Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - When Things Don't Go Your Way | Torah | Deuteronomy 34

Episode Date: November 22, 2022

How do you react when things don't do the way you hoped they would? What happens when your dream dies? What do you have to live for? Tanya shares about the death of Moses in Deuteronomy 34 and how God shapes our lives for his bigger story. 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 34 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 and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmeth. So what do you do when your life doesn't turn out the way you thought it would? Our friend Moses was intimately familiar with disappointment, and his life can show us what it looks like to find life and hope when a dream of ours dies. If you've experienced personal disappointment, then you probably know what this feels like. Today we're going to wrap up our year-long series in the Torah, and we're going to

say goodbye to Moses and we're going to talk about what no feels like and how God desires to seep hope into the deepest crevices of our lives, even if the answer is no. Now at the end of the Torah, Moses' death was imminent and God took him up to the top of Mount Nebo to this place called Piscay so that he could look in all directions and have a view of the land that God was going to give the Israelites. But Moses couldn't go over into the promised land because of his sin at the Rock of Kadesh. Now Moses had pleaded with the Lord to change his mind, but the answer was no. At the top of that mountain, the Lord said to Moses, this is the land, I'm going to give it just as I promised, but you shall not go over there. Now, this was a big no, but it wasn't really the first Moses had

experienced. He was pretty familiar with no. Now, some scholars think that Moses' Egyptian education might have had him in line to be the next Pharaoh, but remember, God pulled him aside to be a shepherd in Midian for 40 years. There must have been lessons for Moses to learn in the pastors about being a leader that he wouldn't learn at a university in Egypt. And then when he did return to lead God's people after he pleaded with Pharaoh and he led the people out via the Red Sea, he had to wander in the wilderness for 40 years next to the promised land with really difficult people. So Moses sometimes complained, sometimes he wanted to quit, he definitely rebelled, and he lost a dream of leading the people into the promised land himself. But he also walked with the Lord and spoke to him as a friend.

Exodus 3311 says, Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face as a man speaks to a friend. So at the end of his life, he went up to the mountain with the Lord. And the answer was, no, you won't go with. into the promised land. But Deuteronomy 34 says he died according to the word of the Lord, and he was buried by the Lord. The Lord was with him when he died. So where Mount Piscay could have been the symbolic pinnacle of Moses' deepest disappointment, it was actually the place where he most pointedly experienced the real presence of the Lord that he loved and knew.

The way Psalms 11615 describes death for God's people like this, it says precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. God grieves with us over the sting of death, yet it must be precious to him when the things that aren't forever fade away from us, because he completely knows our full story of eternal life with him. So the story that Moses was in at the end of his life was just beginning. Moses was looking out at the land where his future hope, Jesus Christ, would be born. Now, when the answer is no, or when our dream dies, what narrative do we tend to tell ourselves? Maybe we tell ourselves we're a failure and we should give up because we're never going to get

it right. Or maybe we tell ourselves that the next success will actually be the one that makes us happy. Maybe we just distract ourselves from what's really true by drinking or or tapping on our phones or streaming videos. See, we all share this human experience of worrying so much about what other people think and obsession about what we think about ourselves. And we allow those expectations to shape our hopes and dreams. But let's do a little thought experiment.

Let's say you were going to take a road trip to the Grand Canyon, but you didn't know you were going to make it to the Grand Canyon. How would that affect your trip? Would you stick with the McDonald's on the side of the road and sleep in stinking motels? Or would you meander and take in all the sites and just enjoy the process more? I think we know the answer to that question. We would take in the sites. We would stop.

We would talk to people along the way. We would find joy in small conversations, the kindness of those along the path. We would lose our focus to reach a destination and focus more on our hearts and our thoughts. and the people sharing those with us. If you could take your mind down a path where a dream of yours died, what would that free you to do? Would you be more free to try something new, love someone in your past, find something you enjoy,

but if you're not great at it? I think God's story is less about getting everything we want and more about finding who we want as we manneder through our lives with God. As the giver of life, God has been involved in our lives all along. He isn't unaware when our dreams have died. He's with us when they do. Jesus took on flesh and became like us.

And in Hebrews, the author says that Jesus, who took on flesh, is able to sympathize with our weaknesses. He's willing to take on our physical bodies and experience temptation, rejection, and pain to be our perfect sacrifice. His willingness to be made like us so we could live forever with him, well, that's the source of our hope. He is a trustworthy friend and savior in our disappointment. And even if we get to the top of the mountain and look out and see all that didn't come to pass, he stands there with us, showing us a better hope of eternal life in him. This is why we keep coming back to God in His true word to guide us through the mandering, mountain tops and dead ends of life.

And as we wrap up today, just a quick side note about my own personal disappointment at the top of Mount Pisca, North Carolina. Part of the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, Piscuit is named such because it too is the highest point in that range. So my friends and I headed out to climb Piscuit with great expectation. And when we got to the top, we had to share the platform with a huge cell phone tower. It was completely crazy and it just reminded. us of the intersection of nature and human progress. We met another couple, Mr. and Mrs. Bieber at the top,

and they were so excited to take our picture. Mrs. Bieber even got down on the ground to get the best angle possible. We faced our second disappointment later when we saw that picture. I mean, you can't even imagine how bad it is. I'll put it on Instagram for you and please enjoy the laughs at our expense. Unfortunately, that cell phone tower, the Tower of Progress we called it, stood in the way of what could have been a beautiful view over North Carolina. What if a dream you've had was the thing standing in the way? What if it prevented you from a deeper conversation with the Lord about what's truly important? Will you surrender your hopes to God's authority and his greater plan for your life?

Watching Moses look out over the land where Jesus will be born is a really cool way to get us ready for the Christmas season. I just continued to be amazed at the beauty and wonder of God's word. I hope you'll stay with us as we explore that too. Before you forget, sign up for the brand new TMBT newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes and you'll get an email every Wednesday that will help you beat the midweek slump and go deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.