Father God, we praise you. You are the way maker, Lord God, we take it seriously knowing that when we can't see what's going on, you are at work and we praise you that you are God who cares like that, who loves us. And so, Lord God, we pray that you would speak to us now as we open your word, speak to each one of us that we might hear what we need to hear from you today. In the name of Jesus, we pray and everybody said amen. Amen. You may be seated thanks to the teams. Uh, I know we are blessed. So blessed. Um, I am Kimberly, uh, Greg mentioned that. And, uh, I wanna say, um, hello here to Chesterfield and to those of you who are in overflow, also to Mid Rivers and Grants Trail, and then my Sunday people at Fenton. Uh, special hello to you guys. We are all gathered together, one church. And, uh, today we are gonna be continuing in our peak experiences. Now, um, we have been to Eden. We have been on Mount Mariah. We have been to Mount Sinai, and we have seen Moses, uh, these last few weeks. We saw him called by God. We saw Moses, uh, as the people received the 10 Commandments. And we saw him dealing with the Israelites last, last week when we talked about the golden calf and the, and the confusion and the sin that they were involved in and, and how Moses was navigating that. Um, you may have grown up in church and you, you might know Moses is, he is kind of a, a big deal. Uh, maybe, maybe you, if you went to like when you were younger and you're a little bit older now, and you went to Sunday school of VBS, you might've seen him as this felt figure on the Flannelgraph board. 'cause he was pretty popular. And the fact is, uh, even if you have not gone to church growing up, if you have no spiritual background at all, maybe you have heard of Moses. I mean, after all, he has been in the movies right here. Let my people go. Behold the power of God. Do not be afraid. God is with us who shall withstand the power of God. Hear me? Oh, hear me. Oh the Lord, the Lord Jehovah has given unto you these 15, 10, 10 commandments for all to obey. So we know Hollywood doesn't always get it right, but anyway, right? But Moses, Moses is quite a, quite a guy, has left quite an mark on this world. The Bible says there was no prophet that rose up in Israel like Moses. He was a man of great faith. He was a leader, he was an administrator, he was a teacher. He was a shepherd of the people. And he was a man of prayer. He wanted the people to understand every purpose and plan of God. And he was a man whom by the power of God, and for the glory of God, did signs and wonders. And the scripture says, for no one has ever shown the mighty power or performed the awesome deeds that Moses did in the sight of Israel, nothing mattered more to Moses than knowing God, obeying God and pleasing God. And believe me, Moses knew God. In the Old Testament. We see God speaking to the prophets through visions and dreams. But for Moses, it was different. With Moses, his most faithful servant, he was called, he spoke face to face. Now, to be clear, Moses did not see God's face, but he did see more of God than anyone else. And he did see as much as God would allow. The Bible says that the Lord spoke to Moses face to face as a man, speaks to his friends. And Moses had a close, vulnerable, intimate relationship with God. It was a bond, a friendship, and a trust that they had. So I suppose it's no surprise then that God chose Moses to lead the people of Israel out of the slavery of Egypt and into the freedom of the promised Land. A place described as a land of milk and honey, the land of abundance where there was water and there was food, and there was security, and there was peace. It was a place where the people of God could dwell with God. Yet the journey was not easy. And we have heard about this. It took years to get to this land. And just when they were about to enter, they were on the edge at one point. And God said, we need to wait for 40 more years. And so back to the wilderness they went. But now those 40 years have passed as we sit here right now, and this is where we're gonna pick up this story. And the Israelites and Moses, they are ready. They are ready to come into this promised land that has been promised to them since Abraham, this land that has been meant to be for the people of God, this physical place. And this is where the story is. And at this point, as you can imagine, Moses is getting older. And so it's come time for him to pass on the mantle of leadership. And so he's going to be giving that over to Joshua. And there is a defining moment where Moses lays his hand on the shoulders of Joshua. And the Bible says that Joshua was filled with the spirit of wisdom because Moses had laid his hands on him. Moses, this man who knew God face to face, was passing on the baton to the next leader and to the people of Israel. And he is saying, as I have known God, as I have obeyed God, as I have pleased God. So now you go and do the same. It was really an incredible, incredible legacy. There's no profit like him. He lived out his God-given purpose. And his faith has made an impact on generations to come, not just for Israel, but for us. For us here today as the people of God, we are still here learning and living out some of the things that we learned from Moses. Moses made his mark on the world. He has quite a legacy and it matters to us. Now, I know Moses being kind of famous and all is one thing, but do you know anyone? Is there anyone in your life who you would say has left a legacy of faith, someone who made their mark on the world, that made a mark on your heart? Maybe someone that you have seen their faith, you have seen how they live, you have seen that, that they have their, their life in such a way that it's made a difference for you. Now, I know that all of us are in different places on our spiritual journey, and some of you're here today and the only person of faith that you know is the person who invited you here. And so you might not have an answer to this question, but if, if you do, if there's someone who is older or someone who's no longer with us and their legacy of faith is something that has made a mark on your life, I want you to turn to your neighbor and tell them about that person. Whether they're you knew them personally or not, but they made a difference to you. Turn and talk about that. So I'm not sure who, who you might have talked about when I, when I answer that question for myself, it makes me think of my grandfather and my great aunt, Martha, his sister, uh, they lived in a little town in Pennsylvania called Hopwood. And there was a tiny little church there that most all of their lives, that they served God and served the people there. And in fact, uh, there is a little like a wall of fame, you might say, and, uh, where different members of the church over like the last a hundred years, they've put their picture in because they've served the people and they served God exceptionally. And Papa Pap and Aunt Martha are on there. And you know, when you think of people like this, um, maybe your heart kind of skips a beat. You, you might even get a tear in your eye if it's someone that you knew personally. Um, but they kind of just, the thought of them kind of inspires and challenges us all over again. I mean, we have mentors of faith in our lives. Moses is kind of like a divine mentor from scripture as so many of the people are. And we learned something from people who laid this foundation of this story. And so today we're at the end of Moses life and we wanna see what we can see from him. And we're in Deuteronomy 32 where we're picking up the story because they are on the edge for real now. And Israel's gonna cross into this promised land, this physical place. And God begins to speak to Moses only. And he says this, Moses go to Moab to the mountains east of the river and climb mountain nebo, which is across from Jericho, and look out across the land of Canaan, the land I'm giving to the people of Israel as their own special possession. God wants Moses to see the promised land with his own eyes, this land that has been the destination for so long. I mean, can you imagine what Moses is thinking after all this time? Finally, finally, we are gonna get to go in. We're almost there. And God then says to Moses, on this mountain that you've climbed, you will die. Now, I'm guessing that Moses takes a pause right there. 'cause that right, it doesn't sound quite right. I mean, if the promise lands over here and Mount Nebo is right here and I'm gonna die here, then what does God mean exactly? And God continues. And he says, Moses, you will die here on Mount Nebo because you broke faith with me in the presence of the Israelites, at the waters of Rabba Kadesh in the desert of Zenin. And because you did not uphold my holiness among the Israelites, therefore you will see the land only from a distance. You will not enter the land that I am giving to the people of Israel. So now let me ask you again. Can you imagine what Moses is thinking and how he's feeling? I mean, what is happening? Moses doesn't get to go in, he doesn't get to experience this promised land with the people. I mean, what is that like after his legacy of faithfulness? I mean, the scripture says there was no prophet that had ever risen in Israel like him. And so here he has been toe to toe with Pharaoh, made it through plagues. He's been persevering. He split the Red Sea. He's constantly managing the Israelites and, and their grumblings and their grievances. And now you're telling me after all of this, all of the things that Moses did right, it is gonna come down to these two things that he did wrong. Yep. That's what it says. Moses broke faith with God and he did not uphold God's holiness. And if you have your journal or your notebook, you might wanna write that down. I mean, what in the world happened in the desert of Zen? And so for us to understand mountain Ebo, we're gonna need to go the desert of zen. We're gonna go the book of numbers. Now, this right here is the desert of Zen. It's a place in Israel. I have been there and I have hiked the desert of zen. Let me just say that's what they called it, hiking. If you know me, I did not really hike. I just walked there mostly. But this is what it looks like. So it was similar to this, and this is where Moses and his brother Aaron were. They had led the Israelite community into this desert, and there was no water. And the people, they were upset, why'd you bring us here? Why would you bring us up outta Egypt and to this terrible place? There's no grain, there's no figs, there's no pomegranates, there's no grapevines. I mean, what are we doing here? There's no water to drink. And the people were mad, they're upset with Moses, with God. And Moses had to handle it. The people wanted water and they wanted it now. And so here is what happened, numbers 20 verse six. Moses and Aaron went from the assembly to the entrance of the 10 of meeting, and they fell face down. And the glory of the Lord appeared to them. The Lord said to Moses, take the staff and you and your brother Aaron, gathered the assembly together, speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink. So Moses took the staff from the Lord's presence just as he commanded him. And he and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock. And Moses said to them, listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock? And then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff and water gushed out in the community and their livestock drank. Do you catch that? Did you see what happened? Moses disobeyed God, God gave Moses specific instructions, and Moses didn't follow them. God said, speak to the rock. And instead, Moses struck the rock, not once, but twice. And he yelled at the people scripture in another place, says Moses had some rash words and, and all of this very not typical of Moses, but somehow instead of being the humble person he usually was, now he was being haughty. And he had kind of a, kind of an attitude here. And he broke faith with God, meaning he did not trust in nor have confidence in God. Essentially, he placed it in himself instead. And if there's one thing we've been learning from these peak experiences is that God wants us to trust in him. Now, God was faithful here. God went ahead and let the water come because he'd promised the people He did that in spite of what Moses chose to how he chose to handle it. So I mean, what is it about? Normally Moses obeyed God and this time he didn't. And we don't know for sure. We, we don't know for sure that the text doesn't say, but as, as you read it, as you consider Moses who he is, if you look at the whole story and you, and you start to think, now, what is this? I mean, in, in some ways we are guessing, but I just wanna throw a couple things out to you. Maybe. I mean, Moses was stressed right here, more stressed than normal. And do you know, sometimes when we're in stressful, desperate situations, we can act out of character. Do you know what I mean? Like, you have the worst, most terrible day at work. You are stressed, you come home and all of a sudden your spouse or your roommates, they look at you and they're like, what is wrong with you? Right? Because you're not acting like yourself. I mean, it could have been that, it could have been that, uh, Moses was just fell at the end of his rope and he, and he just wanted to hit the easy button, maybe do something familiar. I mean, he'd been a shepherd. And there was this thing called the Bedouin technique. I think Greg had mentioned it, where at under the right conditions, at the right time, at the right spot on a rock, you could hit it and water would gush out. Maybe he just wanted to hit the easy button. I don't know. It could be because in the past, God had Moses strike a rock so that water could come out. And so Moses, Moses was just at the end of his rope and stress. He might have just been like, you know, God, you know what I mean? We have, we've done this. You know, I mean, I don't know why we can't do do this. Like we've always done it. Maybe he asked that, you know, and, and just went ahead. Let's just do what we've done before. Well, I don't need the, a fresh instruction. Maybe he was just so stressed that maybe it was that, or it could have been a little more serious than that. You know, maybe he just wanted to prove himself at that point. He was weary, he was tired. He thought at that point I'll just, I maybe I could just adapt God's commands to what? To what I wanna do. Um, we're not sure. But what we do know is that Moses in this situation trusted in himself and believed that he could solve the situation on his own. Now, I don't know about you, maybe you can relate to that. Have you ever just had a situation, a crisis, maybe a stressful thing, maybe something else, and you just thought, you know what? I got that covered. I don't need any input. I don't need any wise counsel. I don't need to see any directions. I mean, I can just do this. I am sure of it. Uh, sometimes we might not know it about ourselves, but, uh, it can happen at different levels. Like, uh, I've noticed, like on online and things, sometimes you see these ideas, you know, and you think, you know what? I'm short, look, they did that. That looks so good. That's cool. I I should do that too. Meanwhile, you have no experience in this thing, but you think, oh, I can, for example, uh, if you know, you're, you're, you got a daughter and she says, you know, I want, uh, to have an Elsa cake for my birthday. And you think, surely that is no problem. I saw it on Pinterest and Elsa looks great. So you go ahead and make that cake. Mm-hmm. I mean, you know, if you're not a cake baker and you've not decorated a cake, I mean, I don't know if you wanna start with Elsa, I'm not sure. You know, there are these home projects and you think, I am not, I don't need to be paying anybody to do that. I am sure that I can hang this satellite dish on my own Uhhuh. It takes a minute. It takes a minute right there, doesn't it? Right. I mean, sometimes we think we can do these things on our own. I mean, you know, that's a lower level. We, but it gets higher, right? Uh, you know, I I used to live on a mountain in Boone, North Carolina, and, uh, it was beautiful there, but the target, the Costco, the Trader Joe's, it was, they were two hours away. And, uh, I didn't make it. That's why we live here today. That's a true story. And, um, but while we were there, you know, winter would come and there was a, there was a a a time when Dave was on a business trip. And, uh, it had snowed like three days, and then it looked like, and I'd been in the house and it looked like it was gonna, uh, it looked better. And I thought, you know, I'm just, I gotta get outta here. And we have a Jeep truck. I thought, this is gonna be no problem. It's gonna work just fine. Uh, we have a one mile gravel driveway down the mountain to get to a somewhat main road. And then I could go to just your basic grocery store, which was still 25 minutes. But I was confident, you know, I'd be fine. So I get in, I get in the Jeep truck, and I'm, I'm going down and I'm going down the mountain, and I'm, I'm almost near there. And then I hit a slab of ice, and the truck ends up going like this. And now I'm blocking the whole road. Um, and there's a ravine behind me and a small ravine in front of me. And I mean, I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but I, but nothing's coming to mind about how to solve this and nothing's working. And I'm scared to death. I am stressed. So I did what I often do when I'm stressed like that. I called Dave my husband, and, uh, from sunny Florida, I might add, he helped me get the Jeep back lined up, and then we moved it over to the side so that anybody who came later would not run into it. And I parked it and locked it up and started my one mile trek back up on foot. And, uh, and so I'm, I'm, I get ready to go and I'm walking, and all of a sudden I hear a noise and I turn, and the Jeep is moving by itself. It's a bad feeling. I felt it. Thank you for feeling that with me. Mm-hmm. Uh, you know what I did? I took a couple steps back. I reached my hand out, I grabbed the tailgate, and I pulled, I want you to think about that. I was like, LA later I thought, what, what are you doing? You know, because in that moment, I really, I mean, that hand would've been better if I had prayed, really. But, uh, but in that moment, my, my self-reliance really kicked in quicker than my God reliance. Now, that truck stopped on its own, believe me, I had nothing to do with it. Praise God. Maybe that. There you go. It's stopped. And so, uh, I, I dealt with that later, but I've, I've just remembered it so many times that I actually thought that that would make a difference, that I could do that. And I think there are situations in our lives that much more serious than that, where our instant response is, I can do this. I'll take care of it, et cetera, rather than going to God right away. 'cause sometimes we just think that we can do it on our own. And I wonder, is this what was happening with Moses? Is this what was happening in the desert of Zen? And that brings us to the second mistake that Moses made in verse 12. The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them. And that was serious too. You know, God takes leadership seriously, because not only was Moses making this decision and acting this way on his own, he was, people were watching him, he was influencing others in how they saw God. His irreverence nce with something people noticed. And so, if you're here and you're, you're a leader, whether by position or influence, you might be a CEO. You might be a teacher, you might be, be the head of a department, you might be a parent. I hope we all realize, and I have to remind myself, people are watching, they're watching what we say. They're watching what we do. They're watching what we don't say. They're watching what we don't do. Leadership matters. And God pointed that out pretty clearly, um, in that moment. In some ways it seemed out of, in that irreverence. So the way that Moses acted, I think he, he'd had a memory lapse of God's faithfulness, or, or he was just a little, he was just, the whole thing had gotten to him so much that he just said, you know, I just gotta be concerned about myself right now. How do I look in front of these people? Um, he, he, he may have thought, you know what, I, I gotta think about my story. And it, and, and you kind of get the sense that whether he knew it or not, he kind of was putting his story above God's story as if he was the headliner and God was the byline. And believe me, that's never ever the case. It's always God's story. First, we serve him, we worship him. Moses had done that most all of his life. But in this instance, some serious things happened. So now we stand back on Mount Nebo. And you know, now what God is talking about when he says, what happened in the desert of Zen? Is this, how it's gonna end for Moses? Is his legacy as the greatest prophet to ever rise in Israel, going to be instead defined, totally defined by these two mistakes? And the answer is no, because when you read the scriptures, God and the biblical writers could have told Moses' story much different. But we still know that his legacy lived, that that who he was mattered in God's kingdom. In God's story. Now, God is pointing out, there will be consequences. Yeah. Moses does not get to go into this physical land that he has dreamt of. But we also know how much God loves Moses. Even when Moses was very wrong, God still loved him. And you need to know the same for you, even when you are very wrong. God still loves you on Mount Nebo. When God tells Moses, he's not gonna go to this physical land, the promised land with the people, there really aren't any details again about how Moses reacts. Uh, we're not sure what he had to say in the say in the moment, but it does look like he stays there. He stays there with God. Um, it, there's no word. It doesn't say he turns away from God. He he doesn't say he gets angry. It doesn't show and say that he was embarrassed. It doesn't say anything like that. He, he didn't seem to have any words of resentment, no rash words at that time for God. He stayed there. And, and on that mountain peak, when God showed him the promised land, the land he wouldn't experience at first, I'm gonna tell you, when I read, it seemed kind of mean. And I was like, I don't wanna do this message. I don't wanna do this one because what is this? This doesn't seem like God at all. And that's because I had the wrong idea. God was not being mean. God does not taunt his people. God was giving Moses a gift. Yes, there was gonna be this consequence. That's the way he took him on a Mount Nebo and said, I want you to see your legacy. I want you to see this land, all that you have done, all your faithfulness. It did matter. It was a gift of grace that God was giving Moses, that he could lay his eyes on his legacy because no one else would ever hold the place as the one God chose to form the nation of Israel and lead them out of Egypt and into the Promised Land. No one. So what I wanna ask you Is that was Moses' legacy. What is your legacy? What's your legacy gonna be? Every single one of us today can decide that we wanna leave a legacy of faith for the next generation and generations to come. And I know there are some of you in here and, and you would not even consider yourself a person of faith. You, you're not even sure what this is about. You have a lot of questions still. So I to I totally respect that and I honor that. And I I just ask that you would just listen in for just a minute as we take this home. We've heard Pastor Greg say many times, he talks about the words of Moses that say, here, O Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord is one directly after Moses says that, he says this, love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. I would imagine maybe some of you recognize that because we've heard someone else say that Jesus himself says this in the book of Mark, love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. So for those of you who are followers of Jesus, What would it look like if this, what both Moses and Jesus said was the driving force behind your legacy, that with your relationship with God, with your personality, with your gifts, with your stories, with the things you've overcome, with the, with the struggles that you've had, what would your legacy look like? Moses said in Psalm 90, he wrote Psalm 90, he said, teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom. See a legacy. It's more than an epitaph on a tombstone. It's more than just a memory of you. It's more than that. But it is going to take some intentionality on all of our parts. So I want you to think, what is a step that you might take, something you could do intentionally that would get you started in thinking about leaving a legacy and passing it onto the next generation. Kind of like what Moses has done. Um, if you're older and there's more years, uh, behind you than ahead of you, and you're sure you're pretty sure of that, it might be time for you to start having some coffee dates with younger people that you know, people at work, maybe your own children, maybe grandchildren, maybe there are some stories of your faith that you've never told that someone could benefit from. If you're kind of in midlife, maybe your success right now, you're at the height of your career and it is fantastic. I wonder is there something in that where you have not yet thought of that as a legacy of faith somehow? And maybe a shift in mindset, a step you could take would start to turn that into something of faith for generations to come. If you are a young adult, I see some of them right here, second Thursdays, every month we meet, um, you're thinking, you know, I'm still young. I mean legacy. I'm not thinking about that yet, but the choices that that young adults make now, college students, the choices, now they're laying the foundation for what's to come. I mean, if, if you were to lean in and learn your Bible now that would help you make these, these decisions as you get started in your adult life, it's gonna make a difference. And then if you're a student, you're a teenager and you're like, I don't know, I'm not even, I'm not really thinking about this. Let me just tell you, God values what young people have to say, what you think the scripture says it. And it could be that in this world that seems so anxious, when you're not sure what the future is, decisions you make now are gonna impact you in your twenties, thirties, forties, fifties. Any of us can tell you that. It could be like you need a mentor. That's something you could do intentionally. How can I start strengthening my faith now that my life will make a maximum impact on this earth in the way that God would have it, I would fulfill my purpose. So as we begin to close, I just want us to take just one minute of reflection. And if you have your notebook, you could maybe make a note. But, and I just want you to think, what is one intentional step that you could take when it comes to leaving a legacy of faith that would impact those who are coming behind you? And then I'm gonna tell you one very important piece of the Nebo story before we go. So as the story on Mount Nebo came to an end, I think it's important that you know what happened when Moses died. The scripture says, and Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in Moab on Mount Nebo, as the Lord had said, and he buried him in Moab. But to this day, no one knows where his grave is who buried Moses. God, what does that look like? I don't know. I mean, God took his hands and buried him. I don't know, but I know how I feel it. How Loving and beautiful and awesome and profound is it that God himself would bury Moses? See, there were consequences to what Moses had done in the desert of Zen, but his legacy held true. And God never defined Moses by those two mistakes. Moses was defined by his relationship with God. And so I want you to hear me. Some of you think your legacy is ruined. But here's the thing. The God of Moses sent Jesus to live, to die on a cross, to rise again for the forgiveness of all our sins, for those who would place their faith in him as their savior, that we would have an eternal and secure relationship with God forever. God will not ignore our sins. There's still consequences. He, he can't ignore it. He, he won't. We still might have consequences at times, but ultimately we are forgiven and defined by God and his love. So absolutely his righteousness and his holiness will hold firm, but so will his love for you. So you cannot give up if you leave here and you think, you know what? I made two big mistakes. And I think that my whole life, that's, it's, it's, it's ruined. I I can't come to faith or I am a person of faith. I know Jesus. And, and it's, it's ruined. It's not, It's not. It's not. You are defined by the love of God. He's making a way for you. So would you stand with me as we go? I wanna read to you two of two words that Moses said to the people on two occasions. And I think you need to hear them. Moses said, be strong and courageous for the Lord. Your God goes with you. He will never leave you nor forsake you. So go in peace and we'll see you next week.