The Lord God, Merciful | Sunday, July 19, 2020 (Full Service)

You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid... Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:14–16)

God's first word about Himself is mercy—and that is the only hope for people who can never keep His covenant.

An Encouragement to Shine

Before we step into the next section of Deuteronomy, I want to begin with an encouragement and commend you all as a church. This strange and historic moment presents us, the people of God, with an opportunity to shine as lights in the world. This is precisely what Jesus taught His disciples in the Sermon on the Mount.

My prayer throughout this period has been that our church would be like a city set on a hill, shining brightly to those in need of hope, grace, peace, forgiveness, love, joy, and all the other spiritual blessings we have from the Lord. You are doing just that. I want to encourage you to keep going—to pray that God would give you the opportunity, the eyes to see the opportunity when it comes, and the faith to seize it.

We are also halfway through July and therefore halfway through our 31 days of prayer. Keep going. Some of you have worked hard to social-distance from social media and the news media, and I'd love to hear how that has helped your outlook and your overall peace and joy. If you haven't been following along, you can still jump in at prayerminder.org.

Discipleship in 2020 is largely happening online, on YouTube and through podcasts, and so is evangelism. You are an amazing church. About five weeks ago I shared how we were seeking to raise roughly forty thousand dollars to extend our broadcast outreach, and you have contributed about ninety percent of that above your normal tithes and offerings. You can help us further by sharing this content with others. The Apostle Paul told Timothy to do the work of an evangelist; for many people that idea is frightening, but it is as easy as sharing what your church is doing online. If God has done a work of grace in your life, you need to share it.

The Covenant and Its Stipulations

This morning we are in Deuteronomy chapter 4, where Moses is delivering his final words to Israel, reminding them of the principles, precepts, and stipulations of the covenant they have with God. This is an essential point in Israel's history.

God promised Abraham descendants and a land. He promised that Abraham would not only be blessed but would become a blessing to all people—but these blessings were the result of a relationship with the one true God. This is essential to comprehend: God blesses those who are in a covenant relationship with Him, and He always does so for the purpose of extending that blessing to others.

Like any covenant, this one has stipulations and requirements. You and I are free not to enter into a covenant relationship with God—that's your choice. But you cannot and will not enjoy the blessings of the covenant if you don't enter into it. Our problem is that we tend to want the enjoyments and pleasures of the blessings without the covenant itself, and that's not possible.

We don't talk about covenant much in 2020. There are really only a couple of places where the concept still comes up. First, if you live in a neighborhood with a homeowner's association, you received a notebook of CC&Rs—covenants, conditions, and restrictions—that you probably never read until you got a letter about your trash cans or about painting your house orange. The other place is marriage. Those of you who are married would agree there are benefits, blessings, and pleasures associated with that covenant, and there are also stipulations and requirements. A lot of people in our culture want the pleasures without the conditions, and that's a problem.

Once you enter the covenant, you are agreeing to uphold its stipulations, and if you don't, there are consequences. If Israel remained faithful to the conditions of the covenant, they would enjoy its blessings; if not, they would experience the consequences and curses we'll read about at the end of Deuteronomy.

No Rival Relationships

Israel wanted to experience God's blessing and extend it to the world. You and I want that too, but it's only possible through a covenant relationship with God. Therefore the statutes and judgments of this section are necessarily important.

The first of these we began considering in Deuteronomy 4, and we'll see it again in Deuteronomy 5: in a covenant relationship there can be no rivals. Married couples understand this. When you said "I do," you agreed to forsake all others and to be faithful as long as you both shall live.

I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, any likeness of anything... (Deuteronomy 5:6–8)

That's fair. God says, "I redeemed you, I brought you out of bondage, I've taken care of you, I'm giving you an inheritance—here's My first stipulation: no rivals." Why do we have a hard time with that? In our flesh we struggle with exclusivity and commitment; that's called sin, missing the mark of God's covenant, and we need to confess and repent of it. But we know we are prone to wander, easily seduced toward idolatry. So I left you last time with a question: what can we possibly do if we misrepresent God's glory through idolatry?

God Anticipates Our Failure

When you beget children and grandchildren and have grown old in the land, and act corruptly and make a carved image... I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that you will soon utterly perish from the land... and the LORD will scatter you among the peoples... (Deuteronomy 4:25–27)

This teaches an important truth: yes, in a covenant relationship there can be no rivals, but God anticipates our frailty in honoring our covenant. Even as He reaffirms the covenant, He says in the same breath that after a couple of generations Israel will act corruptly and provoke Him to anger. The land is a blessing for those who adhere to the covenant; reject it, and you will be expelled, exiled, and scattered among the nations to serve idols. And then what?

But from there you will seek the LORD your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in distress, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, when you turn to the LORD your God and obey His voice... for the LORD your God is a merciful God, He will not forsake you nor destroy you nor forget the covenant of your fathers which He swore to them. (Deuteronomy 4:29–31)

Our inability to honor God's covenant leaves us hopeless—if God is not merciful.

The Lord, the Lord God, Merciful

"For the LORD your God is a merciful God." When Moses used those words, he was calling Israel's recent history to mind. Nearly forty years before, the people first entered the covenant and declared in Exodus 19, "All that the LORD has said we will do and be obedient." Less than two months later they were dancing around a golden calf, engaged in idolatry and immorality, and God's anger was aroused.

And the LORD said to Moses, "I have seen this people, and indeed it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore, let Me alone, that My wrath may burn hot against them and that I may consume them. And I will make of you a great nation." (Exodus 32:9–10)

So why was Israel not consumed by the consuming fire of God's wrath? Because Moses interceded and pleaded for grace. As a result, God revealed His true nature to Moses—and even more than the presence of His glory, He gave Moses His name and explained His nature.

And the LORD passed before him and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty..." (Exodus 34:6–7)

I have so much to say about these verses, and I will when we get to Deuteronomy 5. But here is the essential point seen throughout the Old Testament and the New: though we are frail and feeble by nature, God is merciful and gracious just the same. God's default nature is mercy. If it weren't, you and I would have been consumed long ago.

Mercy at the Top of the Deck

Of all the innumerable attributes of God, if you asked someone which one God would place at the top of the deck, some would say His holiness, others His love. There are many answers. Yet here in Exodus 34, God tells us how He introduces Himself: "The LORD, the LORD God, merciful." That word merciful is so very important—for me and for you—because we are all deserving of the justice and judgment of God.

One of the clearest things you find as you study the statutes and judgments of God, which we'll be doing over the next several weeks in Deuteronomy 4, 5, and 6, is that we have all fallen short of His glory and are all deserving of His wrath and justice. The only thing that keeps us from that wrath is His mercy and grace. So it is good news—gospel—that God introduces Himself both in the Old Testament and the New as "the LORD, the LORD God, merciful."

In Need of Mercy

As we close, you may be realizing for the first time that you are in need of God's mercy. You've been trying to live by some standard of righteousness, but you will never reach God's perfect standard. This is one of the things the law reveals; in Romans, Paul says the law was given to show us we are sinners. When confronted with God's perfect righteous standard, we quickly see we will never measure up, and so we are in desperate need of His mercy and grace.

That is exactly what Jesus came to give. Two thousand years ago, by going to the cross, He took your sin and mine upon Himself so He could give us His mercy and grace. Mercy is not receiving what we deserve. We deserve justice and wrath, but God in His mercy, through Jesus, does not give us the wrath we deserve, because He who knew no sin became sin for us, absorbing God's righteous wrath in our place. And He goes beyond that: grace is receiving the gift we certainly don't deserve. Jesus gives us salvation and forgiveness by grace as we put our faith in Him.

So I invite you this morning to put your faith in Jesus, to trust Him, and to invite Him into your life so that by His mercy and grace He would forgive your sin. Prayer is simply talking to God. I'm asking you to admit you have fallen short of God's perfect standard and cannot save yourself, to believe Jesus died in your place and rose again to make you righteous, and to confess your sin and call out to Him.

Pray with me wherever you are: Dear Jesus, I acknowledge that I can never meet Your perfect righteous standard, and I thank You that You came to absorb wrath for me so that I could be forgiven and saved. Lord, I confess my sin to You. I pray that You'd come into my life, forgive me and save me, and help me to follow You by faith. In Jesus' name, Amen.

If you prayed that this morning, we want very much to know about it, to send you a Bible if you need one, and to connect you with other believers so you can grow. Please go to commit.lifeinconnection.com and let us know you've given your life to the Lord or reaffirmed your faith today.

Closing Prayer

God, thank You for Your good word, and I pray that the truths of Your mercy would compel us to share Your mercy and grace with others. There are so many people we know who are in need of Your mercy and grace, and I pray that You would stir us to extend it to others today and this week. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

May the Lord bless and keep you, may He make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, may He lift up His countenance upon you and give you His peace. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of His Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.