Spirtual Sight - John 9:39-41

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com. That's cornerstonerbc.com. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to church. Once again, the Lord has given us this glorious grace that we can be alive and we can come together as a church of the Lord Jesus Christ.

My dear brother, my dear sister, I'm going to invite you to please open up your Bibles to the book of Deuteronomy chapter 34. We are going to continue with our corporate reading of the scriptures and by God's grace. Now we're coming to the end of the book of Deuteronomy. This is the last chapter of this book. Deuteronomy chapter 34.

And as we have been doing from since Genesis one, by God's grace, we are going to be reading the chapter together. And we are going to be given a brief overview of the contents of this chapter. And I hope that the help of the Spirit applying that to your soul. Let us come, brethren, before the Lord and ask Him that He may help us, that He may give us the faith that is necessary as we preach, as you hear the word that is preached, as we read the words that are written, that we may not be doing this as just a simple exercise in the flesh. But brethren, that we might do this in love, in grace, by the Spirit, and that the outcome of this will not be the exaltation of any man or any person, but that will be the exaltation of Jesus Christ in the heart of sinners who have been redeemed by grace.

So, brethren, let us come together before the Lord and let us pray together. He is the One who saved us, He is the One who redeemed us, He is the One who gave Himself for us, so that we will enter into the throne of grace with boldness every time that we have need. And there is much need, brethren, there is much need. Deuteronomy chapter 34, my dear brother, my dear sister, and I want to speak to you. about the discipline of the Lord.

I want us to read together these 12 verses in Deuteronomy chapter 34 that are going to speak about the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, and how he is going to be unable to make it into the promised land because of the sin that he had committed. I want to take that example of him not being able to make it into the promised land, because of the sin that he had committed, to speak to your soul about the discipline of the Lord. not only for Moses and the saints of the Old Testament, but of course, for the saints of God through generations, the discipline of the Lord. So as we are going to be reading together these 12 verses, let us pay careful attention to the details of how Moses is taken up to the mountain to die according to the word of the Lord and how indeed his death takes place. This is the word of the Lord, Deuteronomy chapter 34.

Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab, to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho. And the Lord showed him all the land, Gilead as far as Dan, all Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah, as far as the western sea, the Negev, and the plain, that is, the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees, as far as Zoar. And the Lord said to him, This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to your offspring. I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not go over there.

So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died. there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord. And he buried him in the valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth Peor. But no one knows the place of his burial to this day. Moses was 120 years old when he died.

His eye was undimmed and his vigor unabated. And the people of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days. Then the days of weeping and mourning for Moses were ended. And Joshua the son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom, for Moses had laid his hands on him. So the people of Israel obeyed him and did as the Lord had commanded Moses.

And there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, known like him for all the signs and the wonders that the Lord sent him to do in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land, and for all the mighty power and all the great deeds of terror that Moses did in the sight of all Israel." And that is the reading of God's Word, may He bless us as we meditate upon these 12 verses here. My dear brother and sister, as we approach to the end of this book, and as we try to think about the many things that we have said in the book of Deuteronomy, there could be many different points that we could take as a summary of the contents of this book. We could think about the covenant that God entered with the people of Israel. rescued the people out of Egypt and entered into a covenant with the people of Israel.

In entering into that covenant, the God, the Lord God of Israel, gave the people of Israel a law. A law that had instructions and commandments that were supposed to be obeyed. The result of obedience or disobedience to those laws that comprised the covenant was either blessings for obedience or curses for the disobedience, all of those topics are crucial and central and vital for us to understand the book of Deuteronomy. But we have to acknowledge and accept that if we look back through these 34 chapters, there is one person that is predominant and very important, not only in the book of Deuteronomy, but even from the beginning of Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers. And that is Moses.

There is no other servant like Moses, according to the words that we have just read here. No other person was exalted as Moses was. He was chosen to be the instrument through which God was going to liberate the people of Israel. He was the instrument through whom God was going to give all the laws and all the commandments for the people of Israel. He was going to be the chosen leader that was going to guide each one of the souls that the Lord had liberated from the land of Egypt, exalted above everyone, face to face with the Lord.

He had entered into the presence of the Lord like no one else. He had spoken to him directly. And the words of the Lord had been not only in his ears, but also in his mouth. He had spoken the words of the Lord. No one had the relationship that Moses had with the Lord.

Exalted in life and also exalted in his death. The way that he died, my dear brethren, as we have just read these 12 verses, the way that this man died is a way that was exalted above every other person. He died in the presence of the Lord. He was not unexpected to his death as we are. We don't know when we are going to die, if we die now, or tonight, or tomorrow, or in five days, or in 50 years.

He was told when he was going to die, when you go up the mountain, then you are going to die and you're going to be joined to your fathers. But not only that, he died, my dear brethren, in the presence of the Lord. And Moses finished his life or finished his ministry in the same way that he started it, in the presence of the Lord alone. He was in the burning bush, I think you call it in English, in the beginning of his ministry, and he died alone in the presence of the Lord. And we are told that his death was according to the word of the Lord.

So exalted was Moses, not only in his life, but also in his death, that even we are told in verse 5, So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab according to the word of the Lord. And he... buried him in the valley of the land of Moab, opposite Beth-Peor. Who buried Moses? The Lord buried Moses.

He was so exalted, not only in his life, but he had this glorious privilege also to be in the presence of the Lord, even when he was dying or when he died. And even, brethren, we are told that upon the death of Moses and even his body, there were angelic conflicts and difficulties. If you quickly come, if you do not know that, to Jude, the second last book of your Bibles, there is a very interesting verse there that speaks of the body of Moses after he died. Very quickly, let's come to Jude. And in verse 9, we are told something very interesting there about the body of Moses when he died.

Jude 1, verse 9, it says, "...but when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment. But he said, The Lord rebuketh you, exalted in his life and exalted in his death." Who does not want to die in the way that Moses died? With the certainty of the presence of the Lord.

And he did not die a normal death, because even we are told in verse 7 that he was full of years, 120, and that physically he was very good. He says that his eye was undimmed and his vigor was unabated. His body, as it was seen by the eye of men, was ready to continue even more and longer days. But the death of Moses had been appointed, not by the reducing and the coming down and the wasting of a physical body, but by the word of the Lord. So exalted was this man that when he died, not one person, not two people, but a whole nation, mourned the death of this man.

We're told in verse 8, that the people of Israel, there is a whole nation, brethren, a whole nation mourned and were weeping for the death of this man. So exalted in his life that he had been face to face with the Lord and that he had received the words and so exalted in his death that he died in the presence of the Lord. And even a whole nation was weeping the death of this man. And he was so exalted and so important that only important people require a successor, if that is the way that you pronounce that word. Someone that will take over your life.

Someone that will replace the important duty and the important task that was given to you. Only an important man, only an important role will be required or will require that someone will take over. In this case, we're told that in verse 9 and onwards, that it's Joshua, the one that is going to be entrusted with the mission to carry on, to take over the important ministry and mission that Moses had been given. exalted in his life, a death like none other. He died in the presence of the Lord, mourned by the whole nation.

He knew about his death. Yet, my dear brother and my dear sister, independently of the exaltation of this man, Independently of the glorious communion that he had with the Lord. Independently of the words that he received and the fellowship that he had with God. Independently of the presence of God so manifested in his life and even in his death. He was still.

Amen. And as a man, as a son of Adam, he was a sinner. And as a man who sins like any one of us, he was subject to the disciplinary hand of the Lord. None of the exaltations, none of the high reputation or accolades, and none of the many times that he had been in the presence of the Lord will take from him the fact that he was a man and that he was a sinner. And as a sinner, he had committed sins.

And those sins, even though they had been forgiven by the Lord, they had consequences. And the disciplinary hand of the Lord was going to be upon him. And what way it was upon Moses, my dear brother and my dear sister. Because all his life had been given with the purpose of entering into the promised land. All his efforts, everything that he had done for the people of Israel, had been with the purpose to enter into the promised land.

And yet the Lord, the God Almighty, took him up to that mountain to see the land and to tell him these words in verse 4. It says, This is the land which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to your offspring. Not I will allow them to see it from afar, not I will allow them to see it from the top of the mountain, but I will give it to your offspring. I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not go over there."

My dear brethren, it is at least when I see it and I try to understand the heart of Moses, how tempted could he have been? to think that he had failed. How tempted could it have been that just seeing all the years that he had preached the word and all the things that he had done, and when he goes up to that mountain and just sees the land, and even though is the Lord the one that is taking him, how tempted, how much the temptation would have been in his mind and his heart to feel and to think that he had failed, and even how tempted Moses could have been just to think that the Lord did not love him as he had said that he loved him, or even that the Lord had forgiven the sin that he had committed that was causing this situation in the present time. How many of the sinners... that were in the community and in the congregation of Israel, who had sinned in a way that was greater than the sin that he had committed, are going to make it into the Promised Land.

How tempted Moses could have been in his heart and in his mind to think that the sin that he had committed was not only not forgiven, but also to think, my dear brethren, that this God did not love him, or that this God was not with him as he had said that he was. Yet, we know from the testimony of the Scriptures, my dear brother and my dear sister, that Moses was filled with faith and with certainty. That what was taking place in his life and in the life of the people of Israel was with an ultimate purpose. and that He was an instrument in the hands of the Saviour of Israel to accomplish a greater blessing unto the people of Israel. And it was established upon that faith that the consummation of the promise of the Lord was not going to be in the land that He was observing, but in a future land that was incoming in the Messiah, that He could have peace, that that which the Lord had appointed for Him to complete, was exactly what he was seeing and witnessing there.

I have to die before I make it into the promised land. And Moses will experience and know, my dear brother, my dear sister, that even though this God is so gracious, that this God is so loving and so condescending, this God is also serious about sin and the consequences of that sin. And Moses is experiencing here the consequences of that sin, that even though he was forgiven, He is not going to be able to make it into the promised land that He has so desired for Him and for the people of Israel. This is the same situation, my dear brother and my dear sister, for the saint. All of our sins are forgiven by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Once by grace, through faith, we have inserted into the person of Jesus Christ, we have absolute certainty that, as brother Jesus said, there is absolutely no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. But God has determined that our sins are not only going to be forgiven, that righteousness is not only going to be imputed, but that righteousness is also going to be imparted. That is, that we are going to be made like the Lord Jesus Christ. And the sins that we commit, even though they are forgiven in the person of Jesus Christ, they have consequences. And the consequences of sins at times are used by the Lord to bring His disciplinary hand, not of judgment, not of wrath upon the church, but disciplinary hand.

Because as children, we are also disciplined by the Lord. And of course, I have to take you to the passage in Hebrews chapter 12, because in Hebrews chapter 12, we see more clearly the disciplinary hand of the Lord for those whom He loves and the purpose of the discipline. Come, please, to Hebrews chapter 12. the way that He disciplines His saints, brothers and sisters, is glorious, yet from our fleshly and human perspective is at times fearful. It is said of the saints at Corinth, you remember in 1 Corinthians 11, those who were partaken of the table in an unworthy manner, that many of them were weak, that many of them were ill, that many of them died.

because they were taking the Lord's table in an unworthy manner. The discipline of the Lord manifested in different ways, and even here we're told in verse 4, implicitly, the shedding of blood when it comes to suffering. It says in verse 4 of chapter 12, "...in your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood." And have you forgotten the exhortation that addressed you as sons?

My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by Him. For the Lord disciplines the one He loves, and chastises every son whom He receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?

If you are left without discipline in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had early fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time, as it seemed best to them. But He disciplined us for our good, that we may share His holiness.

For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it." exalted Moses in his life and even in his death. Yet a man, a sinner, and I say sinner of men, that he was subject to the same passions and the same feebleness that we are. Tempted to doubt and tempted to be taken just simply by the moment that he was not making it into the Promised Land yet. My dear brother, my dear sister, it was the absolute faith that he had in the hand of the Lord.

It was the absolute faith that he had in the love of the Lord that he knew that he's not making into the promised land, that he's not entering into the promised land that was the rest for the people of God, was a type of one who was going to die and indeed was going to make it into the eternal rest. The Lord Jesus Christ, that He was a servant unto a house that was temporarily given, so that He will be the shadow, the type of the Son of God, who will be faithful in all things in the house of God. The One who will endure the hand of the Father upon Him, not because He had committed any sin, that He endure the hand and the wrath of the Father upon Him, to rescue a people that did not deserve to be rescued, but He did it in love. And my dear brother, He endures the pain and the suffering, even to the point of the cross, so that we set in our minds, in the person of Jesus Christ, we will endure until the end, the consummation of our personal faith, even if we have to go through trials and tribulations, and even the disciplinary hand of the Lord. Because when the disciplinary hand of the Lord comes upon the soul of a saint, We ought to be full of certainty and conviction that the love of God has not changed, that the condescension of God has not changed, that the mercy of God has not changed, but rather this God who loved us.

and gave His Son for us is bringing to completion the individual purpose that He has for each one of the saints. He's completing the work of His hand that He's not going to neglect. He's bringing to completion the work that He started up to the day of the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ so that The saint and my dear brother, either in trial and tribulation, can count it all joy when they fall into them, knowing that God is sovereign above all, and that even if it is the disciplinary hand of the Lord, the purpose of it is to work righteousness in your heart, that you may experience the greatest experience that a person can experience, and that is death. Death to self. so that once resurrected you will experience the life of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Death to your thoughts, to your preferences, to your heart, to your emotions, to your feelings, so that in you it will be the life of Christ, the emotions of Christ, the words of Christ. And that which comes out of you will be the manifested work of the hand of the Father, making you like the person of Christ. Amen?