I Shall Not Cross the Jordan But You Shall Cross

This morning, we're going to be continuing our study of Deuteronomy chapter 4. And in this passage, Moses, the author of this book, exhorts the Israelites to serve God as they enter into the promised land. You'll remember that these first few chapters of the book of Deuteronomy are sort of a recounting of the history of Israel these last 40 years, right as they're about to cross over into the promised land to eradicate the Canaanites and take possession of what God promised their fathers many, many years before. In this section, Moses notes, that he will not be crossing over the Jordan with them. He's not going because his death is imminent. He knows that he's about to die. Moses' mortality was on his mind. And it's important to note, in light of that, what he says here at the very end of his life. We may take a couple of years to get through this book of Deuteronomy and sermons, but it didn't take a couple of years for him to say it. He's giving his final testament, if you will.

He's on his deathbed even as he speaks. He knows that his end is near. And so we should pay careful attention to what he says to the Israelites on this occasion. My hope is that this morning God will help each one of us to be faithful like Moses has been and is up until his death. And that we would be faithful like him until the end of our lives. Would you please stand now as we read the word of the Lord? It's from Deuteronomy chapter 4, verses 21 through 24. This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. Now the Lord was angry with me on your account and swore that I would not cross the Jordan and that I would not enter the good land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance. For I will die in this land. I shall not cross the Jordan, but you shall cross and take possession of this good land. So watch yourselves that you do not forget the covenant of the Lord your God, which he has made with you.

And make for yourselves a graven image in the form of anything against which the Lord your God has commanded you. For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Now that first phrase that Moses says, Now the Lord was angry with me on your account. If you had to describe the subtext, what do you think is going on there? What's it sound like? We'll say it so I can hear you. Sounds like there's some blaming going on here, right? That he's upset about this whole thing. All the while, I've been working our way up to this point in Deuteronomy, and really the book ends with Moses' death. I've been sort of watching this thread flow through here of Moses at various points saying, it's your fault I can't go into the promised land. He says it multiple times. This is just one of them. So it's something that...

He's aware of and he's repeatedly making them aware of. But I'm convinced he's not bitter and angry as he says it. I don't believe that he's blame shifting or that he's frustrated with them. Moses, as he's reminding them of this, is recounting a time when the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness. They were thirsty. This wasn't the first time they were thirsty. It was the second time they were thirsty. As they went out into the wilderness and left Egypt, they got hungry and they got thirsty. And God sent them manna from heaven, food, and they want meat. So he sent them quail and they got thirsty. And so they're going, we're in a desert. There's no water. Where are we supposed to get water? You've led us out here to die. And they're ready to kill Moses. And Moses asked the Lord, what am I supposed to do? And I'm paraphrasing here, but he's like, what am I supposed to do with these miserable people? They're going to kill me.

And the Lord tells him to take his staff and to strike a rock and that water is going to come forth for both their livestock and for the people. And that's what happens. Moses goes. He strikes the rock. Water comes out. The people are given drink. Everyone's satisfied. Then later, they're in the same situation. They're thirsty. They want water. And now Moses is getting more and more frustrated with them because God's been providing. In miraculous ways, he's been providing, yet they're still angry with him. They're still frustrated. They're still, considering whether they should kill him. Second time, he doesn't go to the Lord and he doesn't ask what shall be done. In anger, he takes his staff and he strikes the rock and water comes out. But the scripture tells us that when Moses did that, the Lord's anger burned against him. And he swore in that moment that because of Moses' actions, he would not enter the promised land. So whose fault was it? I think it's natural for us to say it was the Israelites' fault.

As we read this passage here where he says, now the Lord was angry with me on your account. We say, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was their fault that I don't get to go into the promised land. Don't we do this in our lives regularly? Blame other people for our actions? Don't we believe many times that we have no other choice? That it's an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth and that whatever we're in trouble for, we only did it because someone did it to us first? This is the way we live and it is the way we reason. And I think it's why when we read this passage, we read it as though he's grumbling and complaining about them. But I don't believe he is grumbling and complaining. We have to be careful not to read our own sinfulness or our own motivations into Scripture. Moses was an exemplary man. He was the humblest man who ever lived. You know who said that? Moses said that about himself. And it's true. Because God moved him to say that about himself.

Moses is the kind of man we should long to be like. God's anger toward, well, let me ask you this way. When God's anger burned against Moses, was God not angry with the people for their grumbling and complaining? I mean, it's kind of silly, isn't it? Like, was God only angry with Moses? No, he wasn't only angry with Moses. And yet Moses was the leader of the people. He was at the top of the hierarchy. He was the patriarch. And his failure, his sin was greater than theirs. He had responsibilities put on him by God directly that they didn't have. And so his breach of his leadership, his failure and his frustration was worse than theirs. God judged him for it. Moses never said that the people hadn't sinned. They had sinned too. And to be honest, their sins were more constant than Moses were. Moses dealt with...

A rebellious people. A grumbly and complaining people. And he did it for a long time. Decades. Multiple times. They wanted to kill him. Have you ever had someone want to kill you? I mean, plotting together in an open scheme to kill you? Who of us can say, yeah, I've had that happen? Maybe you've had someone throw something at you or punch you because they were really upset with you. But kill you? For decades. He walked the knife's edge of leading this people who were rebellious and hard-hearted. who were grumbling and who were complaining. And so it was their sin that provoked Moses' action and led to God disciplining Moses. But Moses' sin was Moses' sin. When he struck the rock, it was he who failed. And there was no place for him to blame the Israelites. You remember in the garden where Adam blamed Eve and then Eve blamed the serpent? There was this hot potato of responsibility being passed along.

Moses did what Moses did, and God was disciplining Moses for what Moses did. If you've got kids or maybe you're a child yourself, you've lived this countless times in your own house. You get in trouble and you think, it's not fair. They did this thing. And what we commonly say at my house is, you're the older one. And we mean it. You're the older one. Of the two of you, if I've got a five-year-old and I've got a 10-year-old, I expect more of the 10-year-old. I expect the 10-year-old to resolve the conflict. I don't expect him to drop down to behave like a five-year-old. Because in other areas of his life, he doesn't want to be treated like a five-year-old. None of us would, right? He's older. We expect more of him. He's more likely to be disciplined for the offense than the five-year-old is, or more severely disciplined. This is what's going on with Moses and the Israelites.

We, like our children in those instances, have to fight against our temptations to blame other people. There is not an excuse to be found to say, well, I did that, but they did it first. When we stand before God, we won't give an account for other people's sins. We won't even get to give an account for how it was their fault that we sinned. God will hold us accountable for our own actions. And that's what's going on here with Moses. Moses is being held to account as the leader of Israel for his actions. It was sinful of him to strike that rock. He fell into sin. Because of Moses' actions, God took him in hand and swore that he would not enter into this promised land. That doesn't mean that God hated Moses or had rejected them. We have to be careful as Christians not to live our lives as though everything is black or white. Either God loves me and nothing I do ever is bad,

Or God hates me and everything I do is bad, no matter how anyone else defines it. This is not how it works. What does Scripture say about God and his sons in Hebrews? It says that he scourges every son that he receives, that he disciplines them. What did I just read and say to Louisa and to Emily? I said that after a little bit of suffering, and that was probably the most offensive part of the whole thing I said to me. He's like, I'm going to say to these two young ladies, after some suffering, God will perfect you. And what I'm saying is, God's going to use the suffering that will come in your life to sanctify you and protect you. There are hard things that go on. God is disciplining his children so that they will share his holiness. And so we have to do away with this idea that if God ever disciplines somebody, they must not have been one of his children. God's about the business of disciplining us.

It would be nice if we as his people would listen to simple warnings. But we don't. Any more than our kids do. Any more than our employees do. It would be nice if we could come and say, hey, that thing you did, could you, let's do it. I don't want you to do it like that. I want you to do it like this. And we'd say, yes, sir, I'm happy to do it. I'm sorry that I didn't do it the way you wanted. I'll do better next time. That's not our response. We get all wound up around the axle and upset because they would dare to tell us we had done something wrong or we're like, oh, I'm such a terrible person. I'm so bad. They're just going to fire me. There's these really extreme responses to really minor discipline. And what it leads to is greater discipline. If we would listen early, we would avoid a lot of the more severe discipline. But listen, you're too sinful most of the time. I'm too sinful, okay?

I'm as stubborn as I am big. And I often need really loud, really clear, really no to get my attention. I know that about me. I know that about you. Do you know that about you? Moses is being disciplined because of what he did. And it doesn't mean that God doesn't love him. We have to get rid of this idea that we're really close to perfection, that we're really, we're just almost doing it right. They were just like, we just, there's these few little things, these loose ends. It's like, like we live our lives. Like if you're in construction or know anything about it, you know what a punch list is. And it's like the vast majority of all the work is done. There's just this like list of, you know, a few things, maybe 10. And it's like, once those things are done and they're usually pretty small and insignificant, the job's done and it's perfect. We live our lives as Christians. Like all we've got is a punch list of sins to deal with. And that's not true.

Was that true of you this last week? You just had these little small kind of, you know, aftershocks of sin in your life. Is that the way it was? Come on, be honest. That's not how it was. There's real sins we're dealing with that we're fighting and falling into and having to confess. So when God disciplines us for those things, we shouldn't be surprised. Moses is not bitter as we would think, well, I would be bitter if I was disciplined for my sins. Moses was not. Bitter, because he knew he wasn't that close to perfection. We as individuals are not dealing with just the little dregs of sin. Our marriages aren't almost, you know, where we could tell other people how to do it really well. And our kids, our parenting, it's not there yet. There's big work to do in all of these areas. And so in every situation, we have to see that God disciplines sinners for their sins. And that discipline, however severe it may be, remember, Moses is being put to death.

is not an indication of his rejection of them. God loved Moses, and he also kept him from leading the people over the Jordan and into the promised land. Why else do we know that Moses wasn't bitter toward the Israelites? Well, a few things. One, he's right at the end of his life, and he's still loving and leading them. He's about to die. At what point can you just say, I'm calling in my vacation days. I'm out. I'm done. I already said it once. Remember, Deuteronomy is the second time he's saying the whole thing, the law of God. He's already said it once. He's about to die. They've come through all of these battles as they're making their way up to where they're going to cross over, and he's leading them, and he's warning them, and he's teaching them, and he's disciplining them, and he's now about to die, and his concern is still to be faithful to God and to love those people. His concern in this passage is not to express his bitterness toward them.

for his discipline, but to remind them that he would be gone soon. I'll be gone soon. I'm not going to cross over to Jordan, but you shall cross. And you need to continue in your obedience to God even after I'm gone. This was his final testament to his people, to those that he loved. How merciful was God to give Israel a man like Moses? He was faithful to them for decades. And even as his death approached, their welfare was still his primary concern. When God gives us good leaders, husbands or fathers or pastors or elders, mothers or wives who love us well, we should mark that as a particular kindness of God and give him thanks. No leader is perfect, but if we know the difference between a good leader and a bad leader, a false shepherd and a true shepherd, someone who actually loves us versus someone who just pays lip service to it. If we have someone who loves God and as a result loves us, then we should praise God for them and we should listen to them, okay? We should listen to them. The truth is we don't deserve the good leaders that God's given us. So if you're a leader, be like Moses. And if you're not a leader, don't be like Israel.

Moses says, I'll die in this land. I shall not cross the Jordan, but you shall cross and take possession of this good land. He knows what he's not going to. I'm going to die in this land, this foreign land. You know, some of you may have thought about where you're going to be buried. Many of you are too young to probably have thought about it. You haven't bought your plot yet. Maybe you've got a family plot and your parents have bought it, but it's not on your mind. Like, where am I going to die? Where's my home? Where am I going to rest until Jesus comes back? Moses tells us where he's going to die. Now, there's an interesting story about Moses' death and his burial and what happens to him that we're not going to get into right now. But the point was this promised land represented heaven and God's eternal rest. And what he says is, I'm not going to get to go into it. I'm going to die in this land, this foreign land, this other place. You're going to go into it, but I'm not. And what he's teaching them is that leaders come and go.

We'll not always have our fathers and our grandfathers. When they go, we must persevere after they leave. Moses' death doesn't prevent or even delay the Israelites' entry into the promised land. They must continue without him. That's what he's teaching them. I'm going to die in this land, but you're going to go across. The most discouraging or harmful thing that they could have done when Moses died was to stop seeking after God. This is why he exhorts them to carry on. I'm not going in, but you shall. Take the baton, continue in the work all your life. Moses wanted God's will to continue, and he understood that he wasn't the linchpin, the hub by which everything worked. He was a part of it for a time, but the work was bigger than him, and the work was going to take longer than he was going to be around for. And so his goal on his deathbed, as he's saying his last piece was for them to persevere, for them to continue, to warn them. You see this concern showing up with Paul as well in his epistles. In Galatians 4.19, he says, My children, with whom I again am in labor until Christ is formed in you. Why does he use the picture of labor? It's this interesting picture if you think about it. If you think of a woman having a baby, you think, okay, this is the beginning of the separation between mother and child.

And it continues on the rest of their life as the kids grow and strengthen, as they grow in maturity and ability and capacity. They gain more and more independence from their mother. So what's a mother's job? It's to put into their children the thing that they need. And in this context, Paul's saying, I'm in labor again. I'm back trying to make you whole and separate from me in Christ. Because Paul knew he wasn't going to be around forever. He tells us in Philippians, he didn't know how long he even wanted to stay. His goal was to see Christ formed in them, to see them serving God after his departure. He told Timothy in 1 Timothy 1.5, All of those things demonstrating themselves after he's gone. Moses and Paul both had the same concern that their ministry would continue to bear fruit after the Lord had called them home. And this should be our aim as well. We should want our descendants, our children, and our families.

and in our church to carry on the work that we've been a part of. We didn't start it. Some of us planted this church, but we didn't start this work. But I'm not going to be the pastor of this church forever. The elders that we have aren't going to be the elders of this church forever. But the thing that we've endeavored to do, the thing that we've given ourselves to, we would love to see continue and expect to see continue in you. That's our whole goal. So that we can die in peace. It should be our aim to see our descendants carrying on our work after God calls us home. We, as children, should aim to continue this work. We are not the first to do this, and we will not be the last to do it. And so as long as we live, we should seek to honor our fathers and mothers in doing what they've taught us to do. And their goal, our goal, is to see you change and become like Jesus. Remember I said earlier, I wish that you would listen with little...

kind encouragements along the way? If you don't, then it becomes more intense. Because we don't like you? No. Because we love you. We're not going to be here forever. Throughout this passage, Moses uses language that show that Israel is in direct relationship with God. He doesn't talk about we and us in this passages. He talks about me and you, I and you. Moses says the Lord your God four times. And with relationship to the covenant that God made, he says that he made a covenant with you. Do you remember back when that covenant was being established? What did the people want from Moses? They said, we don't want to deal with God. He'll kill us. We want you to deal with us. We want you to be a mediator. We want you to be the one to stand in before, to bring God's...

law to us and to take our concerns to him. We want you in the middle. Well, now we're coming to the end of that mediator's life. And now he's teaching them, listen, I'm stepping out. God's calling me home. You have to do with God directly. There's a transfer going on. Moses is separating himself from the people. I will not go into the land, but you will. He's getting out of the way and teaching them that they are God's people. not his people. And that's the, if you think about it, that's the mark of a good leader. Is a good leader doesn't make people so dependent on them that when they're gone, everything falls apart. A good leader, a good parent transfers the authority that God's given to them back to God. And they teach their kids as they come up. They teach their congregation as they come to church. Listen, I'm not going to be here forever.

You're going to have to do things in service to God that I'm not going to be there to lead the charge on. He transfers them from him to them. That's one of the interesting things that happens in baptism and in membership is there's a very real transfer that goes on. When children come to faith, they're interviewed by the elders. And one of the things that we don't allow is parents to be in the room when we interview the child. Now, it's never caused a problem in our church. but I have other friends whose churches have the same policy, and there's a reason they have the policy. And it's because there has to be a transfer of authority from the parent to the child. And you might think, well, why does it have to be adversarial? And I'm going, well, it's not adversarial. Why do you have to think about two authorities as being competing with one another? It's not actually adversarial, but it is true that your children, as they grow up, will come out from underneath your authority more and more. And you would want them to have somebody watching over their souls, wouldn't you?

someone to teach them the things that they won't hear or can't hear from you. If you have teenagers, if you have kids growing up, if you've had this occasion where your kids come and they say, hey, I was talking to such and such, and they said X, Y, and Z, and you sit there and you go, I've been telling you X, Y, and Z for six months. Why be angry about that? All that's going on in the moment is an expression of the fact that your children need other people to speak into their lives, that God's ordained that they would learn things from people other than you. It's a good thing.

Moses understood that he had to diminish and that the people needed to be transferred in their hearts. Their allegiance needed to be transferred to God. As much as they had wanted to kill him, as much as they had wanted to grumble and complain, as much of their muck as he'd endured all those years, I do believe they loved him. And I don't think they were happy to hear that he was about to die. Here's this really hard thing we're going to do. You think all of the wars we've just been fighting with the Amorites and all these people that we've been coming up through their land, if you think that was something, wait till we go over to the place with fortified cities, and I'm not going with you. I don't think they were happy about his departure. And so he conscientiously transferred their allegiance and their closeness from him directly to God. They had loved him, and they had followed him, and they had trusted him. He had stood in the place of God, and now he says, my time's over, and you have to serve God now.

Now God gave them another leader in Joshua, but they had to get it in their heads who they were and with whom they had to do. Moses gives them this final exhortation at the end of this section. He tells them not to make idols, not to make graven images, not to bow down, not to worship them. We talked about that some last week, this temptation to worship God in a form, something familiar. Do not forget your covenant with the Lord your God. He made which he made with you and make for yourselves a graven image. He says, if you forget the covenant, this is what you're going to do. Don't do that. And the reason is the Lord is your God is a consuming fire. He's a jealous God. He warns them. He reminds them of who God is. Now you might feel pressure today to say, well, that's not what God's like anymore. And I want to say to you, that's not all of what God is like. He's not only a consuming fire. He's not only a jealous God, but he is still.

A consuming fire. We're told in Hebrews this very thing. He is still a jealous God. Jealous for his own glory. Jealous for his own people. That they'd be his and not belonging to someone else. If you were out in the public and someone came along and was a threat to your child, what would you do? Would you stand there and go, oh, I need to be gracious, so we'll just let the threat remain? No, in that moment, you would understand jealousy. You would understand being a consuming fire. If someone posed a threat to someone you loved and cared about and you said, they're mine, all of a sudden you'd be a force to be reckoned with. Why don't we understand that? Why do parents send their kids off and why are they not jealous for them? Jealous for their obedience, jealous for their allegiance. Why can their kids grow up and it's just assumed that they'll be bad and they'll wander off and that they'll have to go find their own way. That's so wicked. You should be jealous for your children. You should love them.

You should want them to be imprinted with you. You shouldn't cast them aside to everyone else. Why does Scripture warn us about the she-bear and her cubs? Because that nature testifies to something that's been suppressed in our own hearts and in our own society, that we would possess and own and love our own children or our own people. If we don't understand that in our own homes, how could we understand that about God, that he possesses us, that we are his own possession? A few weeks ago, that was the title of the sermon. That we are his possession. And he's jealous for us. For his glory. For his worship. For his children. And so those who would be a threat to God's children ought to be warned. And God's children ought to be warned not to wander off. In the example I gave earlier where there was a threat to your child, everyone was saying, oh, the danger and the thing to be confronted is the threat, is the person. Would you not also talk to your child?

And warn them in no uncertain terms about absolutely what you expect of them in that situation? And what would be the consequence if they didn't listen? Wouldn't it be severe? And wouldn't that severity be an expression of your love? The Lord your God is a consuming fire and a jealous God. He's jealous for his people and he's jealous for his worship. And he's jealous that his people worship him and not anyone else. And so as you live your life, what you have to be pursuing. And we're not almost there yet. But what you have to be pursuing is Jesus Christ and his church and his people and your brothers and your sisters for whom Christ died. And as your life goes on, that needs to be rising in importance and preeminence and priority. And everything else needs to be finding its place far behind it. Eric was telling me a funny story this last week about one of his, because you was telling me your kids want to eat salt straight. Why don't you let your kids eat salt straight?

Like, just, you know, buy the spoonful. Because it's gross, for one, right? It just doesn't taste good. It's strong, right? Would it be more pleasant to have a spoonful of sugar or a spoonful of salt? We'd all prefer a spoonful of sugar, wouldn't we? Sweeter, goes down a little bit better, right? Why do we want salt in such large quantities? Because it's so pungent. This makes you make funny faces. You know, it sucks all the moisture out of your mouth. Remember that when Jesus says that you're to be salt and light. Why be so weak? Why be so mild? Why be so flavorless? Why have such a lack of priority of God? Why fit in? Why is that such a priority to us? Because we've forgotten that our God's a jealous God, that he's a consuming fire, that he's all about his children, saving them, protecting them, and changing them.

And he's willing to put them through their paces to accomplish it. And as you read the history of Israel in the Old Testament, that's what you see unfolding, is God disciplining and chastising and purging his people so that they'll share his holiness. That's the way he is with us still. And so our goal should not be to avoid that, at least not to avoid it by deception, by lying about who we are or what we are. We should accept God's discipline from us. From his hand. Cheerfully. And be willing to change and be told to grow in the ways that we need to. And we're going to have to do that in less than ideal situations. Israelites had to do this going into a land of war where those be filled with battle and without their father. All their fathers had already passed away. And we're told that Jacob and Joshua are sort of the only older men who were there to lead them in. You realize Moses was the oldest.

guy. He's the last one of the fathers to pass away. And he was the father. And so we have to rely on God to lead us and to guide us and to make us like his son, Jesus, or in this picture, to make us like Moses, who was in turn like Jesus. Let's pray.