Sermon Tone Analysis

Living as God’s People

As I have continued to study this book of Deuteronomy, it has struck me more and more the nature of repetitiveness found there.

And when you zoom out from just Deuteronomy, you find that the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, contain as well certain themes or statements that are repeated again and again.

And when you widen to the entire Bible, you once again come to the conclusion that certain basic things are repeated, again and again.

They are said explicitly.

They are implied in parables.

They are learned through the stories, or narratives.

They are summed up in the Proverbs.

They are sung about in the Psalms.

Many themes in scripture are very repetitive.

I have found in life, that I don’t always like things to be repeated to me again and again.

At a particular job I had once, the manager would repeat again and again to me the certain processes that were part of the job at our store and in our company.

I’m sure over time in his job, he had learned that without this repetitiveness, many employees could quickly forget the standards of service we were supposed to have, or perhaps slack off on the details.

But personally for me, I was very annoyed by this constant repetition.

I wanted to say, yes, I got this the first several dozen times you told it to me.

I have found in the church and particularly in the role of preacher and teacher, that sometimes people in the church do not like to have repetition either.

In particular, people do not like to hear again and again themes such as sin, hell, and repentance.

This is revealed in some of the constructive criticism I have been offered regarding my teaching or preaching.

I have had people say things such as: “People don’t need to keep hearing about sin.” or “We get that, we are in church because we know we are sinners, but we are in Christ now, so there is no need to continually remind us about sin.”

One lady came to kindly sit down with me in the office and tell me that I had overused the word repent in a sermon, that I had used the word 31 times in one sermon!

I was preaching on the verse about the kindness of God that leads to repentance.

Ironically, many of those comments came from people who knew about open sin in the church and wanted to ignore it.

So this is fair warning, that in the book of Deuteronomy, we are going to find much repetition.

The reminders Moses gave to the people are topics we must evaluate to see how they apply to us, here and now, at Oasis Church in 2022.

I think it is safe to say that when a topic or theme is repeated many times in scripture, there is a reason for it.

Sometimes the most repeated topics are those that we tend to forget, sometimes they are repeated because they involve the things we are most likely to ignore.

So today we look at an introduction to a presentation of the ten commandments.

They were delivered, of course, on Mt.

Sinai, to Moses about 40 years prior to the account we are reading today.

Remember that this book of Deuteronomy is a series of addresses Moses gives to the people of Israel before they enter the promised land.

Now, the ten commandments are listed in full twice in the Old testament.

First in Exodus 20, and second of all here.

In the next couple of weeks, we will look at the commandments themselves that are found in Deuteronomy 5, but today we are going to look at how Moses began his presentation.

And we may well consider these questions:

Why does Moses need to repeat the ten commandments, when everyone should already know them?

Why does he preface the commandments with reminders of the recent history of the Israelite people?

What can we learn about the seriousness of these commandments through their repetitiveness throughout Scripture?

So in Chapter 4, Moses has wrapped us the first of his speeches in Deuteronomy, and now we find the prelude to the second speech:

in 4:44, This is the law that Moses set before the people of Israel.

Now, to be clear, this is not a preamble simply to the ten commandments, but we will see that it expands well beyond that.

In chapter 5 the ten commandments, or ten words, are listed.

In chapter 6, we will see a very serious charge given to all: Deut6.5-7

We at Oasis Church are going to take this charge very seriously.

This Fall, we are going to begin a journey together, called D6.

It is based on this passage.

I have mentioned it briefly, and over the past couple of months your governing board has been looking into this program, which is focused on the church side with Sunday School, but it goes far beyond that.

You see, D6 is about following this command, and as you can see, this command, to teach these things diligently to your children is actually not something outsourced to paid professionals, but insourced to the home.

Parents and grandparents alike sharing the responsibility to pass on to the next generations the knowledge of God.

D6 is a Sunday School program, but much more than that, it is designed to help grandparents and moms and dads to be obedient to scripture and train their children.

So in the next week or so, we are going to put out a survey about this program, so be on the lookout in your emails and on the church website.

We want your input and we want to have an idea of how we can best do this program.

Please be praying about your participation, and I am praying that the Holy Spirit will create in each of us a desire as a community of believers, to move forward with excellence in taking seriously our role in learning God’s ways and training others in God’s ways.

It is interesting that when I began preaching through Deuteronomy, I had no idea we would be talking about a Sunday School program, but I am excited that through the Summer, the Lord will be speaking to us through His word, and my prayer is that we would be filled with a sense of urgency regarding our work to know God and make Him known.

So at the end of chapter 4, we see the introduction to the Law.

Moses set this before the people of Israel, it isn’t only the ten commandments, but also many more laws and statutes given to God’s people.

Really, this is how God’s people are to live.

The repetition we see is necessary because God’s people still have a tendency to stray from our path.

The same is true for God’s people in the church.

It is mind boggling, all the things that compete for our attention.

There is much to draw our attention and energy away from the things that are the most important.

I’m sure that over the next few months, as we challenge each other to fully engage in D6, that there will be some pushback.

You want me to get up earlier on Sunday?, someone may ask.

Or, when do you think I have time to do this at home with my family?

Don’t you realize we never stop running?

And as these objections come up, and perhaps come into your own mind, please consider what is the good portion that Jesus said Mary had chosen?

How might our priorities need to be realigned, to make our life in Christ and participation in His Church the main thing in our lives?

Again, the following sections include the ten commandments, but there is much more to it, and as we learn together, we will see how God had some very specific rules for his people, and these rules in many cases would set them apart from the people around them.

We are reminded of the defeat of Sihon and Og, which we looked into in a previous sermon;

Having been given this introduction, we now get to the beginning of Moses’ speech.

Deut5.1

He begins with the word hear; but it has a little more impact than we may usually give it.

there is a sense that the word hear goes beyond listening and actually means to obey.

So perhaps we could say hear and obey.

Are you hearing me? is a little like, are you going to obey me?

Hear, O Israel, the statutes and the rules, and you shall learn them and be careful to do them.

What good would it do to know how to do something but never do it?

We aren’t hear for simply an intellectual exercise.

And we must be careful about this.

Some of us love diving into the Bible, studying it, discussing it, pondering its meaning.

But if all we do if sit around talking about how things are and should be, and never actually doing anything, we will be as worthless as congress.

Or we will be like someone who spent time and money to get a degree in fashion design, which most of those never actually end up working in the field they were educated in.

James wrote: James1.22-25

You can see the echoes of Moses in what James wrote: Moses said learn them, and be careful to do them.

James said don’t hear only, but do.

The one who does perseveres and will be blessed.

Learn them and be careful to do them.

Moses wants the people to understand this covenant is living and active.

This is not the covenant God made with Abraham, many generations before.

The covenant God made with them in the wilderness was not merely with the generation that had perished in the wilderness.

The covenant was with these people just as much as it had been with the pervious generation.

Remember, God is the God of the living.

Let’s go back to the theme of repetition for a moment.

All of these commandments had been given to the people, as is recorded in Exodus.

At that time, the priests were charged with educating people on God’s laws, and parents were also given responsibility to teach their children.

with many remembrances, rituals, and so forth, the people were specifically told that when you do this, and your child asks about it, then you tell them about God’s faithfulness.

One example was the Passover meal, it was intended to be a time of reminding all generations of how God had caused the people of Israel to be set free.

Today in the church, we take the opportunity of the Lord’s Supper, of baptism, or Christmas and Resurrection Sunday, to reflect and remind ourselves and to teach our children about the things of God.

There is no higher desire for the Christian parent then that their children would take the faith and make it personal, and real.

You are not a Christian just because your parents were.

Each generation must learn about the faith and ultimately make their own decision whether they will obey God’s Word and believe in Jesus.