A Prophet Like Moses

Deuteronomy 18 and the Care of the Levites

You'll turn your Bibles, please, to Deuteronomy chapter 18. Deuteronomy chapter 18. Let us once more ask the Lord to give us guidance as we look into his word. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we once again ask that you would give us understanding, that you would give us direction as we handle your truth, or that we would be blessed and that you, by your Spirit, would once again help us to understand what you have provided for us in the Word.

We pray in Christ's name. I don't know about you, but that section we just read in Deuteronomy, pretty heavy stuff, very heavy stuff. For those listening to the sermon, we just read through the last portion of the curses section that comes after Deuteronomy chapter 18, later on in the book.

And it was weighty stuff, as you considered. You have the blessings, yes, but the curses tend to be bigger. Yeah, that is the term, bigger. Bigger, greater, and downright frightening, as you consider them.

Certainly gives a little more meaning to an understanding of looking at what the content of this law is, and God's seriousness in making these covenants. This morning we looked at Deuteronomy chapter 17, and we continue now in Deuteronomy chapter 18.

I will try to quickly read through the material, and then summarize the material in the time that we have this evening. The Levitical priests, the whole tribe of Levi, shall have no portion or inheritance with Israel.

They shall eat the Lord's offerings by fire and his portion. They shall have no inheritance among their countrymen. The Lord is their inheritance as he promised them. Again, let me just mention that countrymen is the same term.

Brethren, we're talking about the Jewish people here, the 12 tribes. Now this shall be the priest's due from the people, from those who offer a sacrifice, either an ox or a sheep, of which they shall give to the priest the shoulder and the two cheeks and the stomach.

You shall give him the first fruits of your grain, your new wine and your oil, and the first shearing of your sheep. The Lord your God has chosen him and his sons from all your tribes to stand and serve in the name of the Lord forever.

Now if a Levite comes from any of your towns throughout Israel where he resides and comes whenever he desires to the place which the Lord chooses, then he shall serve in the name of the Lord his God like all his fellow Levites who stand there before the Lord.

They shall eat equal portions except what they receive from the sale of their father's estates. When you enter the land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not learn to imitate the detestable things of those nations.

There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pastors of fire, one which uses divination, one who practices witchcraft, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who casts a spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead.

Whoever does these things is detestable to Yahweh, and because of these detestable things, Yahweh your God will drive them out before you. You shall be blameless before Yahweh your God. For those nations which you shall dispossess, listen to those who practice witchcraft and to diviners.

But as for you, Yahweh your God has not allowed you to do so. Yahweh your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen. You shall listen to him. This is according to all that you asked of Yahweh your God in Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying, Let me not hear again the voice of Yahweh my God.

Let me not see this great fire anymore, or I will die. Yahweh said to me, They have spoken well. I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.

It shall come about that whoever will not listen to my words, which he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.

You may say in your heart, How will we know the word which Yahweh has not spoken? When a prophet speaks in the name of Yahweh, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which Yahweh has not spoken, the prophet has spoken it presumptuously, you shall not be afraid of him.

The Danger of Idolatry and Syncretism

Now, this is a fairly well-known chapter, well, portions of it are fairly well-known. I doubt too many of us had memorized exactly what the Levites were to be given or anything like that. But I think it fits in the context that we had this morning.

Once again, remember that this morning we were told that if you have a case that is too difficult for the local magistrates, that they are to go to Jerusalem and they are to bring it to the priests, to the Levitical priests.

And so, the Levitical priests have a very important function in the nation of Israel. And so, since they are not given a portion that is a land, the care for them is an important thing. And if they were not properly cared for by the people, and of course this would require the people to be involved in the offering of the sacrifices, involved in doing the things which the law had commanded, well, that would lead to a real problem.

Because if the Levites are now struggling just simply to survive, then it would be very easy to start to overthrow the legal system, overthrow justice, by offering things to the priests who are desperate to have basic sustenance.

And so, you have here the command that these priests are due certain things, that this is important to the functioning of the society itself, and this is something that the people of God were to take seriously.

And we can tell, again, in the prophets and in the history of the people of God, that this was one of the problems that arose. You ended up having false prophets. They seemed to hang around the court of the king.

And they would, in essence, prophesy what the king wanted to hear. Now, of course, nothing like that happens in politics today. Politicians would never dare surround themselves with people who just want to tell them what they want to hear.

But this was a strange and odd thing that only happened in the ancient world. And I'm being facetious, in case any of you are wondering, but it's a very clear example of how the hardness of man's heart and the evil of man's heart can even take a divinely established means, whereby God can have peace with his people.

We can have peace with one another. There would be respect for one another. There would be peace in the country and between brothers and sisters, so on and so forth. Man's heart will always be looking for ways to usurp God's authority and to undercut that which would bring peace amongst men.

And we see this here in the command that the Levites are to be taken care of and that they are to be provided for by the people. Then we have again, and you'll notice it's almost becoming repetitive, how many times we have the command, the warning to the people of God, do not learn to imitate the detestable things of those nations that you're going to drive out.

Over and over again, there is the expression of concern that the people are going to look about them and they're going to look at what the other nations around them practiced or even the nations that they drove out or, as we know historically, failed to drive out completely.

And there is going to be a desire to go after these gods. So there is going to be a wandering. There is going to be a tendency toward idolatry, a tendency toward an eclectic form of worship where you syncretistically join together other forms of worship.

With the pure worship of God.

This again is just simply the heart of man. We become, well, apathetic. And once you become apathetic, then you blame the worship of God for your apathy. You blame the old ways for your apathy. And so you start looking around for new ways of doing things.

Rather than looking at your own heart and asking yourself the question, am I really doing the things that I know that I should be doing? It's always easier to blame somebody else. It's always easier to say, well, you know, when you think about it, I mean, what has Yahweh provided to us?

I mean, the temple worship is not exactly the most exciting thing that's ever happened. I mean, there's no place in the temple for the praise band. And, you know, the high priest, he's wearing the same thing that he wore last season.

There's just nothing cool here. And it's just not meeting my needs.

You know how that could happen?

It happened then.

You know what?

It happens today.

It happens today too. And I'll tell you a story. Once you've been an elder for a while, you've met with some people who've left the church. And here's a truism. What you're told by them when they leave as an elder is not what they tell everybody else.

It's very strange how that works.

The real story comes through, you know, one person said to another person, there was an email, and then there was a comment on Facebook, and then it went to this person. And it eventually comes back to you that, funny, the thing they said, and it's normally a very spiritual thing.

Well, you know, we're just not getting fed. And that's what you hear. And that's the spiritual thing that you hear.

And then if you actually have the opportunity,.

And frequently you don't, because people just sort of disappear. But if you have the opportunity to dig in a little deeper and ask, you know, are you truly making use of all the means that God has given to you?

I mean, really, honestly, if we start thinking about your commitment to the study of the Word of God, and we start asking about your service to others, are you looking to serve others in the church? Are you one of those people that works hard?

It may be seeking to find ways that you can express your service to Christ through your being a servant to others, maybe in teaching the young people or in other things like that. You know, are you really making use of the means of grace?

Are you finding great delight in your study of the Word of God and things like that? And generally you discover that the people who aren't being fed are showing up with their mouths sewn shut. In other words, if you come to the table, and I'm not talking about the Lord's table, if you come to the service and you haven't prepared your heart, you haven't given a second thought, you just sort of stumble in, your mind's distracted with everything else that's going to be happening the rest of the week, and then go, well, I just wasn't fed.

Is that...

You think you might be taking that problem someplace else if you go somewhere else?

Yeah, probably so.

Oh, the new context might make you feel a little better for a while, but the reality is that the problem isn't so much where you are, the problem is an internal one. And in the old covenant, you had a lot of people who were a part of the covenant community,.

But they didn't have a changed heart.

They hadn't circumcised the heart. They may have borne the outer signs, but the heart wasn't changed at all.

Can you imagine?

How many times have we seen people, young people raised within the church? And they had that control, that boundary, that barrier, that the Word of God provided when they were young, but there wasn't a changed heart.

And so when that boundary is removed, they become an adult, they leave the home. Should we really be overly shocked that an unregenerate heart, finally freed from the barriers placed upon it, all of a sudden might find itself attracted to all sorts of false beliefs, no belief at all, life of sin?

We've seen it happen. We see it happen all through the Old Testament. We see people who outwardly bear the signs of the covenant, but inwardly their hearts are clearly hearts of stone. And that heart of stone gets really bored with the true worship of God.

Doesn't find any delight in it. And hence it's going to be looking for something new, looking for something fresh, looking for something that's more exciting. And there's always something more out there.

There's always something right outside the window of the church, right outside the back door, or in this case in the neighborhood across the next valley where the Amorites still have a temple that hadn't been driven out because of the lack of faithfulness of the people of God.

And so before long, all the high places are built up and the syncretism begins and all those curses we just read about, they eventually come to pass. Consistent warnings over and over and over again.

Don't worship Mulloch.

Don't make your son or your daughter pass through the fire. Don't go to one who uses divination. God's in charge of the future. That's an act of faithlessness. One who practices witchcraft or one who interprets omens or a sorcerer.

All the natural religions where allegedly these people have power over natural forces. One who casts a spell, medium spiritist, calls up the dead. All these are ways in which people show unfaithfulness toward a sovereign God.

They're all idolatry.

For whoever does these things is detestable to Yahweh. And yeah, that word detestable, you've heard it before.

Toeva. Toeva.

Same term that was used in Leviticus 18 about homosexuality is very frequently used in regards to idolatry. And not only are the idols Toeva, but the one who pursues the idols and the one who pursues the witchcraft and the omens and calling up the dead, Toeva.

Detestable to Yahweh your God. And because of these detestable things, Yahweh your God will drive them out before you. And we see the destruction of many. But the people became apathetic. And the people eventually stopped that process and it became a tremendous problem.

You shall be blameless before Yahweh your God for those nations which you shall dispossess. Listen to those who practice witchcraft and to the diviners. But as for you, the Lord your God, Yahweh your God has not allowed you to do so.

The Prophet Like Moses and the Test of True Prophecy

Now here in the middle of all of these warnings and you're going to see how seriously God takes them. Just think back over the past few sections that Brother Callahan read and that I had the joy of finishing up this evening.

The curses, oh my. I'll drive you into other nations and even when you're in the other nations, you're going to say in the morning, I wish it was evening. In the evening, I wish it was morning.

You won't even have peace there.

Wow, did you hear what was said?

It's amazing.

But right in the middle of all this, all of a sudden,.

Yahweh your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen. This is Moses speaking. You shall listen to him. Well, wouldn't that be Joshua? Well, it doesn't seem so. I mean, very often you'll have a minor fulfillment and then a much greater fulfillment.

Because it says, this is according to all that you asked of Yahweh your God in Horeb on the day of the assembly saying, let me not again hear the voice of Yahweh my God. Let me not see this great fire anymore.

I will die. So Yahweh said to me, they have spoken well. I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.

It shall come about that whoever will not listen to my words, which he shall speak in my name, I myself required of him. But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuous in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.

So we have a very practical application of a test of a false prophet. Now we have had two tests of a false prophet, remember? Back in Deuteronomy 13, remember what we had there? In Deuteronomy 13, we had the discussion of, well, what happens if a prophet prophesies something and it happens, and then he says, let's go after other gods?

Well, you are not to listen to him. A true prophet must remain consistent in the teaching of the character of God because God does not change. So even if someone gets something right, and once in a while somebody, you know, you can guess the future and, you know, guess things and might impress someone, especially if you have some knowledge of what's coming as far as, you know, sometimes people have insider trading knowledge and that kind of stuff, whatever.

But even if it happens, and he says, follow after the God's false prophet. But here is the other aspect of it, and that is, even if he doesn't teach you falsehood about who God is, but he says such and such is going to happen and it doesn't,.

False prophet. False prophet.

But did you know what came before that? Who is this prophet that, I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.

All that I command him.

This prophet is going to be a perfect prophet. This prophet will not even be like Moses because, you know, Moses had a few failures. Moses didn't get to enter into the promised land. And while in some sense Joshua, his successor, does some of this, even Joshua is not perfect.

Even Joshua can be deceived. The people fail even under Joshua's leadership. Every once in a while, in the Old Testament scriptures, we come across a passage like this.

Happened all the way back in Genesis,.

Where you have what we call the Protevangelium. And you have these, in the middle of a narrative, discussing what happens in the creation of man, and the fall of man. You have this one who will bruise the serpent's head, and the serpent will strike at his heel.

And you just sort of have to sit back and go,.

That was written how long ago? And how would people have understood that at that time?

And then I think of Isaiah chapter 9, and the exalted language that's used there of this one who will come, who will be wonderful, counselor, El Gabor, mighty God, everlasting Father, in this realm of being the one who creates all things, Sar Shalom, Prince of Peace.

And there's no one that that really can apply to in the days of Isaiah. And they're just found in the middle of, you're just reading along, and okay, here's another section about not offering your children to Moloch, and yeah, that's pretty important stuff.

And here's some stuff about the Levites, and here's some tests about false prophets and things like that. And then, boom! All of a sudden, here you have these words. And you think, well, these were written so long ago.

And even in the most liberal understanding, everybody recognizes these words were written long before Christ. Even the person that tries to make these things that are written during the intertestamental period or something like it, even they have to admit,.

These things happened long before Christ.

These words were spoken. Now, we know that these words were applied to the Lord Jesus Christ. And where are they applied to the Lord Jesus Christ? Well, Acts chapter 3, you have the preaching and teaching of the early church.

And if you'll turn with me there, Acts chapter 3, verse 21, and actually back to verse 20, and that he may send Jesus, the Messiah appointed for you, whom heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from ancient time.

Moses said, the Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brethren. To him, you shall give heed to everything he says to you. It will be that, excuse me, that to every soul that does not heed that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.

And likewise, all the prophets who have spoken from Samuel and his successors onward also announced these days. It is you who are the sons of the prophets in the covenant which God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham in your seat, all the families there shall be blessed.

So here, in one of the earliest sermons of the early church, very shortly after that period of time when Jesus walked and talked with his disciples, and did what? He opened their minds to understand the scriptures and how all the prophets had testified concerning him.

And so in one of the first sermons that those apostles get to preach to their fellow Jews, this is the interpretation given of Deuteronomy chapter 18. So it seems pretty obvious that what we have here is the interpretation provided by the Lord Jesus himself to the apostles now being preached to the people, that Deuteronomy chapter 18, this prophet like Moses, raised up from among the people who has been given the very words of God and he speaks them perfectly.

He communicates all of them to the people. This is a prophecy of the coming Messiah. Now, would there be prophets who were raised up by God after Moses?

Well, of course.

There are all sorts of shadows and types and echoes, but the fulfillment is found in Jesus. Now, I mentioned this morning that my Muslim friends think that Deuteronomy chapter 18 is about Muhammad. And I point out there's a major problem with this.

They like to say, well, look, Arabs, Jews, we're all the children of Abraham. One through Isaac, one through Ishmael. So we're all, we're just cousins. We're all countrymen. We're related to one another.

That's why I pointed out to you in Deuteronomy chapter 17, that what it's talking about is brethren. And those brethren are clearly delineated as being in the nation of Israel. You will not put a foreigner, someone outside of Israel over you as king using the very same terminology.

So whatever you do with Deuteronomy chapter 18, whoever this prophet is, has to be of the people of Israel. And so very clearly, this cannot apply to Muhammad, who by the Muslims own teaching is clearly not Jewish and is not descended from that line, but is only related as far as going back to Abraham.

And so I simply take them to Acts chapter 3. I allow them to see that the church had interpreted this way long before Muhammad ever came along, point out the reality of what the prophecy is actually saying.

And of course, I have not, in my experience, encountered a Muslim. Well, of course, once I debate a Muslim, then the next time if we debate the same subject, then I would hope that they would have tried to interact with what I have said.

Though I can think of a couple of times where that hasn't been the case, which is very depressing, actually. They just repeat the same old arguments they repeated before, as if I had not actually been there and said anything last time, which is not a good thing.

But try to explain to them the fact that even though they've been taught this, that contextually there is no possible way that Muhammad could be the one who fulfills this. Though they like to argue, well, Muhammad gave laws, Jesus didn't give laws.

Well, yes, he did. But I guess they're not really thinking about the Sermon on the Mount and the fulfillment of those things. But there is that issue that is raised. But obviously for many people, the problem they have with this being fulfilled in Jesus is just simply the idea,.

This has got to be supernatural if it's fulfilled in Jesus.

This was written, well, I would say 1400 years before Christ. There's arguments about exactly when the Exodus was. There's the early Exodus and late Exodus theories between 1400 and 1200 and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

And even the liberals put it about 700 years before Christ. But it doesn't matter which position you take, the reality is you still have to deal with the fact that there are these texts written right here in the ancient Hebrew language which defy any understanding outside of their fulfillment in Christ.

And this is so striking. That the self-consistent naturalist, the self-consistent person that just doesn't believe in supernatural scripture,.

Doesn't, you know,.

Comes to the Bible with the full presupposition that this is just men talking about God. This isn't God communicating with us. This is just men talking about God. To be perfectly consistent, what they've had to do, people like John Dominic Crossan, is you have to turn the story of Jesus into fiction.

And the fiction writers are ransacking the Old Testament to find texts like this and go, huh, I could, let's make the Jesus figure fulfill these things. Because they have to deal with the reality that, well, we've got the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Dread it all.

That demonstrates for all to see that this was the state of the scriptures prior to the time of the writing in the New Testament.

And so, what are we going to do?

Well, we'll just say that the New Testament writers made Jesus up and made him fulfill these things. And so they take all the prophecies and put them here and go, okay, then the story of Jesus had to sort of go along these lines to sort of make it fulfill all of this stuff.

It's what you got to do.

Now, as I mentioned in Sunday School this morning, that runs smack dab into all the historical evidence that gospel stories were written when they were written. They're rooted in history. They're written from that time period.

They're written by different people. The idea that this is all made up, even just the thing I mentioned in Sunday School this morning, the field of blood that was known amongst the people of Israel even at that point in time.

The idea that you have that kind of conspiracy, it sells well in the dark corners of odd bookstores in certain cities, but it just simply doesn't make any sense. The only consistent, reliable way of reading these texts is to have to admit there are things in the Old Covenant, in the Old Covenant scriptures that simply point to a fulfillment beyond themselves that takes place in Jesus.

And many, a believer in Christ, has come to that conclusion out of an intimate knowledge of the Old Testament scriptures themselves. They've looked, and when the Spirit of God opens their eyes to see these things, they recognize there is only one in which these things could be fulfilled.

And the time has now passed with the destruction of Jerusalem, with the dispersion of the people after A .D. 70. For many of these prophecies, it specifically had to do with the lineages and the tribes, no longer people just don't know any longer.

The time has passed. Many of these things could be fulfilled any longer. It had to have been fulfilled before A .D. 70. I wonder who it could have been. Yes, well, we know who it was, and we know how that fulfillment took place.

And so we have, even here in the midst of a text that is talking about prophets and how we were to know who is a true prophet and a false prophet, and it just goes on to talk about cities of refuge. It's not like, hey, we're going to have a really high point in the text here.

We're going to have a big prophecy coming up. No, it's just, it's just there. It's just in the midst of God's dealing with people. All of a sudden, you have these bright blinding lights that point away from themselves to a much greater fulfillment.

Now, you and I would probably rather that there was, you know, maybe some divine music that would come along with it to sort of get you excited and warn you, here comes something neat. You know, some introduction that says, and God is now going to give you clear evidence that this is sacred scripture because he's going to give you a prophecy.

That doesn't work that way, doesn't work that way.

That may be how we would do things, but that's not how God did things. He gave us so many of these indications.

Of the coming of Christ.

Right in the middle of just dealing with his people,.

Just dealing with his people.

And that's how Deuteronomy 18 comes to us. Is it a prophecy of Christ? Most certainly is. Fulfilled, Acts chapter 3. Did it have a place in that day? Certainly did. But many, many a saint down through the ages had to have contemplated these words.

And gone, well, Joshua, Isaiah,.

Is there not something more here? Is there not something more?

And once the spirit came and the mind is opened up, able to see all the way through the prophets, here is this thread. And just as you may have seen a tapestry,.

And I've talked about the tapestry before,.

Where there is one particular brilliant thread. If it's a woven fabric,.

You won't see it all the time, will you? It'll appear here, and then it appears here, and then it appears there.

And the thread is still in all those places between it. It's just not visible. And then it comes, comes before, and you see it, you can see its brilliant color. And then, and then for a while,.

And there it is again.

That's very much what we have in the beautiful threads of scripture as they're woven together. And especially as we see the prophetic witness, the coming of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We should not be afraid.

We live in a day of naturalistic materialism. We live in a day where people will look at us and they'll say, so you think that books that were written long ago in the Bronze Age were supernatural and predicted future events like the coming of Jesus.

You actually believe that.

And just as Paul said, the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness. But there is that pressure upon each one of us. And sometimes we draw back. And on the other hand, we have the gullible people out there who believe all the wild and wacky prophets running around, who are just there clearly to make money.

And we don't want to be like them. We want to be the sane Christians, you know? And so you put the two of them together and the tendency is to back away and be embarrassed by the supernatural elements of scripture.

But the fact is we can't be.

We can't be.

Because they are part and parcel of what is given to us in the text of scripture itself. Even here in Deuteronomy chapter 18. Let's be thankful for it. Let's pray together. Our gracious Heavenly Father, once again, we thank you for your word.

And we would ask that you would help us to not be so influenced by the way of the world around us, the unbelieving world, the world that's eyes are fixed upon this creation that never look upwards to see the creator, that think that everything that is important is something you can see or smell or taste or weigh, all the natural world.

Oh Lord, we are so deeply impacted by that because we live within that milieu all the time. Help us to be exposed to your word by your spirit. Help us to accept what it says, to believe, to recognize that you were preparing the way long before Jesus is coming.

You gave us these words. We see it now in fulfillment. This is to be a bulwark and a foundation of our faith because as you were faithful to your promises, then you will be faithful to the promises you have made to us as well.

And so we thank you for that. We ask that we will truly believe that you will help our unbelief and Lord, that we will be faithful servants of yours in this coming week. We pray in Christ's name.