You Have Circled This Mountain Long Enough

Before I preach, there's two quick announcements, sort of housekeeping things I wanted to talk about. And this is sort of a perennial thing that I say to the young families. Many of you are young, have little children, and you're trying to sort out life and what it looks like and what priorities should be. Some of us are a little older and have got a little more experience with that. What I want to encourage you to do as your pastor, but as an older husband and father, and this is particularly for the men. you want to learn to take care of your young children. Now that may seem like a strange thing to say, you need to learn to take care of your young children, but what I mean is it's easy as a young man to not really know what to do with a little kid. To be like, I'm not sure, you need mom, we need mom, we need mom. Well, one of the costs, perhaps unintentional but real, is that if you don't know how to take care of your young children, it means that your wife never ever gets a break. And it means that anywhere she goes, she's always having to think about

being the primary caregiver of the child. And so that shows its face in a number of places. The places I would be aware of it would be here at church. I would see it or hear about it. I wouldn't see it directly. I'd hear about it at women's events, women who are not there or women who were there and were distracted because they had kids that weren't babes in arms. I realize their schedules and sometimes that's what has to happen. But as a rule. Young men, you want to be able to take care of your young children. If your baby needs to be with their mother so they can eat, that's one thing. But otherwise, you should be able to do what your child needs for a few hours anyway with confidence. And you may have to learn that. You learn that from your wife who does it all the other time. Or you can learn that from older men who have also learned to do it. But you want your wife to be able to go to...

fellowship with the other women, and to have a break from the burdens of motherhood. They don't ever stop. Your work stops. Her work doesn't stop. Her work oftentimes doesn't even stop at night. And there you lay sleeping, and there she is awake. So it's a kindness that you could give to your wife, and it's a kindness you really should give to her. Because if you don't learn to take care of little kids, I don't want you to think that as they get older, you'll somehow magically step right in and know how to interact with them. You just have to learn. So keep them alive. Feed them, change their diapers. You should change diapers. You should know how to do it. Whatever kind of diaper it is, however messy it is, you can do it. The other place that I would see this sort of wanting to see this grow in this is on Sunday mornings. Our mother's room is for nursing mothers. It is not for your toddlers. It's for your wife and her little baby. So she can go there and nurse the baby or feed the baby and then come back to worship.

If she's taking your little kids into the mother's room, you're not doing your job. I could spend 10 minutes telling you that, but I'll just say it simply. You're not doing your job if your wife has to take the baby regularly into the room. Now, there may be an extraordinary circumstance. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm just saying as a matter of course, you dads can take care of your kids, and you need to take care of your kids for your child's sake as well as your wife's and as a love to the other women that are here. That applies to the mother's room. It also applies to just after church. Right now we have a gym, and it freaks me out that there's a gym because we have teenagers down to like little kids all running around. It could be a dangerous place with balls flying and kids running, and they have a lot of fun. No one's gotten hurt yet. But your kids are your responsibility here at church. And I remember years and years of when we had just little ones, Vanessa.

having to keep track of them. It's a blessing to have a building where kids can go play. We had our kids your age in an office building with marble floors and glass everywhere and pictures on the walls. And you couldn't go anywhere. And you just had to have your kids all just next to you. And the reality was it affected our fellowship after the church service. And kids still do that even with the gym. So you fathers, take care of your kids. Take care of your kids at church, at home, okay? It will help you grow as a man. And so that's my exhortation to you. It's not the sermon. The sermon is not about fatherhood or anything like that. It's just my exhortation to you. It's a gift you can give to your wife and to the other women of the church. So please do that work. Now, our sermon text is in Deuteronomy, chapter 2, verses 1 through 7.

We had a number of sermons through chapter 1, and now we're working our way in through chapter 2. The section we're going to be studying this morning is a retelling of the Israelites wandering through the land of Seir. And if you're like me and I say, they were wandering through the land of Seir, that probably doesn't mean a lot to you. You're like, oh yeah, the land of Seir, this is what happens there. So we're going to talk about what happened in the land of Seir and what the significance of it was. Particularly, before we read the passage, what I can tell you is that the land of Seir was not an uninhabited place, but rather it was the land where Esau and his descendants had settled. Remember Jacob and Esau? Jacob, I've loved Esau, I've hated Esau, being the rejected one, the one who went off. Esau settled in this land. And so as the Israelites are going to wander through this land, travel through it on their way, the Lord instructs them about how to behave while they're in that land.

Moses' retelling of this history is a humbling reminder to the Israelites of the Lord's discipline in their lives. My hope is that God will help us to humble ourselves when he disciplines us and keep us from resisting. My assumption is that when discipline comes, we have a knee-jerk reaction to it. We say, I don't want that. I don't want to, that's not fair. That's not right. You don't understand that these are the sorts of things that immediately spring to mind. We say, that's not how it should be, whether it's our parents or our spouse or our boss or whomever. If anyone tells us this isn't okay, we say, well, you don't understand. And what I want you to know is that's not a humble response and that's not a response often that honors God. And if we don't listen to the correction, then what ends up happening is discipline comes. And the discipline is even more humbling. And that's what we're going to read about with the Israelites.

this morning. Would you please stand now as we read the word of the Lord from Deuteronomy chapter 2 verses 1 through 7. It says the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. Then we turned and set out for the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea as the Lord spoke to me and circled Mount Seir for many days. And the Lord spoke to me saying you have circled this mountain long enough. Now turn north and command the people saying, You will pass through the territory of your brothers, the sons of Esau, who live in Seir. And they will be afraid of you, so be very careful. Do not provoke them, for I will not give you any of their land, even as little as a footstep, because I have given Mount Seir to Esau as a possession. You shall buy food from them with money, so that you may eat. And you shall also purchase water from them with money, so that you may drink.

For the Lord your God has blessed you in all that you have done. He has known your wanderings through this great wilderness these 40 years. The Lord your God has been with you. You have not lacked a thing. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Now, if I had to describe this passage, there's two ways we could do it, and I think one is superior to the other. One is to say that this is a big, interesting history lesson. and there are a lot of historical facts that we're going to look at and get into a little bit as we go through this passage. But I think the more helpful way to process this passage is that the Lord's instructing us in how to receive discipline, or rather the consequences, the lasting effects of discipline. I think most of us, if we have to go through something difficult, we would take comfort in it being short. If I have to do something hard, I just want it to be over with. I just want to get it over with. I want to get back to normal.

But a lot of times discipline doesn't work that way. It's not a simple, here's the remedy and now it's all back together. Sometimes when the offense is great enough and severe enough, there's things that can't be put back simply and quickly. There's ongoing ramifications or fallout from the circumstances. You can understand that if you have a child and your child was... had a cell phone and you found out your child had been looking at pornography on their cell phone, there would be a problem. You'd take the phone away. Did you solve the problem? No, you didn't solve the problem, but what's the thing that's most difficult to address in that situation? The thing that's most difficult to address in that situation is the breach of trust. Now you don't trust them. And that's not something that we can just put back together in a minute and say, it's all fine now.

As much as you might want to, you realize that's not how it works. This is going to take time. It's going to be difficult. There's going to be an ongoing consequence for an action. And so this passage is that sort of situation. There's an ongoing consequence for an action. You remember, the Israelites were brought up out of Egypt, out of Goshen. They go to Mount Sinai. They receive the law of God there. And then they travel north, basically up to the southern border of Canaan, the land of Canaan. And there, Moses retells them the law, and they're going to go into the land. But they refuse to do it. They say, we can't go in. We're scared. And the Lord gets angry with them, and he says, fine then. What I'm going to do instead is I'm going to turn you out of that land. I'm not going to give it to you now. And all your men are going to go, and you guys are going to wander in the wilderness for 40 years, and all your old men are going to die.

And then their children, as they raise up, I'll give the land to them. But you're going to wander for 40 years and it's going to be difficult. They respond to that going, no, no, no, not that, not that. And they go and they try to go into the land, but the Lord had told them, don't go into the land. If you go in, I'm not going to be with you and you're going to be destroyed and consumed. And that is exactly what happened. This was our most recent sermon from the book of Deuteronomy. And so now they're entering in to this 40 years of wandering.

And the land that they're wandering through is not all uninhabited. There are people that live there. This week, we're going to learn about them going through Esau's lands. Next week, they're going to go through Moab, which is another populated place on their way. And so they're having to deal with other people. And so you ought to think of this as you're reading it, sort of zooming out into the big picture and say, how does it feel and what are your thoughts when other people know about your discipline and what's going on with you? When you're a child, how is it when your siblings know that you're in trouble, that you did something wrong, whether you're grounded or you've lost a privilege or whatever's going on? It's not a pleasant thing, is it? No, it's not pleasant. That's the sort of thing that's going on here. The Israelites' discipline is being demonstrated over time to all of the people around. Their humiliation is being made public. And so they had wandered.

As they left Egypt, they sort of, I don't want to, me drawing you a picture with my fingers isn't going to do you any good. But they left Egypt. They traveled south to Mount Sinai. They traveled north to go into Canaan, the southern border, and then sinned and were turned away. So they're heading back south. And they get to this place called Mount Seir, this mountain. And the land around it was named from that mountain. It's down near the Red Sea, a different part of the Red Sea from where they crossed. Nevertheless, it's back further south. They're wandering around. The point of this to them was they were supposed to be going further north. They were supposed to be going into a land to the north. And the Lord says, no, go down there. Go away. Don't stand here on the border. Go south. Get away. You can't have this thing. Go. So they go. And then there's this interesting thing. They're walking in circles around a mountain. Does that sound like any fun to you? Wander south and you wander around this mountain. Now, you wouldn't walk around the mountain, you know.

10 times a day. But here they are, this whole nation of people just making their way around this mountain, this mountain range. And they're walking in circles, literally. The Lord says to them, eventually, you've circled this mountain long enough. You've been here. And you've been going around. They circled it for many days. It seems like a waste of time. But it's not a waste of time. Why is it not a waste of time? Well, it's not a waste of time because they're doing what the Lord told them to do. And this circling and this less... wandering is a part of their lessons, a part of them learning obedience. You remember just recently, they weren't willing to obey God. They were not willing to go in when he said go in to the land. They also were not willing to stay out when he said stay out. And so right now, they're getting a really rudimentary lesson in obedience. This is what we do with young children or with older children. Sometimes it's what we need done with us as adults. We need really simple instructions, really simple lessons. And we have to submit to it. We walk around the mountain.

so to speak. And what's going on at that time is we're learning to do what we're told. And that's what the Israelites are learning to do. If you compared this with their unwillingness to obey, at the end of chapter one, you'd realize something dramatic has happened in this people. Now they're willing to wander around a mountain, whereas before they weren't willing to cross over the river and go into the land. They had seen the awful results of their disobedience. And now they were more content to do what God said. This is a hard way to learn obedience. It should be noted. This is not the ideal way to learn to obey. This is sort of the I will only learn my lessons by experience way. I won't learn from instruction. I will only learn from touching the hot stove myself sort of way. This is not how it should be. This is not what we should aspire to do. This is the hard way. But it is the way that they've...

chosen, so to speak. It's better for us to obey initially than to have to learn obedience through discipline. And so they circle this mountain a number of days, and the Lord eventually says, enough, turn north. And he tells Moses, command the people saying, you will pass through the territory of your brothers, the sons of Esau, who live in Seir, and they will be afraid of you. So the Lord led them into or through an inhabited land. This land is populated with people that the Lord calls their brothers. though they haven't had anything to do with them for hundreds of years. Remember, the Israelites have been in Egypt these last 400 years, and Jacob and Esau split early on in their life. And so it's been hundreds of years since they've had anything to do with these people. And the Lord says, these are your brothers. You're going through the land of your brothers. And he tells them that they should treat their brothers well, that they should not provoke them. I want to ask you a question. Who is your brother? Who is your brother?

You remember when they asked Jesus, who is my neighbor? I'm asking the same question, but I'm using brother instead of neighbor. And what the question's meant to get at is, who are you responsible to or for? And how do you view other people? Do you view them as your brother? I'm afraid we don't view them as our brothers nearly as much as we should, and that's for any number of reasons. It can have to do with age. It can have to do with... It can have to do with station in life. It can have to do with wealth. It can have to do with the color of your skin. Who is your brother? That's the question that they have to face. You understand if you were Israel, you would not have thought of these people as your brother or having any obligation relationship to them. You'd just be like, well, these are just people. I think we should learn as Christians to see people as our brothers.

That we should learn to care for them. We understand that we have natural affection for our biological family or those close to us or those most similar to us. There is some natural affection that way. And what I'm saying is not meant to put that affection away and say that's bad. We all are more comfortable around those that we know and that know us. And yet, the vast majority of people that we interact with on a daily basis and certainly throughout our lives, are not those people. If you were to go through the contacts in your phone, what percentage of them would actually be family members and close friends? I bet it's a really small percentage. I bet there's a whole bunch of people that you know, co-workers and friends and classmates and who knows what. How do you view them? Are they just people? I think Christians ought to view them as their brothers, that we have some obligation to them, that they have some obligation to us, that we ought to treat them well. It's interesting that

that the Lord tells them that when they go into there, how to behave. And basically what he tells them is, don't take advantage of them. Don't steal from them. Don't feel entitled to their stuff, their land, their food, or their water. You're a guest in their house. Love them and be respectful and kind. Treat them like they're your brothers. And so when we see a stranger, someone we don't know, someone who's different than us, What we ought to see is someone made in the image of God. Someone who's our brother. Someone who needs salvation just like we do. I don't care whether they're your age. I don't care whether they're richer or poorer than you. I don't care if their skin is lighter or darker than yours. It doesn't matter. It matters to the world. The world's set on us dividing ourselves up according to these differences. But that shouldn't be the case with Christians. The poor should be able to fellowship with the wealthy.

and the white man with the black man and loving each other because those things aren't that big of a deal. When I grew up, all of my friends were black. All of my closest friends were black. I grew up in a school that was about a third white, a third Hispanic, and a third black. And my friends were black. We played basketball. We played football. We were athletic. We lived in the poorer part of town. That's where I lived. That's where my friends lived. And we didn't care that we were black or white or whatever. The biggest fights we got in were over the games that we played. And it was a good lesson for me to learn. Culturally, I learned something that was good, which is that people aren't defined by the color of their skin or the amount of money that they make or the types of cars they drive. They were my brothers. I was their brother. And it was sweet. And I wasn't a Christian at the time, but it is how Christians ought to behave toward one another. There should be something distinct about how we treat.

It shouldn't be the way the world treats them. It shouldn't be along the lines that the world defines. And it shouldn't be with the expectations that the world demands. We ought to love our brothers. There's a sense in which they could have been scared going into this land. That the sins of Jacob, their father, from hundreds of years before would now come to bear. I think that's why the Lord tells them, they'll be afraid of you. He says, they'll be afraid of you because you may well be inclined to be afraid of them. You remember when Jacob stole Esau's birthright, Jacob was sent away by his mother because Esau comforted himself at the thought of killing his brother. And then later on in life, when Jacob's coming back with his wealth and his wives and his fortunes, and he comes to Esau, he again is afraid. He's like, he's going to kill me. I'm going to send all these gifts out of me so that hopefully his anger will be assuaged.

And so the Lord tells them, no, you're going to go through their land and they're going to be afraid of you. You ought not to be afraid of them. You ought also not to take advantage of them. There is something that I think lends itself to us not loving other people. And it's that we feel special because we think, well, God loves me and has been good to me, so I must be better than everybody else. I've got my life together better than all those other people. That's one of the things I think about or am impressed by. When I send out the prayer list, we have a prayer list that goes out from the connection cards. And about four months ago, we started adding prayer requests from the daycare ministry for the families and for the staff members. Because I have a weekly meeting with the director, and we talk and we pray, and she tells me what the prayer requests are. And you can draw a real clear line.

between the types of things that we pray for and the problems that we have and the types of problems and prayer requests that they have. Very different. And it would be easy to look at the differences and just say, they should get their act together and not lift one finger to help. And that would be a failure and a lack of love for our brothers. If God has been good to you and has given you good things and has given you stability and comfort and a stable home, then you should praise God for that and you should invite those who don't have that into you. That's what you should do. You should love those less fortunate than yourself, your brothers. So you're going to pass through this territory of your brothers, the sons of Esau who live in Seir. Be careful. Do not provoke them. For I will not give you any of their land, even as little as a footstep, because I have given Mount Seir to Esau as a possession. Don't go into their land. In other words,

Don't go into their land and feel entitled. You're under discipline. The most unbecoming thing that you could do was act like you're something when you're nothing. They've got a land. And it turns out, we'll read in our passage next week, that the land that the Edomites, that's what you call the people that live in this land of Seir, the descendants of Esau, they're called Edomites. It turns out that they did exactly what Israel was unwilling to do. There were people who lived in their land who didn't belong there. It wasn't their land because the Lord had given that land to Esau and his descendants. And they went in and did exactly what the Israelites wouldn't do. They went in and wiped out the people who lived there so that they could have the land that the Lord gave them. They took possession. These unbelievers took possession of what the Lord had given to them as a possession, as a land to live in. And so the Lord says,

Be respectful. Don't provoke them. I'm not going to give you any of their land. It's theirs. Not even as little as a footstep. I've given it to them as a possession. One of the lessons we can learn from that is that the Lord hasn't given us something. It's not ours to have. If the Lord hasn't given us something, it's not ours to have. Even if he's given it to other people. There's this thing where... If we have hard things going on in our lives, we don't feel like we can talk to people who have good things going on in their lives because that would be a discouragement to them. I wouldn't want to bring them down. And the inverse is true. And the result of it is that we never talk to anybody about anything. We're never personal. I don't want to discourage you because you're having a hard time, and I don't want to be happy around you if you're having a bad time. I just don't want to be close to you. I don't want to be involved with you. I don't want to let you know what's going on with me.

I think instead what we should do is rejoice in the things that God's given to us and be content with the things he hasn't given to us. And we should rejoice in the things that God's given to other people and the things that he's withheld from them. We should rejoice with those who rejoice and we should weep with those who weep. Instead of coveting and thinking that we're entitled to all of the things that we want or that other people have. You can imagine as the Israelites went through this land, though it wasn't a land like theirs. This land that they were going into, this land of Seir, was a desolate place. It was a hard place. When Jacob had stolen his blessing and Esau comes in and says, don't you have a blessing for me? I'm the oldest and he's already stolen my birthright. Are you going to give him my blessing too? The Lord gave him a blessing and he says, you're going to go into a land and it's going to be a tough place and you're going to live by the sword and it's going to be hard.

Very different than the land that was given to the Israelites. And yet it was their home. And if you were wandering as the Israelites, don't you think you might want their home and their city and their way of life instead of just this wandering? I think I would have. But the Lord says to them, I will not give you any of their land, even as little as a footstep of it. I've given it to them. And I think that there's a disciplinary, humbling element to the Lord saying that to them. You remember that you had the same... and you didn't take advantage of them. You refused. So now you can't have the thing that you wanted. Do you remember what they brought back when the Israelites went into the promised land to spy it out? Do you remember what they brought back with them? Do you remember the food? Grapes and the milk and the honey and all of this wonderful food that they had? Now they go into this land, and you realize if they had gone into that land and possessed it the way they should have, all that food would have been theirs.

They wouldn't have had to buy it or pay for it or do any of that. It would have been theirs. But now they're walking through a land and the Lord tells them, you're going to have to buy your food from them and you're going to have to buy your water from them. They would have understood that to have been disciplinary yet still further. What we could have had through obedience, free and clear, we now have to pay for from other people. And we can't even, what we're buying is food. We're not buying. seed to plant and to plant our own vineyards and to grow our own food. It's like they're eating out, so to speak. They have to buy what they need. They can't grow it or provide for themselves. If they had obeyed, they would have received the fruits of other people's labors, those who had lived in the land of Canaan, but now not so much. They have to buy. Do you think that if they had known that, these were going to be the consequences? They would have chosen differently at the border?

to go in. If they would have been like, all your men are going to die. You're going to spend your wealth on food. It's going to be hard. There's going to be war. These are all the things that happened to them during the 40 years. I wonder if they wouldn't have gone in. I wonder if they wouldn't have been more compelled to go in. They were compelled when they heard that's what was going to happen. I think if they had known the consequences, they would have been more inclined to go in. But the Lord doesn't often tell us the consequences of our actions. While we weigh out, whether we're going to obey or not. And we say, well, what will happen if I don't do this? What will happen if I don't do that? We shouldn't trust our ability to count that stuff up. There's things we're not aware of or don't take into account the way we should have. Who can estimate the consequence of sin? Who can say this is how far it will spread and no further? Only a fool thinks they can control those sorts of things. So don't be a fool. Now, here's the good part about all of this.

had the ability, they had the wealth, they had the money to buy the food. Moses, at the end of this text, steps out of the history and he just makes a statement about them and about God's faithfulness. It's sort of like a refrain. These last couple of verses, he says, for the Lord, your God has blessed you in all that you have done. He has known your wanderings through this great wilderness these 40 years. The Lord, your God has been with you. You have not lacked a thing. And I don't think that's how they would have felt about it, but it was true. When they left out of Egypt, they took the wealth of Egypt with them. And that was the Lord's provision. Now they may have thought, look at this, isn't this great? We're so wealthy. What was that wealth for? Well, it turns out it was for buying food and water in the land of Seir. What would they have done if they didn't have the ability to buy food and water? They would have died. Where did they get the money to buy the food and water? It was God who provided it for them. And so we would do well to see in our lives,

even through hardship, when God is providing the things that we need, even if it's not going the way we want. I'll tell you, as you get older, I've not met someone that I can remember who says, you know what, my life has gone exactly how I wanted it to go. Because they're like, well, there was this thing that happened, and I didn't account for that, and then this, the other. And this is the testimony of living as a sinner in a fallen world. Things don't go according to plan. You make plans. What's the Bible say? Many are the plans of a man's heart, but the Lord directs his steps. And he often directs our steps down through valleys and hardships that we wouldn't choose. And the question is, does he go with us down in those valleys and those hardships? The answer is yes. He went down through all of their sorrow and all of their suffering that he sent them into. He went with them. He went with them. When the Lord disciplines us, we should remember that he walks with us through that discipline. He does not abandon us.

Satan will tell us that he will. He'll tell us that our trials are evidence that God has abandoned us. But those things are a lie. I've heard a number of children over the years, adult children, when talking about growing up in their home, it's an interesting thing. I've heard them say, my parents should have disciplined me more. Have you ever thought that? I wish my parents would have disciplined me more. I wish they would have told me no. Zach's going, nope. Actually, I don't know if you're going, nope, but it wasn't an obvious, yeah. You were thinking, yeah. But I think many of us couldn't look back and say, maybe we wouldn't say, they should have just disciplined me more, but we could point to a situation in our life where we said, you know what, my parents should have taken me in hand and dealt with me more severely. At this point or that point, they should have dealt with it, and they didn't. It was harmful for me because they didn't. And what is the child saying at that point? Well, they're saying, I think that my parents were,

at times to discipline me the way they should have. The good thing is, though we can all say that our parents might have failed us in the ways that they disciplined us, undoubtedly they have, you know what's worse than that? To have a parent that never disciplines you. Because if they don't discipline you, then what do you know is true? They don't love you. I had a football coach in high school, Coach J. Coach J was built like a turtle. He did not have a neck. He was about this tall and he was about as wide as, he was just this, D1 defensive lineman. Big dude. Big, big black dude. And he'd get in your face, and he'd yell at you, and his tobacco juice would get on you if you were too close. He was a good coach. And one of the things he said to us, we were terrible. We were an awful football team. We were like two and nine. We were terrible. So what's he do, wasting his time with these lazy kids? And what he told us one time is he said, you know, I don't care about football. I'm not trying to teach you how to play football, which, you know.

We weren't learning. But he said, I'm trying to teach you lessons for life. That's why I'm so hard on you. And he says, what you need to worry about, you don't need to worry when I get in your face and jump down your throat and I yell at you. He said, you need to worry when I stop. Because when I stop, then it means that I don't think you're capable of growing or improving. I think it's a waste of time for me to discipline you. And that made sense. All of a sudden you were like, yeah, I think it's good when he yells at me. Because he was being a father. It was good for us.

It was good for me. I grew up, I didn't have a dad. I'm thankful for him yelling at me at times he did. You know, he benched me for my homecoming football game my senior year. He didn't let me start. I won't tell you why, but it was good discipline. I needed it. It was my senior year, and he benched me. Didn't let me play in the game at all. He was a father to me. And there I had to dress. He said, you will come to the game, you will dress, you will not play. And if you don't, you will not be on this team.

That was miserable and good for me. Hebrews 12 tells this sort of situation like this. He says, you've not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood and you're striving against sin. And you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as son. My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by him. For those whom the Lord loves, he disciplines. And he scourges every son whom he receives. Scourge is not a word that we use, but just think beat. Whips, severe discipline. He scourges every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as with sons. And what son is there whom his father does not discipline? So God's dealing with Israel and sending them through this land of Seir and making them spend their money and making them face their brothers in all of their hardship and all of their humiliation.

is his preparation of them to enter the land eventually. It's his love for them. It's loving what they're going through right now. None of them would have seen it that way, and that's why Moses tells them, the Lord your God has blessed you in all that you have done. I don't think there's one mouth in Israel that would have said that if the Lord hadn't. This has been good for us these 40 years, this hard stuff. But by faith, I've had occasion to hear men go through some of the most difficult things in their lives, and afterwards to praise God and to say, He was good to me through that, and he changed me for the better, and I never would have chosen it again. In fact, one of them said to me, it was so good, and I hope he never does it again. Because he said, I don't know that I could bear it. I couldn't have borne it when we went through it, and I don't want to go through it again. It's not the sort of thing you come out saying, oh, isn't it wonderful, and it wasn't that big of a deal. This man was thankful for the work that God had done in his life, and he said, I hope I'd never have to go through that again, because it was so painful and so difficult. But he knew.

That the Lord had blessed them. That he had known their wanderings. That he had seen their struggles and their hardships. Even the ones that he brought upon them. He never left them. He never forsake them. These 40 years, the Lord your God has been with you. And you have not lacked a thing. And so the thing about the Christian life is whatever comes to pass in our lives, we have to accept as coming to us from the hand of God. Any time that we spend fighting against it and saying this wasn't right, this was a mistake, this is too difficult, I can't do that, this isn't fair, it's just more rebellion. It's just more rebellion. And it seems impossible for me to say it. Even as I'm saying this to you, I'm thinking about myself and going, yeah, when have I ever been glad for the hardship? Immediately. But we should be because our God is with us and he'll bear us through it and strengthen us and give to us.

what he's promised to give to us in the end. So if you're being disciplined by the Lord, if you're being disciplined by your parents or by your employer or by whomever, rejoice in it. It's the thing you'd never do, but rejoice in it. Give thanks to God and ask him, if you have to go through this misery, could he at least turn a good profit from it in your life? Otherwise, it's not going to be any less miserable, it's just going to be less fruitful. Less productive. And so when the Lord brings you low, accept it and rejoice in it. And ask God to use it for his glory and for your good. Otherwise, you'll end up like the ones in the land who were struck down. Many of you are young. I'll end with this. Many of you guys are young. And I don't know that you've faced the hardships yet. Or I can say that there are harder things coming in the future. I don't know what they are or when they'll come. Some of you young have faced very...

steep burdens. The question that you may not want to ask, but you need to answer is, will you serve God when he disciplines you or not? If the answer to that question is, yes, I will, I will fight in that direction, then you have faith. And that doesn't mean it's going to be easy. It does mean that you'll make it through it because God will be with you. If the answer to that question is no, I'm not going to submit to this. I'm not going to go along with this. I've had enough. People don't understand. Then you've separated yourself from the Lord and from his blessing. And you won't receive them. Rather, you'll receive what you deserve. And none of us should want that. I often tell my kids, you talk about things being fair. You want things to be fair. You say, that's not fair. It's not fair. It's not fair. And I say, you should praise God that life's not fair. Because if life was fair, you would not have any of the good stuff you have.

So praise God for that things are not fair. Even when they're hard, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God and trust that in due time, he will lift you up. Without knowing the details, trust and obey. Let's pray.