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Torah: Life, Liberty, Love
Deuteronomy 10:12-22
February 1, 2004 (Non-lectionary Sermon)
There is the false perception among some Christians that the Torah, the Law, is bad – that somehow it was a mistake. There is the corollary assumption that God has changed since the days of the Old Testament from a bad ol’ God of wrath and vengeance, to a “kinder, gentler” God of the New Testament. This is actually one of the oldest heresies Christians have had to overcome. It is called Marcionism. Marcion was false teacher of the early 2nd century who said that the OT had no place in the Christian’s life. He claimed that the God of the OT was not the same God as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The OT creator God, he maintained, was an evil God full of wrath and vengeance. The God of the NT was a redeeming, loving heavenly Father. The Church, based on the teaching of Jesus Christ and the witness of the apostles, declared that this was a false, blasphemous teaching. Indeed, on one occasion Marcion accosted the great saint and martyr Polycarp. Their exchange has been recorded for the ages: Marcion, said, "Dost thou know me? Polycarp replied: "I do know thee, the first-born of Satan."
As Christians we believe that the God of Abraham & Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Deborah, and Moses is the same God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And the God we know in Christ is unchanging:
Hebrews 13:8 (NKJV) Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Malachi 3:6a (NKJV) “For I am the Lord, I do not change…”
[Therefore] we must ask not only what [the books of the Torah] meant for the religious practices of ancient Israel but also what they reveal about the eternal nature and will of God.
…[I]f we have here instructions from God, then it is a study of the revealed will of God, and its teachings are authoritative and form a critical part of the unfolding revelation of God’s plan of redemption. [Allen P. Ross, Holiness to the Lord: A Guide to the Exposition of the Book of Leviticus, p. 16]
Now there is a problem related to the Law, but the problem is not with the Torah, it is with US! The NT teaches that the Law is from God and as such is GOOD. St. Paul declares:
· So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. Romans 7:12 (NIV)
· We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. 1 Timothy 1:8 (NIV)
· What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “Do not covet. Romans 7:7 (NIV)
The problem is that I cannot keep the Torah. I cannot be justified or made righteous by the Law because all it does is keep reminding me about how often I fail to live by God’s standards.
We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. Romans 7:14 (NIV)
The Law cannot save us because we do not have the innate ability to keep it once we have heard it. But the Law does lead us to Christ who can save us.
· So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. Galatians 3:24
· For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit. Romans 8:3-4 (NIV)
Yet, since God is unchanging, we find the same emphases in the heart of the Torah as in the heart of the Gospel. These distinctions of the Torah prefigure and serve as preparation for God’s redeeming work in Jesus Christ. This is one way the Law leads us to Christ. So what are some of these emphases that reveal continuity between God in the Old Testament and God in the New Testament. The summation of the Torah, Deuteronomy, unfolds some key points of connection.
I. LIFE. From the first words of the Torah in Genesis, to the final words of the Torah in Deuteronomy, God is exalted as the author of life. He is the living God. As the God of LIFE God wants his human creation to enjoy this life.
Deuteronomy 30:19 - Deuteronomy 30:20 (NIV) 19This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live 20and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
A. The Torah was given to Israel to enable a fallen, defiled people to have fellowship with a holy and righteous God. Thus, fellowship/relationship/communion with God is the SOURCE OF LIFE.
Deuteronomy 32:45 - Deuteronomy 32:47 (NIV) 45When Moses finished reciting all these words to all Israel, 46he said to them, “Take to heart all the words I have solemnly declared to you this day, so that you may command your children to obey carefully all the words of this law. 47They are not just idle words for you—they are your life. By them you will live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.”
B. Vaclav Havel rightly analyzed the prevailing condition in the western word: The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less. [Vaclav Havel, in a letter found by Robert Royal; quoted by Martin Marty in Context (June 1, 1990)].
C. It used to be that people struggled to find meaning for life. Now they don’t seem to care at all if life has meaning. I recently asked my friend, John Shuler, how people could live like this. He said, “You have to distract yourself a lot. It takes a lot of busy-ness, promiscuous sex, and drunkenness to distract one’s self like that.”
D. The Torah reveals that LIFE is only LIFE when it is lived in fellowship with God. Rejection of God is the force of anti-life. It is the engine that drives the culture of death.
II. Liberty. Because of human broken-ness the Torah became a confining, binding, suffocating litany of OBLIGATION. But the intention of the Law was to bring liberty and freedom to the people of Israel. Psalm 119 is an acrostic hymn of praise to God for the giving of the Torah. Here the Psalmist declares: Psalm 119:45 (NKJV) And I will walk at liberty, / For I seek Your precepts. This same idea is in the NT as well: James 1:25 (NKJV) But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.
A. On the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia these words are inscribed: ”Proclaim liberty throughout all the inhabitants thereof.” What I did not know until recently was that this is a direct quote from what many people see as the most “legalistic” of all the Books of the Torah: Leviticus (Lev. 25:10b) It refers to the year of Jubilee – a statute in the Law that requires all slaves to be set free every 50th year in Israel. God wants us to live in freedom! You see, the giving of the Law came in the context of God’s delivering the people from BONDAGE in Egypt! God showed his people that real freedom exists only in relationship with him.
B. The PURPOSE OF THE LAW WAS NOT THE REGULATIONS, BUT THE RELATIONSHIP GOD INVITED ISRAEL TO ENJOY. The problem is that in our FALLEN STATE we used the regulations as a means of AVOIDING THE RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD.
Example: I four volumes of a devotional guide. Four thick books called “breviaries.” The purpose of the breviary is for me to have a plan whereby I can daily enter into a time of mediation, prayer, and scripture reading for the PURPOSE OF FOSTERING FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD. But recently I have stopped using my breviary because I began to see it as an obligation, a checklist of religious acts to be ticked off on a daily basis. Instead of bringing me into fellowship with God, I became so involved with “doing” my breviary that it became a BARRIER to God.
C. The spirit of the Torah is that we are in perfect freedom when we are in covenant relationship with God. Now to some the idea of freedom as relationship with God seems confining and stifling. Not so!
Upstairs in our bedroom Lisa has a fish, a Beta, named Aristotle. There used to be a Socrates fish and then a Plato fish, but they have gone on to that great fishbowl in the sky! Aristotle may think his fishbowl is confining and in frustration one day gather the speed to shoot up through the water and then out of the bowl and onto the dresser. If that happened Aristotle’s bid for freedom would result in death. You see, fish are made for water. They are only free when they live in water. To leave the water spells death. Humans are made for relationship with God. Only in that covenant relationship do we find freedom. To leave that relationship, to throw off the perceived constraints of serving God is to not find liberty, but to invite destruction.
III. Love. Above all the Torah reveals God’s unchanging desire to have a love relationship with each of us.
A. God’s premier commandment to Israel was that the people of God would love him and walk in his ways.
Deut. 10:12-22 (ESV) And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul,
Walking in God’s ways means keeping in step with God. Some of my earliest memories come from when I was three years old and my family had just moved from Chapel Hill to Sanford. One of the clearest memories of that time was my dad taking me for walks in the woods near our home. In those memories I do not so much remember the trail or the sights and sounds of the forest. What I remember is the closeness and the love I received from my father. To love God is to walk beside him on whatever path he takes us. To let him hold our hand and to look into his loving face as we walk in his way.
B. We have a basic human need – indeed it is the most basic human need – to be loved and cherished just as we are. We crave that kind of love. That’s the love that is revealed in the Torah. God’s love for Israel was a gracious choosing, a loving election, of a people. They had done nothing to deserve it. God just set his heart in love upon them. We need someone good and strong and beautiful to love us. That’s God’s love in the Torah.
Deut. 10:14-15 (ESV) Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Yet the Lord set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day.
That gracious love shown to Israel has been fully revealed in Jesus Christ. In Christ God reaches out and embraces us and says, “I choose YOU!”
John 15:19b (NIV) [Jesus said, ] I have chosen you out of the world
Eph 1:11 11 (NIV) In [Christ] we were also chosen,
Col 3:12a (NIV) Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved...
1 Peter 2:9 - 1 Peter 2:10 (NIV) But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
God loves YOU. He has chosen YOU. We need to acknowledge this: “God loves me. He loves me right now. I don’t have to do anything to make God love me. God loves just as I am right this moment. He has chosen me!”
CONCLUSION: Here in the heart of the Torah we find what we least expect in the Law: GRACE!
The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you.
But there's only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you'll reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too. [Frederick Buechner in Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC. Leadership, Vol. 17, no. 4.]
All of this is “heart stuff.” We often think of the Torah as external works-oriented rules and rituals for the people of Israel. But even here God is not looking for merely for an outward observance of rules and rituals. Right here in Deuteronomy God calls for a transformed heart that loves him and desires fellowship with him: Deut. 10:16 Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn.
We know that the transformed heart that lives in relationship with God is only available through Jesus Christ. Jesus is the very GOAL of the Torah. Through him we experience the LIFE, LIBERTY, AND LOVE God first promised through the Torah.
Deuteronomy 10:12-22
12 And now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear
the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD
your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13 and to observe the
LORD's commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good?
14 To the LORD your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the
earth and everything in it. 15 Yet the LORD set his affection on your
forefathers and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all
the nations, as it is today. 16 Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do
not be stiff-necked any longer. 17 For the LORD your God is God of gods
and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no
partiality and accepts no bribes. 18 He defends the cause of the
fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and
clothing. 19 And you are to love those who are aliens, for you yourselves
were aliens in Egypt. 20 Fear the LORD your God and serve him. Hold fast
to him and take your oaths in his name. 21 He is your praise; he is your
God, who performed for you those great and awesome wonders you saw with
your own eyes. 22 Your forefathers who went down into Egypt were seventy
in all, and now the LORD your God has made you as numerous as the stars in
the sky.
NIV
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