4 00:00:51,360 --> 00:00:57,220 We call out our misery god just hears the melody 12 00:02:27,380 --> 00:02:34,400 I wake up in the morning, the time of the day. 13 00:02:34,400 --> 00:02:41,380 And pray to live the evening, with children all in need. 14 00:02:41,380 --> 00:02:49,340 Oh, and pray to live the new day, with gentle birds that sing. 15 00:02:49,340 --> 00:02:55,820 Oh, pray to morning people, pray to the King. 16 00:02:55,820 --> 00:03:03,260 Praise the King, praise the King. 17 00:03:03,260 --> 00:03:11,260 Let it rain, praise the King. 18 00:03:11,260 --> 00:03:18,740 And pray for a peaceful watch, and one who checks me. 19 00:03:18,740 --> 00:03:25,740 And pray for a road ahead, with children that are in bed. 20 00:03:25,740 --> 00:03:32,740 Oh, and pray for a one who can never long their way. 21 00:03:32,740 --> 00:03:39,740 Oh, pray to morning people, praise the King. 22 00:03:39,740 --> 00:03:46,740 Praise the King, praise the King. 23 00:03:46,740 --> 00:03:53,740 Let it rain, praise the King. 24 00:03:53,740 --> 00:04:00,740 Praise the King, praise the King. 25 00:04:00,740 --> 00:04:07,740 Let it rain, praise the King. 26 00:04:07,740 --> 00:04:17,740 It was as if the Lord picked all those songs to encourage me this morning. 27 00:04:17,740 --> 00:04:22,740 I too am fighting this whatever it is. 28 00:04:22,740 --> 00:04:27,740 And I skipped right to the almost thrown up this morning on the way to church. 29 00:04:27,740 --> 00:04:30,740 So praise God, I am not going to do that while I'm up here. 30 00:04:30,740 --> 00:04:32,740 But I'm prepared just in case. 31 00:04:32,740 --> 00:04:35,740 Okay, so we're going to give Him all the glory. 32 00:04:35,740 --> 00:04:42,740 So Arden and I were in St. Croix, and we left the group, 33 00:04:42,740 --> 00:04:47,740 and we're traveling down the road looking for a shop that I had seen previously, 34 00:04:47,740 --> 00:04:54,740 which was a shop that had a lot of sewing equipment in it, had threads and needles and stuff. 35 00:04:54,740 --> 00:05:00,740 And I was looking for, in particular, some heavy duty needles and some thick thread, 36 00:05:00,740 --> 00:05:03,740 preferably like leather or something solid like that, 37 00:05:03,740 --> 00:05:10,740 because one of the suitcases that we had taken with us had received some rough handling while we were in the airport. 38 00:05:10,740 --> 00:05:14,740 And however so that happened, I didn't see it happen. 39 00:05:14,740 --> 00:05:20,740 And the plastic piece that had the wheel on it was breaking off the suitcase, 40 00:05:20,740 --> 00:05:23,740 which then meant as you pulled the suitcase along behind you, 41 00:05:23,740 --> 00:05:25,740 the nose of the suitcase wanted to dip to the right. 42 00:05:25,740 --> 00:05:28,740 So if you took your mind off what you're doing even for a second, 43 00:05:28,740 --> 00:05:30,740 the suitcase would fall over to the right, 44 00:05:30,740 --> 00:05:37,740 or the wheel would get cocked back and then you're just here scraping along the floor as it was no longer rolling. 45 00:05:37,740 --> 00:05:40,740 And so I was hoping to find something to repair the suitcase, 46 00:05:40,740 --> 00:05:44,740 and I had in my mind that if I could get at least a thick needle, 47 00:05:44,740 --> 00:05:47,740 like a leather needle and some thick thread, I could stitch. 48 00:05:47,740 --> 00:05:49,740 There was a hole. I could stitch it back in place. 49 00:05:49,740 --> 00:05:52,740 And I hope for better yet, like a rivet gun. 50 00:05:52,740 --> 00:05:55,740 That's what I was really hoping for, so I could rivet it in place. 51 00:05:55,740 --> 00:05:59,740 And sometimes you can find those because leather workers and seamstresses kind of go together. 52 00:05:59,740 --> 00:06:01,740 And sometimes you can find those there. 53 00:06:01,740 --> 00:06:05,740 We were looking for the shop, and I kind of remembered where it was at. 54 00:06:05,740 --> 00:06:10,740 And as we were looking for the shop, I kind of remembered a street sign that I had seen on the way. 55 00:06:10,740 --> 00:06:15,740 But the street signs in St. Croix are not like street signs that we have here. 56 00:06:15,740 --> 00:06:19,740 So if you look out the window, for those of you who can look out the window later, you can look if you can't right now, 57 00:06:19,740 --> 00:06:25,740 I can see the Hefner sign and the Kelsey sign, even though I am not on Hefner or Kelsey. 58 00:06:25,740 --> 00:06:30,740 They are designed to point off the pole in such a way that from halfway down the block, 59 00:06:30,740 --> 00:06:33,740 you can see the street that you are coming up to to cross. 60 00:06:33,740 --> 00:06:37,740 They have print on both sides, and they are put upon the poles. 61 00:06:37,740 --> 00:06:40,740 It's not like that in St. Croix. The street signs are up on the wall. 62 00:06:40,740 --> 00:06:42,740 They are flat against the corner of the building. 63 00:06:42,740 --> 00:06:47,740 Now pretty big, you can see them a block away, so you can see the street that you are coming up to. 64 00:06:47,740 --> 00:06:53,740 But I guess what is assumed is, number one, that you already know the street that you are on, which we did not. 65 00:06:53,740 --> 00:06:57,740 And so that was a bad assumption on the part of whoever hung those street signs up there. 66 00:06:57,740 --> 00:07:01,740 They do keep them off the corners, make more space, that kind of thing. 67 00:07:01,740 --> 00:07:04,740 I don't know, maybe it's better for when the wind blows really hard, whatever. 68 00:07:04,740 --> 00:07:09,740 But the other problem that is assumed is that if you are coming from the other direction, 69 00:07:09,740 --> 00:07:14,740 there is no street sign on this building up here, which was the case in many cases. 70 00:07:14,740 --> 00:07:16,740 You cannot know which street you are coming up to. 71 00:07:16,740 --> 00:07:18,740 So there is a street sign here for the street that we are going on to. 72 00:07:18,740 --> 00:07:20,740 Somebody put that up, probably not even the government. 73 00:07:20,740 --> 00:07:22,740 But over here, there is no street sign. 74 00:07:22,740 --> 00:07:24,740 So if we were coming from this direction, we could not see. 75 00:07:24,740 --> 00:07:28,740 So we actually had to walk up to a building, which I thought there was a street sign on, 76 00:07:28,740 --> 00:07:31,740 walk around and go like this and go, oh, yep, there is a street sign there, 77 00:07:31,740 --> 00:07:34,740 and read the street sign to figure out what street we were on. 78 00:07:34,740 --> 00:07:40,740 In America, maybe because we do not have hurricanes or whatever where we are, 79 00:07:40,740 --> 00:07:42,740 I do not know, it might be different where they have a lot of hurricanes, 80 00:07:42,740 --> 00:07:47,740 we have on the telephone poles, we have the street sign so we can see from both directions. 81 00:07:47,740 --> 00:07:52,740 I submit to you that even a sign that has no print on the front and the back, 82 00:07:52,740 --> 00:07:57,740 so it has print on the front but not on the back, has two sides. 83 00:07:57,740 --> 00:08:00,740 And that sign that we were at when we were in St. Croix, 84 00:08:00,740 --> 00:08:05,740 that we had to walk around the corner and look up and see what it said, it had two sides. 85 00:08:05,740 --> 00:08:08,740 In fact, the sign was not visible from behind. 86 00:08:08,740 --> 00:08:09,740 We could not know that. 87 00:08:09,740 --> 00:08:14,740 But if we knew that it was there, then we could walk up to see what the sign said. 88 00:08:14,740 --> 00:08:19,740 So grab your Bibles, if you will, and go with me today to Deuteronomy chapter 29. 89 00:08:19,740 --> 00:08:22,740 Some of you say amen. All right, amen. Very good. 90 00:08:22,740 --> 00:08:23,740 This is God's Word. 91 00:08:23,740 --> 00:08:27,740 So the text that is up there on the board is not entirely factual. 92 00:08:27,740 --> 00:08:32,740 We are only going to go through verse 28 and we will, and if you can study it for next week, 93 00:08:32,740 --> 00:08:36,740 next week's sermon is entirely based on verse 29. 94 00:08:36,740 --> 00:08:39,740 Okay, and I have already written over a third of it, so I know how it is going to go. 95 00:08:39,740 --> 00:08:45,740 The Lord has been speaking to me about this passage of Scripture from 22 through 29. 96 00:08:45,740 --> 00:08:50,740 But we are really going to focus on 22 through 28 today. 97 00:08:50,740 --> 00:08:52,740 Okay, so here we go. 98 00:08:52,740 --> 00:08:57,740 This will go by pretty quickly, so keep your thinking caps on the whole time. 99 00:08:57,740 --> 00:09:01,740 Now the generation to come, your sons who rise up after you, 100 00:09:01,740 --> 00:09:04,740 and the foreigner who comes from a distant land, 101 00:09:04,740 --> 00:09:08,740 when they see the plagues of the land and the diseases with which the Lord has afflicted it, 102 00:09:08,740 --> 00:09:16,740 will say, all its land is brimstone and salt, a burning waste, unsown, unproductive, 103 00:09:16,740 --> 00:09:22,740 no grass grows on it, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Adma and Zebuim, 104 00:09:22,740 --> 00:09:25,740 which the Lord overthrew in his anger and in his wrath. 105 00:09:25,740 --> 00:09:30,740 So I want you to, the biggest thing here in these two verses, realize the contrast. 106 00:09:30,740 --> 00:09:36,740 Does anybody remember the story in the Bible where a dozen spies were sent into the promised land? 107 00:09:36,740 --> 00:09:41,740 Okay, and among them was Joshua, son of Nun, who would eventually lead them into the promised land, right? 108 00:09:41,740 --> 00:09:46,740 And Caleb, who lived to be a ripe old age, and then after he lived to be a ripe old age, 109 00:09:46,740 --> 00:09:50,740 and he was probably in his 80s, went in at the head of an army to defeat the last of the really big dudes. 110 00:09:50,740 --> 00:09:53,740 Alright, so those are two interesting spies. 111 00:09:53,740 --> 00:10:01,740 These twelve guys go in the land, and they come out, and does anybody remember what the report was of the twelve spies? Ron? 112 00:10:01,740 --> 00:10:09,740 The majority of them reported that the people were too big and too strong, and they couldn't be overtaken and told it well. 113 00:10:09,740 --> 00:10:12,740 Yeah, that's right. So ten of the twelve said, we can't do it. 114 00:10:12,740 --> 00:10:16,740 The people in this land are amazing. Alright, they're huge. 115 00:10:16,740 --> 00:10:20,740 And with that, they did say, they said, it's a great land, right? Is that what you're going to add? 116 00:10:20,740 --> 00:10:23,740 Yeah, they did say, it's a great land. It's full of good stuff. 117 00:10:23,740 --> 00:10:29,740 In fact, the twelve spies, and this is more tradition, that we know the factual nature of this, 118 00:10:29,740 --> 00:10:38,740 but they brought out on a pole, carried between two people, a bunch of grapes that were so large, so large, So large. Very good. 120 00:10:45,740 --> 00:10:50,740 Alright, it's on a pole between them. That's how big, a single bunch of grapes, right? 121 00:10:50,740 --> 00:10:55,740 So this is a great land that God was going to call his people in. It was a promised land. 122 00:10:55,740 --> 00:11:00,740 Remember that from a month ago? It was a promised land, and it was a grace land. 123 00:11:00,740 --> 00:11:03,740 Remember that from three weeks ago? Okay? 124 00:11:03,740 --> 00:11:09,740 And so the spies, after seeing that, and realizing the land was so great, but because the land was so great, 125 00:11:09,740 --> 00:11:13,740 the people had become so great, right? These are nine, ten foot tall guys. 126 00:11:13,740 --> 00:11:16,740 These are guys like Goliath, but they're all over the place, right? 127 00:11:16,740 --> 00:11:22,740 And they basically said, as Ron said, we can't do it. This is too dangerous. This is too much for us. 128 00:11:22,740 --> 00:11:27,740 And Joshua and Caleb, on the other hand, said just the opposite. They said, yes, it is a great land, 129 00:11:27,740 --> 00:11:32,740 and our God is a great God, and he is able to give it to us, and we should proceed. 130 00:11:32,740 --> 00:11:39,740 For that, they are rewarded, but the people overall listen to the ten spies, and it goes poorly. Okay? 131 00:11:39,740 --> 00:11:45,740 But notice the contrast between the description of the land they are given by those guys 132 00:11:45,740 --> 00:11:48,740 and the description of the land now that we just read. 133 00:11:48,740 --> 00:11:55,740 And I ask you, what happened in between? What happened in between that they would go into the land 134 00:11:55,740 --> 00:12:03,740 and go, man, this is awesome, and now, sometime later, they will be, mind you, this is a prophecy, right? 135 00:12:03,740 --> 00:12:05,740 So we're talking about what's happening in the future. 136 00:12:05,740 --> 00:12:09,740 They will be ousted from the land, and the land is left desolate and in terrible condition 137 00:12:09,740 --> 00:12:14,740 to the fact that people say, it's all brimstone and salt, a burning waste, unsewn, unproductive, 138 00:12:14,740 --> 00:12:19,740 no grass grows in it, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abba and Zebuim. 139 00:12:19,740 --> 00:12:24,740 They said, it would be likened to cities that God had wiped off the face of the earth. 140 00:12:24,740 --> 00:12:32,740 The promised land, the grace land, the holy land, now likened to cities that God had wiped off the face of the earth. 141 00:12:32,740 --> 00:12:41,740 And notice that this is a question of a sort. They see this, and then they say, in verse 24, 142 00:12:41,740 --> 00:12:50,740 and all the nations shall say, why has the Lord done thus, wait for it, to this land? 143 00:12:50,740 --> 00:12:57,740 You follow that? So the promised land, the grace land, the holy land, the people go in there, 144 00:12:57,740 --> 00:13:05,740 and now they're ousted, and it's in terrible condition, and the question is, why has God done this to this land? 145 00:13:05,740 --> 00:13:11,740 Why this great outburst of anger, they ask, when they see what the condition of the land is now. 25. 146 00:13:11,740 --> 00:13:16,740 Then men shall say, because they forsook the covenant of the Lord, the God of their fathers, 147 00:13:16,740 --> 00:13:20,740 which he made with them, when he brought them out of the land of Egypt. 148 00:13:20,740 --> 00:13:30,740 And they went, and they served other gods, and they worshiped them, gods whom they have not known, 149 00:13:30,740 --> 00:13:36,740 and whom he had not allotted them. Catch that? So these are gods that they did not know, 150 00:13:36,740 --> 00:13:42,740 and also gods that God did not assign to them, the Lord did not assign to them. We're almost done with the text. 27. 151 00:13:42,740 --> 00:13:49,740 Therefore the anger of the Lord burned against that land to bring upon it every curse which is written in this book. 152 00:13:49,740 --> 00:13:55,740 And the Lord uprooted them from their land in anger, and in fury, and in great wrath, 153 00:13:55,740 --> 00:14:00,740 and cast them into another land as it is this day. 154 00:14:00,740 --> 00:14:04,740 Okay, so what's in the text that's really brought this home for me? 155 00:14:04,740 --> 00:14:09,740 Number one thing is we're talking about a sign. Now in the New Testament, of course, we're cautioned about signs. 156 00:14:09,740 --> 00:14:13,740 You have to be careful about signs. But this is clearly a sign orchestrated by God, 157 00:14:13,740 --> 00:14:18,740 and Moses is here telling them this is how that sign will read, if you will. There is a sign. 158 00:14:18,740 --> 00:14:26,740 The sign is there. People are going to go, what does that sign mean? What happened there? 159 00:14:26,740 --> 00:14:36,740 That historically was this great promised land, grace land, holy land, and now it is desolate, wiped out. 160 00:14:36,740 --> 00:14:44,740 People see that sign. It's there, and people will see it. It's not going to be like, notice it's the foreigner, 161 00:14:44,740 --> 00:14:50,740 and the guy from later generations. So this is not Israel. They're not in the promised land anymore. 162 00:14:50,740 --> 00:14:56,740 They've been taken care of, if you will, by that point in time. And a small group of people does remain, 163 00:14:56,740 --> 00:15:03,740 but they're no longer prosperous. The land is desolate. This land that had everything in it when they got it 164 00:15:03,740 --> 00:15:09,740 has now been wiped out, essentially. So people will see that sign. It's there, and people will see it, 165 00:15:09,740 --> 00:15:15,740 and the sign will lead them to ask the question. And we'll go back to verse 24 again. What was the question? 166 00:15:15,740 --> 00:15:21,740 The question was, and all the nations shall say, why has the Lord done this to this land? 167 00:15:21,740 --> 00:15:27,740 Not to his people, not to the people that were disobedient to him, not to his people who were carried off in other lands, 168 00:15:27,740 --> 00:15:34,740 but why has the Lord done this to this land? Why this great outburst of anger? 169 00:15:34,740 --> 00:15:43,740 So the sign is there. They see it, and it leads them to ask that question. Why has the Lord done this to that land? 170 00:15:43,740 --> 00:15:48,740 Now for us, we're talking about the promised land. We're talking about the grace land, and the holy land that we studied, 171 00:15:48,740 --> 00:15:55,740 that we talked about, right? That's where we live now. That's where our church is now. That's where our people are now, 172 00:15:55,740 --> 00:16:01,740 if we're followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, not geographically bound by the Tigris and the Euphrates, 173 00:16:01,740 --> 00:16:07,740 and down to Egypt, and over there to the desert, and over there to the sea, but in the promised land, 174 00:16:07,740 --> 00:16:15,740 grace land, and holy land that God has called us to today. The second thing is that a sign speaks. 175 00:16:15,740 --> 00:16:22,740 That's what a sign does. Now technically, how much information is actually contained on a sign? None. 176 00:16:22,740 --> 00:16:26,740 Everybody's like, well, just whatever the sign is about, whatever it says, you know, there's a sentence here, 177 00:16:26,740 --> 00:16:35,740 but truly there's no information contained there, right? What's actually there are symbols, or words, or writing 178 00:16:35,740 --> 00:16:42,740 to move the information from the mind of the creator of the sign to the person who reads the sign. 179 00:16:42,740 --> 00:16:50,740 Do you want to add something? Yeah, same amount as in a picture, same amount as in observable feet, 180 00:16:50,740 --> 00:16:59,740 same amount as in a hug, right? How much information is contained in a hug? Well, the idea is that the person 181 00:16:59,740 --> 00:17:04,740 giving a hug is conveying something with the hug. If you're giving them a hug because they're sad because a family 182 00:17:04,740 --> 00:17:10,740 member just died, then what they get out of that hug is that you feel for them, you care about them, right? 183 00:17:10,740 --> 00:17:16,740 But if you're giving them a hug because they're about to punch a deck of guy in the bar, and you're hugging them to hold them back, 184 00:17:16,740 --> 00:17:20,740 right? They're getting out of that, that you don't want to let them go into the fight, maybe because you're protecting them, 185 00:17:20,740 --> 00:17:27,740 or maybe because you're protecting the other person, or whatever. So the information is conveyed from the originator 186 00:17:27,740 --> 00:17:36,740 of the sign to the reader of the sign, but there is no actual information in the sign. Anybody here read French proficiently? 187 00:17:36,740 --> 00:17:44,740 So if all the signs were in French, you'd get teeny little bits, whatever it was connected to the English language, 188 00:17:44,740 --> 00:17:50,740 or whatever you've learned, or whatever you know, right? Because the mind of the originator of the sign was in French, 189 00:17:50,740 --> 00:17:58,740 and the reader of the sign is in English, and so the information that the intender intended does not convey through the sign. 190 00:17:58,740 --> 00:18:06,740 But God is able to make people understand the sign. He is the one who prompts people to give an answer to the sign. 191 00:18:06,740 --> 00:18:14,740 The sign speaks. First thing is, there is an answer to the question that was asked. The sign leads them to a question, 192 00:18:14,740 --> 00:18:20,740 huh, what's going on with this land? Why did God do this? Right? And in verse 25, the answer is laid out, 193 00:18:20,740 --> 00:18:29,740 Then men shall say, now notice these are not expressly Christian, these are not people of grace, this is not God's people, 194 00:18:29,740 --> 00:18:36,740 right? Necessarily, but men, common men, ordinary folks who have seen the sign shall say, 195 00:18:36,740 --> 00:18:43,740 Because they forsook the covenant of the Lord, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them up out of the land of Egypt. 196 00:18:43,740 --> 00:18:51,740 And they went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they had not known, have not known, and whom he had not allotted them. 197 00:18:51,740 --> 00:18:56,740 Therefore the anger of the Lord burned against that land to bring upon it every curse which is written in the book. 198 00:18:56,740 --> 00:19:04,740 And the Lord uprooted them from their land in anger and in fury and in great wrath and cast them into another land, as it is this day. 199 00:19:04,740 --> 00:19:15,740 A sign speaks. There is an answer to the question, and we can only assume that either by this person's knowledge of history, 200 00:19:15,740 --> 00:19:23,740 by this person's, what they see evidentially in the land, whatever, that's how they come to the conclusion and they make this statement. 201 00:19:23,740 --> 00:19:32,740 This sign then speaks of adultery by God's people, that God's people would get wrapped up in something that he did not give them to get wrapped up in. 202 00:19:32,740 --> 00:19:37,740 Okay? They would worship something that he did not give them to worship. 203 00:19:37,740 --> 00:19:46,740 Gods that they have no part with, false gods, demon gods, evil teachings, things that they got involved with, they were nothing. 204 00:19:46,740 --> 00:19:50,740 Things that they put up that made important like God, it's idolatry. 205 00:19:50,740 --> 00:19:58,740 The sign then is speaking of the adultery of God's people, and the sign speaks of a just God, 206 00:19:58,740 --> 00:20:04,740 justly responding in violent opposition to the adultery. That's what we read in 27 and 28. 207 00:20:04,740 --> 00:20:09,740 Therefore the anger of the Lord burned against the land to bring upon it every curse which is written in this book. 208 00:20:09,740 --> 00:20:15,740 Wait a minute. The anger of the Lord burned against Israel. 209 00:20:15,740 --> 00:20:20,740 Burned against his people that he brought out of captivity. 210 00:20:20,740 --> 00:20:26,740 But that's not what it says. It says that the anger of the Lord burned against the land. 211 00:20:26,740 --> 00:20:33,740 Remember the land is the promised land, it is the grace land, it is the holy land, and now God's anger burns against it. 212 00:20:33,740 --> 00:20:40,740 Not against the people who have committed adultery. His wrath is against them. He is violently opposing their course of action. 213 00:20:40,740 --> 00:20:45,740 But he is not angry at them or hateful to them that results in the destruction of this land. 214 00:20:45,740 --> 00:20:48,740 Rather, his anger burns against the land. 215 00:20:48,740 --> 00:20:57,740 It has happened a number of times in my parenting over the years that I have done something special for one of my children. 216 00:20:57,740 --> 00:21:03,740 We thought, we got creative, we surprised, something special. 217 00:21:03,740 --> 00:21:09,740 And then after that they took the something special, whatever it was, and they misused it. 218 00:21:09,740 --> 00:21:14,740 A classic example would be like we plan a special trip for them, something they've really been wanting to do or whatever. 219 00:21:14,740 --> 00:21:19,740 And then they get there and it's all about can I have more, can I spend more money, and never a thank you. 220 00:21:19,740 --> 00:21:27,740 And I'm not saying that to slur anybody, but it's the human condition that if we start to get something, then we think we want something more. 221 00:21:27,740 --> 00:21:30,740 And we start to look for it, that's the human condition. 222 00:21:30,740 --> 00:21:35,740 But then as a parent now, I have to oppose this new course of action. 223 00:21:35,740 --> 00:21:38,740 Where is the gratitude? We're done. 224 00:21:38,740 --> 00:21:40,740 We went out of our way to do this. 225 00:21:40,740 --> 00:21:42,740 Now does that mean I don't love my children? 226 00:21:42,740 --> 00:21:46,740 Does it mean I wouldn't want to bestow them with some good surprise in the future? 227 00:21:46,740 --> 00:21:54,740 No. In fact, you can read elsewhere, we're not going to go there today, but you can read elsewhere, that God says that he does not disown his people while they're off in captivity. 228 00:21:54,740 --> 00:22:01,740 And you can read tons of stories about while they're off in captivity and how God did amazing things through the faithful folks that he carried off into captivity. 229 00:22:01,740 --> 00:22:04,740 He says this is not about destroying the people. 230 00:22:04,740 --> 00:22:05,740 We had that, didn't we? 231 00:22:05,740 --> 00:22:12,740 We talked about that last week about how some would be singled out if they had a false teaching, poisonous fruit. 232 00:22:12,740 --> 00:22:16,740 If they had a false hope, false peace, right? 233 00:22:16,740 --> 00:22:25,740 And if they had a bitterness of soul, that those would be the qualifiers that would cause them to be singled out and God come down with the claw and shut them down. 234 00:22:25,740 --> 00:22:26,740 Pull them out of the mix. 235 00:22:26,740 --> 00:22:30,740 Do whatever he had to do with them to stop that poison from spreading to everyone else. 236 00:22:30,740 --> 00:22:32,740 But that's not what we're looking at. 237 00:22:32,740 --> 00:22:37,740 What we're talking about here is God's anger against the land. 238 00:22:37,740 --> 00:22:44,740 The sign speaks of a just God, justly responding in violent opposition to the adultery. 239 00:22:44,740 --> 00:22:45,740 That's wrath. 240 00:22:45,740 --> 00:22:52,740 And then anger and fury and wrath toward the land. 241 00:22:52,740 --> 00:22:59,740 In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve sinned against God and we were all present in them. 242 00:22:59,740 --> 00:23:04,740 And so at that point in time, that sin then carried down to all mankind. 243 00:23:04,740 --> 00:23:11,740 When they sinned and they were kicked out of the Garden of Eden and told they couldn't go back, 244 00:23:11,740 --> 00:23:19,740 and the main reason that was was so that they would not take a bite from the Tree of Life and exist forever in their present shameful, sinful, wretched state. 245 00:23:19,740 --> 00:23:22,740 That would be very bad for them, bad for everybody. 246 00:23:22,740 --> 00:23:28,740 And so they were being protected from ever possibly falling into that terrible trap. 247 00:23:28,740 --> 00:23:34,740 And God pronounced a curse against them on how creation and man would be in opposition. 248 00:23:34,740 --> 00:23:41,740 And in the book of Romans, it talks about now how all creation groans for final redemption. 249 00:23:41,740 --> 00:23:47,740 There is trouble on the earth because man has misused the blessings of God. 250 00:23:47,740 --> 00:23:49,740 And we could talk geography. 251 00:23:49,740 --> 00:23:52,740 We could say that all over the world it's like this. 252 00:23:52,740 --> 00:23:56,740 Why does a tornado wipe out a house and kill a family of four? 253 00:23:56,740 --> 00:24:00,740 Why does a flood overflow a town and people die in their cars? 254 00:24:00,740 --> 00:24:04,740 Why does cancer invade bodies and people die from cancer? 255 00:24:04,740 --> 00:24:08,740 Because creation is messed up. 256 00:24:08,740 --> 00:24:13,740 It is under the anger and the fury of God, the same as we would be if we were not saved. 257 00:24:13,740 --> 00:24:16,740 Now there is a wrath. We were objects of wrath. 258 00:24:16,740 --> 00:24:18,740 And there is a grace saved from that. 259 00:24:18,740 --> 00:24:24,740 And we enter into a non-physical, holy, promised land filled with grace that God intends for us. 260 00:24:24,740 --> 00:24:26,740 And my question is this. 261 00:24:26,740 --> 00:24:35,740 This sign that we're seeing here, a sign that speaks and has answers, does it also speak about something additional? 262 00:24:35,740 --> 00:24:37,740 I submit to you it does and we're getting there. 263 00:24:37,740 --> 00:24:43,740 The third thing I want you to see, and I mentioned this in my opening, is that a sign speaks in both directions. 264 00:24:43,740 --> 00:24:46,740 Remember that this thing that we're studying today is a prophecy. 265 00:24:46,740 --> 00:24:47,740 It has not happened. 266 00:24:47,740 --> 00:24:52,740 God is not speaking saying, my fury poured out against the land because my people sinned against me 267 00:24:52,740 --> 00:24:54,740 because they went and were idolatrous with other gods. 268 00:24:54,740 --> 00:24:55,740 That's not what's happening here. 269 00:24:55,740 --> 00:25:00,740 This is Moses telling them how it will be when they get there and do that. 270 00:25:00,740 --> 00:25:02,740 So this is a prophecy. 271 00:25:02,740 --> 00:25:09,740 This question, this answer, all serve to warn of ignoring God's commands. 272 00:25:09,740 --> 00:25:13,740 If you will, this sign is a do not enter sign. 273 00:25:13,740 --> 00:25:15,740 Don't go there. 274 00:25:15,740 --> 00:25:21,740 Now he's prophesying saying they will go there, but they are being told clearly, don't go there. 275 00:25:21,740 --> 00:25:28,740 And people say, well, I don't know, if God tells me I'll go there, but says don't go there, how does that work? 276 00:25:28,740 --> 00:25:29,740 That make any sense? 277 00:25:29,740 --> 00:25:33,740 God already told me I'm going to go there, but then tells me don't go there, right? 278 00:25:33,740 --> 00:25:39,740 David, you may or may not recall that King David had a moment of very adulterous behavior. 279 00:25:39,740 --> 00:25:44,740 He went out at night when he should have been on the battlefront with his men. 280 00:25:44,740 --> 00:25:47,740 And he stayed home in the spring when kings go out to war. 281 00:25:47,740 --> 00:25:51,740 And he saw a woman taking a bath and she was a hottie. 282 00:25:51,740 --> 00:25:54,740 She was taking a bath on the house across the way. 283 00:25:54,740 --> 00:25:57,740 And he said, I think I like that. 284 00:25:57,740 --> 00:26:05,740 But he found out that woman was married to a man named, a loyal servant named Uriah the Hittite. 285 00:26:05,740 --> 00:26:10,740 And David arranged to take her into his bed and he slept with her and she got pregnant. 286 00:26:10,740 --> 00:26:14,740 Uriah the Hittite came home, as was accustomed to officers could come home at times, and was, 287 00:26:14,740 --> 00:26:19,740 and David tried to arrange for him to sleep with his own wife and said go stay in your house, 288 00:26:19,740 --> 00:26:22,740 so that the pregnancy would be covered up. 289 00:26:22,740 --> 00:26:25,740 But Uriah being the faithful loyal servant said, no, as long as my men can't be at home, 290 00:26:25,740 --> 00:26:27,740 I'm not going to be at home either. 291 00:26:27,740 --> 00:26:29,740 Sounds pretty just, if you think about it. 292 00:26:29,740 --> 00:26:31,740 And David was like, now what do I do? 293 00:26:31,740 --> 00:26:33,740 And he ordered him and he still didn't go home to be with his wife. 294 00:26:33,740 --> 00:26:34,740 And so he went back to the front. 295 00:26:34,740 --> 00:26:39,740 So when David, when he went back to the front, David sent orders for them to let him take the lead, 296 00:26:39,740 --> 00:26:43,740 as he was accustomed to do it because he was a great warrior and a leader and officers often led their troops in that day. 297 00:26:43,740 --> 00:26:48,740 Let him take the lead and then to get him out forward against the walls and then for the rest of the troops to pull back 298 00:26:48,740 --> 00:26:49,740 so that the enemy could kill him. 299 00:26:49,740 --> 00:26:50,740 And that's exactly what happened. 300 00:26:50,740 --> 00:26:53,740 He went to war and they pulled back and the enemy killed him. 301 00:26:53,740 --> 00:26:58,740 After he was dead in battle, David took his wife and let everybody believe that he was doing it in a magnanimous way 302 00:26:58,740 --> 00:27:05,740 to be good to his servant who died in battle, when in reality he was doing it because she was already pregnant with his child. 303 00:27:05,740 --> 00:27:08,740 It's a sordid tale. 304 00:27:08,740 --> 00:27:14,740 Now God, long story short, brings him up short through a prophet and David realizes he's in trouble 305 00:27:14,740 --> 00:27:18,740 and a prophecy is given that the child will die. 306 00:27:18,740 --> 00:27:26,740 And David begins to mourn and weep and he sits in ashes and he cries out to God. 307 00:27:26,740 --> 00:27:29,740 And then the word comes that the baby is dead. 308 00:27:29,740 --> 00:27:36,740 And David gets up and he says, I'm going to eat now, I'm going to take care of myself. 309 00:27:36,740 --> 00:27:41,740 And they said, I would understand, you just got word that your son is dead and now you're okay. 310 00:27:41,740 --> 00:27:44,740 You're going to get up and you're going to praise God and you're going to be fine. 311 00:27:44,740 --> 00:27:49,740 But while the baby was sick, shouldn't you now be mourning the loss of your son? 312 00:27:49,740 --> 00:27:51,740 And what did David say? 313 00:27:51,740 --> 00:27:58,740 He said, well, as long as the baby was still alive, there was a chance that God might relent and he might die. 314 00:27:58,740 --> 00:28:04,740 But now that the baby is dead, God is not going to change his determination. 315 00:28:04,740 --> 00:28:08,740 And so it's time to get on with life and to live according to God's will. 316 00:28:08,740 --> 00:28:10,740 This sign is a do not enter sign. 317 00:28:10,740 --> 00:28:17,740 God is setting it up there saying, if and you can say when you go there, I will curse the land. 318 00:28:17,740 --> 00:28:23,740 I will destroy all that which has been good to you, all that made you big and strong, all that I gave you. 319 00:28:23,740 --> 00:28:27,740 The prophecy, this question, this answer, all warn of ignoring God's commands. 320 00:28:27,740 --> 00:28:30,740 And he's saying, if you will ignore my command and become my idolatrous, 321 00:28:30,740 --> 00:28:36,740 I will destroy the land as well as cast you into captivity. 322 00:28:36,740 --> 00:28:40,740 And then that brings us to our conclusion. 323 00:28:40,740 --> 00:28:44,740 And it is this, God is gracious. 324 00:28:44,740 --> 00:28:45,740 We know that about God, right? 325 00:28:45,740 --> 00:28:49,740 He gives us what we do not deserve. 326 00:28:49,740 --> 00:28:50,740 That's what he does. 327 00:28:50,740 --> 00:28:51,740 That's what salvation is. 328 00:28:51,740 --> 00:28:52,740 We get saved. 329 00:28:52,740 --> 00:28:54,740 God gives us grace. 330 00:28:54,740 --> 00:28:55,740 He gives us his presence. 331 00:28:55,740 --> 00:28:57,740 He comes and lives with us. 332 00:28:57,740 --> 00:29:00,740 He fights on our side in spiritual warfare. 333 00:29:00,740 --> 00:29:04,740 He seals us up for the day of final salvation. 334 00:29:04,740 --> 00:29:06,740 God is gracious. 335 00:29:06,740 --> 00:29:13,740 But here we see that God is gracious to warn before. 336 00:29:13,740 --> 00:29:18,740 He is gracious to set up a sign which I submit to you is visible from both directions. 337 00:29:18,740 --> 00:29:23,740 Not just those who are looking back saying, oh yeah, this land is all destroyed and people are all cast off 338 00:29:23,740 --> 00:29:25,740 because they were adulterous toward God. 339 00:29:25,740 --> 00:29:28,740 But also from this side, there's a sign there. 340 00:29:28,740 --> 00:29:30,740 What does that say? 341 00:29:30,740 --> 00:29:32,740 God says it's blank. 342 00:29:32,740 --> 00:29:33,740 You can't see it. 343 00:29:33,740 --> 00:29:34,740 You've not been there. 344 00:29:34,740 --> 00:29:35,740 Your land's not been made desolate. 345 00:29:35,740 --> 00:29:37,740 You've not been cast out of my presence. 346 00:29:37,740 --> 00:29:43,740 You've not seen me curse where you are, the promised land, the grace land, the holy land. 347 00:29:43,740 --> 00:29:44,740 You have not seen that yet. 348 00:29:44,740 --> 00:29:48,740 But I'll tell you what that sign says before you get to the other side of it. 349 00:29:48,740 --> 00:29:54,740 God is gracious to warn us what the sign says before we get there. 350 00:29:54,740 --> 00:30:00,740 Indeed, God is gracious to faithfully judge. 351 00:30:00,740 --> 00:30:06,740 Because if God's people who claim to be Christians, who are living for the Lord, 352 00:30:06,740 --> 00:30:10,740 behave in an idolatrous fashion, right? 353 00:30:10,740 --> 00:30:16,740 And so now we're worshiping other things, other things are important, more important than God or as important as God and so on. 354 00:30:16,740 --> 00:30:19,740 And God does nothing. 355 00:30:19,740 --> 00:30:23,740 Where's the sign? 356 00:30:23,740 --> 00:30:29,740 If there's no sign, then how will people know that God is a just God and a gracious God? 357 00:30:29,740 --> 00:30:38,740 See, God could pour out the worst of punishments, could have done far worse than just casting them off into another land. 358 00:30:38,740 --> 00:30:40,740 He would have been right to do so. 359 00:30:40,740 --> 00:30:43,740 Because what they had done was the worst of the worst. 360 00:30:43,740 --> 00:30:45,740 They followed him out of the promised land. 361 00:30:45,740 --> 00:30:49,740 They received houses they didn't build, crops already growing that they didn't plant. 362 00:30:49,740 --> 00:30:56,740 Huge cities already constructed for them, given a promised land, a holy land, a grace land. 363 00:30:56,740 --> 00:31:02,740 And then as a people drifted into idolatry, and instead of destroying them, 364 00:31:02,740 --> 00:31:12,740 he faithfully judged them to illustrate here for all the other nations, remember it's the foreigner and the men of future generations, 365 00:31:12,740 --> 00:31:17,740 to see the nature of God and the opportunity. 366 00:31:17,740 --> 00:31:20,740 Most signs aren't printed on both sides. 367 00:31:20,740 --> 00:31:27,740 Stop signs often aren't printed on both sides. 368 00:31:27,740 --> 00:31:31,740 Yield signs, now they have a shape, you might know, right? 369 00:31:31,740 --> 00:31:33,740 So a lot of signs aren't printed on both sides. 370 00:31:33,740 --> 00:31:35,740 That doesn't mean we don't know what they mean. 371 00:31:35,740 --> 00:31:36,740 Doesn't mean you can't figure it out. 372 00:31:36,740 --> 00:31:37,740 There's a sign there. 373 00:31:37,740 --> 00:31:41,740 And if you want to know what it means, you could go, oh, I'm not going to go on the other side. 374 00:31:41,740 --> 00:31:42,740 I'm just going to go and peek. 375 00:31:42,740 --> 00:31:43,740 Well, let me tell you what happens. 376 00:31:43,740 --> 00:31:44,740 Here's what you'd see. 377 00:31:44,740 --> 00:31:50,740 If you go and peek on the other side of this sign, if the church of today becomes idolatrous, 378 00:31:50,740 --> 00:31:59,740 if we get wrapped up in the things of this world enough that we are no longer showing God's faithfulness and his justice and his mercy and his grace to the people around us, 379 00:31:59,740 --> 00:32:05,740 if we get wrapped up, then God will remove his church and curse this land. 380 00:32:05,740 --> 00:32:07,740 These chairs will sit empty. 381 00:32:07,740 --> 00:32:11,740 This building will either be torn down or become something entirely different. 382 00:32:11,740 --> 00:32:16,740 The church will be gone. 383 00:32:16,740 --> 00:32:19,740 We've been there before, lured to one thing or another. 384 00:32:19,740 --> 00:32:21,740 There are good things in this life. 385 00:32:21,740 --> 00:32:26,740 There are good things that God has given us, not even things that we don't know. 386 00:32:26,740 --> 00:32:33,740 But there are things that we know and we know we cannot worship them like God does. 387 00:32:33,740 --> 00:32:40,740 Remember, this is not a text that is about or written to individuals, right? 388 00:32:40,740 --> 00:32:49,740 Because the previous text, the one we studied last week, said that if a person has a poisonous teaching, if they have a false peace, right? 389 00:32:49,740 --> 00:32:54,740 If they have a bitterness of soul, that God will reach down and pluck them up and deal with them himself. 390 00:32:54,740 --> 00:32:56,740 So that's not what we're talking about. 391 00:32:56,740 --> 00:33:00,740 We're not talking about a people that has amongst a couple of problems, right? 392 00:33:00,740 --> 00:33:02,740 Or some people that are going in the wrong direction. 393 00:33:02,740 --> 00:33:05,740 There's a place for that and a thing to be done about that. 394 00:33:05,740 --> 00:33:18,740 We're talking about a people that has allowed idolatry, things of importance to drift in and become important enough to draw them away from worshiping only God. 395 00:33:18,740 --> 00:33:23,740 Here, the people see there is a sign and they blow past the sign. 396 00:33:23,740 --> 00:33:26,740 Now, how fast? 397 00:33:26,740 --> 00:33:27,740 Ten years? 398 00:33:27,740 --> 00:33:30,740 No, it's generations. 399 00:33:30,740 --> 00:33:32,740 But we're accountable to generations, right? 400 00:33:32,740 --> 00:33:40,740 We're responsible to make sure that the teachings of the Lord are handed down to your children and your children's children if you're still alive. 401 00:33:40,740 --> 00:33:52,740 And so we need to be making sure the best we can that people know that the sign is there and they don't have to go to the other side of it to see what it means. 402 00:33:52,740 --> 00:33:58,740 And we are warned in the New Testament about signs and getting wrapped into it. 403 00:33:58,740 --> 00:34:04,740 At the same time, we are warned about ignoring the teachings of God. 404 00:34:04,740 --> 00:34:08,740 This sign is not the key. 405 00:34:08,740 --> 00:34:11,740 This sign won't save us, right? 406 00:34:11,740 --> 00:34:19,740 If we get wrapped up in idolatry and blow past the sign, God will do what God's going to do and you'll already be there before you know it. 407 00:34:19,740 --> 00:34:22,740 But the sign exists before we cross the line. 408 00:34:22,740 --> 00:34:25,740 As a church, I'm not talking about an individual. 409 00:34:25,740 --> 00:34:31,740 Now, we collectively as a church, you heard it in the songs that we sung, we collectively stand for one another. 410 00:34:31,740 --> 00:34:34,740 We represent the love of God. 411 00:34:34,740 --> 00:34:42,740 We have a job to do to love every one of our members, to love everyone who comes even, who might come and lean in the direction of God. 412 00:34:42,740 --> 00:34:49,740 And God, I wonder if somebody would get out of bed one morning and go, I think I'm going to go there and see what this God is about. 413 00:34:49,740 --> 00:34:54,740 They better be able to come here and see what this God is about because we better be about this God. 414 00:34:54,740 --> 00:34:59,740 If we're about something else, if we've got other things to talk about, other things to do and so on, 415 00:34:59,740 --> 00:35:03,740 then we can safely assume that we are blowing past that sign. 416 00:35:03,740 --> 00:35:12,740 And when we do, as the book of Revelation says, Jesus speaking, I will remove your lamp stand, the church will be gone. 417 00:35:12,740 --> 00:35:14,740 We've got a job to do. 418 00:35:14,740 --> 00:35:22,740 Our job is to live in the promised land, to live in the grace land and recognize it for grace, to live in the holy land, right? 419 00:35:22,740 --> 00:35:27,740 To individually remain faithful to the Lord so that we personally are not plucked out, 420 00:35:27,740 --> 00:35:32,740 as the word promised last week when we studied it, that would happen. 421 00:35:32,740 --> 00:35:38,740 And to ensure that we collectively have an immune system, we collectively remain faithful, 422 00:35:38,740 --> 00:35:43,740 we collectively cut aside from anything that looks like idolatry, 423 00:35:43,740 --> 00:35:51,740 anything that looks like worship that is more important than the worship that we do of God. 424 00:35:51,740 --> 00:35:54,740 I do only that which I see my Father doing. 425 00:35:54,740 --> 00:35:58,740 Well, that's the example. That's the model. That's what we have to follow. 426 00:35:58,740 --> 00:36:05,740 And if you don't, if we don't as a group, I submit to you that God will remove the church. 427 00:36:05,740 --> 00:36:10,740 And in so doing, I'll probably wind up in another church, you'll probably wind up in another church, 428 00:36:10,740 --> 00:36:14,740 you'll probably wind up in another church, you'll probably wind up in another church, you'll probably wind up in another church, 429 00:36:14,740 --> 00:36:19,740 everybody in this room will wind up following the Lord in some other way. 430 00:36:19,740 --> 00:36:23,740 I believe that you profess to be a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, right? 431 00:36:23,740 --> 00:36:27,740 And Jesus puts His people in churches. 432 00:36:27,740 --> 00:36:30,740 And so you will wind up in another church serving the Lord. 433 00:36:30,740 --> 00:36:34,740 The problem is, you're supposed to be here. 434 00:36:34,740 --> 00:36:37,740 We're supposed to be here. We're supposed to be serving God. 435 00:36:37,740 --> 00:36:41,740 Here, when this building couldn't be, when it wasn't possible, 436 00:36:41,740 --> 00:36:48,740 God intervened with multiple miracles, month after month after month, to make this into a church building. 437 00:36:48,740 --> 00:36:52,740 When the bill came in, it was going to be $26,000 to get the electricity hooked up. 438 00:36:52,740 --> 00:36:57,740 God intervened miraculously, sent an electrician who found people, who found supplies, 439 00:36:57,740 --> 00:37:01,740 and it went from $26,000 to $2600, which we had. 440 00:37:01,740 --> 00:37:06,740 When we couldn't get the water turned on, after months of trying and six weeks on a waiting list, 441 00:37:06,740 --> 00:37:08,740 called the guy and he said, yeah, it's going to be six weeks. 442 00:37:08,740 --> 00:37:11,740 And I said, it's already been six weeks. I'm okay with it being six weeks, 443 00:37:11,740 --> 00:37:14,740 but if it's already been six weeks and you say now it's going to be six weeks, 444 00:37:14,740 --> 00:37:17,740 that's what you told me in the first place, how do I know when six weeks is going to be on? 445 00:37:17,740 --> 00:37:20,740 He said, well, that's just not how it works. We turn it on when it gets on. 446 00:37:20,740 --> 00:37:24,740 And I said, well, that doesn't work. We need water. We can't clean up the building. 447 00:37:24,740 --> 00:37:29,740 Can't flush the toilets. And he said, there's nothing you can do. 448 00:37:29,740 --> 00:37:34,740 So I called Jim Gantt, who technically was TPS manager and they still own the building, 449 00:37:34,740 --> 00:37:41,740 and TPS called, Jim Gantt called the new head of the water division, 450 00:37:41,740 --> 00:37:44,740 who had just been instilled and called him like a few days before and said, 451 00:37:44,740 --> 00:37:47,740 if you need anything, call me. That man was Tom Carruthers. 452 00:37:47,740 --> 00:37:51,740 Tom Carruthers was the deputy mayor who pitched the idea to the mayor of Toledo 453 00:37:51,740 --> 00:37:53,740 in the first place for us to get this building. 454 00:37:53,740 --> 00:37:59,740 But when that mayor left office, he lost his job and became the head of the water department. 455 00:37:59,740 --> 00:38:03,740 So as soon as he said, hey, can you make sure this water gets turned on, guess what happened? 456 00:38:03,740 --> 00:38:07,740 The next morning, the next, not six weeks, the next morning at 8 a.m., 457 00:38:07,740 --> 00:38:13,740 they showed up out here to hook up the water. The chairs were sitting in. 458 00:38:13,740 --> 00:38:18,740 We had chairs before this. And we were on Main Street. 459 00:38:18,740 --> 00:38:22,740 We had awesome chairs over there. I think they were green. I'm trying to remember. 460 00:38:22,740 --> 00:38:27,740 And a church had donated them to us. And then the pastor of that church, 461 00:38:27,740 --> 00:38:32,740 his son started a church plant like 100 miles away and asked him, say, you got any chairs? 462 00:38:32,740 --> 00:38:35,740 And he came back to me after he said we could keep the chairs permanently, 463 00:38:35,740 --> 00:38:38,740 he came back to me and said, I'm sorry, we need those chairs back. 464 00:38:38,740 --> 00:38:43,740 And so that was Thursday. And we needed chairs. 465 00:38:43,740 --> 00:38:47,740 And so we got online for rush shipping and got chairs shipped. 466 00:38:47,740 --> 00:38:52,740 And three guys who claimed to be followers of Jesus and didn't even go to church at the time, 467 00:38:52,740 --> 00:38:56,740 and three guys who were in the church came together and we put them all together. 468 00:38:56,740 --> 00:39:01,740 They were coming up out all in pieces. And we put all the chairs together, one after another after another. 469 00:39:01,740 --> 00:39:04,740 And that's the chairs you're sitting on today. And we didn't pay for them. 470 00:39:04,740 --> 00:39:08,740 The Mississippi Baptist Convention paid for them when the building didn't have heat. 471 00:39:08,740 --> 00:39:11,740 And we thought, well, finally going to break down to get the boiler operational. 472 00:39:11,740 --> 00:39:16,740 And God said, in my heart, so are you going to have to do something because it's getting cold, 473 00:39:16,740 --> 00:39:19,740 you're going to lose the, you're going to break water pipes and so on. 474 00:39:19,740 --> 00:39:22,740 So we called somebody and said, OK, let's get this boiler out. We'll pay it. 475 00:39:22,740 --> 00:39:24,740 $4,000, whatever it's going to be. We don't have a lot of money. 476 00:39:24,740 --> 00:39:27,740 We'll do whatever we have to do to get this operational because we can't lose our building. 477 00:39:27,740 --> 00:39:31,740 And they came and he said, after he looked at it, he said, you got so many pipes in there are bad. 478 00:39:31,740 --> 00:39:35,740 It's really not usable. You can't do it. And so all of a sudden we don't have heat. 479 00:39:35,740 --> 00:39:40,740 Fast forward, God put together a businessman locally that what he does is renovate churches. 480 00:39:40,740 --> 00:39:46,740 And he put together a consortium of individuals, businessmen, heat contractors and so on. 481 00:39:46,740 --> 00:39:49,740 And the Mississippi Baptist Convention bought the new boiler, 482 00:39:49,740 --> 00:39:54,740 which was an $80,000 piece of equipment that we could not afford and shipped it here. 483 00:39:54,740 --> 00:39:59,740 And these guys came in and they put it all together. And it cost in the end, it cost us some money, 484 00:39:59,740 --> 00:40:06,740 $15,000 for a $120,000 boiler system. God miraculously put us here. 485 00:40:06,740 --> 00:40:10,740 How many people have been saved at block parties and go to different churches? I don't know. 486 00:40:10,740 --> 00:40:13,740 How many people have been saved here in this building and aren't here now? I don't know. 487 00:40:13,740 --> 00:40:18,740 But this is what I do know. This is where God put us. And I know how to stay here. 488 00:40:18,740 --> 00:40:25,740 Here's how we stay here. We need to develop an immune system that shuts down every opportunity for us to drift into idolatry. 489 00:40:25,740 --> 00:40:28,740 People have been plucked from our midst and they probably will be again. 490 00:40:28,740 --> 00:40:31,740 There's nothing we can do about that except for practice loving accountability and say, 491 00:40:31,740 --> 00:40:33,740 look, I don't think the direction that you're going is good. 492 00:40:33,740 --> 00:40:38,740 Hey, we're, you know, ultimately we're going to have to remove you from the church if you can't serve the Lord here. 493 00:40:38,740 --> 00:40:42,740 This is not where you're supposed to be doing what God wants you to do. You got to go. 494 00:40:42,740 --> 00:40:46,740 We can practice loving accountability. But people have been plucked from our midst. 495 00:40:46,740 --> 00:40:49,740 There was a man who cussed me out after service standing right over there behind that row 496 00:40:49,740 --> 00:40:52,740 because I preached on something that he and I had already talked about that we disagreed on. 497 00:40:52,740 --> 00:40:56,740 And it was in the text, had nothing to do with it. I didn't choose to do it. I just preached the text. 498 00:40:56,740 --> 00:41:00,740 And he said, F'ing this and F'ing that about what I had done and cussed me out. 499 00:41:00,740 --> 00:41:02,740 And I said, well, this is the one thing I'll tell you for sure. And he was a church member. 500 00:41:02,740 --> 00:41:05,740 I said, the one thing I'll tell you for sure. So you're not going to talk to me like that. 501 00:41:05,740 --> 00:41:09,740 You're not going to cost me after service on Sunday. You want to make an appointment, we'll talk. 502 00:41:09,740 --> 00:41:14,740 I said, you're not going to treat me that way. That man died six months later. 503 00:41:14,740 --> 00:41:17,740 I don't know why. I'm not saying God killed him. 504 00:41:17,740 --> 00:41:20,740 But I am telling you that God has removed people from our midst. 505 00:41:20,740 --> 00:41:24,740 He allowed that to happen at the least if he didn't do it. Right. 506 00:41:24,740 --> 00:41:30,740 So what I'm saying to you is, individually remaining faithful and then as a body having an immune system 507 00:41:30,740 --> 00:41:36,740 so that we stop idolatry from our midst. There is nothing else worth what God is worth. 508 00:41:36,740 --> 00:41:39,740 It doesn't begin to compare. 509 00:41:39,740 --> 00:41:46,740 If your speedometer is buried in the red on God and running 50 miles per hour on your hobby or on your phone or whatever, 510 00:41:46,740 --> 00:41:52,740 you are in danger. You're in danger of allowing that idolatry to take up a serious place in your life. 511 00:41:52,740 --> 00:41:57,740 If you're studying other things but not studying the Word, you're in danger. 512 00:41:57,740 --> 00:42:03,740 If you're listening to what somebody has to say but you're dismissing what I have to say because it's too freaky or too aggressive 513 00:42:03,740 --> 00:42:07,740 or I'm pushing you on something that you don't want to listen about, you're in danger. 514 00:42:07,740 --> 00:42:13,740 But you're in danger. But then if we do that, the whole church is in danger and the ground will be gone. 515 00:42:13,740 --> 00:42:17,740 And in 20 years, this will not be a church building and we won't be meeting anywhere else either. 516 00:42:17,740 --> 00:42:25,740 We won't be seen scattered amongst other people because God gave us this promised land, this grace land, this holy land. 517 00:42:25,740 --> 00:42:31,740 Individually, we stayed the course enough to not be plucked from it, but corporately we decided that idolatry was okay 518 00:42:31,740 --> 00:42:36,740 and God says, be careful, there is a sign. I already put up a sign. 519 00:42:36,740 --> 00:42:39,740 I have two closing illustrations I'll share with you and then I'll be through. 520 00:42:39,740 --> 00:42:46,740 The first one is about a natural anomaly. In the Pacific Ocean off Vancouver Island, 521 00:42:46,740 --> 00:42:55,540 a stretch of water known as the Zone of Silence. Because this area is acoustically dead, no 522 00:42:55,540 --> 00:43:02,540 sound can penetrate or travel through it. It's a natural phenomenon. Since no bell or 523 00:43:02,540 --> 00:43:13,220 siren can warn ships of dangerous reefs, the ocean floor is studded with wrecks. Your mouth 524 00:43:13,220 --> 00:43:22,500 was given you to represent Holy God. Yes, grace God. But when you see a believer who 525 00:43:22,500 --> 00:43:28,460 is drifting into idolatry, and certainly in our church, you need to not be silent. Many 526 00:43:28,460 --> 00:43:37,380 ships have crashed because no one spoke up. And in the world today, if you speak up about 527 00:43:37,380 --> 00:43:43,020 something, generally speaking, either you're a hater or you're hated. And sometimes both. 528 00:43:43,020 --> 00:43:48,060 But in the church, it's your responsibility. When things aren't right, we have to haul 529 00:43:48,060 --> 00:43:52,620 each other back from the brink. And if you save a man from his sin, then don't be surprised, 530 00:43:52,620 --> 00:44:00,180 you've saved his soul. And I submit to you the soul of our church. And we can be elsewhere 531 00:44:00,180 --> 00:44:04,180 and still worshiping God, they were worshiping God in captivity. When they were called out 532 00:44:04,180 --> 00:44:10,060 of captivity back together again, they never drifted into idolatry again. Of course, they 533 00:44:10,060 --> 00:44:14,380 never had a great land again. Even today, there are no grapes that grow there the size 534 00:44:14,380 --> 00:44:22,860 of a man's head. Because God punished and cursed the land, took them out of it. They 535 00:44:22,860 --> 00:44:27,340 were supposed to be the great caretakers, took them out of it and then cursed the land. 536 00:44:27,340 --> 00:44:35,820 One more. There's a young girl, 11 years old, her name is Sheila Nossworthy of Cambridge, 537 00:44:35,820 --> 00:44:41,780 which is in England. She suddenly went deaf. She couldn't hear. When specialists predicted 538 00:44:41,780 --> 00:44:47,780 that she would never hear again, she was heartbroken, but knew that she was still here and needed 539 00:44:47,780 --> 00:44:51,740 to do something. And so she switched her attention from television to books, because she couldn't 540 00:44:51,740 --> 00:44:55,860 watch TV anymore. And even with the captions, it just wasn't the same. And so she switched 541 00:44:55,860 --> 00:45:00,140 her attention from television to books, as she started reading books and more books and 542 00:45:00,140 --> 00:45:05,900 more books. One day, while she was in her room, a stack of storybooks fell from the 543 00:45:05,900 --> 00:45:15,020 top of her closet onto her head. The pretty little blonde was stunned, aghast, shocked, 544 00:45:15,020 --> 00:45:22,540 stunned because she in that moment discovered that her hearing had returned. She says, and 545 00:45:22,540 --> 00:45:29,540 I quote, it was Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland and Snow White that hit me hardest, said Sheila 546 00:45:29,540 --> 00:45:36,300 afterwards, I'll believe in fairy tales for the rest of my life. I'm asking you to do 547 00:45:36,300 --> 00:45:40,920 nothing less than trust God. Doesn't matter if you feel like what you've been through 548 00:45:40,920 --> 00:45:46,500 has been hard, He's been with you through it. Our church must be faithful to the Lord 549 00:45:46,500 --> 00:45:53,980 to the end. It won't matter if one of us dies to persecution, if we stay faithful to God. 550 00:45:53,980 --> 00:45:59,000 It won't matter if we suffer terribly, if we stay faithful to God. The worst of it, 551 00:45:59,000 --> 00:46:02,860 as we heard in an inspirational moment, most of what you're going through, most of the 552 00:46:02,860 --> 00:46:06,900 troubles that we're going through on a daily basis or weekly basis, it's all designed to 553 00:46:06,900 --> 00:46:11,060 get us to take our attention or our focus off of God. We live in the promised land, 554 00:46:11,060 --> 00:46:16,060 we live in the great land, we live in the holy land, we do not take our attention off 555 00:46:16,060 --> 00:46:25,780 of God. But we're living in a world that has convinced us that we can share, that it's 556 00:46:25,780 --> 00:46:35,300 fair and it's safe. I can focus on this and also focus on God at the same time. And I 557 00:46:35,300 --> 00:46:42,140 submit to you, I'm asking you to believe more than that. I'm asking you to believe 558 00:46:42,140 --> 00:46:48,620 that God has done this in us as a people and for us collectively as a group to stand firm 559 00:46:48,620 --> 00:46:54,560 with an immune system in place that will chase out all idols. If God has not given it to 560 00:46:54,560 --> 00:47:00,020 us specifically, it has no place here. And I understand God has given you everything, 561 00:47:00,020 --> 00:47:06,500 but God gave you a cell phone, but He never said you could declare its worth. God gave 562 00:47:06,500 --> 00:47:10,500 you hobbies, God gave you a job, God gave you income, but He never said you could worship 563 00:47:10,500 --> 00:47:17,600 it. A man cannot have two masters. So if anything has become a master in your life, I'm asking 564 00:47:17,600 --> 00:47:22,020 you to cut it out. And then we as a church need to have an immune system that when we 565 00:47:22,020 --> 00:47:27,500 see those things creeping in, we say, whoa, wait a minute, this is my concern. And it 566 00:47:27,500 --> 00:47:31,580 may turn out that that's not what's happening. Someone will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt 567 00:47:31,580 --> 00:47:40,140 that we're not worshiping that thing in which it can stay. But if it can't be proven and 568 00:47:40,140 --> 00:47:46,460 it looks like we're headed for that sign, and we have to realize that beyond that sign 569 00:47:46,460 --> 00:47:51,580 is an absence of New Heights Fellowship Baptist Church of East Toledo in the place that God 570 00:47:51,580 --> 00:47:57,340 has put us, in the promised land, the grace land, the holy land that God has put us in. 571 00:47:57,340 --> 00:47:59,980 And people will say, well, whatever happened to New Heights Fellowship Baptist Church? 572 00:47:59,980 --> 00:48:03,560 I got food there so many times. I heard Pastor Dan preaching at block parties and other guys 573 00:48:03,560 --> 00:48:06,380 come up and preach. And they all seemed like they were so on fire for the Lord and they 574 00:48:06,380 --> 00:48:09,100 were all so united and they were all together and they loved one another, they did things 575 00:48:09,100 --> 00:48:12,880 together and they worked hard together. And they had that building that God gave them 576 00:48:12,880 --> 00:48:17,460 was clearly a miracle when God did that. And people say, well, what happened? And someone 577 00:48:17,460 --> 00:48:25,260 will say, inspired in the moment, well, they drifted away from God. They stopped making 578 00:48:25,260 --> 00:48:29,660 God the absolute most important thing and something else became important. And so God 579 00:48:29,660 --> 00:48:35,620 took them out. And so even then, we'll have a witness. We're going to have the praise 580 00:48:35,620 --> 00:48:44,020 team come forward at this time and lead us. We're going to sing a closing hymn. I'm asking 581 00:48:44,020 --> 00:48:48,900 us and really this is, as you saw, a corporate thing. Now, you know that you personally are 582 00:48:48,900 --> 00:48:53,340 either A, drifting into idolatry is something that's sticking up and big part of your life 583 00:48:53,340 --> 00:49:00,860 or B, that you're too quiet and you can't speak up, that you can't lovingly correct. 584 00:49:00,860 --> 00:49:06,460 Then you need to repent and let God work through you and stand firm in what's right in the 585 00:49:06,460 --> 00:49:12,100 promised land, great land and holy land. But if you say, well, I can, I mean, with God's 586 00:49:12,100 --> 00:49:17,020 help, I can. So I'm saying that we all need to make a commitment. We all collectively 587 00:49:17,020 --> 00:49:23,780 need to make a commitment to say, no, God first and God alone. And we're all we've been 588 00:49:23,780 --> 00:49:31,060 blessed with instead of taking it for granted and finding other things to worship. We need 589 00:49:31,060 --> 00:49:41,020 to be grateful for what God has done and stay firm, stay faithful. As we sing, would you 590 00:49:41,020 --> 00:49:47,580 stand with us? If you're online and it's touched your heart, then you respond. You listen to 591 00:49:47,580 --> 00:49:56,060 the podcast and you realize that you're not in the wrong place. Turn to the Lord, God 592 00:49:56,060 --> 00:50:06,300 of heaven. It's not about me, about him. Light of the fact that I may have the flu, I'll 593 00:50:06,300 --> 00:50:11,180 ask you not to walk forward. But if you need to share a word or respond in some way, just 594 00:50:11,180 --> 00:50:13,980 raise your hand where you're at. 595 00:50:13,980 --> 00:50:40,780 I'm at the feet of Jesus, the grace that comes, mercy and love. I'm at the feet of Jesus, 596 00:50:40,780 --> 00:51:07,580 the grace that comes, mercy and love. I'm at the feet of Jesus, the grace that comes, 597 00:51:07,580 --> 00:51:23,020 mercy and love. I'm at the feet of Jesus, the grace that comes, mercy and love. I'm 598 00:51:23,020 --> 00:51:38,460 at the feet of Jesus, the grace that comes, mercy and love. I'm at the feet of Jesus, 599 00:51:38,460 --> 00:51:45,340 the grace that comes, mercy and love. 600 00:51:45,340 --> 00:51:49,340 A couple of real quick things that the Lord has been speaking to me even just these last 601 00:51:49,340 --> 00:51:55,340 few seconds. The first thing is that it occurs to me that traversing the sign, if you're 602 00:51:55,340 --> 00:51:59,980 not paying attention to the sign, traversing the sign usually occurs in an ambush. It's 603 00:51:59,980 --> 00:52:04,780 tricky. The thing comes into your life, it becomes that important to you and pretty soon 604 00:52:04,780 --> 00:52:12,940 you're making choices about, do I invest in this or do I invest in God? Sherry and I are 605 00:52:12,940 --> 00:52:17,660 looking at trying to build an expansion on our house for example. I had a dream, I woke 606 00:52:17,660 --> 00:52:20,380 up from a dream, I asked the Lord, I said, Lord is that what my house is supposed to 607 00:52:20,380 --> 00:52:21,380 look like?