But For All This, You Did Not Trust The Lord Your God

Our sermon this morning, we're going to be continuing on in our study of Deuteronomy chapter 1. In our text this morning, Moses recounts his response to the people, to the Israelites, after the spies returned and had given their report. You have to remember that Deuteronomy is a book of the law, but that the first four chapters are not the giving of the law, but all of the circumstances that happened leading up to the giving of the law. They're standing again at Mount Sinai, or not at Mount Sinai, but at the River Jordan. in Kadesh Barnea, where they had stood 40 years previously, where they had not entered in. And so Moses is in the middle of recounting what happened that 40 years previous. After the spies had come back 40 years ago and given their report, the people were scared. And they were convinced that they couldn't go into and possess the land that the Lord was giving them. And that was because the people were too big and they were too strong. The cities were large and they were fortified up to heaven. Moses pleaded with the people at that time not to give in to their fears.

but to stand firm and to trust that God would continue to care for them as they went forward, even as he had cared for them in the past. What we're going to find is that they didn't listen to Moses' pleading and that they suffered for it. My hope is that as we study this passage and learn about their fears and God's faithfulness to them and how they disregarded it, my hope is that God will help us to see his mercies to us. Not just that he was merciful to them and they did the wrong thing, but that he's been merciful to us. And my hope is that having seen it, he'll help us not to do what the Israelites did, which was reject it and to turn aside. Would you please stand now as we read the word of the Lord? This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. Then I said to you, do not be shocked nor fear them. For the Lord your God who goes before you will himself fight on your behalf, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes and in the wilderness where you saw how the Lord your God carried you, just as a man carries his son.

in all the way which you have walked until you came to this place. But for all of this, you did not trust the Lord your God, who goes before you on your way to seek out a place for you to encamp, in fire by night and cloud by day, to show you the way in which you should go. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. So we're going to start by talking about fear again. We talked a lot about fear last week. And the reason we're talking about it again is because it's a very... recurring theme in this passage. Fear seems to be the predominant consideration, the thing that was ordering the people's lives. And so after the spies come back and after they give their report and after the people are shaken by it and they're scared at the news of the big people and the fortified cities, Moses says again to them, do not be shocked nor fear them. One of the things that I think we have to realize about fear is that the goal is not that

you as a Christian or that they as God's people would have no fear of anything, but that actually their fear was misplaced. Their fear was entirely pertaining to the people in the land and the difficulty and the suffering and the hardship that was coming to them. They were afraid of it. Last week I talked about men being paralyzed with fear, and they were paralyzed with the fear of the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land. What they lacked was the fear of the Lord. And this is how it goes with us as it went with them. The idea that you will have no fear, it's really not an option. You ladies tend to have fears, don't you? Tend to be more prone to it generally than your husbands. There's things you get afraid of. Not always the case, and it's not that your husbands don't have fears. We'll come to that. But fear is an ever-present consideration in your mind. The question is not whether you should have any fears.

But what do you fear? And what do you not fear? I think when it comes to men and you say, hey, what are you afraid of? Men go, I'm not afraid. Because we recognize fear as being an indication of weakness, that it's a bad thing, that men shouldn't be afraid. But I would note to you that everyone who's being described here are men and not women, primarily. These are the heads of the households. These are the heads of the tribes. These are the spies. These are the leaders. These are the guys who are in charge. They're the guys that are supposed to be good examples and capable of this sort of thing, and yet they're all afraid. And so it is true that men get afraid just like women do, though it may express it differently. These men were afraid of what suffering and what hardship would come to them if they went into the land. Instead, they ought to have feared God. In Luke 12, Jesus says to...

He says, I say to you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that have no more that they can do. Like the Canaanites that you're supposed to go in and remove. Do not be afraid of those who can kill the body and after that have no more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear. Fear the one who after he is killed has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him. Fear is a sin. And it's a sin that leads to hell. It's not an acceptable sin where we just go, well, that's just an okay thing. Fear is the sort of thing that will destroy you. When I was describing the men last week who were in the trees and they were paralyzed with fear, none of us would look at that and say, that's a good way to live. We'd all look at that and say, that's awful. Like, that would be a miserable state to be in. It would be very destructive.

You couldn't continue in that industry and doing that job if fear had a hold of you to that extent. And the same is true in our own lives. If fear is what organizes our lives, if it's how we live our lives and make our decisions, it will lead us astray. It's not benign. It's not indifferent. It's not just an acceptable thing that we just reckon as a part of life. It'll just be there. It always has been. It always will be. And that's just how it is. It will harm us because we are replacing the fear of God With the fear of man. With the fear of suffering. In Psalm 36.1, this is in Romans 3 that we had for our call to confession this morning. It quotes Psalm 36.1. In Romans 3 it says there's no fear before their eyes. There's no fear of God within them. But it quotes Psalm 36 and there's a beginning half of the verse that Romans 3 doesn't quote. And this is what it says. It says, Transgression speaks to the ungodly within his heart.

There is no fear of God before his eyes. And you're left being like, well, how does that work? Well, I'll tell you how it works. If you don't fear God, your sins will get a real loud voice in your heart. They will become the ordering principle. The things you're afraid of get louder and louder and louder. And the reason is because there's no fear of God. There's no other voice saying, that's going to lead you to hell. That is destructive. That will destroy your life, the people you care about, and your soul. Fear of God says those things. Fear of man says these others, but if you do, look what will happen. How could God possibly expect you to do that or go into that or to suffer in those ways? Fear speaks and we listen because we've given up the fear of God. And so what we need to do is repent of our fear of man and seek after a fear of God that says I'm more afraid of him getting involved in my life and causing me harm than I am with any other man.

or any other circumstance, getting involved in my life and causing me harm. Because those who get involved in our lives and cause us harm in this life, there's a limit to the trouble they can cause us. And if we're honest, if we're real honest about our fears, the things we're afraid of don't usually happen. Do they? How much of your life have you spent being afraid of something that didn't actually come to pass? Does that stop you from being more fearful in the future? Would that it would work? Would that we were rational enough and logical enough? And stable enough to like go, I get scared about things that don't normally happen. I should stop being so scared. But we don't think that way. It doesn't work. Because sin is not rational. Sin is not logical. You can't reason with sin and be like, oh yeah, I see your point now. I really ought not to be scared. When COVID was first breaking on the scene, there were people who were very scared. They didn't want to die. They were afraid it might kill them. And then statistics started coming out and the statistics say,

as a percentage of the people who get it, very few people actually die. Now, I understand a large number of people died, but comparatively, a very small amount of people who got COVID actually died. Did that fact reduce the fear in anybody? Not really. And if it did, they were weirdos. I remember having that thought when I got COVID and I went to the little trailer that they had out back of CVS, like the little thing where the person behind the glass, you know, and they... Stick their thing in your nose. I remember going in there and I was like, I need to find out if I have COVID. It was a Tuesday because I'm like, I need to know if I'm gonna be able to preach on Sunday. It's the only reason I went and got tested. I was like, I'm sick. I know I'm sick. I don't need anybody to tell me. I'm really sick with all the symptoms of the things that they say is COVID. I know I've got COVID, but I need to go see if I'm gonna get better in a few days so I can get somebody else to come preach. So I went in and they tested me and they're like, you'll get your results in like 48 hours. And that's a miserable time. It's just like scary. You're like, oh no, do I have the plague?

And I remember thinking, this isn't going to kill you. And it actually was a comfort to me. But I also realized I'm a weirdo. And that most people were not comforted by any statistics about it all. And it was the worst cough that I ever had. I won't go into the details. But if you've had COVID, you understand. It was bad. For some people, it was bad. I wasn't in the hospital. And I didn't have breathing issues. But the worst cough I've ever had. By far. And lasted longer. It was not. a little insignificant thing. But all the while, I'm like, I'm not going to die. Now, maybe I was being foolish or maybe I didn't understand the dangers well enough, but I was comforted by the fact that if I'm supposed to get COVID and if I'm supposed to get really sick, that God will do with me what he is determined to do with me. And for all of my fear, I'm not going to change that. And so I would do better to content myself with being miserably sick for the next

A few weeks or the next few months or however long it ends up being. I would not want to come to the point where I stood before God and had feared everything in the world except him. I would not want to stand before God and have that be the story. So what causes fear? Where does it come from? Does it just pop up out of nowhere with no context? No, it always has a context. What precedes fear is a lack of faith, a lack of trust. A lack of fear of the Lord? Perhaps being short-sighted or forgetful? The real question we wanted the answer to is, how do I overcome fear? It's one thing to be told you ought not to fear man or you ought not to fear suffering. Those are things you ought not to fear. And we're like, yeah, right, I know. How? Because when you get scared about something, you're like talking to a drunk person. You're not real, it's not a whole lot of rational conversation.

reasoning going on like the fear has got a hold of you so how do you get to where you don't have the fear get a hold of you well the first thing is you're going to have to work on your fear when you're not scared how do you work on some how do you work on fear when you're not fearful well excuse me fear the way you work on fear is the same way that you work on every other sin okay in your life as a christian you have many sins that motivate your behavior So how do you fight sin generally? That's really the question. How do you overcome fear? Well, how do you overcome sin generally? Do you just try to avoid every circumstance in which you might be tempted? You'll never find that place. Because the temptations come from inside of you sometimes, a lot of the time. Like if you were alone in a room by yourself with no access to anything that might make you scared, you might still get scared that the oxygen in the room would run out. You might get scared that the plumbing would back up.

You might get scared that the furnace would go out. Like you could find something to be afraid of all by yourself without any external input. You could still get scared. So the answer is not, well, make a circumstance in which there's no opportunity to get scared. The way you fight sin is by learning to identify it early and when it's young, so to speak. When the temptation is young. If you can't identify it when it's young, then you're left doing battle when it's big. That's a much harder battle. The problem is when we see sin in our lives or temptations in our lives and they're small, we discount them and we say, that's not a big deal. I'll keep that under control so we don't fight with it. We don't deal with it because we're like, well, I won't let it get too big. I can have a yard full of weeds. I'll just mow them. What's that do if you've got a yard full of dandelions?

It gets rid of them, right? It gets rid of the appearance of them for about 12 hours. All the yellow goes away, and you're like, look, a beautiful green lawn. And you come back home from work the next day, and what's your yard full of? The seeds. Isn't it incredible? As soon as you mow it, it's like, we're going to die. Send out the seeds. And here come the seeds. And what happens? More dandelions. I'll mow them again. I'll mow them again. And it's not how it works. You don't get rid of anything like that. If you want to overcome sin in any way, including fear, you have to recognize it when it's young, when it's infantile, when it's weak and when it's small. And you have to kill it then. If you discount what's going to happen, you'll find yourself given into it. Another thing to mention about killing fear is that you will not kill fear in your life if you accommodate sin generally.

Fear is just one of many sins that you struggle with. And if you say, I'm going to kill this sin, but all the rest of them can grow, I have news, you won't kill it. You won't be able to kill it. Because it has to be an all-out commitment to saying, I want to kill sin. I want to kill fear and I want to kill lust and I want to kill laziness and I want to kill pride and I want to kill lying and I want to kill every other sin that I struggle with. I'm going to find the places where they show up and I'm going to work to say no.

And I'm going to say no early, and I'm going to say no often. If I want to have any hope of being able to say no when something really scary happens, I have to have developed the habit and the muscle of saying no before it gets to that point. He who is faithful with a little will then be entrusted with much, be faithful with much. You know, I think fear is so prevalent in our day. Not that it wasn't prevalent here. We're reading about thousands of years ago. People of God dealing with fear. I don't think fear is new to us, but I do think fear is more acceptable in a soft society, an effeminate society. We don't expect people to be firm. In fact, we call it toxic masculinity a lot of the time. If someone actually says no, we're like, whoa, you're being a little too aggressive here. That's not how we do things around here. We cultivate effeminacy, softness.

And then wonder why we're all so scared of everything. I can tell you why. I can tell you why I'm so scared of things. It's because I've been a product of the American culture and I've become accustomed to making excuses for the things that are hard for me to do. Every sin has become a disease. It's not a sin anymore. Addiction is a disease. Obesity is a disease. Everything is a disease. Alcoholism is a disease. Everything is a disease. There may be diseases that result from those things. Inevitably, there are. But it's not a disease. It's a sin. And if we deal with a sin like it's a disease, we will just end up accommodating it and saying, it's okay that you have this condition. We're just going to spend our lives trying to minimize the effects of it. We'd love to see you get free of it, but we can't say that it's wrong. So why would you need to get free of something that's not wrong or something that you weren't responsible for participating in?

It's an extraordinary thing these days for someone to take responsibility for their behavior. And not in a way that's defeatist or in a way that's like, yeah, well, I know. But if they failed and someone came to them and said, you failed, and they said, you're right, I did. But what do all of us want to do instead? You can't talk to me like that. Here's the reasons why. It was unreasonable for you to expect that of me in the first place. All of those thoughts, all of those excuses are an indication of our, Softness, our effeminacy. Have you ever had to talk to somebody and been like, well, you know, this could be a simple conversation. I could just say, that's not acceptable and don't do that again. But you know that if you go tell them that, that they're going to get all upset and bothered and say you're a big meanie. It's quite miserable. And it's very counterproductive. You can't get anything done. Because you can't deal with sin as sin. You can't deal with fear and say, it's not okay for you to be afraid. I understand you're scared. You shouldn't be scared.

It's just mean, isn't it? Have you ever had anyone tell you that you shouldn't be afraid when you're afraid? Aren't they the worst people? Aren't they just insensitive jerks? Your boss doesn't understand. Your husband doesn't understand. Your parents don't understand. Here's the thing. Whether they understand all of the nuances and the details, they may well understand the destruction that the fear is going to cause. Moses understood the problems that would come. He didn't know the details. He didn't know they were going to be made to wander. And for 40 years, But God was angry at the Israelites for their fear. It's not in our text, but it's in our text for next week. Then the anger of the Lord burned against them because they were afraid. Having been told time and time again, don't be afraid, don't be afraid, don't be afraid. And so if we want to overcome fear, as one of the many sins that we deal with, we have to first repent of our effeminacy and our softness, our excuse-making, our, oh, poor me.

Or, oh, I'll get to it. Or, oh, my childhood. Or, oh, my whatever. We really have to get past it. And it's not to say that those things don't affect us. They do. And yet they're not an excuse. In one of the podcasts we recorded, we were talking about the manosphere and about father hunger. And I said, you know, if you want a poster child for someone who could be the poster child for fatherlessness, I didn't have a dad. And one of the great kindnesses of God, was that he gave me a hard-nosed mother who didn't feel sorry for me. And our life was really hard. My mom worked two full-time jobs from the time I was starting kindergarten. And by the time I was in fifth grade, I was being left home alone at night. Ten years old, home alone, gunshots in the neighborhood. Home alone. And I had a Rottweiler. That was my protection. And my mom didn't feel sorry for the fact that that stuff was hard. She didn't, oh, you poor kid. Oh, you don't have a daddy. It's true, I didn't have a dad.

It shows up in my life. There's things that are true about me that are the result of me not having a father. Nevertheless, I wouldn't have been helped at all or be the man that got, I wouldn't have been, I don't think I would have been able to receive the gospel if he hadn't first worked through my unbelieving mom to say, that's not okay. Your circumstances don't mean you can act like that. And that's what my unbelieving mom, that was the refrain of my life. When I got bad enough, she called the cops on me and told them to take me away. Single mom. Only child. And she meant it. She wasn't threatening. Like, the cops came to the house, and I went and sat out in their car and talked to them. She also took me down to juvie and tried to drop me off. And really did. I mean, we laugh now, but she was serious. It wasn't funny. When I was 10 years old, my mom took me down to the police station and was like, I want to leave him here. I didn't have a dad. But I thank God for having a mom who didn't feel sorry for me and didn't say, it's okay for you to always make excuses for your crappy behavior.

Instead, she said, your behavior sucks. And it's not acceptable in this house. There's no excuse for it. An unbeliever. Should we be like less knowledgeable and less firm or more accommodating of sin than her? I mean, seriously. We've become soft. And it's led to a lot of fear in our lives. And that fear has consequences. The Israelites saw the inhabitants of the land. And they said things like, the Lord hates us. He brought us out here to destroy us. Their cities are fortified up to heaven and there are giants there. Last week I said that the difference between Moses and the Israelites in sending the spies was that Moses was looking for a plan and they were looking for an excuse. And that was their softness, their effeminacy. They were looking for an excuse. They were looking for the grounds to stand on and say, I can't be or shouldn't be expected to do that hard thing. That scary thing.

That difficult thing. This is the opposite of standing firm. This is the opposite of trusting God or fearing Him. This is the opposite of remembering all that the Lord has done for them. This is effeminacy. It's what it is. And it's something we all have to fight against. And the reason we have to fight against it is because the effeminate will not inherit the kingdom of God. Paul tells us so in 1 Corinthians 9. They won't inherit the kingdom of God. God says it's a serious sin. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? And we say, right. And then he tells us who the unrighteous are. Do not be deceived. Don't make a mistake about this. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified. You were changed.

We ought not to be the kind of people who take fear lightly and say, well, it's just part of it. I realize how gripping it can be. I've been that scared. It's not an excuse. We do ourselves harm. We put our souls in danger of hell if we make excuses for ourselves. How are you supposed to fight fear? Identify it early. Identify it when it's young. Identify it often. Another way you fight fear is you remember. It's especially heinous that the Israelites, given where they were at in the history of the world, and God's dealing with them, it's pretty awful that they were doubting at this point. It's pretty shameful. Moses went on and he said, The Lord your God, who goes before you, will himself fight on your behalf, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes.

And in the wilderness, where you saw how the Lord your God carried you, just as a man carries his son, in all the way which you have walked until you came to this place. And so God gives them, Moses gives them two reasons not to fear. And they're good reasons. The first is, God will fight for you. As you read the account of them actually going into the land, it's astounding how they take over these places. It's like, how'd that work? Like, I don't think the commander wrote, you know, decided this is how we'll do it. Sometimes guys are really clever and they know how to take down a big army, you know? The Samson who tied the torches to all the, you know, caught all the foxes and tied the torches to him and went and made it sound like, you know, there's all this trouble and there wasn't. Is that Samson who did that? I'm pretty sure it was Samson, yes. That's pretty interesting. But there are other times where the Lord sends a wind through the camp and they all get scared and they don't know what to do and they start killing each other.

You can't draw that up. You can't account for that. But the Lord can, and he does, and he did. And he just had done it. And they're like, he brought us out here to kill us. And he's like, are you kidding me? He just destroyed your oppressors in the middle of a sea and gave you all their wealth. And nothing can be done now? Your God will fight for you. It doesn't say that he'll fight alongside of them. It doesn't say that he'll fight when they run out of their own strength or get themselves into a pinch or that he'll fight if they ask him. He simply says he will go before you and fight for you. He will clear the path. Basically, you're going to walk in and you're going to just receive all of the good things that God has determined to give to you because he's going to go before you and free it all up so that you can have it. Now I realize we're very smart people and we're rational and we're like, that's not how it works.

Except that I bet that a number of you in this room could tell stories of exactly how that's happened in your life. Where God, in a circumstance, has gone before you and plop! Here comes the thing you didn't know you needed, you didn't know you wanted, or you didn't think you could have. And there it is! Where'd it come from? And how'd it get there? Was it your wisdom? Was it your hard work? Was it your planning? No, it was God going before you and providing for you what he promised to give to you. Why don't we believe that? We don't have armies that literally we have to go and fight against, right? We might say, well, the Israelites, they were having to go and fight with these warriors. We're not going off to battle. And yet, God going before, removing the impediments and the dangers, and giving to his people the things he promised to give to them, because he wanted to give to them, we do still receive that.

That is still how it works. Because God doesn't change. And he can't be found to be a liar. He can't say one thing and then not do it. He wants to do the things he says. He wants to give these sorry people that land. And praise God for it. Because we wouldn't get anything good if he wasn't good to people like them. Or like us. He'll go before you and he'll fight for you. Just as you saw with your own eyes in Egypt and then... Moses pulls in the last 40 years. And as you've seen, as we've wandered around in this wilderness, he's been with us the whole time, fighting for us. They had just recently gotten out of a war with Og and Magog. These two kings who were like, you can't go through our land. We don't know. And God destroyed them with these ragtag bunch that have been wandering around in the wilderness who are not a mighty people, who are not a strong people, who are not militarily elite.

Your God himself will go before you and fight on your behalf. Just as he did in Egypt before your eyes, you saw it. And in the wilderness where again, you saw how the Lord, your God, carried you. And that's the second thing that Moses says. He carried you. He carried you through it. Just as a man carries his son. Is it enough that God would fight for you so that you can then walk in and receive all of it? Do we even have the strength to do that? They didn't have the strength to do that when they were in the wilderness, to simply take hold of the things that God gave them. He carried them through and protected them and provided for them. Food, water, protection, light, warmth, shelter, everything they needed. He carried them through. You think of a little baby. As a man carries his son, you think, okay, my baby needs to get dressed. Here are the clothes, honey. What happens when you give a baby clothes? I mean, they might spit up on it.

But nothing. They can't put them on. You can send your two-year-old, hey, honey, go get dressed for bedtime. Where are they at? They can't. Head's stuck in the sleeve. Put the pants on. They can't get dressed. Baby needs food. Hey, here's your food. They don't stop crying. You've got to clothe them. You've got to feed them. Oh, hey, we're in the car. We're going to go somewhere. Let's go get in the car. Hey, come on, let's go get in the car. What's the baby do? Just sits there and does nothing. You got to pick them up and put their stuff on them, their warm stuff, check their diaper, make sure you got all the things, put them in the car seat. And then when you get to the place, hey, honey, let's go inside. What's the baby do? Nothing. Why does the baby do nothing at every instance where all they need is just right in front of them? Why don't they do anything? Because they can't. And so what does a loving parent do? What does a father do with his son who can't do for himself? He does for him.

He provides all that he needs and then he gives it to him. He carries him. You can't walk, I'll carry you. You can't eat, I'll feed you. You can't dress yourself, I'll dress you. You can't sleep at night, I'll sit up with you. This is the love of a father for his children. Not to say that mothers don't love their children or do this same work, but this is the love of a father for his children. And we see it here. In the Old Testament, we see it here as they're wandering around in the wilderness, that God was their father, that he loved them, and he provided everything they needed because they were too weak to do any of it for themselves. But can we admit that we're too weak to do for ourselves? What do you think of someone who says, I can't? We just despise it. We despise it in ourselves. The worst thing we ever want to say is, I can't. It's like, we'll go suffer the consequences of our inability before we would ask for help. Nobody wants to ask for help.

Because to ask for help, it means to admit that you are weak and that you can't provide or attain or get a hold of the thing you need or you want. God knows that about us. As much as we get it confused in our heads, God's not confused about our weaknesses. We're confused about our weaknesses. Your God will fight for you. Your God will carry you just as he has carried you. They should have looked back on that 11-day journey and then the 40-year journey, and they should have said, Look what God did for us. Have you ever wondered, Moses mentions it here, have you ever wondered why there was a fire and a cloud? They're kind of weird things. Like, why a fire and cloud? Why a fire at night? I'm convinced it was to protect them. Because they were in a desolate land and there were dangerous things out there. And it's not that the whole nation was going to get eaten up by wild animals, but there were dangerous things. And it tends to be that dangerous things don't like to come around light. They hunt at night. They use the darkness.

And God protected his people with light at night. Why a cloud during the day? It's really sophisticated. He said it was really hot. It was really hot. They were in a desert land. It was really, really hot. And so he led them with a cloud and blocked the sun from cooking them for 40 years. It's really kind. Have you ever been thankful for a cloud on a hot day? 40 years of it. But they weren't thankful. They grumbled and complained. Shame on them and shame on us for being like them. This is how nasty fear is. This is what it causes. It takes the mercies of God and it just spits on them and says, there's no mercies here when you're surrounded by them. It's as though we can't have mercy from God if there is hardship as well. But I'm here to tell you, you won't ever find God's mercies except in hardship. And that's when his mercies will be the sweetest to you.

It's when there's difficulty and things to be afraid of and God's there with you, attending to you and ministering to you, even as he calls you to go through the thing you're scared of. Every woman who's ever had a baby understands this. You ain't getting out of it. There's no like, I want to get off the roller coaster ride. It's like you get on it. Nine months, it's just like, you know, you just hear the up and it's like, there's going to be, ah, it's coming. And when's it coming? We don't know. How long is it going to last? We don't know. Maybe the doctor can help. Hopefully, maybe. And God's with you. One of the most helpful things that was said to us about that early on in life was your mom, Emily and Megan's mom. She said, the only way you can have a baby is you have to die. You won't have a baby until you die. That's what she told Vanessa when we first were expecting Joseph. And it's like, what? Because everything in you wants to believe that it won't actually come to that.

A relief valve. And she wasn't being mean. She was being very kind and very sweet. And she just said, you have to die. And when you die, the baby will come. And then you'll have the joy of having a baby. And it'll all be worth it. And you'll want to do it again. Mystery of mysteries. The hardest thing in the world. And I want to do it again. That's God's faithfulness. And that's his kindness. And that's the difficulty in which you find it. But for all of this, you did not trust the Lord your God. This is the warning and the part that we need to hear. There's plenty of excuses to be had that might satisfy us as to why we can give in to our fears. But to give in to our fears requires that we proactively deny and reject the Lord and his provision. We don't want to think about it that way, but that's how it is. We have to actively say, no, I will not. That doesn't matter.

And it's not the rational part of our brain that's doing that. It's our fear that's talking. It's got a hold of us. And in the moment, what can be done? I don't know. But tomorrow, when the thing we're afraid of happened or didn't, we have work to do. So that we're not found to be in the same condition as the Israelites, but for all of this, you did not trust the Lord your God. It should be that the things you get afraid of, sinfully afraid of, and then the bad thing doesn't happen, or the bad thing happens and God's merciful to you in it. that should go in a record somewhere. In your heart and in your mind. So that the next time you can go, you know what? My worst fear happened and God met with me and sustained me through it. And it wasn't pleasant. You don't have to say it was fun. Because it may not have been fun or easy. Things we're afraid of when they come to pass generally aren't. And yet God's with us and bears us through it. We're still here.

When he says to the Israelites, going back just a little bit, he says that God carried you just as a man carries his son in all the way which you have walked until you have come to this place. And so through all the fears and hardships and things that you screwed up, God has brought you to this place and has given you a record and a testimony of all of his faithfulness. And shame on us if all we do is talk about how hard it was and not about how he sustained us through it. We presume that we would be here today. without him bringing us to this point. But we wouldn't. We wouldn't. All of the good things that we have, we wouldn't have if God hadn't brought us through those valleys and through those hardships. We wouldn't have them. We assume we would. We're wrong. We have to tune our hearts and minds to see God's provision and his kindness. That 40 years for the Israelites in the wilderness was hard and difficult.

And they were hungry. And they were without shelter. And they were without water. And they had conflicts. Military conflicts. Life was difficult. All their dads died. And God cared for them and brought them back to the place to give them the thing that he had promised to give to them. They were given to us as an example so we wouldn't be like them. They submitted. They chose to submit. To Satan rather than God. They chose to fear man rather than fear God. And the suffering that they incurred because of that choice was far worse than the suffering they would have incurred if they had gone into the land. We ought to remember that always. We ought to hear these warnings. God had promised them a land flowing with milk and honey to go before them and to clear it out for them. To reap what they had not sown. And to live in dwellings that they had not built. And they said no.

I want to read to you, I'm going to end by reading to you from 1 Corinthians 10, where Paul addresses this whole state of events and applies it to us and gives us a warning. This is 1 Corinthians 10, the first 13 verses. He says, For I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food. And all drank the same spiritual drink. For they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them, and that rock was Christ. Nevertheless, I'll pause here before I read and say, he's saying they're all the same, they're all the same, they're all the same. And now he's going to say, well, but there was a difference among them. Nevertheless, with most of them, God was not well pleased. For they were laid low in the wilderness. And he's pointing back to their unfaithfulness. And all of the men.

that believed the reports and the spies who came back and said, we can't with many of them. Of the 12 spies, two he was pleased with, 10 he was not. And all of the men that followed those 10, he was not pleased with. Three men, Moses, Caleb, Joshua, well pleased with. All the rest, not pleased with. Nevertheless, with most of them, God was not well pleased for they were laid low in the wilderness. Now these things happened as examples for us. So that we would not crave evil things as they also craved. Do not be idolaters. As some of them were. As it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and stood up to play. This is his recounting of their 40 years. He's saying these are the things they did. They were idolaters. They sat down to eat and drink and they got up to play. They were careless. Nor let us act immorally as some of them did. And 23,000 fell in one day. Nor let us try the Lord as some of them did.

And were destroyed by the serpents. Nor grumble as some of them did. And were destroyed by the destroyer. Now these things happened to them as an example. And they were written for our instruction. Upon whom the end of the ages have come. Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall. No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to man. And God is faithful. who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able. That's always the cry of fear is you can't bear it. God will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide a way of escape also so that you will be able to endure it. That way of escape is hearkening back to the Red Sea. He will provide a way of escape. No one could have imagined how that was going to turn out good. No one could even imagine how they were going to live. The best they could have hoped for is

they will come take us back and put us in slavery and make our lives a little bit harder, but let us live. That's the best they could have ever rationally hoped for. Like they weren't freedom? No, I mean, we're not hoping for freedom. Winning the fight? We're not open to win the fight. Here we are walking away with all their wealth. I bet they're upset with us. The best they could hope for was maybe they'll let us live in the most miserable slavery we can imagine. But along with the temptation to fear, God will also provide a way of escape so that you will be able to bear it.

Our part in this life is to search after that way of escape. If I have to go through this hard thing because my God who loves me has put it in front of me, then what I need is the way to bear it. I need the perspective, the strength, the wisdom, the vision to see how I'm supposed to bear this if the worst possible thing happens. It's like, but I want out. Okay. God got them out. You want out? God got them out in ways they never could have imagined. So do you have the faith of a child to believe that God will get you out of the things you're terrified of in ways that you can't imagine? He's brought you to this point. I'm sure he's done that for you in the past. Do you think he'll do it for you again in the future? Or was it just like, it was just like a one-time thing. It was just a big trick so that he could bring you out to destroy you because that's what they thought. He just brought us out here to destroy us. It was a big mean trick. Like he let us through the Red Sea so that he could have the Amorites kill us.

That's a faithless perspective. A faithful perspective is he did it once because he was going to give us this good thing. He hasn't given us this good thing yet, so I guess he's going to do it again. And whatever I have to walk through, he's going to walk before me through it and prepare my path and then carry me through and bring me to the point where I can receive all the good things that he's given to me. That's how Christians ought to think about their lives and their suffering and their fears. Lord, help us. But we wouldn't be doing ourselves any good if we didn't have someone tell us, if Moses hadn't told us, if Paul hadn't told us, that these things were given as a warning to us and an instruction to us so that we wouldn't, in the end, be counted among those with whom God was not well pleased and laid low. None of us want that to happen for us. And I say, okay, well then, we have to do business with our fears. Just like we have to do business with all of our other sins. And we have to trust God.

to deliver us and to give us the victory that he's promised to give to us in Christ. That's our life as Christians. Let's pray.