Deuteronomy 18:15-22 • Christmas Moses

 

Listen to the audio version of this message with the player below.

 

Sermon Notes

 

Transcript

(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)

 
I was mentioning to Pastor Greg before I came up:  This has been a, it seems to me, a particularly sweet service as we've had wonderful music and wonderful testimony and God's people rejoicing in their mission to many others. I want to encourage you in that mission as we think of how God expressed it to us by encouraging you to look in your bibles this morning at Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy chapter 18 verse 15. In your Grace Bibles there in your pews, that's page 161. Why would we be looking at a book of Moses at the time of celebrating Jesus' birth? I mean, that sounds a little bit like doing your Christmas shopping in July. It's smart, but it's kind of out of the spirit of the season. Well, looking at Moses is not out of the spirit of the season. And that's not because the Hollywood Moses, Charlton Heston, looks like Santa Claus by the end of "The Ten Commandments," you know. There's another reason. And it's because Moses, particularly in this passage, is providing one of the great prophecies of the Bible as he is telling the Israelites over a thousand years before Jesus came what he would look like and what he would do. This is one of the great Christmas gifts of the Old Testament as Moses pointed forward to Jesus. Let's stand as we honor God's Word, and I will read to you Deuteronomy 18 verse 15 to the end of the chapter. Moses is speaking to the people of God, and he says, "'The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers, it is to him you shall listen, just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, 'Let us not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.' And the Lord said to me, 'They are right in what they have spoken. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I have commanded him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.' And if you say in your heart, 'How may we know the word of the Lor--, that the Lord has not spoken?' when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.'" Let's pray together. >>> Heavenly Father, thank You for wonderful promise and prophecy:  that You, centuries and centuries before the coming of Your Son, would begin to describe Him in Your Word, not only that the people of God would recognize Him when He came but that critics before and after would not be able to deny that something miraculous was happening when for so many centuries You had told Your people who Christ would be, what He would look like, what He would do, even before He came. We have no parallel in earth literature, no parallel in our knowledge or making. What You were doing was giving us a continuing evidence of the miracle of Your heart, how You were showing us what Your Son would do, how much we would need Him and how much we can trust You for Him. Grant this day that You would do that work again, guiding us by Your Word to trust in the One who provides for our hearts forever. Show us Your Word. Show us Jesus this day we pray. In Christ's name. Amen. >>> Please be seated. The best of scientific research tells us that the year was 1908 in the remote jungles of Cameroon, far away from any city or highway for modern communication, that a hunter having killed a chimpanzee for food apparently in field dressing or butchering the chimp also the hunter accidentally cut himself. And the blood of the chimp mixed with his own blood in such a way that a virus that was in the chimpanzee found a culture in which to mutate and begin the A.I.D.S.' epidemic that from remote Cameroon in 1908 has now been responsible for the deaths of 40 million people with 40 million more now infected. From such a small, remote, incidental, insignificant start mushroomed a great tragedy and evil. It's a hard lesson to learn:  From small things can come gargantuan harm. But what if the opposite lesson could also be true? What if from things small, remote, insignificant, that we would say count for nothing, that what in fact could happen, would God could mushroom mercy? That there could be something that God would do that would be responsible for saving souls across centuries, across millennia and for eternity by something so small and insignificant that we would have at the time said, "That's nothing." It's really what the account that we've just read is all about. As Moses is reminding the people of God that what was once insignificant has huge significance and will have even more than they could ever dream. After all, consider the context of this portion of Deuteronomy that we have just read. Moses is writing to his people in what is identified, Deuteronomy, the second law, which actually is a second chance. After all, where are the people of God? They are camped on the banks of the Jordan ready to go into the Promised Land. They have been here before. A generation before, 40 years earlier, God had so worked in the life of Moses that He had released them from slavery at the hands of Pharaoh. But that was just the second phase of an even greater miracle resulting from insignificance. I mean, you know the story of Moses himself. The children of Israel, to be saved from famine, had gone down into Egypt. And as they had gone down to Egypt, they had prospered and multiplied, so much so that they had been made slaves who now were threatening the rule of Pharaoh. And so Pharaoh, in order to overcome the potential threat of the Israelites who were the slaves, ordered that all the children be killed. And so just by chance, the mother of Moses made a basket of bulrushes and set him down the rivel of the Nile to save him. And by chance, the daughter of Pharaoh found the little ark in the bulrushes. And just by chance, the sister of Moses was also hiding there and saw the daughter of Pharaoh collect the little ark of Moses. And just by chance, Miriam said to the daughter of Pharaoh, "I know someone who may be a good nurse for that baby." And just by chance, that nurse raised that child in the household of Pharaoh so just by chance that particular child grew up not only to have rule but to be the deliverer of his people, not by chance but by the design of God. A little baby in the bulrushes, crying in the River of the Nile, began a process by which God would redeem those people. But now what happened? The process seemed almost complete. They are ready to go into the Promised Land. They camp on the banks of the Jordan. They send spies into the Promised Land. And the spies say, "It's a great land. I mean, it's flowing with milk and honey. I mean, it's so great that even the grapes look like grapefruit. It's a great land. Just one little problem:  really big people. We look like grasshoppers next to them." And so the people of God, rather than listening to the word of God from Moses, rebelled and turned and wandered in the desert for 40 years. Now they're back. And Moses preaches the sermon to them. It's really the book of Deuteronomy in most of the chapters as this sermon as Moses is saying, "It's time again. We're back. God is giving us a second chance. It's a great opportunity. Just one little problem again," Moses says. "I won't be with you." "Oh no. Moses, we've got to go and conquer the enemy. We've got to go establish a new society. We've got to take the land. And you won't be with us?" What then? Verse 15 of chapter 18:  "'The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers.'" It's a promise that is at the same moment a prophecy. The promise is that God will maintain His word to His people. Yes, I, Moses, will be gone, but God will not forsake you. He will continue to make His word, His voice available to you so you will know what to do if you go into the land that He has given you. Because there will be other voices there that challenge what God has said, you will need His word still. If you want to think what the other voices are that will threaten the people of God in the Promised Land, you have only to look at ch--, verse 9 of chapter 18, same chapter we're in. Look at verse 9. Moses there is talking about the other voices that will compete with the word of God. He says, "'When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead.'" Did you catch it? There will be other voices who say, "The way that you can buy your happiness is you sacrifice your own children. You can buy your way to a better life by sacrificing the innocent." Others will say, "No, the way that you will get a better life is you begin to listen to those who say they can predict the future." And they are those who are the diviners. And they will say that they know what's going to happen in the economy, they know what's going to happen to your health, they know what's going to happen internationally. And so they begin to make predictions that control you, because they say they know the future. And there will be the sorcerers, not only those who say that they know the future but they can actually control the future, as they may say to you, "If you just follow this business plan, if you just do this, if you just follow this health program, if you just do what's required as I say to you, you will have absolute control of your future. You're in charge." Or there will be those who don't just try to predict or control the future:  They will go to those of the past, now dead, and will begin to chart their course by what they think those beyond the grave are yet saying to them, and they will guide their lives that way. If all of this sounds strangely familiar, there will be those who will buy their happiness at the expense of their children, there will be those who will follow those who say, "I can predict the future"; there will be those who say, "I can control your life if you will just follow my plan," and those sometimes who in either grief or deception listen to a voice from beyond the grave:  You should recognize that the reason we hear these things is in times like these it's important to know there have been times like these. And when there are those other voices, God says clearly to His people, "But I will not abandon you. I will yet keep My voice among you. There will be My speaking through My prophets. I will maintain it." And because there are all these other voices, you know the question of the people must be, "Well, how will we determine, test, who the real prophets are from all these other voices?" And so verse 20 and forward begins to tell us what will be the test of the true prophets. Verse 20, "''The prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.''" What are the marks of a true prophet? He will speak in God's name. He will say, "What I am saying is, 'Thus saith the Lord,'" a statement that occurs over 300 times in the Old Testament from God's true prophets. And they will say, "From the Lord God Jehovah," not from other gods. "There is one God to listen to," says Moses. "You are to listen to that one who speaks in the name of God." And what will he say? What God has commanded him. He is to say what God has said. It's not to be a matter of opinion or vote or poll. We are to be about what the Word of God has said and not what others have said. It will be in the name of God and what God has said. Well, how do we test all of that? Verse 21, "'And if you say in your heart, 'How may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken?' when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.'" Why need you not be afraid of him? Because you're supposed to kill him. Right? One mistake, you're dead. This is a pretty strict penalty, you know? If he's not speaking for God, get rid of him. And the way you know if he's not speaking for God:  if he makes a single mistake. Don't be a prophet. [Laughter] High, high standard. But while the penalty gets our attention, it's the promise that should grasp our hearts. What, after all, is being said here? The true Word of God does not fail. God's Word is true. It can be counted upon. There will be other false voices. And because we look back in that culture and we say, "There were pagan gods and there were pagan practices, this doesn't really apply to us," but you must recognize there are false voices all around, challenging the Word of God. These voices are often the voices from within us. They are driven by our lust, our loneliness, our fear, our bitterness, our pride. Something in us is saying, "This Word of God, this isn't real; this isn't relevant." And so when we have questions about marriage or singleness, about sexual practice or business integrity, about the way you make it in the world, so often we hear our own heart saying, "You don't need to listen to that. It's out of date. It's written for another time. It doesn't apply to our time. And, yet, what the apostle Peter told us is still accurate:  This is the more sure Word of God. It's that which He has given us, not just for their time but for our time. The reason that we read these chapters is if we look past just the incidentals of that history, we recognize that there is a commonality of the human experience, that Moses would say to them as well as to us, "This is the Word to trust, that which is from 'Thus saith the Lord.' His people, His prophets, in this you should trust." We've seen it, some of us, demonstrated when we recognize the other voices of other cultures that sometime claim to be true. Some of you may have been in Muslim cultures such as I have and you recognize that there are those five times a day in which there are the calls to prayer. And wherever you are in a city or town, you will hear the loudspeakers from the mosques or even from peoples' homes that are declaring, "This is the word." We don't always understand that. It seems kind of loud and invasive, but you must recognize they're just appealing to the sense of the ear to share their faith. What we do in this culture is we put Christmas lights on our home and we say, "You're invading my dark." [Laughter] No, we say, "That's something I'm sharing about my faith." And that's just exactly what happens in the Muslim world. So in Pakistan, Kathy and I have a friend named Sadar Sen. And to make sure his faith is shared well at his children's academy, on the loudspeakers three times a day they read the scriptures. But before they read the scriptures, he says twice, "This is the Word of God. This is the Word of God." Then he reads the scriptures. And at the end he says, "This is the Word of God." It sounds simple, but it's a means to say, "This is the Word of God for you still. There are other voices out there, but this is the Word to listen to." And when we are struggling about what we are to do in our marriages, whether we are to be pure in our sexual practices, whether we are to be those who in business are saying, "Do I need to listen to this out-of-date book at all?" God is saying, "This is the Word of God." This is the more sure Word given by His prophets. This is for us to hear against the false voices or our culture or any other culture. But it's not just that we are to have a sure word. We are to understand the sureness of God's heart. Do you recognize that what God is saying here in this chapter of Deuteronomy is there is not only a continuing voice against the false voices:  There is a continuing voice for false people. "You will yet have a word from God," says Moses. To whom? To people who have wandered in rejection and rebellion against God for a whole generation. I mean, why should they be given a gif--, different chance? Why should they be given a second opportunity? Because He is the God of mercy as well as the one who has given His Word. He is revealing His heart at the same time He is revealing His Word. He is saying, "I am offering to you again My Word for your struggle. You will need this." That Word we continue to need. Kathy and I have a friend, Nancy Souer, in St. Louis who has tried to be that representative of God in the workplace. And she has told us that because she has tried to be consistent in her life and testimony, in her business she is simply referred to as "The Church Lady." [Laughter] And people respect her and tease her at the same time for being "The Church Lady." But she said sometime ago a man who had been particularly pointed at teasing her came into her office, closed the door behind him and said, "Now, Church Lady, what word do you have for a man who's been diagnosed with terminal colon cancer?" What word did she have? God is faithful to faithless people. He is the God of second chances. You may have denied His Word. You may have ridiculed His people. But our God still has a more sure word than your own rejection. And it is the nature of His heart that is providing for people who have turned away. He's the God of second and third and fourth and fifth and sixth chances. He's the God who says, "I am providing a continuing word for the people who will call out to Me." He is that kind of a God. You may need to know that, to be reminded again even as you think this day who might you invite here, even to the music later today, to hear the Word of the gospel. Are there those who have turned away, not just from God but from you? And now as you as God's representative need to recognize it is not their rebellion that's the end of the story:  His more sure Word is still available for those that He is calling to His own heart and we are the instruments of that calling. As God is calling us, we must recognize His Word is made available to us regardless of false voices, regardless of false people. That is the promise. How good is such a promise? We understand as we recognize this promise of a coming, continuing Word is not only a promise for these immediate people but a prophecy of what was to come. The prophecy isn't so evident to us as we begin to recognize, alright, here are the marks, the traits, of a true prophet, verse 18. This prophet who is come; he's described. Verse 18, "''I will raise up for them,''" the people of God, "''a prophet like you from among their brothers. I will put my word in his mouth.''" Okay, there again:  There's the traits of the prophet. He will speak God's Word. He will be out of Israel. And he will be like Moses. Now, if you say, Moses is about to be gone, and God is saying, "Someone's going to follow you, and he's going to speak My Word and he's going to be out from Israel and he's going to be like you," maybe our natural conclusion is going to be:  Well, who followed Moses? Clearly people who were expected to meet the criteria of a prophet, but if you look, you're thinking the one who followed Moses was Joshua. And he was obedient to the Lord. He must be the one that Moses is referring to. "One will come like me who will speak the word of God and lead you." But the difficulty is if you go to chapter 34 of Deuteronomy, you will find that Joshua himself, writing the concluding portion of the book of the Deuteronomy because Moses is now dead, that Joshua actually says, "A prophet like Moses has not appeared in Israel since Moses." Joshua himself denies that it's him. So we might say, well, maybe it's Samuel, because Samuel was the first great prophet to the rulers of Israel. But even Samuel doesn't quite meet the qualifications, because while he had the Word of God, he never delivered people from slavery the way that Moses had. Not Joshua. Not Samuel. Who? That question the Jews asked for centuries. Who is the prophet who is coming to replace Moses? Someone like him, someone out of Israel. Who is the prophet that supposed to come? How do we know that they kept asking that question? You probably already know, many of you. Do you remember when John the Baptist came and he was baptizing people and Jewish leaders went out to John the Baptist and they said, "Why are you baptizing people? Are you the Christ? Or are you Elijah? Or are you the prophet?" They were still looking. They were looking for the Christ, the Messiah, but they also had a question about whether Elijah, who was predicted to come before the Messiah came, maybe John the Baptist was that Elijah, or maybe the prophet, which was synonymous for them with the Christ. Do you remember John's response? "I am not the Christ, nor am I Elijah, nor am I the prophet whose sandal I am not worthy to unlatch." They were still looking. John knew that they were still looking. What were they looking for? The answer to that is actually in Acts chapter 7. And I'll ask you to look there. In your Grace Bibles, that's page 915. Acts 7 and verse 35, in your Grace Bibles, page 915. Here's what's happening. Stephen is now testifying to the reality that Jesus is the Messiah, the one that the Jews have been looking for. They don't like that message. So he begins to prove it to them, to show them how Jesus is in fact the greater Moses who had already been predicted. Verse 35 of Acts chapter 7. Stephen is speaking and he's describing Moses. And he says, "'This Moses, whom they,'" that is the nation of Israel, "'rejected, saying, 'Who made you a ruler and a judge?' This man God sent as both ruler and redeemer by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush. This man led them out, performing wonders and signs in Egypt and at the Red Sea and in the wilderness for forty years. This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, 'God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers.''" Now, if you just kind of move up that passage starting at verse 37, Stephen is saying, "What did Moses tell us? God is going to raise up someone like Moses from among the people of Israel, from among the brothers of those Israelites." What will he do? Verse 36:  If he's like Moses, he has to perform wonders and signs. And if he's like Moses, he not only has the Word of God, verse 35, he's also a ruler and redeemer. He has the Word of God. Stephen says, "Jesus was the Word of God." And beyond that, he said in the book of John, do you remember? "The Word that I have spoken to you is truth and it is of the Father." Jesus spoke the Word of God as well as being the Word of God. And did He perform miracles? So much so that the book of John tells us that when the crowds observed Jesus performing the miracles, the crowds actually said, "This must be the prophet." He had the ability to perform those signs. But also Moses was ruler and redeemer. When Jesus had risen from the dead, what did Thomas say to Him? "My Lord and my God." He is ruler. Is He also redeemer? There is one mediator between God and man, the Man, Christ Jesus. He met all the qualifications. And as the Jewish leaders begin to understand that, they stone Stephen. "You can't tell us it's him. You can't prove it's him. We won't let this voice stand." But what had already been established was that Jesus had met all the qualifications of Moses. He was the greater Moses. He had the Word. He had the power. He had the authority. But above all of that, He had the heart of Moses. Do you remember? It was way back there in Deuteronomy 18 that we read. At some point, Moses is saying, "You people did not want the Lord God to speak to you on Horeb," that is Mount Sinai. Why? Because in the thunder and the fa--, and the fire you got scared. You didn't want to hear from God. And so Moses took the Word of God from God for the people, bowing his face down to the ground, and praying for the people that God would forgive them and God would continue to provide His Word for them. Moses was not just the prophet. Ultimately, he was providing the message of what the redeemer would do:  a mediator between God and man who would show not only the Word of God but the heart of God. And this was being portrayed; this was being said hundreds and hundreds of years before Christ would ever come. He's meeting the qualifications that Moses has established before Moses himself clearly knew who Jesus would be or what He would do. God was providing the way by showing us His own heart through Christ. In 1492, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue. [Laughter] A French painter by the name of Georges de La Tour painted one of the most famous and precious of Christian paintings. It was called "Joseph the Carpenter." And the painting depicts Joseph the Carpenter in his shop, bent over a piece of wood, working hard away at it, and holding the light for his father is the Child Jesus. And as Jesus shields the light from the winds of the world, the light is actually shone passing through His hand to the wood on the floor that the father is constructing into the sign of a cross. More amazing than the whole notion that the light of the Word is coming through Christ to reveal what He would do is the face of the Christ-Child totally at peace because His heart is right with the purposes of His Father. His heart was to redeem a people through His own suffering. Why is it important that you recognize that Moses so many centuries before was speaking of this God who would give His Word and His heart for His people? Because that Word and that heart are for you; that's why. We can marvel at times at all these prophecies of the Old Testament, over 300 of them, that in infinite detail over a thousand years are describing what Christ would do. I mean, there's no piece of literature like it. There is no compri--, comparison in other faith traditions. This notion that there would be hundreds of prophecies fulfilled in intimate detail in the coming of Christ, prophecies that in no way could people have known in those early centuries what was going to be happening in later centuries:  Why would God take so much care to communicate His Word to us? So that we would trust it when He communicates His heart to us. This is this Jesus. This is the one long-expected, the predicted greater Moses. Why do you need to know that? Because He came to do a great work of redemption by this Word, not only telling you what to do but the way to Himself. So that when you need that, when you need a way to God, you know to trust the Word, not only what it says you should do but whom it says you should trust. You look to Him, the One who gave His Word, knowing that when He did so He meant to gain your heart. He's the One who tells you not only the Word He wants for you but the way to Himself. Over a century ago, there was a Welsh missionary. Now, not meaning to insult anyone, but Wales is a little bitty, in terms of world powers, insignificant nation. And, yet, a Welsh missionary, Robert Jermain Thomas, went first to China and then to Korea, because he didn't do very well in China, and to Korea as a missionary. Feisty, hard, not very resilient at times, believing he had already failed, arrived on the shores of Korea and because of the tensions that were there at the time, he's almost immediately killed. His murderer, as a trophy of the western foreigner he had killed, took the pages of the Bible of Thomas and used those pages to paper the walls of his house. Sometime later, there was a merchant who stayed in the house of that particular official who was the murderer of Thomas. And as the merchant read the walls papered with the Word of God, his heart was changed. He became a Christian, a believer in Jesus Christ, and ultimately took that message and converted the murderer, the owner of the house, who then opened the doors so that the villagers could also read the Word of God. And the gospel poured into Korea as the Word of God was being maintained for the people that God was calling to His own heart in ways that would have been insignificant in the moment. The people have said, "This failed; that was nothing." And, yet, God was working. You know where I first heard that story myself? Is from a man named Hugh Friday, a Welshman who was the tenor singing in the "Phantom of the Opera" with the London troupe on the London stage, who by the Word of God became a Christian and as a Christian became a missionary, using his voice to take the message of the gospel to the nations. I heard him sing in Korea. And do you know what he was doing? He was saying to the Korean churches who were the long legacy of his own Welsh brother's work, "Will you now take this legacy and help me support a seminary in Wales that is training ministers for the gospel there?" What happened? Korea, now the second largest sending nation of missionaries in the world, is sending missionaries back into Europe, which I know for all of us who talked about a post-Christian Europe, do you recognize others who study it say it is on the verge of such darkness, on the verge of such hopelessness, on the verge of such collapse that it seems right for the gospel to reenter. And as the gospel now has opportunity to grow, it would grow out of the blood of a martyr who did not even know what he was doing when he stopped off a ship and had his Bible taken to be the wallpaper of Koreans who would ultimately become the messengers of the gospel to his own nation. God works beyond us. And the reason we trust Him is because He has given us a more sure Word, prophecy after prophecy after prophecy, so that when we begin to see the miracle of the Bible, the wonder of His fulfillment of the prophecies of so long, that we will say, "I trust Him because He has shown Himself trustworthy. And for that reason, I will call Him my Savior, serve Him, and tell the world about Him." He can take what is small and insignificant and we ourselves discount and use it for glory beyond our imaging. I don't know all you're facing:  if it's difficulty in a marriage, if it's difficulty with children, if it's wondering how you can make a difference in your business, if it's wondering how people will ever listen to what you're saying at school. I don't know what it is, but I know this:  That when God maintains His Word through you, the work of Jesus Christ goes forward. You may never see it. God is at work. We trust Him, because His Word is trustworthy. And He who gave us His Word has shown us His heart. Tell the world that glory this Christmas.

Previous
Previous

Isaiah 9:6-7 • Christmas Regrets - No More

Next
Next

Ephesians 3:14-15 • More, More, More