8.29.21 Deuteronomy 4:1–9 (EHV)
1 So now, Israel, listen to the statutes and the ordinances that I am teaching you, and carry them out so that you may live and so that you may enter the land that the LORD, the God of your fathers, is giving to you and take possession of it. 2 Do not add to the word that I am commanding you, and do not subtract from it, so that you keep the commandments of the LORD your God that I am commanding you. . . . 6 Keep them and put them into practice, because in this way your wisdom and your understanding will be recognized by all the people who hear about all these statutes; and they will say, “This great nation is certainly a wise and understanding people,” 7 because what other great nation is there that has a god as close to it as the LORD our God is to us whenever we call on him? 8 What other great nation is there that has statutes and ordinances as righteous as this entire law that I am presenting to you today? 9 But guard yourselves and guard your whole being diligently, so that you do not forget the things that your eyes have seen and so that those things do not disappear from your heart all the rest of the days of your life. Make them known to your children and to your children’s children.
This is a nice text that happened to fall on the day before school starts, with an emphasis on EDUCATION. It is Moses’ farewell speech on the brink of the Promised Land. Deuteronomy is Hebrew for “second giving of the teaching.” Moses started by recounting with the Israelites all of the MIRACLES it took to get the Israelites to this spot, how He split the Red Sea and how He made it so their shoes didn’t wear out. He hovered over them in a pillar of cloud and fire. There was NO WAY they would have been rescued from slavery were it not by the miraculous works of God.
If you read through the back end of Deuteronomy you will also see all kinds of regulations about how to deal with murderers and perverts, dietary laws, specific trading practices, how to make sure you keep yourself clean from disease and sickness, and so many other regulations. God especially wanted to look after the slaves and the needy. He ends with an exhortation to make sure to educate your children and your children’s children in the ways of the LORD so they didn’t forget where they came from and who their LORD was and how He wanted them to live their lives.
It starts, however, with YOU. He said, guard yourselves and guard your whole being diligently, so that you don’t forget the things your eyes have seen. The word in the Hebrew for “diligently” is ????? (mi-ode). It also can mean “exceedingly.” In other words, don’t just guard yourself a little, guard yourself a lot. Make sure you know this stuff WELL. Study it regularly. Make it so well known that you CAN’T forget it. It becomes second nature to you.
If you think about it, shouldn’t you know the difference between Moses and Elijah? Wouldn’t it be good to know the days of Creation and how God created the world out of nothing? You should know about the Babylonian Captivity and why it happened. You should know the prophecies of Isaiah. It is a part of history that God has revealed to us by divine inspiration. That’s part of what memorization and repetition is for. You should be able to complete the Ten Commandments easily. First Commandment, “You shall have . . .” What does this mean? We should fear . . . The wages of sin . . God so loved . . . Do you know the rest?
There are several reasons listed in this text why God wanted them to know and remember their history. Today’s text skips verses 3-5. I wish they were left in. God reminded the Israelites of what happened to the men who IGNORED what the LORD said about adultery and worshiping other gods. Right when they were on the brink of entering into the Promised Land, a bunch of men were seduced by Baal temple prostitutes at Peor to have sexual relations with them. As a result, God had absolutely NO mercy on them. He told the faithful and repentant Israelites to put them to death, and impale them on poles in broad daylight. (Numbers 25:4) There are multiple times in the Old Testament that God had to remind His people that He was not to be trifled with or taken lightly. Just because He was patient and kind didn’t mean that He was a pushover. He still hates sin. It makes Him angry when we arrogantly rebel against Him and blatantly do what we know is wrong.
The second reason is very eye opening to me. Keep them and put them into practice, because in this way your wisdom and your understanding will be recognized by all the people who hear about all these statutes; and they will say, “This great nation is certainly a wise and understanding people,” Most other cultures allowed for great cruelty towards the people, especially towards the poor. No other culture had gods that could travel over their people or rescue them from disaster. He wanted His history and statutes to be a light to shine among the unbelieving and heathen nations.
I find that to be interesting, don’t you? I think about how we try to take the Bible very seriously, what it says about Creation, Sin, the Flood, and Salvation. We still warn against living together and call it adultery. We still want the husband to be the head of the wife. We still practice closed communion. We still sing doctrinally rich and powerful songs when it comes to the lyrics that clearly confess law and gospel. Yet there’s almost an embarrassment among some of us. Are you afraid people won’t like us because we are “strict?” Look among many denominations how they follow the society in order to try and be as welcoming as possible and get as many people into the church as possible. But in the process they make it so there are no laws and no sins and no guilt, as if God’s love just meant that everyone can do what they want when they want. Christianity has become as undisciplined and immoral as her neighbors in many senses of the Word.
And even in your own life, how do you distinguish yourself from your co-workers and neighbors in your life? Are you just as lazy as they? Are you just as disrespectful? Just as angry? Just as vile? Do you pray? Do you take time to come and worship the LORD? Do you have an attitude of gratitude and forgiveness in your life? How can we think we will be MORE ATTRACTIVE to the world if we act like them? Why would anyone want to come to our church if we don’t let our light shine? Lord, have mercy.
So I found the prayer of today rather interesting. Let me read it again, because you may have missed it.
Almighty and everlasting God, give us an increase of faith, hope, and love; and, that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command;
Make us LOVE what you command. That’s a tall prayer! I don’t always like what God commands me to do. I don’t usually enjoy being patient and kind. I don’t like turning the other cheek. It sometimes makes me angry. I complain to God about it. I don’t love it. Sometimes I hate it. And that, my friends, is a SIN, even when I’m doing the right things, if I am angry about it on the inside.
Now, there are some who absolutely LOVE rules and regulations. They absolutely LIVE for them. The Jews were examples of people who seemed to LOVE the Law. They memorized it left and right, backwards and forwards. They even made rules for how to keep the rules. How to wash before you eat. How to eat and when to eat. How to walk and when to walk, to make absolutely sure that the laws were all kept! It might remind you of some people who run homeowners associations and are ready to pounce on you if you have the wrong flower in your front yard or if your cement sidewalk is one inch too wide.
The danger is if in a sense of religious zeal I take God’s law and try to make it bite sized and manageable. Or if I turn the whole thing into a system of rights and wrongs whereby I can “get right with God.” Go to church. Get my child baptized. Take him through confirmation. Make sure he knows his Ten Commandments. Get him to his first communion. But is that it? The pastor or elder calls. “We’ve missed you in church. You haven’t had the Supper in quite a while.” So do you say, “I guess you want me to come to church then?” You come once and then wait another three to six months before they call again. And that’s good? Is that how God wanted the law to be taught? The Boy Scout system? Do your duty? Get your badge?
Jesus encountered a rich young man who was trying to approach his religion like that. Do this and do that. Honor your father and mother. Don’t murder. Don’t steal. “I’ve done all that, I’m good.” But then Jesus gave him a whopper of a command. Sell all you have and give it to the poor. He couldn’t swallow that. He couldn’t DO that.
The Pharisees thought they could be clean and good if they just washed their hands before their meal. Then they’d be clean. And Jesus was sinning because he DIDN’T honor the tradition of the elders. It’s not as if God is AGAINST washing your hands. But this whole idea that I’m going to be righteous if I just wash my hands? We measure our righteousness and love by comparing ourselves to others by what we do or don’t do, who is clean and who isn’t? Who wears a mask and who doesn’t? Who gets the vaccine and who doesn’t?
Even when you think you’re doing the right thing, it can be for the wrong reasons. And even if you’re doing the right thing for the right reasons, it isn’t even as simple as that. Jesus paints a very dark picture of humanity in the Gospel for today, and it goes against everything we are taught in our humanistic society that is taught how we can be whatever we want to be if we just put our mind to it. Jesus put an end to such simplistic systems when He said, “it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.” Holiness and cleanliness is not as easily attained as just knowing the law or even only doing the law. Why? Because our hearts are contaminated with all kinds of sin. Keeping the law is so much more than just doing something right or wrong.
Paul felt bad for the Jews who had misread the law and been misled by the whole system of rights and wrongs. He himself was one of those misled Jews at one time. But God showed him the cure! He said in our epistle lesson for today, “my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. 2 For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. 3 Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. 4 Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes. Getting right with God isn’t about ME doing it right, it’s about how JESUS did it right for me. His law fulfillment wasn’t as easy as washing his hands. Pilate took care of that. He went through the hard work of loving His neighbors, healing them, raising their dead, chasing out their demons, and telling them the truth. He went through the work of fulfilling the law, taking it to it’s culmination, where God has to be damned on behalf of humanity, by taking on the actual wrath of God and suffering His wrath for the world which broke His law. That’s where the law ends, at the cross, where Jesus fulfills its demands. So salvation is through FAITH in Him and what He did for us, not through us trying to reduce the law down to bite sized works.
This changes the whole system of religion for me. Am I doing what God tells me to do when my children are baptized? Am I fulfilling God’s law when I take them to Sunday School and Trinity and Catechism? Am I doing the right thing by taking the Lord’s Supper? Sure! But there’s so much more to all of this! As I do so many of these things, God is doing the actual work. He is bathing my child in Jesus and giving him His gift of the Holy Spirit to bring him to faith and keep him in the faith. As I take my daughter through confirmation, I’m telling her about how God created her and why God created her. I’m telling her about the God who took on flesh to die for her. I’m showing her how God wants her to live to the glory of His name as we go through the Ten Commandments. As she is confirmed, I place the body and blood of Jesus in her mouth. And the Holy Spirit works faith in her heart, gives her the forgiveness of sins, and strengthens her faith in Jesus. When I’m “doing” what God tells me to do, God is doing the work for me and in me and my children. He’s bringing me to Jesus. He’s affirming me in the faith. He’s showing me right from wrong, and strengthening me to resist the temptations that still come from within and without.
Why would I look at all of this as work? Getting up early on a Sunday morning. . . taking my children to catechism. . . paying extra for their Christian education. . . What kind of work is that? What else will they get in the world? Where else can you get mercy and grace and Jesus? A soccer game isn’t going to give you that. A baseball trophy won’t give it to you. Where else can you get eternal life and salvation? A beer on a Saturday night won’t save me. How could I think of this as a work, when God gives me gifts here at worship? Why would I think of reading my Bible as a duty or coming to Bible Study as a chore when I learn about my powerful and gracious God here? If you look at all this as nothing more than a duty, then it’s like eating a pistachio but only cracking the outside of the nut and sucking the salt off of it without eating the nut on the inside. You’re missing the best part! Inside of all of this is Jesus.
Think about how the Prayer of the Day starts again, “Almighty and everlasting God, give us an increase of faith, hope, and love; and, that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command;” It starts with an increase of faith, hope and love. Where does that come from? The word and sacrament.
Let’s go back to what Moses told the Israelites. Guard yourselves and guard your whole being diligently, so that you do not forget the things that your eyes have seen and so that those things do not disappear from your heart all the rest of the days of your life. Make them known to your children and to your children’s children. As I continue to see our parents and our families missing Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, I fear that we are letting this beautiful gift go. If you are one of them, then you are depriving yourself, your children, and your grandchildren, of the greatest gift of salvation in Jesus, with all of his peace and mercy. If you let all of these gifts go unused, then you truly deserve what you get. But for those of you who are here today, you are receiving Jesus with all of His mercy and all of His grace from the cross, in the bread and the wine. You are being reminded that God loves you. Jesus died for you. He rose from the dead for you. You are getting what you didn’t deserve, with Jesus, His mercy, and salvation. Free of charge, through faith. Don’t forget it! Don’t let it disappear from your heart all the rest of the days of your life. Amen.
