Deuteronomy 4

Open your Bibles please to Deuteronomy chapter 4. We're going to slow down a little bit. We went through the first 3 chapters fairly rapidly. It was almost a little bit of an introduction that Moses was giving to this his final message to the nation of Israel. This is his last sermon, if you will, prior to him going home to be with the Lord. The Lord has basically told him that very soon he will climb up to the top of the mountain overlooking the promised land. He will look at it from a distance and then he will, using that euphemism, be gathered to his people. A way of saying he will die. But we're here in Deuteronomy chapter 4. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, open our hearts to Your Word and let Your Word speak grace and wisdom to us. For we ask it in Jesus name, amen. Scotty, can I be up just a hair. Verse 1 says,

Stop there for just a moment, please. I want you to notice that the nation of Israel is on the doorstep of going into the promised land. And once they go in, there's going to be battles galore. Enemies everywhere they look, new places to conquer, new battles, new issues, and so forth. I want to remind you of something, that this is a picture. We talked about this last week. Going into the promised land is a picture, it is a type of walking out the promises of God. It's the life of the Christian essentially, and how we hear the promises of God and we walk them out. And of course there's battles, and challenges, and difficulties, all along the way. It's so funny. People sometimes will, will come to me because they're going through an embattled period of time in their life. And they'll talk to me about their battles, and after a period of time, it begins to come out in their conversation that they don't think these things should be happening. And if perhaps maybe they were people of a little bit better faith, or whatever, that these sorts of things wouldn't be happening. And I remind them that the Christian life is a battle, lived and walked on a battlefield. And the fact that you're going through difficulties, and trials, and challenges, should never cause you to question your salvation or even your faith in God. I mean it those things are going to bring to light your faith in God I'll grant you that but you should never come to the place of thinking that somehow you're a second class citizen in the kingdom of God, or maybe not a citizen at all because why am I going through all these problems all the time? I want you just to see this picture of what the Christian life is. Crossing the Jordan, going into the land, and fighting battle after battle. Now, if you were about to talk to a group of people who were about to arm themselves for battle, what would you say? You'd probably start talking about strategy. You'd probably start talking about, alright, here's the deal. And you'd get to, you'd want to talk to your soldiers about marching in line, and how we're going to attack, and here's how we're going to go. And then, and see, and this is how you hold your sword thing, and then you're guys with their arrows. We want to make sure these guys know what they're doing. You got all your stuff in place. You have all your, what about your thing, where your arrows, you got all the… okay. And then the, you'd probably want to talk about all those things, wouldn't you? I find it fascinating that on the precipice of battle, what we hear God saying to the nation of Israel through Moses is, listen, first of all, to the statutes and the rules that I'm teaching you. To you and I, that's listen to the Word of God. And then, look what it goes on to say, and do it! Do you know what's most necessary for you fighting the battles? Is that you hear the Word of God and do it. And we get all distracted by other things that we think we need to clue in on. Well, it's all about how you pray, see. And we're telling people you got to do this. And if you don't pray for an hour, and you got to be on your knees and then by the way, we'll send you a prayer thing that you have to sit on, or put your kneel down on. Have you ever got one of those in the mail? A prayer cloth? Yeah, me too. They said it was a prayer cloth, but it was a piece of paper. It was a piece of paper. ---

--- Anyway, but there's all these things, that people get all distracted about and say, they want victory, and then they get, and God boils it down and I love how He does. He says, all right, here's the deal. You're going into the land where there's going to be all kinds of battles. Here's what you need to do. Hear the Word of God, do it. I just love how He lays it all out there. That is what is vital. And then, here's another key for victory, all right, as far as hearing the Word of God. Verse 2, “You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments (and that's basically doing the Word for you and I, keep the commandments) of the LORD your God that I command you.” In other words, what Moses is saying, the Lord is saying through Moses, don't add to the Word, don't subtract from it. Boy, that can be challenging sometimes. Paul wrote the same thing to the Corinthians. Let me show you a passage from 1 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 6. See that there? 1 Corinthians 4:6. Should be the very first. Not there? Well, I guess I'm going to read it for you then. Paul writes this, “I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, (listen to this) that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written,…” Paul says do not go beyond what is written. Alright? Over the time, over the years, the Jews went way beyond what was written, and the way they did it was they added traditions. They added human traditions to the Word of God, and it got to the point where those human traditions became equal in authority to the Word of God. And Jesus, when He came along, had some very strong things to say about those traditions. Mark 7, do we have that there? We do. Are we on the right day? You might check on that. I'm going to read this one for you here, too. Mark chapter 7, verse 13, listen to this. Jesus said, “thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.” Get that? What He said was you make void. Here's the deal. We think that we can just casually add our traditions to the Word of God and just, it's not that big of a deal. You got the Word of God. You got traditions. Who cares if you know along with reading the Word of God, we just hang out with some of our traditions?

Well, that might be the case at first but eventually those traditions grow in importance because they just they always do. And you know what happens after they grow in importance? They can actually make void the Word of God. And that, we've got, I'm not going to name any name but we've got some church stuff going on for 2,000 years where we've added traditions on the Word of God and it has actually voided the Scripture. To the point where now some of those people involved in those religious systems don't know between the Word of God and traditions. It's like, they just assume that what they, when they hear a tradition, it's like, well, isn't that the same thing? We do it. And when churches start saying things like, well, because we've always done it that way, you've got a problem that things have become so entrenched, that they have taken on an authority of their own. And God is telling the nation of Israel here, and He's speaking to you and I, that in the midst of preparing for battle, knowing that we want to have the victory that is in Christ. Going into that battle, the key is, well, one of the keys here is don't add to the Word of God. Don't take away from the Word of God. Just stick with the Scripture, right? Look at verse 3 in your Bible. He says, “Your eyes have seen what the LORD did at Baal-peor, for the LORD your God destroyed from among you all the men who followed the Baal of Peor. 4 But you who held fast to the LORD your God are all alive today.” Now, what's the next thing Moses does as he speaks to them about having victory as you walk out the Christian life? He says remember, remember what has happened in the past for the sake of learning from it. You might think to yourself, gee, why would Moses bring up a failure? Because that was a failure. We went through that, in the Book of Numbers when the Moabites, they basically caused the wrath of God to come out on the nation of Israel by causing the men to be drawn into pagan sexual practices. And that's what happened at the Baal-peor. That's what he's referring to. And so you ask yourself, why is he bringing up such a devastating failure among the people? Well, the reason is, is because if we fail to remember and learn from our past mistakes, we're just destined to repeat them. Which is why the apostle Paul, challenged us all by saying, if anyone thinks that he stands, take heed lest he fall. (1 Corinthians 10:12) ---

We got to learn, learn from our past mistakes, and that, that can be painful. I'm not talking about living in the past. There's a vast difference between living in the past and just remembering where I have fallen in the past. Because chances are, that's where the enemy's going to attack, right? Where I'm weakest. And for me to come to terms with that, for me to remember is an important thing to do. Verse 5.

Look at verse 6 again.

It's pretty obvious from these couple of verses here that it was God's intention, the nation of Israel be exalted among the nations because of their obedience, that it might be a witness to those nations, related to them keeping the Word of God and the things that they did. I don't think they ever heard attained to that sort of a thing, but it was God's intention that through their obedience, people would see that obedience and say, wow! Look at verse 7, he goes on.

All right, stop there. You have to understand something when Moses says to the people there, “…what… nation is there that has a god so near to it is the LORD our God...” You got to understand who he's talking to. He's talking to people who have been for the last 400 years, exposed to the paganism of Egypt. And they know of the paganism of all of the other surrounding nations. You have to understand something about paganism. This whole idea of having a god near you who responds when you call upon his name, that's unheard of in paganism. In paganism, the gods are distant and they're always mad, and you're always doing things to appease them. You got to find some way of making them happy because they're just always cranky. Right? And what Moses says to the nation of Israel is so beautiful because it speaks of not the religion of paganism, but the relationship of knowing God. And he says, what other nation do you know has their god so near that when they call to him, he responds? These other nations, they got to just, they got to do all kinds of crazy things to get god to even pay attention to them. Remember when Elijah was taunting the prophets of Baal? And they couldn’t, of course, they couldn’t, their God, Baal, wasn't responding to them. So they were hooping and hollering, and freaking out. It said eventually they started slashing themselves, and blood was flowing, because that was a pagan way of trying to get your god's attention. It's like, listen to me, sort of a thing. Aren't you glad that's not the way it is with us? I mean, we have this like invitation from our God who just comes right out and says,

(Matthew 11:28) Right?

(Matthew 11:30) I'm humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls guys. Guys, that's unheard of, that's unheard of in paganism You got to work to somehow, somehow please your god and once you feel like maybe you've done something to appease him, tomorrow he could be just as cranky again. So this is a completely different paradigm of anything that these people knew and understood about having a relationship with God. And so Moses is calling that to their attention, saying, what, tell me, just any other gods you know of, any other nation that has this kind of a relationship with God, and righteous rules and guidelines to follow? Have you ever prayed in front of unbelievers and had them take notice of the fact that you didn't do a religious prayer? I've heard people actually say after the fact when they were in the presence of a believer and that believer prayed a simple prayer, I've heard people comment that it, wow, it sounded like you were actually talking to someone. I mean that you know this God that you're talking to. Instead of this like, O gracious and mighty God who inhabiteth eternity. We throw in the King James English just to make it sound a little extra holy and that sort of thing. O thou God of the ages, hearken unto me, I say. Does that sound like you have a personal relationship with God? It sounds like He's scary and… But then when somebody just begins to pray and they just, they're just like, oh Jesus, we love You so much. Thank you for this day. And they're just talking, like He's a person. And you know what, that makes a difference. People hear that. People who are used to some kind of religiosity. And you ever notice, they pick you to pray when it's, oh, I suppose you better pray. Hey, you want to pray? They pick you cause you're the God person, right? You're the, you're the one who's religious in their eyes. And hey, don't turn it down. Give an opportunity just to talk to God like He's a real person. Just talk to Him with that love relationship that you have and let people be touched by that. It's significant. Verse 9, it says,

So here's a note on parenting and passing along the things that we remember. Again, we're looking—Moses is giving them keys to walking in victory once they go into the promised land. And these for you and I are keys to walking in victory in our life in Christ. Don't forget. Don't forget the things that your eyes have seen. Don't forget the things that God has done in your life. Don't let them slip from your mind. Remember. Remembering is a big deal to God. He talks about it a lot. And, when it comes to the cross and what He did for us, He said, hey, as often as you, have these elements of bread and the cup, remember, do this in remembrance of Me. Right. So He instituted this memorial to His death on the cross. Why? Cause we need it. We need to be reminded constantly. Doesn't it make sense to you that maybe we should have the same attitude as it relates to the things that God has done in our lives in a personal way? What have you done to commemorate or memorialize some of the things God has done in your life? Some of the answers to prayer that have taken place in your life? I think that there's something to that. I think that it's a good idea to remember. And then pass those things along to your kids. Tell your kids. When you have an answer to prayer, write it down, put it somewhere, and then tell them about it. Hey kids, I just want you guys to know, we prayed about this for, we just prayed and prayed, and then God answered this prayer, and it was just, it was wonderful. Don't let these things slip. And he says, “keep your soul diligently.” That's a way of saying guard your heart. Guard your heart because once you get into the land, you're going to get busy, and you're going to be distracted by work. And you got to go to work, and you got to make money, and you got to put food on the table, and you got to buy clothes, and you got to do this, and you got to do that. And pretty soon you're distracted, and you're just so involved in your daily life, and you haven't kept your heart diligently. You haven't been remembering and all of a sudden you find yourself just getting just broadsided by Satan, or something else in your life, and you're wondering where it came from. So he's charging them here to not only remember, but then pass these things on to their children. And then Moses goes on here to remind them of the things they were to remember. He begins talking about some of the things, giving them ideas. He says, verse 10, “how on the day that you stood before the LORD your God at Horeb, the LORD said to me, ‘Gather the people to me, that I may let them hear my words, so that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children so.’ 11 And you came near and stood at the foot of the mountain, while the mountain burned with fire to the heart of heaven, wrapped in darkness, cloud, and gloom. (and) 12 Then the LORD spoke to you out of the midst of the fire. You heard the sound of words, but saw no form; there was only a voice.” God knew that if they saw anything, they'd try to make an idol out of it. And it says, verse 13, “And he declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments, and he wrote them on two tablets of stone. 14 And the LORD commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and rules, that you might do them in the land that you are going over to possess.” Now, let me just add a little point here. It's very possible that even as Moses is telling them to remember this event, it's very possible that some of the people who are listening had no memory because they were actually born after that event. Because that happened before they went to the promised land the first time and couldn't enter because of their unbelief. Then they got sent back into the wilderness for 38 years. So anybody that was under, say like 40, probably wouldn't have remembered. So it was only the people probably over 40 years of age that are really remembering. And yet he's talking to them as if they witnessed these events and he's talking to them about why God did it. And it was because He wanted them to fear Him. So He let them hear His voice. And we're going to, we're going to see in the next chapter. Moses is going to remind them in chapter 5 that, you guys freaked out big time when God spoke. And you guys came to me and you basically begged me to tell God not to talk anymore because you would die if He did.

I was talking to Sue before we came tonight and I was remembering some kids in my youth group back when I was a youth pastor about a thousand years ago. And one girl, particularly, we were coming back from some event and she was just telling me, I could tell she was struggling with her faith. And she said something like, I just wish God would, like, appear in my bedroom or something. I was like, sweetie, no you don't. These people, the Jews said, if God talks anymore, we're going to die. And we forget something that we're actually going to look at here a little bit later in this chapter, and that is, God's holy. He's a consuming fire. And, sometimes you hear people just say, well, I just wish God would appear to me. You would die. There, yeah anyway, so we forget sometimes. Verse 15,

Or if you were an Egyptian, it would be a combination of all of those things. All in one statue or, because they love to do that. They love to put animals, and humans, and put them together, and make it look really weird. But basically what he's doing is he's reiterating the second commandment. You shall not have a graven image, right? (Exodus 20:4) And the reason he's saying that is because during their time in Egypt, you got to remember, they were there for 400 years. Do you guys remember? I mean, think about how long that is. It's way longer than the United States has been a nation. And they picked up during that time, all of the pagan, graven image, mentality of the Egyptians. And now they were very prone to that. And God has to tell them, don't do that. Don't go there. And idolatry would continue to plague them throughout the years. Right up until they were conquered by the Babylonian army. And you know what God did finally? Is He took them to Babylon and He said, okay, you want idols? I'm going to give you idols. And they lived in Babylon, the Persian kingdom, for 70 years. And you know what happened? God broke them of their love of idols. They came back from their Babylonian exile, and they never struggled with idolatry again. But it continued to plague them during their time in the land prior to that. Verse 19 says,

And it's interesting here is He talks more about pagan idolatry. He talks about this something in us, and I'm talking about us as in mankind. And it was certainly evident in them, but I think it's even evident in us somewhat. There's something in us that whenever we see something distant and unattainable, for some reason, we feel like it's worthy of adoration. Even people today, if they are distant and unattainable, we give them some kind of special honor. Even to the point where we call them idols, like American Idol, or something like that. And this basically sums up pagan thought. Anything that was distant and unattainable, they would create into a god. And God here warns His people against this sort of thought process that looks up at the sun and the moon and the stars and says, but they're so great and wondrous, and they must therefore then be something that we should serve as a god. And did you notice at the end of verse 19 what God said about the sun, the moon, and the stars? He said, these are just “things that the LORD your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven.” In other words, He made them for us. You know what that means? It means you weren't made for them. They were made for you. The sun is yours to use. You are not the sun's to use or to have. The moon, it's yours. It's yours. We even put a flag on it since then. But it's cool. It's ours. The stars, they're ours to look at, enjoy, they're ours, but we don't belong to them. And I love how he says that these are things that God has given. He “…has allotted to all the peoples under the whole (of) heaven.” Remember that. He says in verse 20,

You remember what Egypt is a picture of you guys? Slavery to sin. Okay? He's talking to you now. He says, now remember this. God brought you out of slavery. He brought you out of very difficult circumstances. You were dead in your sins, He… And look what He brought you out “to be a people of his own inheritance, as you are this day.” When we hear the word inheritance, we perk up, because we're pretty money emphasized in our culture. And so we hear of, and we, when we think of an inheritance, we think of something that's often passed down by some relative, that was, came before us. And they had money, and they gave an inheritance. Could have been parents, grandparents, whatever the case might be. And we always, and we think of inheritance as usually a pretty cool thing, for the most part. Look what God says to the nation of Israel. He says, you are the “people of his… inheritance.” You are the people of God's inheritance. In other words, you are the people who will inherit all that is God's. So don't worship the stars, they belong to you. Don't worship the moon and the sun and all these other things that have been given on the earth. They belong to you, they're yours. You are not theirs, you see. You see? Your inheritance is God and all that He will give you. Verse 21, “Furthermore, the LORD was angry with me because of you, (and now he's going to remind them of his own situation) and he swore that I should not cross the Jordan, and that I should not enter the good land that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance. 22 For I must die in this land; I must not go over the Jordan. But you shall go over and take possession of that good land.” Why is Moses telling this? Well, again, further reminder to fear the Lord. Moses reminds them here of his own consequences, the consequences of his own actions. He says, you guys, I got so angry at you that I misrepresented the Lord. And because of that I'm unable to enter now this land that you guys are entering. I can only see it from afar. He's reminding them to fear God. There are consequences. Verse 23, “Take care, lest you forget the covenant of the LORD your God, which he made with you, and make a carved image, the form of anything that the LORD your God has forbidden you. 24 For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.”

All right, verse 24. That's something that you should probably underline in your Bible if you haven't. There are two things that are said here about the character of God, the person of God and the first is that He “is a consuming fire.” I've already made reference to it. But this speaks of the purity and the holiness of God. Even the angels are constantly saying around His throne,

And because He is holy, and because He is so pure, He cannot abide sin. God cannot abide sin. You can't talk Him into it somehow to just wink at sin or not deal with sin as, He otherwise would. He cannot deal with sin of any kind, and that means, listen to me now, sinners cannot approach Him. Okay? Sinners cannot approach Him. Why? Because He's “a consuming fire.” Some of you might be thinking, now wait a second, pastor Paul. First of all, isn't that just Old Testament stuff? Listen to what the writer of Hebrews says. “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.” That's in the New Testament. That's Hebrews 12:28 and 29. “…our God is a consuming fire” the writer of Hebrews reminds us. The fact that you and I are given an invitation to approach Him is predicated on the fact that the blood of Jesus Christ enables us to come into His presence. It's not because He settled down somehow, after the cross and decided, okay, I'm going to chill a little bit. Whereas back in the Old Testament, I was a hard case. I was really, I was kind of hard on you guys, but you know what? Jesus came, died on the cross. Thank you. Now I'm going to chill a little bit. No, nothing has changed about the character of God. He is still a consuming fire, right? He's still a consuming fire. The writer of Hebrews tells us, I don't know if that sounds like somebody you want to go jump in His lap, but the fact of the matter is through the blood of Jesus, our sins have been atoned for, and that's why we can come into His presence. I don't walk into His presence in my own ability or my own with my own right. I go in through the right that is granted me through Christ. That's why Jesus said, no man comes to the Father except by me.

Why? Because He's a consuming fire. Right? The only way I can come as a sinful human being is with my sins forgiven, robed in the righteousness of Christ Himself. It's the only way I can come. Now, the other statement here is that our God is “a jealous God.” Now, I've had some people read this before and say, I thought jealousy was bad. And it is when we're talking about the sin of jealousy. But it's really important to understand that God's jealousy is not the same as the sin of jealousy. When God is jealous, He's not committing a sin because His jealousy stems from His purity and His holiness. In other words, even His jealousy is holy. Yours and mine, probably not so much. We get jealous because there's something we want, something somebody else has that we don't have, and we want it. Whether it's their abilities or their appearance or just something that they have. But God's jealousy is not like that. He is jealous when people worship something or someone other than Him, because He knows those things aren't worthy of our worship. Whether that's money, or love, or physical pleasure, or power, or whatever it may be. Those things aren't worthy. Now, I'm not saying that every jealousy that a human being feels is always ever wrong. Let me give you a quick example. If a husband sees another man flirting with his wife, he could be justifiably jealous. And there frankly isn't anything inappropriate about that, because she shouldn't be doing that. That guy shouldn't be flirting with his wife. She should only be giving, that kind of attention to her husband. Justifiably, he could be jealous. Now, But even in a situation like that, where my jealousy may be justified, my reaction probably won't beyond that. That's where my sin starts to take over and, I walk over and say, hey, and give the guy, a sock in the mouth or something like that. Obviously that's where the whole righteous thing ends, right there. But you understand the idea there. It's inappropriate for us to worship something other than God. And so God is jealous. And Paul even wrote to the Corinthians, you might remember this. We'll get to this in our Sunday study in 2 Corinthians. Paul writes to them at one point and says, I have a divine jealousy for you guys because I betrothed you to one lover, to one master, to one husband. (2 Corinthians 11:2) And that's Jesus. And now you're, you understand the idea. Verse 25. “When you father children and children's children, and have grown old in the land, if you act corruptly by making a carved image in the form of anything, and by doing what is evil in the sight of the LORD your God, so as to provoke him to anger, 26 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will soon utterly perish from the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess. You will not live long in it, but will be utterly destroyed. 27 And the LORD will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the LORD will drive you. 28 And there you will serve gods of wood and stone, the work of human hands, that neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.” And that prophecy right there was fulfilled in first the Assyrian invasion of Israel and later the Babylonian invasion of Judah when they were both taken captive. But its ultimate fulfillment is in the rejection of Jesus by Israel later on, and how they were cast into the far reaches of the world, and lost their national identity, until the 1940s. It's one of the reasons we believe we're in the last days of the last days. God brought them back. Called it Israel again. Gave them their national autonomy. Crazy! “But from there (verse 29) you will seek the LORD your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul. 30 When you are in tribulation, (that just means trouble) and all these things come upon you in the latter days, you will return to the LORD your God and obey his voice. 31 For the LORD your God is a merciful God. He will not leave you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers that he swore to them.” Why? Because He’s merciful. 32 “For ask now of the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and ask from one end of heaven to the other, whether such a great thing as this has ever happened or was ever heard of. 33 Did any people ever hear the voice of a god speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and still live? 34 Or has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, and by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great deeds of terror, all of which the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? 35 To you it was shown, that you might know that the LORD is God; there is no other besides him. 36 Out of heaven he let you hear his voice, that he might discipline you. (that word also means training) And on earth he let you see his great fire, and you heard his words out of the midst of the fire. 37 And because he loved your fathers and chose their offspring after them and brought you out of Egypt with his own presence, by his great power, 38 driving out before you nations greater and mightier than you, to bring you in, to give you their land for an inheritance, as it is this day, 39 know therefore today, and lay it to your heart, that the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other. 40 Therefore you shall keep his statutes and his commandments, which I command you today, that it may go well with you and with your children after you, and that you may prolong your days in the land that the LORD your God is giving you for all time.”” And then here at the end of the chapter, Moses in verses 41 through 43 sets apart cities on that eastern side of the Jordan where they had conquered the land. And he established 3 cities where “the manslayer might flee…, anyone who kills his neighbor unintentionally, without being at enmity with him (or in any kind of a bad relationship with him) in time past; he may flee to one of these cities (just) and save his life:” And then they name the cities there in verse 43. Verse 44. “This is the law that Moses set before the people of Israel. 45 These are the testimonies, the statutes, and the rules, which Moses spoke to the people of Israel when they came out of Egypt, 46 beyond the Jordan in the valley opposite Beth-peor, in the land of Sihon the king of the Amorites, who lived at Heshbon, whom Moses and the people of Israel defeated when they came out of Egypt. 47 And they took possession of his land and the land of Og, the king of Bashan, the two kings of the Amorites, who lived to the east beyond the Jordan; 48 from Aroer, which is on the edge of the Valley of the Arnon, as far as Mount Sirion (that is, Hermon), 49 together with all the Arabah on the east side of the Jordan as far as the Sea of the Arabah, under the slopes of Pisgah.” And we will continue next time as we get into chapter 5.