In the Christian life we are called to remember that regardless of how forsaken things might seem to the eyes, the heart knows different. We know that whether we are high or low, safe or in prison, to give glory to the Lord. 

Christopher J.H. Wright has described the book of Deuteronomy as the heartbeat of the Old Testament. Along with Isaiah and the Psalms it is the most quoted book by Jesus and the Apostles. It is filled with electric passages that describe the love of Jehovah for His covenant people. There is so much gospel flowing from the fingers of God’s prophet as he writes that the book would not be out of place in the least in the New Testament. Just as Christ has His Beatitudes so too does Moses. With this it also has in its scope a number of warnings from God to the Israelites concerning how they are to behave and believe once they cross the Jordan and go to conquer the Promised Land. Over the next several months we are going to be spending time meditating on what we at Bethany can learn from this portion of Holy Scripture. In the Hebrew the title is literally “These Are the Words”. Our English name comes from the Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint. There the authors call it, “deuteronomion”, which means the second law. It gets that from the fact that a good portion of it is a retelling of the book of the covenant in Exodus 21-23. There are some added thoughts from Moses to help the generation which had come of age in the Wilderness understand with clearer minds the requirements God provides His people to follow. As we walk through each of the sections every Lord’s Day the goal of the sermon series will be to grow our appreciation for the beauty of God’s law, His wisdom, and how He cares for His Church. Our LORD is as interested in preparing us for our entrance into the Heavens as He was the Israelites to cross the Jordan.
In our first sermon from Deuteronomy we are going to hear a call from Moses to give to the LORD in act of worship the first fruits of the harvests that come from the initial crop which will be produced after the Canaanites, Amalekites, and others are defeated by Joshua and God’s army. As part of his testimony to the Israelites Moses majors on helping the people understand that everything that they now have is a gift of Jehovah. Everything they do in the present and in the future is to be informed by the fact that He has brought their current wealth out of His good will and love for them. There is one particular part of the ceremony of the feast that is worth noting in this morning’s worship and prayer help.
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In this portion of 2 Kings there is a slave girl who upon hearing that the commander of the army suffered from leprosy told him of a prophet of the LORD in Israel, a man by the name of Elisha. Her simple faith and willingness to share the good news with a man of his stature cannot go unnoticed. The world would say that she should show spite to this man who had caused her repression, yet her first impulse is to gently help her captor with the problems he had. 

It’s interesting how many times gentile military leaders are used to give an example to the grace and mercy of God, which brings me to one of my favorite stories in the Bible, the healing of Naaman the Syrian General. So many “oppressors” are granted a place in Jehovah’s providential care, which makes Naaman’s entrance into the story of salvation all the more amazing. In this portion of 2 Kings there is a slave girl who upon hearing that the commander of the army suffered from leprosy told him of a prophet of the LORD in Israel, a man by the name of Elisha. Her simple faith and willingness to share the good news with a man of his stature cannot go unnoticed. The world would say that she should show spite to this man who had caused her repression, yet her first impulse is to gently help her captor with the problems he had. This act of affection for a neighbor should be instructive to us, especially when we live in and time and place that thinks returning evil for evil is the name of the game in seeking “justice”.
In some ways she has a lot in common with the words of the woman at the well in John 4 when she goes and tells her friends about this man who told her everything she had ever done, the testimony of the women who report the resurrection to the disciples, and Rhoda’s work in Acts 12:13. Each in their own way are conduits to God’s grace by their willingness to speak in love. Much of the Lord’s purposes in His creation are accomplished through avenues we least expect.
There are so many elements to the girl’s testimony to Naaman that are worth looking at that it could fill a whole volume (indeed it has). There us, as noted, a seemingly random interaction (though we know there is no such thing in God’s providence) between a servant and a man of place. There is should be no sense where this lamentable action, the enslaving of those grabbed in war, could be a scene of God’s gracious love, yet it seems like it is especially in these types of situations where the LORD particularly enjoys expressing His goodness and mercy. Similarly with the gentile woman whom Christ speaks to in Matthew 15, the Centurion in Mark 15, and the other Roman soldier in Luke 7, and of course the care of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10 there are many instances where the very folks that the people of God are found to be disliking shame them in their faith and trust in the promises of Jehovah, even if at the time they are not the focus of it.
But back to Naaman for a second. It’s not just the 1 Peter 3:15 work of the slave girl that is worth highlighting in the passage.
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The 4th Commandment is not just for Christians. It is what we call a Creation Ordinance, just like the positive call to marriage between one man and one woman. That means that the Sabbath was a part of God’s good work before the entrance of sin into the world. Honoring the day of rest was always central to helping those made in the image of God give thanks for the LORD’s act in making us. 

This week we only have one question to look at and with good reason, because it is long. I know I said about a dozen times in the past several weeks that the Third Commandment is the most misunderstood of the Ten. If that is the case, and it is, then the Fourth is probably the most (to be charitable) explained away of all the statutes of God which summarize the moral law. It’s not so much that folks just ignore it whole hog. All Bible-believing Christians worship the Lord on the first day of the week. However, the reasons behind why the 4th Commandment is a forgotten treasure in the kingdom, and why, on a positive note, we set the Sabbath apart from the other days of the week are less well-understood for myriads of reasons, some we will get into this morning. The next four weeks will be taken up with explaining in more detail what practically all of Christendom until about sixty years ago agreed upon when it comes to how the Lord’s Day (not the Lord’s hour) should be sanctified.
This morning I want to take some time and give some background and surface-level reasoning on what Jehovah intends with this commandment. Another thing I hope to help us to see, not just today, but through the next several weeks, is why the sacrifices (which aren’t really a sacrifice once you think about it) those who claim Jesus as their Savior and Lord make to keep this law are worth it in the short run and the long term.
But before that let’s look at the next question of the catechism:
Q. 57. Which is the Fourth Commandment?
A. The fourth commandment is, Remember the sabbath-day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath-day and hallowed it.
All the first table commandments of the Law have in one way or another to do with worship, and this statute is no different. In fact, the second and the fourth are usually ground zero for all the wars that take place around what we are allowed to do and not allowed to do in our gatherings on Sunday morning and evening. To be sure that is what the 4th Commandment is about, however, when we restrict it to just that we miss the holistic nature of what God intends with it.
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In light of what God has revealed to us in the 3rd Commandment we are to be sure to rest and trust in the beauty of His ways, for what one of us wants to end life broken, defeated, and under the weight of their transgressions like Solomon? Finishing well means obeying this portion of God’s law, with joy, thanksgiving, and humility.  

Vanity is a word that we usually associate with King Solomon and his book called Ecclesiastes. The opening verse of that portion of Holy Scripture says, “The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. ‘Vanity of vanities,’ says the Preacher; ‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.’ What he means by that is his going after the sensual things, heeding the counsel of his pagan wives (Neh.8:26), all had brought him to the point that he realizing how much of the blessing of God he had wasted in this present evil world. What had been the point of all that frivolity but to bring the very son of David to his knees in a quiet and fleeting desperation? If you go on and read the rest of Solomon’s testimony to how he had spent his life he ends with a pretty straightforward word of confession:
“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man’s all.  For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.” — (Eccl. 12:13-14)
There we see in stark detail that every man and woman in their day has a simple choice to make: will we heed the words of a godly father to his son as we read in Proverbs or will they go after the vanity, the worthless idols which cannot do what they promise? In some ways the parable of the prodigal son is a condensing of the life of Solomon. He went from the highs of praising the name of God as the source of all truth and wisdom to the broken man who gave the lamentation of Ecclesiastes to posterity.
In today’s catechism lesson we are going to look at the 3rd Commandment which, as we will see, has a lot more to tell us than just what words we are allowed to say.
Let’s get to this week’s questions:
Q. 53. Which is the third commandment?
A. The third commandment is, Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain: for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
Q. 54. What is required in the third commandment?
A. The third commandment requires the holy and reverent use of God’s names, titles, at­tributes, ordinances, word, and works.
Having heard statutes against having any other gods before the one true and living god and an admonition against forming any image of God, either in the mind or in physical form, we come now to a warning to all men to consider what the very name of Jehovah means.
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The Second Commandment is also largely concerned with comforting us with the news that we need not be ignorant either of how or who to bring praise with and to in response to the grace given in love. The same God who has provided a plan of redemption has presented in His perfect Scriptures a witness to the manner of the worship of His people. 

Our catechism lesson today continues with more on the Second Commandment. Without any more delay let’s get right into it as there is much to talk about this week:
Q. 51. What is forbidden in the Second Commandment?
A. The second commandment forbids the worshipping of God by images, or any other way not appointed in His word.
Q. 52. What are the reasons annexed to the Second Commandment?
A. The reasons annexed to the second commandment are, God’s sovereignty over us, His propriety in us, and the zeal He has to His own worship.
Worship, as has been noted, is what we are about as human beings. It is the very essence of our existence. When we are given a peek at God’s redeemed flock in the Heavens in Revelation 7 we see the people gathered around the throne praising the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit with their voices:
After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
No matter where you are from, or who your parents are, or what the provenance of your faith is, in your resting and trusting in Christ the natural response of a redeemed heart is going to be worship. It’s who we are. If you don’t have a burning desire to gather with God’s Church on the Sabbath Day then it’s a moral issue, a sin, full stop, truly worthy of repentance. We bear the fruit of the tree unto which we are a member.
If we are still attached to the date tree of Satan then we will resist the call to worship. However, if we are grafted onto the fig tree that is Christ then we will bring forth praise upon praise, because the means of His grace flows through us as sap in a maple. There isn’t any wiggle room here for there can’t be more than one master under whom we live, as the First Commandment makes clear. We either have the God of the Bible as our Lord, or we have the man-made creation as our idol. Choose this day whom you will serve has implications for this next word given at Sinai.
The Second Commandment is also largely concerned with comforting us with the news that we need not be ignorant either of how or who to bring praise with and to in response to the grace given in love. The same God who has provided a plan of redemption has presented in His perfect Scriptures a witness to the manner of the worship of His people.
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Where God communicates His will it is my duty to not just be quiet, but to desire obedience unto His word and to lovingly follow as a sheep following my Shepherd. Both the 2nd and 4th Commandment have become provocative in our Reformed circles, and they should not be. This is a case where our forefathers were not necessarily “more holy” than us, but they were in this situation without a doubt wiser.

I am going to do my best not to make our walk through the commandments boring and/or monotonous. Whenever you start a long journey it is best to mentally prepare yourself for the length. I often joke that in a former life I was a long-haul truck driver because I can get in a car and zone out and make a ten-hour drive feel like a half-hour. However, not a lot of people are like that (ask my kids). The hope is by the time we get to the Tenth Commandment you have not completely checked out and are not pulling a Roberto Duran chanting NO MAS! NO MAS!
My goal is to help you see the beauty of Christian ethics. It is where our faith meets real life. We need to understand that it is worth the effort to examine what God would have us to do and to be, because as we seek to obey the Lord we will begin to experience a devotional peace in which by submitting ourselves to Jesus and confessing that as we see the wisdom and attractiveness of the way He has ordered His creation with more clarity, our hearts will be tied to Christ as a wife is to a husband. There is a lot to be said for that type of loyalty. Fidelity to our confession of faith matters. Our belief that there is no hope outside our Redeemer is worked out in what we do when we make decisions and act in the world. While it may seem as if that kind of moral principle is really for the second table of the law, the first table is just as practical for our day-to-day.
Let’s go ahead and get to our catechism questions for this morning as we start to get into how that works:
Q. 49. Which is the Second Commandment?
A. The second commandment is, Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
Q. 50. What is Required in the Second Commandment?
A. The second commandment requires the receiving, observing, and keeping pure and en­tire, all such religious worship and ordinances as God hath appointed in his word.
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As our obedience to God is born out of His love for us so to is our desire and center of our being born out of the amazing grace of the cross, the empty tomb, and the risen Lord. As you go about life today remind yourself of the beauty and assurance of what the Savior has done, remember His power, and be sure to order all things so as to give glory to God in His name in the way you do all in thanksgiving for who He is and what He is for you.

Of the many things I love about the Westminster Shorter and Larger Catechism one of the most important in my mind is the way the authors help us to see the way in which the law of God applies to more than just bare “Don’t do this” pronouncements. There is an elegance and reason to every word found in the Holy Scriptures and none more than what we have in the Ten Commandments. We see in these statutes the beauty of God, His order, and the wisdom of His truth. They are evidences for why it is we should worship Him and alone reserve our obedience unto Him as the only one worthy of such. Regardless of whether one is a “Christian” is almost besides the point. These testimonies are given for every human being made in the image of God, which means everyone. All men are to read the commands and see in them their purpose, the end of their existence, and due to that reality are then to see to it that their lives are grounded and formed by what the Lord reveals therein. So when we get to examining what exactly they promote (and what they deny) we need to make sure that we approach them with the correct mindset. We are receivers of truth, not the determiners of it. As Israel was at the bottom of the mountain looking up as Jehovah wrote His law on the tables and gave them to Moses so to are all humans to come to the Ten Commandments and understand that they are neither up for debate or discussion. This is the way things are, not pragmatically organized for our benefit, though they are beneficial, they provide a description for reality. Disregarding their teaching not only can be described as sin, but foolishness as eating a urinal cake is foolishness, it is self-evidently so.
As we continue to look at the commandments as they are presented to us in the Shorter Catechism let us especially pay attention to what the Lord would have His people to know not only about Him, but the way in which they are a blessing to those to whom God loves in His grace. Not to detract from what I wrote above, but it is important for those who have been saved to see the law in the positive light of the redemption purchased by Christ in His mercy, even when they talk in the negative.
Here are our catechism questions for this week:
Q. 47. What is forbidden in the first commandment?
A. The first commandment forbids the denying, or not worshipping and glorifying the true God as God, and our God; and the giving of that worship and glory to any other, which is due to him alone.
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The Lord has not given the law to believers just to place them back under a covenant of works. We are not trading one form of the curse for another. The giving of the law here is an act of the covenant of grace. Moses is an administrator of God’s mercy, not His judgment.

One of the things that we will notice as we go through the Ten Commandments is that the expectation of the writers of the Catechism is that as we as Christians look at and read the Law of God we will have an experiential and an experimental knowledge of effectual calling, justification, sanctification, and the other benefits of redemption. The reason for this is because as those united to Christ by faith our relationship to the statutes of the Lord has changed. No longer is the reading of “Thou Shalt Not Steal” a burden in which we have no power, nor desire, to fulfill. As new creatures in Christ we see the law as a blessed reminder of the wisdom of God. And not only that but we sweetly comply with it as a son to a Father. That does not mean however we in some way no longer transgress or break the law. We most certainly remain sinners until the day of our glorification. Yet even in that case the curse and condemnation of the commandments has ceased to tear at our conscience. Rather than feeling the law’s demand we bear disappointment at our having turned away from the Father’s love.
As believers we also know that even when we fall short we have an advocate with our God, Jesus Christ the Righteous and then, because of that, we bear fruits worthy of repentance as a sign of true faith. All of this is not a move towards licentiousness, but instead an impetus to obedience to the Commandments. Just because we have grace as a gift, and sufficient grace at that, does not mean we have carte blanche to do what we want. No, our spirits as much as our status has been transformed by the work of the Holy Spirit. Our hearts call is to be made more and more like our Savior and to be seen doing and performing His works in the day of the Lord’s coming. Here is why when Jehovah reintroduces the Law at Sinai He begins in the way that he does, which brings us to the Catechism questions for today:
Q. 43. What is the preface to the Ten Commandments?A. The preface to the ten commandments is in these words, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house or bondage.
Q. 44. What does the preface to the Ten Commandments teach us?A. The preface to the ten commandments teaches us, that because God is the Lord, and our God, and Redeemer, therefore we are bound to keep all his commandments.
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Does the faith we possess, or claim to have, bear the fruit it should? Well, there is one way to find out. When we hear the word “obedience” does it fill us with terror or love?

This week’s catechism lesson is a bit of a transition from what has taken up our time in previous recitations of the WSC. Having heard much about how we are saved the writers of the catechism are now giving witness to saved Christians about what is expected of them in their holy state. In some ways everything that follows is about the process of sanctification and the way in which Believers are to act in light of what the Lord Jesus has done for them in not only sanctifying them by His blood, but in justification and adoption as well. The big question is how are we being made ready to attain the glorification which awaits God’s covenant children at the last judgment. It needs repeated that this “duty” that we will discuss is not a co-operative work to accomplish our finished redemption. On the contrary this is the use of the completed work of Christ in our lives as we are conformed by the Spirit to be more and more like Him. As we walk through these opening questions one of the things we will need to consider is how then should we act as receivers of the free grace and gift granted by our Heavenly Father and the application of it by the Holy Spirit in the renewing of our soul and body into new creatures in Christ?
Does the faith we possess, or claim to have, bear the fruit it should?
Well, there is one way to find out.
When we hear the word “obedience” does it fill us with terror or love? Before we get too far into answering that let’s look at the Q/A:
Q. 39. What is the duty which God requires of man?
A. The duty which God requires of man, is obedience to his revealed will.
Q. 40. What did God at first reveal to man for the rule of his obedience?
A. The rule which God at first revealed to man for his obedience, was the moral law.
One of our favorite Bible verses that is quoted all the time comes from Micah 6:8:
There the prophet says, “He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?”
So what He wants from His people is to recognize that because God is good, they are to do good: which is, to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly. Each of those describe in summary what the catechism says above. Everything that the Lord says or does is right. So if God says, “Don’t Steal” then you don’t steal. Like most things in the Bible this ain’t rocket science.
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We are made perfect in holiness at death. It is a freeing mercy without compare. All the pleasures of this life are nothing to that moment when the cleansing power of the Holy Spirit is complete. It is not a selfish thing to desire that beautiful blessing which we have in Christ. We all experience the corruption brought about by Adam’s sin, both in our spirit in regards to the fight we have with the old man in sin, and in our body as we watch it break down and deal with disparate disease and the realities of old age and overuse. Death frees us from this, and because of who we are in Christ our comfort is that all the physical/spiritual trials we face are temporary.

Today’s catechism lesson gets us into the nitty gritty of life. What happens when we die? More importantly what happens to our faith when we die? Well the good news is that nothing happens to our faith in fact it actually improves and becomes perfect. But what about our bodies? Even better news there. According to this morning’s Shorter Catechism answer to question 37 our physical bodies, the stuff you can pinch right now, remains united to Christ just as it is while you are alive. Without getting into the mechanics of that (philosophers love to waste time on how the spiritual works when adoration and thanksgiving are the more proper responses) the reality is we will all die, unless the Lord returns first, but even in the case of the eschaton’s arrival (which I don’t think will be for a while) the same truth is our peace and comfort. We belong body and soul to our Redeemer and there is nothing that can take that away from us, even death itself. It may be the separation of the soul from the body, but nothing can ever separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ. So let’s get into the questions:
Q. 37. What Benefits Do Believers Receive From Christ at His Death?
A. The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness, and do immediately pass into glory; and their bodies, being still united to Christ, do rest in their gravest till the resurrection.
Q. 38. What Benefits Do Believers Receive from Christ at the Resurrection?
A. At the resurrection, believers being raised up in glory, shall be openly acknowledged and acquitted in the day of judgment, and made.
This section of the catechism is continuing to work through what it calls the “benefits” that believers receive from Christ. We’ve read about effectual calling, justification, sanctification, adoption, and now are hearing a bit on the eternal blessings which come from faith. As noted above there is a sense in which when we get down to the brass tacks of why we do what we do in the Christian life it’s less because of the right now and more about the not yet. Our Lord Jesus came to die so that we would live. It makes sense then that the culmination of the Westminster Divines writing on salvation would focus on what takes place when we leave this mortal coil.
The era in which our catechism was written was full of death. While not a member of the Assembly, a Puritan contemporary John Owen lost eleven children before the age of maturity, most as infants. He had one daughter survive to adulthood.
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