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.
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.