“A Stubborn People” Deuteronomy 9:4-19

Introduction:  It’s easy for pride and arrogance to develop when you live in a land of great blessing.

We might conclude that we deserve it, and are more righteous than others.  Are we?

I.Not Because of Your Righteousness

A.(v5) “Not because of your righteousness…are you going in to possess their land.”

1.The statement is so shocking he repeats it three times (v4, v5, v6).

2.What other reason could exist?  Righteous cause is how we sell wars to the public.

B.(v4) “It is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is driving them out.”

1.Does that mean their actions are more wicked than ours?  That they are crummier than us?

2.Crusades and jihads, Communism’s Long March, France’s Reign of Terror, colonialism

C.(v5) God is driving them out from before you that he may confirm the word he swore to A, I, J.

1.John 9’s blind man.  V3, “that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

2.Isaiah 45:9-10, God uses the non-Jew Cyrus to deliver the Jews.

II.How You Provoked the Lord

A.(v7) “Remember and do not forget how you provoked the Lord your God to wrath.”

1.Who me?

2.Horrible at Horeb

B.(v14) “Let me alone, that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven.”

1.Why is it so hard to imagine that we will be called to account for our actions?

2.Why is it so hard to take seriously a “lake of fire” and Revelation 21:8, 2 Peter 2:9-10.

3.Why is it so hard to accept that none of us is righteous, merely pretenders?

C.“I will make of you [Moses] a nation mightier and greater than they.”

1.God’s offer to Moses and Satan’s offer to Jesus. [Note the 40 days of fasting]

2.Why did Moses refuse this offer (v18)?  Why did Jesus (Luke 22:39-44)?

Conclusion:Not because of your righteousness and Romans 3:10, 23-24.

“That he may confirm the word he swore…”  Communion