Are We There Yet?

Deuteronomy 9: 1-29

The Great Covenant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Max A Forsythe

Introduction:  For all of you who are parents, we begin today with the most disparaging question that our young children can ask, once they learn to talk.  Finally, after much effort, all of the little toddlers are loaded into the family car, belted in and hardly have you cleared the driveway (as it seems) on some journey or another and the fitful words come ringing in your ears:  “Are We There Yet?”  If you are fortunate, it is a short trip to the grocery or across town.  I well remember a ten-day family trip to Florida. By the end of the week, I wanted to engrave those immortal words in raised letters on the family board of education!  I didn’t of course, but I begin with this example to remind you with what human characteristics the good Lord must put up with from the multitude of saints within Christ’s own church!

So very many of us presume that we have arrived at the end of sanctification long before we have ever seriously begun the process.  Certainly the heady sense of salvation to the new convert is a wondrous thing, but time will develop a more realistic view of what the Lord has indeed accomplished in our hearts and souls.  Meredith Kline, begins his comments on our chapter in Deuteronomy today in these words:  “For Israel to assume that Canaan was a reward for their righteousness would be an even greater contradiction of the realities of the covenant relationship than their boasting that the possession and prosperity of the land were an achievement of their might.  The conceit of self-righteousness is an attempt of the sinner lusting after autonomy to free himself from God at that very point where his need of God is most desperate – the need for forgiveness and cleansing.  Moses therefore passionately presented the truth that the promises and blessings of the covenant relation were Israel’s by virtue of mercy, not of merit.”

This observation is always a necessary reminder to every Christian whenever the Gospel message is summarized.  Even Reformed people who should know better – too often assume from American History – that the blessings so providentially endowed were given because the pilgrim, puritan and presbyterian residents of colonial America had worked tirelessly to establish a theocratic republic in place of the corrupt monarchies that had driven them from their homes across the sea!

This is an important point – because the common view of American history is that the golden, silver and iron ages are passed by already and that the stoned age of the sixties is more reflective of foreign or media thinking that have infected the presumably righteous descendants of the heroic generations prior to the present.

Old Covenant Milieu:  Certainly the generation standing before him, over the course of several days, is different from their own fathers, but the temptations are still the same – to think more highly of themselves than is warranted.  Their fathers and mothers were a mixed multitude that had come out of slavery in Egypt.  That word mixed multitude is an apt description.  I remember from Seminary the glee with which one professor announced that the two midwives mentioned in Exodus could hardly have delivered babies for the multitudes claimed to have escaped into the desert.  It was only years later that the phrase “mixed multitudes” reminded me that very many different sorts of people came out from Egypt with the original Hebrew stock descended from Jacob.  We should not wonder at the length of time necessary to wield the ungainly group of people into a unified nation under God.

So too, should we understand our own progress as a nation, one ethnic group after another has come to this fair land with the simple goal of being included in the whole.  Indeed, we may also observe that the Lord’s own Church grows by the same inclusive dynamic.  I read some years ago in a history of colonial presbyterianism in my home county, that the city congregation was put together from five or six presbyterian bodies and the historian observed that it was a generation before there was real peace in that congregation!

In the same way, our Presbyterian Church in America congregations experience the same bewildering groupings within the mixed multitude that the Lord is calling as His own Church.  No wonder – that so many Mission groups have so very many conflicts in just getting organized and settled down!  Now, there is an additional problem within the PCA as well.  Since male leadership is so little desired or respected in so many denominations, we are getting a far greater share of leaders than most churches have.  The biblical principle from Isaiah and Moses is that one man in ten has the gifts of leadership.  I have often noticed that we as a denomination are working with a much higher percentage!

But, I digress, let us turn to our passage and draw out the principles that Moses would lay before the hearts of the people of Israel.  Dr Craigie observes that in this chapter there is a shift in emphasis “and now the stubbornness of Israel becomes the focal point of attention.  Stubbornness can be a good quality, but it is not an unyielding, stubborn faithfulness to the covenant that is described in this portion of the address.  Israel is described rather as being stubborn in its perversity, stubborn in its continual provocation of God.  Thus, the theme serves once again as an element of warning in Moses’ address; the people and their predecessors had been stubborn in the past, but they must learn to yield to the graciousness of God.” 

Raymond Brown echoes this theme and admonishes us further with this observation:  “The Scripture does not spend time flattering a few special favourites.  Sin is sin whoever commits it.  Although the Israelites were his ‘chosen people’, the Lord did not overlook their iniquities.  Their election was an example of his grace not a reward for their works.”

We can outline this ninth chapter into three portions.  Verses one through five highlights in invincibility of the Lord God Almighty.  Verses six to twenty-four describe the rebellious pilgrims as they really were. 

Finally, the last four verses demonstrate the intercessory ministry of the man Moses who prayed daily before God on behalf of the people.  Notice the words of the first verse:  “Hear, O Israel: You are to cross over the Jordan today, and go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourself ...”

There is an echo of the Shema, the call to confession that we considered a few weeks ago.  But this time, the words “Hear, O Israel” are a call to concrete action.  These are marching orders for the tribal levies.  Moses here is no George Patton bragging about the power of the Israelites, no indeed – these verses lay before the people the great weakness of their position.  Moses reminds them how much they need the great and awesome power of God.  Dr Craigie describes the contrast “between the weakness of Israel and the strength of the Canaanites, but the latter are eclipsed by the power of God.  In [verse three], the power of God is described in three ways.

  1.   "It is he who crosses ahead of you as a devouring fire;

  2. It is he who will destroy them;

  3. It is he who will humble them before you.”

The people however will participate in the work of the Lord, however like King Henry V and George Washington, both great captains in military history, they are to give God the glory for what He has done.  The next and longer section in the text is an admonishment, notes Dr Brown that “the land is not a reward for good behaviour by explaining that, far from being righteous, the Israelites have been persistently unrighteous.”

Over the years, I have insisted that my students gain their credit from participating in the class and doing the hard work that was necessary to learn the subject at hand.  More than one student complained that mine was the only “C” grade keeping them from the honor roll!  I usually observed that it was not my job to be a benevolent despot – handing out rewards to those I liked and withholding good grades from those I didn’t.  Usually, there were enough of the latter that in spite of their personal relationship – did indeed earn a better grade than I might have given, if it were up to me!  An administrator once demanded that I lower a grade to send a strong message to a rebellious student.  I refused on the grounds that grades were not based on their own passionate “higher intelligence” of feelings, but upon the cold heartless mathematics that either added up or not!

As you can see from my examples, the people of Israel were providentially better off dealing with God’s mercy and grace than with any system of purely human ethics.  Martin Luther once observed, “if he were God, he would destroy mankind from the face of the earth.”  Thank goodness, brother Martin fell short of any calling to divinity!  Now, if you have any inclination to think that the God of heaven was being to harsh with His elect people, we have only to read over these twenty verses to see five specific acts of gross rebellion.  Look at verse seven (beginning in the middle of that verse) to catch the image:  “From the day that you departed from the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the Lord.”

The list includes:  Horeb, Tabnerah, Massah, Kibroth Hattaavah and Kedesh Barnea.  Briefly, their rebellion included: the idolatry of the golden calf, their contention regarding difficulties, their leadership, their lack of a rich diet, and finally they dismissed the promise and refused God’s lawful command.  What was God to do? 

Here in the last few verses we get a hint of Christ’s mediation still on our behalf.  Moses reports that he continually went before the Lord of heaven to pray that not only Aaron, his brother, but also all of the people be spared from God’s righteous anger. 

His argument on their behalf before the Lord was comprehensive as Dr Brown describes it:  “He appealed to God’s election of Israel, his saving achievement, unchanging promise, personal repute and unrivalled power.”

Moses had no doubts that the people richly deserved the destruction that the Lord considered.  However, for the sake of the heavenly Name, God’s purpose, promise, power and election Moses sought the forgiveness of our Father.

New Covenant Continuum:  In this mediatorial role we see mirrored the coming work of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Thus, we should never doubt that the God of heaven and earth has always had one plan alone for the salvation of sinners.  Grace, mercy and mediation all run as thoroughly through the Old Covenant even as they do throughout the New Covenant.  In the earliest book of the Bible, Job offered sacrifices and prayers for his children – in case they had sinned before the Lord.

In a Bible Study a few years ago, we were talking about acceptable translations of the Scriptures.  In light of the politically correct posturing of the publishers of the New International Version, I was publicly wrestling with leaving behind the NIV in favor of the NKJV of the New Geneva Study Bible.  In the context of the conversation, one of our dear souls who had put behind the Schofield Notes wondered out loud where it would all end.  Was there no safe version of the scriptures to use?  Then as now, I would affirm that the New American Standard offers the very best verse translations and the New International Version of 1984 the best context in paragraph structure.  It remains to be seen if the newly, conservatively edited Revised Standard Version coming out this fall will finally be definitive for our time.

The purpose of translations as well as Biblical Theology is to be faithful to the Covenant underpinnings of the Gospel of Grace revealed in both Testaments.  Dr Shepherd comes out with some astonishing comments on a sensible understanding of the Covenantal structure of the Scriptures.  In one chapter, he observes that if the Roman Catholic Church would accept a Covenantal paradigm, “this change in paradigm would provide a proper basis for Rome’s legitimate insistence that full credence be given to James 2:24, Galatians 5:6, and similar passages.  In light of the covenant, these texts do function in our understanding of the way of salvation without a lapse into the error of legalism.”

Let us consider both verses briefly before we move on to the evangelical position. 

“You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only.” (James 2:24) 

The sentence in that verse refers directly back to the faith of Abraham.  Verse twenty-two of James’ second chapter is even more indicative of the covenantal understanding:  “Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect?”

The passage in Galatians, which follows, is concerned with the ancient covenantal mark of circumcision.

“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love.” (Galatians 5:6)

Yes, the signs of the Covenant are important, but those issues do not in themselves avail salvation alone.  I can heartedly agree.  If we believe in the Covenantal design, we have to understand a certain fundamental obedience of the law as being intertwined with the nascent concept of grace readily apparent in the Old Covenant revelation?

Dr Shepherd’s observation on the evangelical understandings of those verses is telling indeed.  “For its part, evangelical Protestantism has always insisted that salvation is wholly by God’s grace.  We have rightly rejected the idea that a human being can do anything to achieve his own salvation.  We have rightly rejected the idea that a person can work to merit the reward of eternal life.  However, we have not always rejected the very idea of merit itself.  ...  Either we have to grant that the good works of the believer are indeed meritorious, allowing us to boast in our own personal achievement, or we have to deny that the good works of the believer are really good.  In that case, we are saying that sanctification amounts to nothing.”

Dr Shepherd continues:  “We want to ward off the clear danger of legalism but in doing so, we gravitate toward antinomianism.  Then, in order to ward off antinomianism, we are compelled to introduce a measure of legalism.  After all, good works, if they are truly good, are meritorious.  This is the dilemma that has plagued evangelicalism even to our day ....”

Contemporary Application:  The proper theological solution to the problem is to be found in a through Covenant understanding as Dr Shepherd defines it: “with its two parts, promise and obligation.  In keeping with his eternal purpose, the Lord God brings us into covenant with himself.  All of the blessings of the covenant are ours as gifts of sovereign grace.  The covenantal demand for faith, repentance, and obedience is simply the way in which the Lord leads us into possession of these blessings.

Salvation is both by grace and faith.  These are the two parts of the covenant: grace and faith, promise and obligation.  Grace is not without conditions, and a living and active faith is not meritorious achievement.”

Are we there yet?  No, not heaven, but are we fully into a Covenantal understanding of the very subtle tension between grace and faith, between promise and obligation?  The covenantal structure of all Scripture is fundamental to laying these issues to rest.  May we listen to the covenantal words of Moses and carefully reflect upon their meanings and implications through the new covenant of grace fully revealed in Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Resources Used:  

Copyright (C) 2001                             Christ Covenant Reformed (Presbyterian Church in America)                                     

            07 October 2001                       Box 13926 - Columbus, Ohio 43213-8049

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