Ep. 53. Deuteronomy 6-7 | Keep and Do Them
EPISODE 53
KEEP AND DO THEM: DEUTERONOMY 6-7
The book of Deuteronomy begins on the first day of the eleventh month of the fortieth year. Moses will call the people together a few times and remind them of their journey through the wilderness, their sinfulness, God's faithfulness, and the instructions God set before them. At the end of this book, Moses will die. The best we can tell is that all but the last couple of verses cover about a month. In the final moments of Deuteronomy, the people will mourn for Moses for 30 days. It is helpful for us to keep in mind that this entire book is a series of farewell statements made by Moses before he died and the people moved into the Promised Land. I think it's hard for us to think of 34 chapters covering a mere thirty days when the first six chapters of Genesis covered 1656 years. Imagine this as a deathbed declaration, though Moses' strength was unabated and his vigor unimpaired.
We pick up this story in chapter six after Moses recalled the highlights of their forty-year wilderness journey. Moses reminds the people of the statutes and commands of God, saying, "Be careful to do them, that it may go well with you." We, believers in the 21st century, don't think our works save us. We know we are saved by faith in Christ and his finished work on the cross. We have looked up to the one who was lifted up, and the power of sin has been defeated. Still, we too often think of ourselves like these Hebrews, "if we do the commands of God, then things will go well for us." The sad conclusion we come to when we lose our jobs, get sick, lose a loved one to cancer, or some unexpected tragedy, when we empty our cupboards and wear out our shoes, is, "I must have failed God in this matter or that one." We toss and turn on our pillows, trying to figure out where we went wrong. How did we break the commandment of God this time around? Where did we let him down? Certainly, we must have since it is not "going well for me." But this is the system of the Old Covenant. There isn't a single time I read through the Old Testament that I don't celebrate that I belong to the New Covenant. The Old Covenant is heavy and impossible for anyone to accomplish with integrity. It is an insurmountable prospect, "Be perfect as God is perfect." The crushing condemnation of the first covenant points the way to the light, grace-filled work of the second. And you and I clap our hands in delight as we are declared pleasing to God, not on the basis of works we have done, but on the basis of the finished work of Christ. (Titus 3:5) But for those seeking to come to God based on the first Covenant, the covenant of works, "It will be righteousness for us if we are careful to do all this commandment before the Lord our God." How people miss the "all" in that sentence is beyond me. We think, somehow, that if we do good enough, we can be declared righteous, but under the first covenant, no one could be made righteous because the modifier is not "some" or "most" but "ALL."
You'll notice, in the midst of this admonition to obey God, "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." Jesus will call this the first and greatest commandment. Jesus will say the second is like it, "Love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus will tell his Jewish audience that these two commands summed up the entire Law.
As we navigate the conditional standard of the Old Covenant, let us celebrate our Savior and his shed blood, which inaugurated the gracious New Covenant.
ADDITIONAL READING: Titus 3:5; Exekiel 18:4-9; Joshua 9; Ezra 9:1-6; Exodus 17; Matthew 22:36-40
