Dennis Tuuri

The Lord spoke to all your assembly at the mountain, out of the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness, with a loud voice, and he added no more. And he wrote them on two tablets of stone and gave them to me. And as soon as you heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness, while the mountain was burning with fire, you came near to me, all the heads of your tribes and your elders.

And you said, “Behold, the Lord our God has shown us his glory and greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire. This day we have seen God speak with man, and man still lives. Now therefore, why should we die? For this great fire will consume us. If we hear the voice of the Lord our God anymore, we shall die. For who is there of all flesh that has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of fire as we have and has still lived?

Go near and hear all that the Lord our God will say, and speak to us all that the Lord our God will speak to you, and we will hear and do it.” And the Lord heard your words when you spoke to me. And the Lord said to me, “I have heard the words of this people which they have spoken to you. They are right in all that they have spoken. Oh, that they had such a heart as to always fear me and to keep all my commandments, that it might go well with them and with their descendants forever.

Go and say to them, ‘Return to your tents.’ May you stand here by me, and I will tell you the whole commandment and the statutes and the rules that you shall teach them, that they may do them in the land that I am giving them to possess. You shall be careful therefore to do as the Lord your God has commanded you. You shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left. You shall walk in all the way that the Lord your God has commanded you, that you may live, that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land that you shall possess.”

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for this message, a bit of our history being grafted into Israel. We can hear as the people that Moses spoke directly to that these were things that we did. Bless us, Lord God, now as we try to understand this scripture and its implications for us. We thank you for the new year that opens up. Bless us, Lord God, as we seek to be more faithful in our service to you this year than last. In Jesus’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated. It’s typical of course a time of year in which people make New Year’s resolutions. Those are not necessarily a bad thing. The way they’re probably entered into and not fulfilled is not a good thing. It’s actually enervating. It makes people weaker to try to make promises and things and then not follow through. You, on the other hand, as a Christian, that should drive us to the grace of God.

But we’re trying to kind of set a pattern here for some resolutions. One way to look at it that we should think about as we walk into this new year. And so I’ve tried to kind of look at beginning with Advent season. We moved away from the Ten Words for a while and looked at Philippians, the center or heart of Philippians. And we looked at some things that I tried to urge you at the beginning of Advent might characterize our Advent and Christmas season and it might become then a way of life as we move into the new year.

So you know, we began this, for instance, by noting that at the middle of Philippians it tells us to have this mind in us which was also in Christ Jesus, to be imitators of Jesus. And we said that one resolution we should probably make, or we’re saying it now for the new year, is to try to put ourselves in the path of faithful men and women with our eye on them to imitate what’s positive in their lives, recognizing that imitation isn’t always a matter of the will; it’s a matter of who we hang around with. So that idea of imitating the godly is certainly a good thing to commit ourselves to at the beginning of the year.

And then the text went on to say that Jesus, this thing we’re supposed to imitate, this guy, this man, this mindset, our Savior and Lord and King, that he was characterized first and foremost as not doing something, as not grasping at glory and at what God would eventually give to him. Unlike Adam, Adam was a grasper for that apple, for what he wanted right now instead of waiting on God’s timing and obeying God’s word. Jesus was the opposite of that.

And so another good thing to commit ourselves to at the beginning of this new year is to put off as much as we can that Adamic idea of going after, grasping at something, thinking somehow we’re alone in this world and that God doesn’t have our best interests at heart. We said that we’re to put on humility. Jesus doesn’t do that. He puts off grasping and he puts on humble service to God.

Now, humility in the New Testament, we talked about this last week, was kind of in New Testament times seen as a mark of weakness, but the Bible from one end to the other commends to us humility. We’re told, for instance, in First Corinthians 1:27 that it is the unimportant and insignificant things of life that God uses for his plans. He chooses the weak things for his plans. This is repeated in Psalm 118:6-7 and other places as well.

God in Psalm 37:28 says saves the lowly and humble. So salvation is tied to our humility. God looks upon the lowly. He considers them in Psalm 112:4-6. God pays attention to the prayers of the lowly or the humble in Psalm 101. God gives grace to the lowly while he opposes scoffers in Isaiah 2:11, Ezekiel 17:24, and of course this is repeated in the book of James a lot and in Peter as well, the epistles, the writings of Peter, that God gives grace to the humble and he resists the proud.

So lowliness of mind and humility should be a high thing, a high first thing that we endeavor to put on in this new year. And we went on from there to talk last week, or do this in expectation of glory, that if we humble ourselves God will exalt us in due time. And then we said last week that this unity of spirit is important. And I wanted to pick up a couple of things as application from last week that I didn’t necessarily stress the way I should have.

And so in the head of your outline today, it says Victory, Joy and Rivalry. Remember that the setting for Philippians 2 is opposition. It’s the two-seed warfare. Those opposing the gospel and those living out the gospel. And so to get victory, Paul gives them this vision of what to do at the center of Philippians in chapter 2. And then also he says that in verses 1 to 4 we find the key to making his joy and our joy as well complete.

So if we want victory and joy we want to think about making one of our goals for the new year to really attend to verses 1 to 4, the truths taught in them. And there it tells us to put off rivalry, self-ambition. And I talked about this last week and I think it’s such a significant thing. It’s significant in the context of the church, which is Paul’s direct subject of it in Philippians 2. But think about the significance of rivalry in homes.

I counseled with a couple this week and you know certainly their life isn’t marked by rivalry, but I think most marriages can devolve into a rivalry between, you know, who’s going to do what. Leonard Cohen talked about this in one of his songs, the “homicidal complaining” and he used a different word that rhymes with kitchen that goes on in every kitchen. It rhymes with kitchen to determine who will serve and who will eat.

So this is what happens in homes. It’s this rivalry between husband and wife. And we’re not exempt from that or immune from that in our churches and in our homes. Make a commitment today, a New Year’s resolution to put off rivalry, to put off self-ambition, particularly as it relates to your spouse. And additionally in the home it’s even worse amongst our children. It’s a euphemism. It’s sibling rivalry. That’s what we talk about.

And so, you know, that’s what they are in Adam. You know, the vipers in diapers that come out of the womb. We claim them for Christ and they’re Jesus’s kids. They’re not vipers in diapers, but they’ve got a lot of that viper nature. And that viper nature is one of rivalry and self-ambition, to put them down and exalt yourself. My wife just began a book last night that has the same theme in terms of young women. I don’t wish—I can’t remember the name. I can’t remember it now. Probably some of you have heard about it or read it. This is the follow-up book to another book. But the whole point is that girls, you know, young teenage girls, particularly as a focus of the book, they are incredibly rivalrous.

I mean it’s just horrific. I’ve pastored, you know, for almost 30 years. I’ve seen it the entire time in good Christian kids and families. I’ve seen girls, you know, treat each other just horribly. So and it’s because of this Adamic nature, right? This is what Philippians says: is to get joy and victory, you have to put off rivalry. Now, Paul used that word rivalry or self-ambition earlier in Philippians in 1:17 and 18.

He says, “The former,” and he’s talking about his opposition, “proclaim Christ out of rivalry, out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment.” See, that’s a very profound statement for understanding what he means by putting off self-ambition and vain glory in Philippians 2. The self-ambition of the opponents of Paul were rivals to him. That rivalry drove them to preach the gospel. And he says, you know, among other things, I’m thankful that the gospel at least is being preached. God’s using their own sin sinlessly so that Jesus would be proclaimed. But don’t mistake what they’re doing. He says they’re doing it out of rivalry, self-ambition.

And that self-ambition includes putting him down. They want to afflict him. Wives want to afflict husbands. Husbands want to afflict wives. That’s the Adamic nature. Brothers and sisters want to afflict each other. So don’t be surprised when it rears its ugly head this year. But make a New Year’s resolution now to try to understand this. This is one of the most significant aspects of what fallen man is like. It is right in the fall narrative, the narrative of the fall, and it penetrates through the Adamic nature.

James tells us that this kind of rivalry is what leads to all kinds of disorder and every vile practice is because he says in verse 16 of James that jealousy and selfish ambition exist and that’s what produces every vile thing. That’s James chapter 3. So it’s really important to not forget what we talked about last week and to use this reminder to write down a New Year’s resolution. Understand and try to put off with God’s grace rivalry and self-ambition.

Now, Paul says this in Philippians 1. He helps us to understand what it’s about. But notice that he is not talking about people necessarily in a particular local congregation. He’s talking about other proclaimers of the gospel, other preachers like him. So there’s an important application for this to the church in Oregon City. To the church in Oregon City, we’re to exhibit the light of the divine nature the way Jesus did by putting away rivalry, selfish ambition, and grasping.

The nature of God himself is to serve other people, right? And in the church in Oregon City, we had a meeting here, our monthly prayer meeting, and I began the meeting with these verses from Philippians 2:1-4. And you know it’s good that God—you know every city the churches in it are rivalrous. They just are. Sheep stealing is the deal. And you know it’s kind of a holy rivalry because of course we have a separate church because we think we’re right and they’re not as right as we. So the natural tendency for churches in an area is non-cooperation. Right? It’s rivalry.

Now it’s papered over and it doesn’t—you know it doesn’t—it’s not overt usually, but there’s some of that there. And so what we’ve tried to do coming into Oregon City on the basis of texts like this—I don’t know how many assemblies might have been meeting in Philippi, but what Paul says is certainly true for a local church to consider one another and all that stuff, but it’s true for the church corporately in Philippi as well.

Now that means that here in Oregon City, we want to do what Paul said to do, to not look out for our own interests, to not be rivalrous against other churches, but to put them first, right? To consider them, to try to, you know, serve them instead of just serving our own church. And that’s the attitude. That’s kind of the New Year’s resolution that we’ve been trying to get the churches in Oregon City to have for ten, twelve years because we believe that victory and joy—that’s what we want, right?

I want to be joyful. I want to be victorious. That happens in a culture when the church of Jesus Christ exhibits that kind of oneness of mind, being consolidated, one love, one thing. They get that by serving one another. It doesn’t mean ignoring sins in people’s lives, but what it does mean is we’re on their side and we want them to know that.

And also think of the implications. You know, this week was shared on Wednesday, for instance, there’s this Dave Ramsey thing that’s going to start up. This week the free preview is, I think, Wednesday night at Living Hope, which is a conservative Baptist church. That’s where my wife and I first got married, et cetera. But they’re going to have a Financial Peace University. Every church can’t put that on every year. They’ve got that going on.

We’ve got this Merrywell seminar coming up in February to train people that train, that counsel young people about marriage, how to marry well, and in the context of the faith, right. We’ve got—is it Thursday or Friday? Flynn’s got this meeting with volunteers to put together this free medical and dental clinic in May at the Nazarene church. I mean that’s just a few things that were shared and many other things at these pastor meetings.

There’s a tremendous value to knowing each other, to trying to pray for each other and to mutually promote these events. We’ve got a Christian schooling fair. We’re changing the venue to Oregon City Evangelical Church, first Friday in March. These things are all wonderful things. And if you want to start the year off by getting your finances correct, you know, please look at the Financial Peace University stuff from Dave Ramsey and go to Living Hope Church.

And if you want to help prepare young people for marriage, get ready to go to that Merrywell conference. I think it’s also going to be at Living Hope. If you want to bring some people to talk to them about Christian education, what options are available, consider the Christian schooling fair at Oregon City Evangelical Church, March 2nd. And we talked to him about our Trinity Arts Festival.

So the point is there’s a richness of corporate life in the body of Christ in this city. And not only is it just plain wrong to be rivalrous. Not only is it just plain wrong and stupid and it doesn’t exhibit the divine nature in the context of the world, but as a result we lose out. You know, if we’re to put off rivalry and put on esteeming other people, what they’re doing, what it means is if we don’t do that, we won’t learn from the other person.

If you don’t get to know people in this church that you don’t have regard for, right? If you don’t go through the directory like I asked you to do this last week and say, “Well, yeah, these are my natural friends. They’d be friends of mine if we were here or in the world.” And that’s okay. That’s okay. Common interest. But here are some people that aren’t my natural friends. I should come over, get together, go do something with them.

If you don’t do that, you’re not going to learn from that person what they’ve got to give to you, and they won’t learn what you’ve got to give to them. Remember, life is perichoretic. That big word—the Trinity indwells each other. And the church of Jesus Christ is to indwell one another. And there’s, you know, there’s a tremendous practical benefit from that. I get to get attributes of you brought into my soul and into who I am, good ones.

And the same with you if you get to know me. And there’s this natural imitation or perichoresis that happens. That’s true of churches too. Churches here in this city—there’s twenty-five or thirty of them that are trinitarian. They’ve got different things they stress. And each individual congregation can’t be all things to all people. And so if we don’t cooperate as churches here in Oregon City, then we’re going to lose out on the perichoretic indwelling of one another.

So that we learn emphasis from other people and because of that interaction, great things happen. I’ve told the story before and I’m going too long on this, but it’s encouraging to me. I want it to be encouraging to you. You know, one of the pastors who with us shared this vision of the church in Oregon City and began to really press us to get stuff going—I’m an idea guy and he’s a ramrod. He’s got a meeting with me in third week in February so that I’ll get to work meeting with other pastors between now and then about high school, about the free Christian school.

He’s pushing it every time he sees me. So what am I doing? Whom am I meeting with? He’s a ramrod sort of guy and he’s given me that gifting, right? I mean, he’s a blessing to me that way. Well, when we began our conversations, he was self-consciously Wesleyan and Arminian. And for the—I’ve told most of you this, but for the last year, he’s listened to R.C. Sproul every week. He listens to his tapes. He’s become—he probably wouldn’t call it Calvinist, but he’s become Calvinist in terms of soteriology. And always wants to talk about it and says, “Until we get the church here in Oregon City and around the world, you know, knowing about God’s sovereignty, that it isn’t up to man, his choice ultimately, it’s up to God’s election. Until we do that, he says we’re not going to have much change in the world.”

Now this is a guy when we started working together was Wesleyan and Arminian. Now because we have lived together, not in pride, not in empty glory, not in a self-ambitious way, but we’ve served one another and we’ve served the church, he’s open to hearing about that sort of stuff that we bring to the table and says that’s important for the church in Oregon City.

So make a New Year’s resolution to get to know the people that you don’t know now at this church. Regard them as more important on your agenda. Put them up at the top of the list because it’ll actually—it’ll be—it’s what you’re supposed to do, but it will be a blessing to you as well.

We’re to put off and put on. There’s a great old carol, “The Old Year Now Away Is Fled,” from early 1642 or earlier, you know, talks about this shedding of the skin. Verse two of this song says, “For Christ’s circumcision this day we keep”—that was last Sunday—”who for our sins did often weep. His hands and feet were wounded deep and his blessed side with a spear. His head they crowned then with thorn and all mocked him and they’d laugh and scorn, who for to save our souls was born. God send us a happy new year.”

So you know a reminder of last week’s idea, that truth, that Jesus Christ’s circumcision means new creation life for us. And therefore we can look forward with a lot of joy and happiness to the new year. Verse three says, “And now with new year’s gifts each friend unto each other they do send.” See that’s what we’re talking about here, living in community is gifting one another and we do it formally at Christmas or in this period of time on New Year’s but that’s what we do.

“God grant we may our lives amend and that truth may now appear. Now like the snake cast off your skin of evil thoughts and wicked sin and to amend this new year begin. God send us a merry new year.”

Husbands and wives that are combating each other in rivalry, shed your skin now at this moment. Commit yourselves that this New Year’s resolution for you is an important one: to put away rivalry, to try to think the best of your spouse and to try to make them happy in their lives and joyful in Christ. Put it—put off rivalry. Brothers and sisters, quit fighting. When you fight with your brother and sister, you’re not learning from them the things that God wants you to learn.

You didn’t get there in that family, you know, just by accident. The Lord God put you there. May the Lord God cause us to put off that old snake skin, the Adamic nature, and put on newness of life by committing ourselves to putting off rivalry, vain empty glory, and as a result, put on the things that make for joy and peace and that are good for us.

Okay, so let’s get to Deuteronomy. This is the first Sunday in Epiphany. Epiphany’s kind of this festival of light. It begins with the consideration of the magi’s visit to Jesus. It actually was January 6th. The twelve days of Christmas go from the celebration of Christ’s birth up to January 6th, Epiphany, moving through the circumcision of Jesus on the eighth day. Now the Epiphany probably happened quite some time later. The revelation, epiphany, a revelation of Jesus to the Gentiles happened sometime later. It didn’t happen twelve days after he was born, but that’s how the church has celebrated it. It’s a good thing to do.

And so we’re now in a season of several weeks where we’re celebrating Epiphany. And I plan to preach on light in the context of that, looking at Jesus’s life in the Gospels as the revelation of the light of Jesus Christ. Well so I’m beginning with a text of Moses going up to the mountain and a recounting of the Ten Words so I can kind of wrap that series off and connect it up to what we’re beginning the new year with, this Epiphany idea. And Moses’s face of course shone right on that mountain with the light of God, and it rubs off. When you spend time with God, and so Moses’s face shines forth the glory of God. And so an epiphany of God, a revelation of God, happens in the context of the giving of the law and then what happens with the people in response to that context.

And so Deuteronomy 5 is an appropriate text, I think, in which to discuss epiphany or to begin with Epiphany. John 1:16-17 says, “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The only God at the Father’s side has made him known.” So we’re told—very important here—some translations want to put a “but” in there.

“The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” We’re talking in Sunday school class when you break off the Old Testament from the New. You’re sort of left with, you know, sayings of Jesus that you don’t understand their basis and root. There’s one word from God. And when we contrast or put in opposition Moses and Jesus, we don’t understand this text. It says that God—we’re learning about God from grace to grace.

God granted his law graciously to the people through Moses. Moses was about law, the law, but he was also about grace. We’re moving from grace to grace. Moses is a prefigurement of Jesus. He’s the mediator in our text today. And of course, he’s a pale prefigurement of the one who will bring great light to the world, the Lord Jesus Christ at his coming. So grace and truth, we go from grace to grace, from the law graciously given in Moses to the best of all, the thing that really was being prefigured, the coming of Jesus Christ and full grace and full truth is now come in the person of Jesus.

That’s the way to understand this text. And so what we’re looking at here is a prefigurement of the coming of Jesus. But it’s an important one to understand. For instance, it goes right on to say in verse 18, “No one’s seen God. The only God who’s at the Father’s side—that means perpetually moving closer to the Father by the way—he has made him known.” So who makes known God on Mount Sinai? Jesus. Who’s Moses meeting with from that perspective?

Well, not Jesus incarnate, but the second person of the Trinity is communicating with Moses. At least that’s how I understand this particular text. So we want to look at this and make some simple observations of things that kind of, at least with me, sort of jump off the page at you and think, “Well, that’s really interesting to read in this text.”

And you know basically what’s happening, of course, in this text is he’s given them the Ten Words and now he’s saying, “Now you guys really keep them. Make sure you do them.” Moses is saying in his sermon in Deuteronomy. Now he’s going to move from that final appendix or exhortation or summation that we’re reading today, and then he’ll start telling them again about the Ten Words in expanded form. And that’ll form the rest of the book pretty much. But this is like an appendix, a concluding exhortation of the Ten Words that Moses gives. And it’s placed in Deuteronomy for that particular purpose.

And so we want to understand it that way. So I’ve got just a few brief observations of this. Give me just a second. Okay. So the first phrase that’s interesting to me in our text is the phrase “he added no more” in verse 22. So what’s being described in verse 22? Moses says—now this is a transition statement. “These words of the Lord—what words? The Ten Words he’s just spoken. The ten commandments. Spoke to all your assembly at the mountain at the midst of the fire, the cloud and the thick darkness with a loud voice, and he added no more.”

So we got light by the way, right? Light brings the message of God’s word and he gives them ten commandments and he added no more. Now we know that after this he actually does add more, right? After this, what happens? The people talk to Moses. “Well, we don’t want to hear his voice anymore. Please, you be our mediator.” God will give Moses, you know, statutes and judgments and commandments that explain the Ten Words to them. But this “added no more” is a significant phrase. I think in terms of this narrative, it separates the Ten Words from everything else that follows, right?

So Moses, for instance, is going to preach a sermon on the Ten Words, but that’s different than the Ten Words. And he’s—we get case laws that are recorded for us in Exodus 22. But that’s different than the Ten Words. And I take this to help us to understand and to want us to realize this distinction that God makes between the Ten Words and then their application in a particular historical context.

Now right after this in Deuteronomy 6, he’s going to say there’s only one commandment: to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and might, right? That’s what he’s going to say in Deuteronomy 6. So there’s ten words that explain the one commandment and those are distinguished from the rest of the laws and things and the building of the tabernacle center and the judicial code and all that stuff.

And the significance for us is we’re sitting here as Gentiles. We’ve been grafted into Israel. What do we mean by the law? We’re theonomic. We believe in God’s law. But what does it mean? If by the law we mean all those case laws that they should be cut and pasted into our modern day, no, that’s not what we’re saying. So that’s one ditch.

God warns us, “Don’t go to the right hand or the left on this thing,” right? And the right hand would be thinking that somehow God added more basic law to us, but he doesn’t. He gives an extrapolation of the Ten Words in their particular context. And even those Ten Words change a little bit, right? We looked at the Sabbath law when we looked at the fourth commandment. So there’s a distinction made and we want to be careful that we don’t come across communicating or thinking that somehow everything that God gave to this particular people at this particular time in redemption history is what we’re supposed to cut and paste into our civil statutes.

People make that mistake. One mistake they make is they become very tribalistic. You know, big debate over how much centralization is good or bad. And some people say we want nothing with the federal government except to defend our borders as a country. And they think that all centralization is bad because they don’t understand that “he added no more.”

The laws that God adds is given at a time of tribal government primarily. But those aren’t ultimatized when that becomes a kingdom. And then when he sets up gentile empires, it’s different. The Ten Words remain the same, but the way they’re applied is different. And we want to understand that. The text makes that important here because the only words they hear spoken by God are the ten commandments.

So I think it’s significant to see this distinction between the Ten Words and what follows. You know the Westminster standards say that the Mosaic judicials have expired except for the general equity of them, and we can live with that. All that’s saying is don’t think that every little case law in Exodus and Deuteronomy we can just cut and paste into our time because things are different now. We’re in a different period of redemptive historical development and we’re in a different period of social development.

And so don’t—you know, don’t think you can just cut and paste. That’s to the right hand. Now the left hand is the other ditch that you can fall in. The left hand says those Ten Words are just like everything else. They fail to notice the distinction between the Ten Words, which are carved on—you know, God speaks and makes appear on stone, and that he added no more and that he spoke with his voice. They don’t appreciate the distinction of those Ten Words with what comes after.

And there are many people today who just throw out the whole thing. That’s veering off the path to the left. The law is unimportant. Ten Commandments? Well, who—that was for Jews back then. That’s not for us. I mean, people, good godly theologians that do love and respect, seem to think that today. They seem to think that those Ten Words are just off.

Now, which of those ten commandments would we think that the Gentiles were okay doing? Could they go ahead and kill? That was okay with God? Murder people? Could they commit adultery? Who cares? Could they covet? No. Clearly the only commandment that some people give pause over is the very one that we think is a significant one to restate today, and that is the fourth word in our calendars.

And you know what? Gentile nations have tried to get rid of seven days and a Sabbath at the end or the beginning of the week, whichever it is. Gentiles have tried to get rid of that. The French Revolution, the communists, everybody tries to, and they can’t ever do it. “Let’s have a ten-day week.” Doesn’t work because the Sabbath cycle, the seven-day cycle, is a God-given reality and it’s based on creation and it’s based on redemption.

But you know what I mean by all this? Pray for Brad and the team that’s putting together the Lord’s Day book or the Sabbath book. I hear their work is over fifty percent complete now and for its reception by other people when we finally get it out. But you know, so “he added no more.” The significance of that, I think, is that we’re to see these Ten Words as separate from their exposition in a particular setting, and there the Ten Words—the wording changes but basically that is the law code, I think, that all peoples everywhere are supposed to affirm.

Okay, number two: “And you said.” You know, it’s a very strange narrative, you realize that? As I was reading it—you know, a lot of times we listen to the Bible and we’re not listening like we’re hearing a book read. We’re not paying attention to the details. It just sort of is like holy talk and we sort of go into Bible mode and somehow the words don’t—that’s just the value, by the way, of doing literary structural analysis. I encourage you to do chiasms, something paratetic, parallel. Do something to make you actually look at each of the words, forget the structure. You end up with the idea of meditating upon the words of scripture.

But we slip into this, you know, listening to the Bible thing and we just sort of—but if you listen to the text as I read it or if you looked in your scriptures, it’s weird because Moses is thirty-eight years after the giving of the law. You know who’s alive who actually were there at Mount Sinai that he’s describing this event? Three people: Moses, Joshua, and Caleb. That’s it. He says, “Well, you said this and you heard this and you did that.”

Well, they were going to say, “Well, what are you talking about? We did that? That was those guys who died in the wilderness. Don’t—no, no. We’re different people. We’re not connected to them.” So the text says, “You said,” and it says it over and over again in this, but verse 24: “You said, ‘Behold, the Lord our God has shown us his glory and greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire. This day we have seen God speak with man, and man still lives.’” You said that, he said.

Now we’re grafted into this church. And I think I can say that the text says, “You said it.” You know, Matt L. said it, George S. said it, right? Peggy E. said it. You all said it. We’re part of the people of God. And because we’re part of the people of God, we’re grafted in. This is our history we’re talking about. And God, you know, Moses tells us that we said this.

And remember, he distinguishes the Ten Words as what they heard. So it’s, you know, we don’t have to make any caveats to this. And that’s strange. Wasn’t strange in the past. It’s strange for the last couple hundred years because for the last couple of years—and now it’s like topsy, now it’s like galloping ghosts, great ghosts are they’re just moving ahead fast—is we have some kind of radical individualistic thinking that thinks that each of us—to use Doug Wilson’s illustration, maybe he got it from somebody else—we think we’re little BBs rolling around on the floor rather than leaves on a tree. We’re leaves on a tree.

And that’s what this text helps us to understand. We have corporate connection. The ones that heard this, Moses direct, surmon that he’s giving in Deuteronomy, who never heard—I mean they were not there when the first voice, they never heard God’s voice. But still and they can say we didn’t respond. God says yes you did. Moses says yes you did.

We have an odd thing happen at this church. You know, we are trying very diligently—we call our church Reformation Covenant Church and we chose covenant because one of the great things that happened in the early eighties to us was we recognized the significance of covenant. The Bible, you know, dispensationalism and evangelical churches tend to not really focus on covenant. But if you start looking at covenantal passages in the scriptures, they’re all over the place, man. We are in relationship with God through a covenant.

And our covenants are important. Well, the church says covenants aren’t important anymore. And lo and behold, we don’t have people entering into marriage covenants anymore. What’s the big deal? What’s the formal piece of paper? Who cares? We just live together, right? Church membership is a thing of the past. We’re a dinosaur in this area and people point at us and laugh at how stupid are they for having an actual church covenant and people enter into obligations. And oh, when people leave and we try to tell them, “Well, you can’t just—you didn’t join unilaterally.

You didn’t show up one day and said I’m a member by the way, member at RCC now. No, you entered into a covenant with this congregation through its representatives.” So why do you think when you’re going to leave, which is okay, you can go to another church. That’s fine. But why do you think you say, “Oh, I’m not a member anymore”? Wait, whoa, there’s a covenant here. You said, “No, I didn’t say that. My parents said that.”

I talked to a young girl who left the church in the last few years and I was trying to talk to her about this. She said, “Well, I didn’t sign that membership covenant.” I said, “Let me ask you something. Are you a citizen of the United States?” “Yes.” “How did that happen? Well, I signed a piece of paper. I made out a form.” I said, “No, you didn’t. You were enrolled because you were born here.”

This idea about being born into the membership of the church and under the obligation to keep the covenant of the church, that is not a strange thing in church history. What’s strange is a kind of radical iPod, iPad, iMac, “me me me,” individualization that is so radical as to think that somehow what my parents did doesn’t have obligations upon me. That’s weird. That’s really weird in the history of the church. And it’s weird according to this text.

So don’t tell me that we’re weird. I don’t care how many people agree with you. I don’t determine truth on the basis of how many people vote for something. And I hope you don’t either because if you do, we don’t have a risen Savior. We don’t have a miraculous resurrection anymore.

So you know, it’s I do care if other people disagree. If good godly Christians disagree, I do want to engage in conversation, discussion with them. But that’s never what’s given. What’s given is, “Oh, I’m out of here. See you.” Well, this text says, “No.”

Now I’ve used it in terms of application in terms of church membership. This is true of a whole bunch of things. This is true for each of you children. You’re not some little individual only. You’re part of a family. God’s placed you there intentionally. As I said earlier, your sibling rivalry—don’t think the answer to that is getting out of the house. God has put you there for a purpose. He’s sovereignly placed you there. Your life is not, you know, a result of you individualizing every decision in it.

You’re a corporate person. You’re in Christ, which means in a body with other people. That’s who you are now. You know what the world today wants is just a rationalistic thing. No covenant, no law. We just make up our minds about everything. But God says, “No, we’re sinners.” And we need to understand that our basic sin is trying to break away from community. Isn’t that what happened in the garden? Soon as they sin, what happens? They turn on each other.

Now if you have contempt for the authority of the church in the local congregation, believe me, it’s not very long before that contempt will creep into contempt for the authority of the family or your marriage as well. You’re going to denigrate some of those things too. It’s a very slippery slope.

And so you did this. God says—very significant. You did this.

Third thing I note here is “Why should we die?” And here there’s a regard for mediation, right? They’re in their right minds in this. We know because God in a couple minutes is gonna say, “I heard your words. You’re right.” God’s the determiner of reality. Most of the world’s insane because they reject God. And as a result they end up embracing death. “All that hate me love death.”

So that’s what happens. But you know, they’re in their right minds here. And here’s what they say: “Now therefore, why should we die? For this great fire will consume us. If we hear the voice of the Lord our God anymore, we shall die. So they say, ‘Give us a mediator. Let Moses be the guy. We don’t want to hear the voice. You, Moses, you go and talk to God.’”

Now that is not a bad thing for them to want. God commends this. He says they spoke right. Okay. So you got to figure out then what is it telling us? What it’s telling us is God sees fit to work through human mediation. Now, yeah, he’s a picture of Jesus who will come, but he’s a man. A man like you or me, put on his pants or his toga the same way you do, right? Whatever he wore, I don’t know. But everybody put him on the same way.

He’s a man like they were. And when they’re sensible, and by the way, their sensibility is tied to an overt demonstration of the glory of God that almost kills them. I mean, you know, so when they’re frightened, when they know, when they see and sense God’s glory in the context of this voice booming out these Ten Words to them, right? And fire and smoke. You know, in worship we come to a mountain. Is it a scary mountain like Sinai? Well, Hebrews says it’s a scarier mountain.

You know, it’s a scarier mountain is what Hebrews says. I mean, if you despise Moses, well, that’s one thing, but to despise Jesus that you come before in worship, that’s a horrible thing. So we come before him, right? We probably ought to have—we got some fire going on up there. We got the voice, you know, we got the preaching of his word and the reading of his scriptures. Probably ought to have some incense, a little some cloud in here because when you go to worship, you go to the top of the mountain to meet with God. That’s what we do. It’s what Hebrews says.

And so when you come to that mountain, you know, visual demonstrations aren’t necessarily a bad thing. Well, they got the message. This is God, the God of all creation, whose voice can destroy the world, whose voice brought the world into existence. They’re proper to fear it. And in their fear of God, they make good sense. And the good sense they make is “Please, you be the mediator between us and you. Speak to us through human voices.”

Now this is the guy, okay, that they at one time wanted to stone to death. This is a guy that they didn’t always respect and obey and we’re talking about after what they say here. Okay. But God says it is good for men to be taught the oracles of God, to be preached to through men. It’s good. God says for you to hear the oracles of God preached through human mediation. You know, I think there was an old Rolling Stones song, you know, “I don’t want to hear about Jesus. I just want to see his face.”

Well, you know, that’s what we—”Well, if God would just speak directly to me.” No, these people got God speaking directly to them. They realized not such a good deal. It’s best for us. It’s best for you to work through human mediation. And you should have a heart’s desire to hear people as they bring God’s word, God’s message to you. Not just the pastor, not just the preacher, but other people as they bring God’s word to you. You should have a high regard for them.

Well, let’s start with the church again since it’s the most despised of all human institutions these days. Let’s start there, you know. And the preaching of the word is seen as somehow it’s kind of—it’s either interesting, not interesting, whatever it is. But God says it is best for you if I preach sermons and if the elders read God’s word to you in the context of worship, and you hear it from us and you hear its application from us, that God has given to us as why we study the scriptures. It’s good for you. It’s a blessing to you. Regard it highly. Pray for your elders and pastors as they bring God’s word to you.

Have high regard for it. Don’t, you know, despise me at some point in time. Yeah, of course I sin. All the elders sin. We’re weak people obviously, but it so was Moses. God delights to speak through the mediation of men. He uses human voices to teach you so that you can hear his voice. And to desire a direct word from God is to desire a foolish thing.

These people were in their right minds. God commends them because he hears them.

Fourth point: “The Lord heard your words.” Verse 28: “The Lord heard your words which you spoke to me.” You know, saying, “Hey, you be the mediator.” And the Lord said to me, “I have heard the words of the people which they have spoke—spoken to you. They are right in all that they have spoken.”

They said, “This is the grace of God.” They didn’t say that directly, but that’s implied. Who can hear the voice of God and live? Yet they did hear the voice of God and live. God’s grace is on that mountain. They’re right in speaking that. They say, “It isn’t good for us to hear the voice of God anymore.” He says they’re right. They say, “Give us a mediator. You, Moses, be God’s mediator to us. Speak through the preaching and teaching of your word by men.” And God says, “You’re right in everything that you’ve said.”

God hears their words and he hears it commendably. I mean, at the middle of this frightening scene, we have a God who loves his people, commends them when they’re in their right mind, and is positively moved to love them. He says in the very next verse, “Oh, that they would do this all their lives, that they would be blessed forever.” Again, God is not our rival. He’s not against you. He’s for you.

Now when you speak words, you know, of proper response to God, he hears your words. And there must be a million literary stories, movies, songs, et cetera, about overhearing things. The only thing I can come up with this morning as I was thinking about it was Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing,” which Peter Leithart taught us was really “Much Ado About Noting” because throughout the play, you know, the sheriff will say, “Note that I am an ass.” “Make a note.” And so they’re always noting these things, but they’re getting them wrong.

Wrong. And so a lot of hubbub happens over nothing because their noting was improper. And so it’s a play about noting things, but it’s noting them improperly or incorrectly rather. Well, here God notes what you say. It’s important that you recognize that they’re not talking to God at this point. They’re talking to Moses. It’s like you and I having a conversation, right? And as you and I have these conversations, God hears.

You heard God says, “I heard your words that you spoke to Moses. I hear you.” No, that’s obvious. Oh, God knows everything. In the abstract, that doesn’t mean much to us. It’s easy to just kind of dismiss it. But if you think today that whatever you say to somebody else, God is noting it. God is hearing it. And God is evaluating it. Is it good? Is it bad? He says, “Here, it’s good.” God is noting, hearing your words, and evaluating it.

I think this is the center of the text. I’ve given you that double chiasm on the bottom of your outline. That’s the first section. And then in the second section, God hears their words. The first one, he speaks, they hear him, and they talk to Moses. Here in the center section, God says he heard what they said, and they’re right. And then he then tells Moses what to do.

In the third and concluding section, so I think this is the center section of this little narrative. And at the center of it then is a reminder to us to be mindful of the fact that God hears your words. Speak them, speak them properly, speak them well, and know that God will hold you accountable to them when they violate his word. They witness against themselves in the very speaking of their previous words, right? God will judge them according to their words. God will judge you and God will judge your descendants based upon these same truths.

Right? So God hears your words. A good New Year’s resolution is to hear our own words, to hear other people’s words and remind ourselves that God hears our words and he approves of them. He approves of them, right? That’s what it goes on to say.

Five: “You shall teach them.” We don’t need to go into that in much detail except that he gives them these words to teach them his word.

Six: “Don’t swerve from the whole path.” Verse 33: “You shall walk in all the way that the Lord your God has commanded you, that you may live, that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land that you shall possess.”

So what is loving God? Loving God is keeping his commandments properly. Fearing him is connected up with loving God and serving him by obeying his commandments. And those commandments—while there’s only ten of them or even one in Deuteronomy 6—they carve out for us a path through the world.

So we have this path. That path is comprehensive. God says stay in the whole path. That’s what the implication of the adjective here is: to pass all the path. Don’t go out of all the path. The path is comprehensive for your life. Okay? The whole path. God claims every bit of it. The Lord Jesus Christ claims every bit.

As you bring light to the Gentiles, as you bring light to the world this Epiphany season and into the rest of your life, you do so in your whole path, as it’s directed by God’s word, by the ten commandments of God as they’re applied in our particular day. Don’t swerve to the right or to the left.

And then the end result of this obedience to God in the whole path of our lives is to possess the earth. Now here it’s “possess the land.” Paul changes that to “possess the earth.” By the way, notice as the text comes to its conclusion, it sounds like the fifth word, right? “That you might live long on the earth or in the land that I’ve given you to possess.” That’s the blessing attended to the fifth commandment. So the significance of the fifth word—authorities in parents, authorities in Moses, the mediator, authority ultimately of King Jesus—is being alluded to here and the end result is that we can possess the whole earth.

That’s what Paul says in his New Testament rendering of the fifth word. God’s plans for you are wonderful. God’s plans for you are great. He brings light to the world. Jesus Christ comes. The whole world brings the gold that they’ve been sent out to find, represented by the magi, to Jesus because all the Gentiles now will come to the shining of the light of Jesus Christ. And Philippians says, “Your lights in the world. Shine forth as lights in the world. Possess the earth by being careful to hear all the words of God, by establishing proper relationship to the authorities in your lives, and to recognize that God’s ways are intergenerational. They’re not individualistic.”

They’re certainly—he certainly has relationship with each of us individually. But we have a covenantal relationship that he says is quite important. And when we focus on these things, when we’re careful to observe the whole path and not swerve to right or left, not chuck the law or ultimatize a particular period of time in which the law was given in specific relationships to that time, but the whole path is determined by the Lord Jesus Christ.

His coming is the greater lawgiver bringing grace and truth to us on our mountain. Then God says, “You’ll live long. You’ll inherit the earth.”

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for today. We thank you for your wonderful ways with us, your grace, your mercy, your looking for our well-being. As Calvin says, we agree, Lord God, that the greatest thing you do for us is to bring us into covenant with you, a covenant in which you give us your law, the path so that we might know how to live. Thank you, Lord God, for the freedom in that path and for the restrictions of that path.

Bless us as we commit ourselves again at the beginning of this year to follow that path. We thank you, Lord God, that in the Psalms you tell us that you will perfect that which concerns us, because you magnified your word above your name. We thank you that Jesus came to die on the cross for us, that your word of blessing and grace might be put into effect by the giving of his very life, his name on the cross.

Bless us, Lord God, with the full assurance then that you hear us, you have regard for us. Your desire for us is blessing. And we pray, Father, that you would indeed fill our hearts with a firm knowledge that you will indeed perfect that which concerns us individually, as families, as this church, as the church in Oregon City, and indeed around the world. In Jesus’s name we pray. Amen.