Deuteronomy 18 | Thomas Todd

Hello everyone.

This is Pastor Benjamin.

You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, Orlando.

At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer.

For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com.

God has a word for us this day.

Let's pray and ask that He bless our hearing of it.

Heavenly Father, your word is truth.

By your Spirit, give us ears to hear and hearts to believe your word with joy through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Our scripture reading this day comes from Deuteronomy, the 18th chapter.

When you come into the land your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations.

There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a medium, or a necromancer, or one who inquires of the dead.

For whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord.

And because of these abominations, the Lord your God is driving them out before you.

You shall be blameless before the Lord your God.

For these nations which you're about to dispossess, listen to fortune tellers and to diviners.

But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this.

The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brethren, it is to him you shall listen.

Just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, or see this great fire any more, lest I die.

And the Lord said to me, They're right in what they've spoken.

I'll raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers, and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.

And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.

But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.

And if you say in your heart, How may we know the word that the Lord hasn't spoken?

When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word doesn't come to pass or come true, that's a word that the Lord has not spoken.

The prophet has spoken it presumptuously.

You need not be afraid of him.

This is God's word.

Thanks be to God.

You may be seated.

Good morning.

All right, you guys are gonna have to wake up a little bit.

I need your help this morning, okay?

I'm gonna start a song lyric, and I want you to finish it.

So you you have to help me because I promise you, my wife will tell you, you don't want me singing alone up here.

Okay?

All right, you ready?

This one is a new city one here for sure.

Sweet Caroline.

You guys are awesome.

I love this.

This is good.

All right, here's another one.

Uh we will, we will.

This is amazing.

I am impressed.

I was gonna do let it go, but you really don't want me to even try that.

So we're just gonna let it go.

Uh you know, we don't live in a world with too few voices.

We live in a world with too many.

Everywhere you turn, somebody is telling you what is true, what is good, what you should want, how you should live, right?

TikTok is talking, Instagram's talking, podcasts, advertisers, you just go on and on, politicians.

Some of the loudest voices that we hear are between our two ears.

We hear things like, hey, follow your heart, be true to yourself, protect your peace, trust your gut, you know, believe in yourself.

And I think it gets to our struggle that the voices we listen to eventually get down to our hearts and come out in our lives.

Underneath all those voices are some very basic questions.

Who am I?

What is true?

What should I do?

What's gonna happen?

How can I be safe?

And so we we listen.

We listen to our culture, we listen to experts, we listen to influencers, we listen to our fears and our desires.

And sometimes we listen to almost anyone who would promise us to give us a little bit of certainty.

Every age has its voices, every culture, every generation has its prophets.

The ancient world had diviners, sorcerers, mediums, people claiming to have hidden knowledge.

Our world has algorithms, influencers, celebrities, podcasts, self-help gurus, thousands of competing voices telling us how we should live.

Different voices, but the same human heart.

And what makes counterfeit voices so dangerous is they don't always sound way off the wall, right?

Sometimes they sound very compassionate, sometimes they sound wise, sometimes they even sound liberating, sometimes they have a kernel of truth within them.

And the question isn't simply, does this sound good?

The question is, has God spoken?

Because ultimately, this passage this morning isn't just about occult practices, it's a passage about revelation.

Where will God's people go to hear from God?

Whose voice will they trust?

And notice God's answer isn't, he doesn't merely simply say, hey, stop listening.

God's answer to counterfeit voices is not silence, God's answer is revelation.

Deuteronomy 18, if we boil it down to just one quick sentence, God speaks.

So hey, listen to him.

He promises to give his people a prophet who will speak his words.

So here's the question I want you to wrestle with maybe this morning.

When you don't know what to do, when you're wondering, when you're trying to think of something, whose voice do you trust?

Because every voice is trying to disciple us.

Our passage gives us three clear movements, I think, this morning.

First, reject counterfeit voices.

Then second, we'll see receive God's voice, and finally, recognize true voices.

So if you have your Bible, turn with me to Deuteronomy 18, and we're going to start in our first movement: reject counterfeit voices.

Look in verse 9.

When you come to the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations.

Notice Moses doesn't start out with, hey, just don't do it.

He says, Hey, you shall not learn to follow.

And the word learn there gives us this idea of being trained, of being accustomed to.

You shall not learn to follow, maybe said in a different way, would be, hey, don't apprentice yourself to another way of seeking knowledge.

That's significant because these practices aren't these merely just isolated behaviors, but they represent an alternative way of seeking revelation or of control.

Israel's being offered a different way to answer, hey, what's going to happen?

What should I do?

How can I know?

And God says, hey, hey, don't learn that way.

Don't sit at their feet and let them teach you how to understand the world.

And it's significant because, again, we are all being discipled by something.

You're being discipled by what you watch, by what you listen to, by what you repeatedly read, the people you admire, the voices that get your attention.

Every voice is teaching you something.

The question is, who gets to teach you what is true?

Moses, he gives us a voice, a picture of the voices that Israel is being offered.

Look in verse 10 with me.

There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortune or interprets omens or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead.

Now these are all different practices, but they share something in common.

They all attempt to gain knowledge, guidance, or power from sources rather than the God of Israel.

In other words, I want to know what I cannot know, I want to control what I cannot control, I want access to what God has chosen not to reveal to me yet.

And that's the temptation, right?

I mean, from the very beginning, Satan's whisper to Eve was, hey, did God really say that?

When God hasn't given us the answer, we are tempted to go looking for it somewhere else.

But God says, hey, hey, don't learn that way.

Don't be discipled by another source of revelation.

Many of us, many of us, as we read chapter or verse 10 there, we would say, hey, that would never be me.

Like, wait, I would never burn my son or daughter as an offering.

I mean, it should probably bring some revulsion to us at some point.

I mean, just in the news recently, right?

We hear this story of a mom and her kids, and and and it turns my stomach at some level.

Yet I wonder, we often sacrifice our children on the altar of other things, maybe.

Maybe our endless work schedule, or our personal comfort, or our endless scrolling, or even your own, and hear this as gently as I can say it, church, because I need to hear this.

Our own grandiose dreams for our children.

Right?

The, hey, let's get them in the right school with the right program, with the right ball team, with the right coach, and let's have them going from sunup till sundown, and then every weekend let's run to a tournament and make sure that they're doing all the right things in the right places so that they will be successful one day.

We're discipling them to just stay busy.

We're discipling them to listen to a strange voice.

If that's your struggle, you may be listening to the voice of another.

Now, for the rest of the list in verse 10, it's a good thing we don't consult necromancers or mediums or omens or fortune tellers anymore, right?

We're we're way too sophisticated for that.

I mean, nobody in this room is going to go home after this and say, hey, honey, we've got this huge decision to make, so let's go find a medium so we can figure out what we need to do, right?

I don't I don't think we're probably doing that.

We're we're modern, we have Wi-Fi, we're not, we're not doing that.

No, we would never go to something to get answers apart from God.

I mean, imagine if we could go to something and we could just ask it anything, and it would take all the world's knowledge and give us an answer.

I mean, just think about that.

Something that, hey, if we went to it, we said, hey, I've got these symptoms.

Would you tell me what's wrong with me?

Or, hey, could you could you help me understand my childhood?

Or maybe we we go and say, hey, AI, could you, oh wait, oops, uh, what should I eat today?

Or or how do I talk to my kids about sex?

Or or what should what should we do?

You know, I don't have a good emotional connection with anybody.

Could you be my friend?

30% of AI users using it for an emotional relationship, and some for other kinds of relationship.

And because my kids are in the room, you figure that out.

Right?

We're too sophisticated for that.

At some point, we have to admit that this little thing in our pocket, it's getting close to asking this glowing rectangle for some spiritual direction.

And do you ever hear about how AI or how the tech world talks about AI?

It's fascinating.

It's either fortunes or omens.

It's interesting.

I mean, that's our very text.

It's either universal high income for all the world, everybody's gonna be amazing, or hey, there's about a 20% chance that we're all gonna get destroyed.

Fortunes are omens.

You know, here's what's interesting: the technology has changed greatly, but the human heart has not.

C.

S.

Lewis puts it this way: there's something which unites magic and applied science or technology, while separating them from the wisdom of earlier ages.

For the wise men of old, the cardinal problem of the human life was how to conform the soul to objective reality.

And the solution was wisdom, self-discipline, and virtue.

For the modern, the cardinal problem is how to conform reality to the wishes of man.

And the solution is a technique or a technology.

They had fortune tellers, we have algorithms preying on our insecurities.

They had mediums, we have AI.

They asked, what's going to happen?

We ask, we ask, what should I do?

Different technology, the same human heart.

And that's why God's command still speaks to us today.

Don't look somewhere else for the voice that belongs to God.

Verse 12 then heightens it a little bit.

For whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord.

And the word abomination, they're a really strong word.

These aren't harmless alternatives, they represent a way of seeking knowledge, guidance, and power apart from the God who has already spoken.

And notice the end of verse 12.

Because of these abominations, the Lord your God is driving them out before you.

Now slow down there for a minute.

The reason the Lord your God is giving Israel the land is because of who they listen to.

The reason God is driving them out from the land is because of who they listen to.

And so the defining mark of God's people is who they listen to.

Shows the importance of the voice that we allow in our mind.

Moses doubles down then in verse 13.

He says, You shall be blameless before the Lord your God.

And the word blameless here means whole, complete, sound, undivided.

In other words, God isn't merely saying, hey, don't practice witchcraft.

He's saying, don't divide your heart.

Don't give God part of your allegiance and give the rest to whatever promises you, what God hasn't promised you already.

That's the temptation, right?

We trust God on Sunday, but come Monday, I seek guidance, knowledge, power somewhere other than the God of the universe.

And Moses says, hey, no, no, no.

Be whole before the Lord.

Be whole before the Lord.

Be one complete person.

Reject counterfeit voices.

Not because everything they say is necessarily false, but because they don't have the authority to shape you.

And that raises the obvious question: if we reject counterfeit voices, whose voice should we listen to?

God doesn't merely tell us what not to listen to, but he gives us a voice to listen to.

So first we reject counterfeit voices, but now receive God's voice.

This verse 15 changes everything for us.

Look at verse 15.

The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers.

It is to him you shall listen.

Now notice who takes the initiative.

Israel doesn't have to search for someone who can give them access to God.

God promises to provide the voice they need.

God raises him up.

The nations, they're searching for this hidden knowledge, but Israel doesn't have to search for revelation.

God speaks.

And then notice at the end of verse 15, it is to him you shall listen.

And the word listen here is the same word that has been throughout all of Deuteronomy that we've talked about.

It's behind the command, hear, O Israel, right?

The word listen means for us to change, right?

It's throughout this whole series.

It's not merely hearing sounds, but it's, hey, we hear in such a way that it leads to trustful obedience, that we will walk with the one that we are listening to.

You know, we can know the Bible without actually listening to God.

We can have a Bible app on our phone.

We can have five commentaries on the shelf.

We can listen to three sermons at the same time through our headphones and still not listen to God.

God isn't saying, hey, here's another great opinion for you to consider.

He's saying, hey, this is the voice you are to hear.

This is the voice you are to follow.

Think about a GPS.

When you're driving somewhere you've never been before, the problem isn't that you have no information.

Right?

You've got roads everywhere, you've got intersections, you've got signs, you've got billboards, you've got exits, you've got options all over the place.

The question is, which voice are you going to trust to tell you where to go?

That's what God is giving Israel here.

Not a map of every possible road, but he's saying, hey, this is the voice you can trust.

And then Moses reminds them in verse 16 why they need this mediator.

He says, Hey, remember back on Mount Sinai when God spoke directly to you and you were terrified.

And they said essentially in response to that, hey, we can't hear the voice of the Lord anymore.

If we do, we'll die.

And God says here in verse 17, you're right to recognize that you need a mediator.

So God graciously in verse 18 provides one.

I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers.

I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I commanded him.

Notice the progression there.

God gives the prophet his words.

The prophet speaks God's words, and the people listen to the prophet.

The authority isn't in the personality of the prophet, it's in the God whose words he speaks.

And then verse 19 kind of brings a little bit of weight on then the hearers, and whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.

Right?

God takes his word seriously.

So this isn't merely about finding good advice.

This is about receiving God's revelation that he's giving us.

And God has spoken, if we go through the whole Bible, we can see, hey, God speaks through all the prophets, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and so on, right?

Prophet after prophet, word after word, until the word became flesh.

Hebrews 1 reads like this: God spoke in many ways through the prophets, but now he has spoken to us by his son.

After Jesus' resurrection in Acts, Peter stood in Jerusalem and he identified Jesus as the fulfillment of this very promise in Deuteronomy 18.

He quotes Deuteronomy 18.

Stephen, just a few chapters later, does the very same thing.

And then before even that remarkable moment, there was this moment on the mountain where Jesus is transfigured, right?

A voice comes from heaven and says, This is my beloved Son.

Listen to him.

Do you hear the connection?

Deuteronomy 18 says, It is to him you shall listen.

At the transfiguration, the Father says of Jesus, listen to him.

The promised prophet has come.

But Jesus is more than simply another prophet.

The prophets say, God says.

Jesus says, I say.

The prophet spoke God's word.

Jesus is God's word.

Jesus is not merely another voice among voices, right?

When you're wondering, hey, what do I do?

Whose voice should I trust?

Notice every voice does not deserve equal authority.

Not every voice deserves your attention.

But there is one voice that you need to learn to recognize.

There is one voice that you need to slow down and receive and learn to trust.

God speaks.

So listen to Jesus.

And here's why this matters.

You become like the voice you trust.

Hear that this morning.

You become like the voice you trust.

We are all being discipled by something.

Every voice we listen to is shaping what we believe, what we love, how we live.

Romans 12 says, hey, renew your mind.

The Christian life isn't simply learning to listen to fewer voices, it's learning to become so familiar with the voice of Jesus that we recognize it, that we trust it, that we follow and walk with him.

So we reject counterfeit voices, we receive God's voice.

And then that should bring us to one more question that the text just leads us right into.

How do we recognize whether a voice is really from God?

Moses answers that.

Reject counterfeit voices, receive God's voice, and finally recognize true voices.

Look at verse 20 with me.

But the prophet who speaks a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak.

Right off the bat, do you see the problem?

The false prophet doesn't say, hey, hey, stray away from God.

Right?

Satan didn't come and say, hey, run away from God, Eve.

He said, hey, did God really say that?

It's what makes false voices so dangerous.

They don't always come saying, hey, ignore God.

Usually they'll come saying, hey, this is what God really meant.

This is what God is saying there.

Verse 21 asks the question we should then ask.

Hey, how may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken?

And Moses says, hey, this is the way to recognize it.

If a prophet speaks in the Lord's name and what he says does not come to pass, that word was not spoken by the Lord.

The prophet has spoken presumptuously or very arrogantly, right?

He's acting arrogantly.

He's speaking beyond the authority that God has given him.

Or if the prophet speaks for another God, other than the God.

Notice what Moses is teaching.

Don't simply believe a voice because it sounds confident.

Don't believe someone because God told me.

Test the voice.

And this is where Christian maturity matters, right?

It's Christian maturity isn't believing everything.

And listen, it's also not doubting everything, it's discerning everything.

Paul says, 1 Thessalonians 5, do not despise prophecies, but test everything.

Hold fast to what is good.

John says, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God.

The Bereans in Acts 17, right, they're commended because they examined what they were taught against scriptures.

So how do we recognize a counterfeit voice?

You know, if the government wants you to recognize counterfeit bills, they don't expect you to memorize every counterfeit bill that ever existed.

Actually, they don't even want you to look at the counterfeit bills.

They teach you to know the real thing.

The more familiar you become with genuine currency, the easier it is to recognize what doesn't belong.

The same is true for us spiritually.

The best way for us to recognize a false voice is to become deeply familiar with the true voice.

Immersing ourselves in God's word, we get to learn God's character.

We learn what God has already revealed.

And so when we listen to Scripture carefully, and a voice comes along and says, Hey, God says this, we can immediately go, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.

No, no, no.

God didn't say that.

Deuteronomy promised a prophet like Moses who would speak God's word.

And as we said earlier, Jesus is that prophet, but much more than a prophet.

He is the son through whom God has spoken definitively.

Remember the transfiguration.

This is my beloved son.

Listen to him.

So this morning we want to recognize true voices by knowing the true voice.

And God has spoken to us.

And so we should listen to Jesus.

And it really brings us to the heart of the gospel.

The one God commands us to listen to is the one He sent to save us.

Think about where Deuteronomy 18 has brought us, right?

We began with a world full of voices, Israel surrounded by people claiming to offer knowledge, guidance, power, access to what is hidden.

And God says, Hey, don't go there.

Don't learn that way.

Don't sacrifice your children.

Don't listen to the voice of a stranger.

Listen, one of the key evidences that we are listening to a strange voice is that it calls you to sacrifice the most vulnerable thing.

The vulnerable are always the ones who are harmed the most when you listen to the voice of another.

Yahweh doesn't take your sons and daughters from you in sacrifice, he gives you his son in sacrifice.

He makes the promise.

God speaks, and the fulfillment of that promise is Jesus.

Jesus, the word made flesh.

And here's where, as Ben would say, the gospelness of the gospel even gets better, I would say.

That God knows how often you and I have listened to the voices around us.

How we've trusted our fears, how we've trusted our own wisdom, how we've trusted money or success or approval or relationships or feelings or our desire for control.

And we've heard God's voice and we've chosen another.

See, the prophet Jesus, he perfectly listened to the Father when we didn't.

He trusted the Father when we doubted.

He obeyed when we rebelled.

And at the cross, Jesus bore the judgment we deserved for all the ways we've listened to other voices instead of God.

And then he did exactly what he said he would do.

See, the very proof that he is the prophet is that he did exactly what he said he would do when he rose from the dead.

Right?

The resurrection declares that Jesus is who he claimed to be, and his word can be trusted.

Christianity isn't simply about finding better advice, it's about hearing the voice of the risen Christ and entrusting ourselves to him.

So where do we hear his voice?

Not through secret knowledge, not through hidden revelation.

We hear his voice through the word that he has already given us.

See, we come to scripture not merely to fill our heads with information.

No, we come to scripture to hear our King speak.

In 2021, Barna did a research, and they said this: Our research tells us clearly that an individual's relationship with the Bible is the single greatest influence on her or his spiritual health.

Period.

Nothing else comes close.

Blogs, books, podcasts, all that stuff may be beneficial, but for your spiritual health, nothing like reading and studying scripture will impact your life greater.

It's here at New City what we refer to as one of our common rhythms.

We define our daily rhythm of scripture as scripture before screens, or more specifically, to hear God's voice in Scripture before any others.

That's why we have a Bible reading plan.

And we do this in our communities right now.

And listen, we we want to develop this practice together so that we do this well.

And so if you're not in a community, I would encourage you to jump into one.

Like, like together, walk with people who are headed the same direction as you are.

And let me invite you, Ben encourage me, hey, invite them into your practice.

So I'm going to invite you real quick to look over my shoulder on a Tuesday morning.

Okay?

Tuesday morning, somewhere around, uh, I have an alarm that goes off at 4:30, then one goes off at 5.

My wife loves it that I have two alarms that go off nice and early in the morning.

Um and I get up and I go run for about an hour.

And I spend that time in prayer.

Because listen, you might be like, why in the world do you get up at 5 a.m.?

And that's a great question.

It's not because I love 5 a.m., because I really don't.

It's dark.

Uh but if you were in my house come 7:05 a.m., you would understand.

Like there is no way to get another drop of quiet until they pass out sooner or later at the end of the day.

And so 5 a.m.

is the time.

And so I'll run for an hour and then I will sit and read scripture.

And the idea is for me to listen to God's voice before I listen to any other.

I need to soak in God's voice.

The Ten Theses of Byrne says this the holy Christian church, whose only head is Christ, is born of the Word of God, abides in the same, and does not listen to the voice of a stranger.

And so this morning I ask you, are you listening to the voice of a stranger?

There are a lot of voices competing for our attention.

Some are loud, some are subtle, some even sound wise.

But God has not left you to figure it out on your own.

God speaks, and ultimately he has spoken to us through Jesus.

And Jesus isn't just giving you information, he's calling you into a relationship with himself.

And as we hear his word, we know his character and we walk with him and we learn to recognize the voice of our shepherd.

John 10, Jesus says this my sheep will hear my voice, and I will know them, and they will follow me.

So this morning I want to encourage you, reject the counterfeit voices, receive God's word and recognize what is true.

God speaks.

Listen to Jesus.

And let me remind you why.

You will become like the voice you trust.

Or maybe to put it a different way, you will become like the voice that you most listen to.

Pray with me this morning.

Father, we thank you that you have spoken to us through your Son.

Lord, forgive us for the ways that we listen to other voices instead of yours.

Father, give us discernment to recognize what is false and the faith to trust what you have said.

Holy Spirit, train our ears through your word so that we would hear Jesus, that we would know Jesus, that we would walk intimately with Jesus.

Show us what you are saying and what you are doing.

And Lord, give us the grace to respond faithfully.

Help us this morning to listen to Jesus.

In his name I pray.

Amen.