THROUGH THE BIBLE - Deuteron..

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com. That's cornerstonerbc.com. Deuteronomy chapter 10 from verse 1. At that time the Lord said to me, cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first and come up to me on the mountain and make an ark of wood.

And I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets that you broke and you shall put them in the ark. So I made an arc of acacia wood and cut the two tablets of stone like the first and went up the mountain with the two tablets in my hand and he wrote on the tablets in commandments that the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain out of the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly. And the Lord gave them to me. Then I turned and came down from the mountain and put the tablets in the ark that I had made, and there they are as the Lord commanded me. The people of Israel journeyed from Beroth, Beni-Shachan, to Moserah.

There Aaron died, and there he was buried. And his son, Eliezer, ministered as priest in his place. From there, they journeyed to Gad-Godah, and from Gad-Godah to Joth, or Joth-Batha, a land with brooks of water. At that time, the Lord set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the ark of the covenant of the Lord, to stand before the Lord, to minister to him and to bless in his name to this day. Therefore, Levi has no portion or inheritance with his brothers.

The Lord is his inheritance, as the Lord your God said to him. I myself stayed on the mountain as the first time, 40 days and 40 nights. And the Lord listened to me that time also. The Lord was unwilling to destroy you. And the Lord said to me, arise, go on your journey as the head of the people so that they may go in and possess the land which I swore to their fathers to give them.

Verse 12. And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you 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? 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 the peoples as you are this day.

Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart and be no longer stubborn. 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 that your eyes have seen. Your fathers went down to Egypt 70 persons. Now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven.

Amen, our Lord Jesus Christ said, heaven and earth will pass away, but my word will not pass away. Let's quickly come to our Lord in prayer and commit this time to him. Father, we thank you. We thank you, Lord, that now we have a few moments to open your word and to meditate in part upon the contents here in Deuteronomy chapter 10. But we believe that your word is inspired, it is inerrant, We believe it is spoken from the very being of the triune God of the universe.

And therefore we sit under its authority. Help us, Lord, to receive your word by faith. Help us, Lord, also and empower us to obey that which is written for your glory and the renown of your great name. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

So brothers and sisters, we are continuing our. our corporate reading through the book of Deuteronomy. We've been working our way through the book. By now we know that this is the prophet Moses standing before a group, a multitude of people there on the plains of Moab, only on the brink, weeks away from crossing over the Jordan, engaging into the conquest. And here we have from the mouth of Moses, inspired and inspired sermon series, you might say, is the book of Deuteronomy.

great teachings for these people to look back and to behold who their God is and then to look forward in faith, trusting in that God, in the God of the universe, the God that rescued them out of the land of Egypt. So the chapter we have before us is in that context, and it's chapter 10. If we look at the contents, it's only 22 verses long, and it could be easily, quite comfortably, divided into two sections. The first being 11 chapters versus my apologies, and the last being 11. So it's a clean sweep down the middle.

I am not one to give titles to my sermons. You probably know that I'm not that creative. But if I was going to attempt to give a title to what we have before us in those two sections, I would say the first 11 verses are the pure mercy and the grace of God upon his people made known. And if I was going to give a title to the second section that starts from verse 12, it is something like this. Now that you know the mercy and the grace of God, live in light of that truth.

There's no doubt. There's no doubt in my mind that the mercy and the grace and the forbearance of Yahweh is so evidently remarkable in these verses. And Moses, I believe, is reminding the people that are before him of that fact. Because have we seen, we've seen already, no sooner than when the people had committed to obey the covenant of God, no sooner had they made residence there at the base of horrible Mount Sinai, where the thundering, the lightning came down, and the thunder on the mountain of God, and they heard the words of God, that they declared all that the Lord God says, we will what? We will We will do it all.

We will obey. Yahweh is God. You rescued us from the land of Egypt. We will obey. We will obey.

Especially taking note what God had told me. He spoke the 10 words, what we know as the 10 commandments. And when he spoke, we need to note the first one. You remember I said a few weeks ago, the next chapters from that point in Exodus chapter five is an exposition of the first and the second and third commandments and beyond that. So the first commandment is thou shall have no other gods before me.

And the people when they declared we will obey all that God has commanded, that commandment was in mind and it was the forefront of their mind because that's where he began. That means they are to worship him alone they should have eyes for him alone that means that they will not that they will not create from their own hands and craft from their own hands metal images or wooden images or stone images of this great God even if they say that this is the God Yahweh who rescued us from the land of Egypt this is him it's just an emblem it's just a it's just a representation of him they are not to do this why Because when they stood at the mountain, they heard the rumblings, and they heard the voice of God, but they saw no form. God is spirit. You wanna worship him? You worship him as he says he's to be worshipped.

Our creativity will only corrupt the matter. We worship God the way God says, this is how I am to be worshipped. And he's revealed himself so graciously to us, in that sense. No sooner had the people already declared, we will obey all that God had commanded us. Did Moses go up to the mountain?

Why? Because they were terrified. Moses, you mediate on our behalf. This is scary. You go up, you speak to God and tell us what God requires of us and we will obey.

Moses being on that mountain the first time of 40 days and 40 nights and no sooner was he supplicating before God, meditating before God, receiving from God the words of the covenant. What was going on down there at the base of the mountain? Already the people's hearts were prostituted to another. Already they had begun to break the command of God. drafting in that golden calf incident that we know all too well.

And when Moses came down the mountain, what did he see? What was his eyes confronted with? Confronted with a multitude of people there at the base of the mountain. What were they doing? They're worshiping a golden calf, giving sacrifices to it, and doing things that you and I probably could not imagine.

So what did Moses do? Holding the two tablets of stone, The tablets that God had written with his own finger. The words of the covenant. Moses breaks them in front of the people. And this is not because Moses had a problem with anger.

It's not as though Moses needed to go and take anger management classes. That's not it at all. Moses in his righteous zeal was doing with those tablets of stone before the people. He was demonstrating what they are doing right now and what they have done. They have broken covenant with Yahweh as those stones are in many pieces.

The words of the covenant were broken and that's what the people have already done. They have broken covenant, those words that had spoken. We will obey all that he says. You have broken it already. Oh how serious it is.

to rebel against God in that way. Beloved, there is only one fitting response from Yahweh, from the God of the universe, there is only one fitting response towards lawbreakers and covenant breakers like there were at the base of that mountain. And that is a response. A response to pour out His wrath in judgment. You're lawbreakers.

You're covenant breakers. And covenant breakers ought to be destroyed. Because He is righteous and holy and pure. He lives in unapproachable light. He cannot live upon sin.

That's not what we see. Instead, what we see, and what Moses, I believe, is reminding the people of here in chapter 10 and before this chapter also, is that this God, who ought to have poured out his wrath upon these people, chose to hold back his justice. He chose not to give this people what they deserve. We said that what they deserve is His wrath. He decided instead to bestow upon them something else, pure mercy.

He decided instead to give them grace, pure grace. Beloved, right now, almost 40 years later, because Moses, remember, is speaking to a second generation Israel. So this is almost 40 years from the event that took place in Sinai, say 38 and a half or thereabouts. But the virtue of the fact that you have a multitude of people standing before Moses and he's able to speak to them by virtue of the fact that those people are there, camped on the plains of Moab, is evidence that they did not receive what they deserve. That's evidence.

That's evidence of the mercy of God. That's evidence of the grace of God. Or it's best said in verse 10 in inspired words where he says, the Lord, listen Moses, the Lord was unwilling to destroy you. But in the fact that when Moses was on the mountain for a second time, We know that the Lord rewrote the words, those 10 words of the covenant. He says that in our text.

On new tablets of stone, and as Moses says in verse four that God wrote them just as he wrote them before the first time. And that's Yahweh's saying, his way of saying, I will overlook your wickedness for now. I will overlook your wickedness for now, and I will reestablish my covenant with you. I will continue to be your God, and you will continue to be my people, covenantally speaking. And then this first section ends, this first section of 11 verses in Deuteronomy chapter 10, it ends with these words, spoken to Moses, From God.

Verse 11, it says, Arise, go on your journey as the head of the people so that they may go in and possess the land which I swore to their fathers to give them. It's God saying. I'm still gonna bless you. Even though you deserve to be cursed. And now the section beginning with verse 12.

And it begins like this, and now, and now, Israel, what does the Lord God require of you? You've witnessed his incredible mercy. You've witnessed his amazing grace. And now what will be your response, Israel? How will you live in light of what you've received from Yahweh?

And beloved, the answer is actually fivefold, found for us in verses 12 and verses 13. But I believe once we see what is there and understand its contents, I believe that that answer, although fivefold, can be summarized into one. I believe Moses will give his people that one. I'll give you the fivefold answer, but I won't expose it for the sake of time. Let me give them to you.

The first before you there in verse 12 is, fear the Lord your God. The sense here is to fear Him alone. The second is to walk in His ways. Beloved, if your eyes are in the text, tell me how many of His ways are you commanded or the Israel is commanded to walk in? Some?

No exceptions. All of His ways. Three, love Him. That's all we have. Love Him.

Now Israel is not really explaining how to love the Lord their God. Later on it says that God loves the Sojourner. You should love the Sojourner. But really the exposition of how the people of Israel is to love the Lord your God is not really in this text. But as I said earlier, this is a sermon.

There is nothing that would lead us to believe that from the latter part of chapter 4 all through at least here in chapter 10, this is one sermon of Moses. So it wasn't too long ago, maybe only moments earlier, the people there before Moses had heard from his words, from his mouth, the contents that are found in Exodus chapter 6 verse 4. And there it is written that Israel, the people of God are to love the Lord their God with what? All their heart and all their soul and all their might. Number four we have serve him again with all your heart and serve him with all your soul.

And number five, keep his commandments. So what is Moses saying is required of the people of God here? He's saying Yahweh requires absolute total devotion and allegiance from the whole being to him. The whole being. Nothing less.

will suffice. No holding back. Total devotion to Yahweh. That's what is commanded. Yes, the works of your hand need to exemplify this, but also the meditations of your heart.

Beloved, what God requires is an all-encompassing devotion, the type of devotion that it begins with the heart, a heart that is being changed. In other words, the five-fold answer that I gave you, what God requires of his people, can only be met if verse 16 is met. Circumcise, therefore, the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn. I've said before, and it's worth saying again, that the heart in the Bible, When we read the heart in the Bible, it's not simply speaking about the seed of emotion as we've come to know it here now in the 21st century. It is not less than that, but it is a lot more than that also.

When the Bible speaks of the heart, the Bible is speaking about the very center, the very essence, the very totality of the inner being. That's all that you are, is summarized. in your heart. To circumcise the heart is to say that God requires His people to have more than a mark on their body to state that they are the children of promise. But the mark of devotion, the mark of total devotion and total allegiance and love to God needs to be stamped in the inner being.

It needs to be in here. not just on the outside. In other words, what God requires is this, absolute, total consecration of all that you are to all that He is. Nothing less will suffice. Brothers and sisters, feel the weight of those words.

There's no time now to exposit this point, but let me just put it out there. When we look at the circumcision of the heart, it's only mentioned twice in the biblical River Omni. Once here in chapter 10 and another time in chapter 30. Only twice. Feeling the weight of what God requires from His people, I hope by now you're feeling that.

You're feeling how unworthy am I, how fallen am I to do these things. But the second time that that consecration or the circumcision of the heart is mentioned is in chapter 30. And it's no wonder there we're told that it's God Himself who does the heart circumcision. You might misconstrue this chapter 10 thinking that you're the one who does the surgery. No, it is God who does the circumcision of the heart.

It is He who does the surgery because what follows is impossible in your strength and mine beloved. It must be the divine finger of God that wrote on those tablets of stone to write on your heart and on mine. Total consecration to Yahweh. Total consecration to Yahweh is what Moses is telling the people of Israel, the people named by the name of God, and this is something we ought to take on board. Total consecration is what he commands of his people.

Now, beloved, when you're looking from the person's point of view, you have to ask the question, why would you hold back? If you're not willing to give everything that you are, all your devotion, all your love, if you're not willing, And the question is, why would you hold back any of that devotion? Why would you hold back any of that love, any of that allegiance to God? Who else will you give it to? They're pretty good questions, aren't they?

Who else is worthy? I imagine that's what Moses is thinking when he utters the words in verse 14. Behold. Behold the Lord your God, behold heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. And then he goes on to say in verse 17, God of gods and the Lord of lords, the great, the mighty and the awesome God.

Oh, can you feel the majesty of God, the bigness of God? Do you see how he is the God of the universe that is worthy of all things? Who else will He give your allegiance to? Who else is worthy? Who else can satisfy your soul?

Who else? He holds it all. It is all His and He's worthy of all of it. What is the heart that the Lord God requires of us? Beloved, I think the Psalmist, in the inspired words of Psalm 73, He says it best.

There, he says, whom have I in heaven but you. And there is nothing on the earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is my strength, of whom my heart and my portion forever. He's the great God. He has the right to demand complete and total devotion from his people, has he not?

And he has that right simply because of who he is. But here's the mind blowing thing, beloved. before he ever demands that his people love him with a complete devotion and complete consecration to him, before he does that. Before he commands you to love him, he loved you first. This great God that holds the heavens in his hand, this great God where heavens of heavens cannot, Cannot feel Him.

He fills the universe. This God who is in control over all things. This God who is worthy to be praised. Worthy of your devotion. Worthy of the devotion of everything in the created realm because He is the uncreated one.

This God has set His love upon His people. Just think of that word, He loves us. He loves us. But how? We've established that these Israelites, as well as us, because we are all sinners, we've established we deserve wrath.

And for him to withhold the pouring of his righteous fury, his righteous indignation, is indescribable mercy. But now over and beyond that, He pours out, instead of His wrath upon His people, He pours upon them a love, a love upon the ungodly, a love upon the wicked. How can this be? Something does not add up. How can a loving God who cannot look upon unrighteousness pour out His love upon the wicked, upon the ungodly, upon the rebel, upon the idolater, the prostitute?

The sexually immoral, the greedy, the liar. How is it that God can pour his love upon such? Something doesn't add up. This is too marvelous to be true. How God, how can God love the ungodly like you and I beloved?

How is this amazing love even possible? Well, there are gaps. And those gaps can only be filled if you fast forward around 1,500 years. You need to. Because the pieces of the puzzle won't fall into place for another 1,500 years before the picture is seen for what it is.

It is prophesied in the old, but made known in the new. The clarity, the light is completely turned on, the substance. of that love and how it is that God can love wicked sinners like us is made known perfectly in the new. And there is in a sense that I can take you to so many, a plethora of passages in the New Testament to bring this truth out. Literally, it is throughout the word, throughout the pages of the New Testament.

Let me take you to one. And the reason why I want to take you to this one is because only on Thursday in the Bible study, if you remember, I referred to this verse, or these series of verses when speaking about the love of God. And it's down in Romans chapter 5, and we'll start from partway through verse 5. So if you want to open, let's open them up, your Bibles, to Romans chapter 5, partway through verse 5. Romans chapter 5, partway through verse 5 where it says God's love, that's where it begins, portrays the truth I'm trying to convey this evening.

God's love has been what? poured into the hearts through the Holy Spirit what is being given to us. Okay, so we said earlier that we're worthy of wrath and judgment because we're sinners. Here we're told that the Christian is a recipient of God's love, the people of faith, the people of God, the remnant are recipients of the indescribable love of God, not his wrath. And then he goes on to say for For, for, for while we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.

Our brother mentioned that in his prayer this morning, this evening. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners. Christ died for us. How is it?

that when we deserve nothing but wrath and judgment. How is it? That when God's fury should be poured out on the unrighteous, how is it that instead we get an outpouring of the love of God? Beloved, it's because God himself became man. God himself became man.

The one who is worthy of total consecration. The one who is worthy of total devotion. The one who is worthy of total love because God is love. He became man and he bore the wrath of God upon that cross. Willingly he bore the wrath of God, the one who's pure and holy, the one who's only worthy of all love.

The one who is only worthy of all good things and blessedness and the total devotion of his people gets something else. He gets what he doesn't deserve when he hangs on the cross and the wrath of God is poured upon him so that the unrighteousness of the saints of old was overlooked, I said earlier, only for a time because the God who knows no time could see that his son would come in real time and who will die on the cross and shed his blood for those who have been united in him from before time. Isn't that glorious? What a glorious, glorious truth, beloved, that Jesus Christ grant the wrath of God that was deserving of sinners like us. That's our deserve.

We deserve the wrath of God. He got what He did not deserve so that we get what we don't deserve. We deserve wrath and we got love. And so God, His attitude towards you and I, brothers and sisters, those of us who have embraced Christ, Those of us who are born again, those of us who have now been united in Jesus Christ, the attitude of God upon us is not that of wrath, or judgment, or anger. It is only mercy, grace, and love.

Even to the point when Jesus himself says in John chapter 17, that God the Father loves us like He loved Him. The same love. That is incredible. Praise be to His name, let's pray.