Moses' Legacy: Trusting God's Promises

Show Notes

Episode 476: 
In this episode, Jeff and guest co-host Kyle focus on how Moses, after leading the Israelites for over 40 years, is shown the promised land by God but is told he will not enter it. Despite this, Moses accepts God's decision with faith and contentment. The hosts highlight Moses' faith and leadership qualities, emphasizing his place in the hall of faith in Hebrews 11. Overall, the episode reflects on God's faithfulness, Moses' unwavering faith, and the importance of trusting in God's promises.

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You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun, in practical ways. Welcome back to another episode of the Bible Guys. I'm Jeff and I'm Kyle Dave with us. Yeah, that's right, Chris Ball is out of the studio. He's out running around just living his best life. Yeah, living his best life. I guess right now he's with his dad. Okay, yeah, they're doing like a boy not a boys that's gonna say boys road trip. But yeah, yeah it's awesome. So I like Christy tell all about that when he gets back. But that's great. So anyways, we have the inimitable Kyle, right, the inestimable. Oh my, uh, inestimable. Kyle Doba Meyer. He's with us today, and uh, I always look forward to having you in the studio because you've been with Wizar Ball a couple of times. Yep. Yeah, I haven't had a chance to be. In the studio with I was excited it when I got a scheduled that they haven't asked me in a while, so I'm not really sure you know what happened. I know that are. Tough, Yeah, I think I think that we were questioning the output from the last time. Yes, but you didn't much to work. With, you know, you and Z our boss. So you know, I figured, well, let's give you a shot and you can be on my side. There you go, and uh, there you go way better. Yes, you'll carry me and we'll just see how this goes. Yeah, that's I don't carry you. So I don't even care myself. Well, hey, we have a very strong commitment on this on this podcast to bring only the finest news that's right to our listeners from the finest sources, of course, and especially when you get into election season and when you get into all this time, you just don't know what news you can trust. And so we feel like maybe the best source on the entire Internet is the Babylon b absolutely and so uh and if you don't know, the Babylon b is an entirely satire website, but we think it's as accurate as anything. Absolutely, So this is useful information for parenting. It is today is actually called the best waste to embarrass your teenager embarrass yeah. OK. And for me, I have a fourteen year old and an eleven year old, So this is very fitting fact. And you just your daughter just got out of the teenage. Yeah, right right, My kids are all out of their teens. You can relate to this too, I'm sure. But this is good. This is good advice. Make sure you know as you're hearing this, whether you're driving, just mark this down in your head as like a note, or if you're actually just watching this, write down some notes or you can look up the article later. This is very important. This is what it says. If you're the proud owner of a kid between the ages of twelve and twenty owner crowd owner, you know that the teenage yeer is the most socially sensitive time any child ever goes through, which I agree teenagers had the capacity to be embarrassed by literally anything you say or do. Some parents worry about this. Did you realize just how great a comedic opportunity you've been given? Here we at the Babylon b have painstakingly compiled a knockout list of absolutely killer ways to mortify your team. Excellent, Yes, check it out. Here's the list. Ready, Number one speak we're starting to say any word, and it says we're starting with the easy ones. Here. Number two Here's how you can embarrass your kids is to exist. Exist. Your team will never live this dog. Three is to breathe you gross? What's wrong with you? Yeah? Number four, I can write to this one. Take them on a family vacation where they will make lifelong memories they can cherish forever. And then the note on that is says, the teens think that this is cringe. Number five is to be the president. That's a way to embarrass them is to be the president. I don't know, okay. Number six is mistakenly fall in love with them when they travel back in time in a modified DeLorean and bump into you when you're a teenager. That is odd, right, that's the story to the future. Number seven, when checking them in at the doctor's office, loudly state the reason for their visits. That's good. That's good, And then it says, make sure to spell out your teen's middle names that nobody misspells it too. Here, I brought my son junior. He's really constipated. That's good. That's good. Number eight say hello to their friends. That's mortifying for them. That's horrible. Yes, adults, saying hello to teenagers is an unforgivable yep, that's right. And by the way, side note, while I was picking my daughter up from cheer a few weeks ago, and then she had a friend that was that was walking by, she goes, oh, this is so, and so she says you should honk at her, and she was joking, but I honked at her because she said to honk at her own and she was embarrassed. Oh yeah, So I mean I'm right there. I mean apparently I shouldn't say hello to her friends. Number nine. Another thing we can do to embarrass them is to serve them dinner because the food at our house is gross. Gross. Yep, that's right. If it's not handed out the window or over a counter and a wrapper, it's gross. There you go, yep, exactly. Door dashed, yep. Where are your most functional pair of cargo shorts? Yeah yeah, And then it says. That it works best when paired with calf length white cruise socks and some nice flip flops. Nice so basically nice dad outfit to where number eleven, hold your menu upside down and loudly ask for one printed right side up, It says, your comedy genius while you reuteine in tears of laughter, okay, and then lastly, drop some gen z lingo on them. Fam they'll think you're busting no cap. Oh that's good. There you go. So that's pretty much it. Those are the twelve ways to embarrass your kids and mortify them. There you go. That's really good. That's super useful stuff. It's helpful, super useful. I think most of those are instinctive. Yes, right, Which one do you feel like is most useful to you? Most useful? I would say for me, I would say currently, it's the saying hello to their friends, yes, because I think back in I would be fine, like I'd want to go talk to their friends. And now I'm realizing, like in certain environments I'm allowed to talk to their friends. Other environments just stay away, Dad, You're not cool, so stay away. Yeah, And it's hard to navigate is this the good environment or the bad? And bound? Is this appropriate and not appropriate? The appropriate hour of the day, right, like when to do that because it could change daily. And my my my daughter in particular, was very sensitive to where we pulled up at the school, like if I had to drop her off, that was terribly Embarrassingay, yeah right, But she also didn't want to drive to school. Right, So there's that. So where what door? And the door I dropped off last week was not okay to drop off? This way changed? Right? Yeah? All those things waving at friends, I thought they were friends and not friends anymore. Whatever, all that stuff it was it was told. I just remember growing up though, Just going back to this real quick. For teenagers, my dad would drop us off at school and he'd be blairing some eighties music and just like, could Caroline, I'm trying to open the door, h exactly, Yeah, here I am, and I'm like doing the same thing. I'm like, what what's wrong? This is good music, that's great. Well, it's super useful stuff and we're always trying to help our listeners, and so that's that's just about as good as it gets me there. Yep, just existing is offensive to your children. Well, so we have an exceedingly difficult challenge in front of us today with regard to our conversation because for some reason, and I'm not going to put it on Dez entirely because I was the one who helped work out all of these things. But I'm not sure how we divided twelve verses on the death of Moses into two different episodes. It's that epic. Yeah. Yeah. So we're at the end of the Book of Deuteronomy. We're also at the end of the life of Moses, and man, we're going to try to get a lot out of these twelve verses. So today we're only reading the first what four y four? Is that correct? Okay? Correct? So ah, let me clear my voice. I should have gotten some water or something. Man, here we go, it says, Then Moses went up to Mountain Ebo from the plains of Moab and climbed Pisga Peak, which is across from Jericho. And the Lord showed him the whole land from Gilead as far as Dan, all of the land of Naftali, the land of Manassa, all the land of Judah, extending to the Mediterranean Sea, the Negev, the Jordan Valley with Jericho, the city of Palms, as far as Zoar. Then the Lord said to Moses, this is the land I promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when I said I will give it to your descendants. I have now allowed you to see it with your own eyes, but you will not enter the land. Yeah. So have you been in Israel, No, I have not known, not yet. So this is near the top of the Dead Sea. So if you remember the Sia Galilee is at the northern end of Israel. Above that is where he talks about. Dan is up that way, and then above that would be Lebanon, and Syria is up above the Sea Galilee. Then you come down the river Jordan, and that's in a valley all the way down. And so then Mount Nebo, which I remember seeing. Mount Nebo is at the top right at the top of the Dead Sea, and right across the river is where Jericho would be. Then it goes up a hill and then Jerusalem is up up high like that. So it really is a unique it's a very tall for that region, of a tall mountain, and it's not very far. You only look in like ninety miles top to bottom right, so Israel's not a very big country. And he can see all the Promised Land from that spot. So it's a pretty pretty incredible moment, beautiful, beautiful to see. Sure, but you know there's also the other side you're not gonna go in, which we we have to we have to reserve that for tomorrow. So I can't talk too much about that, but. Yeah, I do think it's interesting though, you know how it talks about how, you know, Moses was the only a person to see God face to face, right, God called him a friend, and yet at the same time, his disobedience, you know, caused him to get to that point where he was able. To see it but not actually enter it. Yeah, and yet still I think it's it's a tricky thing because I think a lot of times people want to wonder, They think that there are certain things that should be fair, like why would God do that to Moses? He's been your friend and number one to God, say, you know, to change his friendliness towards Roses, he stayed close and all this stuff, but just said, hey, because you disobeyed, you're not able to enter. I think that's a pretty challenging perspective when you look at that, because I know, as a human you kind of again you think that's not fair, like he should be a lot. You know, well, there's a lot to be done here. So Moses was forty years old when he and we didn't really cover this in the podcast, but he is now an adult in Pharaoh's court. He's also starting to really identify with his Hebrew background. Yeah, and he sees a slave driver working for the Pharaoh. He sees him beating a Hebrew and Moses gets mad, gets picks up a weapon or something and kills this guy and then buries him in the sand. Then he takes off, he runs and hides, and he hides out in the desert for forty years, literally, the Bible says, on the back side of the desert. Very likely most of that time, if not all that time, would have been in the Sinai penin because this is an area that he was familiar with. When he gets back there, when God gives him the Ten Commandments, so then that's forty years. Then he has this moment, this incredible God moment. He was raised in pharaoh's home. He very likely he was the son of the princess. Very likely would have been in the line of succession as a pharaoh, right, he would have had the finest educations, the finest close, the finest everything. He was very educated with regard to their processes and their systems. He kills this guy and then takes off and hides, and so he just disappears, and he's afraid. He's being hunted. And it's during that time he gets married. His father in law's name is Jethro. He just turns into a shepherd. So he goes from a palace to working out, you know, just following sheep in the desert. And then he has this encounter with God with this burning bush yep right and everything for him. So and then that was at eighty years old. Wow, you know, most people are ready to retire at eighty. He has this encounter with God at eighty and God says, okay, Moses, I want you to go and set my people free, and he goes back. They go through all those plagues, they go through all those things with Pharaoh, and then they finally they make it to the Jordan River. They're ready to go, and the Spies go, no, we don't want to go, and they wander for forty years. And Moses wanders around in the desert for forty years from eighty to one hundred and twenty following the people are on. So, you know, on one end, you feel bad for Moses that he's not going in the promnce Land. On the other end, I think Moses was ready to retire. Oh yeah, right, He's like, please, just show it to me. I don't think I can make this trip. Man. You know. The thing that I take away from this though, like you know, you and I both actually gave a message recently. I was in MLA City, you were in Sterling Heights, and we talked about the fairness of God. Is God fair? And I think that's the thing in our human perspective. I think oftentimes it's a we do a disservice to ourselves and to others when we project our own humanity into what we think God should do would do right, And. This is a scenario. When I read this, I'm like, man, Moses just did this one, you know. But God isn't fair, right, And and then we talked about this before, but God is incredibly unfair to our advantage right the way the way he operates. But at the same time, I just love the fact that you know, God is very much revealing this idea that he still was a friend of him. But God took his sin seriously, his disobedience. I think it's an important reminder for us that, you know, oftentimes when we try to really focus on the grace of God and really focus on the mercy of God, we also have to remember too that the mistakes we made, the sin we've made me He takes that seriously. We see it right here and lived out in the life of Moses. Yes, so God had promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that they would inherit the land of Canaan. Yeah. Now when he promised that to them, they were a small group of people. Yeah, you know, not even I don't even know that you could really call them much of a tribe, you know, a couple hundred people. But then they go down into Egypt. For part of that time they were extremely prosperous. Towards the end they were in full blown slavery and they were being oppressed. But they grew and they grew, and they multiplied and they multiplied and they multiplied into some estimates are between one million and three million people. Right, so now they're a force to be reckoned with. They're slaves, they're not fighters, but still and so now God is sending that back in and you know, there's these seven major tribes, the high Bites, the hitd Tights, the the Parazites, the Philistines, and they're gonna have to fight. God didn't say I'm just going to give this land to you for you know, without any without any cost. It's going to cost you something. But now there's a lot of you you're going to be able to and I'm going to go ahead of you and I'm going to fight this battle for you. So God had promised to drive out the evil people that were living in the land and to give it, to give the land to the Israelites. And God is proving to Moses once again that he's going to keep his promises. Right. I promised that this would happen, and it's going to happen. I'm not going to back down from this. And so you know, Moses had paid a real price. He really did work hard for over forty years trying to lead these people. He's in his old age and God is bringing him up and in his goodness, going Moses, look at it. Yeah, you got him here. The job I gave you to lead the people to the promised land, you got them here, and a good job. And I think there's a little bit of addaboy in this right and look at it. Look at it it is. It's a land filled with milk and honey. Look at the hills and the mountains and Look at the green oases all throughout the land, look at the river, the water, all those things. You can see it, and I'm going to take them in. He's reaffirming once again everything you believed is true, and that's really important. True. It is a beautif picture of what God was doing for Moses to take him to that peak and let him see it with his own two eyes. That's the very thing that Moses was chasing after. I'm sure he had so many visions of that for i mean, you think about forty years. He couldn't wait to get to that point. And God wasn't just like Okay, nope, you can't enter it, can't see it. He's and i want you to see it. Yeah, I want you to get like take a peek, like look it's it's kind of a beautiful picture of what God did. Yeah, you know, there's parallels with and there is a lot in our theology and a lot in a lot of the old songs, the old hymns that we used to sing about the promised land is heaven. You know in a lot of those parallels, the river Jordan represents death you're passing over, right, So there's all this promise all this hope that's connected, and you know, we feel like we're wandering in the wilderness. We're struggling. It's it's a hard life. There's some battles that have to be fought, there's some struggles that need to be won, but ultimately God is going to take us in this promised land. And so that's why I think it's so special. When you read about Moses, there's a lot of different passages. You know, in numbers twenty seven is when God tells Moses, you'll see the Promised Land, but you're not going to go in. But then Moses pleads, he kind of he comes to God in Deuteronomy twenty three in Deuteronomy three, and he goes, come on, and God said, no, I gave you my word on this. You're not going to go in, but I'll let you see it. So then Moses accepts that in Deuteronomy chapter three, and then goes on for the whole rest of the book. Restates God's law, restates God's promises. We didn't read it, We've hinted at it in other episodes, but in chapter is it chapter thirty finally he comes or thirty one, Yeah, thirty, Chapter twenty nine and thirty. God he's renewing the Covenant. And then he finally says to the people, he said, listen, God's promises are if then promises if you keep his promises God, if you keep his commandments. Rather, God's promises are that he will bless you, that he will go before you, that he'll fight for you, that he will give you everything that he promised to do. You will prosper, you'll live long on this earth. You'll have success in everything you do. He'll give you life, the life that you really want. And then he says, but and then he repeats all the exact same things, but the reverse side of him. He says, if you disobey God's commands, then God will not fight for you. God will give victory to your enemies instead of you. You will always struggle. You'll have disease, Your fields won't produce, your animals aren't going to reproduce. That you're going to struggle. It's just going to be so hard. Literally, it'll be the death of everything that you're hoping for. And so when you get to chapter thirty, I love that passage. In chapter thirty he says, so I'm giving you a choice now between life and death. He said, life is when you choose to go God's way. Death is going to go when you choose to go your way. There's life and death. There's a choice between blessings and cursings, he says. And then he goes, oh, that you would choose life. He's like, he's begging them one hundred and twenty years old, just choose the right way. Yeah, don't you understand there's consequences to your choices. Obviously, when when Moses gets to the Promised Land, it doesn't get to go in. He's reminded once again there are consequences to his choices. We'll talk about that tomorrow. But God is still good and God is still gracious in this. God does take him to the Promised Land, if you think of the Promised Land as heaven. He does. He does go on into attorney. There's worse things than not being able to cross a river, right, but he does go into the promised land that God has given him with regard to eternity. Yeah, and I think it's a beautiful picture of God's faithfulness. That's what you know, kind of what you're alluding to. It's God's faithfulness. And I just want to remind any of the listeners who are who are listening today that you know, there's I don't like using the name it claim it things for sure, but as there's like you know, the saying that if God called you to it, he'll bring you through it. And I think there's some truth to that that that sometimes in life, I've been with people and I've you know, talked to people who may they feel like, man, God called them to something, but they don't. They can't get there yet, they can't see it yet. Yeah, And there is something when you when you truly are listening to God and focused on his ways and trying to find his will for your life. You know, He is a faithful God. And whatever he promised in you, and it may not exactly look or play out exactly how you thought it was going to play out. But when God says He's going to do it, he follows to run his promises. Yeah. And you know when you read in Hebrews chapter eleven, the Bible puts Moses in what we would call the hall of faith. Right, so we would look at it, go oh poor Moses, But the Bible says, in let me see if I can find it real quick. In Hebrews chapter eleven, the Bible says that Moses what verse thirteen. Here's what it says. All these people died still believing that God what God had promised them. They did not receive what was promised, but they saw it all from a distance and welcomed it. Right, that's what the Bible talking about Moses here, right, that he could see it from a distance and he welcomed it. So where you and I go, Oh, God's not fair. You don't see any resentment or anger from Moses. Moses dies in faith, had welcoming the fact that he could see that God was going to follow through on things. And I think that we have to have this contentment and knowing that God knows the best way, and knowing that God does keep his promises and that God is good to us. And Moses died with a certain amount of contentment when it says that he was able to receive what God was promising by being able to see what God had promised, and he was content with that, and he died in faith. And I could be wrong, I could be Abraham as well. But in that Hebrews eleven does it say that he went without no orner or he was going. Is that was that Moses? That was that was abra Abraham, Okay, And it was just that that idea though, of him just really trusting in God and going. And I think it is it is great to see that he is somebody who is in the Hall of faith, right even though we look at it and yeah, you. Could look and say, oh, man, what a failure. He didn't he didn't he didn't get to the finished No, he is in God's all of faith. Well, he's mentioned many times. It starts off in verse twenty four. So I was just talking about seeing but not going in in that part. But verse twenty four it starts off that you know, by faith. Moses, when he grew up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He refused to identify on the Egyptian side, even though there was consequences. He chose to share the oppression of God's people instead of enjoying the fleeting pleasures of sin. He thought it was better to suffer for the sake of Christ than to own the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to his great reward. That's Moses looking ahead to the great reward. I'm not going to enjoy the pleasures of Egypt going. I'd rather suffer for the cause of Christ with the people of Israel than to benefit from this Egyptian thing. It was by faith that Moses left the land of Egypt, not fearing the king's anger. He kept right on going because he kept his eyes on the one who's invisible. It was by faith that Moses commanded the people of Israel to keep the Passover, to sprinkle blood on the door post so that the Angel of Death would not kill their first born. It was by faith that the people of Israel went right through the Red Sea as though they were on dry ground, but when Egyptians tried to follow, they were all drowned. Right, there's a big chunk there. It's just about Moses. Everybody else gets like one verse and he gets a little chunk there. You know. I think that there are some really great leaders in the Bible, and if you want to be a great leader, study them. But there's no greater leader in the Bible, I don't think than Moses. He just on every level was phenomenon. So we should give Moses as kudos. Yes tomorrow we're gonna talk about him dying, but today God showed him Torow. Yes. Well, hey, that wraps it up, and we're so glad that you joined us today. We look forward to continuing this conversation through the rest of the week, and we'll see you tomorrow. See you