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.
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.
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