This Sunday's Worship Materials can be found in the "Featured Sermon" below. We meet in person at Harper Park Middle School, and the service is also livestreamed on our YouTube channel.

Heart Prep for Sunday, June 5th

We have come at long last to the end of Deuteronomy.  As with last week, we have 4 chapters to cover this Sunday, Deuteronomy 31-34.  In these chapters, we get the plan to transition leadership to Joshua in chapter 31, the Song of Moses in chapter 32, blessings on each of the tribes in chapter 33, and Moses’s death in chapter 34.  I encourage you to spend time reading it since I won’t have the time to read it all on Sunday.

In these chapters, we’re confronted with the idea of legacy.  After all, Deuteronomy is, in many ways, Moses being concerned about his legacy.  He was about to die, and he was concerned for these people he’d poured his life into as he had led them for the past 40+ years.  He knew just how stubborn and rebellious their hearts were, and Deuteronomy as a book is, in a lot of ways, a response to that.  It’s an attempt to guard the hearts of the people; and if they went astray, a witness against them.

Well, we know that they will go astray, and go terribly astray at that.  But we’re not all that different from these people.  We’re still selfish and anxious people.  We still think that we can do things ourselves instead of depending on the Lord.  We’re still vulnerable to idolatry and the subtle (and no so subtle) temptations of this world.  And I think that these words of warning and prophecy against the people of Israel of their faithless in the future ought to give us pause.  These were people who had depended on the Lord every day for everything for the last 40 years.  They must have rebelled against the notion of their future faithlessness, just as we would, and just as many of the disciples did.  And yet, we consistently underestimate the wickedness of the human heart.  And praise be to God that He doesn’t leave us to drift away from Him.  These passages anticipate God changing our hearts, because nothing less will both make us faithful and keep us faithful.  And of course, He does that through the person and work of Jesus.  So come Sunday read to see the Lord’s grace and faithfulness triumph in the face of despicable unfaithfulness.  See you then.  Frank