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Deuteronomy 5:16-6:9

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2/2/1997
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Deuteronomy 5:16-6:9
Deuteronomy 5:16-6:9
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05 Deuteronomy - 1996

The book of Deuteronomy is the giving of the Mosaic Law to a new generation of Israelites at the end of their wanderings. Skip Heitzig tells the story of God's continuing grace to His people.

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We're in Deuteronomy tonight, chapter 5. This is the second speech that Moses gives, the second oration, the children of Israel spread before him out in the desert highlands of Moab, possibly overlooking the Promised Land. Certainly you can see it from the heights of Jordan, the mountain of Nebo, where Moses looked at the land but never entered. He died there. A new generation of the children of Israel are spread out before him. And what Moses does, he goes over for the new generation, the kids who are now adults, the law. Now, I want to do a little bit of review tonight before we jump into our study.

We didn't finish the Ten Commandments, and so we're going to finish them tonight and get into chapter 6, but a little review, great. So Moses goes up to Mount Sinai. It was Moses who went up to the mountain. The people--we're going to read about it, Moses reviews it for the new generation. The people heard God speaking and they were so afraid that they would die, they basically said, "Hey, listen, Moses, God is speaking, that's really neat, but, you know, we could die. So why don't you go. After all, you know, you're just one person. You might die, that's fine. But you go and speak to God, let God talk to you. You get his commandments, and then you tell us whatever God tells you, and we'll do everything God says."

So Moses goes up to Mount Sinai, God speaks to him, and when Moses descends from this mount the children of Israel, of course, are in idolatry. And they may have made a golden calf, and Moses smashes the Ten Commandments, and later on he has to make a new set. But he made a covenant out in the desert in the middle of nowhere, just rocks, dirt, horny toads, manna. God made a pact that was a lasting pact for the children of Israel in the area of Horeb. And so they were there for a year, until finally God said, and Moses reviews this in the first chapter, "You've been at this mountain [Mount Sinai] long enough."

"You've been here, you've gotten the Law, you've gotten a blueprint of the tabernacle that you're to build in the wilderness, now it's time for you to enter the land." So they go up to Kadesh Barnea, twelve spies are sent out. Ten bring a bad report; two bring a good report. Everybody listens to the bad report, and so they do not enter the land of Israel. But we are covering the law. Moses is talking about the essence of the law. What he does is he takes in chapter 5, the Ten Commandments, the Decalogue, and says, "This is the law of life, this is God's commandment, and it covers just about everything you'll ever go through in life."

And then in chapter 6 he boils it down even further to the motivation: "Here's the law and here's the heart of God, which is love, your preservation. And God wants you to know the very heart of his nature, which is love. And you're to respond to God in love." And we already talked about the purpose of the law. God gave it to regard man. God wants us to get along with each other. And God gave it out of love for man because God loves us, because God wants us to love one another. Also, to restrain evil the law was given, because we have an evil nature. Go to a place where there is no law or where the laws are not readily observed.

There are some countries where, yes, there are traffic laws, but, you know, it doesn't matter, because it's, like, you make a beeline on the street toward a direction and you just go there. And you hope you don't hit the cow, the chicken, the policeman who's trying to get the chicken, and you just go. And to restrain, to tether the longings of the human nature, God gave graciously the commandments. The law also reveals sin. Paul bears this out in a whole chapter in Romans. He said, "You know, I wouldn't even know sin unless the law said, 'Thou shalt not . . .'And when I saw what it says I shall not do, and I thought, 'Well, huh, I do those things.'

"Now I realize they're wrong. Now the law tells me that if I do those things, it's against the law. It's sin." And so you have a sign outside that says 55 miles an hour. If there was no sign, guess what? You'd go faster. Some of you do anyway. And so it is to reveal sin, that we are lawbreakers. Then it's to reveal our need of a Savior. We need somebody to take care of the problem of the broken law. The covenant has been violated. The Ten Commandments have not been kept. Anybody who says, "I live by the Ten Commandments," just broke one: "Thou shalt not bear false witness." [laughter] They just lied.

Because we will see that the law covers not only the outward actions, but--what?--the inward motivation, the thought processes. One that comes to mind most readily is "Thou shalt not covet." That's an inward action. That's something nobody sees you doing. You know, nobody walks up to you and says, "You know, I saw you coveting the other day." [laughter] It's a thought process. It's in the heart. So the law reveals my heart, but then it reveals that I need a Savior. The Law is broken up into two sections. There are two tablets of the Law, you might say.

The first covers our relationship to God. That's what the first four commandments were given for. God said, "I am the Lord your God, you will have no other gods before me." We live in a monotheistic world even though there are polytheistic religions. There is Hinduism, and the ancient religious were polytheistic, the Egyptians were polytheistic, the Assyrians were, the Babylonians were. But Israel had a covenant with a singular Deity, the omnipotent God, the only true God. And God said, "Remember that, that's number one on the list. I'm it. And I don't want competition. I don't do well with competition."

God said, "I'm a jealous God." You say, "Why is he so jealous?" Because he is the only true God; everything else is a false God, it's a made-up god. There are no other gods, really, it's only the imaginations and the idolatry of men's minds. There's only one true God. The second commandment is because he's the only true God he demands an exclusive kind of a worship. An image cannot portray the nature of God. You can carve an image or paint a picture of Jesus, and it reveals a certain character, a certain mental feeling that you get when you look at it, but it doesn't really capture the total personality of God.

So any image, even all images put together, never reveal the true nature of God because God transcends any limitation that you could put on him by virtue of an image. So, "I'm spirit, worship in spirit and in truth. No carved images." Number three, we're not to take his name in vain. God's name is sacred, it is holy, and the Jews, as we said last time we were together for this study, never even mentioned the name of God. They simply called God "the Name," Hashem in Hebrew. And then the fourth and the final one on the list of the first tablet of the Law: observe the Sabbath. This is God's maintenance law for mankind: "Take a rest--that's a command."

Now, why would God give a command to rest? Because God knows us. God knows that we think: "Oh, it's a day off, okay, I've got fifteen things I've got to do: clean the garage, do the garden, do the car . . ." And so God gave the children of Israel: "Hey, hang out one day. It's an order." It's the same order Jesus gave to his disciples when he said--okay, after their journey around the Sea of Galilee, their circuit. He said, "Come aside." And it's in the imperative in the Greek language. "Come aside by yourselves for a while and rest." So that's the first tablet of the Law.

But God then gave six more commandments that would comprise the rest of Ten Commandments, the second tablet of the Law, our relationship with each other that we want to cover tonight. We're to honor your parents; the sanctity of the home is preserved. We're not to murder; the sanctity of life is preserved. There's to be no adultery; the holiness of marriage itself. "You shall not steal"; the sanctity of private property. Nine, you don't lie or bear false witness against your neighbor. And "You shall not covet." These are God's commandments that he made with the children of Israel.

Tonight we begin with then the fifth commandment in verse 16, "Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may be well with you in the land which the Lord your God is giving you." Notice the hint of the heart of God: "Here's a commandment, and first on the list in relationship to your fellow man is that you honor your parents, because I want your life to go well. I want the best for you." I don't know why people would resist the commandments of God. Which of the commandments of God can you find that is really a bummer, really a drag? All of them were given out of love.

God wants you to live your life to the max, to have the fullest most enriched possible existence you could have, and so he gave to Israel these laws. "That it might go well with you," it also says, "that your days may be long." It could be that what God was referring to was what was expanded on in this commandment. In the book of Leviticus, which is sort of an expansion of all of these laws, there is a list of sins by which, if the children of Israel were to commit them, they were to be--at that time, they would suffer the death penalty: false gods; or idolatry; homosexuality; bestiality, that is, having sexual relationships with an animal. God had to write a commandment about that.

And honoring your father and your mother. In fact it says, "Cursed is the one who curses his father or mother." He was to have capital punishment at that era of time in Jewish history, and then God said, "His blood shall be upon him." So here's a commandment: "Honor your parents so you'll live a long life. So it will go well with you in the land which the Lord your God is giving to you." Now, of course, that law is not in effect today, the idea of capital punishment for dishonoring your parents. Believe me, if it were, I wouldn't be around [laughter] and probably you wouldn't be around either. There is a problem, it's a growing problem, it's called respect for parents.

I know about this personally, not because I have a rebellious child, but because I is [sic] one. I grew up as a very rebellious--I questioned everything. I fought everything. I fought for my position, I was angry at my parents, and thus I broke this commandment. It is estimated that every year there are eight million, eight million, serious assaults on parents by children where a child would assault mom or dad in this country a year, eight million. God says you're to honor them, not assault them. The word "honor" is the word in Hebrew kabad/kabed, which literally means to weigh, or to add weight to, or to make heavy is the idea.

And if you were to translate this very, very literally in the raw, it's this: add weight to your parents, or make heavy your parents. That doesn't mean feed them well so that they become obese. [laughter] The idea behind the word is to add weight to what they say and to their position as your parent. Let that weigh heavily in your life. Honor them. Respect them. Add weight to what they say by virtue of their position, by virtue of their experience. Something that I really never did till later on when I was a teenager, like many teenagers. It doesn't have to be this way, but, you know, I did question everything.

As a teenager I--especially when my dad would sit me down for a talk, you know, I would just--I'd but the on the whole attitude deal: the folding of the arms, the little eye thing, the little head. You know, my dad should have just slapped me upside the head. [laughter] And he did a few times. [laughter] "Preach it!" they're saying. [laughter] There's a parent of a teenager. [laughter] It means respect. I remember in high school my friends would say, "My old man said . . ." and "my old lady," and that meant their parents. My brother was fond of losing the title "Dad" and started calling my dad by his first name.

Now he called mom "Mom," but he called dad "Lou." He'd say, "Mom and Lou," and, you know, even though I was a rebellious teenager, I had a semblance of values. [laughter] And even I said, "You shouldn't do that, Rick. He's not Lou to you, he's still Dad to you. He's still your father." But he had lost respect, he said, so he called him by his first name till much later on in life. If you visit the South, one of the things that to me was astonishing is the level of respect that's built into Southern culture, something that as a Californian, respect really wasn't a part of our culture.

The first time I went to the South and they called me, "Yes, sir," "No, sir," I thought, you know, that they thought I was a police officer or something. [laughter] When I first met Franklin Graham and he met my wife, I introduced him to my wife here, and he said, "Yes, ma'am," "No, ma'am." And when a woman would enter the room, he'd stand up. And, you know, to me this was foreign culture. It's good. In fact, I thought, "I like that. I'm want to start teaching that myself." But just the respect built in. You're to respect your parents. You're to appreciate your parents. Even if you say, "Yeah, my parents were crummy, you know, they . . ."

Hey, listen, I had my bouts with them too, but, you know, it wasn't until after our son was born that I really started to appreciate all that my parents had to put up with, of the sacrifice. My mom had to raise four boys, and just sort of shift gears: "This is my occupation in life is to raise these four little brats--these four little boys [laughter] that they become good boys." That's what she gave her life to. That's what she delighted in. And if for nothing else, appreciate the sheer value monetarily of that. You know, it's estimated it costs to raise a kid from birth to eighteen, $250,000 by today's standards.

A quarter of a million dollars to raise--I mean, that's soccer fees, baseball uniforms, gas to run them back and forth to school or to these events, on and on and on. So, honor, preserving the sanctity of the home. And then the sixth commandment: "You shall not murder" Now, you think, "Well, that's pretty obvious." And it is obvious, but, you know, man has always had a problem with it from the earliest of times, from the book of Genesis. The first homicide was Adam and Eve's kids, Cain and Abel. Cain killed Abel. It began with anger and really that's where it all begins.

That's why Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, "You have heard that it has been said, 'You shall not murder,' but I say unto you, if you're angry with your brother without a cause, you're guilty of the judgment." And that's where murder begins, with anger. The Bible tells us that Abel was a keeper of the sheep; Cain was a tiller of the ground. In the process of time they brought offerings to the Lord, and God respected Abel's offerings, but he had no respect for Cain's offering. It says that "Cain was angry, and his countenance fell." Another--it's a King James way of saying he was bummed out and he showed it with his body language visually.

And so God has to come to him and ask him, "Why art thou bummed out?" [laughter] "Why are you so angry? If you lived right, I'd respect your offering. If you don't live right, it's because sin is at the door, it's trying to master you, but you must control it, or you must--or you should have control over this sin." Well, in the process of time again it happened that they were out in the field together, and Cain was angry and jealous at his brother, and so he killed him. But it all began with sinful anger. And so in the commandment, murder--you could say, "Well, I'm off the hook. I've never killed anybody."

But have you killed them with your looks, with your thoughts? Again, Jesus said, "If you're angry with your brother without a cause, you're a murderer." Because that's where murder begins. The seed of murder is that hateful, spiteful anger. The thoughts of, "Oh, I could kill him!" Could you? Would you? If everything was just right, nobody found out? If there weren't the restraints of the law? "You shall not murder." Every year 25,000 people are murdered in our country. That's seventy people a day. That's only recorded, there are some that are investigated, but never found out specifically.

They're usually not recorded in those statistics. Add to that suicide, self-murder; add to that abortion, that's murder. Life is sacred to God by virtue of the fact though God made it. This is God's work, and man is different, in that man is the image of God: "God said, 'Let us make man in our image.' In the image of God made he man." So that life reflects the creator in a very unique way. To terminate that life, and I believe life begins the time a zygote is formed in the womb, when the sperm and the egg unite, and there is a division of cells, and the genetic code is there to have a human being be fully developed. That's all there, the DNA is from the beginning onward.

Our country is guilty year after year after year of countless millions of murders. You say, "Well, I believe in freedom of choice." So do I. You can choose to be promiscuous or to be chaste, but once life, not your life, another life is formed in a womb, the choice is ended. Now there is responsibility for the other life. [applause] And that, that zygote turned embryo, turned fetus, if it had a voice, and you were to say, interview it, "Hey, listen, would you like to die?" What would be that choice? It's sacred life. Even Job who was sorely afflicted, and he cursed today of his birth, "I wish I was never born."

But he didn't terminate his life because of that. Even as difficult a life as he lived, he saw that life was sacred and it was from God. So, the commandment of God: "You shall not murder." Verse 18, "You shall not commit adultery." Now God is preserving the sanctity of marriage. As soon as God created man and woman on the earth, he came up with a wonderful idea of getting them together. He created man, excuse me, on the earth. And after his creation the first thing he did--he didn't make government, he made a family.

He looked at man and he said, "It's not good that man should be alone. I will make a helper that is suitable for him, somebody that will blossom him and bring him into complete fulfillment." So God made a woman. And Adam looked at the woman and said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." Now that doesn't sound that romantic. Because it is the Hebrew language, it's difficult to translate it. But scholars tell us that there is in that a packed-full-of-emotion statement. I think a better way to translate it is when he saw Eve he went, "Wow! Awesome! This is what God did from me, God made her." He was approving of it.

It was like, "This is great! Yes, Lord!" It was an emotion. "She shall be called woman because he was taken out of man." And God brought them together. "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife," which in Hebrew is "glued permanently," not go steady, and then quit, and then break up, and divorce, and marry somebody else, permanently. "And cleave unto his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." So God brought them together, and here he is preserving that union by saying, "You shall not commit adultery." God is not saying sex is wrong, he's saying sex outside of marriage is wrong.

God gave--when God put man and woman on the earth, "they were both naked, and not ashamed." Why should they be? God gave us an urge, several urges. They're not bad; they're to keep you alive. You have an urge to breathe. I could prove it. I could plug your nose and your mouth and watch. [laughter] You'd do everything you could to break my hold to get air. You have the urge to eat. Halfway through the day if you haven't eaten, you go, "Man, I'm hungry." Of course, we say, "I'm starving to death!" [laughter] And so you fulfill, or you seek to fulfill, depending on what budget you have that day, the urges is to keep your body alive by putting food in it.

You have the thirst to drink. You have the drive for water, hydration. God gave you a drive, a sexual drive: one, to perpetuate humanity, to keep us all going on the earth. If we didn't have it, we wouldn't be around long. But also for pleasure between a husband and a wife. The urges that are God-given must also be God-governed. And God set lovingly his parameter. Here's his box--enjoy sex. Here's the bounds--marriage; monogamy; one man, one woman, for one lifetime. That's his intention. That can be violated and there are other things involved, and even certain things that God would sanction in terms of remarriage and divorce under a certain violation of the martial bond. But that's God's original intention.

That's the parameter: "Don't commit adultery." And God, through Solomon, in the book of Proverbs talks about the relationship; doesn't he? And he said to the man, "Drink water from your own cistern"; that is, go home and get it at home. "And let your wife's breasts satisfy you at all times. Don't be ravished with the love of a stranger." It's like fire. Fire's neat inside of a fireplace. But take the fire out of the fireplace, put it on your coffee table. [laughter] You might for a few minutes go, "This is cool! This is new and exciting and different." But it's only cool for a little while then you get burned bad.

God knew what he was doing when he gave these commandments; don't look at them as negative. "Man, it's so negative--'Thou shalt not.' " It's positive. Think of the other side. If you saw a sign on a door, you're walking down the hallway and it said, "Do Not Enter." You go, "That's so negative. There's no love in that commandment." Well, read the next line: "Do Not Enter, Danger! Explosives." I would say that sign was put there because somebody loves you. If somebody didn't love you, it would say, "Please Enter." [laughter] And then another sign: "Pull This Lever." [laughter]

So God didn't say, "Have several partners," God wants your life full, fulfilled, and so he's protecting the relationship of marriage. "You shall not commit adultery." The eighth commandment is found in verse 19, "You shall not steal." Again, it's always been a problem with mankind. When God gave the Law, and he qualified this commandment, he told the children of Israel what they're to do and not do for this commandment of stealing. They built watchtowers because thieves could come into vineyards and steal grapes or crops or animals. So watchtowers were built to watch thieves.

And one of the commandments is "You shall not move border stones." If you ever go to Israel, you'll understand what that means. You can't get it here. You'll see piles of rocks everywhere. And the pile of rocks is the boundary line of your property. You might have one big stone piled up on top of one other big stone, and that's where your property begins and the other one is where your property ends. What these guys would do is in the middle of night when you're sleeping is just get up and move the stones a few feet. You get up in the morning, it's just--it's not much.

But, you know, do that over a period of time and you've just got more land. You could steal your neighbor's land by just moving the boundary stone a little bit. "You shall not steal," God is protecting private property. It's not yours you didn't earn it. He doesn't owe it to you. You'll steal it if you try to apprehend it by an unlawful means, so, "You shall not steal." Let me apply that. There's a number of ways we can steal. We can steal from our employer. We can call in sick when we're not sick, and thus rob him of a full day's work when he pays us. We can steal things from the office: "Oh, he won't miss this typewriter computer desk." [laughter]

Could be little things like pencils, till pretty soon you have an arsenal of pens and pencils in your own home. You can come to work late, leave early, take longer lunches, use the phone for personal phone calls like long-distance calls that you shouldn't be making. Some company's don't keep track of it, others do. You can also steal from your employees by not paying them when you should pay them, by not paying them what's fair. You can steal by not paying your bills on time, I think, is one way to look at it. I'm very--personally I feel strongly about paying, giving a good testimony as a believer to the world, a good reputation. "There's somebody who pays up what they owe."

You can steal from the government by not paying your taxes. Some of you feel like, "Well, the government's ripping me off." And there are taxes, and it looks like the taxes can and will get worse and worse, but you still pay them. Romans 13 tells you to pay those taxes. You say, "Yeah, but when Paul wrote that he didn't have our tax codes." You're right, he had worse. They paid a lot more taxes than you and I pay in the United States of America, and Caesar Nero was the guy in charge. It all went to the most corrupt form of government, one of the most corrupt forms that every existed. All right, don't steal.

Verse 20, the ninth commandment, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." The character of God is truth. He is true, and when we worship, we're to worship God "in spirit and in truth." And God wants us to live our lives in the light, in truth. And because this reflects God's character, God's kids should have God's character, and bearing false witness should not be named among us. I think this includes slander, spreading stories, lies, misrepresentations; in a malicious way "I'm gonna just tell everybody about you," just to discredit your reputation, that's bearing false witness.

Gossip, exaggeration, can be a form of bearing false witness. Flattery can be a form: "Oh, man, you're so awesome. I really love you." But what if you're saying that just to get something out of the guy? That's a lie. You don't think he's awesome, because as soon as he says no, you think, "That creep!" [laughter] That's bearing false witness. We have to search our own hearts in terms of truthfulness, don't we? I heard of even a minister who saw a group of kids on a Boston street corner. They were all around a stray dog and they were all in a circle whispering. And he comes up and says, "What are you kids doing?"

He says, "Well, we found this stray dog, and we're all telling lies, and whoever tells the biggest lie gets to have the dog." And the minister said, "I can't believe it. That's so wrong, so sinful. When I was your age, I never lied." And the kid said, "I guess he wins the dog." [laughter] Righteous lying. Verse 21 is something that Paul said when he read it absolutely slayed him. "You shall not covet." And now it says, "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife; you shall not desire your neighbor's house, his field, his manservant, his maidservant, his ox, his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's."

Now here is something that is not an action at first, it's an attitude. And that's why Paul said, "When I read 'thou shalt not covet,' then I saw that the purpose of the law was not just to govern my outward actions, but my inward attitudes. I looked at that and said, you know, up to this point I thought I was righteous in keeping the law, but I found out I have rotten attitudes." There's an interesting translation of this word. I don't know right off the bat what the word is in the Hebrew language, which it's primarily written in, but if you take the Greek language, the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, or translated into the New Testament in Greek, it's the Greek word epithumeó.

It comes from two words: epi, upon, or an intensified version of a verb; and thumos, which means heat. It means to burn after passionately. It's the New Testament word translated "lust." It's the same word Jesus said, "If you look at another woman and lust after her in your heart, you've committed adultery," epithumeó. That's the word translated "covet." The idea is a burning, passionate desire that drives you illicitly. There's nothing wrong with having a wife, there's nothing wrong with having an ox or donkey or a field, but if it belongs to your neighbor, then it's a problem.

If I say, "I wish I had his wife, his donkey, his field. How come I don't have his field?" Then it's a problem. "You shall not covet," that burning desire. Covetousness is an attitude, but it never stays that way, it leads to other things. That's why it needs to be checked immediately. Those desires need to be weighed before God. You see, when I covet, I am basically revealing the fact that I am dissatisfied with God. I am saying, in effect, "God hasn't been fair with me. If God really loved me, God would give me this, and he hasn't, and so I want it." David said, "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want."

Isn't it an insult to God when that's our attitude? "God hasn't given me what I think I should have, what I deserve." You ought to be glad God doesn't give you what you deserve. I'm glad God doesn't give me what I deserve, I'd be burning eternally if he did. I don't deserve--he's given me grace, unmerited favor. And covetousness also leads to other forms of sin: with Lot it led to selfishness, he wanted the well-watered plain instead of Abraham; with David it led to adultery and murder; with Judas it led to suicide and betrayal. It never stays where it is, it leads to other forms of sin.

So, " 'You shall not covet your neighbor's wife; you shall not desire your neighbor's house, his field, and manservant, maidservant, ox, donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.' These words the Lord spoke to all your assembly, in the mountain from the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness, with a loud voice; he added no more. He wrote them on two tablets of stone and he gave them to me. So it was when you heard the voice from the midst of the darkness, while the mountain was burning with fire, you came near to me, all the heads of your tribes and your elders.

"And you said: 'Surely the Lord our God has shown us his glory and his greatness, and we have heard his voice from the midst of the fire. We have seen this day that God speaks with man; and yet he still lives. Now therefore, why should we die? For this great fire will consume us; if we hear the voice of the Lord our God anymore, then we shall die.' " Now when all of this really happened, this generation, they were just little kids. He's reviewing what they--"they" meaning they and their parents, their heritage as the children of Israel--said and did back at Mount Sinai when Moses got the Law.

It was not a pleasant sight, it was a dreadful sight. It was filled with terrible sounds, terrible sights. It scared people. They didn't look at Mount Sinai and go, "Wow! This is--God's here. Oh, the presence of the Lord. Oh, I just want to stay here and fellowship with God." No. It was never meant to have that kind of reaction. It was fearful, loud noises, thunder, lightning, so much so that the whole camp of Israel was frightened. God was simply revealing his character as being holy. This is holy God about to give a covenant and make that covenant with sinful man.

So, hey, they thought, "Hey, listen, we're going to die. God's speaks, we don't want to die." Verse 26, "For who is there of all flesh who has heard the voice of the living God speaking from the midst of the fire, as we have, and lived?" You know, they're glad that they made it that far. So they say "You go near." If you were Moses, how would you feel if they said that to you? You don't feel that special as a leader when they say these kinds of things to you, right? "Hey, listen, if God speaks anymore, we might die. Moses, why don't you go? [laughter] God bless you, Moses, [laughter] be warmed and filled, and if you get back alive, tell us what God says." That's kind of the idea of that.

" 'You go and hear all that the Lord our God may say, and tell us all that the Lord our God says to you, and we shall hear and do it.' The Lord heard the voice of your words which you spoke to me, and the Lord said to me: 'I have heard the voice of the words of this people which they have spoken to you. They are right in all that they have spoken. Oh, that they had such a heart in them that they would fear me and always keep my commandments, that it might be well with them and with their children forever!' " Now, I find that extremely insightful. Here God is revealing the fact of the weakness of the law that Paul brings out in the book of Romans.

The law has its purpose, it has its place, it is a covenant that I make with God, it reveals my sinfulness, but it points to another direction, it points to a fulfillment. God even realized that these people that I'm making this covenant with don't even have the heart within them to continually keep my commandments. So God gave them a standard that God knew that they themselves would not break. You say, "Why would he do that?" Well, God has another plan, this is to lead them to the time when he will bring his own Son, the only one who ever kept all of the law, lived a perfect life, kept all of the dictates of the law of Moses.

And then he died to redeem us from the curse of the broken law we could never keep, so that we would be made right with God by that one act; rather than "I'm going to bring a lamb every day, and bring a sacrifice every year, and get my life right with God, and confess my sins, and go do them again. And confess them again." That would be ended in Christ. So the law would be a covenant, but it would ultimately reveal the weakness of men. This is what Paul says in Romans, chapter 3, "Whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may become guilty before God.

"Therefore by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified." I like to use a little poem that sort of sums this up: "Do this and live, the law commands, but gives me neither feet nor hands. A better word the gospel brings, it bids me fly and then it gives me wings." That is really the intention behind the first chapter of the gospel of John: "For the law was given by Moses, but grace came through Jesus Christ." So Paul writes in Galatians, "The law was a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ," a paidagógos. It was a Greek person, a paidagógos.

And the paidagógos took the kids when they were young and tutored them and schooled them. And then, finally, when they were of age brought them to a school where they sat and listened to the teacher. And the paidagógos would take and introduce the child to the teacher, the teacher to the child, and now a new relationship: "I've done my job. I'm the tutor. I've done the preliminaries. I've told them they need a teacher, that's you. I'm out of the picture now. I've fulfilled my position." Paul said that's the position of the law. It points to a Savior.

And once we come to Jesus Christ we're not under the law anymore, it's fulfilled in Christ. You say, "How is it fulfilled in Christ?" Easy, now you follow the Savior who said, "Just love God with all of your heart, mind, soul, and strength." And we know that if you love God, you're not going to have other gods before him. If you love God, you're not going to worship him illicitly with images. If you love God, you're going to keep all of his commandments. And then Jesus said, "And love your neighbor as yourself," because if you love God, one of God's commandments is love people, "love your neighbor."

And if you love your neighbor, you're not going to kill him, you're not going to covet your neighbor's wife, you're not going to rip off his ox, you're not going to lie against him. The law of love supersedes that. And so the law introduces you to Jesus Christ. The law says, "Skip, this is Jesus. Now let me tell you something about Jesus. Jesus is the only one that kept this law. He's not a lawbreaker like you are. He's kept the law, he fulfills the law, and then he dies in your place to make you righteous. Skip, Jesus; Jesus, Skip." Now the law says, "I'm out of here," and Jesus takes over.

The law doesn't cleanse you. See, that's why it's folly to say, "I'm going to keep the commandments. I'm going to turn over a new leaf, and I'm going to live by the Ten Commandments." Well, listen, you'll do okay for a while, but the moment you discover you've coveted, the moment you discover you are angry without a cause--"I've broken the law. I violated the law." The law is like looking into a mirror. When you look into a mirror, usually, if you're honest, you say uh-oh, [laughter] because you realize nobody's perfect, and I'm not. You look at yourself, you, you--"Oh, that's what I look like."

You wake up in the morning and there's a smudge on your face, and your hair is, like we said before, is doing a rooster. And you think, "Man, I gotta fix that." It tells you the truth, but the mirror, like the law, doesn't cleanse you. You don't take the mirror off the wall and swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh. [laughter] It lacks the capacity. Jesus, his blood, is the cleansing soap for your life. He lived the perfect life, he died the substitutionary death, and so the law introduces you to him, points the way to him. So he says, "Oh that they had a heart in them."

That's why in Jeremiah a new covenant is predicted. Remember that? "I'll make a new covenant with them." And God says, "I'll give them a new heart and write my law on their hearts," so it's inside of them. " 'Go and say to them, "Return to your tents." But as for you,' " verse 31, " 'stand here by me, and I will speak to you all the commandments, the statutes, the judgments which you shall teach them, that they may observe them in the land which I am giving them to possess.' Therefore you shall be careful to do as the Lord your God has commanded you; you shall not turn aside to the right hand or the left.

"You shall walk in all the ways which the Lord your God has commanded you, that you may live, that it may be well with you, that you may prolong your days in the land which you shall possess." Stop for a moment. Before we get into Deuteronomy 6, to the heart of the law, we'll have a little bit of time. God gave them the law and said do it. Now, they did it, but then they broke it. When they broke it, then what did they do? That's where the sacrificial system came in: the altars, the bulls, the shedding of blood--all the rituals came in because God gave them a covenant.

God knew they wouldn't keep it, so God gave them all of these rituals, that by the shedding of blood their sins would be remitted. Again, all of that pointed to Christ. So today aren't you glad you don't have to go get a lamb tomorrow and bring it to church next week? You feel great, the lamb's been sacrificed, but then you go out the next day and you blow it again. You think, "Better get another one." And you have to go through those rituals over and over again endlessly. And now, in Christ, the Lamb has been slain once for all, and we bring now our sins by confession under the blood of Christ.

First John, chapter 1, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, the truth is not in us." We're lying. "But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Man, that is so awesome, that is so awesome, because I blow it all the time. And I can come and confess it before God, ask him for forgiveness, ask him for a new work of the Holy Spirit to renew, to revitalize me, to give me the power to be obedient to him, and in his power go on. Now, we get to the very heart of the law, which is love.

And I love chapter 6 in Deuteronomy because it answers those people who would say, "The Old Testament God is different from the New Testament God. The Old Testament God is filled with wrath; the New Testament God is filled with love." People that say that don't read one thing--it's called the Bible. [laughter] Deuteronomy 6 is filled with love. And the book of Revelation, chapters 6 through 19, are filled with wrath, and it's the same God. In fact, it's Jesus who's doing all the judging at the end times, and he is the one that epitomizes love. He is love. But there's two aspects of the loving God in his nature.

"Now this is the commandment, and these are the statutes and judgments which the Lord your God has commanded to teach you, that you may observe them in the land which you are crossing to possess, that you may fear the Lord your God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments which I command you, you and your son and your grandson, all the days of your life, that your days may be prolonged. Therefore hear, O Israel, and be careful to observe it, that it may be well with you, that you may multiply greatly as the lord God of your fathers has promised you--'a land flowing with milk and honey.' "

Do you hear it in the voice of God? His heart for them, his desire for them is that they would prosper in the land, that God would have them enjoy the land flowing with milk and honey. He's saying, "I've got an awesome blessing for you. Don't short circuit this blessing. Don't go off in your own direction. I have such an awesome plan for you. Now walk in my path." Verse 4, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might. And these words which I have command you today shall be in your heart."

This is really the heart of Judaism, this verse. It's called the Shema, because the first Hebrew word of that commandment is Shema, Shema Yisrael, hear. It's the commandment, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one!" It's a prayer that pious Jews pray twice daily, in the morning and in the evening, as they dawn their phylacteries, and their prayer shawls. They worship God by saying, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one!" The children of Israel just came out of--where?--Egypt. How many gods did they have in Egypt? A ton of them, a whole bunch of them.

It was polytheistic. There was no one, singular, unique god. In contrast to the Egyptian's pantheon, there's the one omnipotent God. And in Egypt they discovered that God is unique, he's different from this nonsense. The problem with polytheism, one of the problems, there's many of them, but one of the problems of having all of these gods is because you have so many gods, whether it be Egyptian pantheon, or it be Hinduism, you have not one singular, omnipotent, all-powerful God, so there's no single will of God for you to follow. What is the will of God? Well, depends which god you're talking about.

The will of one god might try to usurp itself over the will of another god in Egypt. And the gods were always fighting each other. You just said, "I hope I don't tick any of them off." You placate the gods. That was the motivation of life. You'd never ask the question: "How do I know the will of God? How do I please God?" There were so many of them, it would drive you nuts. In contrast to that, Israel had one, unique, solitary God. "The Lord your God, the Lord is one!" Now the emphasis in the Hebrew word "one," the emphasis is unity rather than singularity. The Lord your God, there's unity in him.

I tell you why I bring that up, and it's inherent in the language: Jews are monotheistic. They believe in one God and one God alone, not two, not three, not eighteen--one. But Jewish people will sometimes accuse Christians of being polytheistic. They say, "You worship three Gods: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." And even Christians, I find, are confused. They think they sometimes worship three Gods. There is one God who manifests himself in three distinct persons. You say, "I don't understand completely." I say to you, neither do I, because now you're dealing with that which is infinite and you are finite.

And trying to com--the idea that you're going to comprehend God is like saying, "I'm going to fit the Pacific Ocean in my cup." You lack the capacity to contain it. The Old Testament alludes to the fact, intimates the fact of a Trinity even in Genesis. "In the beginning [Elohim] God created the heavens and the earth." Elohim is the male or masculine plural for God: El, God singular; Elo, God dual, plural; Elohim, usually more than two, often three. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," but it's that compound unity. Then you have personal pronouns used of God. This God, or literally "Gods," is called "he," singular.

But you come a little bit further in Genesis 1 and it says, "And God said," Elohim said, " 'Let us' "--personal, plural pronoun, " 'Let us make man in our image.' " Next verse, "So in the image of God he"--singular--"made man." Then in the Old Testament you have things like theophanies, these appearances of the "Angel of the Lord." You'd read the text and think, "Oh, it's just a person, perhaps an angel, and yet sometimes this figure is called God and worshiped as God, and the angel or the person accepts that worship. Then you come to the New Testament and you have a sort of a turn of events.

It's the same doctrine, but it's very manifested, it's very direct. You have Jesus being baptized, and the Father's voice is speaking to the Son, and the Holy Spirit is descending upon him. You have the formula for baptism: "Go out in all nations and baptize in the name of the Father, and the Son,"--"in the name," singular, "the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit." Also, in the New Testament the Father is called God on many occasions. Jesus Christ is called God on many occasions, contrary to what the Jehovah's Witnesses try to tell you. And the Holy Spirit is called God, Acts, chapter 5, and other places.

So they're all called God, yet in the New Testament all of these people who believed in the Trinity talked about one single God. The Lord our God in unity is one. "Shema, Yisrael: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might." You know, if you do that, you don't have to worry about, "Did I keep that commandment?" That's the heart of the law, love. And it's here in Deuteronomy, chapter 6: "And these words which I command you shall be in your heart." That's where God wants them.

Now, he's about to say, "Put them on your head, and put them on your home, and put them in your kids. But, first, keep them in your heart." You have to have it in your heart before you could put it anywhere else. Right? Abraham Lincoln said, "Train up a child in the way he should go," quoting Proverbs 22, but he said, "In order to train up your child in the way that he must go, you have to walk that way yourself." They have to be in you. It's the example of mom and dad to the nation, to the next generation. Love the Lord your God. "These words which I command you today shall be in your heart."

And then verse 3, "You shall teach them diligently to your children, shall talk of them when you sit down in your house, when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." We're really about out of time. I had the misguided notion that we'd finish chapter 6, but I think to be fair we'll stop there. But you have the word of God in your heart first, then you teach it to your kids. "Teach them diligently to your children."

Oh, there's a slide. It's a slide of a Jewish man, a grandfather in Mea Shearim, the most orthodox part of Jerusalem, with his grandson. "You shall teach them diligently." And today the Jewish people take seriously--oh, this is actually the next verse--but take seriously the mandate to teach things to their children. They spend quality hours with their kids to teach them the law of God. Then verse 8, "You shall bind them as a sign," that's what this is all about. Where did it go? Oh, there it is. "You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, they shall be as frontlets between your eyes."

Now, they have always taken this literally. And I wanted to show you these things are called phylacteries. Phylacteries is what Jesus referred to in the New Testament. They take a little box and in the little box that you see on--see if I have a mouse--see that? Is the mouse moving? Oh, it is, good. See, they bind it to their left hand and then they bind it here. There's a little box on this dude's forehead. [laughter] And then there's one here on his left hand as he's reading the law. Now, this is the commandment in Deuteronomy 6, "Bind them as a sign." And so they take a box, and in the box that's made out of leather they put a portion of the law of God.

They take Deuteronomy 6, they take Deuteronomy, chapter 11, portions of it, and Exodus, chapter 13, put it on scrolls, stick it in the box as a sign. Put it on their hand, put it on their head, some people wear it during at a day. Usually they wear it during their prayer times or their festival times, taking the Word of God literally. "Bind it on your body, it's a sign." You think, "Well, you know, that's kind of weird." I think it's kind of neat. You know there's signs all around us. You're gonna drive down the street, and you're going to see lighted neon signs inviting you to buy a product or to come and eat at a restaurant.

You're going to see signs on the freeways of loosely-clad men and women in the summer telling you to buy suntan lotion. And you get messages from signs and media all day long to smoke certain cigarettes, to drink certain forms of alcohol. And the more you subject yourself to media, you think, "Everybody does it, it's okay." So when you have the constant reminder--the Word of God, the Word of God, the Word of God, it's a good sign. It's a good message to pick up on. They're to have it on their bodies, and they put it on their bodies. In fact, this has been a longstanding tradition of Judaism throughout the Old and New Testament.

And since Jesus said, "I didn't come to break the law, transgress the law, I came to fulfill the law." I believe Jesus was bar mitzvahed and had the tefillin, the phylacteries. Though he didn't make a big deal out of it and he saw that some of hypocrites, the Pharisees, were wearing them to show off. In fact, he said, "You make broad your phylacteries." Remember that verse, Matthew? "You make broad your phylacteries." They would actually make them bigger and bigger so that people would say, "What? Guy has a big box. That's guy's into the Word. He must have, like, a whole NIV Study Bible in there or something." [laughter]

And they drew attention to themselves rather than worshiping God. "You shall write them," Verse 9, "on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." Oh, here's another picture of the phylacteries and a Jewish man worshiping. You can see the box on his forehead. His left hand has the binding of the leather thongs around, and he has his prayer shawl on, and he's worshiping the Lord. Now, verse 9, I think it's best to show you since I don't have a slide of it. I have a little thing in my hand. You can zero in on it. And this is called a mezuzah, and the word here, doorpost, is mezuzot in Hebrew, mezuzot.

And what Jewish people do and they have from the Scripture is they take little containers, reeds, or boxes--this is a piece of limestone carved in Jerusalem, and they place the same Scriptures in it. This is a tiny little scroll that begins by saying, "Shema Yisrael." It's Deuteronomy 6:4, parts of Deuteronomy 11, Exodus 13. They roll it up, they place it inside it like this, and they place it on right doorpost of their home. So if you've ever been to an orthodox home, or you go to Jerusalem, every hotel, every business has a mezuzah, the law of the Lord, as you enter the house.

In every room of the house, every hotel room, you'll see a little mezuzah, the law of God. It's to remind people--the Word of God, the Word of God, the sign, the law of God. Now, the Christian equivalent, I guess, would be putting up Scriptures in your house. You just have a plaque and a promise and you're reminded of that promise as you go. I love it. You go into homes and you see plaques of the Word of God everywhere. Or you take little cards and you write down Scriptures and you have them in your pocket and you memorize them. It's really the same thing.

You know, it's okay to have it on your head or on your hand or on your house, but you should really have it on your heart. You should have the Word of God living inside of you. And the more we study it, we realize that that's where it ought to be, that we're accountable to live and to please the Lord. So, it'll be in your heart, it'll be in your kids, you'll bind them on your hand and on your head, and you'll write them on the gates and the doorposts of your house--the Word of God.

Additional Messages in this Series

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12/22/1996
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Deuteronomy 1:1-33
Deuteronomy 1:1-33
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12/29/1996
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Deuteronomy 1:34-3:29
Deuteronomy 1:34-3:29
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1/5/1997
completed
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Deuteronomy 4:1-49
Deuteronomy 4:1-49
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1/12/1997
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Deuteronomy 5:1-15
Deuteronomy 5:1-15
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2/9/1997
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Deuteronomy 6:8-8:11
Deuteronomy 6:8-8:11
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2/16/1997
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Deuteronomy 9-10
Deuteronomy 9-10
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3/2/1997
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Deuteronomy 11-12:13
Deuteronomy 11-12:13
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3/9/1997
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Deuteronomy 13-14
Deuteronomy 13-14
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3/16/1997
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Deuteronomy 14:22-16:8
Deuteronomy 14:22-16:8
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4/6/1997
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Deuteronomy 16:9-17:20
Deuteronomy 16:9-17:20
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4/14/1997
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Deuteronomy 18-20
Deuteronomy 18-20
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4/20/1997
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Deuteronomy 20-21
Deuteronomy 20-21
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5/4/1997
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Deuteronomy 22-23
Deuteronomy 22-23
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5/25/1997
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Deuteronomy 24-25
Deuteronomy 24-25
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6/8/1997
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Deuteronomy 26-27:3
Deuteronomy 26-27:3
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6/11/1997
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Deuteronomy 27:4-28:20
Deuteronomy 27:4-28:20
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6/18/1997
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Deuteronomy 28:15-68
Deuteronomy 28:15-68
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6/26/1997
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Deuteronomy 29-30:8
Deuteronomy 29-30:8
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7/2/1997
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Deuteronomy 30:10-31:8
Deuteronomy 30:10-31:8
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7/9/1997
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Deuteronomy 31:9-32:22
Deuteronomy 31:9-32:22
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7/16/1997
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Deuteronomy 32:23-34:12
Deuteronomy 32:23-34:12
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There are 21 additional messages in this series.
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