Moses' Final Instructions

Now one of the greatest stories in the Old Testament is the story of Exodus. The entire nation of Israel leaving Egypt and then living in the desert for 40 years. I'm sure you're familiar.

Millions of people surviving the heat of that desert, the threat of attack from other nations, internal rebellion, discontent, all kinds of things going on. They were often discouraged and disciplined by the Lord. But finally, they were told that their journey was over, and they were ready to enter into the promised land, and their forefathers or rather the promised land that their forefathers had dreamed of only so many centuries before. Now in the book of Deuteronomy, we have Moses' final words of warning and encouragement to these people as they are poised to enter into that promised land. Moses, as we know, who was soon to die, gave them many instructions and cautions in these 34 chapters of this book, but all of them can be brought down to one single word.

And the single word was obey. You want you want Deuteronomy in a word, 34 chapters in a word? Obey. What Moses emphasizes most in his final instructions is that in order to maintain and cultivate the blessings that God was intending to give them, they must maintain and cultivate their obedience to him. Yeah.

They had to go into the land and cultivate the land and grow stuff and build cities, But what they had to really cultivate to maintain all of this was obedience to the Lord. You know what? This was true for them as it is for us today. So I'd like to review chapter 4 in Deuteronomy where Moses actually provides the way that people were to cultivate and practice obedience to the Lord and see if we can make some some modern applications to that today. So this next section is called ways to cultivate obedience, Deuteronomy chapter 4.

Well, one way that Moses proposed to the people was that they they were not to compromise God's word. Verses 1 to 3. He says, and now, oh, Israel, listen to the statutes and the judgments which I am teaching you to perform in order that you may live, and go in and take possession of the land which the lord, the god of your fathers, has given you. You shall not add to the word which I'm commanding you, nor take away from it that you may keep the commandments of the Lord, your God, which I command you. Your eyes have seen what the Lord has done in the case of Baal Peor.

For all the men who follow Baal Peor, the Lord your God has destroyed them from among you. Don't compromise the word. Obedience requires that a person obey God's word and not add to it or subtract to it or change it to suit their purpose or to permit their sins. No. Some people justify their disobedience by changing the word or omitting the word.

The best example of that in modern times is the homosexual groups in our society. When they look at the bible, they claim that Paul was mistaken when he condemned this practice in Romans 1. Oh, they believe the part about God and they believe the part about going to heaven and they believe about goodness and they believe about blessings, But when they get to Romans 1, they say, oh, well, that part over there, well, Paul was making a mistake over there. That's what they actually claim. On the Old Testament, Moses refers to Baal Peor.

And this is a place, actually, where the people ignored God's warning to avoid idol worship and marrying those women or those men from pagan tribes around them. And when they did this, we find out in Numbers chapter 25 verses 1 to 9, there was an incident where God sent a plague to destroy thousands of Israelites because of their disobedience. The people were responsible for carefully knowing and obeying God's word without changing it or deleting it or adding anything to it. How do you cultivate obedience? Make sure you do not change God's word.

Number 2, how to cultivate obedience. Don't give in to peer pressure. Let's keep reading. Verse 5, he explains that. He says, see, I have taught you statutes and judgments just as the lord my god commanded me, that you should do thus in the land where you are entering to possess it.

So keep and do them, for that is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes and say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what great nation is there that, that has a God so near to it as the Lord our God whenever we call to him? Or what great nation is there that has statutes and judgments as righteousness as this whole law which I am setting before you today? The word doesn't exist in a vacuum. There is competing pressure to conform to the mold of the world around them and Moses said that cultivating obedience requires a willingness to resist that pressure.

They were to expect that pressure. They were going into a pagan land. They were to expect the pressure, but they were to resist it. And so he encouraged them to take the word with them into the promised land and allow it to be the standard of their lives and not the pressure of the world. Because the nations would be impressed with the fact that they were making God's word their standard.

Another way to cultivate obedience, Moses tells them, do not stop teaching the word. Verse 9. He says, only give heed to yourself and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things which your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. But make them known to your sons and your grandsons. Remember the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, when the Lord said to me, 'Assemble the people to me that I may let them hear my word, so they may learn to fear me all the days they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children.

And you came near and stood at the foot of the mountain. And the mountain burned with fire to the very heart of the heavens, darkness, cloud, and thick blue. Then the Lord spoke to you from the midst of the fire, and you heard the sound of words, but you saw no form, only a voice. So he declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform. That is the 10 Commandments.

And he wrote them on 2 tablets of stone. And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgments, that you might perform them in the land where you are going in order to possess it. The Israelites had a powerful witness. A powerful witness of God's might and His mercy and His goodness. And Moses said they were not to let this witness die with their generation.

Yes, you were at the mountain. Yes, you saw God. Yes, you saw the lightning and the thunder. But don't let that witness die with your generation. They were to continually teach others, And they had to teach the next generation about God and especially how important obedience was in cultivating a relationship with him personally.

They were to practice this in a formal way through worship as well as an informal way, and that is through the teaching of their children at home. But in both ways, they were to preserve the witness that they had because God would not always appear at a mountain. There would not always be lightning and thunder and miracles. And so they had to pass that visual witness down throughout the ages. How do you cultivate obedience?

Do not stop teaching the word. Number 4, how do you cultivate obedience? Do not stray away from the Lord. That's verses 15 to 31. A little long.

I'm not gonna read that. You see, idolatry was a very tempting thing back then because its practice was sexually sensual. It was easy. It was commonly accepted by the people of that time. Now it wasn't an overnight abandonment of God, but rather a slow decline of morals and then practice and then habits.

And it involved a lifestyle change that included more and more of the pagan ideas around them, and then objects of pagans, and then practices of pagans, and less and less of God's word, and less and less of God's will in their lives. Is this sounding familiar? Because I'm really talking about what happened 3000 years ago. And so Moses warns of this slow decline into the various stages of idolatry. And he says, first of all, in order to avoid this, do not confuse the creator with the created.

Stay with me beginning in verse 15. He says, so watch yourselves carefully since you did not see any form on the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire, Lest you act corruptly and make a graven image of for yourselves in the form of any figure. The likeness of male or female. The like this of any animal that is on the earth. The likeness of any winged bird that flies in the sky.

The likeness of anything that creeps on the ground. The likeness of any fish that is in the water below the earth. And beware lest you lift up your eyes to the heaven and see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the hosts of heaven, and be drawn away and worship them and serve them those which the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven. But the Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace from Egypt to be a people for his own possession today. Don't confuse the creator with the created.

And that was always the first step to idolatry. The first step was to put their devotion and their heart into things rather than the creator of things. Doesn't that sound familiar? Putting your heart into things rather than putting your heart into the creator of things. The second stage he described in the fall into idolatry, don't forget the sure judgment for being unfaithful.

He describes that in verse 21. He says, Now the Lord was angry with me on your account and swore that I should not cross the Jordan and that I should not enter the good land that which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance. For I shall die in this land. I shall not cross the Jordan. But you shall cross and take possession of this good land.

So watch yourself, lest you forget the covenant of the Lord your God, which he made with you, and make for yourselves a graven image in the form of anything against which the Lord your God has commanded you. For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous guy. Don't forget the judgment. People sin not because they don't believe that God is there. They sin because they don't really believe he's gonna punish them.

The Jews especially had received strict warnings and they needed to take these seriously. And if you kept on reading through the old testament, you'd see the cycle of falling down and sinning and punishment and then renewal, which brings us to the 3rd stage. And in the fall to idolatry. He says, don't confuse the Creator with the created. Don't forget the judgment for it.

But if you fall, don't give up hope. Verse 25. He says, when you become the father of children and children's children, and have remained long in the land, and act corruptly, and make an idol in the form of anything, and do that which is evil in the sight I call I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that you shall surely perish quickly from the land where you are going over the Jordan to possess it. You shall not live long in it, but you shall be utterly destroyed. And the Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you shall be left few in number among the nations, for the Lord shall drive you.

And there you will serve God the work of man's hands, wood and stone, which neither see nor hear or eat or smell. But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find him if you search for him with all your heart and all your soul. When you are in distress, and all these things have come upon you in the latter days, you will return to the Lord your God and listen to his voice. For the Lord your God is the compassionate God. He will not fail you nor destroy you, nor forget the covenant with your fathers, which he swore to them.

Don't give up hope. God knew that these people were weak sinners, that they would fail over and over again. So he reminds them that a key way to deal with disobedience, the key way to deal with disobedience is not more disobedience or rebellion. The key way to deal with disobedience is not discouragement or despair, not pride or trying to justify or blame others. That's not the way to deal with disobedience and sin.

The way to deal with disobedience, he says, is humble repentance. Because God is merciful and he'll forgive and he'll restore because of his promise. And on verses 32 all the way down to 41, Romans, Moses rather reminds them of 2 reasons they should never give up hope. And I'll summarize these. I won't read the other verses.

Time is getting on here. First of all, he says, don't give up hope because you are special. God has done things for you that he has not done for other people. So you're special. And don't give up hope, he says, because your God is special.

No other god has or can do the things that God has and will do for you because there is no other god. And so when you cry out to God for mercy, you will get mercy because he is the only God and he is a merciful God. And so Moses makes his plea for the people he has led for so long. Obedience to the Lord will keep them long after he's gone. And he says to them, they are to cultivate this by maintaining the purity of God's word, by strengthening themselves to obey it, by teaching it to others, especially to the next generation, and finally, when they fail, to not be afraid to go to God and ask for forgiveness because he is merciful.

Alright. So that's Deuteronomy. That's chapter 4 in the kind of compressed way because of the time limits we have. Now the time and the place have changed, but we as Christians, we are the modern equivalent to the Israelites who came from Egypt to the promised land. We have trouble believing that sometimes.

Their story was lived and recorded in order to provide an enduring model for the generations of Christians that God knew were to come after them. For example, as Christians, we have been saved from the slavery of sin and the furnace of hell by the miraculous hand of God. Don't you see it? I mean, God raised Jesus from the dead. What a great miracle.

And we have been saved by that. Romans chapter 1 verses 34. And as God's people in the modern age, we also are poised to enter into the eternal promised land of heaven in a very short time. And the Jews spent 40 years wandering in the desert worshiping in a makeshift temple called the Tabernacle, and we today spend several decades on this earth wandering and worshiping God from the earthly temples of our bodies. Don't you see the parallels?

In the same way, we also must cultivate obedience so that we might cross over into the promised land of heaven when our earthly journey is over. That's the whole point of this passage for us today. And so as a servant of the Lord, I share with you the same approach to cultivating obedience today as it was back then. You see, in the modern age, many things have changed, but cultivating obedience to God's word remains as it was some 35 100 years ago when Moses spoke these words to the Jews on the same matter. And so today, in the year 2000, to cultivate obedience, our approach should be the same.

Number 1, don't change the word. We must preserve God's word without additions or deletions or perversions. And Paul the Apostle reemphasizes this principle in Galatians chapter 1 verses 6 to 8, and he's quite emphatic that those who do will be cursed by God. Let's not be fooled by shiny new temple. We've got a shiny new temple in town.

Some people had the, quote, privilege of going inside and seeing what exactly? Marble carved by human hands? Mirrors put up by some union worker. Nothing wrong with being a union worker, but it wasn't God. Grass that was laid in and mowed.

Gold ornaments that were bought from some supply place and it's the temple that money built, not God. Let's not be fooled by large religious groups or new prophets who want to lead in another way. It's the same today. Anyone or any group or any leader or any teacher who strays from the gospel message and the gospel savior, Jesus Christ, stands cursed before God and will not enter in. That hasn't changed.

We need to be careful to cultivate and practice obedience to the word and not tolerate any who would add or change or take away from it. That stays the same. Cultivating obedience in the modern age also requires that we not give in to peer pressure. They were surrounded by pagan nations who wanted to draw them into their culture and into their practices and into their beliefs. Now of course, in those days, the pagan nations wanted to do this to minimize the military threat.

Can you imagine all of a sudden, 6, 000, 000 people wandering around next to your country? They weren't there before. And they have a God that's doing all kinds of miracles militarily, so one way to beat them was simply to assimilate them, weaken them by by by going in among them. But the essence of the temptation is still here today. We are continually pressured to conform.

We're continually pressured to keep quiet, to look the other way, to accept the unbelievers' life style in sinful ways as normal, even to accept them as our own. I remember one time, oh, way back when Paul was little, in grade school, and I went to a teacher's meeting. And the teacher, one of the coordinators, was so proud this is back in Canada was so proud to show us the new social studies books and oh yes, we're going to be teaching about homosexuality as the third lifestyle and so proud that they were going to have books with Johnny and Billy holding hands. We're going to be teaching the kids about this. Aren't we modern?

And all the parents were kind of nodding their heads and going, Yeah. Isn't that nice? Aand I was sitting there thinking, Oh, dear. And I had to raise my hand and say, well, I don't agree with that. And blah blah blah.

And people were looking at me saying, man, what planet are you from? Homophobe. There's always pressure to shut up, to keep quiet, to accept the unbeliever's lifestyle. Today, Christians are not a military threat, but we're a moral threat. We're a moral threat.

Our Christian lives and works are a constant witness to the evil and selfish and corrupt world around us. So Paul the Apostle exhorts us to practice not being molded by the world as a way of cultivating obedience to God and thus showing that his ways are right and good and perfect and true. Romans 12: 1-2. Every time you resist being like the world in one way or another, you strengthen God's kingdom in the world, and you solidify your position in the next. Cultivating obedience demands also that we not neglect teaching the word.

Everyone is concerned about the welfare of children. Notice that? The big buzzword, presidential election. I'm gonna vote for the first time in 10 years in this country now that I'm a citizen. So I'm reading, I'm watching.

I mean, where were these guys before? It's all about the children. Whether they're here in America or in developing nations, it's all about because who's gonna disagree with you if you talk about helping the children? Well, nobody. Now the presidential hopefuls both claim that if elected, they will lead the country in such a way that will benefit the future generation.

And this is good. And this is proper because we want all children everywhere to have hope for a bright future. But I'll tell you something. We must remember as Christians that regardless of the condition of our nation and our economy, we we Christians are charged with the responsibility of teaching others, and especially the children, that they must obey God's word. Matthew chapter 28 verses 18 to 20.

Do you know why? This is necessary because without teaching, there is no obedience. And without obedience, our children will have no spiritual inheritance. Never mind that the Social Security Fund won't be there in 20 years from now. If you don't teach your children now, their faith won't be there 20 years from now.

It won't matter if they have Social Security or not. I mean, what good is it if we leave our children all our earthly goods and we make them wealthy, but we neglect to give them Christ? What good is that? And so it's necessary to educate and to train and to help our children grow and to marry well. But without Christ, they will not have the one element to give meaning and direction to all that they have.

So God bless those parents who have modeled faithful attendance and worship, and have taught their children to obey the Lord. Because in doing so, they are influencing all the generations that will come after them. If you teach them the word, if you model the word, they will know the way that they should go when their turn comes. If you wanna see your children in heaven, make sure you teach them to obey God's word here on earth, as it'll be too late to teach them when they get there. Finally, cultivating obedience means that you not stray from the Lord.

You know that Reset Sunday? What is that? It's a gimmick. Come on. It's a gimmick. It's a humorous way of saying, Brethren, you need to tighten up. That's what it is. You need to let go of the stickball championships and the bowling or whatever you're doing on Wednesday night and get to church. That's all that that is. You need to get up out of bed an hour earlier and get ready and bring your kids to Sunday school.

That's all that is. I'm being polite. Reset Sunday. That's all that that is. And I'm trying to move some of you who are always here to get it out of your own household and maybe get on to your brothers and sisters and say, hey.

Are you are you coming? Are you coming to church Sunday? Get that husband of yours out of bed, get that wife of yours going, get those kids out, get it on. Let's fill the building. We got more people than seats, but we still got seats.

That means somebody's at home snoozing. That's what that means. Don't stray from the Lord. The big word today is compartmentalize. Comes from the word compartment, obviously, means box.

Nowadays, people see their lives as a series of compartments containing parts of their lives. For example, they have a compartment from work. They have a compartment for family. They have a box for friends, a box for sport, a box for this, a box for that. And this is how some people justify seeming contradictions in their lives.

I knew a Christian man who was a preacher. He was a teacher. He was an author. He was an elder. He was a husband.

He was a father. And he was also a practicing pedophile. All at the same time. You don't know what that means? That means child molester.

And when he was caught and asked how he could practice such sinful sexual behavior secretly and still get up and preach and write Christian books and lead his family, what his response was? His response was that his sinful sexual practice was one compartment of his life that did not affect the others. That's all it is. He would go into that little room and practice, and then he'd go out and shut the door, and he would do everything else. President Clinton used the same rationale when defending his competency to govern after the scandal was revealed.

Right? Well, that's just part of my life over here. That doesn't mean I can't do all these other things. Okay? Now I give these examples to highlight the fact that many of us have this approach to life and Christian life especially.

Jesus is in one compartment in their lives, and they take him out on Sundays and Wednesdays, a few seconds before and after meals maybe, and that's it. They don't recognize that this approach is simply the flesh's way of of of controlling God so he won't control us. It's a popular way of making us fall away from the Lord by making him king over one little box of our lives while retaining the authority to rule and permit ourselves what we want to in other areas of our lives. Because after all, Jesus is King of this box. But cultivating obedience requires us to follow Christ and remain close to him when and how we do everything.

He's the Lord of our driving lives. He's the Lord of how we deal with our friends. He's the Lord of our attitude at work. He's the Lord of the way we conduct ourselves with our spouses and our children and our friends and our parents and our partners and our teachers and our leaders and our elders and our priests. You know what I'm saying?

It goes all over the place. Because not following the Lord's will in any area of our lives is to fall away from Jesus himself altogether. Rome, Matthew chapter 7 verse 21. Anytime we follow the will of Christ in any area of life, we are cultivating our obedience to God and strengthening as well as demonstrating the faith. And I'm telling you one thing, the faith that saves us.

The faith that saves us is the obedient faith. That's what's safe. Now at the beginning of this lesson, I told you that if I were to summarize the book of Deuteronomy in one word, that word would be obey. Well, at the risk of oversimplifying things, I would make the same comment about the entire Bible. The message from beginning to end is obey.

From Adam to Abraham, from Noah to Moses, from Solomon to John the Baptist, from Peter the Apostle to John's revelation, the key word from God to man has always been obey. Faith finds its expression in obedience. James chapter 5 4 rather verse 18. And love receives its reward through obedience. Matthew 7 verse 21.

And hope is not disappointed if it is built on the solid rock of obedience. Mark 16:16. This is why we begin teaching children to obey their parents, so that they will reap the benefits that come from knowing how to obey teachers, and coaches and leaders and trainers and systems and laws and ultimately God himself who gives all of these others their authority. Like anything else, obedience is a learned thing. And this morning, I have tried to coach you in how to practice the virtue of obedience in the spiritual realm, just in case you forgot or you weren't paying attention.

I've encouraged you to practice following God's word to the letter. Don't compromise. I've encouraged you to practice resisting the pressure to be, to think, to serve the pattern of this world rather than the pattern of Christ. I've encouraged you to practice teaching others the word. Because if you do, it'll bring it alive in you and point others in the right direction, especially your children.

And I've encouraged you to practice your discipleship every day, realizing that wherever you are and whoever you are and whatever you are doing, you are a disciple of Jesus Christ first and foremost. You're not a baker, a teacher, a homemaker, a lawyer, a whatever. You're not that. You're a Christian first. Do these things.

And more and more, you will glimpse with your spiritual eyes the place that God has prepared for you. You see, faith is what sets you on the journey, but obedience is what gets you there. Faith is what sets you on the journey. Obedience is what gets you there. If you're among us today, and you're a believer that Jesus is the son of God, but you have not yet confessed, confessed him publicly, you've not repented of your sins, you've not been baptized, I encourage you to obey this very first command from God's word, Acts 2:38, in order to take your first step on the journey to be with God in heaven.

And all those who have a heart and a mind to obey Jesus today for whatever reason, I do encourage you to come forward and bring your obedience to Jesus Christ as we stand and as we sing our song of encouragement. Courage. Courage.