Gooding, David: 2 - Moses' Final Message

We begin our meditation this evening by reading once more from the book of Deuteronomy, verse twenty five of chapter one. And they, that is the spies, took of the fruit of the land in their hands and brought it down unto us, and brought us word again and said, It is a good land which the Lord our God giveth unto us. Yet you would not go up, but rebelled against the commandment of the Lord your God. And you murmured in your tents and said, Because the Lord hated us, he has brought us forth out of the land of Egypt to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites to destroy us. Whither are we going up? Our brethren have made our heart to melt, saying, the people is greater and taller than we. The cities are great and fenced up to heaven. And moreover, we have seen the sons of the Anakim there. Then I said unto you, dread not, neither be afraid of them. The Lord your God who goeth before you, he shall fight for you, according to all that he did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness, where thou hast seen how that the Lord thy God bare thee as a man beareth his son, in all the way that you went, until you came unto this place. Yet in this thing you did not believe the Lord your God. God give us good understanding of his word. My good friends, it is a joy and delight of my heart to see so many of you here gathered, and to see so many of you who over these past nearly twenty years have been such an encouragement to me. You have not only strengthened me by testimonies you have given at these conferences for missionaries. Some of you, in your patience and forbearance, have even allowed me to visit you on the field and put up with me and spent all kinds of time helping me and comforting my soul. And here you are again. It is a tremendous stimulus to me to be with you. And your kindness allows me to make a confession to you right from the very start. Those of us who were here before you have yielded to temptation and stolen a march on you. You'll see. And, uh, in our imagination last night, we took ourselves off to the plains of Moab without you. Well, there was excuse, of course. We'd heard that the Israelites, the whole bang shoot of them, were to be gathered there, assembled to listen to Moses. And Moses, that had been with them for forty years, was now being called home to glory. And these would be the last sermons he spoke to Israel in his official capacity. So we were all itchy and couldn't wait for it, I'm sorry, and we went and got ourselves to the plains of Moab, and from what we heard, we gathered the atmosphere was electric, and tension filled the air because of the gigantic questions that had to be solved and the decisions that then had to be made. You say, where are the plains of Moab, please? Well, in case you've forgotten, uh, if you can remember the map of Israel, and you've got some idea of where the, the old Dead Sea is, yes? Well, right at the top of the Dead Sea, on the right hand side, it's east of Jordan, you'll see, in the plains of Moab, before further east, Moab begins to rise into those beautiful purple colored mountains, do you see? There on the plains where Israel gathered. If you stand there and you turn your face west, you'll see the Jordan River flowing quietly by, disturbing nobody. And if you look behind you, you will see Mount Nebo rearing its head. There presently Moses will be called to ascend. For while now Israel stood at Jordan on the borders that separated Moab from the Promised Land. Moses had now reached the border where time meets eternity. And as a man soon to be home with God, he addresses the people for now eleven chapters long, one sermon or many, I cannot determine. The situation, you'll see, is tense. Forty years earlier, their fathers and grandfathers had stood at a place called Kadesh Barnea, had sent spies into the land to reconnoiter, were given the report that it was indeed a very good land, but giants dwelled there, the sons of the Anarkim. And hearing it, almost with one accord, the people had rebelled against God, stuck their toes in, and refused to go into the inheritance, and thus made a nonsense of their redemption from Egypt. The result was that God sentenced them that they shouldn't go in if they didn't want to, they didn't have to, they could have their way, and they wouldn't go in. And for forty years, Israel were condemned to wandering through the wilderness until that present generation died out. Now forty years had passed, and their children and grandchildren stood now once more at the banks of the Red Sea, and the decision was to be put to them. Would they rise up with God and go into their inheritance, however many giants might oppose their way? Or would they, like their fathers and grandfathers, refused to go in. The decisions were tremendous, of course, affecting them and countless future generations. And you can understand Moses being urgent, can't you? He himself, because of a mistake he made in the desert, was not to be allowed to lead them in. He must go home to glory. But oh, in spite of that disappointment, what joy would fill his heart if he saw his life's work complete. But the Israelites deciding in this generation to take courage in both hands and go into their inheritance. And so he preaches to them and tries to motivate them. And then as he thinks of their going into the land and the temptations that will there meet them, he warns them and advises them and encourages them with inspired words of wisdom given him by God. But we noticed last night that the first thing he does, as he prepared this new generation to enter into their inheritance, is to take them back in history to where their grandfathers had stood forty years before at Kadesh Barnea. Now, as an old septuagenarian, I gather sometimes that younger people are so much looking forward, they don't like looking back too much, you know. What's the past got to do with us? We're the great pioneers of the future, do you see? But sometimes it's necessary. And if the Israelites were going in and facing these giants that had so put off their grandfathers with their long beards and all the rest of it, uh, you see, uh, they had better know, perhaps, why it really was that their fathers and grandfathers had refused to go in. And we shall find tonight again that when all was said and done, it wasn't really the giants that were the trouble. We began to read the diagnosis that Moses gave them last night, and we must spend a little time more on it this evening. What, Deuteronomy chapter one m and verse twenty seven. And you murmured in your tents and said, because the Lord hated us, he has brought us forth out of the land of Egypt to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us. And amazement came over us. What were they jabbering about? Because the Lord hated us? Hadn't they stood on the further banks of the Red Sea and joined Moses and Miriam and sung till their little lungs nearly burst about the Lord triumphing gloriously over Pharaoh and his hosts, how he'd sunk the enemy in the depths of the Red Sea, how the Lord was a great man of war. And they then had avowed their profession of faith that God had not only brought them out of Egypt, but would bring them into their inheritance and guide them to his most holy hill. What had happened? Could they have conceived the notion that God hated them? But now you notice the implication and what they're beginning to say. They're saying that the reason God brought them out of Egypt was because he hated them. It wasn't the story that Moses had told them. Moses had told them that God, in his faithfulness to the covenant made with Abraham, was now visiting them because he had heard their cry and in his compassion was come down to deliver them from Egypt and to bring them in a land flowing with milk and honey. And you see now what they're saying is, they're saying the whole thing was a lie. A deception. Never was true. It was a yarn that Moses spun us. The only purpose God had was because he hated us and was bringing us out here to destroy us. You say, how can people flip like that all of a sudden? But my dear brethren, you surely haven't gone through life without meeting similar cases of people that in early life professed faith in Christ and sang his praises, and of a sudden flipped, lived to deny not only their own salvation, but to deny that there's anything in the gospel whatsoever. And even as I speak, I can see a married couple, not teenage teenagers with their turbid emotions, but in their settled years, who once had made profession of faith in Christ, sitting it before me and telling me that the New Testament was a lot of nonsense, that the manuscripts all disagreed, the miracles were false, the resurrection, there was no evidence for it. What was the evidence? And when I tried to give it, I soon saw that they weren't interested in any evidence. They were determined to reject the thing, root and branch. Christianity, a deception made up by the church, with rules and regulations designed to inhibit people, and holding out standards in front of them that no mortal man could possibly reach, which the church itself hypocritically didn't even practice itself. What happened? Well, if these Israelites are going into the land really, they're going to face the giants on the other side of the river. They better understand what it was that made their fathers and their grandfathers suddenly flip over and reject their very redemption. Here in Deuteronomy, Moses recites the people's diagnosis. I'd like to read you from the book of Numbers, chapter fourteen, to hear God's diagnosis of what went wrong. This is Numbers fourteen and verse eleven. Here is Dodd's diagnosis. You'll see it's nothing to do with giants. Not really. And the Lord said unto Moses, How long will this people despise me? How long will they not believe in me, for all the signs which I have wrought among them? It's not merely they were afraid of giants. They had come. It's almost too awesome to mention it, to despise God. What kind of an affront is this to Almighty God, that little ant-like creatures, faced with the Almighty, should despise him? I could perhaps understand the human heart enough to know that in pain people will blaspheme God, will rebel against God, but despise him? When one looks at the awesome, awesomeness of the vast creation around us, how could we despise the mind that made it, or the power that upholds it? And when I think of God's deliverance of Israel out of Egypt, oh, but more. For I'm a Christian, not a very good one, but I am a Christian. And when I think that God, his son, not sparing, gave him to die for us little ants that chose to rebel against his created purpose. And I think that God, his son not sparing, gave him to die. How could I despise him? And yet, as I listened to Paul and his companion preaching in the synagogue at Pi- Pam- at Pisidian Antioch. There he has been showing God's faithfulness to the Israelites, his constant deliverance of them through Moses, through the judges, through, uh, David, and then on to the coming of Messiah and his glorious resurrection and the offer of mercy even to his murderers, and the magnificence of the width of his gospel, by him everyone that believes is justified from all things from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses. I see Paul watching the face of the Jewish congregation and the rabbis in particular, and saw the contempt go over their faces and cried out in their midst, behold you despisers, and wonder and perish. They despise God. Well, I tell you straight, there was no point in going into the Promised Land. It could be knee deep in honey and flowing with a Nile full of milk. What's the point of going? If in your heart you despise God. Oh, my good friends, if you think God is so small that you can despise him, you'd be well advised not to go to heaven. What would be the point of going? There was worse than that. Look at verse twenty one. Because all those men which have seen my, sorry, but in very deed as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of God. Because all those men which have seen my glory and my signs, which I wrought in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have tempted me these ten times and have not hearkened to my voice. Surely they shall not see the land which I swear unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that despised me see it. Let them do as they will. For here God stands on his dignity. The whole earth one day shall be full of the glory of the Lord from end to end. None of these men shall see it. For they have seen my glory and my signs and wonders. I'd have despised it. Nothing to do with giants. And I kind of tremble for those Israelites, many of them now in their younger years, faced with all the difficulties and the fighting that will go on in Canaan with they cross over the river. Nobody's pretending it's going to be a birthday party. There are the fence cities, there are the chariots of iron, there are the high technologies of Canaan. There'll be battles every way. I kind of tremble for them, and I ask myself, what will keep them going? And then I think of Moses, how he prayed to God after the incident of the golden calf, where God, as a result of Moses' intercessions, had consented to spare the people and to adhere to his purpose to have them build a tabernacle that he might dwell among them and lead them to their promised land. And Moses, before he got the people a going, said to God, God, show me your glory. My dear brothers and sisters, what shall keep us resolutely pressing on in the Christian pathway, fighting the good fight of the faith, wrestling, if need be, with principalities, powers, and the wickedness of this world in high places. What shall keep us going when nature's pains beset us? When the cynicism of middle age gets hold of us. What shall keep me going? Oh, if you have any care for the likes of me, don't just give me rules and regulations. Oh, there are certain verses of scripture, are there not, that are absolutely vital. Simple verses. For the way of salvation is abundantly clear that a child can understand it. And some of us will be happy if in our dying breath we can recite those lovely verses. But oh friend, if you have any care for my soul and the battles of life I must face, don't reduce the Christian faith to just a little handbook of rules, such as you have to pass if you're going to drive an automobile on the road. Ask God to give you the grace to show me the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Don't say it's impractical, my brother. Be practical. Well, I want to be practical. But if I'm going to put up with the fight here, I do really need to get a realistic estimate of the glory of God. Well, what a story it is, our gospel. It's no little cheap cure, is it? Ha. I find myself wondering sometimes what Michael and Gabriel, the archangel and his assistant, thought of it. You just imagine it. Can you believe it, my brother? That the creator of those billion galaxies with their multi-trillion stars. Whose mind was big enough to conceive it. And energy big enough to carry it out. And he the purpose for which it was all made. By him and in him and through him. But when I rebelled against him and went my own way, he should die for me, and not only die for me, but propose to come and live in me, and eventually share his very throne with me. Do you find that easy to believe? I wonder what Michael, what Gabriel said to Michael, when the serried ranks of angels parted, and they saw the Son of the Eternal descend his throne and step lower than the angels. Did Gabriel nudge Michael and say, what thing is this? The son of the highest making himself lower than we are. I don't think Michael and Gabriel have got over it yet. What did they s- say? When they saw sinful, arrogant men take the unresisting Son of God and nail him to a tree. Did Michael protest under his breath, why doesn't he call for the twelve legion of us? And I don't know how it would have helped Michael to understand the reason why he didn't. How would it help Michael to know that he suffered there at the hands of men, that he might redeem the likes of me and you. Oh, the wonder of it. I can understand Paul saying that through the ages to come, even as now, the variegated, manifold wisdom of God shall be known through the church. And what did they say? What did heaven say? When they saw the Son of God, now God and man, and the man Jesus bid to enter the eternal gates and be raised, carpenter of Nazareth, above the angels. The thought is absolutely staggering behind, beyond comprehension is need. I don't know. I say I don't think they'll get over it for all eternity. Presently to see the likes of you and me raised to sit with Christ in the heavenlies, far above all principalities and powers and mights and dominion. The glory of God. Why we have a salvation that has, I say it with bated breath, changed the Godhead eternally. Won't you allow me the statement? For him, he whom we call the second person of the Trinity, was not always human, was he? Verily, God yet become truly human. And now he's risen. He has not conveniently left his humanity behind, but for all eternity, the second person of the Trinity, being never less than God, shall eternally be human. I don't know whether I might be allowed to dance for sheer joy and excitement at the colossal dimensions of our great salvation. Oh, refuse to believe it if you must, but despise it as something small. What kind of a person is it that despises it? They not only despised it, you see, the men that have seen my glory and my signs, which I wrought in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have tempted me these ten times. What does it mean they tempted him? Well, they tempted him ten times, the most notable of which was at a place called Masar, Exodus chapter seventeen, where the water temporarily ran out. And they came to Moses and they said, have you had enough of it, Moses? You get up there and preach to us that God is amongst us. Okay, Moses, but you now prove it. We've had enough. You can bring us water out of that rock, or you can stop talking about God being among us. You want God- us to go on believing that God is among us. You'll have to do better than this, Moses. God will have to come up to better than he's done already. What really? And they tempted God, saying if he didn't do better, they would cease to believe in him. Tell me, how do you assess these men? Who refused to go into the land? I say again for the seventeenth time, have nothing to do with giants. It was a heart altogether out of gear with God, wasn't it? You say, why should we bother with them? We came here to this conference after all our labours and trials to be encouraged, not to be asked to survey such abominable sinners. Oh, yes, I understand, sorry. But, uh, uh, you'll say, ha, the lesson is important, is it? Isn't, is it not? Because a major part of the New Testament is devoted to applying this same lesson to us, is it not? I refer, of course, to Hebrews chapter three and chapter four. And in those chapters, the writer to the Hebrews reminds his readers of what happened, for they were Hebrews themselves, what happened to their ancestors at Kadesh Barnea, and how, as a result of their refusal to go into the land, God said, and indeed swore an oath, these men shall never see it, and sentenced them to forty years wandering in the wilderness until their carcasses were destroyed. We must shorten the diagnosis. Why didn't they enter in? And at the end of chapter three, verse seventeen to nineteen, we have a precise diagnosis. With whom was he displeased forty years? Was it not with them that sinned, whose carcasses fell in the wilderness? And to whom swear he that they should not enter into his rest? But to them that were disobedient. And we see that they were not able to enter in because of unbelief. Two things therefore alleged. One, they were disobedient. Two, they did not believe. Those statements have made some genuine Christians shake in their shoes, understandably, because the honest Christian will say, well, there have been times when, when my faith has been wobbly, and I deserve the Lord's rebuke, oh ye of little faith. And worse than that, haven't there ti- been times when all of us have been disobedient? Could this apply to us then? We should therefore be very careful to notice the terms. The word that there is used for disobedient is one of two possible words in Greek for disobedience. The one is, uh, uh, uh, the one that is used here, however, means basically to fail to be convinced and therefore to disobey. It is, I hasten to add, nowhere used in the whole of the Old Testament of believers in Christ. Nowhere. If you are going to say that this here applies to people that are genuine believers, you'll have to establish your case why in this verse the verb is used, the noun and adjectives are used, the cognate words, that nowhere else in the whole of the New Testament are used of believers. Just let me cite you some examples of how the word is used. For instance, uh, Acts chapter fourteen and verse two. Acts fourteen and verse two. It would be worth looking at just to get our technical terms correct. Uh, we start in verse one. Acts fourteen one, and it came to pass in Iconium that they entered together into the synagogue of the Jews and so spake that a great multitude both of Jews and of Greeks believed. But the Jews that were disobedient, my translation says, stirred up the souls of the Gentiles and made them evil affected against the Britain. Now, what about these Jews? It says they were disobedient. What does that mean? That they were nice believing Christians, but they had a bad Monday and uh, and got a little bit disobedient? Of course not. They stand in contrast to those that believed. These were the Jews that, having heard the gospel, deliberately said no. Unbelievers then. Or if you care to look at Titus chapter one, Titus chapter one and verse sixteen. They profess that they know God, but by their works they deny him, being abominable and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate. Do you notice the term disobedient? Just whom is Paul describing? Dear believers, genuine believers who've had a bad Thursday morning at work and have taken it out on their wife at night or something, I don't know. No, indeed not. These are people who've professed to know God, but in fact, in their works, deny him. Being abominable and disobedient. And the gospel itself calls, uh, describes the division between mankind. John chapter three and verse thirty six: He that believeth on the Son of God hath eternal life, but he that abeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. Two classes, the believer on the one side who has eternal life, the disobedient, for that is the same word as here in Hebrews, shall not see life. We see, says the Holy Spirit in Hebrews chapter three, the reason that these Israelites did not enter the land, and what was it? Because they were disobedient. Unbelievers, doesn't it ring true to you? Men that despise God. Men that had seen his glory and rejected it. Men that rebelled against him and talked of stoning Moses. Men that said the whole story of redemption from Egypt was a lie and a religious deception. They were proven to be, by their works, disobedient. Unbelievers. You say, but all of us could be weak and wobbly in faith at times. We could indeed. The question at issue is that on this state, at this point, what was it that they didn't believe? And Hebrews tells us quite plainly, doesn't it? Hebrews chapter four now. Let us fear therefore, lest happily a promise being left of entering into his rest, any one of you should seem to have come short of it. For indeed we have had the good tidings, good tidings or gospel, if you like, it's the word for gospel, preached unto us, even as also they. But the word of hearing did not profit them because they were not united by faith with them that heard. What was it they didn't believe? They didn't believe the good tidings, or as normally translated, they didn't believe the gospel. Ah, but say some people, ah, wait a moment, the good tidings they didn't believe was the good tidings about the land, you see, a flowing with milk and honey and all that, and that God would bring them into the land. They had believed redemption by the blood of the lamb in Egypt. And so surely, in our terms, they were saved. What they didn't believe was the promised land business side of it. But wait a minute. Can you make that, uh, kind of distinction? What was the good tidings that Moses preached to the Israelites when he came from God to Egypt? Was it thus? Would you have me preach it, uh, and instruct Moses a little bit? Say, Moses, if you want to get, uh, uh, your sermons user-friendly and not, uh, threaten people too much with putting the stakes too high, you should have preached like this. Now look here, the gospel is that God has come down to deliver you from the wrath of God through the, uh, angel, through the Passover lamb, and from Pharaoh by his almighty power. Now that's the main thing. That is the gospel. You see, the main thing, ladies and gentlemen, is to get out of Egypt. Now, once you've got out of Egypt, I shall come and tell you that there is a deluxe course for the keen. Do you see? Some people are very keen religious, you see, like reading the Bible and things and, and being pilgrims and, and all this. Well, other people don't care for that so much. They're not so extreme, you see. So I, after you get out of Egypt, I shall come and offer you a chance to, uh, uh, take this deluxe course of, of salvation and go on into the inheritance that's uncor- incorruptible and flowing with milk and honey and stuff. But of course, you don't have to take that, because that's an extra to the gospel. Would you have it that way? To put it in modern terms, would you have it, the main thing is to be saved and forgiven. Get that straight, and you'll be delivered from the lake of fire. Once you've been saved, uh, you'll be offered the possibility of going to in the high priest's court. When the maid challenged him, you're one of his disciples, aren't you? And Peter denied him. When the relative of the man whose ear he had cut off looked across the fire and said, hello, old chap, didn't I see you somewhere else tonight? And he said, no, you didn't, and swore all the swear words he knew to say he wasn't a Christian. And if you had been standing there and somebody nudged you and said, hello, that's your Peter, isn't it? Is he a believer or isn't he? What would you have said? You said, well, I think he is. Well, the man says, when he himself says he's not. And what would you have said? Well, I can't deny what he said. He says he isn't. But then, looking back, oh, looking back, I remember the evidence. I remember his love for the Lord Jesus. I remember how he would have risked his life in the garden to save Christ, had it been legitimate to do so. Looking back, I think the evidence says he was a believer. What's happened to him now, I can't tell. And we can't, can we? We can only see people's works and listen to what they say. Oh, thank God, but God knows the heart. He demands the works. But I personally find great encouragement in this, that the writer says, when I look back and I think how you ministered to the saints, then I say to myself, I think in my heart of hearts, these are genuine believers, though their behavior is intolerably inconsistent at the moment. But God, says he, is not unjust to forget the works of the past. Oh, marvelous God. He treasures up every bit of evidence from the past of my works, even though at the moment I'm a bit wobbly. He's not unjust. And I can tell you something more. He's provided a savior for us, as he provided for Peter, who before the trial came said to Peter, I have prayed for you that your faith shall not fail. Everything else failed. Testimony was blown sky high. Courage failed. Underneath, his faith remained. And even in the moment when he was dying the, denying the Lord, he was speaking a pack of lies, for at heart, he was a believer still, and came back as the Lord said he would come back, and lived to strengthen his brethren. No believer shall be lost. Where there is genuine faith, the great high priest intercedes that the faith shall not fail. But all my brethren, what about the years in the wilderness? Let us give thanks to God that our blessed Lord is able to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for us. Let us not take advantage of that and be content with inconsistent behavior. Let me tell you a story. I may have told it you before, but you see, old men, ha, they reminisce. You don't know anything about that. You wait till you get old. See whether you aren't caught out telling a story more than once. When I first went to Belfast, I was asked to preach the gospel in a certain place where at night they had about four hundred of a congregation, and I preached on the confessions of the apostles, how each one of them came to Christ and what they saw in Christ. And one night I preached on Peter and his confession of Christ as the rock, the great solid cornerstone, and pointed out what that meant to Peter, because in his life he knew more than one occasion where he felt he was sinking in the water, for instance, and then that awful ordeal in the high priest's court when panic seized him, and do as he might to struggle against it, he felt himself slipping, and I used the, the phrase that he was like somebody s- falling into a pit and trying to grab the sides and finding it was slimy and letting him down. And how he was brought through. Unbeknownst to me, there was a businessman present, and the next day I received a telephone call. Will I come and have lunch with him? He told me his story. As a young man, he was a believer, had acceptance as a preacher, went into business. He looked around and saw other Christian businessmen doing shady deals in business. He was offered such a shady deal and encouraged by what other brethren were doing, he took part in the shady deal and began a slippery slope. He gained a seat in parliament. He was very successful in business. He never went near the believers. He would drive his aged father to the assembly on a Sunday night, drop him at the door, go away and come back and collect him. He would not go in. Told me he'd been on the point with his daughter of writing a book against the brethren, said he. And then he lost his seat in Parliament. And then his business began to go downhill. And then his health began to cave in. Panic attacks and whatnot. One night he was coming out of his office at about two o'clock in the morning, it was a Sunday morning, in desperation trying to keep his business afloat, and happened to pass the Victoria Hall in Belfast and saw that the preacher tomorrow would be a certain dog's body. He never, never knew the preacher from Adam, but felt an overwhelming power within. He must come to that preaching, and came. And the first sermon he heard for forty years was the story of Peter, who had denied the Lord and felt himself sinking. And he said, that was me, that was me. When you said those words, I said, that's me. You imagine the mercy of the Savior, the first time in forty years, and yet the constraint to come and listen. And he came back to the Lord and lived to prove it. Marvelous. But oh, those wasted forty years. My dear brethren and sisters, many of you have gone valiantly through life. And yet, as we think of ourselves and our younger brethren and sisters about to rise to the challenge, to go in not only to their inheritance to, but to the wide mission fields valiantly for Christ. All let us listen to this story and see to it that by God's good grace we let the riches of the glory of his grace and the wealth of his gospel and the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, so take grip of our hearts and imaginations that it ceases to be a little thing and shall nerve us for the fight, however great the difficulties and however great the pains that we conquer. For who is he that overcomes the world, save he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God. Shall we pray?