Deuteronomy 34:1-12; Jude 1:8-9 | Unshakeable Identity | Alex Culpepper

Well, any kids we have with us, you can meet at the back of the sanctuary and we'll dismiss you to kids ministry. We're grateful you're here nonetheless, and it's a light crew, but that's good. I'm glad you're all here. If you're joining us online, thank you so much for joining us. And what a gift that we are able to have technology that can still keep us in some way connected on Sunday mornings when you have blizzards and snow and all of that good stuff.

And so it'll be a joy for us to go to God's word this morning. We are finishing up a series today, so we're finishing up the Death of Moses series, and then we'll get into Advent next week. But I want to just quickly talk about our Christmas series and remind you of something. So there are invitations out in the foyer, and if you're not here, then you can stop by maybe even later this week, or if you want to, you can pick them up next Sunday. But the invitations in the foyer are for our Christmas series.

So the entire month of December, we are doing a very intentional Invitational series because we want you to be able to connect with your friends and neighbors to give them an invitation to church. And Christmas Eve is kind of difficult because everybody has plans. And then, of course, the Christmas season is so busy. That too, for people to imagine getting to church on a specific date when there's so many other things going on is really challenging. And so every Sunday in December is a Sunday where we are going to be intentionally conscious of people who may be coming through our doors, who are not familiar with church, who are not familiar with the Word and with the Gospel.

And so we're going to be aware of them, we're seeking to connect with them. And. And then every single Sunday in December, we are gonna give an invitation to faith and a call to people to place their faith and their trust in Jesus and respond to the good news that he has indeed come, that he has lived and died and risen again. And then that has implications for the life of every human being. And so we want you to give this invitation to one or two or five or ten people that.

That you know, so that you can make a connection with them. Because this. This makes a difference. Jesus, he is coming back. And that reality of his coming is certain and true.

And the longing of our hearts should be that not one person that we know would be found not knowing him when he returns. We want the people who are in our spheres of influence to Know him because he's coming back to judge the living and the dead, and we want them to know the living Christ when he returns. And so. So please give these invitations out. This is a great opportunity to invite your friends and neighbors as you make connections.

So getting into our sermon, Deuteronomy chapter 34 is where we're going to be. Many years ago, I was talking to a dear friend of mine in the midst of one of the most challenging, difficult circumstances of his life. He had essentially built his life in pursuit of a career path, a particular career path. It was of great passion to him, and he was very successful in his field, very skilled at what he did. And he was also engaged to be married to somebody who was also in the same field.

So shared passion in that relationship. Every. Everybody loved him, right? Everywhere he went, people just enjoyed being around him. And then over the years as he pursued that, what also happened is that he made a number of decisions that worked against that same life that he was trying to build.

He really enjoyed partying, right. Spending time with people he loved to be liked. Right. And he allowed the celebration and the accolades that other people would give to him to kind of influence his decision making. And, and at a certain point, perhaps even by the grace of God, all of these things kind of came to a head in his life.

So this disjunction between the life he was pursuing and the decisions that he was making, and his engagement fell apart. He watched all his friends who were in the same field, in the same place, he watched all of them move on to success in that field while he stayed in the same place. And he just remained there. And he noted like his dreams were failing, the things that he had hoped to pursue were failing. And as he was trying to process everything, like the midst of this turmoil in his life, the words that he said were, I just don't really know who I am.

And Jay, if you could just follow along with me, I don't have the clicker up here with me. And so thank you. I appreciate your willingness to flex with, with my mess ups up here. So he said, I just don't really know who I am. That was what he said.

He was stuck in the midst of this, and this is the phrase that he came up with. And essentially what he was saying is, maybe I picked my career path because all the people I was around said, it's the thing that I should do. Maybe we were engaged because other people said, well, you guys would go really good together. Maybe I've kind of even lost track of my faith or engaged my faith in a way that I did because other people told me to. The people who were around me just encouraged me in this way.

And essentially what he was really saying was, I have not figured out for myself what my place should be because I've been so reliant on what the people around me tell me it should be. And now I don't know who I really am. That's what he was saying. And so this crisis of his that he was in the midst of was really like an identity crisis, a crisis of not knowing who you are. So I bring that up because we're finishing the series the Death of Moses.

Right? And I'm. I'm very excited because today we get to look at one of the most interesting and unusual passages in the whole Bible. There's some biblical detail surrounding Moses's death that is intentionally obscure. There's other detail that is very strange and unusual.

And overall, his death is very abrupt. And in my study this week, as I was trying to figure out, okay, what do we do with all of this? This is a really weird way to talk about somebody's death. And. And this is a strange ending that we read in scripture.

But what all of it is saying, it's revealing something to us about identity. So scripture has something to say about identity. In fact, the first time that human beings are ever mentioned is a word about identity. In Genesis, chapter 1, verses 26 and 27. It says, Then God said, let us make man in our image.

So God created man in his own image. In the image of God. He created them. Male and female. He created them.

This. This first. This is the first statement, like, in all of scripture about humanity. And it is a statement about identity. It's defining who we are by telling us whose we are.

Right? We are images of God intended to reflect the character of our creator to the whole world. Now, because of sin, we are out of touch with this reality, and so we easily lose track of our identity and all sorts of other things. We get confused about what's most valuable. We find who we are in all sorts of other things that are not God enough to sustain our identity.

Right? They're not strong enough to sustain our identity. So think about this. Like, what things do people place identity in? Like, if you're going to place your identity in your career, well, then when the weakness of career is exposed, like say when the economy shifts or, you know, things crumble and you can't pursue your dream job, whatever that might be, well, then career is not going to be strong enough to uphold your identity.

When the economy shifts, right? When the weakness of family is exposed, say when one of our loved ones lets us down, right? Or betrays us or disappoints us in some way, well, then your family is not going to be strong enough to sustain your identity. And we could keep building the list on, on things that people are prone to find their identity in, but that is just. It's not going to be strong enough to sustain our identities.

God is the only one who is actually strong enough to sustain the weight of telling us who we are, of defining us. And we're all kind of born desperately in need to find our way back to this foundational reality. And so this last sermon in the Death of Moses series is we're going to explore what it means or what it looks like to develop a kind of rock solid identity, an unshakable identity. And this shows us that very directly. And so Deuteronomy 34:1 says, this says, then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho, and the Lord showed him all the land.

And then it goes on to detail what parts of the land that he showed him. As far as Dan, all Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim and Moses, Manasseh in the land of Judah, as far as the western sea, the Negev, the plain, the whole land, right? Moses goes up on a mountain and he sees all of it. God shows him all of it. And so last week, Pastor Don walked us through an exchange between Moses and God.

Moses had sinned against God by performing a miracle on his own terms and not God's. And he was the leader of God's people. But he failed to display God as holy. Moses desired to go into the land that God had promised to his people. But God had told Moses, no, you're not going to be allowed to go into that land because God would not forsake his holiness.

And so Pastor Don skillfully reminded us that this refusal from God was not about Moses, but it was about God. It's about God. His goal that was not to punish Moses. He wanted to uphold his holiness in the eyes of the people. And so here, God, when God comes and he takes Moses up to this high mountain so that he can take this, this time to show Moses all of the land, right?

That this, this is not something that God had to do for Moses, right? God didn't have to show Moses what he was doing, but it's an intentionally intimate act between Moses and God. Because God loves Moses, God is going to take Moses up to a high mountain and show him so that he can see, see with his own eyes that the promise is being fulfilled. And so, verse four, the Lord said to him, this is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to your offspring.

I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not go over there. So this is what I love about Moses. Not once in anything that we read do we see Moses question his place with God. Not once does Moses call into question whether or not God really loves him, or whether or not God is really near to him, or whether or not God really cares for him. Moses knew where his identity was like.

Even as God kept the Promised land from Moses, even as God did acts of discipline towards Moses, even as Moses walked with this insufferable people for 40 years in the middle of the desert, Moses knew where his identity was. If you pay attention to the story, when God says, I have let you see it, he's telling Moses, hey, I know that you're broken over this. I know that you're broken that you can't go in. I know I told you to stop asking to go into the land. I know you have been given over to the sin of anger and pride.

And so I'm though you can't go in, I'm letting you see the land with your eyes. And this is an incredible act of God's mercy and grace. This is something like disciplining a kid by telling them to go to their room, but then saying, well, I'm going to go and sit in your room with you, right, and be with you as you endure this discipline. Taking the time to remind them that even as they face the discipline, they are nonetheless yet loved. And so who's.

Who was Moses? Who was Moses? Moses was an image bearer of God who was loved by God. And he knew that his greatest purpose was to glorify God and enjoy him. He just knew that he was found in that.

He was solid in that. And in his last moments, even though he was under God's discipline, God draws near in mercy and grace because he loves Moses. And he says to Moses, look, I'm showing you all the land that your people will inherit. And so this first kind of building block of a. An unshakable identity is this.

A secure identity is rooted in a soul receptive to God's mercy and grace. If you want to have a secure identity, you need to Be able to rest knowing that you have a great need as you approach a holy God, but that his posture towards you and his desire for you is that you would simply know him and love him and be receptive to the mercy and grace that he has to give. Mercy. Let's just define these words real quick. Mercy.

Mercy. This word as it's used in the Bible, gives the idea of relief from a difficulty that you certainly deserve, right? That there's something that you deserve because of the wrong that you've done. And yet there's a kind of relief that's provided by God. God relents from the judgment that he would carry out on you because of the thing that you've done.

So that's mercy. Mercy is not getting the thing you deserve. Grace, on the other hand, grace are the good things that you get that are better than you deserve. We get our the same word in Greek for gift. Being given a gift comes from this word, grace.

It's the good thing that you get that's better than what you deserve. And God gives both mercy and grace. He relents from the judgment that you do deserve, and he gives you gifts that are better than what you deserve. And Moses kind of lived the last chunk of his life persistently open to God's mercy and grace, knowing that who he was primarily above everything else, was grounded in the fact that God had grace towards him and has mercy towards him. And so I want to kind of evaluate this in light of some false identity temptations, right?

So first, false identity temptation.

Maybe it's up there, maybe it's not, but that's okay. So first, false identities and temptation. I am defined by, number one, my accomplishments, right? You're going to be tempted to find your identity in all sorts of things. And I'm trying to give you kind of three big categories here to think through.

I am defined by my accomplishments. And so this is the way that this works is you can get certain things done. You can, you know, accomplish certain tasks. Maybe you have a career that you want to build for yourself. Maybe you have, you know, some kind of wealth or some kind of, you know, name that you want to make for yourself.

And so this idea of accomplishments is I can do things right? And at the root of this, I am defined by my accomplishments as this sense of pride and my confidence in my own ability or that, or that my kind of sense of personhood and purpose rises and falls on the degree to which I am able to accomplish certain things or the degree to which I might fail at Certain things. So that's the first one. The second false identity temptation is my relationships that I would be inclined to rely on what other people think of me or how much other people love me or who stays in my life, right? And so if people are leaving my life, if I have family members again who might betray me, I'm going to be inclined to let my.

My sense of personhood rise and fall on that. The third one is my experiences, right? And this. This is more. Is more kind of just like your existence, like how much you're able to enjoy, how much you're prone to want to have comfort and ease, right?

So, yeah, I'm defined by the extent to which it's easy for me to, like, you know, turn on the air conditioning and get up and go, you know, go to the grocery store, right? And take care of all of the things that I need and maybe have some nice things. I had some friends that I grew up with, and as they got into the age where you can. Could start making enough money to provide for yourself and maybe start a family, the emphasis for so many people was like, oh, yeah, that'll be like, I can have a house and we can have some nice things. Having nice things.

And that's all about experience, right? Having an ease of experience. And. Right. So if you think that you're going to be defined by any of these things, these are the temptations.

And again, they're all not strong enough to withhold or uphold identity. So if Moses were to give in to any of these temptations in every category, you should know that there are some things that he would have to ride on, right? There's some really good things that Moses accomplished, right. He, you know, by the power of God, was able to go into the land and deliver the people of Israel out of Egypt. I think that's a pretty, like, pretty high up on the list of big accomplishments, right?

Relationships. You know, he certainly had, you know, the entire nation of Israel that was following him, right? Who was responsive to his word and his call to them. Experiences. You think about this like, he, you know, nobody had witnessed the power of God in a more significant way than Moses had.

And you add to that the fact that, like, he spent all of this, like, he could hear so clearly from God and he would, you know, he would just have this great awareness and faith in God. And so all of this, like, accomplishments, relationships, experiences, he's. He could be prone to find it in anyone. But it's worth noting that in accomplishments, relationships, and experiences, there are all areas of significant failure for him. Right.

Accomplishments. While Moses may have done a lot of really good things for the Lord, his sin, he sinned in a way that betrayed the holiness of God, right? So that in the eyes of the people, they would be prone to see him more as a magician than somebody who was obedient to the Father in relationships. I mean, it's worth saying that most of the people who were supposed to love Moses ended up betraying him at some point in his life experiences. The last.

I mean, for what it's worth, the last time that Moses was truly comfortable, right? The last time he had a sense of wealth and stability and that kind of stuff, that was back in Egypt, right, When he was in Pharaoh's court. That was the last time that he really had a sense that, oh, yeah, I have everything that I need. And so in every single category, if he lets any of those define him, he ends up with fatal flaws all the way around, right? It all falls apart.

But somehow, somehow Moses was able to resist every one of those temptations. He lived in patient expectation that God was just one who wanted to be gracious and merciful to him. And he fought to not let those things define him and instead ground himself in God's grace and mercy. And so when things didn't go the way that Moses wanted, time and time again, what Moses reoriented himself to was a God who still gives graciously and mercifully. So in the next verses, Moses dies.

Right, that's the next section. We're going to go back and look at that. But I want to skip to what is Moses epitaph, the last words that are spoken about about him. So skip down to verse 10. It says, There has not arisen a prophet since in Israel, like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.

Verse 11. None like him. For all the signs and the wonders that the Lord sent him to do in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land. Verse 12. And for all the mighty power and all the great deeds of terror that Moses did in the sight of Israel, these are the last words that are written about Moses.

But I want to. In particular, I want to focus on verse 10. There has not arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. So this is the other building block of Moses unshakable identity. Moses knew the Lord face to face.

The idea is that the word literally means like Moses knew the Lord mouth to mouth, right? Moses talked to the Lord like he was like this. But the other thing that that conveys is this idea of clarity, right? Most people, when they would relate to God, knew God in some kind of, like, ethereal way, right? So you would have, you know, a sense of God's leading, a sense of understanding who God was or what he was doing what.

But Moses knew with crystal clarity things that people only had a sense of. He could see and know God clearly. God spoke and related himself to Moses in the plainest of terms. So if you want to be able to weather your own failures or the next economic collapse or the next tragedy that takes place in your life, if you want to be kind of like a well of resources to. For the people who are around you as tragedy maybe strikes an area or strikes your family, if you want to build your life on a solid foundation so that when the rains come and when the storms come and when the snowstorm comes, you know, when things blow up in your life, it's not gonna come through simply hearing about God on Sunday mornings, right?

Like Moses related to God consistently face to face. He knew who God was, and he didn't just know who God was. It says that he knew God. He had a very near relationship to God. You have to have rhythms of being with God to build an unshakable identity.

You have to have rhythms of being in his word so that you can better understand and see with crystal clarity who he is. You need rhythms of making your heart known to him and saying, lord, would you search me and know me and see if there be any unjust or wicked way within me? You need to delight in him as the greatest desire of your heart to enjoy being with him, right? Like, you need to learn how to find him when you're doing the dishes, right? You need to learn how to find him when you're out shoveling the snow this afternoon, right?

You need to be still before him and know that he is God. You need to read His Word and let the discovery of his character fill you with awe. And take time to sit and ask, like, what does your kingdom come, your will be done look like in my life? And regularly find that your best and clearest place of safety is to simply be with him all the time and know that you are known and loved by him.

So Second Corinthians 3:18 talks about what this kind of relationship looks like, and it's talking about Moses. It's talking about the kind of relationship that Moses had with God. They said, you know, Moses, he would spend this time with God and he would come out to the Israelites and his face would be shining like the glory of the Lord would, like, radiate from the time that he spent with God. And the people of Israel were like, dude, you need to put a bag over your head because the glory is so oppressive to us, it's so offensive to us, and we need to put a veil over your face. And this is saying in 2nd Corinthians 3:18, we all with unveiled face.

And this is referencing back to that time with Moses. And it's saying we have better opportunity than even Moses had. Do you understand that? Do you get that? We have greater opportunity than Moses had.

Because veiled face, we behold the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into his image. Right? The image of God from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. So Jesus, by his blood and his sacrifice on the cross, has made access for all of us to know the Lord with the same degree of intensity and even a better degree of clarity than Moses knew the Lord.

And so the second building block of an unshakable identity is this, that you would know God by boldly seeking and drawing near to him.

So when I say that, like, you, you have access, you have a way to know God better than Moses did, I'm sure. Like, you have to be like, well, okay, maybe you. You point at me and say, maybe you have access to, but not me. Like, that's. I mean, that's a little idealistic if you think that I have access to that.

And I promise you it's true, because it is the exact thing that Jesus suffered and died for.

That's why he gave his blood. So that a bunch of people who would say about themselves, well, that might be for them, but it's not for me, could discover the power of the Lord to utterly change and transform them from the inside out and put to death the things of the flesh and bring to life things of the Spirit. And so when you say no way, I would say, yes way. Yes, you only ever and always, because the blood of Jesus is powerful to. To bring us into the presence of God.

And that's where you learn to develop an identity that is a rock that weathers storms, because you've learned to love the rock who has weathered every storm. So these are the two building blocks of unshakable identity. And it may be consistently in need and receptive of God's mercy and grace and know God by boldly seeking him. So we're going to now turn our attention to the actual event of Moses Death. Which will clue us into why we're focusing so much on identity here.

So Deuteronomy 34, 5. So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord. God said it was going to happen, it happened. There's no real surprises here. Verse 6.

And he buried him in the land of Moab, opposite Beth Peor. But no one knows the place of his burial to this day. A couple of notes here. Israel buried the bodies of their dead. They didn't burn their dead.

They buried bodies. And this conveys some kind of belief potentially in, like, a resurrection of the dead, a resurrection of bodies of value for bodies. And God apparently made effort on his own to bury Moses body. That's what it's saying when it says he buried his body. God buried Moses body.

God was honoring Moses. God was giving Moses. He was declaring something significant about Moses identity, claiming Moses as a part of his people, even though he couldn't go into the land.

Verse 7, when Moses was 120 years old. Sorry, Moses was 120 years old when he died. His eye was undimmed and his vigor unabated. And the people of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab 30 days. Then the days of weeping and mourning for Moses were ended.

And after that is when Moses is gonna. Or, sorry, when Israel is gonna go into the land. But right here, this is telling us two things. Moses at the age of 120, lacked no ability to take the people into the land, to do everything that Joshua was going to do in his place. This is saying that Moses had every physical capacity that would have been required of him to go into the land.

So the second thing that it's telling us is this. Moses did not die of old age.

Implicit here is that when Moses went up to be with the Lord, whatever happened, the Lord took his life because it was time for the people to go. And Moses could not go. Moses was told he could not go. And this is. This is an act of God that promotes his name is holy.

Here. He takes Moses life. And let's not get hung up on that because he also buried Moses body. Right? So he's still honoring Moses identity.

This story, I mean, it gets more and more unusual. So God buried Moses because. God took Moses life because he was otherwise very healthy. Right? And then.

So those are two things. The third thing I want you to look back at, verse six, verse six, it says he buried him in the valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth Peor. But no one knows the place of his burial. To this day, nobody knows where Moses body is. This is like, this is off the wall.

Unusual for Israelites, right? They're normally very findable people after they die because their people spend so much energy to try to conserve their bodies, right? Like, these people are carrying with them the bones of Joseph through the desert for the last 40 years after Joseph had been dead for 20, you know, about 400 years, right? So these people really care about the bodies of the people who go before them. But Moses doesn't have a place with the people of Israel.

His body has to stay out in the wilderness, which, if you don't know how God really operates, might lead you to think that God somehow was condemning Moses.

Okay, so now are you ready for what I think is perhaps the strangest passage in the whole Bible? Like the strangest verse? I can't wait. It's going to be so good.

Jude, verse nine.

But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, the Lord rebuke you.

This is. Okay, so this is a passage in Jude. This is a passage about false prophets. One of the characteristics of these false prophets is that they presumptuously pronounce judgments over angelic or heavenly beings, right? Not human beings, but heavenly beings in the heavenly or the spiritual realm.

There are these false prophets who walk around and pronounce all sorts of blasphemous judgments about angels and demons alike. And this is given as an example of the grave error that these people make. And so Jude makes reference to the archangel Michael, who, you know, being a very powerful angel, contended with the devil over the body of Moses. And he's essentially saying, hey, would you be more. You need to look for people who are more careful, like the archangel is, and not dumb.

Like these prophets are going around and saying all sorts of things about heavenly beings and thinking that they command them. But if you're. If you're anything like me, your attention is drawn to the fact that Michael disputed with Satan over the body of Moses. Like, what in the world is that about? And Jude just says it like, oh, yeah, you know that story when this happened?

No, I don't know the story, actually.

So first, take note of some things, because identity is at the center of the. This. This whole exchange. I want you to first note the name that is used for Satan. He is called here the devil, which is a word that means the Slanderer, right?

One who speaks accusations. That's literally what the word means. There are other places in scripture where he plays the same role. Most notably there's the book of the prophet Zechariah. So if you were to look in the story of Zechariah, in that book, there's this guy, his name is Joshua, he's a priest.

And he comes in to the Lord on the day of atonement. He comes in before the Lord and he has dirty garments. And you're not supposed to have dirty garments as a high priest, but he's trying to perform his role as high priest for the nation. And so Joshua the priest comes before Yahweh with his dirty garments in the temple into the presence of the Lord. And what happens next in the story is that Satan shows up.

Satan shows up in the midst of the holy place and stands before Joshua and the Lord and begins accusing Joshua of all his failures in terms of the law. And he hurls accusation after accusation. He shouldn't be a priest. He's not worthy of your presence. He, he's dirty, he's a sinner.

He deserves to burn for the wrong that he does. You need to consume him with your fire. And the Lord's angel said to Satan, the Lord rebuke you, O Satan. Because Joshua's identity was a matter of the Lord's grace and mercy and not of his own failure in sin. That was a contention regarding Joshua's identity.

And so when what this is telling us, when the archangel Michael said the Lord rebuke you against the slanderer. This is drawing our attention here that Michael was disputing with Satan about Moses identity. Because Moses sent in a really big way. Moses did the thing that the sorcerers of false religions do, but Moses did it with the Lord.

Moses failed. And so Satan thinks that he has rights to Moses body. Because your body and your identity are really connected. I mean, you just need to know this is why there will be a resurrection from the dead. Your bodies will be raised in the last day.

And so Michael goes, when he's contending with Satan about Moses identity, Michael goes up a rank, he goes up to the Lord because Michael knew that the Lord had rights to Moses body. Because the Lord is the one who knew Moses. The Lord is the one who had grace and mercy towards Moses. In every accusation that Satan had to speak. There was an element of truth in what Satan spoke.

But every accusation failed to recognize something core to God's character, which is this. Every image bearer who seeks God will be defined by God's grace and mercy alone. Every image bearer who seeks God will be defined by God's grace and mercy alone.

This is essentially the main point. There are so many various temptations, poles, false idols in our world that are calling you to place your identity in them, to find your strength and your hope and your courage and your faith in what you can accomplish or in the kinds of relationships that you can build, or in the kinds of experiences that you can have. And it all is broken. And when you do that and the accusations of Satan come, those identities will crumble really fast. There's only one safe place for your identity to be.

So, so what?

Number one, do you know who you are?

Moses? Moses didn't know about what Jesus would come and do, at least in any sort of clear way. But God had somehow wooed Moses heart to still see that he was gracious and merciful at his core. Right? I mean, Moses is the one who got to hear the Lord declare his identity.

The Lord, the Lord, merciful and compassionate, abounding in steadfast love. Moses got to hear those words first.

Moses or God had wooed Moses heart and the beauty Moses saw with clarity, the beauty of God's love and his grace and his mercy. And we have something that's way better than what Moses had.

And we may be 2000 years removed from the death and the resurrection of Jesus, but what he accomplished is no less real and present with us here today that because of what he did, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the living God comes and lives with us and reveals to us God's character and God's mercy and God's grace in a more real and clear and present way than even even Moses did. And so if you don't know who you are, you need to start there. Ground yourself in the love and grace and mercy of God, revealed clearly in a God who is willing to take on flesh so that he could live and die for you, for your sin. So that when the accusations of Satan come, they would just hit the blood of Jesus and fall apart.

Then number two, stand against the slanderer. Ephesians, chapter six is the you know, the armor of God. It tells you to stand in the evil day, stand against the schemes of the devil. We don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against rulers and principalities and spiritual forces and heavenly places. And then it goes through and it says, this is how you stand.

You have a helmet of salvation and a breastplate of righteousness and a belt of truth and shoes that are Girded and grounded in the gospel of peace and a shield of faith and a sword of the word of God. And all of those things are talking about the identity that God has given to you so that when Satan tries to accuse you and tries to break you down, you know what tools are available to you so that you can stand and you can cast down his accusations. Because the Lord has done these things for you. You didn't do them for yourselves. It's his power that did it.

It's his blood that confirms it. Christ is the one who purchased all of this for you. And so you have the tools that you need to stand against the one who would slander you and the one who would accuse you. And even as you have those tools, the other thing and other verses in the Bible say that Christ now stands before the Father as Satan also stands before the Father as Satan accuses. Christ stands as our advocate, our lawyer, and he's smarter and stronger and more holy than the slanderer.

And so would you take up the tools and the confidence that you need that your identity is grounded in everything that Jesus has done to stand against the slander. And then number three, so you've not been given these gifts for nothing. You've not been given an unshakable identity for nothing. You have now resources that nobody else in the world had. Like, you know, no other faith can give, no other source of identity can give.

But your identity can give it. Because your identity is grounded in who God is. And out of your unshakable identity, you have now tons of freedom to pour out God's resources to other people. And so what's amazing about Deuteronomy 34, sorry, and it goes a little bit back into verse 33, is that Moses, goodness, he takes up this opportunity to not be down about the difficulty that he's going to face. He's not going to go into the land.

In fact, even after this, he heard about that the people are going to go in and that a generation later, they're all going to abandon God. He heard about all of that. But Moses doesn't let any of that halt his identity, halt the strength of his identity. He spoke a blessing over the people, right? And you have the opportunity to be a blessing to the people around you.

And so to end, I just want you to hear, this is the blessing that Moses, the end of the blessing that Moses spoke out over Israel. What he does first is he goes and he names all 12 tribes and he speaks a particular blessing over every single tribe of Israel. But then at the very end of the blessing, he says this to Israel, there is none like God. O Jeshurin, who rides through the heavens to your help through the skies, and his majesty, the eternal God, is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms. And he thrust out the enemy before you and said, destroy.

So Israel lived in safety. Jacob lived all alone in a land of grain and wine, whose heavens drop down dew. So verse 29. Happy are you, O Israel, who is like you, a people saved by the Lord, the shield of your help, the sword of your triumph. Your enemies shall come fawning to you, and you shall tread upon their backs.

Moses gave them a blessing so that they would be secure in their identity when they go into the land. And so, Church, the call to you then this morning is, if you've been given something that's so secure, you have something then to share that's foreign to so many people, would you give it? Let's pray.

Father, thank you for the gift of your consistent mercy and grace toward us. Pray that you would bless those who are at home and who are weathering this storm and the safety of their own homes. Lord, would you give Holy Spirit that they could know and be secure in their own identity? Would you give the same to us here by your power, that we could rest secure in the grace and the love of God, which was purchased for us in such a clear way by the death of our Savior on a cross, and who proved that it was real by rising from the dead. Thank you, Lord.

Pray this in your name. Amen.