May I please God to bless us
together this morning as we consider his word. Let us turn to the
book of Deuteronomy chapter 8 and we'll read the second verse.
The book of Deuteronomy chapter 8 and reading verse 2. And thou shalt remember all the
way which the Lord thy God led thee these 40 years in the wilderness
to humble thee and to prove thee to know what was in thine heart,
whether thou wouldest keep his commandments or no." Moses here is addressing the
children of Israel after those 40 years they'd been in the wilderness
and shortly before they were to go across Jordan and enter
into the land of Canaan And also, just a short time before Moses
was to die, as we know, he was not allowed to enter into Canaan,
and therefore he was able to write these great truths and
to speak these great truths to Israel so that they might be
aware of the benefits and the blessings which had followed
them. And he makes this statement,
And thou shalt remember all the ways which the Lord thy God led
thee, these 40 years in the wilderness. Now I know this therefore has
a direct word with regards to Israel, but it does have a direct
words to us today, and especially on this day of remembrance. And
if we think of it like this, and now shall remember all the
way which the Lord thy God led thee. If we look at our country,
we look back in history, and realise how God has indeed led
us as a nation. And it's good for us to realise
God's mercy and goodness to us. You know, we can go back many
hundreds of years to times when our nation was blessed above
many nations, right back into the early centuries AD, when
we know there were those good men like Alfred the Great, who
was raised up and he was called the Great because he was a great
king. We don't hear very much about him in this day and age.
But in actual fact, Alfred the Great was one of the early people
that actually translated part of the Bible. He taught himself
so that he could actually read Greek and Hebrew and also Latin. In those days it was really quite
an accomplishment. but he was very able and he was
therefore blessed by being able to translate some of the Bible
into Saxon English. Well that was a great favour
and God clearly led him and blessed our country way back in those
days. And then as we move on from then
and really the blessing of God to our nation is very much centred
around the Bible. and centred around the translation
of the Bible. And it is good for us to remember
the truth of these things. Because there are many, many
nations in the world who still today are not blessed with the
Bible in their language as we have it. And we can look back
and think of John Wycliffe. What a wonderful man he was. He didn't actually know, of course,
all the languages, but he was able to translate the Bible from
the Latin and he translated it into a good version and it was
tremendous labour that he spent years translating the Bible. There was no printing press in
those days and he had to actually sit down and get scribes to actually
write it out with pen and ink and of course pen and ink weren't
the same as they are today and to write it onto scrolls and
then copies had to be handwritten and yet they were wonderfully
blessed and of course he then sent out those men who were called
Lollards and they went out throughout the length and breadth of the
country preaching the gospel. They were days of wonderful favour
and we should remember the blessings that God gave to us and then
we can we can go on from there and think of William Tyndale
a man who gave up a very comfortable living to translate the Bible. He was so disgusted with the
ignorance of the men, ordinary people, and the wrong influence
that was being put forth by, in those days, the Roman Catholic
Church, that he was determined to translate the Bible into what
we call common English. As he said, even the plow boy
would be able to understand and read. And he gave his life, and
don't forget the cost. He gave his life, he was strangled
and burnt. And prior to that, he spent years
in exile in Europe, with no natural comforts, just in a small room,
and in winter time without any fire or anything, put his overcoat
round him to keep him warm. And he at one time lost, you
know, all that he'd done. He went on a boat and there was
a storm and there was a shipwreck and he lost all his writings.
We might think, surely he would think, well now, God's hand's
gone out against me, I better pack up this. But no, he went
back and he started again. The benefit he had over Whitcliffe
was he knew the original languages, Greek and Hebrew. And he was
able therefore to translate the Bible from those original languages. And what a labour that was. And
then of course, when that was brought back into England, what
opposition there was. As we know, the Roman Catholic
Church, they did all they could, they bought up all the Bibles
they could, in order that they might destroy them. But of course,
they gave big money to buy these Bibles and the money was taken
back to the continent and they produced many more Bibles. And
so, their efforts to destroy the Word of God and the reading
of the Word of God was not brought about. And so we're thankful
that there was that wonderful work of Tyndale which then of
course followed very not so long after that by a number of versions
and eventually in 1611 the authorised version which we've read today
which has been used in our nation for so many years. And so we
should remember in particular what a blessing the Lord has
given to us and thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy
God led thee and he has greatly blessed our nation with the word
of God. But then we should also think
of the wonderful deliverances that he's given us in times of
war. Again we can go back in history
and perhaps we can think of the days when the Spanish Armada
came to to invade our country and they had a far bigger navy
than we did. We had a relatively small navy
but there was a battle in English Channel and then what happened,
the Lord God sent a storm and that storm scattered the Spanish
navy and it scattered it right round the chapel up the east
coast and round the top of Scotland and then many were destroyed
on the rocks there and also then it carried them round to the
coast of Ireland and many of the boats were destroyed there.
And so we see that God destroyed the Spanish Armada and God saved
and preserved our country from the rule of Spain. Now we should
remember such occasions as that and give God the honour and the
glory. And perhaps, as we think of those
things to remember, how God wonderfully washed over and kept Israel those
40 years in the wilderness. And we know then, more familiarly
perhaps, the last two world wars. And we see how God appeared for
us on many occasions in those wars, sometimes by the weather
sometimes by causing the German generals to change their view
and change their tactics and go in an opposite direction,
completely alien to any common sense. And yet we see God graciously
ruled and appeared for us. So what can we say this morning?
Well we must say, we should desire to remember all the way which
the Lord has led us. Now Moses speaks further and
he says this, to humble thee and to prove thee to know what
was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments
or no. And if we think of first of all
our nation, we should recognise that the Lord brought us on occasions
to a very very low condition where naturally it would have
been impossible for us to gain the victory and surely therefore
the Lord humbled us as a nation on those occasions, brought us
right down with virtually no prospect of victory and then
we see how God graciously directed us. It was of course the cost
of many lives but nonetheless without any doubt the Lord appeared
and he humbled us, and I believe also he proved us. You might
say, well, why did he prove us? Well, in those last wars, the
kings graciously called for days of prayer. And this was, I believe,
to prove us as a nation, so that rather than rely on our own abilities,
on our own armament, which in actual fact was very low and
very poor, the great truth was that we were able to commit our
nation unto our God and pray for deliverance. And we know
that there were those wonderful deliverances granted. So we can
say, yes, God humbled us. Yes, God proved us as a nation. And it was a blessing to be able
to look back today and to think of occasions when God did favour
us We think of Dunkirk on that amazing time when we escaped
and then the time when we actually attacked and many other things
there were. We'll not go through a list but
if you know anything of history or you can read the history and
you will find that there were many times of gracious and wonderful
deliverances and so we have cause today to remember and we have
cause today to thank and to praise our God for the wonderful deliverances
and to recognise that in those times of deliverances we were
humbled and we were proved and God had the honour and God had
the glory. Well, so be it, so far. Let us now just first of all
think of Israel, their position, their situation. God had graciously
fulfilled his promise and brought Israel out of Egypt. The Lord had told the patriarchs,
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that there would be that time when
they would go down into captivity into Egypt for some 400 years. And that was a long time, a long
time by any measure, 400 years down in Egypt. But the time came
when deliverance would be brought about. And God raised up this
man Moses. And to think of the preparation
that Moses had for this great commission. He was 80 years old
when he came before Pharaoh to request that Israel might come
out of Egypt. He'd been 40 years in Pharaoh's
palace He was an Israelite and Pharaoh's daughter had seen him
in that little casket in the water on the river and had asked
that he might be brought up and then she said she would take
him as his son and so he was brought up in the royal palace
and knew everything about the palace etiquette that was necessary
in later life. And we know that Moses then thought
he was ready to deliver Israel. God had clearly told him that
he was the one who was ordained to do this great work. Well,
God had a different plan for Moses. Moses had to learn a lot
more. He learned first of all about
all the affairs in the royal palace. But now he had to realise
what he was like. And he was now in the wilderness. It's referred to as the backside
of the desert. And there he was, he looked after
flocks of sheep. And he spent 40 years there.
You might say, well, what did he learn there? Well, what he
learnt was this. He wasn't so important. He realised
he was unimportant. He realised that he himself hadn't
any real ability. and therefore he was brought
to that condition where he was dependent upon God to give him
the right words to speak and the right understanding of how
to proceed. And so after another 40 years,
when he was 80 years of old, God appeared for him in that
burning bush and declared to him that now was the time when
he should return and go to Pharaoh and ask that Israel might be
freed from their condition which existed, which was, of course,
very severe bondage. They were there, they were serving
the Egyptians, it was a very tough life, but now Moses was
ordained by God to go and direct them, they might be brought out.
Well, we know if you follow through in Exodus, those plagues that
were brought before Pharaoh didn't have any real effect until that
time when the eldest child was destroyed. on that night which
was not to be forgotten when Israel were last allowed to leave. They left and they then spent
a year in the wilderness and then God told them to go up and
to possess the land. He sent forth spies. He sent
forth those 12 spies, one from each tribe. They were allowed
to go up and spy the land and see what it was like. He went
up and they came back. Now ten of those spies brought
back a bad report. Two of them, Caleb and Joshua,
brought back a good report. And the bad report was that they
said, no there's some giants there and all the cities are
well built and well protected and we won't be able to go up
and therefore take possession of them. So they turned the people
from obeying the Word of God. And Caleb, though, he did stand
out and he did say we are well able to do this, notwithstanding,
no, he wasn't allowed to pursue that agenda and therefore Israel
turned back. And God then was angry with them. Now those spies had been 40 days
searching out the land and God said, as a punishment, you'll
walk in the wilderness a year for every day. 40 years would
you spend in the wilderness and all those who are over 20 years
of age would never come into the land of Canaan, they would
die in the wilderness. And so it was a tremendous judgment
that God brought upon his ancient people Israel and therefore as
God had said so they walked for those 40 years in the wilderness.
And the great thing was that as Moses says here, thou shalt
remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty
years in the wilderness. And we know there were a number
of remarkable deliverances. We know that their water was
provided for them on two separate occasions, a very special situation. Moses was directed to first place
strike the rock and the second time to speak to the rock but
he struck it instead and disobeyed God on that second occasion.
It was that reason why he was not allowed to come into the
land of Canaan. And so they were also then provided
with food every day. Manna was provided and double
was provided on the Saturdays so they didn't have to go and
pick up any food on the Sabbath or the Lord's Day as we now refer
to it. time and again the Lord came
and delivered them and made their way as they travelled through
this wilderness. Now, there was also a very important
occasion when Moses was instructed to build the tabernacle and the
tabernacle was very important because it was there that the
sacrifices were to be offered up to God. It was there where
the holy place was made and the Holy of Holies, that central
place which only the high priest was allowed to enter in once
a year on what was referred to as the Day of Atonement. And
the significance was that he could only enter in with blood,
blood that was shed, which indicated that the animal had died. And what did it portray? Well,
it set the picture for the life and the death of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And so Israel were blessed with
this as they travelled these 40 years, they had before them
the symbol of the suffering and the death of the Lord Jesus Christ
and the high priest was able to enter in within the veil on
this annual occasion to present to God and to seek for the forgiveness
of the sins of the children of Israel. Now then, Moses then
didn't want the children of Israel to forget this situation. He
therefore said, and thou shalt remember all the way the Lord
thy God has led thee these forty years. Now I want to just go
back to the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy because Moses there
is speaking to the children of Israel and he's instructing them
how they are to bring these truths before their children. And the
6th of Deuteronomy and the 6th verse. It's easy to remember.
Deuteronomy 6 and verse 6. This is what we read. And these
words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart and
thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt
talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou
walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou
risest up, and thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand,
and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes, and thou
shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates. Moses didn't want the children
of Israel to forget what God had done for them. He wanted
them to remember it on every occasion when there was an opportunity. He wanted the parents and the
elders to speak and to rehearse and to bring to the young people
that which God had done. Thou shalt teach them diligently. It's not just a a casual statement
in passing. Here was a statement that Moses
wanted the children of Israel to know, to understand, and to
be taught diligently unto the children. And it was something
to be talked about, something to be spoken about, what God
had done for them. It wasn't just speaking about
issues which were of little relevance or little importance. He wanted
them to understand very clearly what God had done for them. and
what a good thing it would be today if we speak to the young
people and speak to the children today of what God has done for
our country and what he's done for us in our own lives so that
we're able to recognise the importance of these words and they shall
remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these 40
years in the wilderness to humble thee and to prove thee and to
know what was in thine heart whether thou wouldest keep his
commandments or no. Now, sadly, we know that Israel
very often rebelled against God. They got fed up with the journey. They wanted a change. And they
rebelled against God. And what Moses is here really
pointing out to them, he's saying, and to know what was in their
heart. What was in their heart? Now,
we have the same problem today. It's what really is in our heart. It's really what we're thinking,
as it were, in private. Not what people think we think,
it's what we are thinking. Whether we do desire to serve
the Lord, whether we do desire to obey the Word of God, or whether
we, in our heart, are thinking, no, I don't really want to do
that. That's too difficult. I want
to carry on in my life. I want to enjoy myself." Well,
Moses here was clearly conscious of the general position of the
children of Israel and therefore he points out that they were
brought this long distance and to be humbled and to be proved
and to know what was in their heart, whether they would keep
the commandments of God or no. Now, the commandments of course
referred to here really is perhaps more than the Ten Commandments
because there were all these ceremonial law. But nonetheless,
Moses was given those Ten Commandments and as he went up to the mountain,
God wrote them on those tables of stone and we know when Moses
came down on the first occasion, the children of Israel were all
singing and dancing around that golden calf which they got Aaron
to make and he was so annoyed he threw the tables of stone
down and broke them, the broken law. And we know then that God
told him to make some more tables and to take it up to him and
he again would write the Ten Commandments on those stones
which of course he did and therefore they were written. Now we might
think that that was the first occasion the commandments were
obtained, well, in a written form perhaps, but we go back
through the earlier chapters in Genesis, we will see that
no, in fact, those commandments were written, perhaps not on
tables of stone, but they were there alluded to as those things
which were right and those things which were wrong. And so here
we see that Moses is speaking about asking them whether they
would keep the commandments of God or no. And perhaps that's
a question put to us today as to whether we would indeed keep
the commandments of God or no, or whether we will just really
rebel against God and say, no, I'm going to live my own life,
I'm going to please myself. I'm not going to do that. I'm not
going to obey the command. It's too tight. It's too narrow.
I don't want to follow that way. I want to have liberty. I want
to have freedom to do what I want to do. I'm sure that's a general
cry today, isn't it? If we look around our nation
today, you know, we find that men and women, boys and girls,
are lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Now, we read
here that they should remember what God had done. And in remembering
what God had done, that was to humble them and to prove them. We might then come to a more
specific and individual consideration for ourselves, as we look at
our own lives and we look at our lives and see how God has
led us, individually, all of us, not only adults but boys
and girls as well, just to think how God has led us. You might say, well, I'm not
sure whether God has led me. I'm not sure whether I know anything
about God. Well, Israel knew what God had told them, what
God had commanded them, and how he had provided for them, and
how he had led them. So just think of that for a moment.
Has God provided for you and me? Has he provided naturally? Has he given us homes to live
in? Has he given us food to eat? Has he given us clothes to wear? You know, we should always realise
that everything that we have, God has given to us. You might
think, well no, I bought it with my own money. It wasn't God that
gave it to me, it wasn't God that led me, I did it. Well,
just think for a moment. It's God that gave you the ability
to work for money. You may not have had the ability.
A blessing is if God has given you the ability to actually work
and to get money. And so it's God that has done
that. It's God that has led you, not
yourself. It's God that has led you. And
so it's good to realise that and therefore if we really are
blessed with an understanding of that, it will do this. It will humble us to realise
that God has given us these things. Because there are millions perhaps
billions in the world, who have virtually no possessions, virtually
no clothes, virtually no food. And so if God has blessed us
with much more, do we have not reason to remember and to be
humbled at the truth of these things and to be proved. We might say, well yes, I now
realize God has done these things. It's not me, it's not my own
ability, it's not my own strength, it's not my own skill, it's not
my own wisdom, because God's given me all these things. So
to be able then to thank God for what he's done. Now these
are very important things, but there are more important things.
You might say, well what is more important than that? Well I'll
tell you what's more important than that. And what is more important
than that is in reference to our never-dying soul. See, we have a natural body and
we have a spiritual soul. Our natural body will die, our
spiritual soul will live forever. We cannot kill that eternal life. You see, when we're born, we're
given that living spirit, that nature, that soul. Now, it would be a great blessing
if we can remember, look back in our lives and remember what
God has done for us with regard to our spiritual life. You may
say, well, what am I expected? What should I expect? What would
I remember that God has done in my spiritual life? Well, if
we have been directed by the Spirit of God to recognise that
we are not a good person, and we're not a good person because
we have disobeyed God, like these people here. We have not kept
the commandments of God, we've disobeyed God. And what's been
the result? If we've disobeyed God, we have
sinned. We've done that which is not
in accordance with God's will and purpose. We disobey God and
we have sinned. Now that's just the same as Adam
and Eve did in the Garden of Eden. It was through that original
sin that they brought the curse of sin into this world. It was
sin that brought the curse. They disobeyed God and it's the
same today as we all have disobeyed God and therefore we are all
sinners before God and it would be a wonderful thing if the Spirit
of God convinces us that we are a sinner before God and that
we are guilty and that we do deserve eternal punishment and
so to think then that God has led us and to remember the occasion,
perhaps, or a period when God has convinced us that we are
a sinner before a holy God. And we won't then be looking
around and saying, well, that person's worse than me, and that
person's worse than me, because under the true work of the Spirit
of God, it convicts us as an individual. And we stand before
a holy God as a guilty person. It's as though we're in court
and we're there before the judge. And the judge is, he's heard
all the evidence against us. And all the evidence against
us proves that we're not a good person. It proves that we deserve
to be punished for our sins. And we're not able to pay the
fine which is levied against us. We're just not able to pay
that fine. I wonder if we can remember in
our lives a time when perhaps we did stand guilty before God.
It wasn't before other people, we were before God. It was as
though it was just us and God. And God was looking at us. And
we came and we confessed. Yes, I am a sinner. and I deserve eternal punishment."
Well, that'll be an important day in our lives. I should remember
all the way, to remember that way. And then the great blessing
will be if God then has then directed us to the way of release,
the way of freedom, the way of being pardoned, for those sins. We can't of course pardon ourselves
because they were sins which we committed and we offended
God. But to think then that God has brought us to know that. Now I believe that is a situation
which is humbling because we can think well many people have
never been shown this condition but God has wonderfully shown
me and I'm humbled because of it. Now Israel were humbled because
of the things that they had done and God had showed them. And
he proved them. And then God may be proving us
in this way, that we have to then come to God and we have
to pray that he would have mercy upon us, that he will forgive
us of our sins, that he would take away our sins, because no
a sinner who is not cleansed, who is not washed can never enter
into heaven and therefore we are sinners and we are black
as it were before a holy God and we need to be washed and
we need to be cleansed. And how is that to be carried
out? Now then, Israel were directed to the necessity of blood being
shed that the lamb or goat or animal killed and the blood shed
and then that blood was taken in to the holy place and because
of that shed blood, Moses was accepted. And we today, my friends,
are only accepted through the shed blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ came in
this world to save sinners. The Apostle Paul said, of whom
I am chief. He was a very educated man. Nonetheless,
he said he was the chief sinner. And he needed the blood of Jesus
Christ upon him. And all of us, my friends today,
need to know that the Lord Jesus Christ has died for us. That
he stood in our place. You see, if we go back to that
court consideration, and there's the judge, you see. And the judge
is our God. And we are condemned. And to
think then that the judge then says, well, he'll pay the price. He'll pay the price so we might
be set free. And what was the price? The price
was his death. That was the price the Lord Jesus
Christ paid. He gave his life. He died upon
that cross at Calvary so that we might possess the gift of
eternal life. Now, says Moses here today, and
thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God has led
thee these forty years in the wilderness. Well, let's go back
in our lives to see how God has led us in the things that we
need, our jobs, our food, our homes. God's led us there and
also with regard to our spiritual life. He's shown us our real
condition. And He's directed us to the Lord
Jesus Christ as our only Saviour. And what has it done? It's humbled
us to think that God should have taken notice of us. We look at
ourselves and we think, well, why should God have taken notice
of me? Why should He? Well, we know that God took notice
of us because He's loved us with an everlasting love. Isn't that
amazing? To think that almighty God, that
one who made everything, created everything, whoever it is, has
loved us with everlasting love. It goes back, back before the
world was created. He loved us with everlasting
love. Isn't that humbling? Isn't that humbling? Well, it
should be. It would be really humbling to us to realise that,
that the great God was so willing to come and to die upon Calvary's
cross that we might receive that gift of eternal life. Now he says, and to prove thee,
to prove us. And what is that proving? To
know what was in our heart. We had to get rid of perhaps
all those things that we were working out and to cast ourselves
wholly upon the mercy of our God. casting all our care upon
Him because He cares for us. And whether our heart then is
then willing to keep the Lord's commandments. There's many commandments,
aren't there, in the Word of God, not just those ten commandments. The Lord Jesus spoke specifically
when He was asked what was the greatest commandment, He was
told to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and all thy
soul and to love thy neighbour as thyself. He gave that illustration,
of course, of the Good Samaritan where that stranger came and
looked after that person who had fallen among thieves and
helped him and did all that he could for him. And there are
many other commands which we are to observe in our life. We're not to turn away from them.
And so the word here this morning to us is, to know what was in
thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments or no. God looks at you and me this
morning as to whether we are willing and desiring to keep
his commandments, or whether we're saying, well, no, I don't
think so, I won't do that, I'm not going to follow that way.
Keeping the commandments of the Lord are this, to follow the
example of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's keeping his commandments.
And there is no way of excusing ourselves. There's no way of
saying, well that doesn't apply to me. The word of God is very
clear and very positive. And the word tells us this, if
you love me, keep my commandments. The question is then, if we do
love God, the result will be, it must be, that we keep his
commandments. If we don't keep His commandments,
does it not mean that we do not love the Lord? Well, here we
have then this statement written by Moses so many years ago, but
yet I believe appropriate to us today, in our age in which
we live, not the 40 years, but all our life, and to bless God
for it, and to think of these words an application to us, and
thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee
these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove
thee, and to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest
keep his commandments or no. Amen.