Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Are You Living For? | Torah | Deuteronomy 33

Episode Date: November 21, 2022

What will people say about your life? What defines your life's purpose? What comes first for you in your life: yourself or God? In today's episode, Keith discusses Deuteronomy 33and how to live the good life. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Deuteronomy 33 Resources: 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. There's a principle called Begin with the End in Mind. I first heard it from Stephen Covey in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and ever since hearing it, I've never forgotten it. Let me explain it by showing you how it works. If you want to build a new house, what do you do first?

Maybe you order materials, or choose colors, or start framing it? Well, of course, you don't do any of those things first. The first thing you do is decide what kind of house you want. How many bedrooms and bathrooms will have? Should the kitchen and family room be separated by a wall or should it all be one big room? Where should the laundry be in relationship to the bedrooms? Once all that's been decided, what's the next step? Well, then you draw plans that reflect what you want.

So you might have to hire an architect or an engineer depending on how complicated of a project it is. but only after you have all the plans do you start ordering materials and building. Now, do you have to do it in that order? Well, I guess you don't have to, but it would be pretty foolish to do it in any other order. But I guess you could start building without deciding what you want. You could start building without drawing any plans. But if you do that, you're going to end up making a lot of changes that are going to be very costly, both in time and money. No one would do anything so foolish as to start building a house without first having a very good plan for how you wanted it to look at the end.

In this instance, beginning with the end in mind is just common sense. Okay, here's another example. What's the first step in taking a family vacation? Do you just get in the car and start driving? Well, of course not. Again, common sense says that the first step might be thinking through what the family likes to do together, or determining the vacation budget. Now, could you just get the family in the car and start driving down the road with no idea of what you're doing and with no plan?

Well, sure, but that's not going to be a vacation. That's going to be a disaster. First, you plan the vacation and then you go on the vacation. So now let's think about our life. Do we begin with the end in mind when it comes to living our life? Do we plan what kind of life we want before we live it? What I'm asking is, do we do the equivalent of drawing plans for the house or planning a vacation before taking the vacation?

And I think the answer is no. When it comes to living our life, most of us don't have a lot of common sense. We live life day to day, choice to choice, relationship to relationship, job to job, decision to decision, unsure of where we're headed, no real goal in mind. Now, how come we put more forethought into building a house or taking a vacation? than we do living our life. With anything important, we begin with the end in mind, except the most important thing, our life. When it comes to our life, we just do it one day at a time. When it comes to our life, we just wing it. Now, I bring all this up because we're near the end of three things.

We're near the end of Deuteronomy, which means we're near the end of the Pentateuch, and we're near the end of Moses's life. And at the end of Deuteronomy 33, we find Moses's last words, at least last words recorded in the book. Here's what Moses says. There is no one like the God of Jeshran. Now, Jeshren is just a nickname for Israel. So he's saying there is no one like the God of Israel who rides across the heavens to help you and on the clouds in his majesty. The eternal God is your refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms. He will drive out your enemies before you, saying destroy them. So Israel will live in safety. Jacob will dwell on. secure in a land of grain and new wine where the heavens drop due.

Blessed are you, Israel. Who is like you, a people saved by the Lord? He is your shield and helper and your glorious sword. Your enemies will cower before you and you will tread on their heights. Moses went out of this world. Moses ended his life by singing the praises of God. In these verses, Moses tells us there is no one like God. God is your refuge. He's the refuge of all who trust in him. God saves, God sustains, God is your shield,

and God is your protector. See, Moses lived his whole life banking, counting on God. Moses had left behind the riches of the Egyptian Pharaoh to go be with his people in their slavery. He'd endured 40 years in the wilderness. Moses had stared down Pharaoh. He'd spoken truth to power. He'd held Israel together during the plagues, he'd led Israel out of Egypt and through the sea. Moses had gotten on his knees and begged God to forgive the Israelites when they made and worshipped the golden calf. He'd endured the complaining of the people. He'd watched the spies shrink back in fear and refused to enter the promised land. He'd seen God provide manna from heaven to feed his people. But Moses had also personally disobeyed God, and therefore he wasn't allowed to go into the

promised land. And now he knows he's getting ready to die. He knows that he is getting ready to stand before God. When you think about dying and standing before God, what do you want to be true of your life? When you look back on the years that God gave you, what do you want to have done with your time? What kind of person do you want to be? One of the most well-known chapters in all the New Testament is Hebrews chapter 11. It's a fantastic chapter. The whole thing is great. But in the middle of the chapter are verses that I think are exceptional, even exceptional compared to the rest of Hebrews 11. Let me read them. They're about Moses. These are life-changing verses. They say this. By faith, Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He chose to be

mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking to his reward. Do you hear how Moses' faith is commended in these verses? By faith, he saw sin as pleasurable, but he knew that its pleasures were fleeting, that they don't really last. And what this verse says, is that Moses kind of looked at all the treasures that Egypt offered. Now, think about it. They offered great education, great wealth, great power. I mean, he was going to be in the king's court. He was going to be one of the in-crowd at the cool kids' table. I mean, he had all the pleasures of Egypt at his

disposal. He looked at all those, and he says, I know of a better treasure. I know of something that is of greater value. He said that being mistreated with the people of God, suffering for Jesus, the glories found in Jesus are of greater value than the glory found in Egypt. Moses didn't begrudgingly choose to obey God. He didn't say, well, I really wish I could have the treasures of Egypt, but I know the right thing to do is to go after God. No, not at all. Instead, he looked at him and he compared living for God and living in Egypt, and he said, God is better. It's sweeter. It's more satisfying. It's everything I've ever wanted. Yes, Egypt has a lot of treasures, but they are fleeting. Moses saw that by faith. He began with the end in mind. He said,

I want to live my life in a way so that when I end, when I die, when I stand before God, I will be rich in the things of God. I will have been faithful to God. I will have trusted God's promises. I will have obeyed God's word. He said, That's where the good life is. Do you see your life in the same way? That you have a choice to make. You can pursue all the treasures that this world has to offer. And let's be honest, they are pleasurable.

There's a lot of them. They're really cool. They're flashy. They're immediate. They're right in front of our face. And they look really attractive. But do you have the ability to, like Moses, see that they are fleeting and that they are empty and that they don't truly satisfy?

So down one path is all the treasures that this world. world has to offer. And down the other path is walking humbly with Jesus, walking with him, and maybe you don't have much, or maybe your career doesn't go quite like you wanted it to, or maybe it does, maybe you have a great career. I mean, we just don't know what the future holds for any of us. All you know is that Jesus says, come follow me, come, surrender your life to me, live your life for my agenda. Seek first the kingdom of God. Do you see your path that way, and do you have eyes to see, do you have the faith like Moses to understand that the promises of Jesus are eternal, that they last, that he never fails you, while all the treasures of this world will leave you

empty, the treasures of Jesus will always leave you full and satisfied. That what we want more than anything, whether we realize it or not, but what we want more than anything upon our death is to hear Jesus say to us, well done, my good and faithful servant. Now, that's the way, that has real implications for how we live our life here. It means we'll want to obey God, surrender to him. It means we'll need to resist sin and the temptations that pull us away from him. Maybe it means something like we're going to turn down a job promotion that requires us to move to a different city so that we can stay in a good church with good teaching and where our friends are

and a good small group that holds us accountable. And to a lot of people, that won't make any sense. Why wouldn't you pursue a career? you could always find another church. You can always find another group of friends. You can be a Christian anywhere. Why not pursue this great opportunity? And maybe that will be the right choice for some people.

But you might look at people and go, well, but that's not the right choice for me in this situation. Because I don't want to pursue a job promotion at the expense of following Jesus. And I think if I leave my community and leave my church and leave this small group, it might actually hinder my walk with Jesus. And that's what's more valuable. look, all of this is different for different people at different seasons in their life. So I'm not trying to give advice to everyone who's listening to this because it may not apply directly to you, but hopefully you can see the big point. But the big point is that following Jesus is better than anything this world has to offer.

And that might mean that you have to choose to die to yourself in a thousand small ways because you know that it's through dying to yourself and living for Jesus that you find real, life because again you want to begin with the end in mind and what's your end i want to hear jesus say well done my good and faithful servant i want to have surrendered my life to him to followed him to obeyed him to cherish him i want to have raised a godly family i want to have become a person who knows my bible and who is shaped by my bible i want to be a person who has told people about jesus who has given generously to the work of God in this world. I don't know what it's all going to be. The list is going to be long, but when you begin with the end in mind, it makes a difference in how you live your life.

What do you want Jesus to say to you when you stand before him face to face? Hey, thanks for listening. If you want to go deeper, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talk newsletter. You'll get a short email once a week. It'll challenge you to grow in your faith, give you interesting background on today's passage, and a lot, lot more. Just click the link in the show notes to sign up. It'll help you deepen your journey with Jesus.