Scott Brown's sermon, 'The Word is Near You,' focuses on Deuteronomy 30 and the final exhortations of Moses to the Israelites. Brown explores the themes of obedience, covenant, and the proximity of God's word. Moses uses a metaphorical time travel to illustrate the consequences of obedience and disobedience, emphasizing God's promise of restoration and compassion. The sermon discusses the circumcision of the heart as a symbol of the New Covenant, representing true faith and dedication to God. Brown encourages individuals to fulfill their God-given roles, warning against the dangers of worldly distractions. The sermon underscores the importance of choosing life, adhering to God's commandments, and understanding the broader context of redemptive history, ultimately pointing to the gospel of Jesus Christ and the eternal promise of spiritual land.

Chapter 30. Now it shall come to pass when these things come upon you, the blessing and the course which I have said before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God blesses you. And you return to the Lord your God and obey his voice according to all that I command you today. You and your children, with all your heart and with all your soul, that the Lord your God will bring you back from captivity and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where the Lord your God has escorted you. If any of you are driven out of the farthest part under heaven, From there the Lord your God will gather you and from there he will bring you.

Then the Lord your God will bring you to the land which your fathers possess and you shall possess it. He will prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers. And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul that you may live. Also the Lord your God will put all these courses on your enemies and on those who hate you, who persecuted you. And you will again obey the voice of the Lord and do all His commandments which I command you today.

The Lord your God will make you abound in all the work of your hand, in the fruit of your body, in the increase of your livestock, in the produce of your land for good, for the Lord will again rejoice over you for good as He rejoices over your fathers, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God to give His commandments and His statutes which are written in this Book of the Law, and if you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. For this commandment which I command you today is not too mysterious for you, nor is it far off. It is not in heaven that you should say, Who will ascend into heaven for us and bring it to us that we may hear it and do it? Not 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 in your mouth and in your heart that you may do it.

See that I see I have said before you today life and good, dead and evil, in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments, His statutes, and His judgments, that you may live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you go to possess. But if your heart turns away so that you do not hear and are drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, I announce to you today that you shall surely perish. You shall not prolong your days in the land which you cross over the Jordan to go in and possess. I call heaven and earth as witness today against you, that I have said before you, Life and death, blessing and cursing, therefore choose life that both you and your descendants may live, that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey his voice, and that you may cling to him, for he is your life and the length of your days, and that you may dwell in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them.

Heavenly Father, I pray today that you put in our hearts the fear of the Lord and I want to pick up a passage in which Ray has hears and tells the two spies of Joshua the following words, For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea, For when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were on the other side of the Jordan, Sihon and Auch, and as soon as we heard these things, our hearts melted. Neither did there remain any more courage in anyone because of you for the Lord your God He is the God in heaven above and on earth in me Heavenly Father give us today the fear of you the wonder for your great works and the heart of praise for all your mercies. In His name we pray. It's wonderful to see the explanations that are here. What it means to you when that's the condition of your life.

So this passage has been such a sweetness on the one hand and also such a terror because there are so many things that are hard to understand. But Moses, of course, as you know, is giving three speeches to the children of Israel. Each one of them is designed to equip them for the work of the ministry that he has. For them, the first speech in chapters 1 through 4 focuses on the trustworthiness of God, and the theme of it is, I carried you. The second speech is from chapter 5-28 and the focus is on the laws of God and the theme of it is, I have instructed you.

And then this last speech here, it begins in chapter 29 and continues on, focuses on the covenant people of God. And the message is, I have a covenant with you to live in a certain way in the land. And so, Chapter 29, as we saw last week, outlines this covenant of the people and then ends with a prophecy of Israel's exile and their dispersion. And then it ends with this statement about the secret things which belong to the Lord our God and the things that revealed that belong to us. So in this, in chapter 30, you find both.

You find things revealed and you find things secret, shadows, difficult historical matters to try to understand and yet that do have words about them in scripture. So they are both revealed, but yet shadows at the same time. And so now in chapter 30, Moses is continuing to plead with the children of Israel, to grab them by the shoulders and to say, oh, people of Israel, listen to these words. And Moses is arguing with the people of God to be faithful to him. He starts by transporting them into the future in the verses one through 10.

He sort of does time travel and looks back. And then in verses 11 through 14, he speaks of the nature of this salvation that's spoken of in the first part of this sort of time travel. And then finally, he makes it very clear that we're talking life and death here. So that's the basic outline of the text here. And what is found here just helps us to understand really the sweep of redemptive history, as well as how it applies right here today in this church.

And so it's a very helpful thing. So first, let's turn to this first section, the prophecy of future restoration in verses one through ten. And there are a number of things here that help us to understand what salvation is, what it really means. And I'm going to give you nine things here that are identified. All nine of these are shadows of the gospel.

And all of these things happen to those people whose God is the Lord. And so it's a very amazing section. First of all, they wake up in verse 1, it says, Now it shall come to pass, when all these things shall come upon you the blessing and the curse which I have set before you." So he's you can see he's talking about a future time. It shall come to pass. It's a It's like a time warp.

It's like getting transported into the future. Moses, of course, is speaking to three million people, and he's trying to take them as a people and plant them hundreds of years into the future. And so he's giving them a sense of redemptive history, a time of look back into the time. And he's transporting them to some time and scholars have said it's this time or that time. But they're sitting in this time of history and they're looking back almost as if on time travel.

And here he's predicting that When they're in this place, that something will happen in their minds, that something will snap in their brains, and they're scattered across the earth, and in that time, something will come into their mind that will change absolutely everything for them. He says, and you shall call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God drives you. And so what will happen is there'll be a snap in the mind at this time. And they'll remember the blessings and the curses, and they'll see how true they were. They'll see that They neglected to follow it, and they experienced both the blessings and the curses, but particularly the curses.

And it will happen that God will open their eyes and they'll see the devastating results of rejecting the promises of God and not believing Him about the curses. And so here what we find is, you know, Moses is not only the lawgiver, but he's also a prophet. And he takes the people in the future. This is why Moses is called a prophet. Now you can see.

Well, he's prophesied before. He's been prophesying in the last couple of chapters. And then now in 30, he continues this role as prophet. And, you know, Moses is playing his role. And I just want to pause for a moment and just stop on this observation that Moses is both a lawgiver and he's also a prophet.

And that is this, that he is given at least two roles. And each one of these roles is given for the edification of the saints, for the building up of the body of Christ. And I just want to just make a note about this principle that you find in Scripture. That God has appointed every man and every woman with a particular gift in calling. They're called to play a certain role in the world.

Every single person here in this room has been appointed to play a role in the world. You who are mothers have been played, have been appointed by Almighty God to play a role. This is your lot in life. It was not something that you chose. It's something you have been appointed to by Almighty God.

And everyone is just like every mother here in this room. We all play various roles in the world that some of them are just natural roles given to us in the creation order. One is a father, another is a son. These are roles that you must play in the world. One is a daughter.

This is a role you must play in the world, and so forth. I am a brother, and I am a son. So I have natural roles that I must play in the world, in faithfulness to God. There are commands and principles for me in the playing all of the various roles in my own life. And I have a number of different roles.

And then there are divinely appointed, specially given roles that are operating because of the work of the Holy Spirit. All are not prophets, are they? That's the idea. All are not shepherds. All are not evangelists.

All of us have a role that we play in the world. And I just want to sort of ping us together on this matter. Are you playing that role that God has appointed to you, or are you trying to skirt it? Are you trying to do something different than the role that God has appointed for you? It does happen because of our worldliness, our love for things in the world, that we might not be playing our role with the passion and the focus that God has called us to play that role.

I charge you, before God, play your role as Moses did here as prophet and as lawgiver. Play your role, brothers and sisters. Don't let your life pass as you've been jiving around with small things when God has appointed you to particular things to give your whole heart to. If you're a deacon, play your role with all of your heart. If you're an elder, play your role in all of your heart.

If you're a church member, play it well, brothers and sisters, and so forth. And so here, Moses is playing this role as prophet. And what Moses is doing now in transporting the children of Israel to another time in history, He's reminding of the importance of the moment in view of that time in history. All of us live, all of us live not just for ourselves either. We live for the coming generations.

Here this transport in time is, I believe, hundreds and hundreds of years, maybe thousands of years in advance. Yes, thousands of years. And so, what Moses is gripping the children of Israel with is this principle. Brothers and sisters, when the sands of time have run out, you will wish that you had fled to Christ. You will wish that you had played your role.

Because you'll look back and you'll see the curses, and you'll see the blessings, and you'll know how true they are. And so, He's really reminding us of this terrible moment that we face in life, where we look back and we realize that we live for ourselves, that we didn't believe God about the blessings and the curses. And we weep and we gnash our teeth. And the curses are now upon us. And in the morning, we wish it was night.

And at night, we wish it was morning. And we're driven crazy by the sins that have beaten us to death. And so that's what Moses is doing in this time transport. It's meant to shake them. It's meant to help them understand the goodness of God.

And it's meant to transport them to a time where they say, If only I had known, if only I had listened to God, how different it would be. And they see the losses and the deprivations that are there. So he's transporting them to say, this is what it will be like. Come, come to me. Make a covenant.

Enter into the covenant. And walk with the Lord your God. You see the urgency of the appeals. You see the dramatic, almost just amazingly theatrical kind of thing that Moses is doing here by involving the children of Israel in sort of a time warp to show them what it will be like. This is the kindness of God.

He does this in Scripture. He shows us the outcomes. He shows us what it will be like if we reject them. He shows every father what will happen if he rejects his commands toward him as a father and a mother. He shows us all if we reject the voice of God.

And so here I would just hope that we could see this today. That there's a time in the future, let it not be, Let it not be of anyone here in this room that as the years pass, they look back and they say, I rejected the commandments of God. Now, I know many people who have gone down the wrong fork of the road when they faced it. And we paid dittily to walk on that road. So the sands of time are moving along, and there will be a time when everything will be brought to account.

And Moses is speaking of a kind of time like that. Not the final time, but a kind of time like that. So, first of all, they wake up. They wake up in this time warp. And this is one critical element of salvation.

That God opens eyes in the land of the pilgrimage, and we find that we've gone astray and we wake up. So that's the first thing that happens here to those who are being restored. And then secondly, they return and obey, verse 2. And you return to the Lord your God and obey His voice according to all that I command you today, you and your children, with all your heart and with all of your soul." So there's a time of turning and returning. And the verses here, 2 and 3 and on through 6, they beg a question that's in all of our minds.

When? When is this time that He's talking about here? And it is, we know from Deuteronomy 28, 49 and forward that it's a time of utter hopelessness. It's at least that kind of time when one comes to the end and finds utter devastation. Now some commentators have said that this describes the children of Israel's return from the Babylonian captivity that began in 586 BC.

And if this is the fulfillment, I would just say it must only be a partial fulfillment. The utter devastation that's described doesn't fit. There are a number of things that I just don't know if they fit. But you do see God giving pictures of His judgment and of salvation all throughout scripture. Others say that it describes the devastation and scattering that came on 70 AD when the Romans came in and destroyed Jerusalem in an absolutely devastating judgment upon Israel.

Some commentators believe that it's viewed completely spiritually, and it is spiritually fulfilled among God's people. John Calvin is one who took this position. And, you know, for me personally, I don't know exactly in history, however, it does have all the language of the salvation of the New Covenant. All of the language of the New Covenant is here. I believe that this has to do with the New Covenant.

It has to do with the coming of Christ. It has to do with the scattering and then the ingathering of salvation from every tongue and tribe and nation. And it reflects this great ingathering, this dispersion of people to all the nations of the earth, the preaching of the gospel everywhere. And then God making his own people and then caring for them. So the language seems to me to have to do with salvation history, particularly the salvation of Jesus Christ.

I believe this passage is about the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's a foreshadowing of it. It's a stating of it. That salvation is by grace. It's only by the turning of the heart for Jews.

And that's the way it is for us in the New Covenant as well. But the main point of Deuteronomy 30 is not when this happens. It's what about you. That's the main point of Deuteronomy 30. What about you and the Gospel?

Be warned that something is coming. Believe and obey. And then the third thing that we see here of these nine things that happen to those who are regenerated. Not only do they wake up, not only do they return and obey, but thirdly, God has compassion on them. Verse 3.

God has compassion. That the Lord your God will bring you back from captivity and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where the Lord your God has scattered you. Here we have a picture of people scattered, lonely in the world, without God in the world, and God brings them back. And He forgives them and He restores them. And then fourthly, they are gathered together, verse 4.

If any of you are driven out to the farthest parts under heaven, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there he will bring you. And here is this picture of being in the farthest parts under heaven. Those who are out in the outer reaches of nowhere. And God rescues them. You say, what is God doing for the tribesmen in Irian Jaya?

God is able to gather the tribesmen. God is able to put His finger in a culture and draw His people from wherever they are. That's the answer to that question. That God has said that he will gather from the farthest parts under heaven. Maybe you've been asked that question.

What about the person that's never heard? God is big enough for that. And he redeems, He gathers His people together. And you know, He gathers His people. He places them in His own family.

He takes the one and He brings them into a global family and a local family. And This is what God does. He gathers people together, just like He has gathered us here together this morning. He makes His people a family, His building, His church. And this is the central place of their discipleship.

He gathers them in. And I believe that that in gathering is both of the visible global church and it's also the gatherings, the microcosmic gatherings of the body of Christ. And then fifthly, they possess, prosper, and they procreate. Verse 5, and the Lord your God will bring you to the land which your fathers possess, and you shall possess it, He will prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers. Now I use the word procreate, but that's not the only word that's appropriate.

Because the multiplication is a spiritual multiplication, as God pours His Spirit out in the world and puts his finger upon those that he would save. And he would make them, he would give them the land which their fathers possessed. Now what is that land? That land is prefigured in the land of Israel. And it casts a vision for the global land that God will gather his disciples from.

And it's finally fulfilled in that great promised land, that heavenly place that God will place all of his children. He is preparing of many dwelling places for his children. And so Israel here at this point represents the visible church, though there's an ingathering. And it's an ingathering of his people. And my perspective is that what is spoken of here is a vision of the gospel.

It's a vision of the spread of the Gospel and the final gathering of God's people. We've encountered in Genesis particularly a number of prophecies of this. In Genesis chapter 12, God says to Abraham that in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. That's the whole earth. That's not just geographical Israel.

It's the whole earth. In Genesis chapter 13, Abraham is told that these children would be as of the dust of the earth and that Abraham in chapter 17-4 would be a father of a multitude of nations. A multitude of nations. What does that mean? It means exactly what it says.

A multitude of nations. Not just one nation. And in Galatians 3 we see that that blessing is the blessing of justification by faith alone. That he may bless you and that you may become a company of peoples." So Moses is saying that this covenant is a continuation and an application of the promises to Abraham. That this seed of Abraham would multiply, that all Israel are not Israel.

Whereas Galatians 3.29 says, if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, heirs according to the promise. So that's why I believe he's talking about this in-gathering of God's people in the new time of the new covenant. Because if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, heirs according to the promise. Jew, Greek, from every tongue and tribe and nation. So Moses is prophesying the day when God will bring his people home, spiritual Israel, the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so there's this prophecy of restoration. It's very clear that Moses is casting a vision for the entire range of redemptive history from his time forward. And then the Lord will circumcise the hearts in verse 6. And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants. To love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul that you may live.

So Moses is now speaking of the circumcision of the heart. Those who are of the true circumcision here and what happens to them. Well, it's a circumcision of the heart. It includes descendants and it does something to you. It makes you love the Lord.

It makes your heart desire the Lord. With all of your soul. And then it gives life to you, that you may live. So that's what he's saying in verse 6. This is what happens when you are circumcised in the heart.

So for Abraham, circumcision was the sign and a seal of the covenant. And it distinguished the people of God from the people of the world. It was a cutting away of the skin and the reproductive organ. It's amazing that God would have this sign to be in such a place. And he's done it in order to tell a story about the total dedication of a person unto God.

To have one's heart circumcised means complete dedication of the life. We find this language about circumcision of the heart in many places. In Deuteronomy, particularly Deuteronomy 10 verse 16, circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart and be no more stiff-necked. So it has to do with being hard of heart and stiff-necked, and then a change, where God actually changes your heart. In Jeremiah chapter 4 verse 4, circumcise yourselves to the Lord and take away the four skins of your heart.

Ye men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, lest my fury come forth like fire and burn, that none can quench it because of the evil of your doings. In Jeremiah chapter 9 verse 26, God says that Egypt and Judah and Edom and the children of Adam and Moab are all the same because they don't have circumcised hearts. Yes, they might be called by the name of Judah, but they're not really Judah. They're just like Moab and Ammon. It doesn't matter what nation you live in.

It only matters what happens in your heart. And then Paul in Romans says, For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, Neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew which is one inwardly. And circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, not in the letter, whose praise is not from men, but also from God. So, you can be a Jew.

You are a Jew. You're a Jew if you're circumcised in your heart. In that sense, all of God's people are Jews because of the heart circumcision that has taken place. And to the Church of Colossae, Paul in chapter 2, verse 11, says, In whom ye also are circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in putting off the body of sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ." So there's the circumcision of the body, but it's just a prefigurement of the circumcision of the life, of the heart, of the spiritual body of man. Jeremiah prophesied of the coming of the gospel, and he said in chapter 32, verse 39, And I will give them one heart and one way, and they will fear me forever, for the good of them and their children forever." Ezekiel said the same thing, I will put a new spirit within you, I will take the stony heart out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh.

And they will walk in my statutes and keep my ordinances and do them, and they shall be my people, and I shall be their God." So here Moses is casting a vision for the coming of Jesus Christ, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, and the Scattering of the people of God among every tongue and tribe and nation, circumcising their hearts, waking them up in the nations in which they live, helping them to see the curses and the blessings and say, Oh Lord, save me. That's what he's talking about here. And they will inherit the land. The land. Canaan's land.

The true land. The spiritual land. Not a geographical footprint. That's why Paul in Philippians chapter 3, verses 2 through 3 says this. Please open your Bibles there.

Philippians 3, 2 and 3. Paul is speaking to the Philippians about receiving the Lord with gladness. And then he says, beware of the dogs, Philippians 3.2. Beware of the evil workers. Beware of the mutilation.

For we are the circumcision who worship God in spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. Though I also might have confidence in the flesh, if anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so, circumcised on the eighth day. Now, Paul is saying to the Philippians, beware of people who just think that circumcision is about your body and about your nation. And he's saying that there is a circumcision for the worship of God in spirit. Now, Moses is saying that only the circumcised in heart will inherit the land.

And if you take and put these two together, it's very clear. He's talking about a land that's bigger than the footprint of Israel. It's as big as the world. It's as big as every tongue and tribe and nation. And God will circumcise the hearts of those and bring them into His land.

And that land lasts forever. It's Canaan's land. Oh, I love that song. I'm going where the rivers are flowing. I'm going where the grapes are growing.

I'm going, yes, I'm going to Canaan's land. That's the land. That's the land that God has bound His children for. It's a land far better than this one. You're carrying sorrows today, disappointments, problems, reaping the fruits of your foolishness and understanding that this is not that land.

But that land is out there. We can have a foretaste of it now in obedience. It's interesting, you know, the prophets are always pointing in three ways. Just like Moses is doing here. You see how Moses is doing, he's doing three things here in this passage.

The prophets are always doing this, okay? They're pointing back at Moses, remember the law. They're pointing down here, what are you doing today? And then they point to the future. Look what's coming.

Moses is doing all three things in this passage. And then seven enemies will be cursed, verse seven. This is another thing that happens in times of restoration. In this great time of in-gathering, it happened to you and it happened to me. Also, the Lord your God will put all these curses on your enemies and on those who hate you, who persecute you.

We often wrongfully think that God doesn't really bless His people, it's not true. You may not be able to see it with your own eyes, but God does curse those who turn in the wrong direction, who walk on the Broadway. And then number eight, they will obey, verse eight, and you will again obey the voice of the Lord your God and do all his commandments Which I command you today True salvation includes true obedience. There's no salvation without obedience Of course, it's not perfect obedience Anyone who says they have no sin is a liar. We know that.

But there is an inclination of the heart toward disobedience that proves that you do not know God. If there is no obedience, there is no salvation. And Moses is making this clear again. Jesus Christ will say it again, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. The Apostle John repeats it, the Gospel writers repeat it, the Apostle Paul repeats it.

There's no salvation without obedience. And yes, you must obey the law perfectly. You must obey every point of the law, lest you be cast into hell. And Jesus Christ is that law keeper. But you must obey them in verse 8 and then verse 9.

Then the Lord will bless them and rejoice over them. This is another condition of God's people, God's imperfect people, who yes, do continue to sin, who continue to repent and return to the Lord. Verse 9, and the Lord will make you abound in all the work of your hand, in the fruit of your body, in the increase of your livestock, and in the produce of your land for good. For the Lord will again rejoice over you, for good as he rejoiced over your fathers." And then he gives an example of true repentance. If you obey the voice of the Lord your God, verse 10, to keep His commandments and His statutes, which are written in this book of the law.

And if you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. So this is a scene of coming out of disobedience. It's a scene of conversion. And here God comes and He fixes fallen people up. He provokes us by giving us times with the swine, just like the prodigal son.

He has us out of the nations of the earth and we eat the pig slop. And we realize that our Father was far better than we thought He was when we left Him. And He provokes us by these problems from disobedience, and they drive us back to God. And then He rejoices over us like the Father rejoiced over the prodigal son. And those who have been converted, those who have returned, have a Father in heaven who rejoices over them in their return.

And I hope you can somehow feel that today, that you can feel the rejoicing heart of God toward you as you return toward the Lord. That your joy would be turned, that your mourning would be turned to laughter, and you would see the favor of God that is upon you, and feel it in your heart. But God doesn't just leave us there. He shows us that the restoration can happen today. One does not have to wade through years of disobedience and devastation.

And that brings us to verse 11. The accessibility of the blessing. So see, Moses, He was pointing to the future, and now He's pointing to the present. While at the same time, He was pointing to the law of God and departing from it. And now He's pointing to the present.

He's looking down now at the children of Israel, gathered before him, and now he's taking them off of time warp. He's bringing them back from the future. And he says this, For this commandment, which I command you today, today. So we're back to today. His end is not too mysterious for you, nor is it far off.

So here Moses has ended the time warp, and he's broken into the present moment, And he's focusing on his real-time appeal with the people of God. And he's saying that he's giving us something that we can understand. It's not too complex. It's not too hard or too wonderful. It's not too esoteric that we can't understand it.

He says, nor is it far off. It's not far away. You don't have to travel. It's not necessary for you to take a pilgrimage. You don't need to go find the Holy Man.

You don't need to go find the holy man. You don't need to go find that magic book that gives you the seven secrets of how to make everything happen. He's given it to you in His Word. It's right here. You don't need to go quit your job and go move to another city to find it.

It's right here. It's in your mouth. Salvation is at hand. It is not in heaven that you should say, who will ascend into heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it. Nor 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.

In other words, you don't have to hire someone to go and figure it out for you. You don't need a hired gun to be saved and to understand the message. These things, as Deuteronomy says, shall be in your heart. One of the men, Tuesday morning, I believe it was Jonathan Sides, was saying this is in sharp contrast to the religions of the world, particularly the mystery religions, which make everything so complex, where it's hard to work your way up. You move from one stage to another.

In Hinduism, you find an ascending path by multiple reincarnations. It's hard! The religions of the world want to give you a number of things that are hard, not as hard as this. Or I'm sorry, much harder, much harder than this. And so Paul is saying that righteousness by faith doesn't require some amazing journey.

It doesn't require that you have, you know, a top line intellect. But it's by faith. It's like what Isaiah said, you know, he who has no money, come, buy, eat. No expense, no pilgrimages, No genius, no genealogy, no blue blood. People say, you know, if only I could really know the Lord, I could really know the Lord better if only I had a loving Father.

That's not true. It's not far off. It's in your mouth. God gives it to you in your mouth, regardless of where you've been. And He gives it to you in full measure, just like everyone else.

In that sense, it doesn't even matter what kind of father you have. You have a Heavenly Father who comes and pours His grace out and gives you the measure of His Spirit that He ordains. He pours it out. We don't need some kind of dissent. We don't need anything more new or powerful or fanciful.

Paul, Paul carries this language over with exactitude in Romans chapter 10. He quotes this passage of scripture. He says that if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart, that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made to salvation." And then Paul quotes this passage of Scripture. It's not too far away, it's in your mouth.

It's right here. And so what Moses is saying here is that in the scattering of the people, there's salvation, but also there's salvation here today among the people of God and That even even after the destruction of disobedience That God restores his people that God has mercy on his people. This is an amazing thing that Moses is saying here. To his people, right there, he's saying, if you're disobedient and you repent, then God has opened a door of salvation to you. And then finally, there's the offer of life and the threat of death.

He says, I set before you life and death. So here in the final verses of this chapter is a call to love and obedience and he says see verse 15 I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. And this is just very consistent with what we see everywhere in Scripture. That there's the light and darkness. They're the children of the light.

And they're the children of the darkness. That there are, there's the free, there's the free woman and there's the bond woman. That there is freedom and slavery as categories. That there's the broad road that leads to destruction, and then there's the narrow road that leads to life. There are the sheep and the goats.

The sheep are on his right hand, and the goats are on his left hand. And this pattern that Moses is giving to the children of Israel is the consistent pattern of scripture. It, too, is a vision of salvation and and the devastating consequences on the one hand of turning away as a goat and and then the life that happens to those who turn toward Him. Verse 16, he says, In that I command you today to love the Lord your God. That's the first thing, love.

Love. Do you love the Lord your God? Does your heart love the Lord your God? And then he says walk, to walk in His ways. Are you walking in His ways?

And then He says, and to keep His commandments, His statutes, and His judgments. Those are the things that are conditional for salvation. The love in your heart, the walking in his ways, and the keeping of his commandments and his statutes and his judgments. These are the marks of Christianity in your life. If you don't have these, then you should cry out to God and ask Him to confirm or to deny whether you are His child.

But if you desire to be His child, and your heart does desire to love Him, and your feet do desire to walk in His ways, and if you desire to keep His commandments and his judgments, then he will confirm that you are his child. And then he will supply a heart of flesh instead of a heart of stone. And He will give you feet to walk in the right direction, and He will give you His Son to keep all, all of the laws that He's given you to keep. And then he says in verse 17, but, but if your heart turns away so that you do not hear and are drawn away and worship other gods to serve them, I announce to you today that you shall surely perish. You shall not prolong your days in the land which you cross over the Jordan to go and impossess." And then Moses does something here.

He points back to the law. He points forward to eternal destiny. He points down, and now he points toward heaven. In verse 19 he says, I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing, therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live." And he's speaking of the implications of this choice, transgenerationally, unto many generations that it matters what you do now. That if you don't turn now, it means something in the coming generations.

And who has known the mind of the Lord and how this works? Yes, God is sovereign in salvation. He does rescue children of reprobate parents. We know that's true. How many of you are like that?

How many of you are children of reprobate parents and God rescued you? This is the mercy of God, but that's not the end of the story. There's more. If you are a reprobate parent, it matters for your descendants, But if you turn to the Lord, it also matters for their salvation. And I cannot explain that, but it's here.

And it's elsewhere in Scripture. Train up a child in the way in which he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. That's a promise of Scripture. It's a principle. It matters, It matters what parents do, whether their hearts are hard or soft, whether their feet walk in the right direction, and whether they keep the commandments of the Lord their God.

It matters for many generations. It matters for thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands as the generations play out. It matters so much. And Moses brings that to us, that both you and your descendants may live. This is not a guarantee that if you're a Christian, every one of your descendants will live.

It's a general principle because we know that Scripture nuances this promise and gives us more to think about than just this one thing. If you would say, well if I'm righteous, all of my children will be righteous, that's the wrong conclusion. Because Scripture says something additional to this, to help us understand the nuances of God in this matter. And then in verse 20, that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days, that you may dwell in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them." So there is this offer of life and the threat of death that Moses entered. So let's come now and bring this down and try to apply this in a number of ways.

The first thing that I just have so prayed that we could soak in, wade in, you know, get drenched in here this morning where the waters of salvation. This chapter is a gift from heaven to help us as children, to see the beneficial kindnesses of God. That we would see him for his intentions as the Apostle Paul spoke of in Ephesians chapter 1 when he spoke of God's intentions and he said that they were kind intentions the kind intentions of His will toward His people. That the Lord Jesus Christ is such a blessed gift in the heart, and it's such a beneficial grace. And then at the same time, how Moses is teaching us here how to be true disciples.

A disciple is a learner. That we would be taught how to lose our lives in order that we might gain everything in that land, lose our lives today for that land, that we would stop exalting our own thoughts and our own abilities and we would be instructed like a weaned child waiting to be instructed by God in all matters of obedience and end of salvation. And so this passage I hope helps us not to exalt ourselves, to think more highly of ourselves, but to see the great salvation that God has brought to us, and just how kind God is in it. Secondly, for us as a local church, now we've been in Deuteronomy for a year and a half, I believe, something like that. And as a church, it seems to me that we've all found Deuteronomy to be very helpful to us as a tool in the hand of the Lord to help us understand things that we didn't know before.

And God has been discipling us through this book. And this passage here and really all of Deuteronomy, it really is for us pastoral care for his flock. And I hope that we can see ourselves in the drama of Deuteronomy. And here are a number of things that I think this passage can help us with. It can help us to see that we were greater sinners than we thought we were.

And I think Deuteronomy has helped us to see that. It's identified the heart of God in ways that we hadn't seen before, because not a single person ever studied this book systematically in an expositional way in this church that I'm aware of. And so what's happened to us is that our sins have been exposed in different ways through the book of Deuteronomy. And our understanding of law keeping has changed. Our understanding of the blood of Jesus Christ has been cast in a more brilliant light.

And for us, people with us with a pagan past, Deuteronomy was written for people who had been called out of paganism, who had been called out of bondage of Egypt. It's written for people like that. It's written for people who have been saturated in Egypt for a long, long time. And God is trying to rescue us from our Babylonian Egyptian captivity, our 20th century America captivity that we've been locked in all our lives, to try to woo us away, to see his kindness, to show us that our ways are bankrupt and our paganism needs to be thrown off. And As we're coming here now to the end of Deuteronomy, that we would see our lives as in a pagan land and see the bondage and the harsh judgment that's come to us because of our paganism.

Just like the children of Israel. As they are there in this place, they've been in Egypt, many have died off, and now they're in this place, and the vision of heaven is being cast for the future. But they would see the difference between this paganism. And here's what I just hope to say, brothers and sisters, let's pray that God would reveal our paganism to us. That we would renounce it.

It's so harmful to us. The pleasing of the world did not do us well at all. Today it's not doing me well and it's not doing you well either. And somehow we could continue to be rescued, sanctified by God through this, through this recollection. And Deuteronomy is written for people who are undergoing sanctification.

They're on the anvil of God's formation, just like we are here. It's remarkable to me to think about, just looking across this landscape of people here today, how different we all are, how we've come from so many different places in life and from so many parts of this country. And we've come into this place to be sanctified. What's remarkable about this church to me is that there is a sense that the people are here to be sanctified. The people are here to change.

They're here to be ripped from the world because they've been abused by the devil for so long. I know that's true. We've lived the life of paganism. We were in the river being washed down and God took us out of mighty waters. And He's given us a gripping sense that it's not right with us in this land.

And He's called us to make a covenant with Him and with one another to live in this land. And I know many of you have come from one state or another, But all of us have come from the state of paganism. And God desires to rescue us as a people. You may have moved from one state to here, but your rescue from paganism is not over. It's just begun, and so has mine." And so this is written for a people like us, being rescued from the bondage of Egypt.

A people recognizing their paganism and desiring to be rescued from it and trusting only in the Lord. And that's what God has set before us here in this chapter. As Moses points backward to the law, as he points in the distant future, as he points down to the ground he walks on, and he points toward heaven. And Moses brings all of this together to say one thing, obey the voice of the Lord your God and walk in his ways. And his ways are pleasant ways and all his paths are peace.

Would you pray with me? Lord, we pray that you would form us into a people with your might, with your heart, with your footsteps being followed all the way. Oh, Lord, we thank you for calling us here. Now, I pray that you would so cast a vision in our hearts for faithfulness in this place that you've given us, that this place would never be the same again because of your people who are called by your name in this town. Amen.