Deuteronomy 31:9-13

All right. Well, good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to coffee and devotion. This morning we're at Deuteronomy chapter 31 verses 9 through 13. We're going to be talking about something that needs to be done every 7 years. There's a 7-year ceremony. They got to read the law. So, have some coffee. We'll pray and get into God's word. Yes. You didn't even wait for me to offer it to you. You knew it was coming. Someday. Someday, son, I'll be proud of you. You drink it and then you can have You think someday I'll be proud of you? Someday, maybe. Maybe. But today is not that day. Yeah, I'm always proud of you. All right, here we go. Let's pray. God, we thank you so much for this day. We thank you for the blessing it is to get to read your word. It's in a language we can understand, and that's a huge blessing. Father, we pray that we would please love your word. Please let it be instructive to us. Teach us what we are to believe and how we are to live in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, Deuteronomy chapter 31 verses 9 through 13. Oh, verse 9. Mhm. Then I need to go page back. Oh, you Page 19. 31 9 to 13. All right, go ahead. So, Moses wrote this law and delivered it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to all elders of Israel. And Moses commanded them, saying, "At the end of every 7 years, at the appointed time, the year of release, at the Feast of Tabernacles, when you all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God, the place which he chooses, you shall eat. This law for all Israel in their hearing. Gather the people together, men and women, and little ones, and the stranger who is within your gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn to fear the Lord your God, and to carefully observe all the words of this law. And that their children who have been known who have not known it may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God as long as you live in the land which you cross the Jordan to possess. All right. So, we got three questions. A, what is this about? B, what is the best for summaries? And C, what are we called the day? All right. So, A, what's this about? Uh that you're supposed to read the law at the year of release when you release the slaves. You're supposed to read the law. All right. So, every seventh year at the year of the Sabbath year, right? So, you had the Sabbath day every week, but every seventh year you had a year. A Sabbath year, right? And so, at the year of the year of release, there's a remission of of slaves. They're released. And then, is that all that happens? Oop. Um you're supposed to read the law kind of like what's going It's kind of helping you like, oh, why are we doing It's actually like a whole reset. Did you know that they're not allowed to plant their fields that year, either? Huh. Yeah. So, the seventh year is like a big deal for them, right? So, every seventh year, right, God says on the sixth year he's going to bless you enough with enough grain for multiple years to make sure not just that year, but even the year after that you're going to have food, and you'll have seed for the for the first year to be able to plant. And so, the Lord says he's going to bless you abundantly. You got to trust him and keep keep his laws, but he's going to care for you. And so, there's almost like this reset cycle that he wanted to have in Israel. Yeah, the funny thing is every year for the farmers here every year they have to they like normally the farmers like to switch between beans and corn and beans and corn because then they plant too much corn then the ground is a Yeah, they got to take care of the soil, right? And so they rotate their crops, yeah. So it's going to be interesting that one year they allowed to sow. Yeah, so so even in in the Middle Ages what they found out is that crop rotations were good. And so they they didn't know exactly why, but they just knew that if they moved the crops around, right? We'll do lentils this year and then the next year we'll do some corn, the next year we'll do this. And they would well grain, then right barley, they would change things around to try to care for it. But the point is letting the field let life fallow for one year was actually healthy for the land. But the point is is that it was getting them to see that God was king. He was going to care for them. He was going to provide for them. They could trust him. And so every and so on that seventh year there's a year of big things that have to happen, right? Slaves debts canceled. Fields fallow. Right? Their whole life revolved was supposed to revolve around all of this. Right? So what do you think would be the best verse of this, right? So they're supposed to say this law, read the law every seven years. What do you think is the best verse that kind of gets at the heart of of that or why they're doing that? So in what we read verses 9 through 13. What do you think is the best verse that kind of gets at the heart of this? I think 10 and 11. Okay, 10 and 11. Why do you choose those? It's kind of just like Like that's what the passage is about, reading law. And so Okay. Yeah, see I actually chose 12. Right, gather to get gather the people together, men and women and little ones, the stranger who is within your gates, that they may hear, that they may learn to fear the Lord your God and carefully observe all the words of this law. Which but it didn't mention the 7 years at all. So, I go for yours, too. That's fine. I'm going to argue verse 12, but I'll let you. and 11. 10, 11, and 12? So, you you're just going to leave out 13 all by itself in verse 9? Come on, man. Haha. I'm just kidding, that's fine. Uh let's go ahead and talk about seek calling. Uh what do you think you're called to do from this? Can I give you an interesting tidbit before we get in that? We don't have any indication that Israel ever did any of this. Actually, do you know why they had the 70 years of exile? They didn't do it? One year for every Sabbath year they didn't observe. What? 100 years? 700 years. So, 100 * 7 = 70. Or sorry, 10 * 7. Uh Right, so every 7 years they were supposed to do this, they didn't do it. And so the Lord says, "Okay, well, you didn't obey me that with that, so to Babylon you go. One year for every year you missed 70 Sabbaths." Why 70? Yeah. So, what do you think you're called to do? Um We're called to worship God at appointed time. Okay, so worship God at his appointed time. Okay, right? We can go to the book of Hebrews, right? Do not forsake the assembling of yourselves as is the manner of some. Right? But even in the New Testament church, right? There's supposed to be an assembly where we encourage and provoke each other towards love and good deeds. Okay. Uh but this isn't this isn't actually talking about the weekly Sabbath. It is a year. Yeah, it's it's the every seventh year. I think this is remembering that God is the king. At least that's what I'm getting from it, right? That like I need to remember in my life regularly what God has said. His word is perfect. And that he's the covenant king. And I need to be reminded on a regular basis that it's his ways. Not my ways, not what I want to do, not the way I want to live my life, not the way I want my world to operate. I need to bow my will to his and trust in him. That's one of the things I might call from here. I might I might pull out. But Jesus says that there's every verse or every part of the Bible is pointing to him. So, how do you how would you point this to Jesus Christ? Mhm. Okay, so don't tell that. Yeah. So, I think there's a few ways to go, right? One is we follow the law of Christ, right? Many of these things that they were supposed to do on those annual Sabbaths were remembering the poor, not being oppressive. But also think about this stuff that we talked about. Uh if you don't have to work, that's rest. Jesus tells us to find our rest in him. If our If the debts are canceled out, what did Jesus do with our debts? He told them out. Yeah, he paid for them in full himself. Right? I think Jesus is the one that we need to be reminded about time and time again because he's our covenant king now. Right? He's the one who rules over us, and so we can follow him. It's kind of a little bit of a stretch, huh? Mhm. Yeah, but the immediate thing, what is this about? It's about reading the law every 7 years. So, only read your Bible once every 7 years. You think that's what this is getting at? No. All right. You want to pray for us, or you want me to pray? I you Okay. God, thank you so much for giving us your word. It is sweeter than honey, more pure than the finest of gold. Lord, we thank you for giving us rest in Jesus Christ. Lord, we pray that we would follow in you in your ways and trust in you. For you are our covenant king in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, may the Lord bless you as you rest in him. May you read your Bible more than once every 7 years. We'll see you next time. Go and say goodbye. Bye.