2-15-26 - A Land For Which The Lord Your God Cares

This morning, we're gonna be returning to Deuteronomy chapter 11. We got started in it, a few weeks ago. We finished up chapter 10, moved into chapter 11. Moses is continuing, as he has been for these 11 chapters, to address Israel's heart and to prepare them as they go into the promised land. There's a theme that shows up in our passage a lot.

There's a word that is just over and over and over again. It's in there. Nine times it's said explicitly, and a handful of other times, it's referenced indirectly. And that word is land. Strange word.

Land. We're all talking about the promised land. Moses spends a good bit of time, and we will as well, drawing a comparison between the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan or the promised land. He concluded the promised land is far superior and a better place to live. And I wanna show that to you what that actually looks like as we worked our way through the text.

Moses does an interesting thing also in this text though. He ties the blessings of God to the obedience of Israel. He argues at the very beginning and at the very end and says, obey God so you can get these blessings. To hunger and thirst for his blessing in our lives. And that we would pursue those things through obedience to him in every area of our lives.

That's my hope this morning. Would you please stand now as you read the word of the Lord from Deuteronomy chapter 11 verses eight through 15. This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. You shall therefore keep every commandment which I am commanding you today. So that you may be strong and go in and possess the land into which you are about to cross to possess it.

So that you may prolong your days in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give to them and to their descendants a land flowing with milk and honey. For the land into which you are entering to possess it, it is not like the land of Egypt from which you came, where you used to sow your seed and water it with your foot like a vegetable garden. The land which you are about to cross to possess it, a land of hills and valleys, drinks water from the rain of heaven. A land for which the Lord your God cares. The eyes of the Lord your God are always on it from the beginning even to the end of the year.

It shall come about if you listen obediently to my commandments, which I am commanding you today. For your land and its season, the early and the late rain. That you may gather in your grain and your new wine and your oil. Cattle and you will eat and be satisfied. This is the word of the Lord.

You may be seated. So this passage sort of has bookends. And those bookends are obedience. Therefore, you shall keep every commandment. At the end of it, it says, that you shall, you shall listen obediently to my commands.

But our text tells us, in some measure, why obedience is important. He starts off and he says, you shall therefore keep every commandment which I am commanding you today so that you may be strong. Prolong your days. And verse eight, the Lord connects careful obedience to him in every area with strength and length of days, longevity. Careful obedience.

Is there any other kind of obedience? No. But there is. There are actually lots of lesser, perhaps counterfeit types of obedience. So what might we consider as other types of obedience being set in juxtaposition to keeping every commandment, to listening listening obediently to all of his commandment?

Well, we might set on the other side general obedience. I generally do what I'm told. And I want you to think as we as we work through this. I want you to be thinking about your own life. I want you to be thinking about your own children.

And I want you to think about where you see this crop up. And I also want you to think whether or not it's acceptable to you. Okay? So the first comparison I've set up is careful obedience with general obedience. Careful obedience is is doing all of the things just as they were told every time without fail.

On the other side of that, we say general obedience. Well, you might quantify this as saying, well, I didn't get an a, but I got a c and that's passing. I did enough. Like, I was in the right direction, and there were people who did better, and there were people who did worse, and I'm just kind of in the middle. Does God tie his blessing to general obedience?

Like, you had it your heart was in the right place and you tried good enough. No. Careful obedience. What else? Inconsistent obedience.

This is different than general obedience. General obedience is like I'm generally doing the right thing. Inconsistent obedience is sometimes I do exactly what's required of me, and sometimes I don't. This would be the kid turning in the homework or doing his his work for class. And it's not like, oh, I just kind of get c's on everything.

It's like I either get a's or f's. If I do the work, I really do it well. But I don't do all the work. I miss half of my assignments. And so I get zeros and I get hundreds.

That's inconsistent obedience. Right? You may end up with a c in the end. It's very different path though. What else might what other kind of obedience might we find?

Well, how about hypocritical obedience? I do exactly what I'm told when someone's watching or might find out I didn't. You ever done that? You ever been aware of who saw, who's watching, or who will find out? It's pretty common to us, isn't it?

How about this? How about this fourth type? Manipulative obedience. I will do what I'm told to do so I can make you do what I want. In fact, I only do what I'm supposed to do when I have a promise of getting what I want.

You realize that with general obedience, inconsistent obedience, hypocritical, or manipulative obedience, and I'm not saying those are the only four. I think those are just the biggest categories that that come to mind when I think about my own self and my own justifications. It's like, what category does this disobedience fall into? It falls into one of these four categories, generally. You may have more nuance to it.

You may have a no one I'm not thinking of. But these four types of ink of of of disobedience, if we're naming it properly, all come from somewhere and they come from our hearts. Okay? Why would one be inclined toward general obedience or manipulative obedience as opposed to careful obedience? Is the problem that they're just not capable, don't have time, or didn't know?

Likely, that's not the case. More likely, what's the case is that their heart is not inclined. Right? We see this in in our house. Like, there there are things, and I'm sure this is true in your house.

There are some things kids have a really, really, really hard time hearing and remembering. It's like they have to be told every day, and then multiple times while they're doing it. And then you have to check up, and then you have to come back, and they have to redo it. And it's this process of of of of forgetting, didn't realize it, made a mistake. There's all these lines of this line of of excuse.

But if you were to tell them, hey, on Thursday at 03:00, we're gonna make ice cream sundaes. They wouldn't even have to be in the room where you said it. They could be upstairs doing something else. They would hear. They would attend, and they would expect.

You didn't have to say it to them directly. Right? And that's that's we laugh at it because that's our kids, but that's really us. That's how we obey. There's things that that that we care to hear and and remember and do, and so we do those things.

And there's things that we're we're we feel some level of pressure to of of of conformity that that that pushes us in a in a good direction, But our hearts are resistant to it. And I think that's the problem here with the Israelites. I think that's why he's he's begun and ended this section with careful obedience. You shall keep every commandment. You shall listen obediently to my commandment.

I I didn't do that. No. He says you're going to you need to obey in this way so that you may be strong and so that you may possess the land. You may live long in the land. And so careful obedience is tied to strength and longevity.

And that obedience is to to be to every commandment, not just the ones that we think are expedient or important. Good to it's better to get married to marry than to burn. So I'm gonna get married. I wanna get married young. You know, you can screw up getting married young.

We're supposed to have kids. We're gonna have kids. Okay. You know, you can make a mess of having kids. You have not you you've started in a good direction.

You've done the first step in a good thing. But boy oh boy, is there a lot of maintenance and respond and growth and and and and perseverance that's required. And if you're not signed up for that stuff, you're going to lack strength. You will need well, a better way to say it is you will need strength and perseverance to do that work over the over the course of your life. They're going into a land.

The Israelites are going into a land that's occupied by the Canaanites, the various tribes of Canaan. They're to go in there to eradicate those people. They're to possess that land. They're to cultivate that land. You think they're gonna need strength?

It's a land flowing with milk and honey. It's not a desert wasteland. Would you wanna live long there? There's never been a dispute that the land of Canaan was a desirable land to live in as the ancient people would have understood it. They would have thought this is the place to be.

It's a land flowing with milk and honey. It's often described that. What's have you ever thought about what's it mean that it flows with milk and honey? Lots of cows and lots of bees. Is required for for lots of cows?

Lots of grass. Right? Cows don't live in the desert. There has to be there has to be a lot of food. Do you know how much do you know how much cows eat in a day?

I don't actually remember. I did know at one point. Tons and tons. What what, Mike Bowles who, is like he's like my dad. He keeps cows.

And it's about a bale a week per cow. And a bale is about 500 pounds of hay. It's about a bale per cow per week. 500 pounds a week of grass plus water. Right?

For there to be lots of beef, there can't just be grass. There has to be tons and tons and tons of water. How many gallons and gallons and gallons of water does a cow drink in a day? Boy. You couldn't grow them in a land that was desolate, that was dry, that was arid.

Right? You need you need some some a very fertile soil. What about bees? What do you need for to have bees? You need those things, flowers, right?

It's a this little phrase, a land flowing with milk and honey is is is this this little picture of like this beautiful fertile described that in this past, would you want to live long in that land? I would. So careful obedience is the path to strengthen longevity. Obedience is God's mechanism to furnish us with what we need. Calvin summarized this point like this.

It is succinct and I found it helpful. He says, do the things that I have commanded you, that you may enjoy the benefits that I have promised you. Obedience leads to enjoyment and strength. Disobedience leads to misery and death. Right?

This is this is scriptures teaching. Sin leads to death. Obedience leads to life and blessing. That's all it's being said here. It's not that our obedience is causal, but it causes the Lord's blessing.

So it allows us to enjoy his blessings that he's covenanted and promised to us. This lush fertile land that they're going into, they didn't get it because they'd earned it. They didn't get it because they were better than everyone else. In fact, he tells us in this passage how was the reason they got it? Because it was promised to your fathers and to their descendants after them.

That land was yours before you existed is the argument that that that Moses repeatedly makes to discipline their own thought of, like, isn't this great? Aren't I great? No. All that you have, received have come to you from the hand of God. So obey God that you might enjoy it.

You didn't earn it. And isn't that true of the good things that you have in your life? If you're being honest and if we're humble, can't we look at the blessings of our life and say, you know what? It was can't we look at the blessings of our life and say, you know, it was a good thing I wanted, but if I could tell you the things I did to pursue the good things I wanted, they never would have produced. I was full of sin.

I was trying to get this into some other way. And yet God gave me the desires of my heart in spite of my sins. He's giving them this land in spite of their disobedience. A blessing to his people. But it is a strange construct.

One that takes faith to understand. Because obedience doesn't earn God's blessing. It prepares, as Calvin said, prepares us to receive the things promised to us. Many times you're going to find in your life that particular obedience in a particular area doesn't make sense. Doesn't make sense.

If I say that, someone's gonna file a complaint with HR. If I do that, this bad thing will happen. It's inevitable. Right? There's no other way around it.

But in those moments, when we demonstrate our faith through obedience, God blesses us in other ways. He teaches us through obedience to trust him. Careful obedience. Not half hearted in the direction of obedience. Obedience.

Abraham and Isaac is probably the most, graphic or disturbing example of this. Abraham? It gets up, rises up early in the morning, grabs the kindling, takes the knife, grabs his son and off we go. I mean, seriously. You've promised that my descendants are going to be as the sand of the sea or the stars of the sky.

And this is what you tell me to do. I don't know that Abraham had any of those qualms that I'm describing right now. I do. We do. But I don't know that he did.

That's why he's the father of faith. And through Jesus Christ and faith in him, we have access to that same faith to obey when it doesn't seem to make sense. We, as God's creation, owe him obedience. But he motivates us by tying his blessings to our obedience. He says there's good things to come that you'll receive as you obey.

They will become sweeter to you. You don't earn them. But you do receive them according to my mercy, says the Lord, who loves to give good who loves to give good gifts to his undeserving children. So then he compares Egypt to the land of Kenya. He says, for the land into which you are entering to possess, it it is not like the land of Egypt from which you came where you used to sow your seed and water it with your foot like a vegetable garden.

It's an interesting comparison. Have you ever thought about how hard it would be to cultivate the whole Earth? I think about it when I like, if you go on Google Maps and you, like, zoom way out to where you can look at, like, Northern Africa. What is what is Northern Africa? It's just a big desert.

It's just a big desert. How do you cultivate that? Guess what? We, as a race, have not figured out how to cultivate the desert yet. Actually, it's a huge landmass that we have not figured out how to cultivate.

How about the jungles of Central America? How do you cultivate that? Well, it's already cultivated. It's I mean, it's just teeming with life of every kind. And that's true, but it's not cultivated.

How do you cultivate it? We haven't figured it out yet, have we? We know that cutting down the rainforest is bad. And that's as far as we've gotten. The cultivation is another thing.

Cultivation is bringing order and life and blessing to a place that doesn't naturally produce it for man. We can appreciate the beauty of an untouched serene landscape, but it's not cultivated yet. And so we see through throughout history or throughout throughout the world. You can see it both historically and as you look around the world today. The ingenuity, the cunningness of man to cultivate land that's not naturally habitable.

Okay? Do you know what Northern Indiana used to just be a big swamp? It's pretty much what Northern Indiana used to be, and probably think also Ohio. It used to be a big swamp. It's a very hard place to live.

It's couldn't grow stuff. It was mucky. It was just nasty. Is it that way today? Why not?

They cultivated it. Does anyone know how? They drained the swamp. Thank you, April. Yes.

Men fulfilling the creation mandate drained that area and made it habitable. Have you ever seen the terraces that they have in Asia? I don't know where exactly. The rice, it's they've taken a mountainside, which which doesn't hold water very well as a general rule. So you can't grow things.

It means you can't live up there. They took and they terraced the thing. So that the water has to like flow through all of these these these fields where they now can plant things and because they can grow things, they can live there. It's really creative. You ever go driving down the highway and you see those giant sprinklers?

Big circles like, you know, they move around these fields and they shoot water out there. That's another example of cultivation. Why do they do that? Because there may not be enough water. You realize not every field has one of those.

Not every region of of the country has to have those things. But some of them, it's absolutely essential that they have these giant sprinkler systems. They're cultivating the land. It's a lot of work and really, really cool. I actually looked into how those things actually move because you always see the track in the field where the thing moves, But it's unbelievable to think that something that's a 100 feet or 200 feet long moves itself with no motor.

You should go look up and see how they move. It's really interesting how they use water pressure to to move them. How about digging trenches? So that the waters will would the like from the from the from the the main river or the main body will will feed back in so that you can then can water the land. Men have been doing this work forever.

They've been doing it since this is that's what this passage is teaching us is that is he says in when you were in Egypt, you planted seeds and you had to grow them. A lot of these say it. You had to water it with your foot, like a vegetable garden. You had to water it with your foot. That word, like that phrase water it with your foot could also be translated treadmill.

By by the excessive walking with water country, is a very arid dry place except for the Nile Delta. Area green? That area is green because once a year, the Nile floods. And it pushes water out. It's very flat.

It pushes water out and it soaks in and it recedes. Able to and they're able to they have to cart water. It's not enough. It's not enough for the whole season. So they're having to do all this work, all this labor.

And that is not to be, denigrated. That's incredible. The right, It was like being on a treadmill. You just spent your life carrying. It For the land which you are entering to possess it, it is not like the land of Egypt from which you came where you used to sow your seed and water it with the foot like a vegetable garden.

Egypt was only habitable because the Nile flooded once a year. Beyond that, the inhabitants had to work very hard to cultivate that land and survive. And they've only gone so far away from the Nile to this day. The promised land, on the other hand, we're told is watered with the rain of heaven, with the early and the late rains. Interesting side note.

When do the early rains come? When do the late rains come? What time of year? I was wrong. Early rains or the fall rains.

Spring rains are the late rains. I didn't know that. But if you think about site the the actual growing season, the early rains are the ones that come after you harvest and the late rains are the ones that come after you plant. But this land is a land that is not flat. It's not a land that's barren.

If you think about it, flat places don't tend to have very many rivers. Where do you find there to be more rivers and more water? You find it to be where the water is all forced into one place. And so we're told that the promised land is a place with hills and valleys. It's a fertile land.

There's more water running through whereas Egypt has one big river and and Israel has has the Jordan. It has all this this this this this water. It's a fertile land. Whereas Egypt got water once a year and then the people worked for it the rest of the time. In the promised land, God sends the rain from heaven to water the plants.

That and say, well, that's an that sounds like a that does sound like heaven. Sounds awful nice. Instead of having to carry buckets of water our whole lives, God will water our plants and our crops and sustain our life without any effort on our behalf. But there is something that we learn about this that's helpful for us to know. I'll I'll try to point it out to you by asking a question.

In where did the people of God rely on God more? In Egypt? When they had to carry buckets of water every single day for the entire growing season? Or in the promised land where the rain came from heaven? Follow-up.

So some of you said the promised land. You're right. So which one would you be more comfortable with? Wouldn't would you be more comfortable with going, I know where the water is and I just have to carry it, and that's just how we do things around here. Or would you be more comfortable with daily having to ask God to send rain so that your crops don't fail?

Because you've planted far more. It's a lusher ground land. Right? Flowing with milk and honey. You realize that when he says that you can grow your grain and then he adds to that oil and wine, the oil and wine were they were not essentials for life.

Those were blessings. Those were kindnesses to be able to grow the olives, to be able to grow the grapes. You can't grow those kinds of things where where there's no water. So, remember in the Lord's Prayer what he teaches us to pray for? Our daily bread.

Do you remember the manna that the Israelites were given in abundance? The only rule was they couldn't take more than they needed for a day, except on the day before the Sabbath. And do you realize that how hard it was their daily bread. They would have preferred to rely on themselves. And in that sense, we can say they would have preferred to live in Egypt.

Though we just got done saying that the promised land is a superior land to live in. And yet the people of God would rather live in the house of slavery, where they carry their waters. Cities and vineyards that they didn't build their plant. Eventually, the temple, the natural and cultivated beauty of the land, the bounteous provision, the Lord's kindness to that land. Our text says, the Lord cares about that land.

The Lord looks on that land from the beginning even to the end of the year. He loves this land. He cares for this land. How can they look at all of those things and still prefer Egypt? Oh, man.

What did you say? We don't have faith. And we still set it aside and we go back to Egypt. Man. There are some differences between the lives that they led and the lives that we live.

Their lives in this land, all of the appeal and all the blessing of this prospect of going in there was security and and and and stability. You will have a once you get rid of the Canaanites, which didn't do exactly, but if you'll get rid of the people, you will have a secure life and a stable life. Prospect of living in the promised land for those people. They may want to go live in Egypt, just stability and security. And if you've got that, you've got all your my contention is that that's not actually how God's called us to live now.

We don't live in Egypt or in Canaan, where in both instances, survival and security were the main point. We live in a time when our job is not simply to survive and live where God plants us, but rather to go out It requires faith of a different sort to do this type of work. It's not huddle together and just do the And And I don't begrudge you wanting those things. Those aren't bad things to want. But you have to be very careful to not confuse or to conflate this land with the blessings of God that are reserved for his people alone.

This land is not the promised land, and the inhabitants of this country are not collectively God's chosen people. There's a big change, big difference that we have to observe and live by. The closest we get to living in this sort of land that we see Israel being prepared for here on Earth is right here. It's right here. It's these people.

It's you and me and us and whoever else we bring. Because this isn't it, right? We're not supposed to just hunker into our little our little room and our little place and our little cave and wait. We're supposed to go out. Bring other people in.

Bring other people in. It's a complete reversal. The Great Commission was a complete reversal of the way Israel had lived up to that point, the way God's people had lived up to that point. Up to that point, everyone came to Jerusalem, came up to the people of God, and they came to worship there. And as they came, they had to conform themselves to the customs and the rights to be a part.

And then, and he taught, and he healed, and he died, and he was raised. And he was the enemy of the world. And what happened was God took that, that, that big bubble full of his people, and he smashed it and spread it over the world. And he did it in those days by Persuition. Man, we like to come back in the gates.

And we don't care if anyone else comes in the gates with us. And, shame. And that's a shame. And that's a shame. And when we see people sin, when we see people that are living contrary to the gospel and don't let love and trust Jesus Christ, we tend to look down.

And we might contend and say, no, no, no, that's not really true. That's not what I do. I really do love them. And I say, praise God then. What I want to hear then from you and from me is what form that love took in your interaction with that person.

So I wanna hear. And that's all you should want to hear from me. What did you do with that love? How'd you express that love? We love because he first loved us.

What did you say and do? Because it's it's it's useless to just feel it. Where, where it's, it's, it's sufficient for us to just gather and, you know, hunker down together. We live in a time. Where we're supposed to go out and we're supposed to bring other people in to this land.

We're supposed to share with them that that land that existed in the old testament, it's not for it's not God's people's land anymore. We're not we're not fussing and fighting over it like that. That doesn't mean we don't have a promised land. That promised land that the glory and the beauty of of the of the land of the worship, of the communion, of the fellowship. We have a land that we look forward to in glory, where what was what was manifest at this time in Israel will be far more glorious and eternal.

And so in that sense, you do have a land to invite people to. You do have a land to pursue, a land to look forward to, your kids, grandkids, your nieces, your nephews, your neighbors, your coworkers, who you can bring with you. You remember how crazy it was when Ruben wanted to camp outside the land? You remember when a few chapters ago when they were like, they were coming up to the side and then it was like time to cross over the Jordan? They're like, hey, that land we just conquered is a really good land.

Can we can we just hang out over here? And they were given permission to hang out over there provided that all of their men came and fought to settle the the promised land just as their brothers had fought to settle that land. They were allowed to stay over there. But it was a big deal that they didn't want to go into the promised land. And there was it's it's a there's like two story lines about how to how to interpret what Reuben wanted.

On the one hand, it's like makes sense and it's natural and makes all the it's practically expedient. And so he got it. But on the other hand, he wanted to be separate from his other they want to be separate from their brothers. It wasn't a priority to them the way that it should have been. And that's not commended.

Their desire to settle apart from their their brothers, which is to say that the land they were going into was important and they didn't get to just tack on and live on the fringe and act like it was all the same. It wasn't. And so our goal ought to be to see ourselves and our loved ones and our neighbors Jason. And not a not a far off, but in the When we read this passage, we should look and see. Obedience is important to God.

Our obedience is important to God. And he promises to bless. He has promised blessings on those who obey. And those who obey enjoy his blessings far more with a clear conscience And glad heart. We should also see that this land that they were anticipating and going into was for a time, for a season for them.

But that the principles that were established still apply to us today. We still have a land. Not that land, but a new land. And that we ought to be bringing people with us in to so to sum up, we'll come to the last section. He says, it shall come about if you listen obediently to my commandments, which I'm commanding you today, To love the Lord your God, to serve him with all your heart and all your soul, that he will give you the rain for your land and its season, the early and the late rain, that you may gather in your grain and your new wine and your oil.

He will give grass in your fields for your cattle and you'll eat and be satisfied. Beginning, which is that obedience, though the land is different, though the blessings will come to us differently, the blessings come to us now in a suitcase to take with us out into the world. They still come to us. And we anticipate a future land where we'll get to unpack. And there'll be a room and a house, a mansion furnished for us and for all of God's people.

But the path there to receiving those blessings, to preparing for them and enjoying them is still the same as it was for them. And that is careful obedience to the Lord. So the promised land is not a dead concept. We still, as Christians, in 2026, look forward to its fulfillment. We just understand that fulfillment to be in glory.

And that we, as long as we live in this world, we live out of suitcases. We take our the blessings of God along with us, and we anticipate the full revelation in his time. And until that time, our task is the same now as it was for the ancient people of Israel, to love the Lord our God, and to serve him with all of our heart, and with all of our soul. Every area. And so I'll leave you with this.

Whenever someone corrects you or points out an area of weakness or sin in your life, The Christian response is to be thankful for that. And I'm saying that to you because it's so foreign to us. It's not it's not my natural response. My natural response is to argue, fight, defend, excuse all the stuff you do. But we should interpret those things as preparation for our entrance into glory into that land that's eternal.

That's what we should be looking forward to. And I mean to tell you, it's not you're not going you're not gonna just like transition seamlessly from this world into the world to come. This world is perishing. It's perishing. And so our expectations for what we can get out of this world or what we can expect it to provide for us ought to take that into account.

It doesn't mean it's a terrible world and it doesn't mean that God hasn't made it and it doesn't mean that we don't have obligations to steward it, to shepherd it, or to care for the people that inhabit it. We do. All of those things. And yet it's still not our home. So, babe, God, careful.

You, when they say no to you, when that comes to you from your boss, so that comes to you from the HOA. Receive it with gladness. If God's people could accept beatings as as as a badge of honor, we should be able to cut our grass with a happy heart. We should be able to do what's asked of us, stay late, come early, accommodate ourselves to the to the hurdles that come our way with grace. Because this land is not our home, and we want other people to come with us to our eternal home.

Let's pray.