In his sermon, Scott Brown delves into the book of Deuteronomy, focusing on the fatherly kindness of God as outlined in the first sermon of Moses. This sermon covers the blessings of God, recounting His faithfulness and fatherly care towards His people, despite their tumultuous history marked by disobedience and judgment. Brown emphasizes the importance of understanding God's guidance through verbal propositional revelation, the genuine relationship He offers, and His sovereign control over history. The sermon highlights six specific blessings from God: a sufficient testimony, a genuine relationship, a providential history, a promised land, a multiplied generation, and good government. Moses' recounting of Kadesh Barnea serves as a pivotal lesson in obedience and fear, while the sermon draws parallels between historical events and the present, urging listeners to trust in God's control and reject fear. Brown also discusses the significance of God's provision of good government and the principles of leadership, tying them to the ultimate fulfillment in Christ, the perfect governor.

Let's seek the Lord's help here now as we open up this great book. Oh Lord, thank you for giving us these words. Thank you for explaining what you meant in your law through Moses. And Lord, I pray that you would help us to find ourselves faithful in all these things, that our hearts would burn within us and we would say, oh that we have such a heart in us, that we would fear you and always keep all your commandments which you've given to us that it might be well with us and our children forever in Jesus name Amen okay Deuteronomy chapter 1 here we go our first sermon in the sequence of exposition through this book. It is interesting to me to reflect on the fact, at least the way I understand it, almost no one or perhaps no one has ever been in a sequential expositional study of the book of Deuteronomy in the church.

So here we are, first out, right out of the gate, all of us in this recovering territory that we haven't covered in quite the detail that we're getting ready to cover it. And so That really is a very special blessing. Let me just make a few comments about this chapter, and this section that we're in, in Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy, as you remember, is comprised of three different sermons that are given in the last month of Moses' life. All of them are delivered on the east side of the Jordan River before the children of Israel enter into the land.

And so this morning we're going to be covering just the first 18 verses of the first sermon. The first sermon covers chapters 1 through 4. In this first sermon that covers chapters one through four, Moses is outlining the blessings of God. He extols the faithfulness of God. He's recounting his fatherly care towards his people.

Stop just for a moment on that thought. What we'll find here is really the story of your life and the story of my life. It's the story of God's faithfulness. It's the story of tumult, reversals, disobedience, judgment. But at the same time, it is the story of your life and mine because it's the story of the faithfulness of God.

Think of how often you thought your life was hanging by a thread. Think of all the times that you thought you were going to get chopped off right at the moment. Think of all the times that fear gripped your heart and you knew there was no way you were going to make it. Think of all the times that you did something you shouldn't have done and your heart burns with anguish as a result of it. Well that's the story that we find here.

This is the recounting that Moses does. You know what, I pray that it would help us to be a less fearful people than we ever were before. I pray that it would help us to see the fatherly kindness of God, His faithfulness, that never ends. His faithfulness that runs year after year, generation after generation. That's the story of this first sermon and really the whole book of Deuteronomy.

In chapter 1 we learn that throughout all the two moth and the privations, the sleeplessness, the terrors, The privations of the wilderness, the lack of water, the lack of food, and all of that. God says what was happening all along the way. That's what's happening to you and I all along the way today. I pray that God would give us a sense of it. He says, I carried you.

I carried you. This morning as we go through this first sermon I want us to just continue to see these great themes that we find in this first sermon. Moses recounts the provisions of God and their movements throughout this period of time. So what I want to do this morning is I want to identify six blessings that Moses recounts in these first 18 verses of this four chapter long speech. These blessings are there in your outline that you had before you.

The first is that God gives a sufficient testimony. Secondly, that he provides a genuine relationship with himself. Thirdly, that he provides his people with a providential history. Fourthly, that he gives them a promised land. Fifthly, that he gives them a multiplied generation.

And he also, lastly, gives them a good government. Now, all that we'll see here in this first sermon, and of course, in the entire book of Deuteronomy, are all the same themes that we see in the Pentateuch. We've just been walking through the Pentateuch and now we're going to slow down and take a year and a half to stay in this book. But what you see in Deuteronomy is the same thing that you see in the other testimonies of the Pentateuch. Of course, each book of the Pentateuch has its own focus, But in all of them you see the preparation of a people.

God is designed to prepare a people for his own possession, who will walk in his ways. And so we stand here under that same testimony and urging of God. Secondly, there's the preparation of a land. That God's people understand that there is a blessed land that he has them headed toward. There is provision of worship.

And then there is the establishment of a government. How to live in love. It's not a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. It's a government of God. So these things, these four major things are themes that we see all throughout the Pentateuch.

And again, you'll see them again right here even in these first 18 verses in Deuteronomy. Now let me give you an outline of these first four chapters. First of all chapters one through three really declare many aspects of the greatness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And they are assumed, really, I would just say under the heading of God's fatherly care toward his people. Moses, first of all, reminds of the great sustaining love that God brings to his people, that it is a personal relationship of love, and that it is a covenantal relationship.

The Gospel is that God makes a covenant with his people. He rescues them from their sins. He shows them how to govern themselves. He carries his people. He calls them to have a relationship with himself.

And he calls them to obey. That's really the message of the first three chapters of this speech. And then the second part is found in chapter four, and it shows us the rebellion of mankind, the devastating results of that rebellion. What we find here in this first sermon is God uses the gospel, chapters one through three, to motivate and sensitize his people so that they would obey his law. You see how that works there?

In order that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in them. Of course, the requirement of the law is fulfilled in Christ. We see the Lord Jesus Christ in these first three chapters. We see God's fatherly care toward His people, and then the dangers of rebellion, but also that God's mercy is great, and he does atone for the sins of sinners. So that's the basic structure that we have.

Now Moses centers his attention on the blessings of God, reflecting his great character of faithfulness and kindness toward us. And so the first element of God's fatherly care has to do with the guidance of His people. He gives His people something. He gives them the gift of revelation, And that's found in the first five verses. Look at these first five verses.

The first verse tells us about this principle. And that is, we learn that it is God who gives words to His people to lead them. He says, these are the words which Moses spoke to all of Israel. God leads his people by his words, not by the neighbors of his people, not by the relatives of his people, but by the words that are found in Scripture. Verbal propositional revelation is the subject here.

Look at verse 3. These words are according to all that the Lord had given him as commandments to them. So the Lord gives words to his people. If the people live out of their hearts, if people live out of the hat bag of their culture, they'll be astray. And so God gives his people words.

And so the words and the statements in the Word of God are the blessings that God gives his people so that they would know how to live in this world where every man does what's right in his own eyes. And so the message here is that God speaks to his people. And God speaks to his people in the form of words. And this is the way it always has been, and this is the way it always will be. We find in Hebrews chapter 1, verses 1 and 2, where we read God, who at various times and various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets has in these last days spoken to us by his son whom he has appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the worlds.

God is always speaking to his people through words. And this is the first blessing that Moses identifies here. God is giving his people words to live by. It's the principle of, thus saith the Lord. If we would live this life without, thus saith the Lord, God forbid, because of the dangers and the sufferings that are there to live without the guidance of God in this world.

When men do what is right in their own eyes, culture collapses as we are seeing around us even today. Notice in verse 5 what is written there, Moses began to explain this law. Moses began to explain this law. Now this gives us really a key to the entire rest of the book, Because we're being told here what Moses is doing. He is explaining the law.

He is expositing. He is breaking things down. And he's showing us the practical implications of what the law means. Moses will tell us what the law says and then he will tell us what it means in detailed form. He is explaining in detail the applicability of the law.

If you ever wanted to know how to apply the law, here's an example of it right here. Moses is doing it for the people. He takes the plain statements of the Ten Commandments and then he shows how they are meant to inform every area of life. This is why John Calvin took the 613 commands of Scripture and sorted them under the 10 Commandments, because they are expositions of the 10 Commandments. And we should do the same.

We should look at two things. We should look at the law. We should learn what it says, and then look at the world around us in our own hearts and Find the ways that it applies to us all the cultures of the earth are Corrupt and God has given it a cleansing agent and that cleansing agent includes words so that these words would guide his people. There never was an era that was pure. There never was a nation that had the right culture.

You want to go back to the 19th century? That wasn't a pure culture. You want to go back to the 17th century? That wasn't a pure culture either. There never has been a pure culture.

We can look back and find compelling things that one culture or another might have understood. But we need to acknowledge this, that the law of God shines its light upon all cultures and also all eras of human history. So what we find Moses doing is he's explaining the law and what it means in real life. He gives many many illustrations of it. It's interesting if you fast forward almost a thousand years, about 900 years, to 586 BC, you find Josiah applying Deuteronomy.

He opens the Lost Book of the Law, and then he finds how his culture has departed so much from it. And then he begins to do the things that are in the law. It's fascinating. Later on in the study we'll walk through the very particular ways that Josiah took what was written here and he applied it to the altars, to the worship that was going on, to the shrines, to the prostitution that was going on in the temple, to the calling of the dead, to the celebration of the Passover, and all kinds of things like that. Josiah takes this law and applies it in his own day.

Deuteronomy here is written to a people who are caught in a certain era of history, but every person in every era of history always need the same thing. They need the words of God. They are a people just like us. We are a people in transition. We are a people who have been saved by the grace of Jesus Christ.

We have lots of baggage, but what will we do? First of all, we need to recognize that we are people in transition, that God is sanctifying us. He is taking us to the next place of sanctification. And so here in the book of Deuteronomy, he gives us many, many illustrations, explanations of what the law means in areas of education and culture and family and idolatry and poverty and homelessness and alcoholism and sexuality and jealousy and marriage and all kinds of things like that. He is explaining the law.

By the way, this is exactly what Jesus did. Jesus took the law and he applied it to the times when he was living in. When considering matters of divorce, he quotes Deuteronomy. When considering matters of marriage, he quotes Deuteronomy. When he considers matters of taking care of your aging parents, He quotes Deuteronomy.

When he's considering matters of oaths and making oaths, he quotes Deuteronomy. Jesus is applying the law. Of course, Jesus is the fulfillment of the law. He's the end, not the stoppage of it. The fulfillment of it.

He brings it all together. Every section should take us a beeline to Christ, because Christ explains the whole law and that's what Moses is doing and then Christ continues to do it in his own day. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. That should be a great comfort to us because God has given us a fixed, authoritative word by which to guide our lives and our hearts. As he has done with the children of Israel there in 1405 B.C.

He is doing it with us here again at the end of 2008 AD. The first blessing that God brings is a sufficient testimony, a word from heaven to help us live our lives. God is so kind to us. This is why we should feed on it constantly. This is why it should be our meditation when we sit in our houses, when we walk by the way, when we lie down, and when we rise up.

God, God is so kind. I pray that you would just see the kindness of God. Think of all the ways that God has rescued you through his word. Think of the times that you had a silly thought in your mind, but you read the word of God and it turned you away from the foolishness of your own brain, and it turned you back. It turned you to the blessings of heaven.

God is so kind, His fatherly care is so perfect for us in that He supplies to us His words, His beautiful words. Beautiful words, wonderful words, wonderful words of life as we sang this morning. Well, here's a second element of God's fatherly blessings that Moses recounts. The second one has to do with the closeness of the relationship that God has with his people. He gives them something.

He gives his people a genuine, real, heartfelt relationship. We see this really all throughout Deuteronomy, but we see an implication of it in verse 6. Notice that Moses' words indicate they really assume a genuine relationship of grace and mercy between God and man. Verse 6 we read, the Lord our God spoke to us in Horeb. Now, God throws no words away in his book and here we find that this is our God, that He spoke to us, that we are His people, we are the sheep of his pasture.

This is the language of personal relationship. This is the language of grace from God toward his people, who draws his people near and says, come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. This is the language of relationship. What we find is that this is a covenant of love. By the way, I see no indication that this was ever a covenant of works.

There was never a covenant of works. There only was a covenant of grace through faith. It was the faith of Abraham. Man was never saved by the works of the law. Men often think they can and so they try.

But it never worked and it never will work. But what does work? A heart turned toward God. A heart that says forgive me for I am a sinner. And that's what we find here.

The covenant of love that we read of here in Deuteronomy is referred to over 200 times in the New Testament. Deuteronomy shows this love of God toward his people and also the responsive love of his people toward him. In Deuteronomy chapter 5 we learn that God is showing mercy to thousands to those who love me and keep my commandments. In chapter 6 verse 5 you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart. In Deuteronomy 7, the Lord did not set his love on you or choose you because you were more in number than any other people for you are the least of all peoples.

God's love for us is not dependent upon our works, it never was. If it was, no one ever would have been saved in any period of history. This is the language of relationship and of love. It's the language of a sinner crying out to God saying, Oh God, have mercy on me, a sinner. It's the language of love in which God says, I have set my love upon you not because of anything in you, but because I have elected you from the foundation of the world.

And so we find this genuine relationship of love running through all of the book of Deuteronomy, and we find it first in verse 6 of the first chapter. And this just means the book of Deuteronomy, nor any other word of the law, was meant to save us, but to show us how to live. And so Moses is assuming the grace of God, and he also assimilates the purpose of the law to convict us of our sins and show us how we would govern ourselves in this world. There's no legalism in Deuteronomy at all. Moses is explaining how the law applies to the situations ahead of them and he is taking the commands and making application of them.

But he's not telling anyone how they might be saved We know that six hundred years before this we learned in the days of Abraham. We learned that man is Justified by faith alone You think God changed it here on Sinai? No, he didn't change it at all He's just affirming his covenant of grace that he's always had with mankind. And so the second element of God's fatherly care is that he provides a relationship with his people that is not based on their works, but it does call them to obedience at the same time. And then the third element of God's fatherly blessings toward his people that Moses recounts has to do with something that is so important for us living in the times that we live in and that is that he speaks of his sovereign control over history for the sake of the salvation of his people and for the sake of the communication of his glory in history.

He gives them something. God gives his people as a kind and tender father. He gives them what I'm just going to call a providential history. He gives us a history that he is in control of. He is the commander.

He is the great architect of history. And this is a gift to all of God's people. You think you're hanging by a thread. You think that the axe is going to come down and cut you off, and all of your future will be destroyed. Think again, brothers and sisters.

That's not what God does for his people. He cares for them as a father. And yes, there are threats in the interim. But here's the truth of it. God has covered all of your long-term liabilities because He is summing up all things in Christ.

We should not fear. Why is it that so often in Scripture there is the command, fear not? It's because God is in command of all of history. There isn't any way that I can peer into the hearts of any of us here today. But I wish I could.

I wish I could crawl into every heart and turn the latch that would trip the heart to thank God is in command of all things. Therefore, I will not fear. Therefore, I will have courage. Therefore, I will spread the joy of Jesus Christ. Therefore I will smile at my children.

Therefore I will be tender to my wife. Therefore I will be patient with my husband. Therefore I will love my boss. Therefore I will pray for my rulers. Therefore I will love my enemies, because something is tripped in our hearts." And we have said, yes, God is in control of history.

And He's in control of my history. And therefore, I shall not fear. I just want to say fear not brothers and sisters because God has given us a providential history. Now we find knowledge of this in verses 2 through 5. So look at verses 2 through 5 because you'll see the development of this sense of this providential view of history.

In the first five verses of this sermon, we learn the date of the sermon, it was on the Sabbath day, the reference point to the Exodus, it's in the 40th year in the 11th month on the first day of the month, the place it was preached, it was preached in the plain of Moab, the time it was given before they entered the land. Notice the meticulous dating. Look at verse 3. How meticulous can you get? Here is a marker in history.

The word of God is a story about real people in space and time with real experiences and a real God in a real land. It's not a myth at all. It is thoroughly grounded in history. It's not fantasy and the emphasis is God's covenant of love toward his people. And here we find that Moses is speaking to the children of Israel in Kadesh Barnea.

Mark that place. Kadesh. Every person here needs to understand the significance of Kadesh Barnea. Not only do you need to know how to pronounce it, you need to know where it is and what it symbolizes and what happened there. Because what happened there helps us to understand history and not only the history of the world but the history of your life and my life.

So Moses is speaking to the children of Israel in Kadesh Barnea. Here is where they were 40 years ago And what happened 40 years ago there at Kadesh, Barnea? Fear gripped their hearts because they were terrified at the idea that God's protections would somehow be withheld from them if they obeyed him. God had commanded them to go into the land. They feared going into the land because they feared that they would lose something if they went into the land.

That, you and I know well enough, is the reason we don't obey God. We always fear some other consequence. If we obey, this will happen. We project these consequences and really actually think good things don't normally happen. That's my experience with myself and my family and other people that I've known who make decisions based on their fear rather than the commands of God.

There are always reasons that people do not enter into what God has commanded and fear of losing security, fear of losing control over your life, fear of losing the status quo, fear of that thread finally breaking and you drop off and everything is bad and now you are bad. That's what happens in our spirits. We don't obey because we fear something. So here, Kedish Barnea illustrates the place. It's the strategic stronghold where the forces of the world are at work against us and they're working overtime.

And it's, Kedish Barnea is the place of assembling and then leaving and reassembling. It's the place at the edge of the promised land where God's people are tempted. Kadesh means holy. Barnea, desert, or desert of wilderness wandering. The two of the most important places in the Pentateuch are Sinai and Kadesh Barnea.

Those are the two big places. You have to understand both to understand the history of Israel and also the history of your own life. And so the children of Israel are on the borderline and they can obey God or they cannot obey God. And here Moses is recounting that time when they did not obey God. He is retelling the story of when they came up to the edge and then broke down in fear and went the other way.

We find that Kadesh Barnea is the place of grumbling. How about that? Is there any grumbling? Are you at Kedish Barnea today? Do you have grumbling in your soul?

You are in Kedish Barnea. And it's time to get out of Kedish Barnea and go the direction of the Lord. It's possible that you also might be in another one of the conditions of Kedish Barnea, and that is fear. Is there fear in your heart? Get out of Kedish Barnea, because fear never leads to any good thing at all.

And so we find that Kedish Barnea, it's sort of the staging ground of many tests. To me, it's sort of like every place in life. To me, I think almost every place is like Kedish Barnea, where there's a test, and there's a decision point, and there's either the blessing of God or 40 years of wandering ahead of you. Wandering around. It was an 11-day journey.

It took 40 years. That's what happens at Kedish Barnea. We come up to a place, we choose to grumble and we wander for 40 more years. We come up to Kedish Barnea, God calls us to holiness, we go the other way and we wander and we get ourselves beaten up in the wilderness. That's what Catech Barnea suggests to us.

Catech Barnea was the place where the twelve spies were sent out. Catech Barnea was the place where the people grumbled against Moses and Aaron, recorded in Numbers 14. Cateus Barnea was the place where Moses announced that there would be 40 years of wandering as a result of it. Cateus Barnea was the place of Korah's rebellion. Remember Korah rose up and mounted a rebellion and brought apparently hundreds of people to rebel against Moses.

That happened here. By the way, just a parenthesis, a note. This morning, Jason read us a Psalm, Psalm 84. And did you notice who wrote that Psalm? One of the sons of Korah.

One of the sons of Korah, writing about 300 years later. The sons of Korah, some of them, had hearts that turned toward God. And One of them wrote Psalm 84. The kindness of God is that it's never over for us. There's always a turning that we can make toward him.

But it was the place of Korah's rebellion. It was a place of Aaron and Miriam's graves. It was a place of Meribah, where the people complained against Moses. And they had no water, and God said to Moses, Moses speak to the rock. And Moses apparently had gone through a period of spiritual dullness and unfaithfulness of some kind that we don't really have the detail on.

But it was such a kind that Moses was angry. He wasn't God's appointed leader, but he was angry. And instead of speaking to the rock, he struck the rock. And God judged him for it and said, you will not enter this land. And so Kadesh Barnea is not only the place of Meribah, It's also the place of Moses' grave, because he was buried before they entered into the promised land.

And now, as we learn from this text in front of us, it was the place that was just an 11-mile journey from Mount Sinai, and it was the place where Moses died and the people mourned for 30 days. So this is the third element of God's blessing toward his people, is a providential history, okay? He is in control of history and he sees it all. He is managing your history for his own glory. And so when we get to the place of Kadesh Barnea, let's not fear.

Let's not have a history of fearfulness as we go through this life. And then the fourth element of God's fatherly blessings that Moses recounts has to do with something really very wonderful and something that we really don't understand everything about. It's because it's too wonderful for us. It's his provision of the promised land. He gives his people something.

He gives them something tangible. It's a place of rest. It's the promised land. My current understanding of the promised land goes like this. The promised land, yes, it is fulfilled in some things tangible, but it is perfectly filled in all things in heaven.

And so God has given us this, again, a double meaning. He gives us an evidence, a geographical location with borders and physical features. And that's the promised land. Now I think that one thing that we're being told is that heaven is real. It's like the promised land in some ways, only far, far greater.

It's a shadow, yes. It's a picture. But it tells us something that's greater out there. And that is the promised land in heaven. And so in verses 6 through 8, we read, the Lord your God spoke to us at Horeb, and that's, of course, Mount Sinai, saying you have dwelt long enough at this mountain.

Turn and take your journey and go to the mountains of the Amorites, to all the neighboring places of the plain, in the mountains and in the lowland, in the south on the sea coast, to the land of the Canaanites and to Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates. See, I have set the land before you. Go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give to them and their descendants after them. So in these verses, Moses is recalling God's call to possess the land. He called them to possess the land 40 years ago, And now they're right back in the same place.

And he's calling them to possess the land again. And there are several things that God is calling his people to do in this land. Invade, conquer, and occupy. And then to carry out a mission. That's what the promised land is all about.

There's some interesting language in here. Look at verse seven. Moses records the situation, and he says it's time to move on. He says, You have dwelt long enough at this mountain. Turn and take your journey.

Here what we find is God is changing the geographical location of His people. This is what God does. He does move us from time to time. And here God is making changes because they've been in one place long enough. And He's moving them on.

This is one of the wonderful things about life, isn't it? It's always remarkable to me how God has built in different changes in your life. When you're young, you know, there's that day when you get your driver's license and everything changes. Then there's that day when you're married and you absolutely can't believe it. You can't believe it actually happened.

And then you have your first child and a whole new range of love floods into your soul. You thought you understood more about love when you married that young lady. And then you have children and you think, oh there's more. And then you have grandchildren and you think, oh there's even more. Where does it end?

Well God is constantly moving his people along not only in their natural lives of growing, but he also does it geographically. He moves people around, he puts them in cities, he takes them from one place and puts them in another because they've been in one place long enough. And that was what was happening with the children of Israel. We find that this is both the difficulty and the glory of life. Remember Job, who lost everything.

He was the most wealthy man in the region, and God came and took everything away from him. But we read that the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than at the beginning. But we know that when God brings changes, there's often a tearing and a difficulty in it. And weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning. That's what God does.

He moves us from one place to another, and There may be difficulties in the tearing away, but his blessings, his blessings are always there. He knows what he's doing and now he says to the children of Israel, you've been here long enough, move. Now I don't know where anybody in this room might be in dealing with this whole principle. Are there significant changes that need to be made in your life? Are there things that you've been hanging on way too long?

The people have been hanging around Sinai way too long and God was moving them on. Is there anything that you need to move on from? Now this is a divinely ordered change. One of our problems is that we like to change for change's sake or to get away from something. But God here is ordering this change.

So here we learn that God desires the progress of His people and that there's a mission that they're on. Now, here's something I want us to see. Moses said, see, I have set this land before you. This is the blessing of being a Christian, is to have a God who has a vision for your life. And he says, see, that's the kind of life.

That's the kind of life I've called you to. See, here's that land over there. We're going to the promised land. We're not just going to stay in this eddy of sameness with our lives. We're moving on.

God is a visionary God. He has a vision for every person's life here, and He desires to carry us on. Are we holding back? Are we like the children of Israel? We're fearful that that change, that that obedience would cut off our future?

Well, that's a lie of the devil, because God does move his children on in this life. Heavenward, every change is for his glory, for that purpose. We see this visionary nature of God all over the place. Remember when God appeared to Abraham, he brought Abraham outside of his tent and he said, look, look, look toward heaven and count the stars if you're able to count them and he said so shall your descendants be in the same way that Moses stood on the edge of the promised land and said see look at that land God had already said 600 years before. See Abraham, look at the stars, look at where I'm taking you.

I'm moving you in this direction. And so we have a visionary God who takes his people in a direction. And So he's given us this gift as our Father, this gift of promised land. Do you see it? Do you see God's kind fatherly care toward his people?

Well Moses doesn't stop with that. The fifth element of God's fatherly blessings that Moses recounts has to do with God's promise keeping in multiplying His people. God gives His people something, and that is a gift of multiplication. And that's found in verses 9 through 11. Look at it with me.

And I spoke to you at that time saying, I alone am not able to bear you. The Lord your God has multiplied you, and here you are today as the stars of the heaven in multitude. That's really just a proclamation that God has kept his promise to Abraham. God is thankful and he says may the Lord the God of your fathers make you a thousand times more numerous than you are now and bless you as he has promised you. You know God's desire for his people is to multiply them.

They multiply two ways. They multiply through the natural spread of the gospel as sons and daughters of Abraham are born again through the evangelistic efforts of his people. And also as people are fruitful and multiply and they have children and they bring them up in the training and the admonition of the Lord and they send Joey over to that neighborhood and Suzy over to that country and Billy over to that city and there they glorify God and they fill the earth with the glory of God. That's God's plan that he would multiply his people on the earth. This whole thing of population control and zero population growth is nothing but a sinister, dark, satanic principle.

It's completely opposite to everything God has said. Hey, let me tell you, the global warming crowd and the population control crowd are preaching a satanic message. We need to make that very clear. We have a presidential candidate who is preaching the doctors of demons every time he gets on national television. Every time.

And the American people are just blind to it. They're dull. But God is different. God desires his people to multiply in multitude. That's God's desire.

And then there's another element. He just keeps going on. The sixth element of God's fatherly blessings toward his people has to do with his provision of good government. Boy, is that not on our minds now, today? God gives his people something.

He gives them the gift of wisdom to govern themselves and to how to conceive of how government should be understood and carried out. And so he gives them good government. Now Moses starts out this section in verses 12-18 by admitting his inability. He says, I alone am not able to bear this. This is one of the first tests of leadership.

Are you willing to trust God what he says about leadership. That leadership is not primarily conceived of in the heart of God to be a one man deal. But there's a plurality of leaders. Moses is saying, I can't do this alone, but I need more. In these verses is revealed a national structure of government and also a principle of government regarding how to choose leaders.

We are just getting ready in our nation to choose leaders. I awoke this morning to the clock radio and what I heard was amazing to me. I heard an ad in which the front-running candidate had an ad telling the people that he is going to give them more money than the other guy. That's why you should vote for him. He's going to give you $1, 000.

The other guy's only going to give you $250. Vote for me. How do you choose leaders in the land? Here we find a structure of government. He tells us how to structure a government.

He tells us how people should govern themselves. You know how do you manage the household of Israel well? Well, there are various levels. Here we find kind of a national, regional, municipal groupings of people, and it's a republic. And honestly, our civil government, the way that our founding fathers conceived it, is really patterned after this pattern that is here.

People think that we live in a democracy. We were never intended to live in a democracy. A democracy is where people are governed by the values of the people and the votes of the people. God is not the source of law, but men are the source of law. That's the fatal flaw in all democracies.

Our founding fathers conceived of a republic, a representative republic, where people are governed by two things, laws, God's law, and men who are righteous. That's how the government is presented here for the government of Israel. Our founding fathers were looking back into this principle of representative government. We need to recognize the difference between a republic and a democracy. A Republic focuses on qualified representatives of the people.

Democracies will always fail because they're based on the fallenness of the people and the law of the people instead of the law of God. And so Moses here in this section calls back to another time. Remember, he's recalling that. He's taking the things of the past, bringing them forward and saying, now let's go forward in the ways of the Lord. At that time, okay, you see that term, at that time, he's referring back to Exodus 18 where the burden became too great, Jethro came to Moses and said, you can't do this, and made a suggestion.

And it was a suggestion that forms the structure of the godly government of the people. Here we find that Moses is calling them back to this principle of government. God gives gifts to his people to help them understand how to find good leaders and those gifts are in the principles, in the words that he has shown us for how we should choose our leaders. God is so kind to show us how to choose leaders. Notice in this passage that the people choose their own leaders, that they are known.

It really matters what kind of government you have. I have a cousin who lived in the Soviet Union for several years. I got an email from him and he said, I hope the rest of the American people understand that 200 years of capitalism is about ready to be overthrown. I hope that they understand that this is nothing different than the Soviet Union that I lived in several years ago. You know, My son David and I were in Romania interviewing a pastor there who was a believer during the communist era.

And in this interview he said the most amazing words. He said, what most Americans don't understand is that they are thoroughly socialist in their thinking. The only difference between American capitalism and the socialism of Ceaușescu, who is the despot in Romania, is that the American form of capitalism or socialism is really, it's just a glitzy form of it, but the thoughts are all the same. You are headed to a socialistic government, is what he said. And we are.

We have candidates today who are presenting socialistic principles to our people. And they're gobbling them up and soaking them in and becoming like them. And they're going to elect a socialistic government. My cousin said, here's what's going to happen. We're going to end up the same kind of health care that we have in the Soviet Union.

He said, we're going to find that the United Nations is going to control. Hate crime legislation is going to ramp up. And pastors will be in prison for preaching the word of God. He said, your children will no longer be yours anymore. They'll belong to the state just like it was in Russia when I was there.

He said, these people are desiring to get rid of babies just like they did in Soviet Russia and they'll want to get rid of cars and cows and be headed for zero population growth on the excuse of global warming. He said, welcome to the new world order of centralized control of values and money, of which you'll have neither. He says, if you want to know where you're headed, just look at the Soviet Union when the wall fell. That's what you get, and that's what America's headed for. Well, I hope he's wrong.

But he ended his letter with this. He said, if you ever wanted to visit a third world country, just wait a few years. It's coming to you. It matters what kind of government that you have. It matters what kind of men you elect to office.

It really matters. And here, Moses makes that very clear. And there are a number of qualifications that he gives. Let's go through them. Look at verse 13.

He says, choose wise, understanding, and knowledgeable men. Let's start off with gender qualifications. They are men. Everywhere in the Old Testament where qualifications for leaders are suggested, they are males. We see the same pattern for leaders in the New Testament.

Every time that they're mentioned it's men, males. The same thing in the New Testament. Every time that elders are mentioned they're always men. That's why we don't believe in women elders. It's not because there's a command against female elders, It's just that every single time the office is spoken of, it's spoken of as man.

And so the first qualification has to do with gender. God has established order and authority. He said God is the head of Christ, Christ is the head of man, man is the head of woman. That's the creation order. You can't mess with the order.

You can't wake up in the morning and say, oh, I think I'll put man the head of Christ. Oh, no, no, no. Let's put woman ahead of man. No. It's a fixed order.

It's not for us to change the positions that God has established for order and authority in the world. And so, first of all, they are gender qualifications. They are males. Number two, they are character qualifications. They are wise, understanding, and knowledgeable.

Notice those three things. Wise, understanding, and knowledgeable. These are the kinds of people we should be voting for. And if they're not that way, then we should not give them our blessing. Number three, there are relational qualifications.

Verse 15, He said, so I took the heads of your tribes. They were from the tribes. In other words, they were leaders that were from among themselves. People who knew one another. There's this knowledge of the character of the people.

And then there are other qualifications. And by the way, these qualifications are very consistent with what God says all over Scripture about different qualifications. Let's take a different category. The qualifications for elders and deacons are very, very similar. They are all about character.

Very little about skill, but very much about character. And this is the heart of God in the matter, whether it's elders and the government of a local church or the government of a nation, God desires pretty much generally the same kind of people. The qualifications aren't exact, and they're not the same things. But they have the same heartbeat to them regarding character. And then there are stewardship qualifications.

And this probably has to do with gifts and abilities. Leaders of thousands, leaders of hundreds, leaders of 50s and leaders of 10s, officers of the tribes. So there are different amounts of people that are under certain jurisdictions. Some are in charge of large realms and some are in charge of smaller realms. Maybe it goes like this.

He who is faithful and little is given much. Perhaps that has to do with faithfulness, that you see one who is faithful, and he's given more and more and more responsibility. It's interesting to me that you find that God gives leadership to men quite liberally. I mean, look at this. It's almost as if he gives every man leadership in some way.

For one thing, if you're married, you have headship, you have accountability, you have a realm of your home to govern. God makes every man a leader in that sense. Even a single man is given the responsibility to take dominion and to govern the things that God has put in his hands. God gives leadership to everybody. He doesn't just reserve it for the priests or those who have some kind of special position.

He makes every man a leader. He makes the single man the governor of the dominion mandate that he's given him. He makes the husband and father the governor of his family. And he's charged to govern his family well, to manage his household well, and then he gives leaders of 50s and hundreds and thousands. This is the wisdom of God.

He invests in men leadership. Every single man is a leader in some way. God doesn't just segment leaders and the qualifications and qualities of leaders to a certain priestly class. He spreads it all out and makes every man a leader in some realm. And I think that's a wonderful thing.

Of course God is wise in all that he does. But he would make a man to be a leader. I don't know exactly what you have, young men, even you little young men who have dominion over the things that God's put in your hands. But begin to lead and govern the things that God's put in your hands, early, early on. And then when you become a husband and father you'll better know how to govern your family and then if God has you to govern a church as a deacon or an elder in some way that you'll be better equipped start early in the government that God has given to you by a sovereign hand.

There are so many things that we can say here. What we see here is a vision of faithful leadership. Moses is speaking the Word of God. It's a vision of humble leadership where he says the burdens are too heavy for me. It needs to be spread out.

It's a vision of shared leadership where various tribes and legal advisors and judges are brought to the table. There's a management organization that's brilliant here, that's portrayed. There's principled leadership that we find here. There's representative leadership that's found here. And then there's detailed instruction for the judges.

You see that in verses 16 through 18. Hear the cases between your brethren. In other words, listen to all the cases. Don't just concentrate on the wealthy and the powerful. Hear all men.

And don't have the fear of men, have no partiality. Hear the great men and the small men. And if the case is too difficult, then bring it up to Moses himself. And so God is so kind to provide good government for his people. God often speaks his will to the people in government.

This week our family was reading Jeremiah 22 and the word of the Lord comes to the king of Judah through Jeremiah and Jeremiah repeats these same principles that are right here to the king that Moses spoke in Kadesh Barnea. It's absolutely remarkable. You can read about it in Jeremiah 23 where the prophet says, do no wrong, judge justly. All the things that we've read here in this text. God is very consistent in his leading of his people.

And so God has indicated what kind of organization he desires. He's indicated what kind of gender he desires in leadership. He's indicated what kind of character qualities that he desires and that are needed. And he's indicated what kind of service the government should provide, counsel to people who are having practical problems in their lives. The government isn't to do everything, it's only to do a very few things.

The government of Israel is a foretaste of the government of Christ. The kings of the earth have responsibilities to govern with justice and love. And all of these are summarized in Christ. The order and the authority that's pictured here in Deuteronomy, It's all fulfilled in Christ. And all you have to do to know that is to go to Jeremiah 23, in which the prophet says in this same context as he's speaking to the ruler, he says, behold, the days are coming, that I will raise David, a branch of righteousness.

A king shall reign and prosper and execute judgment and righteousness in the earth. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell safely. Now this is His name by which He will be called the Lord our righteousness. And Christ fulfills all of the commands for the selection of civil magistrates. He is the perfect civil magistrate.

He is the Lord our righteousness. And so here we find ourselves back at the cross of Christ, the righteousness of Christ given to a repentant sinner. Men cannot be righteous enough by their good deeds, but He has given them a righteous governor, the Lord Jesus Christ, who says, Take my yoke upon you, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you shall find rest for your souls. God has provided so many blessings in his fatherly care toward us. He's given us a sufficient testimony.

He's given us his words. He's given us a genuine relationship. He's given us a providential history. He's given us a promised land and a multiplied generation. And He's also given us a good government that is summarized in the love and the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, who has become the fulfillment of the law in our hearts.

Would you pray with me? Lord, we thank you for this amazing set of verses that covers so many areas of life. I pray, Lord, that we would love these words as we continue to consider them in the days to come and that Jesus Christ would be honored and glorified in all of them. Amen.