The very first sentence in the introduction to The New International Biblical Commentary says, “Deuteronomy has been aptly described as the heartbeat of the Old Testament. Feel the pulse of Deuteronomy, and you are in touch with the life and rhythm of the entire Hebrew Bible.”
The New Testament contains eighty-six quotations from Deuteronomy, scattered through 17 of the New Testament’s 27 books. Jesus, and Paul especially, quoted from it frequently. Deuteronomy’s message is clear and unequivocal because Moses communicated living words, not detached truths from a distant past. That is why these men say what they do about the book of Deuteronomy. There is just not a more valuable book for a Christian in the Old Testament than Deuteronomy. The “words are living,” is the way they describe it, and have every bit the application to the church as they did to Israel.
I mentioned that Deuteronomy is quoted 86 times. Do you know in that very famous Matthew 4 and Luke 4 where Satan challenges Jesus, that every answer Jesus gave to those temptations was quoted from Deuteronomy? Every one. I think there is a message there, because what was Satan trying to create in Jesus? An idolatry. There is no book in this Bible that hammers on idolatry more than the book of Deuteronomy. That was Israel’s main stumbling block, and that is the church’s main stumbling block—getting other gods before the true God, submitting to those gods rather than to the true God, and giving them our love and devotion rather than the true God.
– John W. Ritenbaugh