In Scott Brown's sermon 'Fulfilled in One Word,' he explores the depth and breadth of the Ten Commandments, emphasizing their ultimate fulfillment in the law of love, encapsulated by the command to love one's neighbor as oneself. The sermon reviews 21 chapters of Deuteronomy, highlighting Moses' second speech to Israel before entering the promised land. Brown discusses the spiritual and moral implications of the commandments, explaining how they reflect God's character and justice. He underscores the importance of understanding the different types of laws—moral, ceremonial, and judicial—and their applications to everyday life. The sermon also addresses contemporary cultural challenges, calling for a return to God's laws as the foundation for righteous living. Brown emphasizes that the law is spiritual, revealing the true motives of the heart and guiding believers to live in accordance with God's will, ultimately fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

This is a time in the sermon when we usually read the text that Scott will be preaching on, but since he's covering 22 chapters, as a review I'll just read the Ten Commandments. And Moses called all Israel and said to them, hear O Israel, the statutes and judgments which I speak in your hearing today, that you may learn them and be careful to observe them. The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. The Lord did not make this covenant with our fathers, but with us, those who are alive today, all of us who are alive. The Lord talked with you face to face on the mountain from the midst of the fire.

I stood between the Lord and you at that time to declare to you the word of the Lord, for you were afraid because of the fire, and you did not go up to the mountain." He said, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them nor serve them for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, For the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

Observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work, you nor your son nor your daughter nor your male servant nor your female servant nor your ox nor your donkey nor any of your cattle nor your stranger who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, And the Lord your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm.

Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. Honor your father and your mother as the Lord your God has commanded you, that your days may be long and that it may be well with you in the land which the Lord your God has given you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, and you shall not desire your neighbor's house. His field, his male servant, his female servant, his ox, his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's. These words the Lord spoke to all your assembly in the mountain from the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness with a loud voice and he added no more and he wrote them on two tablets of stone and gave them to me. Let's pray.

Dear Heavenly Father, please bless the preaching of your word, your eternal and unchanging word. Help us to bow humbly before it and accept what you have to teach us today. Amen. Here we are again in the book that Jesus loved, the book that Jesus quoted more than any other Old Testament book. It's a challenge today to do what I'm being charged to do, to cover 513 verses in an hour, hopefully, and to deal with 21 chapters of the book of Deuteronomy.

It's a beautiful section full of amazing stories, laws, applications of the law of God that cause us to be stretched enormously, intellectually and morally, particularly. Because when we read them we realize that His ways are not our ways. But what we do know is that all his work is perfect, and that all of his words are pure. And so as we stand before these words today, this is the great assumption that we come to it with, that it is all pure. And unfortunately, we're like Isaiah.

When we read the Word of God, we say, woe is me, for I am undone. For I'm a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips. And so, as we've been going through Deuteronomy, we've been constantly confronted with our own morality, our own sense of justice. And we find ourselves in a wrestling match because his justice is not my justice. His ways are not my ways.

And yet all of his laws are expositions of his character and expositions of his love. And so there's so many challenges when we read through Deuteronomy. So today as we walk through the second speech of Moses, if you've been with us, you know that Moses delivers three speeches in the last month of his life just before the children of Israel are going to enter into the promised land. Moses will die in just a few days. And he's delivering, summing up all the things that God has helped him to understand.

The title of this sermon, if you have an outline, is Fulfilled in One Word. Fulfilled in One Word. Because everything that we read here in the law of Moses is fulfilled in one word. The Apostle Paul captured it in Galatians chapter 5 verse 14 when he said, for all the law is fulfilled in one word, even this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. So whatever you might read, whether it confuses you or not in the law of God, one thing you know, it's a law of love for your neighbor.

When we were traveling together around the United States, we were reading through Proverbs, and we reached Proverbs 28 and came across some statements about the law of God that should help us understand our own revulsion against it if we have it, or any confusion that we might have about it, because critical issues are clarified there in Proverbs 28. In Proverbs 28, 4, the writer says, those who forsake the law praise the wicked, but those who keep the law contend with them. It says in verse 7, whoever keeps the law is a discerning son. In verse 9 it says, one who turns his ears away from the law, even his prayers are an abomination. Now Those are amazing statements when you find yourself living in a culture that hates the law of God.

We grew up in a world that hates the law of God. It's so disturbed about it that it wants to relegate it to some other category not applicable here today. And at the same time, we find the Lord Jesus such a massive contrarian to that whole idea, where he said, do not think, in Matthew 5.17, that I came to destroy the law of the prophets. I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill. And then he tells us, when you know the law is passed away, for surely I say to you that till heaven and earth pass away, not one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.

And then he speaks clearly about those who break the commandments by saying, whoever breaks one of these, one of the least of these commandments and teaches men to do so, he shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." So the Lord Jesus weighs in on the law over and over again, as you see when you read the Gospels. Now, I'd like, if you're looking at your outline, to deal with a number of matters before we jump into the text, 513 verses of text. First of all, the immediate purpose that Moses has in delivering the law is to prepare the children of Israel to enter into a pagan land. And as he prepares the children of Israel to live in a pagan land, he prepares you and I to live in a pagan land, because we live in one so much like the land of the Canaanites.

And he will tell them how they will relate with the altars and the religious convictions and the practices for all kinds of things in life. He gives them a responsibility and a disposition regarding the idols to tear them down and to despise them. He's demonstrating the righteousness of God to a people entering into a pagan land. Moses was also completing the Torah. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and now he's completing Deuteronomy here in the last month of his life.

He speaks very plainly about what he's doing. He desires to raise up a wise and understanding people, a distinct people, a peculiar people who would live differently, think differently in the land of their habitation. And so He's teaching people how to be a wise and understanding people. He's casting a vision for the righteousness of God. He's explaining the details of the love of God, because in every law you find embedded in it the love of God for mankind and mankind's laws for one another.

You see the justice of God being explained and it's often difficult for us to see how God's ways are justice because we don't think that way. We are smarter than God, we are more loving than God, We're more just than God. And we want to find a God that is just as compassionate as we are. But God is way more compassionate than we are and therefore He crosses us up in our compassion and redefines it and tells us that it's something that we never dreamed it was before. So, Moses' immediate purpose is to prepare people to enter the land and to give them the righteousness of God.

And then we come to his method. His method is to bring out, through dozens of real life situations, and laws, principles, the meaning of the Ten Commandments. He delivers the Ten Commandments in Chapter 5, where it's recorded, and then he does exposition on the Ten Commandments, one by one. And Moses shows us that the law is meant to be applied in every area of life. And that we too should look to every law of God and cry out to him that his spirit would help us to understand how we might apply it in everyday life.

Paul said that the law is spiritual. It's not just a wooden thing. It's not just a... It is not just something that applies to one single area of life. Jesus demonstrates this more beautifully than anyone ever did, as He explains the law of adultery and the law of murder, and tells us that it means far more than we ever thought.

That murder is actually hatred in your heart. That adultery is actually looking at a woman with lust in your heart. So the law is far more than it appears to be. It appears because it's spiritual. It's living.

It's active. It's sharper than any two-edged sword. And it pierces to separate sin and righteousness, and it convicts us and shows us who we really are. It tells us the story of our life. It reveals our motives.

It makes clear what's driving us. And that's what the law is meant to do is to explode before us our true motives not just to stop us from stabbing someone but to stop us in the heart from cultivating anger and rage toward our brother to find it there and then to see it atoned for and dealt with there, cauterized and ended in the heart so that it doesn't come out to defile mankind. So the law is spiritual and Moses' method is to explain that over and over again by using dozens and dozens of examples in 513 verses of scripture that we will be covering here in just a moment. And this is street level wisdom that Moses brings. The examples that he brings are just extracted right out of life.

Some of the most difficult situations that people face, Moses puts his finger on and says, if you want to know how to live, think of my law to get through the toughest situations of your life. Here it is, come to me. My ways are pleasant ways. All my ways are justice. He's a God of truth and justice.

Righteous and upright is He. So what Deuteronomy is constantly crying out to us about is to come to God, to return to the law of God, seek Him while He may be found where He is found in His holy law. Every problem, every situation you ever had is answered here. Go to the rock. Your rock is not like their rock.

Your God is not like their God. Your God is a God of deliverance. Your God is the one that will heal you. He will take his sword and he will stab you with it, but it will heal you when he comes out. Because it's the sword of the Spirit.

The law is spiritual and it's meant to heal your soul and to put things together that have been so destroyed. So many of us have areas of our lives that are just burned to the ground. What will we do when we've made so many mistakes where we have sinned so often, even unwittingly for year after year after year, what do the people of God do? Return to the rock. Unfortunately, we live in a world that hates that rock, and instead of a rock, we're walking on jello in this land where everything moves and is subject to the thoughts and the intentions of man's heart and not God's heart.

Whereas the kind intention of God's will is for the benefit of mankind. And so here we find in this section, in these 513 verses, we find Moses' method. And that is to make it so clear that the law is applicable to everything in life. It is so applicable that we should always ask critical questions about it. Whenever we read a law, there are questions that must be asked of that law.

How does it reveal the character and the nature of God? In every law that we read, we find a revelation of the character and the nature of God. Another question, what kind of law is it? Is it moral law? Is it ceremonial law?

Or is it judicial law? We've reviewed a number of times our Church's doctrinal statement, the Second London Baptist Confession of 1689. If you want to read something incredibly precise and accurate to the doctrine of our church. Read the Second Line of the Baptist Confession on the law, on what liberty is, because it explains it there. But you have to ask what kind of law is it.

All of the ceremonial law passed away and was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. All of the judicial law, the Second London Baptist Confession, ended with the laws of Israel. But All of those laws have implications and tell us what our laws should look like. And yet the moral law has never passed away, which is obvious from the New Testament with over 500 commands in the New Testament where the Apostle Paul and the Lord Jesus Christ and all the Gospel writers are explaining the glory of Christ's fulfillment of the law. And the moral law is never taken off the table.

A third question we have to ask is whose responsibility is it that God has given to carry it out? Is it a law that the family executes? Is it a law of the church? Or is it a law of the civil government? You have to ask yourself that question.

One of the problems that Jesus was attacking in his day was people were taking the laws of Moses and they were applying them wrongly. With a number of them, they were taking the law and pretending that they had jurisdiction over that law. And they were misapplying it. When the state had been given that law, they were applying it personally. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

They were saying this is something you do personally and this is not something that you do personally in the law of Moses. It's something that's given to the civil magistrate. So you have to ask whose responsibility is this? Is it the families? Is it the churches?

Or is it the civil governments? You have to ask how is it fulfilled in Christ? You have to ask how does it explain love? You have to ask how does it reveal sin in my life? You have to ask how do I apply it in my life?

And then practical questions. When this law is ignored, what happens in my life? What happens in my family? What happens in society? Or what happens if it's embraced?

And then how is this law designed to transform me into the image of Christ? The apostle Paul said, when you read Moses and you've been converted in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, he says, when Moses is read by the converted heart, then the face of Jesus is beheld, and you're transformed from glory to glory. So we should always ask, how is this law transforming my life? Because it's meant to totally change your life It's meant to wreck your life to bring a wrecking ball to the bankrupt Propositions that you've embraced and loved your whole life the mantras of your family the ones you've repeated to yourself Over and over again the one that you that your Marxist professors spoke to you over and over and over again, the ridiculous things you read in the psychology books that you just keep repeating over and over in your brain that are bankrupt and they're poison to you. And God desires to take a wrecking ball to those and tear down the idols.

So with these introductory framework principles, let's now move into the text. So we encounter the first commandment, you shall have no other gods before me." So Jesus gives this commandment, which is the keystone of all the commandments. Here Moses takes all of the Ten Commandments and sums them up in one. And this commandment that is exposited by Moses was repeated twice a day. Probably the most heavily recited commandment of God in the history of the world is this commandment.

And the Shema in which it is contained, as godly Hebrews were to repeat it twice a day. And it is a one-point summary of the law. And it's a mixture, it's a mixture of the engagement of the heart, of the doctrine of God, and your family life, because it was repeated and taught to children in family life. Its immediate application is that fathers would teach their children. It's demonstrating by hearing and obeying when we get to chapter 6, verses 1 through 4.

Hear and obey all the statutes and the commandments and the judgments. And you shall hide them in your heart, and you shall teach them to your children when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." And so here parents are immediately by Moses commanded to teach these things to their children, to take the first commandment and teach it to their children when they sit in their house, when they walk by the way, in every aspect of life. We read about the exclusivity of this commandment in chapter 6, verses 13 to 15, that You worship and fear God only, that He has an exclusive claim upon our lives, and the gods of this world should be rejected for one and only true God. And it's to be demonstrated in conversations with your son.

By the way, this whole section that begins in Chapter 6 through 11 begins and ends the same way as this commandment is repeated in the family. This section where Moses is doing exposition on the first commandment begins and ends with the family and how a father communicates it to his children. Moses explains that you apply this commandment in chapter 7 by tearing down the idols of the land. In verse 1 in chapter 7, he says that you cast them out. He uses a word picture of taking your sandal off of your feet and casting it far from you.

Take the idols and throw them far from you to destroy the works of the heathen in chapter 7 verse 5, so that you'll obey all the commandments of God and so that it will unleash the blessing of the Lord in your life without which from obedience you cannot experience his blessings. He speaks of the fear that we have of our enemies in chapter 7, verse 21, and how you relate to the first commandment when you fear your enemies. And He says that how he speaks of how you relate to the idolatry around you in 725 and 26 You destroy the idols of the land and you're very careful. Do not bring Abominations into your house how often the abominations and the idols of this land are brought into our house through a number of means. Through the activities, through the movies, through the internet sites, poured directly into our house.

Idolatry raging on the screens of our households. Because we've disobeyed the commandment of God here to refuse to bring abominations into our houses. He says, no, you shall utterly destroy them. He says, you shall show no mercy to them at all. It's loving to show no mercy to idols.

That's love. It's love to tear them down, just like Gideon took an axe and he tore down his father's idols. It speaks to the whole matter of making friends with those who hate God, the tolerance of paganism in our lives. He speaks about when you forget your history and that we cannot forget that we were once slaves in the land of Egypt, but God delivered us from that bondage. In this section, he says, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

And for over and over again, he explains different ways that this is applied. He applies it by using a term that we read in the New Testament. A circumcised heart. He says, circumcise the foreskin of your heart and serve the Lord. He's talking about a heart that loves God.

This is how you fulfill the First Commandment. By loving him from the heart. Those raging fools who say that God of the Old Testament was a God of rules and the God of the New Testament is a God of relationship are absolutely wrong. God always worked with the heart. He always called His people to circumcise their hearts, to be justified by faith alone, as Abraham was hundreds of years before the law was given.

He was justified by faith, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness, because his heart was turned genuinely toward God. To fulfill the first commandment, one first of all must have a heart that says, Oh Lord, I love your ways and I am turning away from the ways of the devil. Moses begins and ends with home life as we said earlier. In chapter 10, Moses introduces the idea of blessings and curses. And he says, Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse.

Blessing if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, and the curse if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God." And he gives a vision of something that we'll be speaking in detail in, I believe next week, or perhaps the next, Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, that there are two mountains. Two mountains are always crying out, the mountain of blessing and the mountain of cursing, and you're always either living and listening under one or the other. And so Moses deals with this first commandment by giving dozens of illustrations throughout this section that stretches really for the longest section of the entire second sermon. He spends more time on the first commandment than any of the other commandments, because it is the beginning and the heart of all the other commandments. And He makes it clear, as the apostle Paul said in Galatians 5, 14, for all the law is fulfilled in one word, even this.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself. And this first commandment is explained by acts of love toward your neighbor that stem from a heart turned toward God and God alone. And then he moves to the second commandment in chapter 12, verse 1, to chapter 13, verse 18. And the command of the second commandment is given in 5.8. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

You shall not bow down to them, or serve them." So he issues the commandment, And then he gives the reasons for the commandment in the next, in verse, in verse 9 and 10. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations, of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands to those who love me and keep my commandments." And so here in this second commandment we find a commandment that's consistent with what John says in 1 John 5. Little children, keep yourselves from idols. And here in this commandment, He confronts our own image of God and how it is formed. He speaks of the jealousy of God and how, if you have a wrong image of God and are displaying it in the world, you've broken this commandment.

We all grow up with false images of God in our own minds, and then we misrepresent Him as a result. God has represented Himself not in images, but in words, and He declares Himself to be a God of words, not images. And he does not want himself misrepresented by the use of images of any any kind that would that would attempt to capture him and it's all caught up in the jealousy of God that He would protect the holiness of His name by not allowing creatures to try to draw a picture of Him, to explain Him in graphic form other than words themselves. So any representation of God or the Lord Jesus Christ or of the Holy Spirit inherently misrepresents Him. Crucifixes with Christ hanging on them misrepresent the cross of Jesus Christ because That is not who was hanging on that cross.

And the imagery matters. And it's the same thing if I were to take a picture of another woman and say, this is my wife. Meet Deborah. But you know it's not Deborah at all, because it's not my wife. And this is what God is saying to us.

Don't make a picture and say, that's me. That's not me. And then there, The reasons for it is that he is a jealous god, and that he visits iniquity upon following generations who would misrepresent him. Now, in a day and age of such popularity of images, This must give us cause for reflection and serious consideration of what this means. Why is it that images are the most gripping form of communication?

Why is it that our world has quickly moved to a world of imagery. And the images that we are able to broadcast and communicate in this world are absolutely astonishing. Never before in history have we had such an environment like this. But the problem is not new. It goes back to the heart of man.

That desires an image that's better than God, that desires to see something that would so thrill them and titillate them, but in reality it would persuade them to believe in a God that does not exist. And he speaks of the refusal to destroy idols in this section. He says, if you come to the place with idols, destroy them and their name from off the earth. 12, 2, and 3. This is how God feels about idols.

Moses is applying this to the image-driven idolatry of the day. To make an image and then to have entertainments around that image, which was what the high places were all about. They were places of the entertainments and ungodly personalities doing shameful things in public in those high places. People like to go because they were so fascinating, just like the alluring places that there are in our own culture. He says tear them down.

In chapter 12 verse 5 he speaks of worshiping God in your own way. And in this section 5 to 22, he makes it clear that we worship God only in the way that He's commanded and it's not for us to make up our own ways of worship. He says don't worship Him in a pagan way. In other words, using pagan things to worship a holy God. He speaks of that in 12.5 through 22.

Or 12.23 through 25. He speaks of using pagan methods to worship the true God. He speaks of being ensnared by the idols of the culture in chapter 12, verses 30 through 31. He says, do not be snared by the gods that are there. He warns against adding and subtracting to the Word of God in this section as he did in in chapter 4.

And he says to put to death any who would lead you away from the true God. And he says that he raises up idolaters in your midst in order to test you. He says the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Or Would you love the image more than the protection of the name of God? The Lord Jesus spoke of these kinds of prophets in Matthew chapter 7.

He said, Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, that inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, and bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.

Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you shall know them. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name, cast out demons in your name, and done many wonders in your name. And then I will declare to them, I never knew you.

Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness." The Lord Jesus speaks so clearly of the incursions of false prophets and the lawlessness that they preach. And often the lawless idolaters of our day look so nice, and they do do amazing things, as they did in the days of Moses. Moses says, don't be fake. Don't be ensnared by that. And in this law, this law, the second commandment that restricts us in the area of images, that causes us to take a step back from the imbibing of images and particularly the restriction of trying to image God in graphic form.

It's a law of love. For the whole law is fulfilled in this one word. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. And then we come to the third commandment, beginning in chapter 14, from verse 1 to verse 21. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

This is a commandment about honoring the name of God. And it sounds like it's a sin of the tongue, because it's something that you say. We know that the tongue is an unruly part of the body. It's a restless evil and it's full of deadly poison. But the prohibition goes far beyond the tongue.

Though the law in itself, in its own language, seems to be just about something that you do with your mouth. Moses makes it clear that it's far more than that. And that the prohibition is about taking God's name lightly, to make the name of God vain, to make it a worthless name. The opposite would be to say, hallowed be thy name, to misrepresent him, to hypocritically or in vain bear his name. To bear his name hypocritically is the principle that he's speaking of.

To use his name as a mask for ungodliness, to false label him, to call something godly that is actually ungodly. And this law comes and exposes our lack of integrity as we might say one thing, but we live in a completely different way. Because there are in our lifetimes thousands of different ways that we misrepresent the name of God. By the things that we've said, by the way that we live, we misrepresent Him. We take His name in vain by naming his name and then living in a way that's not consistent with his name.

So that's sort of the broad picture of this commandment. And so what we find here is Moses gives two examples of taking the name of the Lord your God in vain. The first example he gives is the example of mourning like the pagans, acting like you're a child of God, But you mourn like the pagans, and you swoon and you grieve like a madman, like a mad pagan. And you cut yourself and you cut your hair like a pagan to try to relate with the celestial forces that are out there. You take His name in vain when you say you worship God, but then you mourn like a pagan and you cut your hair like a pagan and you cut yourself instead of casting all your cares upon the Lord.

So there's a way even in our mourning for the dead that we would take his name and name. Moses gives this example and then and then he gives the example of eating. He delivers the food laws here and he And he says that the food laws were given so that, not because the food was better for you, the food laws were given as a command to Israel so that the way that they ate would be different than the pagans around them. God desired to raise up a distinct people and so that they would, everything about their life would be different including the way they ate. And so he went to Israel and said you're gonna eat different kinds of foods.

And what Moses is saying is that even by what you eat, you can break this commandment and take the name of the Lord your God in vain. You can pretend to be a child of God, but then you eat like the pagans." That's the point I believe that Moses is making there. We misrepresent God, and that's the heart of the matter in these laws. And then in these laws. And then we come to the to the fourth commandment in chapter 14 verses 21 to 16 17.

Observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. But remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day." So Moses, in doing exposition of this law, he takes us into all kinds of different situations where this law is implied.

And in chapter 14 verse 22 through 29, he says that you can break this commandment when you do not worship God through the giving of tithes and offerings, by bringing your grain to worship God. And by not remembering the Levite and the fatherless and the widow, you break the commandment when you do not set aside in a rhythmic way, in the same way that the Sabbath causes a rhythmic kind of life for you. He brings up in chapter 15, the year of the Jubilee, where all debts are released and slaves are released in the seventh year. So six days you shall work and the seventh is the seventh. God commanded Israel to release debts then and release slaves to give a picture of the rest that there is in God.

In Israel you couldn't have a slave more than six years. You had to give him rest after that. Now if he wanted to stay with you and continue to work with you, then he could. Slavery was an act of mercy that employed people in a household and gave them sustenance, but there was a limit to it and it had to stop after that period of time in the same way that labor has to stop. Moses is giving an illustration of the way you treat your brother.

He speaks not only of the year of Jubilee, but he speaks of the poor man in chapter 15, verses 7 through 11, and having mercy on him and using this rhythmic life of gathering and presenting before God to be part of an act of mercy, and not to exact usury from the poor as if he were a heathen. And then to expose the sin of refusing to celebrate the feast would be breaking this commandment in Israel. To refuse to observe the Passover and the Feasts of Tabernacles. To appear before the Lord three times a year and give as you are able, to not participate in the celebration of the people of God, these weeks of rest that God gave to his people. The picture of tithing that was picked up by the early church and gathered in on the first day of the week.

These principles all come from Moses doing exposition on the fourth commandment to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. He speaks of releasing of debts in the sabbatarian year. Again, you know, all of these laws were designed for mankind. The Sabbath was given for man and it was designed to allow to allow the people of God to spend allocated time for the worship of their Savior exclusively and to set aside all of their economic activity and their normal daily activities. It's all fulfilled, as Paul says in Galatians, for all the laws fulfilled in one word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

And you can see that in the law of the Sabbath, as God would call his people together to bring in tithes and offerings for the purpose of the poor and the fatherless and the widow. It was the law of love. And then the fifth commandment we encounter in chapter 16 verse 18, all the way to chapter 18, verse 22. Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may be well with you in the land which the Lord your God is giving you." Now this law has enormous implications as Moses speaks to us about it. He says that it has implications in many, many areas of life.

It's not just relegated to the family. Well, on the one hand, it's a law that sets us free from the bondage of dishonor and condemnation of our fathers. It also sets us free from that same dishonor of condemnation of those who are civil magistrates and those who are appointed leaders in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. It sets us free from a life of dishonor, which would ultimately destroy us. And God desires so surgically to come into the human heart and lance the wound of dishonor, so that it might go well with them all the days of their lives.

In chapter 1619, he begins with the example of judges and he says make judges throughout the land and don't pervert justice. So He's establishing the principle that there are authorities that should be honored, and they're called judges. And then he speaks of that dishonor toward God is also something that needs to be paid attention to. In chapter 16 verse 21, he tells the children of Israel, do not set up any places of idolatry. In other words, don't honor any other deity than the true God.

He says that we dishonor God by giving our worst in chapter 17 verse 1 in offering blemished animals. It's a way that we dishonor God. So when God gives the commandment to honor your father and mother, it means far more than just your father and mother. It means that you develop a culture of honor that includes judges, that includes relating to God amidst the gods of the world, that includes your offerings and honoring God by giving the very best that He's given to you by not offering blemished animals. He speaks of honoring the authority of witnesses in chapter 17, verses 2 through 7, that if one is worshipping a false god, there must be two or three or more witnesses in order to establish that fact.

So you honor witnesses rather than one single individual. He speaks of honoring the council of priests. He says if there's a matter too hard for you in chapter 17 verse 8, he says if it's too hard for you, take the matter to the priests and seek their counsel. And what they say is binding. You've got to honor what ruling they bring to you in that difficult matter.

He speaks about honoring the king. He says that he shall be the king that the Lord chooses, but then he says that the king must also honor God himself, not by multiplying wives or horses or silver or gold. And the king is to set himself under the law of God. No kings are above the law of God. The law is king.

The king is not law. That's the principle that he's speaking of here. And he's saying that you honor the king, but the king also is obligated to honor God. Moses is doing exposition of the commandment to honor your father and mother. Because if you can honor your father and mother, it teaches you how to honor the king, how to honor the priests and the Levites, how to honor the witnesses that are there, even though you might disagree with them.

But you have a life of honor. And Moses is giving a number of examples about this. He speaks of honoring the Levites by supporting them with gifts for their inheritance in chapter 18, 1 through 8. He says, do not honor the heathen or learn from them. In chapter 18 verse 9, do not learn the abominations of the heathen.

He's saying, yes, you honor God, but there are things that you do dishonor. You dishonor the heathen in terms of your disposition toward their bankrupt and devilish philosophy. And then he speaks of actually how honor works out in the use of your children. And he says, do not sacrifice your children. He speaks of honoring Christ as the coming prophet.

In chapter 18, verse 14, he says that God will raise up a prophet that will speak the words of God. A prophet like him. Moses says it will be a prophet like himself. And the Lord Jesus confirms this as well. So, honor and authority begin in the home, And then they're applied in many kinds of relationships.

You know, I think we should just pause here with this commandment because it's so poignant for us. Dishonor always leaves tracks, and it lays tracks in the future. And so it's a very, very important principle. Anger imprisons, It brings about the loneliness and the self-pity that isolates you, the broken relationships, the self-righteousness that puffs you up. This law goes after so many debilitating things to our souls and attempts to relieve us of our sorrows that we gained through dishonor.

Is there anyone here that needs to repent of any dishonor toward their father or their mother, toward their civil magistrate, toward their spiritual leaders, toward the witnesses, toward whoever else might be in authority over you. Your boss, how legendary it is for people to dishonor those who've been placed in authority over them in the economic sphere. But God here desires to come and give a release from harboring of bitterness in our hearts. It's like he said, trade in your broken relationships here and replace them with a new heart. As the Apostle Paul said, for all the law is fulfilled in one word.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself. And then we come to the sixth commandment, you shall not murder. This is one of the shortest of the commandments, four words. That's it. You shall not murder.

And these four words, as Moses makes it clear, they're only four words, but they apply to lots and lots of areas of life. In chapter 19, verse 1 through 10, we learn that it's murder when you hate your brother and plan to destroy him, but it's not murder if it's accidental. And so Moses shows the children of Israel how to make a way, a provision for the person who kills someone accidentally. Perhaps there are people here in this room who have killed people accidentally and it's so heartbreaking when this happens. The case that he gives here is an axe head coming off the axe handle and killing someone.

But the Avenger of Blood, a man is enraged with fury and chases him down, but there's a city of refuge for him to come to. We have this imagery of the Avenger of Blood and the City of Refuge there that really gives us a window into the Gospel as we as lawbreakers are being chased down by the Avenger of Blood. And there's only one hope, the city of refuge, the city of Jesus Christ where the water and the blood were given, where the suffering for our sins was taken on His body. But see here we find this murderous rage and how it is taken care of by establishing the cities of refuge. This is dealing with guilt and bloodshed.

And he contrasts those who lie in wait, in hatred, toward a neighbor, and those who kill accidentally. He talks about when it's murder in wartime and when it's not murder in wartime. He speaks of the murderous act of sending a newly married man to the front lines that he might be killed there. He says, do not go to war if you planted a new vineyard or built a new house or become betrothed to a wife. There are certain situations that you should not enter into combat because if you die, you will leave something like a betrothed wife behind.

And so you should be careful in the time of your betrothal to preserve your life, to make sure that you save yourself for that sweet bride that's waiting for you during that time. And it would be like unto murder to send a young man into combat that he might die there in the time of his betrothal. It's murder if you do not abide by God's rules of warfare. In chapter 20, verse 9 through 20, the children of Israel are told, when you fight a city that is far off, offer peace first. They're rules of warfare.

They're ways that people who love God engage in warfare. All is not fair in love and war for the people of God. They have to be limited by certain rules and regulations of warfare. There's the whole matter of taking innocent blood in this exposition of the laws against murder, the law of putting away the guilt of innocent blood from among you. If someone dies in a field, then accountability for that blood is required.

The distance is measured from the body to the nearest city of accountability, and it's that city's fault if you cannot find the murderer. And Moses is saying that cities and nations are accountable for innocent blood. And so there is this judgment of God against whole peoples who have blood on their hands. There are some from our congregation yesterday who went and stood out in front of an abortion clinic here in Raleigh in order to declare that there's blood being shed. That's like marking the distance between the body and the city of accountability.

Sitting on that curb, they're standing and saying, we are all accountable for innocent blood shed by the millions and millions who've been destroyed through this culture of death and abortion that so gripped our land. There is accountability for nations for innocent blood and Moses gives that principle here that it matters not just to the individual who committed it, but to the entire society that allowed it to happen. And God knows the judgment that perhaps, I believe, is actually being meted out today by so many calamities that our society is experiencing because of innocent blood on our hands. There are situations of war that are spoken of, the taking of captives, There's the matter of hatred in the family. It's interesting that Moses takes this law of murder, and he brings it down to the family level and hatred that might exist in a family where a man hates one of his wives.

And so he refuses to give a double portion of inheritance to his firstborn son. His anger in his heart is holding him back from doing what he should do by giving a double portion of inheritance to his firstborn son. The sons were to receive a double inheritance so that he could take care of the family in the case of the death or the abandonment of a daughter in that family. And so here we find this principle of hatred in the family and favoritism. It's interesting that the Lord Jesus goes directly to hatred in the heart as an application of this commandment regarding murder.

There's the hatred that's involved in keeping a criminal hanging overnight. And the people are commanded to take him down. Don't make such a spectacle of him. It's not loving to do that. It is hatred and murder to refuse to care for your neighbor's interests and if your neighbor's animal or anything of your neighbors has been lost, that it's hatred toward him if you do not recover it for him and help him out.

It's murder, again, to destroy manhood and womanhood through cross-dressing. It's the law of distinct clothing that men and women dress differently. When a girl wears a man's clothes, she's murdering her womanhood. When a man wears a woman's clothes, he's murdering his manhood. And so Moses comes out in chapter 22, verse 5, about how you deconstruct holy things through your disposition toward them.

He applies this law of murder in so many ways that you just wouldn't think in your wildest dreams, because the law is spiritual. It applies to thousands and thousands of situations. It's not just applied to the physical killing of someone. It appears in favoritism in a family. It appears in hatred of your brother, it appears when you won't lift your finger to help the cow of your brother, whom you hate because he's wandering through your property, and you just as soon let that cow get lost.

So the laws applied in many, many ways. The Lord Jesus said, you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder. And whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment. But I say to you, that whoever is angry with his brother without cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, Raka, shall be in danger of the council.

But whoever says, you fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there. And before the altar, go your way. Be first reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Agree with your adversary quickly while you are on the way, lest your adversary deliver you to the judge, the judge to the hand of the officer, and you be thrown into prison.

I surely, I say to you, you will by no means get out of there until you've paid the last penny. Jesus is, you see how much Jesus is like Moses. He takes the commandment and he applies it to anger toward a brother, he applies it to calling your brother worthless, And then he applies it to the person who goes into worship before the altar and he has a brother against him. He says that's also implied in this commandment. And then he says that it's found in the need to be reconciled with your brother.

And it's also implied when you have a broken relationship and you have an adversary and you're going to court. This law applies not just to the physical killing of someone. Jesus says it applies to lots and lots of things, just like Moses does. And so, like Moses, Jesus brings many things into the forefront to apply it that we never would have thought before because the law is spiritual and it's meant to pierce to the innermost being to cleanse us in the heart. And so we come to the next commandment, the seventh commandment.

Deuteronomy 22, 9 through 23, 18. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not commit adultery. This is a law of purity and and interestingly enough in a mind-bending way Moses in order to apply this command that starts talking about mixing diverse seeds or plowing with with an ox and a donkey together or wearing garments with mixed threads and your head starts to spin and you say how in the world Could this possibly relate to thou shalt not commit adultery? And Moses here brings right off the bat three laws from nature.

And they all show the tendency of man to try to overthrow God's order of things and try to introduce unnatural combinations, things that just don't work, things that are just, they just don't function well. And these combinations are based on the principle of defilement, and they're illustrations of defilement in marriage. And each of them are an illustration from nature that gives sort of an outside of marriage example of the importance of purity in marriage. And so these examples of mixing serve the purpose that Moses has here. And keeping separate things separate, seeds separate, You wouldn't just throw all kinds of different seeds in a field.

You would have total confusion. You don't put an ox and a donkey together. It just doesn't work. It's silly. You don't put threads together where one will rot out because it responds differently and the other survives.

It just makes no sense at all. He's saying In the same way, it makes no sense to commit adultery. It's so destructive, it's so foolish, it's so defiling to commit adultery. And then he speaks of purity and impurity in marriage, And this law of purity communicated in 22, verse 13 through 21, the law of purity before marriage. He speaks that this commandment has implications on the pre-marital relationship.

That adultery is implied in the pre-marital relationship and how you deal, how men and women deal together. And that If a man charges a woman with impurity before marriage, then she is chastised. And in this situation that Moses gives, because she misrepresented her purity, she is actually stoned on her father's doorstep. And here Moses makes fathers responsible for their daughters' purity. That they must be knowledgeable for it, because the responsibility and the knowledge of it goes back to the responsibility of a father.

And it implies this whole world that we live in where fathers do not protect the virginity of their daughters. They let their daughters run free and be exposed to just any old person who might become interested in them. And this kind of thing happens all the time. But the responsibility rests on a father's doorstep. Moses is using this law to implicate fathers in this thing of adultery.

If your daughter is an adulterer of fathers, perhaps it's your fault, and perhaps the blood is on your hands as Moses places it here. Not exclusively, obviously, but certainly he implicates the guiltiness of fathers for a situation like that. There are laws of regarding prostitution and sodomy in chapter 23 verses 17 to 18. And these matters of adultery are again perhaps examples that we would not have thought about initially. But Moses is telling us that this law of adultery goes far beyond just the physical act.

A father is implicated, and The premarital relationship is implicated. A daughter's responsibility is implicated in this as well. It goes far, far beyond to married people who commit adultery. The law is spiritual. It has meaning far beyond its own surface implication.

And that's why the Lord Jesus in Matthew 5 says in verse 27, you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not commit adultery, but I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you. For it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you. For it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish than for your whole body to be cast into hell.

So the Lord Jesus does the same thing. He takes the law and He applies it to issues that aren't necessarily on the surface, because the law is spiritual. Galatians 5, 14 is confirmed again for all the law is fulfilled in one word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And then the eighth commandment, thou shalt not steal, which begins in chapter 23 verse 19 and stretches to 25-12. And he gives, again, many illustrations that you wouldn't think of.

You think that stealing is the five-finger discount in the store or cheating on your taxes or something obvious like that. He says, well, it's actually more than that. Is it stealing when an escaped slave from a foreign country comes to you? Is it? He talks about what I'm just going to call sexual theft in chapter 23, 17 through 18, the laws of whoredom and bringing the price of harlotry into the temple.

Charging interest is also implied in this law of thou shalt not steal. The children of Israel were not allowed to charge interest to one another they were allowed to charge interest to the pagans but not to one another refusing to pay your vows in chapter 23 is is also theft it's theft to bar your property from the gleaners and we find the laws of property that you may eat your fill of your neighbor's crops and It's theft if you divorce wrongly. In chapter 24, 1 through 5, are laws of remarriage after heartbreaking situations in marriage, because there's so many difficult, confusing, convoluted situations that are created through divorce. Moses is giving the wisdom of God on a particular, very thorny problem that has come as a result of a divorce. Again, he says, it's theft if you send a newly married man to war and he dies and you're to give him relief from war for a year so that he might please his wife.

Yes, scripture is sufficient for your first year of marriage. You should be singularly devoted to your wife, the wife of your youth in your first year, so that you might establish her in security, in love, so that you might make her so happy, happier than she's ever been in her whole life, so that you might set your marriage on a foundation of love and tenderness. It's theft to take a man's livelihood, to take the upper or the lower millstone as a pledge. If someone owes you money and they reach the end of it, it's theft if you take their means of making a living. This is why the laws of repossession and bankruptcy are such in our own country today.

You can't take absolutely everything and that law is based on this. Speaks of the theft of kidnapping, speaks of the theft of Miriam to usurp the authority through slander of Moses, that was theft as well. Theft is more than just stealing. It's stealing the honor of those who are an authority over you as we read in Exodus as Miriam rose up against her brother. Moses gives that example here.

It's theft to enter a man's house to get your pledge. A man owes you money. You can't walk into his house. He has to bring it to you. It's theft to delay what you owe to the poor.

It's theft of a father's reputation to accuse him of the sins of his children. It's theft to leave nothing for the poor in your fields, and to, if you forget a sheaf in your field, to go get it rather than leave it for the poor. It's theft to beat a man without mercy. You must not beat him with more than 40 lashes. You can't beat him out of passion.

You are governed by God. It's theft to deprive a living to those who labor in the Word of God, because you ought not muzzle the ox while he treads out the corn. There are many, many examples of refusing to help a brother in preserving his inheritance. It's theft for a woman to improperly attack a man when her husband is in a fight. There's so many implications of this law here that Moses brings out.

Again, we reach the ninth commandment in chapter 25, 13 through 25, 19. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." And Moses gives the first illustration of the law of false weights and measures. That's bearing false witness. If you have it in your heart and you actually carry the means of cheating your brother in your heart and you have the weights in your bag that are false, that's a sin. It is bearing false witness.

And then he gives the illustration of Amalek. Amalek attacked them from the rear. They attacked the weak. And this law, of course, again, is explained. It's fulfilled in one word.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself. And then finally we come to the 10th commandment in chapter 26 verses 1 through 15. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife and you shall not desire your neighbor's house, his field, his male servant, his female servant, his ox, his donkey, or anything that is your neighbors. And here we find God's desire, his concern for our happiness. He goes into the inner recesses of our hearts of covetousness and helps us to put a drain plug on our greed.

Here Moses speaks of it in terms of ties and offerings that we would bring the first fruits of what God has given us so that we might not be hoarding everything. That we might not pervert justice through the stranger and the fatherless. That the family should be providing for the stranger and the fatherless and the widow and the poor. God's economy of justice for the poor is that the family and the people of God would take care of the poor. Unfortunately, we've completely destroyed this in our own nation where it's the state that takes care of the fatherless and the widow and the poor.

That's a perversion of justice. Moses said, you do not pervert justice to the stranger and the fatherless. And we pervert it when we do something different than what God has commanded. And again, we see the heart of this law, it's fulfilled in that word love. God fulfills all of his laws through his love.

And so, as we have walked through At a thousand miles an hour here today, these 513 verses, they really are all summed up in a revelation of the righteousness of God. That He would show us what love means, that He would explain what justice is. When we live in a world that doesn't understand justice anymore. I grew up in a world that hated the law of God. My teachers hated the law of God.

They taught me paganism all my youth. I went to the university and I was taught to hate the law of God. And yet I am that man. I am that man who is undone. I'm a man of unclean lips and I live amongst the people of unclean lips.

And sometimes when I read the law of God, it offends me. It offends me because I'm such a great sinner. It's because I am so darkened in my understanding. It's because I don't understand the heart of God. Because my bankruptcy is so great, my sins are so deep that they cannot be atoned for by keeping even one of the laws of God, which are impossible to keep.

And that my only Hope is the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, which has delivered me from all the curses of the law, which are upon my head without a sacrifice. And this is the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, that God's people would understand the depth of their depravity, how disconnected they are from the heart of God, how they could read something in the law and actually hate it shows what great sinners we are before a law that is perfect and pure in every way. So as we conclude our time in this great speech of Moses given in the last month of his life before the entry of the children of Israel in the promised land, I pray that we would learn from it and that it would cause us to be a holy people set apart for God living by his laws and not the bankrupt pagan laws that so surround us and that we would be willing to die for them and that we would be willing to be a people despised and rejected of men. Because the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul, the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.

The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.

Moreover, by them is thy servant warned, and in keeping of them there is great reward. Would you pray with me? Oh Lord we stand so small, so undone by your laws, but yet so cared for by your mercy, as mercy triumphs over judgment. Amen.