God Has Set The Land Before You

So this morning, we're going to be continuing our study in Deuteronomy chapter 1. In our passage this morning, Moses recounts the original travel from Mount Horeb, Mount Sinai, through the wilderness to the Jordan, where the Israelites were supposed to cross over into the Promised Land to take possession of it. At first glance, you might read this passage and say, oh, well, it's just a transition. It's just saying, and then they went from A to B. And that's how it may read to us, but that's not how it would have read to the Israelites. They would have read it as their current history. They would have been thinking about their families. They would have been thinking about who had been there previously and who was not there now, meaning all of their fathers and all of their uncles and grandfathers. They would have been, as a people, fatherless in many ways. They're going to transition from the mountain where God revealed himself to them and promised to be their God.

to the place where they were supposed to enter into the promised land and to receive his blessing and rest. And yet they're going to stand in the exact same place that their fathers had stood, ready to receive that blessing some 40 years previously. They're going to return to the place where it all went south, so to speak. It all went poorly. And so this morning we're going to be considering how the Israelites should have behaved when they were there the first time on the border of the promised land. And my hope is that God will humble us. and help us to trust him more and to follow his lead in our lives so that we don't ourselves end up in a wilderness of our own making. A lot of the reason God gives us the scripture is to teach us and to warn us. I can't remember who said it, but I remember reading, I think it may have just been yesterday. It says that experience is the teacher of fools. Experience is the teacher of fools, okay?

that only fools will learn by their own experience, but that wise men will learn by the experience of other people so that they'll avoid the same pitfalls. And so what we have this morning is a retelling of a big failure in the history of God's people. And we would do really well to learn from that so that we aren't found repeating it in our own lives. Our text this morning is Deuteronomy 1, verses 19 to 21. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord? Excuse me. This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. Then we set out from Horeb and went through all that great and terrible wilderness which you saw on the way to the hill country of the Amorites, just as the Lord our God had commanded us. And we came to Kadesh Barnea. I said to you, you have come to the hill country of the Amorites, which the Lord our God is about to give us. See, the Lord your God has placed the land before you. Go up, take possession, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has spoken to you.

Do not fear or be dismayed. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. So we'll start with a question. How long was the journey from Horeb to Kadesh Barnea? It's a bit of a trick question. There's actually two answers. If I were to ask you, how long does it take to travel from Horeb to Kadesh Barnea? You might remember that just a few verses before in the very beginning of Deuteronomy that Moses said, In verse 2, it is 11 days journey from Horeb by the way of Mount Seir to Kadesh Barnea. So that's how long it took to travel that far. But you might have understood my question to be, how long did it take the Israelites to get from Horeb to Kadesh Barnea? And it was not 11 days. Well, it was 11 days in that they made the journey. But then because of their behavior while at Kadesh Barnea, on the border of the hill country of the Amorites, They were judged and given 40 years wandering in the wilderness as a consequence for their unbelief and for their fear. And so how long did it take them to get from Horeb to Kadesh Barnea? Well, from the time they left until the time they arrived to enter in, 40 years. A long time. We'll get into this in the coming weeks as we study the spies going into the land and the people's response.

and the anger of the Lord burning against them and the judgments that they faced as a result. But what we have to remember here is that this nation that has now come and is receiving these words from Moses, many of them have not been there before. Their fathers were there, but now their fathers are not there with them. The oldest men that would have been in this camp, in this group, would have been about 60 years old. Because the Lord said he was going to strike down all the men that were older than 20. So if you had men that were in their teens that had gone through the 40 years, they'd be in their mid to upper 50s, right? And so if we looked in this room and said, raise your hand if you're 20 or older, most of the men in this room would be gone. My guess and my thinking about it is that probably Sam would end up being the oldest person left. You're not 20 yet, are you? Are you 20 yet, Sam? Yeah.

So Sam would be, Lucas, did I forget you? Are you 20 yet? You are, you're not 20? Well, we can figure out. What we'd realize is that we would have Sam and Lucas as our leaders, as our elders, except that all the older men, we wouldn't have them as our leaders because we'd all be dead. You ever had something tragic happen in your life, something memorable, and you go, I don't ever want to go back to that place. That's what this place would have been to the Israelites. They would have said, we don't ever want to go back to this place. To the place where our fathers, where there was such rebellion against God that he turned them all out of the promised land and said, you're not going to enter it. He didn't say to them, you're not going to enter it for a while. He said, you're not going to enter it at all, except for Caleb and Joshua. We'll come to an interesting passage here in a few weeks where even Moses is not allowed to go in. And he says, the reason I'm not allowed to go in is because of you people.

So we've got three old men, one of them speaking who's about to die in Moses, and two older men, and then by comparison, a nation full of young men, and many of whom have grown up without the influence and the guidance of their fathers. And if you're older, if you're older than 20, the question I'd ask you is, at what age do you stop needing or desiring or coveting your father's presence and influence and guidance? I don't know if that ever goes away. You don't go, oh, I'm grown now, so I don't need my dad. I'm grown, so I don't want to ask him what he thinks. These men would have been standing, this nation would have been standing on the threshold of the promised land, the hill country of the Amorites, and they wouldn't have had their dads around to help them, to guide them, and probably would have grown up many of their years without their fathers to teach them, to instruct them. If you've lost your father or a parent early in life, you understand the hole that it leaves. It doesn't ever get...

completely resolved and filled back up. This is a whole country of people like that. Men who've grown up without the brotherhood of older men. And so they stand here at Kadesh Barnea, having just gone through 40 years of judgment, 40 years of discipline, 40 years of wanderings. What happened in those 40 years aside from their fathers dying? There was hunger. There was thirst. There was war. There was rebellion. It was not a good 40 years for the people of Israel. They weren't coming into the promised land now off of their comforts and their ease. They were not coming there from a position of strength. They might have come out of Egypt from a position of strength. They had grown and then they came out with the wealth of Egypt in their toe. But now they're going to go into the promised land without any of those things. They're coming in with weariness, tiredness, fear, and discouragement.

You would think that they would remember that. But too often, the people of God, we, like they, have a very short memory. We don't remember how things used to be or why we're in the situation that we're in. The people of Israel had just been delivered out of Egypt. And you would think, we can look at it and say, that would have been such a miraculous deliverance. It would have been the guiding light the rest of their lives. But I'm convinced that it wasn't. That even before they got to Mount Sinai to receive the law, before all of this even took place, they were grumbling and complaining and saying things to Moses like, why did you take us out of Egypt to die? Why did you bring us out into this country to die? They were angry and frustrated. They'd not remembered the slavery and the oppression of Egypt. They'd only remembered that they had meat in their pots. And so they were quick to forget.

They didn't appreciate Moses being their leader. They didn't appreciate having someone to tell them what to do. Our passage last week said that they agreed that it would be good for them to have leaders set over them. We know that they didn't follow them very well. That they weren't regularly thankful for Moses' leadership. On more than one occasion, they wanted to kill him. In Numbers 16, Korah, who is a son of Levi, is one of the priests. incites a rebellion against the people, or against Moses and Aaron. They're just fed up. Korah and the sons of Levi are angry. Dathan and Abiram are there, all inciting the people against Moses. And so in Numbers 16, they rise up. Korah says this to Moses and Aaron. He says, you have gone far enough, for all the congregation are holy, every one of them. And the Lord is in their midst.

So why do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord? Now, I tried to communicate to you the sort of contempt and derision that that statement would have been made in. But what you should be hearing is that they're threatening to kill Moses and Aaron. They're that frustrated with their leadership, with their guidance, with their state of things. And they said, we're holy. What in the world's the difference between you and me? And so then what happens? I'm not going to read you the whole chapter of Numbers 16. But what happens is Moses falls down on his face and he says, tomorrow the Lord's going to judge between you and us. And we'll know who are his. And that'll be that. And so what happens the next day? They all gather together and the Lord sends a judgment, a sweeping judgment, a plague against the people. And Moses and Aaron are preserved and thousands, 14,600 I think, were killed.

Not to mention what had just happened. All the context of this is Nathan and Abiram's destruction. The Korah is angry about it and says, who do you are? Who do you think you are? You're so holy. Who do you think you are to lord it over us? And Moses says, well, we'll see what the Lord does. And the Lord sends a plague against them and strikes down thousands and thousands of them. And what is that plague except a demonstration of the Lord's not being pleased with those people. That they had forgotten their place. That the things that they accused that Korah said about the people were not true. They are a holy people, every one of them. I don't know that any of us would want to stand in the presence of God and say, you know what I am? I'm holy. And I'm as holy or more holy than you are. I don't think that would be a wise thing for us to say. Certainly not at this occasion in the presence of Moses and Aaron. Those who were set apart by the Lord to lead the people.

Who led them out of slavery and led them into, eventually, the wilderness and then to the promised land. And so this problem of forgetting God's judgments, of forgetting the past, is common to us today. We forget his judgment in striking down the Israelites or bringing discipline against us. We also forget his mercies. We also forget his mercies. It's as though we live our lives, each day we wake up and it's like the seashore where every day the mercies of God and the judgments of God and all of the reasoning of God is built up like a sandcastle. And then overnight, it just all gets wiped away. We wake up in the morning thinking only of ourselves and of what we deserve or what we want. And we only think of God in terms of that he owes us those things. And so then when we don't get those things, we become angry. But we forget his mercies that are new to us every morning.

So Moses said to the people at that time, he's recounting to them in Deuteronomy what he had said to them back in 40 years previous. He says, you have come to the hill country of the Amorites, which the Lord our God is about to give us. That journey was a hard journey. And the people listening wouldn't have been able to disassociate their own experience in the wilderness from their father's first hearing of this. When he describes that wilderness as being great and terrible, He's not describing that 11-day journey, but that 40-year journey. It's been great and terrible for you. It's been difficult. There's been a hardship. And yet, you have now come to the hill country of the Amorites, which the Lord is about to give to us. It's an interesting thing. I'm sure there's a fancy word for it. I don't know what it is. Where he's recounting what he said 40 years previously, but he's saying it again directly to them. They did it.

I said this to them. They made the journey. We spoke to them. You've wandered for 40 years. I'm saying it to you. We've come to the hill country. They have come to the hill country of the Amorites through the great and terrible wilderness. If someone were to ask you to describe your life and you were to give an honest sense of it, your sense of it, I think many people would say, my life has been difficult and hard. If we could... remove ourselves from what other people might think of our impressions, I think it would be common for people to say, my life's been really hard. And there's been a lot of burdens and a lot of hardships and a lot of things that didn't go my way. And quite frankly, I don't think it's been fair. If you'd ask the Israelites, how's your life been? I think they would have had occasion and reason to say, it's been quite difficult and it's been hard. My father died. We've wandered. We've been in hunger.

We've been threatened. Our lives have been threatened. We've been without rest. We've been without a city or a home. We've been homeless all our life, wandering around in this wilderness. And so when Moses says to them, you've come to the hill country of the Amorites, which the Lord our God is about to give to us, what he's saying to them is through all of that hardship that you've been through, God has brought you through it. God never left them. God never forsook them. There were points at which Moses and the Lord have interactions where that's the question at hand. Is the Lord going to forsake them? Is Moses going to forsake them? But always the answer is no. They wouldn't be standing where they're standing about to receive the blessings they're about to receive if God hadn't brought them to that point. And so what we should be thinking of ourselves is if we're here, we're here. However, we've gotten here.

Because God's brought us through this wilderness, this valley, these hard times, these trials, these sufferings. God has led us, and that's why we're still here. If he hadn't led us, if he had abandoned us, if he had not been in the pillar of smoke and in the fire, leading the people all those 40 years, they would not have made it back to Kadesh Barnea. They would not be standing there now receiving these words from Moses. They would have died. I think a lot of times we look at our life and we think we know how it should have gone better. But I think it's more Christian of us to look at it and say, you know, if I was left to making my own decisions and I was left to picking my own path through it, that would result in my destruction. That if I was left to my own devices, I would die. That was the thing that was clear in my mind as I became a Christian in my early 20s. Was that...

I made really poor decisions and really destructive decisions, both for myself and the people around me. And that if I were to continue making my own decisions and being my own ruler, so to speak, that I was going to destroy not only my life, but the lives of everyone around me. I was convinced that was true of me. And that having God as my God and as my ruler and as my savior was a far better plan. than me making my own decisions. And yet, I forget on a daily basis what I would have done if I was left to myself. And I don't think I'm unique. I think you also forget what you would be if God hadn't been with you. I think we often think if God's with us, what that means is that our lives will not be fraught with difficulties or with sufferings or with hardships or unmet desires. That is not life for anyone in this world. Except perhaps, The unbeliever who receives his good things in this world to receive his judgments in the next. Perhaps he would look at his life and say, my life has been good and easy and perfect and there have been no hardships or sorrows along the way. But to the believer, there are hardships and there are trials. There are sufferings. There is temptation to grumble and to complain. But for all of our grumbling and complaining, for all of our missteps and all of our failures, God is still leading us and bearing with us.

And so we have to do battle with this problem within us that we forget God's past mercies and demand very particular mercies immediately in our life as evidence of God's love for us. The evidence of God's love for this people was that they still existed. And you're going to have to fight the temptations in your heart to say, well, that's not good enough. Because the other choice is not existing. The other choice is God becoming your enemy. and opposing you, as he's about to use the nation of Israel to do to the Amorites and all the other people who live in the promised land. If you only think of your life in terms of how it could have been better if God would have done something different, you're missing a very helpful part of the consideration, which is it could be much worse if God hadn't brought you through it. And so we need to be encouraged and we need to be reminded and we need to be disciplined to remember that we're here because God's been merciful to us.

And that if we were left to our own devices, we wouldn't be here. You wouldn't be here. You wouldn't be in this room. Literally, you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't be in Christ. You wouldn't be interested in His Word. You wouldn't be interested in serving God. You wouldn't be interested in any of those things. So through all the things you've gone through, God has not forsaken you or abandoned you. He's traveled with you through those times. And you ought not to forget it. We ought not to forget it. Or to discount it. The Israelites. When they came up to the land the first time, this is what they failed to do. They failed to remember that God had been with them, that God had sustained them, that God had delivered them, that God had given them great wealth out of Egypt, that he'd multiplied them and increased them. They'd forgotten all that stuff. They left all of it beside. They didn't remember it anymore. It didn't affect how they viewed their current life. When Moses says to them, see, the Lord has placed the land before you, they should have been thinking,

Wow, look what he brought us through to bring us to this place. How in the world would we ever have gotten to this point if it wasn't for God bringing us here? But that's not what they thought. They could only remember the hardships and the burdens. And so one practical thing that I think would be helpful for all of us as Christians to make priority in our lives is to say out loud regularly what God has done for us. If you want a New Year's resolution, a target to aim at, make that your target. What I'm going to do is I'm going to start talking about what God's delivered me from and protected me from. Doesn't mean I didn't get any bumps or bruises or scrapes along the way, because you will. But you didn't die, and you didn't lose your faith. God sustained you. And it ought to be our habit as Christians to remember his provisions and his kindnesses to us. Because we wouldn't have made it through those things without him.

We really wouldn't have. And we wouldn't have avoided them either without him. We would have made them worse. So Moses said to their fathers, see, you see, the land flowing with milk and honey, the land before you. And then he tells them, he tells them this simple command, go up, take possession, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has spoken to you. There it is. Go get it. Did they? They didn't. It's a weird thing. They're given this land, they're brought up to it, and they're told, it's yours, go get it. Now, why didn't they go get it? Well, because there were people there in fortified cities and the sons of the Anakim. There was this dangerous stuff, and they were just like, we can't go have that. And there was this thing that went on collectively in the mind of all of the people, except for Joshua and Caleb.

which is they completely forgot everything, all the miraculous deliverances that God had performed for them. They just didn't take them into account. It's like a math problem, and they left out the biggest number and got the wrong answer. They couldn't see a way to go up and take possession. All they saw was adversity and hardship and the potential for suffering and the potential for dying, and they were fearful. This is why at the very end of it, of our passage at the end of verse 21, Moses says to them, said to them, do not fear or be dismayed. Fear and dismayed or being discontent are the things that will keep you from doing what God says. They really are. In men's group a few weeks ago, we were talking about the fear of the Lord. And one of the things that I said to the group is, I don't know that men especially are any good at identifying what they're afraid of. In fact, I think they're like opposed to admitting they're afraid of anything because fear is seen as weakness.

And so you can't fear anything. And then fearing the Lord also falls into that category. We don't fear the Lord. Which means that we don't have any wisdom and we haven't trusted the Lord. Because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. So the people have forgotten all that God had done for them. And so what grew in the place of faith and obedience was fear and discontentment. They weren't told to go in by their own strength or by their own might. The Lord would go before them just as he had been going before them these past 40 years. Through all of the hardship and the trials, And the wars and the hungers and all of those things, the Lord was with them and was leading them and was protecting them and providing for them. And they stood on the threshold of the promised land and said, we don't think God will continue to provide for us the way he has provided for us in the past. And that is sin. If you live your life always forgetting what God has done for you and how he sustains you as a justification for your ongoing fear and disobedience, that's sin.

And there is no reasonable justification for it. At some point, you have to look up and say, you know what? God has been faithful to me. We've had good years and we've had bad years and we've had sorrows and we've had hardships. Nevertheless, God has been faithful to me. And for me to continue to use the fact that my expectations for ease and comfort haven't been met as a justification for disobedience, that has to die. It has to go away. It came with great consequence for the Israelites. They didn't obey God. They didn't end up going in and doing what they were told. It was awful for them. And so they ended up in the wilderness as a judgment of God against them because they wouldn't simply trust God to continue to do for them in the present and in the future what he'd done for them in the past. And that's a lesson that all of us have to learn, and primarily because we live in a society now that teaches us that everything that happens to us makes us a victim.

and that none of the things that come to happen to us are our fault, or that we had any hand in it. And I'm here to tell you that a lot of what happens to us is directly related to the things that we do. And also, you will have things happen to you that are not your fault. And you still have to respond like a Christian to them. You still have to ask, what would the Lord require of me in this situation? When Jesus was hung on the cross, when the apostles were martyred, they weren't sitting here going, this isn't fair, I don't deserve this. When they were beaten for preaching the gospel, they rejoiced and considered it all joy to be counted worthy to suffer. And so there's quite a mindset change that has to happen inside of us if we're to avoid the sort of judgment that the Israelites faced here. And what that requires is that we, identify what we're afraid of what we really think God has has failed in realizing we're wrong to think it but acknowledging that that is what we think from time to time in our sin and say I'm wrong however strongly I feel about it I'm wrong because I'm not taking into account all that God has done for me and it is arrogant of me to think that God would bring me this far

and not complete the work he's begun in us. What does Philippians say to us? That we ought to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work to will and to do according to his own good pleasure. It also tells us that he who began a good work in us will bring it to completion. And so if you're a Christian, you're in this 11-day journey. It's your whole life. It's every day. It's this 11-day journey. It's standing on the hill country, like on the border of the hill country, saying, will I go into it or will I justify my disobedience? And you've got to answer that question every day, multiple times a day. And the more we answer the question, no, I won't go in, the bigger the reasons will be for why we can't ever go in. It'll start, well, just not today or just not right now, but I'll do it later, but I'll get to it, but I want to, but eventually we'll stop even asking the question. What does God require of me?

call me to do. And we'll replace his words with our own. And what will happen is our fear and our discontentment will grow. Fear doesn't go away. Discontentment doesn't go away by rehearsing to yourself the things that you're afraid of or the things that you're discontent about. It doesn't help. Has it ever helped you? I mean, if we were honest, like when you, if you're afraid of something and you had to talk about it, did it make you less fearful to talk about it? To dwell on it? To turn it over in your mind for days and weeks and years. Does it make you less fearful? No, it makes you less obedient. Because the things you're afraid of get bigger and more scary. And then we're not far from accusing God of requiring things of us that are inappropriate. You understand the Israelites could have thought as they were supposed to go into this land that it was unreasonable for God to have brought them through such suffering and then now want to set them to war with...

The Amorites and the Canaanites and the Jebusites and all the people. That they're just like, seriously? More? More? Like, haven't we done enough? Have you ever felt that way? Haven't I done enough? You've all felt that way. No, you haven't done enough. And God will be with you as he requires you to do more. And you will enter your rest in time. But there's more for you to do. There will always be more for you to do. And so if your conception of the Christian life is it should be easy, it should be comfortable, the changes should have to be small and spaced out, you'll be breeding contempt for God. At the very end of the book of Deuteronomy, as Moses is about to die, this is the charge that he gives to them, to the people. He says, the Lord will deliver them up before you. And now he's talking to the men who are in front of him, not to their, we're calling their fathers.

The Lord will deliver them up before you and you shall do to them according to all the commandments which I have commanded you. Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or tremble at them. For the Lord your God is the one who goes with you. He will not fail you or forsake you. at the end of Deuteronomy, a number of times, be strong and courageous, be strong to Joshua. Because Joshua, apparently, this man of great faith, who is this old man who had faith in the early years, apparently still in his old age needs to be told, you need to be strong and courageous. You need to not be fearful. You need to trust God and do what he says. And he does. And so one of the lessons we learn from this, and the Israelites ought to have learned, is that if God requires something of you, he will be with you as you pursue it.

And that doesn't mean that it will be easily apprehended, but it does mean you will not be alone. Jesus said the same thing to the apostles on the mountain after his resurrection and the great commission. Lo, I'm with you always, even to the end of the age. Almost the exact same words that were said to Joshua as they went into the promised land, as they were about to enter into battle, as they were commissioned for work. He says, and I'm going to be with you and I'm not going to leave you. And so we ought to remember each day the Lord is with us. We should give up this idea that the Lord is close to us and far from us based on how we're doing. We would all recognize that as bad fatherhood with our own children, wouldn't we? That when we get frustrated with our kids, we go, get away from me, I don't want to talk to you. Look what you did. All of us would look at that and say, that's not good fathering. That's not good mothering. So if we understand it in our own lives, why would we then...

project onto God the sort of fatherhood that is dependent on our behavior. Do fathers get grieved when their kids are disobedient, when they're rebellious, and when they don't do what they're... Yes, they do. But if evil fathers know how to give good gifts to their children, then how much more so our Heavenly Father, who disciplines us for our good. This is sort of a mash-up of different verses in the New Testament, right? Gospels and Hebrews. Our God promises to be with us wherever we go. And he promises not just to be with us being our cheerleader, but he promises to go before us. And so we ought not to fear or be dismayed. This was the import of the message that was given to the Israelites 40 years previous. Moses says, this is what I told your fathers when we were standing right here. And they would have all been sitting going, they didn't do what they were supposed to do. Or maybe they didn't think that.

That's what they should have thought. Let us not do what our fathers did here. They failed, and God gave them to us as an example so that we wouldn't fail in the same ways time and time again. And so we ought to learn from the mistakes of our fathers. The Israelites, as they're back here for a second take, should be remembering the faults and failures of their fathers and say, we're not going to make the same mistake again. We don't desire to do the same things over and over and over again. When we need to be told and reminded of the same things over and over and over again, we do have to question whether or not we were listening and paying attention when it was said the first time. St. Augustine famously prayed one time to the Lord as he was afflicted by what the Lord was requiring of him and his own inability to do it. He just asked God simply. He says, Lord, command what you will. Tell me to do whatever you want. My only request.

is that you grant to me what you've commanded, that you give me the ability and the desire and the strength and whatever's pertinent, that you give to me the ability to do the thing that you've required me to do. He says, I don't have the strength to do any of the stuff you require within myself. So give to me what I need to do what you require me to do. And most of your life, you're not going to feel strong enough to do the things that the Lord's requiring you to do. It may be as simple as shutting your mouth. I mean, just as an example, how hard is it to shut your mouth when you're upset?

Maybe for some of you, the question is the opposite. How hard is it for you to open your mouth when you're upset? Maybe you're the silent type. You're just, I'm going to say it. But it's one or the other. And whichever one it is, you know it's not the right thing to be doing. And that's just a little thing. That's just a fight with your siblings or your kids or your spouse or parents. And it's exceedingly difficult. And so instead of grumbling and complaining at the command of God, instead of grumbling and complaining at his... way of working and bringing us to holiness and to obedience and to the image of his son, well, it's simply to echo the prayer of Augustine and ask, Lord, whatever it is you require of me, I don't have the strength to do it. Would you please give me the strength to do what you've required of me? My desire is to do it. And then, do it. The only way you'll come to see God's presence with you and attendance upon you in your weakness,

is when you try to do what God requires of you without relying on your own strength to do it. Then you'll find God's presence with you. Then you'll gain confidence and experience to say, God is with me in these things. He does provide for me. He doesn't require things of me simply to watch me struggle and squirm and fail. But he goes with me and he gives me the ability in those moments to shut my mouth or to open my mouth or to say the thing or to not say the thing or to do the thing that I know would be glorifying to him. So the Israelites were standing there in the place where their fathers had been, remembering what had happened there before. And Moses is painfully and helpfully recounting to them this history for their good. I said it when we first started in the book of Deuteronomy. Part of the things I was thinking about is this is...

Like I already preached a sermon or at least part of it. But it's no trouble to me, says the Apostle John, to remind you of the things that you already know. And that's to say, if you want to grow in godliness and if you want to do the things that God requires of you, then you have to remember what he has required of you and how he's helped you do things that you didn't think you could do in the past. And that's our lives as Christians. Remembering the judgments. And maybe you're young. Maybe you're like, you know what, that sounds all great, Pastor. Maybe when I'm 30 years old, could you guys stop, please? It may be that you'll say, well, I don't have the experiences you're talking about. That's fine. You have parents, and beyond having parents, you have a Bible that's full of experience for you to learn from. If you can't say with a bunch of examples how God has attended and been with you throughout your past,

certainly you can look at other people and see how he's attended to them in their weakness, how he sustained them when they didn't have strength, and say, you know, they're a Christian, and God's been with them, and I'm a Christian. And so if he promised to be with them, and I'm just like them, and they're my brother and my sister, then he's promised to be with me too. So I'm going to act in faith. Remember, experience is the fool's teacher. It really doesn't matter if you're young and don't have the experience of this. It really doesn't matter even when you're caught in such a mire that you can't see it. There are times when you can't see God's provision for you. That happens to us. What do we do then? Give in to it? No. We rely on the testimony of God's actions in Scripture and in the lives of the people around us, the things we have access to, to see that he is faithful. And even if we can't see it always, that doesn't change the fact.

He is faithful to us. He won't ever leave us or forsake us. And whenever we feel like he will or he has, we're wrong, however strongly we feel it. If we give up that reasoning and that rationale and those commitments, then we'll have to learn the lessons the hard way, which is to say you'll have to learn your lessons by experience and through discipline and through greater suffering. It would be good for us to learn from the experiences of other people. The Israelites were given to us as an example. They're the people of God in the Old Testament. We would do well to look and see what they went through and go, man, if I'm going to screw something up, I at least don't want it to be the exact same way they did it. Because that would mean that I'm not a student of Scripture and that I don't care about any of the lessons that God's given me to learn. May that not be true of us. Rather that we would learn from the example of them before. That they would go in.

I can't help but think that part of the reason they went in and had success initially in going into the promised land was because of the memory of what their fathers had done. And yet it didn't take them long to forget. And so Lord, help us not to forget his mercies or his warnings. Let's pray.