When we’re desperate for direction, we tend to reach for whatever voice sounds most confident, be it horoscopes, politicians or just about anyone who seems to know something we don’t. Deuteronomy 18 speaks to our searching, reminding us God has never left His people without a trustworthy voice to follow, and what He promised there points somewhere specific.
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
The sermon uses the image of a “map” to describe how God has guided His people throughout history toward salvation. How does understanding Scripture as a deliberate, carefully drawn map—rather than a collection of random stories—change the way you approach reading and studying the Bible?
Pastor Tim discusses how people seek answers through false sources—psychics, horoscopes, celebrities, politicians, AI—instead of God’s word. What modern “false prophets” or sources of guidance do you find most tempting to turn to, and why do you think they appeal to us so strongly?
Moses warned the Israelites about false prophets and told them to test a prophet’s words by whether they come to pass. How can we apply this principle today to evaluate whether teachers and leaders are speaking faithfully for God, especially when we can’t always wait for fulfillment?
The sermon contrasts two understandings of God: one where He is holy and distant (causing fear), and one where He is both holy and deeply caring. How does recognizing God’s love alongside His holiness change our willingness to pray, seek His guidance, and trust His direction—even when that direction feels uncertain or uncomfortable?
Moses pointed to a coming Prophet ultimately fulfilled in Jesus—the eternal, perfect Mediator who never fails and never leaves. How does seeing Jesus as that final Prophet transform our relationship with God compared to relying on temporary human leaders or lesser sources of guidance? And how does regularly remembering His body and blood in communion strengthen us against turning to those lesser sources?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
Oh, you know, the battery, which is brand new, is going dead. I’ll be right back. That’s fine, not your fault.
OK, well, these were fresh, so we’ll see how long another set go. It’s sort of like, you know, you go on the vacation, you get that map, and then the car doesn’t start, and you think, oh, boy, and someone jumps it, and you think, I hope we can get all the way home. Maybe we won’t stop at the rest stop. But we used to be able to get those maps, and I loved those as a kid. It was fun. Like, I remember the ones back at the height of all the different country artists down in Branson. We never went to the shows. That wasn’t really the thing that we did down there, but I still loved looking at the map. And you’d see the little singer waving on the side of his building or whatever, you know, that whole map.
And it was meant to do two things. One, it was meant to be useful for the person purchasing or receiving the map, and two, to draw your attention to those places that were really important, or at least the places that were important to the map maker because they’d gotten paid to put them on it. So not every detail was on there, but really, really important ones were. And you think about maps in general, and they’re a variation on the same theme. A map shows what’s important.
You can’t put every detail. If you did, what you’d basically do is take a satellite image. Let’s say you wanted to show a map of St. Charles. Just show a satellite image of St. Charles that fits whatever size the map is, or put it on your phone, right? We can pull up the satellite image. But you know when you’re lost, a lot of times I find it easier to turn off the satellite imagery and just see the basic drawing because I don’t need to see how many trees are in the spot or what the rooftop looks like. I just need to know where I am and where I’m going.
Well, a lot of times when we come to God’s word, that’s our attitude, and yet we forget that he’s actually provided throughout history a map to salvation, a map to his care. And so we go in and say, well, I’m having this problem right now, and so I need that. And what God is saying is, well, let me show you the map that actually gets you to where you really need to go. You think you need to go to this place or that place, right? You could go get one of those fun travel maps and say, but it doesn’t have this particular business on it. Well, maybe not, but here are the ones that you’re probably going to want to see if you’re going to make a touristy vacation of your trip.
Well, what we need is a map to life and a map to what’s really important in life. We’ve been looking at John 5 on Monday nights, and what we see is the Pharisees, they’d memorized not just the map, they had all the topography down. They actually had the satellite image memorized in their head, but they couldn’t remember any of the key details because they had all kinds of stuff, but they weren’t looking where God had directed them.
Over the next few weeks, what we’re going to do in this series of Better Map is we’re going to go through some of the areas in the Old Testament that we don’t necessarily look at as often when we’re talking about prophecies of the coming Messiah, and we’re going to use those to see how God just keeps shouting over and over again about His faithfulness and what He was going to do for the people, what He was going to do for us.
It’s not just, say, Isaiah 9 or Genesis 3:15 or some of those other passages like that that we go to all the time that we’ll read about at Christmastime and say, oh, you know, the Messiah was here. No, over and over and over and over again, God said, let me draw this map so you can actually see what I’m doing.
And seeing that reminds us of what He’s doing for us, but it also reminds us just how faithful He is to make sure that we hear it, that we can find it. He brought up all the spots on the map and put Himself there over and over again. You’re looking at the whole map and every single spot, what do you know, behind the building is Jesus peeking around saying, I’m coming to save you.
So let’s pray tonight as we see how God did that over history that we’d be reminded that the same faithful God who did that thousands of years ago was the faithful God who calls you and me today. Would you pray with me, please?
Father, would you help us to see just how beautifully you have told over and over and over again of your faithfulness, of your redemptive plan, your desire to have your people safely in your presence, of your love that makes that so. And as we see that and are reminded that you didn’t just say it once or twice. It wasn’t a trick question that if we happen to be listening closely enough, we caught it. No, you’ve placed it over and over everywhere that we would see it.
And that because of that reminds us of just how much you love us and how determined our God is to redeem and protect and love and cherish his people. Pray this in Jesus’ precious name, amen.
Let’s go ahead and turn to Deuteronomy once again. We’re going to go to chapter 18, verse 15 tonight. And I lost my clicker. So I’m just going to depend on, everything’s a little scattered after Faith Tomer Fest. I’m going to just, yeah, thank you, Jeff. I have a helpful pilot tonight. I knew I was missing something.
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.
We need a connection to the truth. That is the most basic truth that I can share. And I think it’s one that we somewhat intuitively know that we need it. And yet, where’s it going to be?
Well, Moses here, as I mentioned earlier, he’s in the process of handing off to the people. He’s going to hand to them, here is, I’ve been with you, but now it’s time for me to leave. And I’m going to leave. And the question then is, can you find what you need?
And that was not an intended illustration, but I’m going with it. Can you find what you need? Because the people were potentially going to think, the way that we know where God is, is Moses. And Moses is gone, and therefore God is gone.
But Moses wasn’t there so that they could follow Moses. Moses was there so they could follow the Lord. And so what Moses is saying is, God’s not going to forget you just because I’m gone. In fact, you’re just beginning to see what he does. Yes, he spoke through me. Yes, I’m here instructing you right now, and you need to pass down what I’ve instructed to you, but God’s going to continue to raise up those who speak for me.
Now, the other nations, they had ways to figure out what the gods allegedly wanted. They worshipped all kinds of gods, and they believed those gods had different powers. And so they had different means, ecstatic experiences, where, for example, some prophets, they would cut themselves and bleed all over the place, and that was supposed to put them in a frenzy where they could experience the divine power.
Or you’d have people who would divine using different means. We’ve probably all heard people talking about them. Maybe even this time of year, we hear people say, oh, come over to my Halloween party, and we’ll read tea leaves or get out the Ouija board. Don’t. Please don’t.
Because right before this, what does God say to them? He says, I’m going to speak to you through the way I’m telling you I’m going to speak to you. And you shouldn’t seek another way. Don’t seek ways to divine my will. I am a God who actually can speak.
You don’t need those things. And what was true both then and now is that those other means that people seek out, to the extent that they do anything at all, and sometimes it may be they do nothing at all, but to the extent they do, we need to understand they are not of God. They’re coming from what is evil in the world.
And the Lord says, you don’t want anything to do with that. Instead, listen to those who actually speak my words. I have spokespeople. They’re called prophets. And I’ll raise them up, and they will instruct you, and you follow them.
You don’t need tea leaves. You don’t need to conjure up the dead. You just need to actually listen to me.
And yet, what do we do over and over again? We try to figure out other ways. Strikes me listening to the radio. How often now? It’s amazing. And I’m not sure if this is on every channel, but on the Mighty Mocs, if you have KMOX on, a lot of times these days, there’s a psychic line that advertises.
And it used to be, I remember as a kid, if you watched, like, I’d watch reruns of Star Trek, and it was sort of later in the evening, and then there’d be, like, you know, the psychics you could call that they advertised at that time.
But this is the middle of the day, one o’clock, two o’clock in the afternoon. They’re advertising psychics. And they advertise them a lot.
I don’t have any idea how much this one particular company has paid KMOX to advertise so much. But what strikes me is they’re paying that much because people are calling.
You don’t keep advertising if no one ever responds. You keep advertising when people call and pay money, right? You gain new customers. And so people are desperate for answers.
And the commercials say, well, we have the best psychics. We reject all but the very best psychics. I don’t know how you tell that. But that’s what they claim. And if it’s not life-changing, we’ll refund your first call.
I wonder who also determines if it’s life-changing. Probably the psychic that says, I can see your future, and this is life-changing to you.
Why do people do it? Why would someone call up and spend $20 a call or whatever it is to ask someone they’ve never talked to before, whose job is to convince you that they have something important to say to you, something about your life, and to say it in such a vague way that you won’t be convinced that they’ve made it up? Why would we do that?
Well, same reason that Moses is warning the people here. We want to know the map. But God’s given us that souvenir map, and there’s Jesus in every corner, but you see him over and over again. And we say, yeah, but I want to know what to do right at this particular bend. And I want to know what the trees are right there. It’s not drawn on the map.
We want sure answers. The funny thing is, the more desperate we are for sure answers, the more likely we are to turn to questionable sources.
And for those of us who have been in the church, who have been following Jesus, a lot of times we already have that built-in revulsion to say Ouija boards or that sort of thing. I know I’ve been told. I had a conversation the other night with someone I’ve known since I was a kid. I don’t go if there’s a party going on and they’re going to be trying to convince me they’re going to be trying to deal with evil spirits and stuff. I just don’t go. And I said, that’s a great idea. That’s a wonderful thing. Okay, so we have that, but what else do we do?
Well, there’s sort of the milder versions, right? You open up the online paper these days and you go into the horoscope page. And I intentionally force myself not to remember my sign because I don’t even want that in there. I’m not criticizing if you do. If you know and you can’t forget it, that’s not on you.
But right, you go there and we kind of know it doesn’t make sense. And yet we still say, well, maybe this will tell me what’s going on.
Or we say, okay, truly, I’m not going to touch the spiritual realm. What I’m going to do is open up TikTok and listen to the celebrity on there tell me how to live my life. Because I can get in bite-sized portions. It’s easy to digest and it probably doesn’t make me all that uncomfortable. I’ll do that.
Maybe it’s politicians, an awful lot of us today. It’s amazing how many conversations I have today with folks. And I think you probably all had those conversations too, where our opinions on a wide variety of things, we have very strong opinions and they come from people marginally justified by God’s word, but they’re really coming from whichever politician we favor.
And if the politician says it and the Bible doesn’t seem to go along with it, we criticize the person who preaches the Bible for not saying what the politician said. Is that better than tapping the evil spirits of the spiritual realm?
Well, I think it’s good that we’re not doing that, but I think it’s good that we’re not doing that. I think it’s good that we’re not doing that, but we’re still looking to the wrong source.
Are we looking? Maybe it’s AI. I’ll ask, chat GPT, what should I do? And you know, as a tool, I’ve talked about AI before. I don’t think it’s an unhelpful thing to ask it to organize something.
We’ve seen that here at the church. Some of the things that can do that are kind of neat. But we need to remember it’s a tool. It can’t give you life advice that’s necessarily going to be right.
You shouldn’t trust it to tell you about spiritual things. You should, we should go to God’s word. He says, I’m going to speak to you. Listen to me.
And too often we want the easier route. Now maybe we say, but I’m nervous about approaching God. I’m nervous about opening up God’s word because when I open up God’s word, one, maybe it convicts me on something. I think that’s uncomfortable. Or two, I don’t understand and I don’t want people to think I’m stupid because I don’t understand.
Well, if it’s convicting us, it’s actually doing, that’s not a bug. That’s a feature of it. That’s how it’s supposed to work. God intends for us to be convicted. That means that us coming to God’s word, the Holy Spirit applying the truth of his word to us, is what’s happening is what’s supposed to happen.
Because if we really come to God’s word and say, I want to be a follower of God’s word, we should expect we’re not going to be in accord with it every place and that we need him to actually correct us. That’s how it’s supposed to be.
If we’re scared to admit that we don’t understand it all, well, let me just say right up here right now, I don’t understand it all. God’s word is rich and deep.
And if anyone says they understand every page of it, those are the people I tend to think don’t understand it very much at all.
And so if you don’t understand something, well, I might understand that and you may not, but there’s something you may understand and I don’t. And that’s why we get together and do Bible studies. That’s why we come to God’s word together in the services and why we do Sunday School Express and why there’s things like BSF and other opportunities around in our Christian world to keep digging deeper into God’s word.
The reason we do that is because we don’t understand it all, but it’s good to come to it and be transformed by it.
What about encountering God himself? He’s holy.
The Israelites, well, they were nervous about that. Moses continues in verse 16. He says,
If we go back a little bit, this is what Moses is referring to. Deuteronomy 5:22.
On two tablets of stone and gave them to me. And as soon as you heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness, while the mountain was burning with fire, you came near to me, all the heads of your tribes and your elders. And you said,
And we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire. To this day, we have seen God speak with man and man still live. Now, therefore, why should we die? For this great fire will consume us. If we hear the voice of the Lord our God anymore, we shall die.
For who is there of all flesh that has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of the fires we have and has still lived? Go near, I’m saying to Moses, you go and do it. Go near and hear all that the Lord our God will say and speak to us all that the Lord our God will speak to you. And we will hear and do it.
And the Lord heard your words when you spoke to me. And the Lord said to me, I have heard the words of this people which they have spoken to you. They are right in all that they have spoken.
Oh, that they had such a heart as this always to fear me and to keep all my commandments that it might go well with them and their descendants forever.
People say, we recognize God is holy. He is holy and we are not.
And right there we see, we were talking about this during the time of confession. Our problem, we can say that at some time and then we forget it. They forgot it, right? They, God is so holy, we can’t even listen to his voice. He will kill us just to keep hearing his voice.
And a few days later, right? God isn’t serving a desirable enough menu for us. Why doesn’t he snap to and actually provide us something decent?
God says, if only you would keep that heart of recognizing how holy I am.
Isaiah in Isaiah 6, the call of Isaiah, he encounters the Lord in his throne room and he says that he is doomed because he hears and sees the presence of God. And he says, I can’t survive this.
What does God do? God cleanses him. He doesn’t destroy him.
It’s right to recognize God’s holiness. And if we have a little bit of intimidation as we come to his word, if as we pray to him, it intimidates us at times and we’re not casual about it, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
The problem is, the Israelites, the Israelites are not the only ones who are not casual about it. The problem is, the Israelites understood God’s holiness, but they didn’t understand his care. They understood they needed a mediator, but they didn’t understand what kind of mediator they needed.
So Moses, you go and do it for us. And this is actually part of the problem. This is where it’s going to become a problem later on, because when Moses dies, well, if he’s the one that’s mediated for us, if he’s the one that’s made everything okay for us, then what happens when Moses isn’t here to tell us?
God’s still there. God still cares. But they are associating their security with Moses, not God.
We need a mediator, but it’s transformative if we understand just what kind of mediator that Moses is truly talking about.
Because if we understand the care that God has for us, we start to understand, well, yes, we’re recognizing his holiness, and we rightly react to that.
God doesn’t intend us harm. He loves us. He didn’t call his people out of Egypt because he wanted to destroy them. He called his people out of Egypt to be his treasured possession.
And over time, time and time again, why does he redeem his people? Why is the church called the Bride of Christ? Because the Lord loves his church. He doesn’t hate you. He doesn’t want to devour you in fire. He wants to redeem you and restore you and make you the person that he intends you to be, and it is that he intends me to be.
A friend of mine used to quip that he never, ever, ever prays to God, Lord, send me. You know, lots of people like to say that. We sometimes even sing it, and it sounds good. There we are back in Isaiah 6 again. Sounds really good and spiritual, right? Lord, send me where you want to send me.
And he said, I’m never going to pray that because I don’t want the Lord to send me someplace I don’t want to go.
He said, I might pray that and God might send me to some far-flung village someplace in a different continent that doesn’t have creature comforts. And I don’t want to do that, so I’m not going to pray that.
And a lot of us may not actually make that quip, but I think we kind of think that. I might say something and God might do this thing that’s horrible for me that I don’t want to do, and he’s going to stick me someplace I don’t want to be. And so I better get someone to pray for me who’s a professional prayer, who will know what to pray for me so no wrong words get tossed out there that might cause me to go someplace I don’t want to go, right?
God, I was asking if I could go to Santa Monica this winter. I didn’t say Siberia. That’s not how God works.
And I think that’s the wrong understanding of mediator, right? We’re afraid we say the wrong thing that God’s going to do something that we don’t want to do.
And if we just keep our mouths shut and stay away from him and his holiness and his power, that will be okay, maybe.
And I don’t mean to criticize my friend because it was partially tongue-in-cheek. It’s also completely realistic, right? It’s what we do. But we ought not to do it.
First off, if God wants to send us someplace, he’s going to send us someplace. If he has Siberia in your future because he knows that’s what’s good for you, what you were made to do, you can resist it like Jonah resisted going to Nineveh. It’s not going to do any good. He’s going to get you there.
But also the assumption is, well, he might send me someplace that I’m really not meant to thrive. It’s not really where I’m supposed to be.
And if we understand that God loves us, well, it might not be where I want to be in this moment. It might not feel good in this moment, but what do you know? It’s what is actually best for me as a creature made by God.
He’s not going to send you someplace just to watch you suffer. Just because he says, oh, well, this would be funny. That’s not how God works.
Now sometimes, and with that little joke, it actually kind of played out, that can play out this way.
We say, well, you know, if I prayed to God, would you send me to where I need to be next? I’m not sure where I’m going, but I pray that God might send me someplace I don’t want to be.
Well, the alternative is, well, I’ll just figure out where I want to be and I’ll go there myself.
I don’t need to be there. I don’t need to be there. I don’t need to be there. I don’t need to be there.
Right? I don’t know what to do next, but I might not like what God wants me to do next. I’ll just figure it out myself.
So then, even though we recognize God’s holiness, we decide to become our own mediators, essentially, of life. We will mediate life. We will figure it out.
That’s why it’s so important we understand that, yes, God is holy, and yes, we do need a mediator, but God is holy and also caring.
And so, as we approach Him, He’s not looking for the gotcha statement where we misstate, and He says, Oh, I was hoping someone would pray that.
He loves you. He doesn’t just provide a mediator that will get us in trouble. He provides a faithful mediator of truth who points us to life.
Listen to the false kinds of mediators we might run into. False prophets. Verse 17.
Oh, this is the wrong verse 17 there. I’m just gonna go right on past that. I love Psalm 18, but that’s not what we want to look at tonight. We’re back in Deuteronomy 18 here.
Listen to what he says in verse 17. He says, And the Lord said to me, They are right in what they have 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 will require it of him.
For 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 will 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 may not, you need not be afraid of him.
Just a little cherry on top of that. There was a criminal code for false prophets back in Israel, and we may not get sent as followers of the Lord someplace that we ought not to go, but if you were a false prophet, you would be executed. They would get sent someplace they did not want to go, because they had brought harm on the people. That was how serious it was.
That says, I love my people. I don’t want people claiming to speak for me, misspeaking in my name.
Now, from the most part, we don’t run into a lot of people claiming to be a prophet today. I know there are people that do, but by and large, but we need to understand more generally, the concern here are people who speak for the Lord, but don’t speak faithfully for the Lord.
Now, none of us are going to speak perfectly faithfully every single moment of every single day, but we should look and see if someone’s actually generally speaking well for the Lord.
There were false prophets that were going to try to claim the people of Israel, point them to other gods, point them to doing things that the Lord didn’t want them to do over and over and over again, false teachers that would do that.
And the same is still true today.
And just like those divining techniques seem like maybe an easier way to find out what we should do than actually studying God’s word and praying over it and being the body of Christ together and trying to work through what we should do in life together, so too a lot of times those false prophets, those false teachers, they have a great appeal because they often say exactly what we were hoping to hear.
Something that builds up our egos, something that directs us in a direction we’d like to go.
We say, well, but how do I know in the time? It says if what they say isn’t fulfilled, but what if I don’t know yet? Well, how do I know in the time?
But what if I don’t know yet?
That’s why God gave us his word. The prophets and those whom God spoke through, he didn’t just give them, you didn’t just have a prophet and then that prophet was gone and you moved on and you waited for the next one.
He built a body of work for people to look at. And when we look at his word, we can say, well, is this person speaking faithfully, truly in accordance with this or not?
So when we’re coming together to study God’s word, you should ask the question, is Tim telling me what’s actually here? That’s a good question to ask.
I pray that I am. I hope that I am. That’s my aspiration. That’s what I seek to do.
But that’s something that we should ask anytime we’re going to allow ourselves to be taught. Is this actually teaching what God says?
And we don’t have to wait for something to be fulfilled because we can compare it to what God’s already provided, but even more so the one he’s provided.
Not what early in rabbinical tradition is they’re going over what Moses has said here. They started to say, you know, there’s something interesting about what Moses said about coming prophets.
You see, he doesn’t actually say coming prophets. What does he say? A coming prophet.
Back to verse 15.
The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers, a prophet.
Now, it does seem as though Moses at least initially had in mind, and it seems like that’s how the people took it, and rightly so, that God was going to continue to provide a voice for people to listen to.
And we see that in the era of the judges. We see it with the prophets that are around, for example, King David. And before that, King Saul. We see it later on in the prophets that write the books of the prophets.
We see that all the way up to John the Baptist speaking of the coming salvation that the Lord was providing.
But for example, in John 1, verse 21, the people look at John and say, they said, they asked him, what then are you, Elijah? He said, I am not. Are you the prophet? And he answered no.
What they meant by that is that as people looked at this, they said there is a singular there.
And it seems like in view, there is an ultimate prophet, someone who fulfills this role and doesn’t fulfill it temporarily, doesn’t fulfill it for a little bit of time, doesn’t fulfill it imperfectly. He fulfills it. And what do you know? John pointed to the one who did.
People ask Jesus this. Are you the prophet?
Peter preaching in Acts chapter three. Moses said, the Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you.
And the apostles explained, and this has been fulfilled. Jesus has come. You’ve been waiting for the prophet. Well, wait no more, he’s here.
Hebrews chapter one says that in the past days, God spoke through the prophets, but now he’s spoken through his son.
You don’t have to look for a limited human mediator who’s available for a little bit of time.
Now you can look to the one divine mediator who will never fail and never die, never go away.
And he will come.
Why do we look at everything else? Why do we turn to all those easy answers when God’s actually provided the best answer?
Do I know someone’s teaching the truth, is speaking well for our Lord? What are we hearing about Jesus? Is he the hero? Is he the one who’s going to save us?
We need to make sure we’re actually getting what is actually there in God’s word.
If we do, we’re encountering the truth. And that’s what we really need.
When we realize that we need a map to life, and that’s what we’re going to be exploring over these next weeks, what we’re recognizing is we’re lost.
And when we’re lost, you don’t want to ask someone who’s been to some, the place that you’re at once, and you don’t want to ask someone who’s been to the place that you’re at once, and you don’t want to ask someone who’s been to some, the place that you’re at once before, and says, I think you turn this way, and then you turn that way. And I don’t know, there might’ve been a fork in the road or, you know, somehow it’ll work out. Just keep going and you’ll eventually get there. You don’t want that.
You want someone who actually knows where, better yet, the person who lives there, who understands.
That’s what we have in Jesus.
Beginning of the week, there was a big health scare over at Dolly Parton. And it’s kind of interesting watching people react because, you know, Parton, she’s, her first professionally recorded album was in 1967.
And her last, which is here to date, her most popular, it went up higher on the charts than any other album she’s released.
Rockstar came out just a couple years ago. And she did a rock album. It’s pretty good.
And so it was interesting listening to people as this health scare came out because it sort of doesn’t really depend on your age.
Here’s this celebrity singer who doesn’t find herself constantly mired in scandals and does a lot of wonderful charitable things and so on, who’s sick. And I saw a lot of people concerned.
Her sister posted and said, we need to get prayer warriors praying for Dolly. She’s really going through some health struggles.
Well, then Dolly Parton posted a video herself. And she said, yeah, I do have some health problems. I didn’t take care of myself the way I needed to after my husband died.
And there have been some issues, but I’m not dead yet. And I don’t think God’s done with me yet.
I just can’t tour right now. I can’t do live performances just now. I’m hoping to be able to be able to do that again. I think I will.
And it struck me, if we’re confused about something, you need to go to the right source, right? Her sister meant well, but once everyone could hear from Dolly, well, you want to hear what Dolly has to say. You don’t want to hear what Dolly’s sister has to say.
Well, likewise. Why are we satisfied with second, third, fourth hand, what God says when God actually provides his word?
Why do we have all of these other self-help gurus that we run to when God actually offers us the exact map that we need?
I’m not saying there isn’t a lot of wisdom in this world that can help us along the way, but am I looking at the right map to set my overall trajectory?
What does God call us to do? What was Moses talking about here? Is he prepared to hand over to a new generation?
Listen to the voice that God sends. What do we see over and over again? The people are called, what do we see over and over again?
The people are called over and over and over and over again throughout God’s word to listen to what he’s saying.
To pray, to hear, or as we may do today, read and to trust.
And it is scary at times. Sometimes we don’t know where we’re going, but if we know that we’re on the right course, if the one who actually knows where we’re going is telling us where to go, we should change that equation.
We don’t have to wonder if he’s gonna send us someplace we don’t wanna go because he desires safety for us, safety for you.
We can trust his leading. See, God has mapped out his care. That’s what Moses wanted them to understand.
It’s not about me. I may go, but God’s care hasn’t.
And what I’ve given you, what I’ve given you is pointing you in the direction to life.
Did Moses understand fully what he was saying when he talked about the prophet that the prophet that would come would do something far better than Moses ever could do?
Moses at one point offered his life for the people, but he couldn’t actually save, he couldn’t save the people.
But someday there would be a prophet, the prophet who would come, because he was both fully God and fully man and perfect, would come and offer his life and actually save the people.
Did Moses understand that fully? I don’t think so in this moment.
But God was speaking through him.
God, as he maps out his care, gives us the route to life.
We can trust it. Know he means good through it.
Would you pray with me, please?
Father, we do pray that you would help us to trust in you.
It’s scary at times to trust in you, Lord. We don’t know where we’re going.
We want to know details that maybe you don’t choose to tell us at this moment.
But we do pray that you would help us to trust in you.
Maybe you don’t choose to tell us at this moment.
Lord, help us to trust that you are good and what you do is good.
You are faithful. And help us when we’re tempted to look at other sources of wisdom, of other sources of direction and set aside your word, because it seems like it’ll be simpler or affirm what we want, or we’re just afraid to come to you.
Lord, may none of those things be true, but that we would come to you, that we would hear your word, that we would listen to your word.
We do so because we realize that you love us and intend good for us, in fact, eternal life for us.
Pray this in Jesus’ precious name.
Amen.
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