Not Your Righteousness

Grace Over Works: Understanding Our Righteousness

Bible Passage: Deuteronomy 7-10

1. God's Gracious Choice

Deuteronomy 7:6-11

Vs 1-5, he gives instructions for when you enter the land to destroy the current canaanites. Now commands like this are horribly misunderstood. People on one side will go so far as to say that this means that modern day christians should not marry people of other ethnicities or nationalities. That is racist, nationalistic, unchristian nonsense. But the other side will say that these commands make God nationalistic and genocidal, that is also nonsense. God cares about spirituality, not nationality. He tells them he gave these commands so the Israelites are not led away from Him and later because the time has come for these nations to be judged.

Now, vs 6 6 “For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. You are a holy people of the Lord.

God has chosen you. This is what we would call the doctrine of election. Now what is election? The basic idea is this, that You cannot come to God unless He elects you to come to Him. Both the old and new testaments I believe teach that if you believe, only only can believe because God has opened your heart. That no one can be saved except the Spirit gives them to power to see the gospel.

No some of you may know that the doctrine of election can be quite a contentious one, we simply do not have time to dive into all the minutia of disagreement surrounding it. And it would be a distraction from Moses’ point. The point Moses is making here is this, God chose you.

He has chosen you, made you holy, meaning separate, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. Now that can be troubling when we think about it only within the old testament, but as we move into the new testament we see the idea of “God’s people” expanded to more than just Israel (though it wasn’t strictly genetic jews even in the old testament). And God talks about believers in the gospel the same way. 1 Peter 2:9-10 9 But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; 10 who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.

Now this idea of being chosen by God can give our felsh ammo to try to think of ourselves as superior, but Moses shuts that down right away, vs 7 7 The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples;. He didn’t choose you because of you. He is saying, you weren’t greater than other people, you weren’t better, in fact you were worse.

We cannot get these statements backwards. We in our flesh want to say God chose me because I was holy, because I was a treasure, no the Bible says, I am now a treasure I am now holy because God chose me.

He’s saying, you would never have a relationship with Me on your own…you would never have achieved it. The only reason you have a relationship with Me is because I chose you. There is nothing in you that is better…there is nothing in you that’s different. The reason WE have a relationship…is simply I chose you. And that’s radically humbling.

Vs 8 8 but because the Lord loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers, the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

So God didn’t choose you because you were great, but because He loves you. Because he made a promise to your fathers, that’s why God has been faithful, has redeemed you, has saved you.

Now move that into the broadened new testament context. If you are a christian, you are so because the Spirit convicted you and allowed you to see the gospel and then you submitted to it and received the gospel. So christians here today, you are not saved because of anything in you. You are not saved because you are great, because of your holiness, because of you righteousness, because you are some special treasure, you are saved because God chose you. And now you are holy, a treasure, you can now be called righteousness at God’s throne, but only because God has chosen you.

Christian why has God chosen you? The same reason as we see in vs 8, because God loved you and because He is faithful to his promises. And now He has fulfilled the Old covenant in Christ and offered a new covenant to the whole world.

You aren’t saved because of you, you are saved because of Christ. Not your righteousness, His.

And then his conclusion 9 “Therefore know that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments; 10 and He repays those who hate Him to their face, to destroy them. He will not be slack with him who hates Him; He will repay him to his face. 11 Therefore you shall keep the commandment, the statutes, and the judgments which I command you today, to observe them.

Therefore, because of God’s gracious choice, know that God is your God, that He is the only God and that He is faithful. That He will judge the world. There fore vs 11, obey God, keep his commands. Obedience is the proper response to God’s grace.

Vs 12-26 reiterates the blessings for obeying God in this way. If you do these things Moses says, the Lord will guard you and bless you and multiply you. God will take away sickness, destroy those who attack you and hate God. He encourages them not to be afraid of stronger peoples, to remember how God already defeated Egypt for them. He instructs them again to destroy the altars to idols, to burn the images.

2. God’s Gracious Provision

Deuteronomy 8:1-11

You could focus on the call to remember God's provision and faithfulness in the wilderness. Acknowledge how easily people forget God's past goodness in their lives, leading to unwarranted pride. This section could challenge listeners to trust God in scarcity and abundance, linking God's provision to both material and spiritual sustenance that culminates in Christ, the true Bread of Life.

Vs 12-20 Moses reminds them again like he did in chapters 5 and 6 not to forget that God is giving these things to them by grace. When you eat and are full beware, lest you forget God. He reminds them again that it was God who brought them to this place, who would give them the promised land. He warns against us thinking we’ve done anything by our own power, vs 17 17 then you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth.’

He says remember God, he gives wealth, he establishes the covenant, he warns judgement on those who forget God and serve idols.

See this emphasis build, Chapter 7 God did not choose us for our strength, and here, God does not provide for us or bless us based on our strength, he wanted to teach us even, vs 3 that we don’t live by bread alone, but by the word of God.

This is something Jesus quotes to Satan as he is being tempted in the wilderness. Man does not live by bread alone. It is a recognition that God is the source of all things and the sustainer of all things. If God wanted to he could cause all of our crops to fail. If he wanted to He could stop providing for us right now and we’d all die.

We live because God allows us to live. We have anything we have because God gifted it to us. But the danger that he has been pointing out again and again is that when we are full, we tend to forget God.

3. God’s Gracious Deliverance

Deuteronomy 9:1-6

I mentioned this earlier, God isn’t nationalistic or genocidal as some critics would cite these verses as saying. God will deliver the nations in Canaan into your hands, God will go before you like an all consuming fire. A great promise. But Moses wants them to know something, this will happen, not because they were so great.

Vs 4, Do not think in your heart that God has cast these nations out before you because of your righteousness. It isn’t of your righteousness, in fact it isn’t because of any righteousness at all, it is because of the wickedness of the nations. He repeats in vs 5 for emphasis, not because of your righteousness, but because of their wickedness that God is dispossessing them.

God is simply using you to act out the judgement he promised would come, and simultaneously he is being faithful to the promise he made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Therefore understand Moses emphasizes again, God is not giving this to you because of your righteousness, for you are a stiff-necked people.

Hear this christian, God as not saved you, nor does He bless you because of your righteousness, but because of Christ’s.

4. God’s Gracious Mercy

Deuteronomy 9:7-8, 13-14, 18-24, 25-29

Here Moses wants to double make sure they understand. It wasn’t for their righteousness that God was delivering these peoples in Canaan into their hands, but he was using Israel as the means by which to judge them.

But not only that, he makes sure they know that they don’t even have any righteousness they could boast about either.

Don’t think of yourselves as above the canaanites. Remember your open wickedness, you provoked God to wrath in the wilderness when you complained and doubted, you have been rebellious towards God from the moment he led you from Egypt, you provoked God to wrath at Horeb, Sinai. You made Him angry enough to want to destroy you.

Vs 9-12 He reminds them of how he went up the mountain forty days, within that short time frame they feel to idolatry. God became angry with them, He tells Moses what they’ve done, then God says this;

God recognizes them as stiffnecked. He told Moses essentially, Leave me alone so that I can destroy them. And he offers to use Moses as the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise instead of the current peoples. Moses declines and begs for mercy.

Vs 15-17 Moses comes down outraged and smashes the tablets and chastises the Israelites.

Here and here and here and here and here, remember this and this and this and this, you have disobeyed God again and again and again and again. You have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you.

Moses goes back up to God and prays and fasts for an additional forty days and forty nights. He kept praying because God said he wanted to destroy Israel. He praises God, He asks God not to look on their sin. To hold fast to His promises.

Now something Moses doesn’t bring up here that I think is so important. If we read the original account in Exodus 32 we see Moses tell the people that he is going up to God again to try and make atonement. Ex 32:30 30 Now it came to pass on the next day that Moses said to the people, “You have committed a great sin. So now I will go up to the Lord; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.” Now, Moses knew what he was saying, but do we know? What is atonement in the biblical context? A covering for sin, specifically a sacrifice. God had already laid out the principle that Aaron, as priest, was to sacrifice an animal on the altar to atone for the sins of the people.

Moses says, I will go try to make atonement for your sin. But guess what, Moses didn’t bring any animal sacrifice up with him. This is what he said to God, the next couple verses, Ex 32:31-32 31 Then Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Oh, these people have committed a great sin, and have made for themselves a god of gold! 32 Yet now, if You will forgive their sin—but if not, I pray, blot me out of Your book which You have written.”

He didn’t offer an animal. Moses offered himself for their sins. Now God declines this. He doesn’t destroy Israel, he relents and just disciplines them. Who does Moses remind us of there? Jesus. Now Moses isn’t Jesus. He couldn’t have been the one perfect sacrifice that Hebrews 10:10 talks about; 10 By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

So while Moses is merely an image of the righteousness, He himself is not Jesus. But what he points to here is this, God’s mercy is not based on our righteousness, we don’t receive God’s mercy because we’ve earned it, but because of God’s own righteousness. Specifically Jesus interceding for us himself.

5. God’s Gracious Call

Deuteronomy 10:1-22

Vs 1-11 Moses recounts the story of God giving him a second copy of the ten commandments since he smashed the first. And the construction of the ark to keep the tablets in. Reminds them of some of their travels and Aaron’s death. The separation of the tribe of Levi to be priests. Reminds them that after his intercession the Lord chose not to destroy them and told Moses instead to move forward.

The Lord delighted in the patriarchs, and loved them, and chose the current generation. Therefore Moses says, circumcise your heart. He sandwiches this command between commands to obey God and reminders of God’s sovereignty. The way to obey God is by God. God gives you to power to obey God.

Because of this, because of God’s grace, the principles that we receive nothing because of our own righteousness, therefore, circumcise your heart.

Now I want you to process what vs 16 is, vs 16 is an answer to vs 12-15. What does God require of you? Love and fear acted out in obedience with all your soul. Remember last week, Deuteronomy 5:29 29 Oh, that they had such a heart in them that they would fear Me and always keep all My commandments, that it might be well with them and with their children forever!

God is wishing that his people would have a heart to always fear him and keep his commands. Now in chapter 10 we see that is what God requires of us. Love, fear, and obedience will all of our soul. Vs 14 reminds us yet again that God is the only God and is God in heaven and on earth. Vs 15 reminds us of what he has been building through these chapters That God delighted in their fathers, that He loved them and chose them and now Moses tells Israel and I tell you all here today, God has chosen you to be His holy people.

Then vs 16, therefore what do we do? How can it be possible to have a relationship with God? Vs 16 therefore, circumcise your heart and be stiffnecked no longer. Therefore change your heart and let go of your sins. If I can say that in the new testament context, believe and repent.

An important line that we’ll get to much later is Deuteronomy 30:6 where God reveals further, that He himself will be the one to change our heart.

Is baptism similar to circumcision? Yes absolutely, but similar in so much as they are symbols of an inward heart change. Romans 2:25-29 25 For circumcision is indeed profitable if you keep the law; but if you are a breaker of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. 26 Therefore, if an uncircumcised man keeps the righteous requirements of the law, will not his uncircumcision be counted as circumcision? 27 And will not the physically uncircumcised, if he fulfills the law, judge you who, even with your written code and circumcision, are a transgressor of the law? 28 For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; 29 but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God.

Now Baptism is the new testament circumcision. And even in the law, the more important change is the circumcision of the heart. Now should they have gotten circumcised? Yes because failing to do so would reveal a disobedient heart. But even still Paul chimes in on this and points out that the physical status of circumcision was a symbol and what truly mattered was inward circumcision, the heart change.

The same is true of the baptism, there is the symbol, physical baptism, but that symbol is reflective of the baptism of the Spirit. Which Jesus tells his disciples in Acts 1:5 5 for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” That their water baptism was great but the more important one comes with the Spirit, John the baptist himself said this in Matt 3:11.

Peter also weighs on in this. 1 Peter 3:21 21 There is also an antitype which now saves us—baptism (not the removal of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God), through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” Peter clarifies what he means, baptism saves us, but what I mean by baptism is not the washing of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience towards God. We are saved by the baptism of the Spirit, by accepting the gospel, not the physical water baptism.

Paul has more to say on circumcision as a symbol though. Colossians 2:11-15 11 In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, 12 buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. 13 And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, 14 having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. 15 Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.

We are raised with christ through faith Paul says, circumcised without hands, Christ has taken us who were all disobedient, stiffnecked, rebellious people and wiped away the "handwriting of requirements against us”

The word for handwriting is one that talks about official documents like bills or legal documents.

And the word for requirements is δόγμα and it basically means rules, laws, ordinances. So it is an official document in heaven, a list of our crimes or moral debt before God. And of course, it is against us. We all fall short of God’s glory and His law. And then He took that handwriting of requirements, “And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.” Do you guys remember the actual crime Jesus was charged with by the Romans. Not the Jews, the one crime that finally got the Romans to agree to execute Him? They charged him as a revolutionary. They executed him because he claimed to be King of the Jews. And they gave him a mock crown and wrote that charge down in four different languages and did what with it? They nailed it to the cross. Just as Jesus’ “crimes” were nailed to the cross, if we identify with Him and His cross, he nails them to the cross alongside His own.

nd one greek word that I love to think about is right at the beginning of this verse. It says Jesus wiped out our criminal charges right? The greek word for that is ἐξαλείφω. Now can anybody figure out what english word we get from that? EXFOLIATE. What does it mean to exfoliate?

Quite literally, Jesus exfoliates us. He washes the dead parts of us off and makes us clean. And he takes the dead parts and nails them to the cross as if they died with him. Receiving new life from Christ means letting Him take away our old self permanently.

Vs 15, One final note about How Christ gave us new life. A note of celebration; “Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it. “ Paul uses this phrase similar to the Roman victory parades where a conquering general led his defeated captives through the streets in triumph. Jesus has defeated sin and death.

Not by your righteousness. Not by our righteousness. But by His own righteousness. God’s gracious call is that if we will come to him he will circumcise our hearts, He will baptize us with the Spirit, He will wipe away the charges we all have in heaven’s court and we can stand with him based on His righteous sacrifice, not our righteousness, His.

Memory Verse; Deuteronomy 10:16-17

16 Therefore circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be stiff-necked no longer. 17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality nor takes a bribe..