Do Not Go Up Nor Fight, For I Am Not Among You

So this morning we're going to be returning to our study of the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 1. We're going to be studying the last section of this chapter. And I want to remind you as we come to it, since it's been a few weeks since we've been in Deuteronomy, about what's gone on. Deuteronomy is the second telling of the law of God. And so the first telling of the law was when the Israelites came out of Egypt and they went out to Mount Sinai. And God met with them there and they received the Ten Commandments. Remember, Moses went up on the hill. He spent time up there. He came down, and the people said, we will consent to be your people, and you'll be our God. This was God's proposition to them, and they said yes. And they received the law, and they spent a good bit of time there. And then when they left Mount Sinai, they had an 11-day journey to the river, to the River Jordan, where they were going to cross over into this land, this promised land.

that had been promised not to them directly, but to their great-great-great-grandfather Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob. They were now going to receive it after hundreds and hundreds of years of captivity in Egypt. They were now going to go into God's land. And so they made an 11-day journey from Mount Sinai to a place called Kadesh Barnea, which is just an area along the side of the river. And there they convened, and Moses spoke to them, and Moses told them, we're going to go over into that land, and we're going to receive all that God has promised us. Well, the people were scared, and they knew that the land was not uninhabited, but that there were people living there, and that the people that lived there were strong. And it turns out that the Israelites were afraid of them. And so one of the things they did in preparation, for going into the land was before they went in they sent spies they picked one man from each uh each of the 12 tribes and sent them in spies into the the promised land to scope it out and to see what it was like well those spies all came back to give their report to moses into the heads of israel and all but two of them came back and said this is impossible

They were terrified at the prospect of going in and doing battle with the Amorites and with the other people who lived in that land. Two men were not convinced of that, Joshua and Caleb. Those men said, no, we can go in and we ought to go in because the Lord our God will go before us and he'll fight for us. But their counsel didn't carry the day. And so they stood in this place and... They refused to go in because they were scared. We've had sermons about their fear and the effect of fear on us. Remember what I've told you. We look on fear as though it's not a sin, but as though it's something that can't be helped. But that's not the testimony of Scripture when it comes to dealing with fear. The people were scared and they cried out together, our brethren have made our hearts melt before us. We can't go in there. And so they didn't.

And then God in his kindness tells us what happened next. Because many times we think that's the end of the story because nothing more can be done. But not so with God. What scripture says then is that God's anger burned against the people because of their rebellion. And in response to their rebellion, because their rebellion was that they refused to go up into the land. He says, then you won't go up into the land. I forbid it. Instead, you wander for these next 40 years in this wilderness, and all of your men who are over the age of 20 are going to die. They will not be allowed to enter into my land. The only two that will be allowed will be Caleb and Joshua. All the rest of them, during those 40 years, are going to die. And then he tells them, immediately before our text, go away, basically. Get out of here. Go to wandering.

And so there's still, our text picks up this morning at that point where they're standing there having just been told that the Lord is no longer going to give them the land at this point, but rather they're to spend the next 40 years wandering in the wilderness, suffering without a home and dying. So that's where our text picks up this morning. Our text is their response to all of this. What did they do in response? The only other thing I want to point out before we read this is about the book of Deuteronomy in general. The whole book of Deuteronomy is a retelling of the law. So the book of Deuteronomy was not given at the beginning, but at the end of the wandering in the wilderness. So this is the recap. All of the men that were there originally and were afraid to go up, they're all dead now. And their children have grown up in their place. And Moses is speaking to the people because now they're about to go into the land and Moses is about to die.

And he reminds them as they go in of the things that they had heard 40 years previously in an effort to prepare them and remind them of their duties to God and his promises to them. And so they are being, it's like they're watching a family video of the past, of what they had done and how God had responded and then what they'd done in response. My hope this morning is that God would show us what true repentance is. versus fake or false repentance. Not everything that calls itself repentance or a refusal to sin or a denial of sin actually is a denial of sin. And what you're going to see as we read this passage is that they acknowledge we've sinned, but they don't repent. They think they're repenting.

But all they're doing is incurring a greater judgment and an immediate judgment from God because they did it far from repenting. They continued in their sins. They went right on doing the exact same sort of thing they had been doing previously. And so my hope is that God will help us to see the difference between true repentance and false repentance. And that he'll help us to see it before it's too late. Because there is a time when repentance is no longer an option or available to you. Would you please stand now as we read the word of the Lord from Deuteronomy chapter 1? verses 41 through 46. This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. Then you said to me, this is Moses speaking to the people, then you said to me, we have sinned against the Lord. We will indeed go up and fight just as the Lord our God commanded us. And every man of you girded on his weapons of war and regarded it as easy to go up into the hill country. And the Lord said to me, say to them,

Do not go up nor fight, for I am not among you. Otherwise you will be defeated before your enemies. So I spoke to you, but you would not listen. Instead, you rebelled against the command of the Lord and acted presumptuously and went up into the hill country. The Amorites who lived in that hill country came out against you and chased you as bees do and crushed you from Seir to Horma. Then you returned and you wept before the Lord. But the Lord did not listen to your voice nor give ear to you. So you remained in Kadesh many days, the days that you spent there. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. I'm sure we all have passages of Scripture, maybe books of the Bible, that we prefer, that we like, that we say, yeah, I get that. That's my kind of thing. What I like...

My favorite parts of Scripture are the ones where the veil's pulled back and the truth is just set right out there in plain English. Those are my favorites. Because then there can never be any excuse, well, I didn't understand. Some things are hard to understand, but I praise God for the things that aren't hard to understand. I find them to be very helpful. And this is one of those passages. It's pretty clear. If you were to go home and read this to a six or seven-year-old and say, Can you summarize this for me? I think they'd probably do a pretty good job. They'd say, the Israelites, they sinned and God got mad, and he disciplined them. You know, you disciplined me, Dad, I get it. And then they tried to obey, but it was too late. And they went on in and rebelled, and then they were disciplined some more. And God was angry at them, and he didn't listen to them anymore, even as they cried out to him because of their rebellion. I think that a six- or seven-year-old could...

come up with that from this passage with a little bit of guidance. It's not a hard passage to understand. So have you ever heard the phrase or said it to your children, this phrase, slow obedience is disobedience. At our house, it's no obedience. We like to rhyme. Slow obedience is no obedience. You read it in a book somewhere. I don't know what book it was, so I can't tell you, but it was a helpful concept. Something that you want to teach your kids. If you don't obey right away, it's not obedience. It's disobedience. It's not this other category between obedience and disobedience that's like it's in the queue for later obedience. That category doesn't exist. If you don't do it right away or when you're told to do it, it's rebellion. It's disobedience. That's what we find with the Israelites. They've just heard this severe judgment. And then they say, we've sinned against the Lord.

We will indeed go up and fight just as the Lord our God has commanded us. And the question that should come to our minds is, if they were willing to go up and fight, why hadn't they done it? They'd had opportunity. They had been told. But they refused. They thought now that the discipline was coming. You've seen little kids do this sort of thing, right? Honey, put that down. Honey, pick up your toys. Honey, get off the phone. Whatever it is you say to the kid. And they don't. It's like you are speaking a different language. They don't even blink. And you know they heard you. And it's amazing because without even looking at you, and you see this in like little kids, one-year-olds. As soon as they see you twitch to get up to go toward them, what do they do? They obey. They're like, and they're looking right in your eyes with big old, all the whites. You can see all the white. And they're like, I'm doing it.

And what's going on is that they know that what they're doing was disobedience. You don't have to tell them that. They heard you. But now that the consequence is coming, well, now they're moved to action. So here's the question for you, mom or dad. Is that obedience or disobedience? That's disobedience. That's disobedience. What are you to do about it, mom or dad? I think many times we content ourselves with that level of... Compliance. We actually don't deal with it the way we should. And what we're communicating to our kids is something that God didn't communicate here to the Israelites, which is that if you get around to it just before the hammer comes down, so to speak, then it's okay. But that's not the case here. It is not better late than never. They refused when they were commanded. They said no. And it would be good for us to learn to think, more simply about our own motivations and our own temptations. Every one of us can get wrapped up around in our brains about who we are and what we are and why we're doing this and what we intend to do instead and how we're going to fix it and when we're going to do it. We can get all snarled up about that type of stuff. It doesn't help. It does not help us serve God. What it does is it helps us disobey because we confuse ourselves to the point where the simple command is lost on us.

And we would do well to go back, to take a few steps back and say, what was required of me? Did I do it when it was required of me? It's a simple question because you can just say yes or you can say no. Yes, I did or no, I didn't. And you don't have to get into the reasons why you didn't do it or the reasons why you think it was unreasonable or the unforeseen problem that came up because you were about to do it, but then this other thing happened and then you forgot. Did I do what was required of me when it was required of me, yes or no? Those are questions we can answer without getting confused. I think one of the things that we believe, though we may not say out loud or this clearly, is that the opportunity to obey later will exist. And I'm here to tell you, no, it won't. That's the testimony of this passage. We're going to get to it.

God said, no, you're not going to get to it. And it's not that you're not going to get to it because you won't eventually get around to wanting to do it. You won't be able to get to it because I will not go with you to do it. And so if we think of repentance in terms of when I get around to it, we make a huge presumption on God that he will just stand there idly by while we do whatever we want and then still be there when we finally decide that for whatever reason, we're going to stop. God makes no promise to sit idly by and watch us give ourselves to sin for any length of time and then go, okay, well now that you've decided you've had enough of it, I guess it's okay with me. No. God is a holy and righteous judge. And he is not bound to sit by and watch sinners consume themselves with their sins and not say or respond to it in any way that demonstrates his justice. It's shocking to see what he does with them.

Because they say, we're going to do it. We've sinned against the Lord. Are your confessions of sin that clear? I did it wrong. There's always excuses and reasons and justifications and efforts that were made that didn't make it. It didn't go just exactly how we wanted and we didn't mean to. Or maybe we did mean to, but we didn't want to mean to. The nice thing about them is they just said, we sinned against the Lord. There was no other... other stuff. They left all the excuses behind because now the discipline had come. And now they're just saying, yeah, I did it. I'm guilty. I'm guilty. I'm guilty. And then they made this presumption. Later on, it says that they acted presumptuously. And what was their presumption? Their presumption was that they could go up and fight now that they felt like it. It was too late. It was too late. Discipline unveiled and executed, motivated them to act, but it was too late for them to act. Their opportunity had passed.

The discipline was set. If you live your life navigating through it in terms of where the greatest pain is, meaning I make decisions based on where I can avoid the most pain, then the only way you'll ever obey God is when the pain of disobedience gets higher than the pain of obedience. You think of the little kid sitting there and you say, honey, pick up your toys. And they say, nothing. They also do nothing. They don't want to do it, right? They're like, this is unpleasant to me. I'm not wanting to do that. When they see you come and they understand that discipline is now coming, all of a sudden the pain of discipline has eclipsed the pain of obedience and now they act. If you live your life that way, only seeing where the worst consequences come from, you will never serve God. You can't. Because there's no love for God in that sort of thinking. There's no gratitude or thankfulness for his mercy to you.

You feel entitled to it. There was a lot of things that were bad about growing up outside of the church. I'd never been in a church until I was in my early 20s. Which for some of you, you're younger than me still. And I got all the way to where you're at and had never been in a church. But one of the benefits of it was that the grace of God was real to me. Because I knew what it was like to not have it. And I knew what it was like to live without it. And one of the greatest dangers that growing up in the church, and you guys all have kids and you want to have kids, and it's a blessing of God to have kids. One of the dangers that they will face, and you have to prepare them for, is that they will presume that there are no consequences for their actions because they're taught to love God. When in fact, there are consequences for their actions. And some of them quite severe. Don't wait until the discipline comes to act and to obey. If that's the case, it's too late. There's another thing in this passage that is...

Really astounding. Maybe the most astounding part of it all is toward the end of verse 41. He describes what they do. After they speak and say, we've sinned, we'll go up and fight. And it says that every man of you girded on his weapons of war and regarded it as easy to go up into the hill country. Is war easy? Wasn't war just a little while ago so terrifying that they couldn't move? You regarded it as easy to go up. How in the world did they regard this as easy work? The very thing they were just so afraid of days, if not hours before. How could that be easy? I think it was at this point that they had taken the word of God and the promises of God and gotten it all jumbled up in their heads. He had promised previously to go with them, to be with them. And what they should have thought at that point is, If God will go with us, then we don't have to fear. In fact, that's exactly what Moses told them was, you don't have to fear. Don't be shocked or dismayed for the Lord your God will go with you. Let's put down your fears. Easy might be a stretch, but safe, protected by God, yes. And so now that the discipline has come, they regard it as an easy thing. It's easy to get...

to be mistaken about what God has promised to you. It's easy to get mistaken. Sometimes you can be mistaken in thinking that God is your enemy and out to get you when in fact he's promised to be merciful to you. But you can also get that backwards and think that the grace of God is for you no matter who you are or how you respond to it and whether or not it produces any change in you. But the grace of God is not. ineffectual. It's not the sort of thing that God pours out on his people and gives to them as a gift and then it doesn't change them. But it is possible for us to think it does because it's always been ours until it's not. Until it becomes clear that not all Israel was Israel. That not all of these people were going to enter into God's promised land. That with many of them, he was not well pleased. They felt entitled to the thing that God had promised them to do and didn't think that their behavior

Their response to him, their disposition toward their God mattered at all. They had this clean break between their obedience, their actions, their hearts, and what God had said. And the Bible doesn't teach us any such break. Those things are connected. What God says to us, he works out in us. And if he's not working those things out in us, then we don't have the thing. Good trees bear good fruit. Bad trees bear bad fruit. And he who started a good work in us will bring it to completion. And he makes no such promise to an unbeliever to make their lives easy or comfortable or to turn away his wrath or his judgment. Unless they come to Jesus, they will be consumed. And if you're found among them, then you will be consumed. And you won't have anything you can say or do about it. Any more than they did. It's a scary thing. It's a serious thing.

Our souls are important. In Romans, Paul talks about this sort of confusion that we can get into. In Romans 6, he talks about being under grace and not under the law. And he immediately anticipates that there's going to be a confusion, that there's going to be an abuse of the mercy of God. And he asks this question, what shall we say then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? What he's doing is anticipating the confusion, the mistake, the problem that was going to come. These people had lived, these Jews had lived under this, like, we've got to obey the law to be saved. And they were wrong about that. But that's how they lived. I've got to do what I'm told so that I can be saved. And then the gospel comes, Jesus comes, and he says, that's not how it is. It's never how it's been, and it's still not how it is. And now Jesus has come. And we're no longer under the law, but now we're under grace. And he knew that the people who had never understood the truth would then...

misunderstand the truth still. They were wrong when they thought that they were saved by keeping the law, and now they're going to feel as though they're cut free to sin because they're not under the law anymore. It's like a dog on a chain. Dog's on the chain. The dog's on the chain. As much as he wants to run, as much as he wants to go, there's this chain. He's getting yanked back. Can't go. Here's the boundary. No more grass. Growing underneath where he runs around. But someday, someone lets him off the chain, and he's just gone. Did he not know that he had an owner? Did he not know how merciful it was for someone to come let him off the chain? What a stupid dog. Right out in the middle of the street, most likely. He didn't stop to give thanks. There was no gratitude. He thought, as soon as I'm free to do what I want, if God promises to forgive sins, then I guess sins don't matter anymore. Shall we sin that grace may abound? May it never be.

The mercy of God and the forgiveness of Jesus Christ is for repentant sinners. It is not meant to be a salve for the rebellious heart. And so in this passage, forgiveness is off the table. God has proceeded to judgment. And who's to say when God will proceed to judgment? Certainly when someone dies, God proceeds to judgment. And we all understand that the day of salvation is finally and completely closed. But does the door of... and the opportunity to repent. Does that door ever close while you're still alive? Yes, it does. And I hope it's not offensive to you to hear that. I'm not saying that there can never be repentance in any circumstance and that you should spend your life trying to figure out whether or not it's still an option. What I mean when I say there's a time when repentance is off the table is because your rebellion has gotten to such a point That God acts and treats you as though your behavior demonstrates you want to be treated. You have rejected God. That's what they did. They rejected God. And he said that you will not enter my promised land. So be careful about how you behave because God takes account of your behavior. And this passage teaches us that even before they died, the opportunity for repentance...

was closed. We have another example of that in Scripture. How about Esau? Esau was a fool, and he sold his birthright away for a meal. And then the Scripture tells us later that Esau sought for repentance with tears, and what? Could not find it. Why? Because his rejection of God was such that there's no coming back from it. And God willed for Esau to be judged. And it ought to be a scary, terrifying thing to read a passage about a kid that grew up in a Christian home and God rejected him. Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated. That's scary stuff. You have kids, that's scary stuff. You're a Christian kid that grew up in a Christian home, that's scary stuff. And so I want to impress upon you that there's a day and a time For repentance. And that you ought not to presume that your obedience later is you feel as though you get around to it, that God will still be standing there. It may be that His mercy and His grace is such that He is still standing there. But you should not presume on that. Your soul hangs in the balance. Don't make that bet. They say, we're going to go up and we're going to fight. We'll put on our weapons of war and it'll be easy. And the Lord said to me, to Moses, say to them, do not go up nor fight, for I am not among you. Otherwise, you will be defeated before your enemies.

So I spoke to you, but you would not listen. Isn't that the problem they always had? God would speak and they wouldn't listen? They thought this was repentance. We're going to go do the thing now, but now the thing that God has said has changed. It's no longer go up into the land. It's don't go up into the land. But they're the same. Disobey when you're told to go up. Disobey when you're told not to go up. It's not repentance. Their behavior didn't change. Their actions were the same in our lives. We're often dealing with more than one sin at a time. Maybe one sin that you struggle with is prominent in your mind and you want to be free of it. You won't ever get free of that sin if you don't realize that that sin is connected to a whole spider web of other sins because you have a sinful nature. You don't just occasionally do sinful things. You're sinful. You don't have good stuff bubbling up inside of you. Not on yourself. Not by yourself.

And so it's possible to take on one sin and say, we're going to repent of this sin, but to repent of it in such a way that your disobedience is never broken. You just changed one sin out for the other. I'm going to stop lying. I'm going to stop lying. I'm going to stop lying. Okay, well, what did you replace it with? It's very possible you could replace lying with a completely different sin. Just swap one out for the other. If you don't replace it with true repentance, with true obedience, with true... seeking after God, you really are trading out one sin for the other. And what I can tell you and what Scripture tells you is that in time, that other sin will come back and it will come back with a vengeance. You remember the story of the demon-possessed man? I think it was a man. It was a man. It was a man. They came and the demon was gone. They got rid of him. They cleaned everything up in his life. And then the demon, what does it say about the demon? The demon went out and finding no place to...

go, basically, gets his buddies, seven of them, and they come back. And the last state of the man was worse than the first state. And that's what it means when you swap one sin out for another and you don't repent in the process. When you see a sin, when some sin in your life rises to the level of you go, that's bad, you ought to know, because Scripture teaches you, that that sin that you've identified as bad is connected to a whole host of other sins that are equally bad. And that you can't just repent of one of them and expect that the other ones will stay at bay. They will not. Often before or during a hurricane, there's great flooding. There was just a hurricane last year down in Florida. And one of the things that a hurricane does, and this is sort of how Satan works in our lives, part of the reason there's great flooding is because the hurricane spins and it creates a vacuum and it literally pulls the water.

Like sea level is like this. And it's so strong that it pulls the water away from the shore. And it piles it up. Not level anymore. Piles it up. And then the eye of the storm is moving, right? And the surge, this big pile of water, which water doesn't pile, right? Naturally. It doesn't want to pile. It wants to flatten. What happens is it piles up. And then as the storm moves, the surge comes back. And it just keeps coming. It doesn't come as a wave. It comes as a wall. And it just comes. And it just keeps, it doesn't stop. It's not like there's a wave coming. It's just this new level of water. It's just surging through. And it goes through everything. And it just pushes and pushes and pushes. And it doesn't stop because it's all responding to this other pressure that had already been exerted. It was all gathered up and now it's all going out. And that's how sin works. It wells up. And you say, I'm going to stop that. And then it lets out.

And all these other things come with it. So we have to be careful when we think about repentance that we not think of it singularly, that we think of there's just this one thing I need to fix. There's this one thing we needed to do. The Israelites in this situation should have looked at their lives and understood that there was all kinds of sins and rebellion and rejection of God that attended them. We can go back through their history and point the things out. When they were at Mount Sinai, what did they do while Moses was up on the mountain talking to the Lord? Sat there like good Christian people waiting for God to speak to them? No. They built a golden calf. That's just one example. They grumbled and complained about the food. They threatened to kill Moses. You brought us out into this land. You took us away from Egypt where our pots were filled with meat. You brought us out here to die. They were bitter and they were angry. They were faithless. They were idolaters. They were rebels. So the Lord spoke to them and they would not listen. Instead,

They rebelled against the command of the Lord and acted presumptuously, and they went up into the hill country. And the Amorites who lived in that country came out against them, chased them as bees do, and crushed them from Seir to Hormah. When you presume upon God, and you feel entitled to things that are not yours to have through your rebellion, the result is you get what God says. He told them, don't go up, they're going to destroy you. They went up, and they were destroyed. we can look at that and say, yeah, that's exactly what God said was going to happen. That's exactly what happened. Have you ever had it happen in your life where you cannot figure out what in the world God's doing in your life? Like everything you keep thinking is good and the thing you're like, I need to do this and I need to go over here. I need to start this and stop that. But it always seems to be like you're out of sync with the Lord. If that happens, stop and listen. That was one of their primary failures. They didn't listen.

They didn't listen. Little kids have to be taught to listen, don't they? Hey, honey, come here. Yeah, Dad. Hey, I need you to go upstairs. And the kids hadn't upstairs. They don't even know a four yet. And what if I wanted to tell them three things? They didn't stand and listen. You teach your kids to listen. Stand here and listen. Look in my eyes. Right here. Not over there. Here. Here. What did Daddy tell you to go do? Thank you. Because they don't listen. And we don't listen. And when things don't seem to be going the way they should, we need to stop and we need to listen to what God has said. Because they were all mixed up about what God had in store for them. When the land was available, they weren't interested. Now that the wandering and the judgment is on the table, they're like, no, we want the land. And they can't figure out why in the world what's going on. They were crushed, exactly as God said would happen. And you'll find in Scripture, especially in the book of Proverbs, that Proverbs is full of warnings.

And it's full of truth-telling. Not everything in there is commended as like this is a good thing, but truths about wisdom, truths about folly, truths about the adulterous woman, truths about how to live your life, and comparisons, comparisons, comparisons. I like the book of Proverbs because it's simple and it tells you how things are. It tells you how God made the world and how it can go well for you or how it can go poorly. It's not mysterious. It's not confusing. It's not long. Simple little Proverbs. You read it. You start to put them together and you go, oh, listen to it. Listen to what God said. Okay? You might be thinking, oh, you're telling me to listen, but what am I supposed to listen to? Listen to that. Listen to his word. Listen to his word. So that you'll avoid the sort of outcomes and the sort of rebellion that the Israelites faced. One of my favorite passages of Scripture.

is in 2 Corinthians 7, where he talks about godly sorrow and worldly sorrow. And with worldly sorrow, he's very simple. The sorrow of the world leads to death, and that's all he has to say about it. But then he talks about godly sorrow, and he says that it leads to a repentance without regret, leading to life or to salvation. And then he lists all of the good things that it produces, that attend godly sorrow. It's a sweet passage to me because it's like, oh, that's what repentance looks like. That's what real repentance looks like. If you were to look at the Israelite story and you were to read in that passage in 2 Corinthians 7 and said, which kind of sorrow is this? You'd very quickly conclude this was worldly sorrow. They were mad because they were going to get sent out into the wilderness and they said, no. And God said, yes. And you don't want to be fighting with God about what's going to happen. I think one of the things that attends repentance

is a humility and a willingness to have other people tell you how they see things. The fact is, when we get stuck in sin, we're blind. We think we see, but we don't see. We've become accustomed to things and ways of thinking that are ungodly and that are corrupt. And what we need is someone to shine light into the darkness and say, that is not how you think it is. That's not going to go the way you're expecting it to go. It's going to turn out very badly. The problem with going into sin is you don't see it that way anymore. So you need someone else to come in. But you have to have the humility to say, I'm going to trust someone else to tell me how to live, what to do, and how to get free of this thing that I've wandered into. You need someone to come along and guide you out. And you have to listen to them. And that really is the hardest thing, is listening to what God would say. Lord, what is the way out of the mess? There are lots of things you'll want to do. You'll want to make the situation better.

Many times I'll tell you, when you sin and you fail and you hurt other people, you can't be the one to fix it because you're the one who caused the problem. That was one of the lessons I learned as I became a Christian. All of the sins I'd been involved in, all the harm I'd done to other people, I found life in Jesus Christ. And you know what I wanted to do? I wanted to go tell the people that I'd hurt. But I had been such a destructive force in their life that that wasn't my work to do. And so I had to make my peace with the destruction that I'd caused and trust God to clean it up if he would clean it up.

Through someone else. That's humility. It's very hard. But it has to be a part of repentance or we don't have true repentance. True repentance says, I'm done trying to work in the situation. I need someone else to come clean the mess up. It's really humbling. How many of you women don't like having other people come to your house because your house is a mess? Or you think your house is a mess? It's just constant, right? It's like, oh, well, they're going to come and see the, you know. Do you ever get to the point where you're like, you know what? I do just need somebody to come help.

And it is a mess. And I'm really just asking them to come clean up the mess that I made. It's a really good gospel experience to let someone come clean up your mess. Will they enjoy cleaning up your mess? Probably not. It won't be like, this is so great. I get to clean up your mess. What they will be excited about was that you were humble enough to allow them to help you because you needed help. And you said, I need help. And you didn't stand there and say, well, no, that's not how we do it here at the house. Because it's kind of funny. When you walk through the front door, it's evident how you do it at the house. Right? It's a mess. We see it. This is how you do things. We're going to do it a different way. It takes humility to accept that kind of help. It takes humility to bring your sins before God and say, Lord, do with me what you will. Though he slay me, yet I will believe and trust in him. That's repentance. That's what we need so that we won't end up like the Israelites. Let's pray.