Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Deuteronomy 10:6-7

Our sermon text today is found in Deuteronomy chapter 10, verses 6 and 7, which seems like just a little, very short travel narrative in the midst of Deuteronomy, but in point of fact is a wonderful gospel text with great blessings and comfort for us. Please stand as we read Deuteronomy 10:6-7.

“Now the children of Israel journeyed from the wells of Bene Jaakan to Moserah, where Aaron died and where he was buried, and Eleazar his son ministered as priest in his stead. From there they journeyed to Gad, and from Gad to Jotbatha, a land of rivers of water.”

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your wonderful word. Thank you that this is a wonderful gospel text with much blessing as we pause and meditate on this travel narrative. Give us, Lord God, a sense of confidence about our eternal home as well as motivation to serve you in obedience to the prayer that you’ve instructed us to pray—that your will might be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Bless us, Lord God, with an understanding of this word. Give us the good gift of knowledge and encouragement of your Holy Spirit. Transform our lives with the great hope that lies in this text, and make us, Lord God, fuller servants of yours. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

This sermon is a bit of a divergence, not too far from the stated purpose for today, which was to talk about secondary means as it relates to effectual calling. In article 17 of the Canons of Dort, in the section on the effectual calling doctrine, one heading is “God’s Use of Means in Regeneration.” So we read that just as the almighty work of God by which he brings forth and sustains our natural life does not rule out but requires the use of means by which God, according to his infinite wisdom and goodness, has wished to exercise his power, so also the aforementioned supernatural work of God by which he regenerates us in no way rules out or cancels the use of the gospel, which God in his great wisdom has appointed to be the seed of regeneration and the food of the soul.

This chapter goes on, this section goes on to say other things, but the basic idea is that while God regenerates us, while his effectual calling is totally of his grace and is always efficacious, that does not mean that it rules out the secondary means of the presentation and proclamation of the gospel. The sacraments of the church are included in this as well as secondary means. Pastor Leithart gave us this great illustration of secondary means.

You know, you can have a carpenter. He’s got all these tools around him. Those are the secondary means, but they’re ineffective apart from the work of the carpenter. Now, the carpenter decides to pick up these secondary means and begins to use them to affect his purposes. So God has by his decree established secondary means—things that we’re supposed to do. And these secondary means, in his providence and by his sovereignty, are effectual for what he’s given us to do.

The last sentence of this section says this—well, there’s such long sentences. So even today, it is out of the question that the teachers of those, or those taught in the church should presume to test God by separating what he and his good pleasure has wished to be closely joined together—he’s talking about secondary means to primary means. For grace is bestowed through admonitions, and the more readily we perform our duty, the more lustrous the benefit of God working in us actually is, and the better his work advances.

So the proper use of secondary means means that God’s work actually better advances as we attend to God’s secondary means. Now, you know, overall the point of all this is that while we look at the sovereignty of God in the Canons of Dort, they are not a detriment—they don’t, they shouldn’t be a retardant to our works, our use of our being secondary means that God uses—but actually incitements to it. So you know, I want to talk about some very specific secondary means in terms of application today, but the text I want to look at as motivation for applying ourselves to the secondary means that God has called us to be.

So I want to talk about motivation. And by motivation, we’re looking at this little journey that’s described in this place in the book of Deuteronomy.

Let me set it in its overall context. The book of Deuteronomy is the second giving of the law, so to speak. The primary section of Deuteronomy—the large interior section—is a sermon, or a series of sermons, on the Ten Commandments. In Deuteronomy 5, there’s a republishing of the Ten Commandments. They got it in Exodus 20, 40 years before. They get the Ten Commandments from the mountain. Now they’re done. They’re about ready to enter the land. They’re moving through Moab on the way into the land. And God republishes the Ten Commandments.

Now, they’re different. You take Exodus 20 and you take Deuteronomy 5, and they’re a little different. Some are identical. Some of the commandments are not identical. And you know, you should know that in Exodus 20, the law against coveting relates women to the other property that men have. But in Deuteronomy 5 rather, women become the primary object of not coveting, and the possessions of a man are seen as secondary. And so there’s a change in the order with women in terms of the tenth commandment that’s significant. I believe it represents the maturation of the people of God as they went through the wilderness.

Now, the fourth commandment as well—in Exodus 20, the great emphasis is on rest. But in Deuteronomy 5, the fourth commandment takes on a primary emphasis of memorializing the Exodus out of Egypt. And so this memorialization is right here in front of us every Lord’s Day, at this table. Now, in the New Testament, the Beatitudes of our Savior are in line with this series of republishings of the Ten Commandments.

This is why, when we recite the Ten Commandments, it’s probably preferable to use Deuteronomy 5. It’s closer to our situation than Exodus 20 was. Exodus 20 was 40 years prior. Things had happened. The Ten Commandments are republished. And that republishment in the New Testament—we could look at it that way—as we’re about to enter the promised land is closer to what happens with us in Christ. Now, the Beatitudes take and make all of those commandments and put you in a particular context of character development, which we could spend a lot of time on but won’t.

So there’s this republishing in the book of Deuteronomy—the Ten Commandments first in the actual list of ten words in Deuteronomy 5, and then after that, the bulk of Deuteronomy is a series of ten sections dealing with the ten words of the Ten Commandments. This September, Dr. Henry Krabbendam will be here to be the speaker at the Future Men Camp. Dr. Krabbendam’s work on the Ten Commandments found in the book of Deuteronomy is part of what Jim B. Jordan drew on when he developed his outline for the book of Deuteronomy.

And so we have connections, and maybe you know, he’ll be here preaching as well on that Sunday, Labor Day weekend. And maybe we could talk to him a little bit about these Ten Commandments. But this is a well-recognized pattern—outline of the book of Deuteronomy. Now, the first commandment is where we find our text today. The travel narrative is in the context of the first word—the law in Deuteronomy chapter 6 through 11—a very long section, right? Six chapters, all an exposition of the first word.

And look at your outlines on Roman numeral 1 here. The context of this journey text—the journey happens after the center of this section dealing with the first commandment. And we don’t want to go over this in any kind of detail, but notice that it begins and ends with statutes and judgments. This is like the first word, and it kind of undergirds all the other statutes and judgments. You know, this is what would line up with the first commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

It doesn’t say “no other gods.” It says “no other gods before me.” So it calls for allegiance to God. The first commandment does. And this structure reminds us—for instance, in the E section of the outline—of deliverance from Egypt. And that deliverance from Egypt is spoken about again in chapter 11. So there’s these series of concentric statements that, once you look at them, are quite obvious. That gives us this structure that draws us to the middle of the text.

And what we have in the middle of the text is a transition first into judgment—in the J section—and then the tablets of the law are given, and then judgment at Sinai, and Moses intercedes, and then there’s a second set of tablets given. So the very heart of the first commandment section is a transition away from judgment for sins.

You remember that when Moses brought down the first set of commandments, the people were sinning greatly. Aaron is leading them in their sin. And the Ten Commandments—Moses breaks them. God threatens to destroy all of his people. Moses intercedes with God. At the center of the first commandment is the intercession of Moses to God for the people. And how God answers that prayer—and he does—is first of all through the provision of the new set of Ten Commandments.

Moses says—if we took the time in Deuteronomy—that it was just like the first 40 days. I prayed, and it was just like then. God said, “Okay, come back up,” and he’s going to give Moses the Ten Commandments. And that means that God’s blessing is still upon the people. He’s killed 3,000, but the blessing now has been turned. By Moses, the judgment has been turned. There’s a transition away from judgment into blessing, specifically through the intercession of Moses to God the Father.

For us, we can see at this the heart of the transition away from the wrath for our sin that we deserve because of our sin is the intercession of Jesus Christ to the Father. The Father hears the intercession of Christ, answers it by saving us, his people. So that’s at the heart of the first commandment. In other words, the command not to have other gods prior to, above God is based on God’s gracious actions in removing judgment and putting us in a path of blessing.

Okay. The first commandment is based on motivation—the motivation to obey the command to have no other gods prior to Yahweh, above him in priority. The motivation is that God has graciously—he brought us away from judgment into blessing. That’s the big thing going on in this six-chapter sermon that Moses gives on the first commandment.

Now, that’s the context then for our particular section. We’re going to look at this little travel narrative. And we see the same thing there. We’ll see in a couple of minutes. It’s transition, you know, from judgment and problems into blessing. And that’s what the entire text is about. And within this text, he has several little situations—a couple of verses—that show us the same basic movement.

The other part of the relationship of verses 6 and 7 to this is that when Moses prays to God, he prays relative to two things. One, he asked for God not to kill all the people, and second, he asked him not to kill Aaron. The answer of God to Moses’ prayer is then found in the general outline here. After Moses intercedes in the sections “judgment at Sinai” and “Moses intercession,” very next thing that happens in chapter 10, the first five verses talks about the new tablets of the law. And then the next section is where we find our travel narrative, and it talks about the transition away from judgment related to the death of the high priest.

So Aaron has asked that God keep this people for himself, provide new law, and God does it. He gives them the new Ten Commandments. And Moses has asked that Aaron not be destroyed. And God has answered that prayer. And so these—the section we’re in today will talk about the death of Aaron 40 years later. But it shows us that Aaron’s death had been, you know, did not occur at that time. That God answered Moses’ prayer.

And in fact, is going to use Aaron as a picture of the transition away from judgment that the first commandment is all about. So this text, this little travel narrative, is found in the context of that.

And the other thing I want you to notice before we move on from this is that the transition away from judgment that we’ll be talking about in this little summary picture in verses 6 and 7—you see what happens after that on your outlines. The very center is “judgment and Moses intercession.” Then he gets the law, and then there’s a transition away from judgment pictured in the death of the high priest and a couple of other sections. And then what’s the very next section that matches with the previous section of the text? It’s the I-prime section, chapter 10:11. They move into conquest.

So around the center—transition from judgment—is the preparation of God’s people to move out, to be motivated to apply themselves as secondary means for the conquest of the promised land. And by the way, the other two brackets right around that—right around that—is language that talks about the sovereignty of God and election. Their being chosen not because of any condition in them, but unconditionally elect, because God set his love upon them.

So we’ve got transition from judgment into blessing, and this is to the end that we would move forward and conquer. And that’s the purpose—why God has unconditionally elected us and effectually called us is to have the motivation to conquer the promised land. And the motivation is this transition away from judgment into blessing. It’s the gospel. It’s the death of Jesus Christ for us, his burial, his resurrection, and his intercession to the Father.

This is the center of our lives. And this is the center of the motivation for us to put God first and foremost in everything that we are and do. You don’t take second place. God will not take second place. He wants us to be loyal to him. And the motivation for that is an apprehension, a belief, a hearing, a publishing, and a reception of that publishing of the wonderful gospel that Jesus Christ has moved us away from judgment and curse into blessing and into great peace with God.

That’s at the heart of this.

So you can’t separate the dominion perspective of conquering the world for Christ. Christians are supposed to conquer the world. But you can’t move that away from the gospel. It’s the motivation for applying the secondary means that God will effectually use to call people to him and to bless the whole earth as history and time go on.

So conquering—unconditional election—is specifically to the end that we would conquer through the proclamation of the gospel, drive men to proper motivation to subject their lives to the priorities of God and his word. That’s what this first sermon by Moses about the first commandment is all about. Moses intercedes. God gives him his two requests: new law, high priest lives to make intercession. The end result of that is that we can conquer.

And that’s what we’ve been chosen unconditionally to do by God—to do that very thing.

All right. Now let’s look at the particulars of the text before us. The journey itself. This is a little travel narrative. And if we wanted to, we could look at Numbers 33. There’s a longer travel narrative there, and one or two of these place names. And the death of Aaron is recorded there as well, and we’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes.

But this is a very short form version of a travel narrative. It’s a section all to itself, rather obviously. If you’re reading, you know, verse 4 and verse 8, you see that verses 6 and 7 are their own little travel narrative here. And this travel narrative provides us some important truths from God’s word. And I haven’t filled in the outline. I want you to look at them as we go through them on your outline and fill in the way this travel narrative flows.

Okay. So let’s talk about the verses, two verses slowly.

“Now the children of Israel”—and this is not one of the fill-in-the-blanks on your outline, but who’s doing the journeying? You know, our life is a journey. We move. And life is a great journey, we could say. And this journey, I think, is very much like what this journey describes. But the beginning of the journey here is the understanding that this is the children of Israel who are journeying.

So you know, we’re not abstract, neutral parties involved in our journey in life. You, here, hearing this message, this great gospel text proclaimed to you today, are to recognize yourselves as the children of Israel. You’re God’s children. You’re dearly beloved in the Savior, in the Lord Jesus Christ. You are the children of God. And you’re the children of those who have been conquered by God. That’s what Israel means.

And those who conquer for God, who has conquered you. Remember, Israel is the name given to Jacob as he wrestles with God all night and walks into the sunrise victoriously, limping because of God’s mark upon him. But he’s been ruled by God, and he rules for God. That’s who we are. We’re the children of God—ultimately who have been ruled by God, and we rule for God. And that’s the beginning of our journey: a recognition of the great love of the Father toward us.

So as we begin the journey, we’re going to see that we begin at kind of a stopped-up place of oppression. But understand that as you move through your week this week, as you journey this week, it may start with difficulties and trials, but what it really should start with is a relaxed view toward what happens in our lives, knowing that we’re the children of God. He’s conquered us. We’re to conquer for him. We are dearly beloved of the Father in heaven. That’s what underlies everything else that’ll be talked about here.

All right. What happens to these children of God, the children of Israel? Well, it says that they travel from the wells of Bene Jaakan. So they go from wells—that’s the first fill-in blank. The journey begins at a well. Okay, so you know what a well is. It’s a big hole in the ground with water in it. Okay, and we always think, well, that’s a good thing. Wells are great in the Bible because that’s where marriages happen. You know, that’s where Jacob, or Jesus meets the woman from Samaria at Jacob’s well. That’s where Jacob’s wife is discovered. Before that, where Isaac’s wife is found at a well. Moses, his wife is found at a well. Wells are great places.

But if you think about it, a well is not a good place to begin with. If it’s just a well—remember when Jacob goes to get his wife, what’s he got to do? He has to take the cover off of that well, big heavy thing, to be able to draw water up out of the well. Okay? So a well is a representation of value, of the great water that God uses to give life. But it’s water that’s sitting down at the bottom of a hole.

A coloring sheet today for you kids, you young kids, has a person beginning to draw water out of the well. The well is only useful—okay? The well is only useful if you get the water out of the well and do something with it.

So, and this is why the marriage narratives sort of happen at wells. They’re romantic places. But what they are, of course, is a celebration of, you know, the celebration of John and Johanna yesterday—what they are is a celebration of the opening, the flowing out of life that will come from that couple in good works that they’ll do as a couple together. If the blessings of God give them children, the outflow of children from this well.

So you know, a well is a representation of potential blessing, but at the time that it’s only a well and stopped up, it’s a place of difficulty. It’s a place that needs correction. It needs to have the water pulled out of it. So we begin at a well. Okay.

And this well is found at a particular place. It’s found at, or the wells are found or the wells are identified as the wells of the sons of Jaakan. Well, who’s Jaakan? Well, we don’t know who the guy was, but we know what his name means. Jaakan. The sons of Jaakan. The word Jaakan means oppression. Oppression. Jaakan. It means “let him oppress them.”

So we begin with a well that belongs to oppression. That’s the second blank I want you to fill in. It’s a travel narrative. It begins with difficulties. It’s going to end with blessings. It begins with wells. It’s going to end differently. It begins with oppression. It’s going to end differently.

This word isn’t used hardly at all in the scriptures—once or twice. But the basic meaning of the term in the Bible—you know, these words mean things. You always want to try to figure out what a name means as you read about it in the scriptures, particularly in these Old Testament travel narratives. There’s wonderful things there. And this name means oppression.

Remember, we’re in the section of Deuteronomy, first commandment, that talks about transition from judgment into blessing. And this little travel narrative begins with wells—not flowing water. And it begins with wells that are identified with oppression.

Now, that conjures up images of the patriarchs as well. Abraham, Isaac—what would happen to these wells? Everywhere they would go, they’d dig wells because they wanted to water the world. Today’s sermon is called “Let It Flow.” My tie is an illustration. You’re to be the fountain, the water of God, as you leave this place. You’re to bring living water to the world. You’re supposed to let it flow and water the world. Change it from a wilderness to a garden. And that’s what Abraham did. That’s what Isaac did. They’d go and dig wells everywhere. They brought the garden with them.

You see flow, rivers flowing out. But what happened? The oppressors, the ones that would oppress, kept stopping him up. Now, you know, there’s lots of things we could talk about—envy, who knows what—but the point is the scriptures want us to connect these wells of oppression with an understanding that that’s how the patriarchs’ journey often was marked. And that may be how your journey this week is marked.

You may want to do things with the reservoir, the talents that God has given to you. And yet it seems like you’re subject to oppression, difficulty, people stopping them up.

Well, the journey continues. We go from oppression. Then the name of the next place is Moserah, and this word translated means bonds. Now this word—its root is used lots of places in the scriptures. It means bonds, bands. It can mean like imprisonment. It can mean people are bound up with difficulties, trials, and sins, et cetera.

You know, we have some verses in the Bible that describe salvation as being released from bondage. Let’s see Psalm 116. For instance, “Oh Lord, truly I am your servant. I am your servant, the son of your maidservant. This is verse 16. You have loosed my bonds. I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving, will call upon the name of the Lord.”

So salvation is summarized as being bound, but being loosed from those bonds of oppression. Okay. Again in Psalm 104:14, “He causes the grass to grow for the cattle and vegetation for the service of man, that he may bring forth fruit from the heavens. And wine that makes glad the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread which strengthens man’s heart.”

Well, that’s the wrong verse. Oh well. But anyway, various places in scripture, problems are described as bonds. We’re in bondage. Sometimes those bonds are identified as God’s sovereign bonds over us as well. The Lord God, for instance, in Psalm 2, evil men want to shake off the bonds, the bands that God uses to control them. Being imprisoned is related to bondage, of course.

So we have this movement: from stopped-up water in wells—water that might move but isn’t yet—a place of oppression—through bonds—to then the center of the text that they’re moving along. And the next thing the text tells us, so we’re in your outline, you should have wells, and then you should have oppression. Then you should have bonds. And at the very center of this, this is where Aaron died and where he was buried, and then Eleazar ministers in his stead.

At the center of the travel narrative, just like the center of this first commandment sermon by Moses, is transition from judgment to blessing. What do we have? We have Aaron dying, but not just dying. It says he was buried. And then it says that Eleazar, his son, ministers as priest in his stead. We’ve got the gospel. We’ve got death, burial, and resurrection of the high priest.

Remember, that’s who Aaron is. He’s the high priest. Jesus is connected throughout the Bible to Aaron in Hebrews. Certainly, Jesus is the high priest like Aaron. Aaron’s a picture of Christ, ultimately. And Eleazar who ministers in his stead is as well.

Now, Aaron’s name means lightbringer. Okay? He’s the bringer of light. And Eleazar means “God is my help.” And so the transition from these difficult terms we’ve looked at so far to now terms of blessing at the end of the travel narrative happens at the center as a result of transition away from judgment through the death, burial, and resurrection of the high priest. That’s the center of the travel narrative rather. It’s the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

You know, there was this song by Bob Dylan years ago in his period of time when he was writing Christian songs, and he’s talking about a girl—”Precious Angel” I think is the name of the song—and he says, “You know, you were telling me about Muhammad, you were telling me about Buddha in the same breath, but you never once named the man who died the criminal’s death.”

See, the world can have its philosophies, its saviors, as long as death and resurrection—transition from judgment to blessing—is not part of it. The Christian gospel is that the Lord Jesus Christ, the second person of God, died, buried, and was raised up for the sake of his people. The Christian gospel is that death—that we need transition away from judgment and death, which is justly what we deserve based upon our sins against God—both the corporate sin of Adam, the first, the head of the race, as well as our own individual sins.

We deserve wrath and damnation. The Christian gospel is that Jesus Christ died for those sins and was raised up for our justification.

Death, burial, and Jesus—I saw this movie. I’ll mention a couple of minutes again. You know, Friday was my wife and I’s anniversary. Thirty-two years. And more often than not, we go to movies for anniversary, and we went to see Evan Almighty. I don’t think there’s any spoilers I have to worry about with that movie, right? I mean, piece of fluff. But you know, Evan Almighty—it’s a good movie and a bad movie. You know, you got your typical anti-business sort of stuff going on and pro-environmentalism in terms of just plain stewardship and not development of the land.

You know, all that stuff. You got a little deism thrown in—one line from Morgan Freeman, you know, the actor god of our age, I suppose—but and it’s got some good lessons that I’ll talk about in a couple of minutes. But it doesn’t really have death and resurrection of Christ anywhere in it. Of course, there may be a little bit of death that I’ll talk about in a couple of minutes in terms of the main character, but you see what the world wants us to do.

The world’s gospel is you can be sort of a better person through philosophy—even some of these religions—but not through union with Jesus Christ, who died for your sins, was buried, and was raised on the third day. That’s what is, you know, avoided like the plague: death, burial, and resurrection of the Savior. And that is what is at the heart of the Christian message. And the only way in this travel narrative we’re going to get to places that are good is through the death, burial, and resurrection of the Savior for us.

And the other side of it is, as we’ve appropriated the death, burial, and resurrection of the Savior, we can be assured—this week, though our journey starts in wells where we can’t get the stuff out to minister, and it starts in oppression, it’s going to lead to some better place through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, his death, burial, and resurrection.

So, at the very heart of this little travel narrative is this description of the death of Aaron. Now, one thing before we move on to where it’s going—we move through this to more places. And in the context of Deuteronomy, the death of the high priest, and in Numbers, the death of Aaron is what’s preparing us for conquest. In Numbers 33, some of these same place names are found. And then in verse 38, we read:

“Aaron the priest went up to Mount Hor at the command of the Lord, and he died there in the 40th year after the people of Israel had come out of the land of Egypt, on the first day of the fifth month. And Aaron was 123 years old when he died on Mount Hor. And the Canaanite, the king of Arad, who lived in the Negeb in the land of Canaan, heard of the coming of the people of Israel.”

The death of the high priest is the signal that now it’s time to conquer for Yahweh. So, and actually, if we were to think about this, Aaron and Moses die about six months apart. Aaron dies in the south of Moab. That’s where these places are. Moses dies in the north of Moab. What are they doing? They’re moving up to where God’s going to have them cross at Gilgal into the promised land and conquer.

So the death of the high priest is not just salvation from sins and eventually getting to our pleasant heavenly home. The death of the high priest and its appropriation by God’s people is the signal that it’s time to march. It’s the signal that it’s time to conquer through the publishing of the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It motivates us to move forward.

So again, motivation for living a life of loyalty to God, motivation for taking the message of the Lord Jesus Christ into our day and into our world and transforming it into a place of pleasantness. The motivation for all of that is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Both as an indicator of his great love for us and then as well as the signal to us that the day of conquest has come. The day to march forward into the promised land is here.

So, Eleazar—God has helped. God has transitioned us away from judgment into better things through the death, burial, and resurrection of the high priest in the form of Eleazar, the son.

Well, they go to another place. Then from there, they journey to Gad. And Gad—oh, this means a slapping place. It means to cut. And there’s lots of uses of the primary term here, but it means to cut. You know, the—it’s the same. The root word is what the Baal worshippers did on Mount Carmel. You know, they were trying to get their gods to be stronger than Elijah’s God. And so they cut themselves. And so why did they do that? Well, it seems like it’s a, you know, kind of self-sacrifice, a cutting that produces that. But it’s not a good thing. But it is kind of connected up, in terms of the text here, with this cutting. And that’s the next blank to fill in.

So we’ve got wells, we’ve got oppression, we’ve got bonds, then we have Aaron and Eleazar—the death, burial, and resurrection of the high priest. And then the next place they come to is a place of cutting or slashing. And then they travel on from there.

The next place they go to from Gad is to Jotbatha. Jotbatha. Well, what does Jotbatha mean? Well, it’s—this is the only place it’s really used in the Bible. But the root name—the root word rather—that this city is named after means a place of pleasantness. Pleasantness. So the next blank to fill in is pleasantness.

So we’ve moved from oppression to pleasantness by means of the death, burial, and resurrection of the high priest. Okay. Transition. There’s movement in the text. This is a place of pleasantness. It’s not just a place of pleasantness, though. This place of pleasantness is then described as “a land of rivers of water.”

Well, what do we have? That’s the last phrase to fill in: rivers of water. We move from wells capable of bringing blessing but stopped up as it were. The water’s still down in there. The water has to flow out. The front cover of your orders of worship is a wellwatered land. The well has become the river, and blessing is flowing into the land.

We move from wells—potentially stopped up, potential blessings—to actual rivers of water flowing out. We move from a place of oppression into a place of pleasantness through the death, burial, and resurrection of the high priest. And that death, burial, and resurrection of the high priest that we celebrate every Lord’s Day at the Lord’s Supper is God’s establishment of the covenant through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, who was cut, lacerated, died for our sakes, and by means of that established—cut, so to speak—the covenant with us.

The bonds of oppression have been replaced by the bonds of covenant loyalty. At the very center of the text is the death, burial, and resurrection of the high priest, ministering covenantal bonds by the establishment of the covenant of grace, transitioning us away from oppression into a place of pleasantness. Transitioning us from a place of potential blessing from wells to a place where rivers of water are flowing out.

Now, Deuteronomy is filled with this kind of imagery for blessing. The great blessing of the promised land is this place of water flowing out. Deuteronomy 8, earlier we read this:

“You shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and by fearing him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, fountains and springs flowing out in the valleys and hills. A land of wheat and barley and vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey.”

So God says that the essence of blessing is this flowing out.

Verse 10: “You shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.”

And then he warns us not to forget all these good things. So in Deuteronomy, in fact, there’s one section of Deuteronomy where it begins with earthly blessings. It’s in this first commandment section. You can look at your lines later. And it ends with blessings of water from heaven. God will give you the dew of heaven. The water flowing out into the land is this picture that God has definitively transferred us away from dryness, potential water in the land, to now the water and blessing of heaven flowing out in the context of our world.

We have been transitioned away from judgment. So the first commandment is all about a motivation to prioritize God first in our lives based on the intercession of Moses at its heart, the application of the death and resurrection of the high priest. And these are all pictures of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ voluntarily took upon himself death, burial, and was raised up by the Father for our justification and intercedes at the right hand of God. He lives for this very reason to make intercession for the saints, the way Moses interceded. We are in a position definitively of transition away from judgment, difficulties, stopped-up wells, places of oppression, and God has transitioned us into a place of pleasantness and a place where the streams of water are to flow out.

It’s a beautiful gospel text of the journey or narrative of each and every one of our lives. This is what God has done with us definitively. And this is also what he does with us in the context of who we are. We’re going to conquer now, right? That’s what the death of the high priest said. We’re supposed to do when we leave this place; we’re supposed to be water flowing out into the world. We’re supposed to be the secondary means that God uses to effectually call the world to praise his holy name.

And we do it through an understanding that the center of our being is this transition based upon the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And we do it in union with him, laying down our lives that we might serve others and might join in that resurrected life of the Savior as well.

The journey—the journey is this wonderful thing that God has given to us. If you don’t hear nothing else today, hear the gospel proclaim to you: that God has brought you out of stopped-up wells and oppressions. No matter how much it may feel like your life still has that stuff in it—it does in small ways—but he has definitively transferred you into a place of pleasantness, a place of productivity, a place of blessing and heavenly blessings in your life.

This congregation is known for that. We go to these weddings, and we rejoice. And this is what—but we rejoice in that we’ve been transitioned into a wonderful life of pleasantness. Even as the world around us—you know, as it moves away from Jesus, as it moves away from death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus—becomes places of increased oppression, more difficulties, the breakdown of the family, the breakdown of culture, the breakdown of all kinds of things in the context of our world.

Even in the midst of that, we have been brought into a pleasant land with great blessings. Our children are primarily people of blessing to us and fulfillment. You’ve been brought into blessing, into pleasantness, into productivity. Understand that. That’s the motivation of what I’m going to encourage you to do by way of application.

Remember, this transition narrative is set in the context of the first commandment. And as I said earlier, it doesn’t say “don’t have any other gods.” Doesn’t say that. And it can’t say that because God has given us other gods. This word “gods,” remember, we’ve talked about this in the Psalms—it’s the same word used for governors or rulers. Governors or rulers are gods. It just means powers or authority. Your parents’ children are gods to you. Your pastors are gods to you. Powerful ones, strong ones.

It doesn’t say “don’t have any strong ones.” It says “don’t have any other gods before me”—as a higher priority in your life than me. All other authorities and powers in your life—don’t deny that they’re there. They are there. It’s not just you and Jesus. Jesus mediates power and authority through his rulers in your life. But those intermediate powers and authorities—your submission to them must be subject to a great loyalty to God the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.

Why do you want to go out and speak for Jesus? Why do you want to go and rebuke people who speak his name in an improper way? Why do you want to change the world? It’s because of your loyalty to God the Father. We must place loyalty to God the Father. That is the first commandment. That’s the summation of it: be loyal to this God. Why should you be loyal? Because he has taken you out of stopped-up places of oppression and bad bonds and cuts through the death and resurrection of Christ. He’s brought you through the covenant cut through Jesus’s death. He’s brought you into a place of pleasantness and effectiveness and heavenly blessings for him.

That’s why you’re to be loyal. Six chapters—Moses goes through the wonderful things that God has done for you to give you motivation to prioritize God above everything else you do in your life. All other submissions, all other activities are to be brought under loyalty to God the Father.

You know, loyalty is kind of a dead issue these days. People aren’t loyal. They’re not loyal to friends. They’re not loyal to parents. They’re not loyal to churches. They’re not loyal to anything anymore. There’s even a whole lot of fan loyalty to teams left. Loyalty is kind of a vanishing virtue. You’re about much? No, you don’t. Well, that’s because we’ve forgotten that our prime loyalty is to God the Father.

And I’d suggest that we can’t expect loyalty to one another—loyalty to our spouses in the context of a culture that doesn’t first be loyal to God. Why would God allow us to engage in loyalties to our spouses and faithfulness if we’re not faithful ultimately to him? He won’t. Lex talionis—judgment. Ignore your loyalties to the Father, and suffer then the breakdown of all loyalties of people to you and you to them as well.

God calls us to be loyal. The motivation for your loyalty this week: ask yourself at the end of each day, “Have I prioritized God? Does he want to be first in my life? Have I had the proper motivation to do that through a great thankfulness to God for the transition he’s brought in my life through the death, burial, and resurrection of the great high priest, the Lord Jesus Christ?”

Well, there’s things I want you to do.

I want you to pray more. We’ve talked about that all year. Providence of God. Peter Leithart talked about it. Providence of God. I went and heard this guy named Duke whose ministry is so given to prayer. On your handouts, I’ve given you a little some prayer etiquette from D. You can look at it later, but it’s—I’m encouraging you to engage in prayer meetings regularly in your families with other believers.

God says that the way the kingdom comes and manifest begins with prayer. Evangelism—remember, it begins with prayer. Then God providentially acts, and then the gospel is proclaimed. Prayer begins everything else. Prayer is where it starts. So I’m encouraging you that the way to make proper use of secondary means, the way to let it flow, is to begin by letting it flow in prayer.

Tuesday through Friday, every morning at RCC, 9:00 to 9:30. I think we may have to extend it a bit. It doesn’t seem like enough time. We are praying right now—in here—as the group grows. Maybe we’ll come into some other room. Be with us Tuesday morning. Pastor Ken Walton, who’s going to be our church representative for the marriage seminar I’ll talk about in just a couple of minutes, he’ll be with us praying. Robin D. is going to start joining us. Matt and Angie, and I pray. Whoever’s here—they just happen to be here on those mornings. Join with us in prayer. That’s a place you can come and pray about the direction and desire to serve God that we have at RCC.

I pray that you would pray more often. You’ve been exhorted to this for several weeks now. Have you done anything about it? Have you made a commitment to have this water flow, to minister in the context of the great blessings God has given you by increased attention to the secondary means of prayer? I exhort you to do that.

Chris W. talked last week about Christian service. Let it flow. You’re a well at this church. You’re a well with deep waters—lots of knowledge, lots of things you’ve picked up, lots of things you’ve learned. But God says—he says in Hebrews—you know that’s not good enough. It’s got to flow out of your life into other people. It’s no good. You’re moved from being a well to a stream. What’s your life like? Is it all in the well still? Are you pulling it up self-consciously and ministering it to other people?

Did you take Pastor Wilson’s exhortation to try to spend an hour or two on average each week serving here in the context of the church? Is one way that the water flows out from you? Have you done that?

We got deacons and elders here, and in Deuteronomy 20, you know, the elders or priests would go through and assemble the army, and then the deacons or the officers would go through and arrange the army, applying the word. They administer it. We got—I don’t know—if we got 55, 60 families here, we got six deacons. That’s 10 families per deacon. Maybe one thing we could do is just split up the members of the church, and you could just be called and encouraged by the deacons.

“Well, you’re doing something here at the church. If you don’t have any ideas, we’ll talk to the elders and come up with some ideas and ways for you to serve.” Let it flow.

At the heart of this—of our—of our text is the wonderful death, burial, and resurrection of the high priest. The transition from the death and damnation due to us for our sins to life through the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. That should encourage us to let it flow into our culture. Let it flow. Be that well-watered ground. Take the stuff out of the well that you’re in—that you have developed here.

Thirdly, the marriage and family seminar coming up in September. I’ve given you a handout on the back of the outlines about this as well. It gives you the dates, the basic idea. It’s a wonderful opportunity to come and to get biblical instruction on how to resolve conflicts. You know, conflicts are everywhere. That’s why you get oppression and cutting and all that stuff. And the Bible has a lot to say about how conflicts are resolved.

Now, the marriage seminar is specifically going to be geared at conflicts in the context of marriage. But I don’t care if you’re married or not. You will hear great presentations from the peacemaker speaker who will be here on how to resolve conflicts biblically. It’ll be a great supplement to those of you who did the Crucial Conversations Sunday school class, to those of you that were taught by Howard several years ago in the sanctuary here—a Sunday school class going through Peacemaker material on conflict resolution.

This is a great opportunity for us here at this church, and it’s a great opportunity to let the water that we know flow to the greater Oregon City area through other churches being here to this seminar as well. Maybe you think my marriage doesn’t have conflicts. Well, it will. And when it does, will you resolve them biblically?

Maybe you’re just, you know, putting up with low-level conflict continually in your home. And this seminar could be an opportunity to rise above that and to apply biblical principles of conflict resolution where you can get rid of the underlying lowgrade conflict that’s there all the time.

When I heard Duke speak, he talked about these churches where he had a lot of farmers, and you know, they would dress up on Sunday and they would go to church, but they’d have to stop, you know, at the farm and get out and open the gate and maybe feed some animal or something. And so, by the time they get to church, there’s a little bit of that farm smell on their clothes or on their boots.

Now, to him, it’s not much because he’s living at the farm. He’s smelling that stuff all the time. He’s cleaned up. But when they all go to church together, sometimes visitors would come in and just not want to come back because there was a low-level stench. Not a lot, but just enough.

Well, you want to ask yourself, “Do I have a low-level stench of conflict going on in my marriage or in my home that I really should address from the scriptures?” This seminar would be a great thing to do that. And maybe you’ve got it all together. Maybe there’s no low-level conflict at all. But let me give you another motivation to be rivers of water by coming to this conference and seminar.

Hebrews says—when I preached through it—you’re all supposed to be teachers by now. He said, “And not you little kids. But the rest of you, you’re supposed to be teachers.” You’re supposed to know that the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ wasn’t to give you a whole big great knowledge of him that stays in a well unministered. No, you’re supposed to be teachers. You’re supposed to let the stuff that flows—if you’ve got a family, if you got a marriage that is basically conflict-free, you can come to this seminar, learn more about, you know, what that’s all about from the scriptures, and then be encouraged by that to minister it to other people.

Prepare yourself to be a teacher of the resolution of conflicts by attending this marriage seminar.

We’ve got priorities we’ve set here in the context of this church. And that priority involves us becoming these rivers of water that flow into the broader culture. God wants us to affect the world around us for him. He wants us to begin with the first commandment—to place loyalty to him above every other loyalty we have in our lives—and to do it because of the tremendous blessing that he has sent his only begotten Son to die for your sins, to transition you from judgment, from a place of oppression, to a place of pleasantness.

Now he’s done that definitively for us, but he does that as well as we journey in life. As we go through life, what does it say? “Take up your cross daily and follow me,” Jesus says. The death, burial, and resurrection that we have definitively, once for all, through union with Christ is played out in the context of our lives. And we try to figure out how to go from difficulties, from being stopped up and not serving Jesus, from places of oppression and difficulty to places of blessedness. It is through that death—putting aside our own interests and prioritizing loyalty to God the Father.

This is a wonderful gospel text. It’s a simple text. It’s an easy thing to remember: that our lives are a journey, that the presupposition for that journey is that God has moved us from curse to blessing. He’s transitioned us through the death and resurrection of the high priest. He’s done it through the intercession of the greater Moses, the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

All of this is wonderful motivation for us to be rivers of water flowing out. He’s brought us to pleasantness—not so we can just sit here and enjoy ourselves the rest of our lives. You know, the disciples were up there on the Mount of Transfiguration. What a pleasant place to be—with Jesus and to be there with these great saints of old. What a wonderful place to be—pleasant. But Jesus says, “You can’t stay here. I want you to leave the place of pleasantness to go into the world and bring that pleasantness. Bring the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ that produced it. Take the image of heaven that we live out in Lord’s Day services and in our fellowship time here and be that stream of living water.”

May God judge us if we do not flow into our culture this week. If we fail to make use of the secondary means that he has called us to be. The Canons of Dort says that things won’t be as good if you don’t make use of the secondary means that God has called you to be. But if you do—if that water flows—then the world around us is a well-watered place, and we move not just our own lives but our families, our culture, and ultimately the world from a place of oppression and stopped-up wells to a place of pleasantness and blessing.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we do thank you for the great work you’ve done in transitioning us away from your judgment and curse into your great blessing upon us. Father, we acknowledge that we are sinners in your sight. We acknowledge that if you treat with us according to our sins, you will damn us forever and ever. And we acknowledge, Lord God, that you have provided the mechanism of deliverance from our sins through the death and resurrection of the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

We thank you for this wonderful gospel text of the death, burial, and resurrection of the high priest and how that has moved us definitively from oppression to pleasantness. Now, Lord God, I pray that everyone here might consecrate themselves during the singing of this offertory psalm to be a river of living water sent forth into this world from this place. Help us, Lord God, to recognize that if we stop up the wells that you provided us, your curse is upon us.

Help us, Lord God, to be those people that apply the death, burial, and resurrection of the Savior in our commitment to place our loyalty to you above every other loyalty we have. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

One thing that it does have in it that kind of fits with today’s sermon is that Evan is brought to a position—through the providence of God, played of course by Morgan Freeman—but Evan is brought to a position of having to be loyal to him and to build this ark in spite of looking like a complete idiot to his co-workers, to his neighbors, and then ultimately to his family. And so it’s a good illustration to us—if you happen to see it or if you don’t—to be able to suffer the ridicule of people because of our loyalty to God who has called us to act in particular ways.

The movie was also good in that it brought his children and his wife to an understanding of their need to be loyal to him as well. So the movie is kind of about loyalty to God and then loyalty to the, you know, husband to wife and children to their father, and the end result of all it is blessing.

It doesn’t mock the Christian faith. It really doesn’t portray it. It portrays more of a moralism, but it is a moralism that has, as I said, at least the ability to apply to—we consecrate ourselves afresh each week. Are you loyal? You young children that may see it—are you willing to be loyal to God above all else? If the end result of that is looking like a guy with a long beard and a robe and looking like an idiot to everybody around you, see, that’s what loyalty is all about.

God says that we’re to remember these things that he has brought us out of difficulties, trials, and the devastation of our own sins into blessing through the death and resurrection of the high priest. On the outlines, the two bracket sections on transition into judgment and away from judgment—the matching section with the section we talked on today begins with the requirement placed in large letters to the people to not forget but to remember what God has accomplished for them and why he’s bringing them into that promised land.

We come to a table at which we’re to remember the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Yes, it’s a memorial we present to God the Father to remember and treat us according to the merits of Christ. But it is also a memory to us of the very center of how we have been moved from judgment and curse to blessing and well-being. And that is the literal death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ for us.

We’re called to remember at this meal to the end that we would begin our lives with a renewed commitment to loyalty to God the Father for the great blessings that he’s given to us through what we remember at this meal: the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ for sinners.

It doesn’t do any good to get to loyalty to God or trying to be strong for God if you leave out the heart of the Christian life, which is a recognition of our sinfulness, our need for a Savior, the need for someone to pay the price by suffering the payings of death for us in his stead. And that has been accomplished 2,000 years ago on the cross. That’s the beating heart of the gospel. It’s the beating heart of a life that’s lived with loyalty to God in a way that brings blessing and that lets flow the waters of the gospel into all the world.

We read in the Gospels that Jesus Christ took bread and that he gave thanks. Let us pray.

Father, we thank you for grabbing a hold of us, Lord God, and transforming our lives through the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for our effectual call. We thank you for calling us to meditate upon the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross as the very heart of who we are. And thank you, Lord God, that you call on us to remember this as we walk into our lives tomorrow, putting loyalty to you above every other loyalty we have and every other power that we rightfully submit to.

We pray, Lord God, that as we give you thanks for this bread, you would bless it to us. Give us spiritual grace and nurture from on high. Help us, Lord God, to reconsecrate ourselves anew to serve you and to have no other gods as more of a priority to us than you. Thank you, Father, for the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and the transition from oppression to pleasantness. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.