Feast: Deuteronomy: Hearing
#FT22-01-PM
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 10-Oct-22; 80 minutes
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transcript:
Many people in academia, education, and even in entertainment and marketing decry the rapidly shrinking attention span. (Wake up! Oh, we just started.) I know I have spoken about it a few times, I think Bill [Onisick] may have mentioned it in a sermonette or two, and some others probably have too, and we do not need a whole lot of detailed studies to prove it to us.
It is very evident in school and church and work and play that people lose interest or become distracted far sooner than they used to. Asking for people, especially young people these days, to give their focused attention to a lesson or a speech or an article or any kind of presentation is becoming a tough ask. Microsoft, the software company, released a study in 2016 that found average attention spans had dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to only 8.25 seconds in 2015. Now, this is remarkable because a goldfish has an attention span of nine seconds, so they have got us by .75 seconds.
Of course Microsoft deals with software and computing, so the study's findings reflect how short a time a website or an advertiser has to snag a user's attention to what it is offering. A web surfer is likely to click away if whoever it is, the person who put the website together, if that person fails to grab the surfer within ten seconds. Seventeen percent of people on the Internet will click away from whatever page they are on in less than four seconds. If the situation is say, an elementary school classroom instruction, a student in 1998 would give his attention for about 12 minutes. But by 2008— that is just ten years, one decade later—the time span had fallen to only five minutes.
Some educational systems recommend that their teachers change the focus of instruction at most every 20 minutes. So the teacher is up there giving instruction and has to stop at about 20 minutes and do something else, and then 20 minutes later has to go and switch to something else, all the time trying to grab the kids' attention because they can only stay focused for a short amount of time. High school students can listen to a lecture for 32-48 minutes and that is better. That is a normal length of a class, about 50 minutes.
But how do they listen to or watch a 3-hour movie? If their attention span is only a little bit less than 50 minutes, you might think that it is easy because they are so entertaining. Well, moviemakers actually struggle to hold an audience's attention. They have to use tricks. I do not know if you're aware of it, but they are manipulating you the whole movie while you are watching it because they are repeatedly refocusing your attention. Because when you sit down to a movie, your mind will start to wander in a few minutes too, just like the high school students, just like the elementary school students. And so they have to employ various tricks to keep you focused on the movie and they do this through pacing, changing scenes, and by throwing in frequent action sequences or they make nonstop camera movements so you are riveted to what they are showing you or what have you. (There are many tricks of the trade. Please see Joe Baity after.) Without these tricks, the common teenager would, as they say (I hope I am not dating myself too much), "peace out" and off they would go to something else.
Now most people these days, and I am not one of them, prefer to get their information via video. They would much rather watch YouTube or one of the other video sites than read an article. However, video watching times have steadily shrunk. So it is now recommended by people who instruct other people on these things, that posted videos be no longer than 30 seconds and 15 seconds is even better. This is because of the influence of sites like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook Stories, and the like. They are all very short clips that you can watch and digest a whole scene or whatever it is, in just that short amount of time and then you can go off to something else.
Nearly 90% of viewers of videos will watch the first ten seconds, but by 30 seconds into the video, one-third of the audience has clicked away and at the two minute mark, less than a quarter of viewers are still watching. They have got to grab your attention immediately out of the gate and do what they can to hold you if they have something a little bit longer to say. We probably hardly get anybody finishing one of our sermons at 75 minutes or what have you.
Because of the loss of attention span people have trouble retaining information. They cannot remember things, even personal things that they should know, but because of their lack of focus, their brains are no longer being wired to remember things. All that plasticity in their brains is not being used in a good way. And this idea that fewer facts are actually being put into storage in our brains, is why we have to Google everything, because we no longer remember it. We know, our brains know somehow, that we do not need to remember information that we can quickly access somewhere else.
So our brains are actually smarter than our rational selves are and it does all the sorting of these things, and if you go look up George Washington's birthday and if you did not have that already in your brain, your brain will not retain the information, it will flush it out with everything else and you will have to go back to Google tomorrow and re-find out what it was.
That seem like an exaggeration, but it is not. Studies have shown that 7% of people forget their own birthdays from time to time these days, 25% forget major details, names, birthdays, jobs, spouses, and kids names, you name it, about their relatives and close friends. One quarter of people, even though they should know the information, cannot remember, let us say, a friend's or spouse's name. Generally, a person's attention span peaks in his or her 40s—the decade of the 40s—and then it begins to decline in old age. ("What was I saying?")
Many factors account for differences between people. You find two 42 year old's are not going to have the same attention span because there are differences like a person's sex, a person's health, a person's environmental factors that he or she lives in, stress levels, education levels, personality type, job that they normally do, their engagement with technology, whether it is more or less, things like that.
In addition, attention span is not linear over a lifetime. You do not go, let us say, into your high school senior year and you have a good attention span and it just keeps on going up until you are 40 and then goes down as you age towards your sixties and seventies and eighties. It is not like that. Attention span is actually a bunch of peaks and valleys all through your life, even through your day, even from hour to hour, your attention span differs. I mean, you could figure this out very quickly about whether you have eaten recently or whether you have slept well the night before, or whether you have been getting certain vitamins and minerals or not. It just all depends on how your body works and another very interesting thing that I will get to in just a second here.
A lot of attention span has to do with self-discipline and motivation. We can be focused like a laser when we want to—like watching a football game or racing. Right? We can listen to the radio for the racing calls and it just rivets us for two hours because those guys are shouting as he is going into the turn! But that is all because we are motivated to listen. If it is something that you enjoy, you will pay attention to it. So when we want to or must be focused, then we can really focus, we can discipline ourselves to do it. And if it is something that we are bored with or something that we do not like, we can be completely scattered in our attention and thinking, thinking, thinking about everything. Every little shining thing, you are like a crow and you go and have to look at it, because what you are being presented is not something that strikes you as very interesting.
So the takeaway here is that the human mind can be trained in both directions. It can be trained to be more focused if you use discipline and you find ways to make it interesting, and it can be trained to be very short if the presenter is making it that way. I am having a hard time explaining that one. But like the Internet; the Internet is training our minds to have a short attention span by the way it moves us along so fast and gives us so many options. We can go from one thing to another in one click—less than a second.
The takeaway, as I said, is that the human mind can be trained in both directions. And most researchers of the last 10 or 15 years have come to the conclusion that our technologies are training us toward shorter and shorter and shorter attention spans.
Now that does not bode well for Christians in the end time. Repeatedly throughout Scripture, God urges us to hear, to listen, to pay attention to Him and His words, to His servants, to the times, and other things that He draws our attention to, because without being focused we could miss or forget something vital to our salvation. This idea about listening, about paying attention, is one of the themes of the book of Deuteronomy and that is what we are going to concentrate on today. And I specifically used the words concentrate, focus.
Deuteronomy 31:9-13 So Moses wrote this law and delivered it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to all the elders of Israel. And Moses commanded them, saying, "At the end of every seven years, at the appointed time in the year of release, at the Feast of Tabernacles, when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God in the place which He chooses, you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing.
Gather the people together, men and women and little ones, and the stranger who is within your gates, that they may hear and that they may learn to fear the Lord your God and carefully observe all the words of this law, and that their children, who have not known it, may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God as long as you live in the land which you cross the Jordan to possess."
As I explained a little bit last night, this passage not only instructs us to read the book of the law publicly every seven years during the Feast of Tabernacles, it also tells us why, "That we may 1) hear, 2) learn to fear our God, and 3) carefully observe all the words of the law" or all of God's words, all of God's instructions. These three things. He tells us the reasons why we are reading the book of Deuteronomy during the Feast. The reason why we do this is that they are three steps in the process of fulfilling our part of the covenant we made with God. If we do not hear, if we do not fear, and if we are not careful we will not be fulfilling the covenant.
So my sermons this Feast will focus on each one of these three steps. Of course this one is on hearing. And the reason is so that we can start putting these steps into practice and begin to please God. And if you are pleasing God already, you will be pleasing God even more.
Now we can get an idea of how important the theme of hearing is in the book of Deuteronomy by considering how often it is mentioned. That gives us a good thumbnail for how important God considers hearing. The Hebrew words for "hear" are translated as hear 40 times in just this one book of Deuteronomy. Forty times the word is translated "hear"! An additional 12 times those Hebrew words are translated as "listen." There are an additional 14 times when Hebrew words of that ilk are translated as "take heed" and three times they are translated as "give ear." And one time it is translated as "perceive."
I know you were doing the math. That is 70 times, roughly, that the idea of hearing, listening, taking heed, giving ear, perceive are mentioned in the book of Deuteronomy. That is twice a chapter. So He is constantly telling us to listen, pay attention, give Me your ear! Not every one of them is urgent or a divine command, but a majority of them are imperatives. They are commands with the force of like those words I just said: Pay attention, concentrate, remember, make sure you hear this, understand what I am saying. Those ideas are all in these words that are translated as hear or listen or take heed.
Let us go back to Deuteronomy 4. I read this last night. Chris [Eggers] read this this morning and I am going to read it again this afternoon.
Deuteronomy 4:1-10 "Now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the judgments which I teach you to observe, that you may live, and go in and possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers is giving you. You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take anything from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you.
Your eyes have seen what the Lord did at Baal Peor, for the Lord your God has destroyed from among you all the men who followed Baal of Peor. But you who held fast to the Lord your God are alive today, every one of you. Surely I have taught you statutes and judgments, just as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should act according to them in the land which you go to possess.
Therefore be careful to observe them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes, and say, 'Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.' For what great nation is there that has God so near to it, as the Lord our God is to us, for whatever reason we may call upon Him? And what great nation is there that has such statutes and righteous judgments as are in all this law which I set before you this day?
Only take heed to yourself, and diligently keep yourself, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. And teach them to your children and your grandchildren, especially concerning the day you stood before the Lord your God in Horeb, when the Lord said to me, 'Gather the people to Me, and I will let them hear My words, that they may learn to fear Me all the days they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children.'"
Now here in Deuteronomy 4:1, with the occurrence of the word "listen," it is the first time in the book of Deuteronomy that the word appears in a positive sense. The first three appearances of this word "listen" are all negative. People were not listening. And if you go through the accounts, you find out that bad things happen when people did not listen.
In chapter 1, verse 43, Moses says to the Israelites, "You would not listen" to God and to him, Moses. In chapter 1, verse 45, Moses tells them basically, "Because you did not listen, God would not listen to you." And then in chapter 3, verse 26, God again would not listen to Moses about crossing the Jordan because he had already said, "You sinned and I told you that you would not cross into the land at that time." If you go back to the story, Moses did not listen to God. He struck the rock rather than spoke to the rock. That is how much fine detail God wants us to have when we listen. One word—speak versus strike—and Moses chose strike and he lost his reward of going into the Promised Land.
So, having covered all of Israel's failures in the wilderness, and his own, because Moses points that out, he turns to the people and implores them to listen to the statutes and the judgments that will enable them to live. Because in the bad examples, those people died. We see that here in the example of the Midianites and Baal Peor, and he said, those people who listened to Baal Peor they died because they did were not listening to God. But had they listened to God and not gone to that sexual perversion that happened at Baal Peor, they would have lived. What was it? 20,000 or something? I cannot remember how many people died at that time because they did not listen.
And that happened all through the wilderness. Every time the Israelites failed to listen, they died, and they died all through the wilderness.
Let us go to Hebrews the third chapter and see how the author there describes what happened. Notice the context here. He had just been talking about how Moses was faithful in all his house. But Jesus was the Son and He did everything that God told Him to do.
Hebrews 3:7-19 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, "Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, in the day of trial in the wilderness, when your fathers tested Me, tried Me, and saw My works forty years. Therefore I was angry with that generation, and said, 'They always go astray in their heart, and they have not known My ways.' So I swore in My wrath, 'They shall not enter My rest.'"
Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; but exhort one another daily, while it is called "Today," lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end, while it is said, "Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion."
For who, having heard, rebelled? Indeed, was it not all those who came out of Egypt, led by Moses? Now with whom was He angry forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who did not obey? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.
All of these things are connected together—hearing and rebelling if they fail to hear. And of course, as we see in verse 17 after their rebellion and their sin, they died. But it all started with a lack of hearing. They did not listen. Their bodies, then, were strewn all through the wilderness. And if we are correct about how many people there were, you know, let us say 2-3, 4 million people who were following Moses in the wilderness. There were scores of burials every day for all of the Israelites who came out of Egypt to perish before they came to the River Jordan.
Do the math. It is astounding! Take however many people, divided by the time of 40 years, and how many people would have to be buried during that time. It is incredible to think of. Maybe each tribe had a team of rotating grave diggers. But they would have to, I think it is like 70 or 80 burials a day that they would have to do. So literally, their bodies were strewn across the wilderness. You wanted to find out where the Israelites had been, just look for the graves.
But think, if they had truly listened, if they would have taken in what God had given them, if they really would have heard and understood what God said they should do, they would have lived. They would have lived well because they would be fulfilling their part in the covenant and God would have blessed them. He always comes through. Hey, if you do your part, God is always going to come through and give you the blessings that you need. But they did not get that far, they did not fulfill the terms of the covenant, even in the simple thing of listening, and so they died. They did not get the blessings, they got the curses.
Now, Deuteronomy 4 reveals some of the benefits of listening to God. They are scattered throughout the chapter, the part that we read, and we will go through these one by one. I have three. Three benefits of listening to God.
1. One of the first He mentions is found in verse 3, and that is, hearing God or listening to God enables a person to hold fast to the Lord. Let us read that again.
Deuteronomy 4:3-4 "Your eyes have seen what the Lord did at Baal Peor; for the Lord your God has destroyed from among you all the men who who followed Baal of Peor. But you who held fast to the Lord your God are alive today, every one of you."
Those who ignored or dismissed God's instruction at Baal Peor forsook the God of Israel for an idol and their so-called sacred fornication, because that was what they had gotten messed up in—and they died. If they just listened, they would have held fast to God. Those who listened remained loyal to God and lived, they got to cross over—at least those in the second generation got to cross over—the Jordan and enter the Promised Land.
So those who listen, those who hear and retain the details of the instruction, can consider and weigh the pros and cons of things, the penalties and the rewards, they can accurately determine which is the better of the two choices, and then place their loyalties properly. That is why the ones who listened held fast, because listening was the first step in engaging in the instruction and then they could think it through and make a good decision. The decision being, it is far better to obey God than to go off and have this supposed fun with the Midianites.
Those who went through this process of hearing and thinking through lived. Those who did not died. Such people, then, can be said to have faith because they are sure that under the covenant which they have made with God, He will back them as they follow Him. That is the essence of a covenant agreement. Two people or two parties coming together and agreeing—one to do one thing, one to do another. They shake on it, they ratify it with blood, however it is brought together and made legal, and then you trust the other one to fulfill the terms.
And so these people, the ones who heard, the ones who listened, said, "Look, we have an agreement with God. He is going to fulfill His part of the agreement. Right? He's God, He never double crosses you. He always comes through." And so they said we are not going to Baal Peor because it is better for us to fulfill our part in the agreement so God can come through with His part of the agreement. That is what we agreed to. It is a covenant, it is a contract, and so they were faithful to the covenant. They were faithful to God. And so as He says here, "You who held fast to the Lord your God are alive today, every one of you." God came through for them. He provided life, part of the covenant, so you can have faith in that.
2. The second thing Deuteronomy 4 reveals about the benefits of listening to God: Listening to God generates understanding and wisdom. This is in verse 6. "Therefore [He says], be careful to observe them, for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes and say, 'Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.'"
The words of God from cover to cover in your Bibles are the most beneficial bits of advice in the universe. There is not more wisdom or understanding anywhere than is in the Bible on your lap. It holds the words of eternal life. Just as the the apostles said to Jesus Christ when He said, "Are you going to leave Me too?" And they said, "No way! You have the words of eternal life."
This is our Jesus in word form. If we would just listen to what is in the Book, we would have great understanding and wisdom. Because when we listen and we begin to know those words and to meditate on them, we gain understanding of how God thinks and what produces the best results. And when we begin to put them into practice, they become wisdom.
One of my dad's greatest definitions is his definition of wisdom: skill in living. You need understanding before then. You need knowledge. The knowledge comes by hearing, by listening. The understanding comes by thinking; thinking things through, seeing how everything fits, and wisdom comes by doing, by taking that knowledge and understanding that you have gathered over time and putting them into practice, teaching yourself to walk in wisdom with the help of God's Spirit.
Just think of it. No one knows better how to live more properly than God. He has been doing it for infinity past, till now, and He will do it to infinity the other direction, if that is even possible. Infinity is just more than I can understand. But He is the one who knows how to live, truly live. And His Son tells us in John 17:3 that His way of life is eternal life. It is a quality of life and He shows us how to live that life within these pages through His example, through His instruction, through His Son and all that He did to give us a deep understanding of the life of God.
The things that He said, things that He had written down for us, the things that He has preserved all these years to our time, are the things that make life worth living. There is no better instruction manual to learn how to do things right, and do things that are going to bring great benefits in the end. So those who hear Him have access into God's mind and character and come to not just understand and walk in wisdom, but they also learn and feel a deep gratitude and a reverence for Him. Because the more you think like Him, the more you act like Him, the more you see Him respond positively in your life because He is pleased with your efforts of trying to be like Him, you see Him as He is and that cannot help but engender gratitude and reverence, which we will get to in the next sermon on fear.
3. The third benefit of listening to God found in this chapter, is that those who hear God also have an opportunity to ease the way for their children and to perpetuate God's blessings on the family. Let us read verses 9 and 10 again. Moses writes,
Deuteronomy 4:9-10 "Only take heed to yourself, and diligently keep yourself, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. And teach them to your children and your grandchildren, especially concerning the day you stood before the Lord your God in Horeb, when the Lord said to me, 'Gather the people to Me, and I will let them hear My words, that they may learn to fear Me all the days they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children.'"
God wants these things passed along. He wants sound families that all the members participate in the worship of God and in truly living His way. God's goal was for all Israel to do this and create a perpetual holy nation living His way as a witness to all the nations around them. This never happened. And the reason this never happened is because Israel never shouldered the responsibility of teaching their children and their grandchildren.
But now there is an Israel of God that has been given the same responsibility. I am speaking of the church, and we must teach our children and our grandchildren to start the process of creating, if you will, the new model nation. We as spiritual Israelites must excel in this endeavor of teaching our children, of passing along the great gift of God that He has given us of knowledge and understanding. Let us go to Deuteronomy 6 and just read this. Notice the theme that is in this chapter or at least in this passage.
Deuteronomy 6:1-9 Now this is the commandment, and these are the statutes and judgments which the Lord your God has commanded to teach you, that you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess, that you may fear the Lord your God, to keep all His statutes and His commandments which I command you, you and your son and your grandson all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged.
Therefore hear, O Israel, and be careful to observe it, that it may be well with you, and that you may multiply greatly as the Lord God of your fathers has promised you—'a land flowing with milk and honey.' Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might [strength]. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart.
You shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates."
Now I tried to emphasize but I may not have done it well enough, but "hear" is mentioned twice. God wanted Israel to pay attention to childrearing because training of godly children is what God does. He is Creator, yes. But He is the master childrearer. He is a master parent. He has been parenting us, perhaps for many decades, trying to get us to learn these same things that He is telling Israel to learn. And He wanted His people, Israel, to follow His example in teaching their children. As He says, it takes diligence and I think especially it takes being a good example, 24/7, of God's way of life. Because little kids have a hypocrite detector that is just off the charts and if you do not keep God's ways and then you tell him to keep those ways—"But you don't do it."—well, this is what God says in verses 7-9, you have got to be modeling this way every minute. You cannot think that they are not watching or listening because their senses are primed, they are new, they are not dulled by age. They can hear everything, they see everything, and they will know if you are not being true to what God says.
Now, this does not mean you should keep them ignorant. "I don't want you to know what God says, so I can do what I want." That would be really hypocritical and wrong. But we have to make sure that we are acting out God's way all the time. That was one of Jesus Christ's biggest works that He did throughout His life and especially during His ministry. He had to do this for His disciples. He had to show them the way of God by being God for all that time of His ministry.
You understand the implications of what I am getting at here in terms of a parent. They have to be God to their children and act out being God to their children in their words, in all of their activities. That is what it says here, when you talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up. This is a full day's occupation of showing your kids the way God lives. You are God's surrogate in that responsibility because they do not see God. He is invisible to them too. And so we have to be the one, the model, that they see of how a godly person lives. That means we have to hear, we have to understand, we have to walk in wisdom because we have got little eyes and ears trained on us and they are looking for an example of how to live.
So I will ask you to answer this question just to yourself. How are you doing? How are you doing as a model of righteousness, as a model of good works, as a model of pure speech? I hope your curse jars are empty, if you know what I mean. Little children repeat what their parents say and usually when it is most embarrassing, just as a warning. Are we diligently teaching our children to love God? Are we diligently teaching our children to love His instructions and to keep them? Are we good consistent examples of godly people that they can follow? Or, as I said earlier, are we hypocrites? Where we may talk the talk but do not walk the walk. Like I said, you can answer them yourself. I am not giving a test.
Let us go back to Deuteronomy 5 and we will read the first six verses here.
Deuteronomy 5:1-6 Moses called all Israel and said to them, "Hear, O Israel, the statutes and judgments which I speak in your hearing today, that you may learn them and be careful to observe them. The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. The Lord did not make this covenant with our fathers, but with us, those who are here today, all of us who are alive. [Is that not amazing how much this idea of being alive pops up?]
The Lord talked with you face to face on the mountain from the midst of the fire. I stood between the Lord and you at that time, to declare to you the word of the Lord; for you were afraid because of the fire, and you did not go up the mountain. He said, 'I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.'"
God tells us to hear the covenant that He has made with us, particularly the commandments that were Israel's and our response to Him. It is our part of the covenant to obey these commands. So when we keep them, we fulfill the terms of the agreement and thus secure the blessings of God's presence with us. And as an added benefit, we grow in character. Our character begins to reflect His own. Thus He urges us to learn, to hear, and to be careful to do them because there are no downsides to keeping God's commandments. It is all good.
It is amazing how many people think that keeping God's commandments is a bummer. It is dull. They think the exact opposite. This is the carnal way, which the apostle Paul says, "The carnal mind is enmity against God" and it cannot keep God's law because, this is one of the big things, they think keeping God's law is a downer. It is a bummer, it is restrictive, it is constraining. But there are no downsides to keeping God's law.
That is just human nature's response, because it does not want to do them. Because keeping God's law does require a bit of sacrifice. But the sacrifice pays off beautifully in the end. You live. Otherwise, you die. I did mention that. He emphasizes that a consequence of hearing and obeying is living. We want to live, right? Living comes by keeping God's Word, by doing the commandments of God.
Let us drop down to verses 32-33.
Deuteronomy 5:32-33 "Therefore you shall be careful to do as the Lord your God has commanded you; you shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left. You shall walk in all the ways which the Lord your God has commanded you, that you may live and that it may be well with you, and that you may prolong your days in the land which you shall possess."
So it is not just length of life, but that you will be well, you will have well being and long life. It would be terrible to live forever and not be happy, to be doing sinful things that always brings on curses. No, He says, listen to what I have to say and do them and you will have joyful life, true life, abundance of blessings. He says, "I'm willing to give it. I've already covenanted with you to give you all these things. I'm ready to open the windows of heaven," God says, "and just pour down these blessings." All you have to do is do your side of the partnership, fulfill what you said you would do.
God says time and time again in this book, fulfill your vows. Do your vows, keep your vows. He is getting us to understand we have a covenant with Him which we vowed to fulfill. And so He wants us to to do these things for our own benefit, for our good.
I think we are seeing in some of these early chapters of Deuteronomy, that choosing life is a huge, significant theme of the book. And it finally becomes a crescendo by the time you get to chapter 30, verses 15 through 20, where He says, "Look, I've set it out before you. It's very simple. On one hand, you have life; on the other hand, you have death. Make up your minds! You've got everything to gain on the one hand and everything to lose on the other." It is a simple choice, simple decision, but you have to make it and you have to keep doing it. You cannot just make the decision to choose life and then go off and do your own thing. You have to choose life and you have to keep choosing life, every day of your life. And if you keep choosing life, you live and you will live forever.
Let us move forward to Deuteronomy 9. We are going to go through every chapter here. No, just kidding. We do not have the time. Now if we were in Fort Mill I would be saying, "Oh my, I'm five minutes overtime."
Deuteronomy 9:1 "Hear, O Israel: You are to cross over the Jordan today, and go in to possess nations greater and mightier than yourself, cities great and fortified up to heaven."
Deuteronomy 9:4-7 "Do not think in your heart, after the Lord your God has cast them out before you, saying, 'Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess this land'; but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you.
It is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you go in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God drives them out from before you, and that he may fulfill the word which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Therefore understand that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stiff-necked people. Remember! Do not forget how you provoked the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness. From the day that you departed from the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the Lord."
This usage of hear in verse 1 appears in the midst of a very long passage that spans several chapters. And in this span, God repeatedly tells the Israelites that they are no great shakes. He tells them, "You're not the biggest, you're not the best, you're not the brightest. You're Israel. You've got problems." In chapter 7, He tells them that He saved them, not because they were a large and mighty people, but because He loved them and He had to fulfill His oath to the patriarchs that He would bring Abraham's people back to Canaan after the iniquity of the Amorites was full, after it had reached the height of horrible.
In chapter 8 (we do not want to forget this), He tells them that they had done little during the 40 years in the wilderness. He tells them there, "Basically guys, all you did was walk. Walk and murmur and complain and do the wrong thing." He tells them that He had pretty much done all the work to keep them alive, keep them in clothing, give them water, all that, and His providence, despite their rebellion, would continue in the Promised Land. He would continue to give them the things that they needed. They would have homes and they would have vineyards and they would have fields of grain and they would get honey from bees, and this and that and the other thing. All these things God had done for them and would continue to do.
And finally here in chapter 9, He tells them that their righteousness had nothing to do with why God was kicking the Amorites out of Canaan. No, they were definitely not righteous, not at all. But He says directly they were stiff-necked and rebellious. They did not listen to Him, they were not keeping His commandments, they were only doing enough to skin by. But He was going to bring them into the Promised Land out of the wilderness as He had promised.
So, what is He doing in this three-chapter section from 7-9? In some, He is telling them to hear the truth about themselves. Not only did they have to hear the word of the Lord and keep the commandments, but they had to hear how rotten they were, how weak they were, how small they were, how insignificant they were, how little they had of their own talents, and it was just by God's grace that He was going to allow them to go across Jordan. As much as their human nature wanted to puff them up and make them feel good about themselves and pat themselves on the back for being God's people, that God had made them the center of His universe, well, God popped their bubble by making them listen to how puny, inadequate, and sinful they really were.
He did not want them going into the Land of Promise thinking that they were all that. That God was just along for the ride because they were the reason why they deserved this. No, not at all. They did not deserve anything. They actually should have been just totally wiped out in the wilderness because they failed time and time and time again to keep the terms of the covenant that they were supposed to keep. He had every right to do that. As a matter of fact, it is brought up one time at the Golden Calf incident. God says, "Stand aside, Moses, while I clear this rabble and put them all in an early grave and I'll start over with you." Moses says, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no. The other nations will hear of this and then you'll have a bad PR problem." And God says, "Okay, I'll relent this time, but they're all going to die. They're all going to die in the wilderness."
They had to learn that, compared to God, they were absolutely insignificant. They had to learn. This is part of the hearing, part of the attitude, the mindset that they had to go into the land with, that they were the junior partners in the covenant. God was senior in everything. He was the great God. They were puny and significant Israel, and in any way you look at it, they needed to obey Him. There was no way that they should drag Him around by the nose and He tells them time and time again not to do that. That is when he says, "You shall not tempt the Lord God." That is what they were trying to do. They were trying to make Him work for them rather than the other way around.
Let us pick up the same kind of theme in Isaiah 41. God wants us to know this too so we do not get the big head.
Isaiah 41:8-14 "But you, Israel, are My servant, . . .
He is telling this generation of Israelites and therefore us how it works. Who is the senior, who is the junior, who was in charge, who was to obey.
Isaiah 41:8-14 . . . Jacob whom I have chosen, the descendants of Abraham My friend. You whom I have taken from the ends of the earth, and called from its farthest regions, and said to you, 'You are My servant, I have chosen you and have not cast you away: Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.'
Behold all those who were incensed against you shall be ashamed and disgraced; they shall be as nothing, and those who strive with you shall perish. You shall seek them and not find them—those who contend with you. Those who war against you shall be as nothing, as a nonexistent thing. For I, the Lord your God, will hold your right hand, saying to you, 'Fear not, I will help you.' Fear not, you worm Jacob, you men of Israel! I will help you," says the Lord and your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.
So there is comfort here in being "you worm Jacob" because Israel is so insignificant, so weak, so puny, so not all that. God says, "Don't worry. Don't fear, don't be anxious about this because I'm here. I'm at your right hand. Whatever you lack, I will make up and more. So don't worry. Your enemies, they're gone. All you have to do is obey. All you have to do is uphold your end of the covenant."
If you have God by your side, there is no one that can overcome you. Why Israel never got this through the thick skulls, well, that is the reason, thick skulls. They could not understand this because they did not have the Holy Spirit. They could never make the connection that God was really there and He was really one who, when He said something, meant it and backed it up. There are only a few men and women throughout the Old Testament in the history of Israel that ever truly believed that. David was one of them. He writes it in the psalms but in just about every psalm there is something in there that says, I trusted in God even though the situation was so dire that it looked like I would never get out of it. But he upheld my right hand and guess what? I came through smelling like roses. Because he trusted God, and he trusted God because he heard God and he obeyed God.
Let us go to I Corinthians 1 and bring this home a little bit.
I Corinthians 1:26-31 For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption—that, as it is written, "He who glories, let him glory in the Lord."
So, through Paul, God tells us—the Israel of God—much the same thing but using sight instead of hearing. You see your calling, he says, rather than, Hear, O spiritual Israel! Keep the statutes and the judgments because you are foolish and weak and all these things. He just uses, he says, see your calling, understand your calling. The individuals who make up the Israel of God are not world beaters. God called us when we were, some were young, many were foolish. All of us were weak, the base, not many noble, we were among the despised of the earth. We were nothing compared to the greats of this world.
But He promises, the same God who promises to keep His end of the covenant, promises that He will create us to bring Him glory and bring shame on those who think they are something. He is going to take we weak and foolish people and make us into the strong and the wise and the noble. We will be something, we will really be something, and He will put us there in glory for all those who think they are something, to see and be humbled by.
That is a wonderful thing to think about that. We have such potential that the Bill Gates of this world and the Jeff Bezos and all the others (the ones that Martin was talking about over in Europe and that sort of thing), those who think they are something, hold the reins of power of this world in their hands and they just do this, flick this lever, punch this button, and millions jump at their command. Well, we are going to come down in their capital cities and say, "This is what God made me. I was rabble, now I'm king." But this only happens if we hear, we understand, and we obey. It all begins with hearing, it all begins with taking it in and understanding it.
So He starts buy ingraining His people with this attitude of humility, that we know that we are weak and foolish, not the mighty or the noble. He gives us this attitude of humility, and if you notice He starts the Sermon on the Mount with the same exact thing, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." And the other three that are just behind that, they all speak to being humble in attitude. You start with that and then you turn on the ears and that gives us the vital proper perspective because we realize that He is making something from nothing.
If we are really thinking it through, we understand that we do not have anything to offer, that we start with nothing. That is why Paul says be a living sacrifice because all you got is your life so you might as well use it. And on the flipside, we have come to understand that He is everything. He supplies all our needs, especially our spiritual needs, so that we can start becoming something. Remember, He is the potter, we are the clay. Clay does not have a say on how he is being fashioned. And if your clay starts to talk to you, run out of the room!
He is the master, we are the servants. So once you reach that point where you come to understand this vital difference between Him and us, and that He is working and we just need to be humble and listen to what He says as dutiful children, then He can work with us, then we can be on our way, then we can start truly living—and living forever.
Go to Matthew the 13th chapter. We are going to read actually a fairly long bit here in the parables.
Matthew 13:3-9 Then He spoke many things to them in parables, saying: "Behold, a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell by the wayside; and the birds came and devoured them. Some fell on stony places, where they did not have much earth; and they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up they were scorched, and because they had no root, they withered away. Then some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked them. But others fell on good ground and yielded a crop: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!"
Well, I am sure the disciples mulled what He had just said, chewed it up, and did not know what to think about it.
Matthew 13:10-17 And the disciples came and said to Him, "Why do you speak to them in parables?" He answered and said to them, "Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For whoever has, to him more will be given and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.
And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says: 'Hearing you will hear and shall not understand, and seeing you will see and not perceive; for the hearts of this people has grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them.' But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear; for assuredly, I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it."
What a blessing that we have been put in this group who can hear, who can listen, and who can understand!
So, He says, after finishing this explanation of why He spoke in parables and why they could hear,
Matthew 13:18-23 "Therefore hear the parable of the sower [He was going to explain it to them]: When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is he who received the seed by the wayside. But he who received the seed on stony places, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet he has no root in himself, and endures only a while. For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles.
Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful. [Now, this is the one we really need to key in on, here verse 23.] But he who received seed on the good ground [here is what you need to be doing] is he who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty."
Notice Matthew's organization here. Matthew arranged the parables to begin with one about hearing and understanding God's Word because I am sure he understood that hearing, or seeing, if you want to look at it that way, is the foundation of our conversion and growth. We must receive and accept God's instruction willingly, and then consider it and understand it, and then we must do it and build upon it by bearing fruit. The fruit is the product of hearing the Word, cultivating it, and growing it.
Jesus makes sure we understand that even this is given to us. Jesus makes it plain that other people do not have the skill, do not have this ability, do not have this gift. It is given to those whom God has called and placed in this position. It is a wonderful position to be in. It is very rare to have this opportunity. So He says, make the most of it. Take advantage of it. As God has opened our minds, He has opened our eyes and ears so that we can know and comprehend the mysteries of His way. As Paul says in I Corinthians 4:7, "What do we have that we have not been given?" So since God has given us ears to hear, let us hear!
Let us close in Matthew the 17th chapter. And let us make sure that we heed this urgent command.
Matthew 17:1-5 Now after six days, Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, led them up on a high mountain by themselves; and was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His eyes became as white as the light. And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Him.
Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, "Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, let us make here three tabernacles: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them; and suddenly a voice came out of the cloud, saying, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!"
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