“1 Hear now, O Israel, the decrees and laws I am about to teach you. Follow them so that you may live and may go in and take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you. 2 Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you.”
We all have the sense that life matters. We also have the sense that we are not sensible enough about the fact that life matters. In our more clear-headed moments, we realize that we want to live life to the full and that we are not living life as fully as we think we should.
Today matters more than you think. Life matters more than any of us think. Only God has a sensible grasp on the importance of now.
Now it is important because God has expectations for it. You have the sense that you must live it to the full because have some sense that you will answer for your life.
What you do with just today matters. What you will do with tomorrow matters. Only God knows how much it matters and that’s one reason why the final judgment is His to make. If you belong to Jesus, this judgment will be your vindication. You can obey today knowing that you will hear, “well done good and faithful servant.” That is why Luther said, “There are two days in my calendar: This day and that day.”
God calls you to live for Him today in light of the final day. That is the claim of this sermon: God calls you to live for Him today in light of the final day.
We will see this in three points. First: hear the word. Second: follow the word for the sake of your future. Third: don’t add or subtract from the word. First, in the first sentence of verse 1, hear the word. Second, in the second sentence of verse 1, follow the word for the sake of your future. Third, in verse 2, don’t add or subtract from the word.
First: hear the word. Over the next few months, we will stand with God’s people on the edge of the Promised Land.
Now Israel had been alone with God for forty years. They were largely insulated from the world. They were about to live among the nations again. When they entered the Promised Land, they were entering blessings of which they could have only dreamed when they were wandering in the wilderness; they were also entering temptations of which they never dreamed when they were wandering in the wilderness. Moses was preparing them to be in the world but not of the world.
They, like you, could only be in the world but not of the world by giving total allegiance to God. Moses impressed this allegiance upon them in verse 1. “Hear now, O Israel, the decrees and laws I am about to teach you.”
That word ‘now’ is a transition. In chapters 1-3, Moses had recalled God’s faithfulness to Israel in the past and now he was going to focus on how the people must live in response today. That word ‘now’ is also an exclamation point highlighting the importance of what Moses was about to say. If he were talking to little children, Moses would have said, ‘now look me in the eyes, because I have something important to tell you.’
That word ‘now’ is, in many ways, perpetual. Every moment is ‘now’ when you hear, “Hear now, O Israel, the decrees and laws I am about to teach you.” We acknowledge that when we read the Ten Commandments. We acknowledge that those words are as much for this moment as they were for that moment and they are as much for tomorrow as they are for today. The immediacy of those words never fades.
We, like Israel, encounter God’s words by hearing. “Hear now, O Israel, the decrees and laws I am about to teach you.” The act of hearing is an incredibly rich Biblical theme. Hearing is far more than auditory reception; it is far more than comprehending language so you could repeat what was said. According to Scripture, you can listen to every word of a sentence and hear none of it; you can comprehend every word of a sentence and hear none of it.
Proper hearing requires receptivity. You must be open to hear and willing to hold fast to what you hear. You must listen with an open mind as Chesterton understood it; “Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.”
Proper hearing also requires a willingness to be studied by the word of God rather than simply study the word of God; “the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”
Obedience is the proper response to hearing. “Hear now, O Israel, the decrees and laws I am about to teach you. Follow them.” A man who hears rightly cannot listen without a sense of obligation. If you don’t feel obliged to keep God’s word, then you aren’t really hearing this word regardless of how much information you might be learning.
Perhaps an illustration would help. Perhaps the best illustration would help. Consider Jesus, the word made flesh. You can know a good deal of information about Jesus without knowing him; the same is true with God’s word. You can study Jesus all you want but it is ultimately his study of you that finally matters; the same is true with God’s word. You can listen regularly to Jesus without obeying him. That is true of God’s word. Jesus said that the way that you respond to God’s word written is the way that you respond to him, God’s word made flesh. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
Jesus knew that the teachers of the law didn’t follow God’s word because they didn’t follow him. You can know that you are following Jesus if his word finds a home in you.
You can only hear and keep that word today. Now matters. That mattered when Moses said, “Hear now, O Israel, the decrees and laws I am about to teach you.” It is still now. That is why Hebrews says, “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.” It is always today until it is the last day.
You must keep the word today for the sake of your future. That is our second point: follow the word for the sake of your future.
Obedience today matters. Look at all of verse 1, “Follow them [meaning the commandments] so that you may live and may go in and take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you.”
Entering the Promised Land was contingent on keeping the commandments. If they obeyed, they would enter. If they didn’t obey, they would not enter. That was obvious to the Moses’ listeners. The generation before them died in the wilderness because they refused to keep God’s commandments.
Just as entering the Promised Land was contingent on keeping the commandments so was remaining in the Promised Land. That’s why King Josiah tore his robes and wept when these commandments were found and read. He told the priests, “Go and inquire of the Lord for me and for the people and for all Judah about what is written in this book that has been found. Great is the Lord’s anger that burns against us because those who have gone before us have not obeyed the words of this book; they have not acted in accordance with all that is written there concerning us.”
King Josiah took those words seriously; he was right to do so because God’s people were, in fact, exiled from the Promised Land for not keeping these commandments. Obedience and disobedience have consequences.
That is true today. What Daniel Block wrote about Israel at the edge of the Promised Land is true about you when it comes to the new creation; “actual possession of it and experiencing well-being in it are contingent on the people’s compliance with the revealed will of God.”
You will not make it into the new creation if you will not obey God’s commandments. Jesus makes this clear. In the final book of the Bible, he tells the churches that they must obey to enter the new creation. “To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.” “The one who is victorious will not be hurt at all by the second death.” “The one who is victorious will be dressed in white. I will never blot out the name of that person from the book of life, but will acknowledge that name before my Father and his angels.”
If you think that obeying for the sake of your future is just an Old Testament reality, listen to the end of Revelation. “Those who are victorious will inherit all this [new creation], and I will be their God and they will be my children. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”
That is classic covenant blessing and curse language in Revelation and here in Deuteronomy. If you keep the covenant, you will inherit the blessings. If you do not keep the covenant, you will experience the curses.
That is still God’s way with new covenant believers. The new covenant is not, ‘Jesus obeyed so that I don’t have to.’ The new covenant is not, ‘Jesus kept the covenant so that I don’t have to.’ The good news of salvation is not, ‘since I belong to Jesus it really doesn’t matter if I follow Jesus.’
The good news of salvation is, ‘since I belong to Jesus, I actually want to follow Jesus.’ The new covenant is, ‘since I’m in the covenant by grace, I keep the covenant by God’s continuing grace.’ “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you both to will and to work according to His good pleasure.”
Now given the prevalence of the idea, ‘Jesus obeyed and that makes my obedience irrelevant,’ you might need more convincing. Listen to Jesus, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit.”
Listen to Peter, “since you are looking forward to [the new creation], make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.”
Listen to Paul, “Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey… you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.”
Listen to Moses, “Follow [these commandments] so that you may live and may go in and take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you.”
God’s ways now are the same as God’s ways then. Entrance into the promises of God is contingent upon obedience to the commands of God. You will not find anyone in the kingdom of God who had no interest in faithfulness to God. That is clear because you must be born again to enter the kingdom of God and this is the description of the born again heart: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”
The question is not, ‘are you keeping the covenant sufficiently for salvation?’ The question is, ‘are you born again?’ If you are born again, you will have a new heart and you will want to keep the covenant. You will repent when you fail to obey the Christ who died for you. Then you will have every reason to expect, as Peter puts it, “a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
Now if you balk at the idea of obedience to Jesus but think that by some mental agreement with a few basic tenants of Christianity you will be saved, then you are sorely mistaken. Jesus gave his life for your life. That is the deal of salvation. He gave his life to acquire your life. If you don’t want to live for him, that is a sign that you haven’t taken that deal.
How could it be otherwise? Why would God let people who had no desire to live His way into the Promised Land? Why would God let people who have no desire to live His way into the new creation?
This is why now matters. Now is always the only time you can put your faith in Christ. Now is always the only time you can express your faith through obedience. Now is the only time of salvation. As Paul put it to the Corinthians, ‘As God’s co-workers we urge you not to receive God's grace in vain. For God says, “In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.” I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.’ Today matters more than any of us think. Now matters more than any of us think.
The fact that now matters because now is the time of faith and obedience isn’t all that palatable to the human heart. In many ways, we don’t want life to matter as much as it does, and so we add to and we subtract from the word of God to reduce the gravity of obedience. That is our third point: don’t add or subtract from the word.
If Christianity is just your particular brand of wishful thinking, then you will agree with what you find helpful and you will disregard whatever is outside of your comfort zone. So in lies to the temptation to add and subtract to God’s word. We add interpretations that we find palatable and we subtract words that we find unacceptable.
God will not tolerate such tampering. “Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you.”
Israel added all sorts of words to God’s word. They heard Moses’ words, “Follow these commands so that you may live and may go in and take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you,” and they added the belief that they could never lose the land. They added the belief that since God had built His temple in the Promised Land, they could never lose the land despite God’s warning and so God said, ‘Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!” If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your ancestors for ever and ever. But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless.”
Israel was trusting in beliefs which they had added to God’s word. They did it because the idea that their obedience or disobedience mattered was uncomfortable for them, and if you are in sin, the lies that you want to believe will always be more comfortable than the truth, at least for the moment.
We’ve already seen some of the words that the church adds to God’s word. ‘Jesus obeyed so that I don’t have to.’ ‘Since I am under grace, neither sin nor obedience matter.’ Don’t add such beliefs to excuse your sin. Don’t add assumptions to excuse your lack of obedience. Strip those away now before they stripped away on the final day.
People add words to God’s word to comfort themselves, but, in fact, they make themselves slaves of their own assumptions and their own words.
Our culture has far more commandments than Scripture does. We have commandments upon commandments regarding sexuality, femininity, masculinity, beauty, language, wealth, style, intelligence, retirement, death, and the list goes on and on. Chesterton was right, “If men will not be governed by the Ten Commandments, they shall be governed by the ten thousand commandments.” If you break one of our culture’s laws, you will find no mercy. Just watch the news cycle. You will see outrage based on moralism. Not the morals of the Bible – but a moral code that must be followed or you will be mocked, opposed, and cut off.
Now God doesn’t add commandment upon commandment like our culture. He doesn’t burden His people the way the world burdens its people. The people of this nation are running themselves ragged keeping the unspoken commandments required for approval. If this is you, Jesus calls to you, “come to me all you who are weary and heavy burdened and I will give you rest; take my yoke—my commandments—upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
People are weary and heavy burdened not because they are keeping God’s word but because they are adding to his word. It is only when you are not obeying Jesus that you think his commands are burdensome. When you follow his directives, you find they are quite liberating.
We cannot and must not add anything to God’s word. Neither can we subtract from it. Each age has commands it would like to strip from the Scriptures. Many of the most prominent today are about gender and sexuality, but they aren’t the only ones. Our age, like all ages, wants to strip from the Scriptures the call to be born again and the power of the Holy Spirit to change lives. Our age wants to strip from the Scriptures the final judgment and the difference between the church and the world. Different ages have wanted to strip different verses from God’s word. Our age is not unique in that regard. Our age is just one example of why verse 2 is so necessary, “Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you.”
Now such warnings are only necessary if this word matters. If hearing this word doesn’t really matter, if keeping this word doesn’t really matter, then it doesn’t matter if it is added to or subtracted from. The fact is, it does matter.
This is why the world has no place for God’s word, but it cannot escape the fact that today matters. Now matters. A man’s standing before God matters. God thinks it matters. He thinks it matters so much that He sent His one and only Son that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life, and, of course, this believing involves following, and following all the way through the judgement and into the new creation. There are only two days: this day and that day. Amen.