Duty-ronomy?

I read Deuteronomy 1-3.

Woohoo for moving away from the number of rams sacrificed! On to Moses's last sermon! Wait, the first third is just a recap of where the Israelites have been...bummer.

But Eugene Peterson adds detail that gets me excited to read this book:

"This sermon does what all sermons are intended to do: Take God's words, written and spoken in the past, take the human experience, ancestral and personal, of the listening congregation, then reproduce the words and expereience as a single event right now, in this present moment. No word that God has spoken is a mere literary artifact to be studied; no human experience is dead history merely to be regretted or admired."

What a cool lead up!

Anyway, the first bit is just a recap of where they've been and what they've done. However, there are some very interesting pieces of wisdom contained therein. In Chapter 1, verses 29-33, we get a real picture of faith or the lack thereof (yes, I just used therein and thereof in back-to-back sentences; get over it). "...God, your God, carried you as a father carries his child, carried you the whole way until you arrived here. But now that you're here, you won't trust God, your God..."

Much like what Matt was talking about with the kings, the Israelites, who've been led through situation after situation, still don't trust God. And also like the kings, this applies directly to us!

Moving on, to Chapter 3, verses 23-25 contain Moses trying one last ditch effort to get into the promised land. He begs God, trying to reason with him (not to mention flattery):

"God, my Master, you let me in on the beginnings, you let me see your greatness, you let me see your might -- what god in Heaven or Earth can do anything like what you've done! Please, let me in also on the endings, let me cross the river and see the good land over the Jordan, the lush hills, the Lebanon mountains."

We cannot understand this experience. We, through the love and sacrifice of Jesus Christ, do not have to worry about God accepting our apology. Just like Moses, we sin, true. However, our sin is forgiven if we ask.

God does not allow Moses to enter and makes it clear that is how things are going to be. It makes me wonder if that was Moses's secret intention all along. "If I just do this, God will let me in."

This feelings is a bit more familiar to us. "If I just do this, I won't have to worry about eternity." Reality check: no one act of generosity or Christian brotherhood will get us into heaven. In truth, this shouldn't be our goal anyway. We should strive to live a Christian life...continually. We are a work in progress. We always will be. Our progress should be in the acts that we do...realizing that none of these are final.