Deut Chapter 11- The Importance of God's Law

Service of everyone last night. It's a demonstration of the love of Jesus Christ in your heart and we just wanted to acknowledge that and say thank you about that. Well let me introduce James White. James White is director of Alpha Omega Ministries.

He's an accomplished debater having debated over 140 times on a variety of subjects. Also has been recently been able to debate in mosques and was the first time in London that you debated in a mosque or had you done that before?

You've done it before. Okay. Most recently in South Africa and he's an elder at Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church and been married to Kelly for an amazing 32 years. He's also a personal friend of mine but I have to add one more thing to his list of accomplishments.

He's also a rescuer of stranded cyclists. Friday we went cycling and I had a trifecta of problems. My rear tire went flat and my tube broke in half in my hands and my spare tube had a leak in it and I could go nowhere.

And in 38 degrees I stood on a corner near Huntington while James found his way into Huntington and a bike shop he'd never been to to buy me some goods that I needed to get back on the road. So I'm grateful he's a rescuer of stranded cyclists.

Anyway we're grateful to have you here James and looking.

Forward to administering the work. Thank you. Let's welcome James. Well it truly is an honor to be back with you here. It certainly is not the first time for me not only since Doug's been here but I've been coming here now for a number of years.

I have some very interesting memories. I know that for example I have stood here and done my New Testament presentation and well it's interesting when I touch the microphone. This is the danger in having an electronic Bible.

I don't have a clue where it just went but if I was a charismatic I'd go well I better preach on this. It now says he will give grass in your fields for your cattle and you will eat and be satisfied. So I guess it's time for lunch.

There you go. I'm just interpreting the signs and wonders here. Anyway I remember standing here doing my New Testament presentation. How many of you were here the night, I don't remember when it was, but I had done a debate with a Muslim in Queens somewhere and the Ahmadi Muslim congregation canceled their Wednesday night service and came here and it was about 60 Christian, 40 Muslims in this room for my New Testament reliability presentation.

Was anybody? You guys were here a couple of years, remember that? I'm not sure how many years ago that was but that was a fascinating evening. It's a really was a very enjoyable evening. So it's good to be back and what Doug didn't tell you is that we had borrowed a bike from me and we got about four or five miles into the ride and we were stopped at one of the millions and billions of stop lights you have here and none of which make any sense as to how they work and things like that but I'm sitting there and I look down at my front tire and I go Doug look and the front tire on this bike we borrowed, I don't know how we missed it but it was dry rotted like anything and so I mean at any moment it could just go kaboom and so we had an interesting ride on Friday and then of course yesterday morning was the Popsicle ride.

If anyone went out early you noticed it was a little bit on the cold side and I've come from Phoenix where the high the day before I left was 94, tied our all-time record for that day. So not much in the way of adjustment time for me going down that 32 degree mark.

So we had an enjoyable time though and though I will admit it's a whole lot easier to be a cyclist in Arizona than it is on Long Island. Not nearly as much traffic and the roads are in a little better shape.

You don't run into a cactus here but other than that it's great. But it is good to be with you. If you turn with me please to Deuteronomy chapter 11. I have sort of added this message to my traveling repertoire you might say because it seems to be so important in our day and it's so unusual unfortunately for people to be looking at the Law of Moses but we live in a day where I think it is important that we remind ourselves that we are reminding ourselves of the importance of God's Law and an immersion in his truth.

So Deuteronomy chapter 11 I will begin reading at verse 18. Deuteronomy chapter 11. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates so that your days and the days of your sons may be multiplied on the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give them as long as the heavens remain above the earth.

For if you are careful to keep all this commandment which I am commanding you to do, to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways and hold fast to him, then the Lord will drive out all these nations from before you and you will dispossess nations greater and mightier than you.

Every place in which the sole of your foot tread shall be yours, your border will be from the wilderness of Lebanon and from the river, the river Euphrates, as far as the western sea. No man will be able to stand before you.

The Lord your God will lay the dread of you and the fear of you on the land on which you set foot as he has spoken to you. See, I'm setting before you today a blessing and a curse. The blessing, if you listen to the commandments of the Lord your God, which I am commanding you today, and the curse, if you do not listen to the commandments of the Lord your God, will turn aside from the way which I am commanding you today by following other gods which you have not known.

I've begun a series of sermons in my home church. When I have the opportunity of preaching, I'm not, to the benefit of my people, the primary preacher. I do not consider myself much of a preacher. I'm more of a teacher.

But when I do preach, I am, I just finished a series on the book of Hebrews, and then I decided to really, I mean Hebrews, that's just one of the easiest books to preach from, and very exciting material for everybody, and so I decided, what can I do to really get people jazzed up, and I decided to preach on the holiness code for Leviticus.

And you go, wow, you really are trying to make yourself unpopular, aren't you? But actually, I have, there's some method to my madness. Some of you may recall a TV series, I never saw an entire episode myself, but I certainly saw this one, I saw this, a portion of this one, a TV series called The West Wing, and I'm sure it's been off the air for quite some time now.

And in one of those episodes, probably the most famous of them anyway, is Immunities Amongst Christians, there was an encounter between the president and a female actress, basically representing Dr. Laura Schlesinger, and he picked her out, and he picked on her statements in regards to homosexuality.

And he then launched into a monologue that was taken from a letter that had been written a year or two earlier from when this aired, and had then sort of become viral in the publishing industry. And if you recall the scene, he starts off saying, well, yes, yes, the Bible says in Leviticus 18, 22, and 20, 13, these things are an abomination, but I'd like to ask you some other things.

My daughter just graduated from Stanford with honors, and according to such and such a text, I can sell her into slavery, what do you think would be a fair price for her? And I have some problem, my next door neighbor keeps profaning the Sabbath, he keeps working on the Sabbath day, should I kill him myself, or should I call the police to do that?

And what about the Washington Redskins? They keep touching pigskin, and we know this is a violation of God's law, so should I issue an executive order that they have to make sure to wear gloves at all times around footballs, and so on and so forth.

And it just goes through this litany of text meant to demonstrate that we Christians are extremely selective in what from the Old Testament law we continue to believe and what we do not. Now that kind of thing is extremely effective for one simple reason, I'm not going to do this, but if I were to ask right now when the last time you and your personal devotions, your personal reading of scripture, maybe even in regular preaching, you worked through the book of Leviticus, how would we all do?

How many would go, oh yeah, that's one of my favorite devotional books. The section on leprosy is particularly compelling to me. The reality is that we generally just don't spend much time there, and when we do our read through the Bible in a year thing, we actually sort of pat ourselves on the back, I got through Leviticus, I might make it.

It's the hump, you get over that, it's all downhill from there, the Psalter's coming, David and Goliath, all that stuff is coming, I might be able to make it, but if I can just get through Leviticus, then I'm going to survive.

And so when the world makes comments about these texts, most of us become very quiet, because we don't remember them very well, if we've ever read them at all. And if we're honest with ourselves, we become hesitant, because in my more honest moments, I have to admit that if I were to have to discuss the inspiration of scripture, it would be easier for me to defend the red parts, the red printed versions.

John 3, that's pretty easy, John 6, John 10, Romans, that's way up there, but man, it almost makes me think there might be a lower kind of inspiration, when you read laws like you find in Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, of course, Deuteronomy is the second giving of the law, and so there's parallels in Deuteronomy and things like that.

And so I felt it was necessary, in light of the fact that those Old Testament laws become absolutely central to the New Testament's teaching about the need for redemption, forgiveness, the wrath of God against sin, I don't think it would make any sense, what the New Testament teaches about the sacrifice of Christ, the concept of holiness, high priesthood, the offerings in the book of Hebrews.

When I preached through Hebrews, I had to stop in the series, and step out one entire Sunday, and just look at Leviticus chapter 16, so as to understand the issues of the high priest, and Yom Kippur, actually it's Yom Kippurim, the day of atonements, because the writer of the Hebrews assumes you know all of that stuff, and it's just a part of your thinking.

I don't think you could make heads or tails out of what the New Testament actually teaches on these subjects, if you don't have that Old Testament background found in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. And so, it's important material, but it's material that we ignore to our own detriment today, because that holiness code, specifically Leviticus 18 -20, is also where we find stuff like, Love your neighbor as yourself.

Honor the elderly. Take care of orphans and widows. Honor your parents. Yeah, you've got all the stuff in there about, you know, don't marry your mother, and don't mate with animals, and the prohibitions on homosexuality, and all those things are there.

But they are mixed in with this positive moral teaching in regards to how God has made us, and how we should live. So, I decided to do the holiness code. I decided to walk through it, and as I started to prepare for that, I realized something.

The only way you're ever going to have any real interest in what's found in that material is to begin with a recognition that God can give law because he's our creator. And I would submit to you that one of the primary reasons that our society has completely broken loose from its moorings when it comes to morals and ethics is that we are a society that no longer knows a creator God.

The moral and ethical foundation upon which this nation was founded was one that recognized that God was our maker and our creator, and therefore he had the right to circumscribe the field of human activity.

To say this is right and this is wrong because I made you to live in a certain way. We now live in a day where the vast majority, the tipping point is well past, the vast majority of our fellow citizens do not believe that they are created beings under the hand of God.

And therefore the very foundation that our law has always stood upon has been washed away. It's not there anymore in the thinking of so many of our fellow citizens and sadly not even in the thinking of many people who sit within Christian churches on this Lord's Day morning.

And if you do not have that foundation, then as you look at the biblical narrative, as you look at the grand sweep of redemption, you're going to be missing a very key element in being able to understand why God does the things that God does.

And why he demands of us the things that he demands of us. And so I realized what I needed to do was to first look at the God of the law because no one will ever love the law of God who hates the God of the law.

And as we try to communicate God's law, the owner's manual, shall we say, to our fellow citizens, we must realize that one of the greatest difficulties that we face is the reality that we are dealing with people who hate the very God who gave that law.

They are in rebellion against him. They may want to have the benefits of God, but without the relationship with God. I am reminded of the prophetic words of the book of Revelation where when God's wrath begins to be poured out upon the earth, what is the reaction of men?

You see, unless the spirit of God moves and changes the heart of stone into a heart of flesh, when God's judgment comes, what does it do? It causes men to hate God all the more. They will blame him for their suffering and their misery as if they themselves are not worthy of experiencing these things.

I'm a good man. I'm a good woman. We see that all the time in our society today. And so I am reminded of that text. And it says that men cried out for the rocks and the hills to cover them and to hide them from what?

The wrath of the Lamb.

The wrath of the Lamb.

We have a message for our world today. There is the Lamb of God who stands in the presence of the Father as if slain. Meaning that God has provided the way of salvation. The penalty has been paid. The Lamb has been slain.

And again, you couldn't understand what slaying lambs would do to anyone without Leviticus. But the Lamb has been slain. But there is a time when God must bring justice to bear. And there will be a day when the wrath of the Lamb will be experienced on this earth.

Because of the patience of God, the long suffering of God. His law is being trampled underfoot. His name is being profaned every day. The souls of the martyrs under the altar are crying out, how long, O Lord?

And eventually, at some point in time, God is going to wrap up His purposes. And the wrath of the Lamb will be known. We need to know that God. And we need to know that the ones we are speaking with are in rebellion against that God.

And so my mind settled upon this text. And it explained to me how it is that God's people were to think about God so they would have the right relationship to His law. When you think about it, what the book of Leviticus is about, and I say, well wait a minute, you're in Deuteronomy.

I know, they're all related. We're going to get there, don't worry.

The book of Leviticus really exists because the Israelites had a problem. Think about it. You're living in a tent. And you're moving about in the wilderness. And you come out of your tent. And God had given directions as to how the people, you know, which tribe was supposed to be where and so on and so forth.

And if you remember where all the tribes were supposed to be, they're all related to what?

They're related to the tent of meeting. It's a tabernacle.

And so you would come out of your tent in the morning. And you would look around and you would look down the sort of makeshift street that existed between you and the next row of tents. I would imagine they were fairly well organized.

And you look to your left. And you know who your neighbor is? Because there, if it's still dark, is the pillar of fire. And then by, if it's already sunrise, then it's turned into the pillar of clouds, smoke, cloud.

You see the presence of God. And your neighbor is God. Now, that sounds pretty cool, right? Here are a few of the stories in the Old Testament about the people doing things that resulted in what? God's wrath breaking out against the people.

And we have, let's see, we have fiery serpents. And we have plague. And the real cool one for me was Korah, Dathom, and Abiram. Remember them? You know, the earth opened up and swallowed them. So, you know, what if you were an eyewitness to that?

You know, there's Korah, Dathom, and Abiram, and all of a sudden, it's a pretty good sound effect there. And they're gone. And you're standing right on the edge of this.

What do you want?

You want some instructions as to how to live your life with a neighbor who is God. You've been called to be God's people. He says be holy. And now you go, I'd like to know what that looks like. Please?

Could I have some very explicit instructions as to how I'm to live in the presence of holiness? And that's what Leviticus is about. We are being given directions as to what it is to live in the presence of God.

Now, you'd think that might mean something to us, huh? Well, you say, where is the pillar of fire? Where is the cloud? Yeah, see, they had to go to the Tent of Meeting. We are the Tent of Meeting. We are indwelt by the very Holy Spirit of God.

So, we should be even more concerned about what it means to live in holiness than even they were. And so, here in Deuteronomy 18, I'm sorry, Deuteronomy 11, verse 18, we have some instructions. These are repeated elsewhere in even longer terms, but some instructions about what our mindset should be about our God.

And if we can get this down, we might have the right mindset to sort of understand what God's law should be and how we should honor it in our thinking. And I'll be perfectly honest with you, if you want to try to explain to others why God's law, the direction He's given as to how we are to live and behave, what marriage is, what male and female relationships are supposed to be, and what's right and what's wrong, if you're going to try to explain that to others, may I suggest to you that if you have clarity of thought, and if you have passion about the God who gave these laws, that's going to be communicated to the person you're speaking to.

And if you don't, that will be too. If you're confused about it, if you're unclear about it, it's going to be even less clear to the person to whom you're speaking. And if we're called to be salt and light, even in a society that has decided that what we believe is actually wrong and evil, if we're going to fulfill our prophetic role, well, we need to know something about the God that we're laying everything on the line for and are willing to suffer for when it comes to His name and His glory and His word.

So let's consider these words. You shall therefore impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul. Never, never has the true follower of Yahweh, and that's the term that's used here, I'm going to use the actual name of God here because it's the name He's revealed Himself by, never has the true follower of Yahweh been one who was such merely out of formality.

The call has always been for the law to be heard internally in the heart and soul. And some of the greatest examples we have of tragedies in the Tanakh, the Torah, the Nevi 'im, the Ketuvim, the Old Testament, we call it.

Some of the greatest stories we have of tragedies is when we've had people who are a part of the nation of Israel and yet that law never touched their heart or their soul. It was always external to them.

You shall impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul. Well, how do you do that? Well, they need to be a regular part of your experience. They need to mark off what your life is about. They can't be some addition on Sunday morning, maybe Sunday night, and maybe if you're super spiritual, some meeting during the week.

That's not enough.

We need to be immersed in God's truth. He says, you shall impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontals on your forehead.

Now, we know if the Jews went so far as to take these things literally. And by the days of Jesus, there would be people who would have this big old honking box bouncing around their forehead. And they had written portions of the scripture and would carry them in the forehead and on their hands and things like that.

And, you know, we all know that most things like that start off with good motives, you know, good motivations. And then so often they become empty rituals if they're not connected with the heart and with the soul.

The point is that they are there to be something that you cannot ignore something that's right here. You can't get rid of it. If it's always right there on your hand, that's why the wedding ring is supposed to be always a reminder of the covenants that you've taken.

It's always there. It's always something you're looking at. If you're working with your hands, it's going to be right there. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontals on your forehead.

These commandments that God is giving cannot be something that's put over here. They are to be something that is central to every activity of our lives. We are to be immersed in these things. You shall teach them to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house, when you walk along the road, when you lie down, when you rise up.

Well, you know what? Until the invention of aircraft, that was pretty much everything we did. When you're walking, sitting, lying down, and rising up. In other words, all of life. Your conversations are to be marked by these things.

We shouldn't have our religious talk and then our regular talk. It should not be natural for us as believers to just turn it off. I wasn't expecting to get a sermon illustration from this, but my poor daughter keeps getting requests from people to come on their podcasts.

She was on the Reformed podcast, and then the Reformed and Reloaded podcast asked her to come on. They'll ask her some questions before long. It's like, so what was it like to grow up with your dad? They're always looking for some stories and stuff like that.

She's sort of used to it by now. I think now she sort of enjoys it. Well, she was on this one podcast about a month ago, and I hadn't had a chance to hear it. I only heard it just a few days ago. I finally downloaded it when I was out farther on the island and listened to it.

At one point, they asked a question, because they were talking about guns and stuff. They said, how did your dad sit down and talk to you about the value of human life and all the rest of this stuff? I found Summer's response really, really interesting.

He said, I don't remember sitting down and talking about something like that. I just know that by the way we lived and the way we talked and what we talked about in the home, that it was communicated to me over time.

Not in one lesson, because you've just got one lesson.

You can forget the one lesson.

If it's something that's regular and it's just what's behind everything else you're saying, that's actually the best way to learn something. I'm listening to this going, wow. It reminded me of when I asked my dad, when Kelly first became pregnant with Josh, I had that conversation with my dad where I go, Dad, how did you impress upon me?

Because there were lots of times when we were teenagers we could get in trouble. We could do things that would mark the rest of our lives. Every time that kind of temptation and opportunity came my way, the first thought that crossed my mind was, what would my parents think?

I did not want to dishonor them. So I said to my dad, I said, how did you impress upon me such a strong fear and respect for you and mom that I just couldn't even conceive of doing certain things because I just knew how disappointed you would be.

And I was sitting there ready for the in-depth discussion, because I'm going to be a dad soon. I need the owner's manual. And he looks at me and he says, son, I have no earthly idea.

Thanks, boss.

Appreciate that. I think that may have been his way of saying, actually, it's something you learn by doing, not so much by following some kind of a pre-programmed thing. But it reminded me of that. I guess I got around to it eventually, because I was able to communicate those things to my kids by just the conversations and what we talked about within the home itself.

I think that's what he's talking about here. I certainly was not putting myself forward as a paradigm of parenthood. I guarantee you that. But it seems that at least in this sense, this idea of teaching them to your sons and talking of them when you sit in your house, when you walk along the road, when you lie down, when you rise up, it is to be an immersion.

We know that's not the best way to learn a language. Well, I think it's the best way to learn the language of being a follower of God, is to be constantly speaking of His glory and His might and His power and His authority and our role as His creatures and His purpose in this world and our calling to be a part of the promotion of that purpose.

You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. You've probably seen the mezuzahs. I'm sure there's plenty of mezuzahs around here on Long Island where a rabbi has blessed this thing that's put up on the doorpost.

There's some of the commandments that are written in there. Again, obviously, that would be worthless if you hadn't read the commandments and weren't living them. But the idea was that there should be no confusion as to where this family and this household stands.

And there should be no concern that the world outside knows. It should be open to the world. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates so that your days and the days of your sons may be multiplied in the land which Yahweh swore to your fathers to give them as long as the heavens remain above the earth.

Now, just real quickly, I don't have time to expand upon this, but one of the things I've been doing for my folks in the series we're doing is we've actually had two sermons. You may want to pray for them and pity them, but we've actually had two sermons simply on the Canaanite gods that surround the people of Israel.

One of the reasons for that is if you know something about the religious milieu, the religious context in which the people of Israel live, so much of the Old Testament all of a sudden starts popping. It just starts making perfect sense.

There's arguments going on and stuff that you thought was excess verbiage. It isn't excess verbiage. As long as the heavens remain above the earth.

What's that all about?

Well, if you knew something about the Canaanite gods and the fact that they came forth to your sphere, if you understood that the gods that the people of Israel were being tempted to go after and to worship came from that kind of a background, then you see the contrast that is being made here.

Yahweh has the right to make covenants and promises that are extensive to anywhere in the world and at any time.

He's not like these other gods.

There are so many apologetic arguments that one finds in the text of the Old Testament when you realize what the background was and what the people were facing. It really is a fascinating thing. For if you are careful to keep all this commandment, which I am commanding you to do, to love Yahweh your God, to walk in all His ways and hold fast to Him.

Don't go past that. To the promise that is given. To the driving out of nations, which we know the Israelites weren't completely faithful to and so they really didn't complete the task.

And we know what happened.

That resulted in temptation and fall and so on and so forth. But notice what keeping all this commandment is about. It's described as loving Yahweh your God, walking in all His ways, holding fast to Him.

Put those three together. Loving, walking in His ways, holding fast to Him. There's an incredible description that with the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives should be a goal for us. As the Apostle Paul put it, we are always seeking to know what is pleasing to Him.

Well, there's a good description of exactly what is pleasing to Him. A lot of people struggle with the idea that we are commanded in Scripture. The greatest commandment. Love God. Atheists don't get that.

They think that God's on a massive arrogance kick. And they mock this kind of a thing. But there are many people within what's called professing Christianity that struggle with the idea that this could actually be a commandment of God.

How can you command love? Well, the very fact that Jesus said it was the greatest commandment should immediately cause us to go, hmm, I better think more carefully about what love actually means. There are many people within professing Christendom that have brought wholesale the world's definition of love right into the church.

And the result is tremendous confusion. The result is tremendous confusion. Because to love God is a commandment. And it first of all involves a choice and a commitment. A choice and a commitment. A knowledgeable choice.

God does not want pagan worship where you worship unknown gods. He does not want a type of worship that's focused upon yourself that is not focused upon the true knowledge of who God is. That's one of the main things that separates our history from that of the religions of the world is that God has revealed himself and he wants to be known amongst his people and worship for who he is and for what he's done.

All the pagan ideas of some kind of altered state of consciousness where you're just doing your thing and you just feel states of ecstasy. Foreign paganism to the Christian message. We worship a God we know.

And that means we need to know the truth about him and we worship in spirit and in truth. And he wants us to know him and he wants us to love him. We are commanded to love him. Which means that that love transcends and is much deeper and much fuller than the kind of emotionalism that our society identifies with love.

If we cannot recognize that that love that we're to have for God has much more to it than the emotions that the world talks about that we're never going to understand how God's love has been manifested in what he's done in this world.

Last evening I was talking with some ladies that came up to me and they said, you know, how could God be loving and yet he destroyed all these people and he killed all these people in the Old Testament?

And I had to explain. We need to understand what love is. We need to understand what God's holiness is. You see, if you just have the emotional compassion feeling definition of love you're never going to be able to put that together with the holy God of Israel.

You're always going to end up with a schizophrenic God because that definition isn't big enough to fit the love that God has. That love brought about the bloody cross of Calvary. So if you can't see how the love of God and the holiness of God are like this in his character you really haven't begun to see the God of the Bible.

And it's far too easy for people to criticize the God of the Bible and to create all sorts of contradictions because they've never recognized these things. So God says, what does it mean to keep his commandments?

Love Yahweh your God. Yahweh has revealed himself by that name and he is your God. He has entered the covenant with you. And if you love Yahweh, you walk in all his ways. Not just some of his ways, not just the ways that make you feel comfortable but you walk in all his ways which means you want to know what his ways are.

You want to know his law. That's why the psalm is Psalm 119. If you ever want to give yourself a spiritual check-up a spiritual temperature check-up read the 119th Psalm.

Yeah, it's going to take a while.

That's a big one. We preach through the Psalter on Wednesday nights at our church.

We start with Psalm 1, we go through Psalm 150.

And guess what we do after that?

We go back to Psalm 1.

And we've been doing that ever since I've been there.

I've been there over 25 years. And so I'm not sure how many times we've gone through the Psalter but we just keep on going. And when we get to Psalm 119, we break it up into its constituent parts because you know Psalm 119 is the acrostic poem and the first section starts with Aleph and then Beth and then Gebel and Dalet and so on and so forth.