In his sermon 'Love, Obedience, Blessing', Scott Brown explores Deuteronomy chapter 11, emphasizing the importance of loving God, keeping His commandments, and imparting these values to future generations. He outlines three main commands: love God, keep His commandments, and internalize His word. Each command is linked to historical events such as the Exodus, the promise of the Promised Land, and the experiences in Egypt, highlighting God's goodness and faithfulness. Brown contrasts the self-reliance of Egypt with the divine provision in the Promised Land, underscoring God's sovereignty. He also delves into the importance of remembering God's past acts to strengthen faith and obedience. Furthermore, the sermon addresses the role of education, advocating for a God-centered approach and warning against secular influences. Brown concludes by urging believers to internalize these teachings and live by them, promising divine assistance and blessings for those who do.

Please turn your Bibles to Deuteronomy chapter 11. I'm going to read 11, 1 through 25. Please stand for the reading of the Word of God again. Therefore thou shalt love the Lord thy God, and keep his charge, and his statutes, and his judgments, and his commandments always. And know ye this day, for I speak not with your children, which have not known, and which have not seen the chastisement of the Lord your God, his greatness, his mighty hand, and his outstretched arm, his stretched out arm, and his miracles and his acts which he did in the midst of Egypt unto Pharaoh the king of Egypt, and unto all his land, and what he did unto the army of Egypt, unto their horses, and to their chariots, how he made the water of the Red Sea to overflow them as they pursued after you, and how the Lord hath destroyed them unto this day.

And what he did unto you in the wilderness until you came into this place and what he did unto Dathom and Abiram the sons of Eliab and the sons of Reuben how the earth opened her mouth and swallowed them up and their households and their tents and all their substance that was in their possession in the midst of all Israel. But your eyes have seen all the great acts of the Lord, which he did. Therefore shall ye keep all the commandments which I command you this day, that you may be strong and go in and possess the land whither ye go to possess it. And that ye may prolong your days in the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers, to give unto them and to their seed a land that floweth with milk and honey. For the land whither thou goest in to possess it is not as the land of Egypt from whence ye came out, where thou sowed thy seed and watered it with thy foot as a garden of herbs.

But the land with which thou goest to possess is a land of hills and valleys and drinketh water of the rains of heaven, a land which the Lord thy God careth for. The eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even at the end of the year. And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto my commandments, which I command you this day, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, that I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn and thy wine and thy oil and I will send grass and I fields for thy cattle that thou mayest eat and be full. Take heed to yourselves that your heart be not deceived and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them. And then the Lord's wrath be kindled against you, and ye shut up the heaven, and there be no rain.

And that the land yield not her fruit, unless ye perish quickly from off the good land which the Lord giveth you. Therefore shall ye lay up these My words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes, and ye shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt write them upon the doorposts of thine house and upon thy gates, that your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children in the land which the Lord swear unto your fathers to give them as the days of heaven upon the earth. For if ye shall diligently keep all these commandments which I am commanding you this day to do them, to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, and to cleave unto him, Then will the Lord drive out all these nations from before you, and ye shall possess greater nations and mightier than yourselves. Every place whereon the soles of your feet shall tread shall be yours.

From the wilderness of Lebanon, from the river Euphrates, even unto the uttermost sea, shall your coast be. Then there shall no man be able to stand before you for the Lord your God So lay the fear of you and the dread of you upon all the land that she shall tread upon, as he has said unto you. Please be seated. Well, brothers and sisters, we have heard over 20 sermons on the book of Deuteronomy so far. And I want to bring some words from George Whitefield about how to listen to sermons, because we have many more to go.

George Whitefield gives six helps for how to listen to a sermon. So they're very helpful. I just want to, in preparation for our time this morning, just go through them in hopes that our hearts might be even better prepared than they are now. The first is, come not to hear them out of curiosity, but out of a sincere desire to know and do your duty. And he says, formality or hypocrisy destroys the power of a sermon that God might have.

Secondly, he says that prepare your heart before you hear that you would give diligent heed to the things that God would speak to you, that you would speak to your own heart and prepare it. And then thirdly, don't entertain even the least prejudice against the minister. For could a preacher speak with the tongue of men and angels, and his audience was prejudiced against him, and his words would be like a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal?" He says, and then he gives the illustration of Christ. He could not do a miracle in a place because of unbelief. And then he says, take heed therefore, my brethren, and beware of entertaining any dislike against those whom the Holy Ghost has made you overseers." Isn't that an interesting one?

Because all ministers have their own problems, and it would be so easy to miss the word of the Lord because of a failing in the one who speaks. And then fifth, fourthly, you ought not to be too dependent upon the preacher or think more highly of him than you ought to think. That's the opposite problem. And then fifth, that you would make a careful application of everything you see there. And then sixth, if you would receive a blessing from the Lord, when you hear His Word preached, Pray to Him both before, in, and after every sermon to endued the minister with power to speak and to grant you a will and an ability to put into practice that He will show from the book of God to be your duty." And then he winds up by saying this, for Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

And he has promised to be with us, be with his ministers always, even to the end of the world. So this is George Whitefield on how to listen to a sermon. What a blessing it would be if we could remember all those things in the midst of it. So we are in Deuteronomy chapter 11. In Deuteronomy 11 we find God with a very passionate voice, almost screaming, God is good, God is faithful, God is your provider, God is mighty, God is superior to all of the other gods.

God blesses his people and in this chapter as in so many of the other chapters we've already engaged in, God would come to us and he would call us out of disobedience into obedience, and that he, in the process, he would deliver us from the abuse of idols that have always been upon us. A man's idols never completely depart from him, and so they need to constantly be confronted. But they're always abusive. They're always disappointing. They always mess with everything good.

And here Moses is crying out at the end of this section, and we'll talk about that a little bit later. And he's really extolling the majesty of God in every section of this chapter. And he is calling out again to our hearts that hearts would love God and that it wouldn't be a thing of formality or impersonal religion or going through any kinds of motions, but it would be genuine love for God. Here's how Calvin speaks of how important this love is. He says, for until men recognize that they owe everything to God and they're nourished by His fatherly care and that He's the author of their every good, and that they should seek nothing beyond Him.

They will never yield to Him in willing service." In other words, Calvin is saying, unless you believe in the majesty of God, unless you believe in the absolute goodness of God and that every single one of His commandments is good. Unless you believe that, you can never love Him. That's what Calvin is saying. And you can't obey Him with a pure heart unless you believe that. And then he says this, no, unless they establish their complete happiness in Him, they will never give themselves truly and sincerely to Him.

I think Moses in chapter 11 is just continuing to drive us to the happiness that is there for all those who believe, that there's only one happiness, and that is in God. And so this chapter here serves the end of a series of exhortations, general exhortations, that have been running from chapter five to chapter 11. And in this section, Moses has been expounding on the broad principles that we ought to follow in order to fulfill the first commandment, to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, and to have no other gods before him. And so if there would be love for God, there would be obedience. And if there would be obedience, there would be the experiencing of all of the blessings that are just so repetitively enumerated in this book over and over again.

So now after dealing with these general principles, Moses is going to take us into what we call chapter 12 and dive into many of the details and applications of the law of God. Now, I want to calibrate us again here. Let's talk about chapter 11 first. And then I want to sort of explode out and see again how Chapter 11 fits into the whole scheme of the book. In Chapter 11, I'll just tell you what's ahead.

There are three main commands in Chapter 11. The first command is to love. And there's a historical reason to love the Lord your God, and he gives that, and that is what was experienced in Egypt. And then the second command is in verse 8, to keep every commandment. And then the promised land is the historical illustration of why that's so important.

And then the third command is in verse 18, Lay up. Lay it up in your heart and in your soul. What does it mean to lay up? So we'll talk about these three commands one by one. And the context, the illustration, is the home.

So, you know, he gives this first command and the illustration is Egypt. The command to keep the illustration is the promised land. And then the command to lay up the illustration is the home. So Moses is taking us through all kinds of, you know, really fascinating historical and personal examples that he wants to use to help us understand what he's saying to the people. And then there are three demonstrations of the mighty hand of God, of the majesty of God.

And these demonstrations are his mighty acts on behalf of his people. If you would love God, then it would be so helpful to know of His love toward you and the power that stands behind that love. And then the second illustration is His sovereignty over nature and the nations. We'll find that in chapter 11. And then the third demonstration of the majesty of God is His judgment of sin and His reward for obedience.

And so that's chapter 11. Three commands, three historical illustrations, three kinds of demonstrations of the majesty of God. That's sort of the overview of chapter 11. There are lots of details we'll go into in just a few minutes. Then let's pull back and look at the overall context.

How does Chapter 11 fit in the book of Deuteronomy? And let's just review that again. Deuteronomy is a series of three speeches. The first speech is in Chapters 1 through 4. And it's historical.

That's the genre of literature in the first speech. It's a historical narrative that explains the goodness and the mercy of God, His fatherly kindness toward all of his people enumerated in real life situations. And the application is, what was true for them is true for you, that God loves you. And he really does have a wonderful plan for your life. And that's the first speech.

So it is historical, it's the gospel, and I think the great image that emerges out of this first speech is, I carried you. I carried you. He talks about God's fatherly care in wilderness wandering. In wilderness wandering. And then the second speech spans from chapter 5 to chapter 28.

And it's didactic, it's teaching. The theme of it is I taught you. The content is the law of God and dozens of applications. And then the third speech runs from 29 to 30. It's shorter, it's eschatological, it tells you how things turn out.

And The big message of the speech is, I warn you of blessings and cursings. They're real, and heaven and hell are real. Judgment is real. Turn to God. Fall on your face before he destroys you.

That's the message of the last speech. And then there's a conclusion in chapters 31 to 34. So that's the context in which this rests. And so Moses is now coming to the end of really a section in the second speech. So remember, the second speech goes from chapter 5 to chapter 28.

But from 5 to 11 are many general exhortations and appeals for obedience and then proclamations of blessings, declarations of God's care and his mercy toward his people. He says, I did not put you to death when I could have done it. But I did not do that. I gave you another set of tablets. These first 11 chapters contain many general and they're so beautiful warnings and they're repeated, they're woven together and they repeat, they come back again and by the way they'll come back to us again they'll continue to weave these themes all throughout the sermon But what's very important to understand is that the second speech that Moses is giving begins with generalities and then it ends with specifics for how you deal with all kinds of things, how you deal with your money, how you build your house safe, how you deal with strangers, how you deal with virginity, what fathers are supposed to do with their sons and their daughters, All these details that are there, laws, feasts, duties, rights, all kinds of things are in the second part of the speech.

So now, as you obviously know, we're coming to the very end. We're coming to the last chapter of this first section in the second speech. And so in this last chapter, Moses is really summing things up and getting us ready for the details of beginning chapter 12. Do you get that? So now let's look more carefully at chapter 11.

There are three commands that are issued in the chapter. And the first is found in verses one through seven. Love the Lord your God. Let me just say that Moses makes it so clear that this love that we are to have is a rational love. It's based on facts, it's based on history, it's not based on a pipe dream at all.

It's based on stuff God has done that you can see. And as you look back in history, your love for God can be so inflamed by looking back and seeing what He has done in history, even your own history. So let's look at verses 1 through 7. Therefore, you shall love the Lord your God and keep his charge, his statutes, his judgments, and his commandments always." So he begins with an appeal to love God. He's talking about your affections.

If one doesn't feel love for God, I'm not confident that they truly know God. He is speaking of a heart that does love God, that rises up and blesses God. You know, we're learning much about John Calvin this year on the 500th anniversary of his birth. John Calvin said, I offer my heart to you, Lord, promptly and sincerely. That's the heart that Moses is talking about here.

It's a heart ready to be offered up before God. I've really titled this sermon, A Heart Offered Promptly and Sincerely, because of this command that's so prominent and that is so continuous throughout the book of Deuteronomy. I offer you my heart promptly and sincerely. You know, as I was studying this week, I was just reminded of so many things, but one of the things that I was reminded of is that I've always been aware of God's goodness and His benefits toward me. And I'm pretty confident that it was that awareness that God gave me, that He was good, that caused my salvation.

There was a point in my life where I believed that only God was good, and that I was not good, and that I had messed everything up, and that I didn't want to do life my way anymore. And I looked around at my friends, and I thought, I don't want to do my life their way either. This is a mess. And God, in order to save someone, He would perhaps open his heart to see the goodness of God. You know, I just, I'm so confident that all his ways are pleasant ways and all his paths are peace.

I'm so confident that God gives you His truth and then He uses that truth to set you free. And you shall be free indeed. That He places a thirst in your heart and then He gives you the living water, He gives you a hunger in your soul, and then He gives you bread from heaven. And you know, you know in your heart that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. I know that deep within my soul, though fall short in a thousand ways every day, I know, I really believe that with all my heart, that there is bread from heaven and it's the only truly good bread.

I know, I believe that God, He puts you on a path, way in life, but He is the way, the truth, and the life that He places before you an open door. He is the door. I really genuinely believe that God is good. And Moses here is presenting this case in the first seven verses. He says, love the Lord your God and keep His charge.

And then He gives you a dozen reasons why. Because God is good, because He's mighty, because God is wonderful. And He destroys the enemies of everything that's good. And I wish I could love him more. I wish I could worship him better.

I wish I could pray better with more dependence and more reality and passion. But I will tell you this, I know this love that he's talking about. I don't know the perfections of keeping its commandments, but hear the appeal as to love God with your heart and say, yes, Lord, you are good. If you're saying that, you're saying that with all your heart, and you have repented of your sins, and you've trusted in the cross of Christ for the dealing with your sins and you have nothing left to give for your own righteousness. You're a believer.

You have come into the kingdom of heaven if you love Him and you say, yes Lord, You are truly good. And so that's what Moses is appealing. And remember, he's coming to the end of these general appeals through obedience and love for God. And he begins with this first command of love for God. The audience, he speaks of the audience.

Moses is addressing directly, he's actually just sort of calling them out and he's saying, no today that I don't speak with your children who have not known and who have not seen the chastening of the Lord your God." And he's really talking to those who were under 20 years old at the time of the Exodus. Remember those over 20 died. But there were children there who saw it all. And he's appealing to those eyewitnesses who saw the pillar of fire, who saw the exodus, who saw the armies of Pharaoh get washed away in the flood after the parting of the Red Sea. So he's appealing to these young people who saw with their very own eyes.

Of course, Joshua and Caleb were also there. So he's talking to old guys. He's talking to guys who are 40 plus, 50 plus. And he's asking them to remember what they saw when they were little children. Just think about this little children for a minute.

Think of, you might be 10 or 8 or something, but you've seen God do things. You've seen the mighty hand of God in your family. You've seen God work. That's what he's saying. He's saying remember, remember when you were eight and you saw that?

Remember, God is good. Don't forget that. I'm appealing to you. Love Him. Love Him and keep His charge because you saw Him.

You know how good He is because you've seen it. And it's a rational love, it's a rational faith that God calls us to. That it's not just based in opinions, but it's based in the deeds of God that have clearly been seen, even in your youth. I'm astonished that God here is speaking to those about the faith that they had when they were children, when they were really very young. What a blessing it is when God comes upon you when you're young.

My own dear wife was Saved when she was seven years old what a what a blessing it is to have God light your heart up when you're just a child the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these and So God here through Moses Reminds a generation who saw the stuff they saw the smoke of the fire in a big way And so love is hanging on history, or the appeal to love is hanging on history and a memory of real things that happened. What did they see? Now, it would be glorious to spend the entire rest of the time on just these next few things. What did they see? They saw the chastening of the Lord.

That's one thing. If you're a little child, have you ever seen the chastening of the Lord? Well, when you're 50 or 60, you will draw upon it. You will. God will bring it back.

He'll bring the works of God back in your childhood to strengthen you when you're 50 and 60 years old. So soak it in. Fill your mind with the knowledge and the wisdom of God now because when you're 50 or 60 it'll come back to strengthen you again. You know why do you find oaks of righteousness in their 50s and 60s often. It's because they're constantly being fed by the good sap that was nourished in their early days.

Children should nourish their hearts with a hot, hot and aggressive heart when they're young. So that when they get to be old, they can remember back to the days of old, and they can remember the wonderful things that God has done. Even the chastening of the Lord, and then His greatness. Do you see that? We're numbering now.

The chastening of the Lord, number one. Number two, His greatness. Number three, His mighty hand. Number four, His outstretched arm. Honestly, I've been so thankful for these two turns this week.

His mighty hand and His outstretched arm. When you're a child, look for the mighty hand. Look for the outstretched arm of the Lord, and when you're old and gray, you will be an oak of righteousness. And that sap that got gut churning and nourished when you were so young will help you in the days of trial and calamity when you are old. And so do your due diligence now, children.

Be like these children here who could remember the mighty deeds of God, those who are under 20 years old. So we have the chastening of the Lord, number one, his greatness, his mighty hand, his outstretched arm, five, his signs and his acts, which he did in the midst of Egypt. Six, and what he did to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and to all his land. Seven, what he did to the army of Egypt and their horses and their chariots. Eight, how he made the waters of the Red Sea overflow as they pursued you and how the Lord destroyed them to this day.

Nine, what he did for you in the wilderness until you came to this place. And what he did to Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, the son of Reuben, how the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, their households, their tents, and their substance with them. So he's appealing to two things, the majesty of God and their memory of it when they were children, and to the devastation of sinfulness and how terrible things happen when pride wells up in the heart as it did with Dathan and Abiram and the son of Ruth in those days and the earth opened up its mouth and swallowed them alive. They became proud. They said, I'm better than you.

That was the sin of these people. They said that they were wiser and more spiritual than those spiritual leaders that God had sent them. This always brings great calamity on the people of God when people say, I'm better than you, when they're speaking of those who've been appointed by God as their leaders. And it's, it's so devastating that God would open up the earth and swallow these people to make an example for all of those who would have this attitude rising up in them of self-righteousness and the loss of all humility and rising above in a way that would cause great calamity among the people of God and harm to themselves. So there are these lessons of the past, the greatness of God, the sinfulness of man, and it's all hanging.

It's all hanging on the command to love and to keep His charge. We know that whoever believes that Jesus Christ is born of God and everyone who loves Him is begotten of Him. And we know that we love the children of God when we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God that we keep His commandments And His commandments are not burdensome. So that's what you find right here in these first seven verses.

Love for God and the keeping of His commandments in one sentence, they're both necessary and neither are they contradictory in any way. Notice he says in the next section, keep every commandment. So the focus of the first was love and also implied in it are the keeping of the commandments, but then he presses hard on the commandment keeping side of what God would have us to do. And so he says keep every commandment in verses 8 through 17. Therefore you shall keep every commandment which I command you today, that you may be strong and go in and possess the land which you cross over to possess, that you may prolong your days in the land which the Lord swore to give to your fathers, to them and their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey." So this command to obedience hangs, again, on another historical reality, the promised land.

The love hung on what happened in Egypt. The keeping of the commandments hangs on the promise of the promised land and all the abundance that's there. So with the command, we find a term embedded in it that's terrifying. It should be terrifying to all of us. He says, keep every command.

Who is able to keep every command of God? The rich young ruler said to the Lord Jesus, all these I have kept from my youth up. Was that true? No, that wasn't true at all. He thought it was true because he had an unconverted heart.

The unconverted heart knows that his righteousness is based on how good he is. The converted heart has no righteousness of his own. And the converted heart, though he desires to keep every commandment, knows that he cannot even keep one of the commandments, and that he needs the Lord Jesus Christ, who kept all the commandments. He's our sacrifice. He's our substitute.

Because we couldn't keep the commandments, we had to be given one who could and did, and that was Christ. Christ kept every commandment and fulfilled every commandment When we never could and never have and never will. And so our trust is in the Lord Jesus. This word here is so helpful because it drives us to our needs, it drives us to humility because here we're commanded to keep every commandment. Every commandment.

I'm pretty confident that most of us have broken every commandment sometime between after breakfast and the time you showed up here. So none of us are standing with much except the grace of God to beg for our help. So he begins with this very comprehensive command. And then he begins to, again, as he does so many times, he begins to extol the effect of keeping the commandments. Look at verse 9.

That you may be strong. Keeping the commandments makes you strong, so keep the commandments. And it prolongs your days in the land. Do you see that in verses 8 and 9? Keeping the commandments is good.

It's wonderful. And so we should never despise any of the commandments of God. You know, there's always this discussion going on, what are the essentials and which are the unessentials? There are no unessentials. Where in this book are the unessentials?

Which commands do we remove? Well, Thomas Jefferson thought that was a good idea, so now we have the Jefferson Bible. He took out a pair of scissors, and he cut out the parts that he did not like. And he has a very thin Bible. It's just a New Testament though, by the way.

But we often do that. We do that because we don't believe that it makes us strong. We don't believe that every single commandment makes us strong. The reason is because there's some commandments that are threatening and they're disruptive. They're not anything like we thought life should be.

And so we reject them. No, but he says keep every commandment. You should always be careful when you find a commandment and say that's for another time. Your soul is in danger when you say that. Because here we know that every commandment should be kept.

We're not saved by the keeping of any of these commandments. But every word of God is pure and every commandment is right, whether we like them or not, whether they get us in trouble with our family members or our fellow believers across the world. God has given every commandment for us to obey. And then he says, he makes a comparison, he says that you'll be strong, And then he makes a comparison between the land of Egypt and the promised land. He's going to hold these two up and compare them.

He says in verse 10, not like the land of Egypt. The land I'm giving you is not like Egypt. You know, the taskmasters in Egypt were abusive. And you know, Canaan is not a man-made land. Egypt was a man-made land.

That's one thing that he's saying here. When we come across Canaan, the promised land, we're talking about the kingdom of Christ. And here, the land of Canaan, Matthew Henry points out that the land of Canaan was previously occupied by godless demons, by teachers, by, he called them, work mongers. And he says, but it's freed from sin and error through the word of God in the gospel. That's how Matthew Henry speaks of the promised land.

That it was once occupied, that it will once have been occupied by idolaters like us. That they are dispossessed and the land is cleansed by the Word of God. He talks about the blessings of the land of fertility, contrasting the land of Egypt with the land of Canaan. He's saying it's fertile, it's beautiful, it's prosperous. That's what you see in verses 8 through 17.

He contrasts even the way that people were sustained in Egypt compared to the way that they'll be sustained in the promised land. In Egypt, the land was made fruitful by a vast matrix of levees and ditches because the water came from far away down the Nile. And they would take the waters of the Nile, and they would distribute the waters. That's how they fed themselves. They dug those ditches.

They moved that water. So he says, you sowed your seed, and you watered it by foot. What's that all about? How do you water the land by foot? Well with with with all these ditches there was water backing up and they would take their foot and they would kick the gate open and the water would flow.

So they would water the land by their foot. That's what he's saying here. That in Egypt, you fed yourself, but not in the land of Canaan. The water comes from heaven. I feed you and I am responsible for taking care of you.

I will never leave you or forsake you in the land of Canaan." That's the imagery that he's giving. He's comparing the labor and the work, The personal responsibility that is in Egypt, that you are the master of your own destiny, but not in the land of Canaan. There's a mighty god, and his majesty controls all things. And it's different. In Egypt, man brings water by ingenuity, by networks of ditches and levees and canals and tanks and paddle wheels and wooden checks and blocks that hold the water back and moving from one canal to the next.

But not in the promised land. God provides in the promised land. There's much to say here in this section, because here, God is claiming sovereignty over all the weather. You can hear the rain on the roof now. God is sovereign over all the weather.

He brings the rain in and He withholds it. One of the books that every child must read in his childhood is A.W. Pink's the sovereignty of God. In that section, he talks about God's sovereignty over the weather and all inanimate objects. He says truly then, this is in chapter 3, God's sovereignty in administration.

And that administration covers absolutely everything, including the weather. And he says, God governs inanimate matter. Earth, air, fire, water, hail, snow, stormy winds, angry seas, all perform the word of his power and fulfill his sovereign pleasure. Therefore, when we complain about the weather, we are in reality murmuring against God." And then Pink, in his wonderful style, begins to itemize every instance in the Bible where God controls the weather, which is what I love about this book. And he goes to Mark chapter 4 where we learn that even the winds and the waves obey Him.

We go to Matthew chapter 2 where He controls a star and puts it in the east that guides the wise men. We go to Psalm 147 where He sends out His Word and He gives snow and He gives ice and He melts the ice. He makes the winds blow. He does everything. God is in control of every breath of wind on the planet, on every drop of rain, on every crystal of ice.

God ordains every bit of it. And that's what he's saying in this section. He's saying, I've given you the promised land. In Egypt, you work for your own wages. But in the promised land, I am sovereign over all things.

I will feed you from heaven. The blessing will come down from heaven. And so then in verse 13 there's a repetition of this principle of the first commandment, to love the Lord your God and serve him with all your heart and with all your soul. And then he says, take heed, in verse 16, take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be deceived. When you find yourself believing that God is in control, that God is sovereign, take heed to yourselves.

Lest your heart be deceived and you turn aside to serve other gods and worship them. You know, even those who are saved are tempted to turn and shine up those old idols that we once loved and were so comforted by for so many years. You know, to do those things that made us feel good, but they really didn't feed us. He's saying, don't turn back to the idols, lest your heart turn and be deceived. Take heed, because the heart can turn.

This is an occasion where we should ask, are you at that point where your heart is turning, are you beginning to love those old idols? Are you beginning to love those old wicked songs that were really conceived in the hearts of Baal worshippers, people who hated God, and they comfort you because you like the sound of them and you like those words. Are you going back to Egypt? I know so many old men, 45, 50 years old, they go back to Egypt because they remember the songs of their youth and they start comforting themselves again by those old wicked propositions, and they become corrupt in their old age. It's often the reason men don't finish well.

They get nostalgic and they go back to Egypt. And Moses said, don't turn back, unless you turn aside, verse 16, and serve other gods and worship them. No, stay on the course, keep running away from those gods. Hate them, because they hate you. And That's the logic that he's bringing.

So take heed, he uses the same term that the Apostle Paul uses in Acts chapter 20, take heed to yourselves and to the flock. In other words, he's talking to elders and he's saying you need to see elders what is going on in your life. Are you going back to Egypt in any way? And the apostle takes the same idea and brings it into his admonitions to the elders of the church in Ephesus. Take heed to yourselves and the flock of God, whom God has made you overseers.

So he started with the love of God, a command to love God, and then a command to keep the commandments, and the illustration is the promised land, and then he issues a third command to lay up, to lay up His commands in your heart. And this is the final appeal to offer up your heart promptly and sincerely before God, to believe that God is good, and to offer up your heart by laying up the commandments. He says, therefore you shall lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul and bind them as a sign on your hand." Oh, this is familiar terminology. We're back to Deuteronomy 6 again. That they may be as frontlets between your eyes.

You shall teach them to your children, speaking of them 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, that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land of which the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, like the days of the heavens above the earth. For if you carefully keep all these commandments, which I command you to do, to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to hold fast to him, Then the Lord will drive out all these nations from before you, and you will dispossess greater and mightier nations than yourselves. Every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours, From the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river to the river Euphrates, even to the western sea, shall be your territory. No man shall be able to stand against you.

The Lord your God will put the dread of you and the fear of you upon all the land where you tread, just as He has said to you." So let's try to dissect this a little bit. First, He calls for them to internalize the Word of God. He says, therefore lay these words up in your heart and in your soul. To lay up means to treasure, to savor, to memorize them, just to completely be absorbed in them. That's the command there.

To lay them up. To lay them up. It's a layup, but it's not like the layup that most of you are familiar with. This is a layup that keeps on feeding year after year after year. So he says internalize them, lay them up.

These words are sacred and they should fill your home. And then the second thing, you not just internalize them but you externalize them. They're not just kept in your heart. They are bound as a sign on your hand, and they're frontless between your eyes. He's talking about clothing in a way, the way that you display it.

It's another way of saying, wear your faith on your sleeve. Be right out front with it. Don't hide it. It's not a personal thing. But it should be externalized.

And then teach the third thing. So internalize, externalize, and then teach. He tells you what to do with these words. You shall teach them to your children. Of course we have this beautiful repetition of Deuteronomy 6.

And here we find again one of the great pillars of the biblical doctrine of education. The Bible says something about education. And it gives you the what of education. Moses is very specific about what is the content of the teaching. These words of mine.

That should be the heart of all education. These words of mine. This is what makes pagan education so diabolical. It's because they are antithetical to the words of God. They hate the words of God.

And it is sinful, it's unlawful for parents to send their children to be educated in pagan words and pagan propositions. Because it's a direct disobedience to this command to teach these words of mine. When you go into our public school system, you are taught that those words are buffoonery. By federal mandate, you must say that they are nothing to you. And that makes the entire public school system unlawful before God because it rails against this command.

You cannot keep this command and have your children in a public school, because the words of God are hated instead of embraced. So the what of the teaching, these words of mine. In Calvin's Institutes, he says, Christ received of the Father that he should be the one and only schoolmaster of the church. It would appear, however, that in practice the church has had many schoolmasters, Moses the law giver, the prophets, the apostles. But when all these were appointed to their several offices, it was enjoined upon them that they were to bring forward nothing of their own, but they were to speak from the mouth of the Lord.

Education begins with what you teach and these words of mine. I pray that if anyone desires to send their children to be educated by pagans who hate these words of mine, that you would be haunted until you revert back to these words which are precious. And don't put your children in places where these words are not Precious. And find yourself in direct opposition to this word that's here. And then where?

The house, the way, and the bed. That's where. In other words, everywhere. Education is not something that you do in a classroom. It's everywhere.

It doesn't mean that you can't have classrooms, but it does mean that education rolls on all the time. Sorry, there are no real graduations. Education doesn't stop in the Christian community. It might stop elsewhere. You might put a cap and gown on and say, I'm done with that.

Not in Christianity. That's not what we do. We keep learning. We keep reading. We keep memorizing.

We keep acquiring the commands of God. No, you will not graduate until you get to heaven. Who? Well, this is directed to the fathers of Israel. Who?

That's who does the education. And we know from the other commands that parents are the primary teachers of their children. How? How is it done? Diligently and carefully.

How easy it is to have a home school, but not have it be a diligent home school. To fall off of diligence because There isn't an external requirement out there. You know, God has made you self-governing. And often we're not governing ourselves very well in our homeschooling. We get lazy.

But here, in verse 22, it's very clear that the teaching should be done with diligence. So if there's any flagging in diligence, let's crank it up. Let's get on back on the diligence bandwagon. So education is not neutral. All education is moral by nature.

And today we basically have pagans under federal mandate to teach paganism to children, in the majority of children among our churches. And it should take our breath away that we're doing that. And so here we have these things that are happening in the home And that we would be saved from the end that we read about in Hosea, Hosea 5-7, in which the terrible revelation is given, they have begotten pagan children. And we need to understand that our education happens in our homes. What we are bringing into our homes makes a big difference in the world.

We've already been warned in the previous chapter, or in chapter 7, do not bring the abomination, do not bring abominations into your house. The abominations of the world have no place in our homes. Hollywood hates heaven, Hollywood hates the home, Hollywood hates husbands, Hollywood hates help meets, Hollywood hates having children, Hollywood hates honor. But what words would fill your house? I just appeal to you, brothers and sisters.

Don't let your house be governed by the words of Hollywood. And so we find this third command having to do with the home. We started with Egypt, we continued on to the promised land, and then this final illustration is of the home. And so we find a very sharp contrast in the world philosophy of education to the philosophy of education that we find here in this text. We have to realize that this often is the distinguishing mark between the true believers and those who do not, who really take the commandments of God seriously.

And I know that there are many, many believers who continue to embrace this pagan education system. And my prayer is that God would rescue a generation of children from these houses of bondage. My encouragement to people is to be bold about these commands and not to fear the consequences of speaking these commands over and over again. There is a generation that's being rescued in this country, but I fear that if the exodus from the public school system doesn't happen soon, the losses will be so horrendous that the disappointments will fill the homes of those true believers who kept their children there. My prayer is that God would rescue them.

I hope that's your prayer as well. And so here we find this command for the home. Again, I was reading this week in George Whitefield. Whitefield has a wonderful sermon on the duty of family religion. And he explains how all of this works in a family.

And I commend this sermon to you. It is so good. And then in verses 18 through 25, we see the victory. God does something. When you obey His commandments regarding the education of your children, something happens.

And here's what happens, verse 22. For if you carefully keep all these commandments, which I command you to do, to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to hold fast to him, then the Lord will drive out all these nations from before you. And you will dispossess greater and mighty nations than yourselves. Every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours. From the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the river Euphrates in the western sea.

No man will be able to stand against you. The Lord your God will put your dread, put the dread of you and the fear of you upon all the land where you tread, just as the Lord has said to you. So there's a really dramatic effect. If you would keep the commandments of God and order your home properly, good things will happen to you. And The Lord will drive the nations out before you.

God will come alongside and help you. If you fear what consequences there might be, don't fear at all, because here it says the Lord is going to do the work. He's going to drive out the wicked from before you. And then the chapter ends with what we'll pick up next week with a call to remember a blessing and a curse. And in this section, we find ourselves in the very first place in Deuteronomy where we read the terms blessing and curse together in the same sentence.

And then it will be repeated many times from now to the end of the book. So this in this chapter is a very intense appeal to historical demonstrations of the love of God. It caused the old people to look back and think about what they saw in their childhood. It causes all the children of Israel to recount the mighty hand and the outstretched arm, the greatness of God. And Moses, you know, Moses is arguing with us.

He's wrestling with us. And he's wrestling with you in this text. He's taking you, he's got a full Nelson upon you and he's saying, Listen, obey, obey, you'll be blessed. Love Him, it will be a blessing to you. And He's wrestling constantly.

I think this second sermon is a gigantic wrestling match, just like with Jacob, where God is wrestling with man to love him and to obey him. And so here we find these three commands, one, to love, two, to keep, three, to lay up, and then all of the beautiful evidences. And why? Why? So that God would have his day with us, and he would argue with us, he would wrestle with us, that we would have a heart offered promptly and sincerely before the Lord that our hearts would truly bow down and see how good He is.

And I really believe that that is the theme of these first 11, from 5 to 11, the goodness of God and the case for obedience of every word that is commanded in Holy Scripture. Would you pray with me? Oh Lord, now to you who is able to keep us from stumbling and to present us faultless before the presence of your glory with exceeding joy. To God, our Savior, who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen.