Do Not Fear Him

This morning we're going to be returning to Deuteronomy. We're going to be picking up at the beginning of chapter 3. This is the last chapter in Deuteronomy that recounts the history of the past 40 years of the Israelites' wandering. Most of the book of Deuteronomy is a retelling of the law that was given 40 years before the wandering. These first three chapters recount those 40 years and what happened during that time, and then it transitions back into a second telling of the law. before they go into the promised land. As they're coming to the end of their wanderings, and God's preparing them to enter the promised land, the Lord takes them through a number of inhabited lands in chapters, end of chapter one and into chapter two. They go through the land of Edom, the land where Esau's descendants have settled. And then they travel further north, up through the land of Ar, the land where Lot's descendants.

are settled, and they continue north, and they end up going into the land of Sihon. This was the last time we studied. They go up into the land of Sihon, and they're continuing to make their way north on the east side of Canaan to where they'll make their entry and cross over the Jordan to go in. And so they're going through not uninhabited lands, but they're going through established kingdoms, and kingdoms that the word tells us the Lord established. As they were going through Esau's land, he said, you can't have this land because the Lord gave it to them. And as they move further north and they go through Lot's land and his descendants, he says, you can't have this because the Lord gave this land to them. So you're going to go through those lands. You're going to pay for your food and for your water. You're not going to make war. You're also not going to make settlements. You're going to travel further on and further north. As they went through the first two lands of Esau and of Lot,

they passed through peacefully. But these last two kingdoms, which are the northern and southern kingdoms of the Amorites, they don't pass through peacefully. As they entered into the land of Sion, they came to, he was unwilling for them to go through. And he came out and he made war against them. Even after Moses sent letters of peace saying, would you let us pass through as we have the lands? south of you, we'll pay for our food, we'll pay for our water, just let us pass through. Sion says no. And the scripture tells us that the Lord stirred up Sion's heart and hardened his heart and made him obstinate. And as a result of that, he delivered Sion and all of his people and all of his lands into the hand of Moses and to the Israelites.

It was God that was making war against those kingdoms and delivering them over into the Israelites' hands. This morning, we're going to be studying the final battle that the Israelites will face before they cross over the Jordan and enter into their rest, which is a nice way of saying before it's really difficult. Because when they go across the Jordan, all of a sudden... There's more fighting. They're going to be fighting. And now they're the ones who are going to be going and waging war. You see this progression of you travel through hostile lands and there's no fighting. Then you travel through hostile lands and they initiate the fighting. And then you go over the Jordan and now you're the ones initiating the fighting. And it's going to be a difficult time. And the Lord has been preparing them and equipping them, though not in the way that we would expect him to be preparing them. He's been causing them to wander. He's taken away, as I've said many times over this sermon series, their men.

taking away all of their men of war. And this is how he's preparing them. And so this morning we're going to be studying this final battle with Og, the final king and kingdom to fall, before they're to make their way into the promised land. In many ways, the passage we're studying this morning touches on a recurring theme in these early chapters of the book of Deuteronomy, and that theme is the theme of fear. It was fear that kept the Israelites out of the promised land 40 years before. And it was fear that caused all of their men of war to perish. Now as the Lord prepares them to enter the land and to fight the people, the inhabitants of Canaan, the ones they had previously feared, he makes them face their fears in a much weaker state than they'd been in before 40 years previously. The purpose of this battle, these battles on the east side of the Jordan, was to prepare them for what laid ahead.

And that preparation, what was it they were supposed to learn? That they actually were much stronger than they thought they were? And that they were capable of destroying these men if they had only applied themselves to it? No. The Lord weakened them so that there would be no question that when they were given these lands, when they were the victors, it was the Lord who gave them the victory and not themselves. It was to strengthen their faith in God. that he would give them what he had promised them, and that they shouldn't doubt or fear that. And so my hope this morning is that God will help you and me to face our fears in faith the way the Israelites did. Our text this morning is Deuteronomy chapter 3, verses 1 through 11. 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 we turned and went up the road to Bashan.

And Og, king of Bashan, with all his people, came out to meet us in battle at Edri. But the Lord said to me, Not fear him, for I have delivered him and all his people and his land into your hand. And you shall do to him just as you did to Sion, king of the Amorites, who lived at Heshbon. So the Lord our God delivered Og also, king of Bashan, with all his people into our hand, and we smote them until no survivor was left. We captured all his cities at that time. There was not a city which we did not take from them. Sixty cities, all the region of Argab, the kingdom of Og and Bashan. All these were cities fortified with high walls, gates and bars, besides a great many unwalled towns.

we utterly destroyed them, as we did Sihon, king of Heshbon, utterly destroying the men, women, and children of every city. But all the animals and the spoil of the cities we took as our booty. Thus we took the land at that time from the hand of the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, from the valley of Arnon to Mount Hermon. Sidonians call Hermon Syrian, and the Amorites call it Sinir. All the cities of the plateau and all Gilead and all Bashan, as far as Salaka and Edri, cities of the kingdom of Og and Bashan. For only Og, king of Bashan, was left of the remnant of the Rephaim. Behold, his bedstead was an iron bedstead. It is in Rabah of the sons of Ammon. Its length was nine cubits and its width was four cubits by ordinary cubit. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated.

touches on a theme that's been recurring in these early chapters of Deuteronomy, this idea of the Israelites' fear. But if we were to read more carefully, we'd realize there's been a period of time where fear actually hasn't been mentioned. Fear was mentioned at the beginning as the reason for why they didn't initially go into the land. And then the theme kind of lays dormant for a while. And as they're traveling up from the down in the south, up through these other countries, these other kingdoms, fear doesn't get mentioned. The Lord doesn't say anything about them being afraid of these nations. That doesn't mean they weren't, but it does mean that it wasn't what God was addressing with them. And in this passage, he returns to this theme of fear. And he says to Moses, up in verse 2, do not fear him.

Through all their previous journeys, it's not that God didn't speak to them or give them instructions. He did. He told them exactly how to go through the land, buying food and water, not settling and not fighting. Do this with Esau's descendants, the Edomites, as well as Lot's descendants, the Amorites. Or the Ammonites. Then they come to the Amorite land, the king of Zion, as I've said. And here Moses says, we want to pass through in peace. They say no. And they have a fight. The Israelites win the fight. They kill all of the men, the women, the children. They take over the cities. And yet there's no mention of fear. So the first question we come to is, should the Israelites have been scared? Meaning, was it a legitimate, reasonable fear? And it's a hard question to answer because we all want to say, I know they shouldn't have been afraid. But we're not willing to say that it would have been wrong for them to be scared. That it would have been sinful for them to be scared.

We would have looked at their fear as sort of this benign reality of life that's just unavoidable, that nothing can be done about, that nothing should be expected of. It's just going to be part of it. If we reason and rationalize with sin like that, we will fall into sin. Because what we've already done is seeded the whole battlefield and said, it's okay, it can be here, it can live. We don't even think it can be beaten back. It's just a part of it. Does Moses need to be told? Do the people need to be told not to fear Og? The answer is no. They don't need to be told. They should. I'm sorry. They shouldn't need to be told that. But they do need to be told it. Why do they need to be told it? Well, because they're scared. Right? You ever had a scared child? And what do you tell them? Don't be scared. Why do you tell them not to be scared?

Well, it could be any number of reasons, but at least one of those reasons is that their fear is irrational. You as an adult are looking at your child and whatever it is they're afraid of, and you're thinking of all the things that would have to happen for their fear to actually be realized. The thing they're afraid of under their bed or in the closet would actually have to exist. It doesn't exist, right? So that's the first thing for their fear to be any sort of reasonable is that the thing they're afraid of would have to exist. It would also have to be true that you would let the imaginary danger get at your children and that you would just be able to do nothing about it or that you would have no will to do anything about it. Now, is that true? If there was danger coming at your child and it was a real child, would you just sit there and go, well, I hope it doesn't eat you? No, you would insert yourself because you love your kids. You'd say, I'm not going to allow my kids to be harmed and sit idly by.

And as you go through and you assess, you know, rationally assess your child's fear, you come to the conclusion that their fear is unnecessary. And then you make the silly statement, which is, stop being afraid. And it doesn't help. They don't go, oh, you're right, I was being silly. The kid has a fear. And telling them, though they shouldn't be afraid, simply telling them, stop it, doesn't change it. So what do you have to do? You have to explain to them why, in some ways, some comforting ways, why they shouldn't be afraid. And what you may have to do is look under the bed. Go get your phone. Turn your flashlight on. Nothing but your dirty socks under here, honey. Nothing to be afraid of. I looked. Do you want to come look? Come look. And they look. Nothing scary. And then you say to them, it's my job to protect you.

And how old are you? And they say, I'm three. I'm seven. I'm 12, however old they are. And you say, haven't I protected you? Don't you remember when there was this danger? Don't you remember what mommy or I did to help to protect you, to make sure? Haven't we kept you safe? Isn't that what God expects of us to do? We're supposed to keep you safe. And they go, yeah, you're supposed to keep me safe. And haven't we done that? Yeah, you've done that. Except for this one time, and you say, yeah. Daddy's not perfect. And I'm sorry. But it's my job to keep you safe and I'll do my best. And what you're doing is you're reasoning with your child and you're trying to show them that they're not alone. And that if the real danger comes, the danger that would overwhelm them, that you will step in and you will protect them and you will keep the danger away. So much as it's in your power to do. That may actually comfort your child if you're saying that to them while you're snuggling them on your lap.

and not lecturing them you're telling them you're not alone I've always been here with you and I've done everything that I've known to do in my power to keep you safe and to protect you and to give you the things that you need now this is an extended analogy and I suspect most of you understand what I'm you know where it's going which is to say isn't that exactly what the Lord has done with the Israelites hasn't he gone before them and protected them Didn't they just win a battle against Sion? And didn't the Lord tell them very plainly, I'm going to deliver him into your hand. And before that, I'm going to begin to establish the fear and the dread of you among the nations. And isn't that what happened in Sion? And they're going, oh, no, no, there's going to be a fight. We won. He won for us. He won. So when the Lord says to them in this passage, don't be afraid. Do not fear him.

It's not just a comment out of nowhere. It's the comment of a father to his son. Son, I've cared for you and I love you and I'm going to protect you. That land on the other side of where we're going, I'm going to give it to you because I said that I would. We can't ask the Israelites. We don't have any record here that I'm aware of as to how they were feeling at this point specifically. When they were going to spy out the land 40 years previously, we actually have record in Scripture of more detail in terms of how they were processing. They went in and they're like, it's a very rich land flowing with milk and honey. Here's some grapes. You know, it's amazing. But there's all these fortified cities and there's giants. And what can, like, we can't, we can't, we can't beat them. And we're told that their hearts melted inside of them.

And that the testimony of the majority of the spies caused all of the people's hearts to fear and to just sort of, you know, just shrivel up and evaporate inside. And the Lord got angry at them. And why was the Lord angry at them? Because they wouldn't do what he said. Yeah, because they wouldn't do what he said, but really because they wouldn't trust him to do what he said. He said he would give them the land. He said he would deliver these people over to them. He's the one who just delivered them from Egypt through dry land, through the Red Sea, and then destroyed all of their oppressors. The reason the Lord's anger burned against the Israelites at that time was because they didn't trust him. They gave in to their fear. They shouldn't need to be told not to fear at this point. There's so much evidence that if they would think and consider, there really is no reason for them to be scared.

If you were in the middle of a lightning storm and lightning was crashing down all the way around you, you would have more reason to fear in that situation than you would here. And even then, we shouldn't fear. As we sung in Psalm 3 this morning, I'm as safe with you in the field as I am in my bed. Even then, we shouldn't fear. But then, it would make some sense. Here, they've just come off of a victory. And the Lord says to them, don't fear. They shouldn't need to be told, But because of his love for them, he does tell them. Why does God return to this theme of fear here? Well, we've already established it's because they were scared. And one of the things we have to realize about our fears is that our fears are never that far away. As much as we would like to put distance between us and our fears, they're like our shadow. They're with us. We can't just stiff arm them and make them go away. When God blesses us,

Answering our prayers or giving us the desires of our heart. Our fears subside for hours, maybe days. But within a few weeks, new fears grow up in their place. Or the old fears return. Well, now I'm afraid about this. Well, now I'm afraid about that. And the fears keep changing out because God keeps protecting you from the things that you're afraid of. And yet new ones just keep growing up. And so if we could just... Just take a time out and let me just say to you, you will always have things to be just as scared of as you do right now. That will never stop. And if you keep being surprised by the things that you're afraid of, like there's this new thing to be afraid of that I didn't know about, it will lead you to fall into all kinds of sin and to walk away from the Lord because that's what the Israelites said. Their fear caused them not to go forward.

And now they're at danger of not going forward again. So the Lord says, do not fear him. Don't be afraid of Lot. Though it shouldn't need to be said because of the Lord's love for his people and because he's merciful towards sinners and to his children in particular, he says to them by way of reminder, do not fear him. Don't be afraid of him. I've brought you this far. I haven't brought you out here to die in the wilderness. to become a laughingstock among the nations. They made it through Sihon, but when they got to Og, it was over. You and I, we get tired of ministering to people's recurring weaknesses. We get sick of it. We're just like, well, you'll just need to stop. You know, the little kid, and they cry at 2 o'clock in the morning, and you wake up, and you're like, I don't want to deal with this. I can't. I'm tired. Whatever's going on. At some point, maybe not too long into it, you have this impulse to be like, you know what? You're just going to need to cry it out. There's nothing more I can do. You're just going to cry it out.

I need to go do what I want to do, sleep or feel bad about leaving you in here, whatever it is I'm going to go do. But you just need to do this all by yourself because I'm done with dealing with you because I don't know how to fix your problems. That's how we deal with recurring weaknesses. We leave people to their own devices. We leave them to sort it out themselves. But it's not so with the Lord. He's rich in mercy. And he doesn't despise his children's weaknesses. And he bears with them. And he leads them and he comforts them. And so he says to them, do not fear him. There's also a warning in the Lord saying, don't fear them. When we get scared of something, it's a gripping fear and it controls us and it directs our steps. And we think there's nothing else we could do. You look at it and you're just like, nobody, I mean, if the Lord was in front of me today, he could not tell me that I should have responded differently. What I did was what had to be done. But as we get some distance from the thing that we were afraid of, we start to reflect and we start to think and we go, you know,

I guess I didn't have to do that. Maybe I could have done something else. Maybe I should have done something else. Maybe it was a failure for me to give in to my fears. Maybe it was a sin. You start to think these things. When the next thing comes to be afraid of, all of those thoughts vanish. And we're right back to being scared again. And so when the Lord says to them, do not fear him, he is warning them. Because of what their fear led them to do last time. Don't do that again. It was a voice of sanity. I love you and I've delivered you. Don't abandon me again. Don't give in again. The cost of their failure was significant. 40 years of wandering. 40 years of travel. 40 years of death. Maybe you would wonder, and I wondered, you've just come through one battle. Why are you afraid of the second battle?

If it's clear that the Lord led you through the first one, what is different about the next battle? What is the difference between Sihon and Og? I'll tell you the difference. Og was a giant. That was the difference. Quite literally, Og was a giant. That little note at the end, if you go to the last slide, verse 11, Ian, how big was his bed? Nine cubits. By four cubits. We don't know what a cubit is. A cubit's about a foot and a half. So all you do is take that number nine and you multiply it by 1.5 and you get 13 and a half feet. And you take four cubits and you multiply it by one and a half and you get six. So a six foot wide bed. Are you familiar with six foot wide beds? We call them king size beds. That's about, a king size bed is just almost exactly six feet wide. And the length of the bed, of a king-size bed is like six feet. This bed is like two king-size mattresses laying end to end. And this was one man's bed. When you get around tall people, does it intimidate you? Some of you more often than others because you're shorter, right? So maybe tall to you is someone who's six feet tall or six two. There are people that I get around and I'm like, man, y'all are kind of tall, you know? Like if you're over six four and you're around me and I got to get too close to you, I'm like, this is a weird feeling. Y'all, I got to look up it, you know? But if you were to go get around

Shaq or Wemby. These are NBA centers, basketball players. How tall is Wemby? You guys who follow basketball? 7'6". I'm 6'2 in the mornings before I shrink during the day. 7'6". He's a foot and that big. He's that tall. 7'6". He would look like your baby does. sleeping in your bed if he were standing next to Og. If he jumped into Og's bed, you'd be like, where's everyone else that's sleeping here? Og was enormous. And they were scared because he was enormous. They're like, now we have to go fight the giants. We're told just before that that Og, the king of Bashan, was left of the remnant of the Rephaim. The Rephaim were, there were different names or Tribes, perhaps, or clans of giants. Goliath was one of these giants, and the sons of Anak were some of the giants. The sons of Anak were the ones that actually lived over the river in Jordan, in Canaan, across the Jordan. But the Rephaim were some giants, and Og alone is the one that's left. He's scary. No indication anywhere in Scripture that Sion was a giant, but Og, here he is, he's the only one left. And interestingly, we're told where his bed's at.

interesting. Why do we get told about his bed? I mean, there's interesting things in scripture. Why does it matter at all how big his bed is and where it's located? Well, it is interesting, and I'll tell you why. Is his bed with him in Bashan from reading this? No, it's not. Where is it? Well, it's down with the sons of Ammon, down in Reba of the Ammonites. Where's that? Well, when we were reading, as the Israelites are traveling north, I'm going to try to do this backwards. This is east. Jordan River, right? They're traveling up and they're coming through Edom and they're coming through the land of Aror, the sons of Lot. Then they come up into Bashan's area and they're told, go through and you can just wipe those guys out. But there was a warning. Don't mess with a certain group of people. Who are they not to mess with?

They were not to mess with the Ammonites. If you go back and read in chapter 2, it says, you go through and you can just wipe out the Amorites, but don't you mess with the Ammonites. And the Ammonites are like, you know, you've got the Canaan here and the river and they're kind of making their way and the Ammonites are like right here. They're like this little, at this time, they're like this little land kingdom right here, small. And they're making their way up and eventually they're going to go in. But don't mess with those guys over there. Doesn't tell us why, just says not to mess with them. And you must wonder, how did the Ammonites come to have Og's bed. Well, you can presume from the size of it that Og left and didn't take it with him. Have you ever moved and left furniture? Og was on the move and leaving furniture. And then you wonder, you say, why did Og move? The scripture tells us why Og moved. Because his people were defeated and they were chased north. The sons of Ammon displaced them.

kicked their butts and he left in such a hurry that he couldn't take his custom-made iron bed with him okay now who would have thought that the first few pages chapters of deuteronomy would be so interesting he was defeated his people were defeated and he alone is left having gone north and now has settled and established a new kingdom these are helpful things that we wouldn't know but the israelites would have known about what's going on. So this little thing like, hey, his bed's over there. Those guys who kicked his butt and his people's butt before, they still have his bed. They've got his trophy, you know. I don't know what he sleeps on now, but it's not this fancy bed he had. How did the Ammonites beat Og? Maybe they were an impressive people. Maybe they were really strong and mighty. Maybe they were. I don't know.

exactly how strong or how mighty they were or what that battle looked like, what I do know is that they wouldn't have beat Og if God hadn't delivered him over into their hands. Because as they went north through the land of Edom and through Aror, God makes a point of telling us these people were given this land by the Lord. And so all of the testimony of this passage is pointing at God's going to give people exactly what he means to give them. And that even giants can't stop him. They can't even take their beds with them. Now he's up here and you're going to go and you're going to have a battle and I'm going to give him into your hand just the same. Don't fear. And as I tell you more and more of the history or more and more of the story, give you more and more of the context, their fear seems more and more unreasonable, doesn't it? It's like, why are they afraid? Like, really? What would you do if you were standing next to someone who was 13 feet tall?

Like just so you realize, that's about two and a half feet. I'm about six feet. So I'm about eight and a half, we'll call it nine feet. Four and a half feet taller than me now still. Two of me standing on top of each other and then maybe even a little more. If I was the nicest guy in the world, you'd be afraid of me. People are afraid of me and I'm only as big as I am. It doesn't take much to be scared. So the Lord says to them, don't fear, even though their fear is irrational and unfounded and dangerous. Don't fear. For I have delivered him and all his people and his land into your hand. There's a very basic lesson in this passage, and it's one that the Lord has continued to repeat throughout these early chapters of Deuteronomy, which is, I'm going to do what I said. I'm going to do what I said. And if I've said that I'm going to do good by you, I will.

I will. And there isn't any kingdom or man or wisdom or resistance that's going to even slow me down. In fact, he speaks as though it's already done. For I have delivered him. They haven't even had the battle yet. I have delivered him. It's as good as done. They're walking dead men. Their cities have your flag over them. It's already done because the Lord did it. Even as yet, before even a drop of blood was shed. And so living by faith and not by fear means trusting that the Lord will do what he says he will do. And when your eyes see things that cause you to doubt and question that and in turn to be scared, you are being tempted to sin. And if you give in to those temptations and fears, as strong as they may be and as real as they seem, if they cause you to say, I don't think the Lord's going to do what he said, they're leading you to sin.

I think some of the difficulty surrounding this is that we think, well, if the Lord's going to do this thing, he needs to do it now. We don't have the ability to tell the Lord that. We can't determine when he will do what he says he will do. 2 Peter 3.8 says, Do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. There are other places just further down. In verse 9 of that same chapter, it says, The Lord's not slow about his promise, as some count slowness. Because we're inclined to think it needs to be done right now. It's got to happen. If you're going to do it, you've got to do it right now. And if you don't do it right now, it's never going to happen, or I'm not going to be here to receive it. Because I've got to do it now. I won't wait. You remember, there's many examples in Scripture, but one of them of a man becoming impatient and taking into his own hands the things that were not his to take into, to do, was Saul.

When he was waiting for Samuel, remember Samuel said, go over there and wait for seven days and then I'm gonna come to you. And they're waiting for battle and Saul, the guys are getting scared because Saul's scared. Saul doesn't think it's because he's scared, but it's because he's scared. So his army's getting scared and they're starting to be tempted to desert and all of these things. And he's like, we need Samuel to come and we need to have the Lord have sacrifices offered. And Samuel's delayed. And so what does Saul do? He's like, well, we can't wait any longer. And so the king takes on the work of the priest and says that I'm going to go and I'm going to offer sacrifices. What was the consequence of Saul offering those sacrifices? The kingdom was torn out of his hands. It was that act that caused the Lord to say, there will no longer be a descendant of yours that sits on the throne. I'm going to blot you out because you wouldn't wait. Now, would any of that happen if Samuel hadn't come? We don't know. Did Samuel come? Oh, yeah.

But he didn't come fast enough. So Saul took the matters into his own hands and faced grave consequences. So waiting on the Lord is an essential part of living by faith. If you're impatient, if you're demanding, if you're scared, fear is a really good motivator to be like, it's got to change now. Your fear will not make God do what he says he's going to do and any different times than he's already determined to do it. You can't manipulate God. You may be able through your fears or your accusations or your threats be able to manipulate people around you. If you get scared enough, you may be able to get them to respond to your fear in a way that they weren't intending and in a way that's even harmful. You can't do that with God. He will not go, oh, they're really scared. I guess I will have to change my mind.

And the reason is not because he's cold or distant or far off from us. It's because he knows better. Like, what's motivating you in that moment is paralyzing fear. Do you make good decisions when you're scared? No one makes good decisions when they're scared. And so the Lord says, we're not going to do what you want done when you're scared. You're going to have to trust me. And so I can't trust him. And I say, well, then you're in grave danger. And I don't know what will come of it, but I do know that your fear will lead you into danger and destruction. The Lord will give what he promises, but not necessarily in the time frame that we want. And it's worth noting as well that the time frame we want may simply be in this life. And I can assure you that you will wait on the Lord until he returns for some things. That finally justice and finally mercy and finally relief and finally rest and peace and all of those things, some of them you will wait.

the rest of your lives for? Not all, but some. And if you're not signed up for that in your heart, if you're like, well, I'll wait a little while, but not much longer, you're saying, I'm going to have rough road ahead. Because at some point, my fear is going to get to take the wheel and steer this ship. I've delivered him and all of his people into your hand, even before the battle. Have you ever, I think maybe one of the frustrating things about God's promises is that they're not incredibly detailed or descript. Like for one, like I've just said, he doesn't necessarily give you a time frame. That's a detail that many of us would, I can wait if you'll just tell me how long. You've all heard the old analogy of hope and how it affects people. It's like you put a mouse in a bucket of water and it...

It'll swim for it and then it just gives up and it dies. But if you give it a little bit of, they did this experiment. I'm not advocating it, I'm just. But then when the mouse had hope, when there was like a thing it thought it could get a hold of or like crawl and get out of it, it like lives like three or four times longer. And that was, it's meant to give the, illustrate the, I mean, I think the people who did it were just curious. But it's an illustration of the effect of hope. How long do I have to wait? If I just knew how long, the Lord doesn't always tell us how long. That's what I mean when I say his promises aren't necessarily like all lined out, all the details of them. He promised the Israelites he's going to give them this land. This land is flowing with milk and honey. It's beautiful. It's wonderful. It's to represent heaven on earth. I'm going to give you this land. What was in that land? All kinds of fortified cities and enemies of Israel.

I'm going to give you this great thing, all full of your enemies and people who want to kill you. Gee, thanks. In effect, the Israelites said, that land you want to give to us? Unless it's already pristine like the Garden of Eden, we really don't have any interest in going out and doing any of this creation mandate stuff where we pull the weeds and plant the potatoes. We just want it all given to us. And so they died. because they didn't want the promise when it was first offered to them. He says it's too much work. It's not in the form that we would like it. You know the old saying, if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. It's true that there are some men who just want to be given fish and don't want to do the work of fishing. But expect to have somebody else go do the fishing and someone else prepare it, and all they're supposed to do is receive pre-prepared blessings.

That require nothing of them. That is not the life of a Christian. It never has been and it never will be. The blessings and the good things that God gives to us come with responsibilities, come with burdens, come with things that we get afraid of, and yet they are blessings and kindnesses of God. So in our lives, we have to wait. And in our lives, we have to submit to our desires or our expectations or our hopes. not going exactly how we wanted them to or thought they would. And in those circumstances, we still have to live by faith and pursue the Lord and his promises to us. And when he puts his promises into our hands, we have to accept them even if they didn't come the way that we thought they would. Here's an example. I think it'll make the point crystal clear. You want to have a child. You find out you're pregnant and you go, all is well with the world. And then you find out that the baby's sick.

Or something's wrong with it. It's deformed. It's got some sort of genetic defect. What is the Christian response to that? Is the child no longer a blessing? Is the child's life a forfeit now? You realize that's how the world would think about it. All of our abortion laws say it's okay for that kind of stuff. We don't have to call them blessings anymore because you don't want those kind of troubles. But that's not how Christians ought to view it. A Christian would look at that child and look at the difficulties of that child's life and potentially that child's inability to live outside of the womb. And their response is never to kill the child, to reject the blessing. They say, then we have hard things ahead of us. But for God's glory and for the life of this child and for the good that it will do us, we're going to walk through this difficulty in this valley and we're going to receive this blessing as severe as it may be from the hand of the Lord. The world doesn't think that way.

They don't look at that and say, yeah, that would be a good thing for you. They would look and say, why would you do that? If the baby couldn't live outside the womb, why not just put all of you out of your misery and just try again? That is such wicked and corrupt reasoning and logic. It's so far from how God thinks that it should make us angry and fearful and full of tears. to think that people would do such a thing. But aren't we tempted by the same sorts of things each day? Maybe not with the life of a disabled child. But when the difficulty comes, we just go, no, no, I won't have difficulty from you. I won't have hard things. I'm scared. Isn't every parent that has a child in that situation scared? What is this going to mean for us? What's going to happen to us? Is our marriage going to survive this? Will one of us commit suicide?

Like there's real things to be afraid of that statistically go way up when you have that kind of a situation. Do not fear. The Lord's on your side. And so this command not to fear is a very necessary command and a very necessary reminder because we do think that our fears really do justify our behavior. And I'm here to tell you that the Lord is merciful toward those who are fearful and his mercy looks like him calling them to repentance and out of their fear. And simply to walk through the things that he puts in front of them. They would have gone into battle with Og saying, the only thing we know is that the Lord's on our side. And he said that he's going to do something. And so I'm going to go and put my life out on the line with the firm hope and expectation that the Lord will preserve it. Because he said he would. And that's it. That's what it means to be a Christian. That's what we should aspire to.

When we're scared, we shouldn't justify it. We all have our weaknesses in this area, but we shouldn't grow in our familiarity with it. Like it's okay and it's normal and it's to be expected and nothing can be done about it. No, we have need of growth and faith so that when difficulties come or hardships or pains or sorrows come, when Og shows up, we respond like David did. And not like all his brothers. You remember Goliath, big giant. All the Israelites are like, we can't do anything about him. David brings them food and they couldn't stand David. You just came here because you don't want to do your work. You just want to see what's going on. He's like, no, dad sent me with some food. But wait, what's that guy saying about us? What's he saying about God? That shouldn't be allowed. Somebody needs to go kill him. And all of Israel is like, well, I guess we'll just hang our hopes in the

The sling of a boy whose armor doesn't fit. And he went and killed him. David was just an excellent warrior. Just skilled beyond measure with a sling and a stone. Or David was just a vessel that the Lord used to strike down his enemies. David had faith. We ought to have faith. And we ought to help one another to have faith. Because our fears never are gone from us. we have to do battle with them and we have to ask others to help us with them so that we don't succumb to them and then suffer for them. Let's pray.