Take Heed To Yourself

Pastor Ortiz continued the church's series in Deuteronomy 4, where Moses, now an old man, is instructing the people he has carried as his own for forty years. Verse 9 says, "Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently." Your spiritual condition is your own responsibility. It is not the church's fault, and it is not the fault of whatever building or circumstance a person happens to be in this week. A Christian who is not stronger than he was a month ago cannot blame the environment. The church exists to sharpen and encourage, but it does not carry the responsibility for a believer's walk with God.

No God Like Our God

Moses tells Israel not to forget the covenant of the Lord, then in verse 32 he sends them searching all of human history, "from the one side of heaven unto the other," for anything that compares to what God has done for them. He asks three questions with an obvious answer.

Has any people ever heard the voice of God out of fire and lived? No other people group has had that experience.

Has any god ever pulled a nation out from inside another nation by signs and wonders? No other god has ever done anything like it.

Has any god ever spoken directly to a people in order to make them his own? No other god has ever wanted his people close enough to try.

Pastor Ortiz called this one of the clearest declarations of a singular God in the whole Old Testament. God does not put himself in contrast with any other god because there is no other god to contrast him with.

Why God Allows Hard Things

Verse 35 says these things were shown to Israel so "that thou mightest know that the Lord he is God." Pastor Ortiz pointed out that the Hebrew word for "know" here means experience, not just information. The reason God allows difficulty is not so a believer can say "why me," but so that believer comes to know Him experientially rather than merely academically. He asked the church directly whether they had been shaken in the last three months, and reminded them that with every difficulty they had also seen an even greater victory, which should strengthen the fact that they serve an almighty God rather than a God like any other.

A God Who Makes A Way

Verses 36 through 38 recall the pillar of fire and pillar of cloud that guided and protected Israel in the wilderness, given not because Israel was special but because God loved their fathers. Pastor Ortiz drew a direct line from that provision to the church's own recent history: five buildings in a short stretch of time, doors that closed and then opened somewhere better, most recently two buildings secured within about eight days each, which he called something that simply does not happen in the Bay Area. None of it, he said, is because the church is special. It is because God is different.

Therefore, Obey

Verse 40 turns the whole passage toward obedience: "thou shalt keep therefore his statutes and his commandments... that it may go well with thee." Pastor Ortiz connected this directly to Ephesians 6:1-3, where children are told to obey and honor their parents "that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth," the same promise in different words. Obedience is shown in the action, not the intention. Honoring a parent, or honoring God, means obeying in a way that brings glory to them rather than to yourself.

He closed the point with the story of a young man from his own youth group who refused to go to camp with his friends, stayed behind at a lake instead, went for an early swim, and drowned after his muscles cramped in the cold water. His parents had begged him to come along and be obedient. Pastor Ortiz was careful to say obedience is not a guarantee against every tragedy, but that disobedience can carry a person further than they ever intended to go. Moses is telling Israel to stay close to a God who knows their flaws and will not leave them, and the way they stay close is by listening and obeying.

Closing

Pastor Ortiz closed asking the church to get back into their Bibles, back into prayer, and back into obedience, resting in the fact that they serve a God like no other.