Leaving A Legacy
Sermon
LET'S GET COMMITTED
First Lesson Sermons For Sundays After Pentecost
Moses became God's agent during a transitional era in the Hebrew's history. Chuck Swindoll comments on that transitory period, "When the divine call came to assume a crucial role in the destiny of men and nations, Moses stepped into the gap. He may have been reluctant. He may have been frightened. He may have been filled with regret and self--doubt. But in the end, he yielded ... and became God's instrument in his own generation."1
Moses, the man of selfless dedication, who traveled a lifetime for God and others, now comes to the end of his long journey. He would meet death victoriously and with full possession of his faculties. He had remarkably maintained his powers of observation and health to the very end, considering his advanced age of 120 years. The person who finishes the book of Deuteronomy makes certain that the reader grasps the importance of Moses' legacy for the generations to follow.
Moses was not immortal - no human is immortal. He dies in a natural way. William Walter DeBolt wrote: "Death is a period bringing the sentence of life to a close. Like the spilling of a moment or the dissolution of an hour. Death is a useful comma which punctuates, and labors to convince of more to follow."2
Moses' legacy deserves the understanding of men and women who catch the importance of a life lived for God. People should be like Moses, willingly allowing God to shape them into powerful instruments to serve his purpose despite their frailties.
Moses Left A Legacy Promise
The Israelites had a great life in Egypt - for a while. They had been given the best land in Egypt by Pharaoh himself when Joseph's father Jacob and his family arrived during the great seven--year drought (Genesis 47:5--6, 11). They acquired more property than they were given. They prospered in their business transactions. They grew in family size (Genesis 47:27).
God's promises of prosperity to Jacob were fulfilled through the kind generosity of Pharaoh because of Jacob's long lost son Joseph.
History tells us that the good times soon ended when a new Pharaoh came to the throne. He became nervous about how many Israelites possessed his land. Joseph had died and now Pharaoh dealt with the new leaders of Israel. Shrewdly he got them into submission to his agenda and put slave masters over them to oppress them through forced labor. Jacob's descendants soon discovered their happiness had turned to bitterness at the hands of ruthless Egyptian task masters (Exodus 1:1--22).
God sent a deliverer to the people. God had not forgotten them - he had not deserted them or left them. God never forsakes his people (1 Peter 5:7). What a promise!
Moses marched into Pharaoh's own palace and preached God's powerful message of deliverance for his people. Time passed, but in the end Pharaoh let the people go. Holy scripture records the dramatic struggle of that deliverance. God has a new place - a promised land for them to enter. The Israelites, so much like this generation, ignored God's demands and for forty years wandered just on the border of the promise! During that time in a moment of rage Moses did a foolish thing and lost his privilege of leading these people into the Promised Land.
God's justice had to be met because of Moses' disobedience, but God's love is seen in this final scene. Moses doesn't enter the Promised Land, but he's given a guided tour by God himself! Imagine the moving moments as Moses' head spins from one geographical spot to another from his vantage point high up on Mount Nebo rising 4,500 feet above sea level. I imagine he is on Pisgah, the highest peak of the mountain range. Counter--clockwise from north to south he sees Gilead, Dan Naphtali, Ephraim, Manasseh, Judah as far as the Mediterranean Sea, the Negeb, and the Valley of Jericho. What a view.
The people in whom Moses had invested so much of his life would soon enter that land. What a promise! What a victory! Moses wasn't sad. He was about to enter a land far more beautiful, far more open, far more eternal, far more stable than the people would enter. He was about to go home to a land promised to every believer - heaven! So both the people and Moses entered their promised lands!
God wants every believer to grab hold of his promises. They will eventually lead the disciple into the spiritual geographical land of heaven. It is our final promise and destination.
A Legacy Of Servanthood
Moses was especially equipped with the resources God wanted him to have at each interval of his life. New books appear on bookshelves each year that tell us how to be authoritative leaders, effective managers, successful directors, or superior supervisors. God dismisses these patterns. Though these patterns have some intrinsic human value, God simply says to His servants - lay and clergy alike - "Let me equip you with all that you need."
"Every believer ought to be God's slave, which means that we are always preoccupied with his will rather than our rights, his pleasure rather than our position, his glory rather than our success."3
Corrie ten Boom relates a tense time for her family in her book, The Hiding Place. One dark evening in Holland during the German invasion the bombers flew relentlessly overhead while artillery burst close by the house. Downstairs Corrie heard her sister Betsie in the kitchen.
Struggling to sleep, she decided to arise and join Betsie for a cup of tea. The two shared their deep personal feelings until the wee hours of the morning. The bombers finally flew away, leaving destruction and havoc behind. Now all was still.
Stumbling through the darkened house, Corrie reached her bedroom where she straightened out the sheets and patted her pillow before laying her head on it. As she patted it, something sharp ripped her hand. It was a ten--inch--long piece of shrapnel. She screamed loudly and ran down the steps holding the piece of metal in her hands.
They discussed the event of the night. Corrie said to Betsie, "If I hadn't heard you in the kitchen ..."
Her sister quickly responded, "Don't say it, Corrie! There are no 'ifs' in God's world. The center of his will is our safety."4
As a servant of God our safety, strength, and resource is not in us, but in God's will.
Moses understood that perfectly. As he stood on top of the mountain, he could have joined the song writer in a duet, "Not my will, but thine. Not my will but thine." That is the legacy of a true servant.
A Legacy Of Leadership
Chuck Swindoll defines leadership as "inspiring influence" in his book titled Leadership. Leadership influences others to follow where the leader is going. Leadership influences others to work harder at the task. Leadership influences others to sacrifice when necessary. Leadership influences others to commitment.
Futuristic Christian leadership that Moses modeled and that we need revolved around two axioms of life - faith and works.
Moses' faith did not lie in his own self--worth, but in God's. Faith must be in the Personhood of God. With mustard seed--sized faith Moses led the children of Israel across the dry floor of the Red Sea and then in faith watched the water wall collapse on an advancing enemy army. In faith Moses supplied the thirsty Israelites with a reservoir of water from a rock. In faith he held up his hands to defeat the enemies of God. In faith he prayed down meat and miracle bread for the empty stomachs of the people. His faith still influences the people of God who have already entered a new millennium! That's what godly influence does for a person ... it just keeps influencing others.
Augmenting faith was what Moses did for the Kingdom. James stated in the New Testament, "... faith, by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead" (James 2:17).
Moses' faith that the Red Sea would part was accompanied by the raising of his staff and hand outstretched to divide the water. Moses struck the rock as God commanded in order to get the spring--fresh water out of the rock. He held up his hands for his army to defeat the enemy. Each time he brought them down, the enemy advanced. The Israelites had to pick up the meat and bread that God supplied.
The great Bible commentator Adam Clarke was a meticulous writer, but he worked very slowly to produce his literary treasures. He customarily arose early in the morning to begin his meditation and study. A young minister wanted to emulate the distinguished doctor and asked him one day how he managed to accomplish so much. Dr. Clarke replied, "I get up." As vital as prayer was to the success of the project, each day he had to start.
The great evangelist Dwight L. Moody came upon a group of wealthy American Christians praying for the removal of a 500--dollar debt on their church building. Moody looked those rich businessmen in the eyes and said, "Gentlemen, I don't think if I were you I should trouble the Lord in this matter."
Leadership is the combining of faith and works together to influence people. Godly leadership combines faith and works to influence people for God.
A Legacy Of Spirit
Nothing more vividly characterizes the power of Moses and the legacy he left than his closeness to God ... a face--to--face encounter. What Jesus did on the cross was to open to all people this ability to come face to face with God. God consistently tries to establish communication with us. Edward Day in The Captivating Presence writes, "[God is] forever aware of the wrong directions we are taking and wishing to warn us; forever offering solutions for the problems that baffle us; forever standing at the door of our loneliness, eager to bring us such comradeship as the most intelligent living mortal could not supply ... The Real Presence is ... real and life--transforming."5
Moses experienced the Real Presence that was life--transforming for him. Each person in this world can experience that life change by asking God to enter his or her heart at any time or any place. God patiently waits for us to ask him to come in and live with us. Moses' legacy for all generations is to be open to God.
Conclusion
"[Moses] willingly traded the earthly monuments and acclaim, the perks, the power, and the pleasure for a reward in an invisible realm. He cashed it all in - every shekel of it - for a relationship with the living God.
"It was the best trade anyone could have made. What he lost, he couldn't have kept anyway, and what he gained, he could never lose.
"Moses couldn't do any better. Neither can we."6
__________
1. Charles R. Swindoll, Moses (Nashville: Word Publishing, 1999), pp. 1--2.
2. Albert M. Wells, Jr., Inspiring Quotations (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1988), p. 54.
3. Raymond Brown, The Message Of Deuteronomy (Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter--Varsity Press, 1993), p. 325.
4. God's Little Devotional Book (Tulsa: Honor Books, 1997), p. 295.
5. Reuben P. Job and Norman Shawchuck, A Guide To Prayer (Nashville: The Upper Room, 1983), p. 33.
6. Charles Swindoll, Moses, p. 366.
Moses, the man of selfless dedication, who traveled a lifetime for God and others, now comes to the end of his long journey. He would meet death victoriously and with full possession of his faculties. He had remarkably maintained his powers of observation and health to the very end, considering his advanced age of 120 years. The person who finishes the book of Deuteronomy makes certain that the reader grasps the importance of Moses' legacy for the generations to follow.
Moses was not immortal - no human is immortal. He dies in a natural way. William Walter DeBolt wrote: "Death is a period bringing the sentence of life to a close. Like the spilling of a moment or the dissolution of an hour. Death is a useful comma which punctuates, and labors to convince of more to follow."2
Moses' legacy deserves the understanding of men and women who catch the importance of a life lived for God. People should be like Moses, willingly allowing God to shape them into powerful instruments to serve his purpose despite their frailties.
Moses Left A Legacy Promise
The Israelites had a great life in Egypt - for a while. They had been given the best land in Egypt by Pharaoh himself when Joseph's father Jacob and his family arrived during the great seven--year drought (Genesis 47:5--6, 11). They acquired more property than they were given. They prospered in their business transactions. They grew in family size (Genesis 47:27).
God's promises of prosperity to Jacob were fulfilled through the kind generosity of Pharaoh because of Jacob's long lost son Joseph.
History tells us that the good times soon ended when a new Pharaoh came to the throne. He became nervous about how many Israelites possessed his land. Joseph had died and now Pharaoh dealt with the new leaders of Israel. Shrewdly he got them into submission to his agenda and put slave masters over them to oppress them through forced labor. Jacob's descendants soon discovered their happiness had turned to bitterness at the hands of ruthless Egyptian task masters (Exodus 1:1--22).
God sent a deliverer to the people. God had not forgotten them - he had not deserted them or left them. God never forsakes his people (1 Peter 5:7). What a promise!
Moses marched into Pharaoh's own palace and preached God's powerful message of deliverance for his people. Time passed, but in the end Pharaoh let the people go. Holy scripture records the dramatic struggle of that deliverance. God has a new place - a promised land for them to enter. The Israelites, so much like this generation, ignored God's demands and for forty years wandered just on the border of the promise! During that time in a moment of rage Moses did a foolish thing and lost his privilege of leading these people into the Promised Land.
God's justice had to be met because of Moses' disobedience, but God's love is seen in this final scene. Moses doesn't enter the Promised Land, but he's given a guided tour by God himself! Imagine the moving moments as Moses' head spins from one geographical spot to another from his vantage point high up on Mount Nebo rising 4,500 feet above sea level. I imagine he is on Pisgah, the highest peak of the mountain range. Counter--clockwise from north to south he sees Gilead, Dan Naphtali, Ephraim, Manasseh, Judah as far as the Mediterranean Sea, the Negeb, and the Valley of Jericho. What a view.
The people in whom Moses had invested so much of his life would soon enter that land. What a promise! What a victory! Moses wasn't sad. He was about to enter a land far more beautiful, far more open, far more eternal, far more stable than the people would enter. He was about to go home to a land promised to every believer - heaven! So both the people and Moses entered their promised lands!
God wants every believer to grab hold of his promises. They will eventually lead the disciple into the spiritual geographical land of heaven. It is our final promise and destination.
A Legacy Of Servanthood
Moses was especially equipped with the resources God wanted him to have at each interval of his life. New books appear on bookshelves each year that tell us how to be authoritative leaders, effective managers, successful directors, or superior supervisors. God dismisses these patterns. Though these patterns have some intrinsic human value, God simply says to His servants - lay and clergy alike - "Let me equip you with all that you need."
"Every believer ought to be God's slave, which means that we are always preoccupied with his will rather than our rights, his pleasure rather than our position, his glory rather than our success."3
Corrie ten Boom relates a tense time for her family in her book, The Hiding Place. One dark evening in Holland during the German invasion the bombers flew relentlessly overhead while artillery burst close by the house. Downstairs Corrie heard her sister Betsie in the kitchen.
Struggling to sleep, she decided to arise and join Betsie for a cup of tea. The two shared their deep personal feelings until the wee hours of the morning. The bombers finally flew away, leaving destruction and havoc behind. Now all was still.
Stumbling through the darkened house, Corrie reached her bedroom where she straightened out the sheets and patted her pillow before laying her head on it. As she patted it, something sharp ripped her hand. It was a ten--inch--long piece of shrapnel. She screamed loudly and ran down the steps holding the piece of metal in her hands.
They discussed the event of the night. Corrie said to Betsie, "If I hadn't heard you in the kitchen ..."
Her sister quickly responded, "Don't say it, Corrie! There are no 'ifs' in God's world. The center of his will is our safety."4
As a servant of God our safety, strength, and resource is not in us, but in God's will.
Moses understood that perfectly. As he stood on top of the mountain, he could have joined the song writer in a duet, "Not my will, but thine. Not my will but thine." That is the legacy of a true servant.
A Legacy Of Leadership
Chuck Swindoll defines leadership as "inspiring influence" in his book titled Leadership. Leadership influences others to follow where the leader is going. Leadership influences others to work harder at the task. Leadership influences others to sacrifice when necessary. Leadership influences others to commitment.
Futuristic Christian leadership that Moses modeled and that we need revolved around two axioms of life - faith and works.
Moses' faith did not lie in his own self--worth, but in God's. Faith must be in the Personhood of God. With mustard seed--sized faith Moses led the children of Israel across the dry floor of the Red Sea and then in faith watched the water wall collapse on an advancing enemy army. In faith Moses supplied the thirsty Israelites with a reservoir of water from a rock. In faith he held up his hands to defeat the enemies of God. In faith he prayed down meat and miracle bread for the empty stomachs of the people. His faith still influences the people of God who have already entered a new millennium! That's what godly influence does for a person ... it just keeps influencing others.
Augmenting faith was what Moses did for the Kingdom. James stated in the New Testament, "... faith, by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead" (James 2:17).
Moses' faith that the Red Sea would part was accompanied by the raising of his staff and hand outstretched to divide the water. Moses struck the rock as God commanded in order to get the spring--fresh water out of the rock. He held up his hands for his army to defeat the enemy. Each time he brought them down, the enemy advanced. The Israelites had to pick up the meat and bread that God supplied.
The great Bible commentator Adam Clarke was a meticulous writer, but he worked very slowly to produce his literary treasures. He customarily arose early in the morning to begin his meditation and study. A young minister wanted to emulate the distinguished doctor and asked him one day how he managed to accomplish so much. Dr. Clarke replied, "I get up." As vital as prayer was to the success of the project, each day he had to start.
The great evangelist Dwight L. Moody came upon a group of wealthy American Christians praying for the removal of a 500--dollar debt on their church building. Moody looked those rich businessmen in the eyes and said, "Gentlemen, I don't think if I were you I should trouble the Lord in this matter."
Leadership is the combining of faith and works together to influence people. Godly leadership combines faith and works to influence people for God.
A Legacy Of Spirit
Nothing more vividly characterizes the power of Moses and the legacy he left than his closeness to God ... a face--to--face encounter. What Jesus did on the cross was to open to all people this ability to come face to face with God. God consistently tries to establish communication with us. Edward Day in The Captivating Presence writes, "[God is] forever aware of the wrong directions we are taking and wishing to warn us; forever offering solutions for the problems that baffle us; forever standing at the door of our loneliness, eager to bring us such comradeship as the most intelligent living mortal could not supply ... The Real Presence is ... real and life--transforming."5
Moses experienced the Real Presence that was life--transforming for him. Each person in this world can experience that life change by asking God to enter his or her heart at any time or any place. God patiently waits for us to ask him to come in and live with us. Moses' legacy for all generations is to be open to God.
Conclusion
"[Moses] willingly traded the earthly monuments and acclaim, the perks, the power, and the pleasure for a reward in an invisible realm. He cashed it all in - every shekel of it - for a relationship with the living God.
"It was the best trade anyone could have made. What he lost, he couldn't have kept anyway, and what he gained, he could never lose.
"Moses couldn't do any better. Neither can we."6
__________
1. Charles R. Swindoll, Moses (Nashville: Word Publishing, 1999), pp. 1--2.
2. Albert M. Wells, Jr., Inspiring Quotations (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1988), p. 54.
3. Raymond Brown, The Message Of Deuteronomy (Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter--Varsity Press, 1993), p. 325.
4. God's Little Devotional Book (Tulsa: Honor Books, 1997), p. 295.
5. Reuben P. Job and Norman Shawchuck, A Guide To Prayer (Nashville: The Upper Room, 1983), p. 33.
6. Charles Swindoll, Moses, p. 366.
