"Who Will Bring It to Us?" Deuteronomy 30:11-14 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Well, if you have a Bible, would you please open it to Deuteronomy chapter 30?

Deuteronomy 30 · chapter mention

As you're turning there, thank you, Jesse, for letting me preach this series here on Sunday evenings.

I'm grateful.

Thank you, JJ and Jen, for leading music this evening.

We're going to be all over the Old Testament.

This evening, I'm excited to do so, to understand more of the clarity of Scripture.

We're in a five-week series trying to understand what I think is a critical doctrine, especially for our age, the clarity of Scripture.

And we come to Deuteronomy 30 in order to understand this next element of it.

Deuteronomy chapter 30, beginning in verse 11, I'll read for us.

Deuteronomy 30 · chapter mention

Moses says to the people of Israel, For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you.

Neither is it far off.

It's not in heaven that you should say, Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us that we may hear it and do it?

Neither is it beyond the sea that you should say, Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us that we may hear it and do it?

But the word is very near you.

It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.

See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil.

If you obey the commandments of Yahweh your God that I commend you today, by loving Yahweh your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and Yahweh your God will bless you in the land that you're entering to take possession of it.

But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today that you shall surely perish.

You shall not live long in the land that you're going over the Jordan to enter and possess.

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.

Therefore, choose life, that your offspring may live, loving Yahweh your God, obeying his voice, and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that Yahweh swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them.

So reads the word of the living God.

In 1524, Dutch humanist and renowned Roman Catholic scholar Desiderius Erasmus took up his quill to defend the obscurity of Scripture in a paper that came to be known as the Freedom of the Will.

This is what provoked Martin Luther to write in response the bondage of the will, in which he ably defends the clarity of scripture, though that's not the main issue.

But Erasmus begins by responding to some of what Luther has said and essentially asserting that the scriptures really are not that clear.

He has a number of ways of arguing this.

One is to say that he himself just really hates assertions.

He dislikes it when people make strong statements.

They're too dogmatic.

We would like to tone that down a little.

He also says scripture is obscure because, well, God is so big and mysterious.

How could you really expect to understand something he wrote?

He goes on to say that it's not profitable to, he says, quote, prostitute this kind of doctrine before the common herd, because only the enlightened and intellectual who have been ordained by the Roman Catholic Church can really understand the scriptures.

And ultimately, he says, Scripture is obscure such that, honestly, he might be right or wrong.

Does it really matter?

Is kind of his position.

Really, Erasmus's whole attitude towards the scriptures can be summed up in one aphorism that he said, quote, I dislike even truth that is subversive.

The question I would ask is subversive to who?

We began thinking about the clarity of Scripture last week, and I made the argument that scripture is in fact clear, that God has spoken clearly and supremely so in his word.

And we understood that scripture is clear because God is good, that it's flowing from the goodness of God, his desire to make himself known.

But your immediate question may be if you're a little bit skeptical, so then why doesn't it always seem so clear to me?

There are many passages that seem very hard for me to understand sometimes, and there's lots of debates, people disagreeing.

What do you mean the scripture is clear?

Well, really, there's two reasons why scripture can seem obscure to us, even though God has spoken clearly.

And it's either because of human limitation or human rebellion.

It's either human limitation or human rebellion.

What I mean by human limitation is, hey, listen, it was written a long time ago in a different language.

We got to do some work to translate to get back into that culture.

The cultural distance that happens because of time and place, that makes something harder to understand, right?

It's not a moral issue, it's just kind of an intellectual one.

But there's this other way in which the scriptures can be obscured and are universally.

And that is by human rebellion.

By a refusal to see and understand what God has clearly said.

The issue is not that God can't speak clearly or that he won't speak clearly.

He's powerful, he can, he's good, so he wants to.

But the issue is that, like Erasmus, in our sin, we do not want to listen to God clearly.

The primary reason the Bible itself gives for why Scripture seems so obscure to many is moral, not intellectual.

If you look throughout the Bible, you will find very few passages that deal with the challenge that translation or cultural distance creates for interpreting the scriptures, but you will find countless passages, and we'll go to many of them this evening, that deal with the human refusal to receive the scriptures and thereby rendering them obscure.

This is a unique characteristic of Scripture.

This isn't like other books.

You pick up a textbook on history, you could pick up a manual for fixing a car, you could read it, understand it completely fine, without ever having to submit to it.

But that's not how God's word works.

The way that scripture works, unlike any other book, is that in order for you to understand it clearly, you must obey it.

You must have a heart that is submissive to it.

God's word demands submission in order to be rightly understood.

Because all scripture is profitable to refuse that profit is to essentially blind ourselves.

Another way to say this would be that God requires obedience before he gives understanding.

We know this.

Proverbs chapter 1, verse 7.

Proverbs 1:7

Pastor Ryan quoted this morning that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

You want to have knowledge, you've got to fear God first.

You have to have a right relationship with God first, and then he gives understanding.

The reason why so many would say that the Bible is an enigmatic book of myths, impossibly hard and labyrinthine to understand.

The reason why they say that, the Bible says, is because they don't want to understand it.

They refuse.

And that is what Moses puts before Israel in Deuteronomy chapter 30.

Deuteronomy 30 · chapter mention

Look down at the text.

He says at the end of this incredible series of sermons to Israel on the plains of Moab, verse 11, for this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off.

He's anticipating an objection.

I know, you heard me say, probably about 50 times, you need to obey all the commandments that I command you today.

But I bet there's one of you out there who's got an excuse ready to fling out me.

Yeah, but what if it's too hard to understand?

So Moses says, Well, it's not.

It's not too hard to understand.

The word here for too hard meaning too fantastic, too wondrous, like it's beyond my physical capability to obey.

Or I can't mentally grasp something that's so divine.

He says, No, that's not the case.

God spoke so that you could understand.

He spoke in human language, human terms.

You can get this.

He says, it's not far off, it's not inaccessible, it's not esoteric, it's not ungraspable or ambiguous.

You can get this.

And then he uses these two illustrations, verse 12.

It's not in heaven that you should say, who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us that we may hear it and do it?

As if that's actually what you wanted to do if you had gotten it.

Saying, This isn't a book full of angelic codes that you need someone to come down from the altar on high to somehow divine for you.

No, this is written in Hebrew, your language, the language you speak.

It's totally accessible to you.

But then he says, Neither is it beyond the sea that you should say, Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us that we may hear it and do it?

Listen, you don't have to go on some epic of Gilgamesh quest to get access to the meaning of the truth of this text, okay?

When I said, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, what do you think that meant?

It's obvious.

You don't need some Herculean effort, some human endeavor beyond simple listening to get this.

That's what he says, verse 14.

The word is very near you.

He couldn't emphasize it more.

It's as close as it can get to you.

He's using a spatial metaphor to try to help them understand clarity.

The word is right there.

It's so close to you, in fact, he says, it's in your mouth.

Like while I'm speaking to you, it's not just going in your ear, it's going into your mouth so that you could literally explain it to someone else if you had to.

And he's going to command you to explain it to your kids.

And he says, it's in your heart.

It actually has gotten into your mind and into your understanding.

There's no rejecting that.

It's so obvious and so clear.

You cannot say that it's not there.

But look at what the point of it is.

It's in your mouth and in your heart.

Why?

So that you can do it.

The reason God speaks is not just to be heard, but it is to be obeyed.

The question is, will you?

Christopher Ash writes, quote, the goal of the Bible is Bible performance, not Bible interpretation.

Will you do it?

Or will you refuse?

And so be blinded.

That's what Moses says.

He says, there's two options here.

Only two.

Life, good, death, evil.

What you choose to do will determine whether or not this book will make any sense to you.

You choose life, you choose good, then you get to love the Lord your God, you get to walk in his ways, you get to keep his commandments, his statutes, and his rules.

You understand the whole thing.

So well that you can obey it.

But look at this, verse 17, he says, If your heart turns away and you will not hear.

Will not hear.

But are drawn away to worship other gods, idolatry, then you're gonna perish.

What's that about?

Will not hear.

I thought, I thought this was so clear, it was so obvious that everyone knew it.

Well, yes, it is.

But you can refuse to understand it.

That's what's going on.

If you prefer idols to God, then he will give you the ignorance you want.

This is how Augustine puts this.

The scriptures speak the truth and do not say things that in any way contradict one another, as long as the reader approaches them piously, reads them humbly, and asks, not with the mind of a heretic that leads to quarrels, but with a believing heart that produces edification.

That the scriptures, in order to be rightly understood, must be obeyed.

What Satan started in the garden was a rejection of obedience, leading to a darkness and understanding.

And I bother belaboring this point, and I'm gonna keep belaboring it the rest of this evening, because I think when most people think about the clarity or obscurity of Scripture, they're thinking in purely intellectual terms.

They're thinking just in terms of what I can figure out, putting a puzzle together.

And I just need all the right pieces or a right set of lenses, something like that.

I just need another commentary, maybe, or I need a logos.

Maybe I need to go to seminary, I need an ivory tower education, who knows?

But Moses is telling us, as will the whole rest of the Old Testament, that the primary barrier to a right understanding of Scripture is your own choice.

It is volitional, not intellectual.

But you should ask a question: why does it work that way?

Why is it that God wrote a book in such a way that you have to submit to it in order to understand it?

Why do that?

And I'm gonna illustrate in a couple ways, partially from my own life and then and then from the text.

Imagine, hypothetically, uh a four-year-old and a father who tells his four-year-old to go put on his PJs at night.

Hypothetically.

And then he goes to the room, and then the father comes in some minutes after and finds the child in the room playing, no PJs.

Why not?

says the father.

Says the four-year-old.

Well, I thought that when you said go to the room and put on the PJs, you meant I could go to the room and kind of hang out for a while and play and then eventually put on my PJs.

I added a time delay in there.

Was that misunderstanding because the command was unclear?

All the parents in the room said, No, of course not.

Why was it interpreted poorly?

Because he didn't want to.

He had some other objective besides right understanding and obedience that caused him to misinterpret that statement.

The same thing happens in the whole of the world, Paul says.

Turn with me to Romans chapter 1.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

We're gonna be all over the Bible.

Turn with me to Romans chapter 1.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

I just want to illustrate this in a couple ways.

And first by turning to general revelation.

General revelation.

Paul shows us that it's not just the Bible that gets rejected in its interpretation, it's the whole world.

And there's really one key issue behind it.

Romans chapter 1, verse 18, Paul writes, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

Romans 1:18

So it's not by their ignorance they suppress the truth, it's by their unrighteousness, their unwillingness.

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.

For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and things that have been made.

So they're without excuse.

Meaning, you look outside at the sky and at the trees and the sea and God's animal kingdom that he created, you look at everything, and God is the most obvious reality out there.

He obviously made all of that.

To the degree that it says it's been clearly perceived.

It's not just that he said it all clearly, I made this.

It's that everyone knows he made this.

So what's the problem?

Why doesn't everyone acknowledge that?

Verse 21 for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him.

It's a problem of worship.

And the consequence is they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.

It was a kind of willful blindness.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal men and birds and animals and creeping things.

So do you see the problem?

God speaks in his creation.

I'm glorious, I deserve worship.

Mankind looks at that creation, says, I get that, I don't want to worship you.

I would rather worship me or some other stuff around me, so I'm going to pretend like I didn't hear that.

I'm going to choose to interpret it differently.

And idolatry gives way to foolishness.

Do you see how it's a it's a moral issue?

It's a choice.

It's not just a problem with thinking only, it starts in the heart.

This is how you get all of the idolatrous religions around the world as crazy as they seem.

There's a temple in India called the Temple of Karni Mata, in which dwell 25,000 rats who are revered and worshipped every day.

They are fed expensive food, cheeses, and people go and pay homage to them.

There are people starving outside of this temple while rats are eating inside.

Do you see how foolish that is?

Why?

Why would someone do that?

Because they don't want to worship God.

They don't want to obey the God who has made himself known.

Paul says essentially the same thing, but just from a different angle in Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

Ephesians chapter 4, he says this kind of from a moral angle.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

He says, Ephesians 4, 17, now this I say, and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds.

They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them.

The question is, how did that ignorance get there?

Look at the text.

Due to their hardness of heart.

The first problem was the hardness of heart.

The second problem was the ignorance.

The hard heart makes them ignorant.

Or if you could put it in a simpler way, sin makes you stupid, right?

This is why we live in a society that doesn't know what a woman is anymore.

It didn't start as intellectual confusion, it started as a choice.

So you say, how does that relate to scripture then?

Well turn to 1 Corinthians, verse 1.

1 Corinthians 2 · chapter mention

Corinthians chapter 2, where Paul is going to make this very plain.

1 Corinthians chapter 2, Paul is showing us the action of the Holy Spirit in revealing truth to us.

1 Corinthians 2 · chapter mention

And in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 14, he says, the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God.

1 Corinthians 2:14

That word accept, it's the word for welcome into.

Like you would have hospitality and bring someone into your home.

The natural person, meaning someone outside of Christ, born in their sin, does not welcome in, willingly receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is thereby not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

Do you see the same problem?

It's the heart refusing to accept the truth of God, which causes the mind then to reject it.

This is why there's people who are trying to make evolution jive with Genesis, right?

People who say, well, Jesus never really claimed to be God.

Have you read this thing?

I think most of the conversations that I have with folks on college campus or elsewhere who have all kinds of vitriolic criticism against the Bible, usually one question will dismantle the whole thing.

Hey, just quick, quickly, have you read it?

Oh, okay, you haven't.

It doesn't keep them from making strong pronouncements against it.

It's because they don't want to.

It's that simple.

I want to live the life I want to live, and if I believe what this text says and submit to the clear truth that's in it, well then something's got to change.

I don't want that.

I'll throw one more in here.

I didn't put a slide up for this one, but 2 Corinthians chapter 3, Paul says this with respect to the Jews.

2 Corinthians 3 · chapter mention

2 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 12.

2 Corinthians 3:12

Since we have such a hope, 2 Corinthians 3.12, we are very bold, not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face, so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end.

But their minds were hardened.

For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away.

Yes, to this day, whenever Moses is read, meaning the Torah being read in a synagogue, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts.

But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.

So do you see the problem?

It's not an intellectual one first, it's a moral one.

It's a decision.

They're wide and crooked, and they can lead you the wrong way.

Then he says this the right path is obvious, but it isn't always the easiest.

So the question before you Moses sets it before you will you have obedience and clarity, or will you have idolatry and obscurity?

Those are the two options.

When it comes to the text of Scripture, you can either say, Yes, I will submit my whole life and my whole heart to everything that this God demands of me in this book, and then the whole thing opens up.

Or you can refuse, and it will remain as hard as stone.

Or if you like something that rhymes, hear and obey, clear as day.

So what I want to do this evening, with the time that we have left, is just walk through the Old Testament in a short way and persuade you to choose life.

I want to persuade you of the foolishness of rejecting obedience to God's word and accepting an obscure Bible.

And instead, I want to compel you to submit your heart wholly to this God who has spoken clearly, and so find his word to be life to you.

And to do that, I want to show you how it went for Israel after the plains of Moab.

And what we'll see in the story of Israel is these two options over and over and over again: obedience and clarity, or idolatry and obscurity.

We'll pick up the story in 2 Kings chapter 17, so we're skipping a lot.

2 Kings 17 · chapter mention

2 Kings chapter 17, where the nation, the northern nation of Israel, is fallen.

2 Kings 17 · chapter mention

They have plunged themselves into idolatry and failed to understand the very clear commands of God, and instead pursued idols over and over and over again.

And they become a kind of warning to the people of Judah.

And it says this in 2 Kings 17, verse 13.

2 Kings 17:13

Do you hear in there any hint that there was anything obscure or hard to understand about what they were saying?

No, right?

The expectation all along is all these prophets keep coming and just saying, obey God, it's right there.

Why didn't they?

Verse 14, but they would not listen.

Would not.

It's not they did not, although that's also true, but it says they would not listen, but were stubborn, as their fathers had been, who did not believe in Yahweh their God.

They despised his statutes and his covenant that he made with their fathers and the warnings that he gave them.

They went after false idols and became false.

You realize you become like what you worship, right?

You worship false idols, you become false.

You worship the clear-speaking God, you get to see clearly.

So this becomes a kind of warning, a parable for the nation of Judah left in the south.

What are they to do then?

Well, turn with me to Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 6.

Isaiah 6 · chapter mention

Isaiah, who was ministering shortly after this, actually during this time, but uh we'll look at some of the passages that he wrote a little bit after this.

He's ministering during the reign of Ahaz, who was a wicked king.

He was called the day after Uzziah's death, and during his call, he hears God say this to him.

This is Isaiah chapter 6, verse 9.

Isaiah 6:9

And he that is God said, Go and say to this people, and here's Isaiah's message, keep on hearing, but don't understand.

Keep on seeing, but don't perceive.

Make the heart of this people dull and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes, lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.

He's saying, Your message is to go and proclaim repentance to this people, and you must know at the outset of it that they will reject it.

Your whole preaching ministry, Isaiah, is going to be you preaching to a hard-hearted nation, at least up until Hezekiah, who will continually repel all of my word such that they can hear it, they can go in one ear, but they won't understand it.

They won't submit to it.

And that leads to this episode that we find in Isaiah chapter 28.

Isaiah 28 · chapter mention

Turn with me there to Isaiah 28, where Isaiah is rebuking on behalf of God the priests and the prophets, kind of like in Malachi's day, who were so evil and so letters and sinful that they had given themselves to alcoholism.

They're drunk all the time.

Isaiah chapter 28, verse 7.

Isaiah 28:7

These also reel with wine and stagger with strong drink.

The priest and the prophet reel with strong drink.

They are swallowed by wine, they stagger with strong drink.

They reel in vision, they stumble in giving judgments.

They're drunk while they're at work.

And then he says, this for all tables are full of filthy vomit with no space left.

I mean, just a dramatic, grotesque picture of how sinful they'd become.

These are the leaders, the spiritual leaders of Israel.

So God says, To whom will he teach knowledge?

To whom will he explain the message?

Those who are weaned from the milk?

Am I just going to let talk to babies now?

The only people who aren't drunk that I can talk to?

Because, look, verse 10, for it's just precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, and line upon line, here a little, there, a little.

Hebrew is interesting.

It could just, I think probably the best way to understand this is it's our equivalent of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

That's what it sounds like in the Hebrew.

It's like the you know, Charlie Brown parents is what's going on here.

That's what God's word sounds like to them.

That's the noises that babies make, and that's what God's word sounds like to these prophets, because they can't understand a lick of it.

Verse 11 for by people of strange lips, with a foreign tongue, Yahweh will speak to his people.

I'm gonna send someone outside of this nation to speak to them, to whom he said, This is rest.

Give rest to the weary, and this is repose, yet they wouldn't hear.

And the word of Yahweh will be to them precept upon precept, precept upon precept, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It's just so many words.

I wonder if that's been you, if that's been your experience, your life, that you've gone to church, you've heard sermons, that's all it's ever been.

Just meaningless people talking over and over and over again.

What does this have anything to do with me?

Well, it has everything to do with you.

Because the God who speaks through this word has called you to obedience to him.

Isaiah chapter 29, he continues the refrain.

Isaiah 29 · chapter mention

Look at verse 11, Isaiah 29, 11.

And the vision of all this has become to you like the words of a book that's sealed.

Book meaning scroll in their day, sealed, they would have a wax seal they put on it, so you can't open it.

The vision has become like a book that's sealed.

When men give it to one who can read, saying, read this, he says, I can't, for it's sealed.

And when you give the book to one who cannot read, saying, read this, he says, Well, I can't read.

It doesn't matter who you ask, the point is it's sealed.

It's so unclear to them because they are so sinful and disobedient to God that it's like they can't even open the Bible.

It is stuck shut.

That's why Martin Luther said, it's true that for many people much remains abstruse.

But this is not due to the obscurity of Scripture, but to the blindness or indolence of those who will not take the trouble to look at the very clearest truth.

Let miserable men therefore stop imputing with blasphemous perversity the darkness and obscurity of their own hearts to the holy clear scriptures of God.

Isaiah says, I set before you obedience and clarity, or idolatry and obscurity.

Let's move along in Israelite history to Josiah.

Josiah came in the line of Hezekiah and then Manasseh and then Amon.

There were some idolatrous kings in there, and then Josiah becomes the king when he's eight years old.

It seems that he becomes a worshiper of Yahweh when he's 16, and when he's 20, he starts some kind of programs to reform worship in the country.

But it didn't really get kicked off until he is 26.

Turn with me to 2 Kings chapter 22.

2 Kings 22 · chapter mention

2 Kings chapter 22.

2 Kings 22 · chapter mention

We're doing more sword drills in a water right now.

I love it.

2 Kings chapter 22.

2 Kings 22 · chapter mention

And at the age of 26, a discovery is made.

I'm sure you've heard the story.

2 Kings 22, verse 8.

2 Kings 22:8

And Hilkiah the high priest said to Shapon the secretary, I found the book of the law in the house of Yahweh.

It's likely that this is just Deuteronomy here at this point, but we don't necessarily know.

And Hilkiah gave the book to Shapon and he read it.

And Shapon the secretary came to the king and reported to the king.

He gave him a report of everything that he did.

And then Shapon the secretary told the king, Hey, and by the way, Hilkiah the priest has given me a book.

I love the understatement there.

And Shaphan, I guess like bedtime reading, read it before the king.

So how does Josiah respond?

Is it the same?

It's just a closed book, can't understand it.

When the king heard the words of the book of the law, he tore his clothes.

And the king commanded Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam the son of Shaphan, and Akbar the son of Mekiah, and Shaphan the secretary, and Asiah the king's servant, saying, Go inquire of Yahweh for me, and for the people for all of Judah concerning the words of this book that has been found, for great is the wrath of Yahweh that's kindled against us.

I mean, he got it right away.

Doesn't say there was any sermons preached.

Doesn't say he took a class on it.

He just heard it read.

And he understood it like that.

Why?

Well, they consult a prophetess, and she comes and says this, this is verse 18, thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, regarding the words that you've heard, because your heart was penitent and you humbled yourself before Yahweh when you heard how I spoke against this place and against its inhabitants, that they should become a desolation and a curse.

And you have torn your clothes and wept before me, I also have heard you, declares Yahweh.

You know why it made sense to him?

Because he was willing to obey it.

He was willing to be broken over his sin and to mourn over his unrighteousness and the unrighteousness of the people.

And this then launches into one of the greatest revivals in the history of Israel.

I mean, he goes to town, destroying, I mean, just read chapter 23 sometime, destroying all kinds of different idols, up, down, left, and right.

It's also just incredible there were so many idols there.

There are idols up in the temple in the Holy of Holies.

There's apparently male cult prostitutes that he kicks out of the temple.

He goes down to the valley, stops people from killing their babies.

He burns these chariots that are dedicated to false gods.

He even brings back the Passover.

Nobody has celebrated the Passover.

For millennia, not millennia, for centuries.

And all of a sudden, here we have people who just read the book and do it.

It's kind of that simple if you're willing to obey.

That he reads all this book in the hearing of the people, and the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before Yahweh to walk after Yahweh and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written on the book.

And all the people joined in the covenant.

That's why.

That's why they got it.

Because they're willing to obey it.

Josiah, I set before you today obedience and clarity, or idolatry and obscurity.

Let's move forward a little bit to Jeremiah.

Jeremiah, turn with me to Jeremiah chapter 6.

Jeremiah 6 · chapter mention

This is fun, isn't it?

You never go to Jeremiah 6.

Right after this incredible reformation from Josiah, there seems to be a kind of counter-reformation among the people.

They rebel against what's happening, if not fully during the lifetime of Josiah, then certainly during the lifetime of one of his sons, Jehoiakim, who becomes king shortly thereafter.

And he reinstitutes much of the high places and the idolatry.

So Jeremiah starts preaching into that context where nobody wants to hear what he has to say.

Jeremiah chapter 6, verse 10.

Jeremiah 6:10

Behold, their ears are uncircumcised, they cannot listen.

Why not?

Why is it worthless for him to even preach?

Behold, the word of Yahweh is to them an object of scorn.

They take no pleasure in it.

That's why.

Sorry, Jeremiah chapter 8, verse 7.

Jeremiah 8:7

He says, even the stork in the heavens knows her time.

And the turtle doves swallow and crane keep the time of their coming.

But my people know not the rules of Yahweh.

Like even birds get it.

And you don't.

It's so obvious.

Why don't you?

Verse 8, how can you say we are wise and the law of Yahweh is with us?

But behold, the lying pen of the scribes has made it into a lie.

The wise men shall be put to shame.

They shall be dismayed and taken.

Behold, they have rejected the word of Yahweh.

So what wisdom's in them?

If you reject God's word, you have zero access to wisdom.

Because this is where it's found.

There has to be a submissive heart that is willing to receive whatever God would say.

And just to put it more explicitly, Jeremiah chapter 17, verse 23, yet they did not listen or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck that they might not hear and receive instruction.

Jeremiah 17:23

Do you see?

Over and over and over and over again, the Bible is telling us that the problem with God's people not receiving the word is because they don't want to.

Because they have hard hearts and stiff necks.

It's not because it's too complicated or esoteric, it's just because it requires something of them.

And this leads them to be foolish in their thinking.

D.A.

Carson tells of a former pastor and PhD student who had an affair who left the ministry and then posted the following on social media.

Quote, here's my public contribution during Pride Month.

Whenever I talk with a conservative Christian or pastor about homosexuality now, whatever I actually end up saying to them, what I'm actually thinking is, look, I've done biblical and theological training at a very high level.

At least as high, if not higher, than you.

And I'm telling you, you don't know for sure.

You don't know for sure that your reading in the Bible is right.

Or if your hermeneutics are correct.

You don't know for sure how interwoven or way the divine and human authorship of the Bible is.

You do not know that.

Which makes me an LGBTQ plus affirming Christian.

And I should be willing to say that more.

Happy Pride Month, end quote.

Why does someone get to that point?

Is it because the Bible's unclear about homosexuality?

I don't think so.

I think it's because they've got an agenda.

Because there's a demand that God has placed on this man's life that he's unwilling to obey.

I set before you today obedience and clarity, or idolatry and obscurity.

One last vignette to go to.

Travel with me to Nehemiah.

Nehemiah chapter 8.

Nehemiah 8 · chapter mention

The people have gone into exile and returned according to God's law.

Everything that he said, it all happened.

Now they're back in the land.

Ezra has rebuilt the temple along with the people.

Nehemiah has come along, helped them rebuild the walls.

And now the people are ready to hear God's word.

Nehemiah chapter 8.

Nehemiah 8 · chapter mention

I know many of you are here for Jesse preaching through this recently in the evening service, so this will be no surprise to you, but just want to highlight a couple things.

Nehemiah 8, verse 1.

Nehemiah 8:1

And all the people gathered as one man into the square before the water gate.

And they told Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses that Yahweh had commanded Israel.

So Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly, both men and women, and all who could understand what they heard on the first day of the seventh month.

And he read from it, facing the square before the water gate, from early morning until midday, that's about six hours, in the presence of the men and women, and note this, and those who could understand.

And the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law.

And Ezra the scribe stood on a woman wooden platform they had made for that purpose, and beside him stood a bunch of guys.

And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people, and he opened it, and all the people stood, and Ezra blessed Yahweh, the great God, and all the people answered, Amen, Amen, lifting up their hands, and they bowed their heads and worshipped Yahweh with their faces to the ground.

So we know what kind of attitude they have going into this, don't we?

What do you think is gonna happen?

Also, these guys, the Levites, helped the people to understand the law while the people remained in their places.

It's not entirely clear whether helped there is a kind of like exposition or if it was a translation, because they were mostly speaking Aramaic at that point.

I think it's probably related to translation work, but the point is they helped the people somehow to understand it while the people stand there.

Then verse 8.

They read from the book, from the law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense so that the people understood the reading.

It's that simple.

I want to worship God.

I want to obey God.

I read God's word, it makes sense.

And look at the last verse here.

And all the people, verse 12, all the people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make great rejoicing because they had understood the words that were declared to them.

Man, is that how you feel on Sunday night?

You just got to hear a whole day's worth of Bible and you understood it.

I hope you go away rejoicing.

Rosaria Butterfield was a lesbian professor who hated the Bible, hated Christianity, until a pastor encountered her and challenged her with love to read the Bible, and she did.

And this is her own testimony of her conversion in an interview she did.

She said, Quote, something powerful changed.

I'll tell you, it didn't change overnight.

I read through the Bible about seven times.

I wrestled with everything from its internal hermeneutics to its canonicity to its questions of authority.

I was really wrestling with the idea, that very audacious idea, really, that this book has a birthright and a progeny totally different from every other book on the planet.

And in the process of that, a very simple thing happened.

And that's that the Bible got to be bigger inside me than I was.

And that's when everything changed.

See, I set before you today life and good, death and evil.

The question of the clarity of scripture, most fundamentally, is a question of your heart.

God has spoken clearly.

If you would read it clearly, would you obey it?

The Bible is clear if you obey.

But you might say, obey who?

What do we read?

In the middle of our service earlier.

Paul himself, quoting Deuteronomy chapter 30, says, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, then you'll be saved.

Deuteronomy 30 · chapter mention

If you say that Jesus is my master, he is in charge of my life, and I will obey and follow him whatever he says, then you'll be saved.

This whole thing will make total sense.

Choose Christ.

Choose life.

You know, I think of so many of us have non-believing family members and friends and coworkers and relatives.

And it's true that we ought to have incredible compassion on them because they have darkened hearts and minds.

They don't understand.

And in some ways they can't.

But I think what Moses would tell us is that really it's that they won't.

And when you're sharing Christ with them, I hope that in the midst of your compassion, you also put it to them the way that Moses did.

That you let them know that ultimately, this is not a question of did Jonah actually spend three days in the fish?

Could a guy actually physically rise from the dead?

Is that possible?

What's the scientific likelihood of a worldwide flood?

I mean, no.

That's not the issue.

The issue is your heart.

What are you choosing?

Who do you serve?

Do you serve idols or will you serve God?

The clarity of Scripture depends on a choice.

Let me ask you then, believers, friends, rather than leaving this at a broad level, let's make it real specific.

What's just one command in the Bible that's kind of hard for you right now?

Like one that's just a hard pill to swallow.

I'm gonna guess you know the text right away.

What's the one thing that Scripture says that right now in your life, you're like, I don't really want to do that?

That's the one.

If you want to grow in godliness, if you want to understand more of God's word, if you want to continue to grow in grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, that's the one.

That's the one you need to submit your heart to.

That's the one you need to obey.

What will you choose?

Let's pray.

Teach us, Lord, full obedience, holy reverence, and true humility.

Test our thoughts and our attitudes in the radiance of your glory, we pray.

Give us eyes to see, hearts to obey.

Father, you have set before us a scripture that can be understood by all who will come to it in faith.

Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

So would you grant that faith?

Would you revive that faith?

Would you work in us such a faith that no matter what your word says, we will say yes.

Let goods and kindred go.

This mortal life also, the body they may kill, God's truth abideth still.

Oh God, your word is eternal and your worship is forever.

May we be submissive and obedient to you this week.

We pray all of this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with Jesus.