Desert Survival Series Pt 29- Moses the Servant of God — Don Courville

The Assignment to Enter the Promised Land

Numbers 13 and 14, I'm going to take you through what I consider the most important message that I can teach you or give to you. I'm aware that I can't give it to you and I can't teach it to you. The Spirit of God has to open your eyes to see it.

But what's in this message is what I eagerly and diligently searched for from 1974 to 1985. A spiritual truth that I read about. I had read about it in the life of Hudson Taylor. I've got his testimony on print for you, just a little part of it here.

When Hudson Taylor found that thing that he was looking for, when I saw it in his life, and even as he shared it, that's what I wanted. And I remember I wrote in my Bible in 1974, the day I started searching for it.

Today, I'm going to share with you that thing that is so important for this Christian life. Only the Spirit of God can help you to see it though. It is the most important thing for the believer to realize and to come to grasp.

And the thing about it is, once you grasp it, you can still let it slip away. But when you do let it slip away, you know when it's gone and you know how to get it back. Now, I've titled this message, Wasted Years.

Wasted Years. There's probably nothing more tragic than to see a life that is wasted. And I thought about this title in relation with the children of Israel because this is the story where they come up to the promised land and they don't get to go in.

How many Christians are like that? They get saved, but they never get onto the promised land level where they live free. And out from under the bondage of sin and self and the misery. And there's no joy.

And I was thinking about, this title popped in my mind when I thought about a young Vietnam hero who was shot down. And that's a true story. It's in last year, 84, I think, Reader's Digest. But he was shot down and it went through how he struggled for several months.

He was severely wounded. He was just, it's a miracle he even lived. And I think he lived something like a month and a half before anybody ever found him at all, before the enemy found him and took him captive.

But it was just a story of his struggle. And then later on, how he escaped out of one camp alone. And then he got into another and he eventually died there. But some other prisoners came back and they knew the story.

They found out what all he went through. But he went through all of that suffering and all that struggle just to die. That's all it was. He struggled so hard just to die. And I imagine he died without Christ because there was nothing in there about Christ in the story.

But how many believers, their whole existence is just a struggle. There's no freedom. There's no power. And then they just die. And the children of Israel is just sort of a tragic thing. I think if we were to see on their epitaph, out in the desert, you'd see a tombstone.

And we'd just see another one. Wasted years. What about that for an epitaph on your tombstone? Wasted years. Let's pray. Father, you open up our hearts to this passage now. Lord, we don't want to waste our years.

We only have a few. And they're flying by. It seems like a hundred miles an hour as it is. Holy Spirit, open up our heart to this truth that you're going to teach us today. In Jesus' name, Amen. There will never be any victory in your life, or my life, or any believer's life, without submission to the will of God.

Submission to the Will of God and Victory

God has been humbling me this week, and teaching me things. And humility, it's one of those brave things to talk about, but it's not a very fun thing to go through. It's not fun to be humbled. Remember Jesus?

He was humbled to the point of the cross. It's just not fun. But there will never be any victory today, or tomorrow, or any day in your life, unless we are willing to totally submit ourselves to the will of God.

Now, the flesh doesn't give up easy, having its own way. The flesh doesn't produce faith, by the way, either. If there's no faith in your life, then there's no victory. The flesh just doesn't produce things like that.

The flesh produces fear, and frustration, and failure. For F's. Then we can go through the rest of the alphabet, too, and probably get some things. But it just doesn't produce anything that's any good.

And this is why we've got to learn to totally just die at the cross. Now, how to live in victory in the wilderness. This is our Desert Survival Series. This is number 29. And I don't know if we'll go much beyond probably 32 lessons in this.

We'll have to see how the Lord leads. But how to live in victory in the wilderness. How to get to the point where we can stay in victory. Now, I want to share with you just briefly two things. One, the setting, and then we'll get to the sermon.

And in the setting, we're in Numbers 13. And for the setting, we're going to go through two chapters. We're going to have a fast Bible study. Maybe it'll be fast. I don't know if I do too many things fast.

But anyway, here's the setting. There is the assignment given to Israel. They went through the desert now for two years. They escaped. They went through the Red Sea. Went down to Sinai. They received the Ten Commandments.

And they went through some trials. They've gone through some trials all along the way. Now, here they are. They come up to Kadesh Barnea, the bottom part of Canaan, the Promised Land, Israel, where they were supposed to go in and possess it.

And God said in Deuteronomy 1, 20 -22, The Lord thy God has set the land before thee. And then he said, Go up and possess it. You go on in and take it. Now, when you come to Numbers 13, in verse 1 and 2, here's the assignment.

The Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Send thou men that they may search the land of Canaan, which I gave unto the children of Israel. Of every tribe of their father shall you send a man, every one a ruler among them.

They're going to send out twelve men to spy out the land. Now, the reason they're sending out twelve spies is because they would not go into the land. God said, Just go in. And they said, No, let's send some spies in and check it out first.

And so God says, Okay, send some spies in then if you want to. But you don't have to. Now, here's where we're at. They're sending spies in because of unbelief. And so, from 3 all the way through 25 is the search committee.

It's formed the search committee of twelve. They are sent out and they go into the land. And all those verses, they bring out many things. Moses tells them what to do when they go in. He says, Okay, you go in and you check out.

You look over the land, the topographical layout. You check out the people. You check out the cities. You check out the fields. You check it out and see if it isn't what God said it would be. And so that's basically what goes on from verses all the way down to 23 or 26.

And so they go in. And now they come back in verse 26 and they've got a report. And here's the report, first of all, from the unbelievers committee. The spies went out and they ended up with two groups.

They had two committees, really. They had one which was the unbelievers committee, I call them, and the other was the believers committee. Well, the unbelievers committee, they report back first. Okay, verse 26, chapter 13.

And they went and came to Moses and to Aaron and to all the congregation of the children of Israel and unto the wilderness of Paran to Kadesh and brought back word unto them and unto all the congregation and showed them the fruit of the land.

All right, here they are. They're back. They said, It's just like you said. And they told him and said, We came into the land whither thou sentest us and surely it floweth with milk and honey and this is the fruit of it.

You see those two guys over there? Man, one's got a pole over his shoulder. Another one's got the other end over his shoulder and that pole is bent almost ready to break and they've got one cluster of grapes on that thing.

How much it weighed, I don't know. But if it took two men to carry it, it must have weighed maybe somewhere around 150 to 250 pounds. One cluster of grapes. And there they are. They said, Look, it's just like you said.

And they brought back some other things. Man, it's just like you said. It is a land that flows with milk and honey. This is the promised land. God brought them out of the slavery of Egypt to bring them into this land and they had to just walk in and take it.

They had the fields ready for harvest. It was the great harvest. And they just had to walk in, walk into the houses and live. And they had it there. And all they did was just walk in and worship God and enjoy Him and live.

Man, what a setup. But notice. 28 and 29. They say, But. There's that old famous billy goat. Nevertheless, the people be strong that dwell in the land and the cities are walled and very great. And moreover, we saw the children of Anak there and the Amlekites.

And he goes in. There's problems though. There's giants in there. They got big walls and big people. Now, the other committee chirps right up and they say in verse 30. And Caleb still the people because they're all getting riled up.

And Caleb still the people before Moses and said, Let's go. Let's go get them. Man, let's go. He already had a place picked out. Let's go. Caleb still the people before Moses and said, Let us go up at once and possess it for we are well able to overcome it.

There's the report of faith. Faith always sees God as bigger than the problems. Always. If you got a problem that you think is overwhelming you at work, at home, or at play, wherever, you're being overwhelmed because you're not living by faith.

There's old Caleb and Joshua. They go, What? What problems? Man, we saw God out there. Oh sure, there's a few giants laying around here and over there. But man, we're going to get them. We're going to have giants for supper.

Let's go. We saw God. But what happened? 31 to 33. Notice what happened. But the men that went up with him said, We be not able to go up against the people for they are stronger than we. How did they know?

They hadn't even fought them yet. They're stronger than us. Verse 32,. And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel, saying, The land through which we have gone to search it is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof.

And all the people that we saw in it are men of great stature. And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants. And we were in our own sight as grasshoppers. And so we were in their sight.

Oh boy. There's a principle here. You know, whatever you know is stronger than you, doesn't matter as long as you also know that God is bigger and stronger than whatever it is that's bigger than you. And that's why Caleb and Joshua were ready to go.

They knew those giants were bigger than them. They wasn't fools. But they knew that God was bigger than the giants. You got a problem? Been overwhelming you? Been beating you down? Been discouraging you?

How come? Because you're sitting there looking at this giant face to face. Every day you get out of bed and you come look at this giant and you just shrivel back. And God says, don't look at giants. Look at Me.

And let Me thump on the giants. What about it? Can you give it to God? Well, Joshua and Caleb said, let's let God take care of the giants. Let's go get it. Man, we've been out in this desert long enough.

Let's go take it. But they wouldn't go. Now, chapter 14. Continue on our Bible study. We better keep moving. I might want to preach on that. Here is several little things. Verses 1 -4 is the voice of unbelief.

The Voice of Unbelief and the Rebellion in the Wilderness

The voice of unbelief is a whiny, complaining, growly, grumbly, irritating voice that just gnaws away on your nerves. And all the congregation, sin is always catchy by the way, and all the congregation lifted up their voice and cried and the people wept that night.

All night long you can hear them over in their tents. Bunch of crybabies. Two, three million crybabies out there. All night long just wailing. Here they come up. They got this problem out there. And all the children, it's like they hadn't come through any problems also, right?

They've already gone. They've escaped from Egypt. They went through the Dead Sea. They didn't have any water. They got water out of the rock. They didn't have any food. They got food come down and dropped right there at their doorstep every day.

God took care of their enemies. What are they talking about? And all the children of Israel, verse 2, murmured against Moses. By the way, when you've got a problem, what do you want to do? Blame somebody.

Let's blame the preacher. The preacher wants to blame the people. So we've got this hot potato. We throw it around. So they're going to blame Moses. He's the one that got us out here. Moses, he's going to say, now it wasn't my idea.

This is God's doing. And this is what always happens. They come to Moses and then Moses goes to God. And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses, against Aaron, and the whole congregation said unto them, Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt.

It would have been better to die in the land of Egypt, never to come out. Oh, would God we died in this wilderness. And wherefore hath the Lord brought us? Why did the Lord bring us out here anyway into this land?

But to kill us by the sword? To fall by the sword that our wives and our children should be a prey. By the way, you know who made it out of that wilderness? They said, Listen, our little kids are going to die.

Our kitties are going to die. The enemy's going to kill them. You know who went into the land? Their kitties. They died because they wouldn't believe it. God said, Everybody that's 20 years old and upward, you're going to die in this desert because you won't believe me.

And all the kitties, they got to go in. But they had to bear the burden of waiting for 40 years for mom and pop and grandma and grandpa to die off in the desert so they could bury them, kick some sand over, put up a stone and scrabble on it.

Wasted years. They had to bear that burden. Our children have to bear many of our mistakes. Wherefore has the Lord brought us into this land? To fall by the sword that our wives and our children should be a prey?

Were it not better for us to return into Egypt? And they said one to another, Let us make a captain and let us return into Egypt. Mutiny. Wasn't mutiny on the bounty, man. It was mutiny in the desert.

They're going to take care of old Moses and get a new captain. That's the voice of unbelief. Now, here's the recognition of treason. Moses recognized it. In verses 5 and 6, he recognized the treason. Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of the congregation of the children of Israel.

And Joshua the son of Nun, and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, which were of them that searched the land, rent their clothes, and they spake unto all the company of the children of Israel, saying, The land which we pass through to search it, it's an exceeding good land.

They said, Listen, listen. Let's don't commit mutiny. Let's don't turn against God. Let's don't apostatize and turn away. Let's go get it. Here's the voice of faith. Verse 8, If the Lord delight in us, then He will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land which floweth with milk and honey.

Only rebel ye not against the Lord, neither fear the people of the land, flesh produces fear of man. We went through that one whole lesson, one whole sermon on the fear of man. Only rebel ye not against the Lord, neither fear ye the people of the land, for they are bread for us.

Hey, listen, these guys, they're our bread and butter. They got it all out there. They don't know it, but God's using them to provide for us. And their defense is departed from them. You know what those giants are talking about in their camp?

While the Israelites were camping on the other side of their mountain, you know what those giants are doing around their campfire at night? Now they don't know they're out there yet, but they're thinking.

They're talking. Boy, I hope those Israelites never show up here. If they ever show up around here, we're done for. Did you hear what they did to the Egyptians? Why, when they left, just the backwash of their wave wiped out Egypt.

Why, when they left, they didn't have any crops, they didn't have any money, they didn't have their firstborn. They were done for. Did you hear what they did to the other fellows over there? And then the others over there, they got in their way.

The ones that went out and attacked them. Man, I hope they never show up. They were trembling in their boots. And here's Israel on the other side of the mountain. What are they doing? They're trembling in their boots.

Now, who's got something to be afraid about? You know what? Satan does this to you and I. If he can get us scared, he will make us shake, and he'll get us afraid, and he'll get us mad, and we'll get all tangled up and riled up and all kinds of things.

And we don't have to be that way. All we got to do is just be relaxed and calm. Giants? What giants? You may be surrounded with giants. I don't see any giants because I'm looking at God. If you look at giants, guess what's going to stump on you?

They'll stump the daylights out of you. And Satan's going to make sure that just your particular type of giant shows up. Just whatever will just really discourage you or make you angry or discourage you.

Just exactly custom made for you. What might work for you might not work for me. And he says, look at this! Boo! Every day is Halloween because he's the one that originated that satanic night. By the way, let's not celebrate Halloween.

We're going to have something for the kids here that night. That's the high witchcraft night for the Satan worshippers. And he will have you experience a boo day every day if you will follow him. But just look at God.

God, I see you. There's some things out here, but I'm not going to look at them. You take care of them. You look back and they're gone. Can you make it through today with your problems? How many of you have some problems?

Don't raise your hands. Can you make it through today? Everyone of you will say, I can make it through today with my problems. The problem is most of the time we look off to tomorrow or we get to focusing on our problems that we've got today too closely.

Tomorrow we're to look ahead to Jesus coming. Well, this isn't going to last forever. I'm not going to work in this place forever, praise the Lord. I'm not going to have to live here or work here forever because the Lord's coming back someday.

We get our eyes off the Lord completely. Well, there's the voice of unbelief, the recognition of treason, then there is the voice of faith, and then the response of unbelief to faith. In verse 10, notice what they do.

But all the congregation bade stone them with stones. You know what? They're going to stone Moses, they're going to stone Aaron, they're going to stone Caleb and Joshua. And what happened? At that point, God stepped in.

At that point, it says the glory of the Lord appeared. Nobody's going to be doing any stoning, God says. If anybody does any stoning, I'm going to do the stoning. Now, he didn't say that in verbal words, but that's about what it meant.

He says, you're not going to touch my servants. And all the congregation bade stone them with stones, and the glory of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle of the congregation before all the children of Israel.

God's Judgment, Moses's Intercession, and the Lost Opportunity

Now, verses 11 and 12 is the Lord's anger. They got God mad. By the way, between 9 and 10 and 11, somewhere right in there, you there's a psalm in the hymn book. And I don't know, I think it's, what was it, 195 or somewhere in there, about, here it is, 191.

Somewhere between those verses, the children of Israel crossed over the line of no return. It was finished. They could not go into the land anymore. That was it. I don't know if you realize it, but they did that.

Somewhere right in there. And there's a song that says, there's a line that is drawn by rejecting our Lord, where the call of his spirit is lost, and you hurry along with the pleasure of mad throng. Have you counted, have you counted the cost?

Have you counted the cost if your soul should be lost, though you gave the whole world for your own? Even now it may be that the line you have crossed, have you counted, have you counted the cost? Now, if you're lost today, and you don't know Jesus as your Savior, there may come a day when you just cross over the line.

Now, this is getting into a theological point that many have debated, but I think I've ran across some in my lifetime already that have crossed that line. When I would beg with them to be saved, or plead with them, or share with them, and tears would come down their cheeks, or they would say, no, I can't do it.

I want to, but I can't do it. And I've talked with a lot of them, I believe, when I was preaching the rescue missions. I would beg them, won't you please just turn your life over to Christ, and they'd say, I can't do it.

I didn't understand it, but I just wondered. If this wasn't what it is, if they hadn't crossed the line. Well, Israel crossed the line as far as them getting into the land. They couldn't go. They got God mad.

Verses 11 and 12, the Lord's anger, verses 13 through 19, they got God so mad, God was going to scratch them all off, and God said, Moses, I'm going to take you and raise up a whole new tribe. And Moses, it's a good thing they had Moses.

Moses said, now Lord, wait a minute. Everybody's going to hear how you took them out of Egypt, but you couldn't get them into the land. What's that going to look like? He was really a good lawyer. He was the chief.

He was the number one lawgiver, wasn't he? He wasn't, you know, he wasn't any fool. But God prompted Moses to intercede for Israel, because Moses was a type of Christ. Also, at that point, there he was, interceding, and he says, okay, they can live for a while, but they're going to die out here in this desert.

And so, Moses intercedes, verses 13 through 19, 20 through 35, is the Lord's pardon in the conditions. Here's the pardon. Verse 23, he says, Surely they shall not see the land, which I swear unto their fathers, neither shall any of them that provoke me see it.

He says, okay, everybody can get away right now, but they're going to die in the desert, and all of those are 20 years old, and they can get into the land, except for two men, Joshua and Caleb. They were the only oldies that went across, and they made it in.

For 40 years, then, they wandered in that wilderness. Verse 30 through 34, chapter 14, gives you more details on it, where it says, Dallas, you shall not come into the land concerning which I swear to make you dwell therein, save Caleb, the son of Israel.

And then Joshua. I don't know why they always had dads with big, long names that we have trouble pronouncing. But anyway, you two are going to get in. And then he goes into about their children. Now then, 30 through 35 is the Lord's pardon.

36 through 39 is the record of Moses. Moses gives some more details. 40 through 45 is the most interesting thing. You know what they did? 40 through 45 is the rebellion of the unbelievers. God says, you can't go in.

You can't go in. You know what they say now? Oh, well, now we want to go in. They're just like a little kid, you know? You can't go to bed. Well, I want to go to bed, you know? You got to go to bed. Well, I don't want to go to bed.

Whatever you want, they don't want. That's just what they're like. You know what they do? They got to looking back over their shoulder. They look back out in the wilderness, and there's all that desert.

And they change their mind. They say, well, on second thought, we'd rather go face the giants than go back in that desert. And God says, it's too late. You've already crossed the line. You've already made your decision.

Have you ever made one of those deals? You know, last week, I shared with you how I went into the service, and when I stepped off the bus, and this little sergeant jumped up and started yelling in my face, I knew I'd made a big mistake, you know?

And I wanted to go back, but it was too late. I had already signed on the dotted line, man. They had my life for four years, you know? I knew I'd made a mistake. And that's what it is. They knew they'd made a mistake, but they're going to try anyway.

And so this passage, 40 through 45, all it does is tells us that they got up in the next morning. It says they rose up early, verse 40, in the morning and got them up into the top of the mountain, saying, Lo, here we are.

We're going to go. Take the land. And we were going to the place which the Lord had promised for us, for we have sinned. We have sinned, but we repent. God said, it's too late. There comes a time when it's too late to repent.

And that was it for them. And Moses said, don't go up. You're going to sin even more. You won't make it. Don't go up, because the Lord isn't with you. And they go up and they try to beat them, and they get beat.

The giants come, eat them up. It's like grasshoppers. You know, that's an interesting thing. If there's no submission, there's no victory. And having failed in faith, they're now going to try to live by presumption.

And that's exactly what we try to do a lot of times. If we fail in faith, instead of repenting, oh, Lord, show me what I did wrong. We just turn around and try to do it with some more effort, put a little more oomph into it.

Well, I'll just try to do it a little harder this time. Well, they failed in faith, and now they're going to try to live by presumption. They didn't like the wilderness. They didn't think they could go back, so they're going to go back and face the giants.

God says, there's no choice. You've got to go back to the wilderness now. It's a hard thing. Now, here's the sermon. That was the setting. The sermon is this. Hebrews chapter 3 and 4 deal with this very subject, this very chapter, this very passage, 13 and 14.

Entering the Rest of Christ by Faith

Hebrews 3 and 4 talks about entering into the rest of Christ. This, for the believer, when we get saved, when we come to the cross, when we come to the cross and our sins are forgiven and we are dead to our old life and we rise to walk a new life with Christ spiritually, we are to enter into a life of rest where He says, go.

We say, yes, sir, Lord, I'll go. And we live by faith. We do what He says. Whatever He wants, we do it. And we're relaxed. But if we're not living by faith, we kick and we hold back and we say, well, Lord, I'm not sure about your plans for me.

I'm not sure about this problem that you presented in my life. I'm not sure about this person that you put into my life that's bugging me. And I'm not sure about these circumstances. And we get up tight and we kick up dust.

And the Lord says, now, go on. It's okay. I've got some plans. I know what I'm doing. It's the same thing in the Christian life. The Lord wants us to come. When we come to the cross and when we trust Him as Savior, we're to be dead.

But what happens is we come down off the cross and we're just like the Israelites. Everything the Lord wants us to do, we kick about it and we scramble and we gripe and we complain and we cry and bellyache, you know.

The Lord wants us to come to this point where we're just dead, just stuff. In Hebrews 3, 8 through 19 is the heart of the passage. Verse 18, it says in two, let me just read through here. Verse 8, harden not your hearts as in the day of provocation, the day of provocation.

That's what they did. They provoked God to anger. In the day of temptation in the wilderness, when your fathers tempted me, proved me, saw my works forty years. Why was I aggrieved with that generation and said they do always err in their heart.

They have not known my ways. So I swear in my wrath they shall not enter into my rest. Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief and departing from the living God. Side two.

Not enter in because of unbelief. You see, they tried to get in, but they couldn't get in. They tried to get in, but they couldn't get in. God said, if you won't go in in faith, you won't go in. They wanted to go in in their own effort.

Then in chapter four, he says, let us, therefore, fear lest the promise being left to us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to have come short of it. For unto us was the gospel preached as well as unto them, but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.

For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he said, as I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest, although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. Look over at chapter, or verse nine, Hebrews nine.

There remaineth, therefore, a rest to the people of God. Verse ten, he that has entered into his rest, he also has ceased from his own works, as God did from his. Have you ceased from your struggling, from your kicking, from your, from, from self, selfishness?

Here's what we're to labor in the name of the Lord. Verse eleven, let us therefore labor, therefore, to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief. Now, the application is for the Christian.

Now, there's an interpretation here for salvation, but we're making an application. We're assuming that you're a Christian. The lesson is, just picture yourself being there at Kadesh Barnea. And God says, you see, Kadesh Barnea was their cross.

God had just, they just really got saved. They were new babes. They just got saved, and now, God really brings them to the point, are you willing just to die to self? He'd been nursing them along in the wilderness for those two years.

That was their growing period, growing in Christ. And now, he says, here's the cross. Die to self. Go in. Step forward. Step forward. And the giants would fall, but just die to self. The fear, the frustration, all that stuff, just die to it.

But they wouldn't do it. Now, let me just go through some things here. How to live in victory in the wilderness? What are crosses for? Crosses are for dying on. Whenever the Lord puts a cross in front of me, I'm learning slowly.

But I'm to die on that cross. What would I do? Oh, I'm going to die on that cross. Oh, there's an obstacle in my way. I try to go around it, try to go under it, try to go over it. And every time I try to go a direction that leans over my way, you just can't get around it.

Who puts a cross there? Well, God does. He does. Old Job had that same problem. He was kicking up dust and hollering and screaming about all the problems he had and, you know, complaining how righteous he was.

But when he was all done, he saw that God did all of that just to show him that he was vile. I hold fast my integrity. I'm a really good man. Well, he was. He was a holy man. But God wanted him to see that the very root of our being is vileness.

God put it there, and God puts mine there. And God knows just what will humble us. So crosses are for dying on. Do you have a cross, a burden? What are you to do with it? Die on it. Die to it. I'm just dead.

Bearing the Cross and Dying to Self

Now, how do you get to victory? We get to victory by giving it to God. We just die, Lord, I'm going to give you these giants. I can't handle them anyway. What do you do with giants? Man, I don't know about you, but I'm not a David.

Sometimes giants just scare the daylights out of you, don't they? Lord, I'm going to give you my giants. I'm going to die to my self-effort, whatever. Just give them to the Lord. You die to it by giving it to God.

See, you see, Israel had a cross, and they weren't willing to bear their cross. And Jesus said, if any man is going to follow me, he's going to have to bear his crosses. What do we try to do? We try to get rid of our crosses.

And Jesus says, no, that's not the way of the disciple. The disciple has to bear his cross, because in bearing your cross, you become more like me. We say, Lord, I want to be like you, but I don't want the burdens that will make me, impress me into being like you.

You can't have it both. There's always going to be crosses for the Christian. There's just not going to be any other way. We've got to bear our cross, whatever the Lord brings. Case Barnea was their cross.