After the Sermon: Deuteronomy 11
3/23/26 | Will DuVal | DEUTERONOMY: Remembering God's Faithfulness; Responding in Obedience
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Welcome to the After the Sermon podcast, where Pastor Will answers follow-up questions. We share your personal applications from the sermon for the benefit of the church. My name is Brian and I'm here with our lead pastor, Will.
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That's me.
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We want to remind you with this podcast that sermons are not just a Sunday thing. So we got a few written in questions. Thanks for submitting those. First one this morning, this afternoon, is from Victoria. She wrote in, "Isn't there a reward in heaven for our work here on earth ministry according to our
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Knowledge?" Thanks, Victoria. Yes. The biblical answer to the question is that God does promise a reward in heaven for those who have been faithful to him here on earth. And again, the context of our question is yesterday's message from Deuteronomy 11 on obedience and blessing. And we've seen this theme repeated a number of times now in Deuteronomy, "Obey me, " God says, "And you'll be blessed, disobeying you'll be cursed." And then the third point we brought it back to yesterday was the gospel that in spite of our disobedience, that if we trust in Christ, we can be saved. And Victoria is, I think, following up on those still this point that despite our disobedience and our need for salvation from that, isn't there also, doesn't God also promise us reward. Rewards in heaven for what we do for him here. And I think she's right.
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The Bible, like I said, mentions multiple times this idea of rewards in heaven. You've got Jesus in Matthew 5:12. Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven. When you're persecuted and you endure it, same thing in Luke 6:23.
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You've got later, Luke 6:35, "Love your enemies and do good and lend expecting nothing in return. And then your war will be great in heaven." One Corinthians 3:14, "If the work that anyone has built on the foundation of Christ." So the works that Christ is a foundation, the gospel is the foundation of our faith, but then there's obedience. There's work that is built on top of that and following in obedience. Paul says, "If the work that you build on, the foundation of Christ survives, you'll receive a reward." And so we could go on and on. Two Corinthians 5:10, "We all must appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil." So again, if you've done evil, there's a judgment, but if you've done good and obeyed the Lord and followed and been faithful, there's a reward for that.
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You think of what Jesus says in Matthew 25 about separating the sheep and the goats and those who have fed the hungry and clothed the naked and visited those in prison and et cetera, et cetera, cared for others and have been Christlike and extended his love and comfort and truth to others and the way that Jesus did while he was on earth, that again, there's reward for that eternally. So yeah, that is true. And yet another reason, like we talked about yesterday, for hopefully motivating our obedience. Now, again, like I said yesterday, I think that the most important and best reason for our obedience is not to kind of selfishly get some reward out of it, but that the understanding that our presence with God, our close relationship with God, our living in the center of his will, feeling his smile upon us is the best reward, is just knowing that you're pleasing him, that you're living the way he's created you and called you to live.
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But any kind of eternal rewards on top of that are just kind of icing on the proverbial cake. So yeah, I hope that helps bring even more clarity there, but thanks Victoria for pointing that out, that there is that kind of ulterior motive, so to speak, for being obedient as well and for doing the right thing and living God's way.
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And she briefly put for an application, one word, resting.
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Yeah.
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That's good.
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Well, the gospel frees us to rest because we know that our blessing isn't tied to our obedience, to the Lord, but rather his faithfulness to us and Christ obedience on our behalf. So yeah, we can rest in him even as we work and even as we strive to obey and to follow.
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Yeah, it's good news. Steve wrote, "Will a good sermon for Easter maybe add a line that Jesus offers to exchange his obedience for our disobedience, unless I missed it while taking notes."
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I know that again, this has been a recurring theme that has been at least three sermons. We started in Deuteronomy 30 with that standalone kind of message. Well, I guess that was week two, Sanctuary of Life Sunday, and then especially Deuteronomy. Yeah, Jews life, especially Deuteronomy chapter seven, very similar to this past week's message of Deuteronomy 11 and obey and be blessed, disobey, cursed. But I remembered, I thought saying that I have to go back and look at the ending of the sermon just and how I kind of articulated the gospel there, but I thought that I tried to be clear about that, that Jesus did live the life of perfect obedience that we should have and failed to, that we disobeyed and deserved death and the cross in hell, but instead Jesus wore the curse for us, but also exchanged, traded his obedience to us and certainly the blessing of that obedience.
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But yeah, yeah, can be even more clear about that. We sing that in so many of our songs, that Christ is all my righteousness and all sufficient merit. Yeah, that his merit is now credited to me that it's not just that he took our sin and our curse, but he gave us his righteousness and that perfect obedience and the blessing that comes with it. So yeah,
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Good. Can't say it enough though. We're forgetful people.
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And I wrote in just a question or two. First one, I guess there's two main ones. Could you say more about how we can earn God's blessings? I think it was a line of two ways you can do it or receive. So basically be perfect or trust in the one who's perfect.
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Exactly. Okay. That was the point I was trying to make sense and I think that scripture tries to make is, yeah, there's two ways to earn the blessing or sorry, to get God's blessing and to get therefore the blessing of eternal life and the mortality and kind of the live long and prosper. You can get it by earning it as long as you can be perfect. That's how you earn it. Yeah. And so like I said, I know I had mentioned that kind of earlier in the intro, but you're right. When I came back to it later and said, "Okay, remember there's two ways to get it, you can earn it or you can receive it. " And should have maybe for some folks been even
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More
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Clear like, "You can't earn it. You won't earn it. You will fail, you will fall short. You already have. You've already sent a dozen times this morning already. Don't try and earn it. It's not going to work. You need to receive it. You need to receive the blessing from Christ's obedience, not your own." So yeah.
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Also, just wanted to maybe hear more about the line, something along the lines of the Easter message not necessarily being for everyone. I'm assuming, saying it would be tailored for non-believers specifically that morning.
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Yeah, that's what I was trying to get at, clarify. And to say, I think the way I said it, but then also said it two different ways, but I said primary target audience. So 51 out of 52 Sundays of the year, primary target audience is the church. We're going to understand that they're going to hope, I'm sure, and hopefully be unsaved people that join us every Sunday and that really desperately like
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Heaven or hell, like life depends on it, need to hear and respond to the gospel message. But because we hope and pray and trust and believe that on Easter Sunday in particular, there are going to be folks that will be in church if for no other reason than just that's what's culturally acceptable still on Easter to do. And it makes them feel better that they've paid their penance and done their one mandatory kind of church thing for the year so they can feel like, "Oh yeah, I'm a Christian or whatever." That that's going to be the primary target audience on Easter Sunday because it's such a rare opportunity for us and because again, it's a life or death, heaven or health thing. So basically what I was trying to say is, "Hey, pretty much every Sunday that you come here to West Hills, I'm not stopping to really explain who Moses is.
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" I'm not stopping to explain, "Okay, let me do the five minute recap of where we are in the book of Deuteronomy." And then by the way, where that is in the book of the Bible and the Torah, and let me go back and God created everything and then we send and felt like I don't have to do that every single week or I don't feel like I have to and take it all the way back and give you all the context. Again, that's different than some churches. Some churches, that's every week. Some churches, they are preaching every week specifically to ... And I've heard just, again, pastors have different conviction about that and pastors that would say that they feel like I'm doing a real disservice to the unchurched, unsafe people that do join us on non-Easter Sundays because I leave them lost and they come and could some ... And I try and have an eye for that when I'm writing the sermon and I try and think about, okay, if you were someone who, the Mopins Chinese exchange student who's literally never set foot in a church or whatever and showed up and has no idea, couldn't name you one book of the Bible, doesn't know Jesus from Buddha, certainly doesn't know Moses, would this sermon be accessible?
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You try and think about that, but again, it's just a matter of, to me, who's the primary target audience and how much time do you want to spend every single
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Week
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Kind of recapping that? And I think that that's something that the people at West Stills appreciate about our church is that we try and, again, be as accessible as we can to those who might be visiting and joining us the other 51 Sundays. And we certainly don't want them to feel lost or unwelcomed or anything like that, but at the end of the day, you can't preach directly targeting everyone in the same way. And if you're going to spend that much time kind of having to re-explain every time ... At a certain point in time, if you're going to do that, you're just not going to preach through books of the Bible like Deuteronomy because it's too hard to do all the context. And I would say it's very rare. I know it happens, but it's very rare that you will get expositional preaching through whole books of the Bible, certainly the Old Testament from a church that philosophically is all about reaching unbelievers.
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It's just easier to do kind of topical things and whatever. And again, gets into a whole bigger philosophy ministry. But that was my attempt to say, "Hey, look, just understand this. " And hopefully to remind people and give them an opportunity to appreciate that our church is not patronizing to the Christians and is not dumbing it down, watering it down for us most of the time, but on Easter as a way to be hospitable, welcoming and to really seek to reach those that are coming in, we're going to do it a little different. And
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Sometimes that means going outside of the sermon series altogether, doing a standalone. I thought about that with Deuteronomy, but like I joked about, I don't want to break the streak. And I really think that this idea of obey and be blessed, disobey and be cursed, but trust and be saved, that simple three point thing is how basically going to probably be the outline again for Easter, same sermon that Moses preaches again to him in Deuteronomy 28 and 29, but it'll be even more explicit. He gets especially explicit with the blessings and the curses, and especially the curses. And so I think it'll be hopefully again, hopefully be a warning wake up call for some folks who are trusting in their obedience and trusting in their ability to earn God's blessing to say, no, you really can't. What you're earning is the curse and you need to wake up and realize that and that's the exact reason you need an undeserved, unearned forgiveness that was won for you by Jesus if you trust in him.
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Good.
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Thanks.
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And then you had a question in mind or something you wanted to mention?
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Well, I just, again, and I'm always kind of looking back over the passage and thinking, okay, what are the things if I was a congregant that I, questions I would ask or things I maybe noted that maybe he didn't say in the sermon, the one big one that I just pretty much completely left out of the sermon and for sake of time and that just with my transitions, it didn't work where I wanted it to work kind of thing. And then also I just kind of realized, you know what, we're going to come back and I think we will talk about that on Easter because it's a point that Moses is going to come back to in Deuteronomy 28 is the very end of chapter 11 where Moses commands them, "When the Lord brings you into the land that you're entering, you shall set the blessing on Mount Garazim and the curse on Mount Ebal." And then he explains where they are, they're across the river.
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You got to go over there to do it, so go cross and do it. But that verse 29 idea of setting the blessing on Mount Gerazim and the curse on Mount Ebal, what does that mean? And so we'll talk about it when we look at it at verse 28 and he gives him the instructions for it that he's actually going to divide up the 12 tribes into two halves and six of them and he tells them which one. Y'all get to stand on the good mountain, Mount Gerazim, which in Hebrew means something like green, I think, or lush or something, which again has the connotation of ... And we know historically, well, we think we know probably where if you go to the Holy Land and tour, they'll right across the Jordan River, they'll show you, we think these are the two mountains and one of them still to this day grows grass and looks alive.
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And then the other one is Baron and Mount Nabal is kind of barren and even their names kind of signify that. And anyway, it's this cool like word picture for Israel
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Of the blessing and the curse. Again, you think about, man, how do we draw the shortening of the stick? And we're the six tribes that have to be on the curse. But then Moses has this whole thing where they're supposed to say out loud, repeat back out loud the blessings and the curses that he's given them before they crossed over. Once they cross over, they're going to stand on these mountains and basically shout back and forth in unison the blessings and curses to remind themselves of it. And then he's also got this thing. But interestingly, what we're going to see when we get there in 28, 29, he has them actually carve it into the mountain, into the rock, but only the curses from what I can tell. Once I get to those chapters and start preparing, I'll do more of the commentary work and figure it out.
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But from what I can tell, he doesn't say anything about, "Oh yeah, and on Mount Garazim, make sure you carve the blessing." And again, it is another indication, just like when we get to chapter 29, there's like 11 or something verses of, "Hey, here's all the actual blessings if you obey, you're going to get lots of rain, you're going to get lots of crops and oil and wine and all that. " It's like, I don't know, 15 verses. And then there's like 50 verses of the curses. Oh, and by the way, when you don't do it, you're going to have famine and invading armies and you're going to be, so you're going to enslave each other and you're going to be so hungry when they come and put your towns under siege, you'll eat your own babies. It's terrible stuff. So
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That's where we're headed. But yeah, I did kind of expect somebody to be like, "Wait a minute, you read it, but you didn't say anything commentary about Mount Gerazim and Mount Ebal." So that's just kind of a foretaste of where we're going to head and try and see how much of that we can fit into an Easter message for, again, for visitors who don't maybe know or care and why are you telling us about these mountains over in the middle of Israel. But it's important because it's God's word and because it's a word picture to them and we could think about what are maybe some of those word pictures for us of the blessings and the curses that we have in our, or should have, should put before ourselves to help us remind and remember and pursue obedience. So yeah, thanks.
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That's good. And Easter's coming up just around the corner.
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Be praying. Keep praying, keep inviting. Yeah, pray for me too if you're listening to this and always really, really appreciate getting text messages and stuff from folks saying, praying for you today, but especially, hey, praying for your Easter preparation and just, yeah, it feels extra weighty. Should always feel weighty when you step in the pulpit and you're opening God's word for not only his people, but those who are not yet his people, but especially on something like Easter, with just knowing there's going to be a lot of people there that don't know the Lord and need to. And yeah, God works through ordinary means of the preaching of his word and by imperfect human people. So yeah, appreciate those prayers.
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And we hope that this has been a defying listen for you as you seek to be changed and to love God more as you apply God's word after the sermon. So go apply the sermon, continue to make disciples and Lord willing, we'll catch you right back here next week.