Deuteronomy 10 | Justin Grimm

Hello everyone, this is Pastor Benjamin.

You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, Orlando.

At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer.

For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com.

Stand now for our prayer of illumination and scripture reading.

Give us understanding that we may keep your law and observe it with our whole hearts.

Lead us in the path of your commandments, for we delight in you.

Turn our eyes from looking at worthless things and give us life in your ways to Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Our scripture today comes from Deuteronomy chapter 10, verses 12 through 22.

Deuteronomy 10:12–22

Please remain standing for the reading of God's Word.

And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you?

But to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good.

Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it.

Yet the Lord set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day.

Circumcise, therefore, the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn.

For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe.

He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.

Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.

You shall fear the Lord your God, you shall serve him and hold fast to him, and by his name you shall swear.

He is your praise, he is your God, who has done for you these great and terrifying things that your eyes have seen.

Your fathers went down to Egypt seventy persons, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in heaven.

This is God's word.

You may be seated.

Well, history would tell you that the very first heart transplant surgery took place on December 3rd, 1967.

But in the scriptures, we read that God has been in the business of giving new hearts for thousands of years.

And sometimes for us, it takes a failing heart to discover just how badly we need a new one.

Growing up, Ashlyn Moss was incredibly active.

She was a competitive dancer, cheerleader, and was active and involved in theater.

But she always noticed that she would quickly and easily get out of breath, more so than her peers.

Sometime even her lips would turn blue.

It was just before her senior year of high school that doctors finally discovered why something was seriously wrong with her heart.

Within just a few weeks, Ashlyn went into cardiac arrest and nearly died.

By 19, she was in heart failure.

For nearly a decade, she built her whole life.

So think about this: college, marriage, friendships, simply ordinary days around a heart that was failing.

Now, because this uh decline happened gradually, Ashlyn learned how to live with it.

But eventually she became so accustomed with living with a failing heart that she couldn't recognize how sick she actually was.

One day, when she walked into a doctor appointment, the doctor essentially said this Ashlyn, you're at the end.

Your heart cannot keep doing this.

You have a heart problem.

You see, when we read the scriptures, it's actually fair for us to see that we have this same diagnosis.

We have a heart problem.

If we were to go and look at verse 16 in the text itself, we might describe our heart problem like this: our stubborn hearts love idols more than the God who loves us.

But what does this actually mean?

The Reformed theologian John Calvin described it like this: the human heart is a perpetual idol factory.

But here's the truth.

I don't think any one of us wakes up in the morning and says, you know what I would like today?

I would like a new idol to give my heart to.

But here's how this actually plays out in life.

If we're single, or even if we are married, we might look at our marriages and think, if I just had that, then I would be loved the way that I have always dreamed of.

We might look at success and think, if I had success the way they do, then finally I would matter the way my heart longs for.

Perhaps we might look at wealth and think, if I had wealth, then finally I would be secure and I could begin to focus on giving my heart to God.

Or we look at pleasure and think, if I had that, then truly and finally my heart would be satisfied.

Whatever our idols of choice are, here's what they all have in common.

This is what idols do.

They overpromise and they underdeliver.

Where are we at here in the book of Deuteronomy, where there's been a rehearsal of Israel's history?

And if we look at earlier in Deuteronomy chapter 10, essentially here's what we find out: Israel gave their heart to another idol.

Deuteronomy 10 · chapter mention

Yahweh has remained faithful to Israel.

And now here is the question on the table in Deuteronomy 10, 12 through 22.

What kind of life does this God who remains faithful to you, even though you gave your heart to other idols, what kind of life does he deserve from you?

You see, here's what I believe we learn here in the text this morning in Deuteronomy chapter 10, verses 12 through 22.

Deuteronomy 10:12–22

Yahweh alone is worthy of all of our hearts and all of our lives.

One more time, Yahweh alone is worthy of all of our hearts and all of our lives.

And this morning, as we unpack the text, I think we're going to see that in these three points.

First, God wants all of your heart.

Second, look at the God who wants your heart.

And third, give your heart to the God who gives his heart to you.

God wants your whole heart.

Look at the God who wants your heart and give your heart to the God who gives his heart to you.

Let's go ahead and jump in.

God wants all of your heart.

So a little bit of context work needs to be done.

I've referenced it, but where are we at here in the book of Deuteronomy?

Uh, for lack of a better term, this is my language.

What's going on here is a DTR.

Now, if you are uh not a millennial or younger, I might need to explain what that means.

DTR is an acronym that simply means this: define the relationship.

Define the relationship.

You see, if we were to go back and read verses 1 through 11, there's a retelling of a very significant moment in Israel's and Yahweh's history.

What was this moment?

Well, it's the story of the golden calf.

You see, if we were to go back into the book of Exodus, we would read how with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, Yahweh rescued and delivered Israel from their slavery, from their bondage.

He parted the Red Sea, he crushed Israel's enemies, he brings them to Sinai, he enters into a covenant relationship with them, promising to be their God and calling them to follow him.

And then there's a moment of time where Moses goes up into the mountain and he's receiving instructions from Yahweh, and the people have to wait for a little bit.

They have to be patient for a little bit, and at the first opportunity, they betray their covenant vows and they give their hearts to an idol.

You see, verses one through ten retell this story, what happened previously, and then we arrive here in verse 12 and look at these poignant words, and now Israel.

You see what's going on here?

The shot clock is running.

There's less than 15 seconds on the clock, and the question is this what is going to be the play?

Well, how is Israel going to respond to the God who remains faithful to them?

Well, what we're going to see here, what does God actually call for?

Well, he calls for vows from Israel, but he gives them a good motivation.

He calls for vows, but he gives them a good motivation.

So going forward, what is this relationship with Yahweh meant to look like?

In one sentence.

All of life allegiance.

All of life allegiance.

Let's read verse 12 again together.

And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you but to fear the Lord, to walk in all of his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord.

Did you notice that?

Five imperatives fear me, walk with me, love me, serve me, keep my statutes.

This is a descriptive way in speaking to what?

In speaking to all of life.

The way that you worship, it belongs to me.

The way that you work, it belongs to me.

The way that you parent, the way that you are in community with one another, your joys, your highs, your lows, all of them, all of life belong to me.

All of us need all of Yahweh for all of life.

And why might this be significant in light of the history that has just been rehearsed?

You see, Deuteronomy, it's leading up to a new chapter, a new season, when Israel will no longer be wandering, but they will enter into the promised land.

And here's the truth.

When Israel enters into the promised land, they are going to experience the same temptation that they experienced at Sinai.

There will be times where God will seem distant.

There will be times where seemingly he isn't meeting their first their expectations.

And the first time they are let down, they don't get to return to idols to satisfy their heart's longing.

What does God demand for in these vows?

He demands all of life, allegiance.

But again, he gives a good motive behind this.

Verse 13, uh, which I am commanding you to uh which I am commanding you today for your good.

Again, he gives the five commandments fear me, walk with me, love me, serve me, keep my statutes.

Why?

For your good.

A couple weeks ago, when we were looking at Deuteronomy 5, we see this is how the laws of God work.

They're not arbitrary, they're not meant to hold us back from life, they're meant to give us life.

Or as verse 13 tells us, it is for our good.

God's commands aren't an attempt to keep us from flourishing.

You see, this is what idols do.

Lesser gods or idols, they promise to give us the good life.

But what do we see here?

God, Yahweh, knows what the good life actually is, and in relationship with him, he gives this to us.

It is for your good that you would give me all of life's allegiance.

There is a beautiful book that has some choice language that I commend to you called How to Stay Married.

You see, in this story, Harrison Scott Key, he believed that he knew the woman he built his life with, Lauren, his wife, the mother of their three daughters, a woman who had spent virtually her entire life in the church.

He thought he knew her.

But then on an ordinary autumn day, it was revealed that the marriage he thought he had wasn't the marriage that he actually had.

You see, Harrison discovered that Lauren was having an affair with a family friend.

Now he chose to forgive her and fight for their marriage, but forgiveness didn't end the story.

You see, as the story goes on, more confessions come, more betrayals surface, and eventually the question wasn't simply, can I forgive her?

The question became, after everything that has happened, how much of myself can I possibly give her again?

Harrison eventually tells Lauren that he will forgive her, but that he recognizes forgiveness cannot simply return them to the marriage that they had had before.

Too much had happened.

Whatever comes next necessarily will be different.

In that sense, his forgiveness becomes almost a promise.

Lord, even though you betrayed me, I'm willing to go forward with you, but we are not going to go backward.

If there is going to be a marriage on the other side of this, it will have to become something new.

The question becomes whether they can move beyond merely preserving the covenant and actually entrust themselves to one another again.

And that's what makes their eventual reconciliation so startling.

You see, they don't simply recover the marriage that they had before the betrayal, but it is through mercy, forgiveness, suffering, and the long work of reconciliation that something new begins to grow between them.

Harrison doesn't merely remain married to Lauren, he gives himself to her again, and their story becomes a picture of the difference of simply remaining in a covenant and once again giving someone your heart.

See, that's what is here on the table.

Yahweh is the one who was betrayed.

Yet Yahweh is the one who says, I will remain faithful to you, Israel.

How could I not?

I love you, I choose you, but what our relationship looks like going forward, it must be different.

What do we learn here in Deuteronomy chapter 10?

Deuteronomy 10 · chapter mention

Yahweh, the Lord, he takes our vows seriously.

So the first question then is if God wants all of your heart, and if God takes our vows seriously, the first question that we are called to ask is, do we?

New city, do you take your vows seriously?

The vows in your marriage, the vows in your workplace.

What about the vows in your church membership?

Yahweh takes them seriously, and he calls us to.

You see, if Yahweh wants all of my heart and all of my life, here's the next question, then, that the passage will continue to unfold.

It's this can I trust him with all of my heart with all of my life?

What kind of God is Yahweh?

And here is truly the beauty of this passage.

You see, Moses doesn't simply give another argument for why they can and they should trust Yahweh.

He shows them who Yahweh is.

New city.

Look at the God who wants your heart.

Specifically, this.

Look at the beauty of his love.

Look at the beauty of his character.

Look at the beauty of his care.

First, look at the beauty of his love.

Let's read again verses 14 and 15.

Behold, to the Lord your God belong uh belong heaven and the heaven of heavens and the earth and all that is in it.

Yet the Lord set his heart and love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day.

What's going on in verse 14 and 15?

We see the beauty of God's love in election.

He is the God of the cosmos, of the universe, of galaxies, of stars, of planets.

In him and through him all things hold together.

This is who Yahweh is, yet, grand and marvelous and spectacular as he is, what does he do?

He sets his heart's affections on you.

You see this wonderful and beautiful doctrine of election.

It's not meant for us to first speculate about who God chooses and why, and do we have free will or not?

Do you see it's actually meant to be beautiful?

It's meant to make God's people marvel.

Why would Yahweh set his love on us?

See the beauty of his love for you.

See the beauty of his character.

Verses 17 and 18.

For the Lord your God is God of gods, and the Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe.

He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.

You see, in other words, Yahweh is their king.

The people of God, they have lived under other kings, and how did that go for them?

More bricks, less straw, impatient taskmasters who treated them cruelly.

That is not who Yahweh is.

That is not how he will lead and love his people.

Look at his character.

He rules with justice.

He doesn't accept bribes, he's not manipulated, and he is impartial to all.

Look at the beauty of his care.

Verses 19.

Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were all sojourners in the land of Egypt.

And again, verse 18, he executes justice for the fatherless and the widow and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.

Do you see the beauty of his care?

He provides for the least of these.

What does he provide?

He provides them justice.

He provides them food.

He provides them clothing.

Remember, Yahweh demands all of life's allegiance, but do you see he provides all that we need for all of life?

And it goes even deeper than that.

The God who sees everything sees the people everyone else overlooks.

The fatherless, the widow, the sojourner.

And what effect does this have on God's people?

Look at verse 19.

It shows that beholding God's beauty changes his people.

The people who receive God's love begin loving the people God loves.

But there's one more thing.

There's one more thing here in this middle passage of the text.

Do you see Moses' technique?

Do you see how he goes about motivating?

Remember, this is an incredibly embarrassing.

This is an incredibly shameful story in Israel's history.

How easy would it be for Moses to tap into shame, which is not a good long-term motivator, but it is certainly an effective pill?

Does he touch on shame?

No.

He speaks to Yahweh's love.

He is the God who keeps covenant with you.

He is the God who is beautiful in his love and his character and his care over you.

And what does this lead to?

Well, this is my language here, but I believe the beauty of who God is leads to the beauty of doxology.

This is speculation.

It's pure speculation here at this point.

But notice in verse 21, Moses moves to the present tense.

I almost picture here that Moses knowing this is his farewell speech to his people, whom he has loved for 80 years of his life, whom he has wandered through the desert wilderness with, whom he himself has experienced this with God.

He himself has his own failures, yet has received God's love, character, and care.

And before this new generation will enter into the promised land, I read verses 21 and 22 almost as a spiritual father with tears in his eyes breaking out in doxology about who our God is.

He is your praise.

He is your God.

Here's the question that should be on all of our hearts when we look at the beauty of God's character.

Do we actually believe this?

You see, remember, what's on offer here in all the text is Yahweh alone, God alone, is worthy of all of our hearts and all of our lives.

And Moses shows us why.

Why?

The beauty of his love, his character, and his care.

And this should lead into an all-of-life doxology and praise because of who he is.

Do you believe this?

So, what's going on here in the text?

God, he wants all of my heart.

God certainly is worthy of all of my heart.

But as we spoke to earlier in the text, the problem remains.

My heart is divided.

One more time, let's read together verse sixteen.

Circumcise, therefore, the foreskin of your heart and be no longer stubborn.

In other words, what are we called to do here in verse 16?

Well, I think it's this give your heart to the God who gives his heart to you.

But how do we actually go about doing this?

You see, here's the thing that theologians and the people of God alike have realized.

The only way that we can give God all that he asked for is if God himself will provide.

And it's not here in Deuteronomy chapter 10 that we receive the promise of a new heart, but it's going to be later.

Deuteronomy 10 · chapter mention

It's going to be Moses' swan song near the very end of Deuteronomy that he will give this promise to Israel regarding their hearts.

Deuteronomy chapter 30, verse 6.

Deuteronomy 30:6

And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul, and that you may live.

So how do we do this?

How does God ultimately come through and fulfill his promise to be the one who will circumcise our hearts, to be the one who will give us the hearts that we need to fully give all of our hearts and all of our lives to him?

Well, I believe we don't look backwards for the answer, but we look forwards to the cross of Jesus Christ.

Romans 5.8 tells us this: that while we were still sinners, Jesus Christ died for us.

In John 19, 34, we are given what might seem like an insignificant, yet I believe a tremendously important detail.

As Jesus Christ is on the cross, his side is pierced.

And from his side flows what?

Flows both water and blood.

Medical professionals who are smarter and more intelligent than I am have concluded, based on this small detail in the Gospel of John, that when the spear went through his side, it necessarily pierced his heart.

In other words, we might say that on the cross, Jesus' very own heart was transplanted for yours.

You see, his living heart was pierced and made dead, so that your dead heart may be transplanted with his and made alive.

This is the hope of the scriptures.

This is the hope of the prophets that all of Scripture ultimately points to.

Here, Ezekiel chapter 36, verses 25 through 36 to 27.

Ezekiel 36:25–36

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all of your uncleanness, and from all of your idols I will cleanse you.

I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.

I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

It is looking at the cross of Jesus Christ and how God will ultimately be the one who will give us a new heart through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ that Deuteronomy 10, 21 now has a whole new meaning.

He is your praise.

He is your God who has done for you these great and terrifying things that your eyes have seen.

New city, what's the great and terrifying thing that our God has done for you?

Jesus Christ substituted himself on the cross in your place, that you may now have his heart and you may have his life.

Really, the only question that remains then is how do we respond to this God?

Well, again, the answer is here in verse 20.

You shall fear the Lord your God, you shall serve him, and here's the key you shall hold fast to him.

You see this language here in Deuteronomy verse 10, verse 20, hold fast.

This isn't the first time that we have heard this language.

In fact, the first time that this language is used in the scripture, it goes back to Genesis chapter 2.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

It goes back to the first wedding ceremony in the scriptures.

A man and wife shall leave their family of origin and do what?

They shall covenant, they shall hold fast to one another.

This is marriage language that Moses is using.

Israel, marry Yahweh with your heart's affections.

How do we do this?

Look at him.

Look at his love.

Look at his character.

Look at his care.

Look at what he has done for you in the person of Jesus Christ.

New city, he is your praise.

New city, he is your God.

Hold fast to him.

Remember Ashlyn's story?

Eventually, she reached the point where trying harder, it can no longer save her.

Her heart wasn't something she could rebilitate through greater effort.

She needed a heart that she could not give herself.

And so Ashlyn was placed on the transplant list.

One day, exciting news came she had a donor, but sadly, the first heart and the first donor had failed its final inspection.

She went home still waiting.

Four weeks later, another call came.

A 17-year-old boy had died.

His heart was a match.

For Ashlyn to live, she would have to receive life that came to her through the death of another.

And that life she did receive.

You see, it was the new heart that gave Ashlyn the life that the old one never could.

Within days, Ashlyn was able to walk for over 45 minutes on a treadmill.

Eventually, and recently, Ashlyn has ran a half marathon.

Ashlyn is a mother.

She can throw her little girl into the air.

Ordinary things that she had spent her life calculating around her failing heart became possible because now she is living with a heart that she had received as a gift.

But here's one of the most incredible things when I was able to connect with Ashlyn this last week.

Looking backwards, Ashlyn would tell you that she realized this wasn't actually the first time that God had given her a new heart.

You see, two weeks before the doctors ever diagnosed her with the disease in her physical heart, Ashlyn became a Christian.

And through nearly a decade of suffering, God had already begun doing spiritually what no surgeon could ever do.

Give her a heart that could trust him, love him, and follow him in all of life.

You see, Ashlyn couldn't exercise her way into a healthy heart.

She couldn't discipline her old heart into becoming a new one.

Someone had to die, and she had to receive a heart that she can never give herself.

A new city, do you see?

That is the gospel.

God wants all of your heart, but the good news isn't that Jesus came to tell people with idolatrous hearts to try harder.

The Son of God gave his life so people like us could be given new hearts.

And the God who tells us to love me with all of your heart, he is the God who, by his spirit, gives us a heart that is capable of loving him.

A new city.

Oh Father, how beautiful are you, Yahweh.

Lord, when we read the scriptures, we see the beauty of your love, of your character, and of your care.

And that is most demonstrated to us in the cross of Jesus Christ.

So we thank you for our Lord.

We thank you for our Savior.

We thank you that in him we have a new heart and a new life.

Because of this, may our hearts erupt in doxology, in praise.

May we uh own and claim the truths here in Deuteronomy.

You are our God, you are our praise.

Would your gospel grow deep roots in our heart that we might hold fast to you in all of life?

You are worthy of it all.

We love you.

It is in the name of Jesus we pray.

Amen.