What Does God Require?

Passage Introduction

Turn in your copy of Scripture to Deuteronomy chapter 4. Our text for this morning is going to be Deuteronomy 4:1-8 … sort of. As I was preparing my sermon on this passage, I realized that there are a number of topics to address that are important to be able to fully understand the rest of Deuteronomy, and this passage provides a good opportunity to at least address those things by way of introduction, but that was really lengthening this sermon, so … I’m going to preach on this passage again next week, and what I’m going to say today is mostly going to focus on the first two verses.

So pay close attention as we read, and before we do, let’s pray for the Spirit’s help to understand.

Sermon Introduction

I sure am glad not to be an Israelite. I’m glad that I’m living in the days after Jesus came and died and rose from the dead, living in the days of the gospel and not the law. I’m glad to know that salvation is by faith alone and doesn’t have anything to do with the law. I’m glad that Paul has made sure that I know that in Christ I have died to the law, that I have freedom from the law in Christ, that Christ has abolished the law, so that I don’t have to worry about statutes and ordinances anymore! I’m so glad that none of this applies to me!

So say many who call themselves Christians today. But that is not real Christianity. That’s not to say that everything I just said is false; Paul really does say that you have died to the law, and salvation really is by God’s grace alone, received by faith alone. But that doesn’t mean the law is abolished, or that salvation has nothing to do with the law, or that the law in no way applies to you.

Really, all the bad teaching out there concerning the Christian’s relationship to the law is one big reason that I think it’s important to understand the book of Deuteronomy. You have to understand the law, and you have to understand its purpose for Israel, if you’re going to understand your relationship to the law in Christ. It’s not that nothing changed when Christ came; some pretty big things did change, and I definitely plan to highlight those things as we study Deuteronomy. But one thing that has not changed is the fundamental call to obey the law of God.

And that is the message that Moses begins to preach in this text. It’s a simple message, but a profoundly important message, and one that very much goes against the grain of our culture, and of our own sinful hearts. That message is, “Commit yourself to obeying God’s law.” Commit yourself to obeying God’s law.

Excursus on Types of Law

Before moving on, a clarification is in order. Need to point out one difference between then and now, because within the law of God, there are some distinctions. Those distinctions have traditionally been explained according to 3 categories of law: the moral law, the ceremonial law, and the civil law. And there are differences in how those different kinds of law carry over into the New Testament.

The ceremonial law governed Israel’s worship and set them apart from the nations as a people holy to the LORD. Those laws have been fulfilled in Christ, and their purpose for the New Testament Christian is not for you to continue following them, but rather to see what they teach you about Christ and his work.

The civil laws governed Israel’s life as a nation-state, and they have passed away now that the boundaries of God’s people transcend the boundaries of ethnicity and national borders, but they are still useful in that they are applications of the moral law, and they can serve as illustrations and clarifications of it.

But the moral law, which is summarized in the 10 Commandments and is rooted in the principle of love for God and for neighbor, that law is rooted in God’s eternal, unchanging nature.

As such, the moral law never changes, and it is to that law that God demands obedience of all people who have ever lived, and you will be bound to obey it for all eternity.

There’s a lot more to say about all three categories of law, and I’ll have plenty of opportunity to explain those things once we hit chapter 5! But I needed to say this much to make it clear what sort of laws I’m talking about when I tell you to commit yourself to obeying God’s law.

I. God demands obedience.

But now back to the main point: you must commit yourself to obeying God’s law, because obedience is what God demands. God desires an obedient people, a people who conforms to his standard of holiness, and so he demands that you obey his law.

Moses begins making that point right off the bat.

Vs. 1, “Listen to the statutes and ordinances I am teaching you to follow.”

Moses is about to explain the law; people need to hear, to really hear.

Not hear like the people of whom God speaks to Isaiah in Isaiah 6, “Keep listening, but do not understand.”

Moses is calling the people to really listen, to listen carefully, to hear and hear again, to so receive the law that it becomes foundational to their way of thinking and living.

And of course, to listen to the law in that way requires faith, faith in the God who gives this law, faith that his way is the best way, is the only way to live. Even in a passage in which Moses makes clear that God demands obedience from his people, faith remains foundational, for, as Hebrews 11:6 says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God.”

But this listening is not an end in itself; it is for a purpose, because Moses is teaching these statutes and ordinances to the people so that they might follow them.

Moses is about to give Israel a map that marks out the path of God, but that map is of no use if they do not actually walk along that path!

Repeated in 2b (keep the commands), 4 (remained faithful), 5 (follow them), 6 (carefully follow them). Will be repeated many more times throughout chapter 4, and then on through the rest of Deuteronomy.

The point: God’s ordinances are not curiosities. His stipulations are not just good advice. His commands are not mere suggestions. They are laws, and as laws, they are meant to be obeyed.

And that is still true for you as a Christian—or a non-Christian, for that matter. Either way you are bound by God’s law, because he is your Creator and King, whether you acknowledge him or not.

That’s why the Westminster Shorter Catechism asks question #39, “What is the duty that God requires of man?” and answers it, “The duty that God requires of man is obedience to his revealed will.”

That’s why the New Testament still has a category for sin, and continues to instruct Christians not to sin. Because what is sin? Another Catechism question, number 14, and the answer, “Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.”

Sidenote: this is a good illustration of why you should all learn the Shorter Catechism!

If you’re in Christ, your sins are forgiven, but not to give you license to go on sinning! You’re not saved by or on the basis of lawkeeping, not even a little bit, but part of the blessing of salvation is that you have new power and a new motivation to obey the law.

But there’s a bit more that needs to be said on this point, because of what Moses says in verse 2, “You must not add anything to what I command you or take anything away from it, so that you may keep the commands of the Lord your God I am giving you.”

I am a big fan of this verse, because I’m not a big fan of math, and here I have the inspired prophet of God telling me that at least when it comes to God’s law, there is to be no adding or subtracting!

But in all seriousness, this is a really important clarification to God’s demand that you obey his law. It’s something that should, quite frankly, be pretty obvious, but sin has so clouded our minds and corrupted our hearts that there are a lot of things that should be obvious that God still has to spell out for us.

It’s a warning against actual tampering with God's law, by adding *or* subtracting, or even just modifying, since any modification would necessarily take or add something.

Psalm 19:7, “The law of the Lord is perfect.” Any change you make can only make it worse!

One of the major sins of the Pharisees. Problem is not too much law keeping, but rather tampering with it to make it something they felt they could keep. Piled on their own manmade traditions while finding countless loopholes to make God's actual standard easier to reach. Wrong to forbid healing and limit eating on the Sabbath, but not to insist on keeping the Sabbath!

Need to be careful not to cast judgment where Scripture lays down no rule.

Scripture has much to say about the principles of parenting, for example, but does not lay down the specifics of how and how often to discipline, or about medical care or nutrition or education.

Scripture does not prescribe one approach to politics or tell you how to vote. It does not prescribe a view on economics, immigration, healthcare, or any number of other divisive political issues.

And there have always been things through church history that people have condemned because they seemed wrong in their eyes, though Scripture does not condemn them. Or good advice has been strengthened into moral precept, without biblical warrant.

Importance of this made especially clear in light of Christ and what he has done--it is for freedom that Christ has set you free, so do not submit again to a yoke of slavery! That freedom is, first and foremost, from sin itself, and then from the curse of the law, and from its ceremonial aspects, but it is also freedom from the commandments of men! So do not feel beholden to extrabiblical precepts, nor impose them others.

On the flip side, do not commit the other sin of the Pharisees--weakening or ignoring God's actual laws!

To balance what I just said, important to keep in mind that God's law has something to say about many things it does not directly command or forbid, because it lays down general principles that should make clear what obedience looks like in any situation. Abortion comes to mind--not directly addressed, but clearly a violation of the prohibition of murder. So don't assume that something is indifferent in God's eyes just because there's no direct command or prohibition about it.

But it’s easy to go wrong here and subtract from God’s law even in places where it should be clear.

That’s what’s going on when large numbers of professing Christians subtract from God’s law by saying that this or that prohibition is outdated, or they do some creative interpretation—by which I mean bad interpretation—to make it sound like the Bible doesn’t say what it very plainly says. That’s how we ended up with 18th and 19th century churches saying slavery was OK when the Bible plainly condemns man-stealing, on which American chattel slavery depended! And that’s also how we’ve ended up with so many church that affirm homosexuality—it’s the same problem applied to a different issue.

But I never just want to point the finger out there.

Because you can also subtract from God’s law by treating it the way most people treat speed limits. You kinda sorta try to follow them, but you know the police aren’t too particular about it most of the time, so you’re not all that strict about it.

Or the way a lot of people treat copyright and intellectual property laws—they either just don't think about them much, so they don’t stop to consider whether or not they’re breaking the law, or they know that it's illegal to download that pirated movie or music or video game or whatever, but they really want it, and they don’t want to pay for it, and come on, it’s not that big of a deal, right?

If you’re honest with yourself, you know you’re guilty of things like that.

How many times have you justified your angry outbursts or your harsh spirit or your unkind words? How often have you justified your refusal to submit to the authority God has ordained? How often have you excused yourself for not doing good when you’ve had the opportunity to do it? Or your failure to keep the Lord’s Day holy? How many times have you broken the commands of God but thought little of it because it didn’t seem like it was hurting anybody? How often have you gone against his law with hardly a second thought, not really stopping to consider whether God approves what you're doing?

Doing my best to step on at least one of everybody's toes today, so if you’re not feeling any sting from this then just make sure you’re here when we get to the Ten Commandments, and you’ll have plenty of opportunity to see how much you’ve subtracted from God’s law.

Because I know for a fact that there is some area of your life where you do this type of thing. I know it, because that’s just what sinners do, and at the end of the day every sin that you commit is a way of taking away from the law of God.

And it’s so, so important for you to understand that God does not tolerate such treatment of his law! When God commands or forbids something, he means what he says!

That's why the Westminster Confession of Faith defines the obedience required by God to his law as "entire, exact, and perpetual."

Early Puritan Richard Rogers was once told, "Mr. Rogers, I like you and your company very well, only you are too precise." Rogers replied, "Oh sir, I serve a precise God." Puritans get a bad name for things like that, but it's undeserved, because as Deuteronomy 4:2 makes clear, they were right.

This is what God demands. This is his standard of obedience to the statutes and ordinances that are to follow, beginning in chapter 5.

Sound impossible? Well, yeah, it is. That's kinda the point of God's giving the law, or at least one of the main points. It's to show you how impossible it is to keep, to show you what sin is so you realize that, no matter how good you think you are, you're still a great sinner.

There's a mistaken idea out there that some people teach and a lot more people just assume, that ought implies can, that God only commands something if you're able to do it.

But that idea ignores the fact that the moral law is not new when God gives it to Israel through Moses. Obviously they weren’t the first people not to be allowed to worship other gods, or kill, or steal, or bear false witness. The moral law was originally established before Adam and Eve sinned, at which point they were able to keep it. But when they sinned, it corrupted their hearts and made them unable not to sin, and all of us descended from Adam by ordinary generation--which is to say, everyone but Jesus, born of a virgin, which is extraordinary generation—but everyone else inherited that corruption and the consequent inability to keep God's law.

The reality is, as one children's song about the Ten Commandments has so aptly put it, "The Ten Commandments/no one can keep them all/even on your best behavior/no one can keep them all/that's why you need a Savior."

And it’s that last line that’s especially important.

As I just said, one of the major purposes of God’s law is to show you how impossible it is for you to actually meet God’s standard of righteousness—that standard that you have to meet to actually receive the blessings that God promises to his righteous people.

I’ll have more to say about that next week, Lord willing, but you notice in verse 1 that Moses tells the people to obey, “so that you may live, enter, and take possession of the land that the LORD, the God of your ancestors, is giving you.” It sounds as thought Moses is telling Israel that, if they want to receive God’s covenant blessings, then they have to perfectly and perpetually fulfill their covenant obligations, and if that’s the case, then, well, they’re doomed!

And yet, Israel does actually live and inherit the land! How is that even possible?

That’s where it’s important to understand that the covenant that God has made with Israel through Moses is a gracious covenant—in fact, part of the one covenant of grace that God has administered in different ways at different times, gradually revealing his plan to redeem his people, culminating in the new covenant that God has made with us in Jesus Christ!

The old covenant or Mosaic covenant is very law-heavy, but the purpose of that law is to push the people toward the grace—the grace that is found in the sacrifices, in the priesthood that goes between them and God, in the holiness of the temple where God dwells with them, in the myriad washings and rituals by which people are made clean and able to come before him, in the holidays like the Passover and the Day of Atonement where the people see the principle of a substitute dying in their place.

And all of those things were put in place, not because the bloods of bulls and goats and lambs and pigeons could actually wash away sin and its uncleanness—because they can’t—but as types and shadows pointing forward to the Redeemer that God promised to send, as foretastes of God’s holy presence and of the forgiveness required to enjoy it that would whet their appetite and make them long for the full realization of those things, which came only with Jesus Christ!

Any honest, faithful Israelites knew that they weren't actually getting into the promised land by virtue of their obedience to the law. It was all God's grace, giving something they in no way deserved. And so also you are not getting to heaven on the basis of your obedience. You can't be good enough, because God's standard is perfection, and he's not going to relax that standard for you or anyone else.

But Jesus Christ *did* meet that standard--the only one who could! He merited the reward of heaven, and God is pleased to accept his obedience on your behalf, as though you had done it, if you trust in Christ and his work alone for that.

Now, you have to understand that none of that negates what I said earlier, that God does still require obedience from you, even as a Christian. But it's not obedience in order to earn his blessing, but obedience because you have already been blessed, because God still desires an obedient people. You're not saved because of your obedience, but you are saved so that you might become obedient--a work that God himself will complete on you when you die or Jesus returns.

So, as the author of Hebrews says in Hebrews 12:1-2, "Let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."