Closer To Heaven
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This video is produced by the South Pacific Division Discipleship team.
Week 1_ Preamble to Deuteronomy_ study this lesson for Oct 2 from SPD Discipleship on Vimeo.
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You can view an in-depth discussion of Preamble to Deuteronomy in the Hope Sabbath School class led by Pastor Derek Morris. Click on the image to view:
With thanks to Hope Channel – Television that will change your life.
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The Exodus and all that it entailed, from the blood on the doorpost in Egypt to the drama at the Red Sea — what an experience! No doubt it made an impression on those who lived through it. (And those who died, from the first-born children in Egypt to the soldiers at the bottom of the sea, God will judge them fairly.) As the Lord said: “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself” (Exodus 19:4).
Image © The Classic Bible Art Collection – Formerly Standard Publishing at Goodsalt.com
Why did the Lord do this stunning and dramatic rescue, actually taking one nation out of another nation, or, as Moses himself said to them: “Or did God ever try to go and take for Himself a nation from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?” (Deuteronomy 4:34)?
It was as simple as that. God called them out, the seed, the descendants of the fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And with these descendants the Lord established His covenant, and they would be, indeed, “a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine” (Exodus 19:5). This relationship was central to the covenant.
This idea of a “special treasure” (segullah), however, could be (and it was, in fact) easily miSunderstood. Their specialness came not from anything inherently holy and righteous in and of themselves. Instead, it was because of God’s grace given to them and because of the wonderful truths that He had bestowed upon them — truths that they were to follow and, as a “kingdom of priests,” eventually spread to the world.
God then gave them some of the stipulations of the covenant, too (their end of the deal, so to speak), the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20), and then this covenant was ratified. Having sprinkled a newly constructed altar with the blood of the offerings, Moses “took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people” (Exodus 24:7). The people again declared that they would obey.
| “When Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood … and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, ‘This is the blood of the covenant which God has commanded you’” ( Hebrews 9.19-20, NKJV). What does the blood signify, and why is it so important, even to us today? |
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Abram (later called Abraham) first appears in the genealogy of Genesis 11, which comes right after mention of the scattering from Babel.
Image © Jeff Preston at Goodsalt.com
Many centuries later, the apostle Paul, in seeking to deal with the heresy of the Galatians, pointed back to Abraham’s call, showing it to be an early expression of what God’s intentions had always been: the gospel to the world. “Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, ‘In you all the nations shall be blessed.’ So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham” (Galatians 3:7-9).
Abraham’s call was first expressed in Genesis 12; much of the rest of Genesis is the story of his blood descendants, one dysfunctional seed after another, creating one messed-up family after another, and yet, through them the promise eventually was to be fulfilled, reaching a crucial point with the call of Moses.
In a world steeped in ignorance, error, and a general lack of the knowledge of truth (things have not changed much in more than three thousand years, have they?), the Lord called out a people, His people, Abraham’s seed, from Egypt. In them He sought not only to preserve knowledge of the truth; that is, knowledge of Him, Yahweh, and the plan of salvation, but also to spread that knowledge to the rest of the world.
| Today, how do we as Seventh-day Adventists see ourselves in relationship to the rest of the world? That is, what parallels exist between us and ancient Israel? More important, what responsibility does this parallel place on each of us individually? |
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Almost every school child has heard the story about an apple falling on Isaac Newton’s head, and Voila! Newton discovered gravity. Whether or not an apple really fell on his head isn’t the crucial point; instead, the point is that Newton’s great insight (he didn’t discover gravity either; anyone who fell down already knew about gravity) was to understand that the same force that dropped the apple (gravity) also kept the moon in orbit around the earth, the earth in orbit around the Sun, and so forth.
Image © Review & Herald Publishing at Goodsalt.com
This was important because, for millennia, many people believed that the laws that governed the heavens were different from the laws that governed the earth. Newton showed that this belief was wrong.
And though Newton’s contribution was in the area of natural law, the same principle holds true with moral law. The same freedom, the freedom inherent in love, that led to Lucifer’s fall in heaven led to humanity’s Fall on earth, as well.
After the Fall, things went from bad to worse, even to the point where the Lord said about humanity “that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). And if their thoughts were bad, their actions surely were, as well, until things got so evil that the Lord destroyed the entire world with a Flood — in a sense giving humanity a chance to start over, a kind of second creation. However, as the story of the Tower of Babel shows (Genesis 11:1-9), humanity still seemed intent on defying God. “When the tower had been partially completed, a portion of it was occupied as a dwelling place for the builders; other apartments, splendidly furnished and adorned, were devoted to their idols. The people rejoiced in their success, and praised the gods of silver and gold, and set themselves against the Ruler of heaven and earth.” — Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 119. Thus, besides confusing their language, God scattered the fallen race across the face of the earth.
| Take a mental note of your thoughts throughout the day. What does this teach you about the state of your own heart? |
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