Introduction - how this fits into the logic of chapter 6

Charles Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities. You may have read that. And in that book there is a man who has immense abilities — but almost no loyalty. His name is Sydney Carton. He is brilliant, but he wastes his gifts. He drifts through life. He forms superficial relationships, but never really gives himself to anyone. He is described as a man who cares for no one—and no one cares for him. Just to be clear - he is not openly rebellious; he is simply self-centered, disengaged, and uncommitted. When I think of the first generation of Israelites, I think of Sydney Carton. But in an interesting literary twist, by the end of the story, that same man becomes one of the most sacrificial, loyal friends in all of English literature - laying down his life so that another person could live. And he may not be the best illustration, but I thought I would use him to illustrate some of the dynamics in this passage.

In Deuteronomy 6, Moses is challenging this second generation to have covenant loyalty and to not be like the previous generation. And by the time you get through Deuteronomy and into the book of Joshua, you see that this generation had developed a high level of covenant loyalty. No one needs to be imprisoned by the actions of a previous generation. Let me first review where we have been.

We have already seen that chapters 6–11 unfold the implications of the first commandment. Chapter 6 in particular shows what covenant loyalty to the Lord looks like in everyday life - and covenant loyalty is an absolutely foundational implication of the first commandment. • In verses 1–9, covenant loyalty is best cultivated in the home. Those verses are a challenge to rethink homeschooling and to make it more radically biblical and more radically transformational. • In verses 10–15, covenant loyalty is tested by prosperity. You wouldn't think that prosperity would be a test, but in my last sermon we saw all the ways that prosperity can indeed be a test of the genuineness of our covenant loyalty. Do we forget God or fail to have dependence on Him when everything is going well? We often let our guard down the most when things are going swimmingly well. • And now, in verses 16–19, covenant loyalty is tested by adversity.

When things are hard - when the pressure comes — when God’s providence is not immediately comfortable… Do we still trust Him enough to be loyal? Or do we begin to put Him on trial? Do we begin to question Him? That is the issue in our passage. And Moses gives four tests that reveal whether our loyalty is genuine or merely conditional.

Faithful trust vs. demanding proofs (v. 16)

Verse 16 says, "You shall not tempt the LORD your God as you tempted Him in Massah." The Hebrew of "tempt" has the idea of putting God to the test. So the ESV says, “You shall not put the LORD your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah.” To “test” the Lord here is not a humble request for guidance. It is placing God on trial — demanding that He prove Himself on our terms. They didn't like the discomfort that they were experiencing in Masah, and their attitude to the Lord was basically to tell Him that if He expected them to continue to be loyal, then He needed to do a miracle for them again. Now, we might not be quite so crass as they were, but our prayer life can often center around our comforts rather than God's glory. "Lord, if you are truly faithful, you will provide me a decent home" - or whatever your terms might be. It is what I call conditional loyalty. And conditional loyalty is the opposite of faith. Let me repeat that - conditional loyalty is the opposite of faith.

And Israel definitely had conditional loyalty in Exodus 17. They said they would continue to trust God if He would once again prove Himself to be faithful. But even the way they phrased their request, they were questioning His faithfulness. And what makes their sin so striking is this: They already had overwhelming evidence of God’s faithfulness. They had seen the ten plagues, the miraculous Red Sea crossing, the Egyptians voluntarily giving them gold and all kinds of things as they left, daily manna from heaven to feed them, the bitter water at Marah turned into sweet water, the visible glory cloud. And yet they say, "Is the LORD among us or not?" And it all had to do with their comfort.

They were basically saying, “God must prove Himself again before we will trust Him again.” It's backwards. And when you think about it, it is manipulative. It's sort of like a child telling his father, "If you love me, prove it now - give me what I want." That is not trust; that is manipulative testing, and in the case of Israel it was an accusation against God's generous character. Someone actually likened Massah to "warranty faith" versus "covenant faith." And by warranty faith he meant that they were treating God like a product - "I'll trust and obey as long as you keep performing for me and keep providing for me according to my timetable." At the beginning of the Charles Dickens story, Carton lived this way relationally. He never fully gave himself to others. He was too preoccupied with himself to do so. He lacked commitment. He stayed detached unless something immediately benefited him.

Well, our passage warns us not to be like that because it recognizes that this is so common to human nature. And in the twenty-first-century we still need this warning. We tend to interpret Providences in a self-centered way rather than in a God-centered way. But if we are not walking by faith and seeking to serve God in a God-centered way, God will bring adversity to test and purge fake faith from our lives. And He brings tests because He wants us to have genuine faith. He wants us to walk by faith, and the sooner we learn to walk by faith, the fewer and farther between the tests need to be.

And I am so thankful for God's patience with Israel and His patience with us. The very fact that God said, "Don't do like you did at Massah" shows that God patiently works with us until we learn our lessons. Some are slow learners and others are fast learners, but God doesn't write us off because we have blown it. He keeps training us. He's a good parent.

But I do want to comment on the relationship of faith to understanding. The previous generation of Israelites wanted to understand what the future held before they would step forward, and they wanted that future understanding to be comfortable. In contrast, the church father, Augustine, pointed out that true faith precedes full explanation or full understanding. He said, “Believe so that you may understand.” This is what Presuppositional Apologetics is all about. It insists that the only way to have a cohesive, understandable worldview is to start by believing that every word of Scripture is true. It starts with faith, not with evidence - the evidence comes later and flows from faith. Whereas unbelievers have hundreds (if not thousands) of unprovable presuppositions, we start with one presupposition - "Your Word is Truth." If the Bible is truth, we can move forward with absolute confidence in its secondary propositions. Of course, it takes a work of God's Spirit to move the human heart to the place where it has an absolute confidence in God's Word. And God did that work in this second generation that Moses is speaking to in this chapter. Of course, Augustine went on to say that though faith precedes understanding, understanding also matures faith. So there is a continual reinforcing circle of faith and knowledge that happens. But the Christian life is often a call to walk by faith and not by sight. The church father, Anselm picked up on Augustine, and said, "For I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order that I may understand." God wanted Israel to learn to trust that His Words were always reliable and true - even when it looked like things were going bad. The "going bad" part is the testing of our faith and our covenant loyalty.

But I think the incident in Massah also illustrates the relationship of miracles to faith. The first generation of Israelites probably saw more miracles than any other generation on planet earth, yet Hebrews tells us that most of them died in unbelief. The miracles did not produce faith in them. Don't think that miracles are the answer to unbelief. Miracles by themselves do not create faith. That's not to speak against miracles. We believe in miracles, but Hebrews 11:6 words it this way: "But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him." The reward comes later. Romans 10:17 says, "faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." In Luke 16:31, Jesus said, "If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead." And that was certainly true of most of the Pharisees. They had undeniable evidence that Jesus rose from the dead, but they still did not believe. So my point is that the foundation of our faith is not miracles, but Scripture. And Scripture must be the starting point of our apologetics with unbelievers. So this passage tells the next generation, don't say, "I'll believe when I see another miracle." That's backwards. Believe God, and He will provide for you in whatever ways His generous heart deems best.

Diligent covenant-keeping vs. selective obedience (v. 17)

The next example of how covenant loyalty can be tested by adversity is seen in verse 17: "You shall diligently keep the commandments of the LORD your God, His testimonies, and His statutes which He has commanded you." When times get tough, it is easy for us to cut corners on our obedience. We might think • God understands that I can't help falling into this sin. • This is just an exceptional slip. It won't matter. • Or "I'll compromise just this once."

But covenant loyalty is tested in the tiny details of life. Luke 16:10 says, “He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much…” Someone once said, “Covenant loyalty is not mainly proven in crisis, but in the thousands of unnoticed choices where we either treasure God or ignore Him.” Selective obedience doesn't care about those choices - primarily because others won't notice.

In the book, "A Tale of Two Cities," Charles Dickens portrayed Sydney Carton as having absolutely no self-discipline. He did good - but only when it suited him to do good. He never fully gave himself to what was right. But that is the very definition of selective obedience. And selective obedience is far more common than outright rebellion. But when you see selective obedience in your children, you need to take that defect in their obedience seriously. Selective obedience is simply disobedience wearing a respectable mask. And some of your children will test you to see how far you carry through your training in their lives - maybe not quite pushing the limits all the way, but still pressing close to what they think you will tolerate.

But this verse more accurately describes true faithfulness: "You shall diligently keep the commandments of the LORD your God, His testimonies, and His statutes which He has commanded you." God's law is not a buffet line that we can pick and choose which commandments we want to adopt. As someone worded it, "Selective obedience is still disobedience." In contrast, faith enthusiastically follows the Lord in all that He commands.

Doing what is right in God's sight vs. mere external conformity (v. 18a)

Verse 18 goes on to say, "And you shall do what is right and good in the sight of the LORD..." Notice that he doesn't just say, "you shall do what is right." He says, "Do what is right in the sight of the LORD." This spells the difference between outward conformity to please others and living our lives coram deo - under heaven's gaze. We all know the difference between children who clean their rooms to be noticed and those who clean their rooms because they they have been trained to be faithful. It's the same action, but a different motivation and different attitude. Well, God is the ultimate parent that we should be doing our labors for. The point is that a "camera Christianity" does certain things to be noticed and remembered by people, but immediately stops doing it when the camera is turned off. Why? Because they don't get their desired reinforcement from man. In contrast true Christianity has the same faithfulness whether people are watching or not. And the reason it is the same is because we are doing things for God. We known that He is looking. So, again, the first part of verse 18 says, "And you shall do what is right and good in the sight of the LORD..."

Obviously both sides of that sentence are important. Do we do what is right and good at all times - even during adversity? That's a good test. But do we also do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord? People can outwardly conform to God's laws for quite a variety of reasons, but covenant loyalty is motivated by pleasing God. And if you want to keep the first commandment (of which this is a partial exposition), you will seek to do everything in life in the sight of God and for His glory. R. C. Sproul said, “To live coram Deo is to live one’s entire life in the presence of God, under the authority of God, to the glory of God.” Well, if you never leave God's presence, then this verse reinforces an earlier verse in the chapter that everything we do can be done as a service to the Lord. Martin Luther once said, “The maid who sweeps her kitchen is doing the will of God just as much as the monk who prays — not because she sings a Christian hymn, but because God loves clean floors.” This is a huge test of covenant loyalty - do we always consciously do all that we do under the sight of heaven. If we do, we are going to do our best in all of our jobs.

Though the figure Carton in A Tale of Two Cities does not have a God-focus, there is a point in the story where he tells Lucie Manette, “For you… I would do anything… I would embrace any sacrifice.” You might wish that he would have had that change for God, but as an illustration, it shows where change started for him. For the first time in the story, he is no longer living for himself; he is living for something higher. That is the turning point in his life, and even though Lucie does not reciprocate any affection to him, and just encourages him to live a better life, it introduces the idea of substitutionary sacrifice and how he will eventually trade his life with Charles Darnay so that Darnay can live and not be executed. It may not be the perfect illustration, but the point is that covenant loyalty is willing to sacrifice self for God and for others. That sacrifice may not involve life, but it certainly involves a sacrifice of comforts from time to time. And you know best what those sacrifices are that God is convicting you to do.

Promise-driven possession vs. self-powered conquest (vv. 18b-19)

The last way that your covenant loyalty is tested by adversity is to see whether adversity makes you "just power through" in your own strength, or whether it makes you rely on God's promises by faith more and more so that God's strength is made perfect in your weakness. Notice the three promises given to them. We'll start reading at the second part of verse 18:

that it may be well with you, and that you may go in and possess the good land of which the LORD swore to your fathers, to cast out all your enemies from before you, as the LORD has spoken.

First, God's promises are backed up by God's very character. Verse 18 says that God swore these promises to the fathers. His very character was at stake. But even apart from swearing, if God has said something, we can take Him at His Word since He is the very definition of truth. Hudson Taylor once said, “God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supply.” And what was true of their commission to take the land of Canaan, is true of our commission to disciple all nations and teach them to live out the whole Bible in everything that they do. Not only is this achievable by God's grace, but it is guaranteed in Biblical prophecy to happen - and it is guaranteed to happen prior to Christ's Second Coming. God's promises are backup up by His very attributes.

Second, notice that these Israelites were not called to be passive in achieving God's plan. Yes, God gives the promises: • It will go well • You will possess the land • Your enemies will be driven out

But notice that they still must: • go • fight • act

Faith is not passive, but neither is it self-reliant. They trusted God to go before them, but they still had to go into the land; they believed God would give them the land, but they still had to possess it; they believed that God would give them strength to fight, but they still had to fight against God's enemies before they would see them cast out before them. True faith always leads to action. As William Carey worded it, “Expect great things from God—attempt great things for God.”

But third, let's look at the specific nature of the three promises.

God says, "that it may be well with you." The Hebrew word for "well" (יָטַב) has within it the idea of that which is pleasureable. God commands us to do what leads to our deepest and most lasting pleasure. His laws are not arbitrary. They were meant for our good, and obedience was meant to align us with the very structure of reality that God designed for our joy. This makes us flourish in God, not just in our circumstances. What are some of the ways that keeping God's commands gives us joy? Well, living consistently with the Word of God gives us a clear conscience before God, a heart that more and more delights itself in righteousness, a life that is more and more ordered by God's wisdom, and as John Piper would say, it gives us a deeper capacity to enjoy God Himself. God loves to prosper the steps of those who are loyal to Him. Does He occasionally test our loyalty? Yes. But over and over God says that He wants the best for those who are loyal to him. You cannot out-give God. Some of the young men are going to be going through John Piper's book, Desiring God. And that beautifully shows the reinforcing circle of blessing God and being blessed by God. After all, when we are loyal to God, we are just reciprocating His covenant loyalty to us. The more of God's character of covenant loyalty that we exhibit, the closer our hearts are drawn to God's. So He says, "that it may be well with you;" that it may be pleasureable for you; that you might more and more experience the joy of the Lord.

The second promise is that their conquest would be successful. He says, "and possess the good land of which the LORD swore to your fathers." Did they possess the good land? Absolutely yes. God is faithful to His promises. And God has promised that all nations will submit beneath the feet of the greater Joshua, Jesus, and will eventually serve Him. That hasn't happened yet. But we can engage in the Great Commission with the absolute confidence that it will happen - and He uses weak vessels like us to accomplish the conquest of the Gospel.

The third promise is in verse 19: "to cast out all your enemies from before you, as the LORD has spoken." It wasn't a situation of casting out the enemies even if Israel stayed on the East side of the Jordan. No. God would cast out the enemies from before you... They still had to go into the land, fight the enemy, and possess their possessions, but they were to do it in God's strength. George Muller once said, “Work with all your might; but trust not… in your work.” That's a hard balance. And I actually want to end by using George Muller to illustrate each of the points we have just gone through.

Applying these points

Some of you have perhaps read about George Muller, and his ministry to orphans in England. He gave testimony after testimony of God's faithfulness to provide for the needs of the orphans he was caring for. This orphanage was not about George Muller and his desires. He had already laid down his life to be sold out to the Lord. Müller gave up the prospect of a comfortable, salaried career in order to follow what he believed was God’s call. And if God calls you to something, He will sustain you in that calling. And I'll just relate one of his many stories.

One morning at Müller’s orphan house in Bristol, the situation looked desperate: the children were ready, but there was no breakfast and no money to buy it. The housemother told Müller about the empty kitchen. Instead of panicking or manipulating, he had the children sit at the tables—and he thanked God for the food they did not yet have. Within minutes, a baker arrived saying he had been unable to sleep and felt compelled to bake bread for them; shortly after that, the milkman’s cart broke down outside the orphanage and he offered the milk before it spoiled. God did this kind of thing over and over for him. But more often than not, God provided through the ordinary means of hard labor.

But when we examine this story against the first point in your outlines, we see that Muller trusted God. Unlike the people at Massah, Muller didn't say, “Lord, prove Yourself right now or I won’t continue to trust You.” He didn’t have a posture of doubt. He simply banked on God's promises, gathered the children, gave thanks, and waited — trusting without demanding proofs. If you were in that position, would worry have eaten you up? In order to strengthen our faith, God puts us through tests to teach us to cast off worry and anxiety. Someone once said, “The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith…” And I don't say this to judge you since anxiety has killed my faith many times in the past, and I see worry and anxiety as a Canaanite enemy that I need to continually watch out for. It is a lesson that God has been drilling into me.

When we examine this story against the second point of the sermon, where God calls for diligence, we see that Muller wasn't passive. His whole approach was diligent obedience without the pressure tactics of the world. He illustrated diligence in the Spirit without self-reliance.

When examining this story against the third point, we wouldn't have even have known about Muller's story if it wasn't told years later. He didn't do this to look spiritual in front of others. There was no panic, boasting, or even theatrical showmanship on his part. He was just trusting that when God calls us to do something, God also provides the means to accomplish it. And rather than complaining, he gave thanksgiving for what God was about to do. He sought to live his life in the sight of God.

When examining this story against the fourth point, Muller's confidence was not in his own resources, but in God's promises to provide for our needs according to His riches in Christ Jesus. John Piper used Muller as an example of a person who didn't trust means (even though he used means), but he had developed a daily habit of trusting the Lord. It was a situation of "trust and obey."

Conclusion

“So in conclusion, let me say that when adversity presses,

1. covenant loyalty doesn’t test God — it continues to trust Him;
2. it doesn’t pick and choose which commands to obey — it obeys diligently whatever God says;
3. it doesn’t perform for man - it aims to do what is right and good in God's sight - even if man is not noticing;
4. and it takes steps of faith consistent with God's promises.

May this be true of all of us. Amen.