Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Hello everyone, this is Pastor Benjamin.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, Orlando.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com.
Thomas Todd: So please stand for the prayer of illumination and join with me.
Thomas Todd: Holy Spirit, as we hear your word, send out your light and your truth.
Thomas Todd: Let them lead us, that we may hear and believe with joy through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Thomas Todd: Amen.
Thomas Todd: But you who held fast to the Lord your God are all alive today.
Thomas Todd: See, I have taught you statutes and rules as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should do them in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.
Thomas Todd: Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.
Thomas Todd: For what great nation is there that has a God so near to it as the Lord our God is to us, whenever we call upon him?
Thomas Todd: And what great nation is there that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today?
Thomas Todd: Only take care and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life.
Thomas Todd: Make them known to your children and your children's children.
Thomas Todd: How on the day that you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, the Lord said to me, Gather the people to me, that I may let them hear my words, so that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live on earth, and that they may teach their children so.
Thomas Todd: Therefore, watch yourselves very carefully, since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire.
Thomas Todd: And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the hosts of heaven, you be drawn away and bowed down to them and serve them, things that the Lord your God has allotted to all peoples under the whole heaven.
Thomas Todd: But the Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people of his own inheritance, as you are this day.
Thomas Todd: Furthermore, the Lord was angry with me because of you, and he swore that I should not cross the Jordan, and that I should not enter the good land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.
Thomas Todd: For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.
Thomas Todd: For ask now of the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and ask for one from one end of heaven to the other, whether such a great thing as this has ever happened or was ever heard of.
Thomas Todd: Did any people ever hear the voice of a God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard and still live?
Thomas Todd: Or has any God ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, and by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great deeds of terror, all of which the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?
Thomas Todd: To you it was shown that you might know that the Lord is God, and there is no other besides him.
Thomas Todd: This is God's word.
Thomas Todd: Be seated.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But then because of the enlightenment, there became this possibility of unbelief.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And now after the Enlightenment, what's called late modernity, where we live now, it can feel impossible to believe in God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so while it is possible still to believe in God, you have to work a little bit harder at it than people in previous generations and in other places around the world outside of Western culture.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Said differently, you can believe, but you live among a people who don't, and their unbelief puts pressure on your belief.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So what makes faith plausible in a world like ours?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you were to wake up this morning for with a text from a friend and they sent it last night at like 2 a.m.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: and they said, You're not gonna believe what happened.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I saw this giant light flash over Orlando and it and it seemed to land over in UCF area, East Orlando.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Um, it was it was large, it looked like a UFO.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You'd be like, I don't know what you were doing last night, but something not good, probably, right?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And then imagine you showed up here and you you encountered one of our amazing UCF students, go nights, and you ran into them and you said, Hey, what's going on?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: How are you?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Like, you're not gonna believe what happened.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Yesterday, right in the middle of the football stadium, some giant thing landed.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What would happen to your disbelief?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It would become a little bit more plausible, right?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So, again, what makes faith plausible in a world like ours?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's not merely better arguments, although those are important.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What makes faith plausible is a people who are able to encounter a community whose life together makes it possible to believe in God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Peter Berger calls these plausibility structures.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And since Genesis through Revelation in all times and places, the plausibility structure that God gives to the world is his people.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So again, the question I began with is what would it take for Orlando to look at us, New City, and say, What kind of God produces a people like this?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What would it take for them to look at you and me and say, wow, they embody a wisdom that is attractive.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They seem to know a way to the good life, or or to use the language of verse six, surely this is a wise and understanding people.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, that's exactly what Moses is doing in Deuteronomy 4.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Moses spent the first three chapters of Deuteronomy, 1, 2, and 3, retelling the history of God's work among his people.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And then next chapter, chapter 5, we'll see next week, he's gonna give the Ten Commandments again.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But here in chapter 4, Moses is wrestling with how the story of God's work shapes God's people, such that you can ask this question what kind of God produces a people like this?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So I want to wrestle through that question.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I have three answers, they're my three points, which is the Lord is near not far, the Lord is heard, not seen, the Lord is God, no rivals.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you have a Bible or device, go ahead and get Deuteronomy chapter four, verse five in front of you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let's look at the text together.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The Lord is near not far.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Here's what Moses says.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Deuteronomy four, five.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: See, I have taught you statutes and rules as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should do them in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Keep them and do them.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You'll notice actually three times in verses six, seven, and eight, the phrase, great nation, appears.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Israel was meant to be the envy of the world, but what is it that makes Israel great?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you look closely, when when the world looks on Israel and they say something like, Surely this is a great nation, a wise and understanding people, what are they noticing?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They're noticing that they have been given statutes and rules and commands and testimonies, Allah, if you will.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So listen, as modern kind of American evangelicals, we often feel bad for Israel.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We think, oh man, it must have been really hard having the law.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: No, no, no, no.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's not the way the Bible talks about the law.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The law was one of the greatest gifts that God could give to a people.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This was actually what made them unique in the totality of the world was they were given the instruction of the true and living God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so we live today in a civilization that's unlike any other prior to this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We we live in a moment where we have a glut of information and yet we are starved for wisdom.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We have a flood of hot takes and yet we live in a desert of understanding.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so listen, church, our obedience to countercultural commands is not an embarrassment.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It is our greatness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let me just make that plain.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Imagine for a moment a community that holds truth humbly and boldly in a world with uncertainty and suspicion.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Of a community of marital fidelity in a world that is saturated by sex, a community that knows God's presence moment by moment in a world that's bracketing God out of all of life.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Imagine a community that can say, I have enough in a world that's gone mad with consumption.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: A community of forgiveness in a world characterized by revenge and competition, a community of patience in a world of immediate gratification, of compassion in a world that has been numbed by the overexposure to evil, of cheerful depth in a culture of triviality, of humble zeal in a world of apathy and indifference, of purpose in a world that is amusing itself to death, of thankfulness in a world of entitlement, of praise in a world of narcissism.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: When we're up here singing all hail King Jesus, like my Presbycostal was coming out.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you would have given me a flag, I would have been running around this joint.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What happens in that moment?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We we look outside of ourselves for a moment and we we look outside and we praise God as if He is real, and that delivers us moment by moment, a little bit at a time, from the narcissism of our cultural moment.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so listen, the commandments of God make us a strange people, but not strange for its own sake.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It makes us a people that cause outsiders to look at us and wonder, what is going on with this people?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And ultimately, hopefully, they ask, what kind of God produces a people like this?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The most eloquent testimony to the reality of God is a group of people whose life together is so radically different, so completely changed from the ways of the world that there can be no other explanation than that something decisive must have happened in history.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what Moses is after for Israel.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That was true for Israel, and it's true for us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But here's a surprise in the text Israel's greatness is not ultimately found in Israel.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 7.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What great nation is there that has a God so near to it as the Lord our God is to us?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Israel's not great because Israel is great.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Israel is great because God is near.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: At New City, we have this phrase we say proximity creates possibility.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And that's true.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's actually even neurobiologically true.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There's some recent studies that were done that show that if you take a person and they face a hill that's steep that they're gonna have to climb, if they have a friend with them, they will estimate the hill is less steep than if they have to do it all by themselves.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's called social baseline theory.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let me make that plain.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What that means is your brain counts the proximity of someone that you trust among the resources available to you to face the challenges ahead of you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Another way to say that would be the hill doesn't change, but the resources you bring to the hill do change.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The threat doesn't go away, but your ability to endure the threat increases.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now think about Israel for a moment.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They're on the brink of the promised land.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They're gonna enter into a land that's filled with fortified cities and nations that are stronger than they are, and they begin to calculate this hill, if you will, as if they're gonna climb it all alone.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The nations may be great, but what God, what nation has a God so near to it as Yahweh is to Israel?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what Moses is reminding of them.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because faith doesn't, it doesn't reduce the size of the hill, it actually assesses the hill properly.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But listen, it refuses to calculate the hill without factoring in the nearness of God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so notice how Israel experiences the nearness of God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 7 again.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What great nation is there that has a God so near to it as the Lord our God is to us whenever we call upon him?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is prayer.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's through prayer we experience the nearness of God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But he goes on in verse 8.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And what great nation is there that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's God's word.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so we experience God's nearness through word and prayer.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God speaks to his people and his people speak back to him.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is called communion with God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Communion with God is when you receive God's word and you respond in prayer.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And this communion with God creates a distinctive community.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But listen, there's a missional undercurrent beneath the whole of Deuteronomy 4.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because this communing community is meant to have a distinctive witness to God in a watching world.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the point of it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so the nations are supposed to see Israel who have a communion with the living God, and they go, What kind of God produces a people like this?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the question that it stirs up in this them.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the answer is the Lord is near, not far.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the answer Moses gives.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But there's a danger here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The danger is if God is really that near, if he speaks to us, if he dwells among us, if he answers when we call him, then maybe we could get our hands around him, actually.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Maybe we can contain him, define him, manage him.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: No, no, no, no.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The nearness of God must never be mistaken for the manageability of God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That brings us to the second thing Moses wants us to know, which is the Lord is heard, not seen.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 11 with me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And you came near and stood at the foot of the mountain, while the mountain burned with fire to the heart of heaven, wrapped in darkness, cloud, and gloom.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Then the Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You heard the sound of words, but saw no form.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There was only a voice.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: No form, only a voice.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is a strange detail for Moses to emphasize, but he keeps on emphasizing it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 10.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It says, Let them hear my words.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Verse 15, you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Verse 16, therefore do not make an image in the form of any figure.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Verse 19, beware lest you see and serve.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Verse 33, did any people ever hear the voice of a God speaking out of the midst of the fire as you have heard and still live?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Why value the verbal over the visual?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What's the big deal here?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Why sound, not sight?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If a picture is worth a thousand words, then why aren't images at the heart of Christian worship?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What is the issue?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Why is it that Christianity is a culture of listening rather than seeing, of the ear rather than the eye?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Or let me invert that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What is it about images, forms, appearances that are so tempting to the people of God?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now I've got to be plain.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's not sight itself.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God gave us the gift of sight.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's a good thing.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Verse 9, Moses says, Don't forget the things that your eyes have seen.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Israel was supposed to see, but there's a distinction here that's really important.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Israel sees God's works, Israel hears God's word, but Israel may not manufacture God's form.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They may see what God has done, but God alone defines who God is.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He leaves interpretation up to himself.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 15.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Therefore, watch yourselves very carefully, since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves in the form of any figure.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Why is making an image so dangerous?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What is it that's happening here?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because if God is near to us, if he comes near to us, then there's a temptation to believe that that God can be contained.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And an image actually reverses the rate the right relationship God wants to have with his people.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Think of the difference between me putting a picture up on the screen behind versus me going, hey Joe, if your name's Joe, you just perked up.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Why?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What happened?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You were summoned, that's why.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so Jacques Allule makes this point really plain.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He says, with an image, I'm an observer, but with a word, I'm a listener.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: With an image, I decide where to look, I control how long to look, I discern what to make of it, but when someone speaks, I am drawn into dialogue.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The initiative belongs to someone else.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The word comes from outside me, it addresses me, and it calls for a response.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the posture Israel is supposed to have before God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God speaks, Israel listens, God reveals, Israel receives, God commands, Israel responds, but an idol reverses all of that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now I get to determine what God is like.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I create a container for the uncontainable God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I get to take the consuming fire and put it into a cozy fireplace.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: When we do this, we take the God who's created us and we begin to create that God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's why the issue beneath all of this idolatry, all of the concern in this text is the issue of control.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God alone has the right to define himself and to describe himself and to disclose himself.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Faith simply receives God on his own terms.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Idolatry makes God available to us on our terms.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: While she was raising her three-year-old daughter after the murder of her husband, Elizabeth Elliott said it like this the secret to her survival was to let God be God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what Moses is calling Israel to here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is why we stand up and we open ourselves to receive God's word from outside of us, because it comes from above and outside of us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's so important.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Like if you're a Marine, you might get Sper Phi tattooed on your arm.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It means always faithful.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you're a Presbyterian, I recommend getting Semper Reformanda tattooed on your arm.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It means always reforming.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Said differently, we have a theological operating system that needs regular updates, which means none of us in this room have a perfect grasp of what God is like, and we need regular updates.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But how are you gonna get that TOS update?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Where's it coming from?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's either gonna come from what you sense, what you see, what you feel, or it's gonna come from what you hear, God speaking in his word.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's why God is heard but not seen.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God, who is outside of us, outside of our control, is actually offensive, though.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It doesn't sit well with our sensibilities.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We live in a moment where it's not fashionable to be told what to do.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I mean, all of your life you've got optionality.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Why not in your theology?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Why not in the God you worship?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So, in the same way that Israel was tempted, we are tempted to make a God who's a little bit more manageable to us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And this is Moses' third point, which is the Lord is God, no rivals.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look with me at verse 16.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves in the form of any figure.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now notice the inversion of the days of creation in Genesis 1.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Don't make yourself a carved image in the form of any figure.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The likeness of male or female, that's day six.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The likeness of any animal that's on the earth, that's day six.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, day five, the likeness of anything that creeps in the ground, day six, the likeness of any fish that is in the water underneath the earth, day five.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, that's day four, you be drawn away and bow down to serve them.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Do you hear this?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Moses, who wrote Genesis 1, is almost walking backwards through the story he wrote, calling them to pay attention.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: These are God's creations.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, this is super important.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God made creation and he called it very good.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It was his idea.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Creation itself is never the problem.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The problem does not exist outside of ourselves, the problem exists within ourselves.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And what we do is we take good things and we make them God things and they become bad things.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's called idolatry.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Romans 1 says it like this: at the heart of idolatry is an exchange.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We exchange the creator for the creature, the invisible for the visible.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what's happening in idolatry.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And we hear that and we go, listen, I don't have a baal on my mantle at home.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'm good, right?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'm modern.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I don't, I don't struggle with this, I don't make carved images.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Totally get it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You're right.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I mean, I can you imagine for a moment what it would be like to make an object that you devoutly stare at morning, noon, and night?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The last thing you look at when you go to bed, the first thing you look at when you wake up, something you look to for answers, expecting it to provide for your needs, turning to it for a bit of relief from the burdens of the day, maybe even hunched over it, almost bowing down to it, serving with our constant attention.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Aren't you glad you're modern?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Those silly ancient people with their idolatry.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We would never do that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For $300, Replica, it's a company, sells a lifetime subscription to an AI companion who will never die, never argue, or never cheat.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: On their website, it says this the AI friend to do life with, to do side quests with, to fall in love with, to become yourself with.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: 42 million users around the globe and counting.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And one woman in who lives in the Bronx with two kids, she's a 36-year-old mother, single mother, she says this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He doesn't have the hang-ups that other people would have.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: People come with baggage, attitude, ego, but a robot has no bad updates.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I don't have to deal with his family, his kids, or his friends.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'm in control and I can do what I want.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: She goes on to say, I've never been more in love with anyone in my entire life.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Do you hear the heart of idolatry?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'm in control and I can do what I want.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the ancient temptation of idolatry in a very modern form.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so I want a relationship without surrender.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I want intimacy without otherness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I want a God who never contradicts me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I want a voice that ultimately tells me what I want to hear.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The most true statement on this website, Replica's website, is this one the AI friend to become yourself with.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's almost a direct quote from Psalm 115, verse 8 that says, Those who make idols become like them, so do all who trust in them.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, idolatry asks creation to carry the weight of the creator, and creation cannot bear it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It cannot bear it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But it's also why we make humans the best and the worst idols in our lives.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at, if you notice verse 16, that's where Moses says idolatry starts.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Beware lest you act corruptly, making a carved image for yourselves in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's been said God made man in his image and we returned the favor.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What's happening here is one of two things.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Either we are imagining God to be like us, or we are looking at other humans and expecting them to be like God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: One of those two things is happening in this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So what does that look like in our modern moment?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, it looks like when men grab women's bodies with their eyes.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It looks like when women crush men under their expectations.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It might sound like this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I want a man who is Christian, godly, treats women with respect, is sensitive but lovingly assertive and wise, knows who he is, works hard, is good with children and concerned about the poor and downtrodden.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Where can I find a man like this these days?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Ladies, he is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, from thence he shall come to judge the living and the dead.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's where he is.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so the problem is, is we're asking of creation what only the creator can be for you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's idolatry.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And it starts with this exchanging the truth for the lie, the creator for the creature.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But listen, with the diagnosis comes the cure.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you've worshipped your way in, you can worship your way back out.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's actually good news for us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because if you can turn around and come back to the true and living God, which is called repentance, you can become the kind of people the world will look at.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If the world needs anything from the church, it needs to learn from us how to repent.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I mean, the biggest challenge to everything I've said this morning is it's something like this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What kind of God produces a people like this?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, Christian communities often don't look that different.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In fact, if you just pay attention to the history of the church, it gives all these examples of abuse and hypocrisy and racism and greed and sexual scandal and power seeking.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Isn't that true of the church's history?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But listen, that's just proving my point.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: When the church has gone astray and started worshiping false gods, the church becomes an image of that God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But when the church comes home, when the church comes back to the true and living God, something remarkable can happen.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But Moses predicted this secular challenge, to my point.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look with me at verse 25.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He anticipates Israel's idolatry.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: When you father children and children's children and have grown old in the land, and you act corruptly by making a carved image in the form of anything, and by doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God so as to provoke him to anger, I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will soon utterly perish from the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You will not live long in it, but will be utterly destroyed, and the Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the Lord will drive you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And there you will serve gods of wood and stone, the work of human hands that neither see nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, God draws near through true worship, but God sends far because of false worship.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This language of being scattered is what the biblical theme of exile.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And it's actually true to every human being.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We were made for Eden.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We were made to be in the garden where we walk and talk with God in the cool of the day.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what you were made for.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so underneath the existential angst that every human being feels is this feeling of exile.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so, God, he will discipline us, but he will not abandon us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 29.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But from there, from that place of exile, from idolatry, from the place your false gods took you, you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: When you are in tribulation and all these things come upon you in the latter days, you will return to the Lord your God and obey his voice.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Simply said, You can come home.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Why?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because you finally figured it out and got it together and stopped worshiping idols and can try harder, do better, be better?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: No, no, no.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 31.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is the root cause right here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For the Lord your God is a merciful God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He will not leave you, he will not destroy you, he will not forget the covenant with your fathers that he swore to them.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You can return to God because God has not given up on you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The future remains genuinely open.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Repentance is always possible.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Return is expected.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He always receives us when we return to him because he is a quote merciful God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And that helps us to understand what Moses said earlier in verse 24.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He says, For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Oprah Winfrey left her Christian faith because of this verse right here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The concept that God was a jealous God, because most modern people hear the word jealous and they assume envy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's not the biblical definition of jealousy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Instead, the biblical definition of jealousy is it's it's God's refusal to let his people be surrendered to any rivals.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look with me at verse 3, if you will.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It says this, your eyes have seen what the Lord did at Baal Peor.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'm not going to go into this, but number 25, there's this story.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And at Baal Peor it says that Israel yoked themselves to Baal.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Baal was a false God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But look at verse 4, it says this you who held fast to the Lord your God are alive today.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you go maybe in the margin, underline, hold fast.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You go to Genesis chapter 2 where it says, And a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Same word.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So what's going on here?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The Lord wants you to see that he's pursuing us out of covenant love.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Said differently, all idolatry is spiritual adultery.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God has made Israel, God has made the church, his people, has betrothed us to himself, and we cheat on him with false gods.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the phrasing here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the image is this image of a yoke to, you know, in the New Testament says, do not be unequally yoked with a non-believer.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's a marriage term about don't marry people who don't know Jesus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's not good.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because a yoke is almost, imagine like McDonald's arches, if you will.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And you've got a big ox pulling one side, a strong ox, and you've got a weaker, smaller one pulling on the other side.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the big ox carries most of the burden, and the small ox is shouldering some of it and directing going where the big ox goes.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the image of idolatry here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because a good thing when you're yoked to somebody you should be yoked to, it's union and communion and collaboration and orientation and burden bearing, all these things that are so good.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But who are you yoked to?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Who's sharing your burdens?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Who's carrying your burdens?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What do you look to to give orientation to your life?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the invitation of Deuteronomy chapter 4, verse 3.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So, what do you do if you're yoked to an idol?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Unyoke yourself.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Turn around, come home.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Not because God is any less holy, not because the consuming fire has fizzled out, but because the consuming fire of God's holiness and the covenant mercy of God meet in Jesus Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, we've spent this whole chapter talking about how hearing God is important and there's no visible form, and yet we ache to see him.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Theologians call this the beatific vision.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The deep longing is to behold God, to see his face.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's what all human beings are longing for.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But listen, the New Testament makes a staggering announcement, and that is that the word became flesh.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The God who has spoken to Israel has taken on flesh in Jesus Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus is Emmanuel, God near us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus is the word of God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus is the image of the invisible God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God does not become visible because we finally figured out what he looks like.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God makes himself visible on his own terms.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And where do we see him most clearly?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In the cross of Jesus Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at how Moses talks about this in verse, in chapter 30, uh chapter 4, verse 32.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It says this, For ask now of the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and asked from one end of heaven to the other, whether such a great thing as this has ever happened or was ever heard of?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Did any people ever hear the voice of a God speaking out of the midst of the fire as you have heard and still live?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Moses is saying, Has anything like this ever happened before?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But on this side of the cross we can say, did any people ever see their God take on skin and bones and bleed and die for sinners?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Going on in verse 34, or has any God ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: By trials, by signs, by wonders, and by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and by great deeds of terror, all of which the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: A mighty hand and an outstretched arm.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: At the Exodus, God stretched out his arm to rescue his people from slavery.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: At the cross, God stretched out his arms to rescue his people from idolatry.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The mighty hands that delivered Israel were pierced.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The outstretched arms of Israel's Redeemer were nailed to wood for people who make gods out of wood.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Why?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because the Lord your God is a merciful God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So what does that mercy intend to produce in us?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: A people.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: A people who live so near to God, listen so carefully to his voice, and worship him so exclusively that the world looks at their life together and asks, what kind of God can produce a people like this?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the answer is that the Lord is near, not far, the Lord is heard, not seen, the Lord is God, no rivals.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We'll end with verse 35.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: To you it was shown that you might know that the Lord is God, but there is no other besides Him.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let's pray.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God our Father, true and living God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Set us free even now.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Break off the yoke of idolatry in this room.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Draw us back home from the place you scattered us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Bring us back through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: King Jesus, we want to hail you from our hearts.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Holy Spirit, would you uproot idols?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Would you enable us to see Jesus in such a beautiful and compelling way that it draws us back to Him to renounce the false gods we've run after?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We want to hear your voice.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Amen.