The Command To Love YHWH

It is all the way over on on. There we go. I'll just have to stand still this evening. It's a little bit hot, but that's all right. Not hot in here. I mean, the microphone is feeding back a little bit.

Deuteronomy 11 and the Call to Love Yahweh

Deuteronomy, Chapter 11. Before we look to the word of God, let us ask the Lord to bless our time. Gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you for giving us the opportunity of meeting this day in this place.

And as we open your word, we would ask that once again, you would help us to understand, to think about your truth, to make application that we might understand and truly be servants of yours in this coming week.

We pray in Christ's name. Amen. Well, the weather did everything it could to try to keep us from being here today. But here we are. I was thinking this morning that it was going to be another couple of weeks before we would be able to see one another again.

As most of you know, tomorrow evening, I board a flight for Johannesburg via London and we'll be engaging in a number of debates. Again, some mosques involved there in South Africa, as well as some churches and universities and things like that.

So your prayers would be appreciated for that time. But it has been our our study over the past number of times, and I've had the opportunity of speaking to be looking at the Holiness Code. We have only begun the background of this study.

We have not actually gotten into Leviticus yet. We will, I promise you. But you may recall the last time we were together, we began looking at Deuteronomy chapters 10 and 11. And the reason we were doing this was to provide the necessary background.

I truly believe that one of the largest issues that we have to deal with in attempting to present the righteousness and the binding character of God's moral law is we have to recognize that we are dealing with rebels.

It's so easy in our society today to to be pushed into the mindset that what we're dealing with are neutrally minded individuals that are just, you know, they're just not convinced of the particular claims of Christianity.

And and they're not they're not rebels against God. They don't they don't hate God. In fact, you're radical and you're gun loving and you're exclusivistic. And just start down the all the bad words, discriminating and, you know, all the words.

Discrimination, by the way, means making choices. It's amazing how that has become abused in our day. But but you're all these things and everybody out in the world, they're just morally neutral individuals.

And when we open up our Bibles, we are taught that men know that God exists. They're suppressing the knowledge of God, even on a basic level. I think it's an accurate illustration. I'll update a little bit.

I think it's an accurate illustration that a Christian scholar a number of years ago gave. He said, if you were simply to attach a recording device, he said a tape recorder. It gives you an idea of how long ago that was.

Sorry. But today, you know, an MP3 recorder or something like that, if you were to attach it to someone and just simply record, it just simply turns on and turns off every time they would make a moral judgment about someone else.

And then judge them by that standard, no one would pass that test. We all have that that ability to look at others and we make application, but we don't even live by the applications that we make to other individuals.

We're hypocrites. And yet the world will say, oh, no, no, we're all just morally neutral. No, we're not rebels against God. We're not suppressing any knowledge. And so when we try to start talking about the law of God, what you have to remember is that no one will ever hear or honor the law of God who hates the God of the law.

No one will ever honor or hear or bow to the law of God who hates the God of the law. And that's the real issue. We are always in a spiritual battle in this situation. Very often, you're like me, you know, you approach these situations in a very analytical way.

And, you know, this person would just think logically and rationally like I do. Well, that's not the whole story. I mean, I think we honor God when we when we speak consistently with this truth, that's that's true.

But all the consistency in the world isn't going to change the heart of an individual who fundamentally hates the God who gave that law. Someone sent me a video clip. Oh, I saw it last evening. I really appreciate the pastor who sent it to me.

And it was a video clip from, I guess, the current season of Survivor. I think I saw the first season of Survivor. That was what, 1952, something like that. It's it's it's been going a long time. And I just I just don't follow it.

I just, you know, the first season was interesting. I might have seen a few of the second. And after that, it was like, yeah, OK, whatever. But there are two men on this season and they sent me this interview with them.

And of course, they're homosexuals because that's the thing to be these days. But with such ease, they talked about how not only are they saving themselves from marriage, but it's because they're followers of Jesus.

I'm sitting here watching this, knowing full well, this is absolutely purposeful on the part of the media and all the rest is well aware of exactly why this is happening. But through my mind running all of the the issues that this raises.

And the frustrations that I feel, and yet I also recognize that there's no reason for me really to be feeling those frustrations because I know biblically exactly why people behave in this way. I know why there are people who want to be religious and yet ignore major portions of God's word.

I understand that. It's there, and yet there's still this this natural reaction within me, and I think it's Psalm 119. The psalmist talks about crying rivers of water because people disdain and trample on the law of God.

You know, I understand that. But the Christian life these days is trying to hold these balances together. Sometimes you go off this direction, you become apathetic. You just that's just the world and you stop worrying about it.

You go this direction, you're in a constant state of worry and fretting and unhappiness, and it's got to be a balance. And I think the only way we can have that balance is we really know what God's word has to say about this issue.

Let's look to the word and then make some application. Obviously, I expected more time to cover this material today than we're going to have. So I'm going to compress a little bit. Deuteronomy chapter 11.

You shall therefore love the Lord your God and always keep his charge, his statutes, his ordinances and his commandments. Know this day that I am not speaking with your sons who have not known and who have not seen the discipline of the Lord, your God, his greatness, his mighty hand in his outstretched arm and his signs and his works, which he did in the midst of Egypt to Pharaoh, the king of Egypt and to all his land.

And what he did to Egypt's army and its horses and its chariots when he made the water of the Red Sea to engulf them while they were pursuing you. And I apologize. I need to use the tetragrammaton here.

I did when I read it last time I spoke. It's important that we recognize that it says and Yahweh, we're talking about a specific God here by name and Yahweh completely destroyed them and what he did to you in the wilderness.

And so you came to this place and what he did to Dathan of Abiram, the sons of Eliab, the son of Reuben, when the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them, their households, their tents and every living thing that followed them among all Israel.

But your own eyes have seen all the great works of Yahweh, which he did. You shall therefore keep every commandment, which I am commanding you today, so that you may be strong and go in and possess the land in which you are about to cross to possess it, so that you may prolong your days on the land, which Yahweh swore to your fathers to give to them and to their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey for the land in which you are entering to possess it is not like the land of Egypt from which you came, where you used to sow your seed and water it with your foot like a vegetable garden.

But the land in which you are about to cross to possess it, a land of hills and valleys, drinks water from the rain of heaven, a land for which the Lord your God cares, the eyes of Yahweh your God are always on it from the beginning even to the end of the year.

It shall come about, if you listen obediently to my commandments, which I am commanding you today, to love Yahweh your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, that he will give the rain for your land in its season, the early and late rain, that you may gather in your grain and your new wine and your oil.

He will give you grass in your fields for your cattle and you will eat and be satisfied. Beware that your hearts are not deceived and that you do not turn away and serve other gods and worship them. For the anger of Yahweh will be kindled against you and he will shut up the heavens so that there will be no rain and the ground will not yield its fruit and you will perish quickly from the good land which Yahweh has given you.

You shall therefore impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul. You shall bind them as a sign in your hand and they shall be as frentals on your forehead. 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.

You shall write them the doorposts of your house 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.

For if you are careful to keep all his commandments, which I am commanding you to do, to love Yahweh your God, to walk in all his ways and hold fast to him, then Yahweh 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 to Lebanon and from the river, the river Euphrates, as far as the western sea. No man will be able to stand before you.

Yahweh your God will lay the dread of you and the fear of you on all the land on which you set foot, as he has spoken to you. And then after this you have the repetition of what we've seen elsewhere, the blessings and the cursings, which we will not be able to get to at this particular point in time.

The Love and Obedience of God's Covenant People

Now, just a few things very briefly, and I want to focus specifically upon verses 15 and following. Remember what we said last time when we were talking about one of the ways that we can really glean much from not just the holiness code, but from really the entire Old Testament revelation, but especially when we're looking at the law and the commandments that Yahweh gives to his people.

If we remember the context in which they were living, if we remember the gods that surrounded them, the people with whom they'd have to be having interaction as they do trading, as they engage in people coming through with trade routes and things like that.

There's going to be conversations, there's going to be interaction. Knowing something about those people is very, very important. I don't have time this evening to review all of that, but remember last time we talked about the nature of some of these gods, these deities, the worship that these people would engage in.

When you think about what you have here, the gods of those peoples were not really the objects of love, they were only the objects of fear. They were the objects of fear because of the possible withholding of necessary items, especially fertility of animals, fertility of crops, hence rain, drought, flood, forest fire, insect infestation, etc., etc., etc.

Basically what they did is they created gods that had control over each of these areas and then you would offer sacrifices to attempt to appease and to please these gods. This was the nature of the kind of religious worship that existed in various forms amongst the Canaanites, the land into which the people were going.

You have instead in this section a very different approach. You do have the command that we are to fear God, we are to obey God, he has commandments, but it is very different than what you have in the religions of that day because it is a command to love.

It is a command to love and the God that you are commanded to love is not you are to love the God of the weather over against, well, you can have a particular place in your heart for the God of the crops because you are a farmer, whereas this person over here would have a particular place for the God of war because he is a soldier.

Then you have another God of merchandising and so if you are a salesman or something like that, then you might have a special place for that God. No, there is only one God and because we are his creation, and it is not like the Canaanite religions had where the gods were sick and tired of feeding themselves and so they created mankind to do the feeding for them, that whole concept is completely absent.

Instead, you have God as our creator and our maker and our sustainer and the proper focus of our love and our passion because everything we have, any good thing that we have comes from his hand and that we only find our fullest fulfillment in knowledge of him.

And so, Deuteronomy 11 starts off, you shall love Yahweh your God, always keep his charge, his statutes, his orders, his commandments. It is sad, but a lot of people think that in the Old Testament, you have one God and he just tells you to obey him.

And then when you get to the New Testament, we have got the father of Jesus and now we are obedient because we love God and God loves us. And now we have got love as if that was not a part of the Old Testament revelation.

Now, certainly there were many people under the Old Covenant who had hearts of stone. And we see the difference between the Old and the New Covenant. They all know you, the least of the greatest of them in the New Covenant and they have all had that heart of stone taken out and you have got that concept of regeneration that is very, very important.

But there were people in the Old Covenant who loved God because that heart of stone had been taken out and they had been recipients of that tremendous grace from God. And so the command to love Yahweh your God, then the command to obey him and keep his commandments, it was not like you have in so many people's minds where it was just this kind of angry God, do this and there is no reason for it and do this, there is no relationship to God, etc.

I do not know how anyone can read the Old Testament and come to that conclusion. They must be skipping the Psalter or something, I do not know, or all the prophets. They are skipping the Old Testament in essence and just not really listening to what it is saying because notice the love of God is directly connected with fidelity to his charge, faithfulness, and keeping his statutes, his ordinances and his commandments.

It is a loving relationship and that obedience flows from, the Scriptures have always known, that the only heart that is truly going to give obedience to God is that broken heart that recognizes its own sin and turns in love to God.

There is nothing new about that. It is just now in the New Covenant we have that specific fulfillment that we see in the work of regeneration of all those that are in it. And so when Moses makes this commandment, he says, I know who I am talking to.

I am not talking to your children who have not seen what God has done. You have seen what God has done, his mighty and outstretched arm, his signs and his wonders, what he did to Egypt, and remember what Dathan of Biram, the earth opening up and swallowing the enemies of God, and so on and so forth.

Verse 7 says, But your own eyes have seen all the great work of Yahweh which he did. You shall therefore keep every commandment which I am commanding you today. So these individuals had seen God's faithfulness to his promises.

They had also seen his mercy. Because so many of these incidents have to do not only with delivering Israel, but how many times we are reading through it right now in the Old Testament as we read on Sunday evenings.

The people rebel. They forget. They are provided for. Oh, this bread is wonderful. A few chapters later, we can't stand this bread. Oh, these birds are wonderful. I can't stand it. Now we don't have enough water.

Well, didn't God provide water before? Clearly, these individuals, the vast majority of them are going to die in the wilderness. They are not going to enter into the promised land. They have very hard hearts.

And so we learn from that that you can see all the miracles in the world. You can see all the glorious acts of God. Remember Hebrews chapter 6? You can be in the congregation. You can see the spirit of God working.

You can see hearts and minds change. But if your heart has not been changed, seeing it will never change you. When anybody comes up to you and says, Oh, man, if I could just see some miracles, you know?

Ridiculous. As Jesus himself said, it wouldn't matter if someone came back from the dead. If they have Moses and the prophets, they'll listen to them. They're not going to change their heart. The visible signs and miracles cannot change the hardened heart.

That's why I say regeneration is one of the greatest. Well, it may be one of the, may be the greatest miracle that we see. Certainly in our day it is. So you shall therefore keep every commandment which I am commanding you to do because you've seen God's faithfulness.

So that you may be strong, go and possess the land in which you are about to cross to possess it. So that you may prolong your days in the land which you always swore to your fathers. And give to them that.

Think of that extending your time upon the land. What does that bring up in your mind? Remember, well, we haven't read it tonight, but remember the phraseology in the scripture. Then in the description of why God was going to be dispossessing these people.

Also, people just hate it. Oh, you believe in a God who has genocide, all the rest of this stuff. It's amazing. It's amazing. If God wiped out these people with plague, fire, flood, earthquake, they'd be going.

But if you use this human instrumentality, and what's the problem with their thinking? That these people are not under God's wrath. And yet we know that the Canaanites, Genesis chapter 15 tells us, their iniquity was being filled up.

It's being filled up. And so when God brings his judgment, it is justice. It is right. Shouldn't be ashamed of it. But notice the language that's used when that type of judgment is announced. It is said that because these people did what they did, the land spewed them out, literally vomited them out.

Well, what a picture that is. Think about what that picture is telling us. The land belongs to God. And even the land, the impersonal land, knows what's right and wrong in that sense. And if people cannot possess a land who spit in God's face and abuse the land and themselves in rebellion against God, the land spewed them out.

And that's the language that's used. And when God says to the people of Israel, don't do these things, we're going to see in the holiness code, specifically when it talks about sexual practices, it says don't do what the people before you did and the land spewed them out.

It is so unnatural what they did that the natural land didn't want to have these unnatural creatures inhabiting it. And so the land spewed them out is the picture that is used. It's the picture of a person who, man, I wish I had done this.

But remember, I got really sick back in January of 2013 because one morning at a hotel, I'm having breakfast and I grab a carton of milk and I take a swig. And man, I wish I had spit that stuff. I swallowed it.

And man, did I pay for that for the next 36 hours. But it just was, oh, you could just tell there's something wrong here. There's something, this is not right. And it was just the natural, it's an unnatural taste and you want to spew it back out.

Well, when mankind gets to that level of depravity, the land itself wants to just get rid of this unnatural rebellion against God. And that's the language that is used. And so the opposite of that is love God, keep his commandments, dwell on the land, keep possession of it, live long in the land.

The idea is once you stop that level of obedience, the land is not going to want you any longer. Man doesn't view the land as a given promise from God, as a gift from God anymore. We just view it as where we, you know, I've got a title deed, so it's mine.

But that's not how it works. And no people who ever get to the point of thinking that, well, we have this land and it's ours and God has nothing to do with it. Any people that get to that point are going to be in great, great difficulty.

But notice something else. Notice it talks about how the land of Egypt was sown. And verse 11 says, but the land in which you are about to cross to possess it. Now, if you know about Egypt, the Nile is the mechanism.

I mean, you think we don't get rain. Well, actually, we've done pretty well this September, actually. I think Brother Callahan's been praying. And so we did you back off a little bit, brother? Because last night my house almost got blown away.

I mean, it was it was coming down sideways yesterday. I think my neighbors stole this little plant thing that used to be on my front porch. I now see it on theirs. I feel like I feel bad going over there going, can I have that back, please?

But it just ended up down the street some ways. And so we've gotten some rain. But Egypt, it's not really like that. And how do you grow things and how do you support a meaningful population? In Egypt, it's the Nile, it's the river.

So you have to when it says using your foot to dig, it's those canals. It's those irrigation canals. They're all over the place. But he says the land you're going into, it's not like that. It's the land of hills and valleys that drinks water from the rain of heaven, the land for which Yahweh your God cares.

The eyes of Yahweh your God are always on it from the beginning, even to the end of the year. What's the echo in the back of this? This is what we have to be thinking of when we hear these things. What's the echo?

The echo is the Canaanite religions. You've got gods of the hills. You've got gods of the valleys. You've got gods of rain. You've got gods of fertility. You've got all this division of stuff. And what's in the language, inherent in the language that God uses to speak to his people is, no, all that's wrong.

I'm the one in control of everything, everywhere, because I'm the only true God. And I give the early and the latter rains. And I have my eye upon this. And I don't have to, I'm not in competition with some other god.

You don't have to go looking for Baal and say, well, okay, we're going to offer sacrifices to Yahweh. And then we're also going to offer some sacrifices to Baal to cover our bases, see. The whole point is there are no bases to cover.

And then, in fact, to think that there are is a tremendous insult to the one true God. Now, you might say, well, why do you emphasize that so strongly? Because I really think that so many of the objections that are raised against what we have in our Old Testament vanish away, not in some magical way, but they vanish away once we realize that God is constantly engaging in an apologetic for his people.

I've mentioned to you before, I love that text in Jeremiah chapter 10, where even though Jeremiah is written in Hebrew, when Jeremiah is telling the people, this is what you will say to the people who invite you to worship their gods, who have not created the heavens and the earth.

And then it switches from Hebrew to Aramaic. It switches the very language of the people that they're going to be interacting with and says, say this, the gods that did not create the heavens and the earth will perish from under the heavens and the earth.

Gives them the exact words to say in the language that people would understand. Then it goes back to Hebrew. A fascinating element of the text. And so the point is that God is giving to his people an apologetic even in the way that he frames his promises.

You don't have to worry about these competing deities and going to this temple over there and that temple over there and opening this god's mouth and putting this in there. That's completely untrue. I created all of these things.

And the eyes of Yahweh your God are always on this land from the beginning even to the end of the year. He doesn't fall asleep. You don't have to have priests come over and gong and offer sacrifices to wake him up and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

No, this is something completely different than that. It should come about if you listen obediently to my commandments, which I'm commanding you today to love Yahweh your God and to serve him with all your heart and all your soul.

Again, see the intimate connection. There is no separation of obedience and love if you will listen obediently to my commandments. How many people listen to the commandments of God with just a stiff neck?

You may tell me to do that and I may have to but I don't want to. That's not the attitude that enters into this at all. If you listen obediently to my commandments, which I'm commanding you today to love Yahweh your God, to serve him with all your heart and all your soul.

This is a call to the complete surrender of each of the members of the people of Israel to a life dedicated to service to Yahweh. Now, there may have been specific people who, because they were in the priestly class, they did certain things and you would think that they had a special relationship.

But the reality is all of the people of Israel were being called to give their lives as representatives of this one true God. All of their lives, it didn't matter if they were a poor farmer or if they had more land and maybe they sat in the city gates and they were one of the elders or something like it.

It didn't matter. This is a commandment to everyone and for every person to serve him with all your heart and all your soul. There is no half-hearted following of Yahweh. That's why idolatry is such a horrific sin.

That's why idolatry is so constantly warned against and it's really found at the base of so many things. Because, you see, idolatry in all of its various forms, and it has many more forms than we might think.

I'm afraid we tend to go, well, you know, I haven't seen any hideous idols along the side of the road recently. Well, actually, I have. Now they're electronic and flash different things at a time in certain ways.

You can see three of them right in the time you're driving by. But we have them all over the place. But there is so much idolatry and idolatry in all of its forms fundamentally is seeking to stop us from doing this.

To stop us from loving Yahweh your God and serving him with all your heart and all your soul. So when the world is constantly seeking to snatch not all of your soul or all of your passions, all of your heart away from God, but a portion.

Wants to separate that out and cause you to elevate a certain aspect of the world's possessions, the world's praise, whatever it is. Each one of us has different temptations as to what we can turn into an idol in our own life.

The first temptation is not to simply throw God off completely and grab that. It is to give a portion of what belongs to God. To that thing. And then it grows and then it grows. And sometimes we can't see that happening in the life of somebody else.

Sometimes it's invisible to us. The Lord suffers a time when we're supposed to examine our lives and to see if that's happening. We pray that the Lord would reveal that to us before it becomes, well, what we end up seeing.

There have been times we've all known people we thought they were right there with us, and then all of a sudden, they're gone. And you go and you... Where did so-and-so go? I haven't seen so-and-so for a few years.

So your phone calls don't get returned and your emails don't get returned. And finally you track somebody down or you hear through the grapevine or something. All of a sudden you discover someone has completely thrown the faith off.

Well, I guarantee you that didn't happen one day. They weren't going along loving God one day and then the next day wake up and go, done with it. No, it was a process. And there was idolatry involved.

And there was that growth of something that was given love and service that God demanded for Himself. God demanded for Himself. To serve Him with all your heart and all your soul. Not just a part. You say, but God's made me really passionate about this thing in life or that thing in life.

Yes, He's made us that way. But those things all have to be seen as part of how we serve God. That's how you keep it all going the same direction. I drove halfway through my sophomore year in high school.

The Lord really grabbed hold of me. In fact, I look back now and think about the preacher on the radio. That I listened to for a week of revival meetings at a local church here. I look at him now and man, is that a fulfillment of the saying that I heard first from Pastor Fry years ago.

God can draw a straight line with a crooked stick. Because I look at this guy today and go, really? I mean, he's sort of on TBN Hawking Jesus soap or something like that. You know, I mean, he's just gone way off in the NaNa land.

But somehow, that man preached some fiery stuff. And halfway through, I think it was like January, February of my sophomore year. The Lord really grabbed hold of my heart and said, you know better. You need to be living your life in a better way than you would live in your life.

Really called me to, that's when I really got serious about the Bible. I mean, I had all the great background of being raised in a Christian family and stuff. But man, I really started to become serious at that particular point in time.

And I was playing on the varsity tennis team that semester. I was either number one, two or three. And you'd have to play these challenge matches. And that would determine where you were in the rankings on the team.

Well, it's a high school. And when the guys I'd be playing for would mess up a shot or something like that, you'd get an expletive. But I wouldn't do that. And instead, if I'd miss a shot, I'd go, oh, my word.

Oh, my word. And eventually they got, I remember this one guy got so sick and tired of it. All of a sudden, I missed a shot. Said, oh, my word. And he dropped his racket. Everybody could hear it all across the tennis courts.

And he just stopped and said, what is your word? And everybody else was like, yeah, yeah. It's just they hated that I would not do what they would do in the utilization of foul language. They just thought it just grated against them that when I would have one of those situations, it was like, oh, my word.

Well, I understand that. I understand the world doesn't like that. But what I was trying to do and the best way that I could. And I, I really poured myself into being the best tennis player I could. As part of my demonstration that I was serious about my faith.

I even got up to number one while I was doing that. That's what we've got to be thinking about when you when you're if you're a housewife. And you love taking care of the family that doesn't have to become an idol.

It doesn't have to be something separate from your love to God. You need to see how to make that a part of your expression to God. If God has given you certain physical abilities, you do it to the glory of God.

You know, when it becomes something that's distracting you from God or when you're doing everything you can to make it a part of your worship and service of God, you know. You can see when it starts wandering that direction.

God hasn't called us to just sit around and contemplate our navels. There is a real truth to the idea that when God gives you certain gifts and abilities, when you use them to their utmost as a servant of Jesus Christ, you're honoring and glorifying.

It's a good thing to do. And that's what the people of Israel were called to do. Well, time is escaping me, unfortunately, and I want to look at verse 16. Beware that your hearts are not deceived and that you do not turn away and serve other gods and worship them.

Warning against idolatry, because then you have the anger of Yahweh will be kindled against you. He will shut up the heavens so there'll be no rain. The ground will not yield its fruit. God will not bless an idolatrous people.