WORD OF GOD SPEAK

Introduction

-Today we are in Deut. 30

-Words and the use of those words are important. Having the right words is very important. Mark Twain once said, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and lightning bug.” He may be on to something there. There’s a big difference in saying, “A lightning bug hit my eye” than it is to say “Lightning hit my eye.”

-Words have power. They can build up or tear down. They can bring good or they can bring evil. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that words can bring life or they can bring death. If not in the physical sense, most definitely in the spiritual sense.

-There are a lot of spiritual words out there. There are a lot of religions that use a lot of words. But there is only one Word that contains words of truth and can set a destiny for all of eternity. That Word is the Word of God (both in the sense of Christ being the Word, but for our purposes today the Scripture being the Word of God). Only God’s Word is the right word. Only God’s Word is the word of revelation. Only God’s Word is the word of covenant. But the right word will only do you good if you know it and then put it to practice.

-Today is the day that we all stop making excuses for not knowing and practicing the right word. Today is the day that all pretense is laid to rest as we come to a place of decision—will the Word of God speak into our lives or not?

-In the passage that we are looking at today, Moses is renewing the covenant of Sinai with the generation that will act on God’s promises. Here, he encouraged the Israelites to know and obey God’s covenantal word for their good as they entered into the Promised Land.

-And the lesson we learn today is that God’s Word, which is His revealed covenant declaration, is given for our good and is to be known and obeyed since we are His covenant people. So, let’s see what Moses teaches us about the Word of God that can speak into our lives.

Deuteronomy 30:11–20 ESV

11 “For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. 12 It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ 13 Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ 14 But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it. 15 “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. 16 If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. 17 But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, 18 I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. 19 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, 20 loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”

What do we need to know about God’s Word as His revealed covenant declaration that should motivate us to know and obey it? Let me give you several characteristics about God’s Word that should give such motivation for the Word to speak into our lives...

1) God’s Word is authoritative

-Moses refers to God’s Word as COMMANDMENTS that are commanded. God’s Word is not a set of mere suggestions. It is not an advice column. It is not an opinion piece. It is not a blog. God’s Word is not a book of pop psychology or fictitious novelizations. God’s Word is truth, coming from the mouth of God, that is to be followed by all of humanity because behind the words in the Word is the authority of God Himself. While a lost humanity that is separated from God is too spiritually blind to come to this realization, it would be assumed that God’s covenant people would grasp onto God’s revelation of Himself and His will and His purposes and follow what it says because of what it is. And yet, how often the Word is ignored by those same people and replaced by someone’s own opinions and feelings.

-The Israelites would enter into the Promised Land, but then eventually they would shun the authority of the Word to their own determent. They did what was right in their own eyes, following the authority of their own imaginations. And today, many in the church replace the authority of the Word with what they think within their own minds is right or wrong. They say things like WELL I THINK THIS or I THINK THAT. One pastor turned politician in Georgia said I THINK THAT ABORTION IS OK IN GOD’S SIGHT. Others claim I THINK YOU CAN CLING TO A PERVERSE LGBTQ LIFESTYLE AND STILL BE A CHRISTIAN. Others in the pew say I THINK IT’S OK TO GOSSIP ABOUT THIS PERSON or I THINK IT’S OK TO COMMIT THIS SIN or THAT SIN. Well, you know what: it doesn’t matter what you think and it doesn’t matter what I think, it matters what God said because you and I are not the final authority, God is, and He has laid out the terms of covenant in the Word. The Word of God is authoritative, and nothing else.

2) God’s Word is understandable

-In v. 11 Moses says that the Word of God is not too hard for you. Right here destroys 99% of your excuses for not getting into the Word of God. How many times have people said: I DON’T READ THE BIBLE BECAUSE I CAN’T UNDERSTAND IT; IT’S JUST TOO HARD FOR ME. And there are false teachers that feed into that. In one Roman Catholic work, it says, “The Bible is NOT a clear and intelligible guide to all.” That is what Oscar Meyer called 100% bona fide baloney. The Word of God is understandable to anybody who actually wants to understand it. It has been translated into your language. You don’t need to know Hebrew or Greek. You can read God’s Word, study God’s Word, and grasp God’s Word.

-I’m not saying that there aren’t sections in the Bible that might be confusing—Hello Book of Revelation! But the vast majority of the Bible is easily understood with a little effort of actually taking the time to understand it within its context. But therein lies the catch. You actually need to make an effort. And the problem isn’t so much lack of understanding as it is laziness—people are too lazy and wrapped up in their phones and social media to actually take time to see what the Bible actually says. Unlike popular belief, you do NOT need a doctorate to understand Scripture. In fact, it’s probably more helpful not to have a doctorate. A church father of old quipped that any layperson could probably understand the Bible better than a doctor of theology could. While the doctor of theology gets so wrapped up in tiny details, the layperson will look at the Word and just put it to practice. With the Holy Spirit and the investment of time, God’s Word is understandable.

3) God’s Word is accessible

-In vv. 11-12, Moses says that the Word of God is not far off. They wouldn’t have to try to climb to heaven to find the Word of God. They wouldn’t have to cross the sea on some wild adventure to try to find the Word of God. They had access to the Word of God. For the Israelites, Moses met face to face with God and dictated the Word for them. The priests would have the law and would teach the law to the people. They had God’s Word right there in the center of their community. God made provision to ensure that His covenant people had continual access to His Word.

-God’s Word is not like the mysticism of some other religions where you have to go on a trek or journey to find truth. You’ve heard the stories of people who had to climb mountains to meet with some wise man to learn the meaning of life and all that. Well, Moses already went up the mountain for us. God revealed His truth and ensured that it was recorded and copied and distributed. And today, we are the beneficiaries of God’s work in the preservation of His Word. God ensured that the 66 books that He inspired would remain and would be available to His people to study.

-And now, our day and age is quite a paradox for Western Christianity. The Word of God is more accessible today than it has ever been in history, with untold translations of God’s Word, numerous study tools and commentaries, with quick access to any information that is needed via the Web and computer programs, and yet there may be no age that is as ignorant of God’s Word as today. The very technologies that make God’s Word so accessible to us also cause distractions that take us away from the Word that is right there at our finger tips. Each one of us has access to who knows how many dozens of Bibles in printed and electronic form, and yet how many are actually used and read. We need to take advantage of the way that God has made His Word accessible to us.

4) God’s Word is memorable

-In v. 14 Moses says that God’s Word is near you, in your mouth and your heart. The Israelites did not have printing presses that would allow each household to have a copy of God’s Word, so the people would hear the word as read by the priests and Levites, and put it in their hearts and memorize it and meditate on it daily so that it would be readily available to them. That means that God’s Word is not only understandable and accessible to people, you can actually hide it in your heart so that its authoritative text is readily available to you when you need it. God made His Word that way—it is to be in the heart so it can be recited from the mouth.

-There’s a story about a humble villager in a small hamlet of Poland who received a Bible from a Bible distributor a few years before WWII. This humble villager read it, was converted, and passed the book on to others in his small village. Through that one Bible two hundred more [people] became believers. When that same distributor revisited the village in the summer of 1940, the whole village gathered to worship and listen to his preaching. The man suggested that instead of a normal service that they all just recite verses of Scripture. One of the villagers arose and asked, “Do you want us to recite verses or chapters?” Astonished, the distributor asked, “Do you mean to say there are people here who can recite entire chapters of the Bible from memory?” That was precisely the case. Those villagers had memorized, not only chapters, but also whole books of the Bible. Thirteen of them knew Matthew and Luke and half of Genesis. One had committed all the Psalms to memory. Together, the two hundred villagers knew virtually the entire Bible. They only had the one Bible in the village and they passed it around from family to family and brought to the gathering on Sundays. In those few short years, that Bible had become so worn with use that its pages were hardly legible. So, the only way to hear the Word of God was to recite from their heart through their mouth.

-God’s Word is in your mouth and in your heart. This authoritative text can be internalized, hidden deep in the heart, so that it can be shared and it can be acted upon. And this leads to...

5) God’s Word is doable

-At the end of v. 14 Moses says YOU CAN DO IT. The Bible, when taken within its context, is not filled with a bunch of rules and regulations that are so completely out of reach that it is impossible for anyone to actually do what it says to do. You can actually obey what God says.

-But I mention this with what you might call the fine print. Because Paul, especially in the epistle to the Romans, makes it known that the sin principle that people have within them causes them not to obey. Because we are born in Adam, we have this rebellious streak within us. And we have the world, the flesh, and the devil working against us. But, with that being said, God through Jesus Christ makes us a new person and gives us His Holy Spirit so that we have the ability to obey and to not sin. The problem with all of us, though, is that we don’t usually rely on the Holy Spirit. We rely on the flesh, and so we choose to sin, but we have the ability to choose to obey.

-When I say that the Holy Spirit helps us to obey, it’s not that the Spirit is a force you can turn on or off with a switch, and there is not some magical formula you have to say. {There’s this trending video of some lady on the Family Feud who is clapping and dancing and shouting HOLY SPIRIT ACTIVATE… That’s not how it works.}

-But the Holy Spirit empowers you to live out what Scripture says within its context. There are some things within context that don’t apply to us. We don’t have to worry about whether or not we wear clothes with mixed fibers or boiling young goats in their mother’s milk. But there are precepts that are eternal and there are commands given by the Lord Jesus Christ that we are enabled to do. So, we have to stop using our sinfulness as a crutch to not obey. We have to stop using our ignorance as a crutch to not obey. We have to stop excusing our disobedience, because the Bible makes it clear that the Word of God is doable. But praise the Lord that when we do fall short, there is mercy and forgiveness...

6) God’s Word is life-giving

-Beginning in v. 15 Moses explains that through the words and commands that God gave through him, a choice has been set before them—life and death. Spiritual prosperity or spiritual depravity. To follow God’s Word is to lead to the path of life.

-This does not leave us with a works-based spirituality that leads us up a ladder of enlightenment. Even though the Word of God is doable, the problem is that we don’t do it. So, Moses makes it clear that when you don’t do it, it leads to death and evil. And Paul makes clear in Romans that the law, God’s Word, tells us what to do but we still don’t do it, so it leaves death in its wake.

-But there is a path to life that was foreshadowed in Moses and the Prophets and the Wisdom literature and all the works of the Old Testament. They paved the road to how God Himself would have to provide life for a people who constantly chose death. And then this path is highlighted in the gospels and then expounded upon by the epistles. God’s Word is life-giving in the fact that it declares to us the gospel of Jesus Christ, who alone is the way, the truth, and the life.

-In a sense, God’s Word declares us as dead men and women because we have refused to obey—we have chosen not to do what the Word of God says. God has authoritatively spoken to us, and like the precocious 2-year-old we look in God’s face and tell Him NO! He coaxes us and draws us and we still tell Him NO! That is the path of death that we are all on. The Word of God is doable, and we just don’t want to do it. As Moses describes it, our heart turns from God and His Word. The Word of God speaks, but we don’t listen.

-But then the the Word of God points us to the Word of God made flesh. And this Word obediently followed the Word…He actually did it. And He showed us how we can do it. And He died on the cross to pay the price of our condemnation because we didn’t do it. And He rose again and sent His Spirit so we could have life and be empowered to do it. So, we don’t need to get frustrated with ourselves when we don’t do it, but we entrust ourselves to the One who did do it and He gives us life so that we can live in light of God’s Word and allow the Word of God speaks to us.

-And now that you have this life, according to v. 20 you love the Lord your God, and you obey His voice, and you hold fast to Him, because He is your life. The Word of God gives life because it points to the life-giver who is Jesus Christ. And the Word of God speaks to us, pointing us to Jesus, and we make Jesus our life. But I wonder for how many of us Jesus truly is our life, or is He a mere add-on to a life that we have created for ourselves?

Conclusion

-God has not remained hidden. He has created a covenant with people, and He has revealed Himself and this covenant and the stipulations of that covenant in His Word. In the previous chapter Moses told the Israelites that the hidden things belong to the Lord. There are things that God has not shared with humanity, and we need to stop obsessing over those things. But Moses goes on to say that the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever that we may do all the words of the law. God revealed what He revealed so that we would know His will and do His will. Instead of worrying about what we don’t know, let’s get into what can be known, the Word of God, and let the Word of God speak to us. That is our authority. It is understandable and accessible. We can memorize it to our hearts so that we know it and can do it. And it points us to life in Jesus Christ.

-Christian, come to the altar and pray that God will speak life into your life through His Word. Come and repent of your choosing to ignore God’s Word. Come and commit yourself to following God’s Word.

-Maybe some of you are looking for a church home. Come forward and join yourself to Harvest Baptist Church where we always look to the Word of God to speak.

-But maybe some of you don’t have life because you haven’t believed on the One who gives life. Believe in the Lord Jesus...