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We begin our meditation this evening by reading once more from the book of Deuteronomy, and tonight some verses from chapter four and then from chapter five. Deuteronomy chapter four, beginning in verse one. And now, O Israel, hearken unto the statutes and unto the judgments which I teach you, for to do them, that you may live and go in and possess the land which the Lord, the God of your fathers, giveth you. You shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall you diminish from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you. Your eyes have seen what the Lord did because of Baal Peor. For all the men that followed Baal Peor, the Lord thy God hath destroyed them from the midst of thee. But you that did cleave unto the Lord your God are alive, every one of you, this day. Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should do so in the midst of the land whither you go in to possess it. Keep therefore and do them. For this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, which shall hear all these statutes and say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what great nation is there that has a God so nigh unto them as the Lord our God is, whensoever we call upon him. And what great nation is there that has statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law which I set before you this day? Only take heed to thyself and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes saw, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life. But make them known unto thy children and thy children's children. The day that thou stoodest before the Lord thy God in Horeb, when the Lord said unto me, Assemble me the people, and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children. And you came near and stood under the mountain, and the mountain burned with fire unto the heart of heaven, with darkness, cloud, and thick darkness. The Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire. Ye heard the voice of words, but you saw no form, only a voice. And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, even the Ten Commandments, and he wrote them upon two tables of stone. And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgments, that you might do them in the land whither you go over to possess it. Take heed, therefore, unto yourselves, for you saw no manner of form on the day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire, lest you corrupt yourselves and make you a graven image in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female. And then some verses in chapter five, namely verses one to four. And Moses called unto all Israel and said unto them, Hear, O Israel, the statutes and judgments which I speak in your ears this day, that you may learn them and observe to do them. Our Lord, the Lord our God, made a covenant with us in Horeb. The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day. The Lord spake with you face to face in the mount, out of the midst of the fire. And the God who spoke then and had Moses write these words, grant us to hear his voice again here this very day. We return to evening to the plains of Moab, and uh, jostle ourselves amongst the thousands of Israelites who are standing there, all ears tuned to the direction of Moses, who is giving them their final directions to encourage them now to rise up and do what their fathers and grandfathers had refused to do. At Kadesh Barnea, the Israelites, given the opportunity and the moment to rise up and enter their inheritance, downright refused to do so. Now, forty years later, the children and grandchildren of those men are standing in the plains of Moab. In the distance there is the River Jordan, and Moses, no, not long to be with them anymore, for he must ascend Mount Nebo and be taken home to glory, is standing before them with heart and soul, exalting them, stimulating to take them to take their decision, that they will now rise up and do the great thing and enter into their God-given inheritance. Not only does he stimulate them to do so, but as we presently shall see, he will counsel them and prepare them to meet the great temptations that they will meet on the other side of Jordan. Now, he began, as we saw on our last occasion, to prepare the Israelites by taking them back to Kadesh Barnea, the very point at which their grandfathers and fathers had stood, and receiving the report of the land, had refused to go in. Now, he takes them, and his words are recorded in chapters two and three, on the rest of the journey, having analyzed the reasons why their grandfathers refused to go in when they were at Kadesh Barnea and found themselves sentenced to wandering forty years in the wilderness. Moses now reminds their children of the journey that they had taken, these long forty dusty years from Kadesh Barnea to the plains of Moab, and asked them to remember how we got here. It's a good question to ask from time to time, when I've decided where I am, which is not always easy, to say, how did I get here? How did I get myself into this situation where I had to make this choice? So it was with Moses. And while the forty years served the judgment of God, so that the people who refused to go in at Kadesh Barnea now died off, it wasn't a case of wasted years and journeying for the rest of them. But on that journey, God had taught them many a valuable practical lesson that should serve them in good stead when they got into the land. And of that Moses will speak on a later occasion. This time, as he recalls how they got here, he chooses to concentrate on the very last stages of the journey. We'll see they had come to Mount Seir, and they had, uh, camped and camped round about Man- Mount Mount Seir for a good deal of time, until God blew his whistle and said, time, you've gone, spent too long a time round this mountain, get up and start to go. But instead of letting them go straight east, he made them turn back down south, that seemed at first to be the very contrary direction to which they wanted to go. Right down south to the bottom of the Red, the Dead Sea, and then across and up the other side. East of Jordan, of course. And as they begin to travel, God told Moses to tell them, now you are, as you come up the east side of the Dead Sea, you will come through three nations. There will be, uh, Edom, there will be Moab, there will finally be Ammon. And as you come through them, you are not to fight them. For they are your national brothers, so to speak. And what is more, says God, tell them that I gave the Edomites their land, and I gave the Moabites their land, and I gave the Ammonites their land. Huh. I suspect when Moses told that to the Israelites, it raised a few eyebrows. Exactly what are you saying, Moses? You have told us that God has given us the land of Canaan. Are you telling us that just as God has given us Canaan, he's given old Edom his land? Yes. Uh, and not Mo- Moab? Yes. And Ammon? God gave them their land? Oh, I thought we were special. Well, you are in a way, says Moses. We shall see how in a minute. I see. So there they go trotting along, the Israelites, and they come to Edom, and then they come to Moab. Mm, not bad country, this. And then they come to Ammon. Ha ha. They weren't allowed to fight them. They had to pay for anything they got. I wonder, did they talk to the, to the Edomites and the Ammonites? I think I can imagine them. Morning, could you sell us a little water? Yes. Got a nice country here, haven't you? Yeah, very pleasant. You know, our God gave you this country. Oh, did he really? That's what you think. Well, yeah, that's what Moses said. Yes. And now you're in possession of it. God has given it to you. Okay. Because we've got a land. God has given that to us too. Uh, we're a bit scared of that because there's giants there. Don't suppose there were any giants when you came to your land, was there? Giants, they said. The place teemed with giants. Oh, well, how did you get into the land then? Well, we fought them, of course. What do you think? Not a lot of children, we're grown up men. We fought them and conquered them. Oh, they must have been tiny giants then. Not, not like our giants. Tiny giants? What are you talking about? Haven't you seen old King's Og bedstead? No, what's that? Well, go to the local museum. There it is on display, permanent display. Some people say it's not a bedstead, they say it's a car- sarcophagus. Never mind what it is. It's a colossal thing for old King Og. He was about thirteen and a half feet high. Some giant. You want to go and see him? It'll be five dollars an entrance fee, but go and see him. And you overcame them and have been settled in your inheritance, whereas we for these last forty years have been trudging through a wilderness because we were afraid of giants. Oh dear. Why do the people of God show themselves so weak on times, I wonder? Weaker than the world. Oh yes, I'm well aware, and you even more aware, that if you put your hand to the work of the Lord, you'll find it is no hobby. However innocent it might be, sooner or later you will find opposition. And such opposition that will lead you to think that it comes from more than human sources. Problems there will be, like the stars of the sky. But oh, my dear brethren, don't let's magnify our problem. The world has had its problems. How do you think Marxism got settled in China? The godless atheists of Marxism had their problems to establish atheism in China. The story of the Long March in all its privation and persistence stands to us like the Moabites stood to the Israelites. The world atheists have not buckled under their problems, but have persisted. And shall not we? Do we not believe in the living God? That the Lord of hosts is with us, giants or no giants, and he will triumph. Anyway, they got that, they got through Edom and Moab and Ammon, where they didn't have to fight, and that pleased them very well. When all of a sudden, as they progressed up northwards, up this east side of Jordan, the king of Heshbon came out against them and started a fight, so they had no option. They had to fight. They couldn't say, hold on, king of, uh, king Heshbon, we didn't intend to come here. Uh, no, he came to fo- fight them. And Heshbon and company had forty five cities going up to high heaven. And willy-nilly, the Israelites had to fight them. And fight them they did, and prove God to be with them, and overcame them, and destroyed their fortified cities. And then God, to their surprise, gave them the countryside as part of their in unexpected inheritance. You say, what was God a doing of, uh, making them fight and then giving them an inheritance east of Jordan. But God warned them, the three and a half tribes, the two and a half tribes who took that inheritance, you can have it, provided you are prepared to go across Jordan with the rest and fight the other giants. But there it was. God had made them face fortified cities. Do you remember the excuse that the men gave at Kadesh Barnea why they couldn't go into the Promised Land. Because they had fortified cities, they said. Well, that was the excuse. Now Israel has got to face going over Jordan. They'll certainly face fortified cities. They'll strain every nerve in their body. But the God who knows what lies ahead has in these last months prepared them by their personal experience to tackle fortified cities so that now they would lose some of the fear of it and be ready to go across. Now, I think that is immensely kind of God, isn't it? How merciful he is. One generation jibbed like a horse being ridden up to a big jump, and it puts its front legs down and turns the rider over his neck, refuses to take the jump, and the rider mounts again and wheels the horse around, around, around, around. It loses sight of the big jump, and it was a little jump here, it goes over the little jump, and then a slightly bigger jump, it goes over the bigger jump, a- a- a- and then... once more it's faced with the big jump, and this time has conquered the fear of it, and over it goes. What a God we have, isn't it? If one generation of Israel would gib at the jump, he'd wheel the nation round until their successors, being trained now to face fortified cities, would be ready to go in. And what's true of nations is sometimes true of us as individuals, isn't it? At an earlier part in life, faced with a challenge from God, we ducked it. God, in his mercy, doesn't always say, well, now you've had it, I'll never give you another chance. He wheels us round through life's varied experience and presently brings us back to the same jumper, now more prepared by his mercy to pass the examination. But when Moses had reminded them how they got there, he must now turn in chapters four and five to prepare them for the bigger temptations and tests that would meet them on the other side Jordan. Grant that they had lost their fear of fortified cities and giants, for that matter. There would be bigger, bigger temptations. Once they got among that pagan, idolatrous society, that long since jettisoned faith in the one true God, and had gone over to an idolatrous interpretation of the universe, defying the forces of nature. Once Israel came among them, fighting wouldn't be the difficult thing. The difficult thing would be to resist the temptation to compromise with that idolatrous society. So he came across the Moabites in the south with their permissive religion that mixed superstition with sexual immorality, all in a mix up of supposed religion. Israel would be sorely tempted to say, well, times are different, and you know, old Moses, he was a dear old boy, but he had a long beard, and he was somewhat out of fashion, and you know, you have to move with the times. And whereas he denounced certain things as sin, well, our psychologists have taught us to, to interpret these things differently, you know. It's in our genes. And we mustn't now say homosexuality is sin, must we? I mean, seeing it's all in our genes anyway, that'll be homophobia, and nobody wants to be any phobia whatsoever. So the church must give its sanction, must it? To the marriage of homosexual couples, and then call upon artificial insemination and surrogate motherhood so that this perversity can continue of homosexuals joined in marriage and having children by somebody else. And you mustn't protest. And the church has to compromise or be threatened by the government if it doesn't, for depriving people of their civil rights. Then they got up north to those strong fortified cities of Megiddo and Hazor, with their technological development abreast of everything. Nine hundred chariots of iron, if you please. Hard-headed Canaanites with the most recent technology. And Israel felt a little bit inferior. They hadn't got any technology like that. And people that could produce chariots, how could they be wrong? I mean, they had the new attitude to the universe and to science and technology. Mustn't we compromise with their gods as well. It would be Israel's temptation. A bigger temptation than having to face fortified cities, as Israel found and as the Christian church has found. How should Moses prepare them? In chapter four, he begins some of his longest sermons at this time to prepare Israel for going in amongst these idolatrous nations. And he says in chapter four, verse one, And now, O Israel, hearken unto the statutes and unto the judgments which I teach you, for to do them, that you may live, and go in and possess the land which the Lord, the God of your fathers, giveth you. You shall not add unto the word, you shall not diminish from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you. And to back home the exhortation with a lesson from recent history that they had gone through on the way from Kadesh Barnea to this part of the world, reminds them what had so recently happened when they came near Moab, near Baal Peor, and the Midianite girls had come out. You'll see old Balak, king of Moab, had called Balaam the prophet and promised him a very fat fee if he would come and use his, uh, mumbo jumbo magic stuff to curse Israel. Being unsuccessful there, Balaam, to earn his fee, taught Balak how to cast a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to engage in fornication, and to eat things sacrificed to idols. A good summary of Moabite religion, that, where idolatry lay at its core and sexual immorality was part of the religious process. And the Israelites, tired maybe with a hard slog through a desert, fell to the temptation, and Israel was joined to Baal Peor. And, says Scripture, God was jealous. I, the Lord, am a jealous God. And in his love for his people, when that love was compromised by Israel, his jealousy was aroused. The New Testament speaks that same warning to us believers, doesn't it? Writing to Corinth, Paul reminds them that they cannot, please, they cannot go and sit in the restaurant attached to the heathen temple and, uh, be served meat fresh from being offered to idols. You cannot eat of the table of the Lord and the table of demons, says he. Well, physically you can, but pray remember if you do, provoke the Lord to jealousy, and he's stronger than you are. Our God calls for absolute loyalty. And Paul, writing to the Corinthians once more in two Corinthians eleven, says, you know I have espoused you as a chaste virgin to Christ, but I fear lest that old serpent, the devil, just as he deceived Eve by his craftiness, should corrupt your thoughts from the simplicity that is the loyalty that is towards the Lord Jesus. In the East, before a girl was, uh, engaged, as we would say, betrothed there, she could keep an open mind, you know, like many of them do, so I am told. Shall it be George? Or shall it be Thomas? A lot to be said for Thomas. He's a very manly type, but, you know, he doesn't know anything more than football. He never talks of anything more than football. He's a bit of a bore. But what about Joe? Oh, Joe is very sparkling. He has a, a, a, a Lincoln Zephyr, if not a Cadillac, and his father is very rich. There's a lot to be said for him. Yes, but, uh, he's terrible selfish. Spoiled kid, really. Then there's Arthur. Well, he hasn't got many pennies. Uh, uh, he isn't, you know, the most manly looking chap you'd ever come across, but then he's very kind to children and considerate, and uh... So she chooses Robert, and who knows why she chose him. But once she has chosen him and she's betrothed, then she can't keep an open mind. For then to keep an open mind is not a sense of, uh, a symptom of intellectual prowess. It's a system of defective morality. I've espoused you to Christ, says Paul. Once you had an open mind and God offered you the evidence that Jesus was his son, and you received his son, and you were joined with him. You cannot keep an open mind now as to his deity. You are required to show intellectual loyalty to God's dear son. Let That Israel Israel be. be reminded by their experience at Baalpaol, therefore, as they go among the idolatrous heathen, that God will expect from them uncompromised loyalty. And then he urges them not to be ashamed either of their God or his doctrines. You don't get anybody's respect by compromising the truth or your faith either. The world has no time for a corrupt church that daren't say boo to a goose and goes in with modern immorality and all the rest of it, trying to curry favor with the people. They despise the thing. You keep to the commandments of your Lord, and the nations, some of them will come to say, what kind of a nation is this? How distinct are their judgments? How pure, how correct, how healthy? What a marvelous God there is that's always on hand to be with them. Then how should he strengthen them to be loyal to God and to his doctrines. Moses then, therefore, reminds them and takes them back to the roots of their very faith. You'll see verse ten of chapter four? the day that thou stoodest before the Lord thy God in Horeb, when the Lord said unto me, assemble me the people, and I will make them hear my words. Now Moses is taking them back, not just to Kadesh Barnea, but to that earlier stage when as a nation they stood before Mount Sinai, which is part of the Horeb range, and therefore in Deuteronomy is called Horeb. There to witness the self-revelation of God on Mount Horeb. This was the root of their faith. Israelite faith was not a superstition dreamed up in the minds of bedrugged priests or something. It wasn't a philosophy thought up with the great intellects of Greece, Plato, and Aristotle, and the rest of them. Jewish faith is founded in the revelation, the self-revelation of God in history, made at a particular time, made at a particular place, Horeb. When the living transcendent Lord came down from his heaven and stood on Mount Horeb, and the very m- uh, Horeb shook! Under the weight of the glory of God, how should it not? Out of the fire and the flame, the transcendent Lord spoke! At that time and at that place, the historic self-revelation of God to his people. You heard his voice. And you say, but Moses, half a minute, like many other in a preacher, you, you, you get carried away by your rhetoric, man. You've forgotten they didn't stand there at all, not the chaps that are standing in front of you. They weren't at all. You've forgotten, haven't you, old boy? Uh, it was the, uh, it was their fathers and grandfathers that stood there. The people that are standing in front of you weren't, weren't born, some of them. Many of them were born during this last forty years. What do you mean saying that they stood at Horeb? Ah. Ah, but he hadn't forgotten. Because if they were going to profess the historic faith, God-given revelation at Horeb, then they, in heart and spirit, must stand at Horeb. And know where they got their faith from. Israel's faith, as I say, was founded in God's historical self-revelation at Horeb. And our Christian faith stands there too. All scripture, says Paul, was given by inspiration of God. And he's talking about Old Testament scripture. Given by God. And as Moses brought it to the people and wrote it down, it was true, says Peter, two Peter chapter one. This was the process, in fact. Prophecy did not come by the will of man or on man's initiative, but the process was this, that being carried along by the Holy Spirit, there spoke from God men, that is the order of the Greek, and, and, uh, follows the order of the occurrence, of course. God wanted to convey his word, and so the Holy Spirit was brought in to move, to carry men, so that the message coming from God would now from God come to men, and men would speak it. That's inspiration. As Moses came down the mountain, he brought the words of God and spoke them, and eventually wrote them in written revelation. And Israel heard that word. We have to stand by it, don't we? We Christians. We have, of course, a further revelation, haven't we? And that likewise is an historic thing. For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. No man has seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father. He hath told him out. Listen to John talking to us. We saw him. You can, you can hear the excitement dribbling off the end of his pen in the ink. We saw him. We handled him. We heard him. We touched him. What an awesome thing it was to wake up to the fact that the man who traveled in the boat with you was God incarnate. The very self-revelation of God to men. We as Christians, we stand there, don't we? Haven't you heard him, my good brother, my sister? We can say, I suppose, with the hymn writer, we saw thee not when thou didst come to this poor world of sin and death, nor e'er beheld thy cottage home in the despised Nazareth, but we believe thy footsteps trod our plains and streets, thou son of God. We rest on revealed truth. Of course, we meet opposition, don't we? And in the West, not so much, though more now than it used to be, from the fancies of Eastern religion. We meet modernism. A modernism that took its rise, I suppose, in the Enlightenment, when men ceased to believe that there was a truth given us by God, and substituted for God's revealed truth the power and authority of human reason. Old Descartes is said to be the source of this error. If you don't like Descartes, well, go to sleep for five minutes. Wake up then, I shall still be talking, as you'll see. And Descartes, he had his doubts, you know, whether it could be said in any sense that he existed, and he came to this conclusion that he had his doubts, and if he didn't know anything else, he knew he was doubting, so he must be there to do the doubting. And then, beginning to think a bit more, he decided that he was doing the thinking, and therefore, because I think, said he, I am. And that seemed all very good. Belief in God was rational. But it began a slippery slide. For now, instead of accepting God's revelation, because God said it, now man's thinking, man's reasoning, was from now on going to be the umpire of what could be regarded as truth or not. And from that, that modernism permeated not only the scientific world, but alas, the religious world. And a hundred and more years of modernism in theological colleges has put human reason at the top, and human reason will decide what is true, and if there's a God, and what may be thought to be God's word. If it doesn't match up to my reason, then God will have to withdraw it. And your professor Searle of Berkeley, if you won't mind an Englishman quoting him, says that even if there's a God, he'll have to submit to our reason, fit into our rational scheme, and if he doesn't fit in, too bad for him. That is idolatry, idolizing human reason. That's the thing from Revelation. Oh, young men and women, do listen. If you're going to work for God in the West and in many countries influenced by the West, you should know what they think, where you stand, and why you stand, not against reason, but for the position that reason is not enough to find out the truth. If God did not first reveal his truth, reason could never know it. You'll see in science, science has made such progress, hasn't it? And understanding how the world works. And that's good enough. You can understand how atoms work without bringing God in, if you want to. They work. Just like you can understand an automobile engine without calling God in to explain it. Do they? Explaining how the universe works doesn't mean that you can now account for how the universe came to be there in the first place. The analogy that my colleague John Lennox and I use constantly with Russian atheists is the story of Mr. Ford. If you haven't heard that, well, listen now. It's not copyright, but there was this, uh, rather primitive tribe, you know, who came across a motor car for the first time. Didn't know what it was. But as they handled this and that and the other, one of them accidentally turned the ignition switch and the engine started. Ha! Oof, he was frightened about that. Decided there must be somebody inside there making that noise. Then he looked at the front and saw on the front sort of letter things, FORD. Eventually thought that must be a man's name. That's the name of the god who's inside this machine. And when it hummed nicely, like Ford engines sometimes do, he thought the god was well pleased with him, this this god Ford. And when it backfired, he got frightened and thought the god was now against him, and he offered it sacrifices. But then as they grew up, they learned about engineering. They took the thing to pieces and found I could understand how it worked. And there was no Mr. Ford inside. Ha, they said. We don't need to believe in Mr. Ford anymore, you see. We very much doubt whether there ever was a Mr. Ford. And you see the fallacy at once, don't you? Understanding how the car goes doesn't tell you how the car came to be. And science can tell you how the universe works to some extent. They can't tell you how it came to be, can they? All they tell you they're going to, they're going to find out one day, and we needn't to think about God who designed it. We trust reason, but that's manifestly absurd. They're going to understand the universe. They didn't create it, did they? If reason is going to understand the universe, the universe has to be there to start with. Well, we understand atoms and things and inside atoms and nuclei and all the rest of it, but long before the Greek Democritus had the notion that the world was made of atoms, and long before our modern generations found out what the nucleus of an atom is like and all the quarks, the atoms were all there, and the nucleus was there, and the quarks were there. Science didn't invent them, you know, nor reason either. Part of reason is to understand what God the Creator reveals and made. And that's how it is with God himself. We look at creation and we see God expressing himself in his works, and reason tries to understand it, not to deny the Creator. But when it comes to knowing God, then of course God is not a bit of stuff. He's a person, isn't he? And there's a difference between getting to know an atom and getting to know a person. I'm a person. Now, if you wanted to get to know an atom, all you have to do, you don't need a lot of brains, not too many, not in excess. You, you become an atomic physicist, and you get hold of a little atom and you put it into, uh, one of these hurly-gurly machines in America or, or, or Switzerland, and you push it up to speeds near the speed of light, and then you bash it with an electron or something, and the poor old atom has no chance. It has to give up its secrets, poor old thing, do you see, as it gets bashed to pieces. That's how they do it. I'm telling you now, you could put me into a cyclotron and get to know every atom in my body. You wouldn't know me. You can examine with your machines all the electrons and the things, uh, uh, in my brain that go fizz and bang and whop, and know that I'm using this part of the brain to think or something, and locate where the, uh, activity is going on, but no machine that ever has been invented or ever will. What I'm thinking. Because I'm not just a bit of stuff like an atom. I am a person. And God is a person. You'll never know him unless he chooses to reveal himself. This is not a weakness in Christianity, my dear young folks. This is the only rationality of the situation. With God being a person, if ever we're to know him, we must start with God's self-revelation of himself. There are conditions, of course. I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, says Jesus Christ, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to babes. That's not because God is nasty and m- miserly, but if we're going to know him, we shan't suppose we're going to bring him in front of us and with our reason tell him what he may be like. We must adopt the position of babes and humbly come to Almighty God and let God reveal himself to us. That is our Christian faith. And that is our Lord's claim. I am the truth. No man cometh unto the Father, but by me. The truth of God manifests then not only at Horeb, but now much more, God has spoken to us in his Son, in his incarnation, his birth, ministry, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and coming again. How did Moses get Israel to keep God's commandments in that, uh, idolatrous society? By taking them back to the roots of their faith and asking them to feel themselves standing at the foot of Horeb and hearing again the voice of God, speaking his commandments, and making a covenant with them. And in that strength, knowing themselves to be, so to speak, there spoken to by God, and the reality of God to find the strength to obey those commandments without compromise. How will Moses get the Israelites to keep the c- the commandments? Takes them back to Horeb to remind them that on occasion God made a covenant with them and wrote his law on the tablets of stone, and they accepted his covenant, saying, all that the Lord has commanded we will do and be obedient. Times have gone on. How shall we keep God's covenant loyally in an idolatrous world? Well, because our blessed Lord has made a covenant with us too. Now, I know there are some believers who believe that the new covenant is nothing to do with us in the church. It was made for the sake of Israel. And if what I now say offends you, and you think I have lost my dispensational stance or something, uh-huh, uh, well, come and see me afterwards, and we'll talk about it. So far as the covenant being made for us, Hebrews eight says that this new covenant, not will be made, has already passed into law, has been enacted. Acted. When our blessed Lord sat with his disciples around the table in the upper room and passed them the cup, he said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. And just as Moses, when the old covenant was instituted, took a basin and filled it with the blood of the sacrificial offering, and then sprinkled the book and the people, this is the covenant that God makes with you. So our blessed Lord took a cup and, holding it full of wine to his apostles, said, this cup is the new covenant. Pray, what is the new covenant about? It runs like this. I will write my laws on their hearts, and on their minds will I inscribe them. And they shall not say to every man, know the Lord, for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest, and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Were you there? When the Lord made that covenant? Says Moses to the Israelites standing of- in front of him, you were there at Horeb when the Lord made his covenant, and he made it not just with those at that time, he made it with you. When it comes to the new covenant, my brother, my sister, were you there in that upper room? Were you there when they crucified your Lord? Well, you say, ah, I wasn't physically there. I've been there many times. As at his command, I have gathered with his people. To stand to the covenant. As the Lord, being with us, has taken the bread and said once more in our hearing, this is my body given for you. And has taken the cup and said in your heart, this is the new covenant in my blood, promising to write my laws ever more deeply on your heart. Cooperate with me. Learn to discern yourself and judge yourself, and then you will not be judged. But if you come carelessly, then you will be disciplined. And you say, Lord, I'm unworthy to come. I confess my sins. Must I stay away? He says, have you listened to the covenant? Its last terms are these: their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. How shall we be prepared to face and triumph in our idolatrous societies. All my brothers, my sisters, we must ever and again come and meet the Lord at his supper and stand and see him make the covenant with us, writing his laws on our hearts. Beware of misinterpretation of the covenant. Moses warned the Israelites and God through Moses. You heard a voice, you didn't see any form. Don't you pervert God's self-revelation at, at Horeb, and suppose you saw forms and then go and make idols. We are warned not to pervert the Lord's new covenant either. Sacramentalists have, haven't they? And they take the bread and the wine and not only claim it is the literal body and blood of Christ, but they offer it to God as a sacrifice to get forgiveness of sins. That is a perversion. Our Lord did not say, this is my body, offer it to God. Did not say this is the token of my blood, offer it to God. Whole notion is a perversion. This is my body, my blood, you drink, you eat, and do it in remembrance of me. And evangelicals, would you ever think that they might be in danger of going to the other extreme and banishing the Lord's Supper to once a month or once a quarter or never? I was in a country, let it be nameless, and in certain assemblies where I was asked the question, is not the Lord's Supper irrelevant in our modern age. I was elsewhere to find, to my grief, the Lord's Supper celebrated as a ten-minute interlude in the course of a long meeting devoted to other things. It won't do, my brethren. If we are to stand in our modern idolatrous societies, with idolatrous religion and godless atheist scientists on the other side. We must come constantly back to the roots of our faith and stand at that supreme self-revelation of God in his son Jesus Christ our Lord at Calvary and the resurrection. We can sing if we like. We saw thee not uplifted high amidst that wild and savage crew, nor heard thy meek imploring cry, forgive, they know not what they do. But we believe that the deed was done that shook the earth and veiled the sun. We do well to come back to our roots and hear his voice, the very voice of God incarnate, and treasure his precepts and seek his grace to stand with undeviating loyalty to him in the midst of our modern world.