Valley Church Clinton
September 6th

      • Deuteronomy 30:11-12CSB

      • Deuteronomy 30:13-14CSB

  • Christ Be Lifted Higher
  • Abide
  • Well, welcome everyone to Valley Church!
    So excited you’re here, and I’m especially excited to start our brand new fall preaching series in the book of Joshua.
    And I know the Old Testament can be intimidating, I know there’s some stuff in there that may be difficult to understand, maybe even offensive to our normal, everyday lives and modern day logic…
    But I think this is going to enlighten us a lot to the character of God, and even what He wants in our lives.
    And before we even get started expositing a single word of the text, I want you to know this morning that it’s okay to feel uncomfortable with the Bible.
    In fact, I think that’s good. Because if we look at the Bible as the authoritative holy scriptures, if we look at the entire Bible, Old and New Testaments alike, if we look at the Scriptures as complete and whole and good,
    It’ll stand up to your questions, concerns, and uncertainty, and it will certainly stand up to skepticism and criticism.
    Because it is from God.
    So, when we encounter things in the book of Joshua that make us feel this way, that make us feel uncomfortable, because we will, believe me.
    It’s not wrong, or sinful, it’s normal. Some of the things that happened in Joshua, and tons of other places in the Bible, they’re horrible.
    Terrible things have happened in the history of humanity,
    And the beautiful thing about the Bible is that it’s not trying to hide it.
    God isn’t trying to hide the fact that his people are not great They are sinful, they have screwed up, and there are real consequences to their actions that affect the entire planet.
    It’s one of the only religious texts that isn’t false propaganda trying to paint this perfect narrative, it depicts real people, in real life, just like me and you.
    So, when we have feelings, or frustrations, or thoughts of why would God do or say that?
    We need to reaffirm ourselves of two things: 1. that the Bible is given not as a cushy romance novel, but a real life Epic where God is main character who wins and is good and inserts Himself into our story for our sake…
    And 2. that the person we need to take our complaints to is God Himself. Because He can handle it, believe me, He can.
    Psalm 55:22 CSB
    22 Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you; he will never allow the righteous to be shaken.
    So, without further a do, let’s get into our text, but let’s pray before we do that.
    Pray for Joshua series
    Okay!
    So, while I was at the beach this year, I came to a pretty important conclusion about the state of humanity.
    As you may know, I love to fish, and especially I love to fish in the ocean, and as a dad with young children, I have to be creative if I want to fish alone.
    So, the best creativity I could muster was waking up before the sunrise, and thus, before anyone in the house woke up.
    So, pretty much every morning, I would get up, grab my pole and my bucket of live shrimp, I would exit the multimillion dollar condo complex, which by the way I stuck out like a sore thumb at, went down the elevator, and walked to my fishing spot.
    And as I was walking barefoot down the nice walking path to some public water, I made this stunning realization about humanity -
    There are two types of people - those who run on vacation, and those who don’t.
    Those who get up at the crack of dawn, already 85 degrees and 100% humidity, disciplined, can’t miss a day,
    And those who ask for a second basket of hush puppies.
    You should see all the runners on vacation at the beach- they have their lululemon, their fabletics, which if I wear them, they’re called flabletics,
    But it’s actually kind of amazing, the dedication. I have the same dedication on vacation, it’s just directed more toward the shrimp direction than the lacing my shoes up direction.
    So, as I’m walking down the path, shrimp bucket and fishing pole in hand, I hear footsteps behind me, a couple of runners, and they kind of scared me because they were quiet, I think they weighed together what I weighed in 5th grade,
    But trying to be a good pedestrian, I slid to the left of the path that runs along the body of water called the Little Lagoon, stepping into the sandy, weedy area near the marsh,
    Only to step inches from this little guy.
    Now, it’s understandable if you aren’t a snake expert and you don’t know what this is,
    But this is something called a cottonmouth, AKA a water moccasin.
    And the thing to know about a cottonmouth is that they stand their ground, as in they don’t run away or chase you, and they are very venomous.
    So, as you can imagine, I immediately identified the snake, and took a step back.
    And the thing about cottonmouths is they aren’t like rattle snakes, there’s to rattle to tell you about the danger, or to warn you on your trek,
    No, they just sit, silently, coiled up, in this very defensive position. He’s basically winding himself like a spring, ready to pounce when threatened.
    Now, thankfully, I was apparently not a threat, so I went on my merry way.
    But everything in us knows, even if we don’t know the exact kind of snake,
    If anyone sees this in nature, they know to stay away.
    If you hear a rattle snake rattle, a mountain lion hiss, a dog growl,
    It’s a warning to change your behavior or approach in some way to avoid something very painful.
    And this is exactly what the book of Deuteronomy is about.
    Essentially, it’s a warning to the people of Israel about their past, and how the promised land is right in front of them, and it’s a warning that the people are going to desire worshipping other gods, truing away from God, and following their own desires.
    And you may be rightly wondering - Seth, I thought you just said we’re starting Joshua…
    And I promise we are. But Deuteronomy sets the scene for chapter 1 of Joshua, and it becomes the real pivot point in the history of the Hebrews,
    Because God is warning his people through Moses that the danger ahead of the Israelites is dire,
    Not because of the military conquests, or wandering in the wilderness, or finding food and water,
    The danger is turning away from God, and it’s a danger that we need to take seriously, and probably more than ever, today.
    Because there are snakes out there that want you to worship them, there are gods, and idols, and created things than demand our worship and attention, and they do not want us to heed God’s warning, and they will lie, and do whatever it takes to turn your attention from God to them.
    So, there are a few big themes from Deuteronomy that I think we can take away as points of application today, and the first is this:

    Our Path is Usually Longer than Necessary

    Take a look with me at how Deuteronomy starts:
    Deuteronomy 1:1–2 CSB
    1 These are the words Moses spoke to all Israel across the Jordan in the wilderness, in the Arabah opposite Suph, between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth, and Di-zahab. 2 It is an eleven-day journey from Horeb to Kadesh-barnea by way of Mount Seir.
    Okay, what on earth does this mean?
    Well, there’s really only two places you need to focus on for our purposes this morning - Horeb, and Kadesh-barnea.
    Horeb, also known as Mt. Sinai, this is the place where God revealed the law to the Israelites and established what we call the Mosaic covenant.
    Essentially, that means the law that God gave was a contract to the people, saying they needed to fulfill their side, and then God will fulfill His side.
    But, the law was a lot more than that, it was a tool to not only show people how to love God, and love other, it was a way to keep His people holy.
    They were to be separate. Their lifestyle was to be different than the cultures around them.
    I mean if you’ve ever read through the laws of Moses, they seem crazy to us, but they were actually extremely progressive in a sense, because they were actually just. They were actually fair.
    They cared and gave provision to who society would call “the least of these”. Compared to other cultures and civilizations surrounding the Israelites, the law Moses brought to the people was clearly from a loving God.
    I mean after all, they’ve been enslaved as a people in Egypt for 400 years, they had really lost all semblance of a culture themselves, so God gave them a new culture - where if you truly live by these laws, you can not only survive, but thrive.
    And this is why Deuteronomy is largely Moses sitting down with the next generation, warning them of the disloyalty of their parents, of the generation before, as they look into the promised land, which is another fulfilled covenant on God’s side that the Israelites did not deserve or earn…
    He’s sitting down with this new generation, saying - look, here’s the law that God gave us, that will make us proser in this new land we’re about to take control of,
    And here’s how your parents screwed up.
    This is essentially Deuteronomy summed up.
    Let’s remember the timeline of God taking his people out of slavery, out Egypt,
    For 400 years, they were enslaved, so God brings them out, parts the Red Sea, destroys the army of Egypt that is pursuing them,
    And then they immediately start to grumble.
    There’s no water, there’s no food, we were better off under Pharoah in Egypt, at least he fed us.
    And this is where it al started. The beginning of the end.
    So they make it to Mt. Sinai, Moses goes up to commune with God, he brings down the law and the covenant to the people, and guess what?
    They don’t fight back, they receive the law and accepted it!
    This is how they responded:
    Exodus 19:7–8 CSB
    7 After Moses came back, he summoned the elders of the people and set before them all these words that the Lord had commanded him. 8 Then all the people responded together, “We will do all that the Lord has spoken.” So Moses brought the people’s words back to the Lord.
    So, Moses after this went back up the mountain to receive the written word of the law,
    And in 40 short days, the people had already given up hope, created a golden calf as an idol to worship, and were fornicating, to keep this pg, at the foot of God’s mountain.
    You may be wondering: Seth, how does this fit in to all those places you read earlier, and an 11 day journey?
    Well, after this incident, the Israelites would wander in the desert for 38 more years.
    38 years they would essentially walk in circles, wondering where this supposed promised land was, they were in the wilderness with no permanent home or land to settle…
    And what Moses is telling the children of these people because God let them die due to their disobedience and natural consequences of their actions,
    He’s saying: look, by way of Mount Seir, the entire Israelite nation could have been here in 11 days.
    The Israelites took 38 years to travel an 11 day journey.
    Isn’t that the story of our lives?
    We have a path that God has laid out before us, a path that by the way may not look great, or clear, or easy.
    But it’s always best. The path God lays out is always best for us.
    But we deviate, don’t we? And when we deviate, it’s a lack of loyalty, it’s a lack of faith in God,
    Because let tell you, to the Israelite’s credit, they were in the wilderness. This is where the chaos was, this was equivalent to being out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with floaties.
    The wilderness is where the monsters are, it’s where the devil lives, it’s a death sentence.
    But they forgot the Lord of Armies was with them. Their refuges was travelling with them,
    They didn’t need a house of bricks, they had the Almighty God, the Living God, with them.
    But we haven’t evolved, because even as Christians today, we still seek comfort in our things, in our idols, and in our little gods, don’t we?
    We make our own paths that looks better, and shorter,
    And we end up in the desert for 38 years instead of 11 days.
    But the cool thing is God doesn’t abandon us there. He still comes with us, hoping that we’ll come back to His path,
    And you know what? He always gives us a waypoint, a way back into the fold, and we can see this clearly in Deuteronomy,
    This is called the Shema, is was probably the most repeated line in all of Israel’s history:
    Deuteronomy 6:4–6 CSB
    4 “Listen, Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. 6 These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart.
    Look…..

    The Starting Point is Always Loving God

    It’s there is no Jewish religion, there is no Christian religion, without this core tenet of our faith,
    We must love God. Because He loves us, even though we don’t deserve it, he has always loved us.
    This is so important, in fact, that Moses commands this next piece:
    Deuteronomy 6:7–9 CSB
    7 Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them be a symbol on your forehead. 9 Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your city gates.
    The love of God is to constantly be reminded to their kids, and to the kids kids, it’s part of daily life, it’s part of your being, they were to bind this to themselves…
    This is the command the Hebrew people forgot.
    Instead of loving, they grumbled.
    And that’s where it starts….small.
    It starts with a small piece of bitterness that grows like a weed.
    There’s an unmet expectation, and suddenly God is the evil one who never comes through.
    But what Moses is saying to this next generation, it’s the same thing Paul echoes in the New Testament as a die hard Jew who found Jesus,
    It’s that loving God is the thing. It’s the starting point of everything else that’s good,
    It’s the starting point of our entire religion.
    It’s how God brings us into the fold.
    It’s why verses like Romans 5:8 can even exist:
    Romans 5:8 CSB
    8 But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
    It’s why Jesus says this in John:
    John 14:15 CSB
    15 “If you love me, you will keep my commands.
    Look, we aren’t here this morning to learn how to follow the rules better.
    We aren’t here this morning to enter into a dogma of regulation so we can be elite.
    We aren’t trying to best one another in how great we all are at memorizing the lines of the Bible…
    I would say we aren’t even here to become morally more righteous…
    We are here this morning, gathered together in worship, to learn how to love.
    Because if we learn to love God, and love others like God loves us,
    Everything else will fall into place.
    If we could truly love in that capacity, we would never have to follow the rules again - they would just be a natural outflow of our love for one another.
    If the Israelites could have loved God, with all their heart, and soul, and strength,
    They would have walked right into the promised land after a short 11 day hike.
    Friends, we must dedicated ourselves not to religion, but to love.
    If you ever get lost, repeat this to yourself: love the Lord your God wiht all your heart, soul, and strength.
    Then tell your children. Then tell their children.
    There’s a reason Moses says to keep repeating this: because we forget such a simple command.
    We want to clutter ourselves up with busyness, and rules, and our own moral ground for things,
    But this had always been God’s true North. Love.
    And I think one of the most loving things God has done, is he’s given us a choice.
    We can love him, or not. We can be loyal to Him, or not.
    Nearing the end of Deuteronomy, Moses gets really practical, as he’s at the end of his life:
    Deuteronomy 30:15–16 CSB
    15 See, today I have set before you life and prosperity, death and adversity. 16 For I am commanding you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, statutes, and ordinances, so that you may live and multiply, and the Lord your God may bless you in the land you are entering to possess.
    Here’s the thing: God doesn’t force you to follow Him. He wants you to, but that leaves the choice in your hands….because

    God is the Best Way, but You Have to Choose Him

    See, the Israelites could have simply loved God, followed the law, and entered the promised land,
    But they chose not to.
    Again, remember Moses is speaking to the next generation - those who will actually live in this incredible land that God promised them…
    And he’s saying: look, the cookies are on the table.
    Look what happened to your parents - they died. They never saw the land.
    You can choose God, life and prosperity, or you can chose other things, death and adversity.
    This is what your parents did:
    Deuteronomy 32:16–17 CSB
    16 They provoked his jealousy with different gods; they enraged him with detestable practices. 17 They sacrificed to demons, not God, to gods they had not known, new gods that had just arrived, which your ancestors did not fear.
    Look, I know this may not be popular, and it may even be uncomfortable for some…
    But God doesn’t warn us against false idols and false Gods because he values our time so much and he doesn’t want to see us waste our time, or to not look stupid,
    Our God is not a God of effeciency and time management…
    He warns us against other gods, against demons, spiritual deities, whatever vernacular you’re comfortable with,
    He warns us because they are real, and He knows their dangers, and He knows how enticing their lies are.
    Because these little gods, they’re jealous of the creator. Spiritual warfare is a very real thing, and we experience it likely every single day without even knowing it.
    And it’s so easy to bow down in worship to those powers, to give ourselves to lesser gods,
    This is exactly what Israel did.
    And let me tell you, Satan demands blood.
    He is the father of lies, the deceiver, and he wants nothing more than to put something in your way to get your attention off of God and on to anything else.
    But he can’t create anything himself, he has to twist and distort good things to make them bad things…
    And we constantly fall into the trap.
    You can’t convince me that most of our human institutions were not made from demonic influence.
    Satan took the Garden of Eden and convinced Adam and Eve that it’s vast array of food wasn’t enough, so they ate the one forbidden fruit, because how dare God hold back from us.
    He gave us hands that can work the ground and make awesome things, and that cause Cain to murder his brother Abel because of jealousy.
    God gave us grapes for wine that we’ve turned into drunkeness.
    He’s give us marriage and intimacy that we’ve turned into strip clubs and pornography
    He’s given us resources and money that we hoard and lord over others,
    He’s given us homes that we ever expand because they aren’t big enough,
    The list goes on, and on, and on,
    We must choose God.
    We must choose life.
    And when we do that, we have a bigger world, a bigger, generational, future proof religion that is rooted in the love of God.
    And that brings us to one of our final application points in this book that leads us straight into Joshua:

    Nothing Lives or Dies With Us

    We are not the beginning, we are not the end.
    Thankfully, Jesus Christ Himself is the alpha and the omega, and beginning and the end,
    We are just a small part of that.
    Deuteronomy 31:1–3 CSB
    1 Then Moses continued to speak these words to all Israel, 2 saying, “I am now 120 years old; I can no longer act as your leader. The Lord has told me, ‘You will not cross the Jordan.’ 3 The Lord your God is the one who will cross ahead of you. He will destroy these nations before you, and you will drive them out. Joshua is the one who will cross ahead of you, as the Lord has said.
    Man, after all that, after all the loyalty Moses has shown, because of his people, he doesn’t get to enter the promised land.
    Imagine that, after trekking for decades through the wilderness, Moses doesn’t reap the rewards.
    Look, this is difficult, this is really difficult for me, this is where I struggle,
    Moses got to see the promised land, he got to climb the mountain and look at it, in all it’s glory,
    Yet he never got to step foot in it.
    But Moses understood more than we do.
    Because Moses spend 40 days and nights with God on Mt. Sinai.
    I bet he was up on that mountain, and he saw this land that the Lord was giving the Israelites,
    And he thought: This looks nice, but I’ve been with God. What is this land compared to that?
    And that’s why Moses could die in peace, knowing he was passing the torch to Joshua, a man filled with Spirit,
    Deuteronomy 34:5 CSB
    5 So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the Lord’s word.
    Deuteronomy 34:9 CSB
    9 Joshua son of Nun was filled with the spirit of wisdom because Moses had laid his hands on him. So the Israelites obeyed him and did as the Lord had commanded Moses.
    I think this is why it’s so important to…

    Finish Well, Your Legacy Matters

    Moses could have easily been upset, cursed God, quit the journey seemingly not a single Israelite listened to what He said…
    But he didn’t.
    Moses finished well, he trained a successor, he had a whole tribe of elders, he died at peace with the Living God, because Moses was loyal.
    He loved God with all he had. He loved his fellow Israelites. He chose God, not the other little gods, the God of Israel who was true to His covenant with His people.
    For a while, during the Covid times I believe, I listened to a podcast called The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill.
    Great podcast short series, highly recommended, but they had this bonus episode, and it was all about a guy named Bobby Knight.
    And Bobby Knight, while praised in our region, was know for being really brutal to his players, and the podcast episode was essentially about strong, and arguably damaging, leadership styles that turn abusive. And Bobby Knight will forever be known as a basketball giant, but one with an askerick next to his name for his hot headed style.
    And this authoritative style actually has invaded evangelical churches, unfortunatley…
    Believe it or not, this episode led me to church planting.
    Let me explain.
    At the end of the episode, they highlighted a church planter, who is not famous. He is not a celebrity, he simply used his life to plant so many churches, that when asked to count them up, his wife simply couldn’t, there were too many.
    His name was David Nicholas, and as he got older, he couldn’t really plant churches physically anymore, so he would host young men in his house and near his home in Boca Raton to train them as church planters.
    And one day, he was doing his thing, he was 79 years only, and he had a room full of 25 young pastors, ready to plant churches.
    And the next day, he had a cardiac arrest and passed away, went to be with the Lord.
    That has always stuck with me. Imagine, up until your last breath, training young men to move the gospel.
    That’s how I want to go. That is finishing well. That is how the Israelite journey should have ended, but didn’t.
    This should be our goal. Every waking moment, trying to figure out how to be a Kingdom worker.
    Not seeing how close the end of our lives are, but seeing all the things we can do for the kingdom while were still here….
    If there is breath in our lungs, we need to be worshipping, and loving, and training, and sharing,
    We need to finish well.
    This is what Moses is telling these Israelites: finish well.
    There are dangers of turning left or right, of worshipping other gods, of disloyalty.
    Church, we are on a journey. I challenge you this morning: finish well. Use every waking moment to worship God.
    Repeat the Shema to yourself, to your children, teach them how to love God, and everything else will follow.

      • Psalm 55:22CSB

      • Deuteronomy 1:1–2CSB

      • Exodus 19:7–8CSB

      • Deuteronomy 6:4–6CSB

      • Deuteronomy 6:7–9CSB

      • Romans 5:8CSB

      • John 14:15CSB

      • Deuteronomy 30:15–16CSB

      • Deuteronomy 32:16–17CSB

      • Deuteronomy 31:1–3CSB

      • Deuteronomy 34:5CSB

      • Deuteronomy 34:9CSB

  • Rock Of Ages
  • I Will Exalt You
Valley Church Clinton
3 members