“The LORD Is God. There Is No Other” February 21, 2010

Deuteronomy 4:32-40

SI: We’re studying the book of Deuteronomy.

The name Deuteronomy means a second giving of the law.

The Israelites were standing on the brink of the Promised Land.

They were about to cross the Jordan River

and take possession of the land promised to Abraham.

This was not the generation that had come out of Egypt.

They had all died in the wilderness because of their rebellion.

But God was still faithful to his promise and was about to give their children

the land. So before the entered it, it gold Moses to give them the law a

second time, so that they would know how he wanted them to live.

That’s that the law is. God’s instructions to us about how he wants us to live,

so that we can show gratitude for his grace and enjoy a blessed life.

INTRO: We were watching the winter Olympics this week and on several

occasions the cameras would zoom in on athletes right before their big event.

And you could tell by their body language exactly what they were doing.

They were visualizing the event. Visualizing every turn, every move.

The perfect race, the perfect performance.

And I’m sure that every one of them would say that if you don’t do that—

if you don’t discipline your mind as well as your body,

and train yourself to see with your mind’s eye the perfection

you are trying to achieve, then you can never be an Olympian.

If you don’t focus on something great, then things around you will overwhelm you.

You will look down that steep mountain, you’ll become preoccupied with the

dangers, distracted by the crowds, and never fling yourself into it

with your whole heart and go for the gold and the glory.

Keep that picture in mind as we look at Moses’ words in this passage.

He’s nearing the end of his great sermon—this introduction to Deuteronomy.

He’s preparing the people of Israel to hear the law of God a second time

before they cross the Jordan River and enter the Promised Land.

As we saw last Sunday, he warned them about idolatry.

He said, when you go into the Promised Land, the idols of the Canaanites

are going to be a huge temptation to you.

They are going to offer you the desires of your hearts—security and success,

happiness and affirmation. You are going to be drawn to them.

Don’t worship them. Don’t trust them or you will become enslaved,

and you will suffer from the consequences of idolatry.

Worship and serve the Lord. He is the true God, he alone can really bless you.

Don’t let idols sit on the throne of your heart.

Worship the Lord. He’s the true God.

But Moses recognized that this is hard because idols are so concrete.

You can see them. They are present and visible in our lives.

They are right there with us.

If you have a tendency towards idolizing money.

If you have a tendency to listen to money’s promises of security or self-worth,

you have a difficult challenge.

Because you open your checkbook and there it is in black and white—your balance.

It says: Look at me. You know you need me. Trust me. Serve me.

Other idols are the same—If it’s beauty and appearance, if body image is your idol,

then there it is every time you look in the mirror. Those standards of beauty

saying, Serve me! And then either building you up or tearing you down.

Or if it’s your career or the right crowd or your children or marriage and romance—

those idols are so visible, so concrete—but God isn’t. He’s invisible.

How do you tear down the idols that are so visible and so present

and put the Lord on the throne of your heart when he is invisible?

How can the Lord become more real to you than the idols

that tempt you every day. How do you rise to the challenge of living

the great life God has called you to live?

Moses knew that would be the challenge for the Israelites

and so he says to them, you have to focus.

You have to be attentive and focus your attention on three things—

God’s word, God’s work, and God’s will.

When you face the challenges of faith. When idols that seem so real say:

Trust me. Serve me. When that happens, you have to focus.

You have to focus on what God has said. His word. His revelation.

How the voice of God spoke to you out of the fire at Sinai.

And you have to focus on what God has done. His work.

His great work of redemption.

How God brought you out of slavery in Egypt with miracles and mighty deeds.

And you have to focus on what God wants you to do. His will.

His will he has revealed to you in his moral law.

His commands that are full of love and blessing.

And as you do, this is what will happen—

You will know that the Lord is God and besides him there is no other.

He will become so real to you, that your idols will be as nothing.

And you will fling yourself confidently into the life he’s called you to live.

Look at this passage, this magnificent sermon of Moses under three points,

three things Moses tells the people of Israel to do.

1. You must focus on God’s word.

2. You must focus on God’s work.

3. You must focus on God’s will.

MP#1 First, you must focus on God’s word.

That’s where Moses starts. He says:

“Has any other people heard the voice of God speaking out of fire, as you have, and lived? . . . From heaven he made you hear his voice to discipline you. On earth he showed you his great fire and you heard his words from out of the fire.”

The thing that is striking about this is that Moses doesn’t emphasize the truth

of God’s word. He doesn’t say, God’s word is true and you should

believe it instead of the false promises of idols.

Instead, the point that Moses makes is that God’s word is a miracle,

and you should be in awe of it.

You should be amazed at this most awesome thing—that God has spoken.

He has revealed himself to us through his word.

He says, look at all of human history.

Has anything so great as this ever happened?

Has anything like it ever been heard of?

Has any other people heard the voice of God speaking out of fire?

And the answer to all of those great rhetorical questions is no, no, no!

He’s saying: Do you really see how awesome this is?

It’s unprecedented in all of human history.

God, the Creator, the one true God, the Lord has spoken and made self known.

Did you notice the way that Moses described God’s revelation?

He said that God spoke out of the fire.

He said that you heard his words from out of the fire.

He’s referring to Sinai when God came down and gave the Ten Commandments.

There was a great fire on the mountain and God’s voice came from it.

That’s what he’s referring to historically, the fire on Mt. Sinai,

but what does it mean? What’s the significance of God speaking out of fire?

I’m not sure I know entirely, and I think that’s the point.

It’s a mysterious image that is intended to fill us with awe.

Fire has a beauty and a power and a danger that is mesmerizing.

If you’ve ever seen a big fire, ever seen a house on fire, you can’t pull you eyes

away from it, can you? You just want to watch it consume.

And at the same time that fire is dangerous, it is also life-giving—it warms.

Think of a cozy fireplace in winter or a campfire.

Moses says: This is God’s word. He speaks through fire. His word is like fire.

It can bring life and warmth and comfort and judgment and death.

Moses says: That’s where you have to start.

By gaining or regaining a sense of awe that God has spoken.

The only way that God is going to be more real to you than idols, is when his word

is alive to you. When it’s a fire. When you hear and know that God is speaking.

A few weeks ago I was talking to a woman who has been raising her children

by herself since a divorce. She was telling me that her son had decided to live

with his father. She said: Do you know what I worry about most?

My mind raced ahead and answered the question. I thought she was going to say:

I’m worried about his education, that his dad won’t make him do his homework.

Or maybe: I’m worried that his dad will say bad things about me.

But her eyes filled with tears and she said: I’m worried he won’t hear God’s word.

It struck me powerfully. She was expressing this very thing Moses is speaking of.

She believed that God has spoken out of the fire and more than anything else

she wanted her son exposed to that fire. God was real to her because his word

was real to her. And we were able to talk about the promises in the Bible

that the Lord makes to us concerning our children, trust son to God and not worry.

How will the Lord be more real to you than the idols?

How will you know that the Lord is God and there is no other?

Not just in your mind, but in your heart and experience?

It will happen when you are in awe of his Word. When you hear the Scripture

and whisper to yourself—the Lord is speaking to me!

What that means specifically is that you must find those passages in Bible,

those verses, those promises that speak most clearly to you, challenge your idols.

Write them down, read them, memorize them and listen!

The living God is speaking to you.

A Bible verse on the mirror in one of my girl’s rooms that always makes me smile.

“Charm is deceitful and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord,

she shall be praised.” It’s from Proverbs 31.

That’s God’s word. He’s speaking to his daughters out of the fire.

Don’t be enslaved by the beauty idol. Don’t serve the popularity idol.

They are false gods. They will deceive you and leave you.

Serve me, and I will give you a beauty that will be praised for all time.

The Bible is a miracle. The God of all creation has spoken to his people.

Focus on God’s word and you will know the Lord is God and there is no other.

MP#2 Second, you must focus on God’s work.

His work of redemption. His work of salvation. Moses says:

“Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by miraculous signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes? . . . Because he loved your forefathers and chose their descendants after them, he brought you out of Egypt by his Presence and his great strength, to drive out before you nations greater and stronger than you and to bring you into their land and give it to you for your inheritance, as it is today.”

He told the Israelites to focus on God’s work of salvation—

to remember it and contemplate it. Think about what God has done to save you.

Think about the beauty of salvation in all of its complexity.

The Exodus from Egypt is the most complete picture of salvation in the OT.

These signs and wonders Moses mentions, these great and awesome deeds

and outstretched arm. The defeat of Pharaoh and the gods of Egypt, the death of

the firstborn, the blood of the Passover lamb—all of these foreshadowed Christ.

We see in the Exodus Christ’s victory over sin and death and Satan.

And when you think about God’s great work of salvation on your behalf—

when you worship him for it—then you will know that the Lord is God

and there is no other. Your idols will shrink to nothing.

I read a biography last month called God’s Samurai. About Mitsuo Fuchida.

He was the lead pilot in the attack on Pearl Harbor.

In addition to Pearl Harbor, he was in the Battle of Midway where wounded.

He was stationed in Hiroshima near the end of the war and was called away

on an assignment the day before the bomb was dropped on that city.

After the bomb he was in a group of 70 military investigators who surveyed

damage he was one of only a few who did not die from radiation poisoning.

So his life was preserved throughout the war by a series of remarkable providences.

But he didn’t believe in God. He was a Shintoist and an atheist.

His god was his Confucian ethics and his warrior code.

So he was troubled and humiliated by Japan’s loss and the devastation of war.

He was angered by the war crimes trials so he set out to prove

that the Americans had committed atrocities against Japanese POWs.

He decided to interview Japanese soldiers who had been captured and taken to

prison camps in America. The first one he interviewed told a remarkable story.

Told him that he was taken to a POW camp in Colorado. While he was there,

an American girl, a teenager named Peggy Covell started coming to the camp. Would bring little gifts to Japanese soldiers. They were touched by her kindness.

Finally one of them asked, Why are you doing these things for us?

Shocked by her answer. She said: Because Japanese soldiers killed my parents.

Turned out her parents were missionaries in the Philippines. Occupying Japanese

accused them of being spies and executed them.

Peggy was living in the US, and when she found out, she was filled with hatred.

But then she forgave and extended kindness to her enemies.

Fuchida had never heard anything like this. He forgot his project and started doing

everything he could to find out about Peggy Covell’s parents.

He found out that just before they were beheaded, they knelt to pray.

When Fuchida heard this story he was puzzled.

He fervently believed in the principle of revenge. It was part of his warrior code.

But he had also seen the devastating effects of war and the failure of revenge.

Here was a story in which the cycle of revenge had been broken.

The question that haunted him—What did the Covell’s pray at moment of death?. He somehow knew that the answer to that question would change his life.

He called it his long, long wondering. He wondered for two years.

Then, someone gave him a New Testament and this is what happened:

“One day early in September 1949 Fuchida came upon the Gospel of St. Luke, chapter 23. For the first time he read the story of the crucifixion. He knew in a vague way that Jesus had been nailed to a cross, but he didn’t know the details. The Calvary scene pierced Fuchida’s spirit. It all came alive in St. Luke’s starkly beautiful prose. In the midst of the horror Christ said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. It came to Fuchida that, as they knelt to die, Peggy’s parents had prayed just such words. Tears spring to Fuchida’s eyes; he had reached the end of his long, long wondering.”

Not only did this lead to his salvation and put an end to his idolatry of his

warrior code. The forgiveness of Christ motivated and carried him for the next 30

years of his life, which he spent as an evangelist.

Now, my question to you is this: Are you focusing on God’s great work of

salvation in Christ? Is the cross foremost in your mind.

Do tears ever spring to your eyes as you think about what Christ has done?

You must focus on God’s great work of salvation for the Lord to be more real

to you than your idols.

MP#3 You must focus on God’s will.

You must focus on the life he wants you to live. Moses says:

“Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the LORD is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other. Keep his decrees and commands, which I am giving you today, so that it may go well with you and your children after you and that you may live long in the land the LORD your God gives you for all time.”

What is God’s will for your life? There are two answers to that question.

One answer you can’t know before hand. You have to discover as you go.

You discover the Lord’s will for your life as he opens some doors, shuts others.

You discover his will in the talents and opportunities he gives you,

and what you make of those things.

You discover his will in the joys and sorrows and surprises of life,

in the good providences and hard providences.

In other words, you discover his will for your life as you see it unfold.

We call that his sovereign will, or his secret will.

It’s a secret until he brings it to pass.

When most Christians talk about God’s will for their life, this is what they mean.

The personal plan he has for my life which he reveals to me in his timing.

But there is another answer to the question: What is God’s will for your life?

And Moses explains it here:

God’s will for your life is that you keep his decrees and commands which he has

given you, so that it may go well with you and your children after you and that

you may live long in the land the LORD your God gives you for all time.

In other words, God’s will for your life is simply that you obey his moral law.

We call this God’s revealed will. It’s not a secret. It’s not hidden.

You don’t have to wait or wonder what the Lord wants for you life.

In Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonian church he writes:

“It is God’s will that you should be sanctified, that you should avoid sexual immorality . . .

for God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life.”

That’s exactly what Moses is saying to the Hebrew church.

God’s will is that they be sanctified and keep his moral law.

You can’t help noticing the order of Moses’ points.

It’s an order that we’ve seen over and over in these first four chapters

as he prepares this second generation to hear the law again.

The order is grace first, a relationship first, and then the call to obedience.

Moses starts by saying—The Lord has spoken to you.

He came to you on Mt. Sinai. He initiated contact. He made himself known.

Then, the Lord saved you. He brought you out of Egypt by his mighty hand.

And in revealing himself to you and redeeming you,

you have seen that the Lord is God and there is no other.

Now, Moses says, based on what the Lord has done for you,

and based on who you know he is, the one true God—he has a life for you to live.

Keep his decrees and commandments.

And even this is full of grace. Because the Lord says that he’s giving you

these so things will go well with you and your children and so that you will

live long in the land he is giving you.

That promise does not mean that believers step into a magic circle with no troubles.

It means there never has been a man or woman who followed God’s law and

regretted it. Who comes to the end of life and says, I wish I hadn’t obeyed God.

My life would have been better if I had gone my own way.

Just the opposite. No matter the struggle. No matter the sins and idols

that I’ve struggled to put away. Not one regret that I sought to obey him.

In keeping his commands, I have seen that the Lord is God, and there is no other.

This was proved in Mitsuo Fuchida’s life in a painful yet powerful way.

When he was born again that day in 1949 when he read the Gospel of Luke,

he had no idea what God’s commands and decrees were. He knew he had

been forgiven his sins, but he didn’t even know what those sins were.

But as he began to grow in Christ, as he began to read the Bible and discover

the life God was calling him to live, he realized that he was faced with a decision.

For years he had had a mistress, even had a child with her.

Realized that God’s will was that he be exclusively faithful to his wife.

And as hard as it was, that is what he did. He provided for his child, but put his

mistress away. And the Lord blessed him. His wife, Haruko, who was a devout

Buddhist, professed faith in Christ, as did their two children, son and daughter.

In that, Fuchida saw once again that the Lord is God and there is no other.

What commands and decrees of the Lord is he calling you to obey this day?

What sins is he calling you to put aside to follow his will and live a holy life?

Focus on God’s will for your life. It’s good. It’s the path to blessing.

As you follow it, he will become more real to you and your idols will crumble.

CONC: