Trinity 18
Deut
10:12-21
10/20/19
The history had produced a sense of
inevitability. No one living had ever
seen any other result. And so for many
people there was no reason to expect any other outcome.
More than a hundred baseball seasons
began and ended with the same result: the Chicago Cubs did not win the World
Series. Seven times in a row the Cubs
lost in the World Series. Since the last loss in 1945, the Cubs had rarely been
in the playoffs and had never been back to the World Series. The few times when they had success were
marred by memorable collapses: the 1969 team that failed to make the playoffs;
the 1984 and 2003 teams that failed to make the World Series.
In the discussion that leads into
our text, Moses has been describing a similar history of failure punctuated by
epic acts of disobedience. In the previous chapter he said, “Remember and do
not forget how you provoked the LORD your God to wrath in the
wilderness. From the day you came out of the land of Egypt until you came
to this place, you have been rebellious against the LORD.” There was a long history of Israel failing to
trust in Yahweh and disobeying him.
At the very beginning, when they
arrived at the Red Sea and saw that the Egyptians were pursuing them they said,
“Is it because there
are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?
What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? Is not this
what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the
Egyptians'? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to
die in the wilderness.’”
Their
repeated grumbling, complaining and doubting had been capped off by two huge
acts of disobedience. At Mt Sinai they
had made and worshipped a golden calf instead of Yahweh. And then when Yahweh brought them to the land
of Canaan and told them to go in and take possession of the land, they did not
believe God and refused. Moses was able to summarize their history this way:
“You have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you.”
But
now, after forty years of wandering in the wilderness, they were about to enter
the promised land. In a series of sermon
like addresses, Moses was urging Israel to be faithful to Yahweh, to trust him,
and to obey him. He begins our text by
saying, “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, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD, which I
am commanding you today for your good?”
Moses
called Israel to fear and love God. He
urged them to walk in his ways and to keep the Torah that Yahweh had given to
them as his covenant people. This relationship
– this covenant God had made Israel – had not been caused by anything Israel
had done. Instead in our text Moses
says, “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.”
The
whole creation belongs to God, yet in his grace he had called Abraham, and
reaffirmed his promises to Isaac and Jacob.
God’s saving action for Israel was grounded in the promise he had made
to the patriarchs. As Moses had said earlier, “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, 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.”
Despite God’s
love, Israel’s track record was one of disobedience. And so in our text Moses urges Israel: “Circumcise
therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn. 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.” Moses called Israel to repentance and
faithfulness. The reason was very simple.
God is the awesome judge who shows no partiality and judges justly. And Yahweh had warned Israel that continued
disobedience would bring his judgment.
It would be
great if I could tell you that Israel finally broke out of her history. I wish I could say that like the Chicago Cubs
in 2016 they shook off their past and did the unexpected. Yet that’s not how
things turned out. They entered the promised land where they worshipped other
gods and did not walk in God’s ways. The result, as God warned them in
Deuteronomy, was God’s judgment of exile from the land he had given to them.
I also wish I
could say that we are all that different from Israel. In the opening verse of our text we hear
echoes of the Small Catechism’s explanation of the First Commandment: we are to
fear, love and trust in God above all things.
Like Israel we have our false gods.
They are not Asherah poles or golden calves, but instead the money that
gives us a sense of security and value; the possessions that we just can’t be
without; the sports that occupy so much of our time and attention.
God had told
Pharaoh, “Israel is my firstborn son.”
Yet because Israel was an unfaithful son, God sent his own Son into the
world to fulfill what Israel was meant to be.
In our text Moses says that “the LORD set his heart in love on your
fathers.” When God first set his love on
Abraham and called him, he promised, “and in you all families of the earth will
be blessed.”
Unlike Israel,
the Son of God, Jesus Christ, walked in all God’s ways, loved and served
God with all his heart soul, and kept the commandments and statutes. He did this for Israel. And he also did it for you. At his baptism Jesus was anointed with the
Holy Spirit as he took on the role of the suffering Servant. He took the sins of Israel upon himself. He
took your sins upon himself. And then he
walked in the way of the Lord that led to the cross on Good Friday.
As Moses says
in our text, “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 is the impartial and just God who condemned your sin in
Christ. As St Paul wrote, “For our
sake he made who knew no sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the
righteousness of God.” In obedience to
the Father, our Lord Jesus drank the cup of God’s wrath against our sins. Though without sin of his own, Jesus received
the wages of our sin as he died on the cross and was buried in a tomb.
Jesus loved, trusted and obeyed the
Father all the way to death and the tomb.
But he did so knowing that God’s Spirit had promised through David in
Psalm 16 about the Messiah: “For you will not abandon my soul
to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption.” On the third day God’s Spirit raised Jesus
from the dead as he won victory over death.
Now the risen and ascended Lord has given us the Spirit as we received
the washing of regeneration and renewal in Holy Baptism.
It is the Spirit of Christ who now
leads us to fear and love God as we serve him and walk in his ways. Though no longer bound by the specific commandments
and statutes of the Torah given to Israel, we still find that the things God
commands us in his Word are for our good.
They describe how God has ordered his creation and so they are always
best for us. They bring blessings as we
walk in the way of the Lord.
God’s saving
action for you in Christ is the ultimate demonstration of his loving character. It is a reflection of who God has always
been. In our text Moses says, “He executes justice
for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and
clothing.” God is the One who loves and cares for the helpless. That’s why he sent his Son to suffer and die
for you. That’s why he raised Christ
from the dead. That is why he has called you to faith through his Spirit.
And
because we have received this love, it is now something we share with
others. Moses goes on to add in our
text, “Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of
Egypt.” We are called to help others,
because God has helped us. We are called
to serve others, because Christ served us. We are called to love others because
God loved us. The love that God has
given us in Christ cannot stop with us.
It can never end there. Instead
it sets us in motion to help and assist those around us. By his Spirit, Christ leads us to support and
encourage those in need. We do this wherever Christ places us in the various
callings in life – our vocations. You don’t have to look for people who need
help. God has placed them right there around you where you are in your family,
your church, your job and your school.
At
the end our text Moses says, “You shall fear the LORD your God. You shall serve
him and hold fast to him, and by his name you shall swear. He is your praise. He is your God, who
has done for you these great and terrifying things that your eyes have seen.” Like Israel, we are called to fear the Lord
and serve him. And we are to hold fast to
him.
We
hold fast to God by clinging to his Means of Grace. We return daily to our baptism, as we believe
God’s promises about what he has done for us through water and the Word. There
we were buried with Christ and clothed with Christ. We receive Holy Absolution as the risen Lord
speaks forgiveness here and now through his called servant. We receive the Sacrament of the Altar in
which Jesus gives us his true body and blood, given and shed for us. We receive his Word both in its reading and
preaching in the Divine Service, and in our own reading of Scripture at home.
We
cling to God in these ways by which he comes to us. And then we respond in the
life of prayer that turns to God in every need. We pray for others in their
difficulties. We give thanks for every blessing. We do all of this because of the great and
awesome things that God has done for us in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
No comments:
Post a Comment