Great Expectations
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· 26 viewsThis is a sermon about what the Lord wants from his people, a fear, love, and devotion expressed through our godly living.
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12 “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13 and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good? 14 Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. 15 Yet the Lord set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day. 16 Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn. 17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe.
Intro:
Intro:
The passage in front of us this morning has always been one of my favorites because I’m a guy that likes to be told what people expect. I’m the guy that takes the directions seriously on the box of Kraft Mac & Cheese. I’m the guy that wants to know what my next 2 turns are when someone is giving me driving directions.
So when our passage opens up with “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you...” my heart is immediately drawn to Moses’ leadership style!
In the book of Deuteronomy, the people were on the doorstep of the Promised Land, and Moses was reminding them once more of what it was the Lord expected of them as they took possession of Canaan. They weren’t to be like the nations they were dispossessing, but if they were to stand out, they needed to know what that should look like.
PP: God’s good desire for his people is that we would pursue lives of godliness as an expression of our reverence, love, and worshipful devotion.
Body:
Body:
Again, our passage opens with Moses asking the people of Israel a question: “What does the Lord require of you?”
Helpful to know this
In fact, some of you may have wondered this before turning your life over to Christ, or perhaps you’ve had evangelistic conversations with others who want to know what they’ll have to do or change about their lives in order to become a Christian.
Here you had Israel on the doorstep of the Promised Land, still in the toddler stage as a nation, and God wanted to remind them what he was asking of them as his people.
First up > Fear the Lord your God
What are some things we fear?
The dark: so we sleep with a light on
A virus: so we take precautions
A car accident: so we buckle up
A break-in: so we lock our doors
Identity theft: so we monitor our credit
Falling into the Grand Canyon: so we keep our distance
Going to prison: so we obey the laws
What’s the point? Fear causes us to act.
What are the different types of fear that we find in the Bible?
Traditional fear
12 And David took these words to heart and was much afraid of Achish the king of Gath.
10 When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly. And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord.
Fear that produces wisdom
28 And he said to man, ‘Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to turn away from evil is understanding.’ ”
7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Fear that produces reverence/respect
18 Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off 19 and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.” 20 Moses said to the people, “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.”
7 But I, through the abundance of your steadfast love, will enter your house. I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you.
Which type of fear do you think Moses was talking about?
Essentially it’s a combination of the second and third kinds of fear, wise living and reverence/respect.
Fundamental to what the Lord expected from his people was a reverence that resulted in godly living.
Fearing God was something YHWH required of Israel, but what about the church today?
12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,
22 Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord.
17 And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile,
17 Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.
Look, as Christians we don’t fear God’s wrath, or his judgment and condemnation, but we should most definitely possess a fear of the Lord that shows up in a reverence that produces godliness.
This fear of God begins with a right understanding of who he is.
Look down at verse 14 where Moses provides a reminder for us.
14 Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it.
17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe.
God’s character makes him worthy of our reverence and respect, worthy of our submission and obedience.
Remember, fear causes us to act, and the fear of God should be no different.
It’s not a fear of judgment or condemnation or hell, but it’s a fear that rightly frames our lives in light of the greatness and power and majesty of our God.
It’s this God before whom we live our lives, and we would do well to allow that thought to produce in us more godliness in every area.
P1: Fear the Lord through Godly Living (10:12b, 12c, 13-14)
P1: Fear the Lord through Godly Living (10:12b, 12c, 13-14)
Illustrate:
Back in March, a jewelry store in Beverly Hills was robbed at 2PM on a Tuesday. A group of thieves showed up with sledge hammer and axes, smashed the storefront window, and made off with 3-5 million dollars worth of jewelry.
Los Angeles County has also seen a rash of freight train robberies this year with Union Pacific reporting an increase of 160% year-over-year in LA county.
There are many factors that contribute to stories like these, but a large part of it is a lack of fear among the criminals. There’s no fear of consequences, and there’s been a societal breakdown that has even robbed our culture of a general respect for authority and one another.
Let’s look at what Moses says this fear should look like:
FIRST: Deut 10:12 “to walk in all his ways”
To walk in the ways of the Lord is to live in close fellowship with him
24 Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.
Consistent pattern of godliness in behavior
13 For you have delivered my soul from death, yes, my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of life.
This is something God desires of his people.
13 Oh, that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways!
SECOND: Deut 10:13 “keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord”
Keep = give attention to; carefully observe
Commandments = law (Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah)
Statutes = rules and regulations
Illustrate:
Dinner time is always an adventure at my house, and it usually involves some kind of negotiation between mom and dad and one of the twins about how much they have to eat.
Our typical response is: “All of it.”
But that doesn’t end the conversation because then they divide it and slide it to one side of the plate and ask us if they can just eat that much.
Our typical response: “No, all of it.”
Then they’ll wait a minute or two and come back with another approach: “How many bites do I have to eat?”
Again, our response: “All of it.”
Why do we make them eat it all?
Because we love them and know that’s what is best for them (we’re not feeding them anything that is going to hurt them; Deut 10:13), AND we want them to demonstrate their respect for us and our authority by eating all of their food.
Sometimes we go to the Lord and ask him how much of his commands he wants us to follow. All of them.
17 You shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God, and his testimonies and his statutes, which he has commanded you.
4 You have commanded your precepts to be kept diligently.
3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.
Because (Deut 10:13) he has given us his commandments FOR OUR GOOD.
Maybe you’re struggling with this right now because what you’re hearing is: “God expects you to be perfect.”
You think, well that’s not me, so next...
But there’s a difference that is important for us to understand.
God’s desire for us to keep his commandments, to fear him by walking in all his ways, doesn’t change or go away when we sin.
He doesn’t wash his hands of us and move on as soon as we sin for the first time.
1 Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. 2 Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
Instead, God desires that we would constantly pursue a reverential obedience that produces wise living.
11 Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name.
22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; 23 they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
So as you and I sit here tonight/this morning on the precipice of a new week, the Lord’s expectation for us this week begins with a healthy fear of God marked by godly living.
END P1
I referenced 1 John 5:3 where there’s a clear connection between our obedience to the Lord and our love for him. That connection is found in Deuteronomy 10 as well.
Deuteronomy 10:12c “to love him”
Context of Deuteronomy:
5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
1 “You shall therefore love the Lord your God and keep his charge, his statutes, his rules, and his commandments always.
13 “And if you will indeed obey my commandments that I command you today, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, 14 he will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, that you may gather in your grain and your wine and your oil.
22 For if you will be careful to do all this commandment that I command you to do, loving the Lord your God, walking in all his ways, and holding fast to him, 23 then the Lord will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations greater and mightier than you. 24 Every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours. Your territory shall be from the wilderness to the Lebanon and from the River, the river Euphrates, to the western sea.
This love is not in order that the Lord will love us, but because the Lord has loved us.
6 “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. 7 It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
15 Yet the Lord set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day.
19 We love because he first loved us.
Just before this the Lord had reminded the Israelites of his unmerited love for them, and now he was calling on them to respond to that reciprocally. How? Not really any differently than how we demonstrate our fear of the Lord. We love God because God first loved us, and we demonstrate that love in lives of godliness.
P2: Love the Lord through Godly Living (10:12c, 15)
P2: Love the Lord through Godly Living (10:12c, 15)
John 21
Peter, do you love me?
Then do this...
There’s an old DC Talk song called “Luv is a Verb” that’s all about the song-writer’s realization that love requires action.
17 But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?
The testimony of Scripture is clear: Our love for the Lord is most clearly seen in our pursuit of godliness.
10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.
14 You are my friends if you do what I command you.
This is why in the Psalms David continually spoke of loving the commandments of the Lord.
47 for I find my delight in your commandments, which I love.
97 Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day.
113 I hate the double-minded, but I love your law.
127 Therefore I love your commandments above gold, above fine gold.
159 Consider how I love your precepts! Give me life according to your steadfast love.
167 My soul keeps your testimonies; I love them exceedingly.
This goes back to understanding the purpose for those commandments.
Deuteronomy 10:13 “which I am commanding you today for your good”
They were given for our good
7 The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; 8 the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; 9 the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether. 10 More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. 11 Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.
We must pursue godliness as a demonstration of our love for Jesus. If you love someone, you will want to cultivate a closer relationship with them, and central to that pursuit of the Lord is a love-fueled obedience of his commands.
A Psalm of David. 1 O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill? 2 He who walks blamelessly and does what is right and speaks truth in his heart; 3 who does not slander with his tongue and does no evil to his neighbor, nor takes up a reproach against his friend; 4 in whose eyes a vile person is despised, but who honors those who fear the Lord; who swears to his own hurt and does not change; 5 who does not put out his money at interest and does not take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things shall never be moved.
21 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.”
3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.
14 You are my friends if you do what I command you.
Illustrate:
Going back to my kids and their dinner plates, my favorite is when they clean their plate and then thank their mamma.
She appreciates the words, but seeing them go back for 2nds and 3rds, each time with clean plates, is the greater expression of love for her.
In fact, Jesus himself even demonstrated his love for the Father through his obedience.
9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.
31 but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise, let us go from here.
If you’re finding obedience burdensome, the answer is not in looking for less to obey but in deepening your love for Jesus!
In Deuteronomy this meant reminding Israel of God’s greatness and his wonderful acts of deliverance.
For you and me, this is a great place for us to begin as well; reminding ourselves of God’s greatness in our own lives and his wonderful grace that saved us from our sins.
Memorizing passages like Deuteronomy 10:12-13 or Psalm 19 can help in this as well.
The enemy wants you to leave off that last part of verse 13, “which I am commanding you today for your good.”
What stirs your affections for Jesus?
When the world offers its trinkets and treasures for much less than what the Lord requires of us for what is unquestionably delayed gratification, there has to be something that keeps us trusting him, obeying him, and pursuing him. That something must be our affection for him.
END P2
Speaking of the reminders of God’s deliverance…Another reason God desires this love-fueled, reverential obedience is because he’s worthy of it, a reality he laid out for his people very early on after delivering them from slavery in Egypt.
2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 3 “You shall have no other gods before me. 4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me,
“You shall not bow down to them or serve them.”
Look down in the passage we’re studying, and you’ll find that same word “serve.”
Deuteronomy 10:12 “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you...to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul...”
The Hebrew term has a broad field of meaning ranging from tilling the ground, to working as a slave to serving a master to worshiping a deity.
Like love, this is a word that we find in the surrounding context:
19 And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven.
28 And there you will serve gods of wood and stone, the work of human hands, that neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.
13 It is the Lord your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear.
That’s the emphasis here in Deuteronomy 10 as well. This isn’t about serving the Lord in labor, or as slaves, or as his gardeners, but it’s about serving the Lord in worship. And notice the words that follow: “with all your heart and with all your soul...” Sound familiar?
5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
So maybe, like the relationship between our fear of God and love for God, there’s a relationship between our love for God and our worship of him?
What should it look like for us to worship the Lord?
We worship the Lord by giving something to God. The word from which we get worship is an old Anglo-Saxon term that means “to ascribe worth or value to something.” So when we worship we are giving the Lord what he deserves, we are demonstrating that he is worthy, that he is valuable.
We do that most tangibly through this love-fueled, reverential godliness we have been talking about so far.
P3: Worship the Lord through Godly Living (vv. 12d, 16-17)
P3: Worship the Lord through Godly Living (vv. 12d, 16-17)
Look down a few verses from where we are in our passage and the same word shows up again.
20 You shall fear the Lord your God. You shall serve him and hold fast to him, and by his name you shall swear. 21 He is your praise. He is your God, who has done for you these great and terrifying things that your eyes have seen. 22 Your fathers went down to Egypt seventy persons, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven.
Serve the Lord…He is your praise. He is your God who has done for you these great and terrifying things that your eyes have seen.
There are many ways we serve the Lord in worship. That’s what we’re doing here tonight/this morning after all.
But worship isn’t something that we can compartmentalize
We don’t finish worshipping when we leave the church, or when we get out of the car after listening to a podcast, or when we turn off the worship music playlist.
Many pastors and theologians have said it, but we live worshipping.
That means the way we live in response to the commandments and statutes of God is an act of worship. So then it should come as no surprise that our passage about fearing the Lord and loving the Lord is also about worshipping the Lord.
28 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,
1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
In fact in Romans 1, Paul’s indictment against mankind centers on the connection between our worship and our obedience.
24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
Your battle for godliness is a worship battle.
Whether or not to give into that temptation is a question of what or who you’re going to worship.
To deny yourself is an act of worship.
To indulge yourself is an act of worship
21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
9 So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.
15 Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. 16 Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.
Again, if the commands of the Lord are a burden to you, the answer might be found in a perspective shift. All of our lives are meant to be lived as a sacrificial praise offering to the Lord! And think of what he’s done for you. Is he not worthy of this?
So as you strive for godliness in your life, it isn’t to curry favor with the Lord, or to check a box, or to make yourself acceptable to him. It’s an expression of your devotion, a demonstration of your love, an act of worship.
That’s the flip-side. The mundane acts of obedient submission are far less mundane when we realize that every act of godliness is an act of worship rendered to our God.
Let this encourage you as you as the world grows darker every day, as your neighbors get the bigger house and the nicer car by using underhanded means to advance at work, as the people in power continue to call good evil and evil good. Your faithful integrity is not lost, not pointless, not empty. God sees, he knows, and he is pleased by your faithful worship.
17 For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe.
He’s worthy of our obedience, he’s worthy of our submission. He’s worthy of our godliness.
Conclusion:
Conclusion:
So there they are, God’s expectations for you and me. What does the Lord require of us? To fear him, to love him, and to worship him.
For some of you this is fodder for motivation. It’s a reminder of the directions, the expectations, and now you’re charged up and ready to fire out of here to live out Deuteronomy 10 this week! Awesome. For you, let me encourage you to remember God’s enabling grace. It’s only as he wills and works within us for his good pleasure that we are able to do meet any of these expectations. That way, even our fear, our love, and our worship result in the praise and honor and glory of Jesus.
For some of you this message may have felt discouraging. The bar may seem impossibly high. You may be thinking about how you haven’t been doing a very good job of fearing, loving, and worshipping God recently. For you, let me encourage you to remember God’s forgiving grace. His mercies are new for you every morning. And these expectations don’t need to remind you of past failures, but let them motivate you to fear him, love him, and serve him today, and tomorrow, and the next day.
There may be some of you out there who aren’t Christians. Maybe this message confirmed thoughts in your mind that Christians are all about morality and to-do lists. Friend, this message wasn’t about making God happy or ourselves acceptable to him. None of us can do that. This message was about responding to the good news that he made us acceptable by sending his Son to die on the cross for our sins. The single greatest act of love that anyone has ever displayed is certainly worthy of our full devotion to him in fear, love, and worship.
Application Questions:
Read 2 Corinthians 7:1. While we can often think of the fear of God as an Old Testament concept, it is clear that Christians should fear the Lord as well. What are some common misunderstandings of this concept that you have encountered or had to overcome yourselves? If someone asked you, what does the fear of the Lord look like in your life, how would you respond?
Read Psalm 15. What is David asking in verse 1, and what does that have to do with our love for the Lord? How does his answer in verses 2-5 inform our understanding of the relationship between our love for the Lord and our reverential pursuit of godliness?
Read Romans 1: 24-25. While everyone battles different sins, why can we confidently say that the core issue in whatever sin you battle is a worship issue?
Read Philippians 3:12-14. The expectations of God laid out in Deuteronomy 10 may feel like a tall order and potentially even overwhelming. How does this passage from Philippians help us in our resolve to keep going despite our sins and setbacks?