Being Lifted by God's Greatness, Pt. 2 (09/04/2022)

Park Meadows Church

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Morning again, everybody. Nice to have an opportunity for a little bit of continuity here, which is something that's been hard to come by for previous lessons.

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I don't think we're ever going to finish Obadiah in Sunday school. It's one of the shortest books in the Bible. It's like 21 verses, been in it for six weeks.

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But the lessons have been a little bit staggered. And then as last week, as we were talking about, there's just a good seven month time span in between part one of this study we're doing right now and last week's.

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So I talked to Evan to let me take the main lesson one more time, just so we can try to get a little bit of closure.

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Because I can't stand when there's an ending and it's in sight.

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And I've already took up an hour and a half of y 'all's time and still have about eight pages left. So hopefully, we'll be able to finish up here on this for the day.

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So we're still talking about this same, obviously, same study, which is kind of the overarching theme is trying to get a grasp of this concept or idea that we as Christians, as believers, are capable of having peace, even in some of the toughest times we'll ever go through.

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It's kind of sounds kind of corny. But I mean, it's literally kind of like a superpower that we have, that the vast majority of the human race can't ever experience.

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And I mean, again, it sounds kind of dramatic. But peace that passeth all understanding, I mean, that is supernatural.

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It is like a superpower that we have. And the only reason we can have it is because, through the

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Lord, through the Holy Spirit's guidance, we can put things in perspective that the rest of the world just simply can't.

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And that, of course, perspective is often just the big picture, understanding that the

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Lord is the one ultimately in control, that he's still there with us. We're going to look at some really cool passages today that illustrate that, and that we can kind of step through these moments, these specific times, with utmost confidence.

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And so we did a bunch of review last week for the sake of that large gap. Just really quick summary of what got us here.

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So overarching theme is peace of tribulation. The first section of the study was really looking at a lot of examples of the mourning phase of tribulations we go through.

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The part of our human nature that, you know, the part of our human nature that does have a tendency to mourn or lament, or just maybe ask questions, maybe be a little bit confused with what's going on around us.

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That's what the first section was all about. And we looked at a lot of really interesting passages of Old Testament saints under the inspiration of the

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Holy Spirit, you know, writing some really dramatic stuff regarding what they were feeling. We looked specifically at Jeremiah, at Job, David.

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And there's a lot of other examples as well. A recent one was Ruth. We were, Dave is going through Ruth right now in our

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Wednesday night services. And at the very beginning of Ruth, you know, Naomi, Ruth's mother -in -law, had a pretty dramatic mourning or lamentation.

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I think it was after she came back home, after she returned home from living in the land of Moab for a while.

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And she literally wanted to change her name from the pleasantness of the Lord to betterness.

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And the Lord wouldn't let her, as we discussed. Y 'all gotta come to Wednesday night to get more detail about that. But anyways, there's a lot of great examples of saints, you know, not just any given person, but like really strong believers in the

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Lord and the Old Testament that, again, gave us really explicit lamentations, if you will, of the tough times they were going through.

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That's what all of section one was about. And we concluded that because of these examples we have, it's perfectly okay for us to have similar, you know, times as we go through that process ourselves.

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It's okay to mourn, to take our feelings to the Lord. In fact, as part of that conclusion was that when we do that, we actually come out with an even more intimate relationship with him than we did prior to going through these tribulations.

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So that was all of section one. And then we followed that up with section two, which was living up to a higher standard.

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So then in this New Testament age, the mourning phase of that doesn't have to be the end game for us.

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We have the higher standard that we, you know, get in Philippians 4 .4. And first, there's a lot of great passages in 1

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Peter as well that talk about it. Essentially, again, that ability to, even when we are chained to the prison wall, so to speak, such as Paul was, we can still rejoice in everything and again, rejoice.

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And so that's that higher standard that we want to live up to. So those were the two sections we covered way back in January.

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Last week, what we did was we talked about, and we're still in this section. This is the third section of the study.

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And it's all about being lifted from those times by God's greatness. So it's like, all right, we have kind of our human tendency to mourn when times are tough, which is perfectly fine as we take those problems to the

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Lord. But we also have this higher standard over here that we want to shoot for, because we can. We have the ability to rejoice in everything, even the toughest times possible.

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So how do we get from here to here? So it's kind of an odd, like, kind of an odd sequence in the way we're studying it, but I wanted to get to that higher standard sooner than later, because that's a really, really awesome aspect of our belief in the

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Lord and our faith in Him. And so section three is all about helping us get to that phase. And that is simply refocusing, shifting our focus from the tribulations that we're in, the tough times, could go anywhere with that.

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It could be any kind of tough time you could imagine, and just shifting our focus from that to the greatness of God, and then letting that lift us out of the tribulation.

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So last week, we were talking about that. We went back to Job three one more time and kind of rehashed what

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Job was going through. But then we looked at Job 38 through 40. We read that whole section, which you could spend weeks and weeks and weeks on.

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I feel like that is, I mean, that's God talking. And I feel like that's a section that you could literally read every single week, every single

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Sunday prior to the worship service, just to get everybody, like, hyped. You know what I mean? And it could, anyone could read it.

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I didn't do a great job. I was going pretty fast. I was, there was a bunch to cover, but it's just the word, like, any one three, it doesn't matter how good it's read.

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The words themselves are just like, how awesome does, how awesome is this? Does it get any better? So we read that whole, like, two chapters, 38, all of 38, all 39, just a little bit of 40.

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And it begins with, you know, who is darkening your counsel, Job, with these words without knowledge?

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So we discussed for a long time, the beginning of us coming out of just the confusion and the mourning aspect of tribulation into the peace that we can have in tribulation is understanding we don't yet have all the information.

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So we talked about that a whole lot. And of course, God goes into giving

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Job some examples of how, why it is that he doesn't have all the information. He goes into this really awesome, again, discourse of just totally shifting his focus from the tribulation to God's greatness.

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He doesn't necessarily answer, you know, why is this happening to me? Why am I going through this?

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You know, all of Job's questions, he doesn't answer those. Instead, he simply shifts the focus from Job's tribulation and everything you just experienced to God's greatness on a cosmic scale.

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God talks about everything from the deepest parts of the earth, where he has walked to the

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Pleiades and Orion and all beyond that, everything beyond that, it's just really incredible. So we did all of that.

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And obviously that was a great place to start in terms of getting an idea of the greatness of God and how that can totally shift our focus from those tribulations.

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We looked at Romans 11, just a really quick, I'm just gonna highlight just a couple of the phrases in that passage we looked at, because this is still review, but Romans 11, 33,

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Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, his ways are past finding out for who hath known the mind of the

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Lord. Obviously Paul is expounding upon God's greatness there.

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In Isaiah, we looked at, you know, we wait for him. We have waited for him.

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And we looked at the Hebrew word there that means we are eagerly waiting. It's not just a passive, you're sitting over on a chair, you know, killing time.

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You're eagerly waiting. It's an active waiting for him to return because as it says, Isaiah 25, eight, he will wipe away the tears from all faces.

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The ultimate victory that will bring us out of all the tribulations we could ever experience. That is something we can look forward to.

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And of course that is touching both on God's greatness in general, but also again, that ultimate victory we'll have over the world, over all of our tribulations.

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In Jeremiah 32, 17, these are all the passages we looked at last week. By thy great power and stretch out arm, there is nothing too hard for thee.

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Jeremiah obviously had a great understanding of God's greatness. The great, the mighty

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God, the Lord of hosts is his name as Jeremiah tells us in chapter 32 there. Let's see here.

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And then we ended last week looking at, yeah, at that passage of Jeremiah.

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And we talked about how it's just so important to remember that there are times when, you know, the tribulations we're experiencing may very well, may very well be caused by kind of the simple cause and effect of the things going on around us, either individually, the way we're living out our lives, or even collectively, in other words, our community or maybe our whole country.

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Jeremiah was obviously experiencing a lot of tribulation because his people were disobeying the

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Lord and, you know, doing all kinds of evils against him.

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And because of that, they were collectively being punished, Jeremiah included. And so remember

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Brother Bill's note, when we're going through tribulation, we talked about, you know, his little, his

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Sunday school lesson in first Peter back in January. The first thing you should do when you're going through tribulation is evaluate it.

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Like what could be causing this? So we kind of ended last week with that. And so picking back up where we left off, we're still in section three here.

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And this is just continuing, like I said, I tell you what, y 'all go ahead and go to Joshua chapter 10 in verse six.

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I'm gonna read a couple of just super short passages before that, but it's just a verse or two here and there, but we're gonna be in Joshua for a little bit of time here, just a couple of minutes.

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But again, we're just looking at passages here, just really going into detail on God's greatness.

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And just like with Job, just like God did with him, you know, look at, you know, look at what I did, Job. Are you the one that laid the foundations of the earth and just expounding upon his greatness totally to shift his focus?

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That's what all these passages can do for us when we're going through tough times. We can look at these kinds of passages, remember that this is the

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God that is in control of everything. But not only that, simultaneously has a personal relationship going with us on an individual level.

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I mean, it doesn't get better than that. But these passages, I mean, you can look at passages on kind of that individual relationship, which is awesome.

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But some of these passages where it's just broadly, just talking about just the broad greatness of the

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Lord can have an impact for sure. So again, a couple of short passages before getting to Joshua.

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Deuteronomy chapter three, just a couple of verses. It says, you shall not fear them for the Lord your God, he shall fight for you.

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And then Moses says, and so Moses is telling the people, the Lord is there to fight these battles with you.

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I know you're a little bit scared to go into the promised land, but he will be there to fight these battles with you. And then he says, and I besought the

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Lord at that time saying, O Lord God, thou hast begun to show thy servant thy greatness and thy mighty hand.

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For what God is there in heaven or in earth that can do according to thy works and according to thy might.

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Again, Moses is just really expounding on God's greatness there. The higher standard that we talked about in that second section of the study, we reviewed it last week quite a bit.

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I kind of referenced it a little bit this morning. That higher standard that we talked about is a lot easier for us to live up to that rejoice in everything, even in the toughest times.

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It's a lot easier to live up to when we consider the fact that the very spirit of that great

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God that Moses was just talking about, exact same spirit, same one that Jeremiah talked about and Isaiah as well and everywhere else in the

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Bible, it's the same spirit that unlike those guys, we get to have within us all of the time.

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They had him sometimes, but David had to ask that the Lord spirit wouldn't depart from him.

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We have the unique ability or we have the unique honor. It's not an ability, but we have the unique honor to have the

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Holy Spirit within us all the time since of course, or within this

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New Testament age, we have that exact same spirit that Moses was just talking about, that great spirit within us today.

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His greatness is within us and for that reason, he works, as we learned in Romans not that long ago through us, that he may receive the glory through the earth and vessels, that being us, because despite the fact that we are pretty pitiful little creatures, he can do really great things through us as well and he can get the glory through that.

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But that's an awesome thing to remind us when we're in these times of just struggling, grappling with the tribulation we're going through to remember that that same great

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God, where am I here? I was back a page. How great is the, let's see, show me thy greatness, thy mighty hand for what

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God is there in heaven or in earth that could do according to thy works or according to thy might, that spirit is within us ourselves.

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That peace, having peace in tribulation, accomplishing peace in tribulation seems like a paradox, but for us, it's possible and it's possible through his greatness, which again, actually resides within us, which is a really spectacular thing.

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One more quick burst before going to Joshua, Psalm 145, three, David says, great is the

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Lord and greatly to be praised and his greatness is unsearchable. That unsearchable greatness is all that we need to experience peace, that peace that we've been talking about that we've been striving for, even in tribulation, knowing that our troubles and that our perils, whatever pain or suffering that we may be going through is all held within the hand of a

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God whose greatness is unsearchable. Like we can't even really expound upon his greatness appropriately, but we have tried and of course the prophets of old tried and they did an awesome job.

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Obviously under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we can get a glimpse of it, but at the same time, it's still unsearchable.

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And when we find ourselves in the middle of a battle, whether it be a physical battle, physical battles that we're going through now, spiritual battles, pain, suffering, any kind of fearful tribulation that you could find yourself in, we often don't see or feel his presence with us until we start kind of trudging through the times, kind of right in the thick of it.

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And we have to do that and when we do it, we can find that actually he's been fighting the battle with us and for us all along.

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We may go through some times where it doesn't feel that way but oftentimes right when we're in the thick of it is when we realize he was there the whole time.

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So now we're in Joshua 10, starting at verse six and here's an example of what

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I'm talking about there. Obviously this is a physical picture of the way the Lord can be with us today.

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This is literally a physical battle that he was there to fight on behalf of his people but we'll see how this can maybe come into play for us as well.

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So starting at verse six, it says, and the men of Gibeon sent unto

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Joshua to the camp of Gilgal saying, slack not thy hand from my servants, come up with this quickly and save us and help us for all the kings of the

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Amorites that dwell in the mountains are gathered together against us. Now, what's interesting is the next verse.

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So in many cases, you'll have the man of God, at this point when people are coming to him for help, let the man of God immediately go right to the

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Lord whether it be Solomon or David in many cases or the prophets,

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Samuel and many examples of that where they'll immediately go to the

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Lord. In this case, it goes to verse seven says, so Joshua ascended from Gilgal, he and all the people of war with him and all the men of valor.

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Now makes total sense. And what's interesting to me is this is a case where he's just been told all the kings of the

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Amorites that dwell in the mountains are gathered against him and his people. That sounds pretty scary to me, but Joshua gathered his men together, his people of war, his mighty men of valor.

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He had maybe a little bit of confidence in his men, in their strength and he was a man of war.

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So he was probably prepared strategically as well. So for me, when I see this, you picture yourself for a second, any given type of tribulation.

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Again, this is a very physical battle that's about to take place, but we can use it as a picture for any kind of battle we can picture ourselves in spiritually, physically, whatever we may be going through.

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We can use this scene of kind of impending battle as an example of what's to come in our lives perhaps.

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Now, there may be some times where we feel totally unprepared to face it. And those are the times of course, where we are immediately going to the

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Lord and asking for help and guidance and taking our feelings to him as we talked about in section one.

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But there may be other times where maybe you do feel somewhat prepared in some sense. Joshua, at least going into this may have felt somewhat prepared.

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He has his men of valor right there with him. He ascends from Gilgal. He's gonna go face the battle.

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But then even in those times when you might feel particularly prepared than others, you get there and you face the actual battle, you see what's actually before you and then the fear starts creeping in again.

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So it really like you are going to, or we are going to experience times like this, whether we feel prepared for it or not prepared for it.

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Either way, when we actually see the battle before us and face it, we realize, all right, we're not winning this thing by ourselves.

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We have to have the Lord right there with us. Again, Joshua, he seemed prepared.

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He had his mightiest men by his side. I'd say that's probably a good start going into a huge battle, having your mighty men of valor.

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But then the question is, is it enough to actually face it? And that is when, again, you see what's before you and you start perhaps realizing,

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I can't do this by myself. And then verse eight says, and the Lord said unto

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Joshua. So now Joshua is before them. He showed up prepared, but he sees what's before him.

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And obviously fear has crept in at this point because the Lord says, fear them not. So even being prepared, you're now about to face tribulation that you are not going to be able to bear, certainly not going to be able to experience any level of peace facing it on your own.

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The Lord says, fear them not. And then he tells them that the victory is already won. For I have delivered them into thy hand.

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There shall not a man of them stand before thee. He's facing five kings of the Amorites. This is a way bigger army than what

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Joshua had. Not a single one of them is going to stand. Verse nine, Joshua therefore came unto them.

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So now he has the confidence. Now he's back ready for battle again. He came prepared, but then he faced fear.

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But then the Lord reminded him, you don't need a fear because the battle's already won. Let's go do this. Joshua therefore came unto them suddenly and went up from Gilgal all night.

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Okay, so Joshua, again, he's trudging through the tribulation. He's going through it. He's right in the middle of it at this point.

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He is in battle. They've got swords going left and right. He's fighting his enemy.

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He's in the middle of the battle. He's going all night. Verse 10, and then we get a very specific picture of what's actually happening.

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You think it from Joshua's viewpoint solely, he's right in the middle of the tribulation.

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Zoom out where you have a better picture of all the information, not just what Joshua was saying. It says, and the

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Lord discomfited them before Israel. And the Lord slew them with a great slaughter at Gibeon and chased them along the way.

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How horrifying does that sound? The Lord is chasing these guys himself and chased them along the way that go with up to Bethlehem and smote them to Azekah and into Makedah.

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And then verse 11, I was so excited to get to this last week. So I'm really excited to get to it now.

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And it came to pass as they fled from before Israel and were in the going down to Bethlehem that the

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Lord cast down great stones from heaven upon them and to Azekah and they died.

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And listen to this right here. This is crazy. And there were more which died with hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword.

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So you got Joshua and the men of valor in there with their swords going crazy and they have the confidence they need because the

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Lord is with them, but they're still focused on the singular battle before. Maybe that's literally an individual person from moment to moment.

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All along, the Lord is up there literally like coming down with his wrath on the enemy himself.

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And in the end slew way more than the Israelites did. Now we know that in this day and age, most of what the

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Lord does is through his people. He uses us as the vessels for accomplishing his will, but in the

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Old Testament, especially in the early history of his people, such as here with Joshua, he was doing a lot of supernatural things somewhat often.

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Dad did a study once on kind of how much time elapsed in between literal like supernatural interventions from the

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Lord more often than it happens now because we live in a different age. But at this point, here he is, he's coming down with hailstones himself.

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He's taking care of the battle. So he's fighting the battle. It doesn't matter how prepared we might be, just like Joshua was with his men of valor.

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At the end of the day, we're gonna be facing what will feel like an impossible task, an impossible enemy to defeat.

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Five kings of the Amorites. And you may very well have to take your first few steps into that battle, into that tribulation on faith alone.

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So again, upon the first march into that battle,

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I don't think Joshua yet realized what was actually about to happen. So he's going into the battle with a smaller army against five kings of the

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Amorites with their five armies. He's going to that battle with faith.

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He's going in at resting on his faith that the Lord told him to fear not for I will deliver them into your hands. So that is faith.

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So sometimes we have to step into that battle or the tribulation that's before us, kind of faith first, if you will, not face first, but faith first, and take those first few steps and kind of get into it on the faith that we don't have to fear and that the

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Lord is with us before we realize all along the Lord is there every step of the way.

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And in fact, actually fighting the battle for us or whatever that specific tribulation looks like, he's maybe delivering that supernatural peace we talked about.

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And it's when you're staring at that enemy that you're facing, it could be, for us, it could be anything from uncertainty of the future.

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It could be fear of the devil's stranglehold on the world around us as it seems particularly tight lately.

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It could be just battles in your own personal life that you don't understand the full scope of yet. Because again, as we talked about last week, we don't yet have all the information.

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It's in those moments, you're facing it. You're like, how am I gonna get through this? I am resting on the faith that I know the

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Lord is with me, but I just don't feel it yet. And then all of a sudden, the hailstones start coming flying over your shoulder, hitting the ground before you just knocking guys out left and right, the enemy, the tribulation, whatever it may be, the hailstones from heaven begin to fall in front of you.

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And before you can even grasp what's happening, the Lord himself has already defeated the enemy. It's over.

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It's like, well, that was kind of a big buildup and now victory's won. I guess it didn't need to be stressing after all.

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I mean, think about it. We talked about Job last week in that verse, that which I greatly fear has come to pass.

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One thing we didn't get into in a whole lot of detail was that's kind of an interesting concept because you could argue like, all right, we know the story of Job.

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So I guess he had a right to fear because it ended up coming to pass. So I guess his fear was justified the whole time.

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But you could also take this angle. Number one, from the human viewpoint, Job did not know what was gonna come to pass.

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He did not know the secret will of the Lord, as his dad would put it, yet you only know that by taking the next step in your life, the next step into the future, if you will, from this moment to the next.

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He didn't know that. So he did not, again, have all the information. So again, is the fear justified?

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If we are fearful of things that haven't yet come to pass, be anxious for nothing, right?

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And reserve your energy for today, not about the worries of tomorrow. Even if we do know it's coming tomorrow, we don't need to be wasting our energy today on what we need to handle later.

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So that's the second angle you could take for Job is let's say for a second, he did know every detail of what was gonna come to pass.

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Would the fear still have been justified? Well, he sure did waste all of those moments. He wasted all of those moments beforehand with his family and with all of his riches and with all of the blessings that he had leading up to the great tribulation.

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Even if he knew the whole thing that was gonna happen with the devil just doing everything he possibly could to ruin

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Job's life. I don't know how many years that Job was fearing the things that would come to pass, as he said, in 325.

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I don't know how long it did. Could have been months, could have been years, could have been decades, where he was dwelling on the fear of something that was way down the road.

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So again, here we are, we have everything going through. Maybe we have this fear and maybe we're already in the tribulation itself that we're going through the tough times in our lives or whatever it may be.

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And we're letting that fear overcome us a little bit. And then that's when we look up and realize the battle's already won. The Lord was fighting it with us the whole time.

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He won the battle for us. Again, the hailstones come down. And at that point, the

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Lord has defeated the enemy. He defeated your tribulation. He defeated your tough times, the battles that you were facing.

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He brought you through that tribulation that you were facing stronger than you were ever before. Just on that information alone, we know that that is a pretty good reason why we would experience the things that we do.

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We become stronger for it. And as dad says often as well, it makes us, it prepares us to be the person that we're meant to be the day that we see

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Jesus face to face for the first time. He brings us through that tribulation that we're facing stronger than we were before.

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And he is embracing us on the other side as well, which of course strengthens our relationship with him, makes that intimacy even closer like I talked about earlier, like it had never been before.

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Now verse 12 says, then spake Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered the Amorites before the children of Israel.

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And so at this point, obviously Joshua is well aware of what just occurred.

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It was the Lord that just won this battle for them, but there was still at this point, some battle to be had.

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And he said in the sight of Israel, let's see.

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Yeah, he said in the sight of Israel, son stand now still upon Gibeon and now moon in the valley of Ajalon.

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And the sun stood still and the moon stayed until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies.

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Is it not written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven and hasted not to go down about a whole day.

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And there was no day like that before it and after it. And the Lord hearkened to the voice of a man for the

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Lord fought for Israel. So again, Joshua asked for this supernatural thing to occur so that they could finish what they started and avenge themselves.

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And the Lord literally allowed the sun to stay at high noon for like 24 hours or something.

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And it brings that all back into perspective right there for the Lord fought for Israel. That was all the

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Lord's doing, 100 % of the victory. And Joshua returned and all Israel with him into the camp of Gilgal.

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You know, what a, it's just so funny. And they returned to their camp. Such crazy stuff just happened.

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All right, so now let's go to Psalm 121. And let me see here.

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This little passage will actually conclude this section. Again, being lifted by the greatness of God.

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Psalm 121, let's see here. So this again, kind of plays into both.

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It plays into both God's greatness, but also kind of a glimpse at the, kind of at the dynamic behind our relationship with him.

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And it brings into play our humanity for sure, as David so often did in his

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Psalms, in conjunction with God's greatness, which is obviously a wonderful contrast all the time.

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So verse one of Psalm 121, I will lift up my eyes up into the hills from whence cometh my help.

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Where's that help come from? Verse two, my help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.

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So again, like who is it we get to rely on? Where's the help come from?

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It's from that great God that literally made the heaven and the earth. The same one that went through everything, all of the many intricate things that he did when he was talking with Job, chapter 38 and 39.

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Oh, I just realized something. It's funny. I literally wrote these in with a pen and still forgot to do it.

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You guys may not remember this, but last week we're reading Job, we're reading 38, and there was a verse, I was like, oh, you got to put a pen in that.

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Well, Job 39, so verse 11 of that last thing, I'm backtracking now, because I got to throw this in here.

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When the Lord cast down the great stones from heaven and more died from his hailstones, the enemy of that terrible enemy, more died from his hailstones.

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And Job 39, 22, which was right in the middle of that long passage we read last week, where the

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Lord is asking Job these questions. One of his questions was, has thou entered into the treasures of the snow, or has thou seen the treasures of the hail, which

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I have reserved against the time of trouble against the day of battle and war? And what's crazy is

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Job, we assume, I think there's pretty good evidence for that being one of the oldest books in the Bible.

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So we can assume it happened before, what happened with Joshua. He's telling

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Job right there, are you the one that even understands the treasures of the hail that I reserved for the day of battle?

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And he used it in the day of battle. In this, it's the weapon that he used for bringing Joshua out of his tribulation, that passage.

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And then in a devotion the other day, y 'all remember Jeffrey, we do devotions before work every morning.

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And one of his devotions recently, he just happened to be in Revelation. And let me go to it really quick.

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It's like Revelation 16, 21. It's just crazy because we get a glimpse that all the way into the very end of time when we are facing our final enemy, that the

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Lord is still using the hail, the great treasures of the hail stones for the day of battle.

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16, 21 of Revelation says, and there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent, and men blasphemed

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God, because of the plague of the hail, for the plague thereof was exceeding great. Isn't that crazy? Just had to throw those in there really quick.

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Because that like, it's cool in Joshua, when you see that is, you know, you picture

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Joshua facing this tribulation, facing these battles, and then you have the hail stones flying over his shoulders, and he realizes that he's not alone.

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But what's even crazier is the significance of the hail stones as a weapon of God.

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I don't know, I just thought that was really cool. Okay, so, my help cometh from the

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Lord, back to Psalm 121 here, verse two. My help cometh from the Lord, which hath made heaven and the earth.

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Great God, and He's the one that we get to rely on. He's the one who brings us help. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved.

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He that keepeth thee will not slumber. Y 'all remember last week we were talking about, I forget which passage it was, it was either

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Jeremiah or Isaiah, but the Lord will not tarry. Well, from our perspective, with the minute amount of details that we have, and with our minute comprehension of what's going on around us, and our understanding of everything, we don't, to us, it might seem like he's slumbering, that he is sleeping, or that, what was the other phrase, tarrying, that he says he will not tarry.

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Well, to us, sometimes it sure seems like he's tarrying, but that's not, and it's not to be confused with his long -suffering spirit.

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That's a whole another interesting thing, where one of his greatest attributes is that long -suffering spirit that, where he is putting up with the most awful evils of the world so that he can continue to bring in the fold up until the last age, or right before his second coming, rather.

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And so he's putting up with all the craziness around us because he is literally, again, bringing in the fold, which is a part of each and every generation, but he doesn't tarry.

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He's not like, it's all in his perfect, it's all within his perfect timing, in other words. And this is the same concept here.

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Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall not slumber nor sleep. So it's important for us to remember that sometimes when we're going through our tribulation or our tough times.

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In that moment, it may be like, where are you, Lord? David even asked that question. Jeremiah even asked that question, but he is there and he is not, he will not slumber.

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He will not sleep. Verse five, the Lord is thy keeper. The Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.

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The sun shall not smite thee by day or the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil.

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He shall preserve thy soul. Now it's interesting because you read that and you think, all right, well,

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I would sure consider the tribulation that I've gone through in the past or I may be going through now evil, but this is telling me he shall preserve me from all evil.

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Well, what is the word preserve here? It's the Hebrew word shamar. It means to keep or to guard or literally to save life or to keep watch.

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In other words, through the evil, he is there keeping watch over us. He is there saving our lives through the evil.

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He is guarding us through the evil, protecting us. So he's preserving us. It doesn't mean we're not gonna go through it or we're not gonna experience tribulation.

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It means he's right there with us every moment, the entirety of what we're going through to guard us, to protect us, to save our life, to keep watch.

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Verse eight, the Lord shall preserve, there's that word again, thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth and even forevermore.

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So up until the moment we see him returning in the clouds, that will be a reality. He's gonna be there keeping watch, keeping guard and literally saving our lives through all of it.

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So to conclude that third section there, being lifted by the greatness of God. As Christians, again, we're promised as we talked about last week and back in January, we're promised to face persecution.

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By default, we are at the very least gonna be going through tribulations simply because we follow the

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Lord. Who knows what may happen in our personal lives or again, you could go anywhere with that.

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But one thing's for sure is we are promised we will face persecution simply for loving, putting our faith in the

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Lord. And in first Peter, it literally is telling us we are going to continue, we are to continue the very persecutions that the

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Lord himself was going through. So as Christians, we are promised we're gonna face those tough times, troublesome times, times that bring mourning and sadness, possibly even some confusion, just as the prophets and saints of old explicitly and elaborated in such great detail the feelings they were going through.

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When Job was left with a shaved head laying on a heap of ash, as he contemplated the why behind what he was experiencing, the enormous tribulation that came upon him, what happened?

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He didn't get an answer to the why, rather the Lord appeared in a whirlwind, which is another great example of his greatness.

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I mean, he just shows up in power and he removed his focus, Job's focus from the tribulation itself and toward the greatness of God's power and sovereignty over the entire universe.

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Again, he went into elaborate detail on a cosmic scale in that discourse with Job. So as we face our own tribulations, it really doesn't have to be any different for us.

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As we strive for that higher standard of experiencing peace and tribulation, what's otherwise an oxymoron to the rest of the world is actually a superpower that we have, a thing only possible for those who walk with the

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Lord, rejoicing when change of the prison wall, such as Paul. We need to refocus our attention toward the greatness of God, which can lift us from a place of peace, even in the toughest times.

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So it's 1215, right? My watch is accurate. I'll go ahead and end it there. I actually had section four ready to go because I didn't think

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I'd be able to use up all my time on finishing last week, but there you go. So well, that's a good, there's some closure.

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There's some of the closure I was hoping for last week and we'll see if I keep last week's promise and it's a few months or I don't know, maybe

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Dave will allow me one more Sunday. I have no idea. We'll see. No pressure.

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Sorry I said that, Dave. I mean, I don't know. Like we didn't really, Dave and I, dad is like, y 'all take care of it. We're like, sure.

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And then we don't talk about it because we just kind of play off of it as we go. So anyway.

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Oh, great. I don't know even how they're able to, but that's awesome. I mean, dad, it's okay. Like we have it under control.

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Obviously someone is up here, so don't worry. But anyway, we'll go ahead and close the prayer and then that'll be it for today.

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Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, thank you so much for this wonderful day. Thank you for bringing us together once again, this incredibly special church body, this incredibly special church family that I am just continually thankful to be a part of and the honor that it's been to get to be a part of this church family.

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Literally my entire life is just something that I'll never really be able to express how thankful I am for. So thank you.

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I am for that. So Lord, thank you again for that. Bring us together, allowing us to fellowship. We ask you to please bring the rest of our church family back to us safely.

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Be with mom and dad as they continue to travel. Bring them back to us and anyone else that's out.

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Lord, Matt and Emily, they're on the road and several others. We just ask you to bring them all. Bring us all back together again, if it'd be your will this time next week.

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We thank you for that. And thank you for the food we're about to have. And we just ask you to be with us the rest of the day and we ask all these things in your name.