「主の口から出る言葉で生きる」 二月第一主日礼拝 宣教 2025年2月2日
申命記 Deuteronomy 8章1〜10節 牧師 河野信一郎
Good morning. This morning was very cold, rainy and snowy?, and you must have had a very hard time getting to the church. Welcome back. I believe that God is pleased that you are all here in this chapel. Welcome back to those of you who are attending this morning’s service after switching to an online service to prevent injuries and accidents. We are so thankful that we were able to offer praise, prayer, and worship with you this morning. I trust that God is pleased with you all and will bless you.
Even in the presence of God, we live with many challenges and problems. God knows all of them, but we must trust Him, surrender everything to Him, and seek to be handled by the Almighty God, not just our own efforts. It is an abdication of responsibility to be passive, thinking that God will take care of everything. Instead, we must fulfill our own responsibilities and entrust to God what we cannot do on our own, believing that God’s work will be done. One of the biggest mistakes we make is that we rely too much to God.
We are only receiving in the same way that baby birds opens their mouth wide in the nest to seek food from the parent bird. For chicks, that is fine, but even if they are given a certain amount of growth and are able to actively flap their wings and work to find food and live on their own, I wonder if it is really okay if they continue to open their mouths before God and ask, “Give me food, give me food”. Don’t you wonder if it is really okay to remain a baby bird, passive, a customer/consumer, no matter how long you remain a baby bird? How long will we continue to work the parent bird, God, and do nothing ourselves? In most cases, when they grow up and become able to flap their wings, they fly away by themselves to wherever they want to go and never come back to the nest again. They don’t come back to God and live their lives the way they want to. I think that is also a problem.
What is the problem? Don’t you think it is a problem? The Bible tells us many times. Forgetting the existence of God who is constantly giving us grace, living as we please without returning to God, and not responding positively to the love, mercy, and grace that God is pouring out to us on an ongoing basis. By positive response, we mean a way of spending our days that God considers good, a way of life that God is pleased with. However, we are only responding to God in a way that is convenient for us and only when it is convenient for us. We are not fulfilling the responsibilities that we should fulfill, and we are not fulfilling them. I believe that is not God’s will. Selfishness can also be called complacency, self-righteousness, and selfishness. It can be described as being against God’s will, or “sin”. Sin means to live off the mark. God’s will is that we always return to Him and live in His love and in the fear of the Lord.
We are alive this morning as we were yesterday. No, we are kept alive by God’s love and mercy. We are kept alive by Jesus. What is it that keeps us alive? It is to love God, who is the source of life and love, to love our neighbors, and to love one another. I believe that this means worship and praise to God, evangelism to share God’s love, and building up the church, the body of Christ, together.
Okubo Church is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year. The past 60 years of the church’s history have been years of being guided, protected, and blessed by God, but there have also been times when we have been tested by God. By trials, I mean times of training. Not everything has been rosy in the history of the church. There were many times when we had to go through hardships. However, the God of mercy, the Savior Jesus, and the Holy Spirit were always with us, protecting and guiding us.
So, the question is, how should we as Okubo Church walk in the future? Times have changed, the environment has changed, and our way of life has changed. In such circumstances, we need to think and pray together about how we should love God, love our neighbors, and love one another. I say “we”. Are you one of “us”? Or are you still a guest? In order for us to be Okubo Church, each one of us needs to bring our own gifts, take responsibility for our own actions, and become one team. If the responsibility is left to a few, the church will grow weary, and joy and love will be lost. Prayer and praise will fall silent.
In January, we listened to what God was asking us with the keyword “good,” and in February, we would like to listen to God’s will with the keyword “Word of the Lord”. In order to know how we should live our daily lives, we must not only pray to God, but also listen to the Word of the Lord. It is important to listen to and follow the words of the Lord Jesus, not the words of men. Otherwise, we will go astray and return to sin. It is important for us to listen individually in our daily walk, but it is also important for us to listen together as a church. In this morning’s message and next week’s message, we will be listening to the Word of God from Deuteronomy 8. This morning we will be listening to verses 1-10, and next week we will be listening to verses 11-20.
As some of you may remember from my message from Deuteronomy 6 a few weeks ago, Deuteronomy is a farewell sermon delivered by Moses, who has been leading the Israelites for 40 years, to the land of Canaan, the land of promise, after they have been freed from slavery in Egypt and have finally reached the end of their 40-year journey in the wilderness. It is recorded in the Book of Deuteronomy for us to read, and is intended to encourage us to prepare ourselves to enter the Promised Land.
One of the commentaries says, “The Word of God is given to us as the ‘written word,’ but it is also given to us as the ‘spoken word,’ and we are made alive by it,” which I truly understand. I would like to remember that we cannot live as believers unless we listen to God’s Word and Jesus’ words written in the Bible as “the words the Lord has spoken to me. It is the same for the church. As a community of faith, without listening to the Word together, we cannot build up the church together, grow together, cooperate with each other, and bear much fruit that will please God.
In the first half of verse 1, Moses says, “Keep faithfully all the commandments which I command you this day. Keep them.” The first half of verse 1 says, “Keep all the commandments which I command you this day”. When we enter the Promised Land and say, “Oh, thank God. I’m all right now. I will just relax.” No, that is what God expect from us. Moses tells us that it is important to always listen to the words of God’s mouth and live in the fear of God.
Every day that you continue to listen to the Word, as the second half of verse 1 says, “Then you will have life, and your numbers will increase, and you will enter the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to take.” This is God’s work of blessing. All we have to do is to keep listening to the Word. Okubo Church should not only be thankful for the 60th anniversary, but also earnestly listen to the words of God and Jesus about how we should walk in the future, and follow them.
In the first half of verse 2, Moses says, “Remember the wilderness journey of these forty years that the Lord your God has led you on.” He is saying. In the history of Israel, God rescued them from slavery in Egypt, and He has blessed them by protecting and guiding them with love, patience, and provision throughout their 40-year journey so far. We, too, remember that the Lord, who has protected and guided Okubo Church for 60 years, will continue to be with us and speak to us, and we hope to listen to the words that come out of His mouth together.
The second half of verse 2 says, “Thus the Lord afflicted you and tested you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.” The phrase “thus” refers to the fact that God protected and led the people on a 40-year journey through the wilderness, and that He afflicted and tested them on that journey to know whether they would keep His commandments or not. The distance from Egypt to the Promised Land of Canaan can be traveled in as little as one month by walking. The reason it took 40 years is because the Israelites complained about everything, tested God, made a golden calf, worshipped idols, and did not listen to and obey God’s words, commandments, and statutes. The 40 years were necessary because God wanted to replace His people, that is, to give the Promised Land to their descendants, not to the generation of the parents of the people who left Egypt.
As for the reason for the trial, verse 3 says, “He made you suffer and hunger, and He made you eat manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had tasted before. It was to let you know that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” Moses said. These latter words are what Jesus said to the devil when he was tempted by him, and they mean that we should not live relying on our own strength or trying our best to keep on living, but live trusting in God’s power and listening to God’s guidance. God dared the Israelites to suffer and starve so that they could live by relying on Him. We can provide ourselves with material things to live, but we need to listen daily to the Word of God, the Word of Jesus, which meets the needs of our hearts and spiritual needs.
Verse 4 says, “For these forty years your covering has not grown old, nor have your feet been rent asunder.” In the same way, the sixty years of Okubo Church has been blessed by the true God. Let us be thankful.
In verse 5, Moses says, “Be mindful that the Lord your God will train you as a man trains his son.” We train our children because we love them. In the same way, when we go through trials, it is a preparation before God invites us into the Promised Land, and we rejoice in the knowledge that God loves us and will transform us because we cannot be blessed as we are.
Verse 6 says, “Keep the commandments of the Lord your God, walk in His way, and fear Him.” The “way of the Lord” is a way of life that God deems good as we listen to and obey His Word. The Lord’s Way is a way of fearing God as our God and listening to and obeying the words of His mouth.
Verses 7-9 are words that describe the good land, the promised land that God is trying to lead us into. Do you understand the promised land that God is leading us into through Jesus Christ? It is not something on this earth, but the Kingdom of Heaven where God is. What is it that we are to do before we are invited into the Kingdom of God, and what is it that we are to do in the Kingdom as well? The answer is found in verse 10. “Praise the Lord your God, for he has given you a good land in which to eat and be satisfied”. So let us be thankful for the words of grace that come from the mouth of the Lord each day, and let us receive praising, confessing, and testifying to God and Jesus as our purpose and mission in life. Next week, we will listen to verses 11-20.