Grace OPC Sewickley PA

Sermon Book: Deuteronomy

The Lord’s Holy War

About this sermon

Exodus 23 and Deuteronomy 7 describe the Lord going before Israel to drive out the nations and to destroy their altars and idols. The conquest of Canaan was the Lord’s holy war, a judgment on wicked nations, and Israel’s part was to serve him alone and show their enemies no pity. Grace extends to a thousand generations of those who love him, and judgment falls on those who hate him. The church now shares in that judgment through the gospel and church discipline, until Christ judges the world.

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Sermon transcript

As we come to the reading of God’s Word this morning, I’m going to ask that we begin in the book of Exodus. If we could turn to Exodus chapter 23, please. Exodus chapter 23, I’ll begin reading at verse 20. and read through the end of the chapter and then we’ll be turning over to Deuteronomy chapter seven. Give your attention for this is the word of God. Exodus chapter 23 verse 20.

Behold, I am going to send an angel before you to guard you along the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared. Be on your guard before him and obey his voice. Do not be rebellious toward him, for he will not pardon your transgression, since my name is in him. But if you truly obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.

For my angel will go before you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hibbites, and the Jebusites, and I will completely destroy them. You shall not worship their gods nor serve them nor do according to their deeds, but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their sacred pillar in pieces. But you shall serve the Lord, your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will remove sickness from your midst. There shall be no one miscarrying or barren in your land.

I will fill the number of your days. I will send my terror ahead of you and throw into confusion all the people among whom you come. And I will make all your enemy turn their backs to you. I will send hornets ahead of you so that they will drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites before you. I will not drive them out before you in a single year that the land may not become desolate. and the beasts of the field become too numerous for you. I will drive them out before you little by little until you become fruitful and take possession of the land. I will fix your boundary from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines and from the wilderness to the river Euphrates.

For I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you will drive them out before you. You shall make no covenant with them or with their gods. They shall not live in your land, because they will make you sin against me. But for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.” That’s Exodus 23. Let’s turn over to Deuteronomy chapter 7. Deuteronomy 7, and there we’ll begin reading at verse 17. Deuteronomy 7, verse 17. Once again, this is the Word of God. Give your attention to it. If you should say in your heart, these nations are greater than I, how can I dispossess them? You shall not be afraid of them.

You shall well remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt. The great trials which your eyes saw and the signs and the wonders and the mighty hand and the outstretched arm by which the Lord your God brought you out. So shall the Lord your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid. Moreover, the Lord your God will send the hornet against them until those who are left and hide themselves from you perish. You shall not dread them for the Lord your God is in your midst, the great and awesome God. The Lord your God will clear away these nations before you little by little.

You will not be able to put an end to them quickly for the wild beast would grow too numerous for you. But the Lord your God will deliver them before you and will throw them into great confusion until they are destroyed. He will deliver their kings into your hands so that you will make their name perish from under heaven. No man will be able to stand before you until you have destroyed them.

The raven images of their gods you are to burn with fire. You shall not covet the silver or the gold that is on them, nor take it for yourselves, or you will be snared by it. For it is an abomination to the Lord your God. You shall not bring an abomination into your house and like it come under the ban. You shall utterly detest it and you shall utterly abhor it, for it is something banned.

Thus far the reading of God’s holy word. Let’s pray together, shall we? Our father, may you go before us now, preparing the way for your word to have its good effect. And might you, O Father, open the hearts of your people, even unto those whose hearts perhaps have not been opened before, that we might know you and love you and serve you, that we would walk, O Father, in that godly reverence all the days of our lives, confessing our God and our Savior, Jesus Christ. And may you bless now, Father, the reading and the preaching and the hearing of your word. that we might be built up in that most holy faith that is pleasing and acceptable to you. We pray in Jesus’ name, giving thanks. Amen.

In the book of the covenant produced at Mount Sinai, there was promulgated a program of conquest and extermination against the Canaanite people and their religious practice. In Exodus 23 verses 20 to 33 that we read here this morning, the Lord promised to send his angel before Israel on the wilderness track along the way and by that one to bring Israel into the place that the Lord had prepared for them. The name of the Lord was to be upon this angel, and he would go before them into the land of Canaan, and by him would the Lord completely destroy the enemies of Israel. Thereby, the ancient prophecy of Noah, pronouncing Canaan cursed, and the servant of Shem would be fulfilled. That’s Genesis 9, after the flood. The hour of divine judgment now having come. Moses, in the words of Deuteronomy, nearly 40 years after the words of Exodus, charges Israel with the execution of that program.

Everybody and everything in Canaan which was consecrated to idols, rather than to the service of the true and the living God, must be consecrated to the wrath of God, placed under the ban, if you will. In summary, when the Israelites conquered their new land, they were to destroy the old inhabitants, refusing to enter into any kind of treaty with them, either political or marital. Any kind of treaty would be a compromise and would lead to disaster. Therefore, the Israelites were to destroy systematically the physical religious objects of worship of their enemies, indicating thereby their complete refusal to recognize the gods of the enemies of those who lived and dwelt in Canaan.

The inhabitants of Palestine, whom the Israelites would meet and fight, are listed more comprehensively here in Deuteronomy 7 than normally. At the beginning of the chapter of chapter 7, there are seven nations, those seven nations making up the enemy Israel was to face. Seven nations greater and stronger than Israel. No doubt the number seven has some implications in terms of a complete number.

There was a whole raft of enemy that lay before them. But their strength and their numbers, however, were not to cause the Israelites alarm, for God would set the enemy before his people and they were then to smite them. He would deliver them into their hands and they were to utterly destroy them. Verse two of chapter seven. They were to make no covenant with them and show no favor to them. The Hebrew word translated here in this verse, chapter two or chapter seven, verse two, the word utterly destroy. There at the beginning of the chapter is the Hebrew word harem, meaning utterly destroy in the major English versions, primarily meaning to devote or hence the concept of a ban, of a complete banning from their worship and their inclusion in the things of the idols.

But rather they were to be set apart completely for God, devoted completely to God’s destruction. Thus the idea of destruction or extermination comes into play. And as we spoke last time and we continue today, many reading this portion of scripture and reading this conception of God’s command upon Israel to go into the land and utterly drive out the opponents of Yahweh, and this command to destroy the Canaanites, look at this, many look at this as though it represented something less than a Christian ethic, if you will. How could God possibly, how could Christians adopt this idea of utterly destroying the enemy? When in fact, the offense is taken at the theology and religion of the Bible as a whole.

The New Testament too warns men of the realm of the everlasting ban, where the reprobate, the children of wrath, must magnify the justice of the God whom they have hated and resisted. Indeed, the very judgments of hell at the end of the age are the harem principle come to full, to their full and final manifestation.

Since the Old Testament theocracy in Canaan was a divinely appointed symbol of that consummate of the consummate kingdom of God, there is found in connection with it a type and a shadow of the judgment that is coming. Indeed, many who question the Old Testament are those who question the existence of hell and a judgment yet to come. Israel was being called to a participation in God’s kingdom, a participation in that judgment. Not the end of the world, but certainly a destination and an end in terms of the old covenant as they move towards the promised land and the dealing with God’s enemies, particularly the Canaanites who dwelt in the land. Think about this yourselves, brothers and sisters, in a New Testament context.

Do you not know the word of the apostle Paul, where he argues for church discipline? And there in 1 Corinthians asks the question, do you not know that the saints will judge the world? That you will be participant as judges of the world and bringing the justice of God to bear. And Paul says, if the world is judged by you, are you not competent to constitute the smallest law courts? In other words, yes, there’s a place for church discipline now, when in fact you will sit with God in the judgment to come. Indeed, that judgment, Paul says in 1 Corinthians, we’re judged now by God’s word and spirit that will not be judged then, Because there is a judgment coming, there is a hell, and the world is under condemnation. But God is patient, and he has sent us into the world to preach the good news of the gospel until the end. Paul asks again, do you not know that we shall judge angels?

Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, he says. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers shall inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t you know that?

But the world is acting as if it isn’t so. And many in the church act as if it isn’t so. But brothers and sisters, you know it’s so. and you’re a participant in a kingdom, a kingdom of holiness, a kingdom of righteousness. Here then is a call to holiness and a call to humility, to fear the Lord, to put away sin, to repent and to believe. As believers, do we agree with God and his word or do we stumble at that word? And so it was. in a typical sense, that Israel, the great recipients of God’s love, of God’s loving kindness, of his tender mercies, of his covenantal affections, have been set apart in her calling to be the true vine, the true Israel, the people of God, to a positive consecration in living sacrifice and service to God.

And as such, They are given the command typologically before the end of the world in dealing with a particular portion of geography. They were to utterly defeat the Canaanites. They were to obliterate their cultic institutions. They were to tear down their altars and burn their pillars and strip their Asherim poles and their graven images. Lest Israel through her weakness, relinquish her covenantal distinctiveness and fall prey to foreign and idolatrous allegiances and hence to her own destruction.

It is a call to holiness. It is a call to be God’s people. It is a call to be a participant in the judgment that God declares and has pronounced. The God of the covenant would grant to his people the strength, the strength for victory over their enemies.

And in so doing, Israel was not to forget the Lord, the Lord who had brought them out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. They were to fear only the Lord, their God, and to worship him and swear by his name alone. They were not to follow the other gods. any of the gods of the peoples who surrounded them. No, Israel was to be a holy people unto the Lord set apart. This was the goal of Israel’s election that was to be promoted by the elimination of the Canaanites in Palestine.

The language of Deuteronomy 7, verse 6. We didn’t read it this morning. Deuteronomy 7, verse 6. recalls Exodus chapter 19 verses five and six, the classic formulation of the unique theocracy, which for Israel, for which Israel was chosen to be God’s people, and God would rule over them as king, according to his choice and election, not because of who they were or what they had done, but according to election, that Sinai the Lord had said to Israel, now then, if you will indeed obey my voice and you will keep my covenant, then you shall be my own possession among all the peoples, Exodus 19, five and six. All of the world is mine, but you will be my people and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

The reason then for Israel’s policy of war lay in her election and her holiness and her being set apart as that kingdom of priests. The Israelites were a holy people because of their relationship to Yahweh, the Lord, their God, a relationship which separated them from all the other peoples and practices of the nations. Of course, their holiness, their holy character does not indicate or some sense of inherent merit as if they deserved it. but rather it speaks of divine choice. God had chosen Israel to be his prized possession out of all of the peoples who are on the face of the earth.

And that, however, was no ground for pride or for boasting. Israel was instead to be reminded to glory, glory only in the name of the Lord, their God. For in his sovereign love and faithfulness alone was to be found the explanation of their election. Certainly not their size, their numerical strength.

For God had chosen their father Abraham when he was but one, being only one. And in turn, the family of Jacob, which descended into Egypt, not because they were many, but some 70 souls. It followed from the sovereignty of God’s grace that Israel had no claim upon him that might encourage carelessness with respect to his covenant demands and sanctions.

I have chosen you, the Lord is saying, you are my people. Keep my commandments and my statutes and be a holy people and set yourselves over against the nations and their idolatry and sin. Positively put, Israel was chosen because the Lord loved them. The reason for God’s special love, though it contained within it a special purpose, remains essentially a mystery of God’s own purpose and decision, incomprehensible to us. Why did God do so other than God chose to do so? But on the basis of that love, God had called Abraham and his descendants.

He had made the covenant promise to them. And on the basis of the covenant promise, he had charted his people’s course through the events of history, liberating them from the bondage of Egypt, verse eight of our chapter seven, and bringing them to the present moment on the plains of Moab, across the Jordan, on the eve of the fulfillment of the ancient promise made to the fathers that he would give them this land. And thus does God’s love and choice of this people call forth from them nothing less than love and the keeping of his commandments.

In verses 9 to 11 of Deuteronomy 7, Moses alludes to the sanction formulations which were affixed to the second commandment. You recall the second commandment not to make any graven images. In this way, he encouraged obedience by declaring that though unmerited grace would be continued to the thousandth generation, apostate despisers of grace and holiness would discover that covenant curses were no idle threats, just as God had said. Those that openly hate the Lord and refuse to keep his commandments are inviting God’s speedy retaliation and judgment. These words no doubt apply both to renegade Israelites and to those of the surrounding nations whom Israel was to encounter in war. Let Israel and the nations be warned. After all, God does not warn in vain.

Conversely, the faithful might be confident that the promised covenant blessings were no empty promises. On the basis then of this divine love and choice and Yahweh’s covenant fidelity, the Israelites are thereby persuaded to be obedient to the whole law, the commandment and the statutes and the judgments which Moses puts before them now. and closely connected with these blessings would be Israel’s own keeping of the covenant. Just as God is covenant keeper, it is a call for them to be covenant keepers. From verse 12, it certainly appears that such obedience was a contingency if Israel were to continue to experience God’s faithfulness and loving kindness. It is this note of contingency that if you keep my commandments, I will be with you and I will keep my promises to you. It is this note of contingency that adds such solemnity to Moses’s discourse.

For although God’s faithfulness and his ability were beyond question, the course of the future would correspond generally with the people responding to their covenant obligations. We know the Bible and we know that this does not mean That obedience merited divine blessing, not at all.

But rather, that obedience maintained the proper covenant relationship with God. And this people, his people, would experience the blessing of God only when the covenant relationship, which involved reciprocal relationships and responsibilities, was properly maintained. Corresponding with his obedience would be their prosperity and their fruitfulness in the land, in their good health, attending to their military success in the conquest.

God would be with them and bless their families and bless the land and give fruit to the vine and so on. Yahweh, Yahweh, the creator, the true God of Israel, not Baal. was the bestower of fertility in field, in flock, in family, as he kept his covenant and his loving kindness. It was the Lord who had subjected man after all to nature’s curse because of sin. And it was the Lord alone who was able therefore to bless and multiply his people, to bless the fruit of their womb and their flocks, the fruit of their ground and their flocks, and to deliver the Israelites from the curse. of Egypt’s notorious diseases that are spoken of here. It was God, God alone, who would give them success in their military conquest. It was God, God alone, who would keep them from idolatry.

Thus does verse 16 summarize their marching orders. The command before them and its purpose. And you shall consume, it says, all the peoples whom the Lord your God will deliver to you, your eye shall not pity them, neither shall you serve their gods, for that would be a snare to you. This reference to military success brings back the focus to the theme of the chapter as a whole. All the blessings described earlier, family and field, all the blessings described could come to pass only after the Israelites had conquered and expelled the previous occupants of the land possessed for themselves. Here, however, it is not an injunction to fight, but a promise of military success. I will deliver them into your hands. That is, it is given, you shall consume them. It’s a statement. You shall consume all the peoples. God will deliver them to you.

The Israelite military action was to be without pity, for Israel was to refuse to serve their gods lest they violate the Lord’s first commandment. Though in respect to the privileges of election, Israel would be tempted to vanity, thinking more of themselves than they ought. In the face of their responsibility to the commission before them, they were tempted to timidity. thinking there are enemies greater than they, how can they possibly overcome them? In answer to any such rising fears, Moses reminds them of all of that wondrous experience in Egypt, in the Exodus, and what God had done to save them. He assured them that the same terrible God was still in their midst to war in their behalf against the Canaanite kings. Whom then should they fear?

The hornet mentioned in verse 20, mentioned also in the plural in Exodus 23, 28, must be seen as a figure for the terror of God, which descending on Israel’s foes produced panic and hiding in fear. This people would not be able to stand against Israel.

Beloved, we remember how God called Abraham, how he gave him victory over the kings in Genesis 14, We remember how the Lord brought Israel out of Egypt overthrowing Pharaoh and his chariots in the Red Sea. We remember in turn how God gave the promised land into the hand of Joshua and the sons of Israel led by the very angel of the Lord as predicted in Exodus 20, 23 that is. And we remember later in history, of course, how the Lord raised up David, a man after his own heart who slew Goliath, And as a warrior, King gained the victory over many armies, providing peace and rest to a unified Israel. Notwithstanding the sin, the rebelliousness, the unfaithfulness of Israel time and again, and the hand of chastisement that came upon them time and again, God showed himself faithful and a mighty warrior, able to give victory to his people time and again. in the Old Testament context.

Now, we remember that those things were written for our instruction. And I want you to take note of one difference between the text in Exodus and the text in Deuteronomy. In Exodus, there is mentioned the angel of the Lord who would go before the people of God. We come to Deuteronomy 7, there’s no mention of the angel. Instead, we have mention of God will deliver them into their hand. In Exodus 23, we have mention of the hornets. In Deuteronomy 7, we have mention of the singular hornet who would go before them and cause confusion and dismay among the peoples.

These things were written for our instruction and there is movement and progression. God himself will deliver his people. God himself will lead us to the promised land. And we remember that the types and the shadows of the Old Testament story, the stories of Abraham, the stories of Jacob, Isaac and Jacob, the stories of Moses, the stories of Joshua, the stories of David are true and real stories to be sure, a real people with whom God had dealings, but we remember that the types and the shadows have their fulfillment in God, and specifically in the person and work of Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. The seed of Abraham, the Savior King, the greater Son of David, the very Son of God, And it is he who promised, I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not overpower it.

It is he who has gone before us. He is the Prince of Peace, who wields the two-edged sword of his word, taking captive the nations, conquering sin and Satan and death. that he might gather to himself a people from every nation, tribe, and tongue. He has gone before us for he has overcome the world and he’s already made his way to heaven where he now sits at the father’s right hand. Therefore, brethren, when he says to you, to the church, to the apostolic band and to those who come after, go into the world and make disciples, baptize them into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey all that I’ve commanded you. And lo, I am with you always. We are reminded that if he has gone before, he has overcome the world, that he is with us.

Therefore, brethren, we are strong in him and in the strength of his might. Put on his armor, as Paul says, put on the armor of God and do not be afraid. You did not choose him, but he chose you that you might be his people and that you might bear fruit, much fruit, and that you should show that spiritual fruit in his church and in his kingdom. And so prove to be his disciples and demonstrate his power and his grace and his love towards you.

Overcoming the world by faith in the assurance that he will not let one of his elect go uncollected and be sure there is a judgment to come and the day hastens. Therefore, get up and be about the business that the Lord, your God who saved you, has given you to do.

Amen. Let’s pray. Our Father and our God, again, we are reminded even in the stories of the Old Testament people, that you were with them, that you had called them, that you had set them apart, you had placed your mark upon them, you were in their midst, you would go before them, you promised to drive out their enemies and to place them into their hands. Lord, even so, we read of the stumblings and the bumblings of that Old Testament people, but we are reminded and taught there of the faithfulness of Jehovah. who would keep his word, who would conquer the nations, who would gather a people unto himself to worship him in the spirit of holiness in the church of Jesus Christ. Our father, that day hastens, that day is upon us to go now, to gather that people, to make the conquest, to drive out the enemy that yet remains. For the day is coming when the judgment will fall and every soul will stand before the judgment seat of that great God.

We would not linger then, Father, but we would rise up and be hasty about the work that Christ has given us to do. Let us pray faithfully, earnestly, without ceasing. Let us preach and preach faithfully without ceasing. Let us call upon our God to do what he said he would do as Christ promised to build his church. We thank you for it. Even now. as you build that church, O Father, through Christ and his gospel. We pray, giving thanks to you in Jesus’ name. Amen. Let’s turn together to hymn number 270, shall we? 270. Let’s stand together, Charlie.

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September 5, 2010
Because the Lord Loves You

About this sermon

Deuteronomy 7 begins and ends with the command to destroy the Canaanites and their idols, and at its center stands the reason: Israel is a people holy to the Lord, chosen not for their number or merit but because the Lord set his love on them and kept the oath he swore to their fathers. Israel was to make no covenant with other nations, for the Lord alone was their king. The God who keeps covenant and steadfast love calls his people to love him and keep his commandments.

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Sermon transcript

I invite you to turn with me in the word of God to the book of Deuteronomy this morning, Deuteronomy chapter 7. I once again remind you that this is the inspired word of God. She would give your full attention to it, asking for the grace of the spirit by which that word would be opened to our understanding even today. Deuteronomy chapter 7, this is the word of God.

When the Lord your God brings you into the land where you are entering to possess it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, even nations greater and stronger than you. And when the Lord your God delivers them before you and you defeat them, then you shall utterly destroy them.

You shall make no covenant with them and show no favor to them. Furthermore, you shall not intermarry with them. You shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor shall you take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and he will quickly destroy you. But thus you shall do to them. You shall tear down their altars, and smash their sacred pillars, and hew down their asherim, and burn their graven images with fire.

For you are a holy people to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. The Lord did not set his love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which he swore to your forefathers, the Lord brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.

Know, therefore, that the Lord your God, he is God, the faithful God, who keeps his covenant and his lovingkindness to a thousandth generation with those who love him and keep his commandments, but repays those who hate him to their faces to destroy them.

He will not delay with him who hates him. He will repay him to his face. Therefore, you shall keep the commandment the statutes and the judgments which I am commanding you today to do them. Then it shall come about because you listen to these judgments and keep and do them that the Lord your God will keep with you his covenant and his loving kindness which he swore to your forefathers.

He will love you and bless you and multiply you. He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your new wine and your oil, the increase of your herd and the young of your flock, in the land which he swore to your forefathers to give you. You shall be blessed above all the peoples. There will be no male or female barren among you or among your cattle.

The Lord will remove from you all sickness, and he will not put on you any of the harmful diseases of Egypt which you have known, but he will lay them on all who hate you. You shall consume all the peoples whom the Lord your God will deliver to you. Your eye shall not pity them, nor shall you serve their gods, for that would be a snare to you. If you should say in your heart, these nations are greater than I, how can I dispossess them? You shall not be afraid of them.

You shall well remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt. The great trials which your eyes saw and the signs and the wonders and the mighty hand and the outstretched arm by which the Lord your God brought you out. So shall the Lord your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid. Moreover, the Lord your God will send the hornet against them, until those who are left and hide themselves from you perish. You shall not dread them, for the Lord your God is in your midst, a great and awesome God. The Lord your God will clear away these nations before you little by little.

You will not be able to put an end to them quickly, for the wild beasts would grow too numerous for you. But the Lord your God will deliver them before you and will throw them into great confusion until they are destroyed. He will deliver their kings into your hands, so that you will make their name perish from under heaven. No man will be able to stand before you until you have destroyed them.

The raven images of their gods you are to burn with fire. You shall not covet the silver or the gold that is on them, nor take it for yourselves, for you will be snared by it. For it is an abomination to the Lord your God. You shall not bring an abomination into your house and like it come under the ban. You shall utterly detest it. and you shall utterly abhor it, for it is something banned.

Thus far, the reading of God’s inspired holy word. Let’s pray together once again. Father, we lift up our prayers to you that the spirit who moved Moses to write these words would now be at work granting us the grace to believe and embrace these words as they are meant to be understood. We pray, Father, that you would be glorified, not only in the reading and the preaching of your word, but in the hearing of it also, that we might hear of your faithfulness to us, and might we prove to be faithful as you move us, O God, by grace through faith to walk in obedience to your commandments. We pray these things now in Jesus’ name, amen.

Reading the chapter of Deuteronomy chapter 7 this morning in its entirety, you certainly are struck by its length and its fullness. But Deuteronomy chapter 7 displays a very careful stylistic structure that may not meet your eye at first glance. It is something of a concentric arrangement, there is a focus, there is a center that can be defined. And this chapter, if you notice, begins and ends, begins and ends with the destruction of the Canaanites and their idols.

I ask you to compare just briefly verses one through five with verses 16 through 26. Just let your eyes scan across them, verses one through five, and then verses 16 through 26. The first thing you notice is that that last section, 16 through 26, is about twice as long as the first section, one through five, but both sections are devoted to the destruction of the Canaanites and their idols. of the destruction of the Canaanites and their gods as Israel is about to go in and occupy the promised land. So you have a beginning section, you have an ending section, and then you have the middle section, which is verses 6 through 15. 1 through 5. 16 to 26, and then you have a center, which is six through 15.

And the heart of the chapter then found in those verses is the covenant relationship that the Lord, the God of Israel has established with his people. Having loved them and having set them apart as a holy people in the Exodus, in accordance with the oath, which he had sworn to their forefathers. So at the heart of the chapter is the covenant, the covenant that God made with Israel, the God that he made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that he remembered and fulfilled in the Exodus, that he renewed at Mount Sinai, and that he has established this people that are about to occupy the promised land.

And as you look at that center section, I ask you to take just a moment with me to scan those verses six through 15. And first of all, I want you to notice in those verses, the frequency of the mention of love. There’s a love chapter, not like 1 Corinthians 13 to be sure, but a love chapter nonetheless.

Verse seven, the Lord set his love on you. Verse eight, because the Lord loved you. Verse nine, speaks of the Lord’s loving kindness. And so does verse 12. And verse 13 says, and he will love you. As I count no less than five instances of the mention of the Lord’s love for this people at the heart of Deuteronomy chapter seven. And now pass through those same verses again with me. And let us highlight the oath, quote, which he swore to your forefathers. The oath, quote, which he swore to your forefathers, unquote.

We see it in verse eight. We see it in verse 12. And we see it again in verse 13. So we have love. And we have the oath that God swore to the forefathers, the covenant oath. And then looking carefully, we can see in this center section at the very core of this section, the core of this chapter, the center upon which this chapter hinges is found in verses nine through 11. Here we see the basis for Israel’s elect status and for her blessings. Here at the root of her calling to be a holy people stands the Lord himself as the bedrock on which all else rests. Look and listen to the words of chapter seven, verses nine through 11.

Know therefore that the Lord your God, he is God, the faithful God, who keeps his covenant and his loving kindness to a thousandth generation with those who love him and keep his commandments, but repays those who hate him to their faces to destroy them. He will not delay with them who hates him. He will repay them to his face. Then notice emphatically, therefore, I’m calling this the hinge verse in this chapter. Therefore, you shall keep the commandment and the statutes and the judgments which I’m commanding you today to do that.

Israel does not stand in her own strength, nor on her own merits. The commandments and the statutes and the judgments are not adequate to constitute a people. It is God, the covenant keeper, who causes Israel to stand. Who causes Israel to stand in the power of His might, and in the grace of His loving kindness. So at the center of this chapter, the hinge upon which it turns, is God in His covenant faithfulness, His power, His glory, His loving kindness toward this people, and the command that arises from it, therefore you shall keep. the commandments and the statutes and the judgments. It is God who establishes his people and calls them to his covenant loyalty to be a holy people. God, the covenant keeper, who causes Israel to stand in the power of his might and in the grace of his loving kindness, who establishes a people, calls them to covenant loyalty to be his own.

It is instructive, I think, to observe this formal structure of the chapter, especially as we face the challenges the chapter presents to us. As we mentioned earlier, the chapter begins and ends with the command to exterminate the Canaanites, to eradicate the sinful people and their idols. to destroy all physical evidences of their religion to be found in the land. And that very sober and very abrupt command, if you will, is wrapped around the central teaching that Israel is to be a nation that must be distinct and exclusive. And yet when we reach the heart of the chapter, It’s not so much the wrath of God that cries off the page, but the love of God for this people that cries out to us, to God’s covenant people. I’ve loved you, I’ve established you, I call you to be my people, a holy people, bookmarked or bookended by the command to do business with the Canaanites who inhabit the land. When we reach the heart of the chapter, we might say, we find it beating with the passionate love of God expressed and emphasized. Ironically, almost paradoxically, divine love and grace stand at the core of a chapter commanding total destruction.

Set over against one another. We are challenged by such placement of the holy words. to think of the ethical and the theological implications. The people who are here being instructed to have no mercy on the nations in Canaan in terms of their idolatry are the very people through whom we are told God intends to bless the nations. Think of the promise made to Abraham. He’s going to bless the nations through you but I’m sending you into Canaan and I want you to eradicate the idolatry that you find there. The paradox is quickly apparent.

If the covenant made with Abraham was meant to bring blessing to the many nations of the earth, well, what about the Canaanites? Has that universal promise of blessing inherent in what was spoken to Abraham somehow here been suspended or overlooked? And beyond that, we might ask, what are the implications for us in the new covenant era? as the Church of Jesus Christ. And I ask that we would keep those questions in mind as we proceed, and I suspect we’ll not answer them to their entirety this morning. We will continue to deal with this in the pages of Deuteronomy to come.

But clearly the emphasis in this chapter, right up until the final instructions that come at the end of the chapter, is placed upon God’s own action in bringing Israel victoriously into the land that lay ahead of them. There’s a command to be sure, but notice in the text that it would be God who would cause Israel to enter and possess the land.

It is God, look at the early verses, one and two. It is God who will drive out the nations. It is God who will deliver the nations into Israel’s hand. The same God who loves Israel and has made covenant with them is the God who will bring them victory in the wars in Canaan.

To emphasize the need for divine initiative and action, notice in verse one that the many nations are emphasized there. The many nations that are listed seven, are included in the text and others are referred to, are a people who are described as greater and stronger than the Israelites. So not only are there many of them, but they are greater and they are stronger. And this is a perspective that the Lord through Moses and Deuteronomy is keen to stress in order to deflate in Israel, among Israel, any arrogance on their part. with the intention of exalting instead the power and the initiative of Yahweh, the Lord.

We’ll note in the text that the Lord had not chosen Israel. I believe this is verse seven. The Lord had not chosen Israel nor set his love on them because Israel was better or stronger or more in number than other nations. In fact, verse seven says they were the least. They were less than the other nations. They were nobody.

But even so, when Yahweh had done his part in delivering the nations into their hands, verse two, Israel was to smite them and to defeat them. And, quote, utterly destroy them. Utterly. Completely. Israel’s duty to the Lord was absolute and all inclusive. Everything was to be devoted to him. In fact, the word that is translated utterly might be translated devoted in the sense of being devoted to the Lord. But this was this was a holy activity devoted to Yahweh, to his glory, to his honor, to the accomplishment of his purposes.

And thus Israel was to make no covenant with the idolaters. They were to show no favor to the idolaters. But Israel was to absolutely and irrevocably renounce idolatrous things and persons, and so refuse to take any gain or profit from them. Thus, in obedience to this command, things or persons could be renounced, indeed, set aside, renounced without necessarily being destroyed. In fact, that explanation would provide a context in which the instruction that follows about prohibiting treaties and intermarriage with the inhabitants of the land would make sense. In other words, if you killed everybody, there’s no one to get married to, but the Lord says, don’t marry, intermarry with them and don’t intervolve in them with treaties and covenants. In other words, this idea of utterly devoting them to the Lord is certainly pressing away the idolatrous character of the nations that lay before them and bringing them under conquest for God’s glory and God’s honor. If the local people needed to be destroyed absolutely, then verse three would be rather unnecessary since everyone would have been exterminated at the very outset.

The major challenge of the verses two through five is that the Israelites were to be utterly distinct from the nations whose land they would enter. And as you read those verses two through five, we can identify three specific aspects of this crucial distinctiveness that are listed here. The first is a political distinctiveness, The second is a social and a personal, and the third is religious. Verses two through five, three specific aspects in which Israel was not to identify with the pagans, with the idolaters. At the end of verse two is the political distinctiveness to which Israel was called.

They were commanded, quote, you shall make no covenant with them and show no favor to them. the covenant or the treaty that is operative between Yahweh as the great king of Israel and Israel as his vassal subject people required, as did all such sovereign vassal type treaties, the total exclusion of being allied with any other. I’m your king and no other is your king. And so the vassal was not at liberty to go out and make other arrangements with other kings having taken on this particular sovereign. Well here Yahweh, God, the Lord is sovereign over Israel.

For Israel to enter into treaties or covenants with pagan Canaanite nations would therefore in the first place be an act of disloyalty to the covenant that God has made with them, you see. To their own covenant commitment to Yahweh. Throughout Israel’s history time and again you will recall how Israel was prone to seek alliances with other nations. We think of the prophets rebuking Israel because they wanted to go down in Egypt and depend on Egypt again or make an alliance with Assyria or seek the help of those other nations rather than trusting in the Lord and how the prophets would rebuke Israel for such disobedience. Treaties with such nations would also require not only a disloyalty to the covenant, but some recognition of the gods of those nations, the idols that were occupied and recognized among those people. Idols and gods that would be intolerable for Yahweh who has said plainly in the commandments, you will have no other gods before me in my presence.

So here is a call to the exclusivity of the covenant of God with his people, calling them to that faithfulness as they go into the land. So we see then this particular political distinctiveness. But if you look at verses three and four in our text, You see a second specific aspect, not only were they not to adopt a covenantal relationship, but they were not in the social realm, the Lord says to Israel, furthermore, you shall not intermarry with them.

Now this prohibition was not on purely ethnic grounds alone. In other words, because of their place of birth, Mixed marriages, you might know, were not in themselves out of bounds for Israelites. Moses himself had a Kushite wife, for example, Numbers 12, 1 tells us. And later law in Deuteronomy itself allowed an Israelite to take a wife from among captives of war.

So it’s not saying you can’t marry a foreigner per se. What was ruled out here was the kind of intermarrying that involved the social bonding of families that also included with it the joining of religious ritual, you see, that joined with it the idolatrous as well as the godly religion, you see. Any type of marriage that would involve compromise with idolatry was banned in the critical days of the settlement in the land. You were to marry in the Lord.

Put it in Paul’s language. And so there are the first two, political, social. Now we see a third in chapter seven, verse five. A third aspect of Israel’s distinctiveness is the religious per se. And we’ve alluded to this already in the first two. But the third is a command, you shall tear down their altars and smash their sacred pillars. You shall hew down their Asherah, their totem poles, so to speak, and burn their raven images with fire. Here lies the crux of the matter. The moral justification for the destruction of the Canaanites will be expressed later in terms of the wickedness of their society.

But in the context of where we are here, in the context of the last three chapters, in which the demands of the first and second commandments of the law have been so thoroughly laid out before us, the primary object of Israel in Canaan must be the eradication of Canaan’s idolatry.

You’ll have no other gods. I will not hold him guiltless that takes my name in vain. The polytheism of many altars and idols cannot coexist with the God of the Shema, Israel’s God, the Lord is one. The lifeless emblems of lifeless gods was an affront to the true and the living God whom Israel was to serve and love with all their heart and soul and might. The Shema, chapter 6.

The actions then commanded in verses 1 through 5 were intended to protect Israel’s distinctiveness as God’s covenant people. The basis of that distinctiveness is that the Lord, their God, Yahweh, had chosen them Verses six and seven, look at the text, constitute one of the clearest statements in Deuteronomy, indeed in all of scripture, of Israel’s election. But it is carefully interwoven with phrases that immediately recall the key declaration of Exodus chapter 19, in which these are identified as a holy people for God’s own possession. out of all the peoples. Compare verses 6 and 7 with Exodus 19. The stress here again is on Israel’s distinctiveness. In the midst of the many other nations they were to be holy to the Lord, that is set apart, different, belonging exclusively to Him, His own special treasure, His covenant people. So as we follow this rather complicated, but somewhat simplistic chapter, we have moved from the instruction of the Israelites, what they were to do, verses one to five.

We go to the basis of those instruction, namely Israel’s identity as the wholly chosen and treasured people of Yahweh, verse six. You’re gonna do this because you’re my people, because you’re distinct from those other people. Israel’s status is grounded in the action of God in such a way as to remove any possible claims on Israel’s part that their chosen status reflected their own superiority in any way. Where is the cause for Israel’s boasting?

Particularly here, numerical superiority is rejected as even remotely possible. Why God should have loved them. They were the fewest of all people. And we know certainly from the scriptures that it was not Israel’s moral superiority that moved God’s love to love them.

The bottom line remains, as it always does in the Old Testament, is that the choice of Israel is in the inexplicable self-motivated love of God. having decided to love Israel’s forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, because he chose to do so, and having made to them specific promises which he swore on oath because he freely chose to do so, God proved faithful to that promise in the Exodus, and God set his love on Israel. in accordance with the covenant into which he had so freely, freely entered with Israel. He loved Israel because he loved Israel.

Period. And so we come today, thus far, to the core of our chapter, affirming Yahweh as God and affirming God’s character as Yahweh. the Lord who brought his people out of Egypt according to promise. In the final analysis it is because Yahweh is God as well as being your God and because Yahweh is the faithful God who keeps his covenant and his loving kindness, again the core of this intersection, that God acted as he did toward Israel. Because God is God and because he made covenant and because he keeps covenant Because of that action, Israel was constituted a people committed to preserving a distinctiveness among all the nations. You’re my people, he says. And on that basis, they were to make no compromise with the perversion, the idolatry of the Canaanites. Who is the true God? and Israel’s God, and our God, the God who proved His claim in faithfulness, the God who demonstrated His integrity, the God who committed Himself to love, the God of liberating, ransoming power.

It is that God who does and must do right. He judges justly. Indeed, He must judge justly. He is, after all, a jealous God, visiting judgment upon those who hate him, visiting loving kindness upon thousands of those who love him and keep his commandments. He visits judgment on those who hate him, for he can by no means leave unpunished those who take his name in vain, those who deny him. See the context.

Oh Israel, called to perfect holiness, called to meet out perfect justice. Oh Israel, what hope do you have that you will keep the commandment and the statutes and the judgments which the Lord your God commands you? That’s the statement of verse 11. This is what you’re to do Israel. And I’m asking Israel, what hope do you have to do that? What hope do you have that the covenant and the Lord’s loving kindness will remain? You who so obviously and repeatedly break that covenant, Israel. How dare you hope, Israel? Reminding you have a hope. Israel.

And in turning that to our new covenant context, what hope do we have of this perfect God who calls for perfect holiness, who calls for perfect commandment keeping, who is a God of justice, who will by no means clear the guilty. What hope is there for us? The Lord who demands your distinctiveness, your perfect distinctiveness from the nations, that distinctiveness based on His electing love, based on His covenantal promise of old made to the fathers, based upon His covenant keeping. What hope have you?

And the answer, that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Your hope, beloved, of being a covenant keeper after all, is the covenant keeper himself. Your hope of keeping the covenant is the God who kept the covenant. Israel’s hope for keeping the covenant is the God who kept the covenant with Israel.

His name is faithful and true. He is the seed of Abraham. David’s greater son, Jesus Christ our Lord, born under the law, kept the Lord’s commandments, perfectly separated himself from sin and idolatry, perfectly gave himself in the place of sinners as a perfect, spotless, substitutionary lamb, and he became sin for us, bearing the curse that a just God had to mete out. for us the curse that we deserve by hanging on the tree there to endure the very covenantal wrath meted out against sin. And in covenant faithfulness, he rose again according to promise again from the third day for our justification to all who would receive him and believe in him.

Beloved, know therefore that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps covenant and His loving kindness to a thousandth generation with those who, by grace through faith, love Him and keep His commandments. The Covenant Keeper, our God, and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let’s pray together. Father, we thank you for this word. We thank you for your own holiness and the call of your people to be a holy people, to be set apart, distinct from the nations, distinct from the world, distinct from the idolatry that is all around us. What hope do we have that we can be that people, oh God, that we can keep your commandments, that we can do the works that you prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them? It is according to the power of your deliverance, according to what you have done, according to your covenant faithfulness, that we are made able, that we are called out of darkness into light and from death to life, to be your people as you would intend us to be in every realm of life. Our Father, we pray that you’ll hear our prayers, that as we make our supplications in the name of Jesus, be merciful to us. May we know your loving kindness as revealed in Christ. 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.

August 29, 2010
What Do These Words Mean?

About this sermon

Deuteronomy 6 expects children to ask what God’s statutes and testimonies mean, and parents to answer with the story of redemption: we were slaves in Egypt, and the Lord brought us out to give us the land. Obedience is the grateful response to that saving work. On the road to Emmaus the risen Jesus asks two disciples, “What are these words?” and then opens all the Scriptures to show that they speak of his suffering and glory.

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Sermon transcript

chapter 6. We’ll be reading verses 20 through 25 and then we’ll be turning over to the Gospel of Luke chapter 24. First of all, Deuteronomy chapter 6 beginning with verse 20. This is the inspired Word of God. Give your attention to it. God bless it to our hearing this morning.

When your son ask you in time to come, saying, What do the testimonies and the statutes and the judgments mean which the Lord our God commanded you? Then you shall say to your son, We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Lord brought us from Egypt with a mighty hand, Moreover, the Lord showed great and distressing signs and wonders before our eyes against Egypt, Pharaoh, and all his household. He brought us out from there in order to bring us in to give us the land which he had sworn to our fathers. So the Lord commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God for our good always and for our survival as it is today. It will be righteousness for us if we are careful to observe all this commandment before the Lord our God just as he commanded us. Then turning over to Luke chapter 24. And I’ll begin reading in Luke 24 at verse 13. Once again, this is the word of God, this is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Luke 24 verse 13.

And behold, two of them were going that very day to a village named Emmaus, which was about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about these things which had taken place. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself approached and began traveling with them.

Their eyes were prevented from recognizing him, and he said to them, What are these words that you are exchanging with one another as you are walking? And they stood still, looking sad. One of them, named Cleopas, answered and said to him, Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem and unaware of the things which have happened here in these days? And he said to them, What things?

And they said to him the things about Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet, mighty indeed and word in the sight of God and all the people, and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to the sentence of death and crucified him. But we were hoping that it was he who was going to redeem Israel.

Indeed, besides all this, it is the third day since these things happened. But also some women among us amazed us when they were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body. They came saying that they had also seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just exactly as the women also had said, but him they did not see.

And he said to them, O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken. Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into his glory? Then, beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, he explained to them the things concerning himself in all the scriptures.

And they approached the village where they were going, and he acted as though he were going farther. But they urged him, saying, Stay with us, for it is getting toward evening, and the day is now nearly over. So he went in to stay with them. And when he had reclined at the table with them, he took the bread, and blessed it, and breaking it, he began giving it to them.

Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and he vanished from their sight. They said to one another, Were not our hearts burning within us while he was speaking to us on the road, while he was explaining the scriptures to us? And they got up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem and found gathered together the eleven and those who were with them, saying, The Lord has really risen and has appeared to Simon. They began to relate their experiences on the road and how he was recognized by them in the breaking of the bread.

While they were telling these things, he himself stood in their midst and said to them, peace be to you. But they were startled and frightened and thought that they were seeing a spirit. And he said to them, why are you troubled? And why do doubts arise in your heart? See my hands and my feet that it is I myself touch me and see for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.

And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While they could not believe it, because of their joy and amazement, he said to them, have you anything here to eat? And they gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it before them. Now he said to them, these are my words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.

Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things, and behold, I am sending forth the promise of my Father upon you, that you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.

Thus ends the reading of God’s holy word. Let’s pray together, shall we? Heavenly Father, as we consider the work of Christ, the word of Christ, the fulfillment of the scriptures in Christ, we pray, O Father, thanking you for the new covenant and the blessings that are ours in him. May we be found faithful today in devoting ourselves to hearing the word of right, that we might rise up call you blessed as we go about our lives of God. Whenever we go in and out, when we stand up, when we sit down, in everything, may we give you the praise and the glory as we speak and think and act in Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.

We continue in our sermon series in the book of Deuteronomy. We’ve been dealing with this sixth chapter of Deuteronomy for a few weeks now in terms of the Shema, the great instruction of hero Israel, the Lord, our Lord is one Lord, Yahweh is one Lord, and how these things were to be upon the hearts and the minds of their people.

Rather than forgetting God, rather than putting Him to the test, The people of Israel were to be diligent in their obedience to the Lord’s commandments. Only by obedience would the people prosper in the land that the Lord their God was about to give them. The land was essentially good, but the people would experience its goodness only when they were obedient, obedient to the Lord who had promised the land to them.

The Lord knew and Moses spoke of the fact that the temptation would be great for Israel to forget Yahweh in favor of the gods of the peoples of Canaan when they would dwell in houses they didn’t build and enjoy the produce that they did not plant and live in cities that they had not established. The temptation to forget God. and to think upon the Canaanite gods who were declared by the Canaanites to be the bestowers of fertility and abundance in the land. Such is the human perversity that Israel was endangered of becoming satisfied with material plenty, that which they had received from a plundered culture as God himself had brought them in, but that they would be inclined to honor the vain claims of their victims’ idols and to forget the claims of their own God, Yahweh, who had saved them, brought them out of Egypt, and given them the victory in Canaan. Israel’s obligation to Yahweh was a sworn allegiance to Him who was jealous for their worship and their service, for them to be His people and for Him to be their God, their only God.

Israel must not, therefore, presume to put God on trial as they had in the wilderness at Massa, wherein their anxiety about water, as you remember, they had sought proof of God’s presence with them and of His power to visit them. to visit on them the covenant sanctions, whether that be blessing or curse.

In other words, God, show us. And Israel had defiantly questioned in that occasion, is God really with us? Is he really real? Or have you, Moses, brought us out here to kill us in the wilderness? How much better we should have stayed in Egypt itself. Where is the proof that this is not all a big hoax? They had rationalized that things were better in Egypt rather than die in the wilderness.

And so it is that Yahweh here and now at the verge of the promised land, at the end of the 40 years wilderness experience, speaks to the people through Moses, exhorting them to be faithful and that God would faithfully fulfill his good promises to them as they would do that.

Moses himself having seen now generations come and go, had had his own perspective lengthened, if you might say. His interest was not confined only to the present assembly on that present day, but his words, as you can see in Deuteronomy, reach into the future, the long future of God’s kingdom in the generations of Israel yet to come. Crucial, he understood and spoke to the well-being of the theocracy of God and his people would be the faithful covenantal nurture of their children in the things of the covenant, the message of God’s plan of redemption and what God had done redemptively for them and his purposes for this people. They had a responsibility to teach their children diligently those things. In particular, God’s giving of the law by revealing the paths of righteousness and to follow that path themselves and to teach their children and their grandchildren to do the same would lead Moses tells them to divine favor and blessing.

Forsake the Lord, forget the Lord, and you’ll feel his wrath and curse. To forget him, to chase after other gods, to vainly put God to the test, to break the covenant would be to invite the wrath and the curse of God. Thus does Moses say to Israel here in Deuteronomy 6, particularly verses 6 and 7 that we’ve read previously, but not this morning. He says to them, and then these words which I’m commanding you today, shall be on your heart and you shall teach them diligently to your sons and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. The covenantal duty upon the parents of Israel to pass on the covenant promises and the remembrance of God’s covenant commandments.

And so putting that then before us as we see the closing verses of Deuteronomy 6 verses 20 to 25 that we’ve read this morning, returning to that theme about teaching the children. Indeed, it’s a recurring theme in the law. We see it in Exodus of The children in the days to come asking about the Passover, we see it in the book of Proverbs. We see it elsewhere in the Old Testament. But the passage here in Deuteronomy 6, 20 to 25 envisions that there will be internal family teaching. in which parents will have taught their children and pointed them to the commands and the statutes and the ordinances of God.

And the day will be coming when they will answer their children’s questions about specific statutes and commandments. the various events in the life of Israel, the memorials that they kept, or the things that they built, the altars that they would raise up, the rituals they would perform, the observances, the commands, the things that God had given them for the governance of the life of Israel. And so here in these verses of chapter 620 and following, the child’s question that Moses says will be asked becomes the springboard for their further explanation and their teaching. Something like a catechism perhaps in Old Testament Israel, which some scholars would suggest is what we have even a fragment of here in what has written in Deuteronomy. But the first thing to notice is that such questions and teaching opportunities would arise only if the parents themselves were conspicuously observing themselves, the laws and the statutes which the Lord had given them.

They would have to remember them and to do them for the child to ask them what these things are and what do they mean. In time to come, their son asked, according to Moses here, What do the testimonies and the statutes and the judgments mean that the Lord our God commanded you? Well, I want you to hear literally what that question is in the Hebrew. Literally, the question is, what are the testimonies and the statutes and the judgments that the Lord our God commanded you?

The son is presumably not asking what they are in content. He wouldn’t be asking if he didn’t know that they were there. He would already know of them through the family’s observance of them. So we have to assume that the question, what are the statutes and the testimonies and the judgments? Have to assume that the question means something like, what’s the meaning of?

And that’s what our English translations have put in our Bibles for us at this place. Rather than what are they? What do they mean? What is meant here? What’s the real significance of these things? Or perhaps even more clearly, what’s the point of it? Why do we do this kind of thing? Or even, why do we keep these laws?

You see, that seems to be the spirit and our Bible translators have tried to give us something along that line. And then in fact, as it turns out, the father’s answer combines the historical basis the basis of the law of how it was given to them and the occasion of it in terms of the divine origin of God bringing this people out of Egypt and the beneficial value of keeping it, that it would be well for our own good and survival if we keep these commandments. It might well have been easier, might be easy to imagine the text going straight from verse 20 to verse 24. Why do we keep these laws, you ask? because the Lord told us to, period. We have a command, we ought to do it. And many parents might’ve felt that temptation. Many parents like us feel the temptation when our kids want to know why, what’s this all about?

Because I said so, because God said so. In fact, that moral obligation of an imperative from Yahweh ought to be enough to elicit obedience. But is that what Moses calls for? And is that really enough? If this is all that is given by explanation, the son might very well give Pharaoh’s response. Well, who is Yahweh that I should obey him?

Exodus 5.2, you remember Pharaoh asking that question. Why should I let this people go? Who is it you represent?

So the full answer that Moses includes here in Deuteronomy 6 takes the same classic form as the Decalogue itself, the Ten Commandments. You remember it has a preamble. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the house of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Therefore thou shalt have no other gods before me.

And so in a similar sense, the answer that this father, this family member is to give to the son of Israel is along that same line of stating the facts of redemption that God brought us, Yahweh brought us out of Israel. He put his claim upon us as his people. and that that identity by which God made himself known and his claim upon us and the deliverance that he showed us are simultaneously brought together that we became his people and we were set apart to be his people. And it was that Lord Yahweh who commanded us, verse 24. It is the Lord who delivered us, verses 21 to 23, who commanded us. The God who loved us, who graciously brought us out of bondage.

So that the answer Israel was to give their son was, we were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt. And the Lord brought us from Egypt with a mighty hand. Moreover, the Lord showed great and distressing signs and wonders. Remember all the plagues and all of the things that he did in Egypt. Remember the dividing of the Red Sea. Remember all of the things that had happened in the wilderness along the way. So the Israelite tells his son, We were slaves in Egypt.

We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt and God brought us out of there. And God brought us out of there before our eyes against Egypt, Pharaoh and all his household. He brought us out of there in order to bring us in and to give us the land which he had sworn to our fathers, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

So the Lord commanded us to observe all these statutes and ordinances, to fear the Lord our God always, for our good always, and for our survival as it is today. And it will be righteousness for us, the text goes on to say, if we are careful to observe all this commandment before the Lord our God, just as he commanded us. These are the additional reasons lying behind the stipulations, the decrees, and the laws, not just because God said so, but because God saved us, God redeemed us, God kept his word, God showed himself faithful, God graciously took us in to be his people and called upon us to be that people. As we read this, of course, we ought to take into account the covenantal character of the scenario that Moses portrays here.

The Israelite tells his son, notice, we were slaves in Egypt. We were slaves in Egypt. And the Lord brought us from Egypt with a mighty hand. Now remember, this is a generation removed from Egypt of a father who is about to go into the land and speak to a generation that perhaps not yet born in the land. And yet saying to that son, we were slaves and God brought us out. In likelihood, the son would never have actually been in Egypt. Perhaps not even the father speaking to the son was in Egypt.

Those things happened to their forefathers after all. But covenantally, we know. Israel of later generations were included. It’s as if we were brought out. We were brought out that day. We were set free. You were set free that day. Our forefathers’ bondage was our bondage. When the Lord delivered them, he delivered us.

Thus Israel’s remembrance and not forgetting who the Lord is and not forgetting what the Lord had done can be described, coin a term, as covenantal remembrance. It’s as if we were there and he did it for us. And the promises that we enjoy in terms of the land are in keeping with God’s having chosen a people to bring them out and to bring them to this place. And so the remembrance that is called for means embracing the covenant that the God who spoke of old to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob and to Moses, that God is our God.

And we are his people as well. What he said to them, he said to us. And what he did for them, he did for us. and the statutes and the testimonies and the ordinances that he laid on them, he laid on us. And we accepted them. What he promised them, he promised us. Indeed, he fulfilled it for us in a manner which he did not for them.

We’re the beneficiaries of the covenant, going in to take the land as we do, fulfilled as it is even today. as Israel is about to lay hold of the land of promise. So it is then that verses 21 to 25 of Deuteronomy 6 provide such a concise but comprehensive summary of the central elements of Israel’s faith that some scholars regard these words as an example of Israel’s earliest creeds, a simple statement of faith. of God, Yahweh, who brought us out, who claimed us as his own and keeps us for his own. We’ve become his people and we have received the ordinances and the statutes as our own. Confession of faith on the part of Old Testament Israel, incorporating the traditions of the Exodus and the land gift and the promised land, the patriarchal promise and all. It’s virtually then the Old Testament gospel in a nutshell, you see.

The crucial point here, however, is that this definitive statement of Israel’s salvation history is given as the answer to the fundamental question about the law. The son asked, what’s this all about? What’s this mean? How am I to understand this? The law, the statutes, the commandments.

And the answer that is given is the Old Testament gospel. The son asked about the law and he’s answered with a story of what God did. The old, old story of Yahweh and his love, we might say. The meaning of the law is to be found in the good news, in the gospel. The basis of the law in the covenant lies in the history of redemption. The reason for the keeping of the law is to enjoy the blessings of redemption. The fruit of obeying the law is the righteousness that is the goal of redemption.

And so then in the light of the emphatic thrust of verses 21 to 24 in this redemptive history sense, and the larger proceeding context of Deuteronomy and the earlier chapters and so on, it is impossible to read verse 25 of our text. Read into verse 25 any kind of alleged works righteousness.

As if Israel could do it herself. As if she could make herself righteous. The context makes it impossible to think that righteousness in the sense of being saved or justified is somehow achieved by good works. No way. This is good news gospel here, you see. Old Testament gospel.

The verse says, 25, and it will be righteousness for us if we are careful to observe all this commandment before the Lord our God. just as he commanded us. The God who brought us out, the God who called us to himself, the God who made us his people, the God who has set us apart to be his own. Moses does not here present a works principle of salvation.

The stress falls on the function of law as disclosing the standard of conduct which is righteous in God’s sight and a love for which is a prerequisite for blessing. In other words you love Yahweh and you love his word And you love then what’s doing what is pleasing and acceptable in his sight. It is the consistent teaching of scripture that such righteousness comes bound up in the whole, in the indivisible whole of salvation. In other words, the law flowing out of the grace, which is freely given by God in his grace. And of course, as you know, that message of a righteousness that is a part of the whole of the salvation of what God has done and what God has given has to be understood. You have to understand it in terms of the fulfillment of Jesus Christ. There’s no other way to understand it.

So here in Deuteronomy, The point of the father’s whole answer is that obedience to the law is the only right response to the saving acts of Yahweh, Israel’s God. Indeed, the righteousness of Yahweh is one way the Old Testament sums up his saving actions for Israel. It was his righteousness. He did it with his own right hand, according to his own righteous purpose, you see. his saving actions for Israel done out of the redemptive initiative of his own race.

Such that then our righteousness or Israel’s righteousness is the obedient response that flows from the gratitude of those who enjoy that liberty which he gives, the life and the well-being which come as God’s gifts. And it includes also the enduring blessing on family and social life and how we get along with one another, doing good to one another as we remember God and remember what God has done for us. as we enjoy the fruit of what God has done. It is, in short, a righteousness that presumes the experience of redemption, not a righteousness that presumes to achieve redemption or earn it.

That’s Deuteronomy, pointing towards something yet to come. And it is in that light, then, that I ask you to consider in the remaining time this morning the passage in Luke 24. We must think in redemptive historical terms. Think about it. In redemptive historical terms in Deuteronomy 6 terms if you will.

Think about two Israelites walking on the way to Emmaus. And what are they doing? They’re conversing with each other about the things that have taken place. The signs and the wonders and the awesome things that God has done, but there’s still an obvious confusion for them. But I’m asking you to think of these men walking on the road, talking about the things that have happened from a Deuteronomy 6 standpoint. When you walk by the way, when you stand up, when you sit down, talk about these things. Well, here, they’re talking about the things that have happened, but without understanding, they are talking about what has just happened in their midst.

They were talking about things that perplexed them very much, very greatly. not yet understanding they were talking about the events that are related to a deliverance far greater than Egypt. Out of Egypt and out of Pharaoh’s hand. They were talking about something far greater than Israel coming through the promised land of the wilderness to Canaan. And so then the perplexity of the greatest redemptive historical event in history, the perplexity of the crucifixion of Jesus, a prophet who was mighty in word and in deed, in the sight of God and before the people. Here was the one that many of them were hoping might have been the Christ who was going to bring to them redemption for Israel.

And they’re talking about that. But they’re talking about it in the darkness of the confusion of what has just happened. Jesus was crucified and now he’s disappeared. and we thought he was gonna save us. And now it’s been three days and the tomb where they laid him is empty and the report is he’s alive. They’re talking about redemptive historical stuff on the way, you see, but they knew it not in the sense of understanding it. And so it is that Jesus himself approaches them along the road.

And what is the question he asked them? What are these words you are exchanging as you are walking? Think Deuteronomy chapter six. And the son comes and asks, what are these things? of the statutes and the ordinances and the testimonies. What are these things? Here are two Israelites walking along, talking about the things of redemption, darkened in their understanding of those things. Jesus walking with them on the way. And as they go along the way, he’s talking with them about those same things. And when they, he asked them, what are you talking about?

And they proceed to tell him those things that they knew that Jesus had been a prophet and a a holy man and he was crucified and he was put in the tomb and it’s three days and he’s gone. But some people say he’s alive. And then they come to a village. And what happens then? Jesus went in to stay with them. And before long, they’re not walking on the way, they’re lying down and they’re reclining together. And what are they doing? Well, he’s breaking bread with them. Jesus reclining with them, breaking bread.

And we immediately think of the Lord’s supper as a precursor of the supper here, but he’s making himself known to them in the ordinance as they lie together, when they walk, when they lie down. Think Deuteronomy chapter six. They’re talking about the things of God and beginning with Moses, the law, that’s one part of the Old Testament to be sure, and beginning with Moses and from all the prophets, we are told in Luke 24, that Jesus explained the things concerning himself in all the scriptures. And what is happening? It is the son of the covenant. The son of the covenant. asking the question that Moses said he would ask.

What are these things you’re talking about when you walk along the way and when you lie down and when you sit and when you talk with one another? What are these things? He’s asking. And they don’t know. Other than we know the facts. He was here. He was great. He was a prophet. He was crucified. Put in the tomb three days. Now he’s supposed to be alive and the tomb is empty.

Well, it took the son of the covenant to make known those things about himself in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms that they should have known but didn’t, that had to be fulfilled, that in fact the Christ had to suffer and that he had to rise from the dead and that the repentance for forgiveness of sins would be preached in his name to all the nations beginning from Jerusalem A gospel, a message that would set men free, men free, women free, children free from sin and Satan and death. Not just from Egypt.

And that according to the promise of the Father. A promise that was contained in the law. A promise that was contained in the prophets. A promise that was contained in the Psalms. the testimonies and the ordinances and the words spoken to the Old Testament people.

For these things accomplished are the accomplishments of the righteous son by his righteousness, the true and faithful son of the covenant. Indeed, a new and better covenant. And what does he do for these perplexed Israelites? He opened their minds and their hearts to understand, writing upon their hearts the good news of the covenant, the new covenant. a covenant written in blood, the very blood of the Son of God, a new and everlasting covenant by which the commands of God are written upon the hearts of his people.

And these beloved, these things, these promises are for you and for your children and for your children’s children in a new covenant, covenantal sense. So when you sit down, and when you rise up, and when you go in, and when you go out, the things of which you speak are the things pertaining to the deliverance accomplished for you in your Savior Jesus Christ. Indeed, may those things be proclaimed in every place, in every circumstance, indeed, to the very ends of the earth. These things belong to your covenant privileges to pass on to others still.

Let’s pray together. Our Father, Moses said there would be a son who would come who would ask the question. He didn’t tell us all, for he didn’t tell us he was going to give us the answer, for he himself is the answer. And we are thankful for that answer.

It takes us beyond Egypt. It takes us beyond the enslavement of a people there, wilderness leading to the land of Canaan. But a deliverance that has set us free in the final That’s got a logical sense of being set free from sin, death, judgment, being received into the very house and presence of God. Having the commands written upon our hearts and minds that we would become a covenant keeping people according to what Jesus himself has accomplished in us and for us. As the true son of the covenant appeared, oh God, we find, we see, we understand, as he has written those things upon our hearts. to believe, to receive him as he is so freely offered to us in the gospel. And in this, we will rejoice.

And in this, we will rise up to go forth as a new generation to proclaim these good things to yet generations to arrive, to arise, to the very ends of the earth, both in time and space. Lord, may you gather your people from all the nations, even as you said you would, We pray in Jesus.

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.

August 15, 2010
Do Not Forget the Lord

About this sermon

When Israel enters a land of houses, wells, and vineyards they did not build or plant, prosperity will tempt them to forget the Lord who brought them out of Egypt. Moses calls for undivided fear, worship, and oaths in the Lord’s name alone, and warns against testing God as Israel did at Massah when hardship came. Hebrews 2 applies the same warning: do not drift from so great a salvation, which God has spoken in his Son.

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Sermon transcript

I ask you to turn with me to the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 6. Our scripture reading will begin there, Deuteronomy 6, verses 10 through 25. And then we’ll turn over to Hebrews chapter 2, verses 1 through 4. Once again, this is the book of Deuteronomy, chapter six, beginning with verse 10. Give your attention. This is the inspired and infallible word of God.

Then it shall come about when the Lord your God brings you into the land which he swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you great and splendid cities, which you did not build, and houses full of all good things, which you did not fill, and hewn cisterns which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant, and you eat and are satisfied, then watch yourself that you do not forget the Lord who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

You shall fear only the Lord your God, and you shall worship him and swear by his name. You shall not follow other gods, any of the gods of the peoples who surround you, For the Lord your God in the midst of you is a jealous God. Otherwise, the anger of the Lord your God will be kindled against you, and he will wipe you off the face of the earth. You shall not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massa. You should diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God and his testimonies and his statutes, which he has commanded you.

And you shall do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, that it may be well with you and that you may go in and possess the good land, which the Lord swore to give to your fathers by driving out all your enemies from before you as the Lord has spoken. When your son asks you in time to come, saying, what do the testimonies and the statutes and the judgments mean, which the Lord our God commanded you, then you shall say to your son, we were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Lord brought us from Egypt with a mighty hand. Moreover, the Lord showed great and distressing signs and wonders before our eyes against Egypt, Pharaoh, and all his household. He brought us out from there in order to bring us in, to give us the land which he had sworn to our fathers.

So the Lord commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God for our good always and for our survival as it is today. It will be righteousness for us if we are careful to observe all this commandment before the Lord our God, just as he commanded us.

And I invite you to turn over to Hebrews chapter two, verses one through four. Hebrews 2 verse 1 For this reason we must pay closer attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it. For if the word spoken through angels proved unalterable and every transgression and disobedience received a just penalty, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? After it was at the first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard, God also testifying with them both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to his own will. Thus far, the reading of God’s inspired word.

Let’s pray together once again, shall we? Heavenly Father, we rejoice in the gospel. We rejoice in the great salvation which has come to us in Christ. And we are praying, Father, for the ability, the grace of the Spirit, to hear the word of the Scriptures rightly, that we would know the God who has worked salvation for us that we would know Jesus, your beloved Son, our Savior, the one who has given us life. Father, we pray that we should be found faithful, remembering by faith that which you have revealed, as we would seek to be found faithful, serving you and obeying your every command. We pray now, giving thanks in Jesus’ name, asking for power to be given, Lord, from above, to make the preaching effective among us here now. In Jesus we ask it. Amen.

As Moses addressed the words of Deuteronomy to the children of Israel, the Lord was about to lead his people into the land that had been anticipated since the promise given to Abraham. Here in Deuteronomy 6 verse 10 and following, there is an explicit identification of that ancient promise to the patriarchs with the generation now present before Moses on the plains of Moab for during the intervening years of the sojourn and bondage in Egypt and of the 40 years in the wilderness were now coming to an end. And Moses says to this generation, who now stood before him, specifically that the ancient promise regarding the land that the Lord swore to the fathers was to give it to them, as you see. Not to Abraham, not to Isaac, not to Jacob, not even to their fathers who had fallen in the wilderness, but to them who now stood at the verge of the Jordan. Verse 10, he swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you, he says, to give it to you who now stand at the brink of the promised land. that the ancient promise now was so close to being fulfilled gave cause not only for joy but also for solemnity in view of the responsibility that the promise imposed. Moses expresses the joy by describing the bounty of the land that lay before them, the land that God was going to give them.

The clauses in verses 10 and 11 of our chapter 6 of Deuteronomy beginning with the phrase, great and splendid cities. Those clauses are all descriptive of the land to which they are going and indicate its ready-made character, if you will. The lines here in verses 10 and 11 have an almost poetic quality about them, which seems to serve a particular function, a specific function, namely to emphasize the God-given-ness of the things in the land. And the fact that Israel had not done these things for themselves, to be sure. They were a gift, underscoring the Lord’s grace, Yahweh’s grace, and generosity to this people. He speaks of great and splendid cities, which you did not build, and houses full of all good things, which you did not fill, and hewn cisterns, which you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees, which you did not plant, and you eat and are satisfied, he says. Then following this passage, in which the pleasantness of the land is so portrayed and emphasized.

There is very quickly and dramatically a change of emphasis in the text. For Moses warns them as they are about to enjoy these great things that God has given them. He warns Israel not to forget the Lord once they have reached Canaan and enjoy the abundance of the promised land. This forgetting, of which Moses warns, could mean that the people, proud because of their prosperity, would begin to think that they owed all of this to their own strength. But here something else actually is in the foreground.

The danger is that Israel would forget the Lord who brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, whom alone they were to fear and to worship, and by whom alone they were to swear their vows, and that they would instead begin to do what? To serve other gods. It wasn’t so much that they were going to go back and, well, we did this, but rather they were going to give credit to other gods, the gods of the peoples that surrounded them. The gods of the people who would surround them in the land of Canaan, the land to which they are going. The danger was that Israel would forget the Lord and see their blessings as coming from these other gods instead. The premise of verse 10 is that Israel enters Canaan because the Lord brings them there in accordance with the promise that he had made to the forefathers. the meditation on the pleasantness of the land, evoking pleasure and anticipation.

And then the relaxing tone, as it were, of the poetic lines is sharply interrupted by the imperative, when you’ve enjoyed this and you’re satisfied, then watch yourself! You see? Very emphatic. In the land, its very richness and goodness could lull the people into an attitude of forgetfulness. forgetting the Lord, forgetting Yahweh, which would be absolutely disastrous.

In the good land then, they were to continue to remember their past and the Lord, quote, who brought you from the land of Egypt. It was also Yahweh, the Lord, their God, who would give them the good things in Canaan. And thus were the children of Israel not only to remember what he had done for them, but to keep on acknowledging him in their new circumstances. And it would be gross ingratitude if Israel, after enjoying these new good things to the full, would forget the Lord Yahweh their God and give their gratitude and praise for all of this to other gods. Israel was obliged to fear the Lord and to serve him only and to do so especially in the worship that he prescribed and in their offerings to him and to honor him by taking their oaths in his name.

Look at verse 13. You shall fear only the Lord your God and you shall worship him and swear by his name. There is the text. You are to fear the Lord your God. Fear involves the heart to be sure. The command to serve or to worship involves the works of their hands and what they would do, what they would offer to the Lord. And thirdly, the oaths, the swearing by the name of the Lord only would be the offering of their mouth. their hearts, their hands, their mouths, all were to be given to God and to God alone, to Yahweh.

And verse 14 then states explicitly what is clearly in the background of verse 13, you shall not follow other gods, any of the gods of the peoples around you. In other words, do you hear it again? You shall fear only the Lord your God, you shall worship and serve him only, you shall swear only in his name, and you shall not worship and serve these other gods. That’s the great danger that sets before Israel. You shall not follow other gods, any of the gods of the peoples around you. Then verse 15, for the Lord your God is in your midst, and he is a jealous God. And we’re thinking of the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt have no other gods before me, for the Lord thy God is a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, third, fourth generations, and so on.

In verse 13, the command, you shall worship, you shall serve, is clearly set in contrast to verse 12. Verse 12 mentions the house of slavery. And we say that there is a clear contrast between you shall serve the Lord your God and the house of slavery out of which you were brought because both the word, the verb that is translated serve in verse 13 or worship and the noun in verse 12 translated slavery are derived from the actual same root word in the Hebrew text. You’ll not, you will serve the Lord.

I brought you out of the place of serving or of enslavement to Egypt, you see. And they contrast vividly then the old and the new masters of Israel. You were a slave in Egypt. You were serving Egypt. But now you are to serve the Lord and the Lord only. The old and the new masters of Israel, the Pharaoh of Egypt, who was considered a god by the peoples of Egypt and the Egyptian religion, had for a long time been the sovereign, the suzerain lord over the Israelites in a very literal worldly sense. They answered to Pharaoh day and night by the sweat of their brow.

In the Exodus, the Lord had broken those old ties and now binding his people who had been bound to Egypt, now having won the right to call them his vassals. They are the Lord’s people now, not Egypt’s people any longer, not Egypt’s slaves, but servants to the living God. And since the basis of nationhood in their new land was established on the power of their God, the Israelites were not to forget their liberation. but rather they were to continue now to serve the Lord. They have stopped being slaves of Egypt. Now they are slaves or servants of the living God. They are a new people. The English text obscures the sharpness of the Hebrews.

Those whom God had emancipated out of slavery in Egypt must now live as God’s own loyal slaves. Now there’s blessing to that, of course. but you’re no longer slaves there, you’re now mine, you belong to me, I’m your Lord, Yahweh is saying through Moses.

And the structure of verse 13 in Hebrew emphasizes that God then should be first in allegiance. God comes first actually even in the verse in the Hebrew text in verse 13. For we can read it literally, the Lord your God shall you fear. and him shall you serve, and in his name you shall swear. In other words, God is getting in the first place in everything.

The one you fear, the one you serve, the one of whom you speak, in whom and through whom you make your vows. And the context suggests that the reference of these words, that is, in his name shall you swear, is the oath of allegiance to God as the Lord of the covenant.

They’re swearing allegiance to Yahweh, you see. And so it’s not just any swearing, it’s not just any oath taking, but it is the oath that they take as Israel, as Yahweh’s people, in which they, having been liberated from Egypt, they committed themselves solemnly to him in obedience and in love, to serve him only. to fear him as God and to swear in his name. The words come to be synonymous with the true worshiper of the Lord. That is to swear in the name of Yahweh and in him only is synonymous with what it means to be a true worshiper of the Lord. I’ve made my vow. to the Lord, you see, as a member of Israel. To swear in the name of Yahweh was to acknowledge Yahweh as the highest authority. Hence the seriousness of doing so frivolously or with evil intent. You know the command.

They were not to take the name of the Lord their God in vain. Though the thought of following other gods to Israel at that point may well have seemed a remote possibility to a people now assembled on the edge of the promised land, Moses, reminding them of what God has said to them there in Moses’ presence, it would seem far removed that they should in fact follow other gods after all. But in truth, it could become a very real possibility very soon that they would follow other gods the moment they forget the Lord. The temptation would be very strong to adopt the religion of the people of the land in order to reap any potential benefits. After all, Baal is the god of the Canaanites, the god of fertility. but to go in that direction would be fundamentally incompatible with covenant loyalty to the name of Yahweh and would therefore arouse his jealousy and God’s anger.

We see in this a close connection with what follows in verse 16 of our text. You shall not put the Lord your God to the test as you tested him at Massa. This singles out one very specific event which occurred in Israel’s history when Israel murmured in the wilderness, as you know, when there was a shortage of drinkable water. Testing the Lord at Massah did not mean tempting the Lord by trying to entice him to do what was wrong, but rather the meaning here was to test him or prove him that he would do what he said. And this is precisely the nuance of the people’s challenge at Massah in Exodus 17, 7.

As if to say, this God Yahweh, can He actually do what He promised? Can He really deliver? Or did He just bring us out here to destroy us? Is He really confident? Is He really with us? In other words, this testing God is a holding up His name to nothingness. to vanity. Can he really do? Rather than trusting, such testing of the name of the Lord flowed from a lack of belief in his word and came despite the fact that this people had witnessed the Lord’s previous faithfulness time and again.

This kind of testing that we see in Israel is commonly induced by need and hardship. What do you do when you don’t get what you want or what you expected? What did Israel do when she was suddenly without water? And this warning to not test the Lord your God comes because life will not always be as pleasant and effortless as Israel will first experience when she goes into the promised land and dwells in cities that she did not build. and lives in houses that she, full of houses that she did not fill, and drinks from wells that she did not drink, or that she did not dig, and that she eats from vines and the crops that she did not plant. It would not always be so.

What would happen in the day of testing? The temptation to complacency, the temptation to presumption, the expecting or the demanding their ease, the forgetting grace and attributing to another what was unmistakably the gift of God is commonly induced by need and hardship. Again, where’s God when I need him is the mindset. What does a people do when the trials come?

This entire chapter of Deuteronomy 6 then seems to have been foremost in Jesus’ mind when he went into the wilderness following his baptism. Jesus cited the verse about worshiping and serving God alone when he refused to bow down in the wilderness and worship Satan or acknowledge Satan as in any way comparable to his father God. Jesus further indicates the depth of his meditation on this portion of Deuteronomy when he quotes the verse about not putting the Lord your God to the test in response to Satan. Satan’s suggestion to Jesus is that he should prove Prove God’s protective commitment to him.

Jump off the temple in Jerusalem. After all, the words were still ringing in Jesus’ ears. This is my beloved Son with whom I’m well pleased. Satan says, jump off. He loves you, doesn’t he? Watch what he’ll do. Let’s see if he’ll do what he says. Jesus says, you’ll not test the Lord your God.

Satan’s temptation to Jesus is that if God is really your father and you are really his son and he is really pleased with you, then make him proven by bearing you up and keeping your foot from being dashed against a stone. Jesus understood, rightly understood, rightly believed what the father had spoken and thus rightly does Jesus resist Satan’s temptation as utterly out of line with the command of Deuteronomy 6, 16.

Where Israel, Israel, Old Testament Israel, God’s firstborn son, had so often distrusted, so often disobeyed in spite of spectacular demonstrations of God’s benevolence. Whereas Israel had so often failed the Son of God, the true Son of God would trust and obey.

How many times have we come to this place in our sermons and asked the question, how did Israel do in the land? How did she do in serving God only? How did she do in resisting Baal worship? How did she do in being content with what God had done for her and worshiping God alone and swearing solely in his name for his glory, for his honor in truth and not in vanity?

And by contrast, we look at Jesus, the son of God, who trusted and obeyed. in the wilderness and to the end. Beloved, here is our hope. Here is our confidence. What Israel could not do and did not do for herself, God did. What we could not do, God did.

What the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did, sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin. He condemned sin in the flesh in order that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. Do not walk according to the flesh and the lust of the flesh and give me what I want and when I want it on my terms always. but a people now who walk according to the Spirit. For we have not received, as Paul says in Romans 8, a spirit of slavery, leading to fear again, but we have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out to our Heavenly Father, the Holy Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God and we trust Him. Come what may. As Christians, beloved, we rejoice that we have been redeemed from a greater tyranny than anything the Hebrews experienced in Egypt. By Christ’s faithfulness, we have been saved.

By Christ’s saving work, God has liberated us, says Paul, from the domain of darkness, having supernaturally transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son, Colossians 1.13. By his power, do we now respond to God’s mercy by offering our lives in service for his work. Let us be reminded today of what Christ has done for us.

Like the people at Massa, Christ entered the wilderness. And like them, faced the awfulness of hunger and thirst. The enemy came to taunt him just as he attempted them. Only Jesus was there willingly for our sakes. Indeed, he came down from heaven into the wilderness of this world, that he might set us free from the bondage of sin and death. And he refused to put God to the test, both in the 40 day wilderness experience, following his baptism. but also in the far greater wilderness experience as he willingly submitted himself to the cross as a propitiation for our sin.

Here was the messianic suffering servant of God. As God’s son, Christ knew that he had a caring father. the father would scarcely have initiated his son’s mission without bringing that mission to its completion. And such then that even when facing the utter, utter forsakenness of the cross, even there Jesus willingly drank the cup, the cup that his father had prepared for him. He, Jesus, is the author and the perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Beloved, in reading Hebrews 2 this morning, and in preaching this sermon, I am intent on reminding you of so great a salvation as is spoken of here. God has spoken in these latter days in his son. He has made his salvation known. He has spoken the better word of salvation.

And for this reason, the writer of Hebrews says, we must pay closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. Across the centuries of history, Even in our own day we can look out across the scope of our land and we can look at once great churches and denominations that have forgotten that have rejected the gospel, have made shipwreck of the faith, have refused to hold fast to what God has made known in Jesus Christ. And I remind you, as does the writer of Hebrews, that there is no other after Him. And so the great question that rings across the ages is how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation as has come to us?

And thus, beloved, then do we see the ministry of the word, the ministry of sacrament and prayer and church discipline from this perspective as a reminder, lest we forget. A reminder of what Jesus Christ has done. These humble means of grace, reading and preaching and praying and church discipline, these humble means of grace are the Lord’s appointed means in the spirit by which we remember and continue to believe what God has done in Christ. It’s no accident. that at the administration of the sacrament, we repeatedly say the words, this do in remembrance.

In Him, in Christ, have we been delivered. In Christ have we been set free to serve the true and the living God. In Him have we been made alive, having been raised to the newness of life, whereby we live and walk as God’s beloved children in the world. Therefore, beloved, not putting God to the test.

Come what may, you read the headlines, so do I, but we’re not going to test our God, but we’re going to trust him, we’re going to obey him, and we’re going to preach him until he comes again, lest we forget what he has done for us already. not putting God to the test, but trusting him in every circumstance and keeping his commands, beloved, which is not drudgery, but royal privilege.

You are in the king’s court, and this is no ordinary king. He is the king of kings and the Lord of lords. exalted to the right hand of the Father. And your royal privilege then is to be his bondservants, his slaves, his servants. Not drudgery, but privilege, marked by peace and joy, remembering the Lord is near.

Therefore, we rejoice in Jesus Christ. Consider it a reminder of things you already know, lest you forget. Let’s pray together. Our Father, we thank you for the gospel of Jesus Christ. We thank you for its fullness and richness. of the great things that you have done to set us free from the bondage of sin and death and darkness and set us as citizens in the heavenly kingdom of light under the domain of Jesus Christ, our King, that we are his subjects, that we are his to take up our cross, to follow after him and to do his bidding, and that we would not be afraid, O Father, in the world. When trial and tribulation come, we would not despair, for you are the God who not only gave water to the Israelites in the wilderness. But you are the God who gave the living water from heaven in the person and work of your own beloved Son, Jesus Christ, the eternally begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth, who became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth, that we might be saved.

Our Father, we would drink of Christ then. in the midst of a wilderness of the peoples that reject your word and chase after other gods, of all the things of this world, the things that so enrapture the hearts of those who are going to hell. And yet, Father, we would not be among them. For we will remember what you have said. We will remember what you have commanded. We will remember who we are. And we will remember who Jesus Christ is, the son of the living God, and lift his banner high and continue under that banner as you give us life and breath in him. Lord, hear our prayers of thanks and bless us now we ask in Jesus.

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.

August 8, 2010
The Covenant and the Great Commandment

About this sermon

Deuteronomy 6 calls Israel to love the Lord with all the heart, soul, and might, and to keep his words on their hearts and teach them to their children at home and on the road. The law was never a merely external code; Moses already looked for a circumcised heart, and the prophets promised a new covenant written on the heart. Christ alone kept that great commandment perfectly, and in him God’s people learn to love God and one another, as Colossians 3 describes.

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Sermon transcript

Begin at chapter 6, verse 1. I’m going to read through verse 9 of Deuteronomy 6. Give your attention, for this is the Word of God. Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the judgments, which the Lord your God has commanded me to teach you, that you might do them in the land where you are going over to possess it, so that you and your son and your grandson might fear the Lord your God to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged. O Israel, you should listen and be careful to do it, that it may be well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you in a land flowing with milk and honey. Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

These words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorpost of your house and on your gates.

And turning over to Jeremiah chapter 31. And beginning with verse 31. Jeremiah 31, 31. Behold, days are coming, declares the Lord, And I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them, declares the Lord. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord.

I will put my law within them, and on their heart I will write it. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. They will not teach again each man his neighbor, and each man his brother, saying, Know the Lord. For they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity and their sin. I will remember no more. And then turning over again to Colossians chapter 3 in the New Testament. Colossians chapter 3 beginning with verse 12.

So as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone, just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.

Beyond all these things, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom, teaching, and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father. Thus far, the reading of God’s inspired, infallible word.

Let’s pray together, shall we? Our Father, we come together as your people, confessing our need of your grace, our need of your spirit to open the word of truth to us, that we might see it and understand it and believe it, that we might, oh God, act upon it. We pray, Father, that the things that we read, things that were spoken of old that have come to pass now in the days of Jesus Christ would be written upon our hearts and that we, oh God, would rise up then as the Church of Christ to love you and serve you and honor you, to encourage one another, to bless one another, that being filled with the spirit of the living Jesus, raised from the dead and seated in glory, coming again to receive his own to himself. O Lord, hear our prayers of thanks. Bless them, the preaching and the hearing of your word today, that we might receive it as it is, the word of the living God, we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

The great commandment given to Israel and to us is to love God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, which means with your whole self, your whole being, including your rationality, your mental capacity, your moral choices, your will and willing, your inner feelings and desires, and the deepest roots of your life. Everything belongs to the God who loved you and gave his son Jesus Christ for you. In Deuteronomy chapter 6 as Moses speaks on behalf of God he speaks of loving God with all of your heart and with all of your soul. in the great Shema of Deuteronomy chapter six, verses four and five. And there, Moses, on behalf of God, adds a third remarkable term, and with all your might, with all your strength, it says.

Literally, as we said in our last sermon two weeks ago, it means something like, and with all your very muchness, you might recall that commentary, This word, everywhere else used, is used as an adverb. But here, and when used as an adverb, it means greatly or exceedingly. But here in Deuteronomy 6, verse 5, Moses uses that word to speak that is translated as the word strength. He uses it as a noun in its own right. It’s open to various translations of which strength or might are the most common translations. But as we commented also, the early Jewish versions translated it as your substance.

With all your substance, all your possessions might be an acceptable connotation. which indeed might very well lie behind what Jesus teaches about laying up treasures in heaven of the woman who gave her two mites and gave her whole life, as it were, in service of God. Laying up treasure, serving God rather than serving mammon.

And that commentary, that idea may also get at the heart of Mark chapter 12, verses 28 and following. where Jesus is asked by one of the scribes, what commandment is the foremost of all? And Jesus responds by reciting the Shema, those words from Deuteronomy 6, 4, and 5, saying, the foremost of all is, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your mind, Jesus says, and with all your strength. The second, he says, is this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these. All your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.

And so then, having dealt primarily in our last sermon with verses four and five of Deuteronomy 6, Today, I’m asking that we would focus on verses 6 through 9. Deuteronomy 6, verses 6 through 9. According to the words spoken by Moses, the love for the Lord must show itself in the zealous keeping of, quote, these words which I am commanding you today. That is the demands proclaimed by God and presented to the people by Moses, both before and after this statement in verse six. In other words, the words which I’m commanding you in this great end of 40 year wilderness wandering statement that Moses is delivering in the book of Deuteronomy to the people.

These commands, this word, which I’m speaking to you today, you shall keep them. Keep them zealously. And these commandments, he says, are to be, quote, upon your heart. Heart here again. The idea of loving God with all your heart. These commandments are to be upon your heart. Heart referring more specifically in a Hebrew sense to the seat of thought and memory in the inner being of a person. What we know and think and the mind set as it were, but also of that connotation of love, of loving God with emotion and affection and a willingness and a desire. that these commands which I am commanding you today are to be upon your heart.

This law, this command, these demands were not just for the King of Israel, not just for the priests, not just for the prophets, it was for everyone. It was to be in the heart as well as in the head, in the home as well as in the courts. and the verses that are before us in verses six through nine powerfully dispel two misconceptions. The first misconception is that Old Testament law was a matter of legalistic conformity to an external code. A lot of people think of the law, think of the Old Testament in those terms as externals, as laws, laws that were given simply requiring legalistic conformity.

But on the contrary, Deuteronomy 6 verse 6 is part of a strong stream of Old Testament teaching that calls for the internalizing of the law, in the heart that is. at the center of a person’s mind and will and character. Not just doing it because God says do it and keeping the outward externals of the law, but it is to be in the embrace of the mind and the heart and the will.

Deuteronomy 4 verse 9 teaches, only give heed to yourself and keep your soul diligently. lest you forget the things which your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life, but make them known to your sons and grandsons.” Deuteronomy 4, 9. In other words, Israel was to hold on to these things diligently, internalizing them. They were to keep them in their heart and to pass them on to their children and their children’s children. In Deuteronomy chapter 10, verse 16, Moses will speak of circumcising the foreskin of your heart. Speaking of a people being totally given to and set apart for the Lord.

Deuteronomy 10.16. In other words, the idea of just like there was circumcision of the flesh for the sons and grandsons of Israel, so there was in Moses’ mindset in the Word of God, a circumcising of the heart. that you would take away that which is an obstacle to God and give yourself totally and fully to God. And that theme, those kinds of themes are picked up repeatedly by the prophets that come after Moses. The great hope for Israel and for the sons of Israel was for a renewed heart, that their heart would be made new, totally devoted to the Lord. And so even that very language of the circumcision of the heart is a theme picked up again and again.

Well, one of those misconceptions then of the Old Testament is that it’s just a legalistic code. Whereas it in fact it is indeed very much the Old Testament matter, a matter of the heart. But a second misconception that folk have about the Old Testament is that religious traditions and observances are the preserve of a professional elite. a special religious class, a chosen few. In other words, we think of the Pharisees or we think of the scribes and we think of, well, they were the really religious people and the laws were really for the really religious. Well, we have it today, of course, in various constructs, both in Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, where people think that spirituality or religiosity belongs to a chosen few, a special clerical status, or a certain academic, members of academia. Well, in fact, the priests of Israel were indeed to teach the law. but not to teach it as something that only they within the confines of their professional guild could understand. On the contrary, the law was to be the topic of ordinary conversation, in ordinary homes, in ordinary life, from breakfast to bedtime.

In Deuteronomy 30 verse 11 and following, Moses writes, For this commandment, which I command you today, is not too difficult for you, nor is it out of reach. It’s not in heaven that you should say, who will go up to heaven for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it. Nor is it beyond the sea that you should say, who will cross the sea for us to get it for us and make us hear it, that we may observe it. But the word, Moses says, is very near you. It is in your heart, in your mouth, and in your heart that you may observe it.

The law was accessible and near. Such was its scope and relevance. Deuteronomy chapter 6, verses 6 through 9 dispels the misconception that the law and religiosity was for a chosen few of Israel. the elitist. Notice the language of Deuteronomy 6, 6-9.

This was something they were to teach, they were to speak of it, when they walked along the way, when they rose up, when they sat down, when they were in their homes, when they were out in the streets. along the way. They were to teach it to their children continually.

It was to be the topic of their discussion in everyday life and everyday circumstances. And moreover, this love for God was not some sort of secretive devotion, some sort of purely private relationship which didn’t really concern anybody else but you and God, so to speak. But from the start, it was to involve the element of public confession as well as personal allegiance. First, this loving devotion to the Lord was to be shared in the home.

These God-given truths must not only be taught by Moses to Israel, but by every parent in Israel. So that children and grandchildren will learn and keep all His decrees and His commandments. Parents were to impress this word on their children’s minds and to make it the subject of natural, everyday conversation within family life.

And you shall teach them diligently, he says, to your sons. And you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. continually in every circumstance of everyday life. And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, this text says, and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. And you shall write them on the doorpost of your house and on the gates of your cities. Once again, Here, those verbs in rapid sequence, helping us to feel the force of the exhortation. Teach them diligently, that is the commandments. Talk of them, bind them, write them.

The law of God was to be applied to the individual. It was to be the reference to your hand. The things that you do, the things you put your hand to, there is the command of God that you would fulfill it. It was to be on your forehead as if this is what I see, this is what I see all the time, this is what I’m looking at, this is what I’m thinking about, all the time, when I rise up, when I sit down, when I go in, when I go out, when I meet with my children along the way.

And it was to be not only on your doorpost, which is suggesting your own family house situation, but they were to be on the gates of your city. And so the law of God was not only your family and your house, but the public civic society. The gates were where the elders sat in the cities to judge. The gates were where commerce was carried out on a day-to-day basis. The gates is where the civic authorities met and made their decisions for what was going on in Israel.

The Israelite was to work out the meaning of loving God in appropriate ways for all these levels of self and family and society, the individual, the Israelite families, the Israelite community, the people of God. These were the commands that God encourages them, exhorts them to put in their hearts, and to love the Lord their God with all of their heart and with all of their soul with very muchness. The love commitment of the whole person in verse five is thus expanded to the whole community in verses seven through nine. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.

You do that. but also let it be for all Israel. Verse seven tells the Israelites to teach these commandments to their sons and to talk about them everywhere and always. This serves to instruct the children, but it is not limited to this instruction. You don’t always have the children with them along the road. The point is rather that the Israelites are to keep these commandments alive in their everyday thoughts, to remind themselves and others of them. The commandments were to be the subject of conversation, both inside and outside the home, from the beginning of the day to the end of the day. While not exactly identical, there is a similarity in the words of Proverbs 6, verses 20 to 23, where the writer of Proverbs says, my son, observe the commandment of your father. Do not forsake the teaching of your mother. Bind them continually on your heart. Tie them around your neck. When you walk about, they will guide you. When you sleep, they will watch over you. And when you awake, they will talk to you. When you are awake, they will talk to you. For the commandment, the proverb says, is a lamp, and the teaching is a light.

In summary, then, the commandments were to permeate every sphere of the life of God’s covenant people, really and truly as an expression of the people’s love for Yahweh, the Lord, their God. The injunctions given in Deuteronomy 6, verses 8 and 9 continue to emphasize the important role the commandments were to play in the life of the people.

It’s uncertain whether those verses were intended to be taken literally in their initial context, or whether they are simply primarily metaphorical. In either case, whether they had the intent of being literally taken or not, Historically, they came to be taken literally during the course of Jewish history. The commandments tied as a sign on the hand or as frontlets on your forehead was in time interpreted by Israel as a warrant for the use of what was called a phylactery, which was in fact a little small container that enclosed a parchment, and on the parchment were a number of Bible verses, biblical texts from Exodus and Deuteronomy.

So you’re carrying the word of God around on your hand, and you’re carrying the word of God around on your forehead. Similarly, the injunction to write the commandments on the doorpost and the gates came to be interpreted literally. And the mezuzah, as it came to be called, was a small box that you had containing a parchment on your door post and on the gates. And so you look inside and you open the parchment again.

There is the Bible verses, if you were to quote them. Well, whether those injunctions of Deuteronomy 6, 7 through 9 were meant to be taken literally or not, is it not absolutely clear that figuratively They denote an undeviating observance of the divine commandments.

The commandments were to be in front of the people all the time in every place. And you think of Psalm 1 of the righteous man who meditates on the law of God day and night. Well, that was the command. That was the command given by Yahweh to his people to meditate on those commandments day and night in every circumstance of life. To be understood spiritually as to that which is pleasing to God.

Keeping the commandments in the heart, in the soul, in every circumstance, in every way, in every day. and the rising up and the sitting down and the going out and the coming in. In the market and in the house and in the courts and in the places of business wherever you were as an Israelite you were to love God and love Him with all your heart and soul with all your very muchness. The eye of covenant faith was to be directed clearly and continually to Yahweh and to the keeping and the doing of His commandments.

And as we read such things and hear such things, and as we think of the phylacteries and the references that came about later in time to such things, we cannot help but think of Jesus’ warnings against the scribes and the Pharisees, the professional religious who prided themselves in their outward religiosity. My phylactery is bigger than your phylactery. Or it’s newer, it’s shinier. As Jesus say, they broaden their phylacteries, they lengthen the tassels on their garments, an exaggeration to be sure, but Jesus is basically saying they do what they do to be seen by men. practicing their piety, even their prayers. They stand in the synagogue and on street corners where they’ll be seen and heard and they make a show of religious devotion.

But at the root of it, Jesus is saying they deprive God of his due. They lay burdens on others, but they won’t lift a finger to help. They refuse to humble themselves and to serve, whereas Jesus says, if you would become great, become the servant of all. Love your neighbor as yourself. Beloved, as we hear these things and we hear Jesus’ indictment of Pharisaical religion, we consider Old Testament, Old Covenant Israel. And we ask the question, how did Old Covenant Israel fare in keeping the Great Commandment?

Though the Lord had brought them out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand, Maybe their hand was supposed to remind them of God’s hand. Though the Lord God had brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, though He Himself, Yahweh, had become a husband to this people, taking them in their awfulness and sin and making them His people, though He showed them many great and wonderful signs, how did they do in keeping the commandments with their heart and soul? and with all their very muchness.

How easily they forgot. How readily they forsook the way of the Lord. How quickly they turned to other gods. No matter how dramatically the Lord had spoken his commandments at Sinai. You remember. We don’t want to hear that anymore. You Moses speak to us. No matter how clearly Moses and the prophets spoke the commands of God. or how often they repeated the warnings of God’s judgment against disobedience, no matter how much blood of lambs and bulls and goats and lambs and bulls and goats and lambs and bulls and goats was shed, the glory of that Old Testament covenant priesthood, the glory of the tabernacle, the greater glory still of Solomon’s temple, all of these did not avail.

For all of those things of necessity pointed beyond themselves to the greater need for a new and a better covenant. Not like the covenant which the Lord made with the fathers of the house of Israel when he took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, the covenant which they broke. I’m quoting Jeremiah 31. not like the covenant which they broke despite God’s kindnesses to them. The Lord in Jeremiah 31, 31 to 34 speaks of that new and better covenant that God would make with his people by which he would put his law within them, notice, and write it on their hearts.

He would do it. He would write it there. The Lord there does not simply, does not simply promise a greatness which they had and fumbled and lost, but he promises something far better, something far more excellent. The commandment to write, to hold these things and keep them in your hearts and to love God with all your heart. Here comes the pronouncement, I’m going to write it on your heart. And we hence see that this passage necessarily, says John Calvin, necessarily, Jeremiah 31, necessarily points to Jesus and to the coming of a better kingdom. For without Christ, nothing could or ought to have been hoped for by such a people.

What is there better than the law of God? What better help could he have given them than all of the commandments, and all of the markers, and all of the symbols, and all of the types, and all of the shadows, and all of the things that he did, and all of the things that he showed them in the old covenant? What could he have done better? And the answer? Jesus. Jesus. One who would keep the commandment with all of his heart, mind, and soul, and strength.

Though the law was a perfect rule, a perfect doctrine of what God had revealed to his people, yet the law in all of its glory could in itself not solve the problem of sin in sinners such as Israel was and such as you and I are. But God, but God who is rich and faithful in mercy has brought to bear that new and better covenant. God made a new covenant when he accomplished through his son whatever had been shadowed forth under the law of old covenant history. For the ceremonies and the sacrifices could not of themselves satisfy God’s just demands.

It is only in Christ, only in the working of the Holy Spirit in regeneration and in sanctification wherein we are made alive to God so that obedience is rendered to the great commandment because the commandment has been written upon us by Christ and by His Spirit. Not the law written as a sign on the hand or on the forehead or on the doorposts We’re on the gates. In redemption, God is pleased to write his law on the hearts of his people, wherein a true and spiritual reformation is accomplished to the praise of the glory of his grace in Jesus.

Not what we have done, but what he has done in us and for us. It is in this that He is truly our God and that we are truly His people, loving Him and doing what He commands. And so it is, beloved, the reference that I offer you from the text in Colossians 3 that we read this morning. Colossians 3, 12 through 17.

So as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, listen, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another, forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone, just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.

And beyond all these things, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity, and let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. to which indeed you were called in one body and be thankful. Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God, so that whatever you do in word or deed do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father. Whatever you do, in word or deed, do all, everything, everything. When you get up, when you go to bed, when you go out the street, when you go to bed, when you take your children for a walk, when you go to the playground, when you go to school, when you go to the workplace, when you brush your teeth, when you talk to your wife, whatever you do, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus. giving thanks to God the Father through him.

I want you to hear real briefly Colossians 3 verse 12, put on a heart of compassion. Verse 15, let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. And then verse 16, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Do you hear it? God said, I will write it on your heart. And that’s exactly what he’s done in Jesus Christ. asking you then to take notice of that threefold reference in the short little passage of what it means to have your hearts made new in Jesus. Hearts in which God has worked his perfect peace. Hearts on which God has written his commandments by the word of Christ. Hearts made new in Jesus.

Jesus, the Father, the Spirit, he who is our God, and we who are his covenant people. Love the Lord your God in Christ with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your strength and love your neighbor as yourselves. This is the great commandment. Let’s pray together. Heavenly Father, fill us with the joy and the zeal of Jesus. Teach us that we are that new covenant people made alive with hearts renewed. Hearts that have been renewed by the working of God who has written his commands upon those hearts.

That we should love God and that we should love one another. As the people of God in the church then, oh Father, let us rise up and call you blessed. Let us go about our lives in everyday happenings, oh God. with a spirituality that belongs from the least to the greatest. And let us prove greatness not by acting great, but let us prove greatness by becoming the least of all, serving one another with devotion, patience, and kindness, forgiveness, even as Christ has loved us and forgiven us. We pray now in Jesus’ name.

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.

August 1, 2010
The Uniqueness of Biblical Religion

This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of “The History of Salvation” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, August 26, 1990.

About this sermon

Naturalistic and humanistic accounts treat Israel’s religion as one more ancient Near Eastern cult, and Van Til’s view of revelation shows why it is unique. God’s sheer grace toward Israel in Deuteronomy 7:6-8 is the two-sided key to understanding it.

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Sermon transcript

Tonight we are reading from the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 4. Deuteronomy chapter 4. The first 24 verses. And now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the judgments which I am teaching you to perform. In order that you may live and go in and take possession of the land which the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you, you shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you.

Your eyes have seen what the Lord has done in the case of Baal-peor. For all the men who followed they appear or the Lord your God has destroyed them from among you. But you who held fast to the Lord your God are alive today. Every one of you. See I have taught you statutes and judgments just as the Lord my God commanded me that you should do thus in the land where you are entering to possess it. So keep and do them.

For that is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what great nation is there that has a God so near to it as is the Lord our God whenever we call on him? For what great nation is there that has statutes and commandments as righteous as this whole law which I am setting before you today. Only give heed to yourself and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things which your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. But make them known to your sons and to your grandsons.

Remember the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb. When the Lord said to me, Assemble the people to me, that I may let them hear my words, so they may learn to fear me all the days they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children.

And he came near and stood at the foot of the mountain, and the mountain burned with fire to the very heart of the heavens, darkness, cloud, and thick gloom. Then the Lord spoke to you from the midst of the fire, You heard the sound of words, but you saw no form, only a voice. So he declared to you his covenant which he commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments, and he wrote them on two tablets of stone. And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgments, that you might perform them in the land where you’re going over to possess it.”

So watch yourselves carefully. Since you did not see any form on the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire, lest you act corruptly and make a graven image for yourselves in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the sky, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water below the earth. And beware, lest you lift up your eyes to heaven and see the sun and the moon and the stars and all the hosts of heaven, and be drawn away and worship them and serve them, those which the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven. But the Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace from Egypt to be a people for his own possession as today.

Now the Lord was angry with me on your account. and swore that I should not cross the Jordan, and that I should not enter the good land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance. For I shall die in this land, I shall not cross the Jordan, but you shall cross and take possession of this good land. So watch yourselves, lest you forget the covenant of the Lord your God which he made with you, and make for yourselves a graven image in the form of anything against which the Lord your God has commanded you, for the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.”

We ask, Father, that we would be encouraged by your word in the certainty that your word gives life. Surely your word has the power to transform lives, our lives. And you have made that plain to us. And Lord, we would ask that the word that goes forth from this place would powerfully confront others with the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. And may it be that there would be those who would come and understand better, or even for the first time, the glorious things of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Bless the message tonight and bless the messengers throughout your church who bring your word to the world.

We ask this in Christ’s name. Amen. We have come to the next to the last message in this series on Old Testament times. Next week we will be considering the theme of the Messiah, or Israel’s hope. That to which she looked, that for which she longed. But as we build up to our consideration of Israel’s hope, and the figure of the Messiah next week, we take up this evening the general features of Israel’s religion.

Now it has been said that the Greeks gave to the world arts and letters. that being their contribution to world civilization. It has been said that Rome gave to the world law and order, that being their contribution to world civilization. And for those who are interested in world civilization, It has been said that Israel’s contribution is in the area of religion and ethics. So, in good humanistic style, in fine humanistic perspective, all you need do is to combine the contributions of these great civilizations for what we have now as the underpinnings for our civilization in our time.

If we are interested in the arts, we look to the Greeks. If we are interested in law, if we are interested in government, we look to the Romans. If we are interested in religion, we look to Israel. We throw all of these elements into a big pot, we stir it up, and out comes the perfect mix for a proper civilization, a good and proper society.

Well, if you were attending college at the turn of the century. When professors were still of the habit of trying to find a place for Israel and Israel’s contribution religiously to the world order, you would be likely to hear a presentation like this from some world cultures teacher, from someone who may be teaching you about world civilization. It may well be that that professor does not have himself a biblical faith. It may well be that he is only tangentially related to either Jewish or Christian orthodoxy. His real interest is civilization, culture. And therefore, as he presents his material, it’s in the interests of seeing that culture, that civilization promoted and enhanced. Well, it wasn’t very long into this century when there were fewer and fewer professors and teachers in colleges and in universities who were actually saying good things about the religion of Israel at least in any orthodox sense of the word. You see, these individuals, as were their institutions, were committed to a naturalistic and humanistic approach to the problems of culture and civilization.

When they surveyed world history, they were looking for genius, And genius promoted itself. So what was the genius of the Greeks? What was the genius of the Romans? What was the genius of the Hebrews? Why, the Hebrew people had a special propensity for religion and religious understanding.

Did they? Not necessarily from my reading of the Old Testament. Wasn’t it sort of forced on them? It wasn’t because they had some sort of special natural propensity for religious things. that they have this deposit which has been given to them that is now seemingly exploited by naturalistic humanists in this century, in the interests of better society and grander civilization. The Jews, then, were not naturally religious. in the sense that the Greeks were naturally artistic, and the Romans were naturally interested in government, law and order in society.

Well, there are dangers, then, when we start investigating this whole area of religion. Because there is, out there in the world, a whole and entire network, the educational establishment, that sees religion along naturalistic lines. Religion is something that arises from within yourself. It’s developed It’s fine-tuned, it’s cultivated, but it is something that basically arises from within yourself. You conceive it. Your society, your tribe, or your nation develops that religion, and then that religion, if things go well for it, and you, has an impact directly upon the world and world culture.

When we come to the Bible, though, The Bible is presenting to us a religious phenomenon that is extraordinary in the extreme. It is presenting to us a religious phenomenon that is completely and utterly unique. This is not something that arises from within man. This isn’t the product of someone who has a bright new religious idea, as if Moses were some sort of religious innovator, as if he was about the business of creating a new world religion, and then finding a people that might be willing to accept it. Now we might say that about Muhammad, because that is definitely what happened in his case. The man actually did hatch a religion in his brain. The man went around collecting detached Arabs, congregating them around his ideas and religious philosophy, and voila!

A world religion. And there are a number of other instances of that. What do you make of Joseph Smith? Utterly fantastic! Bizarre! Mormonism, a religion that truly is the product of a nut. Charles Taze Russell is buried on the north side. He was the founder of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Again, a man who took some religious stuff with his own manipulation created a religion all his own. But a million light years removed from the biblical religion. The religions of the world. Buddha. Confucius. The same thing observed there. Truly, men of genius. I’m not denying the fact that Joseph Smith was a genius. A crazy genius, but a genius.

When we come to the Bible, we are confronted with something that is truly exceptional, unique. The religion that stands apart, not so much to make you proud, not so much to cause you to boast about your position, your standing, your relationship to this book or to the faith that it espouses. For you see, the presupposition of this religion is the ruination of the world, the inability of man according to his own lights, to come to a knowledge of the truth, left to myself, I never arrived. The great professor that I had in seminary was named Cornelius Van Til.

He used to say to us, there is natural revelation, but all natural theology is apostate. Do you understand what he meant? God reveals Himself in nature, but anybody who goes to work on nature in order to conceive the knowledge of the true God ends up in apostasy. Look at nature and you end up in the wrong place. Why? Because you need a supernatural revelation.

And the basis of Israel’s religion is a supernatural intervention by God Himself, the only God. So how do we know the truth? How do we know God? How do we come to embrace the right religion with the right religious spirit only by way of a revelation, a self-revelation of and from God?

You understand, God is outside the created order. He is above the heavens. He is transcendent. In order to save, in order to reveal, savingly, He intervenes. He interjects Himself into the space-time world that you know. And in that, He makes Himself known to His people. Because they’re so deserving? Because they’re so worthy? Because they’re so eminent? Because they have a natural religious genius? Because they’re likely to accept it when no one else will? You know better. You know better.

So, the supernatural work of God God intervening, God graciously coming and revealing himself and presenting himself as the center of this religious movement that now grabs hold of Israel. And Israel then becoming by grace, not because she is worthy, by grace, God’s unmerited love and favor, the custodian in the world of this revelation that has come from God. Deposited with Israel is the record of God’s saving works. Deposited with Israel is God’s righteous law. So if you want to think of the substance, then, of that religion that belongs to Israel, not because of her own genius, but because of the Lord’s gift, here it is. The substance of it is, truly, this record given to her of God’s saving words and his righteous law, as he himself personally has communicated that to these people. Now to that we are bound. Interestingly, that’s what the word religion means. It means to bind. We are bound by that at root. That’s why I read for you Deuteronomy 4 tonight.

You have the presentation there of the exceptional deposit that belongs now to Israel as the recipients of this revelatory communication from heaven on high, from God himself. And the verse 6, Surely this great nation is wise and an understanding people. That’s what the peoples of the world now are saying. For what great nation is there that has a God so near to it as is the Lord our God whenever He calls on Him? We call on Him. Or what great nation is there that has statutes and judgments as righteous as this whole law which I am setting before you today?

Verses six through eight of that fourth chapter in Deuteronomy. And if there is any remain lingering questions in your mind about the gracious character of God’s approach to these people. I want you just to turn a few pages of Deuteronomy and look at chapter 7. Here is a classic text, and one that may be well to memorize, imprint upon your consciousness in some way. so as to remind you of the gracious character of God’s dealings with Israel. Here’s what is said. Deuteronomy 7 now, verses 6 through 8.

For you are a holy people to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. There it is, God’s graciousness. But also, you see, God’s choice is sovereign election.

The Lord did not set his love on you, nor chose you, because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which he swore to your forefathers, the Lord brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery and from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.” He goes on, Therefore, know therefore that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps His covenant, et cetera.” Well, I’m not telling you anything new. You, in your heart of hearts, know these things.

But it is well, is it not, for us to rehearse them, to remind ourselves of these truths. No natural phenomenon, a supernatural phenomenon. Not something that we deserve, a gift. Not something whereby we commend ourselves, but something whereby God is commended. Even before there is even any commendation of us.

We’re talking then about the heart and soul of what has been called Hebrew religion. Utterly unique. And how preparatory it is for that which is yet to come. For all the patterns are laid there, are they not? As God has dealt with Israel, so he will deal with his church which he assembles from all the nations and from the four corners of the earth so all the tribes all the nations all the tongues all the races will be assembled finally not just Jews not just Middle Easterners but from all over the world congregated by this great God, who so reveals himself. So, it’s relevant materialism. It’s relevant. Meaningful.

Now there are some features, some characteristics that are worth considering as we think a little bit further about Israel’s religion. There is, for instance, in Israel’s religion an internal side and also an external side. Now, you may be able to find counterparts in all of the religions of the world with regard to these matters. And in this there is a commonality between Israel and other world nations that have produced religions. Truly there is an internal side and an external side. As to the internal, We’ve talked a lot about God’s revealing activity.

We’ve talked about things that touch upon history and upon an interpretation of the origins of Israel as a nation, etc. But now we’re turning our attention to the whole matter of the heart. In Israel’s religion, things of which we have spoken have their impact, first of all, ideally, upon the heart. Israel’s religion is to the end that the heart may be one. Oh, to have a heart for God, to love God with your whole Is the religion that you embrace an emotionless religion? A religion without passion, without zeal?

How is that possible? Is not your heart stirred by the things you hear concerning God’s gracious activity? Is not the Spirit alive within you to quicken your heart, that your heart might be attached to these things in a vital way? Your heart set upon God’s love, inexplicable love for people, God’s gracious dealings with them. Oh, how I love that God! my heart set upon him.” A heart that in its affection is set upon him, but a heart also that trusts the one who is loved. Isn’t this the secret of love?

Have you watched love disintegrate? Have you watched it evaporate? Oh, there are emotions that continue. There are affections that seemingly survive. But if that trust, if that faith is crippled or destroyed, attacked, impaired, damaged, the Oedipus collapses. There certainly may well be some attractiveness that remains, some attraction that persists. But once that matter of faith and trust is gone, the edifice collapses.

Thus it is in our relationship with God. The heart that is affectionately set upon God then entrusts itself to the one love embraced. You see why your love for God must go on and express itself in faith and in trust. There are many people who confess some affection for God, they hardly know of what they’re speaking. For in that affection, that love of which they speak, there is nothing of an informed faith and trust by which they are willing to commit themselves wholeheartedly to this one they say they love. How often in Scripture then you hear the admonition coming again and again. You heard it in Psalm 37 that we sang at the opening of our service tonight, verse 3.

Trust in the Lord. Trust in the Lord. If you love Him, trust Him. Trust Him. If you don’t trust Him, the edifice of affection will become meaningless. all the vocabulary of love for God will crumble. He takes you down hard paths. He tries you, and you feel desperate in the midst of that trial. If you So it is with the religion that is coming to expression within Israel, and that not naturally.

Why do you think it’s necessary for the prophets, Moses himself, the psalmists, to continually encourage the people to trust in the Lord? Because it doesn’t come naturally. Why should I trust someone I can’t see? How can I commit myself to the invisible God? He asked me to live by faith. I can’t! That’s the truth. You can’t! In your own power, you can’t do it.

It is a supernatural work within you. You are utterly dependent upon the Spirit. Give yourself to Him and let Him perfect your faith. He said there’s an external side. That’s also in view in that 37th Psalm, the third verse. You know how it goes. It says, trust in the Lord and do good. Part and parcel of Hebrew religion is not then merely having right affections for God and cultivating a faith towards Him. It’s acting upon it. in such a way that pleases the one who has revealed himself graciously to you. Trust the Lord and do good. So there are concrete acts of obedience. Do we need to reread Deuteronomy 4? There it is. How do we have it in the good old gospel song? and obey. There is no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.

It’s great distress in the Christian Reformed Church right now. I heard a remarkable sermon when I was in California from a distraught Christian Reformed pastor who was reviewing the recent acts of Synod. You know what some of those acts were. What disturbed him most were the reports in the Banner, the Christian Reformed magazine, that told the readership that the decision of the Synod had been bathed in prayer.

That was the language they used. It had been bathed in prayer. So how could anyone doubt the outcome? We bathed it in prayer. Our piousness in this regard has sanctified our actions. You talk about an irate minister. This guy was chewing the cord on his microphone. He was practically leaping over the pulpit trying to get at the congregation, pleading with them. He says, if I have to put it in the extreme, don’t pray, obey. And when God’s word is clear, you don’t justify an act of disobedience by silly, pious language and activity.

There is an external side that we can’t avoid, we can’t get away from. Of course, there are liabilities to that external side, are there not? For part of the external side of the religion of Israel will be focused in a tabernacle, in a temple, in religious rites and festivals. Part of the external side of that religion of Israel will seemingly be focused in, well, if you obey, then you will prosper. And we all want to prosper, don’t we? So let’s get on with prosperity.

The external side can always be a trap. Even outward obedience conformity, compliance, can be a trap, a shield, something behind which people hide. So in the latter prophets you have language like, not sacrifice, you haven’t desired it, You have language coming from Malachi, shut up the temple, close the doors, bolt them, don’t let anybody in. I’m tired of all of this feigned religiosity, all this feigned piety. So the intern seemingly manages the extern. the heart affectionately bound to the God who has revealed himself, a faith that is alive and vibrant, trusting, then able to see those externals and judge them rightly, appropriately, in terms of what God has said and done. Retaking no delight in hiding behind things, camouflaging our case, acting as if we’re righteous when we’re not, playing the hypocrite? No. The religion of Israel then pushes, prods, pokes, goes, so that you will not be content with near externality. Rather, you will be content only with perfect conformity to God himself. I am holy, says the Lord. Therefore, be ye holy.

Well, there are other dimensions, of course, to Israel’s religion that we could look at this evening. We’ve run out of time. It’s a big subject. But I think I’ve laid before you this evening some chief features. Ending on a note that brings before you now the matter, the subject, of hope. The hope of these people, what they long for, what yet may be realized in their case, the perfection of that religion which has been given to them, and that perfection then becoming the true light that shines in the world for the salvation of God’s elect to the ends of the earth. And you’re part of the company. You’re part of the assembly that has been brought together. 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.

August 26, 1990
Baptism and the Father

This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Christians & Their Vows” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, February 11, 1990.

About this sermon

The world’s view of baptism differs from the Bible’s, which finds cleansing in the baptismal water and meaning in the questions asked at the font. Earthly fathers point to God the Father himself.

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Sermon transcript

So we are reading, first of all, from Deuteronomy, chapter 6, and then we will be turning to Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Deuteronomy, chapter 6, verses 1 through 15. Hear the word of God. These are the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments which the Lord your God commanded to teach you, so that you may do them in the land to which you are going to possess it.

That you may fear the Lord your God, to keep all His statutes and His commandments, which I command you, you and your son, and your son’s son, all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged. Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it, that it may be well with you, and that you may increase greatly, as the Lord God of your fathers has promised you, in the land that flows with milk and honey. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.

These words which I command you this day shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. It shall be when the Lord your God has brought you into the land which He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you, great and goodly cities which you did not build, and houses full of all good things which you did not fill, and wells dug which you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant, when you have eaten and are full.

Then beware: thus thou forget the Lord, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God, and serve him, and shalt swear by his name. Ye shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the people which are round about you. For the Lord thy God is a jealous God among you, lest the anger of the Lord thy God be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from off the face of the earth.

Then, turning to Ephesians, chapter six, verses one through four: Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor thy father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise: it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. And ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

The contemporary practice of infant baptism can hardly be regarded as anything short of scandalous. Now, the person who made this remark spoke against the background of European neopaganism, citing the fact that most of the neo-pagans in Europe had been baptized when children, when infants, but had been baptized in the name of what he called cultural custom, in the name of social amenities.

In America, we are not strangers to the force, the power of cultural customs. There are people here, as there are in Europe, who present their children for baptism because it is the expected practice. Because that is the way things have been done in their family, with their ancestors from generation to generation. Social amenity, cultural custom in the old world, Europe, and also in the new America. In America we also have added challenges, not that these are completely absent in Europe, but they seem to be in full force here in our land.

The enemies of baptism’s significance are ignorance and superstition. People submit to the rite, offering their children, hardly having any understanding of what is involved or what they are doing. They have little grasp of the significance of the sacraments. Others offer their children, infants in their arms, out of superstitious fear.

We must have Nelly Dunn, unless something unfortunate happens to her. As if the sprinkling of water were going to ensure the child’s health and well-being. And it is particularly now, in such a setting as faces us—where the force of social custom is increasing, religious ignorance is reaching epidemic proportions, and foolish superstition is growing in influence and strength, especially with regard to conscience and its impact on our actions.

In such a setting as this, is it any wonder that there is often confusion about vows and oaths, about promises made? In the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition, as far back as I have been able to discover, there has always been the practice of making and taking vows in connection with the sacrament of baptism, whether for adults or infants. Carlos’ name. The question that is asked now, of course, and I believe you are aware of the direction I have been taking in my messages on this subject, is whether there is not also a great deal of perjury?

Not many parents perjure themselves when a child is offered and submitted to the sacrament of baptism. Just a few words this morning about baptism itself that may be helpful. A few words to address the matter of our ignorance, if it still persists, or to confront the matter of superstition, if indeed we are its victims.

First of all, baptism is not magic. It is not a magical rite. Christians do not believe in magic, despite C.S. Lewis. We believe in sacraments. We believe in a God who is active in the life of His people. We are not those who claim that God has maintained a witness for Himself among those who believe in magical rites. Belief in magic, and submission to it, is the hallmark of paganism, pure and simple.

You must not mix magic with the mysteries of the sacraments. Of course, there are those who do. Baptism itself does not save anyone. Baptism itself does not save anyone. This sacrament does not confer salvation on any individual, whether adult or infant. The sacrament conferred upon an individual does not save.

This means, of course, that one can be saved without it. As important as we believe it to be, one can be saved, redeemed by God, and rescued by Him. This is true apart from the sacrament. In fact, we believe that the sacrament itself represents and seals the saving work of Christ to the community of faith. This is how it functions.

The element used, water, speaks to us of cleansing. We hear about water in relation to cleansing through John the Baptist, when he says, “I baptize you with water. There comes one after me who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire,” intensifying the cleansing work within you, as it moves from one form of cleansing to another. The water itself is indicative of cleansing. It is a cleansing rite, signifying cleansing with respect to the people of God as they are sealed under the saving work of Jesus Christ in the community of faith. Now, we also recognize that baptism is brought into relationship with the death and resurrection of Christ, and appropriately so, because that is the ultimate cleansing. Death to the old, life to the new. Cleansed from the old, cleansed for the new.

Those who are in the community of faith, whether by profession of faith or by birth, are welcome to the sign and seal. They are part of the community of faith. Therefore, the sacrament of baptism is not magic, nor is it a magical right in itself; it does not save anyone by its own power. Rather, it is the sign and seal of the saving work of Christ, applied to the community of faith. Those who belong to the community of faith by profession or by birth are welcome to this sign, since they are already part of that community. And finally, the sacrament is joined to them without my involvement.

God himself makes a promise to the community of faith for Christ’s sake, signifying and sealing this promise in the act and in the community itself, which pledges to live a life consistent with the sign, the meaning, the cleansing, and the reality of what is indicated. As the community is included in Christ and is in union with Him, these are the various elements and aspects of baptism. In considering the vow and oath, there is an oath that God takes toward His people and a vow that the people take toward God.

Covenant, bond. Now, it has been the aspect of the sacrament related to the vow or pledge that we have been focusing on, in order to remind ourselves of our own pledge. The pledge that was pronounced over us is a pledge that we ourselves have taken. Our focus thus far has been on the promises made in infant baptism.

This is what we have found. We have found that in the Orthodox Presbyterian sacrament, two questions are asked. The first one is: Do you acknowledge that although our children are conceived and born in sin and therefore are subject to condemnation, they are holy in Christ and members of His church? This is magnificent. It is nothing short of sublime. It is compact, and it holds together so well, and it addresses so many important aspects that are essential for our consideration as we bring our children for baptism.

This is the first question, an oath of acknowledgement, or, if you will, an oath that functions as a subordinate public confession. It is a confession of our faith. It is not a full-blown confession of faith, such as the Westminster Confession of Faith. It is not even a full-blown confession in the sense of the Creed, the Apostles’ Creed, or the Nicene Creed. It is a confession of faith that is narrowly focused with respect to the sacrament in view, the sacrament of baptism, specifically the baptism of children. It is focused upon the relationship of our children to Christ and to the Church.

Therefore, as you examine it, you can make a list of the doctrines that are present. Let me make this as clear as possible: confession, insofar as it is a public declaration, a public acknowledgement, an oath in its own right, is a declaration of party agreement. In such a confession, not only the mind is active and engaged, but the heart as well. You are emotionally attached to the truths that you are confessing. Is this not plain from Deuteronomy 6, where the Israelites are called upon to confess the oneness of God, that they are to love Him with heart and soul and mind? This is the kind of confession, this open acknowledgment, that is in view.

How is it possible for us to sleep through our vows? To go through them as if we were sleepwalking, as if they meant nothing, as if they made no impact upon us at all? It is not a matter of God doing it all. It is not His fault if He does not stir my spirit while I am making these vows. He is not to blame. As you go through this list, you are compelled to give hearty assent to the doctrine of original sin. You agree with it. It is correct. Original sin is a true doctrine of Scripture, and I confess it openly as I present this child. This means the whole matter of infant innocence is wiped out. It is erased from the board. It is no longer a viable option. It certainly receives no support from Scripture.

You know what David confessed in the fifty-first psalm: “In sin my mother conceived me. In iniquity I was brought forth.” So you give a part of yourself to these doctrines. You recognize that God and His justice can condemn even this infant. They are subject to condemnation. That is how the vow reads. Then the question goes on to express hope and confidence that these children are children of the covenant, and as such, holy. That means separated, not perfect, not sinless, holy in Christ. That means separated unto Him. And that they are members of His church, of His household. And as such, being members of this community of faith, they are to receive the sign and seal of life. Amen. Amen.

So things start out bleakly, it seems, at the beginning of the question, but they end gloriously. And as you move from one part of that question to the other, it is as if you have moved from condemnation to justification, from condemnation to glory, from condemnation to the gospel. Why is the block? My reading of all the questions I surveyed—quite a few from churches in India to the church in Scotland to the churches of this country—leads me to believe that the Orthodox Presbyterian Church has the best formulation in this respect. It is a question that does not sit well with many in our time, I understand that. The question to which many cannot give their assent, in part.

But that does not diminish its significance. That is the first part. Now, what about the second question? Do you remember it? Remember the second question? Do you promise to instruct your child in the principles of our holy religion as revealed in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments and as summarized in the confession of faith and catechisms of this Church? And do you promise to pray with and for your child, to set an example of piety and godliness before him, and to endeavor by all the means of God’s appointment to bring him up in the virtue and the admonition of the Lord? Oh, truly, the ear that listens to this hears sweet music. Sweet.

The question has two parts, and you surely noticed what those parts were. First, there is the promise to instruct. Second, there is the promise to live. There is the promise to teach, and there is the promise to live. These two parts of the question can be considered under three headings. We have finally reached the third point. I intended to preach to you today. The first point of reference regarding the various parts of the second question, the first factor in writing, is this:

Who shall teach? But we all know who shall teach. The Sunday school, right? The Christian school. Let us hand them over to the state and let the state educate them. Each of these institutions has its place. The unbelieving world has the right to educate their children in whatever way they choose. That is the principle that governs the public educational system. They have chosen humanism, they have chosen secularism. That is their choice.

And the objective in view is honorable: that the young people committed to that system might be functional in the society in which they are a part, and functional in the community in which they are a part. The Christian school, I believe, has the same prerogative in an environment that demands education for our children, demands mandatory education. We are obliged, then, it seems to me, to look toward education that is honoring to our God and that holds to the principles of the community of faith of which we are a part. Again, that our children might be educated so that they might play a role of service unto God and devotion to Christ in the world in which they live.

The Sunday school. We will delay that for a moment. What I want you to see, however, is this: if you read through Deuteronomy 6, do you see it as you read through Deuteronomy 6? Do you see it as you read through Ephesians 6, 4? The kind of education, the kind of instruction that is in view in this matter, in the baptism ceremony, is an instruction, a teaching that parents cannot delegate.

You cannot give it away. You cannot hand it over to someone else and tell them to do it. In this sense, you see, the Sunday school has become a burden if it does not recognize its role as enforcing and reinforcing what parents are already obligated to do under the covenant. If the Sunday school displaces the parents, you cannot surrender this obligation that is laid upon you. No one else can fulfill it. You cannot even say it is the minister’s job to do this, for I have been commanded to do it in Deuteronomy 6 and in Ephesians 6.

I remember candidating in a congregation in New England. It was one of those circumstances in which they had open season on the candidates. So the entire congregation gathered on a Sunday afternoon, and I was seated in front of the church, and anyone could ask me questions.

The first question and the dominant question that was asked was, “What will you do for our youth?” I had a consistent answer: “What are you going to do for your youth? You are a parent. They did not like it, and they did not call me. America is finished with youth.” As an aside, something I found last week, one of Oscar Wilde’s epigrams: “The youth of America is their oldest tradition.” It has been going on now for over 300 years.

Deuteronomy 6 and Ephesians 6 place the obligation upon the parents, an obligation they cannot transfer and cannot abdicate. It is your responsibility to train your children with respect to the matters of the covenant and the issues of their faith. There is something remarkable, I think, that emerges here as an aside when you consider the construction of this question. If that is correct, it testifies to the fact that there is a harmony underlying the Old and New Testaments. They have a parallel structure and a symmetrical unity. Whether you are in an Old Testament environment or a New Testament environment, the responsibility to instruct children in matters of faith is firmly placed upon the shoulders of the parents.

It may be that you cannot instruct your child regarding their future livelihood or future employment, and thus the necessity of schools as we have them today. But in no sense can you transfer that responsibility—the moral and religious responsibility that is yours—to instruct your children. The first question is, “Who shall teach?” The second question is, “What shall be taught?”

Taking this oath, you have committed yourself to the word of God. We are going to instruct them in the scriptures. Do you know the scriptures? Do you hear them? Are you growing in your knowledge and understanding of what the Bible says? Do you take advantage of the many opportunities given to you from birth to hear the word of God? Do you read the word? Now that Gutenberg has given us the printing press and we all have our own copies, do you read the word?

You have also promised to instruct them in accordance with the summary of faith that you find in the confession of faith in the catechisms of this church. Do you know the confession? Do you know the catechisms? Do you truly believe that they are a faithful summary of what is found in Scripture? Are you committing yourself to this? This is your obligation.

Who shall teach? What shall be taught? Teaching our children the Reformed faith is not an option. And finally, how are we to teach? Are we to teach only with words? Only with doctrines? Only with theories? Only with abstract ideas? Jesus died on the cross and rose again from the dead on the third day—this is enough. Should we simply feed them the right information? Is instruction merely an information-dominated concept? Not on your life. Not on your life. The question here wonderfully blends doctrine and life together. You have promised to instruct, but you have also promised to live in such a way that reinforces and exhibits that teaching.

And that is always the case in Scripture. Those who truly hear are those who obey, those who are striving after what the Lord requires. The Apostle Paul, in his understanding of doctrine, does not leave out godliness, because proper doctrine conforms to godliness. Truth is always unto purity, order, and life. When Paul expresses the doctrine concerning Jesus Christ, he incorporates himself in the process.

For me to live is Christ. What does this mean? It means to give oneself over in an act of conformity to the doctrine that is proclaimed. As Christ gave Himself, I give myself. As Christ died, I die. As Christ was raised to life, so I become an instrument of life for the sake of others.

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, and so on. Doctrine is thus blended with life, so that life confirms what we say. Jesus does nothing less. His words perfectly conform to His life, and His life perfectly conforms to His words. Is this not what is intended in Deuteronomy 6 and Ephesians? When you sit down, when you rise up, when you are going out the door, when you are coming in, live with a whole-life vision.

It is not only what you tell your children, but how you act in front of them, what you do. What about our children when our homes are torn apart by discord, hatred, and bitterness? When there is more viciousness than love, more argumentation than prayer, when a father’s sins are known to his child before the child is four years old, and the mother is utterly compromised? And her daughter knows it.

How are we to teach, moving from Deuteronomy 6 to Ephesians 4? In conclusion, it is not merely a matter of knowing doctrine, nor even a matter of striving for a good moral life, but a matter of knowing God intimately. What is operative in Ephesians 6, verse 4, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger”? Is it not the example of God the Father Himself, who does not provoke His own children to wrath? It is the very presence of God Himself mediating through the parent in the work of instruction, so that the parent acts, lives, behaves, and thinks as God Himself.

And in that operation, it is as if you have been translated. I mean this literally. You are no longer understood merely as a creature of this creation, but as one who has been made part of the new creation. You have entered into heavenly realms and into glory, and the very person of God is now molding and shaping you as you live and act in this world.

How do you know how to behave as a parent? I learned it from Ephesians. I learned it from one verse in Ephesians. God Himself is your standard, and you know Him. The grace of God has now included you in Him, Jesus Christ. Therefore, all the power for a righteous life is available to you.

I have made much of two questions. You may wish to have your own copy of these questions so that you can review them again and again. Dearest God, may those who have received the right of baptism, the sacrament, live in the covenant as members of the Church, bound to Christ. And also, Lord, may those who have made vows regarding their children honor those vows. May we live in the power of our God through Jesus Christ, so that the power of His righteous life is available to us as we seek to give instruction and live before our children.

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.

February 11, 1990
The Second Commandment and the Covenant

This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Jesus and the Law” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, June 22, 1986.

About this sermon

The second commandment concerns the covenant as well as images, and it shows both continuity and discontinuity between law and gospel. The preface in Exodus 20:2 roots that covenant relationship, and it has three aspects.

More sermons from Deuteronomy · Browse all sermons

Sermon transcript

Our scripture this morning is from Deuteronomy, chapter four. We will be reading the first twenty verses. Now therefore, hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the judgments which I teach you, that ye may live, and go in and possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers giveth you.

Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish it from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you. Your eyes have seen what the Lord did because of Baal-peor. For all the men that followed Baal, the Lord thy God hath destroyed them from among you. But ye that did cleave unto the Lord your God are alive every one of you this day. Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go possessing.

For this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what nation is there so great to have God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon him for? And what nation is there so great to have statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day? Only take heed to thyself and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, lest they depart from thy heart from all the days of thy life, but teach them thy son and thy son’s son.

Especially the day that thou stoodest before the Lord thy God at Horeb, when the Lord said unto me, Gather me the people together, and I will make them hear my word, that they may learn to fear me all the day, that they may live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children.

And he came near and stood under the mountain, and the mountain burned with fire, reaching into the midst of heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness. And the Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire, and you heard the voice of the Word, and from humility alone you heard a voice. And He declared to you His covenant, which He commanded you to perform—ten commandments—and He wrote them on two tablets of stone. And the Lord commanded me at this time to teach you statutes and judgments, that you might do them in the land to which you are going to possess it.

Therefore, make for yourselves good deeds, for you saw no form of any kind on the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, lest you corrupt yourselves and make for yourselves a carved image, or the likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me, and showing mercy to thousands of those who love Me and keep My commandments.

Thou shalt not make unto thee any carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them, for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me, and showing mercy to the thousands of them that love Me and keep My commandments.

Now, Lord, we pray ourselves before You. And, Father, we pray that Your word, as it is read and declared, may take hold in our hearts, that we may be transformed by this living word, for Your own name’s sake. Hear us, we pray, in Jesus’ name, amen.

The progression has been good. We have been preaching on Matthew’s gospel. We have now come to the conclusion of that gospel, and we have seen that Jesus gave specific command to His church, that the church is, in fact, to carry the message of the risen Christ to the ends of the earth, that the nations themselves might become disciples. And this discipling focuses upon the commandments which Jesus Himself has given. In order to understand those commandments, we have then gone back to Matthew 5, and there we have taken stock of Jesus’ statement concerning how those who are called by His name are to live. Out of this has arisen the subject at hand: Jesus and the Lord. Not merely a subject, but Jesus and the Lord.

The reason for the difficulty, I think, is plain. On the one hand, we want to hold on to what we might call a principle of continuity: that our Old Testament and our New Testament coalesce, that they hang together, and that they do not contradict one another. Therefore, we are not among those who would say that there is an absolute distinction, even an antagonism, between the law and the gospel. We are those who would say: we find the gospel in the law. We also say there is law to be found in the gospel. Now having said that, have we said enough?

By no means. For while we want to hold fast to this principle of continuity between the Old and New Testaments, we also want to appreciate the principle of discontinuity. When Jesus came, was anything the same? The answer to that question is no. Nothing is the same since Jesus came. Not even the law. So while we are holding fast to the thread that runs from Old to New Testament.

At the same time, we wish to appreciate the profound significance of the coming of Christ and what that means. We must therefore appreciate the message that Christ brings, a message that has an effect even upon the world. Those are the basic points. I hope it is clear to you.

But what do we do now with the commandment? To take up the commandment in light of these principles that we have articulated is a very difficult undertaking indeed. We have made an effort to understand the first commandment. Yes, as that commandment still has binding force upon us, nevertheless, it must now be understood in light of Christ and His appearance. Can the Jew truly live by keeping the first commandment?

May God help you. Even if you turn to the other side, for a moment, pause and consider the nature of sin, and the fact that no one can keep the law of God perfectly. Yet, gradually, this Old Testament Jew had at his disposal a self-sufficient system by which he might stand righteous before God. Given all of that—given his diligent efforts, given the sacrificial system—if he could, in any sense, say what the Apostle Paul said in Philippians 3: “Before the law, I will claim him.”

So, it may be that, strictly in light of the provision of the law for his forgiveness, yet even that height to which he had attained, that clarity of vision which he had as a Jew, serving God as best he could, now, under the first commandment, he, in that condition, disobeys God. Why? Because, you see, for God, in keeping with the first commandment.

That God before whom he is to have none other is not simply the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Nor is he simply the God who has delivered Israel from Egypt. That God, now, is the God and Father of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ with the Father. Jesus Christ, being the Son, is exalted to the status of equality with the Father and with the Spirit. So no, no other god will do such a thing. Be ye even the God of Abraham, the God of Israel. No other god will do it, but this God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The second commandment, this one, you have read it. It is before you in Exodus, chapter twenty. As we consider the first commandment, seeking to understand its specific intention, so we now approach the second commandment. How do you assess the second commandment? What do you do with graven images, likenesses? How do you take hold of this command from the Lord? Let us ask the question: What is the precise significance of this commandment? What we are doing and what we are to do is the precise significance of this commandment. It is a declaration, an affirmation of the spirituality of God.

Over against the idols that are mentioned—the carved images and the lightning—over against these idols, the makers and the crafters, God and images. The fact that they are made by human hands from the substance of visible things. Over against all of this, there stands the invisible God.

A God who is spirit and not material substance. Is that the focus of the commandment? Is it an affirmation of the spirituality or the invisibility of God? Or is the specific significance of this commandment the manner of worship to be offered to, before, the true God? That is, when it comes to worshiping the true God, He is not to be worshipped by any visible representation.

Is that the specificity? Now, note, I am not saying that these questions which I have addressed are inconsequential or meaningless. I am not even saying that there might not be application from this commandment concerning righteousness. The issue before us, however, is this one.

Is the precise significance of this second commandment the spirituality of God, the manner in which God is to be worshiped, or both? Although we may speak at length about the spiritual nature of God and the proper way to worship the true God, neither of these points is the precise focus of the Second Commandment. This may be surprising, for I know that most of us have spent time studying the catechisms, have engaged with traditional Reformed theology, and have considered the standard interpretations of this commandment. It often seems that when we come to this commandment, the issue before us is precisely the points I have mentioned.

The spiritual nature of God is invisibility, but even more than that. The manner in which the true God is to be worshiped, as emphasized here, is known as the regulative principle—that we are not permitted to include in our worship anything that God has not explicitly commanded. I stand by that principle. I stand by it.

I even affirm that this commandment has application in that direction. But the issue at hand is this: what is the specific focus of the commandment as it was given to Israel? The specific focus of this commandment is the exclusive bond. The exclusive bond that now exists between God and His people. That is the point. That is the power. First of all, that is the focus. I will say it again.

The specific focus of this commandment is the exclusive relationship that now exists between God and His people. Do you know what this exclusive relationship is called? It is called the covenant. The covenant. This exclusive relationship has been established. It is something that now exists in the realm of history. It is something that is a reality in a way that it was not before.

Because it is the result of a gracious, presumptive act of God. On behalf of His own people, His church, if you like. And that is the power of verse 2 in Exodus 20, and why you cannot understand the commandment properly unless you grasp that second verse and take it in for all that it is worth. That preface stands there for a reason. So that you might read all the commandments that follow in light of that statement. And I cannot overemphasize this.

The covenant, Paul, the exclusive covenant, is now established in a way that it was not before, and that by the direct, gracious, redemptive act of God. God has done something, and therefore the commandment, contrary to what the liberals have told us, is not a set of bright ideas that occurred to Moses at some point in his life, while he was in the wilderness of Sinai, tending sheep, or a reflection upon his life when he was in Egypt, and then the construction of ideas, a philosophy of life, a philosophy of ethics, that he may have developed from those experiences. What is here, presented before you, is not in keeping with what the liberals have tended to say. Rather, what is here is because of the direct, the direct impact of God.

Something has happened. A historical event has taken place. And that makes all the difference. This covenant established by God, the consequence of His direct intervention in life and in history, now mandates the exclusive relationship between Him and those whom He has raised. That, then, becomes the focus of the commandment—the exclusive relationship between Him and those whom He has chosen. This exclusive relationship exists between God and the redeemed.

Emphasize this specific commandment in three ways. First of all, God’s people are to make, construct, or fabricate no rival deity. They are not to create any rival deity. The issue here is the making of a god. The language of the commandment itself refers to great fashion images, such as the various things that are listed.

But you see, the force of such action by Israel or by an Israelite is a breach of the exclusive bond that exists between God and His own people. It is also a denial of His redemptive work. Do you hear the voice of the Israelites? It was not Yahweh who saved us from Egypt.

It is Yahweh who sustains us, who gives us the produce of the earth, who provides what we need. Rather, you hear what they say: It is in God that we are born. It is God who gives us life. It is God who saves us. It is God who delivers us. God’s people are to make no rival creator, no rival deity. The creation of rival deities is an act by which people turn away from God and turn toward other gods. The language here in the Second Commandment.

Is reflective of the relationship that takes place between the husband and the wife in a marriage. Therefore, what is in view when the people of God forsake their God and turn to gods they have made is spiritual adultery and an attack upon the union that exists between God and His people. Therefore, God says, I am a jealous God. God speaks of Himself here as a husband to His people, jealous for their love. In the third place, we are also confronted with the absolute seriousness with which this exclusive relationship between God and His people is understood by the people. God’s jealousy, you see, is not harmless, trivial, or insatiable.

For you see how He expresses Himself at the conclusion of the commandment. A specific reference is made to the working out of His jealousy in wrath. A wrath that comes upon those among His people who have turned to rival deities of their own nation.

I think, with regard to this familiar phrase at the conclusion of the second commandment—“visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me”—how we have ordinarily understood this phrase. As if it were intended to be a limiting concept. If our descendants can merely endure to the fourth generation, then the punishment will be removed. Pray that God may spare the fifth generation. For when the fifth generation comes, may they dwell with us, and our children will return.

Is that truly what the Lord is saying here? I believe one thing that helps us understand this passage is how the phrase about quarreling appears, without any mention of generation. The reference to showing mercy is not about that. In fact, it is not good for him. And I believe you see that in the first part, there is no way this can be understood as comprehensive. What Moses is writing here, and what the Lord intends, is not some idea that if we can just make it through this generation, then we will be free from trouble and revival will follow. No, not at all.

In the Hebrew understanding of generations, there were only three: the fathers, the sons, and then their sons. That is all there was. You heard from your fathers and you taught your children. There were only three generations. And what the Lord is saying here, in effect, is that there are no more generations beyond the third or fourth. Therefore, you are utterly cut off. My covenant is such that if you forsake me, you have condemned yourselves eternally. And there is no definition. There is no rest for me today. What is happening today in theology? What have the pressures from National Geographic and anthropological studies brought upon us? Have they not told us that cultural practices, apart from the gospel, are plain, interesting, and tremendously instructive?

They have value, and that value is to be preserved, not revived. This applies to the making of images and the worship of the Word of God. But what of the people of God? Clearly, in the new day brought by Jesus Christ, the focus is now on the ends of the earth, not just a small area in the corner of the Mediterranean world. The gospel will go to the ends of the earth for the transformation of nations. And as it does, it will confront the other worshippers of the world. But the focus of the commandment is precisely upon the people of God and the way in which they conduct themselves.

And you may say to yourself, well, the Church is going forth, but I am not aware that the Church is incorporating into its midst the manufacturing of deities, the creation of God, or the making of idols for itself. There is, however, a new solitude upon the face of the earth. As the Church goes forth, it is not so much a matter of returning to images and idols, but rather of incorporating thought patterns, attitudes, ideologies, superstitions, and attitudes toward magic within the very fabric of the Church itself. All of those things that were associated with image worship in the Old Testament are now incorporated into the practices of the Church.

If I think in this way about the commandment, it is not the manner of worship that was the specific focus of the commandment. But it certainly has application. The Church goes forth, and as it does, we see the incorporation of pagan practices into the habits and attitudes of the people of God. And we consent to this. And we take it lightly. This should not be.

In fact, when Christ speaks in the book of Revelation to the church of Ephesus and charges them with leaving their first love, it is precisely this point that He has in mind. It is not that they are running off to the local cave temple. But what they have done is to bring the practices of the Satanic temple into the Church and away from God. Their compromise in worship constitutes leaving their first love.

And because of this, Jesus speaking to that church said, “Repent, or I will remove your lampstand from its place.” The language of the Church, found here in this commandment, then occurs with no uncertainty in the ear of the gospel, and certainly with the spirit of the Holy Spirit.

Let us be sure that as our church worships, we are on our guard and keep our stance firm against spiritual threats. Dear Father, we realize that your church has been commissioned to the ends of the earth, and as it goes forth, it confronts the cultures and attitudes of this world, where the creation of idols and images has been a way of life. Lord, we pray that as the Church makes progress, many will be reclaimed from such practices, as we hear of. And Lord, we pray that your servants may be powerful in presenting the gospel and the message of the true God, so that your people, your elect, may be called forth and gathered into one. But as they are gathered, we ask, Lord, that there might be no room for practices that were known in the past.

Instead, in the newness of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, may there be a celebration of the Spirit, and may there be great delight. And Lord, may we be encouraged by the vision of that great celebration—a celebration that comes on the wings of your Spirit and in the power of your word.

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.

June 22, 1986