Chased By Bees

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Kyle Douglass; Deuteronomy 1:19-46 Chased By Bees

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Welcome to Recast Church, where we're growing in faith, community, and service. You're listening to a message by Pastor Kyle Douglas from the
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Book of Deuteronomy from a series entitled, Clinging to God on the Way from Here to There. If you'd like more information about Recast Church, check us out at recastchurch .com
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or you can find us on Facebook. Here's Pastor Kyle. Good morning, everyone.
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Welcome to Recast. We're glad you're here, as always. Thanks for braving the snow. Are you loving winter?
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Yeah. Woo! I say, if we're going to have it, then let's have it, right?
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Bring it. The trouble is, we're running out of parking spots. That's a difficulty. Okay. So, this morning,
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I'll get into the introduction here to the text. I'm back. Don is out of town. He's hanging out with Linda in Mexico, so they're on a cruise, and I hope just having a great time.
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I get to fill in for a couple weeks, so we're back in Deuteronomy, but just to give you a heads -up, too, we're going to do an announcement right before connection time, after worship, about the school transition.
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So that's on its way, but let's jump into the text here. So Deuteronomy, we're in this series called
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Clinging to God on the Way from Here to There. Going back to what is probably, for most of us, a little -read book in the
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Old Testament, and this week, we are in chapter 1, verses 19 through 46.
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Did we get that right on the worship folder, by the way? Does it say through 46? Or 31?
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Okay, good. Got that right. So this passage this morning is a wonderfully enlightening example of how not to interact with the
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Creator of the universe. Does that sound exciting? We're going to learn how not to interact with God a little bit this morning.
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We will be shown, by way of Israelite example, what it looks like to act cowardly, to distrust the intentions of God, and rebel against His commands.
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And what I think that we're going to find in this story is that it will help us define what it means specifically to not believe in the
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Lord, to not believe God. Now belief is a pretty important concept.
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We'd probably all agree, right? But if you think about it, it can be a pretty nebulous term.
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So if I tell you, hey, believe in God, what do I mean by that? Do I mean have an intellectual epiphany, something, some kind of factual, logical statement that you can agree with?
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Am I asking you to really believe something in spite of lack of evidence? Like a fairy tale or, right?
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Is that what belief is, is just despite not seeing proof that you just, you're still going to claim that it's true?
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Don't many people in our world today have that kind of idea of religion, right?
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That there's just a bunch of people choosing to believe something that everyone else can tell isn't real? Is that what it is, belief?
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Or is there some kind of action to it? When we talk about believing in God, are we asking people to do something?
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Can we say that we truly believe that a bridge is safe and sturdy if we refuse to walk across it?
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So you can see, you know, other people going across it, you can see that it's holding their weight, but you won't go across it.
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Do you really believe that that bridge is safe? And these questions matter, right?
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Because at some point in your life, like right now, you'll hear something like you are to believe on the name of the
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Lord Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins. And I hope, my intention is that our story this morning will help move you in the direction of answers to some of these questions about what does it mean to believe
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God, and specifically to put your trust in Jesus Christ. So Moses is giving his magnum opus here at Kadesh Barnea in Deuteronomy.
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He's pastored these people for 40 years now, and this is, his sermon in front of those people is the book of Deuteronomy.
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So they're at a point where he's, he knows he's about to die, actually. And these are his final words, these are the important things that he wants to pass on to his people.
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And how many of you know that when someone comes to the end of their life and they're about to, you know, transition, we'll say, what they say becomes meaningful.
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The things that you think of to pass on, or the things that you find important that you want to share with other people, when you're facing your death or you know that it's imminent, it tends to carry some weight, right?
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So this is what he wants his people to know, and he's trying to convince them to be obedient to God.
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The Israelites have completed their journey in the wilderness in which God disciplined and refined them, so they've been wandering for 40 years.
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They're a sizable nation now, they're divided into 12 tribes, and the whole group is numbering somewhere around a million.
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They've left, escaped the clutches of an evil tyrant in Egypt, right?
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And God has been eagerly desiring to make good on the other half of his promise to Abraham. He promised to make him a great nation and make his descendants as numerous as the stars.
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And as one of our previous sermons looked at, he looks out and he sees, yeah, you guys are as numerous as the stars. But then the other half of the covenant was what?
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To bring them into a land of their own, to bring them to a good land, to establish them as a nation with property.
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And so he wants them to achieve this. God is helping them get to this land of milk and honey.
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But as we looked at a couple of weeks ago, it really shouldn't have taken this long to get to this point.
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This speech by Moses, again, is being given 38 years after the first attempt to go into the land.
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So God wanted to move them in almost immediately after the exodus of Egypt. He brought them to the wilderness.
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He shared his law. He had Moses do some administrative things, a couple of house cleaning items, right? And then he was like, okay, it's go time.
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You guys are ready? Now let's move into the promised land and get this done.
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But as we'll read this morning, something went really wrong in that first situation. The takeover didn't happen.
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Instead of gloriously, triumphantly marching into the promised land, the
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Amorites came out, the text says, and chased them as bees do. And they got beat down at Horma.
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I believe that Moses recounts this miserable first attempt in this historical prologue.
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So again, he's opening his sermon with looking back on the past. How did we get here, right?
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Not just to be mean to them, not just to be cruel, not just to remind them of their inadequacy, but I think he's asking this group of Israelites to please learn from your mistakes, specifically the mistakes of your parents, because all of these people who are now ready to enter the land were all the children below the age of accountability when the first event happened.
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So they don't go into the land, God sends them into the wilderness, an entire generation dies off, and now their kids are taking over, and God's saying, okay, clean slate.
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Will you learn from the mistake of your parents? Will you trust me, and will you let me lead you into a good place?
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And if you don't, you might have another 40 -year field trip, right? And no one wants that.
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My hope for this morning is that we ourselves would learn from their mistake, that we would connect the dots between the chaos in our lives that is because of our sin and the non -faith in God that produces it.
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Now does that mean that everything that happens in our life, all the difficulties or the struggles or the trials, is it just God punishing us?
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Is it the discipline of the Lord? No, absolutely not. But I would venture to guess that some of you are on the run this morning, on the run because of your sin, because of your rebellion against God, and you're being chased like bees chase you, and you're getting beat down.
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And I hope that as we investigate this text this morning, as we look into what God was asking of the people and how they responded, that you might learn what it looks like to put your trust in God in spite of the trials, in spite of the challenges.
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And I promise you that he wants to lead you to a place of rest and peace. This is a pretty long text.
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It's a great story though, and it all fits together as one piece, so we're going to read the whole thing. I'll try and not put you to sleep as I read it, so I'll try and be dramatic, but turn with me to chapter 1, verse 19, and we'll read through the end of chapter 1, through verse 46.
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And this is on page 125, did I get that right in your Bible, page 125?
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All right, so read with me, Deuteronomy chapter 1, starting at verse 19. Then we set out from Horeb and went through all that great and terrifying wilderness that you saw, on the way to the hill country of the
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Amorites, as the Lord our God commanded And we came to Kadesh Barnea.
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And I said to you, you have come to the hill country of the Amorites, which the Lord our God has given us.
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See the Lord your God has set the land before you. Go up, take possession as the Lord, the
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God of your fathers has told you. Do not fear or be dismayed. And all of you came near me and said, let us send some men before us, that they may explore the land for us and bring us word again of the way by which we must go up and the cities onto which we will come.
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The thing seemed good to me. And I took 12 men from you, one man from each tribe. And they turned and went up into the hill country and came to the valley of Eshkol and spied it out.
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And they took in their hands some of the fruit of the land and brought it down to us and brought us word again and said, it is a good land that the
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Lord our God has given us. Yet you would not go up, but rebelled against the command of the
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Lord your God. And you murmured in your tents and said, because the Lord hated us, he's brought us out of the land of Egypt to give us into the hand of the
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Amorites to destroy us. Where are we going up? Our brothers have made our hearts melt saying the people are greater and taller than we.
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The cities are great and fortified up to heaven. And besides we have the sons, we've seen the sons of the
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Anakim there. Then I said to you, do not be in dread or afraid of them. The Lord your
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God who goes before you will himself fight for you just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes.
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And in the wilderness where you've seen how the Lord your God carried you as a man carries his son all the way that you went until you came to this place.
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Yet in spite of this word, you did not believe the Lord your God who went before you in the way to seek you out a place to pitch your tents and fire by night and in the cloud by day to show you by what way you should go.
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And the Lord heard your words and was angered. And he swore, not one of these men of this evil generation shall see the good land that I swore to give to your fathers, except Caleb, the son of Jephunneh.
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He shall see it and to him and to his children, I will give the land on which he has trodden because he has wholly followed the
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Lord. Even with me, the Lord was angry in your account and said, you also shall not go in there.
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Joshua, the son of none who stands before you, he shall enter, encourage him for he shall cause
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Israel to inherit it. And as for your little ones who you said would become a prey and your children who today have no knowledge of good or evil, they shall go in there and to them,
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I will give it and they shall possess it. But as for you, turn and journey into the wilderness in the direction of the
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Red Sea. Then you answered me, we've sinned against the
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Lord. We ourselves will go up and fight just as the Lord our God commanded us. And every one of you fastened on his weapons of war and thought it was easy to go up into the hill country.
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And the Lord said to me, say to them, do not go up or fight for I am not in your midst lest you be defeated before your enemies.
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So I spoke to you and you would not listen, but you rebelled against the command of the Lord and presumptuously went up into the hill country.
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Then the Amorites who lived in that hill country came out against you and chased you as bees do and beat you down in Sierra as far as Horma.
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And you returned and wept before the Lord, but the Lord did not listen to your voice or give ear to you. So you remained at Kadesh many days, the days that you remain there.
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Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this word. We thank you
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Lord for this, uh, the story that you've preserved for us. And, um, God, I pray that as we come to worship and as we prepare to sing these songs,
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God, that you would, that your spirit would make us ready to listen and to hear the lessons that you have for us in this text.
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God, we want faith. We want to be able to trust you. We want to believe you.
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We want our lives to be different because we walk in obedience to you and, uh,
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Lord, I just pray that as we sing these songs and remind ourselves of the truth of your goodness and of who you are and your greatness,
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God, that, um, you would fill our hearts with faith that you'd prepare us, um, for all that you have for us to do and it's in Jesus name we pray.
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Amen. All right, everybody, before we do connection time, go ahead and have a seat.
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Um, we're actually going to have a super exciting announcement because we have a major event coming called the launch.
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That's actually not official. I just made that up, but we on March 9th will be officially moving to Madawan elementary school
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March 9th, which is quattro weeks away.
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Is it getting real now for anybody? Okay. Uh, you might already see some changes happening. Uh, there's some cords that you could trip on and, uh, you know, don't do that, please.
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No one die on the cords, but, uh, we're getting the snakes out. We're starting to, um, get our equipment around.
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We're moving some things, uh, grabbing some stuff out of storage. We, we've been in talks with the school more closely working on, um, the office that recast will be moving to.
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So a lot's happening and this is really moving forward, but now we have a date on it. Um, we're going to one service.
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So March 9th, we'll begin by going back to one service at 10 30 in the morning. So that's a time, 10 30, you'll get to see the other half of recast, which will be great.
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Huh? Um, and this is a, you know, this is the next adventure for our church and we've had several of these and this is just what happens.
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We're a body of faith. We're a family of believers and, uh, as you can kind of see already, I mean, there's some spare seats, but we're, this is about comfortable, right?
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There's not a whole lot of more room for people and, uh, the school is going to be a great step, um, for recast so that we can continue to grow, continue to reach out to people and share the good news of Christ with them and, uh, and have them be a part of our family.
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So with all of that happening, um, we have some things to be working on.
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For instance, uh, we have some crews and some of our volunteer administrators who are working to make it happen.
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And we want to give a couple of those a chance to speak to you this morning. Jeremy Thompson, who is heading up the setup and tear down crew.
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Um, and he's going to describe some of the needs that we have, uh, so that we can do a good job when we get over there with all the equipment and whatnot.
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And then Carrie Canold, who is head of recast kids and is coordinating volunteers for that. And, uh, obviously the getting the kids transitioned out of KDU and going into the school is going to require some, uh, some work and effort.
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And, uh, we want to give you guys a chance to plug in there. So thank you guys as always, a wonderful job.
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And before we jump into the text, let me remind everybody that if you have a gift, um, that you want to give to the
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Lord, uh, envelope in your connection or in your worship folder, black box back there on the counter, and then also a connection card if you want to fill that out, um, do that as well.
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So, okay, let's jump in. Um, as we look at this text, uh, starting in verse 19, um, he says, remember that time when we went out through Horab and went through all that great and terrifying wilderness that you saw, um, this land was great and terrifying, right?
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It was, uh, it was new to them. There were people in there that were strong, well -fortified cities, probably not very friendly to them.
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Right? So, um, there is a challenge to this whole idea of taking over the land.
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And it's very important to see that right up front, that this isn't just a cakewalk. Um, it's a deal, right?
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It's a, it's a major mission that needs to take place here and not an easy one. But we see that the
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Lord commanded them to do it. God commands them to go up and go into the land, which he is giving to them.
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And he says that he set the land before them. And if you think about that wording, what does that mean to, to have something set before you?
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You know, if you go to someone's house and you sit down, uh, to a meal and, and they're very hospitable and they've made you dinner, do you work very hard at, at the meal prep?
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No, right? You sit down and they take the plate or the food and they put it right in front of you and, and what's left for you to do?
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Eat, enjoy it. Or pretend like you're enjoying it, depending on who's cooking, right?
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But the point is, is that they, they take that food and they've done the work and they've set it before you. It's right there for the taking.
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Or maybe think of like Christmas morning, right? When you give a gift to a child and that child, um, wakes up and you know, you're opening the presents and, and you go and you take your gift and you put it in front of them to open up, right?
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Have they done all the work at the job to pay for the money that made the gift?
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Or did they make it with you, whatever it was, or did they wrap it up? No.
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You provided the resources, you set it before them for them to enjoy, and all they need to do is open it up.
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And that's what God is doing here for his people with this land, right?
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I'm giving it to you. I've set it before you. Now go in and take it all as he's commanded you to do.
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This is God's fight. It's his grace. It's his provision.
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It's his work that is making this possible. And so Moses says, despite a great and terrifying wilderness, do not fear or be dismayed because I am making it happen.
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Everything's good so far. So the people come to Moses, verses 23 through 25, and they suggest that they go on a scouting mission.
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Okay, we're supposed to go up and take the land. So let's send some spies and see what we're up against.
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And Moses, it says, thought that this was a good idea. It seemed good to him. And he quotes the people as saying, giving reasons, so that we know the way by which we should go up and to learn about the cities that we'll be overtaking.
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Kind of makes sense, right? Sounds strategic. Actually kind of wise. And if we compare
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Numbers 13, verses 1 and 2, which in Numbers 13 and 14, it's the actual historical account of what happened here, right?
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In Deuteronomy, we're kind of looking back. This is a sermon and Moses is referring back to when this happened, but Numbers actually records the historical event.
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And it says, the Lord spoke to Moses saying, send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which
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I am giving to the people of Israel. So the Lord spoke to Moses. He says, from each tribe of their fathers, you shall send a man, every one a chief among them.
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So I like to point these out. Sometimes when there are discrepancies, you know, and you hear someone preach on a passage and then you go and read about it in another one, you're like, well, that doesn't sound the same.
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I just like to be honest and say, well, it sounds weird. Moses is saying, you guys came to me and said, hey, let's go up and check this out.
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In Numbers, it's saying that God said, go and spy out the land. So why the contrast?
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Why is it now the people's idea rather than God's? Well, it could be that the people made the suggestion first, the first time around, and Moses brought it to God.
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God said, yep, do it, and then made it a command. So he gave his approval. And we see that happening from time to time with Moses, where he has an issue with the people.
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He goes and brings it to God in the tent of meeting. God gives some kind of decree, and then he restates it to the people.
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It might have been a second scouting report as well, so they could be different scenarios. But either way, we see that God is okay with it.
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So it wasn't wrong that they go up and scout out the land. They do so, and when they get the report back, it's a good one.
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The land is incredibly lush. It's fertile. It is a land flowing with milk and honey. The Valley of Eshcol, where they went up to, the name actually means grape, so the
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Valley of Grapes. So this place is so lush and so productive that it actually took its name from the grapes that were produced.
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And they took a bunch of grapes, and they put it on a post, and they actually brought it back to show the people, you know, look at these things, it's awesome.
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So the report about the land itself is good, and I tend to think that this was probably
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Caleb and Joshua's part. They're just saying, guys, this is awesome.
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Like, you will not believe where we're headed to. This is going to be great, right? But there were other facts in the report that made the command to go up and take the land seem like a suicide mission to the people, verses 26 through 28.
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As they hear the report, right, what are some of the things that they're getting here? Oh, yeah, it's a great land, it's flowing with milk and honey, but there's also super fierce people, they're huge, they're giants, their cities are fortified up to heaven, right?
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There's no way that we're going to be able to get in there and take this place over. So it's good, but it's impossible.
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The spies give their report about what's happening here, and all of the people, rather than getting jacked up and saying, yeah, we can go do this, what do they do?
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They turn around, and they walk back dejectedly to their tents, murmuring, right?
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I just picture it, you know, it's just like, tell us about the land, oh, you know, and then they
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Charlie Brown it the whole way back, right? Look at what they say, man, this really hit me like a ton of bricks this week, and you know, maybe as you read it, and we just kind of went through it here, it didn't really sink in, but it's one of the joys of getting to preach is that you get to really sit in a text, but look what they say against God, because the
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Lord hated us, He brought us out of Egypt into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us, because the
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Lord hated us. They hear the report, and they question the heart of God.
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They accuse Him of hatred. The Hebrew word is sin -yah,
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I think that's how you pronounce it, it sounds a lot like sin to me, it means enmity, it means maliciousness, opposition, it's the same word that's used in Psalm 139, different context, but the psalmist is saying, crying out to God, saying that he hates
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God's enemies, listen to what he says, oh, that you would slay the wicked, oh God, oh, men of blood, depart from me, they speak against you with malicious intent, your enemies take your name in vain, do
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I not hate those who hate you, oh Lord, and do I not loathe those who rise up against you,
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I hate them with complete hatred, I count them my enemies, this is a strong, strong word.
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Many of us growing up, right, in kindergarten, maybe you heard it, you don't say hate, but hear the people accuse
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God of being malicious towards them, of having evil intentions, seems to me that maybe as a coping mechanism for their own security, they find fault in the
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God who has done nothing but save them, and provide for them, and care for them, and lead them again and again, they blame shift to cover the shame of their own cowardice and fear, but there's more dysfunction there, it's not just against God, look what they then do, they turn on themselves, right, they say, where are we going up, what are we even doing here, we're too little, we're too weak, again, these are just common expressions of shame, which for our purposes here
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I think could be defined, partly defined as the realization of our inadequacy, you know that feeling, especially that you had like when you were a kid, right, get caught doing something you're not supposed to do, and you have that embarrassment, and that flush, and flushness, and tightness in your chest, right, why, because you've been caught doing something bad, you're wrong, and there's legitimate shame over our sin, and then there's debilitating shame that we take on ourselves in spite of what
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God is telling us to do, can you identify with that, with any of their responses, have you ever been faced with a challenge which put your own weakness and sense of inadequacy on display for others, and how did you react?
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As a pastor and a Christian mentor for a long time, I've heard a lot of these, maybe have used them myself a time or two, why is he doing this to me, why would
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God allow this to happen, God must hate me, this is one that I heard, it was, it was difficult, everybody tells me that God is good, but I've never seen it, or do you turn on yourself,
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I'm nothing, I'm a nobody, I'm sorry
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God, I know what you're asking me to do, but I'm just not that strong, I'm too stupid, too weak,
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I'm too whatever, we may not be able to help the fear that arises from the challenges of life, and I think especially the challenges that come from a desire to be obedient to God, because he asks us to do some incredible things, hard things, things that we can't do naturally in our own strength, and it may be, in fact
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I would say it's most often true that we aren't strong enough, that we aren't smart enough, that we're not good enough or loving enough or caring enough to get done what he's calling us to, but that's the beauty of it, is that we don't have to be, because he is, he is strong enough, he is caring enough, he is mighty enough to handle whatever he's asking us to go through,
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Moses knows this, and he wants the people to know it too, and he hears their response and he kind of goes into this damage control mode, right, he's like whoa guys, guys, please don't be afraid,
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God himself will fight for you, I love that phrase,
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God himself, Yahweh himself will fight for you, Moses recounts
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God's track record, he says he's going to fight for you just as he did, in where?
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In Egypt, right, in Egypt before your eyes, these are people who would have likely been alive during the
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Exodus, right, these are the people who got rescued out of Egypt, even if they were a kid, they were one generation away, and I mean these are the stories that are going to be told time and time again around the dinner table or wherever,
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Exodus 14 31 reflects on that, it says
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Israel saw the great power that the Lord used against the Egyptians so that the people feared the
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Lord and they believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses, they saw what
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God did in Egypt, they saw the plagues, they saw a sea separate in two and they walked across on dry land and they had the right response, the
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Hebrew word used in this Exodus passage and it's the same one used here in Deuteronomy, for believe is aman, it means trust, it means trust, the second evidence that he gives is the wilderness, he says where God carried you like a man carries his son,
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I have three daughters, they're getting big too fast, right, my youngest Charlie is still a perfect size to just scoop up in my arms and hold and snuggle tight and I'll tell you as a dad it is one of my favorite things to do is just to go and scoop that kiddo up, hold her in my arms,
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I don't know how many times you know we'll be out going somewhere and you're getting all packed up and putting the coats on and she comes walking out with five different babies that she just has to have with her or whatever, right, can't even like walk through the snow and she's like daddy hold me, yep,
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I will hold you kiddo, I'll pick you up every time, pick her up, carry her, that's my kid,
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I delight in my kids, Evie's getting big, I can still pick her up, I can still pick up all my kids,
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Adelaide's almost as tall as me though, it's getting a little bit harder, I think
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Moses uses this expression because for one it was a reality, God did care for them every moment that they were in the wilderness, he fed them, he protected them, he led them like a father leads his kids but he also wants to communicate
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God's heart towards the people, right, it's soft and loving,
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God's like a dad who can scoop up his kids, he doesn't hate you, he's not out to hurt you for no reason and then it says that he provided visible direction for them as they navigated the wilderness, you know, comes in and pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night,
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God was doing a lot of things to show himself a protector and provider for the people, so yeah,
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God is asking them to risk their own lives but also to trust him for the victory, we shouldn't diminish the difficulty of this, you know, like I read this and it's kind of easy to get high and mighty with the
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Israelites, you know, like you idiots, like God's, of course God's gonna win the battle, right, but I mean it's like you put your sword on, right,
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I mean that they were literally risking their life, they had to go and take over a land from people who didn't want it to be taken from them, even if God gives the nation a victory, maybe several of them were gonna fall in the battle, right, so they were literally being called to place their lives in the hands of God, so we don't want to diminish that, but the important thing to grasp is that God is a
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God who has revealed and proven himself in the past, and we can put our trust in him for the future, even when he's asking us to put our life on the line, this
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God proving himself thing, it is a little bit harder for us, I admit, based on where we fall in history, right, it's not that God isn't doing incredible things all the time, you know, miracles here and there, but the
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Israelites were a part of God's very vivid and clear intervention in the affairs of men,
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I mean, can you imagine seeing a land flooded with frogs, or the sun being darkened for three days, or you know, whatever,
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I mean these were really incredibly miraculous events, and I think atheists and secular people love to use
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God's apparent silence against him all the time in arguments, don't they? If God's real, it would just be really nice if he proved it.
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I've heard that in a couple conversations, actually, over the past couple months, talking with someone, you know, God's real, why doesn't he just show up, have him turn this pencil into a car, right?
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Like some kind of magician. Well, the thing is, is that he did do things, he did things more mighty than that, but they've happened in history, and Moses is reminding the people of some of these examples of God's revealing himself to people.
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God has not stayed hidden, right? Our faith is not based on the conjectures of a single leader, or a purely theoretical paradigm, but on thousands of years of claims to eyewitness accounts of God's movement in history.
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From our modern vantage point, we have to work with these accounts, we have to determine whether they're valid historically, we have to go through the texts and the papyruses and all that, determine if they're trustworthy, but they nonetheless claim to be historical records of actual events.
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And once we grasp what God is claiming to have done, what the scriptures are claiming that God has done throughout history, then we are confronted with the choice to believe.
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And what is that process of belief? I think we could maybe break it down into three steps.
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Number one, the first step is the intellectual ascent, so it is a brain thing, right?
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That the claim is true. So yes, God fed his people with manna for 40 years in the wilderness.
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That happened. It was miraculous. Not many other explanations, but it happened, right?
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So the first thing is there's an event, and I'm believing that it happened intellectually. The next step, though, of belief is to ask what that reveals about God and his intentions.
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So these events have taken place, yep, God does provide for his people, and he loves them like a father loves his kids.
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But then the final step, you've seen the event, you've made a conclusion about what that says about God's heart, but then it has to come in.
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Based on what I've seen and what it tells me about God's character, will I trust him to provide for me in the same way?
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And I think this is where a lot of us fall short. We're okay doing the
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Bible studies. We're okay hearing the sermons. You know, we go back, and yeah, look what God did and all that, right?
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But God doesn't want you to just know a bunch of stories. He wants you to live in obedience to him, exercising the same faith and trust in him that he was asking the
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Israelites to put in him at that time. This is really the main point of our passage.
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Is God great enough to earn our trust? And by trust,
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I mean obedience. Will you walk across that bridge?
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Do you know the bridge well enough to put your own two feet on it? Way to illustrate this.
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Imagine Pete DeWitt, captain of the basketball team, calls up the recast
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Hoopers, right? And he's like, all right, fellas, I got us an exhibition match against the
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Western Michigan Broncos. If we win, it's a million dollars.
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If we lose, all of your houses get burned down. I don't know, Pete's into some weird stuff.
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And he says, guys, don't fear or be dismayed because Kyle is gonna play with us.
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I played some ball in high school. I did some intramural, right? I played with those guys a little bit.
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They've seen me hoop, but if they're putting their trust in me to beat the
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Broncos, no, right? I can't even show them a highlight reel because there are no highlights, right?
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Unless dribbling off of your foot at the baseline is a highlight. But imagine if Pete says, guys, do not fear or be dismayed because my boy
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LeBron has the night off, and I called him up, and he's gonna play with us, right?
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Now we're talking. LeBron might be able to beat the Broncos himself, okay?
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So if he plays, right, we've seen his highlight reel. We've seen the games.
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We've seen the championships, the rings. The guy's amazing. And if he's the source of the hope for the basketball game, then maybe something's gonna happen.
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No disrespect, Rob. Rob's pretty close. God is our
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LeBron James. God's our pro. And with him, we can get it done, right?
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What do I mean by obedience when I say that? We can trust him so that we can walk in obedience.
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For the Israelites, they had Moses passing on to them direct commands from the Lord. In this case, go up and take the land, right?
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But does God speak like that to us anymore? Is he that clear about what he wants?
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I do believe the Holy Spirit speaks to us and directs us. I can't say that I've ever heard the the literal audible voice of God.
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I know that Don has said that same thing a couple times up front, but that doesn't mean that the Spirit isn't active and communicating to us in various ways.
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But of course we have his word. Of course we have the Bible, and it is telling us to do some things.
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To trust him and obey him. Things like loving our enemies.
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I'm told to lay down my life for my wife. I'm told to forgive until it hurts and not worry about what
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I'll eat or what I'll wear, right? I'm told to care for the orphan and the widow.
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And all of these commands require me to trust that God knows what's best for me and that he wants to bless me.
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Ultimately, it's important to make this really clear.
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Our courage to be obedient in the face of the seemingly impossible does not come from,
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A, denying the difficulty of the challenge. It is a terrifying land.
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It is filled with giants. It does seem counterintuitive to love my wife sometimes.
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I really do love her, right? It doesn't make sense to forgive. That's hard.
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That's hard. Really hard to forgive someone who's really wounded us.
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That's the challenge. But our courage doesn't come from trying to diminish it and say, well, it's not really in a big deal.
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It's easy, right? And it doesn't come from our skill or ability. These Israelites were comparatively a weak people.
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They were homeless ex -slaves. They didn't have a lot of weaponry or machinery or technology, right? They got numbers, but even then, no, it doesn't come from our abilities.
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But it comes from knowing that the Lord God Almighty goes with us and before us and behind us.
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That's why we can have courage to do the seemingly impossible. It is possible, though, that even while knowing the past accomplishments of God, that we find ourselves full of fear as we approach trying to be obedient, right?
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There's a great story that is told in the Gospels. A man has a daughter who's having convulsions and has an evil spirit, and she brings it to the
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Pharisees and the disciples, and they can't kick out the demon. And so finally, they bring it to Jesus, and he says, well, what do you need me to do?
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And the guy says, if you can, can you please heal her? He said, if I can, because all things are possible to those who believe, right?
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And it says immediately, the father in response said, I believe, but help my unbelief, right?
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There are times where in spite of the difficulty and our fear and all of that, we are at a point where it's really hard to trust
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God. But the right thing is to go to him in prayer. The right thing is to admit it and draw into God, rather than put your head down and walk back to your tents and complain about what a jerk
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God is, or how impossible it is in your weakness to do what he says to do.
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That's what the Israelites do. Yet in spite of this word, in spite of Moses's encouragement, they refuse to listen.
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They continue in their unbelief. And what happens? God gets mad. God heard and was angered.
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This is so interesting and intriguing to me, right? That God is emotional. He has an emotion and he's experiencing this in response to the actions of his people.
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God is relational. He has personality. More accurately, we have personality because God does, right?
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We bear his image and our interaction with him is relational. He's not some cosmic pinball machine or mousetrap, right?
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This cold, distant being. He's a father.
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He's near to us. He feels. He's passionate. We're a family.
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He can influence us. And this is crazy. We can influence him.
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Not control, but influence. And I might be taking a liberty here, but honestly, as I read this,
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I think that it's very possible that God's feelings were hurt. God's feelings were hurt by their accusations that he wanted evil for them, despite him caring for them.
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And I hope that this doesn't weaken your concept of God, right? Does it make him smaller, that he can be hurt by us, that he can feel the pain and the anger, right?
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Well, God's powerful and he doesn't need us. And you're right, he is powerful.
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And he doesn't need us, but he wants us. Just like a man who can't cry or get emotional over his kids or something happens, can't show emotion.
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Not gonna hurt me, the guy says. Is he a stronger man than the man that can weep and show himself to his family or his friends when something goes wrong?
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There are obviously consequences to angering God. He swears, he makes an oath that the men of this generation won't make it into the promised land.
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I don't know about you, but making God upset with me is not high on my ever to -do list. It's in our best interest to understand that we still can make
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God mad. And I know this is a touchy subject. It's not very popular to talk about the anger of God. Many of us have experiences either with our earthly fathers or with other faiths or churches, right, that have given us the impression that God is always angry.
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And he's not. He's not angry with you. But you can get to a point where in your rebellion, by refusing to listen to him again and again, you can wear out his patience.
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And just to make the point that, you know, this emotion that God is feeling and this character of God is not just an
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Old Testament relic that we don't need to worry about anymore, and listen to what Hebrews says, a
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New Testament epistle based on the work of Jesus Christ, right, where it said, take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living
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God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
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For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end, as it is said, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.
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For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt, led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for forty years?
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Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but those who were disobedient?
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See, so we see, that they were unable to enter because of unbelief. Hebrews 3, 12 through 19.
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The warning to us is just and maybe more actually serious than it was to the Israelites.
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The consequence for their rebellion, for this particular generation, was to fail to enter the promised land and die in the wilderness.
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The consequence of our disbelief in the Son of God, who died lovingly and sacrificially to cover our sins, might be to fail to enter heaven.
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Caleb and Joshua serve as the counterexamples to their unbelieving brothers and sisters, and Moses says that they wholly followed the
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Lord. I wonder if you could say that about yourself. Can I say that about me, that I'm a person who wholly follows the
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Lord? Not just has a bunch of stories in my head, but when the rubber hits the road,
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I obediently follow. The last section of our scripture here, they take matters into their own hands.
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After hearing the consequence of their unbelief, that they would be sent back into the desert to die off, they have a change of heart, surprisingly, right?
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Well, no, no, God, we're just kidding. We're good, silly sinners, us guys.
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We're ready to fight now. We could take those Amalekites, and then they take off, right?
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Wow, repentance, isn't this good? Good job, guys, you got with the program. Nope, it's not good.
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Despite now agreeing to what God had earlier wanted them to do, He now has changed the program, and He's given them new, far be it, or obviously worse marching orders, but their sin is the same.
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Doing the opposite of what God wanted them to do. Parents, you know this, right?
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Go do your homework. They go to their room. You walk in there in a little bit, open the door, and the room is spotless.
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Wow, they clean their room. Got your homework done, huh? Oh, no, I just knew that you wanted me to clean my room, so I clean my room, right?
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Isn't that like, cleaning your room is a good thing, but I told you to do your homework.
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It's subtle disobedience and rebellion, isn't it? It's disobedience disguised as obedience, which reveals the true intention of the heart, which is not love and respect for the parent or authority, but a conniving version of self -worship and rebellion.
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But God is gracious. He even warns them again. He clearly describes what they can expect to happen if they carry out
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His plan to take over the land. He says, you'll be defeated. They do it anyway, and big surprise, their enemies crush them, and they're chased away in an embarrassing fashion.
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Chased like bees chase someone. So I think the warning for us this morning is to take seriously the warning from the book of Hebrews, which uses this very passage as an example, as I read, but he continues in chapter 4, verse 1, saying that the
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Hebrews could not enter God's rest because of unbelief, right? And so he says, therefore, my readers, us, therefore, while the promise of entering
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His rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it.
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For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them because they were not united by faith with those who listened.
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For we who have believed enter that rest. I don't know about you, but I'd much rather enter
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God's rest than be chased and beat down by the consequences of my unbelief.
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This morning, if you have believed in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, if you believe that He was the
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Son of God, and by believe I mean you've put your full weight in Him by faith, and you trust
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Him to save you from the consequences of your sin, then we invite you to join us in communion.
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In communion, we drink the cup of His blood and we eat the bread of His broken body, which are reminders to us of the work that He completed on the cross on our behalf.
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And He asked us to continue to do this until He comes back so that we always remember that we have a
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Savior who loves us and is returning someday to rescue us.
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If you're not there yet, if you don't fully trust that Jesus Christ saved you, we just ask that you pass on communion and that you do some work with God and that you pray and ask
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Him to help you believe, and not just intellectually, but with all of your being.
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Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for this morning. I thank you for the gathering of your people.
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We thank you for your word. And Father, we pray that you would help us to believe.
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We pray that this lesson would not be lost on us. And it can seem really far away, God. I understand that.
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You're not asking us to take over another nation or even fight with swords anymore. But you've still called us to build your kingdom.
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You still call us to follow you and to listen to your spirit and the directions of your word. And there's a lot of things that come up in our lives,
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God, that we don't want to do. And Father, I pray that you'd forgive us for the ways that our failure to trust you in those things, by being obedient to you, reveals our lack of faith in you.
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And I pray, God, that we would learn to trust you, that we would know that you don't hate us, but that you love us and that you want what's best for us.
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And Fathers, we take communion. I just pray that, Lord, that you would confirm that in our hearts, that you do care for us and that you love us.
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And we do thank you for Jesus Christ. We thank you that he died for our sins, doing what the law of Moses could never do.
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We know we can't be right on our own, God, but you have made a way through Jesus. And in him, we can do this work of obedience through his power.