This recording is from Christ Kingdom Church in Waterford Lakes, East Orlando. Visit us online at ChristKingdom.org for our calendar, driving directions, and more audio recordings. Good morning. As most of you probably know by now, I recently had shoulder surgery. And even though it's been several months ago, I still have not completely regained my range of motion. Now the reason I mention that is because most of you also know that I tend to talk with my hands. So I just wanted you to understand that why I'm only going to go, so no offense to this side of the room, but you're not going to get pointed to a whole bunch this morning. So I only have half as much to say, I guess what I'm trying to say. Of course, you could follow that logic and think that the sermon's only going to be half as long. So leave people. Well, let's get started. We're going to be jumping into Deuteronomy right towards the very end. We haven't been in Deuteronomy recently. Not only that, again, we're going to be jumping in at the end. So before we begin our scripture readings this morning, I'm going to give us a little context. If you have your Bibles with you, you can turn there. It's Deuteronomy chapter 26. I believe the entire chapter is printed for you in your bulletin as well as it's going to be up here on the screen behind us. So go ahead and turn to Deuteronomy chapter 26 and just camp out there for a little while. Now, what's happening is Moses and the Israelites are camped on the plains of Moab and just west of them lies the Jordan River and just beyond that is the walled city of Jericho, which is Canaanite territory. And the time has finally come for them to leave behind 40 long years of wandering and a desert wilderness and cross over that Jordan River and enter into that Canaanite territory, because that Canaanite territory was the land that God had promised a long time before to give them as a people. However, this is an entirely new generation of Israelites, all the men and the women and the children who had experienced God delivering them out of Egypt firsthand, they're dead and gone. It's the children of those people that are camped on the plains of Moab that are poised to enter into the promised land. And that's why basically we have the Book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy, I believe in the Latin means second law, something like that, because it's pretty much a repeat of what God has said in Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers. In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses lays out the covenant law again. God's marching orders for His people, the instructions to this new generation that they're going to need in order to fulfill the mission that God's called them to, all the stuff by the way that their parents had failed to do, which is why they had died in the wilderness and weren't going into the promised land. And then what's interesting is at the end of this really long section of all the vowshouts and the vowshout knots, Moses tells them this, and we begin reading with Deuteronomy, chapter 26, beginning with verse 1. When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance and have taken possession of it and live in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from your land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket, and you shall go to the place that the Lord your God will choose to make His name dwell there. And you shall go to the priest who is in the office at that time and say to him, I declare today to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our fathers to give us. Then the priest shall take the basket from your hand, set it down before the altar of the Lord your God, and you shall make response before the Lord your God. A wandering Aramean was my father, and he went down into Egypt, sojourn there, few a number, and there he became a great, a nation, great, mighty, and populous. And the Egyptians treated us harshly and humiliated us and laid on us hard labor. Then we cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers in the horde, heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil and our oppression. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm with great deeds of terror, with signs and wonders. And he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. And behold, now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground which you, O Lord, have given me. Then Moses continues with the instructions that says, And you shall set it down before the Lord your God and worship before the Lord your God. And you shall rejoice and all the good that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house. You and the Levite and the Sojourner who is among you. Let's pray once more. God, with our hungry souls, we cry out to you, open up our eyes that we may behold wondrous things out of your law. Establish our footsteps in your way and let not any iniquity or sin have dominion over us. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, our king. Amen. So, a wandering Aramean was my father. Well, once this new generation of Israelites were settled and they were at home in the Promised Land, God told them that they had to take the best portion of the first harvest to the tabernacle, and then they were supposed to present those first fruits to the priest. And then in an active worship, they were to stand and recite a story. It was the story about how those first fruits even came to be, the story of how they'd come into the Promised Land, a story that began with those words. A wandering Aramean was my father. Now, it didn't matter whether or not they felt like it, it didn't matter whether or not they'd personally witnessed or experienced any of the things in the story, which they hadn't. God told them that all of them were to tell that same story as an act of worship each year at harvest time. So, why? Because it was the truth. You see, it may have been the Promised Land that God's people were going into, it was also occupied land. It was the land of the Canaanites filled with a pagan people who had already established their ways and their homes in that land. So as the covenant people of God, they were going to be going into this land and then suddenly be surrounded by all these pagan nations who would have their own stories and how the world works and how a society should be structured and how a life should be lived and how worship should be done. So going into the Promised Land, they'd end up kind of being like a huge square peg and a land filled with round holes wouldn't fit. But come on, we know how it works. If you hammer, add it long enough, you can get a square peg to fit into a round hole. And after all, Jesus doesn't call Satan the Father of lies for nothing. And we are told our hearts by nature are deceitful. So give us just enough time to forget the truth and just enough time to hear the lie repeated over and over again. And we're all capable of believing absolutely anything. For example, maybe you've heard the fictitious story about the alien invasion of the earth called Worth a World. In fact, I think it was on TV last night or going to be on TV tonight, I'm not really sure. Well, that story was originally written as a sci-fi novel back in 1898 by HD Wells. And it was a really popular sci-fi novel at the time. So popular, in fact, that later on in 1938 when it was dramatized on the radio by Orson Wells, Orson Wells thought, you know what, nobody's going to listen to this. Nobody's going to pay attention to this. Everybody knows this story. They've heard it before. But you know what? That radio drama that happened on, I believe it was Halloween evening, 1938. Over 12 million people listened to that radio drama. And it is documented over or nearly 1 million people went into a panic believing that the invasion was real. Orson Wells was utterly amazed. Well, six years later, the War of the Worlds was rebroadcast in Santiago Chilli and the same thing happened. Only six years later. Then five years after that in 1949, the exact same radio drama was performed in Quito Ecuador with absolutely disastrous results. The whole town of 250,000 people was gripped in a panic. The reports show that hordes of people ran into the streets, ran to the nearest Catholic church so that they could get right with God before dying. As a matter of fact, this is absolutely crazy. But it is reported that men openly confessed to the priest about adulterous relationships before their wives. Because they believed that the invasion was real and they were about to die. Moreover, the military was dispatched to secure the perimeter of the town. And after all the dust settled in the mayhem and after the radio station was burnt down after the people found out it was a lie, and six people actually lost their lives because of the story of War of the Worlds. Now, of course, it would be easy for us in America to think, oh well, that was way back then and that's in South America. They're not as advanced as we are. Well, believe it or not, in 1968, the radio station, WKBW and Buffalo, New York, updated the radio drama of War of the Worlds. And performed it on Halloween night. And that performance convinced at least, if not more, 6,000 people in the area to flood the telephone lines to the police and to the Red Cross, an absolute terror and fear, believing that it was real somehow. In fact, the Canadian military was dispatched to secure the border because of that radio drama. Sounds nuts, right? But I told you, Satan's not called the Father of lies for nothing. Our hearts are sinful by their very nature. Give us enough time to forget the truth, give us enough time to hear the lie over and over again, and we'll believe just about anything. So that's why God commanded the Israelites, his covenant people to recite that story each and every year as they came to present the first fruits and the tabernacle, because it was a way of keeping the truth before them at all times while they lived and were settled in a world filled with lies. The truth, that even though they had fought for that land, it was actually the Lord your God who had given them that promised land. That story was there to keep the truth before their eyes, the truth that even though they had planted that land and they had formed that land, that ultimately it was the Lord your God who made the land fruitful and abundant or flowing with milk and honey, if you will. That story was to be recited in order to keep the truth before their very eyes at all times, the truth that from the very start they were, who they were, and they had what they had, not by the power of their armies, not by the cunning of their will and their self-determination, not by appeasing some impersonal canonite deity. They were, who they were, and they had what they had all by the grace of the Lord your God. That was why God gave them that story and it needed to be repeated over and over and over again. But the story was given to do more than just teach them and remind them of the truth. It was also given to them in order to shape them in the truth. Let's continue reading in Deuteronomy 26 beginning with verse 12. Moses continues and says, When you have finished paying all the tithe of your produce in the third year, which is the year of tithing, give it to the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, so that they may eat within your towns and be filled. Then you shall say before the Lord your God, I have removed the sacred portion out of my house and moreover I have given it to the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, according to all your commandment that you have commanded me. I have not transgressed any of your commandments nor have I forgotten them. I have not eaten of the tithe while I was mourning or removed any of it while I was unclean or offered any of it to the dead. I have obeyed the voice of the Lord my God. I have done according to all that you have commanded me. Look down from your holy habitation from heaven and bless your people Israel and the ground that you have given us as you swore to our fathers a land flowing with milk and honey. Now, this wasn't the first time God had told his people this. Back in Deuteronomy chapter 14 verses 28 and 29, God had already instructed his people to stockpile a special collection of their produce every three years and then they were to do that in order so that the Levite, the sojourner, the widow, the fatherless, they could be provided for. They were supposed to take up this collection of food so that all of the people among them, who were in need of grace and mercy in order to survive, those people would get the grace and mercy that they needed in order to survive. God had already told them that. So why now, later on in Deuteronomy 26, would he repeat the same commandment? Well, since the first rule of Bible study is acknowledgment of the fact that God does not stutter, we have to understand there's got to be a reason why God would remind us people about this special collection at this point in his instruction to them. And I think that Esther Somerson can help us figure out why. Well, I discovered Esther Somerson, my wife and I discovered Esther Somerson a few years back when the BBC produced a version of Charles Dickens Bleak House on TV and it was put on PBS. It's absolutely fantastic, many series. I highly recommend it to anyone, men and women, to watch it. Great story. Well, in the story, Bleak House by Charles Dickens, Esther is the main character. And as a main character, she is a bit of a riddle to figure out in the beginning of the story, as it unfolds. Because all throughout the story, Esther is always vigilant and diligent to serve and support other people. And she is always continually deferring to other people, always thinking the best of other people despite no matter how gross their faults may be. Esther is constantly giving, even endangering her own life on behalf of others. But yet, she's just as steadfast in denying herself of any pleasure and she's unceasing and refusing any kindness or any consideration that's offered to her. When her guardian repeatedly asks her what she wants or what she desires, she's always saying nothing, I want nothing. And then when she finally meets this young handsome doctor, Dr. Wood Court, and he begins showing favor to her, she belittles herself, sureing him that she's no one of any consequence whatsoever. And it's maddening trying to figure out what the deal is with Esther until the point in the story when there's a flashback, and it's a flashback to her childhood. And then that's when we begin to understand why she behaves the way she does, why she thinks the way she thinks, why she feels she feels, the way that she does what she does. And then it's flashback, it's a memory from her birthday. She says that her birthday was a day that was never celebrated in the home where she lived with her godmother. And she said on this particular birthday, I believe it was her 12th birthday, she's sitting in silence by the fire. And she says, she looks across the table and she says, I saw in my godmother's face looking gloomily at me. It would have been far better little Esther that you had no birthday, that you had never been born. Well, at that, Esther breaks out in tears sobbing and she begs her godmother to tell her something of the mother that she's never known. And her godmother coldly replies to her, your mother Esther is your disgrace as you are hers. Well, at that, Esther runs to her room, climbs into the bed with her doll and she says these words. I knew at that moment that I had brought no joy at any time to anybody's heart and that I was no one upon the earth of what Dolly was to me. And I repeated to the doll the story of my birthday and I confided in my doll that I would try as hard as ever I could to repair the fault that I had been born with and that I would strive as I grew up to be industrious and contented and kind-hearted and to do some good to someone and to win some love for myself if I could. And then that's when we realize why Esther lives the way she does because Esther had been shaped by the story that her godmother had told her on that birthday. That story became the script by which she lived out the rest of her life. Well, the reason why God repeats this command at this point in Deuteronomy 26 is because the story that is recorded in verses 1 through 11 that the people are supposed to be reciting every year. That story that repeats or that rehearses them in the truth, that story is meant to ground them in the truth and to shape them to live out a life that looks like the life that we see in verses 12 through 15. Just as God had graciously adopted and protected and provided for the Israelites all throughout their history, that's the story that gets told in verses 1 through 11. So in turn, the Israelites are to graciously adopt and protect and provide for all those people among them who need that same mercy in order to survive. The story makes the life. That's the exact, it's the exact same thing that God did at the beginning of Deuteronomy when you go back and read. Before God gives his people any commandment which begins in chapter 4, God tells them a three chapter story about the truth of who he was and what he had done for them and who he had made them to be. The story of God's grace always comes before the law because the law shows the life that is to be lived and it is shaped by the story of God's grace. God commands his people to do for others what he's done for them. So he uses that story in verses 1 through 11 to kind of mold them in a particular way of thinking and to impress upon them a special way of feeling and to shape them in a certain way of behaving and believing. God used that story to create in them a distinct identity. God gave them the truth. God gave them that true story. The story that would be declared to themselves and to the whole world the truth and it was this. We are the people of the living God. Now let's continue reading Deuteronomy 26 verses 16 through 19. This ends the whole section. Kind of buttons up everything that's come before beginning in chapter 12. And it says this. This day the Lord your God commands you to do these statutes and rules. You shall therefore be careful to do them with all your heart and with all your soul. You have declared today that the Lord is your God and that you will walk in his ways and keep his statutes and his commandments and his rules and will obey his voice. And the Lord has declared today that you are a people for his treasured possession as he promised you and that you are to keep all his commandments and that he will set you in praise and in fame and in honor high above all nations that he has made and that you shall be a people holy to the Lord your God as he promised. Now I think when we read this especially in isolation it's very very obvious no doubt God's law is serious business. They're supposed to obey it be careful to do the law with all their heart and with all their soul to walk in his ways to obey his voice how many times you hear it over and over again. God's word is serious business for his people he calls it his statutes his rules his ways his commandments his voice parents try that at home. Somehow or another when you say you know you're not listening to me suddenly you so you broke my statute it adds a huge authority to it you know what I'm saying you broke my commandment you know it's it's conveying the seriousness of God's word the fact that he repeats it with so many different words and then we're told God's people to be careful to do his word to walk in it to keep it to obey his law. However even within that passage a passage that is lured with all these rapid fire directives about the need for God's people to obey his commandments even within a passage like that that whole passage swims in the true story of God's grace to his people. The story that teaches them and continually reminds them in that very passage that he is the Lord your God and that they are a people for his treasured possession as he has promised a people holy to the Lord your God as he has promised. They belong to him that's why they're supposed to be obeying not so that they can become his people so that they can live as his people. The story of all that he's done so that he would be the Lord their God and that they would be his treasured possession that's what grounds all of this discussion about obeying and being careful to obey God's law and you know what that's our story too. See the people of Israel they failed to fulfill the mission that God had called them to over time they repeatedly forgot that story. The story that God had given them the story that told them the truth that Yahweh was the Lord their God and that they were a people for his treasured possession holy to the Lord but God didn't give up. Now God hurled himself under these heavens and on this earth and he redeemed for himself through the life and the death and the resurrection and the ascension of his son Jesus a new people a new Israel a new nation a new people who would show forth his praises to all the world a new people who would work to bring his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. A new people who would be a flesh and blood walking preview of God's kingdom and guess who that is the church of Jesus Christ that's us that's why this is still our story and out of God's grace he called us to carry on the work of bringing his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. The same mission that Israel had given Israel wasn't supposed to be all obedient and be blessed just for the sake of being blessed they were to be blessed that they would be a blessing to all the nations. That was their job and they failed it in Jesus God has made us to be that new people so that we can carry out that mission and take it into all the nations of the world but you know what? The world that inhabits that we inhabit the world that we're settled down in and that we live in you know what that world is just as filled with pagan kings and pagan cultures who have their own stories about how the world works how a society should be structured how life should be lived and how worship should be done if done at all. And not only that but we also wrestle with Satan the father of lies we wrestle with our own sinful nature our own deceitful hearts so in essence God has called us as the church to live as a huge square peg and a land filled with round holes and you know how it works folks if you hammer at it long enough you can get a square peg to fit into a round hole. That's what we're in danger of prone to wander Lord I feel it prone to leave the God I love that's us so what do we do well we're supposed to remember our story and tell it well I'm talking about God's word the truth. The word of God that we confess was given to us to overcome our sinful nature our deceitful hearts and to combat the malice of Satan in the world the word of God but listen up I'm not just talking about our need to be reading our Bible on our own as important and as good a thing as that is because here's the deal. There's plenty of heresies and there's plenty of lies that have come out of private devotions because left to our own it's easy to forget the story what I'm talking about is rehearsing the word of God reliving the truth that's found in the word of God I'm talking about us coming together before God as the church in worship. This is what we need what we're doing right now week after week just as much as God had commanded the Israelites every year to come and bring these first fruits every week God is set aside the Sabbath the holy day set apart where we bring the first fruits of our labors in the world and we come and we really live and we react reenact and we recite our story the story of the gospel of Jesus Christ. So I'm talking about our need to come together in worship I'm talking about our need to submit submit ourselves to a group of men elders and a pastor who we have set apart for the soul duty of constantly keeping the truth before our eyes constantly rehearsing and reminding us of the story the truth about who God is and what he's done for us and who he's made us to be I'm talking about our need to sing and to hear and to pray and to celebrate the truth of the gospel in the Lord's Supper regularly which I praise God that is a church we do on a weekly basis because it's there to keep the truth the story that tells us the truth about who God is what he's done for us and who he's made us to be so that we won't forget so that we won't be swallowed up by all the lies that are out there. So that we will be hammered in as a square peg made to fit into a round hole. Now don't get me wrong God's law is still serious business no doubt he still calls it his statutes his rules his ways his commandments his voice and as God's people we're still to be careful to do it to walk in it to keep it and to obey it. And in the coming weeks pastor Scott's going to be laying out we're going to be here about all the different ways in which God's law is to govern our lives you know what there's not a single part of our life that God has not claimed is his own. And so pastor Scott's going to be bringing God's word to bear on our lives how it affects our marriages and our relationships our parenting our money our work and our schools but it's something that we need to get into our heads before we get into those sermons. And it's this God's law has not been given to us like some ball and chains supposed to confine us like a tightly tucked shirt so what God's about. God's not the sovereign power who just enjoys lording his power over others for the sake of doing it no how many times in this passage we talked about the joy the rejoicing and not just for ourselves but supposed to be spread to other people. You know what when you read in Psalm 147 19 which I didn't print out some going to try my best to read here listen to what we are told in Psalm 147 a song by the way which begins with this heart he prays the Lord what praise the Lord about it says he declares his word to Jacob his statutes and rules to Israel he has not dealt thus with any other nation they do not know his rules praise the Lord. Now when was the last time you were I and thinking about God's law immediately erupted into praise the Lord or as John Haley says give him praise. We don't do that because we always think of God's laws that tightly tucked shirt that confines us that ball and chain but no God's people before us the Israelites they rejoiced because they understood the gift of God's law. Men that they were a part of his story that they belonged to him the gift of God's law was a sign of their ownership that he was the Lord their God and they were his treasured possession. God's law is given to us as a part of our story it's given to us to be a script if you will for us to follow so that we can live out the story of God's redeeming grace. The story of his grace towards us in Jesus Christ which proclaims and first Peter but we are a chosen race a royal priesthood a holy nation a people for his own possession that we may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light for once. Once we were not a people but now we are God's people once we had not received mercy but now beloved church of Jesus Christ we have received God's mercy that's the story that's been given to us the story that declares to us and proclaims to all the world. We are the people of the living God that's our story that is the truth thanks be to God let's pray most gracious God we thank you for your word the word of truth the truth. It sets us free and once again we simply pray most gracious God feed our hungry souls open our eyes to see wondrous things out of your law establish our footsteps in your ways in our story and let not any inequity or sin have dominion over us so that the nations will know that Jesus Christ is king amen.