Not Because of Your Righteousness

Jeff Griffis

Deuteronomy • Sermon • Submitted 5 years ago

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Moses reminds the new generation going into the Land of Promise that God's favor is not because of their righteousness but due only to his sovereign grace.

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Not Because of Your Righteousness - Deut. 9

PRAY with me and we’ll dive into this text for tonight.

Here’s the setup for the other verses we just read:

Deuteronomy 9:1–3 ESV

“Hear, O Israel: you are to cross over the Jordan today, to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, cities great and fortified up to heaven, a people great and tall, the sons of the Anakim, whom you know, and of whom you have heard it said, ‘Who can stand before the sons of Anak?’ Know therefore today that he who goes over before you as a consuming fire is the Lord your God. He will destroy them and subdue them before you. So you shall drive them out and make them perish quickly, as the Lord has promised you.

Time to Take the Land God Promised (vv. 1-3)

Deuteronomy - Covenant Renewal

Deuteronomy is a book which records Moses renewing the covenant (that God made with Israel at Sinai—here called Mt. Horeb) with the next generation preparing to go in to possess the land that God had promised to this people dating all the way back to their forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

They’re camped on the east side of the Jordan River, listening to Moses prepare them to enter the land under the leadership of Joshua. - It’s been 40 years since God made a covenant at Sinai, and 40 years ago the previous generation lacked faith to obey God and go in and possess the land. They were afraid of the military power and even the size of the enemies in Canaan. One particular opponent their eyes had rested on were the Anakim.

… which makes perfect sense. My basketball team has a 7-foot guy named Larry. When opponents look over at our team before the game, would you guess that their focus lands prominently on me or Larry?

The Larry-kim, I mean, Anakim, are the symbol of the superior military power of the Canaanites.

Guess what, in the 40 year interim, nothing has changed in terms of the superior nations, fortified cities, and military power of the peoples across the river. - Good pep talk, Moses. We’re feeling pretty good about ourselves and about our odds right now.

Impossible Mission Made Possible

Your team would be fairly unconcerned about this guy named Larry who works at SDC for his day job if one player on your team was Kevin Durant or Lebron James.

Moses reminds them that Israel’s secret weapon is the Lord, the one true God, who goes before them as a consuming fire to destroy and subdue their enemies.

Their job will be to obey God and finish the task with each people group as the Lord gives them into their hand.

And now there’s a shift in emphasis:

Moses reminds the new generation going into the Land of Promise that God's favor is not because of their righteousness but due only to his sovereign grace.

Heart Deception (vv. 4-6)

We tend toward heart deception and selective memory in order to put ourselves in as good a light as possible.

Modeling and makeup, lighting, even photoshopping - The crazy thing about us is that we have a tendency to view ourselves this way… covering up or hiding all the glaring flaws.

Jeremiah 17:9 ESV

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

God understands our hearts. From listening to God, so does Moses, so he warns the people:

Don’t credit victory to your righteousness.

When the Lord delivers you (and he will) by his own gracious and mighty hand, don’t take credit and think that it was because of your own goodness that God did this thing for you.

Victory (on your behalf) is due to...

God’s judgment against wickedness

God’s faithfulness to keep his word

God chose you not because you are so deserving but because of his sovereign grace:

Deuteronomy 7:6–10 ESV

“For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, and repays to their face those who hate him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face.

So don’t go thinking God’s deliverance is because of your goodness. It isn’t. In fact, you’re just plain stubborn.

Evidence of Your Stiff-necked Rebelliousness (vv. 7-24)

Exhibit A - Idolatry at Horeb (Sinai)

While Moses was on the mountain receiving the tablets from the Lord!!! - What were the first two commandments? For quick reference, look back at Deut 5:7&8.

What were they doing in Moses absence?

Deuteronomy 9:12–21 ESV

Then the Lord said to me, ‘Arise, go down quickly from here, for your people whom you have brought from Egypt have acted corruptly. They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them; they have made themselves a metal image.’ “Furthermore, the Lord said to me, ‘I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stubborn people. Let me alone, that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven. And I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.’ So I turned and came down from the mountain, and the mountain was burning with fire. And the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands. And I looked, and behold, you had sinned against the Lord your God. You had made yourselves a golden calf. You had turned aside quickly from the way that the Lord had commanded you. So I took hold of the two tablets and threw them out of my two hands and broke them before your eyes. Then I lay prostrate before the Lord as before, forty days and forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all the sin that you had committed, in doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger. For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure that the Lord bore against you, so that he was ready to destroy you. But the Lord listened to me that time also. And the Lord was so angry with Aaron that he was ready to destroy him. And I prayed for Aaron also at the same time. Then I took the sinful thing, the calf that you had made, and burned it with fire and crushed it, grinding it very small, until it was as fine as dust. And I threw the dust of it into the brook that ran down from the mountain.

Other Examples

Deuteronomy 9:22–24 ESV

“At Taberah also, and at Massah and at Kibroth-hattaavah you provoked the Lord to wrath. And when the Lord sent you from Kadesh-barnea, saying, ‘Go up and take possession of the land that I have given you,’ then you rebelled against the commandment of the Lord your God and did not believe him or obey his voice. You have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you.

Taberah - “burning” -

Shortly after leaving Sinai, the people were complaining about their plight (Num 11:1-3) and the Lord’s anger burned against them such that he literally set fire to the outlying edges of the camp. They cried out to Moses and he prayed for them, and the fire died down. They name that place Taberah, which means burning.

Massah - “testing” -

Moses then references an earlier time, when God had delivered the people from Pharaoh’s hand with great signs, and across the Red Sea. He had given them sweet water when they complained it was bitter. As they journeyed on and they complained of hunger (“at least we had food in Egypt”), God rained bread from heaven 6 days/week for them to gather each morning. (The manna tasted like wafers with honey, cakes baked with oil… but they’d even complain about that later!) When they came to a place called Rephidim (Ex. 17:1-7), they had no obvious source of water, so they grumbled that Moses had brought them out to die of thirst. God provided water for them from a rock, but Moses said they were “testing” God because they had said “Is God among us or not?”, which is why he called the place Massah.

Kibroth-hattaavah - “gaves of craving” -

The Lord had given them water and manna and would even give them meat in the form of quail brought right to them. But they let their craving for the meat get the best of them and they seemed to kill more than they needed. So even as they were over-eating, the Lord’s anger burned against them and he struck down many with a great plague. So they called that place “graves of craving,” Kibroth-hattaavah.

And finally, Moses references when they were at...

Kadesh-barnea - where they lacked faith to obey God and take the land

The Lord God commanded them to go in and take the land, but when the people believed their eyes regarding the enemy instead of their God, the Lord punished that generation by not allowing them to enter the land.

This generation to whom Moses is now speaking, would have been alive, but not yet old enough to be held responsible for the decisions made by the previous adults.

Interestingly (and appropriately), Moses does NOT give them a pass when making this admonition:

Deuteronomy 9:24 ESV

You have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you.

They are not being held accountable for the sins of others. They are being warned about the same tendency of their own hearts.

What does such rebelliousness do to our relationship to God?

Failure to acknowledge and obey God by faith incurs God’s wrath. (vv. 7, 22)

And God’s displeasure means that you are destined to perish apart from him. (8:20)

Do we need to understand what kind of people we are in order to not take credit? Do we need to understand the consequences of our rebellion? ...In order to rightly view ourselves as fully incapable of righteousness apart from the gracious intervention of God on our behalf?

Intercession on Behalf of God’s People (vv. 25-29)

Moses’ Appeal to God:

-not an appeal to his vanity but to his sovereign GLORY

Your people and your heritage… whom you redeemed through your greatness… you brought out with a mighty hand

Remember your covenant

Deuteronomy 4:31 ESV

For the Lord your God is a merciful God. He will not leave you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers that he swore to them.

For the sake of your own glory among the nations

New Covenant Correlation

Have you recognized your condition in sin before God? Have you rejected self-righteousness and turned in faith to God to rescue you through Jesus Christ?

In what ways do you still functionally put trust in your own works for salvation? How can you grow in living from Christ’s righteousness and not your own?

Christ’s Righteousness for your Position

Romans 3:10–12 ESV

as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”

Romans 3:21–26 ESV

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Christ’s Righteousness for your Practice

Romans 6:1–2 ESV

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

Romans 6:5 ESV

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

Romans 6:12–14 ESV

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

I have two tendencies in my fight against sin: working in my own strength and moping when I fail.

But through faith in Christ, the final decision has been made:

Christ’s Intercession for His Own

Hebrews 7:25 ESV

Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.

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