Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them. (Deut. 4:9)
Four decades later the Israelites stood at the edge of the Promised Land, spiritually and physically seasoned by their wilderness wanderings. With the older generation of doubters and grumblers now dead and buried; a new generation chafed to march in and claim the land—Egypt was a faint memory from childhood.
There at the border, the old man Moses delivered three speeches that, for their length and emotional power, have no equal in the Bible. It was his last chance to advise and inspire the people he had led for forty tumultuous years. Passionately, deliberately, tearfully, he reviewed their history step by step, occasionally flaring up at a painful memory but more often pouring out the anguished love of a doting parent. An undercurrent of sadness runs through the speeches, for Moses had learned he would not join in the triumph of entering Canaan.
Moses' longest speech reiterates all the laws that the Israelites had agreed to keep as their part of the covenant. Moses also recalls the hallmark day when God delivered the covenant on Mount Sinai. He remembers aloud the black clouds and deep darkness and blazing fire. You saw no shape or form of God on that day, he reminds them. God's Presence cannot be reduced to any mere image. Moses' central message: Never forget the lessons you learned in the desert.
Besides all the warnings, Moses was giving a kind of pep talk, a final challenge for the Israelites to recognize their unique calling as a nation. If they followed God's laws, all the lavish benefits of the covenant would be theirs. More, every other nation would look to them and want to know their God. Moses seemed incurably astonished at all God had done for him and the other Israelites, and this speech represented his last chance to communicate that sense of wonder and thanksgiving.
Life Question: If you reviewed your own history with God, what lessons would you learn? For what are you most grateful?
