Our Faithful Intercessor and Merciful God

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Good morning.

My name is Allie.

I'm a member of the Central Berkeley Community Group.

Today's reading is going to be from Deuteronomy, chapters 9, verses 6 through 7, 11 through

Deuteronomy 9:6–7

17, 21, 26 through 29, and chapter 10, verses 12 through 22.

Understand then that this is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God

is giving you this good land to possess.

For you are a stiff-necked people.

Remember this and never forget how you aroused the anger of your Lord, your God, in the wilderness.

From the day you left Egypt until you arrived here, you have been rebellious against the

Lord.

At the end of 40 days and 40 nights, the Lord gave me the two stone tablets, the tablets

of the covenant.

Then the Lord told me,

Go down from here at once, because your people whom you brought out of Egypt have become corrupt.

They have turned away quickly from what I commanded them and have made an idol for themselves.

And the Lord said to me, I have seen this people, and they are a stiff-necked people.

Indeed, let me alone so that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven.

And I will make you into a nation stronger and more numerous than they.

So I turned and went down from the mountains while it was ablaze with fire, and the two

tablets of the covenant were in my hands.

When I looked, I saw that you had sinned against the Lord your God.

You had made for yourselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf.

You had turned aside quickly from the way that the Lord had commanded you.

So I took the two tablets and threw them out of my hands, breaking them into pieces before

your eyes.

Also, I took that sinful thing of yours, the calf you had made, and burned it in the fire.

Then I crushed it and ground it to powder as fine as dust and threw the dust into a stream

that flowed down the mountain.

I prayed to the Lord and said, Sovereign Lord, do not destroy your people, your own inheritance

that you redeemed by your great power and brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand.

Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Overlook the stubbornness of this people, their wickedness, and their sin.

Otherwise, the country from which you brought us will say, Because the Lord was not able

to take them into the land he had promised them, and because he had hated them, he brought

them out to put them to death in the wilderness.

But they are your people, your inheritance that you brought out by your great power and

your outstretched arm.

And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God,

to walk in obedience to him, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul, and to observe the Lord's commands and decrees that I am giving

you today for your own good.

To the Lord our God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything

in it.

Yet the Lord set his affection on your ancestors and loved them.

And he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations as it is today.

Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer.

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.

He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing

among you, giving them food and clothing.

And you are to love those who are foreigners.

For you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.

Fear the Lord your God and serve him.

Hold fast to him and take your oaths in his name.

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.

Your ancestors who went down into Egypt were seventy in all, and now the Lord your God has

made you as numerous as the stars in the sky.

The grass withers and the flowers fade.

Good morning, friends.

Congratulations on being here today and just making it out of the house.

You know, after I graduated from college, I found myself in a pub in Western Ireland,

and I met a friendly local there.

It was a little town called Doolin, sort of known for its session music, pub music, and

a friendly local started buying me pints of Guinness.

And when he discovered that I was training to be a pastor, he said, oh, you hatch, match,

and dispatch.

And by hatch, match, and dispatch, he meant I was in the business of births, weddings, and

funerals.

And fortunately, over the years, we've done more matching and hatching here at Christ Church

than we have dispatching.

And yesterday, we had another match.

We had a wedding of Ethan Van Andel and Kate Mallison.

It was beautiful.

Some of you were there under the Redwood Grove, and then here at the reception last night.

Really joyous event.

And I was thinking at the reception last night about a wedding I officiated a few years ago

from a couple that met here at Cal.

And at the reception, the mother-in-law stood up to give a toast to her new son-in-law.

And she said, so you're the husband now, and from now on, you make all the major decisions

in the household.

And all the egalitarians in the room started sweating, and the feminists were feeling super

uncomfortable.

She said, yeah, now you make all the major decisions, but your new wife decides what's

a major decision and what's a minor decision.

And I thought, yeah, that's pretty smart.

You know, I love being married.

It's so great to find that one very special person that you can annoy for the rest of your

life.

And when Catherine and I got married for better, for worse, I couldn't have done better.

She couldn't have done worse.

And it's a beautiful thing.

But we also know that Jesus was single.

Jesus charted a path, a high and noble path for all of his disciples that would come after

him and be single.

But as we begin today, I just want to say it fascinates me that one of the primary metaphors

to describe the relationship between God and his people is marriage.

This exclusive, intense covenant bonds between a husband and wife.

That's what God says.

That's what his relationship with us is like.

And I just want us to think about that metaphor.

As we open up Deuteronomy, we come to this fifth and final book in the Torah, which is the

capstone and the summary of everything that's gone before it.

It's Moses' last words to the people of God before he dies.

And what I think this text in Deuteronomy 9 and 10 is telling us today, God's word for

us, is that our broken vows call for a selfless advocate and a new life of gratitude.

Let's think for a minute about our broken vows.

I want you to imagine a newlywed couple and they're on their honeymoon.

They plan this special wedding weekend for all their family and friends.

They've had the rehearsal, the dinner.

They've had the ceremony.

They've made the vows.

They've had a big rocking party and they've made these serious covenant promises to one

another before the eyes of God and each other and their community to love and cherish each

other until death do us part.

Pretty serious stuff.

And then they go on their honeymoon to a tropical island, not just for like a week.

They go for 40 days.

I mean, who goes for 40 days?

But they spare no expense and they're having a great time swimming in the ocean, walking

on the beach, reading books, eating well, seeing the sights, making love, luxuriating in the

rest and the joy of their covenant that they've just made.

And then all of a sudden, just out of the blue, one of them is unfaithful.

On their honeymoon, one of them is found in the arms of another and their covenant is

shattered into pieces.

How would you feel if you were the one to be so betrayed?

You'd be heartbroken.

You'd be outraged.

How could you so quickly stab me in the back after such high promises, after such deep sacrifices

that we just made to commit ourselves exclusively to one another?

It's hard to describe the emotions you would feel.

That's why we have country music.

That's why we have the blues.

You know, like, what does it feel like to be cheated on?

And that's exactly what happens between Yahweh and his people with the golden calf.

And we're told this didn't just happen one time on their honeymoon and they made up and

then they lived happily ever after.

The prophets tell us that this happened over and over and over again.

God's chosen people, his beloved people, the treasured possession for whom God went to

great lengths to save from slavery in Egypt.

They entered into this exclusive relationship with God and they made these covenant promises

in response to his.

And they said, you will be our love supreme.

You will be our one and only everywhere and always.

And yet what happened?

They adulterated the relationship.

They adulterated the relationship by introducing another lover and another allegiance into the

relationship.

And we hear about that in verse 16 where Moses says, when I looked, I saw that you had sinned

against the Lord your God and you had made for yourselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf.

You turned aside quickly from the way that the Lord had commanded you.

The people of God decide, you know, we no longer want to live by faith in this living God that

we cannot see.

We want to live by sight and we want to make God less than he is.

And so they cast him in the shape of a bull.

Now, some of you know this statue on Wall Street, Charging Bull.

Anybody seen this statue?

It's been there since the 80s after a market crash as a symbol of financial optimism.

And this golden calf wasn't that different.

It was a symbol of strength and vitality and energy and prosperity where the people said,

we are going to make God into who we want him to be and to do for us what we want him to do.

God doesn't define us and fashion us.

We define and fashion God.

And the Apostle Paul reflects on this as not just one incident in the life of Israel,

but the consistent theme in the history of humanity where he says in Romans 1,

they, all people, exchanged the truth about God for a lie

and worshiped and served created things rather than their creator.

Another theologian commented, this is John Calvin.

He said, the human heart is a factory of idols.

Every one of us is, from his mother's womb, expert in inventing idols.

Now, I doubt that many of us have statues at home that we pray to and seek good fortune from,

but an idol is anything more important to you than God.

An idol is anything that absorbs your imagination more than God.

An idol is something that you seek to give you what only God can give.

And you know you have a counterfeit God, a false God,

when anything becomes so central and so essential that if it's lost to you,

your life hardly feels worth living.

You can kind of hear the self-talk in your own heart when you say,

you know, my life only has meaning and I only have worth if I have power and influence over other people.

Or if I win the love and respect of this group or that person,

or if I have this quality of life and this standard of living,

or if I'm this productive or this successful,

then my life has meaning and my life has worth and value.

And these become our functional gods.

The gods that we're living for are gods of power,

a god of approval, a god of comfort, a god of control,

and on and on.

We're expert in inventing idols in which we reduce God and redefine God

and replace God with something he's not.

And so why does Moses remind the people of this painful honeymoon affair?

Because we didn't read this verse, but in verse 4 it says,

you might say to yourself,

the Lord has brought us to the promised land because of our righteousness.

And then verse 6 picks up and it says,

understand then that it is not because of your righteousness

that the Lord your God is giving you this good land

for you are a stiff-necked people.

We tend to either think too low of ourselves or too high of ourselves.

And the danger here is thinking about ourselves with moral self-congratulation,

with a self-righteous superiority complex over other people.

And Moses says, actually, you have a history of being stiff-necked.

It's this image of an animal that refuses to listen to its owner,

that has this unbending, stubborn, willfully obstinate,

not readily submissive, not easily led sort of attitude to its master.

And I think Moses brings this up because he's saying,

look, this golden calf was not an exceptional lapse.

It's just the most obvious and most horrendous example

of our human, congenital, ingrained, characteristic tendency

of habitual rebellion that seeks life from other sources than the living God.

And the prophets repeat Moses over and over.

Here's the prophet Jeremiah.

He says, my people have committed two sins.

They have forsaken me, the spring of living water,

and have dug out their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

And so how does Moses respond to the broken vows of God's people?

It says in verse 17 that,

so I took the two tablets and I threw them out of my hands,

breaking them to pieces before your eyes.

And this isn't so much an impetuous act as it is a prophetic symbol

that the moral law of God and God's covenant bond of love with his people

has been shattered because they've adulterated the relationship

by allowing other lovers to creep in,

rendering the relationship null and void, null and void.

And this is a desperate situation that the people of God find themselves in.

And so that leads me to my next point,

that our broken vows call for a selfless advocate.

Our broken vows call for a selfless advocate.

Anybody ever had somebody plead your case when you royally screwed up

or you just totally didn't deserve it?

Maybe a parent, a teacher, a coach, a colleague, a friend went about for you,

put in a good word for you when you just didn't deserve it.

Well, if any nation in the ancient Near East deserved to be destroyed,

the scriptures tell us over and over again, it was the people of God.

More than any other nation,

their very existence here on the edge of the promised land

is proof of the mercy and the grace of God.

And the question is, how did they get God's mercy?

What changed in this situation?

What changed is that Moses stepped up to advocate for them.

Moses went to become their mediator and their reconciler

who interceded before God on their behalf.

And you can hear him doing it in verse 26.

He says,

I prayed to the Lord and said,

Sovereign Lord, do not destroy your people.

And what follows is this model prayer for all who feel the tension

between what the people of God are called to be

and what we actually are.

Anybody feel that tension?

What the people of God are called to be

and what we actually are.

And this tells us,

don't give up on the people of God.

Learn how to pray like Moses.

And how does Moses stand in the gap between God and his people?

Well, first of all, he's selfless.

He completely empties himself of his ego.

And he says,

You know, this is not about me.

Because God had said in verse 14,

he was so ready to be done.

He said,

Let me alone, Moses,

so that I may destroy them

and blot out their name from under heaven.

And I will make you, Moses,

into a nation stronger and more numerous than they.

God is ready to scrap plan A,

start plan B.

He says,

Moses, you and your family can be the new chosen people.

But Moses ignores that offer completely.

And he just kind of says,

Okay, whatever, God.

But I'm going to redirect your attention

to things that are way more important

than little old Moses.

Namely, God, I want you to pay attention to your love

and to your promises

and to your character

and to your reputation

and to your power.

Walk with me through this prayer in verse 26.

Sovereign Lord, do not destroy your people,

your own inheritance that you redeem.

Redeemed.

God, remember your special love for your people.

Remember that they are your treasured possession,

your inheritance in the world.

And then he says in verse 27,

Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

God, remember the covenant promises that you've made,

that you swore to Abraham.

You'd give him seed and land,

that you'd give him a people and a place,

that you would provide him kids

and a home where they can live.

And God, you cannot go back on your word.

You have to be faithful and follow through

on what you said you're going to do.

And then he goes on in verse 27.

He says,

Overlook the stubbornness of this people,

their wickedness and their sin.

God, be who you are.

Be gracious.

Be patient.

Be forgiving.

Overlook and cover their sin by your mercy.

And then in verse 28, he says,

Otherwise, Egypt, the country from which you brought us,

will say,

Because the Lord was not able to take them,

and because he,

into the land that he promised them,

and because he hated them,

he brought them out to put them to death in the wilderness.

God, consider your reputation.

Do not let yourself become the laughingstock of the nations.

Do not let people misinterpret you as unable or unloving.

Father, hallowed be your name.

Do not let your name be dishonored

because of the stupidity of your people,

Moses says.

And then in verse 29, he says,

But they are your people,

your inheritance that you brought out

by your great power and your outstretched arm.

And Moses comes back to where he started this prayer

in verse 26 with the redeeming power of God.

And he says,

God, do what you do.

You rescued us in the past,

and now I'm asking,

save us from ourselves.

Can you imagine what would happen

if we begun to pray like this?

And if you pour out your hearts

and your longings and your hopes to God

like Moses does,

1 Peter 5 says that we're to cast our anxieties

on the Lord because he cares for us.

And a simple way that the Bible urges us to do this

is to tell God not only what we need

or what we want,

but to tell him why he should grant our requests.

Moses pours out his heart

by supporting his requests for mercy with arguments.

Moses makes a case to God,

and he appeals to God.

He says,

it's on the basis of what you've revealed about yourself,

your special covenant love,

the promises you've made,

your character of compassion,

your glory in the world,

your power to redeem.

And I want to suggest that we adopt Moses' example

of chutzpah in our prayers.

Could we be more bold and direct with God?

Rather than telling God what we need,

tell him why we need it on the basis of his word.

Imagine what God would do

if we prayed with this kind of persuasive urgency.

Now I've been slowly working my way

through the Marvel movies,

the Marvel Cinematic Universe with my kids,

and we're a little behind.

We're on Ant-Man,

and Ant-Man and the Wasp is our latest.

So pray for us as we try to catch up with the rest of you.

But I've learned that action films,

in action films,

the main actor or main actress has stand-ins

because it can take hours to set up a scene.

And so you get an actor

and then somebody who looks and acts like the actor

to stand there

until you're ready to film the actual scene, right?

And that's what's going on here.

Moses is a stand-in.

Moses is a placeholder,

a pointer to the main actor,

one better than Moses,

who will be an even more selfless advocate.

And that main actor comes on the scene,

and what does he pray for us?

He prays,

Father, forgive them,

for they don't know what they're doing.

Moses prays,

overlook their stubbornness and wickedness and sin.

And Jesus, the main actor,

when the final scene comes to be played,

he says,

Father, forgive them.

And when does Jesus pray this prayer for us?

He prays it

when he's slowly suffocating on the cross.

Historians tell us that

crucified revolutionaries died

with curses on their lips.

These were gruesome scenes.

There were screams of rage and pain and despair.

And so of all the words

of recrimination,

of condemnation,

of accusation that could have rung out,

what does Jesus say?

He says,

forgive.

Of all the prayers that I need prayed for me,

this one's the most essential.

Father, forgive him.

Not Father, help me,

but Father, forgive them.

Not Father, relieve me,

but Father, save them.

Jesus doesn't pray for himself.

He prays for us.

Jesus emptied himself

to become one of us

and he humbled himself to death on a cross

to become the selfless advocate

that we desperately need.

And he dares to ask God

for what only God can give.

Why does Jesus have the right

and the authority

to pray,

Father, overlook their stubbornness,

forgive their sin?

Because he's there,

fully God

and fully man

on the cross,

in our place,

as our substitute,

bearing our sin,

our guilt,

our shame,

receiving God's just judgment

judgment of death

that we deserve

in order that we might receive

the infinite mercy

and astonishing grace of God

that we don't deserve.

And the Apostle Paul

summarizes it this way

in 2 Corinthians 5.

He says,

God made him

who had no sin

to be sin for us

so that in him

we might become

the righteousness of God.

And so friends,

my question for us

is have you placed

your confidence

in this one

who's your only

selfless advocate

before God?

And are we ready

to renew our trust

and renew our covenant

with him today

in this one

who has secured

God's mercy for us

when he prayed for us

with us in mind

saying,

Father,

forgive him.

Father,

forgive her.

This is what we most need.

Our broken vows

call for a selfless advocate

but they also call

for a new life

of gratitude.

Our broken vows

call for a selfless advocate

and a new life

of gratitude.

It says in verse 12

of chapter 10,

now Israel,

what does the Lord

your God

ask of you?

Now that you've

experienced

the astonishing

mercy of God

and you've received

the infinite grace

of God

and you've been

powerfully saved,

what does the Lord

require of you?

What is the basic

grateful response

that's fitting

to such a reality?

And Moses says,

we're to fear,

walk,

love,

serve,

and observe.

Listen to verse 12.

This is what

it means to show

that we're grateful

to be the redeemed,

forgiven people

of God.

What does he ask

of you but to fear

the Lord your God,

to walk in obedience

to him,

to love him,

to serve the Lord

your God

with all your heart

and with all your soul

and to observe

the Lord's commands

and decrees

that I am giving you

today for your own good.

What does it mean

to fear the Lord?

It means to have

an attitude of respect

and reverence

for God

in everything that we do

that permeates

all other attitudes.

What does it mean

to walk in obedience?

It means to imitate God

in our ethical life.

What does it mean

that that word

in the center of the list

to love?

It means we're to reflect

the loyal love of God

back to him.

And what does it mean

when it says

we're to serve him?

It means we're to worship him

with our time

and our talents

and our treasures.

And then what does it mean

to observe his commands?

It means that we're to give

constant careful attention

to his revelation

in his written word.

And so I want to close

with two practical applications.

First for the Bible-less

and then for the fatherless.

A word about the Bible-less

and a word about the fatherless.

I've been reflecting on this term

a Bible-less Christian

which is a grotesque anomaly.

I know it's a contradiction

in terms

and I think it's not

a lack of Bibles.

It's not that we don't own them.

We have many of them at home.

We have infinite number

on our phones.

The problem is

that many Christians

just don't open them

or read them.

And why is that a problem?

Because if you claim

the mercy of God,

the mercy that Moses hopes for

and the mercy that Jesus secures,

then the basic thing

the Lord asks of us

is to observe his commands.

And where do we find those?

How can we observe

what we do not know

and what we're not regularly

informing ourselves about?

I want you to imagine

this newlywed couple, right?

And the husband says

to his new bride,

he says, you know,

I'm enjoying this relationship

but from now on

I'm not going to listen

to what you say.

I know words are going

to come out of your mouth.

I know you're going to

communicate things to me

but I've come up

with this brilliant idea

that we can have

a wordless relationship.

And so I don't really need

to hear from you

what you're thinking.

I don't really want

to hear from you

what you want

or what you need.

I'm just going to pop

these AirPods in

and I'm going to kind of

feel my way through

the vibes

of how to please you.

Now how is it going to go

for this new husband?

How do you think

the wife is going to

appreciate being ignored?

Or imagine if you have

a car and you need

to change the oil

and instead of consulting

the manual

from the manufacturer

you just pop the hood

and you start banging

around on the engine

and you go,

you know what,

I have a brilliant idea.

Water is so much cheaper

and cleaner than oil.

I think I'm going to put

water in this engine.

How's that going

to go for you?

Aren't you going

to wish that you

had relied on the maker

of the car

to tell you

how it runs?

Brothers and sisters,

we cannot live

a life of gratitude

to God

without His written

instructions

that He's given

to us

for what He wants

from us

and what will please Him

and how He's built

our lives to work.

And so if you find yourself

as a Bible-less Christian

this morning

and you feel

a little uncomfortable,

good,

I've done my job,

God,

we want you

to become

a self-feeder.

We want you

to go from nothing

to something.

We want you

to wake up tomorrow

and turn to Psalm 1.

Turn to the Gospel

of Matthew chapter 1.

Matthew 1 · chapter mention

If you don't know

what to do,

don't have a plan

for how to do it,

don't have a method,

come talk to me,

come talk to Andrew.

We want

no one here

to be a Bible-less

Christian

because God's

calling us

to observe

His commands

and to walk

in obedience

to what He said.

And the last thing

I want to say

is not just a word

for the Bible-less

but a word

about the fatherless

because when we open

and when we read

our Bibles,

we find it reveals

to us the heart

of our Creator

for His creation

and for the creatures

that He's made

in His image.

And we read things

like this

in verse 18.

He defends

the cause

of the fatherless

and the widow

and He loves

the foreigners

residing among you

giving them food

and clothing.

This tells us

that the Creator God

fixes His attention

not on the glory

and the power

of the wealthy

and the strong

but on the needs

of the poor

and the weak

and the vulnerable

and this fundamental

moral character

of a just

and merciful God

is to be reflected

in the society

and the culture

of His people.

And so I want

to just encourage

us as we close

to find one way

for every person

here to find one way

in this upcoming

holiday season

to defend one child.

One child

who at no fault

of their own

has become fatherless,

has become motherless.

One child

who's been orphaned

and whose needs

can be met

by your resources

and my resources.

And if you want

to know more

about what we're doing

with Care Portal

or Foster the City

or Compassion International

and other things,

email Andrew

and he will send you

to the right people

and the right opportunities

for how we're trying

to set up our church

to defend the fatherless.

But I want you

to imagine.

Imagine us being

a people

who with one hand

we've opened up

the powerful word

of God

and with the other hand

we're blessing

the vulnerable

image of God.

and I think

if we could do

those two things

open the word of God

and bless the vulnerable

image of God

we will have moved

the needle

pretty significantly

toward this new life

of gratitude

that God is inviting us

into us

whose sins

have been mercifully

forgiven.

Us

whose sins

have been

graciously

overlooked.

I hope and pray

this is so

in the name

of the Father,

the Son,

and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.