A Sermon on Deuteronomy 4-13 for the First Sunday after Trinity. Delivered by Pastor Caleb Strutz.

In the 1986 film Highlander, there’s a race of immortals who can only die by being decapitated. It is their destiny to wage war against each other across history. When only a few remain, they are drawn to a faraway land (which just happens to be New York City) to finish this battle once and for all. The last one standing gains “the Prize,” the power of all the other immortals. The tagline for the movie and the overriding belief of the immortals is “In the end, there can be only one.”

I get that this is a really dated movie reference and I don’t blame you if you haven’t seen it. I had heard of this line before I ever saw the movie and, to be honest, I only watched the movie while preparing this sermon so I could use this line without being a fake fan or whatever. But it’s such a good line, right? “In the end, there can be only one.” What a dramatic way to phrase this fight to the death that spans centuries.

In our Old Testament lesson for this morning, Moses is summarizing the law and he gets pretty close to saying “there can be only one.” This isn’t to suggest that the LORD has decapitated all the other gods and is the last one standing, but there is something to be said about his oneness. The law can also be summarized in one command, which follows this pronouncement. One command for one God, makes sense. As we unpack the significance of these statements, we will see that there can be only one when it comes to God, his law, and the fulfillment of that law.

 First, let’s remember what’s going on in Deuteronomy, because that’s a book of the Bible that we don’t deal with all that often, even though it’s one of the most quoted books in the New Testament. The book of Deuteronomy is Moses’ last will and testament. The Israelites have wandered around in the wilderness for forty years because they disobeyed God and now they’re ready to enter the promised land. Before they do, Moses repeats their history and all of the commands that God has given them.

But here, Moses boils down all these commands to just one. “You shall love the LORD your God…” And he bases this one command on the oneness of God, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one!” This statement became a simple creed or confession of faith for the Jews. God is one! Not just the last one standing, but one of a kind. Not just “the best,” but in his own lane entirely. By virtue of his oneness, God is perfect and holy, entirely unique. There’s only one God and that has some implications for how you’re supposed to live your life.  God attaches a promise to this command. If you do this, then you will be prosperous and multiply in this rich land which God is giving you. Seems like a fair trade, right?

But there’s a problem. The command is worded in such a way that it’s impossible to keep. “Love the LORD your God with all your heart.” It requires total sincerity, half-heartedness won’t cut it. “With all your soul.” It requires no reservations, absolute commitment. “With all your strength.” It requires working at full capacity, every ounce of energy. The promises attached to the command were just for the Israelites, but the command as the summary statement of God’s demands for our lives still stands for us today. God is perfect and demands that we love perfectly. So we’re in trouble.

Never mind serving God, when’s the last time you’ve done anything with all your heart, soul, and strength? Our natural impulse is to put in as little work as we possibly can to get by. Certainly that’s the case for things we don’t want to do, but even for things that we’re passionate about and want to do and enjoy doing, are we even capable of putting absolutely everything into it? Even with the things we want to do, we get tired and bored and burn out. If this is the case for so much in our lives, when it comes to spiritual things and our standing before God, we’re clearly not in a good situation. Even if you try your absolute hardest in a single display of obedience to God, how long could you keep up? And even that effort is tainted by sin. We’re faced with a command that demands so much and we can’t ever possibly fulfill. There is no way for us to love him properly at all by our own strength and effort.

It might seem cruel for God to attach a promise to a command that he knows the Israelites can’t keep or to give us a command that we can’t fulfill. But that was never even the point of the law. The law was never meant to be followed perfectly to gain righteousness from God. Rather, through the law we become aware of our own failures and sin. Through the law, we see the room and the need for forgiveness.

For the Israelites, part of God’s instructions were to offer sacrifices. These weren’t an additional burden for them to fulfill, but the way that God used to provide forgiveness. The action of making a sacrifice didn’t merit forgiveness because it was just so great that the Israelites did it for God, but they were the means of conveying to the Old Testament believers the forgiveness that was won by Christ on the cross and they were pointing forwards to him. Forgiveness is baked into the system because God knows our weaknesses.

Jesus alludes to this text in John 10. He says, “I and My Father are one” (30). In no way does this destroy the force of the original, “The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” Rather, the Father and the Son are the one LORD. They share that one substance, like we talked about last week on Trinity Sunday. Because Jesus is the one God, he was able to fulfill the law which demands absolute perfection, he alone could satisfy God’s wrath and justice. Jesus perfectly kept the law that fallen man could never keep because God demands perfection. And he lived that perfect life in your place. Because Jesus is the one God, his death counts for all people. His blood has infinite value. And you have been washed clean in it.

Through Jesus’ death we are made “at one” with God. That’s where we get our word “atonement.” The one LORD in the person of Jesus makes us at one with Him. God demands complete obedience and then sends his Son to fulfill it in your place. He requires perfection and then freely gives you the perfection of Jesus.

We can see already here in Deuteronomy that our relationship with God is one of receiving what is given and not one of salvation by works. This was the case for the Israelites and it’s still the case for us. The first words of that simple creed are, “Hear, O Israel.” Hear, not do. Listen, not act. Receive, not offer. It is by hearing the Word of God that the Holy Spirit works and strengthens faith. The Triune God in all of His oneness dwells in your heart. The only way that we can even begin to fear, love, and trust in God is by this gift of grace and faith that He has given to us.

As we live our lives as Christians, we find that the Word of God spreads from our hearts to everywhere else, as these verses illustrate. This isn’t a work that we do to pay back God but it freely and naturally flows through us as believers and we put it into practice out of thanks for what he has done.

Faith doesn’t stay contained in the heart but gets involved in everything else too. The Word spreads from our hearts to our mouths as we talk about it with fellow believers and continue to study the Word. It spreads to our hands and our eyes as it changes the way we do things and see things. It spreads to the doorposts of your house and the city gates as it becomes a public proclamation to all those around you. This message of what Jesus has done is too good to keep to yourself, too good to just keep it in your heart. It spreads and is shared with others.

Although we fail and struggle on the way, we continue on our earthly wandering strengthened by Word and Sacrament until we reach the promised land in heaven, our ultimate “Prize.” Our heavenly citizenship is not founded on our obedience of the law, but on the obedience of Christ which he offers to us.

At the end of Highlander, the protagonist defeats the other immortal who has been hunting him down and gains “the Prize.” He finds that he can read and influence the thoughts of everyone on earth. But, he’s also become mortal. He’s no longer invincible. Not quite what you expect from “There can be only one.” As Christians, we rejoice that the one immortal God took on human flesh and became mortal for our sake. As true man, Jesus completed the command we could not keep and died the death we deserve. God’s one command does not condemn us as we are clothed in the perfection of Christ. There is only one God, the God who has saved you and loves you. Amen.