Hearing Is Doing

The 16^th Sunday after Pentecost–September 8, 2013

Deuteronomy 30:15-20

“if your heart turns away, and you will not hear…” Vs. 17

     Moses’ time is drawing to a close.  In just a little while he will ascend the mountain for a glimpse of the Promised Land.  His successor Joshua will lead the people into it.  Moses will die upon the mountain, the last of the generation of people who failed to listen to the promises of their God when He said that He’d deliver the Promised Land to them.  Because they didn’t hear their good God’s good Word, they wandered in the wilderness until that unhearing and unheeding generation died.

     Moses was the last and he wouldn’t set foot in the Promised Land either.  But he preached to the people gathered before him awaiting their entry into it.  He preached the importance of their listening to… of their hearing… of their heeding the Word of the Lord.  All they would receive would come from that Word.  Heeding it surely meant life and goodness.  Not hearing it surely meant death and evil.  God’s Word was their life.  Outside of that Word there was nothing but death.

     Moses seems fond of the word “obey” or at least his translators are.  While the origins of our English word obey rest in the combination of two Latin words for “direction” and “hear,” its ancient sense is obscured today.  In those bygone times, those who heard, did.  They could do no other.  In the modern religious situation, the use of the words obey and obedience cannot be separated from an act of the human will—a choice.  The human act of “willing” is inserted between hearing and doing. 

     Moses was well aware that the people before him still carried the idols their parents brought with them out of Egypt (cf. Jos. 24:23; 1 Sa. 7:3).  He knew their hearts were already turned away so he tells them “choose…” “choose life…” choose to have the Word of your Lord in your ears.  It is your repentance and it will repent you.

     So, too, you who wander  among the idols of your own making:  Choose to hear the Word of the Lord.  It will repent you of your old self and its “willing” and make you the new person whom God wills. 

Table Talk:  Discuss how choosing to hear the Word takes away choice
Pray:  Heavenly Father, give us the Word of life, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Table Talk is provided by
The Institute of Lutheran Theology

www.ilt.org

and authored by Timothy J. Sweson