Oh, that's a good one.
And I'm lonely for my whole All my dreams are gone astray
When I'm stranded in the valley And I'm tired and all alone
Seems like I've lost my way
Go running to your mountain
Where your mercy sets me free You are my strong tower
A shelter over me Beautiful and mighty
Everlasting King
You are my strong tower A fortress when I'm weak
Your name is true and holy And your face is all I see
In the middle of my darkness In the midst of all my fear
You're my refuge and my home
When the storm of life is raging And the thunder's all I hear
You speak softly to my soul
Now I'm running to your mountain
Where your mercy sets me free You are my strong tower
A shelter over me Beautiful and mighty
Everlasting King
You are my strong tower A fortress when I'm weak
Your name is true and holy
Everlasting King
You are my strong tower A fortress when I'm weak
When the darkness falls As it falls
Till I will stay
Must it be the day of the light Must it be your name
Must it be your name
When I'm found in my desert place When I walk through the wilderness
The light will be on me
Everlasting you for I will Turn back to praise
When the darkness falls As it falls
Till I will stay
Must it be the day of the light Must it be your name
Great and mighty is the Lord our God Great and mighty is he
Make the propellers let the ebb of spring Wave us to our feet
Great and mighty is the Lord our God Great and mighty is he
There is an endless song And goes in my soul
I hear the music ring And for the sun to come
I am walking on To God I meet
How can I even sing in your praise How can I ever say goodbye
How can I even sing in your praise How can I even shout in your name
I know I have one bad thing That is made so hard for me
I will lift my eyes In the darkest night
For I know my name will live And so I'll walk with you
So when you see me do Let's sing a song to Him
How can I even sing in your praise How can I ever say goodbye
Now, now is the time to worship Now, now is the time to give your hope
Now, just as you are to worship Now, just as you are before your God
Now, now is the time to worship Now, now is the time to give your hope
Now, just as you are to worship
The splendor of the King Clothed in majesty
Let all the earth rejoice All the earth rejoice
Hear an absent, self-hit light Darkness tries to hide
And trembles at His voice Trembles at His voice
How great is Thar-Gah Sing with me how great
How great is Thar-Gah
The gates will wait for you to stand The time has come to stand
Get, get, get, get Let your heart be free and wild
Let your spirit rest on the line of the Lamb How great is Thar-Gah
Sing with me how great is Thar-Gah
Today is the day in which we finish the book of Deuteronomy.
Every day can be exciting when you're preaching the word of the Lord, for sure.
But the book of Deuteronomy has been ours.
We have owned it, we have studied it, we have preached from it, we have done all kinds with it for two years, almost.
So then I went through, I'm trying to find the list right now, I went through and I looked at all of the books that we have preached completely through.
And I didn't have anybody there to help me.
And I tried to make a list and they were, it was a lengthy list.
And then even after I made the list, a little while later I thought of another one.
And so we have preached now through beginning to end the books of the Bible, roughly one third of the Bible.
Since we started planting New Heights, it'll be 20 years ago.
That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool that we've been able to do that.
But it can't be exact and I may not have gotten every book or anything like that.
So, you know, and some of you weren't here when we did it.
I said we'll probably go back around to those books again as the Lord leads and preach them again.
One of the great blessings of the book of Deuteronomy is it's the longest book we've ever preached through.
And we've preached some long ones. We've preached through, let's see, what's another really long one?
We did the book of Hebrews, we did the book of Acts, both of those New Testament books we preached all the way through.
We did the entire book of Joshua.
It says it's on. Check it. Yep, it's on.
All right.
OK, so here we go.
In the book of Deuteronomy, in chapter 34, this is God's Word.
Can I get an amen? Amen.
All right. A few folks are with me.
In the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 34, it's a very sad story.
This is Moses on the verge of the promised land the second time around, and he doesn't get to go in.
Deuteronomy 34, one reads like this.
Now Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho.
And the Lord showed him all the land, Gilead as far as Dan and all Naphtali and the land of Ephraim and Manasseh and all the land of Judah,
as far as the Western Sea and the Negev and the plain and the valley of Jericho and the city of palm trees, as far as Zohar.
Now a bunch of these names that I've just read in the first three verses of this chapter, actually, as Moses is standing there, do not yet exist.
They are names that are adapted for certain areas in the promised land after Moses is gone.
And so some people hypothesize that parts or all of this chapter is actually written by Joshua.
Now the entire book of Deuteronomy is accredited to Moses and that he wrote it all down.
And it is the last two major speeches, right?
And that's why it's called Deuteronomy. It's in kind of two sections.
But that being said, this list was either prophetically displayed here by God, more likely, given through Joshua,
or it said he saw everything that could be seen from there and the list was amended later to include all the places that could be seen from there.
It's hard to say exactly. But what we have is Moses up on this mountain and he spends some time with God there
and he can look out from there and see all those regions that are thus named.
And amongst them are the regions of the promised land that are able to be seen from there and he will not be allowed to go in.
So already he's been told he's not going to be allowed to go in. He's on the doorstep of the promised land.
Again, he's already been told he's not going to be allowed to go into the promised land, but he's allowed to see everything.
Then the Lord said to him, this is the land which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, I will give it to your descendants.
I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not go over there.
Alright, there we go. So God says, this is it. I promised it to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but you don't get to go.
Verse 5, so Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab according to the word of the Lord.
Now this verse is debated hotly. It's a challenging translation into English.
If you would challenge it directly from the Hebrew or translate directly from the Hebrew into the English, basically what you would get is God spoke him dead.
And so the debate is, did God speak Moses dead on the mountain? That's the debate.
Did he right there say, this is it, you're done?
Now there's support in the chapter for it because it'll say in a moment that even though he's old, he's healthy.
He doesn't have any health conditions. There's no reason that he would have just died.
But also there are those who arguably say that the reason he died there was because God had told him he would.
I don't see that there's a real big difference, theologically speaking.
The bottom line is God takes his life and does not allow him to go into the promised land.
That's a fact.
Now whether he literally right there as the Hebrew says, spoke him dead right there on the mountain that day,
or whether he said you're going to die here and then he went up on the mountain and he died exactly as God said,
either way God took his life and did not allow him to continue on past his current age and did not allow him to go into the promised land.
Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab according to the word of the Lord.
Verse 6, and he buried him in the valley in the land of Moab opposite Beth-Bur, but no man knows his burial place to this day.
Again, that's one of those verses that sort of insinuates that maybe Joshua is adding some stuff here.
So Joshua is making it clear. It makes sense if Joshua would say, hey, nobody knows exactly where God buried the body up to this day.
It doesn't make as much sense if Moses says that nobody knows where he buried the body up to this day because Moses' body is the one in question.
Right. That's a little weird. Right.
So it makes good sense if Joshua wrote that part of it.
He buried him. That's God in the valley in the land of Moab opposite Beth-Bur, but no man knows his burial place to this day.
Right off the top of your head, just going to go aside for one second, put your thinking caps on.
Why do you think God might, doesn't say, Scripture does not say, but hypothesizes, why do you think God might bury him somewhere where no one knows where he's buried?
Anybody want to?
Okay. That's a possibility, right?
So the Israelites couldn't take Moses' body into the promised land.
That happened in another story elsewhere that after they died, their bones is returned.
So there's that. What else? What's another possibility?
So no one could steal the body. That's good. Right.
So you'd punish the Israelites pretty badly by going to steal one of the patriarchs of Moses. Pretty big deal. That's good. Yeah.
Okay. That's interesting. That's interesting.
And so not knowing where his body was could cause them to question that, to come to that conclusion.
Do you want to say something?
Okay. Yeah. So what might the Israelites do if they did find out?
Yeah. So there could be those who would go back and want to take vengeance on him or could go the other way. It could become a place of worship.
All of these things are possible. There's a lot of possibilities, right?
I submit to you that on the doorstep to the promised land where they're going to go in there and then we've already been prophesied that in prosperity they will drift and follow the false gods.
They don't need any more stumbling blocks. Right. They don't need to know where they don't need the trouble of burying Moses and they don't need the trouble of where Moses was buried.
They just don't need the problem. And so why God did it, we don't know. The scripture doesn't say.
But we can see it makes a lot of sense for him to do that. He buried him himself and did not tell them where he buried him.
Verse seven, although Moses was 120 years old when he died, his eye was not dim nor his vigor abated. That means he was healthy and strong.
Verse eight, so the sons of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab 30 days when the days of weeping and mourning for Moses had come to an end.
So for 30 days they stayed there and wept and mourned for Moses.
Verse nine, we're almost done with the text. Now Joshua the son of Nun was filled with the spirit of wisdom for Moses had laid his hands on him.
And the sons of Israel listened to him and did as the Lord had commanded Moses. So it's starting off pretty good. Right.
Verse ten, since then no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses whom the Lord knew face to face.
For all the signs and wonders which the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt against Pharaoh, all his servants and all his land.
And for all the mighty power and for all the great terror which Moses performed in the sight of all Israel.
So basically this is a prophecy saying since that writing and it would go on for a long time and be like that, that there had never come a prophet.
Even though there would come prophets, there had never come a prophet like Moses.
But elsewhere we do have a prophecy that there would eventually come somebody like Moses, somebody greater than Moses even.
And we know who that is. Okay. So first of all, I want to give you a little background on this text.
So we know that Moses is not going in. We get that even here. He's dying in this passage.
In Deuteronomy 32, 51, and 52, God gives the reason that Moses was not permitted to enter the promised land. We studied that back in the day.
And this is because he said, you broke faith with me or you were unfaithful.
You broke faith with me in the presence of the Israelites at the waters of Meribah, Kadesh, in the desert of Zin.
And because you did not uphold my holiness among the Israelites, therefore you will see the land only from a distance and you will not enter the land I am giving to the people of Israel.
God was true to his promise. He showed Moses the promised land, but he does not let him enter in.
Now that incident then is recorded back in Numbers 20. So not in Deuteronomy, but in Numbers 20.
And when we went through 32, we looked at that briefly. Basically nearing the end of the 40 years of wandering, they were in the desert of Zin and there was no water.
And everybody is upset. Right? And they're complaining against Moses and Aaron.
They're turning against them to the point that they might have killed Moses and Aaron. It's getting really bad. Right?
Moses and Aaron go into the town of Meying. They prostrate themselves. He was to get down on their face before God.
God told Moses and Aaron to gather the assembly and speak to the rock and water would come forth.
Moses took the staff and gathered the men. Then seemingly in anger, Moses said, listen you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?
And then Moses struck the rock twice with his staff. Water came from the rock as God had promised.
But God immediately told Moses and Aaron that because they failed to trust him enough to honor him as holy, they would not bring the children of Israel to the promised land.
You see that? So that's the event. Now right away this punishment seems harsh to us, but when we look closely at Moses' actions, we see several mistakes that Moses made.
And I submit to you that they are indicative of what I am calling today doorstep demise theology.
Okay? And I'll break that down as we go through. God still provided the water, but God had commanded him to speak to the rock and instead he struck it not once but two times and chastised the Israelites in anger.
Previously in Exodus 17, God had already told Moses to strike the rock to make water come out. So Moses kind of already had a process in mind.
But God says go and speak to the rock and Moses strikes the rock instead, which is not what God told him to do.
Okay? God's instructions here were different. God wanted Moses to trust him, especially after they had been in such close relationship for 40 years.
And you realize they've wandered in the wilderness with God and Moses talking all the time for 40 years.
Once you've walked with God, even as a Christian, once you've walked with God, had the Holy Spirit in you for 40 years, expectations rise.
Okay? You're supposed to start to get an understanding of God's character. There is growth in the Christian life.
Moses did not need to use force. All he needed to do was obey God and know that God would keep his promise.
Also, Moses took credit for bringing forth the water. He said, must we bring forth water from this rock?
Moses seemed to be taking credit for the miracle himself and with Aaron instead of attributing it to God.
Moses did this publicly in front of everybody. He gathered the whole assembly.
God could not let it go unpunished and expect the Israelites to understand his holiness.
Not all that long ago, I had some visitors to my house and we're sitting in the living room and just talking.
And the one person started to talk about events that were going on in somebody else's life just by way of gossip.
Not a prayer request, nothing compassionate or mean about it, but just telling what's going on.
And I said, okay, wait a minute, I'm going to stop you right there.
Now they said this with the people in the room. And I said, I'm going to stop you right there.
If you want us to pray for this person, we'd like to know to pray for them. That's okay. Just tell us something's going on.
We'll pray for them. You don't have to tell us what it is. But when you start getting into the details of what's going on, that's gossip.
And we don't do that here. Now I could have asked them to come out of the room.
I could have been private about it, but I didn't. Why didn't I? They publicly did it. So they were publicly corrected.
Moses abuses God essentially, and we're going to see just how bad that is in a second, in the presence of all of Israel.
And God publicly corrects him in the presence of all of Israel.
Notice that in the New Testament, we won't go there and read it, but in 1 Corinthians 10, the water giving rock is used to symbolize Christ.
In Exodus 17, the rock was struck and provided the water.
Just like Christ was struck, how many times? One time. Crucified. He was crucified once for always.
Opening up the life giving water to everybody.
Moses speaking to the rock in numbers could have been meant as a picture of prayer or a gentle coming to God
to request the outflowing of the living water that would sustain Israel as it had been doing.
God had already been doing that, but now God wanted him to do it this way.
Moses could have noticed. He's walked with God for 40 years. He could have said, hey, God's doing something a little different here.
God's changing something. This is not the way I got the water out of the rock last time.
So now something has happened, but the rock had already been struck as is the image of Jesus already being struck.
He was struck once and now he continues to provide living water for those who pray in faith and will receive it.
When Moses angrily struck the rock, he destroyed the biblical typology.
That means the biblical picture or the way it was supposed to look, what God was trying to teach.
It's as if I stood up in the Sunday school class and taught for 20 minutes on a really important scriptural topic
and then somebody raised their hand and totally said the opposite or twisted everything that I said.
You can't just walk away from that. This is what God is teaching. Moses mars it.
He basically destroys it and he has to be corrected in a way that everyone will realize what has happened.
His punishment is for disobedience, for pride, for misrepresentation of Christ's sacrifice was steep.
He was barred then from entering the promised land.
Yet, and this is key, even though that's true, we do not see Moses complain.
Not once. We do not see him complain about the punishment.
Instead, he continues to faithfully lead God's people and to honor God for the rest of his life
right up to the point at which God, however you believe he does it, takes his life.
So Moses goes all the way, but not quite. He's on the doorstep. He's close.
He would have been about to see the fruition of 40 years of leading a stiff-necked people.
Listen, as a pastor, I can tell you that I hope for nothing more after dealing with the stubbornness of Christian people in general,
myself and my family, right, after dealing with that stubbornness, I hope for nothing more than to see God glorify and something amazing happen.
For all of you in this room, I want to see you faithfully follow God and see him do something amazing in your life.
Not something I did, but something that he did.
And I'm always trying to point people to God because that's where it comes from. It doesn't come from me.
Moses would have been about to receive everything that he didn't build, right?
A house and probably a pretty darn nice one because he's Moses and they all look up to him, right?
A house and fields with crops already growing, right? All of that.
And as he stands there with God, he knows he's actually not going to receive it.
But it's not as bad as it looks. The real promised land is not of this life.
He already had prophesied that the people going into the land would squander their prosperity pursuing false gods,
God's enemies or the distractions of God's people.
Some think that Moses, that what he did or what happened in that moment was just that he got angry and that's what got him in this predicament.
But he did not follow the specific command that he was directed to. He might have acted in anger wrongly.
He ruined the imagery and typology of Jesus in the provision of God.
And he did all of those things in the midst of Israel.
He used force when gentleness would have been sufficient.
And it would have been a better picture of God's kingdom at work.
Hear me now when I say Moses, after 40 years of walking with God face to face, had not learned this most invaluable lesson.
And that is that there is nothing to be added to the work of God.
No amount of flashy human effort will enhance the likelihood of living water arising in a person.
You can go the length for them for 50 years. You can show up and carry their every burden.
You can tell them every chance that you get in flashy ways.
Buy them a new car and tell them I'm giving you this new car because Jesus will save your soul if you'll just let him.
No amount of flashy human effort will ever enhance the likelihood of the living water arising in God's people.
Ceremony, pomp, circumstance and more, they're all ruled out.
God says this, he said, just follow my commands. Just do that.
That brings us to three key points then in what I'm calling doorstep demise theology.
The first one is this. If in that moment when God would be glorified,
you embellish or act out in your own strength or teach a false teaching that is more flashy and appealing,
then you also may never see the true goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
That's hurtful. The psalmist wrote, had I not believed in the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living,
I would have perished. I would have fallen, stopped. However you want to believe that word is translated there exactly.
We've got to believe that God intervenes in life and He's going to do something on our behalf.
Jesus came for that purpose. Now obviously He came so He could be present. He came to give gift things.
He came so that we could experience Him personally, so that we could be born again and live a new life in Christ.
All of that is true, but your born again life is supposed to be a more abundant life.
It doesn't mean more money, not talking about prosperity, but there is a thing that God does that no one else can do
and God came so that He can do it. So that we can see the true goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
The great goodness of the Lord looks like this. God does what cannot be done.
You say that doesn't make any sense. That can't work out that way. And then it just happens.
Glory to God. You know how many times I've been at the hospital and the doctor said to some patient that we've been praying for,
well this is what the circumstance is right now. I can't explain it, the doctor says. I can't explain it medically.
This is not possible. And I say, well we've been praying like crazy. And the doctor says, well it looks like it worked.
Believer or not, God can do what no one else can do. And God wants to do those things. And they are wide and varied.
The great goodness of the Lord is that He does what cannot be done. Also, He gives what cannot be given.
Obviously we have the Holy Spirit, spiritual gifts, whatever. No one can do that for you except the Lord.
But beyond that, in that moment of need, the whole concept of feeding 5,000 people with a little boy's lunch was all about seeing.
Not that God can provide food for 5,000 people, but at the end of that there are baskets of leftovers to feed for days.
God's provision is not short. His arm is plenty long enough. God can give what cannot be given by all logical, reasonable understanding.
That can't be possible and yet God can give it. I am an example of that standing before you today.
Because for 25 years of my life, well at least 13 or 14, from the time I was about 12 or 13 years old,
I was so inhibited that to talk to a stranger or to give a presentation in front of the class in school,
my mouth would be full of cotton, my stomach full of butterflies, my hands sweaty, couldn't speak, couldn't talk, couldn't preach.
In my junior year of high school, I missed 38 days of school in order to avoid every presentation I might have in front of the class.
And also because I didn't really like going to school. When the time come and they got close to the S's and kind of come up on Stevenson pretty soon
and like you're three, four, five people away, I'd get sick. And I wouldn't go back for a week or 10 days until they were on to the next project.
And there's no chance the teacher is going to say, oh we're going to go back and you're going to give me a report.
Even though that affected my grades, but then I would do all the other things necessary to make sure, not my homework,
but everything else to make sure that my grades would stay up. At least decent because I'd get in trouble with my parents if I didn't.
The point is, God took that person who couldn't go in a restaurant and order a fish sandwich without tartar sauce
because I was afraid of what the person behind the counter would think of me and turned me into somebody
that could tell somebody about Jesus who has spit and venom and hate in their eyes the whole time I'm talking about Jesus.
Or they can stand up and preach a sermon when I can't stand at a counter and order no tartar sauce.
God can do and give what cannot be done and what cannot be given.
God can turn an outcome from a loss or a struggling to survive into an incredible victory.
That's Romans 8. He can turn every bad thing that you're going through into something good.
If life lasts long enough and Jesus doesn't come again, then at that point in time, everything that you're going through,
no matter how bad it sucks, will turn out for your benefit as long as you love the Lord and are called according to His purpose.
I didn't make that up. That's written by Paul to the Church of Romans, command from God, this is the way we live.
We trust that the Lord will... Listen, it's very true that lyric that's going around right now.
If it ain't good, it ain't finished.
God can turn an outcome from a loss or a struggling to survive into an incredible victory.
God gives what cannot be given and God does what cannot be done and God turns an outcome into an incredible victory.
That is the great goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
Moreover, God fulfills His promises even while it takes faith to even see the promises.
There are people that don't even believe that there is a salvation available.
They can't see it. Somebody's explained it to them and they still haven't been able to assent to it. They can't get it.
That salvation is available.
While we can't hardly see God's promises, let alone trust that they are in the final stages of fulfillment while that's happening,
God is already fulfilling His promises. He's already doing it.
If you're here and you're a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, God is already standing at the gates of Heaven waiting to welcome you in for eternity.
He's already there. He's already fulfilled that promise in making you a born-again believer.
He's already ready to accept you.
And some days you have a hard time following Him or have a hard time believing in what He says.
And yet, He is fulfilling His promises even while it's hard for us to believe.
The great goodness of the Lord in the land of the living, then?
Well, we're supposed to be living that out.
That brings us to a certain set of action.
Of course, if you will, Paul lays that out in Romans 8 in the middle of which is that verse that I just quoted.
I'm going to go there. Breeze through Romans 8 beginning in verse 25.
This will go by quickly.
But if we hope for what we do not see with perseverance, we wait eagerly for it.
That's talking about the coming Heaven, right?
It says, And in the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we should,
but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.
And He who searches the hearts knows that the mind of the Spirit is because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
And we know that God causes all things to work together for the good to those who love God,
to those who are called according to His purpose.
There it is.
For whom He foreknew, that means He saw it coming, He also predestined, that means He made it happen,
to become conformed to the image of His Son.
And He might be the firstborn among many brethren, that's us.
And whom He predestined, that means He was making it happen, these He also called.
That means He called you.
And whom He called, these He also justified, that means He made it as if you never sinned.
And whom He justified, those He glorified, that means He gives a new body, gives a new existence, born again, 31.
What then shall we say to these things?
If God is for us, who is against us?
He who did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?
Who will bring a charge against God's elect, that's us.
God is the one who justifies, who is the one who condemns.
Christ Jesus is He who died, yes rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword?
Just as it is written, for thy sake we are being put to death all day long, we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.
But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer, that means even if you are facing any of those bad things He just listed,
we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.
For because I am convinced that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth
nor any other thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Listen to me, the great goodness of God is available in the land of the living.
The problem is there is a set of behaviors, a way of acting, a way of believing, a way of trusting in order to see those things clearly,
in order to see them unveiled in your life and Paul was calling us to it.
So while you are being eaten by a lion you can claim that God is amazingly powerful and can turn this out for your victory.
Don't you understand? We might die for Christ.
And if I may say it this way, if we gripe or moan or complain along the way because our car broke down or because somebody got sick
or we didn't have the money that we wanted or somebody said something we didn't like,
how do you think we are going to behave when we are dying for Christ?
Doorstep Demise Theology, Moses said, we stand our ground and continue to do everything that God wants us to do right up to the doorstep
even though we will not fully see, I have been told now, I will not fully see God's blessings poured out the way I might have.
The great goodness of the Lord in God doing what cannot be done, God giving what cannot be given,
turning an outcome from a loss and struggling to survive into an incredible victory, that God will fulfill His promise,
all of that, I won't get to go into all of that.
And yet, He said, I will stand my ground and still do what it is that I am supposed to do in the meantime.
The second thing to see and hear is that your amazing gifts are blessings from God,
but God can remove you from the equation if you follow a similar course to Moses.
Before anyone in this room would say, well I am immune, the New Testament book of Hebrews is very clear, we are not immune.
Those who fell in the sand and did not get to see God's goodness in life in the promised land, it says we are given as an example to us.
I would say it this way, if Moses who walked and talked with God face to face every single day
can be put in the position of practicing doorstep demise theology, you and I can as well.
Last week we talked about the unilateral, that means God did it, God decided it without your help.
Subdivided blessings, that means He pours out blessings to individuals, to families, to churches.
We talked about receiving them, using them, celebrating them, and in the life of Moses we are reminded of the sovereign,
God in charge, unilateral, only God decides, and kingdom focused for the benefit of the purpose to come into relationship
and live in relationship with mankind, that's what God is all about, nature of these gifts.
I'll say that again very simply.
Moses was clearly gifted by God, Moses had God working in his life,
Moses was spending time face to face with God, and in this moment in front of the tribes of Israel,
in front of the assembly, Moses acted in a way that said that he had forgotten that God is sovereign,
that God is the decider of the gifts and the decider of the methods, and that all that God gives us has one purpose,
so that people can come into a right relationship with God.
And he went out when he was supposed to speak, and instead he struck the rock twice.
The amazing gifts are blessings from God, but God can remove you from the equation if you follow a similar course to what's laid out here.
There was a woman, and I've told this story a couple of times, I don't share her name, I never asked her if I could and I don't,
who we led to Christ at one of our block parties, and then she'd come to church once, and then she didn't come to church after that,
and I met her one night while we were Christmas caroling, living over on Platte Street,
and I invited her to church and I said, you know, you said you'd accept Christ, you're going to come and live for the Lord,
and I might ask you the same thing, right?
I said, Ron, are you going to live for the Lord? Haley, are you going to live for the Lord? Hannah, are you going to live for the Lord?
I might ask you the same thing, I asked her, I just like that, I said, are you going to live for the Lord?
You said you were going to live for the Lord, you're going to live for the Lord?
And she's like, well, I can't come to church, I can't do this, can't do that because I'm too busy,
I'm working a job and a half, and I'm babysitting my grandkids on the weekends, and blah, blah, blah.
And I said, well, you can bring your grandkids, we'll take care of them, and you can worship God,
and she said, well, I don't know if my daughter wants me to do that, but I'll check, and then after that she never did come to church.
I went back by there, talked to her briefly, and then we didn't have a prolonged conversation again until the next year we were Christmas caroling,
I was standing on her front porch, and I said, hey, I thought you were going to start coming to church,
because in the meantime I had talked to her and she said she was going to start coming, and she never did,
and I said, I thought you were going to start coming, she said, well, I started working a lot of hours,
and working like two jobs, babysitting my grandkids, and I can't do it, and I said, well, you know, if you're a follower of the Lord Jesus, right?
She said, yeah, I said, well, you know, you're supposed to be worshiping God, that's something you're supposed to be doing,
and she said, well, I just can't do it, I'm too busy, or whatever, and I said, well, I felt lead in the spirit,
I said, I'm going to ask you, what's it going to take?
What's it going to take for God to get your attention, for you to say that some of these other things that you're saying are so important,
are not as important as following God, for you to mark that, what would it take?
And I'm thinking, if there's anything I can do, I want to help her, but I felt lead in the spirit to ask that question,
and she said, well, God will have to strike me, God would have to show me something so blatant, so obvious, get my attention,
that I have to change, and I felt lead in the spirit, I said, well, I wouldn't say that, I said, I wouldn't say that,
because God will do it, God is not quiet, you know, we reap what we sow, and I said, so I'll pray for you,
and I would encourage you to come, whatever, and she didn't start coming.
One more time, Christmas Caroling, and next year, I go to her house, and there's a bunch of people from the church with me,
Christmas Caroling, and there she is, and I recognized her right away, and I said, what's up?
So I thought you were going to start coming to church, well, she took a long time to get to the door, she was walking on a cane,
dragging her leg, and I said, what's the deal? What happened?
I said, well, you should let us know so we can pray for you, she said, well, you remember I told you God would have to strike me to get my attention?
I said, yeah, so I was working two jobs, 40 hours a week, babysitting my grandkids on the weekend, not coming to church,
and so I went into church one day, she was working at Tom's restaurant down there on Front Street,
Tom's Barbecue, or whatever it's called, and she said, I was standing there, and I had a massive stroke, and I fell down, and I almost died,
and I said, wow, I mean, that's terrible, you know, and we prayed for her, and we sang Christmas Carols,
and I went to go leave, and I said, you know, is there any possibility that you just come worship with us, go somewhere,
get worshiping God, let God be first in your life, you know what she said?
She said, well, I don't know, I had a stroke, I don't get out very much, and I don't feel very good, I can't really do a lot of the things I used to be able to do,
I'm not working, I'm applying for disability, she said, I'm still babysitting my grandkids on the weekend,
but I really shouldn't even be doing that according to the doctor, whatever, and she still didn't come to church.
Your amazing gifts, she was working two 40-hour a week jobs, and babysitting her grandkids on the weekend,
those are amazing things, having grandkids is an amazing thing, right?
Your amazing gifts are blessings from God, but God can remove you from the equation if you follow a similar course to what Moses followed.
The third thing to see in this text in here is that God continues in goodness, and God is not victimizing those he removes.
This is the problem, right? It's really hurtful to think that I might screw up bad, and God might take me out of the equation.
I don't want to think about that, and then when we see somebody who screws up bad, and God takes somebody out of the equation,
we feel so terrible for them, man, they're really going through hardships, really bad, really feel bad for what's happened to them.
That lady, I have tremendous compassion for her, I could tell you several more stories about that.
There's an old Hispanic gentleman who lived up on Greenwood that we went to visit, a couple of different guys went with me,
and we went to visit him, and he had received Christ as one of our block parties, and I kept trying to get him to come to church, trying to get him to come to church,
and he's like, I don't got to go to church, I love the Lord, I'm following Jesus, worshiping at home is enough.
I said, no, I see you need to come worship. He said, if you're not going to go with us, let us help you find somewhere, worship with the church, get plugged in, serve other believers.
He had spiritual, we talked about spiritual gifts, I visited him like ten times.
Finally I go to knock on the door, and she said, and that lady who had never come to the door previously, because she had health conditions, you know,
she could hardly get up out of bed, and she had never come to the door. He always said, well she can't come, and I'd be visiting him,
and I said, well talk to your wife, and she had health concerns, she could never come to the door, she'd come to the door,
and I thought, that's weird, she'd come to the door, and I said, what's going on, where is, and I named him,
and she said, well he had a massive stroke, he can't get out of bed, they're expecting him to die within a few weeks.
And I'm not saying God did that, I feel terribly compassionate toward people who are removed from the equation because of this very thing that we're talking about today.
But God continues in his goodness, he's not victimizing those he removes, but he's disclosing the saving truth to all who would yet listen.
When all the assembly of Israel is present, and Moses strikes the rock twice and says, must we give you water from this rock,
instead of just walking up gently and saying rock, give the water, the rock's already been struck, right, instead of,
he gets flashy, flamboyant, outspoken, angry, and he does all that, when God does, then God's gotta fix it,
he's gotta do something, because if you don't, then all those people are being led astray by who?
By the person that God invested in, by the person that God gave the gifts to, by the leader, if you will, of this people.
And if you are with him, you too will be about the business of God, you will be doing the things of the kingdom.
In Acts 4, the disciples quoted this way, they say, there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved, as Jesus.
And it was in the context of, we can't stop talking about it, and then they said, stop talking about it, stop talking,
it beat them, said you gotta stop talking about it, and they said, well you decide for us, is it right that we should listen to God, or to you?
Because we cannot stop talking about the things that we have seen, right?
And then they were persecuted, and those two disciples were eventually put to death for their faith,
because they could not stop talking about what they had seen.
The truth is that God is slow to anger, we talked about that on Tuesday night, we had a Whacked Out Simple stuff,
I had a little video that we watched, and had a stretched out guy with a long nose, and in the Old Testament it talks about,
he's long of nose, because it means his nose doesn't get hot quickly, and that's what it means when you get angry,
your nose and your face turns red, gets hot.
God is slow to anger, however there comes a time when his purposes have to take priority, souls are at stake, the kingdom of God is at stake.
And if you have put yourself in a position of not doing what it is that God would have you to do,
we'll talk about that in the conclusion, then you have to realize that you are risking at some point in time,
God saying, I've had enough.
1 Thessalonians 5.3 says, while they are saying peace and safety, the destruction will come upon them suddenly,
like birth pangs upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape.
Proverbs 29 says, a man who hardens his neck after much reproof will suddenly be broken beyond remedy.
There's only so many times that God is going to chastise and correct us and let it continue,
eventually it becomes an open, obvious thing that we as supposed Christians are not following God the way he gave us to follow him,
but following God somehow in our own strength, in our own ways, or manipulating what should be happening.
When Sherri and I were living in Michigan and God called us to move back to Michigan, we had not been tithing,
we didn't really know what tithing was.
We had learned enough to know that we were supposed to be giving, and we were giving fairly generously actually, we thought,
and then we learned right about that same period of time about tithing, we started tithing on the net,
and both our houses were going into foreclosure, and $29,000 with a credit card debt overnight became within about nine months actually,
became $89,000 with a credit card debt.
So both houses going into foreclosure, going to have nowhere to live, $89,000 with a credit card debt,
and the only income we had was my little part-time job which was making about $100 a week, and Sherri's unemployment,
and she's six months pregnant, and between the two of us done over 500 resumes and applications, we're losing literally everything.
And we look back on that time, we realize it was because God said, move to Michigan.
God did not say, buy that house. We did that on our own.
Just as Moses said, or just as God said to Moses, speak to the rock, and Moses didn't speak to it, he struck it.
So we did the same thing. We run on ahead of God, or we thought, wow, we're living the abundant life in the Lord.
We can afford a $125,000 house on top of the house we already own, and hopefully that one will sell,
but if it doesn't, we've got this great big beautiful house, and they're telling us we can afford it,
and we're listening to somebody other than God, and God said, you're going to live there, but he didn't say, go buy it.
And so we went and bought it, because God said we're going to live there.
Then we found out at the closing that the people who were selling us the house had to bring in fives and ones and cash,
because they couldn't have a bank account, because every access to money they had had been garnered because they were so deep in debt.
And all we had to do was just say, can we rent the house?
And we could have rented the house for $800 a month instead of buying it for over $1,200 a month.
And we only lived there for 17 months, and then God moved us back to sleep.
Don't you think God didn't know he was going to do that? We ran on ahead of God.
So we're tithing on the net, and our finances never ever line up.
Then we get to Perrysburg after God provides us miraculously with a job that comes with an apartment, so we won't be homeless, which is awesome.
Moves us in, and there's tons of miracles done in that whole story. We're doing exactly what God wants us to do at that time.
God does all of that, and we're still only tithing on the net, and our finances don't work.
If God's doing all this other stuff, because a free apartment.
We had a waterbed, and the day we moved in, we filled the waterbed up, went to dinner, came back, took the hose off, and the waterbed was warm.
We're like, that can't be. That's not how that works. Doesn't make any sense.
So we slept in our apartment on a waterbed the day we moved in. That doesn't make any sense.
Later we found out it was because the plumbing in the laundry room had been misplumbed, and it was on the hot water side.
And so the hot water tank had been struggling to keep up the whole time, and it had pumped the waterbed full of the perfect temperature of water.
Whatever. God's like that. God can do what only God can do.
God can give when you need it. God can do it. So we move in. We're still on the net.
Our finances don't work. Why? Why don't our finances work out?
So we go to a meeting at East Littled Baptist Church. Pastor Don talks about tithing.
He says it's on the gross. It's the first thing. It's got to come out before anything else. Before taxes, before health insurance, anything else.
Do that. So we went home. That was like, I don't know what day it was, Thursday night.
That Friday night, Shira gets home from work. We're talking about it. I said, you know, I think we should start tithing on the gross.
He said, well, our budget doesn't balance. We're already, we're $311 in the hole every month. How can we do that?
Doesn't make any sense. I said, well, if we're $311 in the hole, how much is it to tithe on the gross?
And we figured it out. It was like $80 more. I'm like, whatever.
You know, we're going through it. What's the difference between $311 in the hole or $391?
What if God actually does something because we said we were going to do what we're supposed to?
So we decided at 9 o'clock at night to tithe on the gross. Never wrote a check. Never gave a dollar different.
Nothing ever changed. 9 a.m. the next morning, the loan officer calls and we're trying to refinance the house in Northwood to save it
because it was going on a foreclosure and trying to get back on our feet and deal with all this debt and everything.
And he said, we think we can actually get it approved.
The only way we get it approved is if we finance your car into the loan and the car only had like 13 months left to pay off on it.
And I said, you know what? Fine, let's just do it. So then we looked it up and the car payment was $311 a month.
And so that moment in time, our budget balance for the first time ever and all we did was decide to tithe.
Previously, we were tithing, but tithing on the net. And that's not how God said to do it.
I'm not preaching on tithing. I'm explaining to you that in every person's life,
there comes a moment at which you will approach the doorstep of God's amazing blessings, of the goodness of God in this lifetime.
I've talked to so many people who tell me this is wrong in my life. I can't do this. I can't do that.
And all that is happening and you get down to it and after like 10 or 11 things that are going wrong,
there's nothing that can be done to fix it. I'm like, so what are you going to do? Just lay down and die?
So well, I've got health concerns and I've got this problem. I've got no money and my brother-in-law and my sister and my wife
and my cousin and my house and my car and my furnace and my…
I'm like, okay, well I don't have 10 grand. So we can't just go in there and fix everything that you just listed off.
And by the way, I can't fix people. The Gospel can do that, but I can't do that.
So in other words, I cannot fix your problems. I cannot do it. So what are you going to do? Just lay down and die?
No, I'm going to keep going. Okay, so then just pick one of those things and turn it over to the Lord.
And in the meantime, ask yourself, what is it that I'm not doing?
How am I living in a way that I'm stopping short of where God will do His goodness in my life?
Before we go to the conclusion, I don't want to mention it as a side note, but I do want to mention it,
that this passage is pointing forward to Jesus. The reason Moses doesn't get to go into the promised land
is because he was messing up the typology of Jesus. The reason that no prophet had ever come by that time
who was like Moses because Jesus had not yet come to the Israelites.
Then that brings us to the conclusion. The real question, I suppose, the real question that nags at me in this text
is how did Moses walk with God and meet with God face to face for over four decades
and not represent what God was about before the people?
He saw the people. He saw the situation. He knew what God wanted to do.
Was Moses trying to help God get His point across?
Had Moses failed to move on to God demonstrating His love toward them while they were yet sinners?
Because that's what happens. Christ gets struck one time, living water flowing out of the rock after that, right?
So that's God demonstrating His grace. When Moses says, must we give you water out of this rock?
That doesn't sound very gracious. That doesn't sound like he was practicing grace.
When Moses strikes the rock instead of speaking to the rock gently, that doesn't sound gracious.
So was he failing to move on with God to the new teaching, if you will?
If Christ was struck true, but only the one time really, then Christ was actively providing the living water
from that point on that would sustain God's people. And Moses clearly doesn't get it.
Now it's figurative language a lot of times when we say the living water rising up in people, right?
John 4. But actually it's literal. You live and live abundant life because living water is rising up in you.
In 2 Peter chapter 3, we are in the conclusion and this is the last verses we'll read.
So we're going to go there and read those. 2 Peter chapter 3.
2 Peter chapter 3, beginning in verse 3, it says as follows.
Know this first of all. Then on the last day mockers will come with their mocking,
following after their own lusts and saying, where is the promise of his coming?
For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.
For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago,
and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed,
being flooded with water. But the present heavens and earth by his word are being reserved for fire,
kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years
and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise as some count slowness,
but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance.
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar,
and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.
Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness?
We live in a day where people mock God and say, oh, say Jesus is coming again, right?
Why hasn't he come yet? Where is the Church of Christ?
They want to know where the things they read, the little bit that they read in the Bible are.
And our job is to be the Church of Christ and to look forward to His coming.
Over in verse 14 then it says, Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things,
you are diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless.
And then in 17 it says, You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand,
be on your guard, lest being carried away by the error of unprincipled men, you fall from your own steadfastness.
See, we are in danger of the very same thing.
Human planning works. I come out of a business background.
This is how you make a plan in a business background.
Assess the problem. What's a problem?
Divide the plan. What if we do this? Let's do that.
Then enact the plan. Take the steps that you laid out.
It means you don't change the process while you're doing it. You enact the plan.
And then you assess the outcome. What result did we get?
Then you revise the plan and you start over again.
So if you start with a problem, assess the problem, come up with a plan, enact the plan,
the plan doesn't solve the problem, you go back to the drawing board and start a new plan.
That's how it works. If you don't do it that way and you work through there and you get to the,
assess the outcome part before you get done enacting the plan, you will screw up the plan.
A lot of times we get right to the moment of solving the problem, fixing it, overcoming it,
and we screw it up because we're assessing it before we actually do it.
A young couple in our church repeatedly bringing up their prayer requests because they were down to one car.
We need help with transportation, God please help us, we need to find money to buy a car, all these kinds of things.
Finally, after the car sat for nine months, undriven, and they're just driving the one car, limping by that whole time,
and he can tell he goes over to the house, the repair took less than an hour and cost 99 cents.
So for nine months they asked for prayer for a car, for nine months they begged God to give them five grants
so they could buy a good used vehicle, for nine months they suffered driving two trips to work,
to her work and then back to his work and then back to her work and then back home again every day for nine months.
For a one hour 99, you've seen it, people do that kind of stuff all the time because we think, no it won't work,
no it's going to be expensive, no it's going to be too hard.
You get to the doorstep of God's goodness doing something and instead of carrying out the plan, you assess the plan and say you can't.
Say I won't go one step further. We don't even do it by the worldly method.
The worldly method, the biblical or the business method is devise a plan and act the plan, assess the outcome, revise the plan, go back to the beginning.
That's how worldly wisdom says to do it and we don't even do that.
We get wrapped up in the assess the plan thinking about it and we really would wish that God would just miraculously solve it
but since He hasn't yet we just keep begging God to miraculously solve it when all we really have to do is devise a plan and act the plan,
assess the outcome and revise the plan if it doesn't work.
But we don't even do that. Instead, many times we just get stuck.
But guess what? Devise a plan, act the plan, assess the outcome, revise the plan.
That's not God's way of doing things. God has just one plan.
There's just one plan and it is this. Jesus Christ dying on the cross, opening up a personal relationship between believers and God.
Don't live a doorstep demise theology which is one that thinks one, I don't need to obey, or two, I can add something to what God is doing, do it flashy, do it my way,
or three, emphasize the character and the content of the people here or the road that you're going down rather than the character and the content of God.
Hear me now, your entire life, your entire story, everything that has ever happened to you to this point and everything that will ever happen to you to the moment you enter heaven is about God.
Mine is not about you, mine is not about me, it's about God.
God wanted to bring you, if you're here and you're a Christian you know that He wanted to bring you to salvation and He did and now you walk with Him daily and that does not mean,
just because Jesus would die for you if you were the only person who needed it, does not mean that it's about you, it's still about Him.
And if you get to the doorstep and you don't get to go into the goodness of God because you chose not to obey as a Christian or as a non-Christian,
because you think you can add something to what God is doing, you can be flashy or flamboyant or defend God or do a better job of communicating it than God can,
you cannot add anything to the truth, if you add something to it, it becomes a lie.
If you forget to emphasize the character and content of God over everything else, over your enjoyment, over your personal choices, over your relationships,
over your family, over even your own salvation, if you demand now what God has already promised,
God I'm not going to go forward to do anything more until you fulfill your promises to me and fix X, right?
Or I'm waiting for somebody to tell me, I had a man tell me, I'm not going to tell anybody about Jesus until God specifically tells me to tell somebody,
that way I know that person will get saved, to which I said, how do you go about then discounting the roughly a hundred scriptures that says spread this truth to everybody who will listen?
So God, you're saying you're waiting for God to specifically tell you to share with somebody when God has already told you to share with everybody.
So you're saying God, I won't do what you tell me to do until you specifically tell me to do it and how to do it and when to do it.
If you demand now what God has already promised, you're practicing a doorstep demise theology.
Do not be found in unbelief. That was the verses where it says, God says, this is exactly why you will not be allowed to go in.
It's because they were found in unbelief. They did not trust God in the midst of the Israelites.
Talking to the rock wasn't going to be enough. They had to bust it open.
If you have to bust it open, if you have to do it in your own strength, if you have to do something in your own strength, above and beyond what God can do,
then what's going to happen is you're going to be doing just what you can do and not what God can do because that is not how God works.
But let us not miss that Moses showed us this great example.
Even a doorstep demise theology serves to the end.
Moses had already been told that he would only get to the doorstep and never get to go into the promised land.
He would only get to the doorstep of God's great goodness and never get to go in.
He never received the house that somebody else built and the crops that somebody else planted.
And yet, even though he had sinned against God, even though that was true, he had turned to God and he had walked with God after that fact,
and he went to the doorstep and he went faithfully.
So maybe you're here today and you say that after being a Christian, it's possible that after I became a Christian I have not lived for the Lord.
I have tried to embellish what God was doing or I've tried to demand things from God or barter with God over whether I'll do what I'm supposed to do or not.
Maybe you've been disobedient or unfaithful like Moses was.
Even if that were so, and even if God has already told you that at some point in time he's going to take you out
so you will not get to see the true goodness that God intended for you in your life,
even if that were so, you stay the course, you serve the Lord, you do what it is the best you know how,
whatever your gifting is, you use it, whatever your blessings are, you put it into work now.
You didn't then, that was your own foolishness, now use it for his glory because we live not just for the goodness.
Now it's hard, I get it. It's hard to live this life not expecting the goodness of the Lord in this life.
The psalmist said he wouldn't make it.
And I would struggle except I expect to see the goodness of the Lord. You should.
And now we've got this prosperity gospel out there, we preach prosperity gospel,
I'm not going to preach that God's going to do good things in the life of a believer.
The Word said God's going to do good things in the life of a believer.
Also sometimes bad things happen.
There is sorrow and sighing on the road of holiness.
So even if you walk the straight and narrow and get it all right, you may get up to the doorstep
and somebody may kill you before you get to go into the true goodness of the Lord in this lifetime.
But at least it won't be God taking you out.
And even though God took him out, we see him later in the promised land.
He and Elijah meet with Jesus and Jesus is transfigured before the disciples.
So he did make it to heaven.
And you can too by believing in the Lord, by accepting his mercy for your sin,
by accepting his grace which is paid for through Jesus.
You can be inhabited by the Holy Spirit and be saved.
And be headed for the Kingdom of God and be living in the Kingdom of God
and be a representative of the Kingdom of God here on earth.
And if you remain faithful until the end,
then you won't have to worry about a doorstep demise theology
where you might get stopped before seeing the true goodness of the Lord on this earth.
But if you don't remain faithful to the end,
you would be wise to recognize that a doorstop demise theology requires you
to return to the Lord and remain faithful.
David wound up in a position of a doorstop demise theology.
He lost so much because of the woman that he stole
when he should have been doing the work of the Lord.
There are others in scripture, you see it regularly.
Many.
I don't want to be like that and I don't want you to be like that.
But believe me, a doorstop demise theology is still better
than being lost and going to hell.
If we're here today and you have not accepted Jesus Christ as Lord,
that means he tells you what to do and you do it
or a Savior that you need to pray for your sins,
then you do that right now.
Not waiting for a prayer, not waiting for a song,
right in your heart right now and say, OK, Lord, I get it.
You want me, you wanted me so bad that you even died for me
and I want to live for you and let you live through me.
And that's it.
He'll provide forgiveness of your sins because he promises
whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.
And by his grace, he'll inhabit you in his Holy Spirit
and you'll live for him the rest of your life.
If you're here today and you say, I am a Christian,
but I also realize that these blessings that God has given me,
I have not been obedient with them.
I have not been faithful.
And I don't want to be in a position of missing out on the goodness
of the Lord in this lifetime.
So I want to repent.
I want to turn back to God and do what God would have me do.
Whatever that is, usually you turn back to God,
he'll review something new to you, something different to you
or something that you missed.
When we missed that whole story I told you about missing,
we weren't supposed to buy that house,
we didn't even know that until years later.
That's hindsight.
While we were doing it, we were just grateful
that God was taking care of us
and baffled as to why our finances wouldn't line up.
Praying constantly,
the Lord, we don't understand, we can't figure it out.
And then after we figured it out,
or after God specifically led us to do what we did,
then we look back now and it's so plain, it's so obvious.
Just turn to the Lord
and use whatever it is he's blessed you with for his glory.
And even if by some chance you don't get to see
the full goodness of the Lord,
the amazing goodness of the Lord in this lifetime,
you'll at least be in heaven for an eternity
and that's no consolation prize, that's the real prize.
And maybe you know somebody,
you know a friend or a family member
that needs to realize that if they're saying that they believe,
they're saying that they're following Jesus,
and yet they're squandering their gifts
for their behaving unfaithfully or disobedient,
or I know a preacher who only preaches
but add an extra flash and bang.
There are a lot of churches that it's got to be a rock concert.
It's got to be thousands of people there.
And everybody on the stage has got to wear all the same color clothes.
The pastor gets to pick all the music so that it lines up with the message.
Okay, emotional.
We're out in Southwest America where there's a movement
where they sing worship for an hour and a half minimum
before they'll go to the Word.
Because they've discovered that's when people get saved.
And they say it's because people are experiencing God during worship,
but the truth is they're exhausting people.
They're brainwashing people.
They're forcing people to make a decision that isn't real.
We're not going to do that.
Our worship is about worshiping God,
and our Word is just what He says it is, and that's it.
And you're in the right place to make whatever decision God is calling you to make.
And as we sing this coming song, just make it.
And if you've already made it, then make it public.
That's the praise team to come forward and let us know what it means with this song.
And then if you're here, I'll ask you to stand if you're comfortable and able to do so.
Either way, sing.
And if you're making some kind of decision responding, then don't sing.
Just come.
Show me what that thing is.
Well, raise your hand wherever you are.
And I'll call on you as soon as you stop singing.
You can share it from right here to your standing.
John says, even though he killed me, still I would worship him.
You're only close to me.
Never let me go.
I'll lay it all down again.
To hear you say that I'm your friend.
You were my design.
No one else will.
Nothing else.