Grace OPC Sewickley PA

Sermon Book: Deuteronomy

  • Abominable Practices or the Voice of the Lord

    Abominable Practices or the Voice of the Lord

    About this sermon

    Before Israel enters Canaan, Moses forbids the abominable practices of the nations: child sacrifice, divination, sorcery, mediums, and consulting the dead. God’s people must not seek supernatural knowledge by these means. Instead, the Lord promises to raise up a prophet like Moses, putting his words in his mouth; Christ fulfills that promise, and Scripture is sufficient for faith and life. A prophet who speaks in God’s name what he has not commanded is as guilty as one who speaks for other gods. If his word does not come to pass, the Lord has not spoken it.

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    Sermon transcript

    Please remain standing for the reading of God’s word. We’re not back to Isaiah yet, but we’re going to consider a passage that deals with issues that were certainly issues among God’s people in Isaiah’s day. Deuteronomy chapter 18, verses nine through 22 is our passage for this morning. You’ll find that beginning on page 190 in your Pew Bibles. Deuteronomy chapter 18, beginning at verse nine and reading to the end of the chapter. Let us hear, my friends, the word of our God.

    When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, Anyone who practices divination, or tells fortunes, or interprets omens, or is a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a medium, or a necromancer, or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations, the Lord your God is driving them out before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord your God, for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this.

    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, just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire anymore lest I die. And the Lord said to me, they are right in what they have spoken. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth and he shall speak to them all that I command him.

    And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die. And if you say in your heart, How may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken? When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.

    The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Once again, let’s pray for the Lord’s blessing upon the preaching of his word. Lord and Father in heaven, your word is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword. We pray that the sword of your word would pierce our souls this morning, and that it would give us light, that it would give us guidance, that it would give us direction. Open our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous things from your word. And we pray, heavenly Father, that we might hear the voice of Jesus speaking to us through your inerrant scriptures this day. We pray that you would give me the grace to speak forth only that which is faithful to your word, and we pray that you would give us open and receptive hearts, and by your spirit cause us to put into practice that which we learned this day.

    We pray these things through Christ our Lord and all of God’s people said. Amen. You may be seated. The sermon title this morning is Abominable Practices or the Voice of the Lord. And I’d encourage the children to listen to our three key words today. The words are guidance, profit, and distinguish.

    How can I find God’s personal will for my life? How can I make sure that I am in the center of God’s will? Friends, when I was a young man, young in my faith, that was one of the pressing questions that haunted me. And I suspect that this is a pressing question for many Christians, especially many Christian young people who have their lives ahead of them and are wondering, well, what does the Lord want me to do? Where does he want me to go? And so forth. For example, This was a particularly pressing issue for me when I was a college student and had my whole life before me.

    And I wondered to myself questions such as, well, does God want me to pursue marriage or to serve him in a state of singleness? I’m kind of glad for how that turned out. In terms of vocation, I wondered, should I seek to serve the Lord in some form of full-time Christian service, perhaps as a pastor or as a missionary, or should I serve the Lord in a secular vocation? Both options are honorable biblical choices.

    And the list went on and on and on. And I remember, at the time, I wasn’t reformed in my convictions. I was more in the broadly evangelical camp, and I was, at the time, under the influence of the charismatic and Pentecostal movements. Believe it or not, yes, your pastor used to speak in tongues, or at least that’s what I thought at the time.

    In any case, because I was under the influence of charismatic and Pentecostal teaching at the time, when it came to the kinds of advice I was hearing at the time in terms of how to find God’s will for your life, I remember I was not pointed to the Scriptures alone as the soul-sufficient guideline for understanding and living out God’s revealed will.

    Instead, I was told that, yes, you need to read the Bible, you need to study the Bible, you need to seek to obey the Bible, but you can do all of that and still miss God’s plan A for your life, God’s perfect will for your life. And that frustrated me. Because at the time, instead of being pointed to the objective standard of Scripture as the sole guide for living out the will of God, the revealed will of God, I was often pointed by my teachers inward to my own subjective feelings, my own mystical intuitions in order to discover God’s will.

    I was counseled, for example, well, make sure that you have peace in your heart. Make sure that you feel the Lord guiding you in this direction or in that direction. And whenever I would try to make a decision, I would find myself thinking, well, have I really read God’s, have I read the tea leaves right? In other words, have I really discerned God’s will correctly, or have I perhaps misinterpreted His will for my life? Or I was directed to look for special providential signs in my life. Perhaps you’ve heard the advice that if you have an important decision to make, you need to put out a fleece like, the Judge Gideon did in the days of the judges. But friends, in hindsight, I realize now that the methods that I was using at that time to try to discern God’s personal will for my life really amounted to a mystical, Christianized version of sorcery. In other words, of trying to pry my way into the secret counsel of God.

    And what does the scripture say about that? Well, perhaps you’re familiar with that passage in Deuteronomy 29, verse 29. The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. Notice there’s only two categories there. There’s God’s secret will, that’s his sovereign decorative will that is not known to us, and then there is his will that he has revealed through his word. There’s not a third personal will of God that is somehow distinct from the revealed will of God.

    Oh, how much stress that would have saved me if I’d known that at that time in my life, that as long as you’re following the word of God prayerfully and to the best of your ability and looking to Jesus, you’re free to make godly decisions as long as they’re not in conflict with the word of God or sinful decisions. Well, friends, I share this personal experience with you to highlight the relevance of our passage from God’s Word that we are considering today. And in order to really profit from this passage of God’s will, God’s Word, we need to do what we always do as we approach any text of Scripture, and we need to understand its overall context.

    Well friends, in terms of the overall context of our passage within the book of Deuteronomy, we need to remember that in Deuteronomy, the prophet Moses is addressing the Israelites as they are preparing to go in and to conquer the promised land. This is at a stage of redemptive history when the children of Israel had been wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. That original generation, the Exodus generation, had died off for the most part in the wilderness. And now a new generation had arisen and was waiting and getting ready to go in and to conquer the promised land. Now in previous passages in Deuteronomy, God through Moses had made provisions for the civil and judicial and religious institutions that Israel was commanded to observe in the promised land.

    But aside from the divine guidance that Israel would receive from the law of Moses, and aside from the ceremonial directions of the priests and the Levites that they would offer to the people, how would God’s people get the special guidance that they would need in specific future situations that they would face in their future as a theocratic nation?

    Again, we need to remember where the people of God were at in this particular point in redemptive history. Remember that at this time in redemptive history, God’s people did not have the full, complete canon of scripture like we have it today. They did have what was sufficient for them at that time under the old covenant, but they didn’t have all of God’s word. And so later on, God would raise up prophets to give new and fresh divine revelation to the people at that time. But at the time when Moses spoke these words to the gathered Israelites, at that time, the only word from God they had was that which we now have in the books of Moses, the Pentateuch. And even then, Deuteronomy was still in the process of being written. So again, they would need ongoing divine guidance from the Lord in order to maintain the integrity of their covenantal identity and their faithfulness to the Lord.

    Well, in answer to the question, though, Moses first makes it clear to the people where they are not to seek for such supernatural guidance. Namely, they are not to seek divine guidance through following the detestable pagan and occultic practices that the Gentile nations of Canaan used for seeking such guidance. Israel was to listen to the prophets whom God would raise up, prophets like Moses, whom God would raise up from among their own brethren. In other words, instead of heeding the voice of pagan sorcerers, and sorcerer and abominable practices, God’s people were to heed the voice of Yahweh their God. And that voice, that word of God would come to them through a series of prophets and ultimately through one final and ultimate prophet, namely the promised Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, our Lord and Savior.

    So let’s turn our attention to our text for today, and let’s first of all consider from verses 9 through 14, illegitimate means of seeking supernatural guidance. The first thing that Moses draws our attention to, or that the Spirit through Moses draws our attention to, are the things that God’s people are to avoid, the kind of practices that they are to avoid, illegitimate practices. Here the Lord instructs his people to avoid seeking supernatural or divine guidance through occultic or pagan practices. He says this in verse nine, when you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you. Let me just pause there and note a couple of things. He doesn’t say if you come into the land. He says when you come into the land.

    The Lord had promised to give them the land. And so this is a certainty. This is God had covenanted this land to the people. And notice it is the land that the Lord your God is giving you. Yahweh your God is giving this land to you. It’s a gift. It’s not something that they earned or deserved. Deuteronomy itself, throughout Deuteronomy, God makes this very clear to the people. He tells the people, it’s not because you’re more righteous or more numerous than the surrounding nations that I’m giving you this land.

    It’s simply because the Lord your God loves you and is fulfilling his covenant promises. So this land is a gift of God’s grace. bestowed upon his people. But that does not take away the responsibility of the people to live faithfully within the land. When you come into the land that the Lord your God has given you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations.

    We don’t really understand or fully appreciate today the strong temptation that God’s people had in that ancient setting. All around them, all of their Gentile neighbors were immersed in pagan idolatry. They were immersed in occultic practices. They consulted soothsayers and mediums and spiritists and necromancers and so forth. They followed all of these ways.

    And the Lord is saying to his people, look, It’s gonna be tempting, but don’t you dare follow the practices of your pagan neighbors. Again, what he’s saying to them is do not learn to follow the ways of this sinful, fallen world, and thus also do not rely on worldly wisdom.

    Instead, this is basically Moses’ way of saying what the Apostle Paul says, instead of being conformed to this world, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And that renewal comes, as we will see, through the word of God. In fact, as we compare Scripture with Scripture, if you want to turn to Romans 12, verses 1 and 2, I know this is very familiar to many of you, but we need to hear this again and again. after Paul has explained and expounded upon the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ in the first 11 chapters of Romans, he then gets practical, although theology is, of course, supremely practical, but he brings it down to earth, so to speak, and he says this, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, the mercies that he’s been writing about, in the first 11 chapters, I appeal to you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship or reasonable service as it could be translated. In other words, by bodies, the body represents the whole self. Present your whole self to God in view of his mercy to you. And then he says in verse two, do not be conformed to this world, this fallen world with all of its pagan practices, including occultic practices, such as Moses refers to in our passage for today.

    Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. How are our minds renewed, brothers and sisters? They are renewed by the Word of God. The Word of God is absolutely sufficient to renew our minds and thus to give us the guidance that we need for living faithful and godly lives.

    Now, the Word of God doesn’t tell you when you get up in the morning what you are to wear. Well, you know, you’re supposed to wear this pair of slacks and wear the brown pair of socks and not the blue pair of socks. No, God entrusts to you the freedom and liberty to make those kinds of decisions. As long as you’re not making sinful decisions or decisions that go against the Word of God, you are at liberty to use your godly scripture-informed wisdom in those things. And this is because the Bible is sufficient to give us divine guidance.

    Remember what Paul wrote to Pastor Timothy. in that very familiar passage of 2 Timothy 3, verses 16 and 17. In fact, let me back up a little bit and begin reading in verse 14. But as for you, as for you, Pastor Timothy, Continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with what? With the sacred writings. Timothy had been acquainted with the scriptures even from childhood, which is able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

    But not only is the Bible sufficient to make us wise for salvation, not only does the Bible reveal to us the way of saving grace, that’s the fundamental heart of what the scriptures teach. But it goes on to say, all scripture is breathed out by God, theopneustos, breathed out by God, God breathed. and is profitable for what? For teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

    The Scriptures completely equip us. Scripture is sufficient. The Word of God is absolutely sufficient. It’s sufficient for a minister of the Word, such as Pastor Timothy. And if it’s sufficient for those who are called to be servants of the Word in the church, it is certainly sufficient for all of God’s people, for faith and life, for all that you need to know about God’s will in your life and mine. Getting back to our text for today, we are again urged not to follow the practices of the world. But then Moses goes on to make it clearer. He says in verse 10, he gives examples.

    He says, there shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering. That’s an awful pagan practice that was very common, sadly, in the land of Canaan and among Israel’s neighbors. They would seek to appease the gods and the goddesses. They would seek to appease their deities, sometimes by sacrificing, burning alive their own children on pagan altars.

    The Lord says don’t do that, but the sad history of God’s people. later on shows that they fell even into this horrible practice. But don’t do that. Why did they do that? They did that to seek the Lord’s blessing and to seek rather the blessings of the gods and to seek prosperity and so forth. But the Lord says, don’t do that. That’s terrible.

    There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering. And then he goes on to say anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead.

    Now we could spend a lot of time looking at these different categories of individuals and practices, these various occultic practices, but the point is these terms describe various occultic and pagan practices which involved attempts to gain divine or supernatural guidance without relying upon the word of the true and living God. Instead of seeking the voice of the Lord through his chosen prophets, These practices are an abomination to Yahweh because they involve idolatrous attempts to gain secret and supernatural knowledge by illegitimate means, by means other than seeking that guidance from Yahweh’s word, the word of the Lord. In effect, these terms have the effect of prohibiting all kinds of occultic and pagan practices. And I would suggest to you that this would include even supposedly innocent or fun practices, like consulting your horoscope, or using a Ouija board, or tarot cards, and so forth.

    You say, well, what’s wrong with that? Well, look at verse 12. Verse 12 says, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations, because of these pagan occultic and idolatrous practices, because of these abominations, the Lord your God is driving them out before you. Here, my friends, is a stern warning. Those who unrepentantly engage in such practices are regarded by the Lord as an abomination in his sight. And it is because of such abominable practices that God was driving out the nations of Canaan in judgment.

    As Matthew Henry puts it in his commentary, he says, let those who give heed to fortune tellers or go to wizards for the discovery of things secret that use spells for the cure of diseases are in any league or acquaintance with familiar spirits or form a confederacy with those that are. Let them know that they can have no fellowship with God while they thus have fellowship with devils. You can’t commune with demons than commune with the Lord at the one and the same time. And then verse 13, Moses goes on to say this, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune tellers and to diviners.

    But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this.” Again, here is a call to be blameless of such pagan and occultic activities. And I would suggest by way of extension, by way of implication, this would also prohibit us from Christianized versions of such practices as well, as we seek legitimately to discern God’s direction in our lives. So why, that raises again the question, why is it wrong for believers to dabble in the occult?

    Well, first of all, because God says not to do it. And God knows best. Our Heavenly Father knows what is best. Even if we can’t know or understand why He would tell us not to do it, if God says don’t do it, you better not do it. He’s got good reasons for prohibiting you from such activities.

    It is also prohibited, I would suggest, because seeking for secret knowledge and seeking for special powers that belong only to the Lord, that’s what the occult is about. It is seeking special knowledge, like predicting the future, you know, fortune-telling as one example, or looking at a crystal ball. You’re trying to get secret, special knowledge that is only accessible to the Lord, and it’s only His right to have that knowledge. Or you’re seeking special powers, that only God can exercise. It also, such activities, such occultic and pagan activities also involve its participants in fellowship with demons.

    I would have us turn to 1 Corinthians 10, verses 18 to 22. In 1 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul is addressing, of course, the church in Corinth, and the church of Corinth included, among its membership, many former pagans, former idol worshipers. But some of these former pagans, apparently, were tempted to go back to their previous pagan ways. Paul is exhorting them, especially those who would participate in idol feasts within the temple, actual idol worship. He says this, consider the people of Israel.

    Are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar? What do I imply then, that food offered to idols is anything or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice, they offer to demons and not to God. Let me pause there. Idol worshipers who bow down before a block of wood or a statue of gold, they’re not worshiping real gods, but behind those false deities are demonic spirits. Idol worship is communion with the demonic, and that is why you can’t follow Jesus and openly and willfully worship idols at one and the same time. It’s impossible.

    Paul says, No, I imply what pagan sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Shall we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? We belong to Christ. He is our Lord. How dare we then, having confessed his name and having communed with him in the word and worship and in the Lord’s Supper, then to go and participate in pagan or occultic activities. So we are not to dabble in occultic or pagan activities.

    But the main thrust of this passage here, friends, is that the voice of the Lord speaking in the Holy Scriptures is all that we need. for a godly life. And since we, especially now today, in this stage of redemptive history, we have the completed canon of Holy Scripture. Indeed, we have all that we need for Christian faith and Christian living in the Word of God. For all the divine guidance that we need is found in this book.

    And you can rest in that. If you are in Christ, if you are seeking to walk with Jesus in true faith and repentance, seeking to order your life according to the revealed will of God, you’re not gonna miss God’s plan A for your life. You’re already at the center of his will because you are seeking to walk with him. And if you go off the path, he always welcomes you, the prodigal, back home. I’m reminded of that hymn that we will sing a little later. What more can he say than to you he has said, to you who for refuge to Jesus have fled. So we’ve seen the illegitimate practices that the people of God are to avoid.

    But next, as we consider verses 15 through 19, we consider next the promise of a future prophet like Moses, the promise of a future prophet like Moses. Moses goes on to say this, 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.

    Now Moses, remember, Moses is not gonna be allowed to go in with the people to the promised land. So some of them, and he’s told them that, he said, the Lord has prohibited me from going into the promised land. So the people might have been thinking, well, what are we gonna do without Moses? And Moses is assuring them, the Lord is going to continue to go with you and he is gonna continue to give you prophets like me who will speak my word to you. the Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me.

    It is to him you shall listen just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire anymore lest I die. In other words, God is not gonna directly reveal his himself to you through this, the glorious means that he used on Mount Sinai, which caused the people to tremble, to say, Moses, you speak to us. Don’t let the Lord speak to us or we’ll die. He’s assuring them that God will continue to provide the divine guidance that they need.

    But does this promise here, here’s an interpretive question that commentators have struggled with. Does this promise of Moses here refer to a future succession of Old Testament prophets? Is it exclusively a prophecy that is fulfilled only in Jesus Christ? Or is it a combination of both? Does this promise a future succession of Old Testament prophets, but a succession of prophets that will culminate in the ultimate messianic prophet, namely our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ? Well, friends, I believe that it is this latter view that is the correct one given the context of this passage and also within the broader context of later revelation from God.

    Kyle and Delitzsch make the point that just because Moses mentions a prophet in the singular, that doesn’t necessarily mean only one prophet. They say it by no means follows from the use of the singular, a prophet, that Moses is speaking of one particular prophet only. But the idea expressed is this, that at any time when the people stood in need of a mediator with God like Moses, God would invariably send a prophet.

    But again, I think Matthew Henry puts it better when he says this. Whether a succession of prophets be included in this promise or not, we are sure that it is primarily intended as a promise of Christ and it is the clearest promise of him that is in all the law of Moses. In other words, this is a quintessential messianic prophecy here. Henry goes on to write, It is expressly applied to our Lord Jesus as the Messiah promised.

    And he references Acts 3, 22 and Acts 7, 37. And the people had an eye to this promise when they said concerning him in John 6, 14, this is of a truth, that prophet that should come into the world. And it was his spirit that spoke in all the other prophets. 1 Peter 1, verse 11. makes it clear that the Old Testament prophets spoke by the Spirit of Christ. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, so Christ was speaking through the Old Covenant prophets.

    Let’s take a look at what the Apostle Peter says about this in Acts 3, verses 22 to 24. Acts 3, The apostle Peter is preaching the gospel in the temple in Solomon’s portico. And as he’s preaching the gospel, he reminds the Jews whom he’s preaching to of this. He says this beginning in verse 22.

    Moses said, the Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you. In the context of this sermon, Peter’s making it clear that this prophecy that is part of our text for this morning, this prophecy It’s about Jesus, it is fulfilled in Christ. And he goes on to say in verse 23, and it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people.

    And all the prophets who have spoken from Samuel and those who came after him also proclaimed these days. So again, this is applied to Christ. This predicts Christ. So friends, what does that mean for us today? That means we need to heed the voice of Jesus. And where do we hear the voice of Jesus? The voice of Jesus, our good shepherds, speaks to us, his sheep, in the scriptures, the word of God. Are you, my friend, heeding his word, his gospel?

    But that brings us to the final section of our passage for today and the final point I wanna make, and that is how we are to distinguish between a true and a false prophet. How do we distinguish between a true prophet of God and a false prophet? Well, the Lord through Moses makes that very clear in verses 21 and following, or verses 20 and following.

    First of all, we learn that a false prophet will speak in the name of other gods, or will, by implication, spew forth false doctrine, even if he’s speaking in the name of the true God. Bringing a false message, claiming to be from the true God, but which is not a message from the true God, that is just as bad as speaking in the name of other gods. As it says in verse 20, but the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die. Under the old covenant, false prophets were to be not just excommunicated, but executed. That was the old covenant form of excommunication in the Old Testament theocracy.

    This reminds us also of what the Lord through Moses had said earlier about false prophets in Deuteronomy 13, verses one to four, where Moses says, if a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass. And if he says, let us go after other gods, which you have not known, and let us serve them, you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear him, and keep His commandments and obey His voice, and you shall serve Him and hold fast to Him. Even if that false prophet gives you a seeming miracle, performs a miracle, if they’re telling you, counseling you, giving you a supposed message from the Lord that contradicts what is found in the word of God, that leads you in a different direction, you are not to listen to them.

    So false prophets will speak in the name of other gods or by implication they will spew forth false doctrine. But another test that he gives is found in verses 21 and 22. And we learn in these verses that a false prophet will make predictions that do not come to pass. How do you know that someone’s a false prophet? Well, if they’re giving predictions. You know, you think of folks who say, well, you know, the Lord told me Jesus is coming back on a certain date, and then that date comes and goes, and then often the false prophet will say, well, actually, you know, that’s to be interpreted spiritually. They make excuses for their false predictions.

    But what does Moses say about that? Look at verses 21 and 22. And if you say in your heart, how may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken? When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken.

    Got that? It’s pretty clear, isn’t it? You listen to, and there’s many like this today who claim to be prophets or prophetesses or even apostles, and they’ll give predictions. I remember a number of years ago, I think it was before the 2020 election, that there was a particular self-professed prophet of God who was predicting that, yes, Donald Trump was gonna be elected again in 2020.

    Well, we know, of course, that that did not happen. But I believe that so-called prophet is still going, still making predictions. By the standard of God’s will, God’s word, he is not a true prophet of God. Anyone who makes a false prediction is by definition a false prophet, no matter how correct the other things that they say may be. Verse 22, when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.

    And brothers and sisters, As we close our time considering this section of God’s Word, let us heed the scriptural call to exercise discernment between the true and the false. This is actually a duty, a Christian duty, to exercise discernment. You are not honoring God if you give one penny, for example, to use a hypothetical scenario, I don’t think any of you would do this, but if you give even a penny to support a charlatan like, say, Kenneth Copeland, who is a snake, you give even a little bit of money to support such false teachers, you are dishonoring your God. And you are, by implication, denying the sufficiency of his word to guide you. Beloved, let us heed the scripture call to exercise discernment. And how do we exercise discernment again? 1 John 4, verses one through six. Let me read this passage again.

    Beloved, do not believe every spirit. And John there is referring to teachings, spiritual teachings. Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits. You have a responsibility to test the spirits, to test the teachings. How? By the word of God. Why must we test the spirits? For many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this, you know the Spirit of God.

    Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. In John’s day, there were false teachers, Gnostic teachers, who were denying the full humanity of Christ. They were denying that the divine Christ had come in the flesh, which is a denial of the gospel. So anyone who denies the gospel is not from the Lord. Every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.

    This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them. And he who is in you, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world. Therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us. Whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. Do they speak according to this word? Then they are of the truth. Do they speak contrary to or in contradiction to this word? Then they are false prophets, false teachers. But the only way to have the ability to exercise that discernment is to be indwelt by the Spirit of God. And you can’t have the Holy Spirit unless you know Christ.

    Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior from sin? Is he your great prophet, priest, and king? Christ who died on the cross to pay the penalty for sin and rose from the dead so that whoever believes in him, trusts in him alone for salvation from sin, might not perish but have everlasting life. flee to Jesus, receive and rest upon him alone for your salvation. The spirit then, you can be assured then that the spirit indwells you and he is the spirit of truth and he will lead you and guide you into all truth and will grant you the grace of discernment.

    Amen. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, We thank you that you have given to us clear guidance. We need not follow the ways of the nations of this fallen world in seeking divine guidance or supernatural guidance, for you’ve given us that guidance in full in the scriptures. So help us, Lord, give us wisdom by the illumination of your spirit to apply your word with godly wisdom to our own particular lives and circumstances. And we pray, Heavenly Father, that you would help us to test the spirits and to affirm that which is good, that which is in accord with your gospel. In Jesus’ name we pray, and all of God’s people said, amen. Let’s close our time of worship today by rising and we’ll sing hymn 243, How Firm a Foundation, 243.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Do Not Listen to That Prophet

    Do Not Listen to That Prophet

    About this sermon

    Deuteronomy 13 warns Israel: if a prophet or dreamer arises and gives a sign that comes true, yet says, “Let us go after other gods,” they must not listen. The Lord is testing whether they love him with all their heart, and the same holds when the tempter is a brother, a son, a wife, or a friend. To abandon the Lord was to abandon the Savior who had already rescued them from Egypt. In the new covenant the test of any teacher, signs or no signs, is how the teaching treats the gospel of Jesus Christ. As John says, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”

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    Sermon transcript

    Let us prepare ourselves now for the reading of God’s Holy Word. We turn firstly in the Old Testament to the book of Deuteronomy chapter 13. Deuteronomy chapter 13. Beloved, this is the Word of God. Give your full attention to it. Deuteronomy 13 beginning with verse 1.

    If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder and the sign or the wonder comes true concerning which he spoke to you saying, let us go after other gods whom you have not known and let us serve them. You shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams for the Lord your God is testing you to find out if you love the Lord your God with all your heart. and with all your soul. You shall follow the Lord your God and fear Him, and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him.

    But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has counseled rebellion against the Lord your God, who brought you from the land of Egypt. and redeemed you from the house of slavery, to seduce you from the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk.

    So you shall purge the evil from among you. If your brother, your mother’s son, or your son or daughter, or the wife you cherish, or your friend who is as your own soul, entice you secretly saying, let us go and serve other gods, whom neither you nor your fathers have known, the gods of the peoples who are around you, near you or far from you, from one end of the earth to the other, you shall not yield to him or listen to him, and your eye shall not pity him, nor shall you spare or conceal him, but you shall surely kill him. Your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. So you shall stone him to death, because he has sought to seduce you from the Lord your God, who brought you from the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery. Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and will never again do such a wicked thing among you. If you hear in one of your cities, which the Lord your God is giving you to live in, Anyone saying that some worthless men have gone out from among you and have seduced the inhabitants of their city saying, let us go and serve other gods whom you have not known, then you shall investigate and search out and inquire thoroughly.

    If it is true in the matter established that this abomination has been done among you, you shall surely strike the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword. utterly destroying it and all that is in it and its cattle with the edge of the sword. Then you shall gather all its booty and the into the middle of its open square and burn the city and all its booty with fire as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God. And it shall be a ruin forever. It shall never be rebuilt.

    Nothing from that which is put under the band shall cling to your hand in order that the Lord may turn from his burning anger and show mercy to you and have compassion on you and make you increase just as he has sworn to your fathers. If you will listen to the voice of the Lord your God, keeping all His commandments, which I am commanding you today, and doing what is right in the sight of the Lord your God.” Thus far the reading of God’s holy word. I ask you also to turn over with me to the New Testament, to the first epistle of John, 1 John chapter 5, and we’ll read verses 18-21. 1 John chapter 5, beginning with verse 18. Again, give your attention, this is the Word of God.

    1 John 5.18 We know that no one who is born of God sins, but he who is born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him. We know that we are of God and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true, in his Son, Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.

    Little children, guard yourselves from idols. Amen. Thus ends the reading of God’s holy word. Let us pray together. Our Father, these are powerful words, both from the Old and the New Testament, and may we be ready and willing to receive them as your word to us today. We pray that you would imprint them upon our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom you give to us, and we ask, O God, that we would be true and faithful worshipers of the true and the living God, and that God only, and none other. Hear us as we pray. Bless now, O God, the word as we receive it. as it is read and preached for us in our midst today. And may we glorify you by it. We ask and pray it in Jesus’ name. Amen. We are finding more and more that the book of Deuteronomy is a great undertaking, aren’t we?

    In the book of Deuteronomy, Yahweh reveals himself, reveals himself as the great and mighty sovereign who binds himself by covenant oath to his vassal people, Israel. They, as his vassal people, in turn, are to bind themselves to him, to honor him as their God, and they are to reject any other God, especially those gods of the peoples of the land of Canaan, the people and the gods that they are about to dispossess from the land. The book of Deuteronomy comes to us in the form of a in the form of the treaty of the great king, Yahweh, the great king of Israel, speaking to his covenant people.

    In like manner, in the ancient suzerainty treaties of the Near East of that time, of the old ancient times, it was required of the vassal people that would be joined to the sovereign king that they must not be party to any evil words spoken against the sovereign, whether the words amounted to an actual affront or a conspiracy against that lord, that king. The vassal instead was obliged to report the insult or the fomenting of revolt. And in case of active rebellion, the vassal nation must even undertake military measures against the offenders. Moreover, the vassal must manifest fidelity to his lord in such cases, no matter who the rebel might be, whether that rebel was a prince or one of their nearest relatives. And we hear and read of those things here this morning.

    And if that were so on the plane of merely human sovereign vassal arrangements of Old Testament times, how much more so the devotion we ought to show and the people of Israel ought to show in the covenant arrangement between Yahweh and his people. They were to have no other gods before him. He alone was Israel’s God. Yahweh was the true and the living God. And they were to love him with heart, mind, soul, and strength.

    As we saw in our previous chapter 12 of Deuteronomy, the Israelites were to obliterate the names of the false gods from every place in the promised land where they were to go. Instead, Yahweh would establish his name in the place of his own choosing. And there, Israel would worship Yahweh by bringing their burnt offerings and their sacrifices, their tithes and their votive offerings, which they would vow to the Lord. Well, we move on to chapter 13 today and our text today then continues to address Israel’s vassal status in relationship to her great King Yahweh and the obligation she bears in covenant loyalty to him.

    Concerning the purity for the purity of Israel’s worship, we are continuing the concern for the purity of Israel’s worship in line with the first commandment Here, Deuteronomy warns the people of the kinds of situations in which they might be tempted or pressured into deserting Yahweh for other gods.

    Our passage clearly breaks down into three parts, three points this morning. And we’ll see, first of all, there is the danger of false religious leaders, and that’s found in verses one through five. The first section, verses one to five, false religious leaders. Second, Israel is warned of the possible conflict of loyalties when close family members are involved, and that involves verses six through 11. So first section, one to five, and then six to 11, family members. And then third, In verses 12 through 18, there is the danger of the pressure of an influential group of leaders in a community.

    And in each of these cases, then we’ll see false religious leaders, family members, or community leaders. In each case, the threat that they bring to the people is the desire to lead them away from the worship of the true God and to chase after the idols which they do not know.

    We would do well as we consider these to realize that such threats as are present there in those days for Israel, those threats to covenant loyalty were not confined to 1500 BC. False religious leaders, sometimes well-meaning family and friends, and yes, community leaders in the civil realm throughout history, have proven time and again to be the enemies of true religion, and many professors of religion have stumbled and fallen away as a result of the temptation that such persons have brought forward into the midst of the people of God. and thus thinking of the words of the writer of the book of Hebrews in chapter 2 verse 1. For this reason, says the writer of Hebrews, we must pay closer attention to what we have heard so that we do not drift away from it. How shall we escape, the writer asks, if we neglect so great a salvation as has been revealed to us in the person and work of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ.

    Yes, there were temptations to turn away in Israel’s day, and they did oftentimes chase after the other gods. And throughout history, the people of God have repeatedly, even continually, been assaulted by those who would turn people away from true worship. And we, I dare say, we are not exempt. We are not exempt in our day.

    But as we consider Old Testament Israel, as we consider ourselves, the normative force of the inscripturated word that God had already given to Israel through Moses was to be given priority over any future prophetic words that might be spoken. This principle of the primacy of the word of God already revealed.

    This principle will be further developed in Deuteronomy chapter 18 in the law relating to prophets stating that the one who is to come after Moses, the prophet who is to come must be like Moses. And so Moses is the first of those that God gave to Israel and others would come after him to be sure. Our text begins by telling us that no sign or miracle that appears to authenticate a person as a prophet is to be given precedence over the content of the words already spoken by a prophet. Indeed, a person may come with the signs of a true prophet, but if his words contradict the normative covenantal demand, then he is false, and according to Deuteronomy 13, that false prophet must be purged from the body of Israel like a lethal poison.

    In Numbers 12 verses 5 and 6, it was already established that God’s self-disclosure would be continued through prophets to whom Israel would make himself known in visions and in dreams. So the fact that one might come claiming a dream or a vision is not off the mark. And so Deuteronomy 13, 1 and 2 says, if a prophet or a dreamer of dream arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder comes true concerning which he spoke to you, saying, let us go after other gods whom you have not known, and let us serve them, you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams.

    For Yahweh your God is testing you to find out if you love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall follow Yahweh your God and fear Him, and you shall keep His commandments, Moses tells Israel. You shall listen to His voice, serve Him and cling to Him. But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death. because he has counseled rebellion against Yahweh, your God, who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery to seduce you from the way in which Yahweh, your God, commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from among you, Moses says.

    In other words, the prophet, or the supposed prophet, may try to establish himself as a genuine prophet by announcing a miraculous sign or a wonder, which then may even take place, perhaps a successful prediction, or perhaps even a miraculous event of sorts. Both signs and wonders are associated, to be sure, with the mighty power of Yahweh, especially in the Exodus narrative. And so if a person comes with a sign or a wonder, so far so good. That’s a possibility in Old Testament revelation. This hypothetical prophet has the standard means, dreams, or visions, and he apparently taps into divine power by his predictions.

    However, if this seemingly authentic prophet suggests that the people should follow other gods, all the fire alarms in Israel should begin ringing. For no prophet sent by Yahweh would lead the people into a head-on denial of the first and fundamental demand of Yahweh. No other gods beside me, besides me.

    And I mentioned this fire alarm should begin ringing because I’ve just received a book in the mail saying that there is an emergency bell system in Beaver County in case there’s a disaster at the nuclear power plant in Shippingport. And if that alarm goes off, we’re supposed to do certain things. Well, I’m saying that in Old Testament times, if there was a false prophet who tried to lead people astray. All of the fire alarms should have gone off in Israel. The people should have known what to do in terms of that great warning that God is giving here to them.

    That would-be prophet’s words cancel out his amazing deeds. So even if he’s done a mighty sign, if he tells you to disobey the Lord or to turn away from Yahweh, no way. No display of miraculous powers. No amount of signs and wonders. No miraculous events can lend a moment’s credibility to anybody with a message so clearly at odds with the covenant truth and demand already revealed. The first response the Israelites must make to any such message, however dazzling its supporting act, is that they must not listen. The very words must fall on deaf ears.

    Rather, they must exercise the discernment to see through the false messenger to the testing of God. God is testing Israel. We must be careful, however, to see that this does not mean that God would be trying to entice Israel to sin. but rather testing them to discover whether their actions would tally with their profession. Would they be true to the God who saved them? And what was being tested was the most fundamental commitment that God’s people are called upon to make, that is, to find out whether they really do love Him.

    The challenge of idolatry provided a test of covenant commitment. A covenant-keeping people self-consciously living with a singular orientation and commitment to Yahweh would have the spiritual health and vitality to recognize and reject idolatrous enticement as decisively as a healthy body deals with invading germs, or as an exterminator deals with invading termites.

    No way. The death penalty for incitement to idolatry is consistent with the foundational nature of the First Commandment. Thou shall have no other gods before me, Yahweh says. It needs to be seen, this death penalty needs to be seen, not as a vestige of religious fanaticism or primitive barbarism of such old times as long ago.

    But we ought to see this instead as a measure of the seriousness with which the covenant was taken as the foundation of Israel’s whole national existence and peoplehood. It was the covenant that defined them. It was the covenant grace that saved them. That’s who they were in relationship to Yahweh. Therefore, no way were they to allow idolatry to turn them aside.

    To go after other gods. as well as to be in rebellion against Yahweh was effectively a form of treason against the whole community. That is a serious criminal offense with potentially disastrous results for everybody. The prophet who led people in that direction would bring God’s curse on the nation. So who should die then, that false prophet or the whole nation?

    Hence, the purpose of the execution is designed to purge the evil from among them, we’re told. It was a self-preserving act of removing a threat to the nation’s health and survival, like a body ejecting a poison. Here, then, is the Old Testament undergirding for the power given to the New Testament church to carry out church censures, including excommunication if necessary, to preserve the holiness of the body of Christ. So there is a place for church discipline in keeping with the maintenance of the purity of the covenant of God’s people. First of all, there was this idea of turning after other gods. We might identify two further aspects of the offense related to the false prophets that are specified here in chapter 13, verse 5. First of all, the phony prophet preached rebellion against Yahweh, the Lord, their God, who brought them out of Egypt and redeemed them from the land of slavery.

    This redemption, of course, was the basis on which Israel was commanded to love Yahweh and to have no other gods. No other god had saved them. Yahweh alone had saved them out of Egypt. So deliberately going after other gods and even worse, leading others to do so was, to say the least, gross ingratitude. in the light of all Israel owed to Yahweh. No other God was owed anything. But a more serious effect of such desertion was that it would cut Israel off from the very source of their salvation.

    Yahweh was not merely their God, but he was their Savior God. Who, where would they turn then for salvation if they abandoned Yahweh? To go after other gods was to exchange the true God, whose saving power had already been proven, to go after other gods, who were no gods, who could not even save their own breath, let alone save their worshipers who might follow after them.

    Transferring this whole matter to our Christian context in the New Testament covenant times, the clearest criterion of what constitutes false or potentially idolatrous teaching from religious leaders, whether they claim prophetic gifts or not, whether they produce signs or wonders or not, is how does their teaching relate to the central tooth of the saving gospel of Jesus Christ? For Israel, the gospel of salvation was the story of the Exodus. For us, it is the story of the cross of the only begotten son of God. For both Israel for us and for us then, it is a matter of the essential priority of God’s grace and the good news of God’s historical redemption to distort these essentials or to lead people away from them into figments of human speculation is wicked idolatry, as our biblical text here this morning makes clear. And if the Lord dealt severely with Israel for failing to preserve the purity of the message of redemption entrusted to them, how much more ought we to fear and to hold all the more tenaciously to the gospel of salvation that has been entrusted to us.

    For there is none other, there is no other gospel, no other Savior than Jesus, no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved, Peter says in Acts 4.12. So we must cling tenaciously to that gospel. And we hear Paul when he says, I have determined to know nothing among you except Christ and Him crucified. And so we think again of Paul’s words.

    If I or even if an angel should come preaching another gospel with all signs and wonders, no matter, refuse to hear, refuse to listen to such a false teacher. Not only did the false prophet of old teach rebellion against Yahweh, but we also see in chapter 13, verse 5, that he has tried to seduce you from the way that the Lord commanded you to follow.

    Moses says to Israel, the expression, the way of the Lord usually has a strongly ethical meaning. It implies a whole orientation of personal and social life for the values, priorities and will of God. including a commitment to justice and compassion, to integrity, to purity. The way of Yahweh meant all these things for Israel. And so to go after other gods was to go a different way, to adopt different social, economic, political, and personal values.

    To turn from the true god is to turn from the truly human way of life also. Godlessness and inhumanity are correlative. They go hand in hand. You turn away from God, you’re going to see all manner of sin. Without love for God, on the other hand, there will be no love for neighbor.

    So once again, speaking into our context, in the Christian context, the Christian life is also described as walking in the way. Jesus himself is the way, the truth, and the life. Any so-called gospel is no gospel at all if it would turn us away from the way. Those who love Jesus will keep Jesus’ commandments.

    Signs and wonders do not necessarily authenticate the truth of the message, the purity of the motives or the integrity of the mission of those who perform them. The most awful perversions of biblical truth can sometimes be accompanied by the most awesome displays of miraculous signs and wonders. So we need to judge with our ears and not just with our eyes. As 1 John says, we must test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

    And by this you know the spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. That is the spirit of the Antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, John writes, And now it is already in the world, 1 John 4, 1 through 3. So we must test the spirits.

    As we turn back to our Deuteronomy passage, beyond the temptation to idolatry offered by the false prophets, in verses 1 to 5, we turn next to our second section, the temptation to idolatry in the private realm of the home and family, chapter 13, verses 6 through 11.

    And there the temptation would be all the more subtle, more difficult to detect, being done secretly, and much more difficult to resist because of the close relationships of family and the authority involved. The harshness of verse eight in chapter 13 of Deuteronomy has to be understood in this light. All human instincts would militate against exposing a renegade within the family or exposing a close friend. So the law had to address those instincts with powerful negatives, not to yield, even if it were a family member.

    Now, as in ancient Israelite society, ties of kinship, are the strongest of all or horizontal human loyalties. Theologically also, as we see in the applications of the fifth commandment, the family stood at the center of the triangular pattern of relationships between God, Israel, and the land. Moral and legal responsibilities to the family were understood to come higher than individual freedoms and rights. But although the family had priority over the individual, covenant loyalty to God had priority over both. Ties of family and friendship must not override covenant justice and the protection of the whole community.

    And the people of God must not allow themselves to be turned aside even when that temptation is coming to them from a close beloved family member. where family life and covenant loyalty intertwine, then the strongest possible bond with tremendous potential for long-term blessing is forged.

    But when they are thrown into conflict, when covenant and family stand opposite, then the most horrendous tensions can arise. These are often the most painful, the most costly conflicts that the believers have to face from the family. The family seeking to be loyal to the living God agonizes over one rebellious member living in idolatry or wanton sin. The individual seeking to be loyal to God, whether by mere profession of faith or by obedience to God’s call, can be torn apart if that loyalty is not shared by his family members or is actively attacked by those family and friends.

    I want you to remember Job and Jeremiah and how their friends treated them, how their family treated them after they confessed their belief in the Lord. Also remember Jesus himself, how he endured tension and temptation from family and friends. He faced pressure from his own close family and from a closest friend. We’re thinking of Peter in Matthew 16, who sought to deflect him from his path of covenant obedience to God. And Jesus in turn warned his disciples that they too would face such opposition.

    He even presented the potentially rival claims of God and family in the characteristic deuteronomic terms of love and hate. Deuteronomy 10 or Matthew 1037, where Jesus said, He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. And he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Now, neither Jesus nor Deuteronomy were by any stretch of the imagination anti-family.

    They both were, however, passionately anti-idolatry and recognized in the family one of the toughest and subtlest sources of human or hidden idolatry on which many a profession of loyalty to the kingdom of God has floundered. Family members who could not simply resist their family and friends fell by the way because they would not hear and heed the voice of God. So we’ve looked thus far at two categories, the false religious leaders, the false prophets, and then in turn family and friends. But beyond those temptations presented by the false leaders or even by family members who could lead the people astray.

    There is in Deuteronomy yet a third possible way in which such temptation could come to the people. And we see this in verses 12 through 18. Apostasy could grip a whole town, or dare we say a whole nation. And I say that very conscious of where we are today in the United States. Apostasy could grip a whole city or a whole nation under the influence of wicked men.

    These men could be but a small but influential group who seek to reintroduce the Canaanite ways of the pagan people or to suddenly introduce the false prophets of the other gods into the civil realm. We think, for example, of those men who supported Jezebel in the importation of the prophets of Baal in First Kings 21. Again, the enticement to Israel is, let us go and serve other gods whom you have not known. But again, the instruction given to the covenant people is clear and emphatic.

    You shall investigate and search out and inquire thoroughly. If it is true and the matter established that this abomination has been done among you, namely that these wicked men have tried to lead astray a whole city, you shall surely strike the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying it and all that is in it and its cattle with the edge of the sword, Moses says. The city and all its contents were to be burned as an offering to the Lord and placed under a perpetual ban in Israel. The city was never to be rebuilt.

    As we contemplate the severity of this chapter and chapters like this one in Deuteronomy 13, we want to breathe a collective sigh of relief that we are no longer under the sanctions of the theocracy of the Old Testament. Lest we, however, be tempted to diminish our estimation of the awfulness of apostasy and idolatry.

    Think about that for a moment. That’s what’s being put forward here. False teachers, family members, wicked men, trying to lead the people of Israel away from their God, away from the faith, into apostasy and into idolatry. And I’m asking you to consider the costliness of that. Unless we’d be tempted to diminish the estimation of how terrible that is apostasy and idolatry. Let us come again today to the cross of Jesus Christ. For only there do we come to understand the price of covenant faith, covenant faithfulness and covenant unfaithfulness. Jesus Christ completely devoted to his father’s will.

    The true covenant keeper refused to listen to those false religious teachers who sought in every way to silence him. Family and friends alike sought in every way to dissuade him from the way of the cross. But he only set his face that much more like Flint towards Jerusalem, where he, therefore, the joy set before him, would endure the cross, despising the shame that he might sit down in the joy that had been prepared for him at the right hand of the throne of God. Beloved, he endured the cross. He accepted all the shame and humiliation that went with it. the nakedness, the beatings at the hand of, yes, Pontius Pilate, the religious leader, that wicked ruler. He was dead, he was buried. Nay, more than that, infinitely more than that, he descended into hell, enduring the wrath and curse of God, the utter forsakenness.

    And we ask, for what? that the price would be paid, the price paid for our apostasy and our idolatry so that we would be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. So we think of our covenant keeper through whom we are redeemed.

    Beloved, we know, as John writes in 1 John, we know that we are of God and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. You don’t have to look very far to know that. That is true. And we know that the Son of God has come. We know that gospel. And he has given us understanding so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true, in his Son, in God’s Son, Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. And thus, the first epistle of John ends with those familiar words.

    Little children, guard yourselves from idols. Neither false teachers, nor family, nor wicked leaders in the nation or in the community should lead us astray from that true gospel we know, the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Little children, I address you on behalf of the Heavenly Father, guard yourselves from idols. Amen. Let’s pray together, shall we? Our Father, we would hear your word today. We would hear it powerfully in our hearts and souls.

    For we have all been tempted, tempted by those false teachers who offer another gospel that is no gospel at all. Indeed, we know, O Father, that liberalism is a lie. We know it is a lie. It’s an idolatrous lie. We know it, and we embrace the Lord Jesus Christ as he is so freely offered to us in the scriptures. And we know that the health and wealth gospel is a lie, no matter what those who profess it claim to be able to accomplish. It’s a lie. It’s a lie straight out of hell, and we know it. Our Father, help us to embrace the truth and to hold tightly to the gospel we have heard and believed and received. And our Father, each of us has been tempted by family members who have sought to dissuade us from the way of Jesus Christ.

    And yet we would not turn aside, O God, we would follow you and we would keep your commandments and thus we pray for the grace and help of the Holy Spirit. For we know that apart from that help we will surely stumble, we will surely fall. But those who are in Christ shall be kept and preserved unto eternal life, for ours is a great and wonderful Savior.

    And we pray, O Father, that we would at this time especially be in prayer for our communities and for our nation, as we know there are many wicked men and women who would lead us astray, who would lead us into false things, things that are contrary to our God, contrary to our Christian faith, and religion. May we recognize apostasy for what it is. May we recognize idolatry for what it is, O God. And may we, as your people, be found faithful, serving and honoring you with heart, mind, soul, and strength.

    And thus do we pray most humbly today, in the name of our Savior, that glorious name, that only name given unto men under heaven, whereby we may be saved. That glorious name of Jesus, may we never turn aside from it. and may we profess it and may we walk accordingly as your people we pray in Jesus. Amen.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • The Place the Lord Chooses for His Name

    The Place the Lord Chooses for His Name

    About this sermon

    Deuteronomy 12 commands Israel to destroy the Canaanite places of worship and to seek the Lord only at the place he would choose to make his name dwell, bringing their offerings there and rejoicing before him. The chapter is framed by matching warnings at its beginning and end. The place mattered because of the Lord’s name and presence there, not its location, and so it prepared for the temple to give way to Jesus Christ. Every knee will bow at his name, the name above every name.

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    Sermon transcript

    Reading of God’s Word this morning in the Book of Deuteronomy. I would ask that you would turn with me this morning to Deuteronomy chapter 12. Deuteronomy chapter 12. As we prepare to hear the Word of God. Yes, beloved, this is the word of God. Give your full, undivided attention to it. And I would especially ask, as we read this morning, that you would notice where the word Lord, in all capitals, L-O-R-D, which is the English translation way of representing the name Yahweh. I would ask that you would recognize, as we read through our passage this morning, those places and how often that name Yahweh appears in our text. I tried to draw attention to it also in the sermon this morning. Let us hear the word of our God and let us call upon His name today.

    These are the statutes and the judgments which you shall carefully observe in the land which the Lord Yahweh, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess as long as you live on the earth. You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations whom you shall dispossess serve their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree. You shall tear down their altars and smash their sacred pillars and burn their ashram with fire, and you shall cut down the engraved images of their gods and obliterate their name from that place. You shall not act like this toward the Lord, Yahweh your God, but you shall seek Yahweh at the place which Yahweh your God will choose from all your tribes to establish his name there for his dwelling, and there you shall come. There you shall bring your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the contribution of your hand, your vote of offerings, your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herd and of your flock.

    There also you and your household shall eat before Yahweh your God and rejoice in all your undertakings in which Yahweh your God has blessed you. You shall not do at all what we are doing here today, every man doing what is right in his own eyes, for you have not as yet come to the resting place and the inheritance which Yahweh your God is giving you. When you cross the Jordan and live in the land which Yahweh your God is giving you to inherit, and He gives you rest from all your enemies around you, so that you live in security, then it shall come about that the place in which Yahweh your God will choose for His name to dwell, there you shall bring all that I command you, your burned offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes, and the contribution of your hand and all your choice votive offerings, which you will vow to Yahweh. And there you shall rejoice before Yahweh your God, you and your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levite who is within your gate. since he has no portion or inheritance with you.

    Be careful that you do not offer your burnt offerings in every cultic place you see, but in the place which Yahweh chooses in one of your tribes. There you shall offer your burnt offerings, and there you shall do all that I command you. However, you may slaughter and eat meat within any of your gates, whatever you desire, according to the blessing of Yahweh your God, which he has given you.

    The unclean and the clean may eat of it, as of the gazelle and the deer. Only you shall not eat the blood. You are to pour it out on the ground like water. You are not allowed to eat within your gates the tithe of your grain or new wine or oil, or the firstborn of your herd or flock, or any of your votive offerings which you vow, or your freewill offerings, or the contribution of your hand.

    But you shall eat them before Yahweh your God in the place which Yahweh your God will choose, you and your son and daughter, and your male and female servants, and the Levite who is within your gates. And you shall rejoice before Yahweh your God in all your undertakings. Be careful that you do not forsake the Levite as long as you live in your land. When Yahweh your God extends your border, As he has promised you, and you say, I will eat meat, because you desire to eat meat, then you may eat meat, whatever you desire. If the place which Yahweh your God chooses to put his name is too far from you, then you may slaughter of your herd and flock which Yahweh has given you, as I have commanded you.

    And you may eat within your gates whatever you desire. Just as a gazelle or a deer is eaten, so you will eat it. The unclean and the clean alike may eat of it. Only be sure not to eat the blood, for the blood is the life, and you shall not eat the life with the flesh. You shall not eat it. You shall pour it out on the ground like water.

    You shall not eat it so that it may be well with you and your sons after you, for you will be doing what is right in the sight of Yahweh. only your holy things which you may have, and your votive offerings you shall take, and go to the place which Yahweh chooses, and you shall offer your burnt offerings, the flesh and the blood, on the altar of Yahweh your God, and the blood of your sacrifices shall be poured out on the altar of Yahweh your God, and you shall eat the flesh. Be careful to listen to all these words which I command you, so that it may be well with you and your sons after you forever, For you will be doing what is good and right in the sight of Yahweh your God. When Yahweh your God cuts off before you the nations which you are going in to dispossess, and you dispossess them and dwell in their land, beware that you are not ensnared to follow them after they are destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, how do these nations serve their gods, that I also may do likewise? You shall not behave thus toward Yahweh your God, for every abominable act which Yahweh hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods. Whatever I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it nor take away from it.”

    Thus ends the reading of Deuteronomy 12. And also let us turn over to the book of Philippians in the New Testament. Philippians chapter 2. Now our bulletins say verses 9 through 11. I’m actually going to begin reading at verse 5. Philippians chapter 2 verse 5 and reading through verse 11.

    Hear the word of God. Have this attitude in yourself, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a bondservant and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Thus ends the reading of God’s inspired holy word this morning. on that.

    Once again, let us turn our attention to the book of Deuteronomy and particularly chapter 12 this morning. As we begin this morning, it might be helpful to take a small step back and remind ourselves where we are in terms of the whole of the book of Deuteronomy. It is only within the framework of the administration of God’s covenant of redemption that Deuteronomy can be adequately interpreted. So we need to see ourselves in terms of the whole book today. The covenant, the covenant of grace, the covenant of redemption, and the promises given to the patriarchs is finally and truly fulfilled, we know, in Jesus Christ.

    But that covenant also had a provisional and a typical fulfillment in the covenants mediated to Israel through Moses. In the covenant made at Sinai, the theocracy was established. In other words, the exclusive rule of God as king, theocracy. And in that theocracy, Moses was established as earthly representative of Yahweh’s kingship over Israel. Then when the rebellious Exodus generation had perished in the wilderness and Moses’s own death was imminent, it was necessary to renew the covenant to the second generation. The central decisive act of the ceremony of renewing the covenant was the consecration of the servant people by an oath to their divine Lord. In particular, God’s reign as symbolically represented in the earthly mediatorial kingship must be confirmed by securing from Israel a commitment to obey Joshua as the successor to Moses in that dynasty.

    Part of the standard procedure followed in the ancient Near East when the great king, or in this case Yahweh the great king, gave his covenant to a vassal people A standard procedure was the preparation of the text of the ceremony as the treaty document and witness.

    The Book of Deuteronomy then is the document prepared by Moses as a witness to the dynastic covenant which the Lord gave to Israel in the plains of Moab. God is setting himself forth as the great king and calling Israel to himself as his vassal people. And so in the whole of the Book of Deuteronomy we begin in the first few verses of chapter one with what we would call an introductory preamble to the covenant treaty. And there in those first few verses of chapter one, God through Moses went on to provide a historic after a preamble in which he identifies himself as Yahweh to this people. God went on to speak through Moses and to give a historical prologue that rehearsed Israel’s covenant history. In other words, for several chapters, Moses recounts what God, Yahweh, had done for Israel in bringing them out of Egypt and through the wilderness to the very place where they now stand in the plains of Moab on the verge of the Jordan River. So Moses rehearsed in those earlier chapters Israel’s covenant history, wherein they were reminded of how the Lord brought them out of Egypt, met with them at Mount Horeb or at Mount Sinai, as we know it, and consequently led them through the wilderness and brought them finally to the brink of the promised land where they now stood, even at this day, on the verge of the Jordan River.

    And this historical prologue covers roughly chapters 1 through 6 of the whole of the Book of Deuteronomy. And then Moses goes on from there in chapters 5 through 11, a section that we’ve just completed, actually, to delineate anew for Israel the inner spirit of theocratic life. In other words, what should it look like in the life and heart of the people of God? And we remember from that section of chapters five through 11, such dramatic words as chapter six, verse four, which reads, and you’ll recognize it.

    Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our Lord. Yahweh is our Lord. The Lord, Yahweh, is one. You shall love Yahweh, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Or again, we might recall the words of chapter 10, verses 12 and 13, which read, Now Israel, what does Yahweh your God require from you? But to fear Yahweh your God, to walk in all his ways and love him, and to serve Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the Lord’s commandments and his statutes which I am commanding you today for your good. Such was to be Israel’s relationship to Yahweh their God.

    And now that concludes chapters 5 through 11. So now we’re ready to begin chapter 12 today. So now here in chapter 12, Moses goes on to detail, in keeping with the organization of the treaty document, the ordinances and the institutions of the theocracy’s outward form. Just as there was a preamble and then the historical prologue, and then there is this section that would be described as the stipulations of what God required of his people.

    Now he’s going to go on from there to describe specific ordinances and institutions that God Yahweh was giving to the people Israel. And this section on ordinances and institutions will actually continue here from chapter 12 through chapter 26. in particular chapters 12 through 16 are primarily concerned with what we would call cultic ceremonial consecration requirements. That is what the Lord requires in terms of Israel’s public outward worship.

    That is, in other words, what we would know as the ceremonial law. So here in chapter 12 begins what we would consider the ceremonial law as understood by the Westminster Confession. And from there, Moses will go on to address the civil law, another kind of law found in the Pentateuch. He’ll go on to address the civil law that will cover Israel’s conduct as citizens of the theocratic kingdom in the promised land that they are about to occupy.

    The stipulations will conclude, stipulations we begin today here in chapter 12, will conclude in chapter 26. conclude in chapter 26 with rituals of cultic confession of Yahweh’s lordship, and then a final declaration of covenant ratification. So this whole of the book of Deuteronomy is a reaffirmation, a confirmation of the covenant that God has with his people. And then there will be a final declaration of covenant ratification, followed by the prescribed sanctions in the declaration of curses and blessings that will appear in chapters 27 and 28 And then the book will end with the death of Moses. Moses, having laid hands on Joshua, Joshua, who will in turn lead the people of God into the promised land, as is described in the book of Joshua, which follows Deuteronomy and thereafter.

    Chapter 12, you will see begins in verse one with an inspired superscription as a heading, if you will, to this new section that we’re beginning today. In verse one, we read, These are the statutes and the judgments which you shall carefully observe in the land, which Yahweh, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess as long as you shall live on the earth. Notice immediately and emphatically the use of the name Yahweh here, represented in our English Bibles as the word Lord, all capital letters.

    And notice here also, as in the preface to the Ten Commandments, the pattern of grace, Yahweh’s work of deliverance precedes the call for the response of commandment keeping. Unmerited grace precedes and enables obedience. That is always true, and that is certainly true of the Book of Deuteronomy. Unmerited grace precedes and enables obedience on the part of Israel.

    Yahweh is the name of Israel’s God. He is the God, the covenant-keeping God, who revealed his name to Moses and to his people. who reveals his name and his character in the Exodus as the great I am, I am who I am, as he tells Moses. Yahweh is the name of Israel’s God, the covenant-keeping God, and he has revealed his name to this particular people, Israel. And he says in Deuteronomy 5, 6, by way of preface to the Ten Commandments, we see the pattern of grace. He begins, before the Ten Commandments, he says, I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

    And here in chapter 12, verse one, again repeating that pattern, he says, Moses says, he is Yahweh, the God of your fathers, who has given you the land before you to possess. Pay close attention to the repeated use of the name Yahweh throughout this chapter, as I trust you have this morning. This is critical to a right understanding of the text. The central interest of the laws in this section is to guarantee a thoroughgoing consecration to Yahweh with Israel’s exclusive loyalty to Yahweh in its worship.

    They were to worship none other than Yahweh, their God, thus reflecting the first three commandments of the Decalogue here. Yahweh saying, as he does in the first three commands, and you can see them reflected here in this chapter 12, You shall have no other gods before me.

    You shall not make for yourself an idol or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them nor serve them, for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing loving kindness to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not take the name of Yahweh, your God, in vain. For Yahweh will not leave him unpunished who takes his name in vain.”

    And I ask you once again to see in the pattern of the Deuteronomy, but also in the commands themselves, the manner in which God’s name is being brought to the forefront. You remember how Old Testament Israel, the Jews, were even afraid to pronounce the four letter pronunciation of Yahweh’s name. They thought that was unholy even to pronounce his name.

    But I hear your preacher this morning dares to not only preach it, but to repeat it repeatedly. I asked you to see in chapter 12, in terms of the literary structure of the whole of the chapter, that we see how the first four verses, one through four, are virtually repeated in the last four verses, 29 to 32. and just like a sandwich, a beginning and an ending section, verses 1 to 4 and 29 to 32, paralleling one another. And so it is, then, that the meat of the chapter is sandwiched in between those two short sections. The whole chapter must be interpreted in the light of this framework. The primary point at issue is the contrast with Canaanite ways.

    Israel was to utterly destroy all the places where the nations of Canaan, whom they were to dispossess, served their gods. Verse 3 says, you shall tear down their altars, you shall smash their sacred pillars, burn their ashram with fire, and you shall cut down the engraved images of their gods.

    And notice emphatically, obliterate their names from those places. To remove the names of the Canaanite gods was to remove the presence of those gods, to remove their presence and the expectation of their power, just as the putting of Yahweh’s name in a place was to fill it with his availability and his nearness. But they could not coexist. The names of other gods must be deleted, God is telling Israel through Moses. They were to completely destroy those places that bore the name, that their names might be obliterated from the land. The names of the other gods must be deleted, destroyed, right along with all their paraphernalia.

    The change must be radical, negating One group of names and establishing another name, in effect, calls for a whole new order, a transformation, a shift from an order where there are multiple claims for human allegiance and where human design determines the place and the nature of the worship. This new order is to, this old order is to give way to another.

    We’re in divine control. Yahweh’s control is placed over human worship. And one name, that is his name, Yahweh, replaces all other names. In contrast to the pagan sanctuaries of the Canaanite gods and their names, the Israelites were to seek the place, the place that Yahweh, their God, would choose for them. Their worship was to take place neither at the religious shrines of the former inhabitants, nor at any place they just happened to fancy every man doing what was right in his own eyes. Verse 8. No, absolutely not. Verse 10.

    When you cross the Jordan and live in the land which Yahweh, your God, is giving you to inherit, and he gives you rest from all your enemies around you so that you live in security, then it shall come about that the place in which Yahweh, your God, will choose for his name to dwell.

    There you shall bring all that I command you, your burned offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and the contribution of your hand, and all your choice load of offerings which you will vow to Yahweh. And you shall rejoice before Yahweh your God, you and your sons and daughters, your male and your female servants, and the Levite who is within your gates. Look at verse 13. Be careful that you do not offer your burnt offerings in every cultic place you see, but in the place which Yahweh chooses in one of your tribes. There you shall offer your burnt offerings, and there you shall do all that I command you.

    I would ask you to notice in this context that while there is prophecy that Yahweh will choose the place, the place itself is not named. It’s not named in this chapter at all. Not that the Lord could not name the place as if he did not know, but the lack of a place name serves only to underline the importance of the name that is being installed there. It’s not the place, it’s the name of Yahweh that is of central importance to this chapter and to the commands that are being given. the name of Yahweh, and all of their offerings, their tithes and the contribution of their hand, their choice vote of offerings, which they would vow to Yahweh. And they were to rejoice before Yahweh their God, Israel and their sons and daughters, their male and their female servants, the Levite who was within their gates, being careful, verse 13, that they do not offer their burnt offerings in every cultic place that they would see, but in the place alone which Yahweh chooses in one of your tribes. There you shall offer your burnt offerings, and there you shall do all that I command you. We notice in the context again that the place itself is not named, not that the Lord could not name the place, but the lack of the place name serves only to underline the importance of the name that is being installed there, Yahweh’s name.

    And so now, As we know redemptive history and know Old Testament history, we know that Israel did not wipe out all the names of the gods known in Canaanite religion. Baal and Asherim and the Ashtoreth lived on in the minds and in the spirits of the people as well, we come to understand. Again and again, we see in the Old Testament how Israel compromised the true worship of Yahweh with the words and the ways of the false religions that they found in Canaan. Much confusion and error has resulted, even from a wrongful preoccupation with the place, if you will, in geographical terms, linking the place to a historical program of centralization in Jerusalem. And we know that God did establish worship in Jerusalem in the temple.

    But notice from our text that the emphasis is not the place, but the name that is to be placed there. For indeed, to emphasize the place is to invert the priority of the text before us today, a text which is concerned not so much with the location of the place, but with the election of that place by Yahweh himself.

    What matters here is not where, but who. Likewise, the Canaanite sanctuaries were to be destroyed, not because of where they were, or because they were many of them, but because of their names, that is, whose they were. Those were the gods of the peoples. That’s why they were to be destroyed.

    In the wider context of redemptive revelation, the valuing of a place because of Yahweh’s choice and presence, rather than because of its location, sows the seed for the New Testament’s transference of the significance of the place of worship. the temple would give way to the person of Jesus Christ as the focus of worship in the messianic age.

    He, after all, is the better Joshua, who leads the people to the final eschatological destination. For what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did, Yahweh did, sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as an offering for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. As Jesus says, an hour is coming and now is when the true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and truth. For such people, the father seeks to be his worshipers. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth. To the Samaritan woman, Jesus could say, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain, by Jacob’s well, Nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.

    Christ’s sacrifice and offering is the perfect and acceptable sacrifice. And being found as he was from Philippians 2, being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also God highly exalted him. And what? And God bestowed on him the name, which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

    His name is Jesus, which means, you know, Yahweh saves. Yes, Jesus, Yahweh has saved his people, not by works of the law according to the flesh, which we could never have done, which Israel could never do. But Yahweh, Jesus has saved his people. And he is the name. Jesus is the name which is above every other name. And that name is claimed for Jesus alone, and will ultimately be acknowledged by all in every place. He is the judge of all the earth, all authority, and heaven and on earth has been given to him. After all, His is the only name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved. Acts chapter 4, verse 12. Jesus alone is the way, the truth, and the life. Let it be preached to the ends of the world. He is the way. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by Jesus.

    And together then, as his people, let us exalt the name of Jesus, and no other name, even now, as we come to his table, the table which Jesus has prepared for us, as we continue our worship to the Lord’s Supper. Let us be mindful of the, not the place, but the name, the name of our Savior, who has saved us, saved us from all our sins, and set us free. In that name we pray, amen. And so let us prepare to come to the table that Jesus has set for his people.

    As we prepare for the Lord’s Supper this day, I begin by reading the words of institution as they are found in the book of 1 Corinthians in chapter 11. This is 1 Corinthians 11, verse 1. Hear the word of the Lord, as Paul the Apostle writes. Chapter 11, beginning at verse 23.

    For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, in the night in which he was betrayed, took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, he took the cup also after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

    For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But a man must examine himself, and in so doing, he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself, if he does not judge the body rightly. For this reason, many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep.

    But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord, so that we will not be condemned along with the world. So then, my brethren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. If anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, so that you will not come together for judgment. The remaining matters I will arrange when I come.” As we prepare ourselves to come to the Lord’s table, let’s turn to our next hymn, which is hymn number 133. Let us sing together hymn number 133, shall we?

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • The Tablets Restored

    The Tablets Restored

    About this sermon

    After Israel’s sin with the golden calf, the Lord had Moses cut new tablets and wrote the Ten Commandments on them again, and Moses placed them in the ark. Aaron, though he had sinned greatly, was forgiven and his son succeeded him as priest, and the Levites were set apart to carry the ark and to bless in the Lord’s name. The restored tablets in the ark were a reminder that God remained faithful to his covenant. The Lord’s Supper is a similar sign of his faithfulness, and the humble and contrite are invited to his table.

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    Sermon transcript

    I invite you to turn with me this morning in the word of God to Deuteronomy chapter 10. Deuteronomy chapter 10. Be reminded once again that this is the inspired and living word of the true and living God, our Savior. Deuteronomy chapter 10. At that time, the Lord said to me, cut out for yourself two tablets of stone like the former ones and come up to me on the mountain and make an arc of wood for yourself. I will write on the tablets, the words that were on the former tablets, which you shattered and you shall put them in the arc. So I made an ark of acacia wood and cut out two tablets of stone like the former ones and went up on the mountain with the two tablets in my hand. He wrote on the tablets, like the former writing, the Ten Commandments, which the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly. and the Lord gave them to me. Then I turned, and came down from the mountain, and put the tablets in the ark which I had made. And there they are, as the Lord commanded me.

    Now the sons of Israel set out from Be’eroth b’nei Jaqan to Moserah. There Aaron died, and there he was buried, and Eleazar his son ministered as priest in his place. From there they set out to Gadgadah, and from Gadgadah to Jadbathah, a land of brooks of water. At that time, the Lord set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, to stand before the Lord, to serve him, and to bless in his name until this day. Therefore, Levi does not have a portion or inheritance with his brothers.

    The Lord is his inheritance, just as the Lord your God spoke to him. I, moreover, stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights, like the first time. And the Lord listened to me that time also. The Lord was not willing to destroy you. Then the Lord said to me, Arise, proceed on your journey ahead of the people, that they may go in and possess the land which I swore to their fathers to give them.

    Now Israel, what does the Lord your God require from you? But to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways and love him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the Lord’s commandments and his statutes, which I am commanding you today for your good.

    Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the highest heavens, the earth and all that is in it. Yet on your fathers did the Lord set his affection to love them, and he chose their descendants after them, even you above all peoples as it is this day. So circumcise your heart and stiffen your neck no longer, for the Lord your God is the God of gods and the Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God who does not show partiality nor take a bribe, He executes justice for the orphan and the widow and shows his love for the alien by giving him food and clothing. So show your love for the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the Lord your God. You shall serve him and cling to him, and you shall swear by his name.

    He is your praise, and he is your God, who has done these great and awesome things for you, which your eyes have seen. Your fathers went down to Egypt, 70 persons in all, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven. Thus ends the reading of God’s holy word.

    Let us pray together, shall we? Our father, let it be our great joy to be here among your people today. Let us be eager and ready now to hear and by the grace of the spirit made able to hear the word of God and to lay it up in our hearts and to bring forth the fruit of us of it. We thank you for your great love and affection as you have shown it to us in your Son, Jesus Christ, and we pray that in turn we might love you, O God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and may we love one another with that love with which we have been loved in Christ. And may you bless this day that in all things Christ might have the first place in our hearts, in our lives, our minds, our wills, that to Him would be the glory and the praise and the honor, both now and forevermore. And we do pray, Father, that you’ll give grace to the preacher as he opens the word of God today, that we might receive it from his mouth as it is the word of God with understanding and grace and power and that power coming from above by the working of the Holy Spirit. And this we do pray now in the name of our Savior Jesus and for his name’s sake. Amen.

    As we turn to Deuteronomy 10 this morning, we see that Moses had continued to speak to the people Israel about the sad events of 40 years earlier at Mount Horeb, that is at Mount Sinai, when the people, by making the image of the golden calf, their fathers before them had grieved the God who loved them.

    The sins of infidelity and ingratitude had seriously damaged the covenant relationship. Moses, their sacrificial intercessor, however, was concerned both for God’s honor and the people’s salvation. Moses had, as it were, stood in the breach between an angry God and a sinning people. Their iniquity was passed over and the relationship was restored, and the renewed community could then continue their journey towards the promised land, facing the future with gratitude and confidence in their God.

    Moses did not tell the story to the children of the offenders simply to open up sore wounds. He was using their history as a warning device. God can use even our worst sins for our good. God’s kindness in forgiving sin is offered not to harden us in sin so that we can go on sinning, but that we might repent and turn from it independence upon him all the more. In years to come, that grim apostasy at Mount Sinai would be recalled both in the Old Testament and in the New, not simply to condemn the idolaters that they were, but to warn later generations of similar dangers. God is generous in his love and mercy. Although Moses uses the incident to alert the waiting people to similar dangers awaiting them in Canaan, they are not left in any doubt concerning the dependable, forgiving love of God.

    In the teachings here of chapters 10 and 11 of Deuteronomy, you’ll see that love is the central theme. God’s love is the central theme of these chapters. And this extended passage of chapters 10 and 11 brings Moses’s historical review to a close. Back in chapters 8 and 9, he has been reviewing the history of Israel, the history of the wilderness trek. And so as we come to chapters 10 and 11, we’re coming to the end of that historical review. And the people must not be left simply with a depressing account of human sin, but with a reassuring exposition of God’s love.

    As this main address then moves to its conclusion, Moses refers to God’s love for his people. Look at chapter 10 verse 15 and of his love of their love for him. Chapter 10 verse 12, which will carry us all also over into chapter 11 where you might note particularly in verses one, 13 and 22 that also speak of love. Moses also describes God’s love for the alien, chapter 10, verse 18, and the consequent responsibility of the Israelites to love the alien as well, chapter 10, verses 19 and 20.

    The people who are about to enter Canaan are therefore reminded that God’s love is patient. While Moses has been recalling the Horeb story, the Sinai story, he speaks to the congregation about God’s patience and his forbearance that had been shown to Israel’s people, to Aaron’s family particularly, and to the tribe of Levi.

    In verses one through five of our chapter today, Moses makes sure that the people remember how God told his servant to chisel out two more stone tablets like the former ones. You will notice that this observation is made four times in as many verses in verses one to four, like the former ones. The New American Standard Bible uses that word former, while several other versions prefer the translation first. The two tablets of stone Moses was to cut out were like the first ones, the former ones which he had shattered when Israel had so terribly broken the covenant by creating the golden calf. Although the first tablets had been broken, the Lord, here we are told and reminded, invited Moses to make a new record of the agreement, and the freshly made tablets were to be placed in the Ark of the Covenant.

    Although the people had sinned, and dramatically breaking the commandments of God, even in the very face of God, as it were, God was giving them an entirely new beginning. They did not deserve to be pardoned, to have their sins passed over, but it is the nature of God’s love to forbear, to forgive, and to do so fully, completely, and immediately. Those repeated words, like the former ones, are a striking reminder of God’s generous pardon. God graciously dealt with Israel in accordance with Moses’ intercession on behalf of the people.

    But those words, like the former ones, are also instructive in pointing us beyond Sinai to the need for a new and better covenant. It would appear that the prophet Jeremiah is setting forth the promise of the new covenant in Jeremiah 31 verse 31 and following, particularly picking up on the need for a new covenant when he says that this new covenant will not be not like the covenant which the Lord made with the fathers of Israel in the day when he took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant, which they broke. In the New Covenant, the Lord would put His law within His people and on their heart, and would He write it. And He, as He promises according to that New Covenant, He will be their God and they will be His people. This is the covenant which the Lord has made in the power and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

    And while I recognize here in saying that that I’m leaping well ahead of the story in Deuteronomy. Nevertheless, I want to remind you that these things beloved about Israel in Deuteronomy were written for our instruction, a people upon whom the ends of the ages have come. First Corinthians 10 10 11. So let us return for a moment to Deuteronomy 10 verses six and seven.

    And there we are reminded that Aaron, the priest that God had appointed, had sinned. There was no doubt about that. The first two commandments had made it clear that the Israelites were to have no other gods, nor were they to make any graven image. But the people had said, come, make us gods, Aaron. And in response to their demands, Aaron’s own hands had fashioned the golden calf.

    The prohibition against idolatry plainly said that those who rejected God’s love by worshiping images would encounter the wrath of a jealous God who would visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations. But notice there in the text how Moses reminds the people that in God’s mercy, Aaron was permitted to assume, reassume his leadership responsibilities again. And after his death, even his son Eliezer ministered as priest in his place. Verse six, the sins of that particular father were not visited. It appears upon his children. Aaron’s great transgression was met with God’s forbearance and forgiveness and love.

    The new tablets on which the commandments were written were preserved in an ark, a wooden box created according to divine command. And it was made with poles so that it could be carried on the journey by a specially appointed family of priests from the tribe of Levi. The ark was overlaid with gold, and its lid was known as the mercy seat. When the people sinned, the sacrificial blood was sprinkled on the mercy seat to make atonement for the sins of the people.

    Moreover, the ark was to be a visible reminder to the people of God’s presence in their midst. It was there at the ark in the tabernacle that God met with Moses. Images or representations of God were strictly forbidden, for the Lord knew that the people would be helped, but the Lord knew that the people would be helped by the symbols of outward signs of his presence and power. The Lord also knew that his people could easily lose their spiritual and moral values.

    So a particular tribe, the Levites, were set apart to become God’s ministers to remind them of holy things along the way. As the Levites carried the ark on the long pilgrimage across the desert, they were witnessing to the fact of God’s presence there in the midst of the people, and God’s word, the two tables of the law, and remind them of the law and of God’s mercy. The tribe of Levi was in itself a symbol of the importance of spiritual realities and the generosity of God in making such rich provision for their basic human needs. In addition to carrying the ark, verse eight, They were that is the Levites were to serve the Lord.

    They were to stand before the Lord to serve him and to bless his name and to pronounce his blessings on the people, making them aware of the things which mattered most of all. The Levites were not to be given an allocation of land like the other tribes in the promised land. Instead, they were to be supported by the people. If they gave themselves wholeheartedly to their teaching, pastoral and intercessory ministries among the Israelites, divine resources would always meet their daily needs.

    The devoted priest was God’s messenger to the people. The Lord himself undertook to be the priest’s special inheritance. Verse nine, as you know, the Levites, given no inheritance in the land, were nevertheless were told that the Lord himself, Yahweh, is your portion, your inheritance. And the Lord would be as generous to the priest as to all the other tribes. They would certainly not suffer any deprivation because they had put God’s work first.

    In a brief description found in verses 10 and 11 of his intercessory ministry on the mountain, Moses reminded the people of five important aspects of the Lord’s gracious patience. First, he reminds them that the Lord heard my prayers. The Lord listened to me, Moses says. And secondly, he says the Lord was not willing to destroy you.

    And thirdly, the Lord urged Moses to arise and proceed upon his journey ahead of the people, providing guidance and assuring the people, fifthly, that they would go in and possess the land, the land which he had sworn to their fathers to give them. And thus it is appropriate at this point to pause and to take stock of this particular redemptive historical moment in the life of Israel. Rather than having been destroyed by the Lord’s wrath at Mount Sinai, through the intercession of Moses, the Lord had relented of the destruction of this stiff-necked people, and their wilderness journey had continued instead. And so it was, even on that very day that Moses was speaking these words of Deuteronomy 10, the people of Israel now stood by the Jordan River on the brink of the promised land. God had proved faithful to them over those years. The outcome of Moses’s historic intercession on Mount Sinai is made clear by the report of the renewed covenant here in chapter 10, verses one to five, and the renewed journey that had brought them to this point 40 years later.

    The rewriting of the Ten Commandments and the continuation of the priestly ministry were evidences of the Lord’s covenantal mercy to Israel. This is pictured very graphically for Israel. In verse five, Moses could point and say, there they are. They’re referring to the Ark of the Covenant, which contained the two tablets of the law.

    In this visual phenomenon was represented the very presence of Yahweh, the God of Israel, who remained in their midst as he had promised in the light of all that had come to pass between the beginning and the end of their 40-year trek in the wilderness, Israel indeed should be now a chastened people about to move into the promised land, a people with every confidence in their God, but with no illusions about themselves, certainly having no grounds for claims of self-righteousness. Thus, the preacher Moses had returned to some familiar themes as he recounts the historical survey of God’s dealing with his people And we might recall for a moment that again, the Book of Deuteronomy has the format or the form of a treaty of the great of the great treaty that God made with his people. And we would recall that mere Eastern treaties of those days frequently began with an account of earlier relationships between the two parties in making the agreement. The historical prologue to the treaty was usually followed by some general principles, a description of qualities and attitudes which were to govern the relationship in the years ahead. Notice in verses 12-15 of our text, 12-15 and following, how the language of love was given a prominent place in the covenant renewal that God makes here with his people through Moses.

    The Lord is the creator, the sustainer, and the ruler of the entire universe. He is the sovereign, the suzerain who is making treaty with this, making covenant with this people. And he is the creator, sustainer and ruler, the sovereign Lord. And yet that sovereign Lord we see in these verses chose one very small nation, that nation of Israel to be the recipient and the instrument of his special purposes in the world.

    The people are told that. Though that there were so many other nations that He might have used, the Lord set His affections on Israel’s fathers to love them, and He chose their seed after them, above all peoples, verse 15. In other words, the Sovereign Lord could have done what He wanted to do, but He chose among the nations Israel and the seed of Israel to be His people. And the covenant relationship was based on the Lord’s commitment to love them. not on their decision to follow him. The initiative was with God and it, of course, still is with God.

    And as we think in terms of New Covenant context, the Apostle John shared the gospel expression of this idea in New Covenant terms when he writes in 1 John, for example, 1 John 4, verse 10, This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. As Moses could point to the ark containing the two tablets of the law, and in so doing, remind the people of the Lord’s covenant faithfulness and love.

    So I do today also pause and for a moment ask that you would place your attention upon the communion table that is set before you. Here is a visible sign and reminder of the Lord’s covenant faithfulness and love to you, beloved. Here we are once again reminded of Christ’s supreme intervention and intercession on our behalf. For as often as we eat this bread and do drink this cup, we do show forth the Lord’s death until he comes. To be sure, we are also reminded in the supper that the body and blood of Christ are not corporally or carnally present in the bread and wine. Rather, Christ is spiritually present to the faith of those who receive the sacrament. But as surely as one sees and tastes and feels the elements, just as truly and really are the body and blood spiritually present for us. Those who worthily receive this sacrament do receive and apply unto themselves Christ crucified and all the benefits of his death.

    Are we not also reminded here that our salvation is not something we ourselves have done? It is all of Christ doing. It is what Christ did. Even as Moses could point to the ark and to the tablets that were before the people of Israel, reminding them how God had renewed covenant with them and remained faithful to his covenant commitment to them. So we can come to the table today and be reminded that this is all of what Christ has done for us.

    Let us consider earnestly together this morning our great need of having our comfort, our strength so renewed in this, our earthly pilgrimage and spiritual warfare, that it is through Christ alone that we are nourished and sustained on the way. And it is through Christ alone that we shall reach our blessed heavenly final destination, the great heavenly promised land that is prepared for us. God, in other words, does not simply love in word. His love is practical. It’s not merely theoretical.

    It is expressed in his everyday relationships with his people. And thus Moses expounds the visible outworking of God’s love in human experience. The divine love was manifested not simply in Israel’s election, but in his constant protection throughout the years. The Lord their God, the God of gods and the Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, executes his justice and extends his love not only to the vast community, but also to the bereaved family, in his providential care, as we’re told here, for widows, for orphans, for aliens. He does not show partiality, nor does he take a bribe, but he shows himself the God of love to all manner of men, to women, and to children as well. And he disciplines those whom he loves.

    God’s love for his people is the foundation of his covenant. And the initiative is with God. And although the initiative is with God, there are two parties to the agreement. Israel must respond to God’s love by loving him in return. Moreover, as the Lord demonstrates his love in his practical deeds, so too must they do the same.

    The covenant requirements are undeniably explicit. And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require from you? I think this is verse 12. But to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and love Him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the Lord’s commandments and His statutes.

    The Lord stipulates that his people are to give expression to their love for him and their commitment to his covenant. People will know that they love God because of their reverential worship, by holy living and by their willing obedience, their active service and their wholehearted devotion to Yahweh.

    And notice, as we read of this covenant in Deuteronomy, that these are not tyrannical rules, oppressive regulations designed merely for God’s pleasure, but for human pain. But neither are they merely outward ceremonies. The Lord is specially concerned about those things that cultivate the inner life of the believer and the covenant community to which they belong. This is the stuff, beloved, also of the new covenant.

    As Paul says in the book of Romans chapter 8, what the law could not do, God did. Nothing less than new hearts with the commandments written upon those hearts would do. Nothing less than the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Nothing less the propitiation of divine justice would satisfy. Nothing less than the powerful sovereign working of the spirit in regeneration, working faith and repentance, producing sanctification and glorification.

    Yes, we love because God first loved us. He did not merely command, but he also gives what he commands. He gives the Holy Spirit to his people. And the sins that he had previously passed over In the manifestation of his forbearance and forgiveness in the fullness of the time, the Lord summarily atoned for those sins in the death of his own begotten son, his only begotten son, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, the promised seed of the covenant.

    He is our praise and he is our God who has done these great and awesome things for us, which we have now seen by faith. We are that alien people whom God has loved. We were once no people, but now we are the people whom he has made to be his people. He is ours and we are his. He is our great inheritance. May to God alone be the glory among the people of God. To God alone be the glory in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen. Let’s respond to God’s word as we sing together hymn number 188. Hymn number 188. Let’s stand together as we sing, shall we?

    There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel’s veins. And sinners part beneath that flood. Lose all their guilty stains. Lose all their guilty stains. And sinners plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains. The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day, and there have I as my own. as He washed all my sins away. Washed all my sins away. Washed all my sins away. And there have I as vile as He washed all my sins away. E’er since, by faith, I saw the stream, the flowing woods of life, redeeming love has been my feet, and shall be till I die.

    ♪ And shall be till I die ♪ ♪ Redeeming love has been my theme ♪ ♪ And shall be till I die ♪ ♪ Dear dying man, thy precious blood ♪ ♪ Shall never lose its power ♪ Be safe to Syndamore. Be safe to Syndamore. Be safe to Syndamore. Till all the ransomed Church of God Be safe to Syndamore. Please be seated.

    The words of institution of the Lord’s Supper this day come from Matthew chapter 26, where we read, while they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing, he broke it and gave it to the disciples and said, hey, eat. This is my body. And when he had taken a cup and given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, drink from it, all of you. For this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sin. But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new. with you in my Father’s Kingdom.

    We must understand the nature of the feast of which we are about to partake. Our directory for worship explains it this way. The Lord’s Supper is an ordinance instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ. Until His coming again, it is to be observed for a perpetual remembrance of the sacrifice of Himself on the cross. The physical elements representing a broken body and the shed blood of the Savior are received by true believers as signs and seals of all the benefits of His sacrifice upon the cross. They signify and seal remission of sins and nourishment and growth in Christ and are a bond and pledge of communion of believers with him and with each other as members of his mystical body. As signs and seals of the covenant of grace, they not only declare that God is faithful and true to fulfill the promise summon us to all the duties of the children of God, and call us to renewed consecration in gratitude for salvation.

    But who may come to this feast? Our book continues. It is my solemn duty to warn the uninstructed, the profane, the scandalous, to innocently live in any sin, not to approach the holy table, lest they partake unworthily, not discerning the Lord’s body, and so eat and drink condemnation to themselves. Nevertheless, this warning is not designed to keep the humble and contrite from the table of the Lord, as if the supper were for those who might be free from sin, On the contrary, we who are invited to the supper, coming as guilty and polluted sinners, and without hope of eternal life, apart from the grace of God in Christ, confess our dependence for pardon and cleansing upon the perfect sacrifice of Christ, base our hope of eternal life upon His perfect obedience and righteousness, and humble ourselves to deny ourselves crucify our old natures and follow Christ, and become those who bear His name. Let us therefore, in accordance with the admonition of the Apostle Paul, examine our hearts and our minds to determine whether such discernment is ours, to the end that we may partake to the glory of God and to our growth in the grace of Christ. Let me just be very, very clear. This supper is not for those who have not sinned. Do not let sin keep you from this supper.

    However, if you have sinned and refused to repent of it, then it would be best to let these things pass by. If you have not made a public profession in a Reformed or Evangelical church, then it would be best for you to let these pass by. And if you have not made a profession of faith in a Reformed or Evangelical church, then I would invite you to do so. If you believe the gospel, if you are trusting in Christ, then confess him before the church that you might partake of these things.

    But for those who are members here or members elsewhere, please partake of this, for this ought to give us great joy. This is a picture of union with Christ, of having Christ in us, for we have a good God. who saves his people. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, cause us all here to examine ourselves if we would repent of our sin, if we would believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is our Savior, that we are part of the bride. first loved us. We ask, O Father, that your grace would be upon us, that we would see this supper, not making it a work, not making it our works, but that we would see this as your grace to us. For it is only by your grace that we would partake of this holy meal. In Jesus’ name we pray.

    Amen. Our Lord Jesus Christ, the same night in which he was betrayed, having taken bread and blessed and broken it, gave it to his disciples, as I, ministering in his name, give this bread unto you, saying, take, eat. This is my body, which was given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. Now we’ll read from Psalm 50, John.

    Be gracious to me, O God, according to your love and kindness. According to the greatness of your compassion, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only, I have sinned and done what is evil in your sight. so that you are justified when you speak and blameless when you judge. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me. Behold, you desire truth in the innermost being, and in the hidden heart you will make me know wisdom.

    Purify me with hissa. And I shall be clean washed, and I shall be whiter than silver. Take, eat, this is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. Our Savior also took the cup, and having given thanks, as has been done in His name, He gave it to His disciples, saying, This cup is a new covenant in my blood, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. Drink ye of it. Make me to hear joy and gladness. Let the bones which you have broken rejoice.

    Hide your face from my sins, and block out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart of God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will be converted to you. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God, the God of my salvation. For my tongue will joyfully sing of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips. that my mouth may declare your praise.

    For you do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it. You are not pleased with burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. Oh, God, you will not despise. By your favor, do good design. build the walls of Jerusalem. This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which was given for the remission of sins. Drink ye all of it. Let us pray.

    Joy, unspeakable joy, that is what you have given to us, O Father. Not just happiness, but joy, for our sins are forgiven, We walk in a newness of life, not according to the principles of this world, not according to the darkness that we used to walk, but we walk according to the light, to the glory of Jesus Christ, because he has shown his love to us. Cause us, O Lord, to take joy in you. Even as we look to this week ahead, in Jesus’ name, amen. And now we will have our deacons offering.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Man Does Not Live by Bread Alone

    Man Does Not Live by Bread Alone

    About this sermon

    At his baptism the Father declared Jesus his beloved Son, echoing Psalm 2 and Isaiah 42, and then the Spirit led him into the wilderness. Tempted to turn stones into bread, Jesus answered from Deuteronomy 8:3: man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Where Israel grumbled over manna, Jesus stayed faithful as the obedient Son, on a path that led through Gethsemane to the cross. Apart from him we can do nothing; in him believers live by God’s word.

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    Sermon transcript

    It is, of course, impossible for us as New Testament believers to read chapter eight of Deuteronomy without thinking of Jesus and his use of Deuteronomy chapter eight, verse three, when he was tempted by Satan in the wilderness. In fact, it is worth reading the whole chapter as we have done here this morning, especially the first half of the chapter through the eyes and the mind of Jesus. The Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, all portray the temptations of Jesus as following directly from his baptism. At his baptism, Jesus received affirmation of his identity and his mission as the Son of God.

    In words that are quoted there, Quoting two Old Testament scriptures, God speaks. You might think of Psalm 2 verse 7 and Isaiah 42 verse 1. Those two verses come to bear upon the word that is spoken in the Gospels. Psalm 2, verse 7, for example, says, I will surely tell of the decree of the Lord.

    He said to me, thou art my beloved son. Today I have begotten thee. And I’m asking you to think of the word that is spoken from heaven at the baptism of Jesus, where God declares, this is my beloved son. And think of that as a fulfillment of Psalm 2, verse 7. Today I have begotten thee.

    And combine that concept of Psalm two with Isaiah 42 verse one which says, behold my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom my soul delights. I have put my spirit upon him. And think of the outpouring of the spirit that comes upon Jesus at his baptism.

    He will bring forth justice to the nations. The burden of messianic sonship and the mission of obedient, suffering servanthood that flowed from those combined texts fulfilled in Jesus led Jesus here into a period of intense wrestling with the future that lay before him. It is hardly surprising that he turned to the opening chapters of Deuteronomy to answer the devil in the wilderness, for the resources that would undergird the orientation of his life toward doing the will of his father God. Surely that is the whole thrust of these chapters in Deuteronomy, the opening chapters of Deuteronomy, where Israel’s God Yahweh declares himself to be the one true God and that they were to love him with heart, mind, soul, and strength. Well, surely that is what comes to expression in the word Jesus Christ.

    And we clearly see in him one who kept those commands and kept God ever before him. Jesus Christ, unlike Israel, he was obedient. He was faithful. He was true to the Lord’s commandments in everything, in every circumstance. Always do we see Jesus doing the will of the Father, even when it is most painful, most difficult to do so. Not my will, but thy will be done, he would pray. especially emphatically do we see him so here as he faces the temptation in the wilderness. And when he faces the cross, he is determined to do the father’s will and to keep the commandment, even in the face of the great temptation that the wilderness and the cross gave him. Unlike unfaithful Israel, Jesus is devoted to the will of the father, even in drinking to the dregs, the cup of suffering that is set before him. Our passage in Deuteronomy was familiar to all devout Jews of Jesus’ day, and the Lord Jesus must have known these words by heart.

    His earthly life, as you know, was marked by humiliation and trial, from his lowly birth to his horrendous death. Though we might be tempted to think otherwise, his life was not easy. It was most difficult, most painful. Truly, he was God’s beloved son. And truly, he was the suffering servant of prophetic scripture come to fulfillment.

    Immediately after his signal experience of the Holy Spirit at his baptism that is poured out and comes down upon him like a dove, and prior to the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus was led by the Spirit, we’re told, into the wilderness. And there, in the wilderness, he was severely tested. After 40 days utterly without food, he was desperately hungry. There is no doubt that the gospel writers intend us to notice the significance of Jesus, the Son of God, spending 40 days in the wilderness, facing similar privation as Israel did in the Exodus and their 40-year wandering in the wilderness.

    Thus does the devil invite Jesus to work a miracle No doubt, Satan’s repeated insinuation, if you are the son of God, if you are the son of God, he repeats, was intended to induce in Jesus the same spirit of testing God that had characterized Israel time and again.

    Why not turn those light brown stones of the Judean desert into fresh warm loaves of bread so that he might immediately satisfy his natural hunger? If he did so, it would prove that he was the son of God, as the voice from heaven had so clearly declared at his baptism. Jesus was not simply invited to transform stones into bread. It went much deeper than that.

    The devil confronted him with the temptation to doubt God’s word. If you are the son of God, he says. Satan’s temptation to Jesus recalled the first temptation in the Garden of Eden to Adam. Did God really say? Jesus knew that the voice from heaven at his baptism was absolutely true and completely dependable He had known from his youth of his unique relationship with the father and the voice from heaven Spoken at his baptism confirmed it. He was God’s son and if he was Then he could certainly trust his father with what’s With that seemingly innocent suggestion that Jesus turned stones to bread, the devil was actually inviting Jesus to doubt both God’s word and God’s nature. Jesus refused to doubt God’s word.

    God had said clearly and unmistakably, you are my son whom I love. Jesus knew that to be so. And he refused to do anything which might suggest that the saying needed some further support or visible evidence. There was no need whatsoever to prove it. If God had said it, then that was enough. Moreover, Jesus refused to doubt God’s nature.

    If God had referred to Jesus as his beloved son, then God must certainly have been his caring father. with a destiny before him of ministry and sacrifice, which the father had prepared for his son, God would hardly let him die in the desert. When he was hungry, Jesus trusted his father to supply the food. But if he would not supply it, even then he would not adopt the devil’s suggestions.

    Had God really meant what God had said even in the scriptures? It was that same trick that Satan had played on Adam and Eve with such tragic success. If God could feed the Israelites, why would he, when they were hungry, why would he not care for his son now with a miracle to solve the problem?

    But Jesus sees through Satan’s temptations to the reality of God’s testing in its Deuteronomy 8, verse 2 sense. What was in Jesus heart? He lived by the word and the will of God to be covenantally faithful and obedient, faithful and obedient, where Israel had so desperately failed. The ancient word of Deuteronomy pierced the fog of Satan’s confusing question and confirmed Jesus on the pathway of son-like obedience, which led ultimately through the wilderness, through Gethsemane to the cross. Yes, God cared for his son, just as he had fed and clothed his people Israel in the wilderness centuries earlier. He sometimes led them through adverse circumstances, however, you know, so that they might realize just how much they did need him. When Jesus was hungry in the Judean desert, he quoted those familiar words from Deuteronomy. He answered the devil’s doubt of God’s word by quoting the very word the enemy rejected. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of our God. And so Jesus was content. to wait upon his God and his Father.

    Time and again, this was Israel’s test and Israel’s failure. They did not trust God’s word alone. They did not trust what God had told them. Instead, they looked at their circumstances and they looked at the world around them and grumbled that they should go back to Egypt, where there were cucumbers and onions and all the other things that they liked so much. But time and again, God had spoken to them a word which said that he had a promised land for them and that he would not fail in keeping that word to them. For them, the word of God was not enough, however. They wanted more. They wanted proof.

    Listen carefully to Moses’ words in Deuteronomy chapter 8. Again, after 40 years of Israel’s rebellious failures, we view the scene of Deuteronomy 8. Think of the setting of Deuteronomy chapter 8. They’re right where we left them in October of 2010. They’re still right at the verge of the Jordan River. They’re still looking across the river at the promised land. They’re still there as God speaks to them through Moses here in Deuteronomy 8. We view that scene. Moses and Israel now stand at the verge of the Jordan. looking upon the promised land ahead of them.

    And once again, does Moses speak to them there in Deuteronomy 8, exhorting Israel to keep the commandments that it will go well with them in the land that God had promised on oath to their forefathers. We see that in verse one of chapter eight. All the commandments that I am commanding you today, you shall be careful to do, he says, that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to give to your forefathers. again then in chapter 8 verses 6 and 7. Therefore you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God to walk in his ways and to fear him for the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land. There’s the word of God.

    Conversely, in verse 11, Moses says, beware lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his ordinances and his statutes which I’m commanding you today. And again in verse 18 and following, but you shall remember the Lord your God for it is he who has given you power to make wealth that he may confirm his covenant which he swore to your fathers as it is this day. And it shall come about that if you ever forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them, Moses says, and worship them, I testify against you today that you shall surely perish. Lest they be like the nations which perish, verse 20, Israel is warned to listen to the voice of the Lord your God.

    This emphatic recurring exhortation to remember the Lord and to do and to keep his commandments is reinforced by a reminder of the 40-year stay in the wilderness, of the way in which the Lord had led them. These 40 years were important for pedagogic reasons to humble Israel, to test them, to discipline them, to teach them, to show them that they do not live by bread alone.

    But man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. In contrast to the promised land, the wilderness was the place where the Lord had tested Israel to know what was in their heart. Verse two of chapter eight, whether you would keep his commandments or not. Of course, this is a human way of speaking for God knows the heart and his testing is not designed to find out something that he does not know, but rather it is to bring out into the open that which is hidden. for his own glory and for his people’s good.

    Of those trials, those hardships that the people were made to endure in the wilderness, verse 3 especially mentions, specifically mentions the lack of bread, their common staple, so that they were hungry. The Lord gave them manna instead, manna from heaven, something that was unknown to them. Compare verse 3 with verse 16, where Moses says twice, a bread that they did not know. The emphasis that the manna was something that the Israelites and their fathers did not know characterizes the manna as unfamiliar and therefore somewhat less desirable food, humanly speaking anyway. We want the good old things that we’ve always had, they were saying. Nevertheless, the feeding, again look at verses 3 and 16, also expresses their experience of God’s care. He had given them the manna. Why? Because he cared for them, he loved them.

    And through these trials of hunger and of fiery serpents and scorpions and their time on thirsty ground where there was no water, And through his care in the midst of those troublesome days, God wanted to teach them the meaning of the statement that man does not live on bread alone, but on everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.

    The intent is apparently that in this instance, it was the manna that came from the mouth of the Lord. He spoke and it came to be. The manna came into being through the word of his power. as God created and sustained his people, for it is his power that creates and sustains his people. The general import of these things is that the Lord wanted to teach Israel to trust not in anything created, but to trust only in their creator. During those 40 years, their clothes did not wear out, their feet did not swell, God brought water for them out of the rock of Flint, he spoke, and it was so. This undoubtedly is also to be understood as a miracle of God’s power and care, and hence it is mentioned with the manna, the bread from heaven and the water out of the rock. Thus does verse 5 of Deuteronomy 8 draw the conclusion. As a man disciplines his son, so the Lord has disciplined Israel in the wilderness. teaching Israel to trust in the Lord alone.

    Israel must know this in their heart, and therefore they must keep the commandments of this God. This was the purpose of the discipline and the instruction that Israel would know, would remember, and would obey the Lord that they had come to know, and remember him for his kindnesses toward them. He was the God who cared for them in the wilderness. Though he tested them, it was for their good that he would know of their love and their obedience to him.

    But time and again Israel had failed to test. Herein lay an inherent danger for Israel now as they are about to go into the promised land. As they would possess the promised land, what would they do? The temptation would be to forget what they had learned, forget the discipline of what God had taught them.

    In contrast to the wilderness, the promised land is a good land. It is a land of brooks of waters, a land of fountains and springs flowing forth in fruitful valleys and beautiful hills. a land bringing forth wheat and barley and vines and fig trees and pomegranates and olive oil and honey. And there are areas there rich with iron and copper. So it would be that when the people had eaten and were satisfied and moved into houses that they had not built, and they were living in good houses, and their herds and their flocks would multiply. Precious metals were theirs in abundance. The danger was that the people would become self-congratulatory and complacent, trusting their own power and accomplishment.

    We did it ourselves, forgetting what God had done for them. But no, Israel was to remember the Lord their God. who enabled them. They must not forget, lest they turn aside from the true and the living God who had spoken. The true God who had led them out of Egypt, who had led them in the wilderness and protected them there and cared for them, tested them and disciplined them, yes, for sure. But apart from him, they would have surely perished.

    So it comes all back to the covenant, the promise of God to his people, the covenant that comes to its consummate expression in the word that became flesh. God keeps his word, and indeed the word became flesh in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, the son of God who became man for our redemption. Be reminded of the Father’s love that He gave His only begotten Son to undergo the superlative trial and discipline, to submit Himself to the most abject humiliation. And yet that Son remained determined in everything to keep the commands of God and to do the Father’s will, even unto death, the death and curse of the cross. that as many as would trust in Him would not perish, but have everlasting life. And we offer this exhortation today, lest you forget that apart from Him, that is, apart from Jesus, apart from the Word who became flesh, you can do nothing. Apart from Him, you most assuredly will perish.

    But hear the gracious word of the apostle spoken to believing Christians of the first century. Beloved, you have learned Christ. You have been taught in him. In him and in the preaching of his word, you have learned in whatever circumstances you find yourselves or we find ourselves together, whether we’ve been deprived of husbands, whether we’ve been deprived of physical necessities, or whether we’ve been deprived of the use of our left hand or foot.

    We know in every circumstance, whether we are in humble means or whether we are in prosperity, whether we are in times of being filled or whether we are going hungry, whether we’re having abundance or whether we’re suffering need, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. It is our God who most surely shall supply us all our needs. are met in Him according to His riches in glory, in His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. And to Him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

    Beloved then, in the words of Hebrews chapter 12, do not forget the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons. My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him. For those whom the Lord loves, He disciplines and he scourges every son whom he receives.

    And I would ask you to remember, too, that the Spirit himself, the Spirit of Christ, testifies with our spirit that we are children of God. And if we are children, then heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed, Romans chapter eight, if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. Remember, then, we do not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of our God.

    And God has spoken. He has spoken in His Son, Jesus Christ. Praise the Lord. Praise Him with me today, will you? Amen. So let’s turn in our hymnal, shall we, to hymn number 239, and let us praise the Lord there, 239. Let’s stand together, shall we? The mighty God the Lord has spoken unto all.

    From rising to the setting sun, he unto earth doth call. From Zion, his own hill, where perfect beauty dwells, Jehovah hath his glory shown in righteousness itself. Our God shall surely come, and silence shall not hear. Before Him I shall wage that storm, and pastures round Him sweep. Into the heavens above shall then send for His call, and my voice to the earth, that he may judge his people all. Together let me sing unto thee, Then shall the heav’ns be glad, His righteousness abroad, Because the Lord himself is God, Together, let us look up and let us hear the benediction, the good word from our God, shall we?

    The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace, both now and forevermore. For man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Amen and amen.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • The Covenant Renewed

    The Covenant Renewed

    About this sermon

    After the golden calf, the Lord renewed his covenant: Moses cut new tablets, the Lord wrote the Ten Commandments again, and the tablets were kept in the ark. Israel resumed its journey and the Levites were set apart for service. A chastened people learned they lived only because of God’s mercy, not their deserving, and they were called to fear, love, and serve him with circumcised hearts. Stone tablets could not change hearts of stone; that waited for the new covenant in Christ’s blood.

    More sermons from Deuteronomy · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    Our scripture reading this morning is Deuteronomy chapter 9. We’ll begin at verse 25 and reading through the end of chapter 10. We’ll also have a short reading from Romans chapter 12. Let’s turn together to Deuteronomy 9 verse 25. Give your attention, for this is the word of God.

    At that time the Lord said to me, cut out for yourself two tablets of stone like the former ones, and come up to me on the mountain and make an ark of wood for yourself. I will write on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets, which you shattered, and you shall put them in the ark. So I made an ark of acacia wood and cut out two tablets of stone like the former ones and went up on the mountain with the two tablets in my hand. He wrote on the tablets, like the former writing, the Ten Commandments, which the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly, and the Lord gave them to me. Then I turned and came down from the mountain and put the tablets in the ark which I’d made, and there they are, as the Lord commanded me.

    Now the sons of Israel set out from Beoroth, Bene, Jachem, to Maseroth. There Aaron died, and there he was buried. And Eliezer, his son, ministered as priest in his place. From there they set out to Gadgadah, and from Gadgadah to Jathbatha, a land of brooks and water.

    At that time, the Lord set apart the entire tribe of Levi to carry the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, to stand before the Lord, to serve him, and to bless in his name until this day. Therefore, Levi does not have a portion or inheritance with his brothers.

    The Lord is his inheritance, just as the Lord your God spoke to him. I moreover stayed on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights like the first time. And the Lord listened to me that time also. The Lord was not willing to destroy you. And the Lord said to me, arise, proceed on your journey ahead of the people that they may go in and possess the land, which I swore to their fathers to give them.

    Now Israel, what does the Lord your God require from you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways and love him and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and to keep the Lord’s commandments and his statutes which I am commanding you today for your good. Behold to the Lord your God belong heaven and the highest heavens, the earth and all that is in it. that on your fathers did the Lord set his affection to love them, and he chose their descendants after them, even you, above all peoples, as it is this day. So circumcise your heart and stiffen your neck no longer, for the Lord your God is the God of God’s The Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome. God who does not show partiality nor take a bribe.

    He executes justice for the orphan and the widow and shows his love for the alien by giving him food and clothing. So show your love for the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the Lord your God. You shall serve him and cling to him. You shall swear by his name. He is your praise and he is your God. who has done these great and awesome things for you, which your eyes have seen. Your fathers went down to Egypt, 70 persons in all. Now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven. And then turning over to Romans chapter 12. Romans chapter 12, reading just verses one and two. Romans 12, one and two.

    Therefore, I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

    Thus far, the reading of God’s inspired and infallible word, may we hear it and receive it as it is God’s holy, holy word. Let’s pray together. Heavenly God, we lift up our prayers of praise and thanksgiving to you today, thanking you for the gospel of Jesus Christ. Thankful for the manner in which that gospel has been unfolded. pages of scripture unfolded in the course of redemptive history. Indeed, as you have made us participant in that history, O God, by grace, through faith in your Son. We ask now, dear God, that you will bless the preaching and the hearing of your word, and might we receive it, O God, with joy and thanksgiving, and may we bear that fruit that we might prove to be true followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray.

    Oh, man. in Deuteronomy chapter nine, as we’ve been looking at it in recent sermons, we see that after a solemn rehearsal of Israel’s rebelliousness from their sin with the golden calf at Horeb, and the years in the wilderness that followed, we come to the end of chapter nine, verse 25 and following, where we read a moving account of Moses’ role as the community’s intercessor before God.

    So here is this rebellious, stubborn, stiff-necked people demonstrating that from day one until this very day as Moses speaks to them at Moab across the Jordan from the promised land Moses is rehearsing for them the words that he spoke before God as he interceded for them on the Mount.

    God had threatened to destroy the people and blot out their name from under heaven. He had said that he would make a totally fresh start by making Moses the father of a new race, mightier and greater than they, verse 14. In other words, eliminating that people descended from Abraham, except for Moses and starting over with one such as he. When Moses heard this, he went in to plead with God for the disobedient people.

    In verses 26 to 29, Moses relates what he had prayed on that occasion before the Lord. The words are essentially the same as in Exodus chapter 32, verses 11 to 13. And these words summarize the 40 days and the 40 nights that Moses had spent before the Lord interceding on behalf of Israel. And so we see here in this text that Moses’ intercession focuses on three points on which he knew by faith he was speaking to the very heart of Yahweh, his God.

    One, God had entered into a covenant relationship with this people that the Lord could not simply now repudiate, and Moses reminds the Lord of his covenant promise. In verse 26, the repeated second person in that statement, O Lord God, do not destroy thy people, even thine inheritance, whom thou hast redeemed through thy greatness, whom thou hast brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand.

    They’re your people, Lord. your covenant people. And this is even further reinforced by verse 29, yet they are thy people, even thine inheritance whom thou hast bought, brought out with thy great power and thine outstretched arm. They’re yours. You cannot deny them.

    Human beings in general may prove false in their word, Israel in particular had spectacularly shown themselves to be liars. But Yahweh, the true God, the God who was one, and whose very being is defined by faithfulness, surely could not abandon his commitment to his people. This people were Yahweh’s people. because Yahweh had made them so.

    And so Moses speaks boldly before the Lord. Point number two in Moses’ prayer of intercession. Two, the people’s status was founded even further back in God’s promise and oath to their ancestors. Not only had God claimed his people in bringing them out of Egypt and at Sinai, but God should also remember Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God could not abandon the covenant promise to Abraham without breaking God’s own covenant oath, which he had sworn on his own very being. Genesis chapter 15. The Lord, the book of Hebrews says in verse 18, the Lord cannot lie.

    So one, you’ve promised, you’ve claimed them as your people. You pledged yourself to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, number two. And three, again boldly, Moses appeals to the Lord by way of intercession to God’s jealousy for his own name’s sake. That is the honor of God’s own name. So much of what had happened thus far had been explicitly so that the nations would know the truth about Yahweh, about who Yahweh is and what he could do. What kind of God would they take Yahweh to be then, Moses asked.

    If he destroyed the very people he had so miraculously delivered out of bondage. People would not want to know or would not know what to believe about a God if he carried out the threatened destruction of Israel. In other words, you claim you’re able to save this people but you bring them out just to destroy them. How can this be?

    Moses then pleads, let the Lord then protect his own holy name as God. And wonder, wonders, beauty of beauties, the Lord listened to Moses. Though the Lord had threatened Israel’s destruction, Moses offered the intercession of faith, faith in Yahweh, faith in Yahweh’s covenant, faith in Yahweh’s own name and integrity and character and his mercy, Knowing Israel’s stiff-necked stubbornness and wickedness and sin, Moses interceded. Moses boldly offered the prayer of faith, believing God, and God listened and answered his prayer.

    The outcome of Moses’ intercession is made clear by the report of the renewed covenant in chapter 10 of Deuteronomy, verses one through five. and of the resumed journey in the wilderness in verses six through 11. So having heard and answered and received the prayer of Moses, God grants to Moses a renewed covenant for the people’s sake and they continue their journey in the wilderness.

    They’re not destroyed. The main focus of verses one through five is on the rewriting of the 10 commandments. and the storage of the two tablets of stone in the ark as the tangible sign of a renewed covenant. Verse five then reads like the calm after the storm of God’s anger having been averted by Moses’ intercession. Having the commandments in the ark in the midst of the people was symbolic of the nearness of God once again. Things can now move forward. away from the brink of God’s threatened destruction.

    And so God’s answer to Moses’ prayer contains measures to replace the shattered stone tablets, which we can take to be sure to mean that God intends to restore the broken covenant relationship. Restoring the tablets of the covenant, the covenant is being restored.

    And so the Lord commands Moses to chisel out new stone tablets, like the first ones, and to bring them up the mountain. He must also make a wooden chest or an ark. The Lord would write on the new tablets of stone the same words he had written on the first tablets of stone. And Moses must then place these new tablets in the ark that he had prepared.

    Verses three to five of chapter 10 recount the implementation of that very thing. Moses doing what the Lord said, cutting the new stones, having the ark that had been made, carrying it up, and God then supplying him with the new, renewed Ten Commandments. So then, verse 5, Moses could point to the ark.

    He could point to it 40 years later, that they still had carried with them all of those years since that day at Sinai, that God had granted a reprieve and a renewal of the covenant. There it is. So standing in the plane of Moab across from the promised land on the eve of their going into the land, Moses could stand before them and say to them, and there they are. The tablets of stone in the ark are still here with us, present tense. That is the stone tablets of the covenant containing the 10 commandments were still there in the ark having been transported with this people all those years. by way of reminder.

    And there are the people standing on the brink of the promised land ready to go in and take possession of that land that God had sworn to give to their fathers and to the children of the fathers now coming to pass. The Lord had not destroyed them, obviously, but had remained with them and now was about to take them in according to the covenant promise. as we read on in chapter 10.

    At first reading, verses six through nine seem to have little relation to the preceding narrative. Verses six to seven seem to be extracted from the records of Israel’s travel itinerary, where they went, what they did. And verses eight and nine sound almost like an incidental aside. which mentions the Lord setting apart the tribe of Levi for a unique role and a distinct inheritance.

    Doubtless, this accounts for some Bible translations like the New American Standard, like the New King James, the ESV, the NIV, actually put verses six through nine in parentheses. You can look at your text and see that that’s the way it’s set apart. In other words, parenthetical statements sort of breaks the flow of thought but inserted for a little bit of information, so to speak. And if you’ll notice, the flow of the text could easily move from verse five to verse 10.

    But still those verses six to nine are there. And they’re not just there. They’re there according to divine inspiration for a purpose, no doubt. They’re there for a reason. And so we might ask, in terms of interpretation, what is the importance of this apparent parenthesis? Well, it seems that at least three purposes are served by those verses.

    First, there is the historical note. about the itinerary of Israel seeming to be the narrative’s way of saying that Moses’ intercession for Israel was manifestly successful. In other words, they did go on. The journey did continue, you see. It didn’t end at Sinai, as it nearly seemed it was going to happen. The Israelites not only survived, but they continued their journey toward the promised land. One thing those verses indicate. But secondly, by choosing to mention, as Moses does here in the text, the death of Aaron and Eliezer having succeeded Aaron to the high priesthood, the narrative makes clear that Moses’ intercession on Israel’s behalf, sure, but also specifically chapter nine, verse 20, on Aaron’s behalf, The high priest behalf, because God was about to destroy Aaron also, you remember, this text is telling us that not only did Aaron go on to minister, but later when he died, God gave his ministry to another after him. It continued. So not only didn’t Aaron not die at the time of the great apostasy at Horeb, but his family remained the heirs of his priesthood. It continued.

    God graciously keeping his kindness toward Israel. And then thirdly, as God through Moses here does by briefly summarizing the duties of the Levites, the priestly tribe, these verses establish that all of the gifts of God mediated through that priesthood of the Levites are still intact. There’s the ark itself, which they carried. There is the proper service of God in the tabernacle, which was entrusted to the Levites. There is the blessing of the people in Yahweh’s name. In other words, the priests are still at work. God has not destroyed this people. He is still with them. He has renewed covenant.

    He has maintained the priesthood and the blessings that that means by way of their mediation. the Levitical priesthood highlights the ongoing need for mediation, for atoning sacrifice and for propitiation of the wrath of God. And so here is a testimony, an ongoing testimony, that God is a God of mercy, but God is also a God of justice. And the sacrifices and the ceremonies and the mediation of the priesthood is an indication to Israel of that need of sacrifice and propitiation.

    And of course, included here and also highlighted is the special portion of the Levites, namely, not a piece of real estate, but the Lord himself, Yahweh is their inheritance. Underscoring, again, not only the presence of Yahweh, but the better portion. that belongs to this tribe of people? After all, which is better, land or God himself?

    You answer the question. So then Moses summarizes in verses 10 and 11, the manner in which the Lord accepted his intercession, having listened to Moses, and showing himself not willing to destroy this people. And thus the journey of the people proceeded forward with Moses going before them in accordance with the covenant promise.

    In the light of all that has come before them, this most certainly should be Israel, a chastened people. Wow, the Lord was kind to us. as they are now about to move into the land, remembering God, not only not having destroyed them, but maintaining His promise and His covenant with them.

    This ought to be a people who ought to have every confidence in their God, with absolutely no illusions about themselves. It’s not because of what we did, or how we’ve done, or what we’ve deserved. What would have become of them if God had dealt with them as they deserved.

    Here’s the reminder. Here’s the preaching of Moses. And then in the text, verse 11 serves as a transition from the substance of this previous passage about Israel’s litany of failures and rebelliousness and stiff-neckedness. Moses’ intercession. God’s hearing and answering, renewing the covenant. Verse 11 thus serves as a transition from the substance of what we’ve just talked about to the new emphasis of Moses’ major discourse. The Horeb covenant was almost disrupted, but through the grace of God and the intercessory prayer of Moses, disaster was averted and the horrendous sins of the people were passed over.

    That word’s intentional on my part. The emphasis of the address going forward now centers on God’s present requirement of his people. If God has done this for you, Israel, what does God require of you? In verse 11, Moses recalls briefly how the Lord had commanded them to begin their journeys once again.

    His prayer had been answered, the people had been spared. There was not only mercy, but a full restoration of the covenant relationship. When God said, arise, proceed, the command indicated that God would be with his people, even as Moses was commanded to lead this people. The Lord had not forgotten or forsaken the covenant with the patriarchs and the land which he had sworn to give to their children after that.

    And because it was through God’s grace that the people were present on the plains of Moab and the Lord was still with them, the responsibility of the people was to fulfill the requirements of God and that presses all the more heavily upon them in light of God’s goodness and grace toward them.

    So then God’s requirement of his people are stated, first of all, in summary form in verses 12 and 13. And then those things that are mentioned in those two verses, actually five things, will be woven into the fabric of what Moses will continue to say hereafter. In other words, here’s like the five points of my sermon, folks, and here I’m gonna start on those things. This is what Moses is setting them to hear. Moses asked the people, and now Israel, what does the Lord your God require from you? But to fear the Lord your God, one, to walk in his ways, two, and love him, three, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, four, and to keep the Lord’s commandments and His statutes which I am commanding you today for your good.” Five things. And I hope you heard it and I hope you can see it. You will notice that at the center of the five, succinctly stated, briefly stated, at the center, and love Him. There’s the focus. There’s the great commandment, isn’t it?

    In broad terms, the common theme is allegiance to the God of the covenant. The particular requirements indicate the dimensions of the common theme of allegiance, at the center of which is love, love for your God. And the meaning of the various requirements will be elaborated in the verses that follow And it is significant that the first theme taken up in verses 14 and 15, notice, is love. But notice also that it’s not the requirement of the love of the people, on the part of the people, but rather God’s love for his people. What does God require of you? Five things, and then he talks about God’s love.

    Israel must feel impelled to obedience by the favor that has been bestowed upon them. He to whom belong heaven and earth, even the highest heavens, set his love on the fathers of Israel and upon their children their seed after them. Catch it. Catch the magnitude of what Moses is saying. This is the God who owns everything, who set his affection upon Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and you, and your seed after you.

    This is Israel’s God, the almighty God, the Lord your God, Israel. Described here, notice the terms. He is the God of gods and the Lord of lords. There’s none higher than he. the great, the mighty, the awesome, the God who does not show partiality. It is that God who has set his affection to love this people, you Israel. This great, almighty, eternal God, the true and the living God who could have called any nation or all nations into his service.

    He could have set his affection on any he chose and he chose only Israel’s forefather and their descendants after that. Why? You know, absolutely, unequivocally, unearned, undeserved, sovereign grace, right? And grace alone. It is this just God, this holy God, the only God and incorruptible judge who demonstrates and executes perfect justice, true justice. To the orphan, the widow, read on, the widow, the orphan, the alien, those who are apt to not get justice in the world, he shows justice to them, even to the least of them.

    And he is one then who calls his people, Israel, to pattern themselves after him. You love the alien too because I love them and I care for them and I ensure their justice. And so here then is the proclamation of covenant mercy promised and fulfilled by this God, the true God, the mighty God, Israel’s God, our God, beloved. And here then from that God, that God of sovereign grace and mercy and love is the call to covenantal fidelity. What does God require of you in response? for what he has done for you.

    He has rescued them. He has claimed them as his own. And here is Moses 40 years later with a renewed covenant in hand. Literally in hand. In the box, two tablets of stone. Signifying and demarking the covenant that continues. We might well say a new set of stone tablets. Well, 40 years old, I guess they’re at least newer than stone tablets. But stone tablets don’t save, do they? Tablets of stone don’t transform hearts of stone, no matter how fine the sculptor who carved them. No. Something better was needed.

    A new covenant was needed. The pattern is true to form. You see, Moses moved from covenant to covenant. A new covenant was needed. But not a new set of stones. That won’t do it. Moses points us from the old to the new, but he points us beyond the stone tablets to a new covenant, a really new covenant, a better covenant, not like the old one, not a repetition of the old one, but a new one.

    And so I too appeal to you, beloved brethren, by the mercies of God. according to that new and better covenant, and by means of a better priesthood than the Levitical. For with the Apostle Paul, I urge you in Romans 12, one and two, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living and a holy sacrifice acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. By which mercies are they that we make this appeal, Paul and I? What mercies is he talking about? Surely by the mercy shown us in the gospel of Jesus Christ, surely by the mercies that are spelled out in the book of Romans that precede the therefore.

    The mercy that is defined as a mercy that shows no distinction. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. A declaration of justice that says there’s none righteous, not any deserving of these mercies. Doesn’t matter Jew or Gentile, circumcised or not. Makes no difference.

    In these latter days, the covenant promises have been fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was offered as a propitiation for sin, satisfying God’s justice. The better mediator, the better priest. And so then, those all who confess Him as Lord and believe in their hearts that God raised Him from the dead, for our justification will be saved. Those sins that God formerly passed over have now been summarily paid for in the death of Jesus Christ, that Christ who now by His Spirit makes us alive and raises up with Him in newness of life and sanctification that we might now no longer walk, as children of darkness, but as children of God, no longer conformed to this world, but transformed by the renewing of our mind in Christ Jesus, so that we might prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect, according to the working of divine, almighty, sovereign, sovereign grace and election. Do you hear the book of Romans at all in what I’m saying? I trust you do. In the new covenant of Christ’s blood shed once for all for the many that his people would be saved, we see the hearts of stone being transformed into hearts of flesh that live and beat for God, for Jesus Christ. This is the love that overcomes the world, the grace that transforms a people and all to the glory of the King of kings and the Lord of lords. who loved us and gave himself for us according to the power and purpose of the God of gods, to whom be the glory forever and ever.

    Amen. Let’s pray. Our Father, what do you require of us? What does your mercy require of us?

    That we no longer be conformed to this world, but transformed by the renewing of our minds, according to the new covenant graces bestowed upon us in Jesus Christ. That we should be your people, out of all the peoples of the world, by grace through faith, joined to your son, Jesus Christ, who is the propitiation for our sins. that in believing your word and believing in your son and confessing him as Lord and believing you raised him from the dead, we will be saved. Oh God, no longer bound to the flesh, but now made free in the spirit that we should walk as the children of God, adopted into the house and family of God, according to your mercies, knowing that all things work together for good. to them that love you and are the cold according to your purposes, you yourself sovereignly work those things together for that good end, that we should be conformed to the likeness of Jesus. Our Father, we thank you for the great intercessor, and we thank you for the promise that you made of old, that you would raise up a seed of the woman to bruise the serpent’s head, that you would provide a seed for Abraham through whom the nations would be blessed, and that his descendants would be more numerous than the stars of the sky. Our Father, we pray that you will continue to gather a people for yourself from all of the nations according to this new covenant, this renewed covenant blessing come to us in these latter days in the person and work of Jesus Christ, in whose name we give thanks.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • A Stubborn People

    A Stubborn People

    About this sermon

    Moses reminds Israel how they provoked the Lord at Horeb, making a golden calf while he received the tablets of the covenant. He broke the tablets before their eyes, a public sign that they had broken the covenant, and destroyed the idol. Then he fell before the Lord for forty days and nights, interceding on the basis of God’s promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and his concern for his own name among the nations. A stubborn people lived only because a mediator stood in the gap, as Christ now intercedes for his people.

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    Sermon transcript

    Our scripture reading begins in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 9. Deuteronomy chapter 9, I’m going to ask that we begin reading aloud from verse 7 onward. Actually, I’ll pick up at verse 6. Deuteronomy chapter 9, verse 6 and following to the end of the chapter, and then we’ll turn over to the book of Galatians to give your attention. For this is the inspired Word of God. Deuteronomy 9, verse 6.

    Know then, it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stubborn people. Remember, do not forget how you provoked the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness from the day you left the land of Egypt until you arrived at this place. you have been rebellious against the Lord. Even at Horeb you provoked the Lord to wrath, and the Lord was so angry with you that he would have destroyed you.

    When I went up to the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant which the Lord had made with you, and I remained on the mountain 40 days and nights, I neither ate bread nor drank water. The Lord gave me the two tablets of stone written by the finger of God, and on them were all the words which the Lord had spoken with you at the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly. It came about at the end of 40 days and nights that the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, tablets of the covenant, and the Lord said to me, arise, go down from here quickly, for your people whom you brought out of Egypt have acted corruptly.

    They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them. They have made a molten image for themselves. The Lord spoke further to me, saying, I have seen this people, and indeed it is a stubborn people. Let me alone that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven, and I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.

    So I turned and came down from the mountain while the mountain was burning with fire, and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands. And I saw that you had indeed sinned against the Lord your God. You had made for yourselves a molten calf. You had turned aside quickly from the way which the Lord had commanded you. I took hold of the two tablets and threw them from my hands and smashed them before your eyes. I fell down before the Lord as at the first forty days and nights.

    I neither ate bread nor drank water because of all your sin that you had committed in doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger. For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure with which the Lord was wrathful against you in order to destroy you. But the Lord listened to me that time also. The Lord was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him, so I also prayed for Aaron at the same time. I took your sinful thing, the calf which you had made, I burned it with fire and crushed it, grinding it very small until it was as fine as dust, and I threw its dust into the brook that came down from the mountain.

    Again, at Taborah, and at Massah, and at Kibrat Hatevah, you provoked the Lord to wrath. When the Lord sent you from Kedesh Barnea, saying, go up and possess the land which I have given you, then you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God. You neither believed him nor listened to his voice. You have been rebellious against the Lord from the day I knew you.

    So I fell down before the Lord the 40 days and nights which I did because the Lord had said he would destroy you. I prayed to the Lord and said, O Lord God, do not destroy your people and your inheritance, whom you have redeemed through your greatness, whom you have brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Do not look at the stubbornness of this people or at their wickedness or their sin.

    Otherwise, the land from which you brought us may say, because the Lord was not able to bring them into the land which he had promised them and because he hated them, he has brought them out to slay them in the wilderness. Yet they are your people, even your inheritance, whom you have brought out by your great power and your outstretched arm. And then turning over to the book of Galatians, New Testament, Galatians 3, beginning with verse 15. Galatians 3, 15 through verse 22. Brethren, I speak in terms of human relations.

    Even though it is only a man’s covenant, yet when it has been ratified, no one sets it aside or adds conditions to it. Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. It does not say unto seeds as referring to many, but rather to one and to your seed, that is Christ.

    What I am saying is this, the law, which came 430 years later, does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God so as to nullify the promise. For if the inheritance is based on law, it is no longer based on a promise. But God has granted it to Abraham by means of a promise.

    Why the law then? It was added because of transgressions having been ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator till the seed would come to whom the promise had been made. Now a mediator is not for one party only, whereas God is only one. Is the law then contrary to the promises of God?

    May it never be. For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law. But the scripture has shut up everything under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. inspired and infallible word, give your attention to it.

    Let’s pray together, shall we? Our Father, may you grant the grace that the word read today and preached and heard among this people would have its good effect, that we would be brought by way of tutelage to the person and work of Jesus Christ, and having been redeemed in him and by him, may we rejoice in his intercession and mediation for us. Our Father, we are thankful for your covenant faithfulness, and pray, Lord, that we might be encouraged by the things we hear and see today, that you would be glorified in it, O Father, and that Christ would be exalted in all that we do. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

    Now I know that at times the reading of the Old Testament can be both monotonous and tedious, but I pray that today’s excursion into Deuteronomy chapter nine will bear its good fruit for us, that you’ll be patient with the word, and that the word would be patient with you as we come before God this morning.

    Though there might be many events that could have been drawn upon to illustrate Israel’s history of provoking God, the events associated with Mount Horeb or Mount Sinai are chosen here in Deuteronomy 9 in particular, presented here in the form of historical recollection. The choice of Horeb or Sinai was no doubt dictated by its central significance. If there was a time above all others when the people should have been faithful, it was during the events associated with the formation, the ratification of the covenant at Horeb.

    But notice verse eight. Even at Horeb you provoked the Lord your God to wrath. Even there in the face of the smoking mountain and the thunder and the voice of God at which the people begged God to stop speaking. And the people’s behavior there at Horeb was not just a little sinful, but was such that God almost destroyed them then and there.

    Clearly, for Israel, there could be no ground to argue that the gift of the land that they were about to inherit, as they even now camp just across the Jordan, after 40 years in the wilderness, ready to go in, take the land, in no wise could they claim that that land was the reward for their righteous, good behavior.

    The recollection of the events at Horeb is also significant in that the renewal ceremony that is the book of Deuteronomy, Moses renewing the covenant as the people are about to go into the land, that the renewal ceremony there in Moab where Israel is now preparing to enter the promised land was a renewal of that great ratification of the covenant that had taken place 40 years earlier at Sinai. The relevance of the historical recollection is thus all the more apparent, for if the people had been guilty back then of provoking God, even in the midst of the awe-inspiring events associated with Mount Sinai, then the danger would certainly have been no less present there on the plains of Moab that they would indeed again provoke the Lord to wrath in the hearing of these commands late in time. What we have here in Deuteronomy chapter nine, and particularly verse nine and following, is a fairly free recollection of that great apostasy of the golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai.

    After Exodus 24, after the ratification of the covenant, Moses had ascended the mountain. He had fasted there for 40 days and 40 nights, and had received from God the two stone tablets of the covenant, written as it were, verse 10 of our text, by the finger of God, containing the words which the Lord had spoken from the midst of the fire on the day of the great assembly, And so it is the nature of Moses’ fast of that occasion, by way of recollection, emphasizes his complete dependence on God for those 40 days and nights, no food, no water, just God. But even while he was preoccupied with the Lord, the people had already turned aside from the way which the Lord had commanded them. thunder and lightning and loud voice as they stood at the Mount of Sinai. They, while Moses is there, had acted perversely at the foot of the mountain by making a molten image for themselves. And Moses, therefore, at the top of the mountain, was commanded to go down from the mountain to the people for whom he was responsible. And we’re looking particularly at verses eight through 14. And the main foci of those verses eight through 14, I’m going to try to summarize for you.

    And I said that the book of Deuteronomy in this chapter might seem tedious, but it is also very replete with repetition and emphasis. And we’ll try to make those emphases here this day. There are several foci to what takes place in verses 8-14 and you see it repeated again and again in this chapter. Continuing even to the end of the chapter.

    First of all, the corruption of the people. provoking the Lord to wrath at Sinai. It’s mentioned in verse 8. If you have a pencil and you want to jot down a note on the back of your catechism reading for tonight, I encourage you to do so. Verse 8, they provoke the Lord to wrath. The corruption of the people was so terrible. It’s mentioned in verse 8. It’s mentioned again in verse 18. It’s mentioned again in verse 19. And it’s mentioned again in verses 22 and 23. The corruption of the people provoking the Lord to wrath. Moses wanted to get their attention. 8, 18, 19, 22, and 23.

    Also, there is an emphasis upon the sin of the molten calf, the golden calf that they fashioned for themselves and about which they danced and worshiped. The molten calf mentioned in verse 12 is mentioned again in verse 16, is mentioned again in verse 21. by way of emphasis. And in addition to their provoking God to wrath with the sin of the molten calf, there is the giving and then the smashing of the two tablets of the covenant, the two stone tablets. And those two stone tablets by way of emphasis are mentioned in verse nine, and verse 10, and verse 11, and verse 15, and verse 17. the two stone tablets of the covenant that God gave, Moses smashed, and then the next chapter will be given back to them again. Again, by way of emphasis in the midst of this recollection, historical recollection, are the 40 days and the 40 nights that Moses repeatedly spent before the Lord, both on the first instance, and when he went back up the mountain, and that 40 days and nights are mentioned in verse nine, and verse 11, and verse 18, and verse 25, and again in chapter 10, verse 10, Moses spent 40 days fasting on at least two occasions. at the top of Mount Sinai with the Lord. And this time, this time of God’s dealing with Moses and his dealing with the people is marked by way of emphasis by the Lord’s readiness to destroy this people. And that’s mentioned in verse eight. It’s mentioned in verse 14. It’s mentioned in verse 19. It’s mentioned in verse 20.

    God was ready to destroy this people. But beyond that, yet one other emphasis that finds expression in chapter nine is the Lord’s willingness to listen to Moses’ intercession. When all ascend on the Lord, relents of the wrath that he threatened and listens to Moses’ intercession mentioned in verses 19 and 20, And in verses 26 to 29 is the substance of that intercession. And it will be mentioned again in chapter 10, verse 10, that God listened to Moses when he interceded. Verses 19, 20, 26 to 29 in particular, and chapter 10, verse 10. And all of this event, Israel’s great corruption, God’s wrath, Moses’ time on Mount Sinai, the 40 days of fasting before the Lord, days and nights before the Lord, the Lord’s readiness to destroy, the Lord’s readiness and willingness to listen to Moses’ intercession. All of this will culminate in chapter 10 in the rewriting of the Ten Commandments on two tablets of stone. that Moses cut to replace the former ones, verses one to five of the next chapter, and the declaration in chapter 10, verse 10, after all of this emphasis upon what God might have done, verse 10 of chapter 10, the Lord was not willing to destroy him.

    He held his hand. Deuteronomy 9 is laying these foci on you and on God’s people purposefully. And in the midst of this, Moses records the words of the Lord in verses 12 through 14. And in those verses, we highlight two particularly striking things about the Lord and His Word. First, in verse 12, striking is the way God, speaking to Moses, verse 12, refers to Israel, notice, speaking to Moses, your people whom you brought out of Egypt. The double emphasis, you and your, amounts to a virtual repudiation by the Lord of this people.

    It’s not quite as explicit as saying, they’re not my people. But notice how he says, your people whom you brought out of Egypt, Moses. I’m about to destroy them. The Sinai covenant had already been broken by the people. The smashing of the covenant tablets would demonstrate the breaking of the covenant. So the covenant words, my people are pointedly avoided here. God does not even use those words. And the exodus is reduced to an act of human enterprise. You brought them out. They’re your people, Moses. And the horrific import of those words was not missed by Moses.

    For it seems that Moses must have immediately begun protesting such words, leading God to exclaim, catch the drift of these words, God says, leave me alone. that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven. Well, that’s one striking feature about those words in 12 through 14, but notice also a second striking feature of God’s speech is when God threatens. He threatens not only to repudiate the Sinai covenant by disowning the people, but by implication even to lay aside, to abandon the Abrahamic covenant by destroying the people and declaring that he wants to start all over again with Moses. This incredible implication of the words in verse 14, and I will make of you, Moses, a nation, mightier and greater than they. is that God is going to start over with Moses. This idea is even clearer in the preceding story in Exodus 32 verse 10, when it actually happened, in its explicit verbal echo of the Abrahamic covenant of Genesis 12 too, where God said, I’m going to make you a great nation, Abraham. And now God’s saying, Moses, I’m going to make you a great nation. I’m going to destroy this people. I’m going to start over. I’m going to make you a great nation.

    There in Exodus 32.10, God speaks to Moses. As God had said to Abraham, now God was saying to Moses instead, I will make of you a great nation.

    Such was the wrath of God with this people that God could contemplate a virtual repetition of the flood scenario. Yeah, of Noah’s day. A total destruction of this nation is what God had in view. And then a renewal of the promise and a redemptive agenda that would begin with one faithful person, namely Moses. These are shocking words. And they’re meant to be shocking to Israel. And they must have been shocking to Moses. They certainly got his attention. And the shock of those words is allowed to sink in by postponing in the text of Deuteronomy 9, the details of Moses’ intercession.

    We don’t hear what he said to God on that occasion. He says he spoke and God listened, but he doesn’t say the words. Until the end of the chapter, we finally get Moses’ intercession. As it happened in the original, in Exodus 32, 11 to 14, Moses responded to the Lord at once. And Moses’ words are recorded there at once, as God has declared of himself about to destroy Israel. And there Moses interceded on behalf of the people.

    But here in Deuteronomy 9, you will notice that the scripture apparently intentionally postpones the details of Moses’ intercession until after describing in detail what had happened in the actions taken regarding the golden calf among the people Israel. So verses 15 through 17 of our text recap the description of that actions taken in the Exodus narrative, namely the smashing of the two tablets of stone and the burning and the destruction of the golden image, the calf itself. The breaking of the tablets of the covenant was like a prophetic sign that signified a broken covenant. The covenant that God had just made, had written with his own finger is now broken.

    And Moses didn’t drop them accidentally. It was purposeful in their sight. It was a deliberate public action. He says here, before your eyes, I did it. Meant to deliver an unmistakable message, the brokenness of the covenant. and the burning and the destruction of the golden image was itself an object lesson in what Israel was to do soon to the idols of other nations. The people of God should not need to be treated like the other nations. What had once been earrings and ornaments that they had despoiled from the Egyptians was now ground to dust and thrown in the brook. As God despoiled Israel, of the gold they had despoiled from Egypt. And we see it as God’s own judgment of his own people there in the wilderness.

    And thus in Deuteronomy 9, 40 years after the event, does Moses remind the people of those things that were written in the Exodus account. But there is an item also included here in Deuteronomy that is unique to Deuteronomy, not even found in Exodus.

    In verse 20, Moses refers to the intercession that he specifically offered on Aaron’s behalf. God was angry enough to destroy Aaron. who had been appointed priest. And if Israel’s original high priest, with all of the holiness and the tradition attached to him and his family, far from being righteous in himself, had stood under the anger and wrath of God and in danger of destruction, except for Moses’ intercession, what possible grounds could there be for the rest of the people to claim their own self-righteousness? Moses is taking it all away. God is taking it away through Moses’ words. So compare verse 8 with verses 19 and 20. Verse 8 with 19 and 20, and note again the emphasis.

    As God was about to destroy Israel, the people, so God was about to destroy Aaron. The Lord was so angry with you, He would have destroyed you. The Lord was wrathful against you in order to destroy you. And the Lord was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him too. But Moses interceded. He prayed. And wonder of wonders, the Lord listened.

    But again, you will notice that in the narrative, the life-saving words of Moses’ intercession do not appear immediately after this discussion of what happened with Israel and what happened with Aaron. In verses 22 and 24, again, those words of Moses’ intercession are held in suspense, and Moses proceeds to throw into his argument a few more examples of rebellion along the way that had occurred in Israel’s wilderness sojourn.

    The three places that are named in verse 22 all have sinister enough-sounding names and meanings related to the events that took place there. Taberah, burning, numbers 11, one to three. Massa, the place of testing, where Israel certainly failed the test, and put God to the test instead. And Kibrat Hattava, graves of craving, in numbers 11, 31 to 34. Israel hasn’t done too well.

    And in verse 23, Moses also reminds them of Kadesh Barnea, the place in the desert when Israel had rebelled, refused the command of the Lord to go up and take the land, the land of promise. They listened to the unfaithful spies. Back in Numbers 14, again a place of rebellion.

    And you’ll notice that there too Moses had interceded on behalf of a people about to come under God’s wrath. So with this little journey through the midsection of the book of Deuteronomy chapter 9, we come finally to Deuteronomy 9 verses 25 through 29.

    And we reach the words that stood between God’s anger and God’s mercy, the prayer of Moses. God, we recall, had threatened to renounce both the Sinai covenant by disowning the people, they’re your people, Moses, not mine, and the Abrahamic covenant by destroying them and starting over with Moses. Moses, you’ll note, boldly raises his hand to God on both counts, sounding dangerously close to rebuking God for thinking such things.

    Whether Moses was tempted to embrace the idea of taking Abraham’s place or not as the father of a great nation, we cannot tell. But we might well ask whether the Lord was testing Moses to see what was in his heart. Faced with the endless burden of a people who had been rebels as long as he had known them, might Moses have been tempted just a little bit to entertain the thought they deserve to die? But Moses is not only the model intercessor, but also the model leader, a type leader of God’s flock.

    He demonstrates a remarkable commitment to this people, rebels they might be, but they were still the people of Yahweh. And Yahweh was still the Lord their God. with promises to keep and a glory to be maintained. And so Moses’ intercession focuses on three points on which he knew by faith he was speaking to the heart of his God. And I’ll say that again. Moses’ intercession focuses on three points on which he knew by faith He was speaking to the heart of his God. One, God had entered into a covenant relationship with this people that the Lord simply could not now repudiate.

    In verse 26, in contrast to what God had said to Moses, you brought them out, they’re your people. Notice what Moses says. And notice the repeated second person. I have the new American standard that uses the old English, thy, but it might be you or your. And Moses says, oh Lord God, do not destroy thy people, your people, even thine inheritance, your inheritance, whom thou hast redeemed through thy greatness, whom thou has brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand. even further reinforced by verse 29, yet they are thy people, even thine inheritance, whom thou has brought out by thy great power. Don’t you lay this on me, God, you made a covenant. I’m going to hold you to it. That’s a bold prayer, folks, but it’s the prayer of faith. It’s the prayer that believes God when he makes his promise that he’s going to keep his promise. Human beings in general may prove false to their word.

    Israel in particular had spectacularly proved themselves unfaithful and corrupt. But Yahweh, the God who was one and whose very being is defined by his covenant faithfulness, surely could not abandon his commitment to his people. This people were Yahweh’s people because Yahweh had made them his people. So that’s one great thing in Moses’s bold intercessory prayer. Two, the people’s status was founded even further back in God’s promise and oath, not just to Mount Sinai, but back to their ancestors, back to God’s people.

    Remember God, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. God, you cannot abandon the covenant promise to Abraham without breaking your own oath, sworn on your very own being in Genesis 15. And as the book of Hebrews would say about the Lord, he promised and he swore an oath and the Lord offered two things by which he cannot lie. The Lord Yahweh speaks the truth. what he had spoken to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. A third thing about Moses’ words of intercession. Again, boldly, Moses appeals, and he appeals to God’s jealousy for the honor of God’s own holy name.

    It’s your name at stake here, Lord. So much of what had happened thus far had been explicitly so that the nations would know the truth about who Yahweh was and see his mighty hand of deliverance. What kind of God would they take Yahweh to be then if he brought this people out of Egypt only to destroy them in the wilderness? The people that he had so miraculously delivered in the first place. People would not know what to believe about God if he carried out this threatened destruction of Israel Let the Lord then protect His own holy name.

    And Moses was bold enough to say that to God. Protect your name here. Again, the prayer of faith, the intercession of faith. And what happened? The Lord listened to Moses. Though the Lord had threatened Israel’s destruction, Moses offered the intercession of faith, faith in Yahweh, faith in Yahweh’s covenant, faith in God’s own integrity and character and in his mercy. Knowing Israel’s stiff-necked stubbornness and wickedness and sin, Moses boldly offered the prayer of faith, believing God. Here, listen, here is Moses. Moses, I remind you, the giver of the law, the very emblem of the law in Old Testament scripture and in the Bible as a whole. And what does Moses do?

    We find him testifying that Israel’s preservation and salvation is not based on the law, But on God’s covenant promises and God’s covenant mercies, the covenant that God made with Abraham, Moses and the law, writes Paul, do not undo the covenant made more than 400 years earlier. Moses understood that, why don’t we, you see. Moses understood this people had no standing in terms of righteousness. They had standing on the basis of the promise made to Abraham and on that promise alone. Moses had no hope without that promise, without that covenant.

    Must not the judge of all the earth do right? What must God do with a corrupt people? How could the Lord pass over Israel’s corruption and stubbornness and stiffness? How could God pass over Israel’s sin? Why would God yield to Moses’ prayer? Because Moses’ prayer reaches back to the promise made to Abraham and reaches forward to the fulfillment of that promise. Who would step in the breach? Who would bear the weight of God’s righteous wrath? Who would intervene for a sinful people? Who would intercede on their behalf?

    The seed of Abraham, that’s who, in whom the promise has its yes and its amen. Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Paul asked, may it never be. For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would have indeed been based on law. But the scripture has shut up all men under sin. Look how he shut up Israel under sin.

    In order that the promise by faith in the seed of Abraham in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. who believe in the Lord, who believe in the promises, who believe in the covenant and the integrity and character of the God who made the promise and who kept his word and fulfilling that promise by sending Jesus to save us from our sins. Praise the Lord.

    Our hope is in God who promised to make us his people according to his own covenant faithfulness by which he himself would intercede for us in his own son, Jesus Christ, who stood in our place, who bore the wrath due to our sins, who poured himself out to death, who was numbered with the transgressors and now having conquered sin and death and having been raised from the dead, he has ascended into heaven at the right hand of God where he ever was. intercedes for us who believe.

    Therefore, beloved, with Paul, with the scriptures, I say to you, therefore, nothing, nothing can separate us from the covenant love of God, which is in Christ Jesus. Beloved, do not be afraid. No matter what the economic scene, no matter what the political scene, no matter who’s president or not, no matter what the price of gasoline, beloved, don’t be afraid. Come boldly to the throne of grace. Come to God, not in your own righteousness, but in the righteousness of Christ and in His covenant faithfulness. His name will never be put to shame. Do you believe that? That was Moses’ hope. I know, God, you don’t want to bring your own name to shame. Well, I assure you today that the name of Jesus Christ will never, never, never be brought to shame. In that name, let us rest our hope, for He is our surety, and He alone.

    Amen. Let’s pray together. Holy Father, teach us to pray a prayer of faith. Teach us to believe. to believe in Christ, to believe in the covenant faithfulness of our God, in whom Christ is the yes and the amen of that covenant faithfulness, that you are a God who claimed us as your people before the foundation of the world, that you are a God who has declared on oath that you would save a people by the seed of Abraham, even that blessed and beloved seed, Jesus Christ. and that as many as will believe in him most certainly shall be saved. As he ever intercedes, has interceded and continues to intercede for us. Let us believe and not be afraid. We pray that we should be found faithful. to Him who loved us first. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. Let’s sing hymn number 222, shall we? 222.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Not Because of Your Righteousness

    Not Because of Your Righteousness

    About this sermon

    Moses warns Israel not to say that the Lord gave them the land because of their righteousness. The nations would be driven out for their wickedness, and Israel would receive the land because the Lord kept his oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Far from earning it, Israel had been a stubborn people, rebellious from the day the Lord knew them. No one is saved by his own righteousness; salvation comes only through the righteousness of God in Christ, so that whoever boasts must boast in the Lord.

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    Sermon transcript

    Book of Moses, inspired word of God. Deuteronomy chapter nine. We’re beginning to read at verse one. Here, O Israel, you are crossing over the Jordan today to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, great cities fortified to heaven, a people great and tall, the sons of the Anakim, whom you know and of whom you have heard it said, who can stand before the sons of Anak.

    Know therefore today that it is the Lord your God who is crossing over before you as a consuming fire. He will destroy them and He will subdue them before you so that you may be able to drive them out and destroy them quickly just as the Lord has spoken to you. Do not say in your heart when the Lord your God has driven them out before you, because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess the land. But it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is dispossessing them before you. It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess the land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God is driving them out before you in order to confirm the oath which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Know then that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stubborn people. Remember, do not forget how you provoked the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness. From the day you left the land of Egypt until you arrived at this place, you have been rebellious against the Lord. Even at Horeb, you provoked the Lord to wrath, and the Lord was so angry with you that he would have destroyed you.

    When I went up to the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant which the Lord had made with you, then I remained on the mountain forty days and nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water. The Lord gave me the two tablets of stone written by the finger of God, and on them were all the words which the Lord had spoken with you at the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly. It came about at the end of 40 days and nights that the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant, and the Lord said to me, arise, go down from here quickly, for your people whom you brought out of Egypt have acted corruptly.

    They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them. They have made a molten image for themselves. The Lord spoke further to me, saying, I have seen this people, and indeed it is a stubborn people. Let me alone that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven, and I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.

    So I turned and came down from the mountain, while the mountain was burning with fire, and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands. And I saw that you had indeed sinned against the Lord your God. You had made for yourselves a molten calf, and you had turned aside quickly from the way which the Lord had commanded you. I took hold of the two tablets and threw them from my hands and smashed them before your eyes. I fell down before the Lord as at the first forty days and forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water because of all your sin which you had committed in doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger.

    For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure with which the Lord was wrathful against you in order to destroy you, but the Lord listened to me that time also. The Lord was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him, so I also prayed for Aaron. At the same time I took your sinful thing, the calf which you had made, burned it with fire, crushed it, grinding it very small until it was as fine as dust, and I threw its dust into the brook that came down from the mountain.” Again, at Taberah, and at Massah, and at Kibrath Hatavah.

    You provoked the Lord to wrath. When the Lord sent you from Kadesh Barnea, saying, Go up and possess the land which I have given you, then you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God. You neither believed him nor listened to his voice. You have been rebellious against the Lord from the day I knew you. So I fell down before the Lord 40 days and nights, which I did because the Lord had said he would destroy you.

    I prayed to the Lord and said, O Lord God, do not destroy your people, even your inheritance, whom you have redeemed through your greatness, whom you have brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Do not look at the stubbornness of this people or at their wickedness or their sin. Otherwise, the land from which you brought us may say, because the Lord was not able to bring them into the land, which he had promised them, and because he hated them, he has brought them out to slay them in the wilderness. Yet they are your people, even your inheritance, whom you have brought out by your great power and your outstretched arm.”

    This is the word of God. Give your attention to it. Let’s pray together, shall we? Our Father, May the Word of God have its good effect in us today, even as we are reminded of the salvation that has come to us in Jesus Christ. May we consider the power and the might that belong to you and what you have done and what your son Christ has done for us, that we, O God, might give thanks and that we might walk humbly before our God in the grace of the Spirit. Bless now the reading. in preaching the hearing of Your Word, that it would go forth with power among us, O God. As we pray, we do so in the name of Jesus. Amen. The warnings against false assumptions continue. The warnings against false assumptions continue. First of all, Moses has already demolished any idea of national chauvinism arising from Israel’s election.

    He did so in chapter seven, verses six through 10. The Lord had not chosen Israel out of all of the peoples of the earth because they were more in number, not from any superiority. God chose Israel because God chose Israel and because the Lord loved them and because He initiated and kept the covenant He made with them. They had no right to boast in their being Israel. Second, in chapter eight, we have seen how the Lord, through the words of Moses, also takes away any arrogance that Israel might be tempted to arising from their future prosperity in the land of promise.

    Not by their power, nor by the strength of their hand would they be made wealthy. They were to remember that the Lord and the Lord alone had brought them into this land and had given them the power to make wealth according to his covenant promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So not because of their nationality, not because of their ability to make wealth.

    In chapter nine then, a third, false assumption the Lord targets, which is perhaps the most pernicious and perennial distortion of all, the Lord takes away moral self-righteousness in the interpretation of military successes. In other words, it was not because of their righteousness that Israel would succeed in defeating the nations which inherited which inhabited Canaan. Let me repeat that sentence. Didn’t do well. Not because of their righteousness would Israel succeed in defeating the nations which inhabited Canaan.

    Together these three challenges penetrate deeply to the ever ready sources of Israel’s pride. Yes, of human pride in general. The idolatries of racism, of materialism or wealth and the ability of one’s own ability to produce it. And thirdly, militarism. The ability to succeed at war.

    And it is the third one, this ninth chapter of Deuteronomy then, which has as its thrust this matter of Israel’s conception that because they were righteous, God gave them the victories that they secured. And the thrust of that ninth chapter of Deuteronomy then, though directed at Israel, goes to the heart of a very universal phenomenon in the behavior of human beings, of governments, and of nations. In its prophetic power to challenge a complacent people, this chapter in Deuteronomy matches the uncompromising rhetoric of an Amos or an Isaiah. In its unwelcomeness to national leaders and myth makers, Deuteronomy 9 stands alongside the parables of Jesus and the speech of Stephen in Acts chapter 7. in its relevance to modern claims and counterclaims to right, it is our right in the world, it is our right in the nation, particularly in international conflicts, the words of Deuteronomy still speak today. The chapter opens with words that reminded Israel in the first place, that the task which yet lay before them was formidable.

    They are about to go into the land of Canaan and they face cities and nations, cities and nations that had induced such fear in the Exodus generation. And then the generations to follow that you remember how Israel refused to go up and take the land when God told them to. You remember the report of the spies that looked upon the land of promise. there in Numbers 13, and that they saw the people who lived in the land, and the spies, the majority of the spies determined that they were too strong, that these were men of great size, that these cities were too fortified. It was a land that devoured its inhabitants, such that the Israelites who reported saw themselves as grasshoppers before the people who lived in Canaan. As you read in Deuteronomy chapter nine, verse two, Moses even seems to chant the litany of inferiority that the spies had brought back.

    They’re too great. They’re great. They’re powerful. They’re too numerous. That’s the Analect, the Anakim, these great giant men. But Moses’ strategy here, the Lord’s strategy in this word spoken, to counter that fear that had gripped this people earlier, was not to try to shrink the enemy by false propaganda, but rather to strengthen faith in Israel’s one great ally, Yahweh their God. It would be he alone who would give them the victory. God himself would be in the vanguard, going ahead of them into the land.

    And you’ll notice here mention of God going forward among them as a consuming fire. And remember that this is the same language, the consuming fire that they had witnessed at Sinai that had so terrified them that they asked God not to speak again. But that consuming fire, chapter nine verses, the first three verses, is going to go ahead of them into the land of promise against the enemy that dwelt there. that consuming fire that they had so much feared as the mountain quake would now be turned against their enemies. God himself is the one, verse three, who will cross over before them as that consuming fire who will subdue for them their enemies that Israel then in turn might drive them out and destroy them quickly according to the word which God himself, Yahweh, had spoken.

    So Moses sets the scene of what is about to take place in the victories that are forthcoming. But the danger for Israel is that the euphoria of the victories to come is as likely to produce in them and among them a moral self-congratulation as the rewards of their labor, of their military service. of their righteousness, just as their ability to produce wealth in the land would be their ability by their own hand to produce such wonderful crops, or the fact that they were the elect people of God in the first place.

    There is a regular concern in these chapters for what people say to themselves. That is, saying in their hearts. Look at chapter 9, verse 4. Do not say in your heart that we have been given victory because of our righteousness. But the people were apt to say in their hearts, it was by the strength of our hand that we produced the wealth. repeated phrase. So Moses with characteristically sharp instincts envisions what will be said when the dust of the battle settles. At a primary theological level these verses reinforce the point already made in so many ways that Israel owed all that they were and all that they possessed to the grace and gift of God and to God alone. and not in any way to their own merit. They could stake no claim on divine favors in advance, nor could they retrospectively explain any success or prosperity that came their way as the true reward for their righteousness, no. When God expelled the Canaanites before them, the Israelites were to beware of saying in their heart that their righteousness was God’s reason.

    He’s on our side because we’re the good people here. Over against the wickedness of the Canaanites. Israel was not to think in their hearts. Thank God we’re not like other men. You remember Jesus’ words about the Pharisee? Thank God we’re not like those Canaanites, like those Hittites and Hittites. We’re God’s righteous people after all. We are worthy, but they are unworthy. We are righteous, but they are wicked.

    Yes, the reason for God dispossessing the Canaanites was in part to be found in his judgment of those other nations in their wickedness. It is because of the wickedness of the nations. God says here that he will drive them out. But the wickedness of the Canaanites does not prove the righteousness of the Israelites, you see.

    The fact that he is driving them out is just, but the fact that he’s taking Israel in is grace. It’s a gift. So in order to correct the potential for Israel’s false inference that it was their righteousness, over against the Canaanites wickedness that would give them the victories ahead, Moses presses home hard in this chapter. God was not only the God of Israel, but the God of all nations in his absolute sovereignty. Hence the expelling of the Canaanites from Palestine was not to be understood as some arbitrary divine act, but as an act of judgment by a just God. to be sure. But beyond that, beyond that, pay attention.

    The conquest would simply be God keeping his own promise. The promise that he had made to Abraham. He does so in order to confirm the oath which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he says. Israel could not claim credit for the promise itself or for its fulfillment. It is God being God, God keeping covenant, God keeping his word, doing what he said he would do.

    So that additionally, far from the conquest being because of their righteousness, it was actually in spite of their stubborn provocation. You are a stubborn people, Moses says to them. otherwise translated a stiff-necked people. Verse 6. In spite of their stubborn provocation against the wrath of God.

    You think you’ve made God happy, Israel? Do you think you’ve made him well-pleased with you by your rebellion in the wilderness? It was only by God’s grace, and we’ll note carefully in this chapter in a subsequent sermon, only by the intercession of Moses, who again and again went before God pleading that God not destroy this people, only by God’s grace and that at the intercession of Moses, Israel was not destroyed along with the rest of the nations. The gift of the land could not be a reward for righteousness, it was a gift of God’s graciousness.

    On the other hand, as we have been reading in previous chapters, the continuing possession of the land by the Israelites would certainly be bound up with and contingent in a measure upon their obedience. This stiff-necked and stubborn people. What are you gonna be like when you get in the land? Hmm. Disobedience to the covenant could and would lead to forfeiting the land. And the Israelites would join the Canaanites as ex-residents of Canaan.

    So theologically then, these verses stand along with the rest of Deuteronomy in affirming divine grace on the one hand and denying human claims on God on the other hand. Claims that arise out of self-attributed righteousness, that is. These chapters of Deuteronomy present an Old Testament theological equivalent of the arguments of the Apostle Paul in Romans chapters one to three.

    Israel had many advantages and blessings. They had the oracles. These things are undeniable and based on God’s election. But when it comes to moral standing before God, to matters of relative guilt or innocence, then there is fundamentally no difference between Israel and the rest of the nations. Jews and Gentiles, all alike, stand under God’s judgment.

    If part of the intention of verses four through six of Deuteronomy chapter nine was to justify the conquest in terms of the wickedness of the Canaanites, one might have expected the rhetoric to continue with a few choice examples of what those pagans have done. But instead, Israel is spoken of and we are given here, they are given, we are given, not something about how terrible the wicked nations are, but how a lengthy and a very pointed recollection of an outstanding example of Israel’s wickedness.

    Going through that period when God had first given them the law, called Moses up on the mountain, And they had so quickly turned aside to worship the golden calf. Sitting right before God’s face, having just heard and having agreed to keep the Ten Commandments from the voice of God. So we have this large, expansive description of Israel’s wickedness at Mount Sinai. And then in verses 22 and 23, we see a whole list of other little things that they’ve done along the way that also exemplify that same kind of stubborn, stiff-necked, rebellious disobedience.

    Clearly, Deuteronomy is more concerned with the failures of God’s people than with the wickedness of the other nations. That doesn’t make the nations not wicked, but recognize the intent of the book of Deuteronomy. Just as the Old Testament in general pours far more chastisement, even condemnation, on Israel’s idolatry than on that of the nations. After all, they heard, they knew, they were God’s people. How dare they break God’s covenant?

    And as a matter related, as you think about this in terms of mission and the evangelism enterprise, it can well be argued that dwelling over much on the wickedness and the idolatries of those pagans over there in Africa, of those terribly wicked pagans in Japan or in Quebec, can induce precisely the same kind of national, ecclesiastical, or cultural superiority complex of self-righteousness. We’re going to go save them. After all, we’re the good guys here. Let us beware and take to heart what we hear.

    The strategy of Deuteronomy 9 and 10, as we shall see further, undermine such delusions by declaring that the people of God are as deserving of God’s destruction as the worst of the nations, and that only by God’s grace are they saved and spared from it. That warning against self-congratulation is culminated in verse six.

    With Moses’ description of Israel as a stubborn people, or the alternative translation, a stiff-necked people. That latter metaphor, this stiff-necked people, graphically portrays the hard, unbending neck of a stubborn animal that refuses to cooperate with its owner’s wishes. The bull or the cow or the horse, the mule, such language describing Israel as that kind of people. And so Moses recollects from Exodus 32 to 34 when at the very time Moses had ascended the mountain to receive the commandments, the tablets of the covenant, Israel was right there at the foot of the mountain fashioning for themselves the molten calf that they might worship and bow down to it. Thus was the anger of the Lord provoked against them as a people. He threatened to destroy them. Had it not been for the intercession of Moses, it appears he would have destroyed them in his wrath.

    And such wickedness was not a one-time event, though it’s expansively described here. It appears that time and again in Israel’s history, verse 7 and verse 24 make abundantly clear, wickedness was a way of life for Israel. From the time I knew you until now. Wasn’t one little slip-up. Remember, Moses says in verse 7, do not forget how you provoked the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness from the day you left the land of Egypt until you arrived at this place. Forty years! And again in verse 24, you have been rebellious against the Lord from the day I knew you.

    What happened at Mount Sinai was no exceptional lapse, but was simply the most horrendous illustration of what could be described as a congenital and ingrained stubbornness, stiff-neckedness. Even so, the choice of the rebellion at Horeb, that is at Mount Sinai, for the illustration is doubly significant. First, because that’s where the covenant was reinitiated on Mount Sinai. God renewed his promise and his pledge to his people.

    No sooner had it been made than the people broke it in its most fundamental propositions and requirements. The covenant had not been based on and certainly could not be sustained by Israel’s own self-righteousness. So any grounds for future boasting was cut off from under them immediately.

    And secondly, on that occasion, God was so angry, angry enough to destroy them, but didn’t. Mercy, grace instead. We note in verse eight, The use of the same word for destroy as that of verse three. God was at the point of ready to destroy Israel just as he is about to destroy the Canaanites. Very pointed. God actually threatened to do to Israel exactly what he commanded them to do to the Canaanites, destroy them.

    So far from Israel’s self-estimation of the reason for their successes, the fact was that if anyone deserved to be destroyed, it was the Israelites themselves and that long ago. their very existence on the edge of the promised land, let alone their future possession of it, was proof positive of the mercy and grace of God. Beloved, coming out of the shadows and types of the Old Testament, and I’m sure you’d be glad to do that, into the New Covenant, New Testament era, I simply ask you this morning, who dare think that his or her salvation is the result of their own righteousness?

    Their own wise expression of their free will? or any other such stupid comment men might make. Paul rehearses, emphatically underscores, there is none righteous. No. Not one. And there’s no distinction. Jew, Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. This is not new.

    This is no intervention, innovation on Paul’s part of which the apostle speaks. This is the testimony of scripture from beginning to end. It has ample witness born to it in the Old Testament writings. in the law, like Deuteronomy, and the prophets, like Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and Daniel, and Hosea, and Ezekiel, and all the rest. Who dares say in his heart, speaking of matters of salvation, I have done it. I made the choice. I did what was right. No. and not of merit. It is a gift, not something we’ve earned or deserved.

    All have sinned. All, all, all have sinned. All were dead in their trespasses and sins. It doesn’t matter, Jew or Gentile, male or female, black or white, American or Iraqi, are equally in need of the free mercy of God, and may receive his mercy on the same terms through faith in Jesus Christ, who alone has achieved the victory, having gone before us to open the way, destroying the enemies, our enemies, of sin. and Satan and death.

    Not our righteousness, but his. Not our merits, but his. Not our power, but his. For all those who believe, for there is no distinction, no distinction, do you not see? Israel was as wicked, no more wicked, as those other nations. They had the covenant, they had the oracles, they had the promises of God. Israel was as wicked as those they would dispossess. They were no more righteous, no more worthy, no more deserving. Indeed, for all of the privileges in the covenant, they were still under the bondage of sin.

    None will be saved apart from the righteousness of God. accomplished in the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ, who is both just and the justifier. Where then is boasting, Paul asked? It is excluded. Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord and in the Lord alone. To him be the glory.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • The Better Bread

    The Better Bread

    About this sermon

    The manna in the wilderness was no ordinary food. God sent it from heaven to humble Israel and teach them that man lives by every word that comes from his mouth. Obedience was the response of a people already redeemed, not a way to earn the land. Jesus is the true bread from heaven. Israel grumbled at the manna, and many stumbled when Jesus said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven,” but everyone who believes in him has eternal life.

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    Sermon transcript

    Let us turn in the Word of God this morning to the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 8. Continuing our sermon series in the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 8, beginning with verse 1. Give your attention, for this is the inspired and infallible Word of God. All the commandments that I am commanding you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to give to your forefathers.

    You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these 40 years, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandment or not. He humbled you and let you be hungry and fed you with manna that you did not know, nor did your fathers know that he might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these 40 years. Thus you are to know in your heart that the Lord your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son.

    Therefore you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God to walk in his ways and to fear him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs flowing forth in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey, a land where you will eat food without scarcity, in which you will not lack anything. a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper when you have eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which he has given you. Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his ordinances and his statutes which I am commanding you today. Otherwise, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and lived in them, and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold multiply, and all that you have multiplies, then your heart will become proud, and you will forget the Lord your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

    He led you through the great and terrible wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water. He brought water for you out of the rock of Flint. In the wilderness he fed you manna, which your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and that he might test you to do good for you in the end. Otherwise, you may say in your heart, my power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth.

    But you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who has given you power to make wealth, that he may confirm his covenant, which he swore to your fathers. As it is this day, it shall come about if you ever forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them. I will testify against you today that you will surely perish. like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you. So you shall perish because you would not listen to the voice of the Lord, your God.

    I’m going to ask you also to turn over with me into the New Testament to the gospel of John. And I’m going to ask that we turn to John chapter six. John chapter six, I’m going to begin with verse 41 and read through verse 51. John chapter 6, verse 41, this too is the word of God, the gospel of Jesus Christ.

    Therefore, the Jews were grumbling about him because he said, I am the bread that came down out of heaven. They were saying, is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say I have come down out of heaven? Jesus answered and said to them, Do not grumble among yourselves.

    No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, And they shall all be taught of God. Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God. He has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life.

    I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and they died. This is the bread which comes down out of heaven so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down out of heaven If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread also which I give for the life of the world is my flesh.

    Thus ends the reading of God’s inspired and infallible word. Amen. Let’s pray together. Our Father, may the Spirit who moved the prophet to write spirit that is poured out according to the blessing of Jesus Christ upon his church. May that spirit now be active in the reading, the preaching, the hearing of your word this morning, that together we might embrace Jesus Christ as he is freely offered to us in the gospel. And may we be found faithful, receiving life in him and bringing forth fruit in accordance with that life that is at work in us, according to the power and grace of Jesus Christ, our Savior, in whose name we pray, amen. Remembering is a key idea in the book of Deuteronomy. And as a good teacher, Moses frequently returns to the theme of remembering in order to drive its message home.

    For his people, his congregation Israel, the years in the desert had been far from easy. But he knew that once the people entered the land, they would be exposed to entirely different hazards than they had experienced until now. Life in Canaan would confront them with the temptation of disobedience, materialism, forgetfulness, pride, and idolatry all about.

    The future was bright with promise, but not free from danger. In the wilderness, they had been tested and tried. But during those dark days, the promise of a land overflowing with tokens of God’s unfailing generosity lay ever before them. These Hebrew travelers had heard glowing descriptions by Moses of the plentiful territory which lay ahead. But he made it clear that there were other aspects to that future story.

    They were about to enter a land with new temptations, noted as much for its corrupt, immoral religion as its flowing streams and abundant harvests. Once they possessed this unfamiliar territory, the prosperous Israelites would be in serious danger of forgetting the Lord’s correction, his provision, and his commandments.

    And these are the themes then that are intertwined throughout these verses of Deuteronomy chapter eight, as God’s servant Moses prepares the congregation for life in the new environment of the promised land. Thus, it is important to remember that the basic subject matter of Deuteronomy is the renewal of the covenant of the Lord. The covenant of the Lord with his people that had taken place there on the plains of Moab, just across the Jordan, immediately prior to Israel’s entrance into the promised land.

    The death of Moses was almost at hand, fast approaching, and he, in his closing days, needed to prepare the people for the transition that was about to occur. In addition, he needed to prepare the people for the wars of conquest that they were about to undertake as they crossed the Jordan into the land.

    They were about to leave the wilderness behind. The days of manna were nearly over. What had been their steady diet, think of it, what had been their steady diet for the last 40 years was nearly over. That which had so miraculously appeared was almost as miraculously about to disappear. and what had been a pilgrim people on the way were now to be constituted and established theocratic nation soon to inhabit their very own territory.

    Deuteronomy thus serves as something of a constitution for this covenant people. And the great question before them is whether they will remember the Lord and obey his commandments and enjoy his blessings, or would they disobey and experience the curses of the covenant as had been warned against them. The words of chapter eight of Deuteronomy then comprise a most sober warning to Israel, the covenant people, not to forget the Lord, their God, Yahweh.

    The chapter opens in verse one, as you can see there, with a typical requirement to keep the commandments, the law as a whole. And the perspective in that first verse moves from the immediate presence of Moses’ address. He speaks of the commandments that I’m commanding you today to an anticipated long future in the land. The phrase added there in verse one, that you may live, applies to the people in their totality and throughout their generations, as is clear from the accompanying words, that they may live and multiply.

    In other words, in the land to come, in the place of promise, that they would be fruitful, that they would multiply, and that they would dwell long in the land which the Lord their God had given them.

    The logic then of that first verse is not that Israel must obey here and now here in Moab and thus somehow earn their way or qualify their way to go into the promised land in the immediate future. Rather, it is an exhortation in line with the earlier argumentation of Deuteronomy namely that Israel’s Lord, their God, had brought them out of Egypt, had brought them through the wilderness, had brought them out of the house of slavery into freedom to be his people in order that he might now bring them into the promised land and the exhortation is that they would keep the commandments as God’s people as they inhabit the land that the Lord had promised and sworn to give even to their forefathers. and that He had established His law at Sinai at the beginning of their wilderness journey, that they might obey Him and keep His commandments as His people in the land of promise. And thus it is the complex thought of the covenant that the Lord had established on the one hand, Yahweh gives, therefore the people must obey. And on the other hand, Israel must obey in order to continue as God’s faithful covenant people to possess in keeping with the promise made with their forefathers. This is a covenant relationship, a mutual giving and receiving on the part of God giving and the people receiving and they in turn giving of themselves in obedience to the commandments of their covenant making covenant keeping God.

    And so thus there is the need for the people to remain faithful to the covenant during their whole existence in the land. They are reminded of that being a part of the equation. They were to remember the manner in which the Lord their God had led them in the wilderness those past 40 years, how he had led them and how he had done so that he might humble them and test them in order to teach them as his own children. They were to remember what God had done.

    And so this chapter 8 of Deuteronomy serves as a warning to the future Israel. A future Israel that might well be at ease in Canaan, having vineyards and having fields and having flocks and having children. A future Israel at ease in the promised land, basking in self-congratulations on what they had done in arriving there. And here is a warning lest that might be the case. This recollection of God’s providential guidance during the 40 years in the wilderness was offered to afford the corrective for such vanity, even if they might think of being that people. Remember what you have done. Remember who you are. Remember what the Lord has taught you. Remember how the Lord has cared for you in bringing you to this place of blessing.

    The wilderness experience, after all, had been a time of probation, a time of discipline. And what is meant by verse two, by the Lord humbling Israel, is illustrated by reference to God’s extraordinary provision for every need during those 40 years. Their sandals didn’t wear out, their feet didn’t swell up, they always had food. God gave them what was needed. And during those 40 years, God’s extraordinary provision was particularly by means of the manna.

    You know what the manna was, but Moses here reminds them that the manna was a bread of bread, a manna that they did not know, nor did their fathers know. There was something unique and special and distinctive about the manna that they did not know it and it was purposefully such that they did not know it part of the instruction that the Lord would give them. Their humbling thus consisted in their being deprived, they got hungry and they got thirsty, and then in the Lord’s manner of provision, the way he provided, and the provision here Their humbling consisted in the Lord’s provision of the, what is it? The what is it? the manna, the unknown supernatural bread of heaven, which compelled them to recognize their dependence on God. And you might turn with me here this morning to Exodus chapter 16 and you see the story of God giving them the manna and the people coming up with this first awareness of what God was doing. And we read there in Exodus chapter 16 in verses two and following.

    The people were hungry. And they grumbled. The whole congregation of the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. And the sons of Israel said to Moses and Aaron, would that we had died by the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat, when we ate bread to the full. For you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger. Then the Lord said to Moses, behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day that I may test them whether or not they will walk in my instruction.

    And so we have this picture set before us. This picture portrayed in Exodus 16, verse 13 and following of how in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp and the children of Israel would go out and when the layer of dew evaporated, behold, on the surface, on the face of the wilderness, literally, there was a fine flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground. And you have then this humorous picture of the sons of Israel in chapter 16, verse 15, seeing this thing that the Lord had done, this thing that had happened, and when they saw it, they said to one another, what is it? Literally in the Hebrew, man who, from which we get the word manna. Manna, what is this?

    What is it? And that was its name. And that was its name for 40 years. What is it? A bread they did not know. That’s what it was. Nor did their fathers know. It was a bread Supernaturally given from above, a bread from heaven that God provided by which he fed his people for 40 years. What is it? And Moses said to them, it is the bread which the Lord, Yahweh, has given you to eat.

    Not like the bread you know back in Egypt, but a bread you do not know. whatever it was, or whatever it was not, if it could have been put under a microscope and subjected to scientific testing as to what it was or what it wasn’t, the bread of heaven, the manna, was nonetheless, in its nature and in its manner of provision, clearly a miraculous product. Moreover, for Israel, If there had been merely a change from one normal palatable food staple to another, no matter how exotic that other staple food might have been, it would neither have humbled Israel nor taught them the truth which the manna did. This wasn’t just a bread they knew. Not even an exotic bread that they were tasting for the first time.

    But this was a miraculous bread, a supernatural bread, a bread that taught them, Moses tells them in Deuteronomy 8, that man does not live by bread alone, but by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. This, what is it, was a tool of instruction, a reminder, a 40-year reminder that it was God who had rescued them and it was God who sustained them for 40 years in the wilderness. God gave the what-is-it, the manna, as an effective reminder that the creature does not exist as a self-sufficient being. Israel didn’t self-create. the sons of Israel did not make themselves. Nor does that people simply, are they sustained by the fruits of an earth also existing and producing independently of God. In other words, it wasn’t just the tree that was there. And it’s always been there. It’s always been there, Stephen Hawking says. It’s always been there, you see.

    No, these were a people who were created and they lived upon a bread that was created. supernaturally given to them to remind them of who they are and to whom they belong and upon whom they depend for everything, everything. That they, Israel, were to see themselves as a created entity ultimately and always dependent on the divine word, which called it to life and sustained it on the way, creation and providence. God thus led Israel into a situation where life was derived and must daily be sought from a heavenly bread. The fruit of a daily creative exercise of the word of God God spoke and it was there. And Israel survived because of it.

    And that they might see that man’s life does not, as does the life of a beast, does not, different from a beast. consists solely in a physical vitality which bread either earthly or heavenly might sustain. God provided the bread of heaven in such a way as to require an ethical religious response to his preceptive word. What do I mean?

    This response to the manna was appropriately focused on the observance of the Sabbath. They had to be a worshiping people. Six days they labored to gather their, what is it? And the seventh they rested. The response was appropriately focused on the observance of the Sabbath.

    The sign of man’s, of Israel’s covenant allegiance. as well as the people who were to be the recaller who recollected God’s role as creator. Remember the Sabbath day, four and six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and all things contained therein. So the Sabbath bound up with the what is it is to remind them that they were created and that God provided for them and called them to that pattern of Sabbath keeping of worship and service that was fitting. for this people he has redeemed. And you recall then how the manna was to be picked up for consumption six days with a double portion on the sixth day so as not to violate the Sabbath rest and worship.

    Israel was to give the Lord his due. And thus the manna taught Israel that only as man stands obediently under the Lord’s sovereign word, the ultimate source of life, As a people called on to worship Him and honor Him as God, does man find true and lasting life? What is it?

    For Moses, the way to true life included obedience to all of the commandments, but as you know of Moses, as the book of Deuteronomy moves to its close, for Moses, the way to true life included not only living for Jehovah, but also dying in the manner in which he prescribed, according to the word that the mouth of the Lord had spoken. Chapter 34, verse 5 of Deuteronomy, just like God said, so it happened. Moses died and he did not go in to the promised land. And if we can make the eschatological end time leap, just as Moses learned to die as God had spoken, so would Jesus Christ live and die and rise again according to the appointment of God’s word and will, period.

    Remember? Thou shalt worship and serve the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Thou shalt not put the Lord thy God to the test. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord. Not my will, but thy will be done. And so we’ve made our gospel leap. For it is in Him, in Jesus Christ, that there is life. Remember?

    He is the bread that has come down out of heaven. Yes, God fed the Israelites with the manna, which they did not know. Nor did their fathers know, but it was given to them that he might make them to know that man does not live by bread alone. The Israelites ate the manna in the wilderness, the marvelous supernatural manna, and they died. But beloved, you, you have received the better bread. It is a bread that the world does not know.

    Many of the Jews did not know it. Oh, they knew the manna. They could cite chapter and verse. At least they thought they knew the manna. But the manna pointed far beyond itself. It pointed to the true bread which comes down out of heaven. The Jews knew Jesus. At least they thought they did.

    After all, he was the son of Joseph, wasn’t he? And the Jews were offended at the lowly condition of Jesus’ human nature. How dare he? How could he be the Christ? It was a bread they did not know. They grumbled. Sound familiar? Recollection, Israel in the wilderness, grumbling over their hunger. They grumbled at the bread from heaven. And they grumbled that He should say, I am the bread that came down out of heaven. And so the Jew stumbles. and the world looks on and thinks it’s all foolishness anyway. We hear them.

    How dare we claim to the exclusivity of Jesus Christ as the only way to salvation. That only those who believe in him will be saved and have eternal life. Ha! After all, are we not all God’s people? You silly Christians. Are we not all striving for the same things? Is not one religion as good as another? How can God be clothed in human likeness? You fools.

    This is a bread that the world does not know. He came to his own and his own received him not. But our text, beloved, Deuteronomy 8, as well as John chapter 6, is pointing us to Jesus, to Him, to the bread come down from heaven, for man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

    We are a most dependent people, apart from Christ, Finish the sentence. You can do nothing. That’s pretty dependent. Apart from me, you can do nothing. That’s pretty needy bread. Needful bread. Without me, you die. You perish. You’re nothing. Apart from Christ, we cannot truly worship. Apart from Christ, we cannot truly live. Apart from Jesus Christ, we perish, beloved.

    Jesus exhorts the people, therefore, do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man shall give you. For on Him the Father, even God, has set His seal, John 6, 27. And he goes on to say, and this is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent. Believe in the bread, believe in the Son, Jesus Christ, whom has been sent into the world. Yes, beloved, yours is the better bread.

    For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, Paul says. but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Romans 14, 17. Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows, that will he also reap. For one who sows to the flesh will from the flesh reap corruption. But the one who sows to the Spirit shall from the Spirit reap eternal life. Galatians 6, 7, and 8.

    For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Jesus Christ, whose end is destruction, whose God is their appetite, their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things.

    As Paul continues, for our citizenship is in heaven. And our food is from heaven, a bread that has come down from heaven. Our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, Philippians 3, 18. So set your minds, Paul says, on the things above, not on the things that are on earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

    When Christ, who is our life, when the true bread comes and he is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. Colossians 3. Jesus Christ, the better bread, in whom is life. Therefore, beloved, remember. Remember who you are and remember to whom you belong and who it is who offers himself to you that you might have life. Yes, eternal life and have it abundantly. Christ crucified for sin. Christ raised from the dead triumphant. Christ now ascended to heaven. The bread that came down from heaven and returned to heaven that you might know Him and receive Him and live forevermore.

    Remember. Our Father, let us set our hearts upon the bread that does not perish. Let us set our minds upon that supernatural bread, the bread that came down from heaven, the very person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our King, our Savior, the one upon whom we depend for everything.

    And Lord, might we then give him the glory and the honor and the praise that is due unto him, that he might have the preeminence in everything, in our worship, in our lives of service, in our devotion to our God, in the keeping of the commandments, that in all things we would set our hearts upon those things above where Christ is. and that we might partake of him as he is so freely offered to us in the gospel. It’s in his glorious and precious name we give thanks as we pray for the proclamation of Jesus to the nations, that all of the elect might know him and embrace him as he is offered to them. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Not by Bread Alone

    Not by Bread Alone

    About this sermon

    Deuteronomy 8 calls Israel to remember the wilderness, where the Lord humbled them, let them hunger, and fed them with manna, so they would know that man does not live by bread alone but by every word from the mouth of the Lord. Prosperity in the land would tempt them to forget him and say their own power made them rich. Jesus answered Satan’s temptation with this verse, living by his Father’s word through his trials, and in him believers learn contentment in every circumstance, as Philippians 4 describes.

    More sermons from Deuteronomy · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    I invite you to turn to the book of Deuteronomy. We’re reading chapter eight this morning. And I do remind you that this is the inspired word of God. We’re also going to be reading a passage from the book of Philippians. We’ll turn there in just a moment. Let’s begin, first of all, in Deuteronomy chapter eight.

    All the commandments that I am commanding you today, you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to give to your forefathers. You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these 40 years, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.

    He humbled you and let you be hungry and fed you with manna which you did not know. Nor did your fathers know that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years.

    Thus you are to know in your heart that the Lord your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son. Therefore you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to fear Him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks, of water, of fountains and springs, flowing forth in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey, a land where you will eat food without scarcity, in which you will not lack anything, a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper. When you have eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which he has given you. Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God. by not keeping His commandments and His ordinances and His statutes which I am commanding you today.

    Otherwise, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and lived in them, and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold multiply, and all that you have multiplies, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. He led you through the great and terrible wilderness with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground. where there was no water. He brought water for you out of the rock of Flint. In the wilderness he fed you manna, which your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and that he might test you to do good for you in the land.

    Otherwise, you may say in your heart, my power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth. But you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who is giving you power to make wealth, that he may confirm his covenant, which he swore to your fathers as it is this day. And it shall come about if you ever forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them. I testify against you today that you will surely perish like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you. So shall you perish because you would not listen to the voice of the Lord, your God. And I’ll turn over to me and with me to Philippians chapter four, Begin reading there at verse 10 of Philippians 4, 10 through 20.

    But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at last you revived your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned before, but you lacked opportunity. Not that I speak from want, for I have learned to be content in whatever my circumstances. In whatever circumstances I am, I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need.

    I can do all things through him who strengthens me. Nevertheless, you have done well to share with me in my affliction. You yourselves also know, Philippians, that at the first preaching of the gospel after I left Macedonia, No church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, but you alone, for even in Thessalonica, you sent a gift more than once for my needs. Not that I seek the gift itself, but I seek for the profit, which increases to your account. But I have received everything in full and have an abundance. I am amply supplied, having received from Epaphroditus what you have sent, a fragrant aroma, an acceptable sacrifice, while pleasing to God. And my God will supply all your needs according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

    Now to our God and Father be the glory forever and ever. Amen. May God bless to our hearing this portion of his word. Let’s pray together. Shall we? Heavenly God. Help us. To be a people who know who love the Lord Jesus Christ. And that we in him, oh God, would know every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. And that we would be satisfied, oh God, in him. And that we would bring praise and glory and honor to your name, that whatever we do in word or deed, we would do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to you, Father, through him. We pray, O God, that your word, even today, even now, would have its good effect in us, that we, O God, would be transformed, that we would be the people you want us to be, and that we would delight in it to your glory, to your praise. In Jesus we ask. Amen.

    Let me begin very briefly this morning in saying that a number of you over months, perhaps years, have said to me time and again, could you ever give us an outline? And I’ve given you a handout that is an outline of the chapter 8 of the book of Deuteronomy today. It speaks of the pattern of Deuteronomy 8, and it’s more than I could in good conscience try to manage and handle in a sermon today. I’m giving it to you that you can actually take this home and read through this chapter again and refresh your minds. But what I would draw your attention to is the overall structure of the text is showing this parallelism that we call a chiasm.

    And so you can see a pattern in the, in the chapter that goes from, if you’ll look above, matches up with the A that is at the bottom. There’s what we might call an A prime at the bottom, or an A with an apostrophe. There’s a B section and a B apostrophe, and those two sections mirror one another. Similarly, a C section that mirrors itself, a D section, and then a central E section, as we call it here. in which we find the words, bless the Lord, do not forget.

    And it just so happens that that center section, that E section that stands by itself is at the very center of the passage. And that’s why we call it a callous omit. It centers in and comes to a center in this parallel fashion. I draw your attention to it simply because in short, what we see as the focus of the chapter becomes the sermon title today. lest you forget.

    And you’ll see how Moses arranges those words and the spirit arranges those words in the chapter to draw attention to that emphatic comment that is a theme in the book of Deuteronomy, but especially in this chapter. And we hope it will find its way home in this sermon as well. So let’s begin. As we read Deuteronomy chapter eight, It is, of course, impossible for us as New Testament believers to read that chapter without thinking of Jesus and his use of Deuteronomy 8, verse 3.

    And he used that verse when he was tempted by Satan in the wilderness. In fact, it is worth reading the whole chapter eight, especially the first half of the chapter through the eyes and the mind of Jesus. The synoptic gospels all portray the temptations of Jesus as following directly from his baptism, as you know. At his baptism, just Jesus received Affirmation of his identity and mission as the Son of God.

    In words that quoted at least two scriptures, Psalm 2-7 and Isaiah 42-1. You’ll recognize them, you needn’t turn there. At Jesus’ baptism, Psalm 2-7 says, I will surely tell of the decrees of the Lord. He said to me, thou art my beloved son, today I have begotten thee.

    And combine that with the thought of Isaiah 42.1, which says, behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom my soul delights. I have put my spirit upon him. He will bring forth justice to the nations.

    Psalm 2.7, Isaiah 42.1. And I’m asking you to think of the baptism of Jesus. When the heavens open, And a voice is heard, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. And the Spirit is poured out upon Jesus and comes down and lights upon Him like a dove. And that glorious declaration from heaven will end those affirmations that are compiled and compressed in that revelation that God the Father makes of God the Son.

    The burden of Messianic Sonship and the mission of an obedient, suffering servanthood that flow from those two combined texts, led Jesus from his baptism, from this glorious moment of affirmation, into a period of intense suffering immediately thereafter in the temptation in the wilderness. Having been affirmed the Son of God, the one in whom the Father is well pleased, Immediately the spirit drives him into the wilderness where he will be sorely, sorely tested.

    A period of intense wrestling with the future that lay before him. It is hardly surprising that Jesus turned in that temptation in the wilderness to the opening chapters of Deuteronomy. For the resources that would undergird the orientation of his life and to the doing of the will of His Father God. Surely that business of orienting one’s life to the will of God is what is at the heart of these early chapters in the book of Deuteronomy. And such a thrust of life is clearly seen in Jesus Christ.

    That unlike Israel, He was obedient. He kept the commandments and the statutes. He was faithful and true to the Lord’s commandments in everything, in every circumstance. Always do we see Jesus doing the will of the Father. And especially and emphatically so when he faces the temptation of Satan in the wilderness and when he faces the cross. Unlike unfaithful Israel, Jesus is devoted to the will of God, unwaveringly so, even in drinking to the dregs the cup of suffering that is set before him. Our passage in Deuteronomy 8, in fact the whole of Deuteronomy, would have been familiar to all devout Jews.

    And the Lord Jesus must have known these words by heart His earthly life, as you know, was marked by humiliation and trial, from his lowly birth to his horrendous death. Though we might be tempted to think otherwise, his life was not easy. Yes, he’s the son of God, but he is fully man, and he suffers at every turn as a man. Truly he was God’s beloved son and he was the suffering servant whom God had promised and appointed for his people.

    Immediately after this dramatic signal experience of the Holy Spirit coming down upon him at his baptism and prior to the beginning of his public ministry proclaiming the kingdom of God, Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness And there he was severely tested. After 40 days utterly without food, he was desperately hungry. There is no doubt that the Gospel writers intend us to notice in those 40 days the significance of Jesus, the son of God, spending 40 days in the wilderness, facing similar privation as what we would read of Israel in its 40 years in the wilderness. Here they are focused in the person of Jesus in these dramatic 40 days.

    And thus does the devil invite Jesus to do a miracle. No doubt, Satan’s repeated insinuation. You know the words. At the wilderness temptation. Satan saying, if you are the Son of God. Hear it? If you are the Son of God. We’ve just had this affirmation at his baptism. This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. And Satan’s immediate temptation. If you are the Son of God. And that insinuation was intended to induce in Jesus the same spirit of testing, of proving God somehow, demanding that God show as Israel had done again, that had so characterized Israel in the wilderness, testing God.

    Why isn’t God giving us food? Why isn’t he giving us water? Why isn’t he doing those kinds of things that we expect and demand of him? Well, here is Satan inducing Jesus to do something similar. Put your God to the test. Show me, show us that you are the son of God. Why not turn those beautiful brown stones of the Judean desert into fresh, warm loaves of bread? So that you, Jesus, might satisfy your natural hunger immediately.

    According to Satan, if he did so, it would prove that he is God’s son in his ability to do such a thing, as the voice from heaven had so clearly declared at his baptism. Jesus was not simply invited to transform stones into bread. It went much deeper than that. The devil confronted him with the temptation to doubt God’s Word, if you are the Son of God. That if, that casting a doubt upon God’s Word recalls the first temptation in the garden, doesn’t it? Did God really say, are you really the Son of God, you see? Even as Satan had tempted Adam and Eve in the garden.

    Jesus knew that the voice from heaven at His baptism was absolutely true and completely dependable. He had known from His youth of His unique relationship with the Father, and the voice from heaven that had just spoken confirmed it. He was God’s Son, and if He was, then He could certainly trust His Father.

    With that seemingly innocent suggestion that Jesus turned stones to bread, the devil was inviting Jesus to doubt both God’s word and God’s nature. And Jesus refused to doubt God’s word. God had said clearly and unmistakably, you are my son whom I love. Jesus knew that so to be so, and so refused to do anything that might suggest that the saying needs some further support or visible evidence. It’s true. There was no need whatever to prove it. If God had said it, then that was enough.

    Moreover, Jesus refused to doubt God’s nature. If he had referred to Jesus as his beloved son, then God must certainly have been his caring father. The destiny of ministry and sacrifice which he had prepared for his son, God would hardly let him die in the desert. When he was hungry, Jesus trusted his father to supply the food. But if not, he would not even so adopt the devil’s suggestions. Had God really meant what he said, even in the scriptures?

    It was the same trick that Satan had played on Adam and Eve with such tragic success. If God could feed the Israelites, why be hungry now, Jesus, when a miracle, a simple miracle would solve the problem and at the same time prove who you are and God’s willingness to hear your request. But Jesus sees through Satan’s temptation to the reality of God’s testing. This is a test. This is a proof of who Jesus is, even in his performance of the work.

    In its Deuteronomy 8.2 sense of test of what was in Jesus’ heart.

    Would he live by the word and will of God? Would he be covenantally faithful and obedient where Israel had failed? Well, for Jesus, that ancient word of Deuteronomy pierced the fog of Satan’s confusing question and confirmed Jesus on the pathway of true sonship, of filial obedience, that led ultimately from the baptism through the wilderness to Gethsemane to the cross. Yes, God cared for his son just as he had fed and clothed his people in the wilderness centuries earlier. He sometimes led them to be sure through adverse experiences so that they might realize how much they needed him. When Jesus was hungry in the Judean desert, he quoted those familiar words from Deuteronomy.

    He answered the devil’s doubt of God’s word by quoting verse 3, chapter 8 of Deuteronomy, the very word that the enemy rejected. Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Beloved, this was time and again Israel’s test. and Israel’s failure. For them, the Word of God, we often know, was not enough. They wanted more. They wanted proof.

    Listen carefully to Moses’ words in Deuteronomy chapter 8. As we have read in the earlier chapters, again here in chapter 8, Moses again exhorts Israel to keep the commandments that it might go well with them in the land which the Lord had promised them on oath to their forefathers. We see that in verse 1. And we’ve heard it time and again already in the book of Deuteronomy.

    All the commandments, verse one, that I am commanding you today, you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to give to your forefathers. I’ll just by way of a side note, when you go home this afternoon, you can look at how the parallel with that first verse matches up with a later verse in the chapter.

    We’re not going to try to work out all of those complexities in the sermon. all the commandments I’m commanding you today, you be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, that you can go in and possess the land, which the Lord swore to your forefathers. Again in verse six and seven, therefore you will keep the commandments, emphatic here, keep the commandments of the Lord your God to walk in his ways and to fear him for the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land. Conversely, verse 11, our center passage, our center text says, beware lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his ordinances and his statutes, which I’m commanding you today. And again, in verse 18 and following, that same theme of remembering, of doing, not forgetting, but you shall remember verse 18, the Lord, your God, for it is he who gives you power to make wealth, that he may confirm his covenant, which he swore to your fathers as it is this day. And it shall come about if you ever forget the Lord, your God, and go after other gods and serve them and worship them. I testify against you today that you shall surely perish. lest they be like the nations which perish. Verse 20, Israel is warned again, listen to the voice of the Lord your God.

    This emphatic recurring exhortation to remember the Lord and to do and to keep his commandments. is reinforced in this passage by a reminder of the 40-year stay in the wilderness, of the way in which the Lord had led them through that wilderness, how he had showed himself faithful.

    These 40 years were important, God is saying through Moses here, for pedagogic regions, that is, in other words, the way of teaching Israel, pedagogy. This is God’s way of teaching. This was meant, he says, to humble Israel, to test them and to discipline. And he says it not only once, he says it twice in this passage in our parallels. These 40 years were there for a reason.

    The test, the trial, the wilderness experience wasn’t just a bad joke. It was God dealing with his people to discipline them, to show them that they did not live by bread alone. but by that man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. In contrast to the promised land, the wilderness was the place where the Lord had tested Israel.

    Verse two, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. Of course, this is a human way of speaking. For God knows the heart. He knew what was in Israel’s heart even before Israel lived out their days in the wilderness.

    His testing is not designed to find out something he doesn’t know, but rather to bring out into the open that which is hidden for his own glory and for his people’s good. And so what is revealed time and again in the testing of Israel? grumbles, complaints, fault finding, disobedience, chasing after other gods, time and time and time again.

    Of those trials, those hardships that the people were made to endure, verse three especially mentions specifically the lack of bread, the common staple, so that they were very hungry, to be sure. And instead of giving the bread of the normal type, the Lord gave them manna, something unknown to them. You didn’t know it, your parents didn’t know it. Compare verse three with verse 16, again in our parallelisms. The emphasis that the manna was something that the Israelites and their fathers did not know, characterizes the manna as unfamiliar, therefore something other than what they would have desired. This wasn’t what they were looking for after all. Something less desirable than a normal loaf of rye bread or a cucumber down in Egypt. Again, this was something not that they were looking for, but it was God’s wisdom in providing them what He did.

    And He fed them in verses 3 and 16. He fed them in the wilderness, which expresses their experience of God’s care in a place where they could not provide. God provided in a way they did not expect, they did not know. And He cared for them through these trials of hunger. Through times of fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground when there was no water, we read of his care in the midst of them.

    And God wanting to teach to them the meaning of that statement that Jesus quotes in the wilderness, man does not live on bread alone, but on everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. The intent is apparently that in this instance it was the manna that came down from heaven that came, as it were, from the mouth of the Lord, the manna. That is, it came into being through the word of his power. He spoke it into existence for their benefit, the creating, the sustaining power that emanated from God himself, their God, who brought them out of Egypt, who fed them with a manna they did not know.

    The general import of this pedagogy is to teach them that the Lord is their God and that they must trust in their God. Not in anything created, not the bread of their own producing, but only in their creator, their redeemer. During those 40 years in this eighth chapter, again, we read those 40 years, their clothes did not wear out, their feet did not swell from all the walking. God brought water for them out of the rock of Flint.

    Undoubtedly meant to be understood also these things collectively as a miracle of God’s power and grace and care. Hence, these things are mentioned alongside the manna I fed you, I kept your shoes from wearing out, I kept your feet from swelling, I kept you on the way beyond your ability to provide for yourselves.

    And thus does verse five draw the conclusion, as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord has disciplined, had disciplined Israel in the wilderness, teaching Israel to trust in the Lord and to trust in the Lord alone. Israel must know this in their heart and therefore they must keep the commandments of this God. This was the purpose of the father’s discipline of the loving discipline put upon them of the instruction that Israel would know and that they would remember that they would know and that they would remember and that they would obey the God they know and remember him for their his kindness is toward them. And where Moses is taking us in this argumentation and taking Israel is that in remembering what God did for them in the wilderness, a recognition that herein lay an inherent danger in the possession of the promised land.

    In contrast to the wilderness, the promised land is a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs flowing forth in fruitful valleys and hills, bringing forth wheat and barley and vines and fig trees and pomegranates and olive oil and honey. And the areas were rich with iron and copper. And so it would be that when the people ate and were satisfied, and they were living in good houses that they did not build, and their houses and their flocks multiplied, and their precious metals were abounding, the danger would be that this people would become self-congratulatory. We did it! We can do it! And complacent, trusting their own power and their own accomplishment, and what?

    Forgetting the Lord their God. No, Israel, Moses is saying, you must not forget lest you forget and the wrath of God be poured out on you. Israel was to remember the Lord their God who enabled them. They must not forget lest they turn aside from the true and the living God and chase the idols of the peoples around them. The true and the living God who had spoken by whose word they live. who had led them out of Egypt, who in the wilderness had protected them, who had cared for them, tested them, yes, disciplined them, apart from whom they would have perished.

    And many did perish because of unbelief. It all comes back to the covenant, a call to remember the God of the covenant, the covenant that comes to its consummate expression in the word. that proceeds from the mouth of God, the word that became flesh. Jesus Christ, the son of God, who according to the covenant became man for our redemption and beloved therefore be reminded today of the father’s love that he gave his only begotten son to undergo the superlative trial and discipline of the Lord. And he did so faithfully to submit himself to the most abject humiliation, determined in everything to keep the commandments, to do the will of the Father, to accept the torments of the trials that were put before him, even drinking to the dregs of the cross, unto the death and the curse of the cross, that as many as would trust in him, you know the love of God, would not perish. but have everlasting life.

    We offer today this exhortation. Lest you forget. That apart from that word. That word made flesh. That son of God, that perfect son of God. Lest you forget. That apart from him, you can do nothing. Israel, are you listening? Apart from Him, you can do nothing. Apart from Him, you most assuredly will perish. You might have all the bread in the world, but apart from Him, you perish. But that’s why we read Philippians 4 today. Because I want you to hear the word of the apostle. I want you to hear the word of an apostle who reminds us that we have learned Christ. We’ve been taught by Christ. We have been taught in Christ. In him and in the preaching of Christ’s word, we have learned. We have learned, beloved.

    Listen to Paul. We have learned in whatever circumstances we find ourselves. whether we’re in the wilderness or whether we’re in the promised land, whether we’re in prosperity or whether we’re in the dregs. We have learned, says Paul, as Paul himself is teaching us, he has learned that we have learned in whatever our circumstances we find ourselves, whether humble means or in prosperity, whether times of being filled or going hungry, whether having abundance or suffering need, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. That’s what Paul says about himself, but he’s saying it for your benefit, beloved. Apart from the word, you perish. But we do not live by bread alone. We live by every word, that word which proceeds from the mouth of God. And by that word, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.

    And as Paul concludes this Philippians four passage we read in round verse 20, it is God who most surely not only for Paul, who most surely shall supply all your needs according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. To him be the glory forever and ever, Paul says.

    As I was thinking of the sermon title, and this is a little addendum to the sermon, I know it’s late. This has been a week in which we’ve been told time and time and time and time again, we must not forget. We must not forget what? Well, we must not forget the images of the planes crashing into the towers. We must not forget our Constitution. We must not forget our military men on the field.

    Well, this is a sermon about something else. We can have all of the military power. We can have all of the peace and security. We can have the highest towers in the world, but apart from Jesus, we perish. And that’s what we have to preach to this nation. That’s what we have to preach to all the nations. And that’s what we have to be content to know and believe and embrace, you see, that whatever the circumstances, good economy or bad, war or no war, economic wealth or the dregs of poverty, we know that in whatever circumstances we find ourselves, we can do all things through Christ. who strengthens us, because we do not live by bread alone, but by every word that has proceeded out of the mouth of our God, even that word that became flesh for our redemption. I trust you’re with me and take encouragement in these things today. Let’s pray together. Our Father, we are the new Israel. We are that new people, not the grumblers, the complainers, those who live in constant anxiety.

    But we are those who have learned and are learning, O God, in Christ, that whatever our circumstances, whether we abound or are abased, whether we are in poverty or in prosperity, that we have Christ, we have everything. and we can do all things through him who strengthens us. We think of the one who endured the trials of the wilderness, who would not be tempted, who would not turn aside at the word of the evil one who cast doubts upon his identity. But we know who he is, and we believe who he is, and we trust who he is, oh God. And we will not be afraid. We will not be turned aside either.

    As we look to that one who drank the cup of suffering at the cross for us, who would not turn back, who would not be undone, who would not be turned aside by any voice, by any man, we recognize our power is in him, and we trust in him. And we live, we really live in Jesus, in whose name we pray.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.