Relationship of a person to God

Deuteronomy chapter 10. This is a time for a commercial. This niacin is good for whatever ails you. Niacin. Be careful, but don't take too much. Shayla Irvin says niacin is what made her kidneys start working and they gave her too much of it. Anybody want your kidneys to stop working? We got the right to hear the thing for you. No, I'm not taking it. I don't want my kidneys to stop working. They tell me that Betty left this here. It's unopened. If anybody takes this already and doesn't have enough to stop your kidneys, we got a whole bottle of it right here. It was good until 2015 it says. 2015. It's good to 2015. Can you return it and get your money back? I don't know about that. Can we have a hand for this couple coming in? We can start now. This newly married couple, Mr. and Mrs. now. Congratulations. What's their last name? Did you get married? Did you get married? Yeah, but I'm married. When? Soon. When did you get married? We need a basic course on how to ask questions. Good question. What's your last name? Haney. Ryan. Haney. Ryan and O? Jesse. Thank you very much. Deuteronomy chapter 10. This passage beginning with verse 12 is sort of the heart of the book of Deuteronomy. Often times in the Bible, instead of having at the beginning or the end the most critical part of a book, it will sometimes have a section which builds to the critical part, then it has that section, and then finishes up with an explanation about the significance of the section. So here is one place in which the heart of the book of Deuteronomy is found in this chapter 10. It's one of the reasons I've spent a lot of time with it. Because here is the very center of what the book is about. It's not focused on the Ten Commandments so much as it's focused on the relationship that a person has with God and how that's to be done. In verse 12, I want to focus on verse 20 and on, but I need to go back and sort of set up an environment for this. The beginning of this verse 12, he sets out five key ingredients in the relationship that a person is to have with God. And these five elements are foundational. And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, the first one, walk in His ways, to love Him, serve the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, all your heart and soul, and to observe the Lord's commands and decrees that I'm giving to you today for your own good. That's the setting. Then he moves to two pairs of triplets. Separating those a little bit, verse 14, he starts sort of an explanation about what he's asking for above. Verse 14 is paired with verse 17, sort of two about the same subject. I'll read verse 14. To the Lord your God belongs the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth, and everything in it. Verse 17, for the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. See, that's where he's talking about how fearing God, how important that is, the greatness of God. Then he moves from verse 14 to 15, saying, Yet the Lord set His affections on your forefathers and loved them, and He chose you, their descendants, above all the nations as it is today. Moving from the greatness of God to how God cares for Israel, a nation of insignificance, which is paired with verse 18. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widows and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing. He says, God now moves from caring for you to caring for all people who need help and are not able to help themselves. And then verse 16, Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked or stubborn any longer. Paired with verse 19, And you are to love those who are aliens, for you yourself were an alien in Egypt. You're to change your insides so that you have compassion on people who are around you. He's explaining something about these five elements that he starts. Now verse 20, he picks up again the same kind of emphasis that he started with in 12. Fear the Lord your God and serve Him. Hold fast to Him and take your oaths in His name. He is your praise. He is your God who performed for you those great and awesome wonders you saw with your own eyes. Your forefathers who went down into Egypt were 70 in all, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in the sky. Verse 1 of chapter 11, Love the Lord your God and keep His requirements, His decrees, His laws, and His commands always. You notice how this theme picks up. Three times he kind of mentions a summary of the commands or requirements that are given to us. In verse 12 and 13, they're more full, all five of them. But in verse 20, he picks up again with this idea. Fear the Lord your God. He's already said that in verse 1. In the book of Deuteronomy, the word fear in the Hebrew language is translated two different ways. Sometimes, as here, it's translated fear with the idea of an impending doom. And sort of in chapter 16 and chapter 28, he also uses it in the same way. There he's talking about if you fail to keep the commands God gives you, you should be afraid of what God is going to do. For His judgment will be harsh and powerful. So in those instances, he's using the word here, translated fear, to describe someone who's looking at a force or power so great that it could be damaging and destructive to him. And he uses this of God. You should fear God because of His tremendous power. You should fear God because of His holiness. You should fear God because of what He can do to those who reject and ignore His instructions and commands and requirements. But he also uses this in the book of Deuteronomy in another way. In fact, more often in the book of Deuteronomy, it's used to describe what's translated in the NIV as revere. You are to revere God. You are to look at Him with respect. And you are to see Him as a person of integrity. That's shown here when he says, Fear the Lord your God and serve Him. Hold fast to Him and take your oaths in His name. Now, the phrase take your oaths in His name may sound a little odd to us. But what he's talking about was in a culture where your promise was often attached to the authority of some significant person, a God, or yourself, or your mother, or whatever. Like you come to court and say, I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help me God. You're swearing on the nature and character of God as the authenticator for the truthfulness that you're giving. So when they would swear that something was true, you use the most powerful or important or significant person or thing that you know about. So he says, you're not to have anything in your life that you would treasure more. Sometimes people say, I'll swear on my mother's grave. They mean, I swear this is true, even if it would mean my mother would go to the grave, or if it means she would die. You're doing that saying, my mother is a special treasure to me, and I wouldn't do anything that would cause her to die. So her value to you is the basis of your promise. The value that you give to God is the basis of your promise. So when he says, you're not to swear by anything except by God himself, the writer of Deuteronomy is really telling us that God should have the place of ultimate significance in your life. There should be nothing in this world that you would want to lose, that would be more valuable to you to lose than God himself. There's nothing in this world that's more powerful and important to you than God himself. So you can see that the word fear could be used to describe the reverence and respect that a person would have for him. Now, the idea of fearing what God could do to us and having respect and reverence are connected in a way. For you do have respect for something that you're afraid of. You might not say, have you heard people say, well, I have a lot of respect for snakes, or I have a lot of respect for electricity. And they mean in that conversation that they're very, very careful around them and treat that with special care because of the fear of what might happen if they did something wrong. The snake might bite them, they might be electrocuted. So the idea of fear hanging over you sometimes causes you to look at that person or event or circumstance with respect. I respect its power. I respect that person's significance. I respect what they could do to me if I'm not really careful how I treat them. The Bible holds God up as the ultimate authority and power in the world. And if there's anybody in the world we ought to be careful about how we treat, it's God. The Bible is filled with incidences of people who did not respect God's presence nor His instructions and lived to regret it. And some did not live at all because God's power is greater than anything a human being can have. So what he's talking about in this passage is you should have great respect for the person who gives you these instructions in the Bible. They're not like instructions another human being would give you. They're not instructions like another king would give you. They're the instructions of God, Yahweh, your Lord. And you must pay special care for them. Because if you don't live by them, disaster will befall you. Now, it is true that God oftentimes brings in the lives of people disaster as a result of their treatment for Him. And whenever people go through times of disaster, oftentimes it can be traced back to the failure to know and obey the commands and decrees that God gave to His people as to how they should live. So his conclusion that you're to fear the Lord in both of these instances points to the power of God and who He is. You fear the Lord your God and serve Him. Now, if you fear someone and respect them, service is very much a part of what you would do. You do whatever they ask you to do. So you see, fear and reverence and service are connected in some way. These are all a part of how you see God and how important He is to you and how much you can trust Him. Fear the Lord your God, serve Him, and hold fast to Him. This is the same word used in the Bible, the Hebrew Bible, for what you find in Genesis where it says a man will leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, cleave to his wife. It's a word that's also used for how, if you see, like your hand, your knuckles on your bones, how the skin is fastened to it, down to it. On your elbow, how the skin is fastened to it, you pull it up and it comes right back. Your skin is fastened or cleaves to your bones. It's that very word. So that when a man or woman leaves her parents and becomes a part of a marriage relationship, they're to be like skin on bone, fastened together in a permanent relationship, so that they are connected to each other. Now he uses this same language to talk about the relationship of people to God. You should have not only respect for who He is, but you should make a commitment of devotion to Him that would bond you to God, so that you and God are connected together. In the New Testament, there's a little bit of a different way by which it describes this. In John's writing, it says, You're now bonded to God because you are His child. And as a part of His family, you are connected to Him in this inseparable way. So that the Bible describes our relationship with God not only with reverence and respect for Him out of who He is and what He does, but also describes it in terms of a bonding relationship that's like the pledge of a marriage. I commit myself to You, God, from now to the end of my life. That promise that binds us together with another person is a binding relationship between us and God. That's why in the Bible, oftentimes, God describes His relationship with the people of Israel and with us as a marriage. So in the Old Testament, whenever the people of Israel were unfaithful to God, He called them adulterers. Because they were unfaithful to this pledge, this bonding pledge that they made at Sinai. And as they came of age, to say, Now, all of these are words used to describe almost the same thing. There are different ways by which you describe one event. It's like you see a diamond that has a lot of different sides and facets. So that each one of these describe a part of the relationship that we have with God, yet all of them point to the fact that there is a relationship. You fear, respect God, you serve Him, you're connected or clinging to Him, bonded to Him. And you make Him the most important person in your life, so that if you were required to swear something to guarantee it was true, you'd swear it on the name of God. Because Yahweh is the most valuable and important part of your life. Now, verse 21, He says, talking about God, He is your praise. He is the one that we are to praise. He is the one we are to tell about His value. The word praise in the Bible is a reference to all the things that He's been talking about. It expresses the significance of another person. You're so powerful and great that I have reverence and respect for you. You're so important to me that I'm willing to serve you and do whatever you ask of me. My life is connected to you in a way that makes you and me inseparable. We're together as one. You're the most important person in my life. All those are praise words. They describe the greatness of God in comparison to me. And that's what praise is. So He's describing here that He is the one you praise. He is your God who performed for you those great and awesome wonders you saw with your own eyes. He's talking about the Exodus where they were coming out of Egypt and the water parted. He's talking about all the times that the water came out of the rock and the manna fell from heaven and all the great and wonderful miracles that they saw. They praise Him because they have experienced firsthand the power of God, the love of God, the protection and care that God gave them. Your forefathers went down into Egypt, they were 70 in all, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in the sky. There's some question about how many people there were involved in the Exodus. Of the 70 who went down there, 400 years later, there were hundreds of thousands of them who returned to the nation, to the land of promise. Hundreds of thousands. What He's talking about is the prosperity that God had given to them. How He'd taken just a few and from those few had made them into a numerous and powerful nation. You've seen what God has done for you. And it is the result of your being able to see His hand that causes you to be able to give praise to God. In our life with God, praise is very important to God. And it's important to us. Because when you remember the things that God has done in your life, it identifies or nails down for you just how loving God is to you. How much He cares for you. It reminds you of the power that He has. So that every situation you get into, you can remember the power that God had before and what He did to give you courage for this circumstance. Now, you know the Bible, when it was written, was not written by chapters and verses. They just wrote one word after another. Much later, 1500s A.D., somebody sat down with a Bible and tried to make it into chapters and verses. So when you see the verse divisions and the chapter divisions, it doesn't necessarily mean that's the way the author intended it. It just means someone reading it thought it did. You'll notice in verse 1 of chapter 11, it's sort of a transition verse. It connects with everything that's been going on before, but also sets the tone for what's going to take place in chapter 11. Verse 1 of chapter 11. Love the Lord your God. Does that sound familiar? You've already been told to love Him before. You're told to fear Him and serve Him. Hold fast to Him like a husband would to his wife or wife to a husband. Now he comes back with this same word, love. What the book shows is that all of these terms that are used are trying to describe one single thing. What is it like to relate to God? It's to have great reverence for Him. It's to love Him. Now, he's not talking about emotional love here, nor even emotions and fear. What he's talking about, the reverence that you have, is not necessarily emotional. It's in your mind deciding that God deserves my respect. And all the way through the Old Testament, over and over again, love for God is connected with obedience and keeping His commandments. So when he says, love the Lord your God and keep His requirements, he's fastening love and obedience together. There's a lot of people who think that they love God because they sometimes have emotional and kind feelings toward Him. But when God thinks of love, the language of love for God is obedience. If you talk about this book on the five languages of love, about the different ways that we communicate love to each other, by giving a person attention to their interest and need, touch, giving gifts, God's way of understanding our relationship with Him is based on behavior. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. If you love me, you will do what I tell you. Love the Lord your God and keep His requirements. Those are connecting things. They're not one and two. They are the same in God's mind and eye. Whenever you keep the requirements and commands of God, you're showing respect for Him. You're showing reverence for Him. You're showing that you are bound to Him because you want to do what He tells you to do. All of these things are simply ways to describe the relationship that God wants to have with us. This is the way it is. He is in charge. He is the one who makes the plan, has the rules, instructions, the guidelines, the direction. We are the secondary people, lower than Him, who say, I give you respect. I give you honor. I give you reverence. I will do whatever you tell me. I will live in obedience to what you ask. I will walk in the way you tell me to walk. I will serve you. I will think about your decrees and commands, learn them, think about them, reflect on them, figure them out. And I will fear you, respect you. I will serve you. I'll be connected to you. Nothing will be more important to me than you. And I will love you by obeying what you tell me to do. These are all the ways by which God is defining for the people of Israel exactly what it's like to love Him. Love in the Bible is not an emotion. It is a choice that you make to put God in a particular place in your life and for you to have a particular kind of relationship to Him, a relationship of a servant, a relationship of obedience, a relationship of submission, because He is God. What God asks of us is to order our lives in such a way so that we define the world in terms of who is in charge, God, and who will live in obedience to Him, and that's our choice. It doesn't matter how good you think God is or how wonderful you think the things He's done are, but it's whether or not you say, I choose now to live my life the way you tell me I should live it. It is that commitment that makes you a child of God, that brings you into the kingdom of God. What took you outside of God's relationship was as you were growing up deciding there are a lot of things I can do, but what I want to do is exactly what I choose to do. It is that rebellion against the authority of God that causes us to be alienated from God, separated from God, and what brings us back into that relationship is saying, now I'm ready to serve you. One of the distinctives Baptists have is to believe that when you're born into this world, you're not born guilty of sin and deserving of hell. You're born as an innocent child, and somewhere along the line you make a decision about whether or not you're going to respect and revere and serve God or whether or not you're going to serve yourself. Am I going to do what I know God says I should do or am I going to do what I would like to do or what's convenient for me or what's profitable for me in my own eyes? It's that one decision that takes you outside of this relationship with God. Now what he says is, what I'm asking you to do is love me. I'm asking you to obey me, to revere me, to walk, to live the way I tell you to live, and to listen to what I say to you and think about it and put it in practice. I ask you to be connected to me like a husband is with a wife, and I ask you to love me by showing that you do what I tell you to do. Now if you will choose to do that, it's a simple thing you do. You do it right now. Say, God, I didn't realize I hadn't put you in that place, but right now I want to say to you, I'm going to make you the ruler of my life. I pledge to you that from here on out in my life, I'm going to live trying to live in obedience to you. When you do that, then God brings you into his kingdom, adopts you into his family, and you fulfill what God has been trying to get people to do from all the way from the beginning of time. And what he says in this book in Deuteronomy, that's critical to us. Let's pray together. I would like to ask you, if you were to stand and look at God now, could you say that he controlled your life? That you were serving him? That you were connected to him like skin on bones? If you're not sure about that, there's one way to be sure. That is to say, God, I'm going to put you in my life in the place of greatest respect and reverence. And I'm going to commit my life to learning what you want me to do and doing it. If you make that promise to God, you come and talk to me and I'll help you know how to put it in practice. Father, we're thankful that you've told us how to live. It's not a secret, but yet it's secret to many people. But you made it clear what you expect and how we can live in a relationship that assures us of the mighty power that you have to guide our lives, to provide our needs, to protect us, and to make our lives meaningful and significant. And so I ask, Father, that you would let each of us know for sure whether that relationship with you is real. And don't let us rest until we're ready to say, I will love you, Lord, with all my heart and with all my soul. In the name of Christ, we pray this. Amen.