Messages
Deuteronomy 4 |
| Posted by Administrator (charlie) on Jan 26 2009 |
- Introduction
In today’s world, people are really health conscience.
There is a lot of advice out there on how to eat and what to eat.
What I can’t figure is why anyone would eat grape nuts. I think it’s good for you because you can’t chew and therefore it doesn’t digest. Or maybe it just breaks all your teeth so you can’t eat anything afterward.
\My opinion about grape nuts is that it is not grapes and it is not nuts and it is not good.
In Luke 8, we have the account of Jesus teaching and as he is talking to a crowd a woman blurts out, “blessed is the woman who gave birth to you and who nursed you.”
Jesus replied to her, “On the contrary, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.”
- Describing the Biblical Text
Moses is beginning to teach the Israelites the essentials of national life.
They were preparing to enter the Promised Land by receiving some land already and then learning how to live as a people pleasing to the Lord.
This is really an urging by Moses.
In Romans 12 Paul declares “I urge you therefore by the mercies of God.”
Moses is doing the same thing here in order to let the Israelites know the importance of their obedience to God.
- Narrate the Contextual application
Just this past week we inaugurated the first black president of the
68% of the people polled prior to the inauguration felt a sense of optimism in
Even though President Obama did not receive any where near that percentage of the vote, people who did not vote for him still felt good.
People get a sense of excitement when change is on the horizon.
Life was closing in on change for the Israelites as they were drawing their wilderness wandering to a close.
- Life Application (thesis)
Moses knows that if they are going to succeed as a nation, it will all depend on what they do in terms of obeying God’s word.
If they fail, that will be determined by their disobedience.
Consequently, we will consider this idea today?
Knowing what God wants means that we should be doing what God wants.
That is the nature of obedience.
James, the half brother of Jesus in his epistle said that to know what is right and then not to do it is sin.
That is why we will be looking at 2 important principles this morning.
- SO WHAT!! (Outline)
We must be seeking to encounter God’s wisdom.
When I first became the pastor here I made a request that I plan to make any church that I would pastor.
I asked you to pray for me.
But it just wasn’t any old prayer.
It is a prayer that has the validity of scripture behind it.
It is the prayer that Paul prayed for the Colossians in chapter 1 of that letter.
Listen to this prayer and see if you can resonate with its content.
9For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, (V)we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the (W)knowledge of His will in all spiritual (X)wisdom and understanding, so that you will (Y)walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, (Z)to please Him in all respects, (AA)bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; (AC)joyously giving thanks to (AD)the Father, who has qualified us to share in (AE)the inheritance of the saints in (AF)Light.
You see, this is exactly what Moses is telling the Israelites in the first verse.
Listen to the law; listen to the statutes of God and you will live in the will of God receiving the possession that He has for you.
In the Colossians passage, Paul called it walking in a manner worthy of the Lord.
Think about that.
Living in the will of God is walking in a way that is worthy of Him.
That means that we are seeking to please God in all that we do.
The deal is this though.
If we are focused on living a life that pleases God, we have to understand what His expectations are.
The Israelites had an abundance of Laws given them by God during and after the Sinai giving of the Ten Commandments.
We have the Bible and principles that are found in it.
The really great thing is that God has not changed since the giving of the 10 commandments, the coming of Jesus and now.
Paul’s prayer for us to be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding was in essence a prayer for us to know the word of God.
If we think about the word of God being given to profit us in teaching, correction, and instruction in Godly living, we can remember that God has provided what we need in order to be pleasing to Him.
His word and His Spirit indwelling us to help us understand the word are a part of our lives every day.
Jesus teaching in John chapters 14-16 is some of my favorite in the New Testament.
I have dreamt of two research projects in my life if I were to ever get a significant Sabbatical leave.
The first project would be on fruit.
What is the fruit that we are supposed to produce as followers of Jesus?
The second would be on the Holy Spirit.
How do Paul’s teachings on the Spirit of God compare to that which Jesus taught in the upper room discourse.
The Spirit of God, according to Jesus leads us into all truth.
He reminds us of what Jesus taught.
He convicts and converts the sinner.
He is the presence of God that we have to empower us to do ministry on this earth.
He is absolutely essential in encountering God’s wisdom.
If the Holy Spirit is not revealing the word of God as we read it, we are not encountering God from His word.
The wisdom of God is a spiritually discerned commodity that only comes from the Spirit of God through the knowledge of His word.
That is why that prayer in Colossians reads like it does.
We should be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.
That is why that prayer has the outcomes of bearing fruit, pleasing God and increasing in the knowledge of God IOW knowing Him better.
Herein we find our second principle
We must be serving to execute God’s ways.
There was a young man who was graduating from college and he had dropped the hint to his dad that he wanted a certain sports car for a graduation gift. The family was fairly wealthy so a sports car was not out of the question. Well the semester ended and graduation came. When they got home from the ceremony, the father called the son into his study. He handed his son a box and the son was pretty excited because he expected the keys to a new car. When the son got the wrapping off the box and looked at it he realized that it was a Bible. The son got angry He had always gone to church with his family but he didn’t need a new Bible so he tossed the box in the trash and walked out of the study. He never spoke to his dad again. When his dad was in his last days, the son went home hoping to beat death so he could ask his father’s forgiveness but he was too late. He and his mother spent the days together planning the service and making the necessary arrangements and knowing that there was a void because the son never heard his father’s forgiveness. Finally the son mustered up the courage and went into his dad’s study. On the corner for the desk was the box. Dad had fished it out of the trash and kept it all those years. On top of the Bible box was a note which read, “Son, I love you and will always love you. Please don’t think that I had hard feelings as I never meant to disappoint you. I kept the Bible for you in case you ever came back because I want you to have it.” Love Dad. The son picked up the box and took the Bible out. He opened the cover to see what his dad had written on the fly leaf so many years before. When he opened that red leather cover, he found a key taped to the inside. It was the key to that brand new sports car.
It was simply a matter of doing what his father wanted him to do.
All he had to do was open that Bible.
I bet many of us are the same way.
We know what we need to do.
We know what we are supposed to do and yet we don’t.
We don’t execute the commands of God.
That last part of the Great Commission tells the church to teach people to observe or to keep everything that Jesus taught.
Yet we don’t.
The Great Commission has become the great omission in too many churches.
The great commandment to love God and neighbor has become the great consumption use God and neighbor.
It is time that we stopped reading this book and started doing this book.
We have to stop claiming that we believe the Bible and start living the Bible.
We can’t yell amen every time someone uses the words inerrant and infallible in the same sentence and keep ignoring the commands of Christ.
The Bible is a book not to be merely read, it is a book to be lived.
The commands of God are to be executed.
God was going to bless His people in their land by how they kept his commands.
If we took the commands of God a little more seriously in our church, we would see more growth and a dynamic sense of what the Lord is doing.
We must be doers of the word and not hearers only if we are to be the church that God has called us to be.
Are we going into the Promised Land or are we going to wander for another 30 years?
Gospel in invitation
Last changed: Mar 23 2009 at 2:44 PM
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