Week 27 Discussion Guide: The Farewell of Moses

Opening

Begin by reciting this week’s memory verse together:

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” – Deuteronomy 6:4-5 (ESV)

When was the last time someone who was leaving – a parent, a mentor, a friend – said something to you that you have never forgotten? What gave their words such weight? Was it the relationship, the timing, or the knowledge that there would be no second chance to say it? Moses is about to die. Everything he says in Deuteronomy carries the urgency of a man who knows these are his last words. Listen with that in mind.

Review: The Big Picture

This week we read Deuteronomy – Moses’ farewell, delivered on the plains of Moab to a generation born in the wilderness who must now enter the land without him. The book is structured as a covenant renewal: a historical prologue recounting God’s faithfulness from Sinai to the present, a restatement of the law centered on the Shema and its demand for total allegiance, warnings against idolatry and the seductions of prosperity, instructions for worship and justice in the land, the promise of a future prophet like Moses, and finally the blessings and curses that lay out the covenantal consequences of obedience and disobedience. Moses sets the choice before the people with unflinching clarity: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life.” Then he climbs Mount Nebo, sees the Promised Land spread out before him, and dies. God buries him. No one knows the grave.

Deuteronomy is the most passionate book in the Pentateuch – not a legal code delivered from a distance but a father’s plea to children he loves and will never see again.

Discussion Questions

Day 1: Moses Retells the Story (Deuteronomy 1:1-4:43)

1. The Pedagogy of Memory. Moses’ first sermon is not new revelation but retelling – the spies, the forty years, the victories east of the Jordan. He narrates what the people already know (or should know). Why does God value retelling so highly? What is the difference between knowing a fact about God’s faithfulness and remembering it in the way Deuteronomy demands? How does the act of retelling shape a community’s identity?

2. “You Have Seen.” Moses repeatedly appeals to what the people have witnessed with their own eyes: “Your eyes have seen all that the LORD has done” (Deuteronomy 3:21). And yet he also warns, “Take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen” (Deuteronomy 4:9). How is it possible to see God’s acts and still forget them? What does this vulnerability reveal about the human heart?

Day 2: The Shema and the Great Commandment (Deuteronomy 4:44-6:25)

1. Hear, Obey, Respond. The Hebrew shema means more than auditory reception – it implies obedience, response, the letting of a word enter not just the ear but the life. When Jesus quotes this verse as the greatest commandment (Matthew 22:37), he is not selecting one rule among many. He is identifying the root from which every other commandment grows. What does it mean to hear God in this deeper sense? Where is the gap between your hearing and your obeying?

2. Total Allegiance. “All your heart, all your soul, all your might” – the Shema demands undivided love. The Hebrew levav (heart) is the seat of will and decision; nephesh (soul) is the whole person; me’od (might) is “very-ness,” everything you have. Nothing compartmentalized. Nothing reserved for a rival. Is this kind of total love humanly possible? If not, what does that reveal about our need for Christ, who alone fulfills the Shema perfectly?

3. Atmospheric Instruction. Moses commands Israel to teach these words to their children “when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deuteronomy 6:7). The instruction is not periodic but atmospheric – God’s word is to saturate every posture and every hour. How does this vision of spiritual formation differ from a once-a-week model? What would it look like to practice this in your own household?

Day 3: Warnings and Remembrance (Deuteronomy 7:1-11:32)

1. The Danger of Prosperity. Moses warns repeatedly that the land’s abundance will be more dangerous than the wilderness’s deprivation: “When you have eaten and are full… take care lest you forget the LORD” (Deuteronomy 8:10-11). Full bellies forget faster than empty ones. Where have you experienced prosperity dulling your dependence on God? What spiritual disciplines help guard against the amnesia that follows abundance?

2. Not Because of Your Righteousness. Moses is blunt: “Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land” (Deuteronomy 9:5). The inheritance is grace, not reward. How does this preemptive correction echo throughout the rest of Scripture? How does Paul develop this same logic in Ephesians 2:8-9 and Romans 9:16?

Day 4: Worship, Justice, and the Prophet (Deuteronomy 12:1-18:22)

1. Centralized Worship. God commands Israel to worship only “at the place that the LORD your God will choose” (Deuteronomy 12:5) – no freelance altars, no repurposed Canaanite shrines. Why does it matter where and how God is worshiped? What does centralized worship protect against? How does Jesus’ statement to the Samaritan woman – “the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father” (John 4:21) – fulfill rather than abolish this principle?

2. The Prophet Like Moses. “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers – it is to him you shall listen” (Deuteronomy 18:15). The verb “listen” is tishma’un – the Shema verb. To hear the future prophet is to obey the greatest commandment. How does this promise create the expectation that shapes Israel’s messianic hope? How does Peter identify its fulfillment in Acts 3:22-23?

Day 5: Blessings, Curses, and the Death of Moses (Deuteronomy 28:1-34:12)

1. The Choice. “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19). The covenant is not a fate but a decision. Yet the rest of the Old Testament will reveal that Israel consistently chooses death. What does this relentless failure reveal about the human condition? How does Paul’s argument in Romans 7-8 address the gap between the command to choose life and the inability to do so apart from the Spirit?

2. The Death on the Mountain. Moses sees the entire Promised Land from Nebo – “all of Gilead as far as Dan, all Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh” – and enters nothing. God buries him, and no one knows the grave. What is the emotional and theological weight of this scene? Why does God show Moses the land he cannot enter? What does this death teach about the incompleteness of the Mosaic covenant itself?

Synthesis

1. The Greater Moses. Deuteronomy 34:10 says, “There has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face.” The statement is both tribute and anticipation – not yet. How does the New Testament identify Jesus as the prophet greater than Moses? How does the author of Hebrews argue that Jesus succeeds where Moses could not – bringing God’s people not to the border of rest but into rest itself (Hebrews 3:1-6; 4:8-10)?

2. The Shema Fulfilled. Jesus quotes the Shema as the greatest commandment and then lives it – loving God with all his heart in Gethsemane, all his soul on the cross, all his might in the resurrection. He is the only human being who has ever fulfilled Deuteronomy 6:4-5 completely. What does it mean for the Christian life that the commandment we cannot keep has been kept for us? How does union with Christ transform the Shema from an impossible demand into a lived reality?

Going Deeper: Connections Across the Week

• Remember or Perish. The word zakar (“remember”) beats through Deuteronomy like a pulse. Remember Egypt. Remember the manna. Remember the wilderness. Remember Sinai. Remember what Amalek did. Moses knows that forgetfulness is not a minor lapse but the root of every apostasy. The people who forget what God has done will inevitably worship gods who have done nothing. This is why the Lord’s Supper is framed with the words “Do this in remembrance of me” (1 Corinthians 11:24-25). Jesus, like Moses, knows the enemy. The bread and the cup are Deuteronomy’s answer to spiritual amnesia – a ritual of remembrance that anchors a forgetful people to the faithfulness of their God.

• The Covenant’s Built-In Failure. Deuteronomy lays out the choice between life and death with extraordinary clarity. And then the rest of the Old Testament demonstrates that Israel will choose death. The blessings of chapter 28 are beautiful and the curses are terrifying, but the trajectory is already visible: Moses himself predicts that the people will break the covenant (Deuteronomy 31:16-18, 29). The Mosaic covenant is not designed to fail – it genuinely offers life. But it reveals with devastating precision that the human heart cannot sustain the obedience it demands. This is the argument Paul builds in Romans and Galatians: the law is holy, righteous, and good (Romans 7:12), but it cannot give what it commands. It diagnoses the disease. Only the new covenant – written on the heart by the Spirit (Jeremiah 31:33; Ezekiel 36:26-27) – provides the cure.

• The Name That Bridges Testaments. Moses dies. Joshua takes over. The Hebrew name Yehoshua – “the LORD saves” – is the same name rendered Iesous in Greek: Jesus. Joshua will lead the people across the Jordan into the land Moses could not enter. But the author of Hebrews notes that even Joshua’s rest was incomplete: “For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on” (Hebrews 4:8). The name carries the mission across testaments. What Joshua began – leading God’s people into rest – Jesus completes. The greatest figure in the Old Testament dies on a mountain. The greatest figure in all of Scripture rises from a tomb. The name is the same. The rest is eternal.

Application

• Personal: Moses commands Israel to bind God’s words on their hands and between their eyes (Deuteronomy 6:8). The practice is literal in Jewish tradition (phylacteries), but the principle is universal: God’s word should be so close to you that it shapes what you do (hands) and how you see (eyes). This week, choose one verse from Deuteronomy and carry it with you – written on a card, set as a phone background, repeated at every transition in your day. Let the word become atmospheric.

• Relational: “When your son asks you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules?’” (Deuteronomy 6:20). Moses envisions children who ask questions and parents who have answers. Is there a younger believer – a child, a student, a new Christian – in your life who needs you to retell the story of God’s faithfulness? Do not wait for a formal setting. The Shema is taught when you sit, walk, lie down, and rise.

• Formational: Moses dies looking at a land he cannot enter. The incompleteness is the point. No human effort, no amount of faithfulness, no leadership however extraordinary can bring you into the rest God offers. Only Jesus can. This week, practice releasing your grip on the outcomes you cannot control. Name one area of your life where you have been trying to be your own Moses – leading yourself into a promise that only Christ can deliver. Surrender it. The one who carries the same name as Joshua is already on the other side of the Jordan.

Closing Prayer

Close your time together by praying through the Shema. Declare together that the LORD your God is one – the only God, the only allegiance, the only claim on your heart. Ask the Holy Spirit to produce in you the love that Deuteronomy demands and that only Christ can fulfill – love with all your heart, all your soul, all your might. Pray for protection against the forgetfulness Moses feared, and for the grace to remember what God has done. Thank God for Moses – for forty years of faithfulness, for sermons preached on the edge of the promise, for a life poured out in service to a people who rarely deserved it. And thank God that the prophet like Moses has come – that the one who knew God face to face has made the Father known, and that the rest Moses could not enter, Jesus has opened for all who hear and believe.

Looking Ahead

Next week we cross the Jordan with Joshua into the Promised Land. The walls of Jericho will fall – not by siege engines but by obedience. Rahab, a Canaanite prostitute, will enter the covenant community by faith. And the land God promised to Abraham four centuries ago will finally begin to be possessed. Moses is gone. But the promise he guarded is alive, and the God who buried him on Nebo is already at work on the other side of the river.