Tim Keller: "Life and Prosperity, Death and Destruction" (Deuteronomy 30)

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- I thought Don came pretty close to saying the truth is that I am so good at
stating the argument of the opponent so well, so incredibly well that then I
proceed to lose my own argument because I can't possibly overcome that brilliant
argument that I just laid out. Don is right. I've just gotten over the flu or
kind of gotten over the flu so I'm definitely under the weather right now.
I'm sorry about that. There are advantages and disadvantages to that. The advantage
is that if I accidentally say anything inadvertently heretical during this sermon
or whatever this is, I've got plausible deniability. I can say it was the meds
talking. On the other hand, that's an advantage. The disadvantage of
being lower energy is I'm afraid all of my Hispanic brothers and sisters will think I
don't love Jesus. But I really do, I'm just sick. He's just sick. He does love
Jesus, he's just sick today. I'm delighted to be with you at any level of energy. I
hope I am 80%. That was a very optimistic thing that Don said there. One of the fun
things about having a little bit more time to deal with passages here is you can do a
little bit more background. We're here to talk about coming home. We're talking
about where God is taking us. And I'm starting the conference by starting pretty
far back in the bible to Deuteronomy. And neither heaven or hell nor the new
creation is directly spoken of in the passage I'm about to read to you.
And yet at the same time...you might say this is perhaps one of the earliest places
in the bible that were shown that there are two destinations for the human race.
That there are two human destinies. One is blessing bliss, one is cursed destruction.
And even though it doesn't literally talk about heaven and hell, this is the first
place in the bible that comes very clear that something like that must be out
there. Let me read you Deuteronomy 30 verses 1 to 20. One of the more important
passages in the bible since Paul makes a big deal of it in the heart of the great
epistle to the Romans which we'll mention in a minute. Let me read it to you. When
all these blessings and curses I have set before you come on you and you take them
to heart wherever the Lord your God disperses you among the nations. And when
you and your children return to the Lord your God and obey him with all your heart
and with all your soul, according to everything I command you today. Then the
Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you and gather you
again from all the nations where he scattered you. Even if you have been
banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the Lord your God
will gather you and bring you back. He will bring you to the land that belong to
your ancestors and you will take possession of it. He will make you more
prosperous and numerous than your ancestors. The Lord your God will
circumcise your hearts. And the hearts of your descendants so that you may love him
with all your heart and with all your soul and live. The Lord your God will put all
these curses on your enemies so hate and persecute you. You will again obey the
Lord and follow his commands I'm giving you today. Then the Lord your God will
make you more prosperous in all of the work of your hands and in the fruit of
your womb. The young of your livestock and the crops
of your land, the Lord will again delight in you and make you prosperous just as he
delighted in your ancestors. If you obey the Lord your God and keep his commands
and decrees that are written in the book of the law. This book of the law and turn
to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Now what I'm
commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. It is not up
in heaven so that you have to ask who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim
it to us so we may obey it. Nor is it beyond the sea so that you have to ask who
will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it. No. The word
is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it. See, I
set before you today, life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you
today to love the Lord your God and to walk in obedience to him and to keep his
commands, decrees and laws then you will live and increase. And the Lord your God
will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. But if your heart
turns away and you are not obedient and if you are drawn away to bow down to other
Gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be
destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing to Jordan to enter
and posses. This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you,
that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life so
that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God.
Listen to his voice, hold fast to him for the Lord is your life and he will give you
many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Now to understand this chapter which is near almost at the end, basically
understand what the book of Deuteronomy is about. It is the end of Moises' life.
Moises is about to in a sense hand Israelites off to new leaders. They had
entered into a covenant relationship with God at Mount Sinai. God said, "I will be
your God, you'll be my people. This is what I want you to live. Here's the
stipulations of the covenant." And now Moises was about to pass off the scene
they were renewing the covenant and Deuteronomy is a covenant renewal
document. All the things that the children of Israel are supposed to be doing in
order to live as the people of God are laid out. So wonderful exposition of the
Decalogue, of the ten commandments, of what it means to live lives of integrity,
live lives of justice, and so on. What it means to live in a life that pleases God.
And so at the end of the covenant document in chapters 27 and especially 28. God lays
out what is referred to here twice in this last chapter. Moises lays out and God lays
out what's referred to in his last chapter, blessings and curses. If you obey
the covenant, if you're faithful to what you say today you are going to do for me
God says, I will bless you in all these ways. Beginning of chapter 28 is all
filled with ways in which he would bless them. But then the last three quarters of
chapter 28, God says, "If you disobey the covenant, if your faith was to the
covenant, all these terrible things will come upon you, all these curses." It's
very similar to what he says here at the end. We already read it. "I declare to you
this day that you will certainly be destroyed if you disobey the covenant. The
curses will come upon you." Now the curses are so ferocious, in fact Don
Carson in some place, I think it might be in his, for the love of God, daily
devotional thing. Don says that there's no more fearsome
chapter in all the bible than Deuteronomy 28. You know about ten verses into the
curses and you know you got about 40 more to go. They're saying, "I got the idea.
What in the world is going on?" But they are very fearsome and they are very
ferocious. And yet the blessings are astounding and the blessings always come
along with the promise of graciousness. That yes, God is gracious. He overlooks
and he forgives, he does this, he does that. So, the blessings are so gracious
and seemingly so unconditional and the curses are so ferocious and so obviously
conditional. If you do this you'll be destroyed. That there's a lot of scholars
that just can't believe Deuteronomy is written by one person. In the Longman
Dillard Old Testament introduction, I don't know whether either Ray, Dillard, or
Tremper Longman wrote the one on the chapter on Deuteronomy but they
make...they bring out something very interesting. One of the classic Old
Testament professors, F. M. Cross, read the book of Deuteronomy and he said,
"There's no way one person could have possibly written this." He believed,
Cross believed that originally the book of Deuteronomy was written before the exile,
probably at the time of King Josiah when there was a lot of hope. And all of the
stuff in the book of Deuteronomy that gives you these gracious promises of
blessing, God says, "I'm going to do this for you and this for you because I'm
gracious and I'm forgiving and I overlook and I'm going to do all this for you and I
will never give up on you and I'll be faithful to you." All that stuff comes
from before the exile. But then after the exile and after the disaster of the
Babylonian exile and all that, Professor Cross believed that afterwards they look
back and they said, "Wow. Deuteronomy is way too optimistic."
And so somebody else wrote another edition of it and brought in all the curses and
laid all the curses in there because Cross did not believe that any one person could
have both held together the idea of blessings and curses. In fact Cross
basically didn't believe that there could be a single coherent understanding of God
that would be both that gracious and that deadly. Both that loving and not holy. Now
what Dillard and Longman do on that part of the intro. They do a wonderful job of
completely destroying that idea. And you're almost comical. He said, "Can you
imagine an editor so incredibly incompetent?" That he wants to bring in
all the...he takes the document that's too much on God's love and he brings in all
the stuff on holiness and judgment and justice, and he for some reason just
leaves all the stuff that he doesn't agree with. So that it's just a mish mash of
contradictions. That would be a pretty stupid editor. But the main point is this.
The book of Deuteronomy maybe for the first time in the biblical narrative as
you're reading right through makes it extremely clear that there's a tension and
we brought it about. We have a holy God. We have a God of justice. We have a God
that must punish sin, who cannot clear the guilty, says that to Moises. He says, "I
can't let any sin go unpunished." He says that in Exodus 34. But at the same time is
a God of endless love and endless faithfulness and endless forgiveness and
desire for a relationship with us. And it's because of who we are as human
beings and because who Israel is, flawed, sinful. That this creates at least in the
book at this point a kind of unresolved tension at least in the minds of the
reader. Because the question is how can this God be on the one hand faithful to
who he is and faithful to who he is. In fact David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, you're
going to hear more about him at this conference. There's one of the sermons he
did on revival. He does a very interesting little move. He says that when Moises
says, "I want to see your glory." God says, "No. It will kill you." But he
says, "I'll hide you in the cleft of the rock and I will let all my goodness pass
before you." All my goodness, that's an interesting way of putting it. And then
just a few verses later that God comes down, Moises is shielded and it says his
goodness passed before Moises and he declared his name and see. This is in
Exodus 34 verses 6 and 7. And when he declares his name he says, "I am the Lord.
I'm the Lord. I'm compassionate, I'm compassionate, I forgive sins down to the
fourth generation but I will no way clear the guilty." And Dr. Lloyd-Jones says,
"What's interesting is when God says I'm going to show you all my goodness he first
says I am forgiving and I must punish every sin." I am forgiving and yet every
sin has to be punished. And it seems like a contradiction but the way that doctor
put it was this. Why is it that God must punish every sin? You know why he must
punish every sin? Because he's so good. Because he's so good. I mean if a judge
looked out there and saw somebody doing something wrong and said, "Oh, well, you
know, let it go." That's not a good judge. The reason why
God must punish every sin is because he's so good. On the other hand, why is it that
God wants to forgive? Why is it that God wants to love us? Why is it that God
doesn't ever want to let us go? Because he's so good. "Ah," you say. How in the
world could there be a God who is that comprehensively good? Either he's going to
have to be fully good in terms of his holiness and justice and only partially
good in terms of his love. That means you better obey. He'll be patient a little
bit. You know he'll be patient with you but in the end you better obey or you're
not going to heaven. So he'd be all good when it comes to holiness and relatively
good when it comes to mercy and love. Or you may have a God who is comprehensively
good in terms of love. A God who says, "Well, I like you to obey but in the end
I'm going to accept you no matter what you do." So you either have a God who is good
fully in terms of love but not in terms of holiness. Or good fully in terms of
holiness but not in terms of love. But there's no way that there's a God who is
that good, completely good. Comprehensively good. There's just no way
and that's what this Old Testament scholar, what many Old Testament scholars
also said. They look at Deuteronomy and they say, "The blessings are so gracious
but the curses are so ferocious. There's no one God that could be both. This must
be a reduction. This is one guy who have a more benign view of God, one guy who had a
more ferocious view of God and they slapped them together." No. This is what
makes the bible great. And this of course as you know I hope is the whole basis of
the gospel. The Old Testament has an unresolved narrative tension in it. This
is it. What is narrative tension? Narrative tension means you don't know
what's going to happen. There's forces at work and they're at each other. I think at
some place somebody said, "What is a narrative?" Little Red Riding Hood took
her grandmother some goodies. It's not a narrative. That's just a report. Little
Red Riding Hood took her grandmother some goodies but the big bad wolf was waiting
to eat her up. Now we got a narrative because we got a tension. What's going to
happen? This is the narrative tension that drives the narrative arc of the bible all
the way up to the cross. And it's also the narrative tension that drives the whole
book of Deuteronomy. But you say, "Well, I guess it doesn't get resolved in
Deuteronomy." Yes and no. What's beautiful about every part of the bible is
there's these wonderful foreshadowings of how the resolution is going to happen. And
the foreshadowing is here. It's in Deuteronomy 30. Let's look at three things
Deuteronomy 30 says about the future. What's great about Deuteronomy chapter 30,
it's the one that's looking forward to the future, not just the present. Even though
at one place it looks like he's talking about the present. Even there as Paul will
tell us in Romans 10, he's still talking about the future. How so, what are we
talking about? All right. Here's three future things that Moises is telling us
about. In the future we will all fail to live as we ought. Secondly, God will fix
our hearts. Thirdly, and the message of the gospel will go out. Okay. Number one,
first of all we will fail. Now I don't want to spend too much time on this but
it's one of the most important things about this chapter. In fact if you don't
keep this in mind you'll miss read the last part of the chapter. Look at verse
one, when all these blessings and curses I have set before you come on you and you
take them to heart wherever the Lord your God disperses you among the nations. Verse
one says that you will be dispersed. If you go back into Deuteronomy 28 where
you see all these terrible curses. The ultimate curse is you'll be exiled. You'll
be sent away from the land. You'll be plundered. You'll be enslaved. And so
verse one is saying you will fail. You will bring all the curses of the covenant
down on you. The worst that God says will happen to you if you disobey the covenant
will happen. Now just step back for a second. We're Americans, at least some of
us are. And Americans love motivational speakers. Now motivational speakers come
in and they say, "I'm going to tell you what you can do, how you can live." And
actually in some ways Deuteronomy, the whole book of Deuteronomy is a wonderful
ethical tritus. It's a vision for integrity, it's a vision for justice. It's
a vision for human life at the highest. It's great. And in a sense Moses is
preaching by the way. Many people have said that this is a series of...this is
the first place in the bible where you actually have a sermon series. That
Deuteronomy is going to send a series of sermons by Moses. And he's preaching, he's
saying I want you to live like this and live like this and live like this. Great.
Now, but how is a motivational speaker end? Do you get after you've been telling
people live like this and live like this, and then in conclusion do you say. But in
conclusion let me just point this out, you're going to fail. You're not going to
do any of the stuff I'm talking to you about. You are going to miserably fail. I
am wasting my breath. That's how Moses ends the book of Deuteronomy, right there.
And you might say it's not good motivational speaking. No, but it is good
gospel preaching. It's not all the...as we all know it's not
all the risk to gospel preaching. Praise God. But unless you're willing to say this
you're not able to do gospel preaching. What's he saying? What he's saying is he's
looking at the Israelites but of course beyond that he's looking at the human race
of course. At least Israel is representing the human race here. And he's saying, "You
know what you ought to do and you won't do it." You know what you ought to do. This
isn't rocket science. If there is a God you owe him this and that. If...you know
it's not nuts. Love your neighbors as yourself. Love God with all your heart,
soul, strength and mind. You know it's not crazy, it's not rocket science but you
know what you should do but you're not going to do it. Jacob Needleman is a
secular philosopher. I think he's retired now but he taught for many years in San
Francisco State University. Some years ago he wrote a remarkable book. I mean it's
not... I'm not saying go out and get it and read it. You don't have to. It's
called Why Can't We Be Good? And I remembered when it first came out. It kind
of the interviews with him that I read online or you know where I saw were to me
just comical but then the book sort of sank without a trace. Here's his thesis.
His thesis is social theorists are writing books about how we should live. Therapists
are writing books about how we should live. Politicians are writing books about
how we should live. Everybody's working like crazy on trying to tell human beings
how they should live. And he says there's only one thing they're forgetting,
everybody basically knows how they ought to live, we just can't do it. Everybody
basically knows what they ought to be doing and nobody's got the strength to do
it, nobody. He says this is the biggest problem. It's
the biggest mystery of the human race, that's what he said. And it's the biggest
problem the human race has. Why in the world do we proliferating all these books
telling people they ought to live like this and like that. They know how they
ought to live, they just won't do it and they can't do it. It's impossible. Now I
remember I read the interviews with him. I read the interviews and nobody knew what
quite to do with him. He was saying, "Look, people know they shouldn't do this
and they shouldn't do this. But they're going to go do it anyway." And that's our
problem. Our problem is we can't solve the fact that human beings know how they
should live and they can't and they won't. And we haven't figured that out. You know
I guess Becky Pepper here somewhere. Maybe she's here, maybe she's not here today. In
Becky's book Hope Has Its Reasons, there's a great little story. She was auditing a
class in counseling psychology at Harvard University some years ago and she was in a
class and the professor gave a case study of a young man who was or maybe wasn't
young, a man who was very angry with his mother. He didn't realize how angry he was
at his mother. It was just starting his life and through counseling he came to see
how much his life has been dominated by his anger toward his mother. And that
seemed to help him and help him figure himself out. And as he was moving on to
another case study, Becky raised her hand and said, "Well, that's great. But now how
do you help the person?" And professor said, "What do you mean?" Well, how do you
help him forgive his mother? I mean if his life is being distorted by his resentment
towards his mother, how do you help him forgive his mother? His first response
was, "There isn't anything I can do. Hopefully he now will understand his anger
and hopefully not be as driven by it." Mostly the students in the classroom were
a little surprised at his answer and they went around. They went around but in the
end basically the professor said what Jacob Needleman said, this is what he
said. "If you guys are looking for a changed heart, you are looking in the
wrong department." What he's saying is psychology can't help you do what you
ought to do. It can show you what you ought to do. It can show you what you
ought to be doing but it can't really help you. You can show people what they should
do but we don't do it. We can't do it. This is the reason by the way why with a
non-believing audience who is really unhappy with the idea of judgment day. I
for years used Francis Schaeffer's little story, a little illustration he uses to
explain Romans 2. And I'll show you... I'm bringing it up not because you probably
haven't heard it but because I want to bear witness to the fact that no one ever
seems to be able to deny this. You know Romans 2 says that the Gentiles, the
pagans who don't know the law of God, they don't know the bible. They still have in
their conscience a certain knowledge of how they should live and God holds them
responsible for what the conscience tells them. And the way Francis Schaeffer talks
about it is something like this. He says imagine you had an invisible recorder
around your neck and all of your life, all it ever did was record whenever you said
to somebody else you ought. It only ever picked up, it only ever recorded when you
told somebody else how they ought to live. In other words, it only recorded your own
moral standards, the moral standards that you impose in other people. It didn't
record anything else but what you believe was right or wrong. And what Schaeffer
says is what God can do on judgment day is he'll stand in front of people and he say,
"Look, you never heard about Jesus Christ. Have you never heard, you never read the
bible. Hey, I'm a fair-minded God. Let me show
you what I'm going to judge you by." And then he takes that little recorder off
from around their necks which they didn't know was there and he says, "I'm going to
judge you by your own moral standards," and he plays it. And Schaeffer said
there's not a person on the face of the earth that will be able to pass that test.
That's exactly what Needleman is saying. You've got to say to people, and by the
way I used that illustration for years now and nobody ever wants to push back. Nobody
ever says, "I live up according to my standards." No, they don't. Which means
what? The biggest problem of the human race, we don't need more books telling
people how to live. They need the power to do what they don't have the power to do
right now. And so the first thing that Moses tells them is you're going to fail.
And the gospel creatures have to constantly bringing people back and
telling them what they know in their heart but they won't admit it. They say that
starkly is pretty striking, is it not? You know what to do and you never will do it
unless you get some kind of outside help. You will never put yourself together. You
will never do it. That's the first future. The second future however, God has a plan
to fix hearts. And maybe the center at least in my mind of the whole passage is
down here in verse 6. Now, if you remember it, in verse 2 Moses said, "When you
repent, God will bring you back from your land of exile." So verse 2, 3, 4 and 5 is
basically predicting that they will be put into exile and he'll bring them back. But
when a guest of verse six, he says the Lord your God will circumcise your hearts
and the hearts of your descendants so that you may love him with all your heart and
with all your soul and live. I would like to get more demonstrative
right now but I'm running out of voice so I'm going to get a little... It's going to
start to sound like a fireside chat instead of a sermon but here we go. He's
talking about something that the rest of the bible brings out. Jeremiah, Ezekiel
calls it the new covenant with new hearts. Paul in Romans 2 verse 29 says that our
hearts are circumcised. Paul in Philippians 3 verse 3 says we are the true
circumcision. So this is gospel. This is gospel and this is talking beyond anything
that actually happens in the lives of the Israelites at that time. Yeah, it will
help a little bit but I'll tell you it's limited. But that's better. What is a
circumscribed heart? Quickly what's a heart? You know most of us have heard
expositors says over and over again that in English the word heart means the seed
of the emotions. But in the bible the word heart means the center of the whole being.
You probably heard people say that. I've said I don't know how many times. Recently
I've gotten conflicted that I am so still a slave of my late modern culture in which
emotions is the ultimate value. Feelings is the ultimate value. That I am not able
when I read with the bible says about the heart to not let modern understandings of
what the heart means creep in to and affect how I'm reading that text. When the
people talks about the heart, it's talking about seriously the control center of the
whole being. Why? You know how in Proverbs 3.
It says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart." That's what hearts do. They put
their trust in something. You know the place in Genesis 6 where it talks about
the inclination of a heart, that's what hearts do. Hearts face things. You know
the place where Jesus says where your treasure is there is your heart. Your
heart is the place where you decide what you're going to treasure, what your
supreme good is. What your ultimate hope is? What you're going to face all day. The
reason that William Temple, Archbishop William Temple used to say your religion
is what you do with your solitude. And that has always been such a... Man, if you
think that out you realize we're all spiritually dead. What he means is the
thing that your heart most cherishes, most adores, most trusts in, most hopes in. The
thing that you really look to most for your salvation is what your mind
automatically goes to when you have nothing else you have to think about. Now
I know that's hard for us because we're also wired in with social media and cell
phones. In fact some... It almost have in my age remember what it's like to have
solitude. But I do remember that when I was standing waiting for a bus with
nothing to do. I mean isn't that amazing? It used to you'll be standing waiting for
a bus and there was nothing you had to think about. It was no information you
could be taking in believe it or not. I didn't immediately just sit there and take
those five minute to praise God to think about his glories, to think about his
attributes, to think about what he's done for me. And so what that means of course
is my heart tends to fantasize about other things. If only the church could get to
this number then maybe we could build a wing. See, is that what you think about at
the bus stop? Then your career is more important to you.
You see, the heart is the thing that you most love. The heart is the seed of the
greatest lesson. What the heart most wants, the mind finds reasonable, the
emotions find desirable, and the will finds doable. And what that means is that
what the heart is set upon affects your mind, your will, and your emotions. Now
having said that, what is it mean to have a circumscribed heart? It's a scary idea,
isn't it? Peter Craigy and his chapter on Deuteronomy actually says he thinks this.
He says to say the guy circumcised the heart, that's a strange metaphor but it
means God is doing surgery on your heart, that's what Craigy thinks. Other people
look at it this way which I don't think these are contradictory. They're kind of
complement, they complement each other. Circumcision was a sign that I am
externally obedient. It was a physical sign that I am now coming into a covenant
community and I am now making myself subject to the laws of God. But heart
circumcision then would be the inner love motivation to do that. It says so right
there. It says the Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of
your descendants so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your
soul. As simple as that. There is such a thing as a marriage in which you tie the
knot but you're doing it just simply for some kind of legal or business purposes.
Over the years there had been many, many political marriages. Many, many basically
business marriages. But it's as simple as this. When I was falling in love with my
wife and she asked me to make a change in my life, the sort of thing that my mother
and my father used to ask me and I said, "Mind your own business."
And when she asked me or even if I realized I should be happier if it
happened, her wish was my command. You know suddenly why? I was in love. And I
didn't think of it as obeying her will but in the sense I was. I didn't think of this
submitting to her will but there's a sense in which I was. She wasn't asking me. She
wasn't demanding but out of love I was changing. And here's what it means of a
circumcised heart. When what you ought to do and what you want to do are the same
thing. What you most ought to do, what you most want to do are the same thing. You
know the best expression of a completely circumcised heart I know is this great
little line from the John Newton hymn. Our pleasure and our duty though opposite
before since we have seen his beauty are joined apart no more. Our pleasure and our
duty though opposite before since we have seen its beauty are joined apart no more.
I love that and I can put that in a lot of situations but there we have it, our
pleasure and our duty are the same. That's a circumcised heart. That's not just
circumcised flesh, it's circumcised heart. How is it possible that God could do this?
And here's something I need to... I'll be fast. The whole idea of circumcision, you
know when you go to Sunday school, if you grew up in a church you go into Sunday
school and that you'd use this word circumcision. There was this circumcised
or uncircumcised in your Sunday school lessons. And when you're little you know
you ask a question, it's funny that nobody will ever tell you what it means. And
finally usually around the time you're like 13 or 14, you're in some Sunday
school class and you ask question. So this is the sign of the covenant.
You know if you entered into a covenant relationship with God, this is what
happens, circumcisions. "Teacher, what's circumcision?" And then the teacher would
tell you and you'd go, "You're kidding. You are kidding. Why in the world would...
Why couldn't God have asked for a tattoo? Or what is that about?" It's gross and
bloody, and of course that's the point. Seeing the old days, the way you make a
covenant was you didn't just sign a contract. You acted out the curse of the
covenant. You know you cut an animal in half and you walk between the pieces and
you say, "Oh, great Susaren,
the one to whom I make my vow today. If I do not do all the words of the promise I'm
making today, may I be cut the pieces as this animal." See, you're acting out the
curse of the covenant. By the way a lot better way of doing contracts than we have
today is a lot fewer... People more likely to follow through on them. And so you
begin to realize if that's the way they used to do it, you see what that means?
Circumcision is gory, it's gross, it's bloody, it's intimate, it's creepy. It's
creepy. Why not some other part of the body? It's creepy. As a way of trying to
show you the penalty of sin. The penalty for sin. Sin is so dire, sin is so
intimate, sin is so gross. And now you say why do we keep this circumcised heart
thing going? Well, it's a strange spot in Colossians 2 and I promise not to talk
about baptism right now. It's a great place in Colossians 2 where it literally
says this is Doug Mouss, what he calls a neutral translation.
In Christ, you Christians have been circumcised in the circumcision of Christ.
It's talking about the cross. And it says, Christians in him you have been
circumcised in the circumcision of Christ. It doesn't just say that when you become a
Christian you get a new heart. You get a circumcised heart. It says you get a
circumcised heart because of the circumcision of Christ. What's the
circumcision of Christ? And the answer that most theologians I think are willing
to point to is this. That on the cross Jesus Christ was experiencing the penalty,
the curse of the covenant. What's the curse of the covenant? To be cut off. By
the way you know that that's the curse of every... If you ever wrong somebody, what
happens? You get cut off. If you lie, if you cheat, if you wrong peopled, that's
always really the penalty, to be cut off. But God says that if you disobey me the
penalty is to be cut off from me, to be cut off from life, to be cut off from
light, to be cut off from everything. And on the cross Jesus Christ was getting you
might say the cosmic experience that we deserve. He was receiving the penalty of
sin. Another way to put it is in the Garden of Eden, out goes Adam and Eve
because of their sin. And who is put at the door, a cherubim
with a sword guarding the way to the tree of life. Which means the only way back
into the tree of life is to go under the sword. And on the cross Jesus Christ went
under the sword. In that sense he was circumcised.
Because Jesus Christ experienced that circumcision, because Jesus Christ
experienced that for you and me. When I know, by the way, when I put my faith in
him not only does that mean objectively. I now have a relationship with him but
subjectively when I see him doing that, that's really to me what makes my pleasure
and my duty the same. In fact if you go on a little further in that hymn, it goes
like this. Our pleasure and our duty though opposite before since we have seen
its beauty are joined apart no more. But what is that beauty? To see the law by
Christ fulfilled and hear his pardoning voice, changes a slave into a child, and
duty in the choice. If you're seeing what Jesus Christ did on the cross for you,
taking your cosmic cutting off for you. In fact if that moves you and I'm preaching
on this. If that moves the person, if they say I do deserve to be cut off and Jesus
did that for me. They're experiencing the circumcision of the heart right there. Now
lastly, I told you at the very end it looks like this passage goes back. It
looks like it goes back to the present. Because when it's looking down in the
corridors at times saying first you're going to fail and all the curses will come
upon you. You go in exile. But then God will bring you back and eventually
circumcise your heart and that's of course the promise of the new covenant than a new
birth. But then he says verse 11, now what I am commanding you today is not too
difficult for you or beyond your reach. It is not up in heaven so that you have to
ask who will send into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it.
Nor is it beyond the see so that you have to ask who will cross the sea to get it
and proclaim it to us so we may obey it. No, the word is very near you. It is in
your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.
See, I have sat before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. At one
level, Moses does things to be coming back to the present. And he says what I'm
commanding you today is not too difficult for you. The ward is very near you, it's
in your mouth and in your heart. What does that mean? It does mean on the one hand,
it does mean on the one hand that the Israelites right now have no excuse. The
law of God is very clear. It's come to them. They don't have to go over the sea
to talk to sages or to mystics to figure out what God's will is. It's come right to
them, love God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind. Love your neighbors
yourself. It's all laid out. They have no excuse. So in that sense when he says it
is not too difficult for you. It is very near you. He's right. They have no excuse
and yet as Tom Schreiner points out in his commentary on Romans in chapter 10 where
Paul quotes this passage. Tom Schreiner points out, "You have to keep in mind that
Moses already said they will not keep this covenant. Even though he says this is
something that you can do. You have no excuse if you don't do it. The fact is
they won't do it. He already said so. And therefore Paul is absolutely right in
interpreting what Moses says here when he says, "I'm giving you reward today that
it's not too difficult to you. It is very near you. It's in your mouth and in your
heart." And of course as you know in Romans chapter 10,
this is what Paul says. He says, "Christ is the end of the
law as it means of righteousness for everyone who believes."
About the righteousness that comes through faith, Moses says, "Do not
say in your heart who will ascend into heaven. That is to bring Christ down
or who will ascend into the abyss. That is to bring Christ up from the dead"
But what does it say? The word is near you It is in your mouth and in your heart.
That is the word of faith we're proclaiming.
That if you can confess with your mouth,
Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. You
will be saved. Tom Schriener says Paul's absolutely right in saying in the end the
only word that will not cross you, that is not too difficult for you. And the only
word that you don't have to go over the see to achieve because Jesus has already
done it. Don't try to earn your salvation, that's the brain Jesus up from the abyss.
It's to bring Jesus, no other ways to try to put Jesus back in heaven. He came to
heaven to save you. He went into the abyss to save you. If you try to save yourself,
it's like telling Jesus what he did doesn't matter. Only the gospel is the
word that is not too difficult for you. Only the gospel when I crush you. Any
other word will. And therefore what Moses is saying here is something the gospel
will go forth. I'm going to stop right now because we have plenty more of his
blessing, I can say. I do have one more thing to say, the blessings and the curses
point forward to heaven and hell. Without a doubt do they not. But you now see
something, they're not parallel. If you go to hell, it's your fault. You deserve it.
So clear in here. But if you get the blessings of God there is no way you
deserve that. No way, that's been accomplished for you. That has been given
to you. And we must never give anybody the impression that hell is deserved and
heaven is deserved. How is the serve and having is not. And it comes very, very
clear here. You can see it in a way blessings and curses are talked about. The
prosperity gospel says they're equal. If you do this, this, this, this, you'll get
blessed. If you do this, this, this, this, you'll get cursed.
Cross write in his commentary in Deuteronomy says, "Look, if you do
wrong, you deserve the cursing. But if you do right, that only appropriates the
blessing. It doesn't deserve it. It simply is a way for you to appropriate the
blessing that Jesus Christ is there for you. That difference is very clear in the
book of Deuteronomy and must be maintained as we think about the afterlife and in all
of our preaching covenant. Let's close with prayer. Our father, we thank you that
your son, Jesus Christ, is cut off for our sake. We thank you that he took the curse.
We thank you that curse, it is everyone who is hang on a tree and genesis took the
curse so that the blessings that he earned call fall to us. We pray Lord that you
would help us know how to bring these truths home to people as we minister them,
as we preach them, as we evangelized as we lead studies of the bible. We pray that
because we spend this time together here this week, we will be more equipped to be
good ministers of your word and we ask this in Jesus name. Amen.