Remember to Obey
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The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones.
And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry.
And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, you know.”
Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.
Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.
And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.”
So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone.
And I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them. But there was no breath in them.
Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.”
So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.
Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off.’
Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel.
And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and raise you from your graves, O my people.
And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord.”
A Song of Ascents.
Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!
O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy!
If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.
I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.
O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption.
And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.
For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.
For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.
Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever,
even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.
“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.
Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.
In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.
Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”
Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?”
Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.
Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.
Remember to Obey
With most things in life, when we choose to do something, there is not one singular motive. In fact, the bigger the decision, the more motives we must consider. Some people, when it comes to decision making, use the Ben Franklin method. It is pretty simple: List on one side of a table the pros of the decision, and on the other side the cons. If your pros outweigh your cons, you should go ahead with the decision. If the cons are greater than the pros, you should not go ahead.
Of course, if you were doing this, it is unlikely you would have one single item as a pro or con, but instead you would come up with many reasons on both sides, and you may even use some sort of a weighting system for each item. For example, if you were considering buying a particular car, and you had narrowed it to two models you like, you may list things like mileage, style, safety, towing, and so forth. If you have a family, safety may be of a higher weight than mileage. So you may score your pros and cons based on what motivations were most important to you.
When it comes to obeying God, there should be one overarching motivation for us: God said it, so I ought to do it. And that is enough. Or at least it should be. However, there is a beautiful thing about God when it comes to commanding our obedience. And that is, that he proves himself powerful and faithful before he calls us to obedience. He proves himself in creation, and he proves himself in His Word. In fact, many people, when referring to the ten commandments, leave out how it begins: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt” and then the commandments are listed.
So for the people of Israel, God says, “I have proven myself powerful and faithful to you. therefore, remember that and obey these commands I am giving you.” So we are to remember in order to obey. But that is not the only thing God reminds us. He also reminds us of his wrath against sin, wrath against attacks on His holiness. And in our passage this morning, we see Moses calling the people to remember both the power and faithfulness of God, and also his fearsome power that comes when mankind has violated his law and even attacked his holiness. Let’s look at our passage:
Deut11.1-7
“You shall therefore love the Lord your God and keep his charge, his statutes, his rules, and his commandments always.
And consider today (since I am not speaking to your children who have not known or seen it), consider the discipline of the Lord your God, his greatness, his mighty hand and his outstretched arm,
his signs and his deeds that he did in Egypt to Pharaoh the king of Egypt and to all his land,
and what he did to the army of Egypt, to their horses and to their chariots, how he made the water of the Red Sea flow over them as they pursued after you, and how the Lord has destroyed them to this day,
and what he did to you in the wilderness, until you came to this place,
and what he did to Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, son of Reuben, how the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, with their households, their tents, and every living thing that followed them, in the midst of all Israel.
For your eyes have seen all the great work of the Lord that he did.
“You shall therefore love the Lord your God and keep his charge, his statutes, his rules, and his commandments always.
Moses could have left it right here. The commands of God are firm. They are imposed on every person. We are all responsible to keep them. This is regardless of whether we grew up in the church, or in another religion, all people will one day stand before God and give account regarding the keeping of His laws. What a fearful day that will be for those who have not received the salvation of Jesus Christ!
Here we see that love for God is connected with obedience to his commands. Jesus reiterated this: John14.15
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
Moses could have stopped at the command to love God and keep his charge, his statutes, his rules, and his commandments always. Jesus could have stopped at “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” But neither stopped there. By the grace of God, we are given his commands, but we are also given help. Moses gives help in the form of calling the people to remember, and Jesus also did this, but Jesus also, right after saying, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments, promised the Holy Spirit, who would come as our helper, who would empower us to do that which we were called to do.
Observe the connection of these two: Thou shalt love the Lord and keep his charge, since love will work in obedience, and that only is acceptable obedience which flows from a principle of love.
For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.
So one motivation to follow God’s commandments is love, and that should be given freely. Another motivation is the fear of God. Simply put, this is the same dynamic we would hope for in the home. A child ought to obey their parents out of love for the parent primarily, but even when that love fails, the fear of reprisal may be a helpful motivation as well. And we ought not look at acts done in fear as a bad outcome. Even though it may not be the preferred outcome, if obedience comes from fear, it is still obedience. All of us at times have obeyed some law or statute out of fear. We fear a traffic ticket, so we don’t speed. Not many of us follow the speed limit purely out of love for the traffic laws, or the government that imposes them.
Nevertheless, obedience counts for something, even if it is done in fear. But it is much better to obey out of love than out of fear. Perhaps you don’t love the government who sets the speed limits, or the officers who enforce it. But if you love God, then service to him out of love would include following his commandments, which include his expectation that we honor the local magistrates, whom scripture tells us are put into place by God. If we love God, we follower his explicit rules and laws, and we also follow laws imposed on us by our government, so long as those laws are not in conflict with God’s laws, which they rarely would be.
And consider today (since I am not speaking to your children who have not known or seen it), consider the discipline of the Lord your God, his greatness, his mighty hand and his outstretched arm,
Here Moses is pointing out that the elders of the community are those who were 20 years old and younger at the time of the Exodus, and were witnesses to the power of God. Their parents have now died, and they are between 40-60 years old, and anyone under 40 was born in the wilderness and had not seen with their eyes those miracles. So they are being called upon to be the guardians of these stories, and to pass them on to their children and grandchildren. Why? So they would remember, that they would remember in order to obey. And the stories to be reminded of and memorized, and passed down, were not only the great stories of God’s mighty hand in defeating Egypt, but the stories of the discipline of God as well.
Moses gives a few examples of this next:
his signs and his deeds that he did in Egypt to Pharaoh the king of Egypt and to all his land,
and what he did to the army of Egypt, to their horses and to their chariots, how he made the water of the Red Sea flow over them as they pursued after you, and how the Lord has destroyed them to this day,
That was pretty incredible! Such a powerful army, wiped out because God would be faithful and keep his word to Israel, leading them from the desert and defeating their captors in a decisive way.
And as a reminder of some of the other things God did for them, let us look to Psalm78.14-40
In the daytime he led them with a cloud, and all the night with a fiery light.
He split rocks in the wilderness and gave them drink abundantly as from the deep.
He made streams come out of the rock and caused waters to flow down like rivers.
Yet they sinned still more against him, rebelling against the Most High in the desert.
They tested God in their heart by demanding the food they craved.
They spoke against God, saying, “Can God spread a table in the wilderness?
He struck the rock so that water gushed out and streams overflowed. Can he also give bread or provide meat for his people?”
Therefore, when the Lord heard, he was full of wrath; a fire was kindled against Jacob; his anger rose against Israel,
because they did not believe in God and did not trust his saving power.
Yet he commanded the skies above and opened the doors of heaven,
and he rained down on them manna to eat and gave them the grain of heaven.
Man ate of the bread of the angels; he sent them food in abundance.
He caused the east wind to blow in the heavens, and by his power he led out the south wind;
he rained meat on them like dust, winged birds like the sand of the seas;
he let them fall in the midst of their camp, all around their dwellings.
And they ate and were well filled, for he gave them what they craved.
But before they had satisfied their craving, while the food was still in their mouths,
the anger of God rose against them, and he killed the strongest of them and laid low the young men of Israel.
In spite of all this, they still sinned; despite his wonders, they did not believe.
So he made their days vanish like a breath, and their years in terror.
When he killed them, they sought him; they repented and sought God earnestly.
They remembered that God was their rock, the Most High God their redeemer.
But they flattered him with their mouths; they lied to him with their tongues.
Their heart was not steadfast toward him; they were not faithful to his covenant.
Yet he, being compassionate, atoned for their iniquity and did not destroy them; he restrained his anger often and did not stir up all his wrath.
He remembered that they were but flesh, a wind that passes and comes not again.
How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness and grieved him in the desert!
So many things God does for his people, and yet their hearts stray and wander. But God is faithful to those he has called. The great Chuck Norris died, and he had committed to Christ at age 12, but for many years he did not follow the ways of God. He said, “I strayed from God, but He never strayed from me”. This is a great explanation for the people of Israel who rebelled and grieved God, yet he was faithful.
And beyond what God did to Pharoah and his army, and all the other things, Moses calls the people to remember what happens to people who defy God. He calls to their memory a significant event referred to as Korah’s rebellion, when some men, Korah, who was a Levite, and Dathan and Abiram raised a rebellion against Moses and Aaron. They said they were just as qualified as Moses and Aaron to lead. They said all the people were holy, they didn’t need someone called by God specifically to that role. Sometimes this happens in churches. People who want to control will say similar things: “Who are those elders? anyone could do that! Why should we follow their leadership?”
The answer would be the same as what happened in Korah’s rebellion. God ordains certain things, such as elders in the church. And He ordained Moses and Aaron for the positions he put them in. When Korah led the rebellion, there were grave consequences. Korah and the 250 priests he led in a rebellion were killed with fire. And his family and Dathan and Abiram’s families were swallowed up by the earth:
and what he did to you in the wilderness, until you came to this place,
and what he did to Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, son of Reuben, how the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, with their households, their tents, and every living thing that followed them, in the midst of all Israel.
This is the horror of the wrath of God at work against rebellion! If any sin is cosmic treason against a holy God, how much did Korah’s rebellion stir up that wrath! After all, their rebellion, as they presented it, was against Moses and Aaron, but truly their rebellion was against God. And God’s wrath did not end with the earth swallowing up those families. In fact, if Moses had not interceded, God once again was ready to wipe the people out. But Moses appealed to them for mercy. Then next part of that story is very remarkable. After seeing the earth swallow up those people because of rebelling against God, did the others cry out for mercy and repent to God? No, they grumbled against Moses and Aaron:
But on the next day all the congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and against Aaron, saying, “You have killed the people of the Lord.”
And when the congregation had assembled against Moses and against Aaron, they turned toward the tent of meeting. And behold, the cloud covered it, and the glory of the Lord appeared.
And Moses and Aaron came to the front of the tent of meeting,
and the Lord spoke to Moses, saying,
“Get away from the midst of this congregation, that I may consume them in a moment.” And they fell on their faces.
And Moses said to Aaron, “Take your censer, and put fire on it from off the altar and lay incense on it and carry it quickly to the congregation and make atonement for them, for wrath has gone out from the Lord; the plague has begun.”
So Aaron took it as Moses said and ran into the midst of the assembly. And behold, the plague had already begun among the people. And he put on the incense and made atonement for the people.
And he stood between the dead and the living, and the plague was stopped.
Now those who died in the plague were 14,700, besides those who died in the affair of Korah.
And Aaron returned to Moses at the entrance of the tent of meeting, when the plague was stopped.
It is quite a story. The cost of sin and rebellion against God illustrated in vivid technicolor. We are reminded that just as the people of Israel offended God by rejecting Moses and Aaron, those who reject Jesus will also learn of the wrath of God: Heb10.26-31
For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,
but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.
Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.
How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?
For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.”
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe,
for our God is a consuming fire.
So Moses has called on the people to remember in order to obey; remember the power of God and the faithfulness of God, and remember the fear of the Lord that all who love him experience. We are called to obey for love, but we also are called to fear, and consider the consequences of not obeying the Lord.
For your eyes have seen all the great work of the Lord that he did.
They had seen God work. They had seen both his power and majesty in delivering them from Pharoah and all the miraculous provisions in the desert, and they had also seen his work when it came to his wrath against those who defied him.
Let us consider how we should respond to this: We are called to continual obedience to Christ. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And we have seen him work, starting with each of us if we came to faith. If we came to faith, we are witnesses of the power of God to change a heart of stone into a heart of flesh. We are witnesses to the saving power of the gospel, and the power of God to draw sinners to himself, to convict them of their sin and cause them to believe the truth, resulting in true repentance and confessing that Jesus is Lord and believing the God raised Him from the dead.
Each of us in Christ can attest to that, we can remember that and remember in order to obey. But even beyond our personal conversion story, we continue to see him work. We see his gracious healing, we see his provision, we see his mercy in giving us a new family in his church. Most of us have also experienced his chastisement, his discipline. When we have strayed, in his goodness he has disciplined us to bring us back to him. Many have backslidden and been brought back, and that is the story for many of us.
Throughout the scriptures, we are called to remember in order to obey. Near the back of the book, Jude similarly wrote about persevering, and he starts the section with you must remember. His challenge in this case is to remember the promise, and I want to conclude with this, because this is yet another motivation for us to live a life obedience. We live because we remember the greatness and faithfulness of God, we remember to fear Him and his discipline, and we remember His promises for our eternal future:
Jude17-23
But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.
They said to you, “In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.”
It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit.
But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit,
keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.
And have mercy on those who doubt;
save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.
I love this passage, remember the predictions of the apostles, who told you ahead of time of the scoffers, the unbelievers. They will mock you and try to cancel you. They are divisive and do not have the Holy Spirit. But we are not to be disturbed by this, but build ourselves up in the faith and in prayer, waiting with anticipation. We are to have mercy on those who doubt, remembering tht whatever faith we have is given, so we cannot think of ourselves as better than anyone. Snatch people out of the fire. That means share the gospel with the saved to remind them who they are and share the gospel with the unsaved, praying that God draw them to himself.
That seems like a tall order, and anyone reading Jude’s letter may have though so, but he gave this beautiful benediction at the end:
Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy,
to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.
Who can keep us from stumbling? Who can present us blameless before the presence of his glory and with great joy? He can. God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, is worhty of glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. He is the eternal, self-existing God. The universe is His. He created it all. He is over all.
So may we all remember in order to obey. Why do we follow His ways? Because He has commanded it. Because He has proven himself worthy. Because He has proven himself faithful and mighty. Because He has warned us of His wrath against all sin. How do we obey? Only with the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, our advocate and helper, who is given to all who believe, so let us rely on Him.
(Elders available to pray)
