W. Robert Godfrey (0:00)

The Word is to be in your heart and in your soul. I hope that's why you're here today studying Deuteronomy. You long to have the Word living in your soul. That's why Protestant churches have devoted so much time and energy to the preaching of the Word and to the learning of the Word, because it really is our life. As Deuteronomy will say at its end,

Nathan W. Bingham (0:28)

All Scripture is breathed out by God and prophet orders for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. This is what the Apostle Paul teaches us in a letter to Timothy. And it's why on Renewing youg Mind, we seek to study all of Scripture. Welcome to the Thursday edition of Renewing youg Mind. I'm your host, Nathan W. Bingham. As we seek to study all of God's Word, some sections can be easier to understand than others. The regulations we read in the Old Testament, they can seem strange to our modern ears. How should we understand these passages about shellfish blending fabrics and boiling goats in their mother's milk? Well, this week on Renewing youg Mind, W. Robert Godfrey is showing us that we have much to learn from Deuteronomy and from God's law. This is your final day to request digital access to the Entire series, the DVD and the study guide with your gift at renewingyourmind.org this offer will end at midnight tonight, so don't wait. Secure your copy while there's still time. So how does the Book of Deuteronomy help us to live as Christians in the 21st century? Here's Dr. Godfrey.

W. Robert Godfrey (1:52)

We return now to Deuteronomy and to a new section of Deuteronomy. We've got to the third step on our step, pyramid laws about loving God. And this is a very important section in part because it really helps us to think about the law relative to God and to show God's intention is that the law should be personal connection with him, not just, as I said in an earlier lecture, an accounting procedure to mark off how well we're doing. And we can see that, I think, in the way this section begins, chapter 10 at verse 12, Moses says, Now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? It's a great question, isn't it, posed in other places in the Scriptures? But what is said here in answer to this, what does the Lord require of you? What does his law insist on but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to Love him to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord which I am commanding you today for your good. Here's the very essence of it. God has entered into covenant with his people for their good. And what does he want from them? He wants them to fear him and obey him and love him and serve him. It almost sounds like a wedding ceremony, doesn't it? Here's a pledge that God has given to his people and that he's asking of them. This is the heart of the law. This is the core of the law. And it's so beautifully expressed here, it's so powerfully stated about the relationship that God would have with his people. And he goes on, behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Yet the Lord set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them. You above all peoples, as you are this day. And it's as if Moses is saying here, the Lord already had everything. He didn't need you, but he loved you. He placed his love upon you. And how that should determine your relationship with him. Your eagerness to know his law and to serve Him. You know, in the history of the Church, a number of great catechisms have been written. And it's my obligation as a Dutch reform minister to say the greatest of them all was the Heidelberg Catechism. And the Heidelberg Catechism is divided into three parts. The first short part is on guilt or on sin. And the second part is on grace, how we're delivered from sin. And then the third part of the catechism is on gratitude, how we live a life of gratitude before the Lord for the grace and deliverance he has shown to us. And that's sort of what we find here, that we are called to serve the Lord, to live for the Lord, to love the Lord out of gratitude for the great work that he has done in saving us. So Moses is saying, the Lord placed his love on you. And he goes on there to say, circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn. He had said, you're a stubborn people. Don't be stubborn anymore. Cut your heart so that covenant will exist between me and you. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the Lord your God, you shall serve him and hold fast to him, and by his name you shall swear he is your praise, he is your God, who has done for you these great and terrifying things that you have seen. It's a remarkable statement, a remarkable call to love. And it's almost as if Moses can't quite keep exclusively on the subject of loving God. He's got to also talk about loving the neighbor, loving the sojourner among you. This was articulated really well in some writings by Marilyn Robinson, if you're familiar at all with her. She's become somewhat famous as a novelist. She's written three bestselling novels, which doesn't always mean you're a novelist, but she's really a very fine writer, very sensitive about a Protestant minister from several different angles. It's set in Iowa, so it's not your typical Manhattan novel. And she is, it would appear to be a rather liberal Protestant, but is remarkably acquainted with the Scriptures and with the book of Deuteronomy in particular. And what was even more startling to me was in reading an essay she wrote about Moses in Deuteronomy was to realize she had read very carefully John Calvin's sermons on Deuteronomy. Well, those sermons run to almost 1,000 pages, I think, and they're in Old English. They, they're not at all easy to read. And yet she was very conversant with them and really praised Moses for the gentleness, the compassion in many ways of his law. She offered the example that in 18th century Britain there were many, many crimes that were punishable by death. And many of those crimes were crimes of theft. And she said, by comparison, in Moses law, no one is put to death for stealing something. They're punished, they have to make restitution, but it's not a capital crime to steal something. And so she's talking about the humanity and the love that's embedded in the law of Moses and how much it's oriented towards building community. And that essay is really fascinating and I think actually captures very effectively something that is going on here in these texts and reminds us that we want a community of love, love of God, love of the neighbor in the church that shines in a dark world with a wonderful testimony to us being a separate, a different people. And Moses goes on then to again remind this people of their own history and what they ought to learn from that history. Verse 22 of chapter 10. Your fathers went down to Egypt 70 persons. And now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven. This is a remarkable church growth passage from 70 to millions. Who has done this? The Lord has done. This is the blessing of the Lord. Israel could have starved in Egypt. Israel could have died out in Egypt. Israel could have drowned in the Red Sea coming out of Egypt. Israel could have perished in the wilderness. But the Lord preserved them, and not only preserved them, but blessed them so that they grew dramatically. And I do think, again, this is something for the church to think about, that the church grows by the blessing of God. The church grows in our day by the blessing of God. And we see that happening in parts of the world that we may not be living in, but in parts of the world that have seen remarkable growth of the church. One of the great examples of that is China in the 20th century. The great irony that after 100 years or more of Protestant missionary work in China, the church was very small and struggling. But when the missionaries were thrown out and the Communists took over, the church began to grow much more dramatically and quickly. By the blessing of God. Now, I don't say that to blame the missionaries or suggest they did something wrong, but it shows that the Lord can accomplish things beyond what we would imagine. It's maybe the hornet principle we talked about before. He can overcome enemies by the smallest hornet. He can grow his church in the most difficult circumstances. And we mustn't get discouraged that the church is not growing as we might hope and pray in America today, but it is growing in the world. And the Lord is blessing and the Lord is accomplishing that great truth. And so the Lord says, teach your children that. Teach them our history. We see that also here. Chapter 11, verse 2. And consider today, since I am not speaking to your children who have not known or seen it, consider the discipline of the Lord, your God, his greatness, his mighty hand, his outstretched arm, his signs and deeds that he did in Egypt to Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. Moses is saying, the day is passing when the people who actually saw Pharaoh defeated will all be gone. And then you're going to have to teach those things to your children. I'm beginning to experience that as an old man, that things I assume are kind of universally known just aren't known anymore. Now, some of those things don't really matter. I had a joke I used to use in church history class about Mae west. And I used that a year or two ago, and not one student in the class had ever heard of Mae West. Now, this is not the end of Western civilization, but it was surprising to me. And just the other day I mentioned Mae west made a movie with a young Cary Grant. Same reaction. Students had never heard of Cary Grant. Now I'm really feeling old. But much more importantly, I was born in 1945. So I don't personally remember the Second World War, but it was such an alive reality in the experience of my parents generation that I felt like I remembered the Second World War. And now you talk to young people and the Second World War is like ancient history. I mean, it's so far removed that they don't feel any kind of personal connection with it. Well, that happens. There's not much we can do about that. But what Moses is saying, when you think about the great saving works of God in history, don't let your children forget them. Don't let them pass from the collective memory and knowledge. And it's a great commission for the educational work of the church. And again, I think one of my concerns is to look around and I feel Bible knowledge in American churches has really declined in the last 50 years. The only way to address that is to work harder at it, work better at it, no doubt, but also to work harder at it, devote time to it. And Moses is encouraging that, that we would see that to remember God's triumphs as he triumphed over Pharaoh, but also to remember God's judgments. One of the things he talks about here is Korah's rebellion in the wilderness and how the Lord had to overcome that rebellion against Moses and against his leadership. Look at verse 5 in Deuteronomy 11. He's been talking about the great victory over Pharaoh at the Red Sea. And he goes on to say in verse five, and what God did to you in the wilderness until you came to this place, and what he did to Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, the son of Reuben, how the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up with their households, their tents, and every living thing that followed them in the midst of all Israel. So here's one of the great judgments in the wilderness, Korah's rebellion against the Lord, in which he was joined by Nathan and Abiram. And notice how Moses tells this story. Do you notice what he doesn't mention in the story? He doesn't use the name of Korah. Korah's name is too vile to be repeated, is the implication here. But of course, the implication is also that people will be so well acquainted with this story that they'll know immediately what he's talking about. And this is another of the the reasons why it's so important for us to really know our Bible history. I was thinking about that relative to the golden calf, which I said was so prominent in parts of the Old Testament. But Paul almost does the same thing in 1 Corinthians about the golden calf that Moses here in Deuteronomy 11 is doing with Korah. Because in 1 Corinthians 10, verse 7, Paul says, Do not be idolaters, as some of them were. As it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. That was said of the people as they danced around the golden calf. So Paul doesn't mention the golden calf, but he alludes to it. And he assumes that we'll be well enough acquainted with the scriptures that we'll recognize that and understand that. And I guess we could say the application would be, if the Corinthians can know about the golden calf, we ought to be able to know about the golden calf and know this history and treasure it as the way in which we come to know the Lord and to depend upon Him. And he promises then again that blessing. And he does it in a rather interesting way. I thought, if any of you are farmers, you'll appreciate this, and maybe you'll appreciate even if you're not a farmer. Verse 10 of chapter 11. He's talking about the blessing of a land flowing with milk and honey. And then he says, for the land that you are entering to take possession of is not like the land of Egypt from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated it like a garden of vegetables. But the land that you are going over to take possession of is a land of hills and valleys which drinks water by the rain from heaven. A land that the Lord your God cares for. The eyes of the Lord your God are always upon it from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. He's talking about the different kind of farming in Israel as opposed to Egypt. In Egypt, farming was entirely dependent on the flooding of the Nile every year. And there was a waterworks and irrigation works that was used to distribute that Nile flood water to the growing areas of Egypt. And the flooding of the Nile was so almost automatic, so reliable, that it was very, very rare for there to be a year of drought and apparently still visit Egypt and see where the priests measured the rise of the Nile every year. The flooding was so predictable. And they would know by the flooding of the Nile whether It be a really prosperous year of crops, or a moderate one, or a dangerously low one. But it was all done by irrigation. Reminds me a little bit of California. California is entirely dependent on irrigation. There is no rain in California in the summer, just like Florida. Now, maybe Florida's a little different, but in California, you could grow nothing in the Central Valley if you depended on rainwater. It just doesn't rain in the summer. But God is saying, I'm bringing you to a different land, a land where you will farm on the basis of rain and you will have crops only when it rains. And God is saying, and that should be a picture for you, that your blessing comes from heaven. It doesn't come from the work of your hands. It doesn't come from the cleverness of your irrigation canals. It only comes when I send it, and I send it frequently enough that you can be presumptuous about it. But don't be presumptuous. I will send it to bless you, and I'll withhold it if you are not faithful. So here is that Deuteronomic notion of blessing that is being articulated here. But it's interesting how God uses what we think of as natural things to illustrate spiritual points for his people, and how important that is, how valuable that is, and how important a lesson it really is. And then verse 14 of chapter 11, Moses says, God will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, that you may gather in your grain and your wine and your oil. And then we have one of those kind of summary statements again, calling us back to the word at verse 18 of chapter 11. You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes, and you shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise, you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give them as long as the heavens are above the earth. Now you might say to yourself, moses needs an editor. He already said that in chapter six, several verses there, just a quotation of chapter six. But a good preacher knows that not everyone is paying attention all the time, and that therefore there's a value to repetition. There's a value to reiterating what you're saying, and Moses is certainly doing that here. But again, notice the Word is to be in your heart and in your soul. It's to live in you. I hope that's why you're here today studying Deuteronomy, because you long to have the Word living in your soul. That's why Protestant churches have devoted so much time and energy historically to the preaching of the Word and to the teaching of the Word and to the learning of the Word, because it really is our life, as Deuteronomy will say at its end, and is so important. So verse 32 of chapter 11 summarizes this sort of general introduction to loving God with this very familiar word. You shall be careful to do all the statutes and the rules that I'm setting before you today. That theme of carefulness returning to again and again. And it's preceded immediately by a statement about how the day is coming when you'll stand on Mount Ebal and on Mount Gerizim and you'll hear curses and blessings. And that will remind you of the obligation to serve the Lord faithfully, carefully. And that's a hint of what then will be described in more detail in Deuteronomy 27. So this book is very carefully put together. It's carefully put together to encourage us to be careful.