Deuteronomy is set in the time
of Moses and presents Moses’ final words to the Israelites before he dies and
they enter the Promised Land. Though it
is traditionally attributed to Moses, Deuteronomy was written over many
centuries by many people. The basic form
of the book was probably composed during latter part of the reign of Manasseh
or the early part of the reign of Josiah (ca. 650-640 bce) by prophets or priests in
Because it reflects theologically on and reinterprets events that occurred long before it was written, and because it uses an ancient setting (entering the promised land) to reflect theologically on a present crisis (exile), Deuteronomy should be read more as a work of theology than as a work of history. It not only presents the content of the law, but it also exhorts its audience to a right attitude toward the law and to God. Having a right attitude toward God (love) and toward the law (obedience) is the main focus of the two passages we will be teaching our children.[1]
Deuteronomy is presented as a series of addresses by Moses to the Israelites before they enter the Promised Land. Moses has already been told that he will not enter the Promised Land and his death and burial are presented at the end of the book (one of the reasons people doubt that he wrote the book!).
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1:1-4:43 |
Introductory address and review of
God’s salvation history with |
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Review of the law; Moses recounts
the law, and exhorts |
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27: |
Covenant of obedience; a ceremony
in which |
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31:1-33:29 |
Moses’ final words to |
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34:1-12 |
The death of Moses |
The Faith Challenge Deuteronomy unit needs to meet the following middle school Sunday school goals:
The learner will understand how the story of Moses and the Exodus leads to an understanding of Jesus as the Messiah.[3]
One way to meet this goal, is to draw our children’s attention to the parallel between the Shema (6:4-5) and Jesus’ words in Matthew 22:37-39: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. This is the first and most important commandment. The second most important commandment is like this one. And it is, Love others as much as you love yourself.” This can be done as simply as having the children read the Shema and asking “Who else said something like this?”
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4Listen, |
The basic exhortation here is to obey the first commandment. |
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5So love the LORD your God with all your heart,
soul, and strength. |
Love God with your whole being: mind, spirit, and body.[4] |
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6Memorize his laws |
Meaning the Ten Commandments and,
by extension, the laws that derive from them.
Christians understand Christ to be the fulfillment of torah (Matthew |
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7and tell them to your children over and over
again. Talk about them all the time, whether you're at home or walking along
the road or going to bed at night, or getting up in the morning. |
Each generation participates in and becomes a part of God’s salvation history by learning the story and making it their own.[5] In this way, by hearing the story told over and over again, God’s saving action in the Exodus and in the cross becomes true for our children. In other words, hearing the story again and again engenders faith. |
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8Write down copies and tie them to your wrists
and foreheads to help you obey them. 9Write these
laws on the door frames of your homes and on your town gates. |
Those who take this commandment literally have written the text of Exodus 13:1-16 (God’s instructions to observe the festival of thin bread) and Deuteronomy 6:4-9 (the Shema) and 11:13-21 (a more expanded form of the Shema) on little scrolls and bound them to their wrists and foreheads in little leather pouches called phylacteries.[6] |
See also: Matthew 22:34-40 (and synoptic parallels)
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Moses said to |
Because they have been committed to memory. |
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15Today I am giving you a choice. You can choose life and success or death and disaster. |
God does not constrain us or force us to obey God, but has given us free choice to obey or disobey. In obedience we find life and in disobedience death. |
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16-18I am commanding you to be loyal to the LORD, to live the way
he has told you, and to obey his laws and teachings. You are about to cross
the |
This is a statement of what is called “Deuteronomic theology.” The righteous prosper and the unrighteous suffer. This theology shapes the histories that follow Deuteronomy (and, in fact, were written and edited contemporaneously with Deuteronomy): Joshua, Judges, 1&2 Samuel, 1&2 Kings, which are called Deuteronomistic history. In these histories, kings and kingdoms are judged by whether or not they “do what is right in the sight of the Lord.” Faithful kings prosper and are allowed to rule; kings who worship other Gods are overrun by their enemies. God’s judgment takes the form of conquest and, eventually, exile.[7] |
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19Right now I call the
sky and the earth to be witnesses that I am offering you this choice. Will
you choose for the LORD to make you prosperous and give you a long life? Or
will he put you under a curse and kill you? |
Every generation must claim for themselves God’s promises and their obligations. They cannot be transmitted genetically. Each generation must hear the stories, hear the promises God makes in these stories, and make a choice.[8] Presbyterians reflect this in our pattern of infant baptism followed by confirmation: as parents we claim God’s promises for our children and pormise to raise them in the faith (that is, to tell them the stories); as youth our children make a choice to claim the faith for themselves. |
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Choose life! 20Be
completely faithful to the LORD your God, love him, and do whatever he tells
you. The LORD is the only one who can give life, and he will let you live a
long time in the land that he promised to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob. |
It will be important here to make sure our children understand the difference between life and death. That sounds crazy and obvious, but I believe that too often we mistake death for life and life for death. Jesus constantly confronted the religious authorities with their confusion in stories like the man through the roof (Matthew 9:1-8 and parallels), the man with the withered hand (Matthew 12:9-14 and parallels), and the man born blind (John 9:1-12). |
See also: Romans 10:5-10
· God loves us and wants us to love God.
· God wants us to keep God’s word in our hearts.
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We are more likely to obey God’s word if we know
it by heart.
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Knowing God’s word by heart helps us make right choices.
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God gives us the freedom to choose to obey God
or disobey God.
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Obeying God leads to a full life, but disobeying
God takes life from us. (What I am trying to accomplish here is to
convey the sense of Deuteronomy 30 without taking it literally: people disobey
God all the time without literally dying.
And the less literal lesson is the harder one to learn. The world tells middle schoolers
(and their parents) that a full life consists of ambition, winning, getting
more and more things, getting the “right” things, doing more and more things,
being popular, being beautiful, being sexually
attractive. Scripture tells us that a
full life consists of loving God and others, being generous, taking the part of
outcasts and downtrodden, being faithful to our friends and families,
simplicity in speech and lifestyle.)
This is what I meant earlier when I wrote of teaching our children to
distinguish life and death.
The Shema, Deuteronomy 6:4-5: “
Deuteronomy 30:19-20: “Choose life! Be completely faithful to the LORD your God, love him, and do whatever he tells you.”
Matthew 22:37-39: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. This is the first and moost important commandment. The second most important commandment is like this one. And it is, Love others as much as you love yourself.” (I prefer the NRSV: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”)
John 10:10: [Jesus said,] “I came so that everyone would have life, and have it in its fullest.”
2 Timothy 3:16: “Everything in the Scriptures is God’s Word. All of it is useful for teaching and helping people and for correcting them and showing them how to live.”
1 John 4:7: “My dear friends, we must love each other. Love comes from God, and when we love each other it shows that we have been given new life.” (Actually, the translation of this verse that I like best is from the New King James Version: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.”)
1 John 4:8: “God is love.”
1 John
What the heck! Let’s just have them memorize the whole of 1 John 4!
Memory work: have the children review and work on the memory verses we have selected for the past year.
“Pearls of Wisdom”: have the children create and string together prayer beads that represent some of their favorite Bible verses or some of the verses that they have memorized. One way might be to have each child design one bead, make multiple copies of it and hand one to each other child who can recite the verse it represents from memory. To goal is for children to collect as many different beads from their classmates as they memorize verses. (I must point out that my worst critic, Rachel, thinks anything having to do with memorizing scripture is a bad idea!)
“Write these laws on the door frames of your homes”: These lessons lend themselves very well to an art or craft project in which children create a plaque to hang in their homes.
Making right choices: what are some of the choices Middle Schoolers have to make and how can scripture help them make the right choices?
[1]
Dennis R. Bratcher, “Deuteronomy,”
Harper’s Bible Dictionary (New York: HarperCollins, 1985), pp. 219-220. Hereafter cited as HBD.
[2] HBD, p. 220.
[3] From “6th/7th Grade SS Curriculum Goals,” Joan McCarthy and Edla Prevette, Spring 2000.
[4] Bruce C. Birch, et al., A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1999), p. 147. Hereafter cited as TIOT.
[5] TIOT, pp. 149, 168.
[6]
Ronald E. Clements, “Deuteronomy,”
The New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume II (Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1998), p. 344. Hereafter cited as NIB.
[7] TIOT, p. 145.
[8] TIOT, p. 157.