Passing the baton of faithfulness, Deuteronomy 4-6

I ran track when I was in High School. I ran the quarter mile, the half mile, and even did a little triple jump to start off most meets. But, my favorite part of each track meet was the last event of the day, the 4x400 relay. I’m pretty sure I was one of the slowest guys on that relay, but I loved it.

In a relay each member runs the same distance carrying a baton. In the 4x400 each guy runs one lap around the track with the baton. There is a zone for passing off the baton. You cannot receive the baton before the zone begins and you cannot receive the baton after the zone ends.

It doesn’t matter how fast you run your leg of the relay, its the combined time that matters. You can run the fastest split among all the runners on all the relay teams and not win. The reason is that it’s a team race. The point is that whoever gets the baton around the track 4 times and across the finish line first wins the race.

I loved it. I loved depending on the other guys and I loved being dependable. I remember a couple of races where I just didn’t have it. I also ran the 4x800 relay and that happened in that race some too. There were times where I wasn’t ready, I wasn’t rested, I wasn’t focused, etc. And in those situations we didn’t win and I hated to let the guys down. I love to compete and love to leave it all on the line. But, playing team sports like soccer, basketball, track, relay teams, and even being in the band taught me many valuable lessons, and one of them is that it is significantly more rewarding to win with a team than to win on your own. I would rather have one the relay race than my individual race. Don’t get me wrong, I like to win period. But, the joy of sharing in the win and celebrating with the team is unbelievable.

Back to the relay race. I was thinking about it a lot this week because of our sermon passage. In some way you could say that what matters most is the baton. If you run the race without a baton you can’t win. The baton is the only part of the relay team that is involved in the whole race. If The baton is there at the beginning and at the finish line.

The reason this whole relay race and baton thing was on my mind this week is because we find Moses at the point of passing the baton. You can turn to Deuteronomy 4-6 in your Bible.

The context of our passage is near the end of Moses’ life, which is about the same time that the people of Israel are going to enter into the Promised Land.

Back in Numbers 13 there were 12 spies sent to scout out the Promised Land. They came back with an incredible report of the land, but with a fearful report of the people and the cities that were waiting for them. All but Joshua and Caleb were afraid to follow God into the promised land. They stirred up the people of Israel to want a new leader to take them back to Egypt.

Moses and Aaron prayed on behalf of Israel and asked God to show them mercy and forgive them for their rebellion and fearful response.

God responds to the petition of Moses and Aaron in Numbers 14:20–23 (CSB). It says, “God judged the fearful reaction of Israel 20 The Lord responded, “I have pardoned them as you requested. 21 Yet as I live and as the whole earth is filled with the Lord’s glory, 22 none of the men who have seen my glory and the signs I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have tested me these ten times and did not obey me, 23 will ever see the land I swore to give their ancestors. None of those who have despised me will see it.”

God judges Moses’ generation and denies them entrance to the Promised Land.

God told Moses in Numbers 14:28–29 (CSB) to tell Israel, “ 28 Tell them: As I live—this is the Lord’s declaration—I will do to you exactly as I heard you say. 29 Your corpses will fall in this wilderness—all of you who were registered in the census, the entire number of you twenty years old or more—because you have complained about me.”

God continued in Numbers 14:30–35 (CSB) saying, “30 I swear that none of you will enter the land I promised to settle you in, except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun. 31 I will bring your children whom you said would become plunder into the land you rejected, and they will enjoy it. 32 But as for you, your corpses will fall in this wilderness. 33 Your children will be shepherds in the wilderness for forty years and bear the penalty for your acts of unfaithfulness until all your corpses lie scattered in the wilderness. 34 You will bear the consequences of your iniquities forty years based on the number of the forty days that you scouted the land, a year for each day., You will know my displeasure. 35 I, the Lord, have spoken. I swear that I will do this to the entire evil community that has conspired against me. They will come to an end in the wilderness, and there they will die.”

Joshua and Caleb are the only ones of Moses’ generation that would enter the promised land. In fact they would lead them into the promised land.

The rest of the Israelites would die in the wilderness; and their children, who would take the Promised Land, would bear the punishment of their parents by wandering with them for 40 years in the desert.

The point we arrive at in Deuteronomy 4, 5, & 6 is the end of the road for Moses and his generation. He is passing the baton, and the baton is more than leadership… the baton is the Word of the Lord and the will of the Lord for His people.

Deuteronomy 4:1 (CSB)

“Now, Israel, listen to the statutes and ordinances I am teaching you to follow, so that you may live, enter, and take possession of the land the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you.”

Remember that Moses isn’t going to cross the Jordan River with them. He is going to die and not enter the promised land. Moses dies on a mountain looking out across the promised land at the end of the book… but seeing is the closest he got until Jesus.

In Deuteronomy 6 Moses gives the people of Israel the foundation for their life with God in the Promised Land. Moses passes the baton of faithfulness to the next generation of Israelites and instills in them the importance of passing the baton on from one generation to the next. Moses reminds the people of Israel that…

Religion is grounded in relationship

The Lord “our” God, the Lord is one.

The generation that is going into the Promised Land doesn’t remember all that God has done. Many of them were not born when God delivered Israel from Egypt. They didn’t live through the plagues and experience the freedom of the Passover. They weren’t there to see the pillar of smoke and fire, they didn’t walk through the Red Sea. They weren’t at the mountain when God gave them the ten commandments. This generation needs to be reminded that everything they do is because they have a relationship with God.

This was the very thing that Joshua and Caleb exclaimed when they spied out the promised land. 40 years earlier they proclaimed that because God was with them they could overcome any nation or city in their way.

The courage and obedience of Joshua and Caleb was fueled by the presence and power of God in their midst.

As God said in Exodus 20:2 (CSB), “2 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the place of slavery.”

God initiated a covenant with His people built on His covenant or faithful love. They can count on Him because of His Word and His love for Israel.

The center of the relationship with God is love, and it’s love that motivates our obedience to Him.

Love motivates obedience

Deuteronomy 6:5 (CSB) says, 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.

Really I think that verses 4-5 are meant to be understand together. For the sake of our sermon I wanted to point out God’s commitment and covenant relationship with Israel. But, all of our obedience to God flows from our love for Him. And, our love for Him flows from His love for us.

This is why John wrote in 1 John 4:19 (CSB), “19 We love because he first loved us.” And loving God is demonstrated through obedience to God.

Living by faith equals living faithful

Be faithful to God alone

Idols The ways of the world Men over God

Follow His Will by following His Word

God’s will is given to us clearly in His Word. The Spirit of God will never lead differently than the Word.

Faithfulness perseveres and passes the baton

Deuteronomy 6:20–21 (CSB) says, 20 “When your son asks you in the future, ‘What is the meaning of the decrees, statutes, and ordinances that the Lord our God has commanded you?’ 21 tell him, ‘We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a strong hand.\

Moses taught the Israelites that the reasons why were as important as the what.

Remember that religion is grounded in the covenant relationship we have with God. What good is it to do all the right things without actually knowing God?

Moses instructs them to continue doing all that God has told them. He tells them to continue celebrating and following the Word of God, and to remind and teach the next generation of all that God has done for them.

So, how then do God’s people get off track?

3 reasons the people of God get off track:

They forget their first love and wander from God

They become motivated by something or someone other than God’s love.

They lose sight of the relationship God has with them and focus only on themselves.

They follow false gods and give themselves to worldly ways

When you lose sight of what God has done you become increasingly focused on what you have done. But, the Israelites were not entering the promised land on their own efforts. They weren’t living in homes and cities that they had built… no they were moving into a land to inhabit and take over at the Lord’s mighty hand of provision and power.

Following false gods and living according to the ways of the world is known as disobedience. But, this doesn’t happen overnight. In fact, it usually takes a while and is seen more in the next generation than the first generation.

One generation wanders and the next generation is rebellious. The reason for this is rooted in the next point. God’s people get off track when they assume faithfulness in the next generation rather than instill it.

They assume faithfulness and drop the baton

This is what Moses is guarding against. His generation dropped the baton 40 years before. Now, he is obeying the Lord and passing it on to the next generation. And, it is up to them to make sure that faithfulness continues in the people of God.

God is going to be faithful to the covenant He has made with Israel. There is no doubting God, the problem comes with God’s people assume that they are faithful because of God’s faithfulness. They take their eye of what matters, they assimilate into the ways of the world and the culture around them, and they eventually look nothing like God’s Word says they should look.

It only takes 3 generations to lose it. The first group has it, the second group assumes it, and the 3rd generation knows nothing of it.

Unfortunately this is the pattern that we will see over and over again in the Bible. But, the pattern doesn’t make it acceptable, it’s actually the opposite. Over and over again the Bible shows us that God keeps His end of the covenant and brings the people of Israel back to Himself.

And this is where we can look to Jesus.

God demonstrates that He is faithful and true through the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Adam

Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham

Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Moses

All of the times God shows mercy, all of the times that God redeems His people, even the promised Land itself are all wrapped up and fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

God keeps His Word to redeem and deliver the world from sin through Jesus Christ.

1 John 4:7–12 (CSB)

7 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice, for our sins. 11 Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is made complete in us.

God delivers us through Christ to live with Him as we make our way to our eternal home.

Like the Israelites making their way into the Promised land we live with Christ and the presence of the Holy Spirit in us. We are not alone and there is victory for us over the temptations and struggles that we face.

And, just like the Israelites were called to be faithful…

God calls us to faithfully persevere in our obedience to Jesus and His Word

Jesus sends us out with the reminder to pass the baton.

Matthew 28 Jesus has commanded us to teach others like He told Moses to teach the Israelites.

Matthew 28:18–20 (CSB) says, “18 Jesus came near and said to them, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. 19 Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

In today’s church, the inability or the unwillingness to pass the baton has stunted the church.

This is true when it comes to leadership in churches.

This is true when it comes to the way families raise their kids spiritually… they leave it all in the hands of the church

This is true when it comes to Christians being devoted to the Lord in the way they live their lives. So much of discipleship is caught rather than taught.

We live in a culture that is focused on the here and now. Our culture is not worried about what happens next. People aren’t focused on leaving things better than they found them. In fact, you can’t leave it better than you found it if you are only focused on what you are getting out of it.

And, when it comes to the church we have an epidemic on our hands that we must remedy. I am so encouraged by what the Lord is doing in our church. But it is going to take more than just a few churches, it’s going to take an army of churches focused on sharing the gospel and living faithful to Jesus to turn this around.

In fact, we aren’t really going to turn anything around, we can only raise people up. I believe that the idea of turning something around is problematic. Instead of trying to go back, we must press forward and consider what we will leave behind when we are gone.

If you knew that you only had 3 years, and then you would be gone, had to leave, etc… what would you do? How would you make sure that things would be covered? Would you try to get more people or would you try and raise up more leaders?

Consider the way Jesus has told us to make disciples… His plan is that there is always a group ahead of us, beside us, and behind us.

Just like God went into the promised land with the people of Israel, Jesus tells us that He is with us as we go forward in our faithfulness to Him.

What do you need to repent from and commit to in your pursuit of faithfulness? Who are you walking beside in the pursuit of faithfulness? Who are you passing the baton too?