Deuteronomy 31, Are You Moving On?

Deuteronomy 31 and the Call to Move On

Deuteronomy chapter 31 be reading the entire chapter here. The Word of the Lord. So Moses continued to speak these words to all Israel and he said to them. I am 120 years old today. I am no longer able to go out and come in.

The Lord has said to me You shall not go over this Jordan. The Lord your God himself will go over before you he will destroy these nations before you so that you shall dispossess them and Joshua will go over at your head as the Lord has spoken and the Lord will do to them as he did to see Han and Og the kings of the Emorites and to their land when he destroyed them and the Lord will give them over to you and you Shall do to them according to the whole commandment that I have commanded you.

Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them for it is the Lord your God who goes before you He will not leave you or forsake you. Then Moses summoned Joshua and said to him in the sight of all Israel be strong and courageous for you shall go with this people into the land that the Lord has sworn to their fathers to give them and You shall put them in possession of it.

It is the Lord who goes before you he will be with you. He will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed. Then Moses wrote this law and gave it to the priest the sons of Levi who carried the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord and to all the elders of Israel and Moses commanded them at the end of every seven years at that set time in the year of release at the Feast of Booths when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God at the place that he will choose.

And You shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing. Assemble the people men women and little ones and the sojourner within your towns. That they may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God and be careful to do all the words of this law and that their children who have not known it may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God as long as you live in the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess.

And The Lord said to Moses behold the days approach when you must die. Call Joshua and present yourselves in the tent of meeting that I may commission him. And Moses and Joshua went and presented themselves in the tent of meeting and the Lord appeared in the tent in a pillar of cloud and the pillar of cloud stood over the entrance of the tent and The Lord said to Moses behold you are about to lie down with your fathers.

Then this people will rise and whore after the foreign gods Among them in the land that they are entering and they will forsake me and break my covenant that I made with them. Then my anger will be kindled against them in that day and I will forsake them and hide my face from them and they will Be devoured and many evils and troubles will come upon them so that they will say in that day have not these evils come upon us because our God is not among us.

And I will surely hide my face in that day because of all the evil that they have done. Because they have turned to other gods now. Therefore write this song and teach it to the people of Israel. Put it in their mouths that this song may be a witness for me against the people of Israel.

For when I have brought them into the land flowing with milk and honey Which I swore to give to their fathers and they have eaten in our full and grown fat. They will turn to other gods and serve them and despise me and break my covenant.

And When many evils and troubles have come upon them this song shall confront them as a witness. For it will live Unforgotten in the mouths of their offspring. For I know what they are inclined to do even today Before I have brought them into the land that I swore to give them so Moses wrote this song the same day and taught it to the people of Israel and The Lord commissioned Joshua the son of Nun saying be strong and courageous.

For you shall bring the people of Israel into the land that I swore to give them. I will be with you. When Moses had finished writing the words of this law in a book to the very end Moses commanded the Levites who carried the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord.

Take this book of the law and put it by the side of the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God. That it may be there for a witness against you for I know how rebellious and stubborn you are. Behold, even today while I am yet alive with you.

You have been rebellious against the Lord. How much more after my death? Assembled to me the elders of your tribes and your officers that I may speak these words in their ears and Call heaven and earth to witness against them.

For I know that after my death you will surely act corruptly and turn aside from the way that I have commanded you and In the days to come evil will befall you because you will do what is evil in the sight of the Lord Provoking him to anger through the work of your hands.

I'll leave off the last verse. May the Lord has blessings to the reading of his Holy Word. Well, are you moving on? Are you want to go back? If you could only go back to a time the good old days. Life is really really good.

I remember in late December of 1990 that odd week between Christmas and New Year being driven to the airport in Birmingham, Alabama. I was going to fly off to Singapore where I would get married and start a new job.

My first a real career job teaching at a Bible College after I just finished seminary on the radio. My mother was driving me was set to this. The radio was set to one of those oldie stations and on came this Famous really some of you may know it this 40s song.

Sentimental journey. Gonna take a sentimental journey gonna set my heart at ease. Gonna take a sentimental journey to renew old memories. Now the irony of the song is that the singer first person isn't Literally taking a journey.

Is it going anywhere forward? He or she is going back in Memories now the last stanza. Never thought my heart could be so yearning. That's an interesting word. It's a great word. I think even if it's a forced rhyme journey.

Why did I decide to roam? I was going to Singapore gonna take a sentimental journey. Sentimental journey home. Now that sentimental person doesn't want to go forward doesn't want to transition to whatever is next move on to the future.

He or she wants to go back. I was going forward hearing about yearning to go back. How about you? You want to move on? Now you must stay where you are. Or do you even want to take that? Impossible sentimental journey back.

Oscar Wilde said that sentimentality is quote the luxury of having an emotion without paying for it. An interesting quote, but I think sentimentality does make you pay it makes you pay for the illusions of the past this mirage of how Great, you think things were your heart being yearny for them?

It makes you pay for that by giving up some of the joys of the present and what you could move on to in the future. The Irish poet WB Yeats said it better rhetoric is fooling others. Sentimentality is fooling yourself.

You probably don't come to church to hear an attack on sentimentality. What an odd thing to hear it. Church for many people churches are supposed to be bastions precisely of sentimentality all about holding on to a culture the ethos the Feelings the values of the past.

We want to go back to a time that we dream was ideal. Maybe that was just fading away. When we were children when divorces were few and father-knows-best. It's a father's day. Today remember that show father's knows best.

There was really was a TV show by that title in the 50s. It was just Fading away as reruns when I was a kid in the 70s. People dress neat men in ties and tucked in nicely ironed shirts shirts with collars.

And women with respectable dresses and churches were well attended all three services a week so well attended the sports sports for children in particular they knew better than to try to have competitions or practices on.

That competed with the church on Sundays or even Wednesday nights. They use hymnals from which they sang those old great hymns off of that old time religion. It's good enough for me. You don't want to move on from that.

You want to go back to it? How about you? You want to move on or do you you want to take a sentimental journey back? It's easy in a time of transition to yearn. For the good old days to be yearning to be nostalgic.

They want to go back to the familiar. Be afraid of facing the uncertainties of the future, but I think the H was right. We're just fooling ourselves by being sent by going on sentimental journeys. We think we prefer the values of the 50s or earlier.

Because we forget that those values were somehow able to live side-by-side with things that were valueless. Like racism and segregation and sure they sang from the hymnal, but that was really only because they didn't have a choice.

And if you look closely at the information below the hymns many really most of them most of those hymns. They weren't so old. Most of them are just a generation or two earlier. Than the 50s and the hymnals from the 19th century or the early 20th century.

Many of the thing many of the hymns called those old great hymns. I'm just like a hundred years old. They're not it's just your grandfather's time. They came up. They only thought they were old because they had been sung when they were kids.

When they were actually new songs now sure We might want to recover some of the things that have been lost from the past. But before people forgot what marriage was or church membership. But the searing sentimental play our town if you've ever seen it.

If you can't do see it our town it the main character is trying to get back from death.

To relive.

Just one day from the past relive one day. But it's just too painful. Because life is moving on. The lesson you can't go back. You have to move on. Like what we did last week not trying too much to hold on to the bees.

But to see them off to help them go on and to be ready to move on ourselves here in Deuteronomy 31. We see that we're called to move on to go forward. To do that. We need four things. We need leadership.

We need the word we need self-awareness. And finally we need witnesses. But to move forward you need leadership and remember as we've seen in Sunday school. Hopefully seen in Sunday school. We are as I've argued Israel.

This isn't an analogy what I'm doing through this sermon where I'm not just like comparing us to Israel. I'm not saying like we are like Israel. We're experiencing something similar. No, I actually believe we are Israel.

Israel is the church. The church is the assembly of God's people called Called Israel here. Israel is the assembly of God's people. We are so but the same thing and first to move on we need the leadership of the Lord.

The Lord makes it quite clear in this first nine verses that he is the leader and with him as the leader. You should be quite confident even joyful expect it. About whatever is next. Moving on to what's next indeed while we can cherish memories and even seek to recover good things that have been lost.

To be stuck in the past. To be deluded by nostalgia. That those were the good old days. Not any coming days right, not not anything worth living in for for the future, but. Willing to go if we only we could go back to be stuck like that fearing the future trying to avoid it.

Holy get off for as long as possible. That is to doubt the Lord's leadership. You see this in sports all the time middle-aged or older men mostly men. It seems trying to recover the glory days of their basketball or running career.

But they can't and so they just spend the rest of their lives. You know, they can't get young again because life moves on including your body. And they spend the rest of their lives telling boring stories about how they shot the game winning shot in that basketball game in high school.

Or about how they outran a competitor who was from southeastern, Missouri State. It attracted me to Mississippi State. No, I told you that one. Oh. That's a good story. They need to understand that as exhilarating as that may have been it's time for the next challenge.

Now to move on maybe not to run faster. Shoot the game when he shot maybe to defeat a short temper or outrun lust or beat greed. Or be a fateful husband and father wife. Raise faithful children to serve in the church to help kids now who think that life is all about.

Being an athlete or finding that relationship or getting that career if you trust. That the Lord is leading you into the future. You won't be stuck on.

Unending.

Sentimental journeys. You'll bravely go forward to whatever is next. It's John Chrysostom. Early church father said nothing ordinarily so repairs the soul and makes a person better as a good hope of things to come.

Here.

Moses knows what's next. He says in verse 2. I am 120 years old today. Apparently this was his birthday. This is how he's celebrating instead of spending it dreaming about the good old days. Man remember when we were in Pharaoh's court.

Oh, the food was so good and the wine was flowing and we had nothing. We just all we had to do is laze around. Not a care in the world. He could go in a lot of sentimental journeys gonna first 40 years of his life or even when he was a shepherd in Median with a family and he just wandering with the sheep pretty carefree life.

Instead of doing that he looks forward. He says he's not able to lead that. The Lord will lead them into the promised land. The Lord will be their leader. He'll lead them in three ways first the Lord goes before them and second the Lord fights for them and Second third he stays with them first.

Moses says in verse 3 the Lord himself will go over. Before you he will be the advance guard. So don't worry about the future. He's leading his people into it. He is going before them to prepare the way he precedes them.

In the middle of verse 6 the Lord your God Goes before you. Finally in case you still haven't gotten to the point in front of all Israel. Moses says in verse 8 the Lord goes.

Before.

You.

So it's at least three times. He said that in eight verses. So then Why are you afraid of the future? Second the Lord fights for his people notice in verse 3. The Lord is the active one. He Will destroy the nations before you.

In verse 4 the Lord Will do to them to these Canaanites as he the Lord did to see Han and Og. Those two nations that they just recently conquered by the Lord's power at the end of verse 4 He the Lord destroyed them.

God did it again in verse 5 the Lord Will give them over to you. The Lord's doing it and we're tempted to linger in the present. I'll try to go back to the past because we think. We fought the battles.

To get whatever we got we overcame. Whatever. Well, I mean just maybe just our laziness. We worked hard. We fled from sexual immorality. And so we won some victories we graduated or we got a career. We got some money.

We got out of debt. We got a family and so if we're to go on. You know, we're thinking. That's more battles to fight. It was tough enough in the past. I've do more work. That means more change more challenge.

I'm tired. At least that's how we'll look at the future if we think our past depended on us that whether we made it happen with our willpower and exertion. So what it will take to move on is more willpower and more exertion and you know, I want to retire.

We think it'll take more of us. If we think it depends on us, but here Israel is on the banks of the Jordan preparing to cross over and being given these instructions. We're taking a brief Sentimental journey and recalling what we experienced in the past.

To remind us remind the Israelites of how we're to go into the future here. They we are reminded that those past victories were the Lord's doing so we can be assured. That the Lord can take care of our future our future challenges maybe the future challenges that we're trying to avoid with our Sentimental journeys.

Well, finally the Lord is our leaders by staying with us. He's our companion into the future. Moses is telling the people that he's not going to be able to go over with them any longer that he's this towering figure among the Israelites.

Who's dominated their lives? Positively for over a generation the one who led them out of Egypt who gave them the Word of God who counseled them and settled disputes. Discipline them prayed for them was there for the you know shortages of food and the manna and through all of that for four over 40 years now and Since almost all the older generations.

It's almost everybody over 40 has passed away. For most of these people Moses is the only leader that they have ever known. He's basically the father of the nation talking about Father's Day and he's saying I'm about to go.

Now if after think of it for us after you know after four years or eight years it gets. It's kind of odd to get used to the name of a new president president so-and-so. If after only four or eight years it's odd to get used to a new one.

What about if it's over 40 years? And Moses is intense, you know leadership. Get used to the idea that he's not going to be around. But he says in verse 6 don't fear don't be a dread. Either of your enemies or of the future the uncertainty because the Lord will be with you.

Now some people are afraid to go into the future because it means going without someone that they've depended on. Maybe someone who has been taken from them by death. They can't imagine living without them.

They can't imagine spending the rest of their lives without this person that's gone with them so far. And so they try to go back in their minds. Just take the sentimental journey to when they to when they had that special.

Someone.

Be a spouse to be a mother. We should love our family and spouse but we should never be so stuck on a person that were.

Paralyzed and.

We can't go into the future. We just always Living for all wish he or she was still with us. We believe the Lord is with us. And as much as I like to make fun of the footprints poem, you know. Where's individualism?

It's just you and me together just you and me and the Lord together to say there's no church and it's implied therapeutic Deism that God's not in control of the storms of life. He's just helping carry you through these apparently out of control events.

Still it gets one thing, right? The footprints thing gets one thing, right? God is with his people. He carries us and that's enough to inspire us to step into the future boldly without fear. Are you moving on?

Well, you might be encouraged now, okay. Yes, I'm. I'm moving on me and the Lord. There's only two sets of footprints in the sand that not the whole story of leadership. The lesson of leadership is also that God appoints Leaders for you agents for him.

God leads, but he usually leads through Means through men that he's selected here the leader into the future is Joshua in verse 3. Notice the Lord himself will proceed you he'll he'll fight for you. He'll be with you.

Joshua will go over at your head. Joshua is to be their human leader. God's agent. So so much so in verses 7 and 8 Moses is addressing Joshua in Particular he's talking to him Joshua you be strong and courageous.

The Lord goes before you Joshua. He's talking individually to him. He'll be with you Joshua and will not leave you or forsake you. He's talking to him their leader because the Lord has a leader for his people.

Now, it's not a coincidence that Joshua which is Yeshua in Hebrew Jesus in Greek Jesus in English is also the name of our leader who brought us into the promised land. So our ultimate You know, we say even God is our ultimate leader.

Yes. Well, we have a human leader.

And.

Jesus is our ultimate human leader. Who's also God. It's also our ultimate God leader. So our ultimate human leader is Jesus whom the Father is with and will never forsake. But that doesn't mean that we use that.

Truth.

To avoid our need for leaders that God appoints kind of kind of both. You know, I don't need leaders. I don't need actual human leaders with all their foibles and sins and weaknesses and problems and sometimes it is wrong.

Jesus is my pastor and I'm gonna stay home and listen to him. No, God still works through means through agents in the church here in the church or elders. But that that's again made clear in verses 14 and 15 Where the Lord tells Moses to officially commission Joshua as the next leader.

Even before he Moses is dead. Moses is told your death is coming soon. Hey like that on your birthday, but you must be willing to go forward. Even when the next step is death. You must be willing to go forward even when the next step is death.

So I the Lord says will commission ordain him. They come to the tabernacle in that pillar of cloud the sign of God's presence that went before them through the desert of Appears over the tabernacle and God is appointing a new human leader.

So that they aren't sheep without a shepherd in verse 23 again. The focus goes back to Joshua. Three times in this chapter. We're reminded that Joshua is the appointed human leader. The chapter is basically instructions from Moses and the Lord about leadership about the word about your need for a witness and Interspersed three times among all that is the commissioning of Joshua as their leader to go courageously into the future.

You need leaders. Are you moving on to courageously go into the future? You need the Word of God? We see that here in verses 9 to 13 now some people have argued I bet from this passage I don't know for sure.

But I bet there's some body somewhere that's used this passage to argue that what we as a church need most of all is a Succession of leadership like you see a succession here like Joshua's Succeeded from to the leadership from Moses.

We need a succession that goes back to the Apostles and Jesus. We need an apostolic succession. That's what they call it. Apostolic succession is like the doctrine called that and they will say that the legitimate churches that the God's churches are those that trace their leadership back to a succession all the way back to the Apostles.

But in the New Testament as.

Apostles died.

Except for Judas, of course. It was a false one. But to restore the twelve apostles in Acts chapter 1 the very beginning they did point a new apostle. But after that as the Apostles died, they didn't have a succession.

They didn't replace them.

You know.

They didn't appoint new apostles to have a succession and then after a while start calling the bishops. And so pass it on like that. Now as the Apostles wrote the New Testament the Word of God takes preeminence even here.

After Joshua.

They don't have a succession of leaders do they. Back to Moses. There's no mosaic succession in Israel. Is there? The the word was to be the leader. Like in the USA the president can only it should only lead under in according to the Constitution applying it.

So the elders of a church lead according to the word. We move on with the Word of God here. Actually Moses is in the process of writing it and He gives it to the priests and the elders the leaders under Israel in verse 9 and Moses commands them starting in verse 10.

To read the law. Let's read scripture as they had it up until then. Apparently read the whole thing and read it to all the people every seven years. During a sabbatical year when their debts are canceled the people are gathered for the Feast of Booths, which is about a week long.

So it takes them probably most of the days through most of a whole week to hear. The law read completely. Apparently so symbol all the people even the children even the foreigners that they may hear your God's Word and learn to fear of.

Those reverence to tremble at his word to fear the Lord your God and be careful to do All the words of this law from the beginning. It's not good enough just to have leaders. Whether they're whether there is a succession or not from the beginning of God's people in the beginning of Israel.

It's not just you don't just follow the leaders do what they say. They've God works through them. Now the people need to know the Word of God and That includes children notice in verse 13. He emphasizes the children make sure the children hear the Word of God.

He already mentioned them in the list of people. That's how he's emphasizing children because he listed in verse 12 Listed all those people that need to hear basically everybody. Oh, he's all the kinds of people there are and he mentioned children among them and in the next verse even.

Basically specifically focuses on the children they need to Hear God's Word, especially make sure the children are present because they haven't heard it before. They don't necessarily need a special children's church.

Here they listen to it with everyone else but if they are going if they're going to have a children's assembly make sure that they are hearing the Word of God and not just Moralistic stories about how to be good little boys and girls.

Some people think the children can miss church because they don't understand it all they don't understand what's going on. Especially when the pastor gives lessons on apostolic succession. I mean what in the world is that about?

But they understand enough and they too need to hear The simple reading of God's Word. So bring your children to church. We don't meet just once every seven years to hear the whole word read. How would you like that may take us longer than a week and longer than a week now since we have a longer scripture.

We don't mean just every seven years the whole here the whole word read we meet once every seven days. They're relatively small passage even for us even though we read longer passages still compared to the whole Bible as well.

It'll be small just a chapter but after seven years We should have heard a lot of it. Generally, so to move on we including our children Need to hear the Word of God. Are you moving on? If so you need self-awareness starting in verse 16 the Lord tells Moses that he's about to move on to death and the people will eventually move on to Spiritual death apostasy.

Moses is aware that his death is near now. We live in a culture that hates to admit that death is coming. It just will not it won't face that fact much of what we've gone through over the past year now this Lockdowns and so forth the hysteria that came from the pandemic arises from the shock that many people are feeling that they could die.

What you mean to say to kill me? That's just outrageous. Sure, legitimate precautions are reasonable. But it seems to me that the hysteria went far beyond what was reasonable. It was hysteria incited by the idea that you know, I could die.

That's how stage people in our culture refuse to move on to Moses here is facing it. But even more relevant from this passage. We live in a culture utterly lacking and in self-awareness. Probably because we don't know the word and it's not confronting us about who we are.

James calls the word like a mirror. We look into it and we it says it shows us man. We're dirty. We need to be washed. We're in bad shape. That's what the word does for us. It makes us aware of ourselves when we compare it us.

What the word says that we should be to what we really are. And and that now our culture is so lacking in knowledge of the Word of God. He doesn't know how.

Depraved it is.

We live in a culture in which in which we can kill some people If they're at a certain young stage of life. They're pre-born and we feel smugly self-righteous about how superior we are to a few people a few generations ago because we're woke.

We're self-righteous and immoral at the same time. Now here the people are feeling victorious that they are on the edge of conquest and triumphant. And yet God tells them it is soon. They will he says whore after foreign gods here picturing idolatry.

Like.

Adultery with a prostitute. God says in verse 16. They will forsake me and break my covenant.

Why?

They had the Lord they should have been satisfied with him. Why are they going after other gods? Why would a married man consort with a prostitute? He's not satisfied with what he has. Why would they be drawn to the gods of the people?

They are about to conquer like Bale. Because they wanted what those gods promised. Fertility. Prosperity. And they wanted it now. And with none of those strings attached of a covenant. Like the Lord demands or wife demands.

Sure, Bale asked for sacrifices to everybody. Demands payment. You know, you got to be realistic. Got it. You got to get Bale something. And the other gods, but the Lord. He demands my life my soul my all.

He demands a covenant. Bale or a prostitute. We'll be happy just with a few dollars. What they need. What we need to move on without moving into apostasy is. Self-awareness. We need to be aware of our proneness to wander.

Prone to wander. Lord, I feel it prone to leave the God I love. So we make commitments. You make objective. Commitments about. You know to the Lord. About why we're going to live. Maybe about Bible reading of a prayer.

About giving. About church attendance and membership. A Covenant. We commit to reading the Bible. Hopefully every day praying. Giving a certain percent.

Attending.

Joining, you know walking together in Christian love. That's why this church in line. This isn't our our idea we're in line with. Puritan and historic Baptist churches has a specific covenant that members commit to and We make commitments when we feel like making them so that we'll keep them when we don't feel like keeping them and so that they Show us that we're wandering away.

So we're confronted with this covenant that we committed to and we see we've wandered from it. It makes us aware of ourselves of our wandering. So they become measuring sticks like a thermometer. If we started to fall away to lose our first love when it starts to show up in our living when we're no longer reading and praying like we committed to or when our checkbook shows that we're not giving like we resolved to or when our monthly reading of the church covenant reminds Us that we haven't.

We haven't been doing this or that like we committed to that. We might be falling away. We become aware of it. Self-aware. We need self-awareness. So that we can repent and move on. Move on with the Lord not move on into apostasy judgment or discipline.

Comes.

To make us aware here in verse 17 the Lord promises that he will get angry. My anger will be kindled. Oh, they will be on fire and he will forsake them or us and He will hide his face. It means no more blessing no more of his presence and the result they will be devoured to be destroyed and the purpose of that that's judgment if they are not his people or Discipline if they are the goal of his being angry at them or us is Giving them the the end to be achieved the purpose of giving them over giving us over to destruction.

Isn't so that they'll escape or will escape To a sentimental journey, you know hankering for some good old days. Our problem is is a it's not like it was in the 50s way back then. No, but so that we'll see that God is afflicting us and so We'll search a couple where where have we sinned?

What have we done? So we'll repent now. The problem today is that we assure everyone That they're favored that we're favored no matter what happens. No matter if it's the hard times of life and you see only one sets of footprints in the sand the only thing it could possibly mean is that the Lord is Scaring us wherever whatever you do.

We tell people today. This is the attitude today what you're supposed to tell Christians anyone actually. Never wonder that maybe the Lord's judging you. Maybe the Lord's disciplining you. Maybe he's trying to wake you up.

Maybe he's trying to make you aware of some sin in your life that you need to repent of. No, you know, that's bad manners to even suggest such a thing our common advice today. It's just horrible because it's the opposite of this.

Our advice today is always believe God is happy with you. That he's with you. He's the therapeutic God. But here in this chapter the Lord wants us to become Aware notice verse 17. Come aware. Have not these evils Come upon us.

This is what we're supposed to ask ourselves. Have not these evils come upon us because our God is not.

Among us.

Judgment is to make us aware of God's absence. Discipline is to make us aware of God's displeasure. You see that one set of footprints of the sand. That's when you were living for the dollar and I walked away.

I left you by yourself. So we'll put away our idols our covetousness are living for the dollar, which is idolatry and seek first his kingdom and then. We'll be ready to move on. Are you moving on? Well, if so, you need Witnesses here starting in verse 19.