Deuteronomy 10:18–19
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
Evening, church. I decided back in April that our family was going to have a word for the summer. Some families do these types of intentional, reflective things really well and often. Our family had never done this before, but it's been really fun and really fruitful for our family. Don't worry, I'll tell you what the word is. So, why now? Why did we decide to do it this summer? I'll be honest with you, the genesis of the idea didn't come from a convicting sermon.
It didn't come from my time studying the Word. It didn't even come from a parenting book. No, I came up with the idea out of my own fear. So one day back in the spring, I was feeling particularly discouraged. I wish I could remember exactly what it was that was the catalyst for all this, but I can't. But once again, I found myself sitting in my office and feeling like a failure. I felt like there was an opportunity to speak up and defend someone, or it might have been a chance to be bold in my faith with a certain co-worker, or maybe there was a chance for me to right a wrong.
But this had been happening in my life, and now here I was sitting again in my office, disappointed in myself, wallowing in my sadness a bit. I kid you not, that same day, mindlessly scrolling through Instagram just a little bit later in my office, a pastor pops up on some video and he's talking about having courage. And he says something like, courage doesn't mean that you aren't afraid.
Courage means that you're willing to act in the face of your fears. And boom, that hit me like a ton of bricks. I did my best John Lovett impersonation right there in my office with a loud amen. And that was really the encouragement that I needed to hear. So I went home and told my wife about how I was feeling and how I wanted to strive to be more courageous. And I said, we're actually all going to do it as a family. And so for our kids, that looked like we had a courage chart on the fridge and they could earn stripes in the kind of progress bar.
Anytime they showed courage. I didn't have mine on the fridge. But the kids could do things like order for themselves at a restaurant or when we were on vacation, the water slide seemed a bit intimidating. You could earn some courage. And we kept talking about courage means that you're willing to act when you are fearful. It doesn't mean that you're not afraid, but you're willing to act when you're not fearful. Well, in Deuteronomy 10, our text, where our text is for tonight, Moses comes down from the mountain, and he's been up there for 40 days and 40 nights.
He has new versions of the same Ten Commandments after he broke the first ones, and he comes down from the mountain, and he exhorts Israel. Okay, and I'll pick it up in verse 14, which is a few verses before our passage for tonight. Deuteronomy 10, verses 14 through 20. 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.
Circumcise, therefore, the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords. The great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. And then our passage for tonight. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. In verse 20, you shall fear the Lord your God, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him, and by his name you shall swear.
Let's look quickly here at what we see in this text. In our text for tonight, beginning in verse 18, he executes justice. First, we see God's sovereignty. He executes justice on behalf of the most vulnerable. The idea of justice is not a theory to God. He's not just merely in favor of justice. He delivers it. Like we heard this morning, God wasn't just a fan of justice, curious what king in the line of David and Abraham and Adam might step up and deliver justice and save the fallen world.
What king, what lineage could pull this off? No, he delivers Jesus to an adoptive father. Delivers Jesus into a lineage that traces all the way back to King David, Abraham, to Adam. None of it by chance. Greg this morning said, out of a long, broken line of humanity, God finally sends one who is able to redeem and restore the broken relationship between God and his people. He executes justice.
And he does so sovereignly, with purpose. So Moses here, in his writing, he doesn't go into all the detail about what that means. But it seems obvious to me that what he is saying is that God provides justice by offering provisions for the vulnerable here, his people, those he loves. I think of those that he says he executes justice for here in these two verses. Don't skip this. The executing justice for the fatherless.
The orphan has no ability to make for themselves a father. The widow has no ability to bring back for herself her husband. The sojourner who's lost has no ability to nationalize themselves. They are an outsider. When this was written, too, these three types of people would have been the most vulnerable and marginalized members of society. The orphan lacked protection, inheritance, social status, the widow economically unstable and a burden on the community.
And the sojourner was an outsider, not one of us. When we hear that God executes justice for these types of people, we think, that's so wonderful, that is so like our God. But when Israel heard this, the hard hearts of Israel hears that God executes justice for these types of people, they would think, them? For that boy? For her? He does what?
God provides justice by offering provision. Specifically here, it mentions giving food and clothing to the sojourner. Again, God's not just a fan of justice. He is actively executing it. So Israel might hear this and be shocked, and then they're shocked again in verse 19 when Moses now transitions and says, love the sojourner. Just a few verses before that, remember, Moses said to them, this is verse 15, just a few verses before, he said, yet the Lord set his heart in love on your fathers, Israel, and chose their offspring after them.
You, above all peoples, as you are this day. He said that a few verses earlier, and now he's telling them, love the sojourner as well. We're chosen by God, and yet you're telling us to love the sojourner, the one who isn't one of us, the outsider? And he flips Israel's thinking on her head, as he so often does, and says, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. I think it's fascinating here in this passage.
So again, Moses, he gets the new Ten Commandments. He stays on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights. He hasn't been with Israel. He comes down. God has expressed his concern over Israel's repeated failure to keep the law. Now Moses comes down from the mountain, and he implores all of Israel to get their hearts right. And then from this verse, from 12 down even into chapter 17, Moses gives Israel 17 commands that accompany this imploring that he gives to Israel.
And of these commands, they are fear the Lord, follow the Lord, love the Lord, serve the Lord, keep his commandments, teach his word, fear the Lord, serve the Lord, love the Lord, hold fast to the Lord. And he continues on, of all 17 commands, all but two of them are commands towards God or commands towards God's law. Fear the Lord, follow the Lord, love the Lord, keep His commandments, teach His word. The only two that aren't are in verse 16.
Circumcise your heart. Cut away at the stubbornness in your own heart. In verse 19, love the sojourner. It might sound familiar to you. Mark 12, when the Pharisees asked Jesus, what is the greatest commandment? Love the Lord your God. and to love your neighbor as yourself. Circumcise your heart and love the sojourner. Why? Because you were once sojourners in the land of Egypt. You were a stranger too.
And, of course, we know, we have the context, not just a stranger of nationality, but a stranger spiritually as well. A stranger to God. As we read in Colossians 1, And you, who were once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, has now been reconciled in his body of flesh by his death. Moses tells us that God executes justice by offering provisions of food and clothing and comfort to his people. But we were cut off from God because of our sin.
But because of the death of Jesus when he died, the death that we deserved, taking the punishment for our sin, we were bought by His blood. And God provided justice by offering provision through Jesus. The justice of satisfying the wrath of God through the blood of a spotless, sinless lamb, His very own Son. If you're here tonight and you don't know this Jesus, Just like the fatherless who can't make for themselves a father, the immigrant who can't make for themselves a citizen, a king must do it for them.
And God has executed justice for you through Jesus. And he invites you into the citizenship of his kingdom, invites you to call him father if you'll repent and believe. We're about to sing later. I will not boast in anything, no gifts, no power, no wisdom, but I will boast in Jesus Christ, his death, and his resurrection. Why should I gain from his reward? I cannot give an answer. But this I know with all my heart, his wounds have paid my ransom.
We'll remember God's provision for us a little later when we take the Lord's Supper together. Jesus' blood poured out for us. His body broken so that we might be made whole. We've covered the story of this passage. I'm going to look quickly at how can we apply it to our lives. We get our application tonight. It's kind of catapulted into your face in one word here in these two verses.
And that word is, therefore. At the end of verse 18, God loves the sojourner. Love the sojourner, therefore. In this context, the sojourner is an outsider, both socially and spiritually. The rest of Scripture makes it clear that we are to love both the materially vulnerable and the spiritually lost. So the application, I think, is simple. Love the lost and love the vulnerable.
How we do that, I'll make two suggestions for tonight. How do we love the lost and the vulnerable? So, this might seem obvious. I think we can be inclined to avoid this. But you need to know them. You need to know people who are lost and people who are vulnerable. Are they your neighbor? Are they your in-laws? Do you see them at the grocery store or the library on reoccurring every so often?
Are they your children's teacher? If we are called to love the lost and love the vulnerable, we need to know them. Talking about trying to be more courageous, we have two widows who live in our cul-de-sac. One lost her husband just over a year ago. The other about three and a half years ago. And I'll be honest, one of them is not very nice at all. She's cold.
She kind of keeps to herself. She has another home somewhere else. She spends a lot of time there. She's often not home. It can be hard to make contact with her, communicate with her. The other one is a bit of an odd woman. She's very friendly. She's hard to understand. I don't always follow her train of thought. My daughter, Abel, and I once took some dessert over to her house late one evening. It was in the winter, so it was already dark, and we were on our front porch, and when she flicked the lights on, bats went everywhere.
We were screaming, she was screaming, like covering our heads. We had no idea what to do. It was truly terrifying. but the reality is she doesn't go outside very often and so the bats take up residence in the corners of her porch it can be scary to get to know people who are in vulnerable positions in your life to find out their needs to ask to pray for them to invite them to church to invite them to dance recitals and football games invite them to dinner or no idea how long they're going to stay, or what they might say in front of your children.
It can be scary, but you have to have courage to know them. And part of that is admitting already in yourself that maybe the reason why you haven't is because you're afraid to. But you need to know the lost and the vulnerable. And then number two, you need to have the courage to love them. Like I said, this pastor on Instagram, this clip, he kind of changed the summer for our family, saying that courage doesn't mean you aren't afraid. Courage means you're willing to act in the face of your fears.
This passage we're looking at tonight, this is not a to some he called passage. It is not a to some he gave the gift of passage. It's actually quite plain. to love the sojourner. It can be scary to love others. It can feel uncomfortable. It can and it will cost your time, your status, your money, your preferences, your plans. But you must be willing to act, to offer provisions, meeting their very real needs, but also and most importantly, to share of the one who met your greatest need.
to share the greatest provision of your life, Jesus, your Savior and your King. If the God of the universe, the King of all, the Sovereign Lord, all-powerful and mighty, if He turns His ears to the needs of the orphans, if He turns His heart towards the needs of the widow, If he turns and welcomes the outsider, why can't we?
After all, we too were sojourners. We were outsiders, and God, through Jesus, brought us in. Let's pray. Lord, may all of our hearts tonight be reminded that you brought us in. You executed justice on our behalf. You paid the penalty of our sin for us, calling us yours. And we come to you tonight as adopted sons and daughters.
And Lord, we remember this evening as we prepare our hearts for the Lord's Supper in just a little bit. Lord, would you remind us of that calling, of how you saved us. And Lord, would you give us courage to love those who you call us to love, the lost and the vulnerable, and to give ourselves to them that they may know you. And we pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.