Deuteronomy 4:1–43 – Deuteronomy: Then You Shall Live
Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost – November 17, 2019 (am)
 

We just sang Be Thou My Vision, at once an affirmation of and a petition for an undiluted, undivided, undiverted faith, a plea for God to enable us to know, trust, and obey Him unconditionally. Today’s text can help us in that pursuit as we hear an impassioned exhortation but also discern a potential impedance.

Israel has come again to the border of the land after their forty years in the wilderness and Deu. presents Moses’ final instructions to them, just trying to make sure that they don’t fail to enter again, especially now that they’ve conquered all the allotted land east of the Jordan River.

We come to the final section of his first speech today and it is rousing! Clearly Moses is seeking to stir the people toward faithful, covenant obedience as they enter the land. But he also knows these people. He knows that they’re the children of their parents and that they’re just as capable of turning their backs on the Lord as the previous generation had been. You can almost hear his concern explicitly stated as he drills deeply into every potential category of unfaithfulness that’s available to them. But you also hear the passion with which he’s pleading with them to take care, watch [themselves] carefully, and keep [their souls] diligently (9).

We need to hear both parts of his plea, the passionate call to know and trust and obey the great and glorious God Who has initiated relationship with us, but also the call, the implicit concerns and explicit warnings that Moses proclaimed to these people at the end of their wanderings. And we need to be reminded of what is at stake. Who lost if Israel failed in their calling to live in covenant obedience in the land, and who loses today if we fail in our calling? This closing exhortation comes in three parts.

The Wisdom of Obedience – 1-14

Moses gets at it right off the bat. 1 And now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the rules that I am teaching you, and do them, that you may live, and go in and take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you. Obey and live! This is the message that runs through the heart of Deu. from beginning to end, right up to the closing promise in the final sermon: 30:16 If you obey the commandments… by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land…. You’ve tasted the blessings of obedience, Israel, and you’ve observed the cursings of disobedience. So, listen and obey! Why wouldn’t you?

Moses reminds them of their vulnerability by referring to the incident at Baal-peor (3; Num.25:1-18) which happened just a few weeks earlier (Merrill 115). They’d been drawn into immoral relationships with Moabite women in that area and immediately compounded their sin by entering into the worship of their gods (Num.25:1-2). The judges we met back in c.1(9-18) were charged to put to death the men in their tribes who had done this evil thing (Num.25:5). 4 But you who held fast to the Lord your God are all alive today.

Learn your lesson from that! Moses is saying. That is the key to your success in the land. That will produce life and joyful continuation in the land, effective ministry there! It will draw the attention of everyone you engage there. 1 … O Israel, listen to the statutes and the rules that I am teaching you…!  6 Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ 7 For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is to us, whenever we call upon him? 8 And what great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today?

No one around you has anything like what you’ve got, Israel! Everyone else can talk about having a god that looks after them, but those gods aren’t like your God! Those gods don’t guide and instruct their people like your God does! (6, 8) Those gods don’t dwell visibly among their people (7) in a specially designed Tabernacle or a pillar of cloud by day or of fire by night! None of those people have heard their god [speak] out of the midst of the fire (12) like you have, Israel! Those gods can’t see or hear or eat or smell either! (28) None of those gods have told their people exactly what is expected of them like your God has! (13) So, Israel, 9 … take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children’s children. Your God is worthy to be obeyed, Israel!

The Foolishness of Idolatry – 15-31

15 Therefore watch yourselves very carefully. Since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, 16 beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves, in the form of any figure…. Your God has presented Himself as audible but invisible. So, don’t try to use or make something visible to represent your God! That is offensive to Him. In fact, He’s forbidden it in the second of His Ten Commandments (13; 5:8-10).

Today we may think: Little danger here. We don’t believe gods inhabit carved [images]. But the temptation is still there for some of what Moses writes here: 19 … beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them…, lest you think there’s some causal correlation between the order of the [heavens] and events on earth. Many things can act as visible manifestations of God, even things He’s made—seas, mountains, sunsets—but they’re all offensive to God when they receive the worship He is due.

We may not worship little statues and think they have actual power. But we’re more than capable, even today, of believing that lesser things have the power of God in our world or our work or our lives. We’re not beyond believing that it’s things like diet and exercise and vitamins and sunscreen and speed-limits that protect and prolong our life. There’s nothing wrong with any of them, or sun or moon or stars. But they are not our God!

23 Take care, lest you forget the covenant of the Lord your God, which he made with you, and make a carved image, the form of anything that the Lord your God has forbidden you. 24 For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. The writer of Hebrews picked up on this verse and helps us hear it with new covenant ears. Heb.12:26 At that time [God’s] voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” 27 This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of things that are shaken—that is, things that have been made—in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. He’s talking about the place of our eternal home, the promise land we will enter when this life is finished. 28 Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, 29 for our God is a consuming fire. This is his final word before he moves into his conclusion. Our God is the same God who spoke at Horeb (cf. Heb.13:8). His future acts will be even greater than His past! And He is to be approached with reverence and awe as the only true God!

The Privilege of Knowing God – 32-43

He is One of a Kind! 33 Did any people ever hear the voice of a god speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and still live? 34 Or has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation [like] the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes? …  39 [K]now therefore today, and lay it to your heart, that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other. 40 Therefore…, keep his statutes and his commandments… that you may prolong your days in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for all time. This is your God, Israel! He is worthy of your worship and of your obedience! Honor Him as the one true God!

Conclusion

That was Moses’ charge, that was Israel’s calling in the land, but somehow Moses seemed to know it just wasn’t going to happen. I believe the clearest place we see this begins in v.25: 25 “When you father children and children’s children, and have grown old in the land, if you act corruptly by making a carved image in the form of anything, and by doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, so as to provoke him to anger, 26 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will soon utterly perish from the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess. You will not live long in it, but will be utterly destroyed. 27 And the Lord will scatter you among the peoples…. 28 And there you will serve gods of wood and stone, the work of human hands, that neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell. 29 But from there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul—if you love him. 30 When you are in tribulation, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, you will return to the Lord your God and obey his voice. They will surely stray as time progresses. And they will be exiled from the land. But [they] will also return to the Lord… and obey his voice. 31 For the Lord [their] God is a merciful God. He will not leave [them] or destroy [them] or forget [his] covenant with [their] fathers that he swore to them. Their God will add grace upon grace to enable them to know and trust and obey Him such that His purpose for them will be fulfilled.

It seems like Moses knew, and surely God knew, that it was going to require more for Israel know and trust and obey God than just the sheer determination of their will. Their experience throughout their forty years in the wilderness proved that; the incident at Baal-peor was only a few weeks old! This was a new generation with the same old heart problem. Moses preached to them with passion, but we can also hear his concern. He knew in his heart what was truly in their hearts. They needed help to know, trust, obey!

And the hardest part was, it wasn’t just for their own personal joy and blessing that they needed to succeed in their response to Moses’ exhortation. The very mission of God was at stake, the purpose for which He called and blessed and made promises to this nation in the first place. There were other eyes watching them in the land. And it was through their [knowing], trusting, and [obeying] God that the [nations] would be introduced to His greatness and glory! It was their covenant obedience that would awaken the surrounding [nations] to the God Who promised to bless them all through these people (cf. Gen.12:3). They needed help!

But, as we know, Israel didn’t succeed in the land. These sons of Abraham, sons of God, were just not equipped to hear and respond to the message Moses was preaching or fulfill the purpose God had set forth. That brand of obedience, the fulfillment of that grand purpose must await the arrival of a better Son of Abraham, the eternal Son of God. If God’s people were going to know, trust, and obey Him, they were going to need a new heart! Their heart, which was dead to the law of God, must be made alive and filled with His law! And that’s just what Jesus provided!

The man I call Pastor used to teach preaching courses at Trinity Seminary. Sometime mid-semester after the lectures were complete and the lab was to begin, he’d take the class on a field trip to a local cemetery. They would walk among the tombstones until they found perhaps a husband and wife lying side-by-side, and he instructed them to preach to this couple, calling them to arise from the dead because the day of resurrection had arrived! You can imagine how self-conscious the students were! And volunteers were hard to come by! But then Lutzer would begin to preach, with all the passion Moses displays here! If human passion could enable obedience, that couple would’ve stood up and shouted! But they didn’t. They remained in the grave. All were relieved. And then he explained. This is what we do every Sunday.

Friends, this is what Moses was doing in Deu.4. He wanted the people to obey. He knew God could enable the people to obey. But it truly was God Who needed to act for His purpose to be fulfilled. And He did act, but not right then. At that point He was still demonstrating that it requires more than just knowing the right thing for His people to do the right thing. It requires being born again to newness of life. It requires a resurrection from the dead, spiritually, that looks forward to a resurrection physically. That is what Israel lacked, and that is what Jesus has provided.

Let’s now give thanks for His provision.