Welcome to Buoy, a Life in Deeper Water podcast.

Episode 66. The Power of God’s Story (and living in it… with Moses)

Hello human.

I recently came to a new spiritual place with my God.

When His story became more important than my story.

How so? When I made the commitment to immerse myself in His story. I have read through the Bible maybe once, several decades ago, and studied it by book, and chapter, during my undergraduate work. But it has been time, and I have known this for a couple of years, to read God’s narrative as a story, again.

With one question:  What happened, God?

If you are staying with BUOY in real time, by the time you listen to this episode I will likely be done with the Old Testament and gathering reflections to share before I continue with the New Testament. I am in a whole new spiritual space. The scale, magnitude, depth in God’s story is like I am reading it for the first time. Though it is not, I have never read through it within such an intense timeframe.

I have a fairly flexible schedule, but the commitment I am making is to immerse in God’s journey with His people. I will share more details later, and recommendations, but this approach really just means reading enough at one time to get lost in the power of God.

Today I share a snippet from someone everyone has heard of… Moses.

Not the burning bush, not the tablets, not the golden calf, but a read-through of his last sermon. Turns out, I love Deuteronomy. I look forward to sharing more about Moses, but just consider this, human: the story we may have learned about Moses that religious and secular culture has tethered itself to, is shallow water. Great visuals for Sunday School, and little eyes and young hearts, but we should seek more from Moses.

This is a man who had an unbelievable relationship with God… and his last sermon comes within pretty challenging circumstances for Moses, personally.

For now, here’s what he said:

I am a First-Person Witness

Deuteronomy 11

 

11 Love the Lord your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands always. 2 Remember today that your children were not the ones who saw and experienced the discipline of the Lord your God: his majesty, his mighty hand, his outstretched arm; 3 the signs he performed and the things he did in the heart of Egypt, both to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his whole country; 4 what he did to the Egyptian army, to its horses and chariots, how he overwhelmed them with the waters of the Red Sea[a] as they were pursuing you, and how the Lord brought lasting ruin on them. 5 It was not your children who saw what he did for you in the wilderness until you arrived at this place, 6 and what he did to Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab the Reubenite, when the earth opened its mouth right in the middle of all Israel and swallowed them up with their households, their tents and every living thing that belonged to them. 7 But it was your own eyes that saw all these great things the Lord has done.

In Verse 7 Moses calls out each Israelite on this journey as a first-person witness. I see this as saying… take responsibility for what you know about the power of God in your life. You are a co-narrator with the Almighty God. That is the story.

God is the Caretaker of Your Land

And Moses goes on in verse 8:

8 Observe therefore all the commands I am giving you today, so that you may have the strength to go in and take over the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, 9 and so that you may live long in the land the Lord swore to your ancestors to give to them and their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey. 10 The land you are entering to take over is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you planted your seed and irrigated it by foot as in a vegetable garden. 11 But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. 12 It is a land the Lord your God cares for; the eyes of the Lord your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its

end.

This is so cool.  Moses is telling them that the life and land they will live on has God as its caretaker, a majestic terrain of mountains and valleys that “drinks rain from heaven.” God never takes His eyes off you and your land.

Moses continues…

13 So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today—to love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul— 14 then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and olive oil. 15 I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied.

It’s so simple, but we have a tough time with simple. If we serve God with all our heart and soul, we will be satisfied.

Love, Walk in Obedience, and Hold Fast to God

Moses goes on to warn…

16 Be careful, or you will be enticed to turn away and worship other gods and bow down to them. 17 Then the Lord’s anger will burn against you, and he will shut up the heavens so that it will not rain and the ground will yield no produce, and you will soon perish from the good land the Lord is giving you. 18 Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 19 Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 20 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, 21 so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.

 

22 If you carefully observe all these commands I am giving you to follow—to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him and to hold fast to him— 23 then the Lord will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations larger and stronger than you. 24 Every place where you set your foot will be yours: Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the Euphrates River to the Mediterranean Sea. 25 No one will be able to stand against you. The Lord your God, as he promised you, will put the terror and fear of you on the whole land, wherever you go.

Living in the time of Moses and entering the promised land was brutal, and full of fighting, plundering, and murder. For Moses to say “No one will be able to stand against you.” Is a statement that slays.

You Are About to Take Possession

I could make this section about my life so easily. A mountain for blessings, and a mountain for curses… I know the terrain. And it is so powerful that Moses says “gods you have not known.” That’s beautiful, because the blessings come from knowing God. He just reminded them that they have seen God’s power with their own eyes. But if we turn from God, we wager on something we do not know.

The curses are as I have said, the lures of the world, all the things you do with no spiritual connection to the Vine, the earthly things of this world are all the priorities, idols, material things, the relationship gods you engage in out of His presence.

Yet when we make that divine decision to love, obey and hold fast to God, it is the commitment to cross the Jordan and live in a spiritual world He takes care of, with all answered prayers and fortitude that comes from drawing our strength from His promises.

But you don’t see the power of His story, if you don’t live within it. When your beliefs and actions come together as a faith that could only be His divine persuasion of your heart.

Oh, there’s more to come…