Moses' Final Sermon: The Covenant at the Edge of the Promised Land

Come Follow Me 2026 — Week 19 — May 11–17 — Deuteronomy 6–8; 15; 18; 29–30; 34

The Sermon on the Plains of Moab

Deuteronomy is not a second law — it is the great covenant sermon. Moses stands on the plains of Moab, 120 years old, his eyes undimmed and his natural force unabated, knowing he will not cross the Jordan. The entire book is his farewell address to a people he has led for forty years through the wilderness. He has been their prophet, their lawgiver, their intercessor, and their judge. Now, before the next generation steps into the inheritance, he gathers them and speaks.

What Moses says to Israel in these chapters is not peripheral doctrine. It is the core. Every major teaching of the Old Testament — and much of the New — roots itself in these chapters. The Lord Jesus Christ himself, when asked which commandment is greatest, will answer from Deuteronomy 6. The Apostle Peter, preaching at Solomon's Portico after healing the lame man, will quote from Deuteronomy 18. Joseph Smith will connect that same prophecy to the Restoration. The covenant structure laid out in Deuteronomy 29–30 will echo through every dispensation of the gospel.

Moses' final sermon is scripture within scripture — the word that interprets all the rest.

The Shema: The Foundation of Covenant Identity

In Deuteronomy 6:4–5, Moses speaks the words that have defined Jewish identity for three thousand years — words that observant Jews recite twice daily, morning and evening, as the central confession of faith:

Deuteronomy 6:4–5

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”

The Hebrew word Shema simply means “hear.” But in this context it is a covenant summons: attend, receive, obey. To hear in the biblical sense is not merely auditory reception; it is responsive action. When God commands Israel to hear, he is commanding total orientation of the self toward him.

The confession that follows — “The LORD our God is one LORD” — is both theological and covenantal. Theologically, it asserts the unity and singularity of Israel's God in a world of polytheism. Covenantally, it establishes that Israel belongs to one God and one God alone. In a culture where nations kept patron deities while acknowledging others, this is a radical declaration of exclusive loyalty.

Then comes the commandment: love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your might. This is comprehensive. The heart is the seat of will and understanding. The soul is the inner person, the life-force. The might is everything of strength and resource you possess. Nothing is to be withheld. This is not a commandment about feeling; it is a commandment about orientation, allegiance, and the totality of the self.

The First and Greatest Commandment

• Matthew 22:36–38 — “Master, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:5 directly as the first and greatest
• Mark 12:29–30 — Jesus prefaces his answer with the Shema itself: “Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord”
• D&C 59:5 — “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy might, mind, and strength”

Moses continues in chapter 6 with what has been called the mezuzah passage: “And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up” (Deuteronomy 6:7). Covenant life is not a Sunday practice. It structures every dimension of daily existence — home, travel, morning, night. The covenant is meant to be the atmosphere in which covenant people live and breathe.

Remember: The Doctrine of Deuteronomy 8

Deuteronomy 8 contains one of the most sober warnings in all scripture: the danger of prosperity. Moses has just promised Israel that they will enter a land flowing with milk and honey, eat their fill, build fine houses, and multiply their silver and gold. Then he warns them of exactly what will happen as a result:

Deuteronomy 8:12–14, 17

“When thou hast eaten and art full… Then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the LORD thy God… And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth.”

The wilderness was not an accident. Moses explains that God led Israel through forty years of difficulty — the hunger, the thirst, the unknown path — to humble them and prove them, “to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no” (Deuteronomy 8:2). The manna was not just food; it was a daily sacrament of dependence. Every morning Israel woke up with nothing, and every morning the provision came. The purpose was to teach them that “man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live” (Deuteronomy 8:3).

Jesus, fasting in the Judean wilderness forty days, will quote this very verse when Satan tempts him to turn stones into bread (Matthew 4:4). The wilderness that tested Israel was the wilderness that tested the Son of God. The doctrine holds across both testaments: affliction is often the instrument of formation, and abundance is often the environment of forgetting.

The Prophet Like Unto Moses

In Deuteronomy 18, Moses delivers what would become one of the most debated and doctrinally significant prophecies in all of scripture:

Deuteronomy 18:15, 18–19

“The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken… I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him.”

The New Testament applies this prophecy to Jesus Christ. Peter, preaching in Acts 3, quotes these exact verses and says plainly: “For Moses truly said unto the fathers, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you” (Acts 3:22). Jesus is the Prophet like unto Moses — the one who receives God's words directly, who leads a new Exodus from bondage, who mediates a new and greater covenant.

Latter-day Saint doctrine connects this prophecy additionally to the Restoration. Joseph Smith taught, and the Doctrine and Covenants confirms, that this prophecy has a dual fulfillment: in Christ and in the prophet of the Restoration. The Angel Moroni cited Deuteronomy 18 to Joseph Smith in their very first meeting as one of the prophecies “not yet fulfilled” (Joseph Smith—History 1:40). The pattern of a prophet “like unto Moses” — one who receives direct revelation, who restores the covenant people, who leads them by God's word — repeats in every dispensation.

Messianic and Restorative Fulfillment

• Acts 3:22–23 — Peter identifies the prophet like Moses as Jesus Christ
• John 6:14 — After the feeding of the 5,000, people say “This is of a truth that prophet that should come”
• Joseph Smith—History 1:40 — Moroni lists Deuteronomy 18 among prophecies not yet fulfilled
• D&C 28:2 — “Moses was a seer, a revelator, a translator, and a prophet” — the pattern of prophetic office

The Law of Jubilee and Care for the Poor

Deuteronomy 15 contains Moses' covenant legislation on debt and poverty. Every seven years, debts among Israelites were to be cancelled entirely. “Every creditor that lendeth ought unto his neighbour shall release it; he shall not exact it of his neighbour, or of his brother; because it is called the LORD'S release” (Deuteronomy 15:2). This is not charity; it is covenant economics. It is the Lord's release.

Moses warns against the cold calculation that leads to withholding help from a poor neighbor simply because the release year is near: “Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart, saying, The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand; and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother” (Deuteronomy 15:9). The covenant economy insists that the poor are God's test of the heart of the prosperous.

Then comes the verse that will echo through the New Testament: “For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open wide thine hand unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land” (Deuteronomy 15:11). Jesus will quote this — “The poor ye have always with you” (Matthew 26:11) — not as an excuse for ignoring poverty but as the context for understanding that covenant care for the poor is a permanent and ongoing obligation, not a problem that gets solved and goes away.

The covenant is economic in the deepest sense: it restructures how the community relates to wealth, debt, labor, and the vulnerable. It insists that no member of the covenant people perish in absolute poverty while others accumulate. The Jubilee legislation is not peripheral social policy; it is an expression of the character of the God who releases captives and forgives debts.

“Choose Life”: The Covenant Ultimatum

Deuteronomy 29–30 is the covenant renewal ceremony at Moab, formally ratifying with this new generation the covenant originally made at Horeb (Sinai). Moses recounts the history: the plagues, the Exodus, the wilderness, the victories. He warns of the consequences of covenant-breaking. And then in chapter 30, he sets before Israel the most fundamental of all choices:

Deuteronomy 30:15, 19

“See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil… I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.”

This is not mere rhetoric. Moses is describing the structure of covenant existence: every generation faces the same fundamental choice. God does not remove the agency. He sets the terms clearly, explains the consequences honestly, and calls with urgency — “therefore choose life” — but the choosing remains with Israel. The covenant is not coercive; it is the framework within which moral agency operates most fully.

Moses adds something remarkable in chapter 30:11–14: “For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us… But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it.” The covenant is not arcane or inaccessible. It is not for specialists. It is in your mouth and in your heart — available, near, present. Paul will quote this passage in Romans 10 as describing the very accessibility of the gospel of Christ.

The doctrine of choosing life runs through all of scripture and all of the Restoration. The Book of Mormon places the same ultimatum before its readers again and again: “I would that ye should come unto Christ” (Moroni 10:30). The pattern of invitation, choice, and consequence is not unique to Moses — it is the pattern of every covenant.

The View from Pisgah: Faithful to the End

Deuteronomy 34 is among the most poignant chapters in all of scripture. The LORD takes Moses up to the top of Pisgah on Mount Nebo and shows him the land — north, south, east, west — the entire promised inheritance. “And the LORD said unto him, This is the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed: I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither” (Deuteronomy 34:4).

Moses dies on the mountain. His burial place is unknown. Israel mourns him thirty days. And then the narrator writes one of the most generous epithets in scripture: “And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face” (Deuteronomy 34:10). Known face to face — the highest description of prophetic access to God.

The view from Pisgah is the image of the faithful servant who does not see the fulfillment in mortality. Moses led Israel forty years toward a land he would not enter. He prepared a people for an inheritance he would not personally possess. There is a profound doctrine here about the nature of covenant labor: you may not be the generation that enters the promised land. You may spend your life building what others will inhabit. The faithfulness of Moses was not diminished by the fact that he did not cross the Jordan. He finished his work. He blessed his people. He taught them everything they needed. And then the LORD took him.

There is a traditional Jewish teaching that Moses does not simply die on Pisgah — that he was taken by the LORD himself, that his death was a “death by the kiss of God.” Whether or not this tradition is historically accurate, it captures a theological truth: the servant who gave everything was received by the Master himself. Moses is later seen on the Mount of Transfiguration alongside Elijah, standing with the glorified Christ (Matthew 17:3). The view from Pisgah was not his final view.

For Latter-day Saints, Moses appears in the Kirtland Temple on April 3, 1836, and commits the keys of the gathering of Israel to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery (D&C 110:11). The faithful servant who could not enter Canaan himself is commissioned, in a later dispensation, to restore the work of gathering the covenant people. The view from Pisgah was not the end of Moses' ministry — it was a pause.

Doctrinal Threads Through Deuteronomy

Several doctrinal threads run through these chapters that reward careful study. First, the covenant is remembered by rehearsing history. Throughout Deuteronomy, Moses recounts events — not simply to recall the past but to let the present generation feel themselves participants in it. “The LORD made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day” (Deuteronomy 5:3). Covenant memory is generative. It creates community across time.

Second, the covenant is taught to children. Deuteronomy 6 is the founding document of covenant education: parents are responsible for teaching the commandments in every context of daily life. The purpose is not intellectual transfer alone but formation — creating covenant people who love God because love was modeled for them from their earliest consciousness.

Third, the covenant has consequences. Moses is not gentle about this. Deuteronomy 28 lays out blessings for obedience and curses for covenant-breaking at great length. The covenant is not morally neutral. Fidelity brings flourishing; apostasy brings destruction. This is not arbitrary divine caprice but the built-in structure of reality as God has arranged it: align with God's order and life flows; rupture that alignment and everything begins to break down.

Fourth, the covenant anticipates failure and return. Deuteronomy 30:1–10 is remarkable for its prophetic candor: Moses does not assume Israel will remain faithful. He predicts the exile explicitly and then describes the return: “And the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live” (Deuteronomy 30:6). This is the promise of a transformed heart — what Jeremiah will call the new covenant, what the New Testament calls the covenant of grace. The covenant always makes provision for the penitent return of the broken.

Moses' final sermon ends with blessing, with song, and with death. He has given everything. He has spoken every word the LORD commanded him to speak. He has trained a generation, appointed a successor, and left a written law to guide those who come after. The great sermon is finished. The covenant is in place. Now Israel must decide what to do with it.