Deuteronomy 31:1-30: Shabbat of Repentance

In the final chapter of Deuteronomy, God tells Moses (and Moses tells the children of Israel) that he’s going to die and that shortly thereafter, everything Moses has worked for the last 40 years to accomplish will go right into the rubbish bin. On the surface, it is the most depressing message ever. 

It’s quite fitting that the Shabbat when Torah reading וַיֵּלֶךְ Vayelech (“he went,” Deuteronomy 31) often falls on is the “Shabbat of Teshuvah” (Sabbath of Repentance). It’s planted between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, because it’s a calling back, a call to turn around and return to God. It’s also part of the Day of Awe, a calling to be in awe of who our God is. We should be in awe and remember our place in comparison with the God of the universe. 

Here are a few thoughts to snack on for Shabbat of Teshuvah: 

1. Human leaders come and go, some are good and some are bad. You can read about that in 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 & 2 Kings. Human kings come and go but the real King, our Lord is a Rock, utterly dependable. What we build in our life is only as dependable as the foundation we build it on. Do we build on the Rock of Israel or on sand?

2. Moses tells them to read this book every seven years, at the shmitah, when you are to discharge the debts of those who owe you money or looking forward to your debts being released. This theme is even repeated in the Lord’s Prayer. When we went through John 15-17 and reviewed the last Supper and Yeshua’s last prayer is that He promised the Holy Spirit to bring to remembrance, but we have to study and hear before it can be remembered. What the Holy Spirit gives us is what we have already read and heard. We are to heard it, do it, ponder it, reflect, keep and guard it. 

3. Things that are ordered trend towards disorder. The second law of thermodynamics What we do in our power tend to unravel unless you continually protect it and restore it. We need to guard what we have and protect it from going away.

4. When you get knocked down, get back up again and keep moving towards the goal. What does the Bible say, does it say in 1 John, “I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin but you do sin I will forsake you, throw you out the door, slam the door behind you and padlock it so you can’t come back in some other way”? NO! John says, “if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father.” Hallelujah! There is a road back, but we need to repent, turn around from the wrong path and return to the right one.

This is part of the line of succession between Moses and Joshua. We see a similar pattern when Yeshua told His Apostles that He had to leave before the Comforter can come. What happened when Messiah left? Yeshua told the Apostle Thomas that those who didn’t see Him in the flesh and believed anyway are very blessed. Just as Moses and Joshua had different leadership styles, so do the Messiah and the Spirit. 

What is the leadership of the Spirit? It’s the kind of leadership from the inside out. Leadership that happens on the inside, in a sense, is more important than the leadership from the outside. It encourages us to grow. 

Moses told them why he wasn’t going to lead them into the Promised Land. He admitted that he had failed to hold up God’s glory at the incident with the rock. God is the one who deserves all glory, not man. 

Moses chose Joshua as his successor, not because he had been around for a long time, but because he was filled with the Spirit.

One undercurrent you see in the scriptures is the current of envy. For example, the Jewish leaders looked down on Yeshua because he chose fishermen as students, not the children of elite people from Jerusalem. 

The Lord doesn’t stick with us because we have been around Him “forever” or because we are 3^rd or 4^th generation this or that but because we continue on hearing, doing, protecting, guarding, pondering His words and pass them along to other people. 

One of the Sages said that Joshua may have been the fulfillment of Deut. 18:18, but there’s a hole in that analysis. The people were never afraid of Joshua the way they were afraid of Moses. Also first century AD, a lot of people realized Joshua wasn’t it either. They were looking for the forerunner of the Messiah and the Messiah Himself because the earlier prophets, even those who were very powerful, such as Eliyahu, Micah, etc. didn’t fit the predicted pattern. 

Even Joshua, even though he took them to the land of rest, the second generation didn’t really enter the kind of rest that God wanted for them. 

“For if Joshua had given them rest, He would not have spoken of another day after that. So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. Therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:8–12 NASB)

So, again, we can’t fool the Lord, by what we claim to believe and what we claim we follow. He knows the heart. He knew exactly what would happen, yet He took them in away, yet He promised not to forsake them. 

Paul tells us that we are pledged in marriage as long as we are alive but once one of the parties dies, the pledge is nullified. 

God’s marriage to Israel ebbed and flowed over the generations, and there were some generations that God had to “divorced” but God granted grace to the next generation and He kept faith with them. 

When God breaks your bondage, you leave. Period. Just like ancient Israel left Egypt, crossing through the sea and the pursuing army chasing after them drown in it. They were cut off from the bondage to a new life. 

If one generation doesn’t want to enter God’s rest, God will offer that rest to the next generation until there is one who takes Him up on His offer. 

We are to come out and intentionally meet together to hear God’s words, but to remember why we are hearing the words. We need to remember how our forefathers went off the rails, because they didn’t consider God’s words important. Paul warns us about that in Rom. 1:18-32 as well. 

“So Moses wrote this law and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi who carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and to all the elders of Israel. Then Moses commanded them, saying, ‘At the end of every seven years, at the time of the year of remission of debts, at the Feast of Booths, when all Israel comes to appear before the LORD your God at the place which He will choose, you shall read this law in front of all Israel in their hearing. Assemble the people, the men and the women and children and the alien who is in your town, so that they may hear and learn and fear the LORD your God, and be careful to observe all the words of this law. Their children, who have not known, will hear and learn to fear the LORD your God, as long as you live on the land which you are about to cross the Jordan to possess.’” (Deuteronomy 31:9–13 NASB)

There’s a tradition that the Messiah Himself will read the book of Deuteronomy in the temple at the beginning of the Messianic Age. 

“Now it will come about that In the last days The mountain of the house of the LORD Will be established as the chief of the mountains, And will be raised above the hills; And all the nations will stream to it.

 And many peoples will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, To the house of the God of Jacob; That He may teach us concerning His ways And that we may walk in His paths.” For the law will go forth from Zion And the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

 And He will judge between the nations, And will render decisions for many peoples; And they will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, And never again will they learn war.

Come, house of Jacob, and let us walk in the light of the LORD.” (Isaiah 2:2–5 NASB)

The Law and the Word of the Lord are the same thing. When you get to the Gospels, the Living Word, Yeshua is the fleshly embodiment of the Law of God. He spoke the words His Father gave Him. When He returns, He will still be speaking the words of the Torah. 

We need to make sure that the legacy we bring forward is something that will last. 

Unfortunately, this chapter ends with bad news, with the coming apostasy. This is the worst farewell message ever. God is telling Moses that he’s going to die and that that everything he has worked for the last 40 years will go right into the dumpster. It’s going to go so badly that God will turn his back on all of them. 

“The LORD said to Moses, “Behold, you are about to lie down with your fathers; and this people will arise and play the harlot with the strange gods of the land, into the midst of which they are going, and will forsake Me and break My covenant which I have made with them. “Then My anger will be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them and hide My face from them, and they will be consumed, and many evils and troubles will come upon them; so that they will say in that day, ‘Is it not because our God is not among us that these evils have come upon us?’ “But I will surely hide My face in that day because of all the evil which they will do, for they will turn to other gods.” (Deuteronomy 31:16–18 NASB)

Where is the turnaround? Realizing you’re on the wrong path and owning your sin is merely step 1. You have to get up — and move. Even if your life is going off the rails, there’s a way back. That is what the Days of Awe are about. 

We have a great High Priest who knows the way back and is willing to cover over our sins, transgressions and iniquities. We have to be willing to become different people than we are right now. Paul calls it becoming “a new creation.” 

We can all partake of the good news that the person we used to be, God can consider that person dead, and that the repentant person in front of Him as a new person. 

This is your homework before coming to services next week: Read Psalm 90 along with Deuteronomy 32. You will see Moses’ heart as he recounts his life experience. 

Summary: Tammy