Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction:

-What is your favorite verse in the Bible?

-Does anyone have one?

**take some verses**

Wouldn’t it be nice to know what Jesus’ favorite verse or passage is?

What do you think He would have said?

-Well, we actually have an occasion in the life of Jesus where he wasn’t asked that exact question, but He was asked something at least similar to it

Background

-We are going to be in Deuteronomy 6:1-5 this evening looking at this passage that Jesus deems to be the most important of all of God’s commands

Now, what I like to try to do on Wednesday evenings when I preach is help us become better at reading and interpreting Scripture for ourselves.

-So while I’m preaching this, I also want to teach you how you can be better at interpreting Scripture in your own time with the Lord

-So I have some basic principles this evening for how to read and interpret the Pentateuch, and I’ll get to those in just a moment

-But first, I want you to notice the illustration I have at the bottom of the page

-This is something I got from one of my seminary professors, and I think it illustrates how to rightly read and interpret the Bible

We live in 2022 in the Charlotte area in America.

-We have a way that we view the world

-The Bible, however, was written to people that lived a long time ago

-And so what can be tempting for us to do is just to read the Bible as if it was written to us in America in 2022.

-Now, it’s important to make a careful distinction

-The Bible was written FOR us . . .

amen?

-That being said, the Bible wasn’t written TO us, in the sense that we were not the original intended audience

-We don’t have the book of “Charlotteans” that Paul penned, because he didn’t write to us like he wrote to the Philippians or the Corinthians

So when we read and interpret the Bible, we need to seek to cross this bridge, out of 2022 Charlotte, and over into the biblical world

-So tonight, we are going to cross into the world of the nation of Israel in 1400BC

-We want to read and study and understand the text in its context — how it was meant to be read and understood by the original audience

-THEN, we want to seek to cross back over the bridge and see how this applies to us as NT Christians

-This is especially important when studying the OT

-Why?

Because although the audience of Paul’s epistles lived in a far different situation than we do, Paul is still writing to NT Christians who live on this side of the Cross and the empty tomb, so we share a lot in common with them spiritually

-With the OT, however, these people lived before the cross, and therefore there is not as much as share in common with them as we do with the recipients of Paul’s letters

-For instance, in the OT, they had the Tabernacle/Temple and sacrifices, whereas we don’t have that today

-Sound good?

Now, I’m going to walk us through a few of these principles I’ve written down, and then we’ll get to the rest at the end.

-The book of Deuteronomy is found in what we call the Pentateuch, so named because they are the first five books of the Bible, hence the word “penta”

-These books have been attributed to Moses throughout the Bible (1 Kings 2:3, John 5:45-47)

-As we read the Pentateuch, there are a few things we need to keep in mind as we seek to understand it

-The overarching theme of the Pentateuch (or metanarrative) is the God bringing about His plan of redemption for sinful mankind

-And I want to kind of lay this out for you, because it’s extremely important in understanding our text today

The Pentateuch begins with the account of God creating the world and creating man and woman in his image and in right relationship with Himself

-However, man and woman chose to sin, plunging the world and the human race into sin, resulting in broken fellowship with God

-Despite this, God promised in Genesis 3:15 that a descendant would come from the woman who would deliver a crushing blow to the Serpent, the enemy of God

-Genesis begins then to trace the line of the woman down through history

-The first descendant of the woman is Cain, and he quickly shows that he is not the descendant we’re looking for, seeing as how he murders his brother.

-And so the line continues from Adam to Seth and then to Noah eventually, and down through the centuries we trace it until we get to a man named Abram.

-God calls this descendant out of his place of comfort and into a relationship with God

-God promises that He will make of this man a special people that will bless all the families of the earth

And so we begin to trace the line of the woman through this man, and we see the story unfold of how God is marking off for Himself a special people who are to be distinct from those around them

-This man Abraham has a son named Isaac, who has a son named Jacob, who has 12 sons.

-And it seems that no matter how sinful these descendants can be, no matter how bad they mess up, or no matter who threatens them, God protects this line of descendants

-When there’s a famine in the world, God prepares a special place for them to grow and be protected in the land of Egypt

-And when they’ve grown to somewhere between 1 and 2 million people in the land of Egypt, God brings them out of their slavery despite the powerful Egyptian Pharoah’s best efforts

-God recruits a man named Moses to be His instrument in bringing the people out and in representing Him both to Pharoah and the people

-Moses doesn’t go without a fight, but God wins out and uses this unlikely servant to bring out the Israelites with such power and force that it devastates one of the world’s most powerful nations

-And if that’s not enough, when they get to the Red Sea with the Egyptian army in pursuit, God opens up the Sea, allowing His people to cross on dry land

-And when the Egyptians try to pass, He drowns their entire army

-God soon brings this group of descendants (who quickly show themselves to be a bunch of grumblers and complainers) to Mount Sinai, where God Himself makes a covenant with them

-He has rescued them from Egyptian slavery and wants to enter into an exclusive love relationship with these people

-He will be their God, and they shall be His special, marked-off people

-He promises to guide them, provide for them, love them, and bring them into the land He promised their ancestors

-And they in turn are to love Him and obey His commands as evidence of their love

-Moses no sooner receives the Ten Words (as they’re literally called) from the Lord on Sinai that the people have already made a golden calf as a visual representation of Yahweh and worshipping it

-Despite this massive failure, God guides them all the way to the brink of the promised land

-Before they go in, they ask if they can send in spies to scout out the land

-God allows this, and the spies go in

-They come back and give a bad report to the people, saying that there is no way that they can take this land!

-The people are too strong and powerful

-The people rebel against God’s command

How incredibly sad this is!

-This is literally the opposite of the truth

-It was God’s love for the people that caused Him to rescue them, and He had promised them victory over the enemies inhabiting the land

Because of this, God punishes the Israelites

-He sentences them to wandering around in the wilderness for 40 years until every male over the age of 20 is dead

-Only their children will be able to inherit the land

-And so they wander aimlessly for 40 years

-Until once again, here they stand, a new generation, again on the brink of the promised land

-Behind them lies the failures and rebellions of the previous generation

-Before them lies the promises of God

-What will they do?

-And it’s in this context, that we find ourselves this evening as we begin to exegete and exposit the book of Deuteronomy

Background of Deuteronomy

-Deuteronomy is the culmination of the Pentateuch

-As I just mentioned, Israel sits on the brink of the Promised Land, finally ready to attempt once again to enter the Land after their failure 40 years earlier

-Deuteronomy then is a collection of sermons delivered by Moses to the nation of Israel, the second generation since the Exodus

-In chapters 1-3, Moses recounts the history of Israel since the Exodus and the Crossing of the Red Sea

-He recounts their journey to Mount Sinai to receive the Law, and then their journey to Kadesh-Barnea

-This is the place where they failed to trust God and take the land

-He then recounts that failure and their subsequent years of wandering, back up to the present time

-In chapter 4, Moses commands the Israelites to live in obedience to God’s commands, and warns them of the horrible consequences of abandoning God

-In chapter 5, Moses gives the 10 Commandments once again, just like in Exodus 20.

In in this context, we find our passage for this evening.

Vs. 1-3

-What is the commandment, statutes, and judgments?

-If you glance back at chapter 5, you’ll see what he’s referring to in context

-He’s referring to the Decalogue, the 10 Words, or as we know them, the 10 Commandments

-This is the commandment which Moses has been commanded to teach the Israelites

In these first two verses, we have three intended outcomes or effects that are intended with the teaching (expositing) of the command of God by Moses, all of them beginning with the word “that”:

“That you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess”

-God wants them to do the commandments, to follow them, to obey them

-He is giving the Israelites this land that He’s promised, and they must obey Him in this land