Given the way both Jesus and the New Testament writers quoted this book, it shouldn’t be a surprise to find the gospel in Deuteronomy.
And yet, there’s a sense in which you might think that the Old Testament law is the last place you’d find good news. But the law reveals the heart of God. And the heart of God is one of patience, compassion, and grace.
So embedded in these Old Testament chapters is a message of hope, and chapter 30 is the clearest, most evangelistic instance of the gospel in Deuteronomy, maybe in the Old Testament.
These notes accompany a sermon on YouTube delivered at Bromborough Evangelical Church Wirral in May 2025. You can find more in the series in our sermon index.
Repent of your sin (1-10)
The detailed stipulations of the law were laid down for us in chapters 12 to 26. We saw that the law was far more than just a list of external do’s and don’ts. The law of God reveals our hearts as sinful, and external commands can’t change that.
The next few chapters highlight a binary choice to be made: Blessing from God in obedience to him, or cursing from him from disobedience: Chapters 27 to 29 emphasise that the binary choice that people have lead to a binary outcome: Blessing or Curse.
But the Bible is always realistic: God knows you’re going to sin.
The ultimate curse for Israel was to be ejected from the land, the Promised Land. And so chapter 30 begins with an assumption that that’s going to happen (which it did).
Return to the Lord (not just to religion)
Read Deut 30:1-3.
God must act in justice, and yet when you come to your senses and realise the mess you’ve made in your sin, you find God to be a God of great compassion. He will welcome you; he will restore you. In saying he’d gather them, he’s saying he undo the exile, the curse.
But a return to dry religion isn’t what God is calling for. This isn’t “My life is a mess so I need to do good religious stuff to get God happy with me again.” That’s an insult.
No, he is calling you to true repentance: v2 calls you to return to the Lord your God and obey him with all your heart and all your soul by doing everything I am commanding you today…
And here we come to one of the paradoxes of God’s sovereignty!
- Read Deut 30:6.
- External circumcision was a sign that you belonged to Israel, the national community of God.
- But it was no indicator of a heart of faith in God: Just ask Ahab, Ahaz, Zedekiah, or Judas.
- But circumcision of your heart was a heart change; it was a sign that your heart belonged to the Lord.
- And that’s something only the Lord could do for you.
- But back in Deut 10:16, God told the people to circumcise their own hearts!
- That’s equivalent to v2 calling you to return to the Lord your God and obey him.
And so there’s the paradox: You must repent of your sin and turn to God, and yet only God can work that in you! But don’t ever dither over whether God might be calling you or not: You’re here, so assume he is!
He calls you to repent, so repent of your sin. Turn to him! Unless you do, you’re lost to hell, separated from God.
Have faith in Jesus (11-14)
Read Deut 30:11-13.
What command? He means the whole law, as if summarised into a single command.
Remember that the law was written on plastered stones and taught from mountaintops and in families: Everyone in the community could understand was God wanted. In that sense, it wasn’t “too difficult or beyond [their] reach”.
You don’t need supermen as if normal people can’t grasp it all: No-one has to ascend to heaven to get the knowledge. Nor does anyone need to go across the sea. (The sea was often an image of chaos, and in the ancient near east the place of the dead was sometimes thought of as ‘beyond the sea’! Whatever you mean by it (the sea or the place of the dead), you still don’t need to go there!)
The knowledge of God is for you to know.
Read Deut 30:14.
The laws are easy to understand. They’re right here. In truth, they’re even easy to do, at least outwardly. But we don’t want to. We often prefer sin, and we’re easily drawn aside by temptation.
The law reveals so much
So the law reveals three things you might want to ponder:
- First, the law absolutely reveals your own sinful heart. You do commit adultery as you lust after someone in your heart. You can’t help but covet other people’s lives. No-one can say you’ve been entirely truthful, or generous, or controlled in temper. And those are just the laws relating to other people. There’s not a soul here without idols that keep you away from a true knowledge of the living God.
- Second, the law reveals the heart of God. He is a God of love, and care, and compassion. And he is also a God of intense jealousy, righteousness, and justice. These two things (your sin, God’s justice) don’t sit too well together, until you remember the 3rd thing:
- Third, the law reveals God’s intent to provide a means of atonement and reconciliation, so that he can dwell among his own holy people on the earth in beautiful fellowship and relationship. While your sin deserves death, God has given a system of sacrifice so that another could die in your place: That ‘atones’ for your sin, so that you can have reconciliation and peace with God.
How can you obey God’s laws in a way that brings you into that relationship?
In Leviticus 18:5, God says this: Keep my statutes and ordinances; a person will live if he does them. I am the Lord. But how can you live by statutes and ordinances that you can’t keep? “A person will live if he does them” seems out of reach?
- It’s theoretically true that your perfect obedience would lead you to fellowship with God. But that’s beyond you. Only Jesus has managed that kind of moral perfection.
- But think: The laws reveal your sin AND God’s grace AND his way of reconciling atonement for you to come to him. His law should drive you to him in faith, not in works.
Now you might say, “That was then. What about me, now?”
Deuteronomy in Romans 10
Well, this is the gospel in Deuteronomy, so the apostle Paul picks it up for you in Romans 10. He was writing about how the Israelites of his day weren’t going to God in faith: They were trying to keep the law in the hope that their own righteousness would please God.
Read Romans 10:1-5.
When he says that Christ is the “end of the law” he means it in the sense of the goal, the terminus, the completion, the fulfilling accomplishment. The law builds up to Jesus.
- Jesus shows you just how sinful you are.
- And he reveals to you the grace and love of God.
- Because he is the ultimate sacrifice and place of atonement for your sin. (That’s those 3 things again.)
So the law actually drives you to faith in Jesus. It calls on you to repent of your sin and have faith in Christ.
Is that too complex? No. Too difficult to grasp? No.
Read Romans 10:6-7.
He’s quoting those verses in Deuteronomy, and using them to describe all that Christ has done. You don’t need a superman to go to heaven to find the way to God, because Christ came down to you! Nor do you need someone to come back from the dead (across the sea, out of the abyss) because Jesus has already done that for you! He is risen!
Faith in Christ
So what must you do to be saved? Read Romans 10:8-10.
And remember, those aren’t magic words like abracadabra or something from Harry Potter.
If you say Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, then you will turn in repentance from your sin and cry out to him for forgiveness. Read Romans 10:13.
That’s good news (the gospel in Deuteronomy). The law was never given to trip you up. It’s to drive you to life! To eternal life in Christ.
Not by keeping dry commands, but by putting faith in Christ’s death and sacrifice for you. Will you do that today, now?
Choose life every day (15-20)
Because faith in Christ is your only hope of life with God, then you’re faced with a choice: Choose Christ, or choose death and hell. Read Deut 30:15-18.
See the binary choice and the binary outcome?
Romans makes it abundantly clear that your choice today is about your trust in Christ. What will you do?
The people in Deuteronomy were being called into God’s covenant blessing. A covenant needs witnesses between the parties, but who is sufficiently grand to witness God entering into a covenant?? Read Deut 30:19.
And there’s the choice facing everyone here: Your eternity hangs on what you’ll do: Will you choose life and blessing, or death and curse?
You might ask, “Is this really an eternal choice?” Yes, Revelation makes that clear enough. On the day Christ returns to the earth, everyone who has rejected him will experience a “second death” in the lake of fire. It’s symbolic language, but it’s clearly awful. For those who have trusted in him, there will be no more curse: No more sin, death, crying, or pain.
And right now, the word of God is crystal clear: Choose life!
By keeping the law? No! By coming in repentance and faith to Christ, who is your life.
Read Deut 30:20.
And if God is your life, then the life you lead is him living in you. The life you lead, is a life in union with Christ, the Son of God. Your life is incorporated into his. So his life is increasingly expressed in yours.
Priorities for Life
So look at the three priorities in v20:
- “Love the Lord your God”
- You can only love him when you realise he loved you first and gave himself up for you.
- Your love for him will only ever be a response. God is the initiator.
- But such love is always shown in what you do.
- “Obey him”
- Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commands.”
- Because Jesus was obedient to the Father, your obedience is an outworking of your union with Christ.
- But it’s also an expression of your love for him, because you will want to do what pleases him.
- If you can’t say, “I love him” then you’re probably less obedient to his will than you think.
- Go back to him; love him because of his love for you, and begin again in the obedience of faith.
- He is gracious, patient, loving and kind.
- “And remain faithful to him”
- Literally, “hold on to him”.
- That means every day. Every hour.
- In every choice you face, every temptation to laziness, or gossip, or worse.
- When prayer seems dry, and Bible reading feels empty: Hold on to Jesus. You will find him in them.
Your life is not meant to be one of dull drudgery and obligated duty. Christ is your life. Choose life. Live in daily repentance and faith, in daily communion with him: Loving him, obeying him, holding on to him.
Because that – and that alone – is life. Better than any bucket list.
If you have never turned to him in repentance and faith, will you do that now? Will you choose life now?
If you have done that in the past, but things are a bit cooled off, will you choose life now? Will you go back to Christ now?
And if you’ve been a Christian for many years, and you’re getting weary and old, will you also continue to choose life? Hold on to him!