W. Robert Godfrey

And so it's very important to see that Deuteronomy, in a variety of ways, is very much forward-looking.

It's talking not only about the past and about the present, but it's communicating to Israel to be aware that there are going to be great changes in their future, and they have to be prepared for that.

They have to recognize what's going to happen.

And we'll see in the very last chapter of Deuteronomy that what is said is even though calamity is going to come upon Israel in the future for a time, yet God will raise up another prophet like Moses.

And there is the great prophecy of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Old Testament situation described in Deuteronomy was never going to be the end.

It was never the fulfillment.

The Promised Land had a great purpose.

But the purpose of the Promised Land was preparatory to seeing the coming of the ultimate Messiah, the ultimate mediator, the true prophet, priest, and king, who would bring the new heaven and the new earth, not just a little bit of territory in the Near East.

That's not what we're promised in the Scripture.

What we're promised in the Scripture is the great day is coming when the whole earth will be renewed and the whole earth will belong to the people of God because that's what God intended from the beginning.

There's a real historical movement going on in Deuteronomy to cause the people to look forward with confidence, with hope, with expectation.

about what's going to happen in their future.

And so this history is critical and at the center of it always is this call to avoid idolatry.

It's very tempting to invest physical objects with spiritual power.

It's very tempting, it's very satisfying to think there's a place I can go, there's a thing I can touch that will connect me to the divine.

That's a pretty universal human experience.

Some of you will know I'm a minister in a Dutch Reformed denomination.

And in the Dutch Reformed churches, unlike a lot of the Presbyterian churches, we have forms, we call them, for things.

readings that the minister reads for baptism, for Lord's Supper, for profession of faith.