Skip HeitzigSkip Heitzig

Skip's Teachings > 05 Deuteronomy - 1996 > Deuteronomy 9-10

Message:

SHORT URL: http://SkipHeitzig.com/1110 Copy to Clipboard
SAVE: MP3
BUY: Buy CD

Deuteronomy 9-10

Taught on
Date Title   ListenNotes Share SaveBuy
2/16/1997
completed
resume  
Deuteronomy 9-10
Deuteronomy 9-10
Skip Heitzig
  Listen - Mini Player
Listen and Take Notes
Transcript Facebook
Twitter
Email
Audio (MP3)
Buy CD
05 Deuteronomy - 1996

The book of Deuteronomy is the giving of the Mosaic Law to a new generation of Israelites at the end of their wanderings. Skip Heitzig tells the story of God's continuing grace to His people.

FREE - Download Entire Series (MP3) (Help) | Buy audiobook

Transcript

Open as Word Doc Open as Word Doc    Copy Copy to Clipboard    Print icon    Show expand

There was a California industrialist who said---he travels around and gives seminars to people on motivation and growth. He said, "There's two things I find it hard to get people to do: the first is to think; and the second is to do things in order of their importance, to live by a list of priorities, to be able to filter out what is important." So he says, "First of all, you need to think about life. Secondly, you need to---in thinking about life, knowing where you've come from, where you're going---to do the right thing at the right time." Moses is trying to get his people, God's people, the people of which he is the leader to think, to think about where they've come from, to think about where they're going.

He wants them to think about their future, but he first wants them to think about their past. And the past would be a guidepost rather than a hitching post. Rather than having to always look back, past tense, and say, "Oh, I remember when . . ." and sort of in a romantic way look back to the past as it was something that was past tense in their relationship with God. He wanted it to be present and future. But he wanted them to always remember the pit from which they've been dug, the stone from which they've been hewn, their own background, their own history. Because they were going to cross the River Jordan, get into a land that God promised, but it wasn't going to be easy.

So they had to think. They had to get their reference, their bearings, and then go for it. Remember Jesus said in Luke, chapter 14, I believe, "Which of you, building a tower, would not first sit down, and count the cost, to see whether he has enough to finish the project or not---lest, when he has begun to lay the foundation, and is unable to finish it, others will come and mock him, and say, 'Look, he started this thing but he hasn't finished it.' " He hadn't thought it through. He just went out and did something without really thinking or doing it in order of priority.

So, reaching back to the past, and then going ahead to the future, Moses has several messages to give to the children of Israel. By way of review, Moses is giving his second speech, which is sharing with them their present responsibilities. And he tells them "remember." That's sort of the keyword in this second speech: remember what God has done. They're to remember to pass it on. We uncovered that in chapter 6 last week. Pass it on to your children. Pass it on by visible signs, what you have on your head and what you bind to your arm, what you put on your doorposts. These things are reminders of God's activity, God's promises. Remember then to pass it on to the next generation.

Then the next chapter was remember to possess the land. God gave them a land, they hadn't been there yet, but God still gave them a promise: "It's a free gift. You're not going to earn it. You don't have to beg me for it. In fact, it's my idea to begin with. I was the guy that told Abraham about it and Isaac and Jacob, and now you're the generation that is inheriting that promise. "But though I am giving it to you as a gift, you got to set your foot on it. It won't come automatically. It's not like you're going to cross the Jordan River and the Canaanites are going to be out there with a red carpet and a title deed in their hands saying, 'Here's our land, you can have it. God has spoken to us too and it's yours.' "

No. They're going to have to go in and city by city, little by little they are going to have to possess the possession that God has promised to them. Then in chapter 8, same speech, God tells them to remember to ponder God's work, and that's really where we left off. Think about, ponder what God has done for you in the past. So Moses looks backward and then Moses looks ahead. He looks back to God's activity from Mount Sinai, Mount Horeb, the wilderness, and then looks forward to what they're going to uncover in the land. Now, I want to draw your attention to verse 5, after talking about God's provision in the past.

Verse 5 of chapter 8, "So you should know in your heart"---there is a difference between knowing in your head and knowing in your heart, right? You can memorize certain things and sort of know on the surface, but it's another thing to know in your heart. And Moses so often will talk about the relationship with God from the heart and the covenant is from the heart. He will talk about circumcision later, and he says, "It's not the flesh, it's the heart that God wants to circumcise." The flesh is just a sign of the reality of the heart. So, "You should know in your heart that as a man chastens his son, so the Lord your God chastens you."

Have you ever been spanked by God? Doesn't it feel good afterwards? That's what the writer of Hebrews said, right? "No chastening is fun while you're going through it, but afterwards it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness." When you grow up and you look back and you think, "You know, my parents were disciplined enough to discipline me. I respect them for that." I love that. I think parents today have the idea that if they discipline their child, their child will rebel and turn against them. No, your child will rebel if you don't lovingly discipline them. They want parameters, and they want the parameters lovingly enforced.

You do no favors to your children, in fact, you show them no love at all if you refuse to discipline. You say, "Yeah, but every time I discipline my child, they get angry with me." It's not what your child thinks of you now that is all that important, as much as what your child thinks about you when they've grown up. Now, let me restate that. When you, in love, set a parameter and chasten, you discipline, in love, your son or your daughter, at that moment they're going to say, "You don't love me." Now, they won't do that for long, that's very, very temporary. After it's over and you hug them and you talk it out, they're not going to hold a grudge the next day.

Children are very resilient. They'll forget all about it. But they'll know that there is a line, they crossed it yesterday, and that you don't make threats, that you make promises. That's the important thing for them to know. That's where the chastening comes in. Never threaten your children. What I mean by that is follow through. If you make---if you tell them something, make it a promise, not a threat. If you say, "If you do that, I'll spank you," then if they do that, don't say, "Now, I told you if you do that I'll spank you. Now, if you do it again I'll spank you."

So they'll do it again. "Now, I told you . . ." and you start raising your voice and then they know there's a decibel level that mom and dad work with. "Everything up to that decibel level is just empty threats, but when mom and dad start reaching that high shrill, then I know they're serious. So I got a lot of latitude." No. Just be calm. Simply say, "Look, here's the rule. Don't do that. Do that, there will be a consequence." As soon as they do it, give them a consequence rather than wrath, rather than getting all freaked out. Just follow through with it. They will get the idea those are real parameters, those are real lines.

And they will grow up confident and secure that you love them enough to enforce that discipline. And the Lord loves us enough to enforce his discipline. God's laws, spiritual laws are as powerful and as real in their cause and effect as physical laws. There's a law of gravity. Smaller objects will be attracted toward larger objects because of gravitational pull. You can prove the point. You can stand up on a building, and though you might defy the law of gravity and say, "I have always wanted to fly, without an airplane, just by myself. I've imagined myself soaring through space and now I am going to do it."

Work yourself how you will, and then take that flying leap. You cannot defy the law of gravity. You will lose. You will bear the consequence. That law, once broken, has a severe consequence. Spiritual law is the same way. "Whatever a man sows, so shall he also reap." Spiritual laws and their consequence are as powerful in their cause and effect as physical laws and God enforces them. And the reason he does is because he's like a good dad who loves his kids. "And like a father chastens his son, so the Lord your God chastens you." Now, I do want to get into chapter 9, but I want you to look at a few verses that are very descriptive of the land of Israel.

Look at verse 7. "For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains, springs, that flow out of the valleys and hills; a land of wheat and barley, of vines, of fig trees, pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing; a land whose stones are as iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper. When you have eaten and are full, then you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which he has given you." Now, God in a few verses describes the land they're about to go in. And though you can read it, there's nothing like seeing this.

And those verses are so pregnant with the beauty of the land of Israel that I thought I would just sort of take it slide at a time and talk about the land that God was giving them. They hadn't seen a land like this. They've been in the land of Egypt, and that was great, they had the Nile River, but that's about it. This was a new land of hills and valleys and beautiful flowers throughout the hills that soaked in the rain from heaven. And God said, "As long as you obey me, I'll send the rains," Deuteronomy 11:11. We'll get to that whenever we get to that. But picking these verses apart more slowly: "The Lord your God is bringing you into a good land." So much of the land of Israel is cultivated even in the areas where it's dirt and desert.

They have decided to change the climate of Israel by a massive reforestation. And if you were to go there pre-1948, and I've seen pictures, you'll see just barren desert, dust. You look at it today, it's an entire forest, because they started planting seedlings and little pine trees and covered acres and miles with pine trees. I wish that we as a state of New Mexico could convince the land of Israel that we're part of the state of Israel, [laughter] and just cover this thing with pine trees. It's "a land of brooks of water." How many people I've talk to that have gone to Israel said, "Man, I pictured that place as one big heap of sand and dirt."

It's gorgeous in some places, water coming out of the ground, especially in the north. And God said it's a land of brooks, of fountains, of springs of water, and this is the beginning of the Jordan River, the Dan tributary that comes from the north and feeds the entire state of Israel. God had said it's "a land of fountains and springs that flow out of valleys and hills." It's an interesting land. It's a very small area. It's got the lowest place on the planet earth, the Dead Sea, 1,290 feet below sea level, and it's got the highest mountain peak in the Middle East, Mount Hermon. And you can go there in the summertime and you can see snow on Mount Hermon.

In fact, they ski, there's a ski lift there on Mount Hermon. You can go in the wintertime and snowboard or ski. And here's a picture of it in the heights of Zebulun, fountains, valleys that flow out of the---"fountains and springs that flow out of the valleys and the hills." God said it's a land of fig trees growing by these springs and fountains of water. It's "a land of olive oil." I couldn't find a bunch of olive oil, so I scanned in a guy selling a bunch of olives. [laughter] "A land which you will eat bread without scarcity," especially in the area of Bethlehem, Béthleem, the house of bread, the place of bread, the breadbasket of Israel, where the wheat grows freely, the place where Ruth and Boaz were out gleaning in the fields.

It's a land "in which you will lack nothing," said God, just, just, just beautiful areas. Then it says in the same verse, "the land whose stones are iron." You know, you have to go to Israel to really appreciate this. You can't go anywhere in the land without seeing rock. Everything's rock. You gotta clear away the rocks. It's not like sand, it's just rock, rocky hills, rocky valleys, rocky ravines everywhere, solid rock. And so you have rock and then you'll have some topsoil. And often times when people plant in the topsoil, it's a very shallow shelf of dirt, and underneath is the bedrock.

That's why Jesus said, "the seed fell upon some soil and it grew very quickly." Because, you know, you have just a little bit of soil packed with nutrients, but if you have a hot day, because the roots can't go deep because of the bedrock, the plant withers away. It's just the nature of the land of Israel, hard rock everywhere. "Whose stones are as iron, a land out of whose hills you can dig copper," loaded with minerals from the Dead Sea all the way to the northern part of Israel. Now, we get into chapter 9, and we're again in the same speech, the second speech Moses gave to the children of Israel.

And chapter 9 is the theme, basically, remember your mistakes. It's interesting that Moses will take them through a short litany of how much they blew it. See, God---Moses, and of course God in inspiring this, doesn't want these guys to get proud. There would be a temptation once they're in the land to think: "Well, you know, it's because I'm kind of a righteous person and we're a righteous nation that we're in this land to begin with. After all, we kicked the Canaanites out. It was their land to begin with and now it's ours. It must be because we're awesome." So Moses would say, "You need to look back and remember how many times you have failed."

Now, you say, "Is that helpful?" Yes, it is helpful, and I'll show you why in a minute. In chapter 9 it'll cover the sad memory of their failure at Mount Sinai, the sad memory of their failure throughout the desert years, the sad memory of the failure at Kadesh Barnea when they refused to go in the land forty years before, but they listen to the ten spies. Then in chapter 10, and this is where remembering the failures come in and it's helpful, remember God's mercy. See, after you remember your mistakes, you start going, "Oh, man, I do remember that. Oh, whew, whew, that was pretty bad. There is no reason for God to bless me and to love me." Right.

Now, you're at a great spot, because now you can get a reality check. It's God's mercy, it's not because you deserve God's blessing, it's God's mercy to you that you are where you are; God's mercy to answer prayer, that would be Moses' prayer time and time again; God's mercy to replace the tablets of stone, because Moses broke the first set and so Moses had to carve out a new set and then God wrote the Ten Commandments on them again; and then God's mercy not to destroy them altogether. That's the theme of these two chapters: remember your past failures and remember God's mercy. So let's get into chapter 9, see how far we get.

"Hear, O Israel: You are to cross over the Jordan today, and go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourself, cities great and fortified up to heaven, a people great and tall, the descendants of the Anakim." Anytime you see an I-M (-im) at the end of a word in the Old Testament, it's pronounced eem (ēm) and this is the male plural in Hebrew. You don't say the Anaks, it's Anakim is the male plural, the "-im" ending. So, "The descendants of the Anakim, whom you know, and of whom you heard it said, 'Who can stand before the descendants Anak?' "

Who said that? Who are the people who said, "Who can standing before the descendants of Anak"? It was the ten spies who said, "It's huge! These guys are unreal and the cities reach all the way up to heaven." It was an exaggeration. He's simply using their phrase. He's saying, "Go in and take it. Take the place that these ten spies filled with unbelief said it's impossible to take the giants. Go in and take the greater, bigger, more powerful nation than yourselves." It was Martin Luther who came up with the beautiful phrase, "With God one is a majority."

Of course, Martin Luther would know that by experience, having the entire Roman Catholic Church against him when he pinned the 95 Theses on the door in Wittenberg and started the Great Reformation. He believed that you could be justified by faith as a gift of God, not by works or indulgences. And the entire church was against him after he read Galatians and Romans. And I think that fits here. You're going in, these guys are bigger and more in number, mightier, stronger, taller---take it. You got God on your side. You're a majority. And because God is on your side, and when you factor him in, you're much stronger than they are.

In fact, though they are more in number, they're just a bigger target, easy to hit, easy to fall. The Anakim were indeed real descendants. They were real giants. Even extrabiblical literature writes about the giants that inhabited the land. They were probably the remnants of the original Canaanites, even before those who occupied the land at this time. They were remnants, leftovers of that. They lived in the southern area, principally the area of the Philistines, the area around Hebron. You hear that in the news, the city of Hebron, all the conflicts going on. That's where the Anakim lived.

In Abraham's time the Anakim lived east of the Jordan River in the area of modern-day Jordan, Edom, Moab. But now they had settled in that land and they were the formidable enemies for the children of Israel. "Therefore understand today that the Lord your God is he who goes before you as a consuming fire. He will destroy them and bring them down before you; so you shall drive them out and destroy them quickly, as the Lord has said to you. Do not think in your heart, after the Lord your God has cast them out before you, saying, 'Because of my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess the land'; but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out from before you."

So, Moses is saying now, "You gotta remember, it's not because you're so good that you get this land, it's because they're so bad. And though you're not perfect yourself,"---in fact, Moses is going to say, "As long as I've ever known you, you've been stiff-necked and hardhearted. And as bad as you are, you're the lesser of the two evils. So don't get puffed up and think, 'I'm awesome!' No, they're just wicked. And God is going to do something he had promised a long time ago." God is about to dispossess these people groups in the land of Canaan from the land that they lived in. Some would say that's cruel.

Actually, it's very patient of God. God had been warning them for four hundred years. When Abraham came from Ur the Chaldees and came into the land of Israel in Genesis, chapter 15, God says, "Now, Abraham, though you're in this land, your descendants will go into another land that is not their own, the land of Egypt. They will serve those people in that land and they will be oppressed by the people who live in that land and they'll be oppressed for four hundred years. But in the fourth generation I will bring them out from there into this land." And listen to this phrase: "For the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full." The Amorites were the Canaanites who lived in the land.

In other words, God is saying, "I, as their landlord, will give them four hundred years to change their ways. If they don't change their ways by then," which God basically predicted they wouldn't. God wouldn't act impetuously or impatiently, he would wait four hundred years. Folks, I don't know of any landlord that would give somebody four hundred years to pay their rent. And God gave them four hundred years to change and they did not. And now the time has come for (a) God to give Israel the land, but (b) to dispossess those people that he was patient with through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob's testimony in it as they spoke of the God of the covenant.

Now they will be taken out of the land. And so because they're wicked God will drive them out from before you. Now, God does drive them out, they don't turn to God, except for one person. Who would that be? A harlot by the name of Rahab. Of all the people to confer grace upon, there's one gal, a harlot who gets saved basically, in Old Testament terms, which is great, because, you know, being a harlot you would recognize, you know, "I'm a sinner, a prostitute." Most prostitutes wouldn't say, "Well, you know, I'm as good as the next person." They recognize, "No, this is not good, this is sin. This is wicked in God's sight."

And God loves to save bad people. God never saves people who think they are good enough. People who think they are good enough never ask God to save them. They're the kind of people who in their pride say, "I don't need God. I don't need to change. Who you telling---what are you preaching to me for? I'm fine the way I am." But somebody who is a sinner and recognizes it is the one who's going to ask God for his forgiveness, and basically that's what Rahab did. "We have heard," she said, "of your God. We have been in terror ever since we heard of him." And she was included by faith, the Scripture says, among God's promised.

Verse 5, he sort of repeats himself. "It's not because of your righteousness, or of the uprightness of your heart that you go in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God drives them out from before you, that he might fulfill the word which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." It's all grace, isn't it? We've been saved not by our own works, Paul said in Ephesians, but by faith through God's act of grace. "Therefore understand the Lord your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stiff-necked people."

He gets just down to earth with them. He is making a character judgment of the entire service, the entire congregation. "You're a stiff-necked group. God has noticed that." And Moses would say, "I agree with God," later on, "you are a stiff-necked people." I mean, think about it, think of their history. As soon as they witness what I would call the state of the art miracle---I mean, it'd be the latest thing to come down the miracle pike. A sea of water opening up, and dry land appearing, and the ability to go across on dry land the Red Sea, and then have that same body of water destroy the Egyptians, they saw that.

And yet almost immediately after they saw that they start griping and complaining and thinking that, "Well, God brought us out with that miracle, but we're going to die now. We're not going to have water or food." And, you know, the litany. They became so good at griping. They became experts in the field of complaining. They were stiff-necked. They saw miracle after miracle, but they hardened their heart, became very stiff-necked. It goes to prove an interesting point: miracles, signs, and wonders may dazzle for a moment, but generally the people who will see it will often go back into the same kinds of activity and state of heart as before.

See, people say, "Well, if I only saw a miracle, I'd believe." Well, you know what? Look what happened to Lazarus after he rose from the dead. The Pharisees got wind of it, everybody in the region heard of it or saw it, and so the Pharisees sought to kill Lazarus because he's evidence, habeas corpus. They produced the body, get rid of it, get rid of the evidence of Jesus' miracles. They hardened their heart in the midst of a miracle. "Remember. And do not forget how you provoked the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness. From the day that you departed from the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the Lord.

"Also in Horeb," that would be the area of Mount Sinai, "you provoked the Lord to wrath, so the Lord was angry enough with you to have destroyed you. When I went up into the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of covenant which the Lord made with you, then I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water. Then the Lord delivered to me two tablets of stone written with the finger of God, and on them were all the words which the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly.

"It came to pass, at the end of forty days and forty nights, that the Lord gave people the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant. Then the Lord said to me, 'Arise, and go down quickly from here, for your people whom you brought out of Egypt have acted corruptly; they have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them; and they have made themselves a molded image.' " In the midst of a revelation on Mount Sinai at the very base of that mountain while Moses is hearing from God to speak that word to the people, while that's going on, there's idolatry in the camp.

Again, you know, they've seen miracle, they've seen sign, they've seen wonder, and now they're doing the very thing that God just tells Moses they shouldn't do. "Don't have any God's before me. And don't make a molded image." They're down there making one. This becomes a blot on their record. It becomes as notable as the deliverance from Egypt. In fact, as you trace their history through the Old Testament, almost every time they talk about "God delivered us with a strong hand from the land of Egypt," they usually mention the golden calf incident along with it as the very low point in their history of rebellion against God.

"Furthermore the Lord spoke to me, saying, 'I have seen this people, and indeed they are a stiff-necked people.' " Moses is saying, "That's what God told me personally about you." God goes on to say to Moses, " 'Let me alone, that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven; and I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.' " Basically what God is offering to Moses in a word is the same deal he offered to Abraham when he said, "Abraham, I'm going to take you, and I'll make a great nation out of you. Leave your father's house, leave your country, and I can take just you, you and Sarah, and that little primary unit, and I can make a whole nation."

Now, He's saying, "Moses, move out of the way. I'll wipe them out and I'll just do it all over again with you. I'll wipe them out." Now, it's a good thing I wasn't Moses, because I'd be tempted. I'd say, "You know, sounds pretty good, have a nation named after me, the Skippites. [laughter] Beside that, these guys have hassled me ever since we left Egypt. They've been griping and complaining against me. Let's just teach them a lesson. Go ahead, wipe them out." But the Bible says that Moses was the meekest man on the face of the earth. Not me, Moses was. And Moses will intercede at this point.

"So I turned and came down from the mountain, and the mountain burned with fire; and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands. And I looked, and there you had sinned against the Lord your God---and made for yourselves a molded calf! You had turned aside quickly from the way which the Lord had commanded you. Then I took the two tablets and threw them out of my two hands and broke them before your eyes." Hoo! must have been a sight. Here comes Moses and, boy, is he ticked off. Takes the very words of God and he smashes them in the sight of all of the people.

"And I fell down before the Lord, as at the first, forty days and forty nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all of your sin which you committed in doing wickedly in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to anger. For I was afraid of the anger and the hot displeasure with which the Lord was angry with you, to destroy you. But the Lord listened to me at that time also." Moses, you might remember, intercede for the children of Israel. He says, "Look out! I'm just going to destroy them." "No, no, no, God, please, don't do it. You made a covenant with them. What will all the nations say?

"You know, blot my name out of your book of life if you're going to blot their name out." And Moses intercedes for them and God stays his hand. Now, it would appear in reading that that Moses sort of calmed God down. You might get the idea that here's God, he's angry, and Moses, "Now, God, let me talk a little sense into you. You're just having a bad day. [laughter] You're having a bad people day. I know how that goes, but, listen, just chill out a little bit. Let's talk this thing over. Let's do something different." I don't believe that's really how it goes.

I think that God said, "I'm going to wipe out," in order that Moses would get a little bit excited and say, "Whoa, now wait a minute," and start praying. God said that very thing that would create a reaction in Moses, so that Moses would pray and intercede for them. I think God was looking for any excuse not to judge them. As Ezekiel said, God was looking for a man to "stand in the gap" for his people. Prayer never begins with man, it always begins with God. It's God who awakens our need, our sense of that need, and then we begin praying.

And I think God was simply drawing Moses out to a place where he would intercede for the people, because that was God's intention all along, to spare them. But now Moses gets involved and he prays. And God inspired the prayer, and now God answers the prayer. "And the Lord was very angry with Aaron." It's a good thing at this point that Aaron is dead and buried when Moses shares with this new generation, because it would be embarrassing to mention the guy's name personally. If he was over in the corner going, "Oh, Moses, don't bring that up." But he was already buried.

"The Lord was very angry with Aaron and would have destroyed him; so I prayed for Aaron also at the same time." Amazing, so quickly after seeing incredible signs and wonders, the work of God firsthand. They weren't reading a Bible, they weren't reading about it, they saw the most miraculous things anybody had ever seen, and yet the head of the priesthood, the clergy, already defecting. It's not the first time. Soon after Jesus ascends into heaven, the early church is born in Jerusalem. People had been around, they had seen Jesus in their midst, seen the miracles, seen the resurrection, Jesus after his resurrection.

And yet, right off the bat, Acts, chapter 5, Ananias and Sapphira, they lie to the Holy Spirit. Boom! They get knocked dead. There's a church at Corinth in just a few decades of Jesus being on the earth, and the church developing, already there's an entire church that has become corrupted in sexual immorality. It's the pattern of the flesh. Even know you're very close and not far removed from some great event, it is possible to backslide to that extent. I mean, I think back to friends that I have from what we call the Jesus Movement of the 1960s and '70s, saw such tremendous revival, tremendous acts of God, and yet where are they today?

Where are some of the people that you thought, "Man, these guys are just on fire for Jesus." There's been a lot of people that have thrown their pinecones in the fire at retreats and camps and, you know, sung their little songs, but they're not walking today. It's not a present tense experience. And here's Aaron, one of the leaders, and it says, "God would have destroyed him, but I prayed for Aaron also at this time." Brings up a point for us: you can take the children of Israel out of Egypt, but you can't take Egypt out of the children of Israel.

You can take the Christian out of the world---so to speak, by an act of God's grace through salvation, but then there's another thing after salvation called growth, sanctification,---you can still have the world in the Christian. That's why John says, "Don't love the world, neither the things in the world. The world is passing away," you're in a whole new camp, a whole new value system. "Then I took your sin," notice how he kind of rubs it in. Of course, this is the new generation, this is all secondhand, this is hearsay to them. They were little kids when this happened, but he's saying it collectively, speaking of their fathers primarily.

"I took your sin, the calf which you had made, and burned it with fire, crushed it, ground it very small, until it was as fine as dust; and I threw its dust into the brook that descended from the mountain." Of course, he doesn't throw in that "I made your parents drink some of it." "Also at Taberah and Massah and Kibroth Hattaavah you provoked the Lord to wrath." It wasn't only at Mount Sinai, it was also in those wilderness years. He's naming several incidents. "Likewise, when the Lord sent you from Kadesh Barnea, saying, 'Go up and possess the land which I have given you,' then you rebelled against the commandment of the Lord your God, and you did not believe him or obey his voice."

Mark that. Hardness of heart comes from not obeying the voice of God, the Word of God. When the Word of God is spoken and you know it's the Word of God to your life, and you don't do it, you harden your heart on that area. You become callous. There's a lot of maintainers in Christendom. They're saved, it's an act of God's grace, they're just kind of stagnant. They're just stuck. They're in a rut. They're not growing. They're not moving. They've hardened their hearts. Easy to do. How does it happen? It happens by not obeying the Word of God, the voice of God.

You know, every time you open your Bible for quiet time in the morning, every time you come to a Bible study, God has a specific message for you at that time. You may have read it before, but it's a new message. It's something for you at that time. You're to take it and do it, cooperate, "grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ." Verse 24, Moses says, "You have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you." God was right, you've been rebellious. "Thus I prostrated myself before the Lord; forty days and forty nights I kept prostrating myself, because the Lord had said that he would destroy you."

Oh, Moses, man, what a great leader. What a great guy to have around, the one guy that stood in the gap for these guys. He prayed for them forty days and forty nights. "Therefore I prayed to the Lord, and said: 'O Lord God, do not destroy your people and your inheritance whom you have redeemed through your greatness, whom you have brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; do not look upon the stubbornness of this people, or on their wickedness or their sin, lest the land from which you brought us should say,' " that is, the Egyptians.

" ' "Because the Lord was not able to bring them thought land which he promised them, and because he hated them, he has brought them out to kill them in the wilderness." Yet they are your people and your inheritance whom you brought out by your mighty power and by your outstretched hand.' " When Moses talked to God about this incident, it's recorded earlier in the Pentateuch, he said, "Lord, you know, blot out my name. If you're going to destroy them, then just---I don't want to be the next leader of the nation, of a new nation, just blot my name out too."

In other words, "I identify with these people. I'm one of them. Even though I'm not the guy who's sinned along with them, I'm still a part of them. And I love them so much that if they're to be gone, then just get rid of me as well." You know what that reminds me of? Another guy who said something very similar to that; what was his name? Paul, Romans, chapter 9. He said, "I tell the truth, I do not lie, or I am not lying, my conscience is also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have a great sorrow and a continual grief in my heart. For my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh who are Israelites, I could wish myself accursed from Christ for their sake," he said.

That continual burden that Paul bore wherever he went because his own group, the Jewish nation, to whom God promised the Messiah had hardened their hearts. Paul had been saved and he was grieved that his brethren were not. And so Moses did something about it. He prayed. We call this intercession. Anytime you pray for somebody other than yourself, it's called intercession. When you pray for yourself, we generally call that petition, personal petition. I find it very easy to pray for myself.

I don't consider myself a great spiritual giant when I spend some time praying for my life, myself. It's not like, "You know, I'm a mighty spiritual man. I prayed a lot for myself today." So what? You know, that's just being a consumer. [laughter] I know that I have a need, I want you to fix it. I find it not difficult to worship, to praise God. God's wonderful. He's the object of affection in our lives. He's done it all. It's no great feat to worship someone as lovely as awesome as God. But whenever you pray for somebody else, it's a whole different camp. It's easy then to get distracted, to get tired, to get a lot of phone calls.

It's amazing how the enemy will work anytime you're praying, interceding for somebody else, standing in the gap. And whenever you pray for somebody else and intercede, that's when prayer becomes labor. It's not laborious to pray. It's not laborious to pray for myself. But when I pray for somebody else because they ask me to, then prayer is a little more laborious. There was a guy in the New Testament Paul wrote about, it could be Colossians, I think. He talked about Epaphras. Maybe it's Philippians. It's one of those "-ians." But he said, "Epaphras, a fellow bondservant, who labors fervently for you in prayer that you might stand perfect and complete in all the will of God."

Great guy to have around. Everybody needs an Epaphras. Can you imagine somebody praying for you, "laboring fervently for you in prayer that you would stand perfect and complete in all the will of God." Wow! You can't lose with that. "Laboring in prayer," that's intercession. That's what Moses was doing for the people. Let me be quick to say that, you want to add some zing to your life as a Christian? You've gotten into a little rut, a little stagnation? You're kind of dry these days? You don't see much action these days? You pray and you read, but---start interceding for people. Start praying for nations around the world.

Get Operation World, it's a publication that's put out, or YWAM's prayer diary, and pray for a different nation and people group every day. And start taking a running list of people and praying for others and watch how God moves in those lives. See, one of the problems that we have and one of the reasons we get stagnant in our Christian life is that we eat a lot, but we don't exercise. It's like the equivalent of a couch potato would be a pew potato, I guess. [laughter] And it's possible to become spiritually fat, obese, just another meal, another Bible study, another note taking session, but there's no exercise of it. And so church becomes and your Christian walk can become a spiritual "bless me" club.

There's no life in that. I hear people talk about, "We want the meat of the word, man." What a cop-out. Somebody once said, "If you want the meat, it's in the street." Find what you know and go exercise it, and then it's awesome. Step out and pray and serve and it'll add zip, it'll add zing. Now, we're in chapter 10. "At that time the Lord said to me, 'Hew for yourself two"---this is funny. Moses busted the first set, now God says, "Okay, now this time, you do the work." [laughter] I think it's wisdom. "You busted them, you make some new ones. Cut them out for yourselves this time." Now, God is going to write with his finger on them, the Ten Commandments.

But, "Hew for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and come up to me on mountain and make for yourself an ark of wood." Now, I don't want to belabor this point, it is pretty obvious, but I think it needs to be said. When God gave the commandments to Moses the second time, the second set, and wrote them on them again, they were just like the first. It wasn't the new and improved updated revision. It wasn't like God said, "Well, that was then and this is now. That doesn't apply now. That was the old generation, this is the new generation, things have changed." It's the same truth. It's the same Law. It's the same Word that changes not. "He's the same yesterday, today, and forever."

It wasn't the Reader's Digest edition, it was the same truth that God gave to the last generation. " 'And I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablet which you broke; and you shall put them in the ark.' So I made an ark of acacia wood, hewed two tablets of stone like the first, went up to the mountain, having two tablets in my hand. And he wrote on tablets according to the first writing, the Ten Commandments which the Lord had spoken to you in the mountain from the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly; and the Lord gave them to me. And I turned and came down from the mountain and put the tablets in the ark which I had made; there they are, just as the Lord commanded me.

"(Now the children of Israel journeyed from the wells of Bene Jaakan to Moserah, that was the place where Aaron died later, where he was buried; and Eleazar his son ministered as priest in his place. From there they journeyed to Gudgodah, and from" there to another place, "a land of rivers of water. At that time the Lord separated the tribe of Levi to bear the ark of the covenant of the Lord to stand before the Lord to minister to him and to bless in his name, to this day." Remember there were three subgroups in the tribe of Levi.

There were the Gershonites, and the Gershonites were 7,500 males. And they were in charge of carrying the curtains, the skins, the coverings, the cloth around the tabernacle. They had to carry that. Then there were the Kohathites, and the Kohathites were about 8,600 males. And they had to carry the holy articles, the ark, the lampstand, the table of showbread, the altars. And then there were the sons of Merari. They all camped on different sides of the tabernacle. And they basically carried to infrastructure. So the tribe of Levi, that was their job, the tabernacle, the worship system of Israel. They had to carry it through the desert.

"Therefore," verse 9, "Levi has no portion nor inheritance with his brethren; the Lord is his inheritance, just as the Lord your God promised him.)" The Levites got no land; they got the tithe of the people. They never really owned any particular portion of land in Israel. They had different Levitical cities within all of the tribal allotments, but they never had land that was their own land. They got to plant, they got to have homes, but they lived off the tithe of the people. And they got to eat the offerings: the sin offering, the grain offering, the trespass offering.

That was their meal. People brought it and they scarfed it. That was part of the deal. God set it up to take care of them. "The first time, I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights; the Lord also heard me at this time, and the Lord chose not to destroy you. And the Lord said to me, 'Arise, begin your journey before the people, that they may go in and possess the land which I swore to their fathers to give them.' " Now, the last part of this is so precious. It's really the heart of the law itself, the essence of it. "And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you?" That's a good question.

"All right, let me boil it all down. What does God want? What are his demands?" Here they are: "But to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, to keep the commandments of the Lord, his statutes which I command you today for your good? Indeed heaven and the highest heavens belong to the Lord your God, also the earth with all that is in it. The Lord delighted only in your fathers, to love them; he chose their descendants after them, you above all peoples, as it is this day."

Now, notice that little list beginning in verse 12. What does God want? Fear him. Secondly, walk in his ways to love him. Third, serve him with all your heart and with all your soul. It all begins with fear, not dread. "The fear of the Lord" is a phrase mentioned fifty times in the Bible. People hear it and they're confused. They don't like the term, "the fear of the Lord." It's a good term. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," said Solomon. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge," said the same man.

It means a reverential awe, a respect of God, reverential awe that leads to humble submission to a loving God. That's essentially what it is. It's not, "Man, if I don't do this, God's going to kill me. God's going slap me upside the head." That's not the idea of the fear of the Lord. That was the pagan idea of their gods. The Greeks, for instance, had a whole system, a pantheon of gods. There were gods of valleys, gods of rivers, gods of lakes, god of the ocean, the god of the sky, the god of the storm, the god of the sun, the god of the stars.

And all the gods hated each other. They couldn't get along. They were like babies. They were like little kids. They fought each other. They vied for attention, the attention and adulation of man. Read the Greek mythologies, it's like a bunch of little brats that can't get along. Earth people had to placate the gods so that the gods would leave them alone. There's a story in Greek mythology about the god Prometheus who decided to have compassion upon humanity and give as a gift to man the gift of fire, so they could warm themselves and cook their food.

The myth says that when Zeus, the chief kingpin god, found out what Prometheus had done in doing a favor to man, he took Prometheus and chained him to a huge rock in the Adriatic Sea, and commanded vultures to pick out his liver. That's a Greek myth. That's the, you know, the worship system. They lived in fear of the gods. But to fear the Lord is: "I reverence God. The only fear that I might have is that I wouldn't please him." So, first of all, it's that attitude. To fear the Lord means that you filter everything in your life, every action, every attitude, every motivation through a central filter in your life, a mindset, a worldview where you actually ask yourself certain questions.

You have an opportunity presented to you, and you ask yourself: "Would this please God? Would this honor God? Would this further his kingdom? Is this something that I sense is from the Lord that he wants me to do and get involved in?" You ask those kinds of questions. You evaluate life with those kinds of questions. It's that grid that you filter everything through, the fear of the Lord, to please him. That comes first. You fear him, you walk with him, and you serve him. You know what I find in ministry a lot of times, ministers lose the fear of the Lord and they just think about the ministry, serve God.

And you see ministers involved in illicit affairs, and in all sorts of activity that doesn't glorify God. And when it comes down and they start getting found out over their sin, their first thing is, "I'm going to lose my ministry," which indicates they've left already the fear of the Lord. The most accountable thing you can have in your life is the fear of God. You can have people all around you holding you accountable for every little thing in life and still blow it, and still cover up your sin, if you don't live in the fear of the Lord.

Jim baker talked about having ECFFA, Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability as his watchdog. He had a system of accountability, but he even admitted he didn't walk in the fear of the Lord. When you lose that, you've really lost it. I'm living under the eye of God, I want to please him. So that's where it begins. "Therefore circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be stiff-necked no longer. For the Lord your God is a God of gods, Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality nor takes a bribe. He administers justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the stranger, giving him food and clothing.

"Therefore love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." Be careful about your attitude toward aliens in your country. "We got here first." Yeah, but you know what? You were an alien. I was an alien. "Yeah, but I was born here." Yeah, but your forefathers came as aliens. "Yeah, but if we have too many aliens, then the economy . . ." Yeah, but you know what? God says, "Be careful, love the alien. You were an alien in Egypt." Love them. Treat them fairly. Treat them with love. "You shall fear the Lord your God; you shall serve him, and to him you shall hold fast, and take oaths in his name.

He is your praise, he is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome things which your eyes have seen. Your fathers went down to Egypt, seventy persons, and now the Lord your God made you as the stars of heaven in multitude." From seventy people to, well, 600,000 males, about 2 million to 2.5 million people, from seventy. This is what God has done, let him be your praise. I love Deuteronomy. I do. I love it. Jesus quoted Deuteronomy more than, I think, any other book.

He obviously was aware of how Moses applied the principles of the law to the children of Israel and quoted it so many times. Moses boils it all down: "This is what God wants: walk with him, love him, serve him. He's your praise." If you take Christianity and boil it down to one thing, it would be Jesus. It's him. It's the person of Jesus Christ. It's a relationship with the person. It's allegiance to the person. It's not doing a bunch of things, it's loving him, fearing him, walking with him. And because you love him and serve him and walk with him, it's shown in the way you treat people.

So love the strangers, love the aliens. You might have some strangers next to you tonight. You might want to meet them after the service. Now I'm going to India tomorrow, I'm going to be an alien in a foreign country. And I hope that they'll love the aliens, because I'll be one of them for the next two weeks. And I appreciate your prayers for me, and for another fella who's going, and some of the other pastors who will be going from other churches to meet us and to minister.

Additional Messages in this Series

Show expand

 
Date Title   Watch Listen Notes Share Save Buy
12/22/1996
completed
resume  
Deuteronomy 1:1-33
Deuteronomy 1:1-33
Skip Heitzig
  Listen - Mini Player
Listen and Take Notes
Transcript Facebook
Twitter
Email
Audio (MP3)
Buy CD
12/29/1996
completed
resume  
Deuteronomy 1:34-3:29
Deuteronomy 1:34-3:29
Skip Heitzig
  Listen - Mini Player
Listen and Take Notes
Transcript Facebook
Twitter
Email
Audio (MP3)
Buy CD
1/5/1997
completed
resume  
Deuteronomy 4:1-49
Deuteronomy 4:1-49
Skip Heitzig
  Listen - Mini Player
Listen and Take Notes
Transcript Facebook
Twitter
Email
Audio (MP3)
Buy CD
1/12/1997
completed
resume  
Deuteronomy 5:1-15
Deuteronomy 5:1-15
Skip Heitzig
  Listen - Mini Player
Listen and Take Notes
Transcript Facebook
Twitter
Email
Audio (MP3)
Buy CD
2/2/1997
completed
resume  
Deuteronomy 5:16-6:9
Deuteronomy 5:16-6:9
Skip Heitzig
  Listen - Mini Player
Listen and Take Notes
Transcript Facebook
Twitter
Email
Audio (MP3)
Buy CD
2/9/1997
completed
resume  
Deuteronomy 6:8-8:11
Deuteronomy 6:8-8:11
Skip Heitzig
  Listen - Mini Player
Listen and Take Notes
Transcript Facebook
Twitter
Email
Audio (MP3)
Buy CD
3/2/1997
completed
resume  
Deuteronomy 11-12:13
Deuteronomy 11-12:13
Skip Heitzig
  Listen - Mini Player
Listen and Take Notes
Transcript Facebook
Twitter
Email
Audio (MP3)
Buy CD
3/9/1997
completed
resume  
Deuteronomy 13-14
Deuteronomy 13-14
Skip Heitzig
  Listen - Mini Player
Listen and Take Notes
Transcript Facebook
Twitter
Email
Audio (MP3)
Buy CD
3/16/1997
completed
resume  
Deuteronomy 14:22-16:8
Deuteronomy 14:22-16:8
Skip Heitzig
  Listen - Mini Player
Listen and Take Notes
Transcript Facebook
Twitter
Email
Audio (MP3)
Buy CD
4/6/1997
completed
resume  
Deuteronomy 16:9-17:20
Deuteronomy 16:9-17:20
Skip Heitzig
  Listen - Mini Player
Listen and Take Notes
Transcript Facebook
Twitter
Email
Audio (MP3)
Buy CD
4/14/1997
completed
resume  
Deuteronomy 18-20
Deuteronomy 18-20
Skip Heitzig
  Listen - Mini Player
Listen and Take Notes
Transcript Facebook
Twitter
Email
Audio (MP3)
Buy CD
4/20/1997
completed
resume  
Deuteronomy 20-21
Deuteronomy 20-21
Skip Heitzig
  Listen - Mini Player
Listen and Take Notes
Transcript Facebook
Twitter
Email
Audio (MP3)
Buy CD
5/4/1997
completed
resume  
Deuteronomy 22-23
Deuteronomy 22-23
Skip Heitzig
  Listen - Mini Player
Listen and Take Notes
Transcript Facebook
Twitter
Email
Audio (MP3)
Buy CD
5/25/1997
completed
resume  
Deuteronomy 24-25
Deuteronomy 24-25
Skip Heitzig
  Listen - Mini Player
Listen and Take Notes
Transcript Facebook
Twitter
Email
Audio (MP3)
Buy CD
6/8/1997
completed
resume  
Deuteronomy 26-27:3
Deuteronomy 26-27:3
Skip Heitzig
  Listen - Mini Player
Listen and Take Notes
Transcript Facebook
Twitter
Email
Audio (MP3)
Buy CD
6/11/1997
completed
resume  
Deuteronomy 27:4-28:20
Deuteronomy 27:4-28:20
Skip Heitzig
  Listen - Mini Player
Listen and Take Notes
Transcript Facebook
Twitter
Email
Audio (MP3)
Buy CD
6/18/1997
completed
resume  
Deuteronomy 28:15-68
Deuteronomy 28:15-68
Skip Heitzig
  Listen - Mini Player
Listen and Take Notes
Transcript Facebook
Twitter
Email
Audio (MP3)
Buy CD
6/26/1997
completed
resume  
Deuteronomy 29-30:8
Deuteronomy 29-30:8
Skip Heitzig
  Listen - Mini Player
Listen and Take Notes
Transcript Facebook
Twitter
Email
Audio (MP3)
Buy CD
7/2/1997
completed
resume  
Deuteronomy 30:10-31:8
Deuteronomy 30:10-31:8
Skip Heitzig
  Listen - Mini Player
Listen and Take Notes
Transcript Facebook
Twitter
Email
Audio (MP3)
Buy CD
7/9/1997
completed
resume  
Deuteronomy 31:9-32:22
Deuteronomy 31:9-32:22
Skip Heitzig
  Listen - Mini Player
Listen and Take Notes
Transcript Facebook
Twitter
Email
Audio (MP3)
Buy CD
7/16/1997
completed
resume  
Deuteronomy 32:23-34:12
Deuteronomy 32:23-34:12
Skip Heitzig
  Listen - Mini Player
Listen and Take Notes
Facebook
Twitter
Email
Audio (MP3)
Buy CD
There are 21 additional messages in this series.
© Copyright 2024 Connection Communications | 1-800-922-1888