The Heart of the Problem
The Story of the Old Testament: Deuteronomy • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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So I’m guessing that most of you, either when you were students - or as the parents of students, had the experience of using a song to memorize something. I know for my kids, it was a song to learn all the capitols and countries of South American. Songs are a great way to remember something, as we’ll see in this final part of Deuteronomy.
That’s where we are, here at the end of the book of Deuteronomy, in the same place we started, on the east side of the Jordan River in the territory of Moab, the Israelites gathered ready to enter into the land that God had long promised them to bless them with. Moses is wrapping up his lengthy speech, reminding the Israelites of all that God has commanded them.
Just a few notes about things that occur in the book of Deuteronomy to help us keep track of the overall story of the Old Testament - if you remember, Moses lost the blessing to be able to enter the land God when he, out of frustration, hit the rock in order to water to be provided for the people at Kadesh Barnea (way back in book of Numbers). Deuteronomy ends with Moses death.
But before he passes, he summons Joshua and passes on the mantle of leadership to him in the presence of the entire nation of Israel. Joshua will be the one who will take them across the Jordan River in order to take possession of the land - which we’ll see when we pick up the story of the Old Testament again after Easter, when we make our way through the next book, Joshua.
But as we saw last week, Moses’ speech finishes with him laying out the covenant agreement to the Israelites so they know exactly what they are committing themselves to. In their minds, that’s exactly what they are going to do: they are going to enter into the promised land, live faithfully according to God’s laws, and enjoy all the blessings that God would pour out on them for doing so.
But God knows better. He makes that plain to the Israelites as we’ll see in Deuteronomy 31:14-22...The Lord said to Moses, “Now the day of your death is near. Call Joshua and present yourselves at the tent of meeting, where I will commission him.” So Moses and Joshua came and presented themselves at the tent of meeting. 15 Then the Lord appeared at the tent in a pillar of cloud, and the cloud stood over the entrance to the tent. 16 And the Lord said to Moses: “You are going to rest with your ancestors, and these people will soon prostitute themselves to the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake me and break the covenant I made with them. 17 And in that day I will become angry with them and forsake them; I will hide my face from them, and they will be destroyed. Many disasters and calamities will come on them, and in that day they will ask, ‘Have not these disasters come on us because our God is not with us?’ 18 And I will certainly hide my face in that day because of all their wickedness in turning to other gods. 19 “Now write down this song and teach it to the Israelites and have them sing it, so that it may be a witness for me against them. 20 When I have brought them into the land flowing with milk and honey, the land I promised on oath to their ancestors, and when they eat their fill and thrive, they will turn to other gods and worship them, rejecting me and breaking my covenant. 21 And when many disasters and calamities come on them, this song will testify against them, because it will not be forgotten by their descendants. I know what they are disposed to do, even before I bring them into the land I promised them on oath.” 22 So Moses wrote down this song that day and taught it to the Israelites.
Consider for a moment what God is doing here - he begins with telling Moses that he will die soon. Tells him to get Joshua and bring him to the tent of meeting so God can commission him as the new leader, which he does.
Then he tells Moses flat out how the Israelites are going to enter into the promised land and they will forsake him in order to follow other gods. They will engage in great wickedness, rejecting God, the covenant they made with him. They will be unfaithful in spite of how faithful God has been to them. And he will, therefore, bring down the curses he promised - disasters and calamities will fall on them. I hope one of the things you see here is how amazingly faithful and true to us God is, even when we fail absolutely to be faithful to him. “I know what they are disposed to do, even before I bring them into the land I promised with an oath.”
Think, too, about the fact that God is giving Moses a song to teach the Israelites how unfaithful they will be. The entire song is laid out in Deuteronomy 32 - it’s a song of praise to God, his greatness, how his works are perfect, how faithful and upright and just he is. And how they Israelites are not. It goes on for a while - this is not a single verse song. This is their homework assignment - to learn this song! Can you imagine learning a song like that and then singing it? How Great Thou Art - how terrible we are!
God tells Moses why he is doing this - so that it may serve as a witness to the Israelites. They are learning it in song from so they will remember it. So when the time comes, that song will come to mind: God told us that we were going to turn against him - and we did. He knew would be unfaithful, no matter how much we promised to be obedient to his commands.
It’s not just God - Moses has been around his people enough that he knows they their hearts - he knows they will be unfaithful. And he doesn’t hesitate to tell them, either, as he gives them a copy of the law, written down so they can read it on a regular basis to remind themselves of how they are to live. This is Deuteronomy 31:24-29...
After Moses finished writing in a book the words of this law from beginning to end, 25 he gave this command to the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord: 26 “Take this Book of the Law and place it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God. There it will remain as a witness against you. 27 For I know how rebellious and stiff-necked you are. If you have been rebellious against the Lord while I am still alive and with you, how much more will you rebel after I die! 28 Assemble before me all the elders of your tribes and all your officials, so that I can speak these words in their hearing and call the heavens and the earth to testify against them. 29 For I know that after my death you are sure to become utterly corrupt and to turn from the way I have commanded you. In days to come, disaster will fall on you because you will do evil in the sight of the Lord and arouse his anger by what your hands have made.”
Again, Moses isn’t saying that he’s giving them the law to read it because he knows how faithful they will be. Like the song, this is to serve as a witness against them - you agreed to this, this is the covenant you committed yourselves to. But he knows they will turn away. He knows disaster will fall on them. “For I know how rebellious and stiff-necked you are” - and that’s not going to get any better after he’s gone.
What does this mean for God’s plan? Remember, going all the way back to Abraham - he was going to be the father of a great nation. Descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. Living in this land, that they are standing at the precipice of. The promise was that they were going to be the nation through whom all other nations would be blessed. God’s holy nation, his kingdom people.
Here he is telling them - you’re going to fail. You will not be holy, you’ll be wicked, unfaithful. As we continue to make our way through the story, we’ll see times and places where they are obedient, but it never lasts, only for a generation or two, and then, they always end up turning away from the Lord their God.
God knows all this! So, what’s going on here? This doesn’t seem to be the plan. This should be the great moment of triumph, entering into the land - it’s finally happening. You’d think it’d be a rah-rah speech, word of great encouragement - Let’s do this! Instead a song. And the law written down, placed in the Ark of the Covenant - all to serve as a witness to say, I told you so. I knew you would be unfaithful. What’s God up to?
The Heart of the Problem is the Problem of the Heart
Here’s what God is doing here - he is revealing the broken condition of the human heart. That the heart of the problem is the problem of the heart. Remember, when we’re talking about the heart, we’re talking about it in the way the Israelites would have understood it - as the very center of who we are, that which drives us. Not just our emotions, what we feel, but how we think, our reason, our wills.
And in our minds (as was the case for the Israelites), we overestimate the goodness of our hearts. We can do this. We can and will be obedient. We just need to try harder. Exert more will.
But God is revealing to them that the problem is much bigger. It goes much deeper. Our hearts are broken, hardened against God. There’s deep seeded rebellion within us. We need some serious heart work. A newness of heart. As it says in Deuteronomy 10:16: Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer.
This is a central part of the story of the Old Testament - why we see this pattern of the Israelites failing over and over and over and over again. Why we see God teaching them songs and Moses giving them the entire law written down as witnesses against them. And this really is an essential part of the story - it demonstrates the tragic reality that we cannot do this on our own.
In and of ourselves, we are not good. We have truly been captivated by sin. The sinful condition of our heart goes down deep. In Reformed theology, this is known as the concept of total depravity. Though I think a more accurate description is thoroughly depraved. Our sinfulness, our hardened hearts impact every aspect of our lives.
Story is meant to shatter the notion that we are capable of earning our way towards God. That we can be good and faithful as we currently are. That what the law really does is expose our sin. It’s the metric, the standard under which we can see how far we fall short. We can see clearly - this is how we’re supposed to live. And see clearly that we are not.
This really is a downer to end the book of Deuteronomy on - can you imagine being one of the Israelites in that moment, singing that song?! But, as always - and I mean always, there’s a word of hope. A word of promise - because that’s who God is - God’s desire is to save. Redeem. To enable his people to be with him, to be like him.
We see this in Deuteronomy 30:1-6: When all these blessings and curses I have set before you come on you and you take them to heart wherever the Lord your God disperses you among the nations, 2 and when you and your children return to the Lord your God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul according to everything I command you today, 3 then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where he scattered you. 4 Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back. 5 He will bring you to the land that belonged to your ancestors, and you will take possession of it. He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your ancestors. 6 The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live.
See here that the Israelites will experience some of all of it - blessings and curses. But notice how God is talking here about how he will disperse them among the nations - spread out through all the lands. Reference to future events that won’t happen for hundreds of years - the Israelites will go into exile when the Babylonians destroy the Kingdom of Judah (we’re a long ways from there in our journey through the Old Testament).
But what I want to focus your attention on is what God will do for his people - restore their fortunes, pour out his compassion, gather them from all the nations he scattered them to, no matter how far away. But then this - “The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live.”
Did you see that - it’s not them circumcising their hearts, changing them - God will do it. The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts. He’s going to give them new hearts so that they can do what they cannot do now, hearts capable of doing what he has commanded them to do - love him with all of their being.
And this promise of a new heart is echoed throughout the Old Testament - Jeremiah 24:7, I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart.
Ezekiel 11:19, I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.
And then this, Jeremiah 31:31-34, “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. 32 It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. 33 “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 34 No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”
Over and over again, it’s God. He is the one who give us a new heart. He will enable us to return to him with all of our hearts. He will take away our heart of stone, our hardened heart - and instead give us a heart of flesh, a soft heart, an undivided heart. And this will all be through the new covenant, the new agreement - one not based on our ability to follow God’s commands, but the one based on Jesus Christ, his faithfulness, his obedience to death, even death on a cross, his taking the curse upon himself. God makes us new as we entrust our lives to him.
Colossians 2:9-12 - For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10 and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. 11 In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, 12 having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.
It is a circumcision of the heart in Jesus. What an amazing truth to claim - I have a new heart. The surgery has already been performed. I was ruled by the flesh - but that’s been put off by Christ. I have joined with Jesus in dying to sin and rising into new life with him.
Which means that the way I pursue godliness, faithfulness, being obedient - is not through my effort (that doesn’t work - point God is making to Israelites). Not by my strength - if I just try harder. But be being attentive to Jesus and his work in me through his Holy Spirit. I do so from a position of trusting that my heart has already been made new. That I am no longer ruled by sin - but by the Holy Spirit. To give my heart over to Jesus so he can continue his new-making work in me.
My experience at the Night to Shine with Bill & Randy…God making my heart “softer”
The difficulty here is that our hearts have been set in a particular way for a long time. They have been hardened, set. We have much to unlearn in order to learn. Here’s where the spiritual disciplines come into play, where we join with Jesus as he works in us to make our hearts new.
Here’s a question that I would encourage you to prayerfully consider this morning (and I mean, prayerfully, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit - ask God to show you your heart). How is my heart? Is it getting softer, towards God, towards others? Am I growing in my capacity and willingness to love God and trust and obey God? Am I growing in my love of others - who I am willing to love, is that growing broader, including more and more people, willingness to be for their good? Is it growing deeper, willingness to give more of myself to them, serve them?
Trust that God will (if he’s not already) bringing something to mind - a person you have a hardness of heart toward, you’d rather avoid them. Might be a friend of yours, a co-worker, someone in your family. Perhaps you’re experiencing a resistance against God. As God brings to mind, pray - for a softer heart towards that person. Pray for that person. Pray for willing surrender, that God would continue his heart work in you.