“11 Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. 12 It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, “Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” 13 Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, “Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” 14 No, the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.
15 See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. 16 For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.
17 But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, 18 I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.
19 This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live 20 and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”
There may be someone here who has a decision to make. You have divided your allegiance for far too long. You must decide whether or not you will express devotion to God daily with everything you are and everything you have. This is a word from God to you. “Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to His voice, and hold fast to Him.” God calls for your total allegiance.
We’ve spent twelve weeks studying this total allegiance. It is very possible that some of us have heard this call to total devotion and remained unmoved. This is the way it so often works with spiritual matters. “Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving,” as Isaiah said.
You know that you haven’t understood this call if you are content with allegiance that is less than total. You know that you haven’t perceived this message if you are unwilling to give God all that you are.
God calls you to total allegiance through the preaching of this word. In this age, we tend to approach the preaching of the word as consumers—‘what did I get out of the message?’ I know that I have approached it that way, but Mary didn’t ask that question when the word of the Lord came to her. She said, “I am the Lord’s servant… May your word to me be fulfilled.” Moses didn’t ask, ‘what am I getting out of this message?’ as he stood before the burning bush. He treated that word as if it was binding on him; he wrestled with it; he even said, “Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else,” but then he went. Moses responded as if that word had something to do with him.
What Moses said in Deuteronomy is as binding on you and I as those words from God. This call to total allegiance is binding upon us.
God calls for your total devotion which is the only path to life. That is the claim of this sermon: God calls for your total devotion which is the only path to life.
We will study this in two points. First: the will of God is available and doable. Second: choose life over death. We see that the will of God is available and doable in verses 11-14. Verses 15-20 call you to choose life rather than death.
First: the will of God is available and doable. We have been standing with Israel at the edge of the Promised Land. They were a community bound by a covenant with God himself, just like us. Their covenant relationship had clear expectations with clear consequences just like ours. Now, one last time before he died, Moses called the people to keep this covenant.
The covenant requirements were not unreasonable. “Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you.” God’s commands were not onerous or excessive. He was asking for a reasonable response to grace. Total devotion is a reasonable response to grace.
Now we learned last week that the people, as a whole, would not keep the covenant. Their failure to keep the covenant was not due to the unrealistic expectations of the covenant just like your failure to obey God is not due to His unrealistic expectations of you. You sin because you choose to sin. Israel broke the covenant because they chose to break the covenant.
Now if you have taken the opportunity to hear God’s word preached in the evening, you might be wondering how you can square Moses’ words, “Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you,” with Paul’s words in Romans, “The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.”
You square Moses’ words that the commandments were not too difficult with Paul’s words that the commandments are too difficult by recognizing that both Moses and Paul would say that you need a changed heart to keep the commandments. The commandments are not too hard if your heart is circumcised. The commandments are not too difficult if you have the Holy Spirit.
The Old Testament is clear that there were plenty of Israelites who kept the covenant. They did it not because it was imposed on them from the outside but because obedience welled up within them from the inside by the grace of God. It takes grace to obey.
If you have received grace, total devotion is your reasonable response. “Therefore, I urge you, in view of God’s mercy,” said Paul,” to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.” Jesus sacrificed everything for you; you sacrifice everything for him. You can’t get more totally devoted than a living sacrifice and that is the response of the born-again heart; in other words, that is the response of the man who truly is saved by grace.
Today Zoe will publicly promise to love the Lord her God with all her heart, soul, and strength this morning. No one will be thinking, “The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God,” when she makes that commitment. We won’t be thinking that because she is professing that she has been saved by grace. She is making profession of faith because she has been born again. She has the Spirit. A profession of faith is a profession of new birth.
So God’s commands are completely reasonable and doable for children of God; they are also available. “Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach,” as Moses put it, ‘It is not up in heaven, so that you have to ask, “Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?” Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, “Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?”’
God made His way obvious. We take our knowledge of the will of God for granted. Our culture is so foolish in this regard that it scoffs at the idea that there is such a thing as the revealed will of God. They don’t scoff at the Bible in terms of literature or inspiration material; they scoff at the idea that this is word from God which is binding on humanity. They scoff at the idea that there is such a thing as the revealed will of God.
The ancient world was far wiser. The ancient world wanted to know the will of God. One Ancient Near East document cries out with longing, “Who knows the will of the gods in heaven? Who understands the plans of the underworld gods? Where have mortals learnt the way of a god?”
Ancient near east stories have any number of heroes setting out to discover the will of God. Their myths are full of men travelling to distant lands in hopes of finding the gods in order to find answers to life’s deepest questions. The ancients wrote such stories because what the Psalmist said was true, “He has revealed His word to Jacob, His laws and decrees to Israel. He has done this for no other nation; they do not know His laws.”
The ancients would have longed for the chance to hear from God. We, like Israel, have it readily available; “the word is very near you,” says Moses, “it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.”
The question, of course, is whether it is in your mouth and heart. It might be sitting on the bookcase at home. Less than half of regular faithful churchgoers read their Bibles at all throughout the week. Studies show that only twenty percent of churchgoers strongly agree with the statement, “throughout the day I find myself thinking about Biblical truths.”
I think it is fair to say that if only twenty percent of churchgoers strongly agree with the statement, “throughout the day I find myself thinking about Biblical truths,” there are many churchgoers of whom verse 14 is not true, “the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.”
Consider whether the word is in your heart so that you may obey it. That is, after all, what it means to be totally devoted to Jesus. “If you love me you will keep my commandments.” Such commandment keeping is a demonstration that a man is saved. As Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
This is not works based righteousness. This is righteousness by faith. Listen to Paul quote this passage from Deuteronomy. “The righteousness that is by faith says: “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down) “or ‘Who will descend into the deep?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the message concerning faith that we proclaim: if you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Paul wasn’t calling for mental assent to two points of doctrine—‘are you find with Jesus being Lord, whatever that means to you?’ ‘Is the idea of Jesus’ resurrection acceptable to you?’—Paul was calling for total submission to Jesus because that is what believing in Jesus, in other words justification by faith, compels a man to do. Bonhoeffer was right, “Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes.”
This call for total devotion, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength is very clear. Please don’t deceive yourself into thinking that there is some other sort of faith in Christ. James makes clear that, “faith without works is dead,” and works takes the form of obedience to the word of God; “the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.” Obey it. It is available. It is doable.
This obedience is the way of life. We see this way of life in our second point: choose life over death. No man who is given a clear choice between either life and prosperity or death and destruction, as verse 16 puts it, would intentionally choose death and destruction. No one raised his hand that day near the Jordan River and said, ‘Moses, given the choice, I opt for death and destruction,’ and yet many made that choice, and many continue to make that choice.
People regularly choose the way of death. They choose it because they don’t believe it leads to death. Eve chose the way of death by not believing it led to death. Satan blinded her mind to the word of God, “you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” He is no less adept at blinding minds to the word of God today.
Moses makes the choice between life and death clear because we need it made clear. “See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed.”
Now there is no path between this way of life and way of death; this is a binary choice—either you are choosing to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commands, decrees and laws, or you are choosing the way of death. Israelites could not say, ‘well, I’m an Israelite so this commandment keeping doesn’t have to do with me;’ they needed circumcised hearts that longed to keep the covenant. Churchgoers can’t say, ‘well, I’m a Christian so this commandment keeping doesn’t have anything to do with me’; you must be born of the Spirit, which means you are moved to love God with all you are and have.
You are either devoted to God or you are on the way of death. Moses warned against anything less than total devotion to God because anything less leads to destruction, but if you are born again you want to be totally devoted.
Now, we’ve seen many warnings throughout the book of Deuteronomy. If you read through any book of the Bible, you will find many warnings. We are tempted to gloss over these warnings because we live in an age that finds warnings unfitting for a God of love. Our age teaches us to screen these warnings out as Jefferson cut out sections from the Bible with which he disagreed. These warnings cannot and must not be cut out. God warns because He loves people and He wants to turn them from destruction. “As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, people of Israel?”
Jesus warned because he loved; “everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”
That great crash is condemnation at the final judgment. We will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ and we need regular warnings lest we wander into sin. Modern man does not want to hear such warnings and many teachers are happy to give these itching ears what they want to hear. I understand that temptation. However, not to warn is a dereliction of duty. It is a dereliction of duty for leaders. It is a dereliction of duty for parents. It is a dereliction of duty on our part towards Zoe who will ask for accountability in her vows today.
There are warnings marking the way of death and there are also invitations marking the way of life. “I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.”
God holds out blessings to motivate obedience. Now some people find this unfitting. Some people think that man should obey God with no hope of blessing. God doesn’t agree. He holds out blessings to encourage obedience. Jesus did this regularly in the book of Revelation. “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… To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat down with my Father on his throne.” That would motivate you if you were under persecution like those Christians. That should motivate you today.
If you are a Christian, you need to keep these motivations in mind because the world is offering you incentives to switch paths. If you find yourself torn between the world and the way of Christ, recognize that you are torn because the incentives of the world are blatantly obvious to you every day and the blessings of the covenant have become fuzzy by your lack of focus. CS Lewis is right, “It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
This infinite joy should motivate you to make the right choice; “Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.” This whole sermon of Deuteronomy has been building towards this climax. Moses was about to die; he was preaching as a dying man to dying men. “You Israelites are making a choice, make the right one.”
Some Israelites chose life. Joshua did. His most famous words were his public profession of his choice; he told the people, “if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Today we would say, ‘if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourself this day whom you will serve, whether the world, your own flesh, or the devil, but as for me and my household we will serve the Lord.’ There are only two ways.
Today Zoe has publicly declared that she will serve the Lord. She has declared that she has chosen life; “Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to Him.”
You can know that you have chosen life if you long for total devotion to the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength. You can know that you have chosen life if you listen to God’s voice with the sense that this word is binding upon you. You can know that you have chosen life if your supreme goal in life to hold fast to God. That is verse 19, “Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to Him.”
If you know that what you’ve just heard is not true of you, you are not on the path to life. It shouldn’t surprise us to find that some members of the covenant community are not on the path to life. Moses spoke the words we are studying to the covenant community of his day. He wouldn’t have needed to speak these words if everyone in the covenant community was walking towards life. Jesus spoke the following words to the covenant community of his day, “Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
Don’t imagine that you are on the way of life simply because you are part of what is called the church. Inspect yourself. Inspect yourself by the response of verse 19, “love the Lord your God, listen to His voice, and hold fast to Him.”
Peter gives us a perfect example of the proper response of what is called ‘discipleship’ in John 6. Many of Jesus’ followers had turned away because they couldn’t stomach his teaching. Jesus asked the original disciples if they were going to leave too. Peter responded, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.” That is verse 19 in action, “love the Lord your God, listen to His voice, and hold fast to Him.” Jesus devoted all his heart, soul, and strength for me. It is fitting that I devote my heart, soul, and strength to him.
You know that you are on the way of life if you love Jesus with your heart, soul, and strength and wish that you did so with all your heart, soul, and strength. You know that you are on the way of life if you keep listening to and submitting yourself to Jesus’ voice in his word, which is the only place you hear it. You know that you are on the way of life if you hold fast to Jesus saying with Peter, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”
There is a way that leads to life and a way that leads to death and you are on one or the other. If you are on the way to life, please take this word from God as an encouragement which you desperately need in this world of temptation. You, my friend, are walking towards life eternal when Christ will say “well done, good and faithful servant… now enter into the joy of your master.”
If you are not on that way of life, you are on the way of death and I beg you to turn around, or, in other words, repent. Do not be ever hearing, but never understanding; ever seeing, but never perceiving. Repent of your sin, my friend, and ask for what you know you need: a new heart that longs to obey God.
There is no in between in this matter. You are going with the flow on the path of destruction or you are moved by the very Spirit of God to walk the path of life. You will stand before God one day and in that moment, receive the verdict of either life or death. Choose life. Amen.