This sermon was preached at Ascension Reformed Church in Moscow, Idaho on October 25, A.D. 2026.
Deuteronomy 30:1–14
“Now it shall come to pass, when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God drives you, 2 and you return to the Lord your God and obey His voice, according to all that I command you today, you and your children, with all your heart and with all your soul, 3 that the Lord your God will bring you back from captivity, and have compassion on you, and gather you again from all the nations where the Lord your God has scattered you. 4 If any of you are driven out to the farthest parts under heaven, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you. 5 Then the Lord your God will bring you to the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it. He will prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers. 6 And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.
7 “Also the Lord your God will put all these curses on your enemies and on those who hate you, who persecuted you. 8 And you will again obey the voice of the Lord and do all His commandments which I command you today. 9 The Lord your God will make you abound in all the work of your hand, in the fruit of your body, in the increase of your livestock, and in the produce of your land for good. For the Lord will again rejoice over you for good as He rejoiced over your fathers, 10 if you obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which are written in this Book of the Law, and if you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
11 “For this commandment which I command you today is not too mysterious for you, nor is it far off. 12 It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend into heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ 13 Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ 14 But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it” (NKJV).
Introduction
There is much talk in the church today of an increasing number of young people, men in particular, being attracted to and converting to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.
Some of this has come about with the proliferation of Catholic and Orthodox apologetics and accounts on social media and YouTube, paired with an apparent, and sometimes warranted, dissatisfaction with their experiences within evangelicalism.
In a rootless age, people are looking for something rooted. They are looking for something connected to the past—strong tradition in a rapidly decaying society. And they are looking for truth in an age of lies.
Now, while I do think this is a real phenomenon, having even seen a few men in our church community leave, you should know that, at the end of the day, statistically, there continues to be more Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox overall moving inr the other direction—into the Protestant church. However, regardless of the overall stats, American Protestants are certainly showing renewed interest in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, and we cannot deny it.
I strongly believe one of the most important ways for the Reformed church to keep its people is to show that what they seek in these other communions and traditions can actually be found in confessional Protestantism at its best.
Yes, pop-evangelicalism is frustrating, and it’s understandable, although still wrong, that some in those churches think they can find something more solid by swimming the Tiber. But the truth is that in the magisterial Reformed tradition we find both connection to the historic church—we find the catholic faith Reformed according to the Scriptures and the example of the early church—and, particularly in the Puritan stream, we find the kind of experiential spirituality that many long for. And so it is important for us not to be Reformed or Protestant by default—but by conviction. We must cultivate gratitude for the pure gospel we have received through the work of the Reformation.
Therefore, on this Reformation Sunday, we will focus on the return of the Word of God to the people of God. That great gift of having the Scriptures in our own language.
Summary of the Text
As the start of the final chapters of the Book of Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 29–30 contain Moses’ final exhortation to the Israelites before the commission of Joshua to lead them into the land and Moses’ death. Deuteronomy 30 specifically speaks to the blessing that would come to the people of God when they would willingly return to God after being driven into the nations for their disobedience.
Moses declares that when the Israelites recall this covenant, return to their God, and obey His voice, the Lord will set them free from captivity with compassion and bring them back into the land (vv. 1–4). He will also circumcise their hearts and those of their descendants, renewing them from the inside, so they will truly love him with all their heart and soul, and the curses once laid upon them for their disobedience will instead fall on their enemies (vv. 5–6).
If the people of God obey the voice of the Lord, keep His commandments found in the Book of the Law, and return to him with all their heart and soul—the Lord will make them abound in all the work of their hands, rejoicing over them for their good just as He did over their fathers (vv. 8–10). Lastly, Moses explains that this commandment, this word from the Lord, is not too mysterious or difficult for them, nor far off or beyond their reach. It is not in heaven or across the sea—too far to hear or understand, but is within their reach. It is near to them—in their mouths and hearts—that they would obey it (vv. 11–14).
Reformation Gratitude
Now, I believe this text has applications to understanding the history of the church and the necessity of the Reformation. Especially when it comes to the obscurity of the Scriptures and the Reformers' unleashing of them, leading to God's immense blessing on the continuing Protestant church.
Three years after he nailed his 95 Theses to the Wittenberg Door, Martin Luther published an essay entitled The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, in which he lays out the ways in which the church had been in exile and held captive by the Roman Catholic hierarchy to false doctrine—obscuring the pure gospel and its promises. In this, he compared the late medieval church to the Old Covenant people of God. Just as Israel once needed deliverance from Babylon, so too did the New Covenant people of God need spiritual deliverance from the Babylonian captivity of the Roman Church.
One of the most important ways the Reformers delivered the Church from bondage was by placing the Scriptures in its hands as the ultimate authority. Once purposefully obscured and hidden in ecclesiastical Latin, Scripture first became accessible in English first through John Wycliffe 200 years before the Reformation. But his work was thoroughly rejected. Although dying of natural causes, decades after his remains were dug up, bones burned, and ashes tossed into the river to declare exactly what they thought of his work.
Following in Wycliffe’s footsteps, William Tyndale took up the sacred cause of restoring the Word of God to God's people during the Reformation, translating from the original languages that had become more readily available into English.
And so I’d like to set the stage this morning by giving you some snapshots of Tyndale’s work and context, by quoting at length from the great Reformation historian Jean-Henri Merle d’Aubigné.1
In our first scene, he describes a moment when Tyndale is in the dining room of wealthy landowners who let him live in their manor while he did his work.
He has his Greek New Testament in hand, and gathered around him are some educated neighbors, “with several abbots, deans, monks, and doctors, in their respective costumes.”
And he writes:
“…at length the conversation, after wandering a little, took a more precise direction. The priests grew impatient when they saw the terrible volume appear [Greek NT]. ‘Your Scriptures only serve to make heretics,’ they exclaimed. ‘On the contrary,’ replied Tyndale, ‘the source of all heresies is pride; now the word of God strips man of everything and leaves him as bare as Job.’
‘The word of God! why even we don’t understand your word, how can the vulgar understand it?’
‘You do not understand it,’ rejoined Tyndale, ‘because you look into it only for foolish questions, as you would into our Lady’s Matins or Merlin’s Prophecies. Now the Scriptures are a clue which we must follow, without turning aside, until we arrive at Christ; for Christ is the end.’
‘And I tell you,’ shouted out a priest, ‘that the Scriptures are a Daedalian labyrinth, rather than Ariadne’s clue — a conjuring book wherein everybody finds what he wants.’
‘Alas!’ replied Tyndale; ‘you read them without Jesus Christ; that’s why they are an obscure book to you. What do I say? a den of thorns where you only escape from the briars to be caught by the brambles.’
‘No!’ exclaimed another clerk, heedless of contradicting his colleague, ‘nothing is obscure to us; it is we who give the Scriptures, and we who explain them to you.’
‘You would lose both your time and your trouble,’ said Tyndale, ‘do you know who taught the eagles to find their prey? Well, that same God teaches his hungry children to find their Father in his word. Far from having given us the Scriptures, it is you who have hidden them from us; it is you who burn those who teach them, and if you could, you would burn the Scriptures themselves…’”
You see here the utter disrespect and disregard for the Holy Scriptures. They are either useless and impossible to understand, and only good for creating new heresies. Or they are clear, but only through the teaching magisterium of the church, not on their own.
He then describes how Tyndale went about preaching the gospel from the Word in the open air. But there was one problem.
“No sooner had he preached in any place than the priests hastened thither, tore up what he had planted, called him a heretic, and threatened to expel from the church every one who dared listen to him.
When Tyndale returned he found the field laid waste by the enemy; and looking sadly upon it, as the husbandman who sees his corn beaten down by the hail, and his rich furrows turned into a barren waste, he exclaimed: ‘What is to be done? While I am sowing in one place, the enemy ravages the field I have just left. I cannot be everywhere. Oh! if Christians possessed the Holy Scriptures in their own tongue, they could of themselves withstand these sophists. Without the Bible it is impossible to establish the laity in the truth.’
Then a great idea sprang up in Tyndale’s heart: ‘It was in the language of Israel,’ said he, ‘that the Psalms were sung in the temple of Jehovah; and shall not the gospel speak the language of England among us? Ought the church to have less light at noonday than at the dawn? Christians must read the New Testament in their mother-tongue.’”
It was this thought that sent Tyndale in pursuit of an English Bible.
He recognized that if laypeople were still just relying on him to accurately teach the Word, there would always be a competing voice—and authority—that could drown him out and change their minds. But he believed if he gave them direct access to the Scriptures in their own language, to be heard and read by all, they would be like Bereans, able to test all that they hear. Therefore, Tyndale’s great desire was that even a plowboy could read and understand the Scriptures better than the priests and theologians of the Roman church.
Having completed the English translation of the New Testament, the fruit of Tyndale’s work in England was astounding. Hear just one more time from d’Aubigné:
“In the parsonages and in the convent cells, but particularly in shops and cottages, a crowd of persons were studying the New Testament. The clearness of the Holy Scriptures struck each reader. None of the systematic or aphoristic forms of the school were to be found there: it was the language of human life which they discovered in those divine writings: here a conversation, there a discourse; here a narrative, and there a comparison; here a command, and there an argument; here a parable and there a prayer. It was not all doctrine or all history; but these two elements mingled together made an admirable whole.
Above all, the life of our Savior, so divine and so human, had an inexpressible charm which captivated the simple. One work of Jesus Christ explained another, and the great facts of the redemption, birth, death, and resurrection of the Son of God, and the sending of the Holy Ghost, followed and completed each other. The authority of Christ’s teaching, so strongly contrasting with the doubts of the schools, increased the clearness of his discourses to his readers; for the more certain a truth is, the more distinctly it strikes the mind. Academical explanations were not necessary to those noblemen, farmers, and citizens.
It is to me, for me, and of me that this book speaks, said each one. It is I whom all these promises and teachings concern. This fall and this restoration… they are mine. That old death and this new life… I have passed through them. That flesh and that spirit… I know them. This law and this grace, this faith, these works, this slavery, this glory, this Christ… all are familiar to me. It is my own history that I find in this book. Thus by the aid of the Holy Ghost each one had in his own experience a key to the mysteries of the Bible…”
How beautiful is that? To find that God has spoken, and is speaking, in His Word directly to you. In your own language. Without a mediator, except the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. Again, imagine that your only access to Scripture was in the Mass—read or sung—in Latin, a language that you did not understand. Yes, the priest would speak in English during his homily, but he, too, was often uneducated and sometimes even unconverted. But now you have the Word in your hands, or at the very least, in your ears as you hear it read clearly for the first time.
Eventually, Tyndale was arrested, strangled, and then burned at the stake—the punishment reserved for Anabaptists. And it is said that his final prayer was, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes!” Which was answered when King Henry the 8th had an English Bible translation placed in every church based on the work of Tyndale.
Protestant Christian—this is your great heritage. And your English Bible—is your great inheritance. It is astounding that anyone knowing this history, and having the Holy Scriptures at their fingertips because of it, would willingly return to a corrupted church, which still stands in authority over the very Word of God.
This belief that Scripture should always be available to God’s people in their native tongue is a Reformed conviction, which was even laid down in our own Westminster Confession, which reads:
“Because these original tongues are not known to all the people of God who have right unto, and interest in the Scriptures, and are commanded, in the fear of God, to read and search them, therefore they are to be translated into the vulgar language of every nation unto which they come, that the Word of God dwelling plentifully in all, they may worship him in an acceptable manner, and, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, may have hope” (1.8)
The Word is to be translated “into the vulgar language of every nation” that “may have hope.” And so we thank God for the Reformation.
Scripture is Clear
Now there are two convictions, both in our passage this morning from Deuteronomy and in that account of Tyndale, that I want to highlight regarding Scripture. I want to highlight two aspects of the Word of God that we hold to, which allow us to submit to it as our highest authority.
First, the Word of God is clear. Scripture is clear.
As the Westminster Confession articulates the Protestant position:
“All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all: yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain a sufficient understanding of them” (1.7).
The Word of God is meant for the people of God, and through it God is able to, happy to, and does speak clearly and accurately what He intends to communicate to His church. We see this in our passage when Moses says, “For this commandment which I command you today is not too mysterious for you, nor is it far off… But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it” (Dt. 30:11, 14).
Here Moses says the Word is not a mystery that you are unable to comprehend. It is not distant from you and hard to reach. But it is near to you, even in your mouth and heart, and by the power of God you are able to hear and obey it. And so we see that Scripture was written to be directly heard and read by all of God’s people—not just theologians, priests or pastors, or the educated. Ordinary Christians, you and me and everyone else who believes in Christ, are capable of both receiving this Word and understanding it, with the help of the Holy Spirit within us.
You can hear in the account of Tyndale the fear of the Roman Church of what would happen if the Scriptures were placed in the hands of ordinary laypeople. If you were to paint them in the best light, there was a belief that the average Christian simply could not understand or responsibly handle the Scriptures, and therefore they feared heresy would spread. But that is not how we see the Word of God or the people of God treated in Scripture itself.
In the next chapter, in Deuteronomy 31, we see the clarity of Scripture taught again when Moses declares that the Law was to be read before all Israel. He writes, “Gather the people together, men and women and little ones, and the stranger who is within your gates, that they may hear and that they may learn to fear the Lord your God and carefully observe all the words of this law, and that their children, who have not known it, may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God as long as you live in the land which you cross the Jordan to possess” (vv. 12–13).
Again—men, women, little ones, and strangers… are all able to hear and heed the Word of God. And not only that, it is God’s desire that you do so. He has given you His Spirit so that you would receive the Word rightly.
This is why each Lord’s Day a minister stands up, reads the Word to you, and then teaches it. I have the expectation that, through the rational minds the Lord has given you, the new hearts He has granted you, and the illumination of His Holy Spirit, you can hear the Word, receive it, and apply it to your lives.
This is what the Apostle Paul commanded Timothy to do in Ephesus. He wrote in 1 Timothy 4:13, “Devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching…” Paul would not tell Timothy to do this if he did not believe that the church—the average person in the pew—could hear and understand the Word.
Likewise, this is why you are free and encouraged to read and listen to the Bible on your own and with your families in your homes. We trust that the Lord will help you understand what you read, without the need for the church to constantly mediate and interpret for you.
Now, does this mean that all things in Scripture are equally clear? No. The Apostle Peter himself said that some things in Paul’s letter are hard to understand and are even twisted by the ignorant (2 Pet. 3:16). And so we do value creeds, confessions, biblical commentaries, and faithful preaching and teaching that help us to understand the Word. It is an act of Christian humility to seek out and receive the understanding that the Spirit has given other believers. But we read Scripture and these resources not with fear but with faith, believing that the Lord has a Word for us to hear, because He has made His Scripture clear.
The Roman Catholic doctrine and practice before and during the Reformation reflected not only a low view of Scripture’s importance in the life of a believer and a low view of the believer himself, but also a low view of God. They did not believe that God, through His Spirit, could make the Word discernable. In their effort to try to protect the Church from what they deemed to be heresy—but what sometimes was actually the pure gospel—they cut off the people from the very words of life. Therefore, we are to be thankful for the Word returned to the church, for it contains the clear message of truth that leads to salvation.
Scripture is Sufficient
The second doctrine concerning the Word of God that allows us to submit to it as our highest authority is this—that Scripture alone is sufficient for salvation. Scripture contains all things necessary for salvation.
Returning again to our passage this morning, in Deuteronomy 30 we read, “For the Lord will again rejoice over you for good as He rejoiced over your fathers, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which are written in this Book of the Law, and if you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul” (vv. 9b–10).
After wandering in their sin and disobedience, suffering the covenant curses of God, where did the Israelites need to turn to? Where were they to go? They were to return to God and the Book of the Law. If they obeyed the voice of the Lord their God with all their heart and soul found in the Book of the Law… He would again rejoice over them. They would be delivered and saved.
And so again we read in the Westminster Confession this statement:
“The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit or traditions of men” (1.6).
Scripture alone is enough.
This is not the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. For them, Scripture must be paired with Sacred Tradition—on equal footing—and the authoritative interpreter of both is the Church’s Magisterium… meaning that the Church stands in authority over the Word.
But the grand claim of the Reformers was that God’s Word is supreme. It stands on its own. And it alone contains all that we need to live godly lives.
We see this teaching in 2 Timothy 3, which reads, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thorouhly equipped for every good work” (vv. 16–17).
So Scripture, although written by the hands of men, comes from God Himself—it is breathed out by God. And what is it for? It is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training for righteousness. In order that “the man of God may be complete…”
Notice the word there—“complete.” All that you need to be made whole in Christ is found in the Word. In there you find the Word of Life and all that you need to obey by the power of the Spirit to walk in righteosuness.
Now, again, I want to be clear— this does not mean that Protestants completely disregard tradition or the teachings of the church, as found in creeds and confessions.
We gladly receive the ecumenical Creeds, esteem them, and submit to them as an authority. Likewise, we embrace the Reformed Confessions as authoritative. But they are authorities in submission to the Word. Their authority is derived from the Word, and if they were to ever contradict the Scriptures, they would need to be corrected. In short, these lesser authorities are subordinate to Scripture. Scripture alone is the infallible rule of faith.
This reminds me of one particular reason why C.S. Lewis—who came to faith through his friendship with the Roman Catholic J.R.R. Tolkien—said he could never be a Catholic.
Once writing in a letter, he stated:
“The real reason why I cannot be in communion with you is not my disagreement with this or that Roman doctrine, but that to accept your Church means, not to accept a given body of doctrine, but to accept in advance any doctrine your Church hereafter produces, It is like being asked to agree not only to what a man has said but to what he’s going to say.”
Do you see what he is getting at?
Lewis understood what would be required of him if he became Roman Catholic. He would not only need to submit to Scripture, which he was willing to do in principle, but also to whatever the Church authoritatively declared in the future.
And this is exactly what the Roman Church has done. For example, the Roman church has four Marian dogmas—beliefs about Mary—that they say all Christians are required to accept as part of the deposit of faith. But did you know that the teachings of Mary’s Immaculate Conception and Assumption into heaven were not declared as infallible dogmas until 1854 and 1950, respectively?
So what will come tomorrow? You cannot know, because these are not grounded in Scripture—you will not find an account of Mary’s preservation from original sin at conception or her taken bodily into heaven at the end of her life in the Bible—but only in tradition. And so, as a good Protestant—Lewis was correct. We believe that the Word of God alone contains all things necessary for salvation.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I have one main application and exhortation for you to consider.
It is a tremendous blessing of the Protestant Reformation that you have such free access to the Word of God in your native tongue.
The question is: What are you doing with this blessing? Are you making the most of it?
The Apostle Peter once wrote that you have been born again, “not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever…” (1 Pet. 1:23). The very same bright Word that brought you out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light continues with you now. If you feel that it has grown dim in your life, it is not because its light is fading. Like the Reformers, you must unleash it again. You must uncover it. You must open it up.
Dedicate yourself again to reading it daily—whether in the morning before your kids wake up, during your lunch break, or in the evening with your spouse. Make it a part of your family’s dinner or bedtime routine—bring it to the ears of your children who are not too young to understand. This light of the Word still shines today in your church, in your homes, and even on those devices in your pockets—but you must make use of it.
If you find it difficult to read, if you are not a natural reader, download an audio Bible app. That counts. For thousands of years that is actually the primary way the people of God received the Word—they heard it and believed. So play it in your homes. Play it in your car. Fill your day with it and meditate upon it.
Are you being faithful with the inheritance you have received? Is the Bible authoritative over all of your life? And do you turn to it, recognizing it as the very Word of God?
One way to assess your current relationship with Scripture is to read Psalm 119, and compare yourself with the Psalmist, and what he writes concerning the Word. He writes:
“My soul longs for Your salvation, I hope in Your Word” (v. 81).
“You are my hiding place and shield; I hope in Your Word” (v. 114).
“I rise before dawn and cry for help; I hope in Your Word” (v. 147).
Do you truly have hope in the Word? Can you speak like this?
If not, please understand me this morning. Do not let mere shame drive you to the Word. Do not despair regarding this… Rather, consider the kindness of God to you. Consider His goodness. That He has not left you adrift in the dark, but has shone a bright light—a real lamp unto your feet and light unto your path (Ps. 119:105). He desires to commune with you by His Spirit in His very own Word. And so go be with Him! And there you will find Christ, the Word incarnate, the hope and light of life, the One who has given you a new heart to believe and obey with joy.
All quotations from The Reformation in England (Banner of Truth).