If you missed yesterday's column, please read "Warning against Going Beyond" in the archives.  John

Deuteronomy 6.1-3

“Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the rules that the LORD your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it, that you may fear the LORD your God, you and your son and your son’s son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long. Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.”

Luke 1.6; Ephesians 6.1-3; James 1.22-25

“This” refers to “all the way that the LORD your God commanded you, that you may live, and that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land that you shall possess” (Deut. 5.33), as well as everything which is to follow. Notice again how Law and promise are intertwined. These must not be separated. If we desire to know God’s promises (live in the land) we must hold fast to what He has revealed (all that He has commanded).

If we do what God commands – He Who has redeemed us by grace through faith – we will realize what God has promised. This is how we demonstrate love and fear of God, and this is how we enjoy the benefits of full and abundant life. Obedience keeps us on the path of promise – here typified by the “land flowing with milk and honey” – and leads to ever higher stages of promise realization.

All these statutes associated with the first commandment thus emphasize the role of grace, faith, and obedience within the covenant of the Lord. There is no separation of promise and law, grace and obedience, faith and love. These all define the way of covenant faithfulness and full and abundant life in the redemptive grace of God.

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Deuteronomy 12.32

“Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take from it.’”

1 Corinthians 4.6; Revelation 22.18, 19

God cannot emphasize enough the importance of full, complete, and continuous obedience to His Law. Israel is to “be careful” to do so, reading the Law, studying and discussing it, looking to her elders and judges to explain and apply it, and dutifully keeping their steps within its path (Ps. 119.59, 60). In order to secure the further benefits and blessings of God’s covenant, Israel must not omit any part of the Law, even though it is difficult to understand or hard to bear. Nor must they add anything to it, thus presuming to improve on God’s revelation by their own wits.

Paul would tell the churches in his day the same thing – not to “go beyond” what was written in the Word of God, but to keep their obedience within the framework of divine revelation. And John warned any who would add to his words, the last of the apostolic generation, of judgment to come on those who presume to add their own words to God’s as of equal standing.

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Will we ever get this right?

Christians can change the world.

The hot weather takes it out of me.

We’re not likely to make something that lasts simply by accident.

The Kingdom advances one body, one struggle, one moment at a time.

Deuteronomy 11.1, 2

“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…”

The message is thus: Don’t lose sight of what God has promised, or of how He has thus far moved to fulfill those promises. And realize that further enjoyment of those promises is along the path God Himself has marked out in His Law. Believe, obey, and enjoy: here is a formula for blessedness.

This is “always” the way God brings His people to higher stages of blessedness. We must “always” walk in obedience to what God has revealed, beginning in His Law. There will never be a time when we will not be dependent upon God’s revealed Word in order to know how we must live before Him. Those, therefore, who scorn the Law of God, preferring to be “led by the Spirit” or to live “by the law of love”, are deceived. They would substitute for what God has revealed some subjective and sentimental standard of righteousness that seems right to them at the moment. Such has “always” been the way of death (Prov. 14.12).

God is appealing to Israel’s love for Him – because of His promises and redeeming grace – but, as we recall, Israel was not merely to love the Lord. They were also to fear Him. Sadly, love for God is never a completely adequate motivation for obedience, not even in the age of grace. God commands His people to run their race with energy and obedience, looking to Jesus, the quintessence of God’s promises and the agent of God’s redemption (Heb. 12.1, 2). But, in the same context, having reminded them of His grace and called them to faith and obedience, He also reminds them of His ability and determination to discipline those who fail to adhere to the way of righteousness unto which He has redeemed them (Heb. 12.3-11).

Such discipline is not pleasant. The people of Israel, assembled on the plains of Moab, would know that their hard-hearted fathers had all perished in the wilderness. Those hearing Moses would have seen God’s discipline, known its pain and sorrow, and have therefore been motivated to obey Him out of fear that such might befall them yet again.

God calls His people to obedience out of gratitude and love, but also out of fear.

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Deuteronomy 11.1, 2

“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…”

That “therefore” cues us to look back to the preceding passage for the reason God requires the obedience of His people. Deuteronomy 10.22 reads, “Your fathers went down to Egypt seventy persons, and now the LORD your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven.” This is a direct reference to God’s promise to Abram in Genesis 15.1-6, and it invites the people to respond to the grace of God just as their forefather did: “And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.”

This is how the divine economy operates: God graciously selects a people to be His own, and draws them after Him by holding out precious and very great promises (2 Pet. 1.4). They respond by faith, demonstrated in obedience, thus making it possible for God to bring them into His promises, if only in an initial phase. Receipt of the promise at that level engenders renewed faith on the part of the faithful, leading to obedience and further realization of the promises, and so forth.

God had just delivered His people from Egypt, graciously “remembering” His promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Ex. 2.24). Now, on the plains of Moab, east of the land of promise, Israel was poised to begin enjoying the next phase in God’s covenant promises. And how would that happen? How would they gain further benefits from the God of grace? By looking to the promises and walking in obedience to God’s Law.

How thorough must their obedience be? Israel is to “keep” God’s charge, defined as His statutes, rules, and commandments. Exhaustive obedience to all the Law of God: this is the key to continued enjoyment of the promises. Let us keep in mind that obedience is not unto redemption. Redemption has already been accomplished and was all of grace. Israel – then and now – was not saved by works, but unto them. Obedience is to be out of gratitude for redemption, unto further realization – higher stages of realization – of the precious and very great promises of God, and is therefore by faith.

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Deuteronomy 10.17-19

“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 executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.”

Again, the Lord asserts His greatness and integrity. He can do what He promises as well as what He commands, and He will not change His mind (Mal. 3.6). He is incorruptible and worthy of our deepest admiration and love. We would not exist without Him. We would have no hope without Him. We would not know how to live without Him, nor could we continue to exist even for a moment. Whatever way we might design to pursue our endeavors, apart from Him, can only lead to disappointment and death (Prov. 14.12).

So let us hear this Lord, fear this God, receive His Word, hope in His promises, and walk in all His ways, looking to Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our salvation (Heb. 12.1, 2). Thus we will know full and abundant life (Jn. 10.10) and all the promises and blessings of our God (2 Cor. 1.20; 2 Pet. 1.4).

And lest we should think that God’s Law is only incumbent upon or intended to bless the elite few of society, the Lord emphatically declares that the blessings He intends through His holy and righteous and good Law (Rom. 7.12) extend to the very least of Israelite society – orphans, widows, and strangers. This is why pure and undefiled religion is defined in the New Testament as extending the grace and blessings to God to such as these (Jms. 1.27). His grace is sufficient for all our needs, and it flows in wave upon wave to all His chosen people through our Lord Jesus Christ and the grace of God’s Law.

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Deuteronomy 10.14-16

“Behold, to the LORD your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. 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. Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn.”

In order to bless us with His “good”, God requires of us something we cannot accomplish: He requires that we “circumcise” our hearts. And what God requires of us, He will hold us accountable to perform (Gen. 4.6-12).

Here again, the grace of the Law is evident. For what God requires of His people, He promises to perform on their behalf (cf. Deut. 30.1-10). God promised to circumcise the hearts of His people so that they would be able to keep His Law and, thereby, know the blessings of His covenant. He is powerful to conceive the Law and to require its obedience; He is also powerful to enable His people to love and walk in it.

Ezekiel and Jeremiah assign the fulfillment of this promise to the time of the New Covenant (Jer. 31.31-34; Ezek. 36.26, 27). All those, therefore, who have come to faith in Jesus Christ have received a new heart, a clean heart, and the indwelling Spirit of God. And all who have that Spirit in them will have hearts formed by the Spirit to know and obey the Law of God, unto their good.

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Deuteronomy 10.14-16

“Behold, to the LORD your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. 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. Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn.”

Given that God loves us and intends His Law for our good, why does the Law of God languish among men? Why do even those who claim to know Jesus Christ seem to have so little regard for God’s Law?

It’s not that we don’t acknowledge the Ten Commandments. We do; we just don’t take them very seriously: witness the way the Lord’s Day is regarded by most Christians, and the easy way the fifth, seventh, ninth, and tenth commandments are ignored or rationalized away.

The answer is that, like ancient Israel, we are stubborn in our hearts. We want what we want, when we want it, and we will do our best to bend the Word and Law of God to our own selfish interests. Israel’s stubborn heart cost her dearly throughout the course of the Old Testament. Her story of stubbornness was written for our benefit (Rom. 15.4); yet it often seems as though God’s covenant people today simply aren’t listening.

The solution to our stubborn hearts is a circumcised heart. God commands His people to acquire something which, on their own, they simply cannot do. We cannot “circumcise” our hearts. We cannot remove the encrusted wickedness that corrupts our souls and keeps us from taking the will of God, as revealed in His Law, as our priority in life (Heb. 9.8, 14). The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked: who can know it (Jer. 17.9)? And if we cannot know it, how shall we be able to repair it by removing all that wickedness which keeps us from loving God and His Law?

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