Deuteronomy - Lesson 30

Out of the depths of Mordor. [The movie and book series that Dr. Block is referring to is Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien. The prequel to this series is The Hobbit.] The mystery of divine Grace. The mystery of the ways of Yahweh is reflected in verse 29 of Deuteronomy chapter 29, this is according to our English readings. 

Here is one of the most difficult verses in all of Deuteronomy to interpret. Now the words are clear, but what does it mean? “The hidden things, hannistārōṯ, belong to Yahweh our God, but the revealed things belong to us and our children forever, so that we may follow all the words of this Torah.” This verse is stuck right in the middle of the fourth address. 

Exasperated over the conduct of Stalin and the Soviets in 1939, Winston Churchill exclaimed, “It, Russia, is just a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Brilliant. That sounds Mosaic. Notice the three expressions. That’s what Moses keeps doing. Well, that’s how I feel about this verse. One of the most enigmatic in the book. And it doesn’t help that on the surface it doesn’t fit in the context. 

At the end of a shocking description of Israel’s eventual demise under the fury of God, chapter 29, which is the first half of the fourth address, and before the correspondingly surprising portrayal of Israel’s eschatological restoration, “After all these things have happened to you.” Which things? The blessing and the curse. What happens? 

Well, in this session, I will be focusing on the grace that comes at the end, the quintessential gospel according to Moses. But before we go there, we have to set the context and give context to this verse as well. 

Chapter 30 represents the second half of Moses’ fourth and shortest address. It’s only two chapters. And if we go back to our diagram, this is where we are now, 29:2b to chapter 30, verse 20. In the Hebrew text it is 29:1, rightly so. And so, all the verses are out by one number. In the English translation, that is, they’re out. 

Well, then this fourth address is a four-act drama of divine grace. He begins by talking the past experience of divine grace and the present celebration of divine grace, “Today you have become the people of Yahweh.” 

Then he talks about the future spurning of divine grace, 29:13 to 20, and the future eclipse of divine grace. It gets very dark here. We are in Mordor. And then you’ve got verse 29, Today. Today. 

But then when we come into chapter 30, something amazing happens. You’ve got this future outpouring of divine grace. And then Moses gives them the altar call, Choose it, accept this grace. Present access to divine grace is conditional. And so, in the end, as the book closes, we are left with the words ringing in our ears. Which will we choose? Choose you this day whom you will serve. It’s the message for all in Moses’ audience. 

So, you see at the bottom, yesterday, (scene one), today, tomorrow, tomorrow, this is today, and then tomorrow and it ends with, today, “Choose this day whom you will serve.” And the final one is today as well. So, he’s taking people on a journey from the present to the past to the future, and then brings them back to today. 

Out of the depths of Mordor. You are familiar with this movie. I didn’t have any interest in these until my grandkids. It became the topic for a while of every conversation and I decided. I had never read these books. And I, when I, they took me to the first movie once and I thought, “This is irredeemably violent.” I didn’t get it. I mean, my roots are Mennonite. We don’t do this. We do not do this. And I couldn’t believe that my son was taking my grandkids to see this kind of movie. Using violence as a means of entertainment. 

But then, they were talking about this all the time, and I thought, “I’ve got to know what my kids are talking about.” So, I read the whole thing, and I’ve watched some of these movies since then. Of course, it is more violent than the book. The books move much more slowly, and so you have time to digest and reflect and think. But anyway, this is where we are. We’re no longer in the shire. But we end back in the shire. That’s the beautiful thing. How do we get back there? Out of the depths of Mordor. 

To set the stage for 30:1 to 10, we must hear Moses’ chilling anticipation of the effects of Israel’s future, apparently inevitable, apostasy. Verse 22, “Future generations of your children who follow you and the foreigner who comes from a distant country will see the plagues of the land and the sicknesses Yahweh has inflicted on it.” This is chapter 29. 

“All its soil will be a burning waste of sulfur and salt, unsown, producing nothing with no plant growing on it, just like the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah, Adamah and Zeboiim which Yahweh demolished in His fierce anger. And all the nations will ask, ‘Why has Yahweh done this to this land? Why this great outburst of anger?’” The God of this place must have been really angry. 

“Then people will answer, ‘It’s because they abandoned the covenant of Yahweh, the God of their fathers, which He made with them when He brought them out of the land of Egypt. They began to worship other gods, bowing down to gods they hadn’t known – gods that Yahweh had not permitted them to worship. Therefore, Yahweh’s anger burned against this land, and He brought every curse written in this book on it. Yahweh uprooted them from their land in His anger, rage, and great wrath.’” Notice the three words again. “And He threw them into another land where they are today.” 

Well, what we’ve got here is the flourishing and collapse of the covenant triangle. It’s all gone. The people are divorced from the land. The land itself has been totally devastated; it’s nothing but a barren wasteland. And people are asking, “Where’s the God of this place?” 

So, notice who’s talking. It’s not Israelites. It’s the pagans, and their theology is more orthodox than the Israelites’ was. That’s the shocker. “Why is the God of this land so angry?” They understood that theology. They knew about the triangles; their gods, their lands, and their devotees; the relationships. But now they’re saying the God of this land must have been really, really angry. There are lots of allusions and expressions of this in ancient Mesopotamian poetry and mythologies. 

This sets the stage for the remarkable turnaround in the fortunes. Notice the images of Mordor here and then what we get in chapter 30 and the divine disposition that we witness in the next chapter. But this is part of the first address, interrupted by verse 29. That’s where we started. 

But let’s talk first about chapter 29. What lessons do we learn from that? One, covenant relationship with Yahweh is to be understood as an incredible privilege. “You had everything and you gave it up.” 

Two, divine intervention in the human constitution is required to make people responsive to the grace that He offers. There’s something fundamentally wrong with the Israelites that they went this way. 

Three, individuals who trample underfoot the grace of God may not seek cover under the national umbrella as they pursue their rebellious ways. Chapter 29, after a review of the covenant ceremonies about verses 12, 13, 14, he introduces, “But if there is a person in your midst who says, I’d like to go after other gods,” that’s where it starts. God’s anger will be, he will be the target of God’s fury from the outset. 

Four, infidelity to Yahweh and His covenant has tragic missiological consequences. Did you notice what the nations are saying? And I look around and I ask, “What are the peoples of the world today saying about us, the church? Why has God been so? Why is the church in such shambles? Where is the God of this place?” They’re not impressed. 

And here, sometimes outsiders are more sensitive to divine truth than those who claim to be the people of God. It’s the nations who are, observers are saying, “Why was the God of this land so angry”? And it’s the observers who have the answer. And the answer is absolutely orthodox. So, they know about the story. The neighbors are asking, “How could you do that with your story?” 

“When all these things have happened to you – the blessings and the curse that I set before you,” now we’re in 30 “and you come to your senses while you are in all the nations where Yahweh your God has driven you.” Notice who is the subject. They’re not victims of enemy nations. It’s divine fury. Salvation is fury [recte: salvation] from God’s wrath. God’s wrath. Are you saved? Saved from what? The answer has to be the fury of God, which is what we all have coming.

Well, “When all these things have happened to you and you return to Yahweh your God, and you and your children listen with your whole heart and with your whole being to His voice in accord with all that I charge you today, then He will return your fortunes, He will have compassion on you, He will return and regather you from all the peoples where Yahweh your God has scattered you.” 

Well, as in a gripping live drama performance in a theater, at least in the editing of these addresses, I don’t know if verse 29 was part of Moses’ oral speech or was that the narrator saying, “I mean, he’s talking about… Ooh, this is a mystery.” We have to put a buffer between chapter 29 and chapter 30. This is intolerable. To prevent the whiplash that occurs as you move from one chapter to another. 

“The secret things belong to Yahweh our God but the revealed things belong to us and our children forever, so that we may follow all the words of this Torah.” Notice his first person. Now we have an Israelite talking so that we may follow. We need to get the point. 

But this is like in a live performance in a theater, a drama performance, there’s almost always an intermission where people have to go out and catch their breath. We’ve reached a critical moment and people are emotionally exhausted. Go outside to catch a sip of coffee or have your cigarette or whatever else people do to calm their nerves and then we can come back for the last act. I think that’s what’s happening here. 

It’s like Job 28 in the book of Job, which is completely extraneous to what’s going on. But he’s finished that heated debate with the three so-called friends. And before he gets, he begins, the resolution of the crisis, he pauses, the secret things again, “Where can wisdom be found?” 

But what are the secret things of which verse 29 talks? He talks. He says the secret things. What secret things? 

Well, there are several possibilities. The secret things that I don’t get, only God gets them. Secret things belong to the Lord. 

Well, these could be the secret actions that humans commit. Remember? In the last set of curses of chapter 27, there were several of those actions that were secret actions that you perform when nobody is watching. It’s the same word, hannistārōṯ. So, these are the actions that humans commit in secret. But there was no secret to what the Israelites have experienced. It was all public, and even the pagans got it. This is not a mystery. 

It could be the secret thoughts and actions of God. “My ways are not your ways, and your thoughts are not my thoughts.” The ways of God are a mystery. The secret things. This is how the word works in the book. 

The hidden things, concealed things. “If your brother, the son of your mother or your son or daughter, or the wife you embrace or your closest friend secretly entices you saying, ‘Let’s go worship other gods.’” We do this in the dark, in the corner when nobody’s watching. Or “Cursed is the man who makes a carved or cast image and sets it up in secret.” It’s the same word. 

28:57 - This horrible curse. Things will be so desperate, people will be starving when women will be eating their children and not telling their husbands. Not sharing the meal with their husbands, it’s horrible. “When her afterbirth comes out from between her feet and her children whom she bears, because she lacks everything. She will eat them secretly in the siege of the distress.” They’re desperate for life because it’s Mordor at its very worst. 

It could be the mystery of divine providence. Exodus 33:11 to 17. Moses is into this. Moses comes to God after the golden calf affair, and he says, “Lord, you know everything about me but I know so little about You. Show me Your glory.” Glory. Well, it’s as if he hasn’t, he can never get enough of God’s transparency. “Show me Your ways that I may know You.” You know everything about me, but I know so little about what, how, and why God operates the way He does. And I think that’s perhaps what is involved here. 

“He spoke with Moses face to face,” that’s clear, “Just as a man speaks with his friend.” And yet there’s such this mystery. “Then he would return to the camp and his assistant, the young man Joshua wouldn’t leave inside the tent. Look, you have told me, ‘Lead this people up,’ but you haven’t let me know whom You will send with me. ‘I know you by name, and you found favor in My sight.’ Now, if I indeed have found favor, teach me Your ways.” Why does God do what He does? And I will understand you. And that’s all a part of this divine mystery. 

Now, another answer is the mystery of Israel and its place in God’s grand scheme of redemption. And I actually think here we may be onto something, too, because God cannot let the story end in Mordor. He has made an eternal covenant with Israel. Irrevocable covenant with Israel. And on Israel’s fulfillment of its mission hangs the message of grace to the world. But he doesn’t use the Greek word mysterion here. He uses the word κρυπτὰ, the mystery of God which needs to be revealed. 

The First Testament use the words uses the word mysterion only in Daniel 2, a couple of times in Daniel, but it’s more common in the New Testament. “Then the disciples came and said to Him, ‘Why do you speak to them in parables?’ And He answered, ‘To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.’” And I have a feeling we’re into this semantic world. The secrets of the kingdom of heaven are at stake in this crisis that has just been produced. 

The clue may also lie in Jesus’ comment at the end of His story of the sower and the seed. “And He said to them, ‘Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket or under a bed and not on stand? For nothing is hidden (krypton), except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret (apocryphon), except to come to light (phaneron).’” “Show me Your ways.” 

Well, in this context, it seems the hidden issue is, after the horrors of 29 and in the face of chapter 30, how can Yahweh take Israel back? Would you? How can He take this mess, transform her into the ideal that is represented by the covenant? I think that’s the riddle that this chapter seeks to address. 

Verse nine. “Yahweh your God will make you extremely prosperous in all the efforts of your hands, in the offspring of your womb, in the offspring of your livestock, and in the produce of your land. Indeed, Yahweh will turn around and delight in your well-being, just as He delighted in the well-being of your ancestors – when you listen to the voice of Yahweh your God by keeping His commands and ordinances that are written in this document of the Torah, and you turn to Him with your whole heart and your whole being.” This is a different world. How did we get here? How can we? 

I mean, in chapter 29, the question the pagans are asking, “How did they get from the blessing to the curse? That’s the mystery to them. How could they do this? But then they have the answers. They know exactly how. It’s because they rejected the God of their covenant. 

Now the question is, how could you turn from the curse to the blessing? 

“When all these things have happened to you – the blessings and the curse that I’ve set before you – and you come to your senses while you are in all the nations where Yahweh your God has driven you.” It begins over there already “And you return to Yahweh your God and you and your children listen with your whole heart and your whole voice [recte: being] in accord with all I charge, then He will return your fortunes, then have compassion, and turn around and regather you from all the nations. Even if your outcasts are at the end of the heavens, from there Yahweh will gather you, from there He will fetch you. Yahweh your God will bring you into the land that your fathers possessed, and you will possess them. He’ll make you more prosperous than ever. And Yahweh your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants,” that’s the key, that’s the answer. Why? “So you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul. And He will never again inflict these curses on you but will put them on the enemies. Then you will turn around and listen to the voice of Yahweh and observe His commands.” It’s a fabulous gospel. The judgment cannot be the last word. But why? 

As we read this, and I’ve read most of it twice by now, I hope you saw the repetition here. The word šûḇ, to return, seven times in this text. And this is the Hebrew word for ‘repent.’ In Hebrew, the word ‘repent’ means turn around. You’ve been walking in this direction; you will be walking in this direction. When you’ve turned your back on God, you will now turn your face on Him. 

And the interesting thing half of these repentances involves Yahweh’s repentance. Does God repent? And the action [recte: answer] is, yes, He does. If you’re using Hebrew language and you understand what repent means, it means, turn around. God has turned His face away from you. He said that in Deuteronomy 31. We’ll talk about that next. “When you persist in your sin, I will hide My face from you.” 

But what’s happened? When you turn around, I turn around. And of course, this is the way living relationships work. So, šûḇ is the key word because you can track the cause-and-effect issues in this text.

“Yahweh your God” over and over again. Heart. It’s in the heart. Listening to the voice. Full of these key words. 

Notice also the chiastic structure. “When your children return,” verse 2a. And at the end can be, “When you return to Yahweh your God.” So, who’s doing the turning? It’s the people. 

And “Listen to His voice with all your heart and being.” And at the end, 10a, “When you listen to the voice of Yahweh your God.”

And then you have, “Then Yahweh will return, restore your fortunes. and He will delight in prospering you as He took delight in your ancestors.” So that’s the emphasis on God’s action. 

But notice what happens right in the middle. “Yahweh will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring so that you will demonstrate love for Him with all your heart and being and you will live.” That’s right in the middle of this chiasm. That is the turning point. 

Well, the relationship of this text to other texts. We have in Leviticus 26:38 to 46, as I alluded to earlier. In this passage, we have the original promise of divine restoration. Israel’s story doesn’t end in judgment. It ends in restoration. 

We’ve also had it in 4:25 to 31. In fact, what we have here is what I like to call ‘resumptive exposition.’ What Moses often does, as do other prophets who follow in his train, like Ezekiel, particularly, early on in the book, in his preaching, he raises the point, and just summarizes it and doesn’t develop it. Later he comes back and he unpacks it in full detail. And I think that’s what we’ve got here 

[Deuteronomy] 4:25 to 31. This is a summary statement of Israel’s future history. “When you have children and grandchildren and have been in the land a long time, if you act corruptly, make an idol in the form of anything and do the evil,” it’s not anything that’s evil, it is the evil, “in the sight of Yahweh your God, provoking Him to anger, I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you you’ll quickly perish from the land that you’re about to cross the Jordan to possess.” This is right at the beginning of the service he said that at the end of the first address. 

“You will not live long there. You’ll certainly be destroyed. Yahweh will scatter you among the peoples, you will be reduced to a few survivors among the nations where He drives you. There you will worship man-made gods of wood and stone, which cannot see, eat, hear, or smell.” You go ahead worship idols all you want, but not in my land. 

“But from there, you will search for Yahweh your God,” and He will let himself be found. “You will find Him when you seek with all your heart and all your being. And when you are in distress and all these things have happened to you and you return to Yahweh your God in the later days and you obey Him. He will not leave you, destroy you, or forget the covenant with your fathers that He swore to them by oath, because Yahweh your God is a compassionate God.” 

This is the key. Yahweh’s memory. Yahweh’s covenant. Yahweh’s commitment, and His compassion. That’s assured. 

Now we have the unpacking of how that last verse turns out, the last two verses. 

Well, there are several dimensions to the restoration. There’s a restoration of the bilateral relationship between Yahweh and Israel, verses 1 to 3. 

The divine restoration of the trilateral covenant relationship involving the land. 

Then the human proof of the restoration verse 8. 

The environmental proof of the restoration, 9 to 10. It’s a full exposition of that. 

Let’s look at the first part. The context of the restoration. “When all these things have happened to you, the blessings and the curses that I set before you,” that’s the context. At the end, when the nightmare has passed and you wake up, and you come to your senses. 

Notice the human actions in the restoration. “Then you will come to your senses.” You will remember in your heart, or take to mind, realize. “While you’re in the nations where Yahweh your God, has driven you, then you will turn around to Yahweh your God, you and your children will listen with your whole heart and whole being to His voice in accord with all that I charge.” This is repentance. We have been resisting God’s grace. We’ve been running away from Him all these years. “Then you will turn around.” Those are the human actions. They will come to their senses. They will reorient themselves toward Yahweh. They will listen to His voice. 

But look at the divine actions in number three, verse three. “Then He will return, restore your fortunes, šûḇ, šᵊḇûṯḵā.” This is a stereotypical expression for restoring the full blessing. The blessings that were once were ours, they will come back. “And he will have compassion on you,” here’s that word rāḥam, “for Yahweh your God is a compassionate God.” That we had in 4:31, that’s the grounds. “He will be compassionate. He will repent,” which means He will turn around. He will change course and regather you from all the peoples. He’s the one who’s scattered you; now He will run this movie backwards. And you’ll come back and you’ll be back in the land. The divine actions. He will restore fortunes. Show compassion. He will repent. He will regather His people. 

Now, there are some people who will not like when I say God is repenting, but listen carefully. This is how Hebrew uses the word and this is what the word means. Turn around. God turns around when people turn around. 

This happens in marriage. I mean, there can be weeks and months in our marriage when we’re stressed and it’s not going so well. But it’s amazing what happens when one of us softens and starts to listen instead of shouting. What happens in the other party. And that’s exactly what’s being. This is a living relationship. It goes up and down. Yes, it does. But the health of the relationship depends upon the disposition of each partner. 

Then we come to the divine restoration of the trilateral. This is a three, this is a triangle. Verses 4 to 5, “And even if your outcasts are at the ends of the heavens, from there Yahweh your God will gather you.” This is renewing the relationship between the land and the people. “From there, He will fetch you. He will bring you into the land that the fathers possessed. You will take possession of it. He will make you more prosperous and more numerous than your ancestors ever were.” That will look like kindergarten when we are finally back. This is the restoration of the triangle. It’s all together now. It’s not complete if it’s only God and Israel. From the beginning, it involved the land. It’s all back. The restoration of the triangle. 

But then we come to the climax. “Yahweh your God will circumcise your heart and the hearts of your descendants so you will…” This is cause and effect. When God circumcises your hearts, you will love Yahweh which means that demonstrated love for Yahweh with whole heart, whole being. This is the shema, living the shema, you may live. That is what circumcision produces. And in the absence of demonstrated wholehearted full-bodied demonstration of love to God, there is no circumcision of the heart.

Earlier in chapter 10 you remember, 10:16, Moses had said, “People, circumcise therefore your hearts and stiffen no more.” Don’t be resistant. At that point he is saying, Look, it’s up to you. Get yourself a new heart. Ezekiel’s expression, the most Calvinist of all the prophets, he says, “Get yourself a new heart, which means change your mind. It’s up to you. We are not automatons at the mercy of what bigger powers are doing. Without our willful volitional involvement, it won’t happen. But the other side of it is, on the one hand, we turn around and God turns around and then God gives us a heart so that the old circumstance never happens again. Now we’re guaranteed. 

But we should not draw radical contrasts here between chapter 10, verse 16 and this one. It is not because people have no power in, you know, to do anything. They are responsible for their own welfare and their own status. “Circumcise your heart.” 

What’s happening here now, remember, that one was addressed to the individual and he’s talking to individuals in the congregation though the whole covenant is made with all the people, in the end, it’s up to the individual whether or not you buy into this system. Buy in, he says there. At this point, he is saying, “God will circumcise your heart.” And he’s talking, the whole nation. That’s what’s new here. We’ll have more to say about this later. This will be a national restoration, something that we have actually never seen. 

The proof of the divine action is in demonstrated love. And of course, we talked about this when we talked about the shema. This is that old psychological interpretation, as if we are body, soul, and spirit, or when we should be looking in these terms. “You will serve the Lord from the inside out. You will serve Him with your whole person, and you will serve Him with all your resources.” Nothing left over for any other god. This is what is involved here. The shema is fully operative. 

Then you have the restoration of the relationship with Israel and the world. Israel was to be a city set on a hill that the world may know. And what happens here? “And Yahweh your God, will inflict all these curses on your enemies who hate you and pursue you.” The order will be restored. This is a way of simply saying, you will have full security because nobody will touch you. Nobody will touch you. 

This is Ezekiel’s Gog and Magog oracle. Which is a cartoon, a literary cartoon, about this reality. In the distant future, when you’ve been living in the land a long time, Ezekiel, God imagines. I think it’s hypothetical actually, God imagines a circumstance in which the whole world, in all its four directions, conspires against Israel. And they think when they’re dwelling in safety and security and flourishing, they’re all going to want a piece of this pie. And they all come together and in the nick of time, God steps in and He destroys them. Actually, He’s the one who puts the hook in Gog’s nose up there and says, “You come out of your lair, come and attack Israel and bring with you all the nations of the earth. And they come.” And in the end, it’s His way of setting the trap. Here this is his summary way of stating that. Ezekiel’s point there, I think is saying that 586 after that, 586 will never happen again. “You are secure.” 

The human proof of the restoration: new orientation, new attention. I mean, and again, you’ve turned around. You are listening to the voice of Yahweh, new behavior. You’re doing all this command. 

And the environmental proof of the restoration, verses 9 and 10. Notice in this one Yahweh’s new disposition. “And Yahweh your God will turn to the land again.” In chapter 30, verse 9, “Your God will prosper you abundantly in all the work of your hand, and the offspring of your body, and the offspring of your cattle, produce of your ground, for the Lord will again celebrate over you for good, just as He celebrated over your fathers; if you…” Or if I think it actually means when you, “obey the Lord your God to keep His commands, His statutes and His ordinances.” This is a great day. Yahweh disposition is new. Yahweh’s action is new. He will cause you to prosper and it will all be exactly right. You see here the correspondence between what He has said and the blessing in chapter 28. Now it’s on full display. There are echoes of that text here. 

The human preconditions. Of course it is, if you will listen, if you will obey, and if you will turn to him. 

Well, let’s summarize the sequence of events envisaged here. The print I know is a bit small on there. 

Step one: Yahweh and Israel commit themselves to each other in a covenant relationship. Did you notice that it’s to each other? Of course, theologians debate over which comes first. Does God do the action first or do the Israelites do the actions first? In this passage, I’m sorry, it’s all confused. It is. And I think it’s very intentional. I think it’s very intentional. You cannot just become passive and wait until God does it and then. No, no, no, no, no. It involves both turning. 

Yahweh and Israel commit themselves to each other in a covenant relationship. 

Israel proves faithful [recte: unfaithful] to Yahweh and His covenant with her. 

Yahweh imposes the covenant sanctions as punishment for Israel’s apostasy. 

Israel comes to her senses and returns to Yahweh. 

Yahweh compassionately turns to Israel and restores her fortune. 

 Yahweh circumcises Israel’s heart. 

Israel’s fidelity is fixed permanently, and 

Yahweh causes Israel to flourish in the land. 

This is the process of the fourth address from beginning to end. They’ve made a covenant. They’ve proved unfaithful. God has visited them with all His curses. And this is where we land up. This is the end of the story. 

Of course, we talked about this slightly the other day, about where is the hand of God in this and where is the hand of the human beings in this? According to our Calvinist friends, the emphasis tends to be on the divine role in everything. Apart from the divine action nothing happens and the minimization of the human freedom in this one. 

Of course, on the other hand, people in my tradition, many in my tradition, the Mennonite Anabaptist tradition, they’re at the other end of the spectrum and there it’s all about this. And they’re very hesitant to talk about things like election, unconditional election. And, you know, the emphasis is on here and minimizing the role of God when in the end this text goes this way. 

It’s all about both. Both. Both are true. God is absolutely sovereign, but human beings are absolutely responsible for their own destiny. And so that’s part of verse 29. The mystery, the mystery of divine providence. How can God be absolutely sovereign and how can He leave it up to the individual at the same time? How can He work this way? But this is how He works in real time.

If you examine the texts related to this in Scripture, you will discover that the emphasis overwhelmingly is on the human response. God is not obligated to treat graciously those who don’t serve Him, live for Him, whatever. 

But this is Moses’ vision of Israel’s eschatological future, and in this he is the paradigmatic prophet, for this vision is built on, well, it starts with chapter four. Actually, Leviticus 26 started it. That’s the first text to talk about the circumcision of the heart. Then Deuteronomy 4, Deuteronomy 30, Jeremiah 31, Ezekiel 34, and it ends in Romans 11:26-29. This is how I understand what’s happening here. The relationship between physical Israel and spiritual Israel as perceived by Moses. And I’m convinced that this is the way Jeremiah perceives it in chapter 39. 

That’s a totally parochial text. He’s not—yes, Israel is a microcosm of the world in Deuteronomy and in Jeremiah. But it’s not about the world. Jeremiah’s New Covenant is entirely about this people. He’s not thinking beyond the parochial borders. 

But in the past, and here’s the problem. We have always had two Israel’s. There is big Israel, physical Israel, the descendants of Abraham and those who adopt in, like Caleb, and Rahab, and Ruth. There have always been these people coming in, and other aliens. But this is the problem. Spiritual Israel has always been there, but it’s always been a very small minority. And I will argue these spiritual Israelites were New Covenant Israelites – fully regenerated, fully redeemed, fully born again, and I would argue, indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God. If people are regenerate, how does that happen? And I think it comes from the inside out. There have always been those. 

What happens in this vision is the boundaries of the physical Israel and spiritual Israel become coterminous. All who claim to be physical descendants of Abraham are spiritual descendants as well. 

Now, of course, we know from the beginning that the vision is for the world. “In you shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” And it turns out that it is ultimately about spiritual seed of Abraham. But if the Israelites aren’t also spiritual seed of Abraham, you know, from Romans 4, you have no title to the spiritual heritage of Abraham. And that’s what we’re talking about. 

In my interpretation of Romans 11:26, when Paul says, “And all Israel will be saved,” he is quoting there from Jeremiah. They will experience the forgiveness of sin in all Israel. He’s anticipating the day when my kinsmen after the flesh. That’s what he says at the beginning of this whole passage. It’s about the relationship between outsiders to the ethnic group and insiders. 

So, in the meantime, while his own people are hardened, God has gone to the Gentiles. But there’s coming a day when Jeremiah 31 isn’t forgotten. A day when the true branch of Israel, the physical branch of Israel, will open. 

Does that mean every single Israelite? Whatever else. I don’t, I think. depends on what ‘is’ is It depends on what ‘all’ means. And here I think ‘all’ means what it meant when at the Red Sea, all of Pharaoh’s horses and chariots were destroyed. Well, literally, that’s not true because he had horses and chariots down in the Sudan and to the west, and Libya. This was this army, that which you see here. And so, we have to be careful how we use all. It’s not necessarily every single individual, but it is the masses. And that has never been the case, never. 

Even in David’s time, when I think that little circle might have been larger than any other time. I think by the time David has died, then a lot of Israelites are on board. But it didn’t last long because Solomon killed the thing. Solomon built the climax of this. Yes. But then he starts the downward skid and the court becomes the sponsor of apostasy. And that’s a problem. 

So anyhow, this is the vision. Israel in Moses’ eschatological vision. 

I do have an essay in one of these books on that topic. A festschrift for Craig Blaising, an article. They asked me to do something on eschatology in the Pentateuch. 

All right. That’s it for this session.