About this sermon
Moses reminds Israel how they provoked the Lord at Horeb, making a golden calf while he received the tablets of the covenant. He broke the tablets before their eyes, a public sign that they had broken the covenant, and destroyed the idol. Then he fell before the Lord for forty days and nights, interceding on the basis of God’s promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and his concern for his own name among the nations. A stubborn people lived only because a mediator stood in the gap, as Christ now intercedes for his people.
Sermon transcript
Our scripture reading begins in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 9. Deuteronomy chapter 9, I’m going to ask that we begin reading aloud from verse 7 onward. Actually, I’ll pick up at verse 6. Deuteronomy chapter 9, verse 6 and following to the end of the chapter, and then we’ll turn over to the book of Galatians to give your attention. For this is the inspired Word of God. Deuteronomy 9, verse 6.
Know then, it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stubborn people. Remember, do not forget how you provoked the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness from the day you left the land of Egypt until you arrived at this place. you have been rebellious against the Lord. Even at Horeb you provoked the Lord to wrath, and the Lord was so angry with you that he would have destroyed you.
When I went up to the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant which the Lord had made with you, and I remained on the mountain 40 days and nights, I neither ate bread nor drank water. The Lord gave me the two tablets of stone written by the finger of God, and on them were all the words which the Lord had spoken with you at the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly. It came about at the end of 40 days and nights that the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, tablets of the covenant, and the Lord said to me, arise, go down from here quickly, for your people whom you brought out of Egypt have acted corruptly.
They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them. They have made a molten image for themselves. The Lord spoke further to me, saying, I have seen this people, and indeed it is a stubborn people. Let me alone that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven, and I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.
So I turned and came down from the mountain while the mountain was burning with fire, and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands. And I saw that you had indeed sinned against the Lord your God. You had made for yourselves a molten calf. You had turned aside quickly from the way which the Lord had commanded you. I took hold of the two tablets and threw them from my hands and smashed them before your eyes. I fell down before the Lord as at the first forty days and nights.
I neither ate bread nor drank water because of all your sin that you had committed in doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger. For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure with which the Lord was wrathful against you in order to destroy you. But the Lord listened to me that time also. The Lord was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him, so I also prayed for Aaron at the same time. I took your sinful thing, the calf which you had made, I burned it with fire and crushed it, grinding it very small until it was as fine as dust, and I threw its dust into the brook that came down from the mountain.
Again, at Taborah, and at Massah, and at Kibrat Hatevah, you provoked the Lord to wrath. When the Lord sent you from Kedesh Barnea, saying, go up and possess the land which I have given you, then you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God. You neither believed him nor listened to his voice. You have been rebellious against the Lord from the day I knew you.
So I fell down before the Lord the 40 days and nights which I did because the Lord had said he would destroy you. I prayed to the Lord and said, O Lord God, do not destroy your people and your inheritance, whom you have redeemed through your greatness, whom you have brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Do not look at the stubbornness of this people or at their wickedness or their sin.
Otherwise, the land from which you brought us may say, because the Lord was not able to bring them into the land which he had promised them and because he hated them, he has brought them out to slay them in the wilderness. Yet they are your people, even your inheritance, whom you have brought out by your great power and your outstretched arm. And then turning over to the book of Galatians, New Testament, Galatians 3, beginning with verse 15. Galatians 3, 15 through verse 22. Brethren, I speak in terms of human relations.
Even though it is only a man’s covenant, yet when it has been ratified, no one sets it aside or adds conditions to it. Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. It does not say unto seeds as referring to many, but rather to one and to your seed, that is Christ.
What I am saying is this, the law, which came 430 years later, does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God so as to nullify the promise. For if the inheritance is based on law, it is no longer based on a promise. But God has granted it to Abraham by means of a promise.
Why the law then? It was added because of transgressions having been ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator till the seed would come to whom the promise had been made. Now a mediator is not for one party only, whereas God is only one. Is the law then contrary to the promises of God?
May it never be. For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law. But the scripture has shut up everything under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. inspired and infallible word, give your attention to it.
Let’s pray together, shall we? Our Father, may you grant the grace that the word read today and preached and heard among this people would have its good effect, that we would be brought by way of tutelage to the person and work of Jesus Christ, and having been redeemed in him and by him, may we rejoice in his intercession and mediation for us. Our Father, we are thankful for your covenant faithfulness, and pray, Lord, that we might be encouraged by the things we hear and see today, that you would be glorified in it, O Father, and that Christ would be exalted in all that we do. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Now I know that at times the reading of the Old Testament can be both monotonous and tedious, but I pray that today’s excursion into Deuteronomy chapter nine will bear its good fruit for us, that you’ll be patient with the word, and that the word would be patient with you as we come before God this morning.
Though there might be many events that could have been drawn upon to illustrate Israel’s history of provoking God, the events associated with Mount Horeb or Mount Sinai are chosen here in Deuteronomy 9 in particular, presented here in the form of historical recollection. The choice of Horeb or Sinai was no doubt dictated by its central significance. If there was a time above all others when the people should have been faithful, it was during the events associated with the formation, the ratification of the covenant at Horeb.
But notice verse eight. Even at Horeb you provoked the Lord your God to wrath. Even there in the face of the smoking mountain and the thunder and the voice of God at which the people begged God to stop speaking. And the people’s behavior there at Horeb was not just a little sinful, but was such that God almost destroyed them then and there.
Clearly, for Israel, there could be no ground to argue that the gift of the land that they were about to inherit, as they even now camp just across the Jordan, after 40 years in the wilderness, ready to go in, take the land, in no wise could they claim that that land was the reward for their righteous, good behavior.
The recollection of the events at Horeb is also significant in that the renewal ceremony that is the book of Deuteronomy, Moses renewing the covenant as the people are about to go into the land, that the renewal ceremony there in Moab where Israel is now preparing to enter the promised land was a renewal of that great ratification of the covenant that had taken place 40 years earlier at Sinai. The relevance of the historical recollection is thus all the more apparent, for if the people had been guilty back then of provoking God, even in the midst of the awe-inspiring events associated with Mount Sinai, then the danger would certainly have been no less present there on the plains of Moab that they would indeed again provoke the Lord to wrath in the hearing of these commands late in time. What we have here in Deuteronomy chapter nine, and particularly verse nine and following, is a fairly free recollection of that great apostasy of the golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai.
After Exodus 24, after the ratification of the covenant, Moses had ascended the mountain. He had fasted there for 40 days and 40 nights, and had received from God the two stone tablets of the covenant, written as it were, verse 10 of our text, by the finger of God, containing the words which the Lord had spoken from the midst of the fire on the day of the great assembly, And so it is the nature of Moses’ fast of that occasion, by way of recollection, emphasizes his complete dependence on God for those 40 days and nights, no food, no water, just God. But even while he was preoccupied with the Lord, the people had already turned aside from the way which the Lord had commanded them. thunder and lightning and loud voice as they stood at the Mount of Sinai. They, while Moses is there, had acted perversely at the foot of the mountain by making a molten image for themselves. And Moses, therefore, at the top of the mountain, was commanded to go down from the mountain to the people for whom he was responsible. And we’re looking particularly at verses eight through 14. And the main foci of those verses eight through 14, I’m going to try to summarize for you.
And I said that the book of Deuteronomy in this chapter might seem tedious, but it is also very replete with repetition and emphasis. And we’ll try to make those emphases here this day. There are several foci to what takes place in verses 8-14 and you see it repeated again and again in this chapter. Continuing even to the end of the chapter.
First of all, the corruption of the people. provoking the Lord to wrath at Sinai. It’s mentioned in verse 8. If you have a pencil and you want to jot down a note on the back of your catechism reading for tonight, I encourage you to do so. Verse 8, they provoke the Lord to wrath. The corruption of the people was so terrible. It’s mentioned in verse 8. It’s mentioned again in verse 18. It’s mentioned again in verse 19. And it’s mentioned again in verses 22 and 23. The corruption of the people provoking the Lord to wrath. Moses wanted to get their attention. 8, 18, 19, 22, and 23.
Also, there is an emphasis upon the sin of the molten calf, the golden calf that they fashioned for themselves and about which they danced and worshiped. The molten calf mentioned in verse 12 is mentioned again in verse 16, is mentioned again in verse 21. by way of emphasis. And in addition to their provoking God to wrath with the sin of the molten calf, there is the giving and then the smashing of the two tablets of the covenant, the two stone tablets. And those two stone tablets by way of emphasis are mentioned in verse nine, and verse 10, and verse 11, and verse 15, and verse 17. the two stone tablets of the covenant that God gave, Moses smashed, and then the next chapter will be given back to them again. Again, by way of emphasis in the midst of this recollection, historical recollection, are the 40 days and the 40 nights that Moses repeatedly spent before the Lord, both on the first instance, and when he went back up the mountain, and that 40 days and nights are mentioned in verse nine, and verse 11, and verse 18, and verse 25, and again in chapter 10, verse 10, Moses spent 40 days fasting on at least two occasions. at the top of Mount Sinai with the Lord. And this time, this time of God’s dealing with Moses and his dealing with the people is marked by way of emphasis by the Lord’s readiness to destroy this people. And that’s mentioned in verse eight. It’s mentioned in verse 14. It’s mentioned in verse 19. It’s mentioned in verse 20.
God was ready to destroy this people. But beyond that, yet one other emphasis that finds expression in chapter nine is the Lord’s willingness to listen to Moses’ intercession. When all ascend on the Lord, relents of the wrath that he threatened and listens to Moses’ intercession mentioned in verses 19 and 20, And in verses 26 to 29 is the substance of that intercession. And it will be mentioned again in chapter 10, verse 10, that God listened to Moses when he interceded. Verses 19, 20, 26 to 29 in particular, and chapter 10, verse 10. And all of this event, Israel’s great corruption, God’s wrath, Moses’ time on Mount Sinai, the 40 days of fasting before the Lord, days and nights before the Lord, the Lord’s readiness to destroy, the Lord’s readiness and willingness to listen to Moses’ intercession. All of this will culminate in chapter 10 in the rewriting of the Ten Commandments on two tablets of stone. that Moses cut to replace the former ones, verses one to five of the next chapter, and the declaration in chapter 10, verse 10, after all of this emphasis upon what God might have done, verse 10 of chapter 10, the Lord was not willing to destroy him.
He held his hand. Deuteronomy 9 is laying these foci on you and on God’s people purposefully. And in the midst of this, Moses records the words of the Lord in verses 12 through 14. And in those verses, we highlight two particularly striking things about the Lord and His Word. First, in verse 12, striking is the way God, speaking to Moses, verse 12, refers to Israel, notice, speaking to Moses, your people whom you brought out of Egypt. The double emphasis, you and your, amounts to a virtual repudiation by the Lord of this people.
It’s not quite as explicit as saying, they’re not my people. But notice how he says, your people whom you brought out of Egypt, Moses. I’m about to destroy them. The Sinai covenant had already been broken by the people. The smashing of the covenant tablets would demonstrate the breaking of the covenant. So the covenant words, my people are pointedly avoided here. God does not even use those words. And the exodus is reduced to an act of human enterprise. You brought them out. They’re your people, Moses. And the horrific import of those words was not missed by Moses.
For it seems that Moses must have immediately begun protesting such words, leading God to exclaim, catch the drift of these words, God says, leave me alone. that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven. Well, that’s one striking feature about those words in 12 through 14, but notice also a second striking feature of God’s speech is when God threatens. He threatens not only to repudiate the Sinai covenant by disowning the people, but by implication even to lay aside, to abandon the Abrahamic covenant by destroying the people and declaring that he wants to start all over again with Moses. This incredible implication of the words in verse 14, and I will make of you, Moses, a nation, mightier and greater than they. is that God is going to start over with Moses. This idea is even clearer in the preceding story in Exodus 32 verse 10, when it actually happened, in its explicit verbal echo of the Abrahamic covenant of Genesis 12 too, where God said, I’m going to make you a great nation, Abraham. And now God’s saying, Moses, I’m going to make you a great nation. I’m going to destroy this people. I’m going to start over. I’m going to make you a great nation.
There in Exodus 32.10, God speaks to Moses. As God had said to Abraham, now God was saying to Moses instead, I will make of you a great nation.
Such was the wrath of God with this people that God could contemplate a virtual repetition of the flood scenario. Yeah, of Noah’s day. A total destruction of this nation is what God had in view. And then a renewal of the promise and a redemptive agenda that would begin with one faithful person, namely Moses. These are shocking words. And they’re meant to be shocking to Israel. And they must have been shocking to Moses. They certainly got his attention. And the shock of those words is allowed to sink in by postponing in the text of Deuteronomy 9, the details of Moses’ intercession.
We don’t hear what he said to God on that occasion. He says he spoke and God listened, but he doesn’t say the words. Until the end of the chapter, we finally get Moses’ intercession. As it happened in the original, in Exodus 32, 11 to 14, Moses responded to the Lord at once. And Moses’ words are recorded there at once, as God has declared of himself about to destroy Israel. And there Moses interceded on behalf of the people.
But here in Deuteronomy 9, you will notice that the scripture apparently intentionally postpones the details of Moses’ intercession until after describing in detail what had happened in the actions taken regarding the golden calf among the people Israel. So verses 15 through 17 of our text recap the description of that actions taken in the Exodus narrative, namely the smashing of the two tablets of stone and the burning and the destruction of the golden image, the calf itself. The breaking of the tablets of the covenant was like a prophetic sign that signified a broken covenant. The covenant that God had just made, had written with his own finger is now broken.
And Moses didn’t drop them accidentally. It was purposeful in their sight. It was a deliberate public action. He says here, before your eyes, I did it. Meant to deliver an unmistakable message, the brokenness of the covenant. and the burning and the destruction of the golden image was itself an object lesson in what Israel was to do soon to the idols of other nations. The people of God should not need to be treated like the other nations. What had once been earrings and ornaments that they had despoiled from the Egyptians was now ground to dust and thrown in the brook. As God despoiled Israel, of the gold they had despoiled from Egypt. And we see it as God’s own judgment of his own people there in the wilderness.
And thus in Deuteronomy 9, 40 years after the event, does Moses remind the people of those things that were written in the Exodus account. But there is an item also included here in Deuteronomy that is unique to Deuteronomy, not even found in Exodus.
In verse 20, Moses refers to the intercession that he specifically offered on Aaron’s behalf. God was angry enough to destroy Aaron. who had been appointed priest. And if Israel’s original high priest, with all of the holiness and the tradition attached to him and his family, far from being righteous in himself, had stood under the anger and wrath of God and in danger of destruction, except for Moses’ intercession, what possible grounds could there be for the rest of the people to claim their own self-righteousness? Moses is taking it all away. God is taking it away through Moses’ words. So compare verse 8 with verses 19 and 20. Verse 8 with 19 and 20, and note again the emphasis.
As God was about to destroy Israel, the people, so God was about to destroy Aaron. The Lord was so angry with you, He would have destroyed you. The Lord was wrathful against you in order to destroy you. And the Lord was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him too. But Moses interceded. He prayed. And wonder of wonders, the Lord listened.
But again, you will notice that in the narrative, the life-saving words of Moses’ intercession do not appear immediately after this discussion of what happened with Israel and what happened with Aaron. In verses 22 and 24, again, those words of Moses’ intercession are held in suspense, and Moses proceeds to throw into his argument a few more examples of rebellion along the way that had occurred in Israel’s wilderness sojourn.
The three places that are named in verse 22 all have sinister enough-sounding names and meanings related to the events that took place there. Taberah, burning, numbers 11, one to three. Massa, the place of testing, where Israel certainly failed the test, and put God to the test instead. And Kibrat Hattava, graves of craving, in numbers 11, 31 to 34. Israel hasn’t done too well.
And in verse 23, Moses also reminds them of Kadesh Barnea, the place in the desert when Israel had rebelled, refused the command of the Lord to go up and take the land, the land of promise. They listened to the unfaithful spies. Back in Numbers 14, again a place of rebellion.
And you’ll notice that there too Moses had interceded on behalf of a people about to come under God’s wrath. So with this little journey through the midsection of the book of Deuteronomy chapter 9, we come finally to Deuteronomy 9 verses 25 through 29.
And we reach the words that stood between God’s anger and God’s mercy, the prayer of Moses. God, we recall, had threatened to renounce both the Sinai covenant by disowning the people, they’re your people, Moses, not mine, and the Abrahamic covenant by destroying them and starting over with Moses. Moses, you’ll note, boldly raises his hand to God on both counts, sounding dangerously close to rebuking God for thinking such things.
Whether Moses was tempted to embrace the idea of taking Abraham’s place or not as the father of a great nation, we cannot tell. But we might well ask whether the Lord was testing Moses to see what was in his heart. Faced with the endless burden of a people who had been rebels as long as he had known them, might Moses have been tempted just a little bit to entertain the thought they deserve to die? But Moses is not only the model intercessor, but also the model leader, a type leader of God’s flock.
He demonstrates a remarkable commitment to this people, rebels they might be, but they were still the people of Yahweh. And Yahweh was still the Lord their God. with promises to keep and a glory to be maintained. And so Moses’ intercession focuses on three points on which he knew by faith he was speaking to the heart of his God. And I’ll say that again. Moses’ intercession focuses on three points on which he knew by faith He was speaking to the heart of his God. One, God had entered into a covenant relationship with this people that the Lord simply could not now repudiate.
In verse 26, in contrast to what God had said to Moses, you brought them out, they’re your people. Notice what Moses says. And notice the repeated second person. I have the new American standard that uses the old English, thy, but it might be you or your. And Moses says, oh Lord God, do not destroy thy people, your people, even thine inheritance, your inheritance, whom thou hast redeemed through thy greatness, whom thou has brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand. even further reinforced by verse 29, yet they are thy people, even thine inheritance, whom thou has brought out by thy great power. Don’t you lay this on me, God, you made a covenant. I’m going to hold you to it. That’s a bold prayer, folks, but it’s the prayer of faith. It’s the prayer that believes God when he makes his promise that he’s going to keep his promise. Human beings in general may prove false to their word.
Israel in particular had spectacularly proved themselves unfaithful and corrupt. But Yahweh, the God who was one and whose very being is defined by his covenant faithfulness, surely could not abandon his commitment to his people. This people were Yahweh’s people because Yahweh had made them his people. So that’s one great thing in Moses’s bold intercessory prayer. Two, the people’s status was founded even further back in God’s promise and oath, not just to Mount Sinai, but back to their ancestors, back to God’s people.
Remember God, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. God, you cannot abandon the covenant promise to Abraham without breaking your own oath, sworn on your very own being in Genesis 15. And as the book of Hebrews would say about the Lord, he promised and he swore an oath and the Lord offered two things by which he cannot lie. The Lord Yahweh speaks the truth. what he had spoken to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. A third thing about Moses’ words of intercession. Again, boldly, Moses appeals, and he appeals to God’s jealousy for the honor of God’s own holy name.
It’s your name at stake here, Lord. So much of what had happened thus far had been explicitly so that the nations would know the truth about who Yahweh was and see his mighty hand of deliverance. What kind of God would they take Yahweh to be then if he brought this people out of Egypt only to destroy them in the wilderness? The people that he had so miraculously delivered in the first place. People would not know what to believe about God if he carried out this threatened destruction of Israel Let the Lord then protect His own holy name.
And Moses was bold enough to say that to God. Protect your name here. Again, the prayer of faith, the intercession of faith. And what happened? The Lord listened to Moses. Though the Lord had threatened Israel’s destruction, Moses offered the intercession of faith, faith in Yahweh, faith in Yahweh’s covenant, faith in God’s own integrity and character and in his mercy. Knowing Israel’s stiff-necked stubbornness and wickedness and sin, Moses boldly offered the prayer of faith, believing God. Here, listen, here is Moses. Moses, I remind you, the giver of the law, the very emblem of the law in Old Testament scripture and in the Bible as a whole. And what does Moses do?
We find him testifying that Israel’s preservation and salvation is not based on the law, But on God’s covenant promises and God’s covenant mercies, the covenant that God made with Abraham, Moses and the law, writes Paul, do not undo the covenant made more than 400 years earlier. Moses understood that, why don’t we, you see. Moses understood this people had no standing in terms of righteousness. They had standing on the basis of the promise made to Abraham and on that promise alone. Moses had no hope without that promise, without that covenant.
Must not the judge of all the earth do right? What must God do with a corrupt people? How could the Lord pass over Israel’s corruption and stubbornness and stiffness? How could God pass over Israel’s sin? Why would God yield to Moses’ prayer? Because Moses’ prayer reaches back to the promise made to Abraham and reaches forward to the fulfillment of that promise. Who would step in the breach? Who would bear the weight of God’s righteous wrath? Who would intervene for a sinful people? Who would intercede on their behalf?
The seed of Abraham, that’s who, in whom the promise has its yes and its amen. Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Paul asked, may it never be. For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would have indeed been based on law. But the scripture has shut up all men under sin. Look how he shut up Israel under sin.
In order that the promise by faith in the seed of Abraham in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. who believe in the Lord, who believe in the promises, who believe in the covenant and the integrity and character of the God who made the promise and who kept his word and fulfilling that promise by sending Jesus to save us from our sins. Praise the Lord.
Our hope is in God who promised to make us his people according to his own covenant faithfulness by which he himself would intercede for us in his own son, Jesus Christ, who stood in our place, who bore the wrath due to our sins, who poured himself out to death, who was numbered with the transgressors and now having conquered sin and death and having been raised from the dead, he has ascended into heaven at the right hand of God where he ever was. intercedes for us who believe.
Therefore, beloved, with Paul, with the scriptures, I say to you, therefore, nothing, nothing can separate us from the covenant love of God, which is in Christ Jesus. Beloved, do not be afraid. No matter what the economic scene, no matter what the political scene, no matter who’s president or not, no matter what the price of gasoline, beloved, don’t be afraid. Come boldly to the throne of grace. Come to God, not in your own righteousness, but in the righteousness of Christ and in His covenant faithfulness. His name will never be put to shame. Do you believe that? That was Moses’ hope. I know, God, you don’t want to bring your own name to shame. Well, I assure you today that the name of Jesus Christ will never, never, never be brought to shame. In that name, let us rest our hope, for He is our surety, and He alone.
Amen. Let’s pray together. Holy Father, teach us to pray a prayer of faith. Teach us to believe. to believe in Christ, to believe in the covenant faithfulness of our God, in whom Christ is the yes and the amen of that covenant faithfulness, that you are a God who claimed us as your people before the foundation of the world, that you are a God who has declared on oath that you would save a people by the seed of Abraham, even that blessed and beloved seed, Jesus Christ. and that as many as will believe in him most certainly shall be saved. As he ever intercedes, has interceded and continues to intercede for us. Let us believe and not be afraid. We pray that we should be found faithful. to Him who loved us first. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen. Let’s sing hymn number 222, shall we? 222.
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