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Good morning.
My name is August Fern.
This morning we're going to have a reading from the book of Deuteronomy, various selections
from chapter 4 as printed in the liturgy.
The words we're hearing are the words of Moses as he's speaking to the Israelites before they
crossed the Jordan, starting with verse 5.
See, I have taught you decrees and laws as the Lord my God commanded me, so that you may follow
them in the land you are entering to take possession of it.
Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations,
who will hear about all these decrees and say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding
people.
What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the Lord our God is
near us whenever we pray to him?
And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body
of laws I am setting before you today?
Only be careful and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes
have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live.
Teach them to your children and to their children after them.
Remember the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, when he said to me, assemble
the people before me to hear my words so that they may learn to revere me as long as they
live in the land and may teach them to their children.
You came near and stood at the foot of the mountain while it blazed with fire to the very
heavens with black clouds and deep darkness.
Then the Lord spoke to you out of the fire.
You heard the sound of words but saw no form.
There was only a voice.
He declared to you his covenant, the Ten Commandments, which he commanded you to follow, and then wrote
them on two stone tablets.
And the Lord directed me at that time to teach you the decrees and laws you are to follow in
the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess.
You saw no form of any kind the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire.
Therefore watch yourselves very carefully so that you do not become corrupt and make for
yourselves an idol, an image of any shape.
Now verse 23.
Be careful not to forget the covenant of the Lord your God that he made with you.
Do not make for yourselves an idol in the form of anything the Lord your God has forbidden.
For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.
Verse 31.
For the Lord your God is a merciful God.
He will not abandon or destroy you or forget the covenant with your ancestors, which he confirmed
to them by oath.
Ask now about the former days, long before your time, from the day God created human beings
on the earth.
Ask from one end of the heavens to the other.
Has anything so great as this ever happened?
Or has anything like it ever been heard of?
Has any other people heard the voice of God speaking out of fire as you have and lived?
Has any God ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation by testings,
by signs, and by wonders?
By war?
By mighty hand and an outstretched arm?
Or by great and awesome deeds?
Like all the things the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?
Verse 39.
Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth below.
There is no other.
The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God stands forever.
Good morning, Christ Church.
If you're new with us, we're delighted to have you.
My name is Jonathan.
And if you want to know what I've been up to the past two weeks, I'm now a volunteer cross-country coach
at my kids' school and have been recruiting kindergarten to eighth grade students to come
and run with us and wooing them with popsicles at the end of practices and trying to get their parents
to sign up on Team Snap and get jerseys and spirit gear and all this great stuff.
I think now we're going to have about 40 plus kids come and run with us on the next four or five Friday nights.
And it's been a lot of fun, but it's also a great deal of effort to form a team.
Has anybody here tried to form a team?
It takes a lot of effort to get all these different people moving in the same direction
and to get these kids kind of ready for speed and for distance
and to just get them up to the starting line of that first race to be ready to run their best race to their fullest potential.
I've also enjoyed thinking about great cross-country slogans on T-shirts.
For example, our sport is your sport's punishment.
Thought that was a good one.
Running is a mental sport and we are all insane.
Or if we played tag, you'd be it forever, which I kind of like that one.
But I like this analogy of forming a team and getting people up through the starting line.
And it has great resonance for me as a pastor launching a church into a new ministry year.
How do you get all these individual people into a cohesive group moving in the same direction for the same purpose?
And I kind of think about my experience as a cross-country coach or as a pastor
as like one one millionth of what Moses must have been feeling here at the edge of the promised land,
trying to get the people of God up to that starting line
and ready to move into the race that God had marked out for them.
Because that's what is happening in Deuteronomy.
Moses is getting the next generations of the people of God ready to run this race with perseverance
and with joy that God has set out before them.
And Jesus, I think, as we talked last week, he loved this book so much.
Quoted this book more than any other book, I think,
because it's such a clear revelation of who his father is.
Such a clear revelation of the character and the nature of God,
of his heart and his will for us,
of what he wants from us, his people,
how he wants us to run this race that he's setting before us.
So with that, let's dive in this morning to Deuteronomy 4
and this great farewell address from Moses in the last month of his life.
What does he have to say to the people of God?
And I think here in Deuteronomy 4, he wants us to know
that our mysterious God has a jealous love that makes us different.
And I want to explore for a minute the fact that we have a mysterious God
because Moses says in verse 10,
he says,
Remember the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb,
that is Mount Sinai.
Remember that day when he said to me,
assemble the people before me to hear my words
so that they may learn to revere me
as long as they live in the land
and may teach them to their children.
The people of God had two intense encounters
with Yahweh, with the Lord.
And these were their primary sources of their knowledge of God.
The one experience was the exodus from Egypt.
And the other experience was the covenant
that God made with them at Sinai.
And this formed the framework for Israel's faith,
just as for the Christian paradigm
as the incarnation of Jesus on the one hand
and the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus on the other hand.
And Moses is inviting us into this framework.
He's inviting us to relive this moment at Mount Sinai
because this defining foundational event
was a profoundly moving experience
of the mysterious presence of the Lord.
And Moses, as he helps us remember it,
he's emphatic that God,
the God of the Bible is not an either or God.
He's a both and God.
He's not a one-dimensional God.
He's a multi-dimensional God.
And the people of God are called to know
this dynamic, personal, relational, incomparable being
that cannot be reduced down to either this or that.
And here's what I mean.
Moses wants us to know this God
is both imminent and transcendent.
He's both near and he's awesome.
Look at what he says in verse seven.
He says,
what other nation is so great
as to have their gods near to them
the way the Lord our God is near us?
Whenever we pray to him,
there's an intimate closeness.
We call out and God's right there listening.
He's near to us.
And yet, listen to verse 33.
Moses says,
has any other people heard the voice of God
out of fire as you have and lived?
He balances God's nearness with the fact that
he's so awesome and majestic in his power
that if you were to plug into him,
it would blow your circuits.
I mean, how can anybody hear God
and survive that encounter?
How can they live through that experience?
Or again, Moses says in verse eight,
he says,
what other nation is so great
as to have such righteous decrees and laws
as this body of laws I'm setting before you today?
Here is God right here
giving you this ongoing quiet guidance
through this righteous body of teaching
the scriptures breathed out from his spirit
into your spirit.
He's right here with us.
And yet, it's balanced with verse 34
where he says,
has any God ever tried to take for himself
one nation out of another nation
by testings, signs, and wonders,
war, a mighty hand, and outstretched armor
by great and awesome deeds
like the things the Lord your God
did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?
The quiet guidance of God in the scriptures
is balanced and matched by this drama
of his mighty hand and his outstretched arm
and these wonderful works of God
to rescue his people.
God, Moses says,
who's not to be taken lightly
or to be trifled with.
Moses is saying to the people,
look, you should have confidence in God
because he's so near to you.
He's so close to you.
He's right here filling all things
everywhere around us and within us.
And yet, not only should you have confidence in God,
but you should have reverence for this God
who is awesome, who's wondrous,
who's incredible in his power,
who's way more than we can handle.
And Moses tells us that this God
who's both imminent and transcendent,
this God who's both near and awesome,
he is both knowable and incomprehensible.
And Moses goes on and he says,
this God is both fire and a voice.
This God is both a fire and a voice.
He says in verse 11,
you came near and stood at the foot of the mountain
while it blazed with fire to the very heavens
with black clouds and deep darkness.
This is a detailed, vivid memory
that Moses wants to become our memory.
Even those of us who were not there,
he says, imagine this mountain, Mount Sinai,
that's glowing with the light of fire.
Its brightness contrasted
with all the surrounding darkness.
And five times in this text,
Moses likens God to a fire, right?
Which is consistent with Genesis 15,
God shows up to Abraham as a,
he reveals himself as a blazing torch.
Exodus three, God shows up to Moses in what?
A burning bush.
Exodus 13, God reveals himself to Israel
and he leads them out of Egypt as a pillar of fire.
Why fire?
I don't know, but I just, I love,
I love this fact because I've been a pyromaniac
since I was a very young child.
I just loved striking that match
and seeing, you know, the flame come to life.
Some of you have heard me talk about sewer ball.
As an adolescent, we would take the manhole cover off.
We'd pour some gasoline down the sewer.
We'd soak a tennis ball in gasoline,
light it on fire,
and then we'd kind of play putt-putt
and hope that we could get that flaming ball
into the sewer.
And when it happened,
there was just a pillar of fire
that would come up.
How am I not in jail right now?
How am I alive?
How am I a pastor?
I don't know.
But I've always loved fire.
And you think about these four elements,
earth, water, wind, and fire.
Why does God reveal himself as fire?
You know, your child comes to you, wants to play.
Do you give them a hose and some dirt
or do you give them wood and lighter fluid, right?
The fire imagery, the fire likeness of God,
it engages our senses.
We can see the brightness.
We can feel the heat.
We can hear the roar.
There's a formless, luminous, mysterious beauty
that beckons us from a fire to come closer
and to get warm.
And yet, there's a powerful danger that says,
don't come too close or you're gonna get burned.
This fire on Mount Sinai needs no fuel to burn.
Just as God needs nothing in himself
or outside of himself to be, he just is.
He's this infinite source of self-sufficient power.
Moses says, you are before a fiery God.
But this fiery God is not a silent God.
He's a God who speaks.
Verse 12.
He says, then the Lord spoke to you out of the fire.
You heard the sound of words but saw no form.
There was only a voice.
This is a God who speaks.
He's a personal, relational God who reveals
and communicates himself to us,
which means we're to be a people not so much of the eye.
We're to be a people of the ear,
a people who learn to listen
because God is calling out to us
from his interior, inmost being,
through his voice, through his word,
trying to get into our interior, inmost being.
God is reaching out to us
because he wants to be known by us.
And this is so deep.
This is so rich.
Moses is saying, God,
the God who is a transcendent, awesome fire,
he cannot be grasped or comprehended
by the greatest theologian.
And yet this God is also such an imminent
and near voice that's speaking to us.
He can be known and adored by the smallest child.
And Moses says, this voice of Sinai is speaking
not only to that generation,
but to every generation.
He's calling out to us
and it's ours to learn to trust this voice.
It's ours to learn to trust this word
that's speaking to us.
I love the gospels.
We have four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
But John 1, 1 says this,
in the beginning was the word.
And the word was with God
and the word was God.
The word became flesh
and made his dwelling among us.
We have seen his glory,
the glory of the one and only son
and who came from the father
full of grace and truth.
In Jesus, John says,
we finally and fully meet this mysterious God
who is both transcendent and eminent,
who is awesome and who's near,
who is a fire and who is a voice.
In Jesus, the divine fire
takes on human form
and a human face and a human voice.
In Jesus, this divine nature of God
is woven into human nature
and he's calling out to us
from his inmost being,
calling out our names,
saying to each one of us,
I want you to come follow me.
Come follow me.
And that's the question
maybe for some of us today
who are here exploring the Christian faith
and what it's all about.
Are you hearing this voice,
the voice of this mysterious God
calling out your name?
Moses says that our mysterious God,
he has a jealous love.
Our mysterious God has a jealous love.
And this is where Moses goes next in verse 15.
He says,
you saw no form of any kind
the day the Lord spoke to you
at Horeb out of the fire.
Therefore, watch yourselves very carefully
so that you do not become corrupt
and make for yourselves an idol,
an image of any shape.
Why?
Because God says,
I can tolerate no reductionist images of me
and no rival powers beside me.
On the one hand,
God is saying,
I am unrepresentable.
Anything you would try to construct,
whatever you could imagine,
I'm more powerful than that.
Whatever you could create,
I'm more majestic than that.
Whatever size you could make an idol,
I'm way bigger than that.
God is saying,
I am not static.
I'm not immobile.
I'm not deaf or dumb
or unfeeling or unthinking,
which every idol in the end actually is.
God says,
no,
I'm not manageable.
I'm not limited.
You can't contain me
or control me.
You can't pin God down
in space,
time,
and matter,
and say,
well,
God,
this is your time
and this is your space.
This is your day
and this is your place
and all the rest belongs to us.
God says,
no,
all of it is mine.
God says,
all of it is filled with my glory.
All of it is filled with my presence.
You can't reduce me
or try to reproduce me.
He says,
I'll tolerate no reductionist images
on the one hand
and on the other hand,
the ancient Near East
was full of gods,
full of gods
that oversaw various realms,
oversaw various human needs.
You had the gods of healing,
the gods of agriculture
and the god of commerce,
the god of war,
the god of relationships
and love and fertility
and in order to make your life work,
you had to bow down.
You had to depend on these gods
for your vitality
and your success
and God is saying here,
I don't want you to turn
to any substitute powers
for your needs.
Why?
Because I am the lord of all realms
and I am the lord of all needs
and I want you to come to me
and depend upon me
for everything,
for all of your needs.
I can tolerate
no reductionist images
and no rival powers
and why can't he tolerate
these things?
Because he says,
I'm jealous.
I'm a jealous God.
Verse 23,
be careful not to forget
the covenant
of the Lord your God
that he made with you.
Do not make for yourselves
an idol in the form of anything
the Lord your God
has forbidden
for the Lord your God
is a consuming fire,
a jealous God.
There are actually many places
in the Bible
where it just says
that God's name is
Jealous
with a capital J
and I know
it's completely off-putting
for most of us
for our modern sensibilities.
Why?
Is he jealous?
Is he insecure?
Is he egocentric?
Is he paranoid?
What's up with God
being jealous?
But there are two ways
that we can use that word.
One way is
jealousy is a synonym
for envy.
So I'm jealous
of your good looks.
I'm jealous
of your money.
Meaning that I
want to have them
and I don't want you
to have them.
That's one form
of jealousy
that's kind of
an egocentric
self-absorbed
kind of jealousy.
But the other
way to use this word
is what it means
here in Hebrew.
It literally means
to become intensely red.
I am a God
who becomes
intensely red.
And that signals
a passionate
commitment,
a zealous
allegiance
behind
which
and beneath
which sits
the structure
of a covenant.
If you want to get
Presbyterians
really excited
and see them
become Pentecostal
just use this word
covenant.
We name our churches
and our schools
covenant this
and covenant that
but that's because
God says here
in verse 23
the Lord God
don't forget
that he made
a covenant
with you.
Western society
is increasingly
short on
covenantal relationships
but the scriptures
say that this is
the only way
that we can relate
to God
is through
a covenant.
Well what is
a covenant?
A covenant
is far more
personal
and intimate
than a contractual
relationship
and yet a covenant
is far more
binding
and solemn
and accountable
than a friendship
and there are
really only two
forms of
covenantal relationships
left in
Western society.
The first is
the parent-child
relationship.
Some of you are parents
so you can imagine
yourself being a parent
and I want you to imagine
your cute
beautiful son
or daughter
becomes a teenager.
A teenage
son or daughter
who develops
a pattern
of lying
and cheating
and stealing
and how does that
make you feel
as a parent?
Does that make you feel
warm and fuzzy
on the inside?
Does that make you feel
indifferent
or does it cause you
to become
intensely red?
You become
intensely red
not so much
because you're angry
at that child
of course
you are
but because you're
angry for
your child.
you're angry
because of the
thing that's
destroying your
loved one
and your
relationship
with them.
You're angry
because you
love them.
This is what
one woman says
she says
love detests
what destroys
the beloved.
Real love
stands against
the deception
the lie
the sin
that destroys.
The more a father
loves his son
the more he hates
in him
the drunkard
the liar
the traitor.
Anger isn't
the opposite
of love.
Hate is
and the final
form of hate
is indifference.
The Bible
teaches us
that God
is this loyal
parent
with a
fiercely
protective
familial
bond
that will
tolerate
nothing
that's destroying
the well-being
of his children.
That's what it
means that he's
a jealous God.
But there's also
this other
relationship
not just the
parent-child
relationship
but the
covenantal
relationship
of marriage.
And if you're
if you have a
spouse
or you're
interested in
having a spouse
imagine
what you would
feel if you
found that your
spouse had
become more
intimate with
someone other
than you
you would
become intensely
red.
You would
because of
your passionate
commitment
because of
your zealous
allegiance
you would
want to
rescue
your beloved
you would
want to
rescue
your relationship
with them
and the
scriptures tell
us as well
that God
is a faithful
spouse
who has a
marital
commitment
to his
people
that will
tolerate
no rivals
and no
competitors
in this
relationship.
If God
is our
highest
good
how can
he be
anything
but jealous
how can
he possibly
be indifferent
when he sees
us his
people
resorting to
cheap
alternatives
that are
so much
less
than he
is
and so
far
beneath
us
people
who are
made
in the
image
of God
people
who are
the
beloved
children
of God
we
all of
us
myself
included
experience
imperfect
jealousy
that's so
tainted
with self
interest
it's hard
for us
to imagine
but what
if there
is one
being
one
perfect
parent
one
perfect
spouse
who
so
selflessly
sacrificially
committed
himself
to the
good
of his
loved
ones
that if
something
went
wrong
he
would
be
filled
with
a
pure
positive
redeeming
jealousy
for us
I think
C.S.
Lewis says
it so
well in
his book
The Problem
of Pain
he says
what is
this love
of God
and love
is such
an amorphous
term
is it
not
Lewis
helps
us
define
it
he says
what is
this love
of God
it is
not a
senile
benevolence
that drowsily
wishes you
to be
happy
in your
own
way
it's
not
the
cold
philanthropy
of a
conscientious
magistrate
it's
not
the care
of a
host
who
feels
himself
responsible
for the
comfort
of his
guests
no
the
love
of God
is the
consuming
fire
itself
the
love
that
made
the
world
persistent
as an
artist's
love
love for his
work
and despotic
as a man's
love for a
dog
provident
and venerable
as a father's
love for a
child
jealous
inexorable
exactly
love
between
sexes
and what
I want
to
remind
us
today
is
that
Jesus
most
fully
reveals
this
covenant
love
of our
jealous
God
1
John
3
16
says
this
is
how
we
know
what
love
is
Jesus
Christ
laid
down
his
life
for
us
when
he
was
crucified
on his cross, Jesus is acting like a parent who's throwing himself in front of the bus of sin and
death that's barreling down the road, threatening to kill us, his beloved children. When Jesus is
crucified on the cross, he's acting like a spouse who is out of his mind with crazy love to do
anything, anything it would take to bring his beloved back home to himself. On the cross, Jesus
is becoming intensely red in a passionate commitment to his blood, a zealous allegiance to
give himself completely body and soul for our well-being. God the Father, God the Son, God the
Holy Spirit has shown that he'll stop at absolutely nothing. He will spare no expense to rescue us, to
love us, to bless us because he's a jealous God. And in Christ crucified, we see this God who is both a
jealous God and a merciful God showing us what love really is by laying down his life for us. And that's
the question for us today. Are we clinging to this crucified one as the fullest, most complete image
of this invisible, mysterious God? Moses says, our mysterious God has a jealous love that makes us
different or that makes us weird. Our mysterious God has a jealous love. Let's just go with that. Weird is
better. That makes us weird. And I'll close with this. This is what caught my attention listening to
Moses' sermon this week and just taking notes on his own preaching. Moses expects the next generations
that are going to come along as the people of God and enter into the promised land, he expects them to
develop a counterculture. He expects them to establish a contrast society, to become an intentionally
peculiar people with a distinctive way of life that's recognizably different and strange, that's
readily distinguishable from the identities and vocations of the surrounding nations. Listen to what
he says in verse six. He says, observe these laws of God carefully for this will show your wisdom and
understanding to the nations who will hear about all these decrees and say, surely this great nation is a
wise and understanding people. What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the
Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him? And what other nation is so great as to have such
righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I'm setting before you today? Moses looks at the
surrounding peoples, the surrounding cultures of the ancient world, and he says, they're going to be dazzled
by what they see lived out among you, the people of God in your life together. The ideal nation in the
ancient world was based on, you know, having great size and great wealth and great military power, and
Israel had none of those things. Israel was small, it was weak, it was poor, it had no military. These were
recently freed slaves who've been wandering in the wilderness, but God says to them through Moses, he says,
your greatness is going to be your wisdom, that you live according to the wisdom of God woven into
this world. Your greatness is going to be your spiritual understanding and your moral discernment.
Your greatness is going to be your intimate covenant relationship with this God who is near you to
bless and protect you. Your greatness is going to be the righteous character of God embodied
embodied in your communal life together, embodied in your neighborly love, embodied in your justice,
especially toward the poor and the vulnerable. And as I think about this counterculture,
as I think about this contrast society of the people of God, I get excited about that. I don't know about
you, but I want to be a part of a great church. I want to be a part of a peculiar church, a church that
is like causing people to ask, where is this coming from? Where is all this wisdom and righteousness?
Where is all this understanding coming from? Don't you want to be a part of a church that's a counterculture
here in Berkeley and Oakland? And I just want us to, as we're going through the book of Deuteronomy,
as Moses lays this out, I want us to imagine what that looks like. I think what it looks like is us as a
people having hearts that are on fire with the burning love of God in our midst, his love that is
jealous, his love that is merciful, his love that is renewing. We have our hearts burning with the love
of God. And because of that, we have an attractive life. We have a provocative life. People look in
upon us and they see there is God's burning love embodied in their love for one another.
There I see there's God's love embodied in their love for their neighbors and even for
their enemies, their political enemies, their ideological enemies. I see the love of God among these people.
When people get close to us, they would feel the burning of God's wisdom and understanding among us.
When people get close to us, they would feel the burning of God's presence and his nearness
in our midst. When people get around us, they would feel the burning of his righteousness and justice being
enacted by us. And oh, the people would say, as Moses expects them to say, wow, we are illuminated.
By the burning light, we are warmed by the blazing heat of your God that's burning in your midst.
When the mysterious God is among us, when his jealous love has set us on fire, we will be a people
who are just different. A people who may look strange, who may look weird, but when we get close
enough, you know, this is the very heart of God, the very love of God that's become real and alive
among this community of people. That's what I want. Don't you want that? Let's pray for that.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we ask, Lord, make this true for me. Make this true
for us. Make us a people with your fire in our midst. Make us a people with your voice speaking in our
midst. Make us a people who look like you and act like you and feel like you in every way possible.
We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.