Deuteronomy 18 | Jason Dunn

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.

Let's pray the prayer of illumination.

Guide us, O God, by your word and spirit, that in your light we may see light, in your truth, find freedom, and in your will discover your peace.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

This morning our scripture reading again comes from the book of Deuteronomy, the 18th chapter.

When you come into the land that the Lord 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 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 are 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 brothers.

It is to him you shall listen, just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of this assembly, when you said, Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire anymore, lest I die.

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

I will 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 has not spoken?

When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is 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.

Well, good morning.

I want you to think about a voice.

Not necessarily the voice that you're hearing right now, not my voice, but a voice maybe that you haven't heard in years.

Maybe it's the voice of uh your father who said, I am so proud of you.

Maybe it's your mother's voice and her soft singing voice singing you to sleep.

Jesus loves you, this I know.

Maybe it's a coach, a teacher who pushed you to do more than you thought you could ever do.

Maybe it's the voice of an old friend who said, You don't have to carry this alone.

The reality is that voices in our lives, they may not be in the room anymore, but somehow you can still hear them.

And what are those voices saying to you?

Voices can leave us both with beauty, as I just described, but also voices can leave us with brokenness.

Voices can win us to love, or voices can wound us to ruin.

Or said another way, voices they build us up or they tear us down.

You could have done better.

You aren't enough.

You are what happened to you, you are what they think of you.

There's a psychologist, his name is Michael Nichols, and he says the past is alive in our memory, and it runs our lives more than we could ever know.

In other words, sometimes voices that get inside of us, and long after the speaker stops speaking them, we are still listening.

So the question this morning is who has your ear?

Not do you hear voices, of course you do, but what do they say?

Which voices tell you what you should fear, which voices tell you who you are, which voices capture your heart?

Because here's the reality.

Voices, they form us.

What gets your ear eventually will get your heart.

And we tend to reach for the other voices for three reasons.

Either we are anxious about the future, or we're insecure about the present, or we are wounded by our past.

And Deuteronomy 18 is exactly what we need to hear today, because God warns against finding those voices outside of him.

This passage actually uses language of speaking, words, and hearing 20 times in the 14 verses that Mike read.

The abominable practices, they look really strange to us, but beneath those practices is a very familiar human desire.

Tell me what is coming ahead.

Tell me that I am safe.

Tell me that I am enough.

And Moses gives Israel, Moses is giving us, God is giving us a choice between two voices, the voice of the world and the voice of the Lord.

Remember, what gets your ear will eventually get your heart.

And we're going to explore those two points, the voice of the world and the voice of the Lord this morning.

If you have a Bible or device or bulletin, look down with me starting in verse 9 of chapter 18 of Deuteronomy.

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

Now notice that little phrase, you shall not learn to follow.

The idea here is it's a process of formation to be taught, to become familiar with a way.

And Moses is writing to a people who are entering a new land, and he knows something about those people.

He knows that they are going to be in a new land and they're going to be hearing new voices.

You don't just wake up one morning, though, and decide that you're going to maybe change all of your gods and you're going to follow the voices of the false gods.

You don't wake up one morning and decide, hey, I'm going to sacrifice my son or my daughter.

You don't wake up one morning and just decide you're going to reject everything that God has said.

It happens slowly.

You listen, you learn, you do, and you become.

That's formation.

In fact, you could say learning to follow is discipleship.

That's why we say oftentimes around here, and you say, follow me as I follow Jesus.

And Moses is giving us a warning.

He says, You shall not learn.

Because the culture around Israel as they're entering the new land, the culture around all of us is discipling us.

It's through their voices and through their practices.

Culture catechizes all of us.

Every culture has these voices.

Every culture has the voices that not are just out there, but they're also in here.

Consumerism says, you are what you acquire.

Scientism says only what you can measure is real.

Experts say if you can just know enough, you can finally be secure.

Expressive individualism says the deepest voice that's inside of you is the truest voice of all.

And after we hear the story long enough, after we learn to follow it, we we after we listen and we learn it, we learn to follow it.

What is the cultural voice that's around you teaching you to follow?

What has become so normal around you that you've stopped asking whether it's actually true or not?

Look down with me at verses 10 and 11.

There you shall not be found, 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 sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer, and you guys get the idea here.

Moses gives this long list and it kind of varies in different ways, but these practices, they all have something in common.

They're ways of gaining guidance, revelation, or knowledge, particularly about the future.

But they also have one other thing that's in common.

They all do it apart from the true voice of our God.

And that's what makes this passage so relevant to us today.

Because we probably aren't, we probably didn't wake up this morning and started reading the tea leaves in our cup of tea.

But we haven't stopped trying to master uncertainty about the future in our lives.

We've just got a lot more sophisticated at it.

We have algorithms, AI, financial projections, and more information and more voices and more voices than any generation in history.

And none of those things are inherently evil.

The problem isn't that voices are wrong.

The problem is those voices aren't all right.

So what are we asking them to give us?

Maybe it's success.

Maybe it's a security, maybe it's a voice of blessing that we didn't receive when we were a child.

Look down with me at verse 10 again.

Anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering.

Well, we don't do that, right?

I read that and I'm a little appalled.

There are still some kids in the room.

And I'm I'm I'm I'm wondering, does this raise a question for us?

How are we offering our kids as a sacrifice?

Our culture says your child must keep up.

And if you don't have children, think of it as yourself that you can't fall behind.

Your children, they need to be on the right team, they need to have the right grades, they need to be in the right school.

Or if it's for you, you need to have the right job, the right spouse, the right house, and the right car.

Because if you get it all right, you guarantee their future and yours.

But at the same time, I think you sacrifice their rest and yours.

You sacrifice their joy and yours.

You sacrifice their time with siblings and friends, and you sacrifice your own friend, deep friendships.

And you sacrifice their life in this church and yours because we are afraid that without success, they won't be okay.

Without success, I won't be okay.

Voices are those things that are forming us.

I am what I achieve.

That is the voice that is so crushing that you cannot bear the weight underneath it.

Are we helping our children flourish?

Are we asking their achievements to make them feel secure?

The voices that our children hear are teaching them what to love.

Because what gets in their ear will eventually get in their heart.

But the Bible pushes this even deeper because beneath the thousand voices of culture, scripture shows us another voice.

The first competing voice in the Bible shows up where?

In Genesis chapter three, right?

In Genesis chapter one and two, God is working, God is creating all things through his voice, and he's walking with Adam and Eve in the cool of the garden.

And then what happens to chapter three?

The serpent shows up.

And what does he say?

He said, Did God actually say?

That's the question that that's underneath every false voice.

Is God's word really trustworthy?

Is God's definition of good really good for me?

Can I really trust God with my life?

And Satan, he's called the liar because his fundamental work is to contradict God's voice.

This is how Jesus puts it in John's Gospel, chapter 8.

He says that Satan was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.

And when he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of all lies.

The crafty one offers us a false interpretation of reality.

And the story turns when humanity begins to listen to the wrong voice.

Eve listened.

Adam listened.

And they learn a false interpretation of reality.

They act on it.

And that voice, as they acted on it, as they learned to follow that, it has a destination.

Voices actually have destinations to them.

Look down with me at verse 12 in our text.

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.

The nations have listened.

The nations have learned.

The nations follow the voice of the evil one.

And eventually their way leads to judgment.

The nations were dispossessed and driven out of the land.

And so was Adam and Eve in the garden.

They are also driven out.

So the question isn't merely, do the voices around me make me feel better?

The question is where is this voice leading me to go?

And sometimes I want to say that that voice, it sounds just like my voice or your voice.

There's this inner critic that goes along in our minds.

Remember what I was saying earlier, that voices sometimes after people stop saying things, we still hear them in our hearts.

And we keep saying to ourselves, instead of the person who may have said this originally, we say it to ourselves and say, I am what I achieve.

I am still not enough.

And the reality is that inner voice, it needs discernment too.

When what I tell myself actually disagrees with what God has said, which voice gets the final word?

Well, look at with me at verse 13.

You shall not, I mean, you shall, rather, you shall be blameless before the Lord your God.

Now, blameless here is a call to wholehearted faithfulness.

It carries a sense of being complete, whole, undivided, that your heart is fully devoted to the Lord.

In other words, don't have the Lord for worship and then have another God for guidance.

Or don't sing to God on Sunday and let the market tell you what you're worth on Monday.

Don't confess that God is your Lord while letting fear govern your life, or letting the critic have the final word about who you are.

God wants our undivided hearts.

He wants one that is blameless.

What gets in your ear gets in your heart.

So whose voice is forming you?

How are you doing at listening?

Are you undivided in hearing of the voice of God?

Maybe the answer is for us to withdraw from all these voices that are in the world, right?

All the voices that are around us.

No, but it's not about withdrawing, actually.

It's about knowing which voice is the Lord over all others.

It's knowing whose voice can you trust.

Notice the contrast here in verses 14 and 15 as we continue down the text.

Verse 14, these nations, they listen to fortune tellers and diviners.

And then verse 15 says, But God will raise up a prophet, and it is to him you shall listen.

God doesn't leave his people guessing, he gives them a prophet, and he calls them to trust in that prophet.

And this leads me to my second point: the voice of the Lord.

Let's continue reading 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 I want you to notice something before we even start talking about who that prophet is.

Look at all that God has done, just simply here in our text.

Verse 9, the Lord is what?

Giving them the land.

Verse 12, the Lord is driving out the nations.

Verse 14, the Lord has not given them over to practices.

Verse 15, the Lord will raise up the prophet.

Verse 18, the Lord will put his words in the prophet's mouth.

God is acting.

God is acting.

Before Israel asks, What will happen?

God has already been at work.

Before we panic about tomorrow, God is already in tomorrow.

That is the Christian alternative to the abominable practices, to trust in the voice of our God for today and for tomorrow.

Why?

Because He has done so many good things for us already.

And this gives us a very practical spiritual discipline.

We remember.

And that's the word we are teaching our fourth and fifth graders.

We zakar to remember God's faithfulness.

So when anxiety starts about the future, starts shouting at you, what's the evidence of God's faithfulness in the past that you can lean on to?

Israel is constantly told, and we are constantly told, remember what has God has done to bring you out of Egypt.

Remember the wilderness.

Remember the provision of God's hand.

Remember what the Lord has done.

Anxiety narrows our vision and stops up our ears.

But remembering widens our vision again and it opens up our ears.

You may not know what God is going to do, but you know something about who God is and what He's done.

And Providence says that our God, who was faithful yesterday, has not resigned from being our God for tomorrow.

But God doesn't merely just act.

We see here, this is a passage about the prophet.

And we see in verse 15, God speaks.

So this is the ways that I see God speaking in this text alone.

Verse 15, to him you shall listen.

Verse 16 is a recounting of the incident at Horeb.

Verse 18, I will raise up for them a prophet and I'll put my words in his mouth.

Verse 19, the person who does not listen to those words is ultimately not listening to God Himself.

And that word to listen, it means more just sound entering your ear.

It carries with this movement of hearing, of listening, and obeying.

Biblical listening moves towards allegiance.

Biblical listening is an undivided heart.

It's an undivided heart.

It's a blameless heart before and toward God's voice.

But let me pause here for a second.

Some of you are saying, Yes, we know that God speaks.

I have his scriptures.

I have I have seen him work out in many different ways, but I feel like I can't hear him right now.

Maybe you've been praying for your child who has a sickness or cancer and God still hasn't responded in their healing.

Maybe you've asked for a family member related to a disease as well, that a chronic addiction, and they still have not been healed from that.

Maybe you're pleading with the Lord about the direction of your vocation.

Should you go this way or that way?

And he still has not answered.

Maybe you're praying for a spouse, but are still unmarried.

And maybe you're waiting for children, and the Lord still has not given you that answer, and you're stuck in this waiting with the Lord.

Pete Gregg, he wrote this book, God on Mute.

And now that title, it describes exactly how I have felt in the past that I'm waiting for the Lord to speak, and I know he's speaking, but I cannot hear him.

When I open my Bible, it doesn't really explain why things aren't working out the way that I want.

Or it doesn't tell me when things are going to resolve itself.

I want to say real clearly that this does not mean that you have failed to listen.

This is why remembering becomes so important.

C.S.

Lewis has this amazing story, uh the Chronicle Chronicles of Narnia, all a lot of great stories there.

But in the magician's nephew, there's a boy named Diggory.

And this boy has a mother who is dying.

And he meets Aslan, the guy who uh the the the king, the one who's created the world, he meets this this this person and he says, Wow, this person, Aslan, he's the one who can, he's the one who can heal my mom.

I'm gonna ask him.

And he's desperate.

So he asks Aslan, he's like, Will you heal my mom?

And he desperately hopes for it, yes.

He desperately says, Will he say yes?

But he's also terrified of the no.

And but what surprises him is that Aslan doesn't give him the answer, yes or no.

And some of you know that experience.

You would rather have a yes or a no, but not living in the waiting.

Again, in the story, if you know the story, Diggory comes back again and he asks Aslan again, he says, Will you heal my mother?

But this time, instead of just looking at his paws, Diggory turns his face and he looks up in his eyes.

And what he sees is astonishing these great big teeth.

Tears are rolling down the lion's eyes.

Tears so large that Digory wonders whether or not Aslan actually feels more for his mother's suffering and sickness than he does.

And what Digory realizes is that not at that moment, Aslan didn't heal his mother, but what he realizes is that the lion cares.

God cares for you all, even in the waiting.

And while we wait for an answer, we hold on to the word that he has already given.

And we say with Thomas Akimpus, Oh Lord, you know what is best for me.

Give me what you will, how much you will, and when you will.

That's why we keep coming back to Scripture to remember that He cares.

Even when we cannot understand what He is doing, He cares.

This is why Bible reading isn't just information transfer.

Discipleship, learning to follow is fundamentally about training your ears.

Training your heart.

The question simply isn't, did I read my Bible today?

The deeper question is whose voice gets first and final authority over interpretation of my life?

Because who has your ear will eventually get your heart.

This is why one of the common rhythms at New City is scripture before screens.

There's so much wisdom in this practice to hear God's voice in scripture before all others.

And if you guys are struggling with reading your scripture, come find me at this service or come find one of the pastors.

We'd love to tell you about our practices.

I don't do it all the same way every day.

There's a steady di of how you can hear God's voice in the word.

A lot of different apps that help with that too.

Now let's keep going as we talk about God's word and scripture.

How do we know when we hear God's word?

Look down with me in verses 20 through 22.

We'll start in verse 20.

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.

Well, there's two ways a prophet can speak falsely.

It's really clear here in verse 20.

One, he can claim to speak the words of God when God didn't give him those words, or two, he can speak in the name of another God.

And God's judgment is pretty severe.

This person will die.

And the point is, you cannot put your words on top of God's.

Keep reading with me in verse 21.

And if you say in your heart, how may we know that the word that the Lord has spoken?

Such a good question.

How are we to know?

Well, keep reading.

That answer is right there in verse 22.

When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come true to pass or come true, that is the word that the Lord has not spoken.

The prophet has spoken presumptuously.

You need not be afraid of him.

Verse 22 gives a clear test of how we know.

If what the prophet announces does not happen, the Lord has not spoken that word.

The prophet has claimed an authority he does not have.

And notice that last part of verse 22.

You need not be afraid.

So a false prophet, the false voices of culture, even the false voice of the inner critic inside, their claims on your life do not bind your conscience.

The brokenness and ruin that come in through our ears does not bind our conscience.

It's our allegiance, our undivided heart, our ears, as they belong to the Lord who loves you.

That's what binds your conscience.

But why does God speak through a prophet?

Why put his words in a human mouth?

Why does God need a prophet at all?

Well, to answer that, we go back to verse 16.

Look down with me.

Just as you desired of the Lord your God in 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 anymore, lest I die.

Israel heard God's voice.

They had seen this great fire, and they feared that hearing him again would mean their certain death.

We cannot bear to hear from a holy God, because we will die.

In verse 17, right after this, God moves in mercy.

God moves in graciousness.

He says, And the Lord said to me, They are right in what they have spoken.

They are right.

We need God's voice, but we are a sinful people, and we can't stand before his unveiled glory and his unveiled holiness.

So, God, what does he do in mercy and grace?

He gives us a mediator, someone who can bring his word to us.

Look down in verse 18 again.

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

I will put my words in his mouth.

God, our God, the true and living God, the one who is the creator of the universe, he is going to put his words in a human mouth.

God so graciously mediates his presence.

He puts his word into the prophet's mouth.

And throughout the Old Testament, God keeps speaking through Moses, through Elijah, through Isaiah, through Jeremiah, and on.

I didn't mention a lot of them, and on and on and on.

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

John chapter 1, verse 14, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John 1:14

Acts chapter 3 actually quotes our passage for Deuteronomy and identifies Jesus as the prophet that would be raised up, the word that becomes the flesh, the one to whom we must listen.

Acts 3 · chapter mention

And Jesus is even greater than all the prophets in the in throughout Scripture.

We've heard this from our call to worship in Hebrews 1.

Long ago and many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these days, these last days, he has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.

He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

Prophets receive God's word, but Jesus is the word.

Only this prophet, only Jesus, upholds the universe, that last part of Hebrews, by the word of his power.

This is the great reversal in the garden.

The fall of humanity begins with us listening to the wrong voices.

The redemption is the gospel, listening, us listening to the gospel, announcing that the true word has entered the world.

In Genesis chapter 3, the serpent says, Did God really say?

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

And Jesus says, in John's Gospel, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.

The serpent speaks death.

Jesus, he speaks life.

The inner critic says to you, You have to prove yourself.

Jesus says, It is finished.

The world's voice says, Your failure defines you.

But the gospel says, There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

The world says, protect yourself at all costs.

But Jesus says, lose your life for me, and you will find it.

This is the recatechizing of the Christian heart.

We keep bringing the false voices of the world, of those around us, underneath the true voice, the Lord's voice.

Now remember verse 9 and verse 13 that we already looked at.

You shall not learn to follow, and you shall be blameless before the Lord your God.

Jesus is the only one who learned to follow the Father's will perfectly, to listen to his voice.

When tempted by Satan in the wilderness with false voice, the liar, Jesus responds perfectly with the voice of the Lord.

And I think it's because he held fast to the voice of the Father, saying, This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.

Jesus is the only one with an undivided heart.

His allegiance was to the Father, to do the Father's will, to listen to the Father's voice, and to follow that voice to the cross, even to the point of death.

God doesn't want us to sacrifice our sons and daughters to Him for blessing.

But instead, God the Father sends Jesus the Son as a sacrifice for our blessing, for our redemption.

The Lord has spoken through his son.

The prophet becomes the Lamb.

The word become the word that speaks life, gives his life.

This is the voice of the one who is calling out to us.

Beloved, who has your ear?

Let the word of God, which is Jesus' name in revelation, let him have your ear, because he wants your heart.

Let us pray.

Father, we are grateful for your steadfast love for us in this, that you have given your Son, who speaks a greater word by his blood.

And Jesus, you are the one who left your home to follow the Father's voice, even to the cross, so that we might be made whole by your word.

Spirit, fill us with gladness and shouting joy, and help us to trust in the steadfast word of you.

We give you the glory.

Amen.