Jason S. DeRouchie's Blog

The Old Testament is three-fourths of the Bible, and it is the only Bible Jesus had. He said that it spoke of him (Luke 24:44–45), so reading it through him and for him helps us treasure Christ more and understand all of Scripture better. My my new book Enjoying Jesus’s Bible (Cruciform Press, 2025) condenses for laypeople my earlier Delighting in the Old Testament: Through Christ and For Christ (Crossway, 2024). In it, I seek to show you how to read the Old Testament as God intended, see Jesus in all of Scripture, hope in God’s promises for us, and live faithfully in relation to God’s law. God gave us the Old Testament for our instruction (Rom 15:4; 1 Cor 10:11; 2 Tim 3:16; 1 Pet 1:12). May we enjoy Jesus more by enjoying his Bible.

The post Book Announcement—Enjoying Jesus’s Bible: The Old Testament for Christians appeared first on Jason DeRouchie.

(Audio Download / PDF / SoundCloud) DeRouchie gave this message on 10/19/2025 at the Sovereign Joy Baptist Church plant in Liberty, MO.

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Throughout history, few Old Testament texts have impacted the church and society more than the Ten Commandments, which the Hebrew text calls the Ten Words or Decalogue. This special revelation of God at Mount Sinai has influenced art, politics, justice, and ethics worldwide for millennia. The Bible gives us two versions of the Ten, the first in Exodus 20:1–17 and the second in Deuteronomy 5:6–21. Deuteronomy’s account is more expansive, suggesting that the form in Exodus is the more original statement housed in the ark of the covenant (Deut 10:1–2, 5), that Deuteronomy’s version likely arose from memory, and that the Decalogue retained authority yet in a way that allowed for fresh applications in a new generation. Today, we will begin to consider the message and lasting significance of the Ten Words as they come to us in Deuteronomy.

In 4:13, Moses recalls, “And [Yahweh] declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments, and he wrote them on two tablets of stone.” Then, in 9:10 Moses adds, “And the LORD gave me the two tablets of stone written with the finger of God, and on them were all the words that the LORD had spoken with you on the mountain out of the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly.” That God gives “ten words” (4:13; 10:4; cf. Exod 24:28) allows for easy memorization, recitation, and discipleship within the family and community. That they came by “the finger of God” on “tablets of stone” (cf. Exod 31:18) highlights their function as the legally binding covenant document that solidified the relation between Yahweh and Israel and that served as a lasting witness between the covenant Lord and his kingdom sons/citizens (Deut 5:22).

The Ten Words are about valuing Yahweh and those made in his image. In short, they are about loving God and neighbor. Following Moses’s structure in Deuteronomy 5:6–21, we will approach the Ten in five movements that cover the spectrum of Israel’s relationship with God. Today we’ll cover the initial three, and then next time we’ll look at the last two and reflect more on the Decalogue’s lasting significance for Christians today. The five movements include worldview and worship (Word 1, vv. 6–10), daily witness (Word 2, v. 11), weekly household patterns (Word 3, vv. 12–15), family relationships (Word 4, v. 16), and community relationships (Words 5–10, vv. 17–21). All of life is to be subject to God’s rule.

Word 1: Worldview and Worship (vv. 6–10)

The revelation opens with Yahweh speaking in first-person: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (v. 6). Yahweh identifies himself in personal terms as “your God” who delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt. They were needy, and Yahweh had arrived as a warrior to save, defeating the oppressor and rescuing the oppressed. Now, Israel had switched masters––slaves not to Egypt but Yahweh (6:13; 10:12; cf. Exod 3:12; 14:5), and this fact brings with it demands. But before ever giving prohibitions or commands, God reminds Israel of his past grace so that it might fuel their present loyalty. Let your experience of God’s power and benevolence yesterday help you trust and obey today.

This now leads to the main injunction: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Deut 5:7). While not clear in English, this initial charge relates not to Yahweh having highest priority or rank among many but to his status as the only sovereign, the one who acts alone, not as the head of a pantheon of rival deities but as the sole and ultimate power in the universe. Throughout the Old Testament, whenever the Hebrew preposition rendered “before” occurs with a personal object, the meaning is always spacial, which means that the stress is that Yahweh has no peers in his presence. When you think about the heavenly court, picture only one throne, for Yahweh does not share rule, authority, or jurisdiction with any other. “Yahweh is one” (6:4). There are other spiritual beings, but they are all created and thus subordinate to Yahweh––serving him (1 Kgs 22:19), bowing to him (Ps 29:2), obeying him (103:20–21), and praising him (148:2–5). “[Yahweh] is God; there is no other beside him” (Deut 4:35; cf. 10:17; Ps 95:3).

Jesus “is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:2), taking no glory away from the Father because he is God’s Son with “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matt 28:18). Thus, the author of Hebrews stresses that, “after making purification for sins, [Jesus] sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs” (Heb 1:3–4). That Jesus sits enthroned at God’s right hand proves that Jesus is not like the angels but is indeed God. Paul declares:

We know that “an idol has no real existence” [citing Isa 41:24] and that “there is no God but one” [citing Deut 4:35–36]. For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth––as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords” [alluding to Deut 10:17]––yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. (1 Cor 8:4–6)

The Decalogue’s first Word speaks to the most fundamental aspect of reality: there is only one Sovereign––one Causer of all, and creation is subservient to him. He stands alone in both class and function; he is not the first among equals but is the sole decisive mover in the universe who alone is worthy of worship. Both in his being and his actions he is exceptional or transcendent.

The implications of this truth are massive and clarify the very essence of the world’s problem. Paul says,

Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him…. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things…. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever…. They did not see fit to acknowledge God. (Rom 1:21–23, 25, 28)

Where are you placing your trust today? Whatever we value most is our god, and how easily we create new gods of comfort, ease, health, wealth, success, reputation, or power. In our marriages, we prize being right and winning the argument over patience and self-sacrificing love. In our work, we cherish approval from the majority over a faithful witness to Christ. In our sports or even in our ministry, we esteem the praise of men over a quiet honoring of God. Friends, this should not be. Yahweh alone sits on the throne of the universe, and, therefore, he alone is worthy of holding the place of God in our lives. Surrender to him today.

What follows are two explanatory prohibitions that clarify implications of the initial charge: God’s people are not allowed to construct an image (v. 8) or to worship other gods (v. 9). First, we must ask if verse 8 is forbidding fashioning an image of Yahweh or of a false deity? I think both. Israel broke this prohibition when they made the golden calf (9:16) and declared, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” (Exod 32:4). The single sculptured calf represented multiple gods, and we’re told that in shaping it the people “had turned aside quickly from the way that the LORD had commanded” (Deut 9:16; cf. Exod 32:8). When did he command it? In the Ten Words!

The prohibition against a graven image also restricts misrepresenting Yahweh. Back in 4:15, Moses recalled how Yahweh revealed himself at the mountain as Spirit without form. Then, on this basis, using very similar language to 5:8, Moses warned Israel not to carve an image in the likeness of any created thing––“the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness of anything creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth” (4:16–18). Yahweh created humanity in his likeness, but humans have no right to attempt to recast the creator in their likeness or in the likeness of any other created thing. The result would be falsehood, for it automatically diminishes his transcendent greatness and supremacy. I don’t think this prohibition would restrict representing in art the creational disturbances like fire, cloud, and thick darkness that Bible associates with the intrusion of Yahweh’s presence in space and time. I also don’t think it would disallow casting a person in the role of Jesus in an Easter pageant, the “Jesus” film, or “The Chosen” TV series, for the Son of God did indeed take on flesh and dwell among us. So, what the Ten Words are prohibiting is the representation of Yahweh as Spirit in the form of creation.

The second explanatory prohibition is explicit that to envision a single throne in heaven means that Yahweh will allow no rivals with respect to veneration and devotion. The “them” of verse 9 likely refers to the only other plural in context––the “other gods” of verse 7; this grammatically links verses 7 and 9 and shows they are part of the same Word. Back in in 4:19, Moses warned, “Beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the LORD your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven.” The Egyptians treated as gods all these created realities, which God had given the world as markers of providence––“for signs and for seasons and for days and years” (Gen 1:14). A beautiful sunrise should have moved them not to worship the sun but to praise its giver. How often do we fail to give God the glory he deserves? How often do we praise ourselves for successes or live as if we earned the right to ease or comfort, forgetting that in God alone do “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28)? How often do we value what is empty or even praise what is praiseworthy yet in a way that does not recognize God as ultimate? May the Lord help us honor him for who he is as the great giver of all.

In the rest of verses 9–10, Yahweh gives the main reason why Israel must worship him alone: “for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.” Yahweh is jealous (cf. Exod 34:14) like a husband is jealous for his wife; the marriage covenant demands mutual respect and loyalty, and jealousy in the covenant context is right, necessary, and loving.

Yahweh is right to expect that his people love him and keep his commandments because he alone is preeminent over all things and therefore worthy of worship (Exod 34:14; Deut 32:39; Rom 11:36; Col 1:16). Punishing those who hate him is a necessary part of his jealousy because if Yahweh, as sovereign of the universe, allowed his glory to be given to another, declaring something else worthy of highest praise, he would stop being God and the world would end (Isa 42:8; 48:11; Job 34:14–15; cf. Heb 1:3). Finally, Yahweh’s jealousy for his people’s affection is the most loving thing he could do because he alone can save (Isa 43:10–11; 45:21; Hos 13:4) and has saved Israel (Deut 5:6) and because he alone can satisfy with full joy for the longest among of time (Ps 16:11; Matt 13:44; John 15:10–11). Therefore, Yahweh is jealous for his people’s loyalty.

“We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28). Deuteronomy 5:9–10 testifies to this truth. However, only punishment remains for those who reject or misrepresent Yahweh––a penalty that could impact all in household, even when four generations live under a single roof. May we not look elsewhere for help or satisfaction when God himself is the ultimate deliverer and greatest pleasure.

This week my son Ezra had a chance as a senior to challenge his cross-country team; he urged them not to chase after wins, as if they are supreme, but to chase after Jesus, who is eternally unchanging and whose worth will never wear out. The prophet Samuel said something similar: “Do not turn aside from following the LORD, but serve the LORD with all your heart. And do not turn aside after empty things that cannot profit or deliver, for they are empty” (1 Sam 12:20–21).

Word 2: Daily Witness (v. 11)

My last sermon noted how, in Deuteronomy 5, Moses is recalling the events from Mount Sinai to clarify why Israel must heed his instruction; at that mountain the people and God appointed him to mediate the covenant as God’s mouthpiece. Verse 23 notes that, as soon as the community began to hear Yahweh speaking from the fire, the leaders ran to Moses in terror, thinking they would surely die. Then in verse 27 they plead to Moses, “Go near and hear all that the LORD our God will say and speak to us all that the LORD our God will speak to you, and we will hear and do it.” I recall this event because it likely explains why Yahweh is speaking in first person in verses 6–10 but then Moses in verses 11 and following speaks about Yahweh in third person. Word 2 is the point when Israel stopped listening directly to Yahweh and where Moses started clarifying God’s instruction. Thus, we read, “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.”

In popular circles, taking God’s name in vain is limited to casual, crass, or disrespectful use of God’s name in speech. However, the phrase “taking or bearing the name” points not just to speech but to lifestyle, witness, and representation. Those “bearing” the name are those “called by Yahweh’s name” (Deut 28:10; Dan 9:19), who have had his name “placed” on them (Num 6:27) and who claim Yahweh as their own (Isa 44:5). To keep God’s word and to remain in the faith is to “hold fast” to Yahweh’s name and not to “deny” it (Rev 2:13; 3:8), whereas to portray a warped view of Yahweh’s power, will, and worth through poor judgment and rebellious behavior “profanes” his name (Ezek 36:22–23). “Bearing Yahweh’s name” is about God’s image in human lives; it’s about reflecting, resembling, and representing God rightly through covenant obedience, whether in public or in private. As Moses says later: “The LORD will establish you as a people holy to himself, … if you keep the commandments of the LORD your God and walk in his ways. And all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they shall be afraid of you” (Deut 28:9–10). Those made in God’s image who have surrendered to Yahweh’s claim on their lives must live for God’s fame, and this is done significantly by seeing the principles laid out in the Decalogue embodied in our lives. This is the point of Word 2.

Every week in the fall I am faced with the challenge of living as a Lion’s fan amidst the Chief’s kingdom. We mark our team loyalties by how we dress and talk. Similarly, as a church, we are a heavenly embassy in a foreign land. We identify with Jesus’s kingdom, and we are to represent it well. May our thoughts, speech, actions, and reactions testify that Jesus is Lord of our lives. May our priorities and witness declare that Jesus saves sinners from sin’s penalty and power and that he alone is worthy of our trust and hope. Do not bear Yahweh’s name in vain.

Word 3: Weekly Household Patterns (vv. 12–15)

Beginning in verse 12, we read: “Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God” (Deut 5:12–14). The noun Sabbath is related to the Hebrew verb meaning “to cease, rest.” Following the exodus, Yahweh established a 6 + 1 pattern of life for Israel, wherein they would work for daily bread the initial six days of the week and then cease from work on the seventh, looking solely to God to supply (Exod 16).

The Exodus version of the Decalogue explicitly grounds this weekly rhythm in the creation, “for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth … and rested on the seventh,” thus making it “holy” (20:11). This link is only assumed in Deuteronomy’s version. After God’s original workweek, he enjoyed the rest of sovereignty, for all the world was at peace with him and he was at peace with the world (Gen 2:1–3; cf. Ps 132:7–8, 13–14). However, the fall into sin and curse disrupted the right order, so, in time, Yahweh raised up Abraham and ultimately Israel to serve as the agent through whom he would overcome the world’s curse with blessing and restore right order to the universe. God said of Abraham that “all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him” (Gen 18:18; cf. 12:3), and Yahweh commissioned Israel to serve as “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” amidst the earth, thus displaying his wonders to the world (Exod 19:6; cf. Deut 4:6–8; 26:19; 32:43). Just as the rainbow and circumcision were covenant signs, God made Israel’s weekly Sabbath the sign of the old Mosaic covenant (Exod 31:13–17), something about it clarified the very purpose of Israel’s existence.

Through the 6 + 1 pattern, God reminded Israel every week that they were living for a goal––to see rest restored on a global scale. Peace with God was not only for them but was something they should ultimately want to see the nations enjoy. Deuteronomy highlights this outward movement by calling the heads of households to ensure that all under their care benefit from the weekly rhythm of rest. Thus verse 14 adds, “On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.” Notice how this Word addresses not the children, servants, or cattle but the household heads and calls them to work for the benefit of all under their care. This redefines what so many think of leadership, for the focus is on not what others owe the leader but what the leader owes others. The true leader serves, working for the welfare of his home.

Verse 15 then calls the community to remember how great a victory Yahweh gave them through the exodus to understand why he gave them the Sabbath. I think the logic is this: Because God gave Israel rest and right order through the exodus, he gave them the Sabbath to remind them that he wants to do this again for the whole world. Having tasted the hope of dawn, the joy of healing, and the freedom of deliverance, they must keep the Sabbath to both display and remind themselves of their mission. The world was not here for God’s people, but they were here for the world with a goal of seeing the seventh day restored, right order reestablished, and peace with God renewed on a global scale.

In answer to the global problem of sin and curse, Yahweh raised up a people through whom would come a person to save the world from its sins. Israel’s 6 + 1 rhythm of work leading to rest reminded them of this goal. Then, in the fulness of time, Jesus came as Israel’s representative; he is the ultimate king-priest who perfectly obeys where the nation failed, and through him alone you can gain a right relationship with God. Thus, Jesus urges, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt 11:28). In coming to Jesus “you will find rest for your souls” because he is “lord of the Sabbath” (11:29; 12:8). The old covenant Sabbath symbolized a goal that Jesus secures, as the Sabbath “shadow” gives rise to “substance” (Col 2:16–17). He rose on a Sunday morning, and because of this we gather weekly on Sunday to testify to ourselves and one another that rest for our souls is now real and that one day it will be complete. Sunday is not the new Christian Sabbath; it is called the Lord’s Day for on a Sunday Jesus inaugurated the fulfillment of rest and right order that Christians now experience 24–7. “There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God” (Heb 4:9), and all who are in Christ are already experiencing it truly, even as we look forward to when we will enjoy it completely when “he will wipe away every tear … and death shall be no more” (Rev 21:4). In a world filled with stresses, deadlines, and relational tensions, Christ has already secured you peace with God and rest for your soul.

Conclusion

We’ve considered the first Three Words of the Ten, and all of them are radically God-centered and exalt Jesus. Word 1 informs worldview and worship and never allows for any God but Yahweh, who will have no misrepresentation or rivals because he is rightly, necessarily, and lovingly jealous for his people’s love. And because God elevated Jesus to his right hand and because Jesus is himself worthy of worship, we know that he is indeed God. Word 2 addresses daily witness and calls all who bear Yahweh’s name to do so faithfully without compromise, following the way of Christ who declared to God, “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me…. Keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one” (John 17:6, 11). Finally, Word 3 speaks to weekly household patterns, which served as a pointer for Israel to the peace and rest we are now enjoying in Christ. Israel was to keep the Sabbath “to the LORD your God,” which means they exalted God by trusting him for provision and by recalling that their missional goal was to see rest realized on a global scale. Jesus secures this rest and peace with God for all who trust in him. God shows himself to be the Savior, Sovereign, and Satisfier as he delivers, dominates, and delights through Jesus. We have counted the first three Commands; may the Lord now help us make them count. Pray with me….

The post A God-Centered Life That Exalts Christ: A Sermon on Deuteronomy 5:6–15 appeared first on Jason DeRouchie.

Introducing the GearTalk Bible Reading Plan Introducing the GearTalk Bible Reading Plan

by Jason DeRouchie, Tom Kelby, and Jack Yaeger

https://jasonderouchie.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Rooster-GT-1.mp3 Transcript

JY: Welcome to GearTalk, a podcast on biblical theology. We have a big announcement today—we’re launching the brand new GearTalk Bible reading plan. This goes through a reading in all three sections of the Old Testament each day, plus one reading in the New Testament. I mentioned this was new. It is, but as you’re about to hear, it’s a bit more complicated than that. We developed this Bible reading plan based on Jason DeRouchie’s Kingdom Bible Reading Plan. That means it’s old and new at the same time. Today, Tom Kelby and Jason DeRouchie talk about the plan and why Jason developed it. If you can, while you’re listening, go to handstotheplow.org and register for the new study.

TK: Welcome to GearTalk. It’s me and the roosters and Jason DeRouchie.

JD: Yes. Here I am. And the roosters—they’re a bonus.

TK: Nice. I was just asking if it’s only theirs or where they live, and he said, no—the neighbors have them too. So we can’t— that was the neighbor, wasn’t it?

JD: I don’t know which that was. We actually got a new set of chicks, thought they were all female, and out comes a rooster. So he’s now part of the batch—thirteen chickens.

TK: Alright. Alright. Well, this is gonna be fun. Jason, we’re gonna be talking about something this morning—your Kingdom Bible Reading Plan, which is being changed slightly for use with your phone or your computer, and we’re gonna talk about that. But it’s something that I think—for me—I don’t think you ever told me about it. I think I discovered it, and I felt like I found a friend when I found it.

JD: That’s sweet.

TK: So you came up with this Bible reading plan. Can you kind of explain what your Bible reading plan is, where it came from, and what your intent was in it?

JD: Yeah. So I called it the Kingdom Bible Reading Plan because at the heart of Jesus’ message is proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom. And he is realizing in his life all that the Old Testament was hoping for—a day when the king would finally show up and make all things right. And so, from beginning to end, the gospel is promised and then realized throughout Scripture. And so that captures the overarching message of the Bible, I think. And so I named the Bible reading plan after that.

It really developed early in my academic ministry teaching at a Christian college and wanting my students to be able to initially have a plan that would lead them through the Old Testament in the arrangement that Jesus envisioned it. We see in a passage like Luke 24 that Jesus says, “All that was written in the law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” The law of Moses, the Prophets, and Psalms—a three-part canon. In the last two sections joined together, at times the whole testament is just called the Law and the Prophets. But we see in Luke 24, witness to what we see outside the Bible in Jesus’ day and before, that often the Jews talked about a three-part Old Testament, with the Psalms standing as the most major book at the head of the third division. Yet we today, our English Bibles are in a different arrangement

TK: More chronological.

JD: Yeah. More chronological.

And so simply grouping all of the history books together, then the poetic and wisdom books together, and then finally the prophetic books. And yet Jesus’ Bible actually has the Old Testament and the New Testament framed with the story. So the Old Testament, as Jesus envisioned it, begins with the law just like our Bible does—with the story from creation all the way up to Israel’s readiness to enter the land. Then the story picks up again right away in what is called the former prophets—the early prophetic books—which are all narrative.

TK: And I wouldn’t find that in my Bible. Like, if I opened it, I’m not gonna find something that says “Former Prophets” over a particular book.

JD: That’s right. It is simply going to probably just say history books, if anything. And we’re talking about Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings. They’re called prophetic because they not only include prophets in their story but these are sermons—prophetic sermons in story form. They’re designed to teach and instruct, and that was the role of the prophet. We see then this movement from creation, which begins in the region of Mesopotamia—the Garden of Eden in that region—where major powers like Assyria, Babylon, and Persia were. And then by the end of the first part of the story, we’re back in Babylon where the exile has happened. Israel has been kicked out of their land.

Then in Jesus’ Bible, the story pauses at the end of the former prophets. We get an entire grouping of commentary books. So we’ve got two different types of books: the story books—the narrative books—telling a true story of what happened in world history.

TK: And those are generally, wouldn’t you say, for a lot of us, easier to read? Like, we read about David went here, did this, and we can track the flow of it.

JD: Sure. We’re just seeing a major event happen and then the response to that event.

TK: Right.

JD: And the story just develops chronologically. But that story pauses after Israel gets kicked out of Jerusalem—after Jerusalem falls by the power of Babylon as agents of God’s judgment. Kings ends with Israel going into exile. I wanted students to be able to read the story in that order, but in Jesus’ Bible, a book like Chronicles doesn’t show up directly after Kings—it’s actually the last book in Jesus’ Old Testament, and it carries a very different message. So I wanted my students to be able to read the Bible in the arrangement that Jesus and Paul were envisioning when they talked about their Scriptures: Law, then Prophets—Former Prophets, Latter Prophets.

So then the commentary section begins with Jeremiah as a major prophet, and we move from Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and then the twelve minor prophets. And right away, that’s a different order than we have in our English Bibles. Our English Bibles, well, most of the prophetic books, we still try to put in chronological order, but that’s not the way they got lined up in the sequence most ancient that we find testified to in the days of Christ.

These commentary books are reflecting on the story itself—what the prophets themselves were saying during the story period. So we hear from Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and then the twelve smaller prophets. Then the prophetic unit is over, and we move into the Writings, the last major section of Jesus’ Bible. The Writings also have a former and latter.

The former section continues the commentary unit, and we move from Ruth—which is a very small book, doesn’t show up in the story portion—so it has a different function in Jesus’ Bible. It’s introducing us to the messianic hope—the hope for the coming Christ, the royal deliverer.

TK: And it’s preparing us for the rest of the Writings.

JD: It’s preparing us exactly for how to read the rest of the Writings as first poetry designed to heighten hope for the coming Messiah.

And then the latter Writings begin with Daniel, then move to Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, and then cap up with Chronicles—all designed to heighten hope for the Messiah’s coming. So these former Writings—Ruth, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Lamentations—are the songs that were being sung, the poetry that was being written by this very small remnant of faithful people who were hoping in the coming king. They give us a lens for understanding how they were hoping, how they were believing, how they were living and called to live as parents and married couples in the midst of deep suffering, chaos, and brokenness that showed how dark the days were, heightening our hope in the coming Redeemer.

Then the story picks up again—and this is how Jesus’ Bible ends—in the latter Writings right where the story had dropped off. So it got us up to the exile and the destruction of Jerusalem and Babylon. Lamentations transitions us back to remembering the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile. Then Daniel picks up in exile. The story continues with God preserving the remnant in Esther, God returning that remnant to the land in Ezra and Nehemiah, and then Chronicles as the capstone volume—a very positive book. The first word in Chronicles is Adam. It ends with the decree of Cyrus that people can return to the land. Isaiah had told us that once we see Cyrus come, the agent of return to the land, the one we’re expecting next is the servant who’s going to bring reconciliation with God. And that transitions us then to the book of Matthew, which opens with, “These are the generations,” or the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. He is the anticipated king, the servant of Isaiah who would suffer and bring the kingdom of God into being.

As we enter the New Testament, there’s a similar structure to the Old. It begins with narrative in the Gospels, and the new covenant is established there. Then we move into Acts, paralleling the former prophets. But where in Joshua through Kings the story was negative, now with the rise of the church, it’s a positive story in the book of Acts—the rise of the kingdom of God. It’s working in the church as the Spirit of the resurrected Christ is bringing the kingdom of God to earth. After Acts ends, we pause for some commentary books—all the letters that are given to us, paralleling the latter prophets and the former Writings, reflecting on the story, teaching as the church was rising, and the kingdom was advancing. Then you come to the end of the New Testament in a prophetic narrative: Revelation is the capstone. It celebrates the end of the story which will last forever. The work God has done in the church will give rise to the return of the King, the defeat of the enemy, and the celebration and consummate satisfaction of the bride of the Lamb in the presence of the great King—the Lamb seated on the throne.

I wanted to give my students—this was birthed in a context where I wanted to give my students an opportunity to read the Scriptures through that lens. And so the Kingdom Bible Reading Plan was birthed. Every day, there is a reading from the law, a reading from the Writings, a reading from the prophets—law, prophets, Writings—and a reading from the New Testament.

TK: That might seem odd because you’d say, wait a minute, the New Testament has Jesus in it. The New Testament has all these letters in it. Why are you seemingly deprioritizing something so important to us?

JD: That wasn’t at all my goal. I simply wanted to shape whole-Bible people. Paul stressed to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20 the absolute need to declare the whole counsel of God—the purposes of God from creation to consummation as disclosed to us through his book. I wanted to give equal weight to each major section of the Scriptures.

The Law, the Prophets, and the Writings are almost each the same size, and each of those divisions are almost identical in size to the New Testament whole itself.

TK: Seventy-five percent

JD: 75.5 percent, in fact—of our Bible is the Old Testament, and the last quarter is the New Testament. So I created a Bible reading plan that would give equal weight, equal reading time, to each quarter of our Christian Scripture.

TK: It’s—like I said, I’ve used this so much, and you had it. It’s actually printed in some of your books, which is so helpful. A drawback of it is, you print a paper copy of it, you put it in your Bible, and it falls out or it does whatever.

Something that we’ve done is—Mark Yeager has really led a great effort to make this available as an online resource—a GearTalk Bible reading plan based on your Kingdom Bible Reading Plan—where every day you log in and it tracks your progress.

JD: Yeah. It’s really cool. You can track your progress. You know where you’ve read, you know if you’re behind, and what you need to do to catch up. One thing built into the plan though, Jason, is that it only covers twenty-five days a month.

TK: I actually love that fact of the plan.

JD: It was intended just to know that life gets full or we may want to have several days during the month where we do something else—maybe practice Bible memory; on Sundays, when we gather for worship, we may do something different; maybe you’ve got a prioritized family worship time supplementing normal daily personal devotions. However it is, the plan itself is only twenty-five days, leaving you, on most months, five or six days free. So if you’d only get the reading, it’s set up so you could do four different readings per day—one reading, usually one chapter, from the law; one from the prophets; one from the Writings; and one from the New Testament. In an entire year, you read the entire Bible one time, and Psalms you read through twice, because the law portion—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy—is a little bit shorter than the rest of the sections, so I allowed us to read the Psalms one extra time mixed in through our reading of the law.

TK: So I might be reading Numbers, and then all of a sudden get three Psalms in a row—three days in a row.

JD:  That’s right. Three days of Psalms, then you’re back in Numbers again.

TK: For me, a huge benefit of this GearTalk Bible reading plan is it’s a little different than, say, reading a book that’s talking about the sections of the Bible. Every day, I’m seeing it play out in front of me. It’s pushing the story of the Bible into my life in a different way, and I like that. The way Mark has laid it out here, you actually see it graphically portrayed every day—like, okay, I’m in this section, I know where I am in the Scriptures. It’s kind of cementing something in your mind.

JD: Adding to that, the works that Hands to the Plow and jasonderouchie.com have produced are incorporated into the readings. So every day, at the bottom, there is some snippet from one of our Developing Leaders Curriculum guides or from a preacher’s guide or from one of the books that I have written, resources drawn from some of the lecture notes I have—and they’re added into the Bible reading plan to supplement your reading and help give some guidance as to lasting relevance and the importance of whatever section you’re working through that day.

TK: Something we’re hoping to do is tie this podcast also into readings that we’re doing—to talk about certain books in the schedule at the same time. I think that will be great.

JD: So, for example, if in the next month and a half you’re working through 1–2 Samuel, which is part of the reading, then hopefully we can engage a scholar who has been working in those books and could give us added reflection and insight.

TK: Right. Well, Jason, I am grateful personally for this. It’s blessed my life. It’s really fun to launch this. So we’re at a conference down in Kansas City at your school, and today and tomorrow are really the official launch of this. People can go to our website, handstotheplow.org, and you’ll see a GearTalk Bible reading plan logo you can click on, register, and I would just say check it out. I believe you will be blessed by this plan as I have been blessed.

JD: I praise the Lord for that. We want to see people get into the book. It’s through the book that we encounter our God. Scripture alone brings rebirth. We are born again through the living and abiding Word of God. Scripture alone gives us holiness. Jesus said, “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.” This world is so broken, so hard, and we need the word to fuel our pursuit of God, our purity, our delight in him. It’s only through the word that we’ll be sustained. We need a daily diet of God’s Word.

I think about how Paul said to Timothy that “All Scripture is breathed out by God and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped.” This isn’t just a one-time meal; we need the meal every single day. It’s our prayer that people will be drinking in the well that never runs dry through the Scriptures so ultimately they might always be satisfied:

Incline our hearts to your testimonies and not to selfish gain. Open our eyes that we may behold wonderful things from your law. Unite our hearts to fear your name. Satisfy us this morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Our souls are satisfied through the word as we encounter the living God. That’s our prayer for our people as we move ahead with this GearTalk Bible reading plan.

TK: Amen. One final note: you will find on there an audio version of the text for the day, which is really nice. So let’s say you have a morning or a time during the day when you think, “Wow, I wasn’t able to do what I wanted, but I have to drive ahead of me.” It’s a nice feature. I’ve greatly appreciated it.

JD: If you’re in a season where your eyes aren’t working, you can click in, and we’re grateful to Crossway for allowing us to reproduce that ESV Bible app right on our website, giving the opportunity to have that audio available.

TK: Amen. Well, Jason, do you want to pray for us as readers of God’s word as we encounter it?

JD: Lord, we are grateful that you have spoken in a way we can truly understand. Thank you that you reign and that you, as the reigning God, save and satisfy every sinner who believes through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. I pray that this good news would be seared into our souls—that it would not only save us from sin’s penalty but that we would increasingly be saved from sin’s power as we hope in the day when we will be saved completely from sin’s presence. I thank you that your wrath is abated through the precious gift of Christ. I pray our souls would increasingly be satisfied in all that you are for us in Jesus. Let your word be living and active, and may this reading plan serve souls for the sake of your name and for our good. Through Jesus we pray. Amen.

TK: Amen. Alright, Jason. Thanks so much.

JD: Thank you, Tom.

JY: Thank you for joining us for GearTalk. To register for the GearTalk Bible reading plan, go to handstotheplow.org—you’re gonna love it. For other resources related to biblical theology, visit handstotheplow.org and jasonderouchie.com. To support the work of Hands to the Plow, visit handstotheplow.org.

 

The post Introducing the GearTalk Bible Reading Plan appeared first on Jason DeRouchie.

(Audio Download / PDF / SoundCloud) DeRouchie gave this message on September 28, 2025 at the Sovereign Joy Baptist Church plant in Liberty, MO.

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I invite you to follow along as I read Deuteronomy 5…. Pray with me…. “Nothing good happens after midnight.” Friends told Teresa and me this during our dating years, and we are so glad we heeded their warning. The Israelites gathering to Moses remembered the recent late-night party and the dangers of forsaking Yahweh. Peor was just across the valley, and children holding their daddy’s hands could feel the callouses, shaped from the hours of digging graves. Giving into temptation had brought an Egypt-like plague that killed 24,000 of their brothers.

“All Israel,” God’s old covenant people, had gathered to Moses to hear Yahweh’s word. The end of Deuteronomy clarifies that “all Israel” included “the men, women, and little ones, and the sojourner” who was among them (Deut 31:11–12). Growing out of the “mixed multitude” who accompanied Israel at the exodus (Exod 12:38; cf. Lev 24:10–11; Num 11:4), sojourners were non-native-born Israelites––once foreigners but who had become Yahweh-followers, even willingly accepting the covenant sign of circumcision (Exod 12:48–49). So, some of Israel had an Egyptian heritage, growing up worshiping Egypt’s gods and witnessing Yahweh’s greater power through the plagues. The recent events reminded them that Yahweh was indeed supreme and that doing what he commanded mattered. Later in Israel’s history, figures like Rahab the Canaanite, Ruth the Moabite, and Uriah the Hittite would be drawn to Israel, declaring, “Your people shall be my people, and your God my God” (cf. Ruth 1:16). In the new covenant non-Jews can join God’s people without having to embrace old covenant regulations, signs, and symbols (Eph 2:11–18; 3:6), but in Moses’s day, every follower of Yahweh had to embrace the outward distinctives of the old covenant.

The Need to Heed Moses’s Teaching (5:1)

Moses opens, “Hear, O Israel, the statutes and the rules that I speak in your hearing today, and you shall learn them and be careful to do them” (5:1). Listening is necessary to any relationship. In this instance, hearing the specific statutes and rules that Moses will detail in chapters 12–26 must result in learning and doing them. Knowing God’s instructions is not enough; true followers heed them. While unclear in English, Moses opens speaking to the whole community, calling it to tune its spiritual ears to God’s Word. But then he signals that the responsibility to comprehend and carry out the teaching lies with every individual in the covenant. From old to young and least to greatest, all needed to heed God’s prophet to live.

At this, an abrupt shift happens in Moses’s message. After only one verse of giving instruction, Moses digresses for the next thirty verses by recalling some events from Israel’s time at Mount Sinai, beginning with the giving of the Ten Commandments but then highlighting what took place afterwards (vv. 2–31). For the interpreter, the question becomes, Why does Moses shift from preachy speech in verse 1 to historical narrative in verses 2–31, only to return to his main exhortation in verses 32–33? How does the account of something that took place forty years earlier contribute to his call for the people to heed his words? To answer this, we will need to walk carefully through the historical account itself, noting the details on which Moses chooses to focus.

The Reason to Heed Moses’s Teaching (5:2–31)The Binding Nature and Members of the Horeb Covenant (vv. 2–3)

In verse 2, Moses first recalls the covenant Yahweh originally made with the people. God’s unique, personal name is Yahweh, which the ESV represents with LORD in all caps. Yahweh means, “He causes” all things. God refers to himself as “I am,” but we refer to him as “He causes.” C. S. Lewis did more than write the Chronicles of Narnia, but had he written himself as a character into the books, the Narnians would have only known him as the author, the cause of their reality.

Moses’s stresses that the author of all things is “our God,” who established a covenantal relationship “with us at Horeb.” In Deuteronomy, Moses normally refers the region of Mount Sinai as Horeb (Deut 1:2, 6, 19; 4:10, 15; 5:2; 9:8; 18:16; 28:69; cf. 33:2), a term meaning “dryness or drought” (Gen 31:40; Deut 28:22; Isa 25:5) or by extension “desolation or waste” (cf. Isa 61:4; Jer 49:13; 50:38). The choice of Horeb over Sinai likely anticipates how the old covenant would result in death, not life.

Having introduced the binding nature of Horeb covenant in verse 2, Moses adds emphasis to this in verse 3. He says what God did at Horeb was “not with our faithers … but with us, who are all of us her alive today.” In Deuteronomy, when “fathers” refers to a past group it consistently connotes the patriarchs––Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (e.g., Deut 1:8; 6:10; 7:8; 9:5; 10:22; 29:13; 30:20). So, Moses is underlining that what God spoke at Horeb is not ancient history but matters for his generation. Moses and his audience were part of the covenant and needed to heed its demands and account for its promises and warnings. They are the people of the covenant and must listen to the words of the covenant. But there is more.

The Prophetic Mediator of the Horeb Covenant (vv. 4–31)

Moses himself is the covenant mediator and thus Yahweh’s mouthpiece. This part of the prophet’s argument is developed in two units: the context (vv. 4–22) and the process (vv. 23–31) of Moses’s appointment as covenant mediator.

The Context of Moses’s Appointment as Covenant Mediator (vv. 4–22)

Moses opens in verses 4–5 by giving us the setting for God’s covenantal revelation. The mountain was blazing with fire from the presence of God, and Yahweh was speaking in a way that generated great fear in the people, causing them not to approach the mountain. As such, Moses tells them, “I stood between the LORD and you at that time, to declare to you the word of the LORD.” Already, Moses is operating as the middleman.

Moses then recalls the covenant revelation itself, which we often refer to as the Ten Commandments. My next sermon on Deuteronomy is going to focus solely on these Ten Words in verses 6–21, so at present we are going to hop over them and continue with the story. Beginning in verses 22, Moses reflects on the revelation: “These words the LORD spoke to all your assembly at the mountain out of the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness, with a loud voice; and he added no more. And he wrote them on two tablets of stone and gave them to me.” The imagery of fire, cloud, and thick darkness is common in Scripture whenever God manifests himself in our world. Usually, it happens in contexts of punishment, as at the day of the Lord, when Yahweh enters space and time as a warrior to crush his enemy and save his own (e.g., Zeph 1:14–16). The cataclysm at Horeb may anticipate how the covenant would bear a ministry of condemnation (2 Cor 3:9).

Once Yahweh proclaimed the Ten Words, “he added no more,” which indicates that the call to love God and neighbor in the Ten Commandments encapsulates the totality of the people’s responsibilities before God. While God would later build upon these words, he added no more now because they were enough to formalize and summarize the relationship.

Yahweh then “wrote them on two tablets of stone and gave them to [Moses]” (Deut 5:22). Again, the emphasis is on Moses mediating the relationship between God and the people. Last week we noted how a covenant is a special, formal relationship between two parties based on binding promises with God as witness. Both tablets likely included all the Ten Words, for the ancients commonly made duplicates of the covenant document so that both covenant parties had copies to place in the temple of their gods, who would hold them accountable. In the case of the old Mosaic covenant, the two parties were Israel and God, yet both copies would be placed within the tabernacle inside the arc of the covenant, God’s throne, because Yahweh served both as a party of and witness to the covenant.

The Process of Moses’s Appointment as Covenant Mediator (vv. 23–31)

Having noted the context, Moses now clarifies the process by which the people formally recognized him as covenant mediator. The Hebrew text signals this part of the story as the climax of Moses’s historical account, thus showing that the story at Horeb in chapter 5 is less about “The Ten Commandments” like the heading in my ESV says and more about what we are now going to read. The report develops in two paragraphs, with the first addressing the people’s request that Moses mediate between them and God and with the second detailing Yahweh’s affirmation and appointment of Moses as covenant mediator.

Verse 23 notes, while Yahweh’s voice was rumbling out of the darkness and the mountain was ablaze, the twelve tribal leaders and other community influencers approached Moses to request that he operate as a go-between. We then read their collective perspective. Verse 24 says, “Behold, the LORD our God has shown us his glory and greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire. This day we have seen God speak with man, and man still live.” Israel’s auditory and visual senses were in overload, having seen Yahweh’s majesty and heard his roar. They were amazed that they were not yet dead, but they were also convinced that their end would be soon unless something changed fast.

We pick up in verse 25: “Why should we die? For this great fire will consume us. If we hear the voice of the LORD our God any more, we shall die.” Verse 26 then tells us that they knew their doom was certain because, in their limited global understanding, no human had ever survived a similar encounter with “the living God.” I think of Adam and Eve in the garden, meeting Yahweh God after he had declared, “In the day that you eat of [the tree] you shall surely die” (Gen 2:17; cf. 3:8–10). This is the first time in Scripture that Yahweh is called “the living God,” and in other every instance, as here, the title highlights the certainty that he, as God, is real and superior to all other forces. Thus, Jeremiah declares that, in contrast to the idols of men, “the LORD is the true God; he is the living God and the everlasting King. At his wrath the earth quakes, and the nations cannot endure his indignation” (Jer 10:10; cf. 1 Sam 17:26, 36; 2 Kgs 19:4, 16). In verse 27, the leaders clarify the community’s plea. “[Moses, you] go near and hear all that the LORD our God will say and speak to us all that the LORD our God will speak to you, and we will hear and do it.”

At this, Moses shifts in verses 28–31 to record Yahweh’s response, for God was aware of what was going on at the base of the mountain. Yahweh notes first that he heard the leaders’ words to Moses, and then God affirms they were indeed correct that they would die from his presence: “They are right in all that they have spoken” (v. 28). This statement in verse 28 seems to assume that the people’s hearts were not righteous before God, and he knew it.

I will substantiate this idea shortly, but I first must stress that, when the living God appears in space and time, we must be ready. Just as he met Israel at the mountain out of the fire and the cloud, he will appear again in fire and cloud, and every eye will see him. Anticipating this day, the author of Hebrews said, “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries” (Heb 10:24–27). Paul adds that the Lord Jesus will be “revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus” (2 Thess 5:7–8). Are you ready to see the living God face to face?

That Israel’s hearts were indeed not right with God is clarified in verse 29, but to see this we can’t follow the ESV. Where the ESV has, “Oh that they had such a mind as this always,” the Hebrew raises a question: “Who will give so that their heart would be this to them––to fear me and to keep all my commandments all the days, that it might go well with them and with their descendants forever?” Later Moses will tell the community, “To this day the LORD has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear” (29:4). Yet the age would indeed come when he would reshape their hearts so that they would revere and follow him. “And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul” (30:6). God queries, Who will give the people the heart that they need to live in my presence? The answer: he will … in the new covenant.

At this, Yahweh tells Moses to send the people home but commands the prophet to remain: “You, stand here by me, and I will tell you the whole commandment and the statutes and the rules that you shall teach them, that they may do them in the land that I am giving them to possess” (5:31). We read again three categories of law. In 4:45 it was “the testimonies and the statutes and the rules”; now in 5:31 its “the whole commandment and the statutes and the rules.” We saw that “the statutes and the rules” are the detailed covenant stipulations in Deuteronomy 12–26. Yet what of “the whole commandment”?

The word rendered “whole” is the term “all,” so I at times refer to this as “the all-commandment,” captured in 6:5 in the call to love the Lord with all your heart, all your being, and all your substance. Throughout Deuteronomy, this singular supreme commandment summarizes the instructive thrust of the whole book (see 6:1, 25; 7:11; 8:1; 11:8, 22; 15:5; 17:20; 19:9; 27:1; 30:11; 31:5; cf. Josh 22:5). Love is what Israel is to do; all the other instructions clarify how to do it. In Scripture, the singular “commandment” stands alongside “the law” as a summary for all Moses’s teaching (cf. Exod 24:12; Josh 22:5).

Building off the Ten Commandments Moses had already received, Yahweh committed to give the prophet “the whole commandment, even the statutes and the rules,” and Moses was to teach the people to obey them in the land (Deut 5:31). They are now on cusp of entering the promised land, and in 5:1 Moses urges them to hear and learn and obey his teaching. So, why would he give a single verse charge and then shift into a thirty-verse historical digression on the events of Horeb forty years earlier? The answer is that those very events bind the present generation to the covenant and establish Moses as Yahweh’s mouthpiece.

Affirming the Need to Heed Moses’s Teaching (5:32–33)

Moses is done with his story telling, and in verse 32 he returns to this exhortation, yet in a way that recalls his last direction in verse 1. With “the statutes and the rules” in mind, 5:1 ended with Moses commanding Israel, “Be careful to do them.” Now, 5:32 opens, “And you shall be careful therefore to do as the LORD your God has commanded you.” Note how what Moses was speaking is now explicitly called Yahweh’s command. The prophet’s instruction is God’s law, God’s commandment, so for Israel to reject Moses was to reject God.

“The gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matt 7:14). In verses 32–33, Moses says that to obey requires not veering to the right or to the left but remaining on the singular path. He ends by supplying three promises that motivate this resolve: (1) life; (2) wellness; (3) extended days in the promised land. Because we are reading Deuteronomy’s synthesis of Moses’s law, we often will encounter the foundational principle of the old covenant: do this so that you may live; obey perfectly so that you may enjoy blessing (cf. Lev 18:5; Deut 4:1; 8:1; 11:27–28; 30:16–17; 32:47). As in the garden of Eden, where Adam and Even could have, hypothetically, enjoyed eternal life had they heeded God’s directive, so, too, the Mosaic law makes eternal life a goal in the relationship and not a ground of it. If God’s people perfectly followed his Word through Moses, they would enjoy full provision, protection, and lasting life. That is how law works: do this and live. Why then do we need the gospel?

Paul tells us that it’s because the complete inability of every mere mortal to perfectly honor God always results in our doom. As he says in Galatians, “All who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written [in Deut 27:26], ‘Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them’” (Gal 3:10). The hope of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that “God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us” (Rom 8:3–4). In weeks to come we’ll unpack these beautiful truths more.

Conclusion

For now, let me summarize and consider some lasting relevance. In this first of three testimonies in Deuteronomy 5–11, Moses defines the fundamentals of the Moab law-covenant. At base, Israel needed to heed Moses’s instruction because they were the people of the covenant and he was the mediator of the covenant. The mediator’s voice matters, for he serves as God’s ambassador and mouthpiece. His words are God’s words, bearing all the authority of heaven. To reject the mediator is to reject the living God and to put yourself in danger of blazing divine fury.

Christians are in the new covenant, not old, so Moses is not our mediator. At the transfiguration, when Moses encountered God’s glory on another mountain, “a bright cloud overshadowed [Moses, Elijah, and Jesus], and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him’” (Matt 17:5). Here God recalls Moses’s pledge in Deuteronomy 18: “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers––it is to him you shall listen––just as you desired of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die’” (Deut 18:15–16). Yahweh then said, “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him” (18:18–19; cf. Acts 3:22–26).

Brothers and sisters, Jesus “is the mediator of a new covenant” (Heb 9:15), and it is to him we must listen. The better covenant in Christ has now superseded the Mosaic administration, so we must heed the law of Christ (1 Cor 9:21; Gal 6:3), seeking to make mature new covenant disciples by “teaching [every covenant member] to observe all that [Jesus] commanded” (Matt 28:20).

At the beginning of Moses’s second and longest sermon in Deuteronomy, Yahweh stresses the importance of knowing our covenant and its mediator. Moses charged the Israelites to “hear, learn, and do” his instructions. Yet for most in the old covenant, Yahweh did not grant ears to hear (Deut 29:4), and without hearing, they could not learn and do and so would experience curse, not blessing. Yet the book’s hope is God’s promise to one day enable what he commands. Thus, Jesus says, “It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me” (John 6:45). Nothing good happens after midnight; I urge you: do not forsake the Lord. The old covenant pattern that all Israelites except Jesus failed to heed was hear, learn, and do. The new covenant pattern provided to us by grace through faith is hear, learn, and come. I urge you today: come to Jesus, our better covenant mediator.

The post The Need to Heed God’s Mediated Word: A Sermon on Deuteronomy 5:1–33 appeared first on Jason DeRouchie.

The Prophetic Word of Zephaniah For the Church Today The Prophetic Word of Zephaniah For the Church Today

by Jason DeRouchie, Tom Kelby, and Jack Yaeger

https://jasonderouchie.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Zephaniah-Episode-1.mp3 Transcript

JY: Welcome to Gear Talk, a podcast on biblical theology. Recently, Jason DeRouchie published a substantial commentary on the Old Testament prophetic book Zephaniah.

JY: On this podcast, Dr. Fred Zaspel, editor of Books at a Glance, interviews Jason about Zephaniah’s message and lasting significance.

JY: Jason’s kids grew up with Zephaniah being one of their dad’s best friends, and we think that you will benefit from the way Jason clarifies how this 53-verse, relatively unknown prophetic gem is Christian Scripture that magnifies Christ and speaks to the church today.

JY: In the show notes, we’ll include some links to some of Jason’s writings on Zephaniah.

FZ: Greetings. I’m Fred Zaspel. Welcome to another author interview here at Books at a Glance. Today, we’re talking to Dr. Jason DeRouchie about his new commentary on the minor prophet Zephaniah.

FZ: Jason, great to have you with us. Thanks for coming.

JD: Thanks. It’s a delight to be with you.

FZ: It’s not often we see a commentary on Zephaniah, so congratulations on that.

JD: That’s right. This truly is one of those books so many don’t even know exist. Fifty-three short verses.

JD: My son told me that, okay, Dad, my phone says it takes 9 minutes to read through this book. And if I take that number of words and compare it to your commentary, it’s going to be a 17-hour read.

JD: That’s what he told me.

FZ: I was going to say, Zephaniah is one of those books where you tell the congregation you’re going to turn to Zephaniah, and then you take a coffee break. You explain that it’s in the Old Testament and give them time to look over in their index and find it.

FZ: What about all of that? Why is it so? Is it just because it’s one of The Twelve and it’s so small that it’s overlooked? Tell us about your own interest in Zephaniah. I know it’s been a long interest of yours. So tell us about all that.

JD: Well, it is an unknown book. We are Christians, and so many of us are raised solely on the New Testament, failing to recognize that our Old Testament is Christian Scripture.

JD: Then we go to the prophets and think of the heavy hitters like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the 12 Minor Prophets, minor only because of their size, they’re easily forgotten. Zephaniah is buried right in the middle of them and is filled with imagery of the day of the Lord, and half of that is punishment, which we don’t often like to think about.

JD: So I think we just don’t consider Minor Prophets very often. Now for me, I was thrust into teaching my very first Minor Prophets course 20 years ago this year.

JD: They were 8-week exegesis classes at the undergraduate Christian college I was teaching at. Over a 4-year period, I taught the Minor Prophets 10 times, and Zephaniah continued to be the book that destroyed me because of its call for humility and its battle against the proud.

JD: Originally, in the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the Old Testament series, I was slated to write on Deuteronomy. That’s what I had done my doctoral studies in, and I wanted to continue that work.

JD: But over time, it became evident that I was not going to be able to finish that project according to the calendar Zondervan had in mind. So I requested Zephaniah.

JD: Little did I know what I would gain. What I knew is that Acts 3:18 said all the prophets foretold the sufferings of Christ.

JD: Acts 3:24 said all the prophets declared the day that Peter was preaching in, which was Pentecost and beyond. All the prophets did that. Acts 10 told us that all the prophets foretold that everyone who believes in Jesus can experience forgiveness of sins.

JD: Peter again in 1 Peter 1 said the very prophets of the Old Testament that were speaking about the saving grace that was ours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring to know what person and time the Spirit of Christ in them foretold when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.

JD: It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but us. They were searching and inquiring. Zephaniah was reading Isaiah. Zephaniah was reading Genesis and considering all the while, as Peter says, the person and the time of Christ’s coming.

JD: I had that framework, and it drew me into this book because it’s one of those Minor Prophets that never mentions the Messiah explicitly. Yet Peter says he’s there. His sufferings are talked about. The church age is talked about. So I was drawn into this book, and I ended up spending 10 years with this guy.

JD: Many projects happened in between, but I started it in the summer of 2014. For a decade, I’ve gotten to journey with this brother. He ministered during the days of Josiah, which is in the period when the book of the law was found.

JD: The essence of which I believe are the sermons in Deuteronomy. All of a sudden, my Deuteronomy side was piqued by wondering whether Zephaniah was serving Josiah’s reform movement before or after Deuteronomy was found.

JD: That informed my reading of Zephaniah’s use of Scripture. But then considering Zephaniah’s use in Scripture, how do later authors like Zechariah or John, Luke in the book of Acts draw on Zephaniah? Matthew, as a Gospel writer. How do they interpret it in light of Christ’s coming? All those factors have played in and helped.

JD: As I’ve sought to read this book within its close, continuing, and complete biblical context, I’ve been awed by what God has shown me. I truly see it as Christian Scripture with a lastingly relevant message for the church today.

FZ: I love it. I think that’s enough already to pique our interest in your commentary. It’s great. But I do have a few more questions. Wonderful. I love it. Tell us about the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary series that you’re writing in. What’s distinctive about it, and how does that shape how you approach your work in the commentary?

JD: Well, it’s intriguing. Dr. Daniel Block has long been recognized as someone who reads Scripture carefully, seeking to trace arguments, not only saying what is there, but why the author said it that way.

JD: I wrote my dissertation at Southern Seminary under Daniel Block in the book of Deuteronomy, seeking to trace the flow of thought of Moses’ sermons. When Zondervan approached Dan during my doctoral days about this possibility, Dan kindly pulled me into the editorial team to help shape the vision for this series.

JD: The vision is that of discourse analysis. That is a careful look at the flow of thought and the rhetoric of the biblical author. How are they shaping their arguments? This commentary, in a distinct way, focuses on the main point of every pericope, seeking to shape an exegetical outline rather than a content-based outline.

JD: Rather than just saying what is there, it unpacks for the preacher and the teacher how every subordinate element within the structure of our outline is related to the main idea. It shows how that main idea is unpacked through the author’s thought flow. As we unpack the commentary proper, we’re not addressing word for word; we’re addressing thought for thought to clarify how the argument at this point in whatever book we’re in is being developed, whether it’s a narrative, a poem, or, in my instance, a prophecy.

JD: This isn’t just stringing together pearls. This commentary seeks to unpack the holistic message and, within my commentary, very intentionally place the message of the book itself in light of informing theology. That is, how is what Scripture was this prophet using, and where does the Scripture understand his place and his message within the flow of Scripture storyline climaxing in Christ? How is later Scripture drawing on and clarifying our understanding of this text? Those are the three words I used: the close, the continuing, and the complete biblical context.

JD: So that’s some of the distinctives of the commentary series as a whole and of my commentary in particular. Discourse analysis matched by biblical theology.

FZ: I’ve only begun looking through it. I’ve sampled here and there through it myself so far, and I’ve just been intrigued. I look forward to going through it myself. I think it’s a significant contribution to the study. You’ve mentioned the historical setting, Josiah et al. Is there more you can add to that, the historical setting of Zephaniah?

JD: One of the elements that’s pervasive throughout the book is this language of ingathering. It appears as though, and many commentators have drawn attention to this, that Zephaniah likely preached his message during the fall ingathering festival, that is, the Feast of Tabernacles. The book indicates that he is targeting the very sins that 2 Kings 22 and 23 note Josiah in his reformation movement was addressing.

JD: What’s not present is child sacrifice. So what it suggests to me is that Zephaniah is indeed serving in the days of Josiah’s reform, but after it has already been kick-started so that the most major sin, child sacrifice, has already been addressed. However, many of the smaller elements that are still active in Judah need to be confronted by this prophet.

JD: The very fact that I see Deuteronomy alluded to or cited numerous times in the book suggests to me that this is growing out of the context very near 622 when the book of the law was found. It was found, and then they celebrated Passover. So it was found in the spring, and the Feast of Tabernacles is in the fall. It suggests to me that this book was actually preached. It’s a single oracle. It doesn’t have repeated, for example, “Thus says the Lord.” It’s shaped as a single sermon, these 53 verses, that are the word of the Lord that came to Zephaniah. He proclaims it, it seems, in a single setting. At least that’s how it’s presented to us, associated with the Feast of Tabernacles.

JD: Why that’s significant is because he uses this image of ingathering to his benefit. In the same way that at a grape harvest, the bad grapes are thrown away even as the good grapes are gathered, God is going to do a great ingathering called the day of the Lord. That day of the Lord will be both punishment and renewal. It will have the blessing of fruitfulness, but before that fruitfulness comes, there will be a large amount of pruning that is done. That’s the image of ingathering, and it relates, as I said, to both punishment and renewal.

JD: Another key element of the historical context is that Zephaniah alone has a five-member genealogy in the prophetic introduction. It’s the word of the Lord that came to Zephaniah, the son of Cushie, the son of Amariah, the son of Gedaliah, the son of Hezekiah. The final member is Hezekiah. This suggests that Zephaniah has royal blood in him. He is a Davidic descendant in a sea of debauchery, born in the days of Manasseh, most likely. Yet Manasseh, being the son of Hezekiah, and yet in the royal line maintaining, his name Zephaniah is Yahweh has hidden, protected. That’s how his parents envisioned him as one who is protected in the hand of God from all the yuckiness of the age.

JD: He has in his line royal blood. He’s a symbol of the Davidic hope and connected to the original reformer and now growing up in the days of the new reformer. Not only that, his father is Cushie. Cush is ancient black Africa, and Zephaniah’s grandmother named her son Mai Blackie, suggesting to me—and this is in an age where in the days of Hezekiah, the 25th Egyptian dynasty was a Kushite-ruled dynasty. As we’re reading through the biblical books, we see this influx of black Africans all throughout Judah. It’s not at all strange that there would have been, for example, a black woman who would have married into the Jewish line.

JD: What it suggests to me is that Zephaniah is a biracial prophet. He is both Judean with royal Davidic blood and African, infused into one man. His awareness, his royalty gives clarity to why he is aware of so much international affairs, but his black descent highlights why it is that he is focused significantly on Cush. First, as the one people group that has already experienced the destruction of God, this typological intrusion of the day of the Lord, Cush, that is, as in Nahum when it mentions that Thebes has already fallen. The Egyptian capital of Thebes was the Kushite capital of the 25th Egyptian dynasty, and Zephaniah is talking about that same destruction.

JD: Cush has already fallen, but then Cush becomes the sole region on the planet that gives exhibit A, example A of international transformation at the day of the Lord. It says in Zephaniah 3:9, “In that day,” that is at the day of the Lord, “I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech that all of them may call upon the name of the Lord and serve him with one accord. From the very region of Cush, my worshipers, the daughter of my dispersed ones, will bring my offering.” That’s the sole example.

JD: Cush is where Zephaniah goes to celebrate this international global transformation at the day of the Lord, where God will purify speech and where he will take the offspring of those once scattered and gather them like priests to his holy presence.

JD: I think that Zephaniah is indeed a black Jew, and he’s celebrating his ethnic heritage. That both is a central point in the book of how it reaches backward and forward. Because even as I talk about the change of speech, Fred, and the regathering of offspring once scattered, I would imagine that it sparks something in Old Testament history in your mind. The changing of speech and the language of scattering. What comes to mind in the Old Testament?

FZ: Babel.

JD: I think that’s exactly right. What’s amazing is that the one who built Babel, according to Genesis 10, was Nimrod, son of Cush. So it’s the Cushites who built Babel, and then God—so they’re the instigators of the hostility against God. Now Zephaniah is elevating Cush, ancient black Africa, as the very ones that God will start his international ingathering.

JD: So Cush brings about the global scattering, and then God will begin with Cush to reverse the decreation and bring creation. We could go back a little bit further. The region of Cush is first mentioned as one of the terminus points of the four rivers that flow from the Garden of Eden.

JD: Zephaniah says, “From the region of Cush, from beyond the rivers of Cush, my worshipers, the daughter of my dispersed ones, will bring my offering.” It’s as if those in black Africa once scattered are now following the rivers of life back to the very presence of God. We jump into the New Testament. Many scholars have highlighted how Pentecost seems to be alluding to Babel, but what they miss in the quotation with Joel 2 is that Joel mentions the Spirit’s outpouring, but he never mentions the change of speech.

JD: It’s Zephaniah 3 that mentions the change of speech. I see Luke intentionally reaching back to Zephaniah as all the nations are gathering to Jerusalem and the gospel is being proclaimed in multiple tongues. It’s an allusion to the initial fulfillment of Zephaniah’s prophecy. What’s amazing in Acts 2 is that Cush or ancient Ethiopia is never mentioned because, I believe, Luke intentionally holds off noting any presence of Cushites in Jerusalem because they’re Jews and proselytes.

JD: He holds off until Acts 8 mentioning the Ethiopian eunuch, the first Gentile convert to Christianity, to highlight, look, look. It’s ancient black Africa. It’s ancient Ethiopia from which God is now sparking this global reversal of the curse and global transformation.

JD: It springs forth in Acts 8 as the first Gentile convert. This is Scripture’s use of Scripture and Zephaniah’s use in Scripture as I’m understanding it, and it’s beautiful.

JD: Related to historical context, he is a biracial Jew. He is a black Israelite prophet whose own life is testifying to his messianic day of the Lord futuristic hope in what God will bring on a global scale, fulfilling the Abrahamic covenant promises.

FZ: I love it. I love it. I was going to ask you next, what is the big question? What is Zephaniah all about? What’s its major theme? You’ve already touched on that. Do you want to crystallize the theme of Zephaniah for us?

JD: I will. The book opens with the day of the Lord as punishment, portraying that punishment as cataclysm, conquest, and sacrifice, all three of which are brought together at the cross.

JD: This is one of the ways that I believe the day of the Lord as punishment in Zephaniah anticipates the sufferings of Christ. But that day of the Lord is only a backdrop for the main exhortations in Zephaniah 2 and 3.

JD: The first exhortation grouping comes in Zephaniah 2:1-3, and this is the essence of it: seek the Lord together to avoid punishment. The next exhortation comes in Zephaniah 3:8. In its context, wait for the Lord to enjoy salvation.

JD: Those are the two elements that I see shaping the essence of this prophet’s message: seek the Lord together to avoid punishment, wait for the Lord to enjoy salvation. Within the book, that salvation, that delightful salvation sets the highest-level motivation for the people to seek the Lord and wait for him.

JD: It’s that they might rejoice in their deliverance and that ultimately God might rejoice or sing over those he has saved. It’s this satisfaction that is the highest-level motivation in the book. That’s why I have made the subtitle of Zephaniah “The Savior’s Invitation to Satisfaction.”

JD: Seek the Lord together to avoid punishment. Wait for the Lord to enjoy salvation. That salvation is intimately related to rejoicing, making merry, celebrating the deliverance that God has wrought as he’s overcome the curse, and matching line by line this Savior King’s celebration over those he has redeemed.

FZ: I think it capsulizes the book very well. Is there a distinct role that Zephaniah has in the canon, a distinct contribution that it has to the canon?

JD: Yes. It’s especially seen in the book of The Twelve. Of all the Minor Prophets, Martin Luther said Zephaniah proclaims the age of the Messiah more clearly than any other.

JD: If you take the book of The Twelve, the 12 Minor Prophets—

FZ: More than Zechariah.

JD: That’s according to Martin Luther. The whole—and probably what he meant is the holistic view of the messianic era that includes one of the Bible’s most graphic portrayals of the day of the Lord as punishment and one of the most glorious portrayals of the day of the Lord as renewal.

JD: Within the book of The Twelve, the prophets proclaim sin, punishment, and restoration. They engage the sins of the people directly, usually through the lens of the Mosaic covenant. That’s what clarifies the standard upon which their lives are being weighed.

JD: Within that Mosaic covenant, it was clear: if you do not obey and follow the Lord, judgment will follow. The curses of the covenant will be poured out. The prophets move toward a focus on defining the nature of those curses and how bad it is going to get because God takes sin seriously.

JD: But always, the vision of the prophets is that on the other side of that judgment is renewal and restoration for a remnant. That renewal and restoration is directly associated with the work of the Messiah.

JD: Someone like Paul House has, I think, helpfully identified that even though every book in the Minor Prophets and indeed even the major prophets speaks of sin, punishment, and restoration, when we look at the whole of the book of The Twelve, recognizing that these books are not in chronological order, Jonah was the earliest prophet, but Hosea gets fronted.

JD: There appears to be a theological structuring of the book of The Twelve. Hosea through Micah, those first six books in The Twelve, principally focus on defining the sins of the people. Then Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah highlight the punishment that is going to come against the peoples, not only against Judah but against all the world for their turning away from God.

JD: Within this framework, Zephaniah provides—whether we would view it as the high point of punishment or perhaps better, this low movement in the book—it’s in Zephaniah that we get to the lowest point of the U and then begin to move upward. Zephaniah is indeed a climax within the book of The Twelve as a whole because it portrays extremely graphically through cataclysm and conquest and sacrificial language the judgment that God is going to bring upon the world.

JD: But then it moves through that judgment, and through the flames and the burning comes new life. The seed dies, and then out comes this glorious rising beautiful international community of God. Zephaniah envisions this in his final chapter, this portrayal of salvation and deliverance out of the day of the Lord in wonderfully beautiful ways that I believe are anticipating the church age.

JD: Within that framework, he provides a vital role within the book of The Twelve of moving us from punishment to a vision of renewal. It’s in that vision of renewal that then Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, that hope for renewal, end out the book of The Twelve.

JD: Of all the Minor Prophets, Zephaniah most holistically relates—similar to the book of Isaiah. Zechariah, without question, is bathed in Isaiah in ways that no other prophet is. But with respect to portraying both the judgment of God and the new creation of God, Zephaniah captures it.

JD: For a preacher that might say it’s too daunting for me to tackle one of those big major prophets, Zephaniah would be an ideal book to say, I’m going to give five sermons to these 53 verses and give my people a holistic view of redemptive history.

JD: It will take you all the way back to Genesis, unpacking the problem and showing the impact of that problem on the people of Israel and Judah of Zephaniah’s day, but it will move you through the exile all the way to the days of the coming of Christ.

JD: In John 12, at Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, we hear, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the King of Israel!” That reaches us back to Psalm 118. But the King of Israel is not part of that text, but it is part of John 12. Then it says directly after that, the people cry out, “Fear not! Your King comes to you, gentle, riding on a donkey, on the colt, the foal of a donkey.” That shoots us back to Zechariah 9. Zechariah 9 actually says, “Rejoice!” rather than “Fear not!” Where did John get that “Fear not, O daughter of Zion?” The one text in all the Old Testament that includes “King of Israel,” “daughter of Zion,” and “fear not” is Zephaniah 3:14-15.

JD: I think what’s happening is John is actually, as he’s writing John 12, not only drawing on Psalm 118 and drawing on Zechariah 9, but he also has in mind the promise of Zephaniah 3 that reads, “Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exalt with all your heart! The Lord has taken away the judgments against you. He has cleared away your enemies. The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst. You shall never again fear evil.” Zephaniah is envisioning a day of the Lord that is already but not yet. A day in which God has intruded in and already overcome enemies.

JD: He’s urging the people, “Don’t fear! You need not fear anymore!” He’s called the King of Israel, and it’s supposed to spark the daughter of Zion, not Zion herself. The Zion of Zephaniah’s day was an evil, wicked place. This is an offspring of that group, a remnant of that group that are called to rejoice in light of judgment overcome.

JD: John sees Jesus as the ultimate embodiment of Yahweh in the day of the Lord coming into Jerusalem, calling his people, “Fear not! Because the judgments are going to be taken away.” It says in John 12 that “A great crowd was following Jesus. Indeed, many Greeks were there.” After the resurrection, the disciples remembered these words and understood the Scriptures.

JD: I think Zephaniah 3 was one of those Scriptures that they went back to and said—

FZ: It would seem so.

JD: The Lord’s reign, the day of the Lord, King Yahweh’s reign is being realized through Jesus, who has overcome the curse on our behalf.

JD: In doing so, he has trampled our enemy. Even now, as we await the full realization of the day of the Lord, we recognize new creation has already dawned. The fires of God’s wrath have already been poured out on our behalf at the cross. The day of the Lord has entered into the middle of history, and with that, the dawn of the new creation.

JD: The international ingathering beginning with Cush has started. We, as part of the church, are enjoying now this international transformation.

FZ: Love it. I love it. You mentioned the possibility of preaching five messages through Zephaniah. I’m sure this has happened to you before. You get invited to speak somewhere. You got one shot. It’s a Sunday school lesson or it’s one sermon, and if they want you to give them Zephaniah. Can you give us a two-minute summary of that sermon?

JD: Sin is serious. The day of the Lord is real. The day of the Lord will come in fury. In that day, Christ will be the agent of God’s destruction. But before Christ comes as the agent of that destruction, he came as the object of that destruction. He came as the one who bore our pain, and all the fiery wrath of God that is promised at the day of the Lord was poured out upon him at the cross. If we seek the Lord together, we can avoid the punishment promised in this book. If we wait for the Lord together, we can enjoy salvation because of what Christ has done. That’s the essence of how I would capture the Christian message of Zephaniah. I think that is what Zephaniah was ultimately hoping in.

FZ: Amen. Amen. This has been very helpful, Jason. Thanks so much. We’re talking to Dr. Jason DeRouchie about his new exegetical commentary from Zondervan on Zephaniah. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve read through just parts of it. I’ve sampled it here and there, and my interest has been enormously piqued. I look forward to working through the entire commentary. This has been a wonderful taste of it today, Jason.

FZ: Thanks a lot.

JD: Thank you.

FZ: Alright.

JY: Thank you for joining us for GearTalk. Check the show notes for some of Jason’s writings on Zephaniah. For more resources connected to biblical theology, visit handstotheplow.org and jasonderouchie.com. To support the work of Hands to the Plow, visit handstotheplow.org.

The post The Prophetic Word of Zephaniah For the Church Today appeared first on Jason DeRouchie.

(Audio Download / PDF / SoundCloud) DeRouchie gave this message on 9/21/2025 at the Sovereign Joy Baptist Church plant in Liberty, MO.

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Today marks our church’s one-year anniversary of weekly worship gatherings. Praise the Lord for providing and protecting. My heart warms with affection for you as members of Sovereign Joy, and my love for you has only grown the last several weeks as we’ve walked through flames together. We don’t yet know what God is forging, but as Tolkien highlighted in Fellowship of the Ring how fire alone could disclose the writing on the one great ring, the heat of the past weeks is increasingly disclosing the law of God written on your hearts. You have acted so responsibly, revealing both your ownership of our church and your commitment to the glory of God in the face of Christ. I praise the Lord for you, and I am eager to journey forward with you to glorify God by making mature disciples through the Word and Spirit for the joy of all peoples in Jesus Christ.

Today also marks the start of a preaching series through Deuteronomy 5–11, which shapes the heart of this amazing book that calls God’s people to love him with all. Paul said, “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Rom 15:4; cf. 2 Tim 3:16). Deuteronomy is Christian Scripture that God gave “for our instruction” that we might gain “hope.” With this, Jesus noted, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me” (John 5:46). As we walk through one of Moses’s sermons in Deuteronomy, we get to consider how these words bear witness to Christ (5:39).

I say these things fully recognizing that Paul said that Moses’s law multiplied transgression (Rom 5:20; Gal 3:19), exposed sin (Rom 3:20), and brought wrath (4:15). Why preach through a book filled with laws that brought death to God’s people due to their inability to obey perfectly? Doesn’t Paul stress that the old law-covenant of Deuteronomy bore “a ministry of death” and “a ministry of condemnation” only to be superseded by the new covenant’s “ministry of righteousness” (2 Cor 4:7, 9)? Doesn’t Paul highlight that “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Rom 10:4)? Why then would we as Christians want to focus on the law of Moses?

These are important questions, and the challenges only increase when we see that Paul equally said that this same law includes “the embodiment of knowledge and truth” (Rom 2:20) and that “the law” of Deuteronomy “is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good” (7:12). Why did this book inform and influence the old covenant seers, sages, and song writers more than any other, and why was this book one of Jesus and Paul’s favorites? When the devil tempted Jesus in the wilderness, verses in Deuteronomy shaped three of his responses (Matt 4:4, 7, 10; cf. Deut 8:3; 6:16, 13), and later Jesus said the “most important commandment” was Deuteronomy’s foundational call to love the one God with all (Mark 12:29–30; cf. Deut 6:4–5). Paul pointed to Deuteronomy to celebrate that we can be saved if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead (Rom 10:8–9; cf. Deut 30:14). Deuteronomy helped justify Paul’s mission to the Gentiles (Rom 15:10; cf. Deut 32:43), and he recalled Deuteronomy to highlight how Christ became a curse for us so we may be justified by faith (Gal 3:11, 13; cf. Deut 21:23).

Deuteronomy is Christian Scripture that matters for Christians. While the book served as a constitution for the united tribes of Israel and detailed the old Mosaic covenant relationship of which we are not a part, it also foretells how Israel would disown this relationship and how God would work through a new covenant prophetic mediator who would forever ensure lasting relationship and a universal kingdom. The church today is part of that new work, called the new covenant in Christ, so we can begin to see how Deuteronomy was written “for our instruction” to awaken “hope” in a trustworthy God who is faithful to his promises.

Turn to Deuteronomy 4:44–49, which introduce Moses’s second sermon and clarify its nature, audience, and historical setting. The words come from unnamed narrator, whose principal role in the book is to let us hear Moses’s final words to a community he had been shepherding for forty years. If God told you that you would die tomorrow, what would you say to the people you’ve loved and lead for four decades? Along with a warning song and a death-bed blessing, Moses’s four sermons in Deuteronomy supply his last words before death. Collectively they are called “the book of the law” (Deut 29:21; 30:10; 31:26), but you should think of them less as the legal dictates of a judge and more as the passionate guidance of a father to his children––the instructions of a shepherd who cares deeply about the heart and future of his sheep. This is what we will get in Deuteronomy 5–11. But first we must hear the narrator’s heading for this larger unit and his preamble to the second sermon. Follow along as I read Deuteronomy 4:44–49…. Pray with me….

The Law of Moses (4:44)

To grasp properly a passage’s lasting significance, we must query the author’s intent. Some texts seek to instruct, calling for faith or action. Others seek to motivate, clarifying promises or warnings designed to guide other stated goals. Still other texts, like this one, seek to inform. So, as we consider Scriptural application today, you’ve gained what God intended if you better understand in a way that readies your heart for what is coming. We are to think rightly about issues like the speaker’s identity and authority and the timing and setting of his words. We must remember that God does not include superficial details in his text. The Spirit gave us these words on purpose, and we must consider why.

Our text has a double heading, the first of which comes in 4:44: “And this is the law that Moses set before the people of Israel.” While absent in the ESV, verse 44 begins with a conjunction that links this heading to the book’s beginning. 1:1 opens, “These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel,” and now 4:44 adds, “And this is the law that Moses set before the people of Israel.” The first sermon in chapters 1–4 is categorized as “words,” and then the several messages that run from chapters 5–28 are together designated as “the law.” The “words” in chapters 1–4 supply the historical context and implications of the covenant God is here renewing in the region of Moab, and then the “law” in chapters 5–28 clarifies the content of the covenant itself.

Next, we must rightly grasp this concept of covenant. It’s a special formal relationship between two parties based on binding promises with God as witness. Legal contracts like land purchases could include a penalty but wouldn’t incur the wrath of God if you failed your commitment. In contrast, covenants included blessings and curses that God would carry out based on whether the human party was faithful to the stipulations. The world’s story told in the Bible develops through a progression of these special relationships between God and humanity.

Deuteronomy’s messages summarize the Moab covenant, which gets its name from the region of Moab, north of the Dead Sea, where Moses gave his final sermons. The Moab covenant renews the relationship God initiated with Israel at Mount Sinai after the exodus. This collective relationship is often referred to as the Mosaic covenant, because Moses is the human instrument God used to formalize the relationship. In Galatians 3, Paul speaks of this old Mosaic covenant when he writes, “The law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God [to Abraham], so as to make the promise void” (Gal 3:17). God had pledged that the world would be blessed through Abraham, and the old law-covenant that Yahweh gave to Israel four centuries later through Moses at Sinai and then through Deuteronomy could not annul those earlier promises.

As salvation history progresses, Israel’s condemnation in the age of Moses’s law gives rise to the age of faith in Christ. Thus, the new covenant supersedes the old. Again, Paul says in Galatians 3, “Before [the age of] faith came, we were held captive under the law [of Moses], imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith” (Gal 3:23–26).

When Paul speaks of law, he almost always refers to the Mosaic law-covenant as detailed in Deuteronomy 5–28. When the narrator introduces this section of Scripture with the heading, “This is the law,” he highlights that what follows supplies the commands and prohibitions for enjoying a lasting relationship with God. But the same section also clarifies the blessings of life that will come if they obey and the curses of death that will result if they don’t. The language of “law,” therefore, summarizes the body of the covenant––both the directives or instructions that guide the relationship and the promises and warnings that motivate it. When Paul says, “the law is holy” (Rom 7:12), and, “I delight in the law of God in my inner being” (7:22), and when he says, “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness” (10:4), he refers to the law-covenant in Deuteronomy that is here introduced with this heading, “This is the law that Moses set before the people of Israel” (Deut 4:44). The content here provided the legal framework for Israel’s future in the promised land. It is this law by which judges were to render justice (16:18–20), kings were to rule (17:18–20), and priests were to teach (33:10). It is this law that the future prophet like Moses would fulfill and clarify and that the new covenant community would then follow (18:15, 18; 30:8, 14).

Finally, the passage associates Moses, not God, with this “law.” Yet these concepts are not at odds, for Moses operates as an ambassador of the heavenly court whom Yahweh commissioned with a word for the people. Moses stands as the mediator of the covenant because he represented God before the people, serving as God’s mouthpiece, and then represented the people before God through prayer. The “law” is indeed Moses’s law, but he is merely the messenger, clarifying for Israel the revelation of God, who is king over all. Elsewhere Scripture refers to the special relationship between Yahweh and Israel as the old covenant because it stands in contrast to the new covenant, for which Jesus is the mediator. The old covenant includes “the law of Moses,” whereas the new covenant includes “the law of Christ” (cf. 1 Cor 9:20–21; Gal 6:2), whom Deuteronomy calls a prophet like Moses.

The Demands of the Moab Covenant

Whereas the “law” of Moses in 4:44 introduces several speeches, the new heading in 4:45 announces only the second message, which has two sections––chapters 5–11 and 12–26. We read, “These are the testimonies, the statutes, and the rules, which Moses spoke to the people of Israel.” Chapters 5–11 read like a sermon and are the “testimonies,” whereas chapters 12–26 sound more like laws and are the detailed “statues and rules.” Chapters 5–11 provide three “testimonies,” each beginning with “Hear, O Israel” (5:1; 6:4; 9:1), that urge Israel to love Yahweh with all by heeding the covenant stipulations that follow (5:1; 11:32).

Having clarified the messenger, audience, and nature of the sermon that follows, the narrator now wants us to consider the significance of several features of history and geography that ready us to interpret properly what Moses is about to preach. Let’s look at each of these in turn.

The Timing

“Moses spoke to the people of Israel when they came out of Egypt” (4:45). The greatest act of divine deliverance in the Old Testament era was the exodus, when Yahweh rescued Israel after 400 years of bondage to Egypt. Thus, we read, “The LORD has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt” (4:20). Highlighting the uniqueness of this event, Moses adds, “Or has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, and by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great deeds of terror, all of which the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?” (4:34). Moses’s law is here framed in the context not of enslavement but of freedom. The narrator stresses that Moses’s call to love God with all in Deuteronomy 5–11 comes as a response to saving grace and not as a means for gaining it. In view of how much God has won for them, will they turn from evil and cling to good?

The Location

“Moses spoke to the sons of Israel … beyond the Jordan in the valley opposite Beth-peor” (4:46). The region of the Jordan River is far east of Kadesh-Barnea in southern Judah where Israel initially tried to enter the promised land. Chapter 1 retells how the nation arrived at this southern outpost of the promised land and sent in twelve spies, who returned celebrating the land’s fruitfulness. Yet the people refused to enter, claiming, “The people are greater and taller than we” (1:28). Even after Moses emphasized, “The LORD your God who goes before you will himself fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes” (1:30), the people “did not believe the LORD” (1:31). So, God declared, “Not one of these men of this evil generation shall see the good land that I swore to give to your fathers” (1:35), except Caleb and Joshua. So, for the next four decades the exodus generation became a walking mortuary, dying at a higher rate than expected as God led them through the wilderness. Moses then says, “And the time from our leaving Kadesh-Barnea until we cross the brook Zered [near where Deuteronomy is preached] was thirty-eight years, until the entire generation, that, the men of war, had perished from the camp, as the LORD had sworn to them” (2:14).

Noting that Moses was speaking in the region of the Jordan recalls not only God’s justice in punishing the first generation but also his mercy in allowing a new generation to rise and enter the promised land. There are still people to whom Moses gets to preach, and this is a testimony to the kindness and steadfast love of God. He hasn’t changed, and we should be forever grateful. Had he wiped out Israel in the wilderness, hope would be dashed for blessing to rise from the offspring of Abraham. Yet while the curse remained, hope was sustained, and one evidence is in Moses preaching to a new generation in the region of the Jordan.

Next, the narrator highlights that Moses’s message arises “in the valley opposite Beth-peor” (4:46). This note cautions all readers. After the exodus generation was dead, Peor was the spot where the prophet Balaam incited the new generation of Israelites “to act treacherously against the LORD” in sexual immorality and idolatry. This resulted in God bringing a plague on the people that killed 24,000 (Num 25:9; 31:16). The plague happened only weeks before Moses’s sermons in Deuteronomy, so the wounds of loss were fresh. 4:3 reads, “Your eyes have seen what the LORD did at Baal-peor, for the LORD your God destroyed from among you all the men who followed the Baal of peor.” The sins of the parents had already become the sins of the children, and 24,000 experienced the curse of death. Approaching Moses’s law rightly in Deuteronomy requires that we sense God’s holiness and feel the tragedy of sin and condemnation. God takes sin seriously, and so should we. We may easily pass over this small geographical comment, yet its presence is to awaken certain reactions in readers who have ears to hear. Do you hear God warning you, urging you to guard yourself from sin?

Finally, with respect to location, we read,

Moses spoke … in the land of Sihon the king of the Amorites, who lived in Heshbon, whom Moses and the people of Israel defeated when they came out of Egypt. And they took possession of his land and the land of Og, the king of Bashan, the two kings of the Amorites, who lived to the east beyond the Jordan; from Aroer, which is on the edge of the Valley of the Arnon, as far as Mount Sirion (that is Hermon), together with all the Arabah on the east side of the Jordan as far as the Sea of the Arabah, under the slopes of Pisgah. (4:46–49)

For a retelling of Israel’s engagement with Sihon and Og you can read chapters 2–3, but in their being called the two Transjordanian “kings of the Amorites” recalls the notice God gave to Abraham that his offspring would be afflicted 400 years and would not yet possess the promised land because “the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Gen 15:16). Obviously, in God’s purposeful providence (2:30; 3:2), these two kings’ refusal of Yahweh’s terms of peace completed the measure of wickedness that God had determined for their destruction, and Yahweh gave them and their lands over to Israel. Israel claimed territory from the northern part of the Dead Sea east of the Jordan all the way up 60 miles north of the Sea of Galilee near Damascus. Moving into the battles, God told Moses, “This day I will begin to put the dread and fear of you on the peoples who are under the whole heaven, who shall hear the report of you and shall tremble and be in anguish because of you” (2:25). And then after the victory, Moses prayed, “O Lord GOD, you have only begun to show your servants your greatness and your mighty hand. For what god is there in heaven or on earth who can do such works and mighty acts as yours?” (3:24). Why does God display such great acts of power? Moses tells us: “that you might know that the LORD is God; there is no other besides him” (4:35).

Conclusion

Today’s passage has sought to inform with necessary data so we can rightly hear Moses’s call to love God with all in Deuteronomy 5–11. The biblical narrator has elevated both Yahweh’s power and pardon, his punishing hand and his preserving grace. In the wilderness, God destroyed the doubting warriors of the exodus generation, and at Peor he brought a plague that killed 24,000 who followed the wicked ways of the world. Yet a new generation remained to whom Moses spoke God’s words, thus highlighting God’s amazing mercy. With this, in the weeks leading up to Moses’s message, Yahweh had delivered the two Amorite kings of the lands beyond the Jordan River over to the Israelites, recalling the great power he had earlier displayed when defeating Egypt at the exodus. The God who promised that he would give Israel a resting place in the promised land was able to do it. But would the new generation heed his Word or follow in the rebellious ways of their forefathers? Yahweh is still holy, and his power remains unmatched.

Furthermore, our present journeys through fire remind us that we are still awaiting our own greater promised land––the new heavens and earth. The questions remain: Will we hear and persevere? Will we fail, or will we follow? In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul recalls some of the same stories mentioned in our passage. He notes of the exodus generation, “With most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness” (1 Cor 10:5). Paul then adds:

Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not be idolaters as some of them were…. We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. (10:6–12)

May we enter Deuteronomy eager to gain greater knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. Moses’s law still matters, and his testimonies in Deuteronomy 5–11 are still speaking to all who have ears to hear. May God help us receive.

The post Introducing Moses’s Testimonies: A Sermon on Deuteronomy 4:44–49 appeared first on Jason DeRouchie.

(Audio Download / PDF / SoundCloud) DeRouchie gave this message on 9/14/2025 at the Sovereign Joy Baptist Church plant in Liberty, MO.

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This week our nation experienced a political assassination. We’ve seen hatred flowing from prejudice and evil responses and reactions. So much darkness! Yet in the shadows, light becomes one of God’s powerful gifts. The more time you have in the night, the more you appreciate sight. Yet light also allows images to etch the mind, creating memories that guide our way when darkness afflicts. Today’s dawn brought fresh divine mercies (Lam 3:22–23), which pursued us into this room (Ps 23:6). We have an able, wise, and good Shepherd who never leaves nor forsakes––whether in the green pastures or in the valleys of darkest shadow.

Turn to Ecclesiastes 11. Today we meditate on the power of light and the gift of sight in a world where dark days are many. The Preacher in Ecclesiastes is one who had tasted the bigness and beauties of God and who supplies help for those who know the Lord yet cannot grasp his ways in this crooked and confused age. This passage seeks to help us know how to rejoice in the Lord always, even when sorrow or strife, loss or lack seem our daily portion. Follow along as I read Eccl 11:7–12:1…. Our passage has two units: (1) the need to rejoice in the Lord always (11:7–8); (2) how to rejoice in the Lord always (11:9–12:1).

The Need to Rejoice in the Lord Always (11:7–8)Seeing Light is Sweet (11:7)

Verse 7 asserts, “Light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun.” Our normal rhythms of sleep and work, seasons and years, are all guided by the presence and patterns of the sun. Every relationship we have and activity we enjoy is aided by light. In the first work week of Genesis 1, the day did not end in the dark, for “there was evening and there was morning, day one” (Gen 1:5). In God’s timing, light always triumphs, as night gives way to sight and dawn drives to noon. The Preacher says, “The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises” (Eccl 1:5). Morning light overcomes the night, and during the blackness, the sun is hastening to the place where it will rise again.

Ecclesiastes uses “light” and “darkness” metaphorically. When Solomon says, “Light is sweet,” he uses a general truth to speak about spiritual realities. Within this book, while “it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun,” most in this world are dwelling in darkness without eyes to see the goodness of God that is all around them. Consider 2:13–14: “Then I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in folly, as there is more gain in light than in darkness. The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness.” Though the fool lives under the sun, he remains blind, unable to see God’s goodness and faithfulness. The stillborn baby never sees light (6:4–5), and in this world death will come to all, when “the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain” (12:2). But of the fool we read: “All his days he eats in darkness in much vexation and sickness and anger” (5:17). There are dark days for both the one who fears God and the one who does not, but it is ever night or spiritually dark for the fool. The fool never appreciates the common graces of God in ways that move him to praise. Therefore, it is the wise who alone can say, “Light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun” (11:7; cf. 7:11–12).

Solomon is the sage who authored this book, and he counts himself among the wise who can appreciate the sweetness of spiritual sight of God’s light. He wants us to recognize how significant glimpses of God’s grace can be. I assume that Jesus has moved most of you from darkness to light, meaning that you recall having tasted and seen God’s goodness, beauty, and faithfulness. You have experienced his closeness, heard him speak through his Word, and rejoiced at his declaration of no condemnation. You’ve sensed his powerful presence amidst pain, and you have felt the relief of deliverance and hope of eternal life. You know that “light is sweet,” for you have lived in the darkness and have seen its end.

But the reality is that once the clouds of past pain dissipate, for the believer greater storms await. “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). Solomon is here urging us not to forget past grace, for it will fuel our hope in future grace. Past glimpses of God’s mercies help true saints maintain their satisfaction in God when trials test our faith. Having experienced the joy in the day, believers gain a hope for dawn and noon that can carry and guide them through the night. Look with me back at 11:8.

Why Seeing Light Is Sweet (11:8)

Why is seeing light sweet? 11:8 supplies the reason why. The ESV opens verse 8 with the conjunction “So,” but I struggle to see how this translation is possible. Both the NASB and CSB translate with “indeed,” which is closer. The Hebrew conjunction is the normal one for expressing the basis for something, and I think that verse 8 gives the reason why verse 7 is true (cf. the same Hebrew construction in 4:9–10; see also 5:19–20; 8:15). Light is sweet “for if a person lives many years, he should rejoice in them all; and he should remember that the days of darkness will be many.” According to this text, light is sweet because of what it gives us not in relation to our past or present but in relation to our future. It is pleasant to see the sun because it supplies us fuel for maintaining our satisfaction in God always, even through extended seasons of darkness. The light forges our memory of the right path, so that in the dark we still know the way to go. Glimpses of God’s goodness today are God’s gifts to help us endure tomorrow, for they remind us of his worth and beauty and help us know he will deliver again.

Notice first that, if God grants that we live many years, we are supposed to “rejoice in them all.” It is like Paul, who implores, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice!” (Phil 4:4; cf. Rom 5:2–3; Jas 1:2–3). The apostle then immediately says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God … will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:6–7). Paul calls people to rejoice always and then says that we battle anxiety and experience peace not only by praying to God but also by thanking God, remembering who he has been for us in our past and who he has promised to be for us in our future. We battle for joy in the darkness by recalling the light.

There is “a time to be born, and a time to die”––just two dates on the tomb stone. And between these poles, as we live out the dash (–), we are to rejoice (Eccl 3:2–8). In times of planting and plucking, killing and healing, weeping and laughing, we must rejoice. Through mourning and dancing, embracing and refraining, seeking and losing, we should rejoice. In times of silence and speaking, loving and hating, war and peace, we are to remain satisfied in all God is for us. “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under the sun” (3:1). But in all our many years, come what may, we are to rejoice in the Lord always.

Light’s sweetness comes in how it helps us maintain God-conscious joy, even when storm clouds darken our perspective. Notice the next statement, “It is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun because … every person should remember that the days of darkness will be many. All that comes is vanity” (11:8). Even those who fear the Lord and have been declared right with him––even the spiritually wise will not always see the rays of God’s goodness. Indeed, for us in this room, “the days of darkness will be many.” Paul noted that we are “fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom 8:17). “It has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake” (Phil 1:29). “If we endure, will also reign with him; if we deny him, he will also deny us” (2 Tim 2:12).

These realities are what makes seeing and savoring the shining of God’s goodness all the sweeter. If one lives many years, many days of these years will be filled with darkness––when God’s goodness seems distant. We must, therefore, memorialize the moments when we know God to be true, when we have seen his power, relished his mercy, and savored his promises, and we must let those glimpses of grace and goodness sustain us through the shadows. Seeing the sun of God’s goodness reminds us that light wins, that morning comes, that darkness will dissipate, and that God will continue to be faithful to carry us into a new day. With every dawn comes the promise of fresh mercies, so light is sweet because of the way it allows us to use every past glimpse of brilliant and warm grace to heighten hope for something beyond the night. Past encounters with God create hope for more steadfast love, so nurture gratitude for God’s past kindness, as it will fuel your faithfulness amidst trial. If you entered this room weary and warn, feeling dry and distant from God … if you feel burdened by the cares of this world, pause and pray that God will remind you of his past mercies and promises and from these heighten your hope that he will act for you again.

I’ve needed to fight for joy this week, for often my soul has been overwhelmed with the weight of this world’s brokenness. How about you? Questions about your future, strife with loved ones, seemingly insurmountable obstacles, unending task lists, concern for your children, ignorance about how to provide or protect, fears about the state of our Union, anxiety about job security or health. Such cares easily suffocate our souls, leaving us gasping for breath and crying for reprieve. Yet we hear the call: “Rejoice in the Lord always. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand” (Phil 4:4–5).” Brothers and sisters, remember how your God has been and forever will be good and faithful and let those truths firmly ground you in the storm. “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isa 41:10). Recall how pleasant seeing the sun is and let that memory supply satisfying surety that light will again triumph over night. Our God is greater. Jesus is stronger.

How to Rejoice in the Lord Always (11:9–12:1)

We now come to part 2 of the sermon. 11:7–8 stressed the need to rejoice in the Lord always; 11:9–12:1 explains how to do this. While unclear in most translations, beginning in verse 9 we find a progression of six conjoined commands: “Rejoice … and walk … and know … and remove … and put away … and remember! These six charges together clarify how you and I can remain satisfied in all God is for us. I have grouped them into four steps. How do we maintain our joy in God, even in hard times? Step 1: Rejoice always (11:9ab). Step 2: Run wisely (11:9cd). Step 3: Remove your cares (11:10ab). Step 4: Remember your Creator (12:1a)

Step 1: Rejoice Always (11:9ab)

Step 1 in rejoicing always is to choose joy: “Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth” (v. 9ab). Choosing to rejoice is easier when days are bright, but God’s worth is displayed even more in the night when our baby will not be consoled, when we learn that our dad lost his job, or when cancer reaches stage 4. Our joy can look like laughs and smiles and praise reports when we win a sporting event, pass a major exam, or delight in time with a loved one. But joy can also look like dependent cries to God for help when money is low, when infertility persists, or when you hear that miscarriage is imminent or that your child has a chromosomal deformity. In Ecclesiastes, God is calling us to rejoice in him both amid prosperity and adversity, and this joy takes numerous forms, depending on the circumstances. Rejoicing is something greater than mere happiness, for when we are not smiling or able to laugh, we can still be satisfied, and our souls can find solace in our unchanging, ever-present, ever-faithful God. There is a way to be “sorrowful yet always rejoicing” (2 Cor 6:9).

Can you choose joy today? Can you declare that “God is worthy of my fear, worthy of my trust simply because of who he is and not because of what he gives or takes away? Can you say, “though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no heard in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation” (Hab 3:17–19)? The first step in always rejoicing in the Lord is choosing joy. Jesus said, “Whoever comes to me shall not hunger; whoever believes in me shall never thirst” (John 6:35).

Step 2: Run Wisely (11:9cd)

Step 2 in rejoicing in the Lord always is to run wisely. Look at the second half of verse 9: “Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes. But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment.” A preacher must truly know his audience if he tells them, “Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes.” Moses characterized his audience as “stubborn, unbelieving, and rebellious” (e.g., Num 14:11; Deut 9:6–7, 23), and because of this he told them “not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes” (Num 15:39). In Ecclesiastes, however, the context is very different. The rest of the book shows that Solomon is not commending an unrestrained, worldly pursuit of pleasure. In 11:7–10 he is addressing the wise man and not the fool. He said in 11:8 that “it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun,” and in 2:14 he observed, “The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness.” Only the wise see the sun as a manifestation of God’s goodness and grace (7:11–12). Elsewhere Solomon says that “the wise heart will know the proper time and the just way” (8:5). Indeed, 10:2 stresses: “A wise man’s heart inclines him to the right, but a fool’s heart to the left.” So, if the wise person’s heart is bent Godward, knowing the just way, it makes sense why Solomon would call him to “walk in the ways of your heart and in the sight of your eyes.” These will be the ways of God.

If you are truly pursuing Jesus, you can assume the lights are green unless God cautions you with a yellow or stops you with a red. In the words of 9:7, “Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do” (cf. 1 Tim 4:4). Yet there is a stated warning. We must be sure to make every step, every decision, every click of the mouse, every purchase, every glance knowing “that for all these things God will bring you into judgment” (Eccl 11:9). “God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil” (12:14; cf. 3:17; 5:2). So, we must not hesitate to follow our heart and to delight in pastries, parks, and parties, but we must do so keeping in mind the final judgment. The Lord will hold us accountable for every word and every deed, and this fact must color how we pursue joy. How do we rejoice in the Lord always? Step 1: choose joy. Step 2: run wisely.

Step 3: Remove Your Cares (v. 10)

Step 3 in sustaining God-conscious joy is to remove your cares. 11:10 reads, “Remove vexation from your heart, and put away pain from your body, for youth and the dawn of life are vanity.” The verbs “remove” and “put away” indicate that rejoicing even in dark days requires that a conscious choice not to allow the burdens, confusions, vexations, and troubles of this life to wear us down. The Preacher is not calling us to pretend life is pleasure when in fact it’s pain. No, there is “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance” (3:4). We don’t ignore human troubles, but we don’t let them consume us. This can be so hard, but we must fight the lies of Satan and embrace the hope God gives.

Jesus said, “Do not be anxious about your life…. Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” (Matt 6:34). Indeed, “not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father…. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows” (10:29–31). Knowing that “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble,” Peter exhorted, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties upon him, because he cares for you” (1 Pet 5:5–7). Because youth and the dawn of life are filled with confusion and questions, “remove vexation from your heart, and put away pain from your body” (Eccl 11:10). That is step 3 in how to rejoice in the Lord always.

Step 4: Remember Your Creator (12:1)

There is no higher way to remain satisfied in God than to remember our Creator: “Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in them.’” (12:1). What 11:8 designated “the days of darkness,” 12:1 calls “evil days.” All of us suffer. If you are still young and have not yet experienced much, you have opportunity now to store memories of God’s kindness that can help sustain your faith long-term. Furthermore, you have the chance to shape within your heart convictions that celebrate God’s bigness and your neediness, that nurture God-dependence and battle self-reliance. “Remember your Creator!”

The Preacher in this book believed in a massive God who creates everything (11:5), both the good and the bad. “Consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked? In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him” (7:13–14). We are ignorant and small; God is in charge. His purposes are not being thwarted through the surprising death of a parent or through an extended search for a house or ministry post. He is at work through sustained illness and in your child’s rebellion. He is sovereign over the home sickness, the night terrors, and the relational friction. The Lord was on the throne before the divorce, and he is on the throne now! He is the Creator––all things being from him, through him, and to him (Rom 11:36). We are aided when we take our eyes off our problem and direct them to the only one who can produce a solution. We cry, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).

If all the power of God that we can neither contain nor explain is working for us, we need not fear those who can only kill the body but cannot kill the soul (Matt 10:28). We gain boldness to leave houses and family and lands for Christ’s sake and for the gospel (Mark 10:29). Our faith need not falter when we fail a task or when a marriage suffers challenges. Oh, God, keep us believing; keep us trusting. Greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4). Remember your Creator, who through the evil days will guide and provide.

Conclusion

In conclusion, rejoice always in the sweetness of supernatural light, which all ultimately derives from Jesus, the light of the world. Embrace every glimpse of God’s goodness shown in and through Christ to give you memories that can help fuel your faith to the end. And as you recall what God has done in Christ and promised through Christ, rejoice always, run wisely, remove your cares, and remember your Creator, whether in times of sight or in the night.

The Queen of Sheba “came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here” (Matt 12:42). Jesus says, “Come unto me … and I will give you rest” (Matt 11:28). “Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). Knowing that God is for you in Jesus should awaken joyous hope for the day when night will be no more and his light will enable sight of his face forevermore.

The post Rejoice in the Lord Always: A Sermon on Ecclesiastes 11:7–12:1 appeared first on Jason DeRouchie.

(Audio Download / PDF / SoundCloud) DeRouchie gave this message on 9/7/2025 at the Sovereign Joy Baptist Church plant in Liberty, MO.

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Introduction

The prophet Habakkuk declared: “Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation” (Hab 3:17–18). The apostle Paul, too, asserted:

I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this [trial] will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain. (Phil 1:18–21)

For guests, we as a body find ourselves this morning in an unexpected season of loss and heartache. This week a pastor was dismissed from his post. We ask this morning, What does God want for us, and how should we respond? Habakkuk said, “If all divine discipline pours down upon me, yet I will rejoice in Yahweh.” Paul said, “I will rejoice, knowing that my deliverance will culminate in Christ’s honor.”

In this season of loss, may we remember “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing” (Eph 1:3). Let your souls take deep comfort knowing that the God who “made us alive together with Christ” has “put all things under his feet … for the church” (1:22) and is, in this very season of grief and uncertainty working “all things according to the counsel of his will” (1:11). Let your heart begin to soar in hope and adoration, knowing that Christ is still at the Father’s right hand “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion” (1:21) and that in him God will “unite all things” (1:10), fixing what is broken, righting all wrongs, and bringing order out of chaos. The hope for our church today is Jesus, through whom we have been adopted as children of God (1:5), no longer “children of wrath” (2:3).

Today we have come to the climax of the first half of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians in 3:20–21; here the first three chapters peak in praise. To this point, Paul has urged the church toward unity in Jesus; as he summarizes the call in 4:3, the church needs “to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph 4:3). Sometimes unity is only possible through discipline, as the church calls straying members back into the fold and clearly signals what it means to follow Jesus. This unity does not mean everyone is the same, for there are Jews and non-Jews and many body parts with different functions and giftings. Yet the unity is centered on Jesus, not following patterns of sin associated with “the course of this world” (2:2) but living out the “good works” that “God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (2:10). This unity is grounded in God’s love toward us in Christ and is characterized by our love for others. God’s “great love” moved him to save us (2:4), and Paul prays that we will know Christ’s love that “surpasses knowledge” (3:17) and that makes possible the gospel (3:7–10). Later he will charge us to speak “the truth in love” (4:15) and to “walk in love, as Christ loved us” (5:2). Having called the church to unity in Jesus, Paul pauses to stand in awe of a God who is all powerful and, therefore, able to enable what he commands.

Knowing the toilsome terrain we have had to journey as a body, I didn’t have to go elsewhere to find a text that would speak to our hearts, and I sense God’s kindness to our body this week, letting us simply progress to the next verses in our series that place us at a pinnacle of praise and open for us amazing vistas of veneration. Look at 3:20–21: “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. My sermon today has three parts: (1) the God worthy of glory; (2) the meaning of “to God be glory”; and (3) the agents and extent of glory. I truly hope that wherever you are at in your walk with God that you would this day find great comfort and confidence in our God who is more than able to provide your every need and satisfy your deepest longings. Pray with me….

The God Worthy of Glory (3:20)

We open considering the God worthy of glory. Paul directs his climactic praise “to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think.” The term translated who is able is the participle form related to the noun “power” later in the verse. I translate the whole: “Now to him who is powerful beyond all to do more than ever what we ask or think, according to the power working within us.” Who is the one worthy of glory? He is the one powerful beyond all.

Paul speaks of this power earlier back in 1:19–21. There he prays that we may know “what is the immeasurable greatness of [God’s] power toward us who believe” (1:19). He then adds it was this “great might” of God that erupted into the world as molten mercy when God raised Jesus from the dead and enthroned him at God’s right hand “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion” (2:20–21). The power God worked in Christ renders Jesus far superior to all other powers, and that identical divine authoritative energy Paul now says in 3:20 is “at work within us” (3:20). The same power that raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you who believe, and no other power can compare. The implications of this in our pursuit of life and holiness are massive.

In your weakness, remember that you have a God who is supremely strong––“powerful beyond all.” You may feel condemned, but if you are in Jesus the powerful God has defeated the prince of the power of the air and declared “by grace you have been saved” (2:5), making you no longer a child of wrath (2:3). Indeed, “we have redemption through [Christ’s] blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses” (1:7). You may be afraid, but the one who “works all things according to the counsel of his will” is with you and for you. “In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ” (1:5) and sealed us “with the promised Holy Spirit” (1:13). This makes the church God’s temple––the very “dwelling place for God” (2:21–22). As a Christian, wherever you go and whatever you face, God is with you, so you need not fear. You may feel sin’s hold on you is too great and that you are overcome by discontentment or lust, anger or doubt, worry or insecurity. Yet Jesus died not only to free you from sin’s penalty but to release you from sin’s power. “We are [God’s] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (2:10). The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is working in us, moving us to walk in newness of life without pride or prejudice, enabling us to forgive as we have been forgiven, and giving us hope beyond what would ever be possible on our own. Jesus is greater than all the powers of darkness, and Paul would have us stand in awe of the God who is supremely powerful.

The apostle adds a specific angle to our God’s super-capability. He notes that he is “able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think.” The term behind far more abundantly is the highest form of comparison possible in Greek; it’s a super-superlative (cf. Dan 3:22; 1 Thess 3:10; 5:13). Your most extravagant request, and every dream of your wildest imagination cannot compare to what is possible with God. As Jeremiah declares, “Ah, Lord GOD! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you” (Jer 32:17; cf. Gen 18:14; Job 42:2; Mark 9:23; 10:27; 14:36; Luke 1:37).

As I look out on this body, I can imagine a day when we have dozens of missionary units on the field and several support teams at home holding their ropes, when God has raised up multiple new pastors from our midst and sent them with hundreds of former members to plant churches. I picture a day when the babies in this room are parents discipling their own children, when present college students are leaders in the home, church, and community, when we have many deacons overseeing teams of servants, and when our council of pastors is loaded with godly, qualified men. I envision a time when the members grounded long-term in our community outnumber those associated with the seminary, when William Jewell College and the city of Liberty know about Sovereign Joy because of its love and its intentional witness for Christ. I long to see our church become a mobilizing center for equipping Bible-believing, Christ-embracing, gospel-cherishing, nations-loving men and women who are sold-out for the sake of Jesus’s name––humble in prayer, skilled in the Word, bold in their testimony, sacrificial in their love, and hopeful in Christ’s return.

But there is more. With Paul, I can pray that our Father of glory would “give [us] a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of [our] hearts enlightened, that [we] may know what is the hope to which he has called [us], what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe” (Eph 1:17–19). Furthermore, I can ask that “according to the riches of his glory he may grant [us] to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in [our] inner being, so that Christ may dwell in [our] hearts through faith––that [we], being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that [we] may be filled with all the fulness of God” (3:16–19). It is that last element that absolutely blows me away. Paul says that God who is powerful beyond all can do more than ever what we ask or think, yet Paul was able to request and imagine God filling us with all the fulness of God. What could be more than that? How could it get better or more extreme or more extensive?

Brothers and sisters, find rest today. Find hope today and do not lose heart. As Paul says elsewhere,

Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Cor 7:16–18).

May we join the apostle in considering that “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom 8:18).

Who is worthy of glory? The God “who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us” (Eph 3:20). This last note regarding God working within us is significant. It not only recalls that we are God’s temple in which he dwells, it draws attention to how we become agents in fulfilling his good purposes––“his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works” (2:10). God’s gracious power toward us does not make our work unnecessary; it makes it possible. Thus, Paul could say, “By the grace of God I am what I am…. I worked harder than any of [the other apostles], though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Cor 5:10). Similarly, he charges, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and work for his good pleasure” (Phil 2:12–13). We can work because God is decisively working in us. “Him we proclaim…. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me” (Col 1:28–29). The God worthy of glory is the one who is powerful beyond all to do more than ever what we ask or think, according to the power working within us.

The Meaning of “To God Be Glory” (3:21)

But we now must ask, if it is this God who is worthy of glory, what does “to God be glory” actually mean? Paul says, “To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations” (3:21). Is the church or Christ somehow giving God something he does not already have?

“Glory” is a term associated with weight, honor, or value. To glorify is to prize or praise worth and beauty. It’s game day for my team; these are my Detroit Lions’ socks. And when I cheer on the Lions, I glorify them, elevating them before others. I am presently in my thirty-second year of marriage to Teresa and my twenty-first year of full-time ministry. Together we have journeyed through so much, yet perhaps more than ever before I find my heart treasuring the gift she is to me. Daily she brings me such a wealth of wisdom, skill, care, companionship, and joy. I am such a better man, better husband, better pastor because she is by my side. And in recognizing this and in verbalizing this, I glorify her––not giving her something that is not already hers but in testifying to what is already hers.

In this book, we have already seen glory appear several times. In 1:6, God predestined us for adoption through Jesus “to the praise of his glorious grace.” God’s saving grace is infused with glory. In 1:12, God’s glory is praised when Christians hope in Christ, and in 1:14 our claiming our future inheritance will result in the praise of God’s glory. 1:17 calls God “the Father of glory,” as if all that is praiseworthy, honorable, venerable finds its ultimate source in him. God’s glory is what we see and savor when we encounter him. It’s what is put on display when all that distinguishes God as God goes public. To experience God’s superior beauty, incomparable greatness, and matchless power through his words and deeds is to encounter his glory. Thus, to glorify God is not to give him something he doesn’t already have but to recognize and rightly magnify who he already is. We magnify him not like a microscope takes something minute and makes it large but like a telescope magnifies the magnificence of a distant moon. Paul’s statement “to him be glory” is a prayer that who God is already glorious would be rightly revered, reflected, resembled, and represented in two agents of glory, and this leads us to our final point.

The Agents and Extent of Glory (3:21)

Having called Christians to unity in Jesus, Paul pauses to pray that God’s splendor would be put on display “in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” On earth the church is the principal agent to testify to God’s worth and love. As I consider how the church glorifies God, we could pause to talk about conversion, fruitful obedience, praise and gatherings for worship, prayer, or discipleship and mission. Yet today, I want to consider how the church’s suffering and trials become a context for God to be magnified.

In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul tells us how he was given a thorn in his flesh, which he describes as “a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited” (2 Cor 12:7). Satan was there, but the purpose of the thorn was to keep Paul from pride, which means God and not Satan was decisive in the apostle’s suffering. God was in charge. Paul pled with the Lord three times to remove this thorn, whatever it was, but Christ said to him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (12:8–9). Paul then declares, “I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (12:10).

Paul’s weakness humbled him, removing pride and forcing him to seek God for comfort and aid. When Paul received help, God was magnified as helper. The apostle’s need for healing made much of the healer. Paul was satisfied, and God was glorified. When we shift from self-reliance to God-dependence, we exalt God’s greatness and receive grace. Because “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (1 Pet 5:5), we should see divine humbling as a severe mercy. When we trust in ourselves less and God more, the spotlight shifts to the splendor of our savior. We glorify God most when he satisfies us most, and sometimes God strips us of earthly comforts or securities so that we will recognize him as our ultimate source of strength and supply. When members of Christ’s church suffer in ways that display God’s worth and God’s power over their own, we testify to God’s greatness in the world in ways that can move others to revel in God as well. Others will “see your good deeds and glorify God” (1 Pet 2:12; cf. Matt 5:16). Consider Paul’s words in 3:13, “I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory.” Jesus is seeking to “present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Eph 5:27). When Paul suffered in a way that revered, reflected, resembled, and represented God’s glorious power and worth to the Ephesians, he aided them in doing the same. Paul prayed that God would be glorified in the church, and I long for God to fulfill that prayer among Sovereign Joy through our affliction. May our suffering move us to savor our savior, who is good, who is in charge, and who knows what is best for us. Whatever your pain or problem today, let your heart look to Jesus. You will be satisfied, and he will be glorified, and in the process you will help others glorify God as well.

Finally, Paul prays that God will be glorified in Christ Jesus. Jesus is one with the Father, and all the glory of the Godhead is his (John 17:5). Yet here Paul longs that God would be further glorified in Christ Jesus. What does he mean?

To answer this let us consider two texts. First, look at 5:18, 20. Paul says that in evil days, “do not get drunk with wine … but be filled with the Spirit … giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Millions of prayers from people in numerous religions we be offered today, but only prayers in Jesus’s name will reach God’s throne. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes the Father except through me” (John 14:6). The only way we can approach God’s presence expecting aid is “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” By his blood and righteousness alone do we stand. “All the promises of God [in which we hope] find their Yes in [Jesus]. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory” (2 Cor 1:20). “Amen” is not just a word of conclusion. It’s related to the verb “to believe” and it’s an expression of our absolute trust in God’s faithfulness to us because of what Christ has done for us. We thus give thanks in Jesus’s name, and God is glorified as we do.

Now, as we conclude this sermon, look back at 2:6–7. We read that God “raised us up [together] and seated us [together] in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” The only way that we receive any blessing from God is in Christ. Our score had only demerit, yet Jesus’s wealth of obedience overcame our poverty; his wounds alone bring our healing. All that we are and all that we ever will be is due to him, and therefore every growth in fruitfulness, every glimpse of grace, every joy in redemption glorifies God in Christ Jesus. And for eternity––or as Paul says in our passage––“throughout all generations, forever,” God will be magnified in ever-increasing ways for eternity as we grow to recognize more and more the “the immeasurable riches of [God’s] grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” And the more our united joy increases in the powerful and grace shown us in Jesus, the more God will be glorified in the church and in Christ Jesus forever.

The post Empowered Unity for God’s Glory: A Sermon on Ephesians 3:20–21 appeared first on Jason DeRouchie.

(Audio Download / PDF / SoundCloud / Handout) DeRouchie gave this message on 8/17/2025 at the Sovereign Joy Baptist Church plant in Liberty, MO.
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Pray with me….

The title of today’s message is “The Revealed Mystery of Gentile Salvation.” Since 2:11, the Apostle Paul has been stressing the need for the church’s unity; Gentile Christians and Jewish Christians are one people of God in Christ. In 2:11–22 he urged the Ephesian church to remember the unifying power of Christ’s love, and now in 3:1–21 he prays that they will know it. The apostle introduces this prayer in 3:1–13, and we’ll focus this week on verses 1–7, which highlight that Gentile Christians as Gentiles are full fellow participants in God’s people. Follow along as I read….

The Initial Opening to Paul’s Prayer (3:1–2)

Two weeks ago, Pastor Charles showed us from Eph 2:11–18 how Jesus is the messenger of peace who creates in himself a new humanity and reconciles both Jews and Gentiles to God, removing all former separation. Then last week Taylor highlighted in 2:19–22 how the predominantly Gentile Christians in Ephesus were full-fledged fellow citizens with all the saints, full members of God’s household, and together a holy temple in which God dwells.

“For this reason,” 3:1 tells us that Paul prays, asking God to make known to the church the unifying power of Christ’s love. But the prayer itself doesn’t come until verse 14. Note how both 3:1 and 3:14 begin with “for this reason.” In 3:1–2, Paul opens his prayer and clarifies for whom he prays, but then before getting to the content of the prayer, he digresses to provide an illustration of the unifying power of Christ’s love.

Paul highlights in 3:1 that he is in prison “for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles.” On the road to Damascus, Jesus told Paul that he was sending him to the Gentiles “to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me” (Acts 26:18). At the same time, the Lord said that he would show Paul “how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” as he carried Christ’s name before the Gentiles (9:15–16). The unifying love of Christ is validated by the fact that Paul, Jewish missionary to the Gentiles, is willing to suffer imprisonment for their sake.

Remember that Paul was “a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent” of the church (1 Tim 1:13) who wanted nothing to do with Christians of any sort, let alone Gentiles. As we read in Ephesians 2:11–12, the Gentiles were the “uncircumcision” who were “separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise.” Yet now Paul was “a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles.” His life illustrates the unifying love of Christ.

Two Saturdays ago, some missionary friends sent from our previous church buried their twelve-year-old daughter. Ministering in northern Africa, this precious image-bearer got Typhoid fever, received treatment, went to sleep, and never woke up. This dear family is bearing a great cost for their discipleship, and their willingness to return to Africa to continue their mission with their seven remaining kids testifies to the love of God for their target people.

Paul’s willingness to suffer for Christ’s sake to see Gentiles saved also testified to the amazing love of Christ. All Christians, though citizens of a different homeland, remain on this earth with gospel purpose, and our suffering provides a context to display both the worth of God and the love of Christ to a world in need of both. That God, after saving you, has kept you on this planet and has led you into suffering is designed to testify to the world of Christ’s amazing love. You are among those of whom the world is not worthy, yet the love of Christ has planted you here to display his love to your neighbors and his worth to the power of darkness, even through your trials. When you face trials this week, consider how your trust in Jesus and steadiness amidst suffering and hope in pain bear witness to Christ’s love and worth to your kids, your neighbors, and your coworkers.

Paul now catches himself before moving on, saying, “assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you” (Eph 3:2). This term translated “stewardship” is the same word translated “plan” in 1:9–10, which highlights that God has made “known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fulness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” I would render 3:2: “assuming that you have heard of the plan of God’s grace that was given to me for you.”

From the beginning of world history, God always intended to overcome the universal problem with a universal solution. For literally thousands of years, God’s people had been anticipating a day when the right order that was present in the beginning would be restored. Whereas blessing was lost in the garden through Adam’s sin, God promised one day to overcome the curse through Abraham and his offspring. In the hourglass of time, history broadly focused first on Adam’s fall and the curse on all humanity but then narrowed to focus on one nation, Israel, through whom God would reverse the curse by raising up a single deliver, Jesus, thus restoring blessing to some from the whole world. “And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed’” (Gal 3:8). Paul was convinced that he was living in the fulness of time and that Christ Jesus’s resurrection and ascension had marked the shift in world history from promise to fulfillment. Saving grace and every spiritual blessing was coming to all who by faith were united to Jesus––from both Jews and Gentiles. Paul’s mission to see both these groups reconciled to each other and to God was fulfilling a long-standing plan in the mysterious purposes of God.

At this, Paul digresses to clarify further the shape of the revealed mystery of Gentile salvation. Our verses today focus on the recipients and scope of the revealed mystery (vv. 3–5) and the content of the revealed mystery (vv. 6–7).

The Recipients and Scope of the Revealed
Mystery of Gentile Salvation (3:3–5)

Paul notes first in verse 3 that “the mystery was made known to me by revelation.” Here the apostle refers to when the resurrected Jesus revealed himself and commissioned Paul on the road to Damascus. Saul the Christian persecutor became blind, unable to see, and then when his heart was changed, the Lord granted him physical sight, thus pointing to his spiritual enlightenment. Elsewhere Paul says, “I did not receive [the gospel] from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ…. [God] was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles” (Gal 1:12, 16).

Paul states that this mystery is something about which he has already “written briefly,” which I believe recalls his words in 1:9–10. There he stresses that the proof all Christians––Jews and Gentiles alike––are redeemed or forgiven is that we understand “the mystery of [God’s] will … set forth in Christ … to unite all things in him.” Christians are those who grasp God’s progressive purposes to save some from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.

In the Bible, the term “mystery” refers to something partially understood but not fully disclosed. The term occurs first in the book of Daniel, where the prophet refers to King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream as a “mystery” that God then reveals (Dan 2:27–30). The king could retell his dream but did not know its interpretation, and Paul believes that something about Gentile salvation is a mystery “that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed” (Rom 16:25–26).

Note verses 4–5: “When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.” Paul here contrasts what was understood before Jesus’s coming to what was newly revealed to the apostles and prophets.

But what does Paul mean when he states that “the mystery of Christ … was not made known … in other generations as it has now been revealed”? In my preparation, I shaped a two-page answer to this question that I cannot cover in full this morning, so I have placed print outs in the back for any who are interested. In short, I believe the particle “as” in 3:5 marks a shift from partial awareness to fuller awareness and not a move from complete ignorance to knowledge. Prophets like Abraham (Gen 17:4; 22:17–18), David (Pss 2:9; 18:49; cf. 87; 117:1), Isaiah (Isa 49:6; cf. Acts 13:47; 26:23), Jeremiah (Jer 3:17; 12:16; 30:8–9), and Zechariah (2:11; 8:22–23) foretold how a massive number of Gentiles would join the people of God in the days of the Messiah. On the one hand, Paul says that when God declared to Abraham, “In you shall all the nations be blessed,” the patriarch was hearing the gospel that “that God would justify the Gentiles by faith” (Gal 3:8). But Jesus could also note that “many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it” (Matt 13:17; cf. Heb 11:13). Yet the difference between what the Old Testament saints understood and what we now understand is more than just a shift from promise to fulfillment. What the apostles and prophets uniquely grew to understand is that when the Gentiles became Christians they would do so without having to embrace all the old covenant markers that distinguished Jews from non-Jews. And Paul was pointing to this fact when he said in 2:14–16:

For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.

The Old Testament believers anticipated that the Gentiles would one day join the people of God, but they didn’t fully understand that they would do so as Gentiles without having to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem and without having to being involved in Sabbath keeping, the food laws, festivals, and sacrifices. But all these shadows find their substance in Christ (Col 2:16–17). Rahab the Canaanite, Ruth the Moabite, and Uriah the Hittite had to become Israelites to join the people of God. Yet today, it’s our faith in Jesus and not our Sabbath keeping or festivals that mark Christians. Having addressed the recipients and scope of the revealed mystery, Paul now turns to address its content in verses 6–7.

The Content of the Revealed Mystery
of Gentile Salvation (3:6–7)

In verse 6 Paul writes, “This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” In 1:10 Paul had defined the revealed mystery set forth in Christ to be the uniting of “all things … in heaven and on earth.” In chapter 3 he is focusing specifically on the uniting of things on earth. What he says has been made known to the apostles and prophets is that the Gentiles are fully a part of God’s people. Paul uses a prefix that he repeats three times to stress the togetherness of the Gentiles and Jews in Christ: fellow heirs, fellow body members, and fellow partakers of the promise. Let’s take each of these in turn.

With the coming of Christ, Paul has recognized that those from non-Israelite nations, while remaining Gentiles, are “fellow heirs” alongside Jewish Christians, both of whom are adopted into God’s household (1:5; 2:19; cf. Rom 8:16–17; Gal 3:19; 4:6–7). The language of inheritance recalls 1:14, which highlights how all who have been adopted in Christ will redeem possession of an “inheritance.” 5:5 calls it an “inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.” Last week as my family drove past beautiful vistas of Lake Superior, I said jokingly to Teresa, “Wow, let’s buy that property.” She immediately responded, “It’s already all yours.” My mind immediately went to Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 3, “For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the preset or the future––all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor 3:21–23). God “put all things under [Jesus’s] feet and gave him as head over all things for the church” (Eph 1:22). And all things that are Christ’s become ours, including God’s presence and the entire new earth. If you have in meekness trusted in Christ alone for your life, the peaks of the Himalayas, the rain forests of the Amazon, the depths of Lake Superior, and the farmlands of the Midwest will be yours when the curse is finally overcome and the earth is transformed. And in the center of all will be the King in all his beauty; all sorrow will cease, and our joy will be full. Just think of it! “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matt 5:5).

Next, the Gentiles are “members of the same body” (Eph 3:6). Paul has already highlighted how Jesus creates in himself “one new man in place of the two”––a new humanity and Israel of God. Later the apostle will speak of Christ as “the head of the church, his body” (5:23), and he’ll highlight that, because there is “one body and one Spirit,” Christians must seek to “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (4:3). Elsewhere he writes,

There are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable…. God has so composed the body … that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. (1 Cor 21–22, 24–25)

As a church, we must fight to “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph 4:3). Because we are equally part of Christ’s body, we must honor every member, valuing even the weaker parts. In our times of fellowship before and after a service or in our prayer groups or even throughout the week, it’s so easy to be drawn to those most like us––similar age, similar education, similar stage in life. Yet the call of this text is to fight all prejudice and to celebrate that in Christ everyone is equally valued and valuable. Consider this week how you may show value for a body member of whom you often take little notice. Set up a time for conversation over coffee; invite them over to play a game and ask them their story. Paul’s main point here is that Gentile Christians should not in any way feel like second-class members, even though they were once “separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise” (2:12). The body needs the head, and the head needs the body. In Christ, you are valued and newly created with purpose. “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (2:10).

Finally, the mystery revealed to the apostles and prophets is that, in Christ Jesus and through the gospel, the Gentile believers are fellow “partakers of the promise” (2:6). It doesn’t say “promises” but “the promise.” In 1:13–14 Paul notes that in Christ the Gentile believers “were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance.” In 2:12 Paul then says that the Gentiles were “strangers to the covenants of promise” and, therefore, had “no hope without God in the world.” But 2:18 says that “through [Jesus] we both [Jewish and Gentile Christians] have access in one Spirit to the Father.” The promise seems to point to the gift of God’s Spirit (cf. John 7:39; Gal 3:14). Through the prophet Joel Yahweh foretold a day when “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh” (Joel 2:28), something that Pentecost begins to realize (Acts 2:17). Isaiah, too, envisioned a day when God’s Spirit that rested on the Messiah (11:2; 42:1; 61:1) would be poured out on his offspring, sparking a new creation (32:15; 44:3; 59:21). For Paul, the presence of God’s Spirit among all the new covenant people signaled the international church was the end-times temple, the dwelling place of the living God.

To know that you partake of the Spirit means that God is always with you. You are never alone. Yet it is also this Spirit that unites you and me with every other believer on the planet and gives us hope for a future without pain and pressures and problems. The one who revealed the Scriptures is now here to remind you of his promises. The one through whom God birthed your new life is present in you to bring that work to completion. Because God has now fulfilled all the Old Testament covenants of promise that anticipated the day when God’s presence would be among his people, you and I have both hope and God in this world (2:12).

At the end of verse 6, Paul now stresses how all these beautiful blessings––fellow heirs, fellow body members, and fellow partakers of the promise––come to Gentiles “in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” There is no other way. Christianity is the only religion that declares the solution to the universal problem of sin and brokenness cannot be found in those who are part of the problem. The solution must be found outside of us––“in Christ through the gospel.”

Paul then adds, “Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power” (3:7). These final words bring us back to how Paul’s own life provides an illustration of the unifying love of Christ. As he writes this letter, this Jewish missionary is suffering in prison because he was driven by the power of God to proclaim saving grace in Christ to the Gentiles. What a precious kindness to those only having bad news that God would reveal to his apostles and prophets the good news that non-Israelites as Gentiles could be saved and become fellow heirs, fellow body members, and fellow partakers of the Spirit. These are among the spiritual blessings that are fully ours in Christ Jesus (1:3).

Part of the revealed mystery of Christ is that Gentile Christians as Gentiles are full fellow participants in God’s people. And because of this fact, we––a predominantly Gentile church in the northern suburbs of Kansas City––have great hope. Be encouraged today and find rest in knowing that you have an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ, that you are a vital member of this body, and that the very Spirit of the living God is with you and for you and will never leave you alone. Let us pray….

Perpetua Joy Broten (Dec 6, 2012–July 31, 2025). https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-th....

The post The Revealed Mystery of Gentile Salvation: A Sermon on Ephesians 3:1–7 appeared first on Jason DeRouchie.

The book of Zephaniah contains some of the Bible’s most vivid portraits of the day of the Lord both as punishment and renewal. It calls God’s people to seek the Lord together to avoid punishment and to wait on him to enjoy salvation. This is what I argue in my new commentary: Zephaniah, ZECOT (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2025). Zephaniah is the Savior’s invitation to satisfaction, and this study interprets the book within its close, continuing, and complete biblical context. It seeks to clarify how Zephaniah was among “all the prophets” who spoke both of Christ’s sufferings and the glories that would follow (Acts 3:18, 24). Zephaniah declared the saving grace that is now ours in Christ (1 Pet 1:10–11), and I hope preachers and teachers will give time to engage this 53 verse book so as to see, savor, and then say the lasting message for the church. See this video for an overview of the commentary.

The post Book Announcement—Zephaniah: The Savior’s Invitation to Satisfaction appeared first on Jason DeRouchie.