About this sermon
Moses warns Israel not to say that the Lord gave them the land because of their righteousness. The nations would be driven out for their wickedness, and Israel would receive the land because the Lord kept his oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Far from earning it, Israel had been a stubborn people, rebellious from the day the Lord knew them. No one is saved by his own righteousness; salvation comes only through the righteousness of God in Christ, so that whoever boasts must boast in the Lord.
Sermon transcript
Book of Moses, inspired word of God. Deuteronomy chapter nine. We’re beginning to read at verse one. Here, O Israel, you are crossing over the Jordan today to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, great cities fortified to heaven, a people great and tall, the sons of the Anakim, whom you know and of whom you have heard it said, who can stand before the sons of Anak.
Know therefore today that it is the Lord your God who is crossing over before you as a consuming fire. He will destroy them and He will subdue them before you so that you may be able to drive them out and destroy them quickly just as the Lord has spoken to you. Do not say in your heart when the Lord your God has driven them out before you, because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess the land. But it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is dispossessing them before you. It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess the land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God is driving them out before you in order to confirm the oath which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Know then that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stubborn people. Remember, do not forget how you provoked the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness. From the day you left the land of Egypt until you arrived at this place, you have been rebellious against the Lord. Even at Horeb, you provoked the Lord to wrath, and the Lord was so angry with you that he would have destroyed you.
When I went up to the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant which the Lord had made with you, then I remained on the mountain forty days and nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water. The Lord gave me the two tablets of stone written by the finger of God, and on them were all the words which the Lord had spoken with you at the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly. It came about at the end of 40 days and nights that the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant, and the Lord said to me, arise, go down from here quickly, for your people whom you brought out of Egypt have acted corruptly.
They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them. They have made a molten image for themselves. The Lord spoke further to me, saying, I have seen this people, and indeed it is a stubborn people. Let me alone that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven, and I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.
So I turned and came down from the mountain, while the mountain was burning with fire, and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands. And I saw that you had indeed sinned against the Lord your God. You had made for yourselves a molten calf, and you had turned aside quickly from the way which the Lord had commanded you. I took hold of the two tablets and threw them from my hands and smashed them before your eyes. I fell down before the Lord as at the first forty days and forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water because of all your sin which you had committed in doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger.
For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure with which the Lord was wrathful against you in order to destroy you, but the Lord listened to me that time also. The Lord was angry enough with Aaron to destroy him, so I also prayed for Aaron. At the same time I took your sinful thing, the calf which you had made, burned it with fire, crushed it, grinding it very small until it was as fine as dust, and I threw its dust into the brook that came down from the mountain.” Again, at Taberah, and at Massah, and at Kibrath Hatavah.
You provoked the Lord to wrath. When the Lord sent you from Kadesh Barnea, saying, Go up and possess the land which I have given you, then you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God. You neither believed him nor listened to his voice. You have been rebellious against the Lord from the day I knew you. So I fell down before the Lord 40 days and nights, which I did because the Lord had said he would destroy you.
I prayed to the Lord and said, O Lord God, do not destroy your people, even your inheritance, whom you have redeemed through your greatness, whom you have brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Do not look at the stubbornness of this people or at their wickedness or their sin. Otherwise, the land from which you brought us may say, because the Lord was not able to bring them into the land, which he had promised them, and because he hated them, he has brought them out to slay them in the wilderness. Yet they are your people, even your inheritance, whom you have brought out by your great power and your outstretched arm.”
This is the word of God. Give your attention to it. Let’s pray together, shall we? Our Father, May the Word of God have its good effect in us today, even as we are reminded of the salvation that has come to us in Jesus Christ. May we consider the power and the might that belong to you and what you have done and what your son Christ has done for us, that we, O God, might give thanks and that we might walk humbly before our God in the grace of the Spirit. Bless now the reading. in preaching the hearing of Your Word, that it would go forth with power among us, O God. As we pray, we do so in the name of Jesus. Amen. The warnings against false assumptions continue. The warnings against false assumptions continue. First of all, Moses has already demolished any idea of national chauvinism arising from Israel’s election.
He did so in chapter seven, verses six through 10. The Lord had not chosen Israel out of all of the peoples of the earth because they were more in number, not from any superiority. God chose Israel because God chose Israel and because the Lord loved them and because He initiated and kept the covenant He made with them. They had no right to boast in their being Israel. Second, in chapter eight, we have seen how the Lord, through the words of Moses, also takes away any arrogance that Israel might be tempted to arising from their future prosperity in the land of promise.
Not by their power, nor by the strength of their hand would they be made wealthy. They were to remember that the Lord and the Lord alone had brought them into this land and had given them the power to make wealth according to his covenant promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So not because of their nationality, not because of their ability to make wealth.
In chapter nine then, a third, false assumption the Lord targets, which is perhaps the most pernicious and perennial distortion of all, the Lord takes away moral self-righteousness in the interpretation of military successes. In other words, it was not because of their righteousness that Israel would succeed in defeating the nations which inherited which inhabited Canaan. Let me repeat that sentence. Didn’t do well. Not because of their righteousness would Israel succeed in defeating the nations which inhabited Canaan.
Together these three challenges penetrate deeply to the ever ready sources of Israel’s pride. Yes, of human pride in general. The idolatries of racism, of materialism or wealth and the ability of one’s own ability to produce it. And thirdly, militarism. The ability to succeed at war.
And it is the third one, this ninth chapter of Deuteronomy then, which has as its thrust this matter of Israel’s conception that because they were righteous, God gave them the victories that they secured. And the thrust of that ninth chapter of Deuteronomy then, though directed at Israel, goes to the heart of a very universal phenomenon in the behavior of human beings, of governments, and of nations. In its prophetic power to challenge a complacent people, this chapter in Deuteronomy matches the uncompromising rhetoric of an Amos or an Isaiah. In its unwelcomeness to national leaders and myth makers, Deuteronomy 9 stands alongside the parables of Jesus and the speech of Stephen in Acts chapter 7. in its relevance to modern claims and counterclaims to right, it is our right in the world, it is our right in the nation, particularly in international conflicts, the words of Deuteronomy still speak today. The chapter opens with words that reminded Israel in the first place, that the task which yet lay before them was formidable.
They are about to go into the land of Canaan and they face cities and nations, cities and nations that had induced such fear in the Exodus generation. And then the generations to follow that you remember how Israel refused to go up and take the land when God told them to. You remember the report of the spies that looked upon the land of promise. there in Numbers 13, and that they saw the people who lived in the land, and the spies, the majority of the spies determined that they were too strong, that these were men of great size, that these cities were too fortified. It was a land that devoured its inhabitants, such that the Israelites who reported saw themselves as grasshoppers before the people who lived in Canaan. As you read in Deuteronomy chapter nine, verse two, Moses even seems to chant the litany of inferiority that the spies had brought back.
They’re too great. They’re great. They’re powerful. They’re too numerous. That’s the Analect, the Anakim, these great giant men. But Moses’ strategy here, the Lord’s strategy in this word spoken, to counter that fear that had gripped this people earlier, was not to try to shrink the enemy by false propaganda, but rather to strengthen faith in Israel’s one great ally, Yahweh their God. It would be he alone who would give them the victory. God himself would be in the vanguard, going ahead of them into the land.
And you’ll notice here mention of God going forward among them as a consuming fire. And remember that this is the same language, the consuming fire that they had witnessed at Sinai that had so terrified them that they asked God not to speak again. But that consuming fire, chapter nine verses, the first three verses, is going to go ahead of them into the land of promise against the enemy that dwelt there. that consuming fire that they had so much feared as the mountain quake would now be turned against their enemies. God himself is the one, verse three, who will cross over before them as that consuming fire who will subdue for them their enemies that Israel then in turn might drive them out and destroy them quickly according to the word which God himself, Yahweh, had spoken.
So Moses sets the scene of what is about to take place in the victories that are forthcoming. But the danger for Israel is that the euphoria of the victories to come is as likely to produce in them and among them a moral self-congratulation as the rewards of their labor, of their military service. of their righteousness, just as their ability to produce wealth in the land would be their ability by their own hand to produce such wonderful crops, or the fact that they were the elect people of God in the first place.
There is a regular concern in these chapters for what people say to themselves. That is, saying in their hearts. Look at chapter 9, verse 4. Do not say in your heart that we have been given victory because of our righteousness. But the people were apt to say in their hearts, it was by the strength of our hand that we produced the wealth. repeated phrase. So Moses with characteristically sharp instincts envisions what will be said when the dust of the battle settles. At a primary theological level these verses reinforce the point already made in so many ways that Israel owed all that they were and all that they possessed to the grace and gift of God and to God alone. and not in any way to their own merit. They could stake no claim on divine favors in advance, nor could they retrospectively explain any success or prosperity that came their way as the true reward for their righteousness, no. When God expelled the Canaanites before them, the Israelites were to beware of saying in their heart that their righteousness was God’s reason.
He’s on our side because we’re the good people here. Over against the wickedness of the Canaanites. Israel was not to think in their hearts. Thank God we’re not like other men. You remember Jesus’ words about the Pharisee? Thank God we’re not like those Canaanites, like those Hittites and Hittites. We’re God’s righteous people after all. We are worthy, but they are unworthy. We are righteous, but they are wicked.
Yes, the reason for God dispossessing the Canaanites was in part to be found in his judgment of those other nations in their wickedness. It is because of the wickedness of the nations. God says here that he will drive them out. But the wickedness of the Canaanites does not prove the righteousness of the Israelites, you see.
The fact that he is driving them out is just, but the fact that he’s taking Israel in is grace. It’s a gift. So in order to correct the potential for Israel’s false inference that it was their righteousness, over against the Canaanites wickedness that would give them the victories ahead, Moses presses home hard in this chapter. God was not only the God of Israel, but the God of all nations in his absolute sovereignty. Hence the expelling of the Canaanites from Palestine was not to be understood as some arbitrary divine act, but as an act of judgment by a just God. to be sure. But beyond that, beyond that, pay attention.
The conquest would simply be God keeping his own promise. The promise that he had made to Abraham. He does so in order to confirm the oath which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he says. Israel could not claim credit for the promise itself or for its fulfillment. It is God being God, God keeping covenant, God keeping his word, doing what he said he would do.
So that additionally, far from the conquest being because of their righteousness, it was actually in spite of their stubborn provocation. You are a stubborn people, Moses says to them. otherwise translated a stiff-necked people. Verse 6. In spite of their stubborn provocation against the wrath of God.
You think you’ve made God happy, Israel? Do you think you’ve made him well-pleased with you by your rebellion in the wilderness? It was only by God’s grace, and we’ll note carefully in this chapter in a subsequent sermon, only by the intercession of Moses, who again and again went before God pleading that God not destroy this people, only by God’s grace and that at the intercession of Moses, Israel was not destroyed along with the rest of the nations. The gift of the land could not be a reward for righteousness, it was a gift of God’s graciousness.
On the other hand, as we have been reading in previous chapters, the continuing possession of the land by the Israelites would certainly be bound up with and contingent in a measure upon their obedience. This stiff-necked and stubborn people. What are you gonna be like when you get in the land? Hmm. Disobedience to the covenant could and would lead to forfeiting the land. And the Israelites would join the Canaanites as ex-residents of Canaan.
So theologically then, these verses stand along with the rest of Deuteronomy in affirming divine grace on the one hand and denying human claims on God on the other hand. Claims that arise out of self-attributed righteousness, that is. These chapters of Deuteronomy present an Old Testament theological equivalent of the arguments of the Apostle Paul in Romans chapters one to three.
Israel had many advantages and blessings. They had the oracles. These things are undeniable and based on God’s election. But when it comes to moral standing before God, to matters of relative guilt or innocence, then there is fundamentally no difference between Israel and the rest of the nations. Jews and Gentiles, all alike, stand under God’s judgment.
If part of the intention of verses four through six of Deuteronomy chapter nine was to justify the conquest in terms of the wickedness of the Canaanites, one might have expected the rhetoric to continue with a few choice examples of what those pagans have done. But instead, Israel is spoken of and we are given here, they are given, we are given, not something about how terrible the wicked nations are, but how a lengthy and a very pointed recollection of an outstanding example of Israel’s wickedness.
Going through that period when God had first given them the law, called Moses up on the mountain, And they had so quickly turned aside to worship the golden calf. Sitting right before God’s face, having just heard and having agreed to keep the Ten Commandments from the voice of God. So we have this large, expansive description of Israel’s wickedness at Mount Sinai. And then in verses 22 and 23, we see a whole list of other little things that they’ve done along the way that also exemplify that same kind of stubborn, stiff-necked, rebellious disobedience.
Clearly, Deuteronomy is more concerned with the failures of God’s people than with the wickedness of the other nations. That doesn’t make the nations not wicked, but recognize the intent of the book of Deuteronomy. Just as the Old Testament in general pours far more chastisement, even condemnation, on Israel’s idolatry than on that of the nations. After all, they heard, they knew, they were God’s people. How dare they break God’s covenant?
And as a matter related, as you think about this in terms of mission and the evangelism enterprise, it can well be argued that dwelling over much on the wickedness and the idolatries of those pagans over there in Africa, of those terribly wicked pagans in Japan or in Quebec, can induce precisely the same kind of national, ecclesiastical, or cultural superiority complex of self-righteousness. We’re going to go save them. After all, we’re the good guys here. Let us beware and take to heart what we hear.
The strategy of Deuteronomy 9 and 10, as we shall see further, undermine such delusions by declaring that the people of God are as deserving of God’s destruction as the worst of the nations, and that only by God’s grace are they saved and spared from it. That warning against self-congratulation is culminated in verse six.
With Moses’ description of Israel as a stubborn people, or the alternative translation, a stiff-necked people. That latter metaphor, this stiff-necked people, graphically portrays the hard, unbending neck of a stubborn animal that refuses to cooperate with its owner’s wishes. The bull or the cow or the horse, the mule, such language describing Israel as that kind of people. And so Moses recollects from Exodus 32 to 34 when at the very time Moses had ascended the mountain to receive the commandments, the tablets of the covenant, Israel was right there at the foot of the mountain fashioning for themselves the molten calf that they might worship and bow down to it. Thus was the anger of the Lord provoked against them as a people. He threatened to destroy them. Had it not been for the intercession of Moses, it appears he would have destroyed them in his wrath.
And such wickedness was not a one-time event, though it’s expansively described here. It appears that time and again in Israel’s history, verse 7 and verse 24 make abundantly clear, wickedness was a way of life for Israel. From the time I knew you until now. Wasn’t one little slip-up. Remember, Moses says in verse 7, do not forget how you provoked the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness from the day you left the land of Egypt until you arrived at this place. Forty years! And again in verse 24, you have been rebellious against the Lord from the day I knew you.
What happened at Mount Sinai was no exceptional lapse, but was simply the most horrendous illustration of what could be described as a congenital and ingrained stubbornness, stiff-neckedness. Even so, the choice of the rebellion at Horeb, that is at Mount Sinai, for the illustration is doubly significant. First, because that’s where the covenant was reinitiated on Mount Sinai. God renewed his promise and his pledge to his people.
No sooner had it been made than the people broke it in its most fundamental propositions and requirements. The covenant had not been based on and certainly could not be sustained by Israel’s own self-righteousness. So any grounds for future boasting was cut off from under them immediately.
And secondly, on that occasion, God was so angry, angry enough to destroy them, but didn’t. Mercy, grace instead. We note in verse eight, The use of the same word for destroy as that of verse three. God was at the point of ready to destroy Israel just as he is about to destroy the Canaanites. Very pointed. God actually threatened to do to Israel exactly what he commanded them to do to the Canaanites, destroy them.
So far from Israel’s self-estimation of the reason for their successes, the fact was that if anyone deserved to be destroyed, it was the Israelites themselves and that long ago. their very existence on the edge of the promised land, let alone their future possession of it, was proof positive of the mercy and grace of God. Beloved, coming out of the shadows and types of the Old Testament, and I’m sure you’d be glad to do that, into the New Covenant, New Testament era, I simply ask you this morning, who dare think that his or her salvation is the result of their own righteousness?
Their own wise expression of their free will? or any other such stupid comment men might make. Paul rehearses, emphatically underscores, there is none righteous. No. Not one. And there’s no distinction. Jew, Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. This is not new.
This is no intervention, innovation on Paul’s part of which the apostle speaks. This is the testimony of scripture from beginning to end. It has ample witness born to it in the Old Testament writings. in the law, like Deuteronomy, and the prophets, like Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and Daniel, and Hosea, and Ezekiel, and all the rest. Who dares say in his heart, speaking of matters of salvation, I have done it. I made the choice. I did what was right. No. and not of merit. It is a gift, not something we’ve earned or deserved.
All have sinned. All, all, all have sinned. All were dead in their trespasses and sins. It doesn’t matter, Jew or Gentile, male or female, black or white, American or Iraqi, are equally in need of the free mercy of God, and may receive his mercy on the same terms through faith in Jesus Christ, who alone has achieved the victory, having gone before us to open the way, destroying the enemies, our enemies, of sin. and Satan and death.
Not our righteousness, but his. Not our merits, but his. Not our power, but his. For all those who believe, for there is no distinction, no distinction, do you not see? Israel was as wicked, no more wicked, as those other nations. They had the covenant, they had the oracles, they had the promises of God. Israel was as wicked as those they would dispossess. They were no more righteous, no more worthy, no more deserving. Indeed, for all of the privileges in the covenant, they were still under the bondage of sin.
None will be saved apart from the righteousness of God. accomplished in the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ, who is both just and the justifier. Where then is boasting, Paul asked? It is excluded. Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord and in the Lord alone. To him be the glory.
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