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In Deuteronomy 29, Moses begins his final speech as he summons the Israelites to review what God has done in their history and to ratify and renew the covenant with God. What were the important things Israel needed to hear? And what can we learn from Moses' speech in our faith today? Pastor Wei shares the word.

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This is the last speech Moses is giving is making to the nation of Israel. And this is just before they cross over to the promised land. So we're finally getting towards the end of Deuteronomy. And at this point, they were to ratify the covenant with God. And ratification is a big word, right? I had to go and search it up myself and then just because I had no idea what it means. Beth told me that it's actually a legal term. It's for when you are signing a treaty or you are going to enter into a contract that is legally binding. So what's happening here then is that the just before they enter the promised land, they are supposed to leg they are supposed to ratify the covenant with God to enter into it formally with the Lord. A covenant that grants them favor and blessings if they keep it, but curses and judgment if they break it. And so it's a very serious matter for the Israelites right now. It's not to be taken lightly. The most poignant thing that stands out from today's passage is, I think, how accurate it is in its portrayal of our fallen nature. On some level, we may be right to wonder what relevance this covenant has with us, right? It has happened so many thousands of years ago. It is the old covenant, right? Jesus has come with the new covenant. So what has today's passage got to do with us? And we may be right in thinking like that. But the relevance, my friends, is found in the fact that we are just like them, actually. That even today, with all that we have been given, we find that we have much more in common than we would think. Also, it is about a God who hasn't changed at all over these last uh few thousands of years. He hasn't changed in his plan and his purpose for our forebears in Moses' time and for us today. And so in the first part of his speech, in chapter 29 is but the the really the first part of his uh final uh discourse, uh, in this chapter, Moses raises a perennial issue that has plagued Israel through their history. Right? They have always been a stiff-necked people, right? Moses, and so Moses starts his speech by first going through their experiences in the past. And I think it's it's important to note that Moses is not talking about some abstract history of the nation that they happen to be in, right? He's talking about their personal, first-hand experiences of God, right? Their own experiences of what the Lord did in their lives. And so verses 2 and 3 say this, you have you have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, uh, to Pharaoh and all his servants and to his land. The great trials that your eyes saw, the signs and those great wonders. Right, the current generation of adults in uh Israel now, uh, the the current generation of adults and elders, they were alive when the events of Exodus happened. They saw with their own eyes the mighty works and wonders of God in the ten con the ten plagues in Egypt, right? In the parting of the Red Sea, they were there and they saw it. In water coming out of the rock, right? They were there and they saw it. And on and on. They were eyewitnesses to God's miraculous actions in their lives. But then Moses uh kind of follows this with perhaps the most confusing verse in the entire chapter. In verse 4, it says, But to this day, the Lord has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or hear ears to hear? Right? Didn't Moses just say they saw? They saw this and they saw that. And now Moses is saying they actually didn't see. Why is it that God did not give them the ability to understand, to see, or to hear? Why is God the one keeping them blind and deaf? Why would God do such a thing? If God did not give them the capability, does it mean that we can blame God? Right? Is God just trolling the Israelites? The rest of the passage and in many other places of the Bible would suggest actually not. That's not quite what is happening. In fact, the whole point of the covenant and the thrust of Deuteronomy is that the people are given the terms of the covenant clearly. Clear enough that they can understand, clear enough that they can accept it. Right? And that they can and must choose whether they would follow God or not. It becomes especially clear in the last verse of uh today's reading in verse 29 the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. It has been clearly given to the people. And so uh they are given what they need to know, right? What some we would call sufficient and necessary revelation. They are given all that they need to know in order to obey God. And so, how do we understand verse 4? It is not that God is speaking in riddles, right? He's not hiding his message in puzzles for us to solve. God's message is clear in his works and in his words. Right? The issue is that the people were not in the right posture to be given the mind to understand, eyes to see, and ears to hear. Because as we have just seen, gone through their history, as the people who have witnessed the power and wonders of the Lord, they persistently complained and grumbled against God and against his appointed leader, Moses. They were hard-hearted and they were stiff-necked. So, what is clear revelation from God is spiritually opaque to them. They saw the wonders and marveled at the wonders, right? But they learned nothing about the wondermaker, they understood nothing about his ultimate purpose, and they could not trust him when they faced new challenges. Instead, they will grumble, instead, they will long to go back to Egypt, long to go back to be slaves rather than be free. And instead, they continuously make demands, demands of water, demands of meat, and even turn away from God to worship idols, thinking these useless gods can help them instead of the one who actually acted in their lives. It is astounding that right after they are brought out of Egypt, right, Moses goes up to the mountain to meet God, coming down the Ten Commandments. When Moses was kind of late in coming down, they built a golden calf to worship. They were quick to turn away from God because they were hard-hearted. And so they had no true desire, right, to know or to trust, or they couldn't trust God beyond the superficial level. And because of this condition of their hearts, they were not given the minds to understand, eyes to see, or ears to hear. They couldn't have accommodated that sort of mind. But God doesn't give up on his people, right? And God continues to appeal to the people here, right? He goes on to tell them to reflect on just the last 40 years of their lives in the wilderness. In verses 5 to 5 to 9, right, verse 5, I have led you 40 years in the wilderness. Your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandals have not worn off your feet. And some of us will love this miracle, right? I, for one, would definitely enjoy this miracle. Clothes don't wear off, shoes don't wear out. You know, I can wear the same thing over and over again. I don't have to buy anything, right? And then now a lot of my teachers have holes, and Behf is always telling me, don't wear this t-shirt out, cannot wear that one out, got holes here, cannot, and all that. And I wish my clothes would not uh wear out. Um and of course, for some it would be terrible news, right? Um, I remember even back when I was in secondary school, some of my friends would like to you know flex and say that wow, they have not repeated the same outfit for the last month, right? Uh as it is a badge of honor to have so many clothing, so many articles, and they can mix and match and and uh not have the same outfit, right? And imagine being a fashionist in the wilderness, right? This miracle would have been a torture to them. But it is amazing that 40 years, 40 years, right, in the wilderness, their clothes and their sandals were still intact. Beyond that, verse 6, you have not eaten bread and you have not drunk wine or strong drink, that you may know that I am the Lord your God. And one scholar comments, and this is quite quite strange, right? But one scholar comments that um the bread and the wine are things that they needed to make for themselves, right? But the fact is that when they were in the wilderness, they did not make anything for themselves. They did not bake bread, they did not make wine, right? All the food that they had, all the drink that they had, was completely provided for by God. Everything was provided for by God. And so not just clothing, no, just food. Verse 7 and 8. When you came to this place, Sihon, the king of Heshbon, and Ork, the king of Bashan, came out against us to battle, and we but we defeated them. We took their land and gave it to, uh gave it for inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half tribe of the Manasites. Right? Even in battles, right, when Israel had no might and really they have no right of coming out victorious, right? They were powerless, they were small, they were just a group of nomads in the wilderness. God gives them victory in battles against these more powerful nations. God was with them through and through. They lived in the miracles of God in the wilderness. And upon reflection of their personal experiences with God, they are called in verse 9, therefore keep the words of this covenant and do them, that you may prosper in all that you do. These are important words at this pivotal time for Israel as they ratify the covenant God is making with them. Right? It is a call for them not to be stubborn, not to be hard-hearted, but to be tender-hearted with the Lord. It is meant to stir up a response in them that they may respond and receive, truly receive the mind and the eyes and the ears to live out their lives in God's blessing. It is a call to them not to turn away from God or his covenant. Yet, this wouldn't be the last time we will read of their inability to understand and to hear and to uh to see. Um, in Isaiah, um, and actually it's a passage that the Reverend Daniel just uh kind of uh quoted from as he prayed with us, right? In Isaiah chapter 6, right, um this refrain, no no not having the mind to understand, not having the eyes to see or the ears to hear, right? This refrain becomes a judgment unto the people. In uh chapter 6, verses 9 and 10. Um God tells Isaiah to go and say this go and say to the these people, keep on hearing but do not understand, keep on saying but do not perceive. Make the heart of these people dull and their eyes heavy, and blind, uh, their ears heavy and blind their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed. Right? This same reframe is picked up um by Isaiah, right? And this time as a form of judgment, but of course, again to stir up a response in Israel who is now going wayward. And by it doesn't stop there, it is yet again picked up by Jesus and by Paul in the New Testament. Um, and I want to want to kind of look into uh how Jesus uses this passage from Isaiah when he explains to his disciples the meaning of the parable of the sower. Um if it to just draw your memory, the parable of the sower is about uh a soul who goes out to the field and kind of sows in four different types of soil, and then each uh yielding different results. Um Mark chapter chapter four, verse 10 onward. Um, when he was alone, the disciples came to him, right? Uh, those around him with the twelfth asked him about the parables. They came to Jesus and asked him privately, um, what did the you know what did the parable actually mean? Right? We we don't quite get what you're trying to try and say, right? And so Jesus said to them, To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything is in parables. So that, quoting from Isaiah, they may indeed see but not perceive, may indeed hear but not understand, lest they turn, lest they they should turn and be forgiven. And the verse 13, he says to the he says to the disciples, Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? He expected the disciples, the people who have chosen to follow him, the people who were close to him. He expected them to understand parables, to have that mind and that eyes and that and those ears. And at first at first glance, right, the reason Jesus taught in parables was really to um in some sense hide, hide the truth from uh those who didn't quite have the spiritual mind or spiritual eyes, right? Um and and it seems that you know Jesus is trying to um yeah, hide the truth from certain people, right? But let's think about it a little bit more. Um when we think about the parables, are they really difficult to understand? Are the parables really that difficult to understand? Because one of the main characteristics of the parables is that Jesus uses everyday language, he uses object lessons from their everyday lives, right? In a language that everyone could understand so that he could effectively bring his point across, right? Many comments that this is the genius of Jesus teaching in parables, right? So, on one level, just on one level, actually parables are not that difficult to understand, right? So, what is it about parables that keep people from seeing, hearing, and understanding? It hides because the spiritual lessons of the parables are opaque to those with no spiritual eyes to see, no spiritual ears to hear. Those who are spiritually sleeping could not understand what Jesus was actually trying to get at. And so we read seeing, they do not see, hearing, they do not hear. Many, many people in Jesus' time have heard his teachings, have heard his parables. I'm sure many have understood his parables to a certain degree, right? But very few were tender-hearted and truly understood the heavenly meaning of Jesus' parables and responded by following him. We also see how in Jesus' ministry, people just kind of miss the point of his miracles altogether. They have seen it, they have personally experienced it for themselves, and yet they missed the sign and failed to see Jesus for who he says he is. Right? The case of Jesus feeding the 5,000 is uh is one example, uh, and that happens in John chapter 6, verses 22 onward. Um, this is after he feeds the 5,000, you know, they go off for a while, and then Jesus kind of travels again, right? Um, we read we read that the next day, uh many people were just coming back to look for Jesus. Because previously they they experienced a miracle, they ate the bread, rational, no free food. So they wanted to come to Jesus again. They were trying to look for him. Um so 26, right? Uh well, uh after the whole whole whole whole uh narration of how they found Jesus, they came to Jesus and all in in verse 26. Uh Jesus tells them this truly, truly I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal. And at this point, they are kind of having a back uh to and fro, right? Um, so the people not quite understanding what what Jesus meant, or like, oh yeah, do do the work that has that has that gives us eternal food, right? So they start to ask him, what must we do to be doing the works of God? So Jesus answered, This is the work of God that you believe in him whom he has sent, to have faith in the Son of Man whom God has sent. But they didn't get it, they didn't understand Jesus at all. And in fact, they sort of have the cheek in verse 30 to ask, What sign do you do? After having you know performed numerous miracles already, in uh just recently the feeding of the 5,000. What sign do you do that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness as it is written, he gave them bread from heaven to eat. And so Jesus kind of pushed back. He said, Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God, he is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. So they say, Sir, give us this bread always. Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. Right? Can't be clear on this. I am the bread of life that God has sent down from heaven so that I can give you life, you know. And the work of God is just to believe in me, right? I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall not thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. Jesus is really blunt with them right now. You have seen me, but yet you do not believe. And then we jump to verse 41. The Jews grumbled about him, just as they grumbled against the Lord in the Old Testament. He grumbled, they grumbled about Jesus because Jesus said, I am the bread that came from heaven. They said, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, I have come now from heaven? This is symptomatic of what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 14. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him. And he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. To a people who want nothing more than physical sustenance, and essentially who want nothing more than free food, they couldn't see Jesus for more than someone who can provide bread for their stomach.

unknown 19:57

Right?

SPEAKER_01 19:57

They had no mind to understand, no eyes to see, and no ears to hear that the one who did the miracle of feeding them is the one who comes to give them spiritual and eternal food. And who does so because he is the Son of God sent by the Father to give life abundantly to all who hear and believe in him. But of course, many did not understand Jesus. Many in his time heard him, saw him, experienced his miracles and all, but they passed him by because they were hard-hearted. Right? Just like Israel in the wilderness. And today we may be quick to think of ourselves as different. We think of ourselves as more enlightened than the people in the Old Testament and of the New Testament. We think of ourselves as more understanding and more faithful than them. But this morning, church, we are compelled by God to ask, are we really all that different from them? What is the condition of our hearts this morning? As we are seated right here, as we hear the word of God, as we worship God just now, even right, as the Spirit of God was moving in this place, what is the condition of our hearts this morning? Are we really not just as hard-hearted and stubborn as the people in biblical times? One key way for us to discern the condition of our hearts, right, is to allow the spirit to search our hearts and to ask ourselves this one question. How am I responding to Jesus today? The key to understanding all this is really how am I responding to the word of God? As Jesus, as you we hear Jesus' parables, easy to understand, easy to follow, but what about the spiritual lessons? What about our response to God? In Deuteronomy 29, we just saw, right? The point of mentioning. All of this, their hardheartedness and all that before they ratify the covenant, is to evoke a response to the one true God, laying it down before them and asking them, How will you now respond to God? Will they really honor God and seek after his heart? Will they humble themselves and surrender to the Lord? Will they choose to obey his law and walk in his ways, having experienced his goodness and knowing that his way is really the best way? And so when it comes to the New Testament, when it comes to us, even us today, the question is the same. How are we responding to Jesus today? Who do we say he is? Right? Who is Jesus in our lives? When we personally experience God and hear his word for us, have we been changed by him? Or do we remain the same as before? If we marvel at his work and at his word, if we give thanks and sing praise to him, or if we study and elucidate his teaching, we've understood very well scholarly through academic means or whatever, we understand very well what God is trying to say, right? But if we do all these things but are otherwise unchanged, untouched by the Spirit, then have we really understood the Lord? Because true understanding calls for a response to the Lord. Every time we encounter the word of God, every time we come to worship the Lord, true understanding and seeing and hearing calls for a response to the Lord. The nature of God's work and word is transformative. And He calls us to today to respond and to grow into Christ-likeness in this ongoing process of sanctification in this life. But like I said, I think today's passage really reveals the condition of our hearts, the fallen nature of our being, our stubbornness often gets in the way. Israel in the Old Testament struggled with this in the form of idolatry. In today's passage, Moses warns them about this, knowing that the distraction and temptation will be great when they enter the promised land. So in verses 16 to 19, uh we read that you know, the Israelites, you know how we lived in the land of Egypt and how we came through the midst of the nations through which you passed. And you have seen their detestable things, the idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold, which were among them. The language here is very strong. The word detestable here is linked to uh feces, right? To to poop, right? Um and it means abhorrence, it means disgusting, right? The expected reaction is to immediately turn away, right? If you see, I don't know, if you see a cockroach in your foot, you immediately freak up, right? Or if you see someone vomiting in front of you, you don't just wow, wow, so nice. You turn away, right? It's kind of gross, right? When you see someone vomit, it comes to me, you want to vomit as well, right? It is that reaction that God is expecting of his people when they see these detestable things. Right? And and it's it's this these things that we want, you know, God wants us to avert our eyes, close our eyes. You have children, they want to close their eyes, don't see, don't see, right? Um but the nature of men is that we often get distracted and then we get uh drawn into these temptations. We close our eyes, then slowly open, open, open, then we we start to start to peep, start to look, and then we start to get drawn into it. And before we know it, we are consumed by it, like pigs playing in mud. But the point here that they are trying to make to Israel at this point in time is that any alternative to God and to his covenant is downright detestable. Any alternative to God and his covenant is downright detestable. So he continues continues to say this in verse 18 beware lest that there be among you a man or woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning away today from the Lord our God to go and serve the gods of these nations. Beware lest that there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit. One who, when he hears the words of this swan covenant, blesses himself in his heart, saying, I shall be safe though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart. This will lead to the sweeping away of the moist and dry alike. Idolatry cannot just make us wonder, right? It can birth off fruit that is poisonous and bitter, that will be toxic to the people around us and plunge people into judgment. And again, it's not that much different from what we face in our lives, right? In the same way, we ourselves are prone to idolatry, we ourselves are prone to chasing idols and entering alternative covenants. Or we can get very comfortable with just being a nominal Christian, right? We profess faith in the Christian God, we come to church, but our lives are can be generally untouched and unchanged by the gospel of Christ. We can just bless our heart and say, Yeah, we are part of the church, we are part of this church, we are saved. Sometimes we find ourselves unable to speak of a personal relationship with God.

unknown 27:35

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SPEAKER_01 27:35

I don't know whether sometimes you struggle with that um that sense that God is my God. We can sometimes it's hard to articulate how the Heavenly Father is our God, how Jesus is our Lord, how the Spirit is leading and guiding us. Sometimes it's so hard to kind of make that connection of God and our lives. Or when life is good, we feel like we are in control, right? We feel everything is going our way, we can, and so we can easily see ourselves as the captains of our destiny, right? Given full reign to steer the course of our lives according to our own plans, our own will. And when tough challenge challenges arise, we do what we always do. We start to pray, right? We start to pray to God, and when we have overcome that difficult season by his grace, no, how often do we simply just slip back into our old ways? All that is to say that the hard heartedness of Israel in Deuteronomy chapter 29 is much more common to all of us today than we would care to admit. But you know what the good news is in Deuteronomy 29? Do you know what the good what the good news is in today's passage? From verses 9 to 15, we read that despite their hard-heartedness, and this is shocking, God still wants to be their God. And God still wants them to be his people. Despite this stubbornness being stiff-necked, right? Despite these people being prone to rebellion, God wants to be their God, and God wants them to be his people. He still wants to enter into a covenant with them so that when they come out of the wilderness, they do so as his covenantal people, entering into his mission to the world. God is utterly committed to the covenant he has made with his people, whether it is to the Israelites in the past or to us today in the new covenant of Christ. Despite our spiritual blindness and hard-heartedness, despite our tendency to wander away, he still desires to be our God and us to be his chosen people. Today, if you feel far away from God, God is always near. You feel wretched, you feel like you have you have wandered too far. No, God still wants to be your God. He still wants you to be his people, to be his children. I think the parable of the prodigal son in Luke, chapter 15, illustrates this point well. Whether you are like the younger son who have wandered off, um, and that's a young, that's the son that we normally remember more about, right? Who wandered off, squandered everything, went to the lowest of the lows, started feeling pigs and all, right, and have to come back to the father. Or you actually identify with the older son, um we don't speak about as much, who, but who is just as important in the story, right? Who stayed in the father's house, close to the father in proximity, but so far away from the father in heart, who did not actually understand the heart of his father, right? Whether or not you identify with the younger or the elder, God is waiting on you. God is waiting for you to come. Come to him, to meet him, to respond to him. Earlier we sang the song Jesus I come. You know, the bridge goes, and we don't have time. I wanted to kind of maybe sing that song as a as a uh response song, but I don't think we have the time now. But we we sang in the bridge, right? Just a glimpse of your glory. Just a glimpse of your glory. And in my heart I know that I won't let go. I'll cling on to God with just a glimpse, with just a taste of God's goodness, right? My heart will respond to God, and I will not let go of the one true God. That is really today's message, right? To respond to God who shows us his goodness, his glory, his love for us. God has never ceased to demonstrate his glory and his goodness in our lives. Often we are blind to it, often we are deaf to it, but God has never ceased to demonstrate his glory. And if we desire to walk in the ways of the Lord, this morning would you ask him, ask him for the mind to understand, for the eyes to see and for the ears to hear? Would you come to God and just surrender your heart, your wayward heart, your heart-heartedness? Would you ask God to exchange it, take it away, and give you a heart of flesh that you may be tender towards him, that you may be able to surrender to him and allow him to change you. We come back to the Father and respond to his love with renewable faith.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

We pray that you've been to the word of God today. If you'd like to know more about the Eastern Christian Church, please visit our website at the Y C C A C.