B, Pent 22 Proper 26 - Deuteronomy 6:1-9 "The Way of Life!"

Text: Deuteronomy 6:1-9

Moses said to the Israelites, 1 These are the commands, decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, 2 so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. 3 Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers, promised you.

4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Sermon

The year is 1462 — “BC” — or roughly thereabouts. The Israelites are free from Pharaoh’s oppression. They have walked out of captivity with minimal bloodshed to themselves. The Israelites didn’t have to rebel by taking arms; there was no war! They walked out as God did the fighting for them. Moses and Aaron just told Pharaoh, God’s ultimatum to let his people go and the Egyptian emperor let all of them go. This is not surprising; God’s word is powerful. It’s not surprising that Pharaoh changed his mind either, and sent his army after the walking workforce of Israelite slaves. But God wasn’t about to forsake those he’d chosen to rescue, and he delivered them safely into the desert of Sinai while drowning Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea.

At Mount Sinai the Israelites were given the Law, including the Ten Commandments, and Moses reinforces the promise he first spoke of, when the Israelites prepared for their escape from Egypt. He said, “Hear, O Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers, promised you.” (Deut 6:3) This promise was first given to Moses years earlier when he stood before the burning bush on that very same mountain, and even earlier, to Abram as he wandered through Canaan.

Surprisingly for the Israelites the promise didn’t happen as quickly as the recent events which led to their exodus. They arrived at Mount Sinai within three months of leaving Egypt. They were in the desert with the promise of entry into Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey.

But for them to inhabit this land, God put requirements in place. These statutes are the Law; the Ten Commandments together with all the other laws Moses received on Sinai and gave to the people in the Torah — the first five books of the Old Testament.

God commanded Moses and Aaron to teach the people, and they their children, and their children’s children. He prescribed a way of righteousness, which, if kept, would go well with them, give them enjoyable long lives, and give them fertile increase through the wombs of their women and through the land’s abundance on the other side of the Jordan River.

God called them to be bound to the Law. Instead of covering themselves with idolatry and its symbols, he says, “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” (Deut 6:6-7a, 8-9) One must understand that the wearing of jewellery and the placement of ornaments or statues on gates and doorframes was forbidden, because these were pagan rituals done to ward off evil from the entrances to their bodies and property, and bring good luck.

On the other hand, the prescribed actions of the Law would always put God’s way in front of them, as a reminder that God is One. These Laws were given so the Israelites could live with God without being sucked into the local pagan traditions and philosophies held by those who were far from fearing God. The Law was given so the Israelites could discern right from wrong, as an authoritative directive from God alone, as a pre-judgement for those who crossed the line, as a code of conduct, and as God’s holy wisdom written down for holy living in the land God set aside as holy for his holy people.

Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey, was to be paradise on earth given to the people as long as they lived the Law. The Law’s prohibitions, similar to that of not eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, was given to cleanse the Israelites, so God could dwell once again with humanity who had separated themselves from him through their sin.

However, we know the Israelites couldn’t even leave Mount Sinai without adorning themselves and their hearts with gold and idolatry and sin, building a golden calf to gain access to what they thought was paradise. For the first of many times they crossed the line and let go of the means God put in place to make them holy, and threatened having themselves cast from God’s presence, just as humanity’s parents, Adam and Eve, had been earlier hurled from God’s presence.

So Moses and most of the Israelites didn’t ever enter a land flowing with milk and honey, but instead were constantly called to faithfulness as they wandered forty years in a triangular Sinai wilderness, just three hundred kilometres (187 ½ miles) by three hundred kilometres by three hundred kilometres. (That’s a triangle from just Chinchilla to Coolangatta to Bundaberg.)

We might think all this hasn’t much to do with us; that it’s just a nice little history lesson. After all we are not under the Law anymore but under Christ and the Gospel, who has passed through the perfect heavenly tabernacle and cleansed us, once and for all, with his blood rather than the blood of animals as required by the Law.

But, much is still the same! God still wants to dwell with us. He still desires to lead us through the wilderness of this life and bring us into a land flowing with milk and honey—the perfect heavenly tabernacle—where Jesus Christ is now at the right hand of God. He still puts in place means through which we are given access into his holy presence. In fact, he still demands that we must be holy to be in his presence. He still requires that we teach our children to cling to his way and his way alone. And he still calls us to wear his clothes of righteousness over our rags of idolatry, self-centredness, and sin.

We have one God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three persons in one God. We do well to listen to God and heed “his ways”. We do well to teach our children to endure in the baptismal faith given by the Holy Spirit, which enables us to trust God as we struggle against the temptation to adorn ourselves with the hoary jewels of sin and idolatry.

We no longer have the Law; we now have the Gospel too. The prohibitions of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the Law given through Moses, have been revised and perfected in Christ. He now has fulfilled all the requirements which Adam and the Israelites failed to accomplish. The commands, “you must not”, have been kept by Jesus who now says you must, “believe in the One the Father has sent!” (John 6:29)

God cares more for a speck of faith—a splinter of trust in Jesus—than a ton of excitement, a lifetime of good works, or a brilliant mind. Although the fruits of faith might be, excitement or stillness, the fruits of faith will be good works of various kinds as we love God and love our neighbour, and the fruits of faith will lead the youngest and the simplest to receive the deepest understanding as they hear God’s word.

As we wander in the wilderness of this life, we already have a window glimpse of paradise. The tree of life, to which we lost access when Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden, is the cross, and it’s our window into the heavenly paradise, the eternal land flowing with milk and honey.

Adam and Eve wrongly ate of the tree of good and evil, but now we must eat only of the tree of life, Jesus Christ in the eternal paradise who is also planted in your hearts. You do well to allow the Holy Spirit to continually bind Christ to your heart; only then can you “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength, and love your neighbour as yourself.” (Mark 12:30-31)

We are promised all the glory of eternity if we remain in Christ, and if we allow him to remain in us. We do well to believe in the mystery of baptism, the mysteries of Holy Communion, and the mystery of the Holy Spirit coming to us through the written word of God. We do well to impress these things upon the hearts of our children and talk about them in our homes.

We do well to live each day in victory over our sinfulness under the sign of the cross, daily invoking the name of the Triune God, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, in whose name we are baptised into the eternal kingdom of heaven, a land flowing with milk and honey. Amen.