Deuteronomy 4:3

The Bible says in Deuteronomy 4:3-4, “Your eyes have seen what the Lord did because of Baalpeor; for all the men that followed Baalpeor, the Lord thy God hath destroyed them from among you. But ye that did cleave unto the Lord your God are alive every one of you this day.” God gives life because He is life. Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” All life comes from God. That is why man should not end life. God creates life and therefore man has no right to end what God created. Only God has the right to do that. This truth is the basis for opposing war, the death penalty, abortion, and other means of man to end life. God alone is the Giver of life and the Taker of life. Since man cannot do the former, he should not do the latter either.

Life emanates from Christ. Life flows out from Him. If you become attached to Christ through faith in Him, then His life flows into you, and then you have life: eternal life. Life on earth is a gift, but it is temporary. Eternal life is a gift because it is an automatic benefit of the attachment to Christ. Eternal life comes from your faith in Christ and not from anything that you do. In the day of Moses the ones who died turned away from God and trusted in a false God named Baalpeor. The ones who stayed alive are the ones “that did cleave unto the Lord your God.” The false gods today are the gods of money, and entertainment, and pleasure, and humanism, and politics, and all the false religions of the world.

The Bible says in Deuteronomy 4:5-6, “Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the LORD my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to possess it.
[6] Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.” The children of Israel were under the law. One of the priorities of their existence was to obey the law. That is why they were told as they were entering the Promised Land to keep the “statutes and judgments.” In the age in which we live, we are not under law, but under grace. We are saved by grace through faith. Therefore, when a person enters into the Christian life, they must remember to constantly exercise faith in Christ. The Lord wants us to start following Him, and to keep on following Him.

Deuteronomy 4:6 is an important verse for explaining one of God’s purposes for the children of Israel. It says that they were to live for God, “in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes.” Yes, God chose the children of Israel and blessed them, but the blessings were not supposed to stop with them. Israel was supposed to be an evangelistic nation. God wanted His truth to come to everyone and to every nation, and His plan was to use Israel to do it. Notice the primary way that the truth would spread: the unbelieving nations would see how the believers were acting and talking, and the unbelievers would be attracted to it. The unbelievers would see the believers and the conclusion of the unbelievers would be, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.” That is exactly how the gospel is supposed to be spread in our day also. Jesus said in Matthew 5:13-16, “Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.[14] Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.[15] Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.[16] Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” Your “works,” i.e. what you do each day, are either a good testimony for Christ or a bad testimony. What testimony do you have before a lost and dying world? That is a very important question. Do not do anything that would harm your testimony.

The Bible says in Deuteronomy 4:7-8, “For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the LORD our God is in all things that we call upon him for?[8] And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day?” This is the Biblical prescription for what makes a nation great. A great nation is close to God: “who hath God so nigh unto them.” The way to be close to God is through prayer and Bible study. Prayer is mentioned in verse 7 when it says, “all things that we call upon Him for.” Bible study is mentioned in verse 8 when it mentions a nation having “statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law.” It is fairly simple: prayer and Bible study. In prayer you talk to Jesus, and in Bible study Jesus talks to you. If you want to be close to God, just make sure that you have a good dosage of prayer and Bible study in your life. If prayer and Bible study will make a nation great, then what will weaken a nation? Remove prayer and Bible study and the nation will become weak instead of great. One of the main events that weakened America was when prayer and Bible was taken out of the public school system. Not only have these been removed from the education of children, but also generations of children have basically been taught that prayer and Bible study are not important, and sometimes they are even taught that prayer and Bible study are wrong. Hollywood has removed prayer and Bible study from their entertainments. Politicians have removed prayer and Bible from their speeches and platforms. As we have become more and more of a secular and humanistic nation, we have become a weaker nation.

The Bible says in Deuteronomy 4:9-10, “Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons' sons;[10] Specially the day that thou stoodest before the LORD thy God in Horeb, when the LORD said unto me, Gather me the people together, and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children.” Every Christian has had at least one great spiritual experience when they came to know Jesus as Savior. And then if a Christian walks with the Lord, they will experience many blessings that come with being a Christian: being guided by Him, blessed by Him, and used by Him. But there is always the possibility that someone might fall away. That is why Moses said, “take heed to thyself.” Moses also told the children of Israel, “keep thy soul diligently.” The word “diligently” refers to having the right priority and making the right effort. What kind of effort are we talking about? The next phrase in verse 9 tells us. It says, “lest thou forget.” We must remember the blessedness of our salvation. We must remember what Jesus did for us. It takes discipline and an effort to remember and to keep the cares or the interests of life from crowding out the remembrance. When we remember, we are thankful to God. When we remember, we are full of faith. The battle of the Christian life is largely a battle of the mind: what we think about and what we remember. How long do we have to fight this battle? The answer to that is also found in verse 9. It says, “all the days of thy life.” It is a lifelong battle to remember what we ought to remember and to forget what we ought to forget.

If we do have some success at thinking about the Lord in our own minds, then what else do we do? How about teaching others, and if we are going to teach others, how about starting with our own families? And so Moses mentions the primary responsibility of parents: to teach their children. It is not the school’s responsibility to teach your children. It is your responsibility. Moses said, “teach them thy sons, and thy sons' sons.” Who are they teaching: their children and their grandchildren. What are they to teach them: all the things that they learned in their own life concerning what God had done for them. The failure of the school systems is not only a failure of society as a whole, but is also a failure of parents, parents who have given their responsibility to strangers and unbelievers to teach their children. In verse 10 God clarifies more exactly what they were to remember and what they were to teach their children: “I will make them hear my words.” Of course, this is a statement of the importance of the Word of God: the Bible. Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word of God.” The number one responsibility of parents towards their children is not to punish their children, but to teach them. It says in Ephesians 6:4, “And ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” The word that is translated “nurture” means literally “the education and training of children.” The word that is translated “admonition” means also “exhortation” and refers to words that are mild and kind warnings. Parents need to warn their children about the spiritual and practical pitfalls of life. Life is short and can be dangerous. The best way to learn is for loving parents to teach the children. That is much better than learning the hard way. In other words parents look for those teachable moments when Biblical principles for life can be taught and explained.

The Bible says in Deuteronomy 4:11-13, “And ye came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness.[12] And the LORD spake unto you out of the midst of the fire: ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude; only ye heard a voice.[13] And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, even ten commandments; and he wrote them upon two tables of stone.” Most, if not all of us, have nether seen God nor heard His voice. One of the blessings of being born again through faith in Christ is that we do become aware of His presence. But Jesus said in John 5:37, “And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape.” And we see how great was the privilege that was given to the children of Israel when they were all allowed to hear the voice of God. Moses said in verse 12, “ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude; only ye heard a voice.”

Deuteronomy 5:1 is an interesting verse. God mentions a “covenant.” He is talking about the covenant of the Old Testament: the law. In the New Testament age in which we live we have a new covenant. We are not under law, but under grace. The difference between the Israelites and the believers in Jesus is that the Israelites tried to please God by their keeping of the law. They could not do it. They failed, just as we would fail if we tried to please God through our keeping of the law of God. Happily, we rest in Jesus. Because Jesus pleased God, the good life of Christ and His righteousness are credited to our account. We are accepted of God and we are accounted as righteous because of faith in Christ. What a difference between the old covenant and the new covenant. The old covenant kills because we cannot keep it, but the new covenant makes alive because Jesus kept it.

Notice that when talking about the old covenant, the covenant of the law, God mentions the ten commandments. There are hundreds of commandments in the old covenant, but they all emanate from the ten commandments. If we are not under law, what purpose is there to the ten commandments? We are told in Galatians 3:24, “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” A schoolmaster teaches you something. This schoolmaster teaches us that we have failed in our attempts to keep the law, and thus we need Jesus as Savior to forgive us, and to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. This implies that we try to keep the law. The law is God’s standard. The ten commandments give us a moral foundation to strive for. But in regards to our salvation, it reminds us that we need a Savior. If you need a Savior, you can bow before Jesus today and accept Him into your heart.

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