verse I did not understand a single verse I could recite probably books after books and the moment the exam stopped it was purged it was completely unleashed erased and I passed the exam to this day you know thirty years later I have no idea how I passed because I cannot remember anything and that was exactly opposite because we were forced to learn and I just rejected it completely totally now I look at information as something that opens up and it depends on what you just said just now it's absolutely true if you look at information as something that you look at digest and have to go that extra step and explain the moment you have to go that extra step and explain to somebody else you learn much more and what I find is looking at having children being put in the position of having to explain to my seven-year-old or my ten-year-old that big that is a big step having to digest it and then explain it that I find it a lot more in depth the knowledge that I'm getting so it's the explanation part that's there can you be asked on it because this is a fascinating sort of thing there's another aspect to that rather than explaining if you teach and then expect the people to apply then they learn it if they have to read it and apply it they learn you can learn the item in the application for the teaching so that everybody who's taught needs to teach in that sense or put it into practice and again that goes back to the biblical teachers teach your children write it in your hearts apply it it's the only way you really

[36:37] I think learn it and as you've started applying it then you can strip it down to one or two sentences and if you can simplify what is complex into one or two sentences and get the essence then you really know what you're doing I think it goes back a step from that even though it gets back into will and affection thing what we're talking about is a rational exercise I think it's more than that it steps back even more into your heart if it's not what's the point of teaching all this stuff if it's not real in the gut I have a client she's 36 she's dying of cancer and God has come into her life and touched her God said a while ago she wasn't going to die yet because she didn't know him and through her dying process she's had a fascinating conversion experience and you hear about her time she's designing a quilt for breast cancer and it's going to go right across

[37:47] Canada it's big big big but people come to her and ask her like what's happened to you like there's so much peace in your life you're a different person so it's not an intellectual transformation it's a total personal so it's more than you teach it to them but I think somehow I don't know what it is but it's got to go back a step deeper somehow one of the basic learning theories is that students will learn what they perceive as being important to them how things it it it just strikes me in a sense not to feel that I really see where Cedric are from that different experience and maybe when you mentioned the intellect infection there's the key there to some extent that if it there's the extreme of learning my dry road just because this is stuff packing your brain rather than something we learn because of love for it and a desire to learn something for it and I think that's what maybe ties these things together is that there has to be something that is taught and learned but you know it has to be love and a desire to learn that thing that's interesting our discussion has brought us back to intellect will and affections again as being a fairly shrewd way of keeping those three things locked together well okay that's could we could we get some more verses

[40:08] Cedric are you would you be ready to give us chapter two just turn to chapter two as you as Cedric puts us through that chapter two first comes right after chapter one we found the Israelites rebelling against the order of God and chapter two basically is about the end of those 40 years after they roamed around the wild wild wilderness for all those many years chapter two brings them to the hill country just just to the north of the gator gulf of acuba and south of the promised land and basically they had to go through two areas that has according to

[41:17] Deuteronomy has been previously given to the descendants of Esau and Lot and in each of those cases they were told not to provoke the population there not to go into war pay for the food and be at peace with them to go through and in each case the Lord reminded them when they're going through when they're just about to go through the land that's been given to the descendants of Esau they were reminded that God for the past 40 years had been with them and provided for them reminded them that God provided and they were directed to go by what the law told them to go when they came to the land where they were the land that was given to the descendants of

[42:24] Lot they again were told not to provoke them be at peace with them and they were reminded that the previous inhabitants of those lands were wiped out and the land was given to the descendants of Esau and Lot by the Lord so the Lot's hand was at each of that but then there was a big change when they came to the land of the Amorites there the lot said he would deliver the land to the people to the Israelites he first struck fear into the Amorites he apparently also made the king of the Amorites stubborn and then he refused to let the Israelites pass through peacefully even though

[43:27] Israelites offered to again pay for the food and pass through peacefully and the end result was Babel in which not just the armies of the Amorites were destroyed but so were the towns all the inhabitants and they made a strong point that verse 34 at that time we took all his towns and completely destroyed them men women and children we left no survivors and that was the end result it was explained in the margin notes in my translation that the Hebrew term destroyed means giving over of things or persons to the Lord it's almost like I read it to be a sacrifice that was a bit difficult verse for me but it's not the only verse in the

[44:40] Old Testament that causes me trouble and thinking further asking questions that as to why the towns have to be annihilated what did the children do that were that deserved all this in the end that's the intellectual side the intellect side asking that question and in the end all I could come up with the answer was that there was such things still happen now such things I still don't understand and rather than dismiss the rest of Deuteronomy which I hope to have a lot of things to teach me I sort of decided to put this phrase aside and maybe come back to it at some point because that caused me great trouble in the first reading one second why did it cause you trouble this whole image of

[46:00] God being not the image of benevolence and goodness and I was taught that thou shalt not kill but I suppose annihilation it's fairly drastic thing to have happen and if this is part of the law thou shalt not kill I find it very difficult to reconcile that I can understand the king of can I I just wanted you to do exactly what you've just done and I would like to say this about I mean you've expressed it very well the issue what you read in Deuteronomy that has happened and for which God seems to be responsible you a 20th century

[47:06] New Testament Christian say that shouldn't be so that in a sense you are taking what God has taught you to critique what God is teaching you you know that both those both sides of that thing come from the same place they mean it's not I mean the problem I I don't know if this helped you but it was some help to me in taking it through the problem we have is not that we are wiser than God but the God who is the God of the battle with the Amorites and the God who is the father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the same person and what we learn on the one hand to criticize this is from the same source and that that that's part I think of the resolution where I think we get into trouble is when we say that we by our own natural wisdom know that

[48:12]  God is wrong and we are right about how to deal with things like that I was reading in the paper last week for instance that in in Rwanda five 500,000 people have died in battle and the prophecy was that in the course of the next year a million people will die of AIDS from the armies that are being disbanded and going throughout the country that there will be more people die in the peace that follows that slaughter than died in the slaughter itself this the care and management of a people is a very complex problem and I just sort of thought that as a kind of contemporary to this but that problem that you've stated pointed out well is one of the reasons that translation is better people know that inside