Deuteronomy 8:1-18 | A Shepherd's Heart | Don Romano

Good morning.

I don't know about you, but it seems to me like we've been in deuteronomy for about 40 years, lost in the wilderness.

Well, fortunately, we're still in Deuteronomy this morning.

You know, it's one thing to go through and teach what it says, and then there's another thing to go back and look and say, well, in light of what it says, what do we do?

So we went through the whole Book of Deuteronomy, and then we went back and looked, kind of an overview, and now we're looking at little sections, and we're asking, as we're going along, what does it mean for us? What. How does it influence what we do? And so we're looking at the Book of Deuteronomy again.

And before we get into it, I want to let you know something about me.

Okay. On my. That's my cheering section over there. On my dad's side of our family, I am the oldest living person.

And on her side of her dad's family, Debbie has one older brother. So she and I together kind of make up the patriarchal and matriarch of our family.

And I gotta tell you, I don't think that my children, or my brother or sister, my cousins, my nieces or nephews, they just don't quite get the weight of what that means.

I take it as a great responsibility before the Lord that I am the patriarch of our family.

And these my last few days, whether measured in weeks or years or decades, I'm thinking I probably have decades left. Well, the Lord knows that these days, these are the last opportunity that I have to infuse the life of faith, as I understand it, into the hearts of those who come after me.

I sense the weight of legacy.

Will I be able to communicate to those I love just what I have come to understand regarding what it means to follow the Lord? Will I be able to impress their hearts with the gravity of what that means?

The world they live in will always try to press them into its mold by way of memes and social media, influencers, podcasters, politicians, pundits. Will those who come behind me have what it takes to resist that pressure and submit instead to. To having their hearts transformed by the renewing of their minds according to the word of the Lord instead of the spirit of the age.

In short, I think I'm asking what will my last words to my family be? And will I try to compress them into some sound bite at the end of life, or will I make them a constant message for the rest of my life, I have another responsibility, by the way, as the associate pastor of Renovation Church. All of the same questions arise in my mind concerning you.

In short, I think it's what is God calling us to as a fellowship?

What is he calling us to do? And how are we go. How are we to go about making disciples, making ourselves into better disciples?

Well, this morning is a revealing of my heart.

It's also a revealing of the heart of Pastor Alex and the hearts of all of our elders. And we believe that it is the heart of the Lord as well as part of his overall plan for Renovation Church. For the past six years, we've been asking you to pray that the Lord would reveal what he wants to do in Bartlett, what he wants us to become. What is his plan for Renovation Church? Actually, at the time we started, we weren't called Renovation Church.

We were called Alliance Bible Church of Bartlett. And becoming Renovation Church is part of what we believe the Lord has been calling us to. We call ourselves Renovation Church for our sake because it reminds us that God is renewing us. It reminds us that we haven't arrived. It reminds us there's still work to do.

There are still places for each of us to grow.

I think I can reduce all of that to one thought.

That what God wants most is for us to be disciples of Jesus Christ and not merely interested in him. So we should pray together before I get into Deuteronomy. So if you would, please pray with me. Father, as you've just heard, we believe that you are answering what you've called us to pray about for the last six years. And as you answer, we recognize that it's not the next six years that we're talking about, it's the next 60.

So, Father, filled into our lives this morning by your Holy Spirit, who we invite. Holy Spirit, come and manifest your presence in a way that we have not sensed before, in a new and exciting way, and raise us up to new life every day, renewed. That we might be the people that you are calling us to be in Jesus name and for the sake of the Father's Kingdom. Amen.

Well, I just mentioned my last words.

Last words.

A lot of emphasis is placed on a person's last words, especially the last words of famous people like Moses, he was pretty famous. The last words of important people like Moses, he was pretty important. Or the last words of people. Thank you. Who were important in our lives.

I'm not old enough to say like Moses. Okay, Some of us may be close to that. It's not me.

No. The last words of people who are close to us. I mean, we remember people sometimes by their last words. Last words can give us something to think about for a long time, something to think about as we move forward through our own lives. Last words can provide new perspectives for us when we consider things in life, or they can emphasize something.

We often analyze the last words of people and try to understand the things thinking of that person as they spoke those words, or whether those words even have any significance of their own. Last words can be profound.

They can be ludicrous. Sometimes they can be cryptic.

As I prepared this message, I looked up the last words of a lot of people and I've discovered each one of these things. There last words can be confusing or they can be clarifying. They can be mystical, or in some places they can be satirical or sarcastic or sardonic.

It's said that Salvador Dali's last words were where's my clock? Sardonic.

Last words can be honoring. They can be humorous. They can be insulting. They can reveal things, they can conceal things. They can encourage or discourage.

They can be edifying or destructive. Last words can give life or they can consume it.

They can light the way for us or obscure the way. They can give hope or sow despair. Last words, powerful things. Personally though, I don't think last words are really all that important.

Actually, in my thinking, last words are like the touch up paint that they put on a new house before they deliver it to the new owner. The beautifying final touches look good, but they are actually only good if they reflect a rock solid structure. No sense putting paint on a house that's fallen apart. So at this point, you might expect me to point to the last words of some famous person or people as examples of any of these things, but I'm not going to do that.

So hopefully your train of thought is now derailed because there's something I have to interject from somewhere else. And so there's an overarching principle that covers everything. I'm about to talk about an umbrella, if you will, that covers the whole concept. And it appears in Proverbs chapter 4, verse 23, which reads this. Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.

Here's how it works. Your life is like a garden. Your heart determines what gets watered.

You may want a harvest of tasty vegetables, but if your heart is only watering thorns and thistles, The vegetables are not going to be that great.

Just let that sink for a minute. That whole concept Umbrellas, everything.

So here's the great example of last words. I looked up many, found several whose last words reflected their entire lives. I only have one best example and you will have to look it up for yourselves if you want to know what Billy Graham said in his last public statement. But I will tell you this about it. His last words were a summary of the things he allowed his heart to water in his life.

The things that make his last words important is that those words revealed the rock solid structure of a life built on the passion of his heart.

In other words, if you had paid attention to Billy Graham life, you could guess the meaning of his last words without ever hearing them.

You would have read his heart in his life. His last words are the same story.

That's why I don't think last words are all that important. It's what you say all along the way.

This truth cannot be avoided. What people say comes from what overflows in their heart.

So here's the main point of this message based on Deuteronomy chapter 8, which you can turn to so that you can follow along. When I finally get into it, here's the main point. Your life is making a statement.

Is it what you want to be saying?

Moses was no different.

Yes. He made an error in judgment along the way. It had huge implications. He even spoke about it for a long time. He had a hard time letting it go.

But it was not the narrative of his life.

It was not what his heart watered. It is a footnote. We shouldn't let it get in the way. So I'm going to guide us through Deuteronomy 8:1 18.

As I do, I. I'm going to be referring back to several points. So I'm going to tell you what those points are up front. You can look at the insert in your bulletin if you know what. You might not have printed those out. So it's going to be hard for you to follow unless you can write really quickly.

So I just want to remind you of this. Your life is making a statement. Is it what you mean to be saying?

In the 40 years that Moses spent leading the children of Israel, his life spoke one statement. It is what his life, his heart watered. And it's this. You might want to write this if you have some paper. If you honor the Lord as God and follow him, he will honor his promise for your good.

That is the statement of Moses life. If you honor the Lord as God and follow him, he will honor his promise for your good. I kind of compress that from A lot of statements.

So here's the points. There are three main points in this passage. The first one is, honor the Lord as God.

Honor the Lord as God. And Moses gives us a little bracketed summary of what that means. Remain humble.

Moses illustrates this point. God led you in the wilderness, in a cloud and in fire.

He led you in a cloud and fire. He fed you when you could not feed yourself. Remain humble. Know your limits. He sustained you.

Your clothes did not wear out. Your feet did not swell.

Moses. Second point. Pardon me, Moses. Second point. Follow the Lord.

Follow him. Keep his commandments.

And he supported that in two ways. Moses in this passage is going to say, God trained you to follow him by repeatedly testing your heart to see if you would follow Him. He trained you by testing you. So, second way that Moses supports this point in his life, God builds discipline into your life. Like children.

He loves, he builds. He trains you to follow him, because that's what a loving parent does.

Third point. God honors his covenant, his promise. And he's honored it for you by leading you for 40 years. He's led you. He hasn't left you.

He's shaded you in the heat of the day. He has given you light and heat at night by being that cloud to cover you and that fire to warm you.

And he will continue to honor his covenant by giving you a land, a name, and a heritage.

So those are the things that we're about to look at. Why did I do it this way? Give you all the points and the sub points. And now I'm going to look at the passage. It's because these things are mixed up in this passage all over the place.

And I want you to be able to see them as we go through. So I'm going to look at Deuteronomy, chapter 8, starting at verse 1 and going through verse 18. I'll read it and I'll make a comment or two as we go along. Moses says to the congregation, the whole commandment that I commanded you today, you shall be careful to do in order that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land that the Lord swore to give your fathers. See, that's the whole he's honoring his covenant thing.

But that's also. Follow him. He's given you the commands.

Verse 2. You shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these 40 years in the wilderness that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandment or not. Those points are in there.

Honor The Lord as God remain humble. Recognize he led you, he supplied for you v3 and he humbled you, let you hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, in order that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Here's Moses saying, For 40 years the Lord has done this. Yes, he's used me to speak these things to you. And the character of my life has been to remind you of these things, to walk with you through them, to teach you how to draw near to the Lord and to recognize when it's time to repent and return.

But know this. You can't do this on your own. You can't get through the wilderness. God fed you when you couldn't feed yourself, And he gave you more than bread to fill your belly. He gave you his words that you might live, but not just be alive.

Prosper. He just listed the ways that he's prospered you so far. And listen to this in verse 4. Your clothing did not wear out on you, and your foot did not swell these 40 years. Why not?

Because God was undertaking to fulfill his covenant. He's honoring his covenant for you. Verse 5. Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, the LORD your God disciplines you. He's not talking there about punishment.

He's talking about training. The Lord provided food for you. He gave you his word that you might prosper. He did not allow your clothes to wear out or your feet to swell so that you could continue to follow and serve him. It's all what he's done.

Verse 6. So keep the commandments of the LORD your God by walking in his ways and fearing him.

How did God's commandments come to the people? Moses went up to Sinai and got them. He brought them down from God to the people. Moses at the beginning of this 40 years, started by interceding for the people, by providing for them a way to draw near to God.

Verse 7. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land. A land of brooks, of water, of fountains and springs flowing out in the valleys and hills. A land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey. A land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing.

A land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper. And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord. Your God for the good land he has given you.

Wow.

This is the promise the Lord made, right? Come, follow me. I will lead you to a land flowing with milk and honey. This is it. And there's more than just milk and honey.

There's barley and vines and oil. And bread. No lack of bread. But man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. So in this long list of good things that the Lord's going to give is this veiled promise I will continue to pour out for you.

You will lack nothing. You'll be full, not just in your belly. In your spirit. I will give to you everything you need.

And yet it's Moses who had to stand up and say these things. Why? Because his heart is this.

I want you to follow the Lord and be filled and be satisfied. And he. You know what? Honor him as God, and follow him, and he will honor his promise for your good. Here it is, a list of all the good, including God's own presence.

Verse 10.

And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. Wow. Moses is saying, this is how you have fellowship with God. And remember all of the sacrifices at the beginning of this journey. They were about how to draw near to God because he wanted to sit down and eat with you.

Now he's going to feed you and eat with you.

Verse 11. Take care.

Guard your heart with vigilance.

Take care. Lest you forget the Lord your God, by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today.

Lest when you have eaten and are full, and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart will be lifted up and you will no longer remember your humility.

You will forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of flint, who fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and test you to do you good in the end.

Beware. Lest you say in your heart, my power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.

You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to Your fathers as it is this day.

All of this summarized, compressed. If you honor the Lord as God and follow him, he will honor his promise for your good.

You know, as I think about that, I think I can compress that even smaller because I have problem remembering big ideas. Let me see if we can make this statement even more simple. See, when it came to being the shepherd of Israel, Moses heart watered this.

Be and make be disciples of the Lord. Be disciples and make disciples.

What is a disciple? That's someone who learns and follows a disciple. In Jesus day, for example, a disciple was someone who followed his teacher. I mean literally walked around and followed him wherever he went, heard the things he had to say, but also did this. A disciple took on the lifestyle of his master.

And Moses is saying here, take on the lifestyle that God has told you about. A lifestyle in which you keep his commandments. Why? Because they train you to draw near to him. Well, why is that such a big deal?

Because he wants to bless you. He wants your good. And your best good comes from intimacy with him. Moses is saying this. For 40 years he's been saying this.

Be disciples of the Lord and teach your children to be disciples. Be disciples and make disciples.

Moses spent 40 years walking with his people, teaching them what it means to be God's disciples. He prayed for for them openly in front of them. He prayed for them, he interceded for them. He taught them, especially when God was mad, he interceded for them. He taught them how to draw close to God.

He taught them how to honor God with their lives. He lived with them, he walked with them, he failed in front of them. He repented, and he kept going forward in front of them. He cared for them and about them.

And that's my heart for you.

And that's Alex's heart for you. And that's your elders hearts for you.

We want to see you honor the Lord is God and learn from him that he may keep his promise for your good. We want to see you be disciples of Jesus Christ and not just interested in him, followers of him, taking on his lifestyle and making more disciples of your own. Children of your neighbors. That is our heart for you. We want to be those who walk before you and with you and among you as you walk among and with and before one another.

So this is not something I can do for you or that Alex and I and all the elders and Nate can do for you. This is.

Well, it is something we can do for you, but it's something we all do together for each other. I Learn from you more than you learn from me.

That's just the truth of it. I see how you care for one another. I see how wise guys draws men in and shows them this is what it's like to follow the Lord. How Women's Ministries encourages how Men's Bible study, Women's Bible Study encourages how Crossroads expands this whole illustration out into the community. I see these things and I learn more by watching you than you do from watching me.

So what? So what if this is the truth? If Moses spent his whole 40 years of his life walking with in front of before and nurturing these people, so what if he's calling us? If God is calling us at Renovation Church to be of that same heart watering in our lives, so what?

I think that what it boils down to is this.

Find a Moses for yourself and be a Moses for someone.

All right? Find that Moses for you. Someone whose life already says what you want your life to say. And invite that person to be your guide and let them know I've been watching you. No, we're not going to become a church full of stalkers.

We're going to be a church full of role models. Right? Okay. Yeah. Invite that person to guide you through the wilderness and be ready to find someone else who needs a Moses.

Because somebody's entering into a wilderness you've already walked through. You've already enjoyed the cloud by day and the fire by night and the manna and the more than bread that feeds your soul. And someone is just entering into what you've already been through. And they need you and you need somebody else.

So find someone who needs a Moses and be Moses for them. Be and make disciples of the Lord.

Be and make disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ by honoring him as God and following him by. By keeping his commands. I have a new commandment for you. Jesus said, love one another.

But more than that, take inventory. Evaluate your own discipleship.

Ask some hard questions of yourself.

Ask do I really honor the Lord as God in my life?

Do I have the kind of humility that God wanted to build into Israel to remind them that you don't thrive on your own? I provide for you.

Do I allow him to set my goals and meet my needs? Or do I take that job on for myself?

Do I value things the way God values them?

Am I thankful? Am I a thankful person? Do I go around thanking God in our house? Grace sounds like thank you and it gets kind of boring and repetitive to say but not to hear.

Ask yourself, do I freely praise God? Do I give him the credit when I see him working.

Here's another hard question. Am I following Jesus or my own way?

Am I a disciple or am I just interested?

Do I keep Jesus command to love one another but abide in Him?

He said this unless you abide in me, you can do nothing.

Ask yourself, am I becoming a better disciple or am I stuck?

Or have I never really put it in gear?

Ask yourself, does my life say what I wanted to say, or will I have to come up with some good last words and hope they stick?