God Centered Alphabet - A Is For Awesome

Hello, welcome back to the God -Centered Podcast. This is Andy Cain. I hope you're doing well. Today we're starting a series called the

God -Centered Alphabet. That's right, the God -Centered

Alphabet. A through Z. Each letter will represent something in the Bible that we will look at, and we will look at a text that deals with it, or maybe multiple texts, but the key is that it will all be

God -Centered because of the God -Centered Alphabet. Remember, God -Centered means we start with God and reason down to man.

So we start with what God has said, and then we acclimate ourself to that, not the other way around. So for A, it means

A is for awesome. That's right, he is an awesome God.

You've no doubt have heard the song, Our God is an Awesome God. Well, that's because it's true. He is an awesome

God, and this is an awesome word of God. And for that, we're going to turn our attention to Deuteronomy chapter 7.

In Deuteronomy chapter 7 and verse 12, it says, Then it will be because you listen to these judgments and keep and do them that Yahweh, the

Lord your God, will keep with you his covenant and his loving kindness which he swore to your fathers. Now, just in passing, you know we're doing the

God -Centered Bible study on lamentations, and in that there's a lot of lamenting and mourning over the fact that Babylon has come in and killed many of the people, destroyed the city, and carried the rest off into slavery.

And you know, there could be the temptation to be like the whole like, Why me? Like, well, the

Lord warned you over and over and over again, and you kept sinning and sinning and sinning.

So I mean, what was he supposed to do? He's got to send something at some point. And so all the way back here in Deuteronomy, it says,

Look, you listen to the Lord your God, listen to the judgments, keep and do them. The Lord keeps his covenant.

That's a covenant, right? Two people, one person keeping their side, the other person keeping their side. God says,

Look, I'm faithful. I'm going to keep my side. We're the ones that don't keep our side.

This is in verse 13. He will love you. He will bless you, multiply you. He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your new wine and your oil, the increase of your herd and the young of your flock in the land which he swore to your fathers to give to you.

And we learn from the book of Joshua that everything the Lord promised to them, he gave to them, the land and everything this promise is fulfilled.

And we see that in Scripture. But we also see here is all these blessings that were promised to Israel.

They prove that they ultimately could not live up to them and fulfill them in the flesh because it takes a spirit that is alive to worship in spirit and truth.

It requires taking out the heart of stone and giving it a heart of flesh. Man cannot do this on his own.

Man cannot live up to God's standard and all these judgments and standards. Yes, God's faithful and God's saints would live out these things in faith, albeit imperfectly, but ultimately the vast majority of people were not doing so.

And so the law and the rules and judgments of God are a schoolmaster or a way in which we see man's sinfulness shown out.

The law is not meant to be something to save mankind. You cannot be saved on your own merits.

And so that is why Christ had to come to do what man could not do in fulfilling all the law, keeping all that God has commanded so that he could save us.

And now he changes us from the inside out. He gives us a new heart and that new heart shows forth out outwardly as we have been changed internally.

And so the true blessing to look for God is not about how much herd you have or, you know, all these different things.

Yes, there are many things that happen in life. You know, if you have a good job and a roof over your head and children, all these things are great blessings from God.

But the greatest blessing any person can have is the salvation of God in the new covenant in his blood.

And so it goes on and says you should be blessed above all peoples. And see, that's the thing. We see this in its truest sense that in the new covenant, we are blessed among all peoples because we have the salvation of God.

We have the righteousness of our awesome God. We have the spirit of our awesome God indwelling us.

How awesome is it that he has saved us and saved us in such a perfect way? He says, there will be no male or female barren among you or among your cattle.

Spiritually, we're never run dry. We always have that well running over and the

Lord will take away from you all your sickness. He will not put on you any of the harmful diseases of Egypt, which you have known, but he will give to them, give them to all who hate you.

And you shall consume all the peoples whom the Lord, your God will give over to you. We see this in the book of Joshua, all the conquest, all the victories in battle and in war and how the people, you know, maintained their health and maintained all their things.

And they didn't see any of those diseases and judgments and plagues that were there in Egypt designed to get them out of Egypt.

They didn't have to deal with those things outside of Egypt because Lord gave them success and good health and good victory in war.

This is not something that we can take and apply to our world and say, well, well, see, see, it says that, you know, you won't have any sickness and all those things.

Well, we got to handle the word of God consistently, both in interpretation and application.

And this was applying to the original audience, to the Israelite people specifically.

Now we can take spiritual application out of this and say, yes, God will bless your family, generally speaking, and your health and your life and things like that if you're obedient.

But there are many times where we will suffer greatly for God. And those that will serve

Christ will suffer for Him. And there we'll suffer physically. We may suffer through trials.

We may suffer through certain adverse situations. And it's all designed for our good, for our growth, and for the glory of God.

This is not some blank. This doesn't mean that there wasn't ever anybody in this group of people that didn't get sick or anything like that.

The awesomeness of it and what shows to be an awesome God is that He is faithful in His promises and what

He provided. And yes, He did give them the land. And it says, you know, nor shall you serve their gods, for that would be a snare to you.

And so that's the issue. He says, you're going to consume all the peoples that the Lord gives to you. And that happened. But even in Joshua and beyond, as you look through their history,

He keeps warning them, you're going into these lands, but don't mix with them. Don't mingle with them.

Don't intermarry with them because you think you could influence them, but it's actually them that will influence you.

And then you're going after other gods. And we see this as very true in our day.

You know, bad company corrupts good morals. You're not going to continue to hang out with that group of sinful people and think you're going to influence them.

If their hearts haven't been changed, haven't been raised to life in Christ, there's no basis to think that at all, that they could make that change.

But they will influence you and influence your decisions. And so He says here, you know,

I'm going to give you all these people, but He says, your eyes shall not pity them. And He says, don't serve their gods.

That's a snare. Idol worship is always a snare. Our awesome

God is to be served supremely. Our awesome God is awesome because He is the only true

God. He's the only God we should want to worship. He's the only God we should want to serve. He's the only God we should want to know about because He is the only

God. All other gods are idols, figments of man's imagination. And He says it's a snare.

It's a trap. Think about it. The most sin in our life is traps.

It's, ooh, look how pretty and shiny this is over here. Don't you want to look at it?

Don't you want to? We just have to touch it. We have to use it. We have to consume it, whatever it is.

And you find out like, I think I was sold a bad mix of goods here.

This wasn't what I was promised. Well, that's sin. It's a snare. It's a trap.

It isn't what it promises to be. And then in verse 17, it says, if you should say in your heart, these nations are more numerous than I, how can

I dispossess them? You shall not be afraid of them. You shall well remember what

Yahweh, the Lord, your God did to Pharaoh and all to Egypt. And see, so even here, even in this instruction here, we're in Deuteronomy, the

Lord's talking about his covenant blessings with Israel. This is what I've said I will do to you as a part of my covenant.

And this is what I expect from you. He's already telling them, you need to guard your hearts against idol worship.

And you also need to guard your hearts from lack of faith. And look, it's, it's easy to pile on Israelites and say, man, these people just could not keep their faith.

I mean, if the Lord sent plagues to get me out of Egypt, if the

Lord parted the Red Sea for me to go through, I don't think I'd forget that.

No, I wouldn't. Yeah, we're, we're not so different. We, we do it.

We, we encounter, I can speak for myself. I encounter situations and my immediate thought is like, how am

I going to get through this? What am I going to do? I don't have the money.

I don't have the time. I just, I don't have the resources. Like how am I going to get this done?

What are you expecting from me? What are you doing to me? When just yesterday and last week and last month and last year, the

Lord comes through and he shows you, I'm an awesome God. I can do these things for you. I'm here to do these things.

This is what I want to provide for you. This is what I want to do for you. This is what I need you to do for my glory.

And he comes through and shows himself worthy. He helps us endure through trials.

If we suffer physically or mentally or any along them lines, if we're suffering and using that as a way to spread the gospel and for his glory, we forget all these things.

And we think, oh, well, you know, you know, Lord ain't done what I wanted to do for me.

So I guess he's not faithful. No, no, he's faithful. It's us that are not faithful.

That's what he says. Don't ever look them and think, how could I dispossess them? Don't be afraid of them. Remember what God did.

Verse 19, the great trials, notice this, which your eyes saw and the signs and wonders in the mighty hand and the outstretched arm by which the

Lord your God brought you out. So shall Yahweh your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid.

Moreover, Yahweh your God will send the hornet against them until those who remain and hide themselves from you perish, shall not dread them.

Notice that verse 19, great trials, which your eyes saw. You saw all these signs and wonders.

You've seen the mighty hand of God work. You've seen the awesome outstretched arm by which the

Lord brought you out. And the Lord's going to do this to all the people whom you are now currently afraid.

See, notice how God's faithfulness is never in doubt. God's faithfulness is never in question.

God always does exactly what He purposes to do. Now, sometimes His purpose is allowing us to go through trials and suffering for kingdom building, for sanctification, for His glory.

Sometimes God chooses us to suffer through a or through something. Or some people have lives that are just full of suffering.

And then we find out how much glory God gets out of it, how they suffer well for the kingdom. Because remember, ultimately, our ultimate promise is that we will have no sin, and no pain, and no tears, and no issues in eternal life, in the next life, when we are in heaven with God and with Jesus.

In this life, we're not promised perfect health. We're not promised these things. That's why one of the tests you can know to know that if somebody's taking this as an application to say, you know, pray for your health, claim your blessing, and you should never be sick, or never all these things, it's just nonsense.

Well, obviously interpretive interpretations that are done consistently with right context, application, and so on and so forth will let you know that's not right.

But I always say, and I teach this a lot, your interpretation of Scripture should and always will match reality.

God has created this universe. He's created this world. And He's created everything to work within a certain reality, certain physical laws, certain things like that.

That's why miracles were obviously broke these laws because they were obviously supernatural and of God.

But it's going to be in concert with reality. So if your application or interpretation of something is completely outside of the normative functioning reality that we see around us, then you're probably wrong, or you're off somewhere.

So think about it. If it were true, this prosperity gospel were true, and, you know, you could just be never get sick, never be hungry, never have trials, never have hard times in your life, and that was just true, as true as they claim it is.

Then why are there sick Christians? Why are there suffering Christians? Why are there

Christians that have hard times? Why are there Christians like myself that have major depressive disorder and OCD?

Why are there Christians that have autism? Why are there Christians that have broken legs or missing legs or maybe cancer or whatever it is?

Why? Well, reality tells us these things happen. Reality tells us these things are not only possible but very likely to happen to many of us.

I don't see Christians walking around exempt from these things. I don't see Christians running around.

You don't have a whole swath of people in this world that just never get sick. Like, what's different about those folks? Oh, they're

Christians? Hey, sign me up for that. No, reality tells us that's not true.

Does God heal? Yes, when he chooses. Does God sometimes supernaturally heal us quicker from things than we otherwise would have been?

Sure, I'm sure he does. Does God give us bodies that heal themselves with the immune system and all those things?

Yes. Does it take time to heal sometimes? Yes. Does God do things in doctor's offices and in surgery rooms that completely baffle people for his glory?

Yes. Is that normative? No, because if miracles happened like that all the time, they wouldn't be miraculous.

It'd be normative. It's the whole point. God chooses when he wants to do these things for his glory but to get the most glory out of it.

And sometimes that means you've got to have good and bad and good. Trials, good times.

Mountains, valleys, and everything in between. You've got to have suffering to have that overcoming.

You can't overcome anything if there's nothing to overcome. So that's not with being healed.

But he's still telling them, you've seen the great trials. You've seen how

I've worked and yet you're still afraid of these people. The people

I've told you, you're going to go in and battle them and you're going to defeat them. We see all throughout the book of Joshua.

Conquest, victory after victory. He's having to remind them all the time, yeah, that's what

I told you I was going to do. We're not so different.

How many times? We've seen God work in our lives. We've seen him bring us out of stuff.

We've seen him use tough times and trials and sufferings to teach us things about ourselves and about him.

And then the next thing comes up and it's like, like this again.

Do I really have to do with this again? It's always something. Now I will admit, the older I'm getting,

I'm doing better with this. Much better. I think

I can say confidently and righteously that I am doing better in this area. As things come,

I'm learning to say, hey, you know what? This is unfortunate. This is certainly not what

I would have signed up for, but we'll be okay. Everything will work itself out.

We'll make it through it. If we need money, it'll be there. If we need resources, they'll be there because we have seen

God, the awesome God, work and demonstrate himself to be faithful and awesome time after time after time after time after time.

Even when I haven't been faithful, even when we as Christians have not been faithful, even when

I failed him through sin or not trusting or having enough faith with him or been chasing off some shiny idol, he's still faithful time after time after time after time.

Why? Notice verse 21, it says, you shall not dread them. They're not your

God. They can't do anything to you that I do not allow them to do. God is sovereign over all things.

Every single moment in time that occurs has been sovereignly cared for and predestined by God.

There's nothing that occurs in time that surprises God, that he learns from, that he didn't have full control over.

No, it's not him sitting there robotically pulling strings. The great mystery is how God has creatures that can make choices in concert with our will, whether it's a will that's a slave of sin or slaves of righteousness, and we have will and desire, and we make choices, and we freely make those choices within creature or creaturely will.

God has true, free, autonomous will. We have creaturely will, but within our creaturely will, based on our nature, whether a slave of sin or slave of righteousness, we freely make our choices, and how

God uses that and gets us to act in ways, and how he instills this obedience in us, and how he hardens some hearts, and how he raises some hearts, and how he instills some wisdom into us, and how he instills some wisdom into us, and how he instills wisdom into life.

It's all in his sovereign plan and his redemptive history being carried out.

And so when he tells you, you shall not dread them. You say, they're not sovereign.

They're not God. I'm God. I'm the awesome

God, not these people you're afraid of, not that thing at work that troubles you, not those sinful people you have to deal with, or your own sin that may be in front of you, or whatever your circumstance, whatever your medical diagnosis, whatever it is,

God may not necessarily correct it, remove it, or heal you from it. But whether it's a medical diagnosis that God has chosen not to heal and you're gonna have to live with it, and yes, it may end your life early if you have a mental health issue like I do.

I struggle with every day. Whatever it is that God has given your life, He is strategically and sovereignly and purposefully giving you exactly what

He wants you to have. And sometimes it's more than you can handle. The whole Christian cliche of like, God will never give you more than you can handle.

Baloney! Baloney on all accounts! There have been many times

I've had more in my life that I could not handle. It was only by the grace and mercy and power and strength of God that I made it through it.

And sometimes you don't really necessarily...sometimes the overcoming in life that we love to sing about, we're overcomers and all, and say, yeah it's true.

And sometimes the overcoming is you just barely, barely make it through.

I mean you are just barely getting across the finish line. Crawling, scraping,

I mean you just do get across. And sometimes, yes, you very victoriously cross it with full strength and full stride and all those good things.

The whole point of all of it, no matter what it is you face, no matter what is in your day, no matter what is in your week, no matter what's in your life, no matter what it is, you shall not dread it or them or your own sin or Satan or whoever.

Don't dread it. Don't fear it. Why? For Yahweh, your

God, notice the possessive use of language here, your

God, the one that you submit to, the one that you bow the knee to, the one that you obey, the one that has saved you, your

God is in your midst. He is a great, and the

Legacy Standard Bible translates it, fearsome God, but you could also translate this awesome

God, hence the A is for awesome, awesome God, the magnificent God, otherworldly

God, the beyond comprehension, beyond human language to fully describe, the awesome, the fearsome, the great and awesome

God. He's not a God that float out there on a cloud somewhere like, well,

I created him. Y 'all go ahead and figure this thing out.

No. Just like He was for the Israelite people, for us, this verse does.

Verse 21 can directly apply, obviously with a little bit of limitation because we weren't living in this time period.

We weren't the literal Israelite people He was speaking to in terms of Egypt and all the things that happened, but in spiritual application and bringing this over into our land here, you shall not dread them.

No dread, no worry. Don't fear that which can't kill the soul, but fear those that can, fear the one that can kill both body and soul in hell.

This is New Testament language. See the consistency and harmony of both Testaments? We're to fear

God. We're to have a fear and a reverent fear and a reverent positioning and worship or bowing down of ourselves to the one who is the great and fearsome, awesome

God. And Lord your God will clear away these nations before you little by little.

You will not be able to put an end to them quickly, lest the wild beast become too numerous for you. But Lord your

God will give them over before you and will throw them into great confusion until they are destroyed. He will give their kings into your hands that you will make their name perish from under heaven.

No man will be able to stand before you until you have destroyed them. The graven images of their gods you are to burn with fire.

You shall not covet the silver or the gold that is on them, nor take it for yourselves lest you be snared by it.

For it is an abomination to the Lord your God. And you shall not bring an abomination into your house and become devoted to destruction like it.

You shall utterly detest it. You shall utterly abhor it. For it is devoted to destruction.

Notice here these last three or four verses. He reiterates what he had said before.

He talked about not, you know, don't, let's see, it was in verse 16, don't, when you consume the peoples, don't have pity for them.

Don't serve their gods. It's a snare for you. Then he talks about how don't have a lack of faith and understanding that I can't do this, but he repeats it.

And if you ever stop to wonder, because you know, Scripture does repeat a lot of things and deal with a lot of subjects over and over and over.

So if you ever want to know what Scripture takes seriously, what, besides all of it obviously, but usually if there's something repeated, it's probably because we need to pay a special attention to it.

So one of the things you see in the New Testament as well, but a lot in the Old Testament, is this repeated call to abhor idolatry.

Detest idols. Detest that which God says in an abomination to Him. He is

God. He is the fearful and awesome God. And anything that takes away from His glory is an abomination, is to be detested.

It says here, don't bring it in, don't bring an abomination into your house and become devoted to destruction like it.

Now here, in many cases, we'd be dealing with literal idols.

These pagan peoples would have, you know, actual, physical, literal idols they'd worship.

And so he says the graven images of their gods, burn it with fire. Destroy it.

Get rid of it. Why? You'll end up coveting it, and it'll be a snare for you, and it'll take you away from me.

It'll take you away from your God. It's an abomination. You don't need to bring in your home. You need to detest it.

Abhor it. It's devoted to destruction. And sin and idols will do the same to you.

It will consume you. It will take you down the path to destruction every time. One of my dear brothers and fellow preachers in the

Lord, Pastor Jim Krieger, I always remember one of the things he used to always say all the time in men's

Bible studies. He'd say, men, all of you, all of us, and me, are only about one or two bad decisions away from completely ruining your life.

I'd say, man, that's, that's a little scary there, Jimbo. I mean, come on, man.

You maybe just tone that down a little. He's right. Think about it.

You bring that idol into your home. Start devoting yourself to it. You're gonna wake up one day, and your life's gonna be destroyed.

Everything you know is gonna be done. You're gonna be consumed by it. Why? Because you took something that had to be created, whether it was taking materials like a tree for wood or whatever it is to make this idol, or if it's some type of spiritual idol like your job or your career or money or whatever it is, and you have now attached great and fearsome and awesomeness to that idol in the place of the

Lord who says, you shall not dread them for the Lord your God is in your midst, a great and awesome

God. He's awesome, and He's the only awesome God in His actual act of cosmic treason to replace

Him with anything else or anyone else. We shouldn't do that. No other

God can make the claims that this God does, the claim that I'm gonna give you victory.

I'm gonna do all these things for you, and you're gonna love me, and I'm gonna love you to provide for you, but the biggest takeaway from this that I want you to, if you haven't heard anything else, here's what

I want you to take away with this. This great and awesome God. He says here in verse 21, the

Lord your God, Yahweh your God, is in your midst.

It means He's with you. He's in there with you through all of it.

He doesn't just leave you to figure it out. He doesn't just leave you to, you know, try plans

A, B, C, and D, and just see what sticks or, you know, like the episode I watched one time where King and Queens, they had this rented apartment, and they were getting bored, so they had this big bunch of bullseye circles of tape on the wall, just throwing baloney at the walls, seeing where it would stick.

That isn't life. Now look, sometimes in our sin, we may feel abandoned.

I know David certainly felt that way many times when he'd get into sin. You see that in his Psalms. He says, Lord, where have you gone?

It's like I feel abandoned here. That's not true. He says, I'm in your midst. I'm with you.

I'm right there with you. He's with them. He's with us. He's always with us.

He will never leave us or forsake us. He's with us. He's with you. Now if you're in sin, he's gonna be with you to get you to repent of it, and he may have to let consequences come and chastise you as a child to, you know, get you to realize the folly of your ways.

He's always with you. He's a dwelling. You can't go anywhere in this world where he's not there, but this is more than just locational or the omnipresence.

This is a covenantal thing about God. This is relational.

It's love expressed. It's God saying, I'm not just sending you these

Israelite people into battle to have victories absent of me. I'm with you when you're doing it.

And so yes, in these last few verses, 23 to 26, when he says, if you covet their idols and bring them their home,

I'm not with you on that. Now I'm still there, and I'm detesting it, and I'm hating what it's gonna do to you, but I can't be a part of it.

I'm not gonna be there with you in that because it's sin. That's why

I'm telling you, do not judge the faithfulness of God or whether he's with you based on your circumstances, whether you're healthy or not.

You know, I've heard some people say, well, you know, you're sick. You must be sinning. No. If you're living obediently and living righteously, and you're praying and making sure there's no sin in your life, and you're doing everything you can to follow

God, be obedient to God, use your gifts, grow in righteousness, every possible thing you can think of that Scripture would tell you to do as a child of God, and there's some adverse thing that befalls you or some medical diagnosis or whatever it is,

God's with you in that, and there's some higher purpose, some higher calling going on that he wants you to learn about yourself or about him or use it.

I think about people that are in cancer wards or maybe have some type of physical deficiency, and they're able to use it to help others like them and preach to them and teach them, and there's so many ways to look at it, but in your righteousness,

God's with you, but if you got idols, he can't support that.

He can't be on board with that, and so we see this awesome God. It isn't about, okay, hey buddy,

God's awesome, and you know what? He's awesome because of all these things he's gonna do for me.

No. He's awesome because that's who he is. He's the great, fearsome, awesome

God, and we need to be rightly related to him through repentance and faith, and we need to obey him, and you're gonna find him to be better than anything you can imagine because at the end of the day, he is awesome.

Amen? Well, thank you for joining me on this episode. I hope you've enjoyed this first initial episode in the

God -Centered Alphabet series, A is for Awesome. Come back next time, and we'll dive deeper into the alphabet.