After a premature start in Deuteronomy, we’re back!

I was struck by Moses’ warnings in Deuteronomy 4, along with the repeated application. Let’s take a look:

And now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the rules that I am teaching you, and do them, that you may live, and go in and take possession of the land that the LORD, the God of your fathers, is giving you. You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you. Your eyes have seen what the LORD did at Baal-Peor, for the LORD your God destroyed from among you all the men who followed the Baal of Peor. But you who held fast to the LORD your God are all alive today. (Deuteronomy 4.1 – 4, ESV)

Quick observations:

• Listen to the standard (“the statutes and rules”)
• Don’t change the standard by adding to it or taking from it
• Remember that one can be led astray into sexual immorality (“Baal-Peor“)

So what to do? Moses is clear:

Only keep yourself and keep your soul very carefully, lest you forget the things which your eyes have seen and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life… (Deuteronomy 4.9, LSB)

So keep your souls very carefully… (Deuteronomy 4.15, LSB)

So keep yourselves, lest you forget the covenant of Yahweh your God which He cut with you and make for yourselves a graven image in the form of anything against which Yahweh your God has commanded you. (Deuteronomy 4.23, LSB)

“Keep yourselves,” “keep your souls very carefully,” “keep yourselves…”

The implication is clear: the culture will drag you down. “Keep yourselves” to the standard. And so there would be no mistake what the standard was, a copy of “The 10 Commandments,” written in stone, was in the Ark in the Tabernacle.

At that time the LORD said to me, “Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and come up to me on the mountain and make an ark of wood. And I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets that you broke, and you shall put them in the ark.” So I made an ark of acacia wood, and cut two tablets of stone like the first, and went up the mountain with the two tablets in my hand. And he wrote on the tablets, in the same writing as before, the Ten Commandments that the LORD had spoken to you on the mountain out of the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly. And the LORD gave them to me. Then I turned and came down from the mountain and put the tablets in the ark that I had made. And there they are, as the LORD commanded me. Deuteronomy 10.1 – 5, ESV, emphasis mine)

So there’s no confusion, we have the written word, and we have to “keep ourselves” to God’s standards. It takes watchfulness while entire denominations and influential churches like Andy Stanley’s NorthPoint church are accommodating the current cultural values. I think this is an accurate summary and critique of Andy’s position:

What Stanley considers as a failure to live up to an unattainable ideal, Scripture calls sinful. Nowhere in the messages was there any expectation that someone would turn from their same-sex relationship. This is an example of unbounded empathy that listens (which is good) but never invites toward transformation (which is not good). – Andrew Walker, author of God and the Transgender Debate

I believe Moses’ and Solomon’s warnings remain:

Only keep yourself and keep your soul very carefully, lest you forget… (Deuteronomy 4.9, LSB)

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. (Proverbs 4.23, ESV)

Andy Stanley likes to say that Jesus drew circles (of inclusion) rather than lines (of division). But Jesus drew both:

For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (John 1.17, NKJV, emphasis mine)

Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more. (John 8.11, NKJV)

Do all things without grumbling or disputing; so that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I will have reason to glory because I did not run in vain nor toil in vain. (Philippians 2.14 – 16, NASB, emphasis mine)