The Arrogance of Grace Text: Deuteronomy 9:1-6
Introduction: The Poison of Self-Righteousness
We live in an age that is drowning in self-esteem. Our therapeutic culture tells us from the cradle that we are fundamentally good, that our hearts are trustworthy, and that our greatest need is to simply believe in ourselves. This is not just a secular problem; it has seeped under the doors of the church like a toxic gas. We have become experts at baptizing our pride, dressing it up in religious language, and calling it "our testimony." We talk about our spiritual disciplines, our moral victories, and our theological insights as though we were presenting God with a resume He would be a fool to reject. We think that God is somehow fortunate to have us on His team.
Into this swamp of self-congratulation, Moses throws a bucket of ice-cold water. As Israel stands on the precipice of the Promised Land, on the verge of their greatest triumph, Moses is given the unenviable task of reminding them that they are, in fact, complete frauds. They are about to receive an astonishing inheritance, a glorious gift, and the natural human tendency, the default setting of our fallen hearts, is to immediately find a way to take credit for it. "Look what I did. Look at my faithfulness. Look at my righteousness."
Moses is here to preemptively demolish that impulse. He is here to tell them, and to tell us, that the grace of God is not a reward for our righteousness, but rather the scandalous and shocking remedy for our profound unrighteousness. The conquest of Canaan is not a story about the virtue of Israel. It is a story about the sovereign grace of God, the covenant faithfulness of God, and the holy justice of God. If we miss this, we miss everything. We turn the gospel into a self-help program, and we turn God into a cosmic talent scout looking for promising recruits. But the Bible presents a very different picture. God is not a talent scout; He is a resurrectionist. He does not recruit the righteous; He justifies the ungodly.
This passage is a direct assault on the citadel of human pride. It is designed to make us profoundly uncomfortable with any notion that we bring anything to the table in our salvation. God does not give us the victory because we are good. He gives us the victory because He is good. And if we ever forget that, we will inevitably become arrogant, entitled, and useless for the kingdom.
The Text
"Hear, O Israel! You are crossing over the Jordan today to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, great cities fortified to heaven, a people great and tall, the sons of the Anakim, whom you know and of whom you have heard it said, ‘Who can stand before the sons of Anak?’ So you shall know today that it is Yahweh your God who is crossing over before you as a consuming fire. He will destroy them, and He will subdue them before you, so that you may dispossess them and make them perish quickly, just as Yahweh has spoken to you. Do not say in your heart when Yahweh your God has driven them out before you, saying, ‘Because of my righteousness Yahweh has brought me in to possess this land,’ but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that Yahweh is dispossessing them before you. It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that Yahweh your God is dispossessing them before you, in order to confirm the oath which Yahweh swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. So you shall know it is not because of your righteousness that Yahweh your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people."
(Deuteronomy 9:1-6 LSB)
God's Power, Not Yours (vv. 1-3)
Moses begins by setting the stage. He wants Israel to have a clear-eyed view of the task before them, and an even clearer view of the God who goes before them.
"Hear, O Israel! You are crossing over the Jordan today to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, great cities fortified to heaven, a people great and tall, the sons of the Anakim, whom you know and of whom you have heard it said, ‘Who can stand before the sons of Anak?’" (Deuteronomy 9:1-2)
This is a reality check. The previous generation had failed at Kadesh Barnea precisely because they looked at these same obstacles and concluded they were insurmountable. They saw the giants, the fortified cities, and their hearts melted like wax. Moses here is not downplaying the threat. He is amplifying it. He says, in effect, "Everything the faithless spies said about the enemy is true. They are bigger than you. They are stronger than you. Their defenses are humanly impenetrable." He is deliberately stacking the odds against Israel in order to magnify the power of God.
The world always looks at circumstances. The world measures resources, calculates probabilities, and then makes its decisions based on what is humanly possible. This is the essence of unbelief. Faith, on the other hand, does not deny the existence of giants. Faith acknowledges the giants and then looks past them to the Giant-Slayer. Moses wants them to feel their own inadequacy, their own smallness, so that they will have no choice but to look to God.
And that is exactly where he directs their gaze in verse 3.
"So you shall know today that it is Yahweh your God who is crossing over before you as a consuming fire. He will destroy them, and He will subdue them before you, so that you may dispossess them and make them perish quickly, just as Yahweh has spoken to you." (Deuteronomy 9:3)
Notice the glorious chain of divine action. It is Yahweh who crosses over. It is Yahweh who is a consuming fire. He will destroy. He will subdue. The victory is entirely His. Israel's role is secondary; they are the instruments of a conquest that God Himself accomplishes. The language of "consuming fire" is the language of holy, terrifying judgment. God is not going into Canaan as a neutral party. He is going in as the righteous Judge of all the earth, executing a sentence that has been long delayed. The Canaanites had filled up the measure of their iniquity, and the time for judgment had come. Israel was simply the executioner.
This is the foundation of all Christian warfare. We do not fight for victory; we fight from victory. Christ has already crossed over before us. He has already disarmed the principalities and powers. He has already conquered sin, death, and the devil. Our task is to walk in that victory, to take possession of the ground that He has already won for us. But we must never forget that it is His victory, not ours.
Two Reasons for Victory, Neither of Them You (vv. 4-5)
Having established that God is the sole agent of their victory, Moses now moves to dismantle the predictable pride that will arise in their hearts. He gives them two reasons for the conquest, and neither of them has anything to do with Israel's moral superiority.
"Do not say in your heart when Yahweh your God has driven them out before you, saying, ‘Because of my righteousness Yahweh has brought me in to possess this land,’ but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that Yahweh is dispossessing them before you." (Deuteronomy 9:4)
The first reason is negative: the wickedness of the Canaanites. God is not an ethnic cleanser; He is a righteous judge. The Canaanites were not being dispossessed because of their ethnicity, but because of their depravity. Their culture was a cesspool of idolatry, sexual perversion, and child sacrifice. The land itself was said to be vomiting them out. God had been patient for centuries, but the time for judgment had arrived. This is a crucial point for our sentimental age, which recoils at the idea of divine judgment. But a God who is not just is not good. A God who is indifferent to the burning of children on the altars of Molech is a moral monster. The conquest of Canaan is a terrifying display of God's holiness and His hatred of sin.
But Moses is not content to leave it there. He repeats the point in verse 5, adding a second, positive reason.
"It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that Yahweh your God is dispossessing them before you, in order to confirm the oath which Yahweh swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob." (Deuteronomy 9:5)
The second reason is God's covenant faithfulness. God made an unconditional promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He swore an oath to give them this land. And God keeps His promises. His reputation is on the line. He is not giving Israel the land because they deserve it, but because He swore He would. The entire plan of redemption hinges on God's faithfulness to His own Word, not on the fickle and fluctuating obedience of His people.
This is the heart of the doctrine of grace. We are saved not because of our righteousness, but because of Christ's righteousness. We are kept not because of our faithfulness, but because of God's faithfulness. He made a promise, and He sealed it with the blood of His own Son. Our salvation is grounded in the character of God, not in the quality of our performance. This is the only ground for true assurance.
The Unvarnished Truth (v. 6)
Lest there be any lingering doubt, any small corner of the heart where pride might still be hiding, Moses delivers the final, crushing blow in verse 6.
"So you shall know it is not because of your righteousness that Yahweh your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people." (Deuteronomy 9:6)
He has already told them what the reasons are: Canaanite wickedness and God's faithfulness. Now he tells them what the reason is not, in the plainest possible terms. "It is not because of your righteousness." And why not? "For you are a stiff-necked people."
The term "stiff-necked" is a metaphor taken from animal husbandry. It describes an ox or a mule that refuses to submit to the yoke. It stiffens its neck and resists the guidance of its master. This is God's own assessment of Israel's character. They are stubborn, rebellious, and prone to wander. In the verses that follow this passage, Moses will go on to provide a detailed and embarrassing list of their rebellions, starting with the golden calf at the very mountain where they received the law.
This is not ancient history. This is our story. The natural state of the human heart is to be stiff-necked toward God. We want to be our own masters. We resist His yoke. We want His blessings, but we do not want His authority. And this is why grace is so scandalous. God does not choose the compliant, the flexible, and the obedient. He chooses the stiff-necked. He takes rebels and makes them sons. He takes enemies and makes them heirs.
The Gospel According to Moses
This passage is pure, unadulterated gospel. It teaches us the fundamental grammar of our relationship with God. The logic is inescapable. God's blessing flows to us for two reasons, and neither of them is our own righteousness.
First, we are saved because of the wickedness of the world. Not our wickedness, but the wickedness of the principalities and powers, the rulers of the darkness of this age. Christ came as a consuming fire to judge the works of the devil. He came to dispossess the strong man and plunder his house. His victory on the cross was a judicial act, a righteous sentence executed against the enemies of God. We are the beneficiaries of a war that He fought and won.
Second, we are saved to confirm the oath. God the Father made a covenant promise before the foundation of the world to give a people to His Son. The entire history of redemption is the outworking of that eternal pact. Jesus came to secure the inheritance that was promised to Him. We are that inheritance. Our salvation is not an afterthought; it is the fulfillment of an ancient, unbreakable promise.
And what is our contribution to this grand transaction? We provide the sin. We are the stiff-necked people. Paul says the same thing in Romans: "But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). He did not die for us because we were cleaning up our act. He did not die for us because He saw our potential. He died for us in the midst of our rebellion, while our necks were still stiff.
Therefore, boasting is excluded. There is no room for pride at the foot of the cross. There is no room for self-righteousness in the kingdom of God. There is only humble, grateful, astonished worship. We did not earn our place here. We do not deserve to be here. We are here for one reason and one reason only: the sovereign, stubborn, covenant-keeping grace of God, who delights in taking stiff-necked rebels and making them trophies of His mercy.