Dedication Proved — Devern Fromke

Dedication as Presenting Ourselves to God

Romans chapter 12, please. Well, let's see, who's joined us today? Who was not here yesterday or the day before? Anyone? Couple? Thank you. Praise the Lord. We're speaking about dedication these days.

I'm sure you can realize that's too big a theme for one week or five times. It's too big a theme for a year. It'll take us all eternity to really find out what dedication means. And so, I'm just trying to give us just a few little of the details as we see the important things in this twelfth chapter of Romans.

We started out the first day answering the question, what is dedication? What is dedication? Remember we said that it is God, through His mercy, that redeemed us by His own precious blood. He bought us, He bought us out, and He loosed us.

In order that, now that's His mercy, in order that we might what? Dedicate or present ourselves. So, we're just saying dedication is present. What else can I do, Lord? You know, it says in the Scripture that He bought us with the precious blood.

He bought us with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are His. Lord, I really can't do anything else but give myself, present myself to you. So, without going into this, we saw then that to present is one thing.

Then He receives what has been presented. I'd like to get into that because I think there's a lot involved in the sense that God receives or accepts what has been presented. And in the accepting of it, we saw that He applied the blood to our ear, opened our ear, He applied the blood to our hands, that which we do, what we do.

And then to our feet, determining where we go. Yesterday, we went on to another portion, and we were dealing with the fact that this dedication is not just a blind doing something for God. It just isn't let's get out and work for Jesus.

Dedication According to Renewed Knowledge

Dedication is according to renewed knowledge. Renewed knowledge. You notice we have put the word renewed in. We started out by saying that Israel had a zeal, a dedication for God, but it was not according to knowledge.

There's a renewed knowledge. And the great struggle that's going on today in the religious realm is that people are dedicated according to their own vision of what they think God wants. They're giving God something, their time, their energy.

They're burning out for the Lord. But all the necessity of saying that it's according to renewed knowledge. This morning, we're going on to the third phase of an element that's involved in dedication.

Proving the Will of God

And it is this sense that we are to prove the will of God. The proving the will of God. Now you know where we're getting this, don't you? Romans 12, 1. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your body a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable.

Well, let's all read it together now. A living sacrifice, wholly acceptable under God, which is your reasonable service. This little word, reasonable, means intelligent. And I like to say that it is a dedication, that it's a reasonable thing for me to do, but that my service, likewise, is to become an intelligent service.

Oh, I think God has so much trouble with His lovely children. They are so busy doing and so eager to get things accomplished for Him. He says, but I didn't tell you to do that. And we come back with our mess, we come back with the thing that He can't approve, and we wonder why His blessing, why it isn't upon it.

He says, but you did that on your own. You meant well. You meant well. So there is the coming into renewed knowledge. And we were saying yesterday that as we go on with the Lord, according to the teaching or the word we have, we're within guardrails on the highway, but when we get out, there's reproving.

The reproofs that come, there's the corrections, and all of it is to instruct us that we might come into renewed knowledge. Then we closed yesterday by saying, one of the most wonderful things in renewed knowledge is to discover that you just can't present your old self to the Lord and say, Lord, use me.

The only thing that can really be presented to God is that which has been through the cross, through the grave, comes up on the resurrection side. All I can present to Him is that which is on resurrection ground.

It's my new life that's presented to Him. Not just my old energy, not my old hands, as it were, my own strength and all that I think I can do for God. The talents, all these things, this isn't what God wants.

We summed it up by saying that that which is passed through and is under the blood, He anoints. The oil always comes upon that where the blood has been placed. It's quite a drastic thing when we discover that our presenting, our dedication, is not just according to our understanding, but God's very careful about it.

And He anoints, and He only anoints, that which is really through on the resurrection ground. Well, we'll get into that as we go along. So, you see, this is something we are learning. There's a constant supply, a constant renewing of our mind that we might come into a real understanding of God's ways.

Now we come to this, and be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. This is the way we get our renewed knowledge. Renewing of your mind that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

I know it may sound strange, but there's a lovely two-fold proving that goes on. He says in Malachi, Prove me. God is speaking. He says, Prove me. Try me. Prove me. And guess who else gets proved when we prove the Lord?

Are you with me? Who else gets proved? I tell you, it turns around wondering who's getting proved, doesn't it? Prove me, he says. Prove me. Try me. And in the midst of it, we're the ones who are likewise proved.

So I'd like for a little bit this morning, well, maybe we ought to continue on. We begin to prove what is the will of God. Proving. We'll see what that involves. Now we're headed for tomorrow, I think, for this dedication that finds its fulfillment.

Dedication Fulfilled in Position and Power

Finds its fulfillment in placing, or we could call positioning. And this fulfillment, then, God's very careful about the way things get done. How many have ever discovered that? He just doesn't leave things to the slightest bit of our own imagination.

This fulfillment, this real dedication, the fulfilling of it is in the placing, the positioning that he has given, and it's in power. But guess where the power comes from? It says, no energy of your own, none of your own strength.

I'm going to position you, I'm going to place you, but I'm also going to give you all the energy of the power. And so when we get to the next verses, you see, after the proving of the will of God, we come to verses 3 and following.

I don't think we'll go into it now. But we discover that in God's reckoning, in God's way, we are placed in a body. We become a member in the body. And as a member in the body, it is there that we function.

We find position, we find place, and we find the anointing or the power for all of our dedication. This thing, before we get through this week, I trust God will help narrow down until we see how lovely is the dedication, but how sharpened is the focus.

And I'm sure God appreciates what we've done to the measure of our understanding, but all the renewed knowledge, as he sharpens the dedication, I believe the last ten years have been discovering in the lives of people and in our own life that God keeps sharpening and sharpening the focus until you see how much of the time you've wasted doing good and helpful things, but not really according to that which he really wants.

So there comes a whole new set of priorities, dedication according to what God is after, the fulfillment then, and we will see. I like to picture it sometimes. I didn't plan to get into this until tomorrow, but we just, well, start off wrong.

So here we are. We were saying yesterday we're in Adam, and this is the family tree in Adam. How does he move us out of Adam and bring us into Christ? Well, God's way of taking us out is that here on the cross, he literally wraps the whole family of Adam, every one of us, he carries us to the cross in his Son.

And when God looks down on the cross, what does he see? He sees his lovely Son, the Lord Jesus. But he sees something else. He sees all the wretched family of Adam wrapped up, as it were, and nailed there in him.

And isn't it interesting that he was called the first Adam, but Jesus is called the last Adam? And so when God says, I'm going to get rid of the whole family, the thoughts and the imaginations, the intent of the heart, this evil continuum, I can't get anything good out of it, he wraps the whole thing up in his Son and nails it to the cross, and he buries it in the tomb and he says, that's the last of Adam, the last Adam.

And so God looks down and he sees us in his Son. When he was buried in Joseph's new tomb down here, we were buried with him. When he rose from the grave, what happened? We rose, resurrection. Scripture actually pictures that when he ascended, ours was an ascension.

But here we are now. When God the Father has poured out the Spirit upon his Son, upon the head, we also get a glimpse that the Holy Spirit's outpouring comes upon the head plus the whole of the body. How do I get from Adam into a position in Christ?

How do I move from one family to become a member of the body of Christ? Now we look at it from God's viewpoint for a moment. We see what he sees. And here is an individual who comes and just in the most simple way says, Lord Jesus, I thank you for dying for me, shedding your blood.

And the moment an individual comes by faith to look to Calvary, to what Jesus did, in that moment, guess what God does? He puts the whole thing to your account. And he says, there you are, a hand positioned in the body.

And the tragedy is that while God sees it, God recognizes all of this. The great majority of people only get it by bits and pieces. Just by bits and pieces. For example, the individual who comes to see that Jesus died says, thank you, Lord, for dying for me.

How much does he know of all of this? How much does he experience of it in reality? The reality of it comes just according to the measure that he has apprehended. And he appropriates the precious blood.

You see, God looks and he sees the whole thing. But all we see, all we see, is according to the apprehension that we have. And by simple faith we say, thank you, Lord Jesus, for dying for me. And as our brother was saying last evening, a little bit later on we discover that our problem is not just that we needed to be redeemed or saved from the things we've done, but we discover that God needs to deal with something in our life.

That we are. We begin to cry out, oh, wretched man that I am. Lord, I'm tired of plucking fruit off the tree all the time. Lord, isn't there something else, something better? He says, yes. Just look back to Calvary again.

Don't you know that when you were born, you were born crucified, but all you knew is that you were born? Are you following me? When you were born, that is, when you were there at the cross and you saw Jesus dying for you, that's one thing.

But now, look back again and you see that he not only died for you, but he died as you. You died in him. Oh, it's a wonderful thing. Wonderful thing. When we look back, I say we take another look at Calvary.

There we discover God's remedy for the old life. And it's a blessed day when you realize that he buried the whole stinking mess in the tomb. I just will be very abrupt about it, because that's what it is.

You see, so much of the time we've tried to consecrate, we've tried to dedicate something of the old as though God could use it. The flesh cannot please God. The old creation cannot do anything for God.

Just impossible. And so this is why, if our dedication is to become very real and meaningful, we must look back to the cross again and there we see that God's place for the old Adam life and all that it is, is in the tomb.

But, thank God, there's a rising from the grave. We've been crucified and buried together. We rise together in him. And I believe that some people have suddenly got beyond the negative aspects of things to see that they begin to live by his life.

I think you can go on for a long time before that really begins to lay hold of you. I did, for years, emphasize nothing but two aspects of Calvary. Jesus died for me and I died with him, but I didn't get out of the grave.

God saw me out, but I didn't. I don't know how to say this. You see, you can be so involved and so wrapped up in the negative aspect of what God has done that you pound your fist and say, I'm going to keep dead.

I'm going to live a crucified life. And one day we begin to see that we not only have all the negative work that's dealt with, but now we come to see that we live by his life. And that is a whole new apprehension.

Praise God, I'm nothing but a failure. Hallelujah, the day I discovered I couldn't live it. I shock people every now and then. They come up and say, Brother, I'm just not going to try. I'm going to quit.

It's impossible. I can't live a Christian life. And you know what I say? Hallelujah. What a blessed discovery. They say, what are you talking about? I say, that's the day when God can show you that you are living by the life of the Son of God.

Oh, I can't emphasize it too much this morning. I'm convinced that in our deeper life and Bible conferences, there are throngs of people who have never come to the living appropriation of Jesus Christ as their life.

They doctrinally know it, but they don't know it in experience. They don't know it in reality. They don't know it in its livingness. So, praise the Lord, the day you get out of the grave. Now remember, God sees it all what?

Done, finished. Here we are, resurrected. But not only resurrected to walk around in newness of life, I think he just takes sort of a shortcut right over and he says, Frankie, you be a good toe down here.

I'm going to position you. I'm going to place you. I see folk all the time who have gone on in the enjoyment of the life of the Lord and the privilege of being a partaker of His life. And then they suddenly discover that this life has some very restrictive aspects to it.

Uh-oh. It's not just life to use. This life of the Son of God, it works only in a certain way. I can't use this life just for myself. This life begins to bring me into the relatedness of one another, of others, you see.

And so while God from the beginning saw the whole thing that happened, again I get another bit in peace, you see, and I say, Praise the Lord. I see now why I enjoy being with the company of the Lord's people because I am a part of a body.

I'm a part of a body. And so this is why he says in 1 Corinthians that by one spirit we are baptized or we are planted into the body of Christ. I get a position, a placing. I'm planted into the body of Christ.

But that isn't all. What's the next phrase? Planted into the body of Christ. Baptized into the body. And what? Made to drink of one spirit. Well, get way ahead for tomorrow. But anyway, it's a wonderful thing when we begin to discover that here we are, a member, a part in the body in our dedication.

Our dedication in fulfilling the thing that God really wants is the realization that we are a member. Hand, leg, ear and eye and nose, a member in the body of Christ. But that along with it we've been made to drink of one spirit.

One spirit. And the power by which God works is a twofold power. There's the inward, made to drink. Made to drink. And there is the outward because God has not only put, as it were, the supply of the spirit within, but when the promise of the Father came, the Holy Spirit came down as an anointing upon this whole body.

And the Holy Spirit has been poured out. Now, the tragedy of tragedies is that people somehow have thought that it takes an awful long time to get through to the appropriation of all these that God has made real and complete.

And would I shock you if I say that what I see happening more and more, I don't think that it's a full apprehension of it all, but I believe that God is doing some rather quick work today. And He's showing us that an individual who is rightly instructed in the Holy Spirit bringing illumination can come through with some full understanding and very quickly begin to just sort of be planted in the body and know the anointing of the Lord and good drink from God's own life.

Lord, I thought that used to take ten years. Or twenty. Like one dear pastor said, if this could all happen, I mean, if God, if you can come to awareness of your member in the body and the anointing is there, if you can all do that in one Sunday, what would you tell them from then on?

Can I say to you this morning, brothers, sisters, we spent so long getting to the gate where we could begin. We've been fumbling the fundamentals so long that now it's time, let us not lay all these foundational things, but now let us go on.

This is pretty big stretching for me because I've enjoyed taking people at least, you know, every six months through anew, you see. And I'm not saying that you can understand it all or that you apprehend the fullness of it.

I'm not saying that. But I am saying, I'm saying that all of this is very elementary. Did you hear me? It's the ABCs. I used to think that when someone had something of the anointing and the Spirit of God came within, that they really measured up to a high mark and they'd arrived.

Then the Lord said, they've arrived at the gate. It's not because they are spiritual. It's to help them become spiritual. You see? Just because someone may have the anointing of the Lord come upon them and they burst forth in a heavenly language in praying unto the Lord, I'd say, oh Lord, that's wonderful.

They haven't arrived at anything but the gate. You see, our problem as fundamentalists is we'd look at some folk who we thought they had arrived at some great spiritual experience and then we'd see all their babyhood elements and all these things come out and we'd say, Lord, that's a disappointment.

They haven't arrived at much. Really? Lord, how am I getting off on all this so far? Well, we had a young fellow. He was in a conference some months ago. The Lord brought him into the meeting. It was in a hotel ballroom.

A Young Man Encounters the Joy of Believers

He slipped in after the service. He walked up and he said, my, all these people seem to love the Lord. They're so joyous. What is this all about? I've never been in anything like it before. The leader turned to him and he said, he said, well, we're just people of the Lord who've come to discover that we're one body in the Lord and we love Him.

Do you know the Lord? No, he said, but I'd sure like to. So in a few minutes, after just a bit of instruction, they led him to the Lord. He bowed his head and said, oh God, I knew there was something.

I just give my life to you. I trust Jesus. I wasn't there. I'd gone up to my room. There were three or four. Jesus stayed around. He came. It's such a realization of knowing the Lord Jesus. His life was just, well, you could just see the difference of his countenance, they said.

And five minutes later, the brother said, you know, would you like to have the fullness of the Spirit in your life and have God's anointing come upon you so that you can be a real witness and you can really know how to walk a dedicated life?

He said, I want all there is. So ten minutes after he'd been saved, when the brothers laid hands on him, the Holy Spirit so sweetly came upon him without any instruction or anything. He just began to magnify the Lord in another language.

I've been seeing this happen so often in the last few months. I began to say, Lord, what are you trying to get through to me about? And he just seemed to say, we've gotten things so separated so long.

One year here, five years later here, ten years here. The Lord says, no, I'll give you 15 minutes. I'm trying to stretch this this morning. I've had some real stretching. I'm not saying that that dear fellow knew all that really was involved when Jesus died and he died in him.

He'll discover that, but the Lord will take him back for another look. Someday he'll discover, maybe in a new way, what it is to live by the life of the Lord. He'll look back and say, oh, that's what resurrection means.

I'm living by his life. You see? If you knew how this crossed out some of the things I've taught through the years, you'd shout hallelujah about now. But I am convinced God is doing something in our hour that's beyond our explaining.

What I'm trying to say is basically this. God sees us complete in who? In Christ. When? When's the now? The moment a little babe lifts Abba Father and says, Dada, God sees. That's right. Complete in who?

You've all said that, but you didn't believe it. We've got to take some time and work. I'm not saying that this whole total thing of dedication and all is worked out just in 15 minutes. But oh, I'll tell you, there's a reason why we've fumbled along with fundamental things so long.

We've not brought people on to the fuller thing that God is after. Well, first half hour's gone. We haven't started. But anyway, do you see this morning that there is an inward, a drinking, made to drink of one's spirit?

And this is God's qualifying, the inward life character developing within us, the inward strength, you see. But when the spirit is outpoured, outpoured, it is something of God positioning. Tomorrow we're going to see that position and anointing go together.

And we're going to see how the inward strengthening, the inward might that God gives as the Spirit of God fills and controls the life within. But all of dedication, all of dedication comes to its fulfillment, the individual, as we get into position and we learn the power that God's made available.

There's two lovely words for power or authority. One is ecstasy. It's the outward thing. And the other is dunamis, which is the inward. Well, you know where we're headed, but let's get back today, see if we can't labor and make it a little harder to get into it, huh?

Promise, Proving, and Possessing

Complete in Christ. Well, let's take three different aspects in which the proving comes about. First of all, there's the promise that He gives. Second, there's the proving. And thirdly, there's the entering into the possessing, I do believe that as we begin to come into some renewed knowledge and our longing is more and more to know a real dedication unto the Lord, we get a hold of the blessedness of some of the promise that God has made.

And wouldn't it be wonderful if just in giving us the promise we could automatically possess? I'm afraid far too many folk have got the promise and the possessing mixed up. As one of my friends says, he sings it so often, every promise in the book is mine, but how about the reality of the promise really being brought out, really possessing the reality of it?

Take a couple examples. Look at the life of Abram for a moment. We'll not spend much time. One day when God brought Abram out of Chaldea, He gave him the promise. He said, I'm going to make a father of you.

You will have a family that will numbers the stars of the sky and the sand of the seashore. Oh, how Abraham was thrilled with the promise that God had made. How long did it take before he came into the possessing of it?

It was a long period of proving, wasn't it? The promise had been made. Abram tried to help God all this long period, the proving. And finally, through Isaac, he comes to possess a son. And just about the time that you think a family is going to come from Isaac, he says to Abraham, now I want you to give Isaac to me.

Is this a proving? Is this a proving? The Lord. How are you going to fulfill your promise? Just kill him and prove me. Who gets proved? Did you hear me now? Prove me, God. You see, there's this simple obedience.

He says, surrender, yield Isaac. The Lord. Don't worry about my part. Just prove me. See what I do. Go ahead, kill Isaac. But how are you going to do it? He brings it right to the brink, as it were. Prove me.

And of course, in the proving of him, we get proved. We have a better example of it in the history of God's people Israel. Turn to Deuteronomy, chapter 6, verse 1. Now these are the commandments, the statutes and the judgments which the Lord your God commanded to teach you, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go to possess.

He's giving them a promise. The promise is that he's going to give them a land to possess. He says, I have brought you out and put it to what? Bring you in. Brought you out of bondage, brought you out of slavery, out of Egypt, as it were.

You present, you give yourself to me. I will bring you in. I will bring you in. Read on with me. That thou mightest, verse 2, fear the Lord thy God to keep all his statutes and his commandments which I commanded thee, that thou and thy son and thy sons' sons all the days of thy life, that thy days may be prolonged.

Fear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it, that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily as the Lord God of thy fathers hath promised thee. In the land that floweth with milk and honey.

So, in the process now of the promise and bringing them into the possession, why can't God just immediately let you possess a thing? What really is involved? God says, I'm going to give you this, and then immediately he gives it.

I believe it's a law in human nature that you cannot give certain things to individuals without hurting them. Except they be prepared, the heart be proved. And I think we get that in the next verse here.

Verse 4. Hear, O Lord, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one God, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. So, you see, the proving that takes place right in here is the taking of a new heart and making it wholehearted before the Lord.

How many of you know that when you were redeemed, he gave you a new heart? But there's a vast difference between a new heart and a wholeheartedness. All the feckleness of a heart that's never been proved, that's never really been through the testing, you see.

The feckleness of it. You can stand and look over, say, praise the Lord, that's what I want. Lord, I want to go. I want all that you have. And I believe that in the midst of this, God's desire was not so much just to give them a land.

The land is incidental. He was wanting in the land to give them himself. And they got into the land. What did they do after another generation got in and took and possessed the land, so to speak? They used the land for themselves, for their own interests.

It wasn't that God had been able to really prove in this place the proving of their heart. The land was so good that over a period of 490 years they failed to let it lie idle 70 Sabbaths. Every seventh year was a Sabbath unto the Lord.

Oh, the land was so good. It was so wonderful. And they used it for whom? For themselves, without any carefulness. They were in the proving, you see. And so the Lord allowed the northern Babylonians, the Syrians, to sweep in and took them into captivity.

How long were they carried away before Cyrus the king was finally allowing them to come back? Seventy years. And I'd have you keep your finger in Deuteronomy now, but just go over for a moment to Jeremiah 29.

Verse 10, For thus saith the Lord, that after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon, I will visit you and perform my good word toward you in causing you to return to this, what? God was going to bring them into the place, to the place that He wanted them, where they could reach fulfillment, to the place.

For I know the thoughts, verse 11, I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Then shall you call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you, and ye shall seek me and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.

Oh, the proving work then is to develop a wholeheartedness within us. Can I just gently say something to you this morning? I know the mentality of a lot of good fundamental people is, well, praise the Lord, I want everything that He wants for me.

And if He wants to give it, I am willing to take it. That sounds so spiritual. I've got news for you. You know where you're sitting? You know where you're stalled? Right here. Thank you, Lord, for the promise.

There is something that God requires about the wholeheartedness within our life. Lord, my dedication unto you, my dedication for the full thing that you want, is that my face is set, and I learn to live in my will.

I want to give a message sometime on what it means to live in the will. I'm convinced that the great majority of God's children live in the fickleness of their feelings. One day I feel up, and the next day my feelings are something else.

How many of you have discovered the fickleness of your feelings? Well, you can go to a meeting, and you can get all stirred up and inspired, and you say, I will serve the Lord. Your will acts while you're there.

But three hours later, you're away from the climate and away from everything, and the fickleness of your feelings have come in. And your will is a plaything of your feelings. Anybody know what I'm trying to say?

I've come to hate my feelings, to hate the fickleness of it, you see. I think there are others who live in their reasonings all the time. When they're in the bright light of a good meeting, and they see things clearly, they say, praise the Lord, I will do that.

How many of you know three hours later when you get out from the light, where it's so bright, and you start reasoning, reasoning. You know what I mean? Reasoning. Then your will becomes subject to your what?

Reasoning. Well, maybe it is kind of foolish to be so wholehearted. Maybe God doesn't want all that really, you see. And once again, my will gets taken captive by my reasoning. Oh, I don't want to get into this now, but anyway.

I pray, Lord, help us to know what it is to set our will. Now, the will doesn't perform. Paul says, for me, the will is present. Thank you, Lord, you do the performing. But for me, the will is what? Present.

And I think it's good. I hope we can all affirm it this morning and say, Lord, I will be proved. I will have my heart, my wholeheartedness brought to real proving. I want today to tell you, listen to me when I'm strong, not when I'm weaker now.

Listen this morning. I will that you shall prove and work all around the roots of my heart and tell, it's a heart that's proved. And I set my faith. I will, dear Lord, that the proving shall bring about the possessing.

You've brought me out to bring me in. But you'll never get in with a dilatory, well, I'm willing if the Lord is. You'll never get there. I press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

It's a press. Everything, everything will move in to hinder and thwart. And it's this proving area right here, the promise. Oh, so many of God's children think they have the possession because they have the promise.

As Brother Sparks used to say, we have the knowledge, but we don't live in the good of the reality of what we know. Back to Deuteronomy again. Chapter 6, verse 15. For the Lord thy God is a jealous God among you, lest the anger of the Lord thy God be kindled against thee and destroy thee from off the face of the earth.

Ye shall not tempt the Lord your God. Now, let's just stop for a little bit and ask the question. If God has made a promise and we're proving what is the will, the good, the perfect, the thing that God wants.

If we're proving the good, acceptable and perfect will. He's made a promise to Israel. I brought you out to bring you in. He made a promise to Abram. We're going to see the promises that have been made to us.

Proving God Without Tempting Him

Here's the issue now. How in the proving do we slip away from proving to tempting? What is the difference between proving and tempting? He said here that they tempted. What's the difference? Ye shall not tempt the Lord your God as ye tempted him in Massa.

Ye shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God in his testimonies and his statutes which he hath commanded thee. And thou shalt do that which is right and good in the sight of the Lord, that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest go in and possess the good land which the Lord sware unto thy father.

And so forth. All right? We'll just be open a little bit. When does my proving God? He says, prove me. Prove me. But when does it slip over into tempting God? I need help. Who will help me? Have you considered it?