Deuteronomy 30:11-20

Well, good morning.

I greet you all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. What a wonderful thing to be in this service together this morning. I want to welcome our guests as well as all students and faculty and friends who are here this morning. It is a privilege for Christians to get to sing songs such as we have just sung. It is a privilege for Christians to be deployed in Christ’s service, as you’ve been invited to do and this project upcoming. It is a blessing to Christ’s people just to be together in one place. That’s in so many ways the great blessing of this campus. It’s not an accidental assemblage of people. It’s the strategic gathering together of teachers and students, all of us learners together of God’s word and God’s ways, so we greet you all. It’s a privilege to look out this morning and see you. It is an even greater privilege for us to turn to God’s word together. I want to invite you to turn to Deuteronomy chapter 30. Deuteronomy chapter 30.

I am teaching a class on leaders and leadership this term and just last week before the break I was teaching on Moses. Now, I kind of call the class Moses to Margaret Thatcher because we’re looking at ten different leaders and the first three are David and Moses and Paul. Moses being the first, and I believe Moses being the paradigm of leadership for the entire biblical tradition. So much so that Jesus is the new Moses leading his people not out of captivity to Pharaoh in Egypt, but rather out of captivity, to sin and to death and to darkness. A greater than Moses. But until Christ, at least what we hear at the end of the book of Deuteronomy is since the death of Moses, no prophet like him has arisen in Israel.

Now, a part of the fun of the new book I just had come out on the three offices of Christ is that Christ infinitely fulfills all three offices in the Old Testament: prophet and priest and king. But when many people think about prophets in the Old Testament, they think about predictive prophecy or the confrontational prophets. We think about Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, but Moses is in the Old Testament, the paradigmatic prophet. The text that we’re going to consider this morning in Deuteronomy 30 is at the end of the very long leadership of Moses. I found teaching about Moses to be a daunting challenge, a wonderful challenge, and one for which I’m incredibly thankful. But Moses is a remote figure to us in so many ways, and I think that’s the way it is supposed to be.

I just lectured on Paul. Paul is so much more accessible to us and not just in chronology and in time, although I’m sure that has something to do with it. But we have far more introspection in Paul. We have much more of an understanding of the interior life of Paul. This particular passage comes at the end of the long ministry of Moses, a remarkably faithful ministry. But remember how chapter 31 begins: “So Moses continued to speak these words to all Israel. And he said to them, ‘I am 120 years old today. I am no longer able to go out and come in. The Lord has said to me, ‘You shall not go over this Jordan.’ The Lord your God himself will go over before you. He will destroy these nations before you, so that you shall dispossess them, and Joshua will go over at your head, as the Lord has spoken.’”

Moses is 120. His life in so many ways broken into three periods of 40 years. 40 years the Prince of Egypt, 40 years in the wilderness, 40 years after his call leading Israel. He’s old. I don’t know anyone 120 years old. I know old, old… but I can only imagine what 120 years old looks like. He describes himself by saying, “I’m 120 years old today. I am no longer able to go out and come in.” I don’t know exactly what that means, but it evidently has a good deal to do with leadership. It is not just about physical strength. When he dies, we are told that he died with his strength unabated, his strength intact, his vigor unabated. The Lord preserved him, but in this circumstance, he recognizes the transition is inevitable. Israel is now at the brink of the land of promise, but they’re on the wrong side of the river Jordan. They need to cross the river in the covenant promises of God and take conquest of the land that the Lord their God has promised them.

It is so clear that Moses aches to be the one to lead Israel into the promised land, but it is God’s judgment that he should lead Israel to the brink of the promised land and then go up on the mountain and die.

Last words mean a lot. They mean a lot of you’re talking about great figures of history, sometimes we have their last words, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we have their last words and we think someone made them up. Sometimes they’re indisputable. But what weight we would assign to such last words. We have the last words of Moses and of course some of these words will continue through the successive chapters, but in this section of this great sermon of Moses, the Lord speaking through him, we come to chapter 30 and Moses is setting up what is at stake. It’s part of the task of Christian teaching, part of the task of Christian parenting, part of the task of Christian leadership and of the Christian life. It’s understanding what’s at stake.

For the sake of time, we will not read all of chapter 30, but we will begin at verse 11. God speaks through Moses:

“For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?” Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?” But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.

See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”

A valediction of sorts here. Last words, a good many of them. All of them important, all of them precious. We can only imagine how Israel heard these words. They’re standing at the brink of a transition. Today, it’s Moses. It has been Moses for many, many years. Soon Moses will be dead and it will be Joshua.

The Lord has provided a successor, but no one said the transition is going to be easy. Moses the prophet, speaks this word from the Lord. In some ways it is a repetition of what Israel has heard before and as a matter of fact, that’s the whole purpose of the book of Deuteronomy. In one sense, deutero nomos, the second giving of the law. There’s a particular reason or necessity for this, and that is that the generation of the exodus became unfaithful, so unfaithful that they even worshiped a golden calf. They were unfaithful such that the Lord said to them, you will not enter the land a promise, but your children will.

Well, alright, but that presents a challenge. It requires the second giving of the law, so that the generation which will enter the land of promise has heard the law. Even as Moses received the law, they will hear it and it is their responsibility to heed it. Israel is on the brink of the conquest. Moses is speaking some of his last words, so what is he going to say? Well, the first thing, he says this as the Lord is speaking through him, this is the Lord’s voice, “For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’” In verse 14, “But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.”

This is an astounding statement. It feels natural to us because it seems natural to us that the word is near us. It is just a fact of life. We take for granted that the word of God is near us, that we don’t have to try to go to heaven to get it. We don’t have to go across the seas to get it. The word of God has been, by God’s grace, brought to us. In the case of Israel, it was brought to them by the prophet or through the prophet Moses. For us, the great good news is that the word of God is near to us because we have the holy scriptures, and so we have Moses, yes, five books of Moses, but we have far beyond that. We have David, we have the kings, we have Solomon, we have prophets, we have gospels, we have apostles, we have epistles. So much more. We don’t have to go far to get it. It has been brought near to us. It is accessible to us.

It’s one of the reasons why in the history of the Christian Church, one of the main concerns has been to make sure the word of God is accessible. One of the stories of the Christian Church, especially you go to the turning point like the reformation, is that it was predicated upon so s scriptura the Scripture alone, and that’s why I love taking people in churches in London, Saint James Piccadilly, not what I’d name a church, but Piccadilly is the neighborhood. St James was the name, so it’s St. James Piccadilly. Why do I love taking people there? It is because the original building burned in the Great Fire of London, but you’re not looking at a ruin. You’re looking at a very typical Christopher Ren building, astoundingly beautiful, stately, and elegant. But if you compare that church building, that place of worship with ones before the fire, you’re going to notice one stunning difference.

St. James Piccadilly has these soaring windows that let in the sunlight why Christopher Wren’s brilliance as an architect? No. The why is the reformation and the reformation puts the bible in the hands of God’s people and whereas before the reformation, you sat in the dark room and priest did everything behind the screen. After the reformation, you sit in the pew with a Bible in your hand. It’s the same Bible the preacher has in the pulpit and you read the text even as he preaches the text, and that takes light and that takes windows. One of the reasons why we’re so committed to Bible translation, getting the word of God into as many languages as possible, as fast as possible, and as accurately as possible. A part of the Christian missionary movement has been very clear in its logic where we go with the gospel, we go, this ruptures yours.

It’s very easy for us to take this for granted. It’s very easy for us just to assume you can go into a store and buy a Bible that you can have a Bible sitting on your desk, on your table, you can have a Bible in your hands, but that is not to be taken for granted. It is a miracle. It is a sign of God’s grace. It is a sign of God’s mercy that we have the Scriptures.

Moses says in the very next sentence as the Lord speaks through him, see, “I have set before you today life and good, death and evil.” Okay, alright. Yeah. That’s got to be right. So when you hold the Bible, when you open your Bible and you read it and your private devotions, when you study it, when in a small group you discuss it when you’re at Christian worship and the scriptures preached, what’s happening?

Well, none of it would be happening if the word had not been brought near to us, the only way this happens is because the word is brought near to us, but here’s where I think most Christians underestimate what in the world is going on every time this word is opened, set before us is life and death, blessing and curse.

We ought never to preach a message without understanding that we are preaching life and death, blessing and curse. We ought never to open the word of God and read a single word without understanding that we are reading life and death, blessing and curse. In our private devotions, we just open the Scripture… what do we get out of this? Well, life or death, blessing or curse. There’s not a tame word in Scripture. There’s not a portion of God’s word of which this is not true.

God intends it this way. It isn’t that the Lord says to his people, “Oh by the way, the way this is kind of set up is that set before you is life or death, blessing or curse.” No, he doesn’t say that. He says, “I have sat before you today, life and death, blessing and curse.” So, God in his sovereignty intends it this way,  that every time we open the word it’s blessing or curse every time. It’s life or death every time.

The Lord is reminding the children of Israel of this fact as they are about to enter the land of promise. It’s a good thing that we are reminded of this fact every time we come to worship. Every time I come to the preaching of God’s word, well, what’s at stake here? Oh, I don’t know… Relevance, application, brilliance and exposition, religious information, data for edification? No! Life or death, blessing or curse.

That certainly has to weigh on the preacher, right? It better weigh on the preacher. What’s at stake here? If the preacher doesn’t see anything particular at stake in the text, it’s going to be an unfaithful sermon. But it’s just as true of the hearer as the preacher. It’s just as true of the Pentateuch, as of the gospels. It is just as true of the epistles, as of the prophets. It’s just as true of the Psalms as of the book of Revelation. The Bible is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword. It’s not safe anywhere you touch it. And as it cuts, it cuts blessing on one side, curse on the other. It cuts life on one side, death on the other.

I want us to pay particular attention to verse 16. “If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. But if,” verse 17, “But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess.”

Alright. Much of institutional Christianity is disappearing. You probably noticed this. Any major cities city like Louisville, you drive around town, you see a lot of whited sepulchers curse. You see a lot of churches where evidently at one time the word of God was preached. No more. You can sometimes tell everything you need to know by the presence or the absence of a rainbow flag flying out front, which by the way is exactly correlated with whether or not the word is rightly preached inside. Now, thankfully, there’s so many wonderful gospel Bible churches in this city. Now, this is God’s gift, and I don’t take it for granted.

This is an amazing demonstration of God’s love, so many congregations in which so many of our students and faculty here are deeply engaged. There are signs of God’s promise in these congregations of faithfulness and they often meet in far less elegant buildings, less prestigious addresses, but in them is Bible and gospel, ecclesia, mission, joy, living faith. That has everything to do with the power of the word, with the presence of the word or the absence of the word. Which, put another way. means obedience to the word or disobedience to the word, the fulfillment of the responsibility of preaching and teaching or the failure in the responsibility of preaching and teaching. Or a failure in the responsibility of hearing and heeding seen in not hearing and in disobeying.

What I want to draw attention to in a way that I think gets inadequate attention by Christ’s people is what we see here first when we see verse 16 and then to verse 17. The first word in our English translation, the first word of verse 16 is “If.” I think a lot of preachers are scared to death of “if.” Little word, just two letters. “If” in the structure of the English language and its parallel in the structure of the Hebrew language, as it is in the Greek language, the presence of an if is a syntactical sign that there is a “then.” It’s a conditional.

If you do this, this will happen. And if we obey the word, if we obey the word… “If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.”

Too often where we are tempted to preach or to rest in the promises of God without the “if.” “If” will get you into trouble, people want to be told that they’re going to be blessed by God, period. They don’t want a conditional. They don’t want an “If you obey, if you walk in my ways, if you keep my commandments and my statutes, then you shall live and multiply and long live into the land of promise.” There’s an “if” the other side of that is a then, but just because we are slow of hearing and dull of heart and, in spiritual terms, stupid. The Lord through Moses makes it clear by offering the other conditional, he comes in the next verse, “But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish.”

So, the big issue here is what’s at stake? Life and death, blessing and curse. The “if” underlines the fact that God’s promises are sure and certain, but they are presented to us, they’re presented to us with an “if.”

That means we have to think about this because God’s purposes are absolute, his sovereignty is absolute, his will is absolute. So how the “if” fall within the sovereignty of God? Well, there are mysteries there we’ll never fully understand, but we understand by the entirety of Scripture that we are to preach the sovereignty of God, the security, the essential unbreakable unchangeable of his decrees. We rest in the fact that we as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are chosen before the foundation of the earth, but God has sovereignly willed that his people be presented with “if.”

Israel isn’t told, “You’re my elect people so you don’t have to worry about a thing from now on, obey disobey no matter, walk in my ways don’t walk in my ways no matter.” No… He actually tells them, “If you do not obey my word, your enemies are going to trample on your heads…. You’re entering the land of promise, but you’re going to have nothing but trouble and by the way, you’re going to die fast. You’re not going to live long in the land that I have promised you.”

The “if” the unavoidable, inevitable, conditional. It’s got to be very central to our understanding of Christianity. It’s got to be very central to our understanding of biblical faith. It’s got to be very central to our understanding of preaching and teaching. It’s got to be very central to our understanding of hearing. Every time we hear a sermon preach, whether we recognize it or not, it is coming to us as the word of God and there’s an “if.” If you obey it, you shall surely be blessed. If you disobey it, you shall surely be cursed.

Part of me says that if you understand what’s at stake here, you just don’t come to church… But then of course you are dead because you’re cut off from the word of God and you’re cut off from the people of God. This was something that greatly affected Martin Luther, the reformer. With his greater and deeper understanding of the gospel came to a greater and deeper understanding of preaching and of what is at stake in preaching what is at stake in both preaching the word of God and hearing the word of God, and there was a sense in which that realization, given Luther’s fears led him to think maybe it’s just too dangerous a thing to preach. And then he came to the understanding that nonetheless, this is what God has commanded and his people need to be fed and the preacher has just got to get up and preach.

The preacher is never worthy of preaching. The preacher is just a frail and fragile human being, but God has so chosen and decreed that his word is to be preached through fallible human preachers. This is why Luther says “sin boldly.” People take that out of context: order a second piece of pie or something stupid. That’s not what Luther meant. He simply meant in the context that if you sin even as you’re preaching because maybe you think about that  you’re hungry while you’re preaching. In other words, we are earthen vessels. The word of God is perfect. We’re not. But if God’s called you to preach then even in preaching, you’re going to sin, you’re going to have a wayward thought. So, sin boldly because the one thing you can’t do if you’re called is not get up in the pulpit and preach the word of God in season and out of season. The word of God has to be preached.

You want to see what it looks like to take away the inevitable conditional? If you take away the conditional, you end up with something like liberal Protestantism in which preachers are actually at pains to tell you there’s nothing major at stake. “There’s no heaven and hell to worry about. There are no flames of hell to avoid. There’s no judgment of God to fear. There is no gospel imperative to drive us to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. No, just about any religion will do, just about any amount of religion will do, just about any variant of religion will do and evidently just about anything will do in the pulpit.”

There are some clever ways out of this. You can try to get out of this. Try to get away from that inevitable, conditional. Let’s try. Let’s try to defang it a little bit. I’ll tell you one thing that’ll defang it: Purgatory. It’s unbiblical. It’s actually contradictory to the entire structure of the gospel. Not only is it not found in God’s word, it actually contradicts God’s word, but it’s a very convenient doctrine. The Roman Catholic Church has purgatory and purgatory is kind of a middle ground and virtually everyone’s going to go there at least for some length of time, and so in so far as there is sin in the Roman theology not covered by sacramental grace and there is sin still, there is a need for purgation still. Well, there’s purgatory over there and for a length of time you’re in purgatory until such time that you are qualified to enter into heaven itself, but you notice that purgatory is not hell. Purgatory is just a place where you’re being purged of unrighteousness until you’re ready. It’s a brilliant invention if you don’t care about biblical authority, the gospel, because you tell people you don’t have to worry about hell, you’re not really going to hell. You’ve been baptized in the Catholic Church, so you’re not going to hell maybe in purgatory a long time. But you know eternity’s longer.

You’re not going to hear the conditional, you’re not going to hear the “if” in gospel terms where the if then is prosperity rather than eternal life. Prosperity theology has an “if then,” but it is a false “if then” there are promises on the other side to the conditional, there are promises to God’s people. You will prosper in the land of promise. You’ll live long in the land of promise, but it is not a glib promise that in the context of your age you are going to be unusually prosperous.

I remember as a student seeing the death announcement in the headlines of a health and wealth preacher famous at the time who died at age 82. My first thought was, “That’s about the right time.” Evidently, whatever this preacher preached, did it make the difference between 81 and a half and 82? I don’t know. That evidently is not the conditional.

I mean there is a, even in the wisdom literature in the Bible, there’s an obvious thing if you jump off a cliff you’re going to get hurt. That’s an if, but the main point of this conditional, and it’s made so quintessentially, so clearly in this text, is this a difference between life and death, blessing and curse, obedience and disobedience, faithfulness and unfaithfulness. We ask what’s at stake? I think it’s really important that we understand how much we have to lean into the consequences, lean into the inevitability of the conditional. If this has at least something to do with, for instance, the argument that comes out of originally in terms of its quintessential argument. It is based in even the New Testament of course and foreseen in the Old Testament, but it shows up at crucial times in church history. It shows up in the reformation: thesis and counter thesis.

You have the Protestant confessions answered by the Council of Trent, but in the modern age you had rival worldviews in collision, two different intellectual worlds in collision, and this is where you had originating, at least in some sense in Dutch Calvinism, you had the recognition that faithfulness means we have to clearly identify the antithesis. The thesis of truth and the antithesis that is already present in our culture. You have to preach the thesis and the antithesis. You’re not doing your job as a theologian, as an apologist, as an ethicist, as a Christian believer, as a preacher, as a student, as a professor, you’re not doing your job until you’ve not only identified the thesis, but you have clearly identified and refuted the antithesis. It’s one of the reasons why in our teaching here we have to deal with a lot of stupid heretical bad stuff. It’s because we really can’t teach the thesis in our context without teaching what is the antithesis.

We have to defend the thesis. We have to tear down the antithesis. You have a church over here, it preaches universalism. How did it get there? You’ve got to break that down. You have to understand that here’s a Christian over here arguing for the legitimacy of same-sex marriage. Okay, well, you’re going to have to have to understand the antithesis and you only do so because you first understand the thesis of marriage as revealed in Scripture. But you have to understand how the antithesis is now formed and how, by the way, you are going to have two opposing conflicting worldviews inevitably. Two completely irreconcilable sets of truth claims because when you look at one issue like that, it’s never just one issue like that. It is an entire chasm that separates life from death, blessing from curse, thesis from antithesis. It’s not just a mind game. It’s about life and death.

The final passage here, the final paragraph section begins in verse 19, “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”

Alright, time is fleeting. Turn to Romans 10. Romans 10 beginning in verse five. “For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. But the righteousness based on 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 abyss?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? ‘The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart’ (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, ‘Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.’ For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’”

Deuteronomy 30, Romans 10. Paul brings the words of Moses, the word of God through Moses, right from Deuteronomy 30 to Romans chapter 10. The context has changed. It’s not Old Covenant, it’s New Covenant. It is Christ who has been brought near to us. We didn’t go up to heaven to get him. For God’s so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. We didn’t go to heaven to get him any more than Israel went to heaven to get the word. The word was brought near to us. We didn’t cross the seas to bring him. We didn’t bring him up to us. No. God brought him up out of the grave.

Some people hear the “if” in Deuteronomy 30 and say, that’s so Old Testament. It’s so New Testament. What does the Lord say through Paul? Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. The context here is the faithfulness of God’s people, the reality of God saving act, the issues, the faithfulness of God’s people as they were getting ready to enter the land of promise. The issue now is the faithfulness of Christ’s Church in this generation. We’re in the same situation. No, no, we’re in the same predicament, but it’s not the same situation. The predicament is the “if,” the conditional. The situation is infinitely different. We’re not just talking about living long in the land of promise. We’re talking about eternal life, the gift of God to all who believe and have faith in his Son.

The Old Testament law had content, so does the gospel. If you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord… Don’t run from the conditional. You can’t. There’s no escape. Don’t minimize what’s at stake. Hear it, be warned by it, be encouraged by it. Live in it, preach it, teach it, share it. On the other side of that “if” is life or death, blessing or curse.

It’s true in Deuteronomy 30, it’s true in Romans 10. It’s true then, it’s true now. Praise be to God. Let’s pray: Father, we’re so thankful for the candor of your word. Thank you. Thank you for the directness of your word. Thank you for the warnings in your word. Thank you for the blessings in your word. Father, may we, this morning, live by your grace and for your glory in the “if” of faith and obedience to all you’ve revealed to us. It will be to the praise of your name. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord we pray. Amen.