There are 215 videos on our website where I have responded to our River kids’ questions over the years.
After all that, I still get some unique variations of questions.
Questions are good, I want our kids to be very comfortable asking them.
A good friend once asked a question as a child and was told by his pastor “Don’t worry about it, just have faith.”
That non-answer caused him to struggle with his faith well into adulthood.
The problem is not that we don’t have all the answers…it is okay to say, “We don’t know”
Faith doesn’t exclude curiosity, questions, or even doubt.
But doubt is not a virtue; we should get to the place where we doubt our doubts more than our faith.
However, that won’t happen if our questions or our doubts are simply dismissed.
Another problem is not being confident that we do have answers…because there is a lot that we do know.
We know because God has made himself known.
We need to be both humble and confident about what God has made known.
Otherwise our kids will begin to wonder…Then is this even real?”
Some of questions the kids ask me are of pure intellectual curiosity
Like, “What did God do before he made the world?”
I got that question after a lot of snow days…I can imagine some young person was pondering eternal boredom as they were trapped in their homes.
But some are questions of what obedience looks like…they are of practical importance.
Like: “Is playing two truths and a lie a sin”
These kinds of questions show that the kids are concerned to do the right thing by God.
But whether they are driven by intellectual curiosity or are of practical ethical urgency.
The questions matter because if the kids didn’t think any of this was real, they wouldn’t ask these questions.
My grandkids didn’t ask me a couple of weeks ago as we watched spiderman traversing the multi-verse… “So how does Spiderman climb up buildings?”
They know it is make believe…it’s not real.
They have asked me, “Why doesn’t God answer my prayers?”
“Why do we get sick and why do some people die?”
Because they have prayed, and because people they love have died.
The questions indicate that they know this is real, it’s not make believe…but they don’t understand how it all works.
What if we didn’t have scripture? No revelation from God.
What if every question that humans asked came with a… “I don’t know, we can’t know that.”
Or someone just makes up an answer or gives their own opinion.
And what if those questions were of vital importance to human lives?
Not just questions of intellectual curiosity…but of purpose and ethics.
What matters in the end and what is good to do with my life?
Over the years people with a few days to live have asked me some very important questions.
What if my answers were, “No one knows” or “Don’t worry about it, have faith.”
God has spoken in Scripture and told us with clarity the answers to our most important questions as humans.
*Sure, there are many things that those who take Scripture seriously disagree on but if you look at those things carefully, they are secondary not primary worldview issues.
- There are different opinions on the details of God’s sovereignty and human choice…but not on whether God is sovereign, and humans are responsible.
This is very different than fate, or the impersonal Universe controls all outcomes…it’s all just a game of chance.
- There are different opinions about the details of the end of time…but not whether Jesus will return and bring about the end of the age and will judge the living and the dead.
This is very different than a random asteroid blowing us all up or we will heat up the planet and kill ourselves, or then the universe will ultimately just go cold and silent and none of this will ultimately matter.
- There are different opinions about how churches are to be organized and lead…but not whether the church is the body of Christ, and we are to live lives of worship and mission in committed community.
This is very different that, than just go find your purpose…money, boats, or make it to retirement…or just realize, it doesn’t matter anyway.
These differences between biblical and non-biblical answers matter both for our purpose and for ethics…they impact our real lives in the greatest possible ways.
There are answers, we actually know a lot, and in fact we know all the answers to the most important questions.
We just don’t know all we might want to know, but we do know all that we need to know.
Questions are good…God made us questioning beings.
Questions drive discovery…questions have led men and women to Christ.
Questions are part of being made in God’s image…we are thinking, choosing, creative beings.
Questions are not by default, a lack of faith; faith can drive good questions.
Scripture tells us the right questions to ask and the answers to those questions.
My grandson was recently watching an interactive show where you are given choices in a survival setting and then shown the outcomes of your choices.
I thought as I watched him learning, this show is good…they aren’t just giving answers…they are being taught to ask the right questions.
How to think, not just what to think.
Scripture does both of these things.
Often a big part of discovery is finding out the right questions to ask.
Science is about questions in search of answers, and science is rooted in a biblical worldview.
John Lennox writes:
At the heart of all science lies the conviction that the universe is orderly. Without this deep conviction science would not be possible.
He quotes Melvin Calvin, a Nobel Prize winner in biochemistry who says the idea of a universe governed by a single God, not the whims of many regional gods, comes from the ancient Hebrews and is the historical foundation for modern science.
Lennox, John C. God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? (pp. 20-21). (Function). Kindle Edition.
The right starting place is essential to right conclusions.
Here are the views of two renowned scientists.
‘Science and religion cannot be reconciled.’ Peter Atkins
‘All my studies in science… have confirmed my faith.’, Sir Ghillean Prance
Of course both can’t be right…one of them is very, very wrong.
Both are looking at the same world but coming to very different conclusions.
We have answers regarding science…God has given them to be discovered…we don’t have them all.
We have answers that transcend human discovery…God has given them to us in his word…but we don’t have them all.
There are revealed things and there are things that remain a mystery.
Deuteronomy brings us to the end of what is called the Pentateuch, or the first five books of the Bible.
Genesis lays out a Biblical worldview: who God is, who man is, what his problem is, and what God’s solution will be.
It ends with God’s people in Egypt.
Exodus jumps centuries later and tells of God’s deliverance of his people from their slavery through his servant Moses.
It records the giving of the covenant at Sinai, instructions for building the tabernacle, the Ten Commandments, and other laws for the nation.
Leviticus gives further laws for the nation and lays out the sacrificial system that will allow a sinful people to have ongoing relationship with the Holy God.
Numbers gives the key historical events of the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness.
Deuteronomy is Moses final words before Israel will cross over into the promised land.
Moses is allowed to see the land, but he will not enter it.
Today we look to Moses’ final of his three sermons in Deuteronomy, it is found in chapters 29 and 30.
It is called the Moab, or Canaan covenant.
Essentially, it’s a repeat of the Sinai covenant for this generation.
Their parents had pledged loyalty to the covenant after leaving Egypt and had failed to keep that pledge.
Now this generation is given their chance.
I watched last week as Trace officiated a wedding ceremony for a young couple in this room.
The focus, the point of the marriage ceremony was the making and marking of a covenant commitment.
They made the commitment with their vows; they marked it with a ring.
The purpose of the actual marriage (about a week old), until that vow is completed by death, is nurturing and keeping and enjoying the fruits of that covenant commitment.
Look at chapter 29:1
These are the words of the covenant that the Lord commanded Moses to make with the Israelites in the land of Moab, in addition to the covenant he had made with them at Horeb.
Moab is the land East of the Jordan River where they are gathered and were preparing to enter the promised land.
Horeb was Sinai, where Moses got the original 10 commandments and many other laws.
Trace gave testimony in the wedding ceremony about how he had seen God’s faithfulness in the young couple’s lives and how he had seen their faith evident as well
In verses 2-9, Moses gives a historical review of what God had done the past forty plus years…his faithfulness to them.
2 Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, “You have seen with your own eyes everything the Lord did in Egypt to Pharaoh, to all his officials, and to his entire land. 3 You saw with your own eyes the great trials and those great signs and wonders. 4 Yet to this day the Lord has not given you a mind to understand, eyes to see, or ears to hear.
Notice in verse 4…as Moses declares God’s long faithfulness to the people, he points out that they don’t have what it takes to live faithfully to the covenant.
It would be bad if Trace had said to the young couple, “You guys don’t have what it takes to keep your vows, but let’s do this anyway.”
We will talk more about why Moses told the people they would fail.
In verses 10-15, Moses will challenge them to keep the covenant.
This is similar to where Trace challenged the young couple to keep the covenant vows they were about to take.
By the way, because of Christ…they can and I am confident that will keep their vows.
The purpose of the challenge is to impress on Israel both the difficulty and seriousness of what they are about to do.
10 “All of you are standing today before the Lord your God—your leaders, tribes, elders, officials, all the men of Israel, 11 your dependents, your wives, and the resident aliens in your camps who cut your wood and draw your water—12 so that you may enter into the covenant of the Lord your God, which he is making with you today, so that you may enter into his oath
All of them were taking their stand before the Lord…from the most senior leaders to the servants.
Verse 12, the purpose of the gathering…”So you may enter into the covenant with the Lord your God.”
Trace didn’t use the arcane language, but this is essentially the equivalent of, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here in the sight of God to witness these vows.”
But more than the people making a vow, God is promising to establish then in the land.
Next, comes what was a common element in the covenant or treaty patterns of the time.
The warning against violating the covenant commitment.
This kind of thing is in place today…treaties between nations include a kind of blessings if kept and curses is broken.
Like the relatively short 14-point NATO “covenant.”
The blessings and curses are not directly spelled out…but they are certainly implied in that document.
16 “Indeed, you know how we lived in the land of Egypt and passed through the nations where you traveled. 17 You saw their abhorrent images and idols made of wood, stone, silver, and gold, which were among them.18 Be sure there is no man, woman, clan, or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the Lord our God to go and worship the gods of those nations. Be sure there is no root among you bearing poisonous and bitter fruit. 19 When someone hears the words of this oath, he may consider himself exempt, thinking, ‘I will have peace even though I follow my own stubborn heart.’ This will lead to the destruction of the well-watered land as well as the dry land. 20 The Lord will not be willing to forgive him. Instead, his anger and jealousy will burn against that person, and every curse written in this scroll will descend on him.
He says you have seen for yourselves what idolatry brings…it is a dark and devastating path…don’t go down it.
French atheist Jean-Paul Satre wrote “Atheism is a long, hard, cruel business.”
He would know.
He said that his atheism was based on his own “intuition” that God doesn’t exist…because of course he couldn’t prove it.
He made an idol of his own mind and emotions.
Making ourselves the center…idolatry in all forms, is a long, hard, cruel business.
Look at verse 19…we find the kind of person who would become a root of poisonous and bitter fruit among the people.
Meaning…this attitude would spread.
It is the person who thinks, “I am special, I am exempt…I will get the blessings of God even as I do whatever I want.”
What is very confusing, is when it seems like this is true in practice.
That is the point of Psalm 73, where the Psalmist looks to those who live what seems to be blessed lives, but they have no regard for God.
In the end, he realizes…just wait, this will not turn out well for them.
This is the person today who doesn’t live in Christian community (go to church), doesn’t obey God, does whatever he or she wants…and believes…”I am exempt, I will have peace with God even as I follow my own stubborn heart.”
No, this is a conditional promise...if you keep the covenant then you will experience the blessings, if you do not…those blessings will turn to curse.
Many times, in marriage ceremonies I have said, “selfishness is a failed method of personal happiness.”
Every time it is tried, it fails.
That is essentially me giving a marriage covenant warning…fail to keep your vows and you will not experience the blessings of marriage…what is supposed to be blessing from God will become a curse.
Sadly, I have stood before couples who stare dreamily at one another on their wedding day, who can’t imagine ever “falling out of love” with their spouse.
Only to watch them later destroy their family and the marriage ends in anger, dissension, and tears.
But I have actually, never seen anyone fall into or fall out of love.
It is a figure of speech that does not match reality.
People make choices, investments that lead to having a heart for one another.
Then they stop making those same choices and they invest their hearts in other things and other people.
Our hearts follow our investment…there is no falling in or falling out of love…there is only choosing.
So, Moses says…Choose!
Joshua, on the other side of the Jordan, as we will see next week, will say to them…”Choose.”
It is common in parts of the Christian sub-culture to say, “I don’t want rules, I only want Jesus.”
Or…I want relationship not religion.
We don’t know who Jesus is, apart from God’s word…Jesus himself said, “If you obey, then you are my disciples”
The Bible and all its rules are how God has made Christ known to us.
And religion is just a word for a common faith practiced in a larger community.
At the heart of all this is a choice, a decision that is to be followed through on.
Decide and then live decided not deciding…this is the charge of Moses.
Moses goes on to say that the implications or their choices are multi-generational in their impact.
One day future generations will ask, “What happened to them anyway, how did they end up in exile, in this mess?”
The answer will be:
‘It is because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, which he had made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt. 26 They began to serve other gods, bowing in worship to gods they had not known—gods that the Lord had not permitted them to worship. 27 Therefore the Lord’s anger burned against this land, and he brought every curse written in this book on it. 28 The Lord uprooted them from their land in his anger, rage, and intense wrath, and threw them into another land where they are today.’ 29 The hidden things belong to the Lord our God, but the revealed things belong to us and our children forever, so that we may follow all the words of this law. Deut 29
Moses is giving them a challenge, but he knows they will not be up to that challenge.
God will tell Moses in chapter 31 that their failure is inevitable.
There at the end of the chapter is that great verse, Deut. 29:29
“The secret things belong to God; the things he has revealed belong to us and our children (the generations) so we will obey him.”
Things beyond the knowledge of man, like the future are God’s sole concern.
The things God has revealed are sufficient for God’s people to live faithful and fruitful lives.
These revealed things are what Israel is accountable for…what we are accountable for.
Chapter 30 then gives hope beyond the curse and exile.
Moses speaks of a future day after exile and the curse of having broken the covenant, where God will restore the people.
30:6
The Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the hearts of your descendants, and you will love him with all your heart and all your soul.
Verse 11… This command that I give you today is certainly not too difficult or beyond your reach. It is not in heaven so that you have to ask, ‘Who will go up to heaven, get it for us, and proclaim it to us so that we may follow it?’ And it is not across the sea so that you have to ask, ‘Who will cross the sea, get it for us, and proclaim it to us so that we may follow it?’ But the message is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, so that you may follow it.
Verse 11, says the commands of God have somehow become obtainable, in that future time, they no longer beyond their reach.
How will this happen?
Moses is looking beyond what we call the Old Testament (Covenant) to the New Covenant…it first called that by Jeremiah (31:31)
It will be a covenant written on hearts not on tablets of stone…inside out, not outside in.
Paul quotes Deut 30:14 in Romans 10, then he adds how this great thing will happen in the next verse
The message is near you, in your mouth and in your heart., This is the message of faith that we proclaim: If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
Romans 10:9,10
Moses all those centuries ago, as Israel stands on the border of the promised land is laying out the rest of the Bible.
They will prosper in the land, then they will disobey and suffer curses, eventually be taken into exile.
There will be a partial return, but it will be incomplete and inadequate.
Then, Christ will come, and he will bring the covenant promises of God to our hearts and take the curses to the cross in his death.
The obedience to God that Moses preaches with great passion was then, beyond the reach of the people.
But God is not toying with them, offering them a promise they cannot keep and blessings they cannot obtain.
As they obey, they will in fact be blessed…but sin has rendered them unable to obey completely or consistently.
Yet God has been committed from the very beginning to make the way through Christ to restore them to himself.
This restoration will be through the transformed hearts of the New Covenant of Christ.
Conclusion:
Deut 29:29. The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.
We are accountable for what is revealed…not for the things God has not revealed to us.
We must not be sidetracked or sidelined by mystery.
Sidetracked is to chase the things that don’t matter the most at the cost of what does
It is movement in a wrong direction…not in the direction of Christlikeness.
We must not train ourselves to think most about, worry about, pursue, what is not going to make us into the image of Christ over time.
Questions are good…but we cannot make a short of idol of them.
They cannot take us from obedience to the answers that we have been given.
Don’t pursue the interesting, the bizarre, unusual, the confusing things at the cost of basic, bottom line fundamental things of the faith.
Being sidetracked is often a result of pride or boredom.
Pride because we want to be thought of as deep, or to have insider information that “normal” people are ignorant of.
We find the mysterious more interesting that the ordinary truth of God.
“I don’t do normal”
Normal is for suckers…I want the unusual, the fantastic, the phenomenal.
I want an amazing life, not some normal one.
This is just foolish…and I have seen this attitude lead to a shipwrecked faiths…more than once.
Chase faithfulness…there is nothing more interesting or rewarding.
Sidetracked can also be because of boredom.
We think there has to be more to this than just this normal stuff of day to day living.
Reading the bible, going to Church, going to work, loving friends and family…Yawn.
I’ve watched people shipwreck their faith and families…because of both pride and boredom.
Both pride and sinful boredom are things to be repented of.
When is boredom a sin?
When it is tied to ingratitude…if I am bored with my spouse, my life, my food…worship, Bible study…whatever God has given me to be faithful with.
If I am failing to be grateful and faithful with what God has given.
This boredom, discontent, is to be repented of, it’s not to be fed or accepted.
If I grow bored with normal, everyday obedience…I need to repent and become grateful again.
I don’t some new thing or new spouse…I need new passion for what God has given me.
This kind of contentment and gratitude is not something that we fall into or out of…it is a serious and ongoing choice.
We will either become more discontent with more aspects of our lives over time
OR…
We will become more content with more aspects of our lives.
We are going one way or the other…you won’t stay static for long.
It is our choice…not something beyond our ability to decide.
Being sidelined is different than being sidetracked.
Sidetracked is to follow paths that lead us astray.
Sidelined is to stop walking the main path…to sit down and stop moving.
It is not necessarily to walk into rebellion as much as to be stuck, paralyzed by questions or struggles.
I think if we stay stuck for long, we will probably eventually begin to move away from God’s good path.
Sidelined often becomes sidetracked
We cannot wait until all our questions have been answered before we move forward in obedience.
We have enough answers to keep moving.
Conclusion
This is not a matter of intelligence or more having information.
It is not a matter of different kinds of personal experienced.
The Bible lays this out as a choice, a decision…that everyone is to make.
Moses: “For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws.” Deut 30:15
Jesus: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Matthew 22:37
He didn’t give exceptions for those with intellectual doubts, or with troubled pasts.
*You can want more information, but you don’t need more than you have to thrive in your relationship with Christ.
There are so many books, so much helpful information on why the Bible is true and reliable.
So much helpful information on the truth of the gospel.
You can read a book, then another, then another…that’s good.
You can listen to podcast after podcast…if they are sound in theology, then great.
But in the end we can become desperate in thinking…just a little information…and then I can really live decided.
I went to Seminary in 1981 thinking, “I’ll do my four years and then have it all settled, no more questions.”
I went back in 1986, “Just a few more years, another degree, then I will have it all settled.”
Now, “It can be more book on that topic, and that one, and that one.”
44 years later…I am about where I was in 1981 in terms of what is foundational for my faith.
A have a lot more information…but I am pretty much the same as I was then in regard to trusting Jesus.
I had decided at age 19…the Bible was true, Jesus is Lord, and I need to follow him faithfully.
After 44 years of study and experience…my conclusion is…the Bible is true, Jesus is Lord, and I need to follow him faithfully.
The decision to believe, not all the information I have collected, has been the difference maker in my life.
Collecting that information has been important, and it is what faithfulness has looked like for me.
I am not diminishing the study and the work.
I am highlighting the necessity and the opportunity of choosing to believe…and then standing on that belief.
You are in the times of the New Covenant…so this is not beyond you.
Christ has placed this within your reach.
In the end, you have to decide to believe…then actively live decided.
If you have been born again…God has given you the gift of faith, you can, if you will, live the decided life.
Perhaps you just need to be told…”It’s okay to not doubt and also not have all the answers…it is okay to believe completely and finally and not keep looking back.”
You don’t need more information than what we have covered today…to live a fully and finally decided life.
You just need to decide, believing that God will empower your decision to obey him.
You don’t have to wonder if this is his will…it is…he has said it is.
You need to make it a matter of your will.
If you have not yet been born again, if you have not committed your life to Christ.
Romans 10:9, Confess Jesus is Lord…believe the gospel and be saved.
You can’t on your own steam, muster up the ability to “keep a faith” that you do not yet have.
If you struggle to believe…perhaps it is because you have not yet believed.
Not just intellectually or culturally…but personally, believed the gospel, repented, made Jesus Lord.