Finding Life
Deuteronomy 10:12-22[1]
It’s hard to mention Moses without thinking
about the Ten Commandments. And the Ten Commandments may remind us of Judge Roy
Moore. He’s the former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice who commissioned a
5,000-pound monument depicting the Law of Moses. What you may not know is that
“the Rock,” as it has been called, went on tour. That may not seem like a big
deal, until you think of what it takes to lug around two-and-a-half-ton
sculpture. It rode on a flatbed truck and had to be lifted off and back again
with a five-ton, fifty-seven-foot crane![2] What
a perfect image to portray the commandments as “burdens, weights and heavy
obligations,” as one commentator put it.[3]
That’s how we tend to think of the Ten Commandments, the Law of
God, and the Hebrew Bible in general: as a burden. We tend to think that the
people of Israel labored under the burden of demands they could never fulfill,
trying to win God’s love, trying to earn salvation by their good works. And we
see Jesus as the one who set us free from that burden by bringing salvation to
us as a gift. As a result, we might be tempted to think that the Ten
Commandments, the Law of God, and the Hebrew Bible in general are pretty much
irrelevant.
But that’s not what our prophet for the week, Moses, has to say
about the matter. We may not be accustomed to thinking of Moses as a prophet,
but in the Jewish world, including that of Jesus’ day, Moses was the prophet above all others. He spoke
the word of God to the people. In our lesson for today, he begins with a question:
“What does the Lord require?” (Deut. 10:12). It’s a straightforward question
and at first the answer sounds clear enough: “to fear the Lord your God, to
walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your
heart and with all your soul.”
The problem comes when we read on: “and to keep the commandments
of the Lord your God and his decrees that I am commanding you today, for your
own well-being” (Deut. 10:13). That doesn’t compute for us on several levels.
Most of us don’t equate “loving God and serving him” with keeping the
commandments. But the witness of Scripture is clear that loving and serving God
means “walking in all his ways.” Knowing God truly has always made a difference
in the way people live out their lives—in every aspect of life.
Part of the reason why our Scripture lesson doesn’t compute for
us is because it seems like Moses is saying that finding life depends on what
we do. Somehow, it seems that our salvation is a matter of earning God’s love.
And yet, Moses specifically says that the Lord chose people to live in
relationship with him because he “set his heart in love on your ancestors”
(Deut. 10:15). The original covenant with Israel was based on the same love as
the new covenant. Keeping God’s commands was never a means of gaining or
achieving salvation apart from God’s grace.
If that’s the case, then why were the commands given at all? Why
did Moses insist that the people keep the commandments? While it was never a
matter of earning a relationship with God, the commandments were a way of
defining what a genuine relationship with God looks like. They spell out in
daily practice what it looks like to “walk in all God’s ways, to love him, to
serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.” The Bible
teaches that it’s a part of God’s original intention for the human family: to
lead us into a relationship characterized by love and faith that are not
coerced and by heartfelt obedience that puts God’s will into practice in daily living.
I think the final aspect of this passage that doesn’t compute
for us is found in the line that keeping the commandments is something that was
intended to be “for your own well-being” (Deut. 10:13). They were meant to
instruct us about how to find the life that is truly life, the life that God
intended for us all to have in the first place. That is the heart of what the
Law or Torah was about: instructing us in what it looks like to “walk in God’s
ways.” And when we do so, we realize that God’s ways are not burdensome at all,
but rather they are paths that show us the way to find life.
We’re not used to talking about the commandments in this
way. We’re much more familiar with
talking about them as a burden, a weight, or a heavy obligation—like a 5,000-pound
monument made out of Vermont granite.
But that misunderstands their role in God’s purpose for his covenant
people, both then and now. The purpose of that covenant is to form a
relationship. Not surprisingly, what God looks for is for his people to commit
themselves to this relationship wholeheartedly. In that context, the purpose of
the commandments is to spell out what it means to live a life defined by love for
God. They were given as the parameters within which to live our
lives—parameters that are intended to enable us to find a life that is full of
living hope, lasting joy, and genuine love, both toward God and others.
Elsewhere, Moses calls this way of living “choosing life” (Deut. 30:19-20). As
we learn what it means to love God, to serve him wholeheartedly, and to walk in
his ways, we find the life that is truly life.
[1]
© 2018 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 8/5/2018 at
Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2]
Joshua Green, “Roy and his Rock,” The
Atlantic Monthly (October 2005); http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/10/roy-and-his-rock/4264/
.
[3]
Cf. Thomas G. Long, “Dancing the Decalogue,” in The Christian Century (March 7, 2006):17.
No comments:
Post a Comment