Moses' Legacy: Trusting God's Promises

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