“32 Ask now about the former days, long before your time, from the day God created man on the earth; ask from one end of the heavens to the other. Has anything so great as this ever happened, or has anything like it ever been heard of? 33 Has any other people heard the voice of God speaking out of fire, as you have, and lived?
34 Has any god ever tried to take for Himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by miraculous signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes? 35 You were shown these things so that you might know that the Lord is God; besides Him there is no other.
36 From heaven He made you hear His voice to discipline you. On earth He showed you His great fire, and you heard His words from out of the fire. 37 Because He loved your forefathers and chose their descendants after them, He brought you out of Egypt by His Presence and His great strength, 38 to drive out before you nations greater and stronger than you and to bring you into their land to give it to you for your inheritance, as it is today. 39 Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other.
40 Keep His decrees and commands, which I am giving you today, so that it may go well with you and your children after you and that you may live long in the land the Lord your God gives you for all time.
”
The Bible never bothers to argue the one thing that people expect. The Bible never bothers to argue that God exists.
People are intrigued by arguments for God’s existence. We are intrigued by the cosmological argument—the idea that the existence of the creation demands a creator. We are intrigued by the moral argument—the idea that our innate morality points to an all-knowing Judge. Moses didn’t seem all that interested in such arguments. Why?
Moses wasn’t interested in arguments for the existence of God for the same reason that you aren’t interested in arguments for my existence. You don’t doubt my existence because you know me. Moses didn’t doubt God’s existence because he had knew Him. You don’t bother to argue for the existence of someone whom you know.
Do you know God or are you living off second hand information about God? Second hand information doesn’t captivate the soul. God captivates the soul. There is no one and nothing like God; if you have met Him, then you know. There is no one and nothing like God. That is the claim of this sermon: there is no one and nothing like God.
We will see this in four points. First: there is no one like the God who speaks. Second: there is no one like the God who acts in history. Third: there is no one like the God who loves. Fourth: responding appropriately to this God. In verses 32-33, we see that there is no one like the God who speaks. In verses 34-35, we see that there is no one like the God who acts in history. In verses 36-39, we see that there is no one like the God who loves. In verse 40, we see the proper response to this God.
First: there is no one like the God who speaks. There is no god like our God. The age in which you live does not believe that. Our age believes that all religions have a part of the truth but only part of the truth. This is how it is explained, ‘centuries ago, a group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to their village. They had never heard of one before and so they went to inspect it. Each of them felt a certain part of the elephant. The first blind man said, “an elephant is like a thick snake,” because he was holding the trunk. The second blind man, said, “no, an elephant is like a tree trunk,” because he was touching its leg. The third blind man said, “no, you are both wrong; an elephant is like a wall,” because he was pushing against its side. The fourth blind man said, “I don’t know what you are talking about; an elephant is like a spear,” because he was touching one of its tusks.’
Our age likens God to that elephant and the different religions to those blind men. Each of us has a portion of the truth but none of us has authoritative knowledge. Moses disagrees. He disagrees because he has heard God speak. Verse 32, “Ask now about the former days, long before your time, from the day God created man on the earth; ask from one end of the heavens to the other. Has anything so great as this ever happened, or has anything like it ever been heard of? Has any other people heard the voice of God speaking out of fire, as you have, and lived?”
We need not be blind men groping about for a bit of truth about God because God has revealed Himself. God has spoken. The Scriptures are not speculation about God; they are God’s revelation of Himself. These are not our best thoughts about God. These are God’s communications about Himself. No one else has anything like this.
Moses never seemed to get over the fact that God speaks to humanity. He has brought up time and time again in Deuteronomy and will continue to do so until the end of the book, which is the end of his life.
Maybe you have gotten over the fact that God has spoken. Maybe you have become quite bored with Scripture. Maybe you want something different. If this is the case for you, you need to confess this dullness to God. You need to ask to be as astonished as Moses. Take his question seriously. Do some research. “Ask now about the former days, long before your time, from the day God created man on the earth; ask from one end of the heavens to the other. Has anything so great as this ever happened, or has anything like it ever been heard of? Has any other people heard the voice of God speaking out of fire, as you have, and lived?” You will find that the answer is “no.”
Be astonished by the God who has spoken. If you have never been impressed by Him, then you are acting according to the Biblical definition of a fool. You see such foolishness all around you in the culture. You see it in the lives of people who live as if God were irrelevant. Don’t be a fool. Take God seriously. Take seriously the truth that there is no one like God one who speaks.
Take seriously the truth that there is no one like the God who acts in history. That is our second point. Our age denies the historicity of the events recorded in God’s word. It puts Scripture on par with Aesop’s Fables–worthwhile for wisdom but just as historically irrelevant. No one imagines that there was ever a talking mouse who bit through a net to free a talking lion and our age puts Moses on par with that talking mouse and God on par with that talking lion; they are seen as simply characters in a story.
Denying the historicity of the events of this book leaves you with something other than Christianity. An Oxford student named Carolyn Weber returned home on summer vacation and spoke to her mother about Christianity. Carolyn was slowly but surely coming to faith in Christ. She told her mother, “I’m thinking of becoming a Christian.” Her mother replied, “What do you mean ‘become’? You’ve always been a Christian.” “Mom,” said Carolyn, “I haven’t been a Christian. I mean really a Christian.” “Oh, nonsense,” her mother said, “most decent people are Christians and you are more than decent… yes, we are good, Christian people. Ethical. Moral. Kind.”
Carolyn explained that what her mother was saying had little to do with Christianity or faith and that faith in Christ was the heart of Christianity. Then her mother said, “[what you are talking about is] a pipe dream, a cloud of smoke… you’ll feel different when you’re older, sweetheart.”
Notice how quickly her mother went from, “you’ve always been a Christian,” to, “Christianity is a pipe dream, a cloud of smoke.” That is a rare moment of honesty about what I fear many people truly believe. I fear that each of us know all sorts of people who think like Carolyn’s mother. They call themselves Christians but only because they consider themselves decent people, but they think that the historicity, the miracles, the hope, and the faith, are all just, “a pipe dream, a cloud of smoke.” They don’t really think any of these accounts really happened or any of the promises really will be kept.
Do you believe that the events recorded in Scripture actually occurred? Did Jesus of Nazareth really chase money changers out of the temple? Were three thousand added to the church on Pentecost? Was Daniel safe in the lion’s den? Did Moses and Israel cross the Red Sea on dry land?
If you don’t believe these occurred in the same way that D-Day occurred 75 years ago, then why believe any of what is in Scripture? If the death and resurrection of Jesus is just a story about love defeating death and not a historical event, then you have no reason to believe that love will defeat death in the history in which you live. Faith stands and falls by the historicity of this word.
Moses knew that God acted in history because he lived it. Verse 34, “Has any god ever tried to take for Himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by miraculous signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?”
The Exodus showed that God makes distinctions amongst humanity in real time. He acted in history. He afflicted the Egyptians with plagues from which He spared the Israelites. He opened the sea up for Israel to walk through and then collapsed those same waters upon the Egyptians. God treats different people differently, which should lead anyone with ears to hear to one inescapable question, ‘can I know how God will treat me?’
You can know. The God who did great and awesome deeds still does so for the sake of His people. He does what no one else can do. “You were shown these things so that you might know that the Lord is God; besides Him there is no other.”
The Israelites did live in the land of Goshen; they were oppressed by the Egyptians; they were saved from political oppression in a miraculous fashion on a particular date; in fact, they structured their calendar around these events. At the first Passover, God told Moses, “This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year.”
If you are a Christian, then you can grasp the importance. The historicity of the resurrection is central to the New Testament. Paul said it was of first importance, “what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” Paul went on to list eye witness after eye witness so that his readers could verify his claims.
We Christians take this resurrection seriously. If you don’t take the resurrection seriously, then you are not a Christian no matter how ethical, moral, or kind you may be. The church took this so seriously that we changed our day of worship to match the day of the resurrection and we changed the calendar of the whole world. Not even the most hardened atheist can deny that it is the year of our Lord 2019.
There is no one like the God who speaks. There is no one like the God who acts in history, and there is no one like the God who loves. That is our third point.
We moderns take the idea of “the love of God” for granted. In fact, we take it so for granted that our culture has distorted the word into an affirmation of whatever it wants.
The people of the nations around Israel in Moses’ day wound have found all of this quite bizarre because they could not get their minds around the idea of a God who loved. As scholar Daniel Block notes, “the notion of love is virtually absent from the vocabulary of divine-human relationships” throughout the Ancient Near East. No one else even imagined that their god loved them.
The revelation of God’s love is one of the most startling refrains of Deuteronomy. Israel enjoyed what they enjoyed because, and only because, God chose to love them; verse 37, “Because He loved your forefathers and chose their descendants after them, He brought you out of Egypt by His Presence and His great strength, to drive out before you nations greater and stronger than you and to bring you into their land to give it to you for your inheritance, as it is today.”
God chose this people’s forefathers for salvation because He loved those men. Now, why did he love those patriarchs? He loved them because, and only because, He chose to love them. God rescued Israel from Egypt because He loved them. Now, why did He love Israel? He loved Israel because, and only because, He chose to love them.
God loves because God chooses to love. That is your only hope. You are not loved by God because you were worthy of it and He doesn’t continue to love you because you remain worthy of it. He loves you because He chooses to love you.
Until you grasp the fact that the only reason that you are loved by God is because God has chosen to love you, you will not understand God’s love. Until you grasp the fact that God’s love for you has nothing to do with anything in you and everything to do with everything in Him, then you will not understand God’s love. Until you realize that God could rightly have chosen not to love you, you will not understand the fact that He has chosen to love you.
This brings us to the doctrine of election, which is a doctrine of God’s love. Until you realize that God could rightly have chosen not to love you, you won’t rightly comprehend the fact that He has chosen to love you. Until you grasp the fact that God’s love for you has nothing to do with anything in you and everything to do with everything in Him, you will not understand God’s love.
God’s love is a choice. The fact that you are loved by Him says a good deal about Him and very little about you. If you are one for whom Christ died, that says much about Jesus and very little about you. The little it does say about you isn’t all that flattering but the much it does say about Jesus is astounding. It says that while you were still a sinner, Christ died for you. That is love.
There is no one like the God who chooses to love. You see that in verse 39, “Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other.”
Some scholars argue that monotheism, the idea that there is one God and only one God, was an idea developed slowly by the Jews. Moses would say otherwise. Moses would have said that there is no other God than the one he met, the one who chose to ally Himself with this small group of slaves who were the descendants of one man named Abraham.
That was quite a claim in that day and that is quite a claim today. There is no other God than the one who chose to love the world by sending His one and only Son that whoever should believe in him might not perish but have eternal life. The church holds views that are in line with those of Moses, “Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other.”
To say that there is no one like the God who speaks and no one like the God who acts in history and no one like the God who loves is, in the end, to say that there is no god but God. There is no one and nothing like God.
God forbid that anyone in this sanctuary find God boring. Those words were chosen carefully: God forbid that anyone in this sanctuary find God boring. There is no one like the God who speaks. There is no one like the God who acts in history. There is no one like the God who loves. How do you respond to that?: responding appropriately to this God.
If you believe with conviction what you have heard this morning, responding appropriately to God will come naturally. If you delight in the fact that God has spoken, you will be changed by what He has said. If you are amazed that God acts in the real time of history, you will feel compelled to live for Him in real time. If you take seriously the surprising fact that you are loved by God, you will find it quite fitting to love God and love others.
The structure and proportions of these words from Moses are instructive. To this point, it has all been grace. Moses has spent the above verses laying out what God has done of His own free choice. Daniel Block points out that, “In a text consisting of 163 words, Moses uses 109 to tell the story of Israel’s historical experience of grace; He uses 26 to reflect theologically on those events; and then he concludes with 26 words of application.”
A little bit of application is always framed by a lot of grace. Your proper response only seems proper when framed by the grace of God. It is only after demonstrating that there is no one like the God who speaks, no one like the God who acts in history, and no one like the God who loves that Moses says in verse 40, “Keep His decrees and commands, which I am giving you today, so that it may go well with you and your children after you and that you may live long in the land the Lord your God gives you for all time.”
Obedience is motivated by grace. If you think that all this nation needs for morality is the Ten Commandments displayed in more places, then you need to see that the lawgiver, Moses, only displays those commandments within a frame full of grace. Before calling for an appropriate response to God, Moses reminded them of who God is and what God has done. Grace precedes commandments.
Until a man knows this, he cannot see that even the commandments are for his good. Look at verse 40, “Keep His decrees and commands, which I am giving you today, so that it may go well with you and your children after you and that you may live long in the land the Lord your God gives you for all time.”
God gives commandments for your good—so that it will go well with you. Consider the grace of God: even His commandments are for your good rather than for His good.
Even the most sacrificial parent sometimes makes rules out of self-interest. ‘No more talking for three minutes.’ Sometimes a fight is stopped more to gain some peace and quiet than to teach brotherly love. Sometimes we make rules for our own sake. God never makes rules for His sake. Even His commandments are for your sake. Don’t grumble about God’s commands. Don’t grumble about that which is for your good. Do that which is for your good. Teach your children to do that which is for their good.
Now, you know no one like God. You know no one who would do for you what God has done for you. The cross is proof positive. While you were God’s enemy, Christ died for you.
He loves you. You see it in history. You see it in this world. You know no one like God, unless you don’t know Him. If that is the case, the good news is that you can know Him. It doesn’t matter what you have done. It doesn’t matter what foul things you’ve said about God. He will forgive you – you know no one like Him. There is no one like Him. Amen.