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Deuteronomy 1 |
| Posted by Administrator (charlie) on Jan 13 2009 |
- Introduction
It seems that second chances don’t come along very often.
But, what we have in the book of Deuteronomy is a second chance, so to speak, to enter the Promised Land.
At this point the original Israelites who refused to obey God and to enter the Promised Land were essentially dead.
The next generation was being prepared to go in.
It was the Israelites that were delivered from
I remember being art Boy Scout camp when I was a youth and wandering into the skeet range before it was my turn to shoot. The scout master in charge of the range kicked me out and forbade me from shooting for the rest of the week.
As much as I love to shoot, that killed me.
- Describing the Biblical Text
The text before is today is the beginning Moses recounting for the people all they had been through prior to their finally being allowed to enter the Promised Land.
They even tried later to go in but the Lord’s timing had already passed and it was not to be.
The fighting men that attempted to do it their way instead of God’s way were crushed.
But now, God is ready to move the remaining people, the next generation into the land flowing with milk and honey.
Remember the clusters of grapes from the exploits of the spies going into he land?
They had to be carried between men on poles.
This truly was a promised land that God was giving his people but there one thing they needed to demonstrate and that was obedience.
- Narrate the Contextual application
Obedience doesn’t sound like a hard thing to accomplish but it is.
It is hard for several reasons.
We are not born with a bent to be obedient to God.
It is just the opposite.
We are born rebellious and seeking our own reward rather than that which is offered by the Lord.
We as humans do not have a penchant to see the big picture.
We tend to see that which we can see benefits immediately.
Trust is also an issue I think.
It is hard for us to trust God just like it was hard for the Israelites to trust Moses.
They did not obey what they knew because they saw that the challenges outweighed the benefits even though their leader Moses was prepared to lead them into the Promised Land.
- Life Application (thesis)
You have to wonder how these same issues affect us.
You have to wonder how these barriers to obedience influence followers of Jesus Christ to keep us from doing what God would call us to do.
How many times do we get up or go to bed and just decide we are too tired or too busy to pray or devote time to God?
Yet, we are His people and we are pledged to trust Him and to follow Him.
We have surrendered our lives to obey Him in every area.
This then should be our manner of life.
As the people of God, We must obey the Lord’s commands.
- SO WHAT!! (Outline)
Let’s take a look at some principles behind obedience this morning.
Obedience affirms that God’s plan is the best plan.
As you know, I really enjoy our Wednesday night meals.
You what is really interesting? Watching people fix their plates is cool because you can discover that there are some foods that people don’t like. Some people will get the potatoes and the gravy and other go for the green beans.
If you look at my plate, it will have 2 pieces of chicken and mounds of coleslaw.
When we are choosing to obey God’s commands we are affirming that it is the best thing for us.
It is like choosing the food we eat.
In our choice, we are affirming what we think is best.
Some folks like slaw and some do not.
I do.
Look at verse 26
Here we see whiney pouty people who would rather retreat to the life in bondage than to enter the Promised Land.
What they are saying is that they do not believe that God has their best interest in mind.
What they cannot see and what we often cannot see is that God has a plan in mind for us that He determined before the foundation of the world.
Far too often though, we think that God’s plan is not the best option for us.
We look back to a time in our lives when thing were better or at least we thought they were and we long to go back.
But, to what would we really be going back?
We would be returning to the bondage of the old life and leaving the plan of God that we so recently readily affirmed by giving ourselves to Him in obedience.
For the Israelites, life in
They had good jobs and they were well fed and in general they had everything they needed.
Yet, there was something missing.
There was the promise of God to their ancestors that they would have God’s inheritance.
There was the promise of God that they were His chosen people.
And all of this that God had planned for them was being unfulfilled because they were not in the place God wanted them to be.
So God was ready to move them and he sent his servant Moses.
Who brought the Lord’s message but we must remember that he also brought the Lord’s misery.
When Moses came on the scene in
But they were worse for the Egyptians.
The plagues that God sent to
Whenever we desire to go back instead of moving forward in obedience to God, we are choosing our own plan instead of His.
And then what happens?
Our second principle comes into play.
Obedience affects God’s proceedings.
Here are the people of God.
They have been delivered from bondage, crossed the red sea on dry land, given the ten commandments and promised victory when entering the promised land so what id they do.
They called a business meeting.
If a church is doing something good and is making progress for the Lord, all it takes is for somebody to call a business meeting to ruin everything.
In all honesty, it is in business meetings where pastors discover they are not the trusted leaders that they thought they were.
It is in business meeting that churches will vote to do anything that seems prudent even if it is not in agreement with the word of God.
What were the Israelites saying when they would not enter the Promised Land?
They were saying that they did not trust their leadership.
They did not trust Moses who had brought them out of
So what does a leader do when he finds the people not trusting him anymore?
He gets angry when the people complain and strikes a rock for water to show off.
Or he might decide that it is time to leave.
When a leader is miserable, and feeling like he is not trusted by his people, it is likely that he will begin to seek a pasture with greener grasses.
Yet Moses did not do that. But I know many a pastor who has and some who are thinking about it now.
God told the people to go in and take the land but the people voted no then God was ready to turn them back to the wilderness and the people said, “Oops we goofed”
But, it was too late God’s opportunity had passed and the people were crushed as they tried to do what they no longer had the Lord’s blessing to do.
God changed his plan so far as we can understand it.
Those people who were supposed to enter the blessed Promised Land flowing with milk and honey found themselves wandering in the wilderness of the
God’s proceedings and his plan for his people were affected by their disobedience.
If we are not obedient, God might withhold His blessing from us as well.
He might just let someone else have our promise like He did the Israelites.
This then brings us to a third point or principle.
Disobedience affronts or insults God’s purpose.
We have seen our daughter’s first boy friend and first break up.
What amazed us was that such a nice boy while he was seeing
But you know what?
When we disobey God, that is exactly what we are doing.
We are thumbing our noses at him and saying that we don’t care what you want or what your word says.
All we care about id doing it our way.
I can’t imagine anyone thumbing their noses at God but every time we disobey, that is essentially what we are doing.
We are saying to the eternal omniscient God that we know more than He does.
We are saying that we would be better at running our own lives that He would be.
You know what is really ironic about that.
It’s what the world says every day.
They don’t want God or His teaching.
They want their own pleasure.
They want what feels good for a season.
They do not want the eternal truth of the eternal God who sent His son to be the redeemer of the people of God.
But what we might not consider is that Jesus is there because we are all disobedient to God.
The Bible says all have sinned and come short of His glory.
There is none righteous no not one.
Therefore we need Jesus in our lives to provide forgiveness for that sin.
We need Jesus death on the cross to pay the price or to take the punishment in our place so that we can come to God.
There is a promised land, a land of peace and rest.
That land is found in obeying God and following Jesus Christ.
Last changed: Jan 14 2009 at 1:02 PM
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