The LORD Your God Is A Compassionate God

So last week, I told you that we were starting a two-part sermon. And we could have either stayed for an hour and a half or two last week, or we could break it up into two. And so if you weren't here last week, I encourage you to go back and listen to last week's sermon because it's the context in which this sermon finds its place. But by way of refresher, I'll remind you what last week's sermon was about first. It was a warning against falling into idolatry. The Israelites are about to go into the land of Canaan and take it over. And Moses, as they go, warns them. And he says, listen, guys, you're going to go in there and you're going to get comfortable and you're going to become wealthy. And this is a warning for you, not in the days or the weeks or the months or even the first years that you're there, but this is a warning for you when you get old. That once you become old, that you not become complacent.

and that in your complacency that you fall away from the Lord. He warns them that if they do that, if they fall away from the Lord, that the Lord would then take away the land that he had given them. He warns them against their entitlement and this idea that we've got this land and we've gotten it by our own strength and by our own might and it's ours and no one can take it away from us. If it were true that no one in the world had the strength to take away their land, it is true that God in his infinite power could take it away with the smallest effort. This is what Moses warns them against. Don't get comfortable and fall away from the Lord. Don't fall to idol worship, or you'll be destroyed. Very clean, very plain, very simple warning. This week, we're going to be picking up where we've left off in the middle of our text. And in this portion of the text, Moses tells the people what the Lord's destruction would look like. And he promises mercy to all.

who would repent of their idolatry. And so my hope this morning is that God will turn our hearts back toward him as he calls the Israelites' hearts back toward them in this text. I pray that he'd help us see us where we've gone astray and that he would renew our devotion to him. Would you please stand now as we read the word of the Lord from Deuteronomy chapter four, verses 27 through 31. The Lord will scatter you among the peoples and you will be left few in number among the nations where the Lord drives you. There you will serve gods. the work of man's hands, wood and stone, which neither see nor hear nor eat nor smell. But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find him if you search for him with all of your heart and all of your soul. When you are in distress and all these things have come upon you, in the latter days you will return to the Lord your God and listen to his voice. For the Lord your God is a compassionate God. He will not fail you.

nor destroy you, nor forget the covenant with your fathers, which he swore to them. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Now there's an interesting thing in here that we'll get to address first. But at the very end, he says that he will not destroy you. But in verse 26, just before the passage that we did read, it says, you shall not live long in it, in land, but will be utterly destroyed. So which is it? You'll be utterly destroyed or you will not be destroyed. Yes. Depends on who we're talking about. It really does depend on who we're talking about. In verse 26, just before this, he says that he would destroy them, that there would be utter destruction, that God would take away what he had given to them. We saw last week that the longer we have something, the more accustomed we become to a way of life, the more entitled we feel to it. The more we think this is mine.

And nothing can take, no one, no one, nothing can take it away from me. It's very easy to forget how we've gotten to where we are. To forget those who've gone before us. To forget those who sacrificed for us. Do you hear me, kids? It's a danger for kids to not realize the work that their parents do for them and loving them and sacrificing for their benefit. To think that they're all entitled to it. They're not. Paul asks us a series of questions in 1 Corinthians chapter 4 that get at this point, this question of entitlement. He says, for who regards you as superior? And what do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you had not received it? These are rhetorical questions. Any one of us could answer them. Who regards you as superior? Well, we do. We do. In Timothy's prayer, he referenced the The Pharisee who went in said, I thank you that I'm not like these people. Who regarded that man as superior? Well, he did. And whatever troubles we have in our lives and whatever weaknesses we endure, we do our best to keep them hidden and to keep them out of sight. And we do everything we can to project our strength and our wisdom and our beauty and our youth and our wealth so that everyone else will agree with us that we are, in fact, superior.

The next question Paul asked in 1 Corinthians was, what do you have that you did not receive? And we might whisper, where no one would hear us, nothing. But is that how we live? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you had not received it? And here's the answer. Because I've had it so long. And because God's been so faithful to me that I've forgotten where I got it. This is what Paul warns them against. And he says, if you fall into this trap, God's going to destroy you. Your entitlement will consume you. And so this is a real danger. And it's a danger that's particular to us in our day because entitlement is sort of the flavor of the month or of the year or of the society. If you want it, you can have it. Have you ever found there to be an end to your wants? Would you like another scoop of ice cream? Yes, please. Now, it's a silly example.

But it gets at the reality of our hearts. We want everything. There's a certain greed that attends the Israelites here that they're being warned against. A lack of contentment. A lack of dependence on God. This is what Paul's warning them against. He says, if you give yourself into this, the Lord's going to scatter you among the peoples. Whatever it is you want or feel entitled to, whatever you think belongs to you, I can take it away and I will take it away. And then he tells them about this destruction. He says, how's it going to look? He says, well, I'll scatter you among the peoples, which may seem like just a common phrase, but it's not a common phrase. What does it mean to be scattered among the people? It means to be driven out of your land. It means to be uprooted and cast away. You know that feeling when you go on vacation or you go on a trip, you go to see family. Toward the end of it, you start to think, I want to go to my own bed. Like, I miss my own pillow, you know? The lumps and the smell and the, you know.

The height of the bed and the bathroom I can find in the dark. Just the familiarity of it. You want it back. Even when good things happen and you move into a new house or a new place, all of a sudden you've got to relearn all this stuff. It's unfamiliar. You stub your toes. You can't find the light switch. That is much, much better than being scattered among the peoples. It's more like going to prison. We're going to take you and we're going to lock you up in a little cell with none of your belongings and none of your freedoms. All that you have will be taken away from you, even your clothes.

This is the shape that destruction would take. They'd be scattered among the people. And as they're being scattered, he tells us, you will be left few in number among the nations to which I drive you. What's that mean? Destruction and death. That many of the people, as they're being scattered, they're also being judged. Some will be scattered and live, but many will be scattered and die. And you have to remember who he's saying this to. To the Israelites who've just gone through their 40 years of wandering. And their destruction for what? Their lack of faith and their lack of obedience. A generation before, he said, go into the land. And they went in and they sent spies and they said, no, no, no. We can't do that. They're too big and they're too strong and their cities are too fortified. We'll be consumed by them. And the Lord says, no, you'll be consumed by me. And here he warns them again, you will be consumed as I judge you, as I scatter you.

As I take your land away from you, many of you will also lose your lives, and the rest will be swept away into bondage, but none will escape his discipline. You know how when you have a kid and they get caught in something, some lie or some behavior that they're not supposed to do, what do they immediately try to do? They try to shape the narrative in a way to moderate the discipline. Do kids do this? Sometimes when all hope is lost, they just put their hands over their butt. That's like the last ditch effort, okay? But it's this impulse inside of us to control the one who's disciplining us, to mitigate the consequence and to lessen it. Can we do that with God? Can we get him to like back off a little bit or just discipline us a little bit? Can we reassure him by our contrition and our tears that we really do mean it this time? Could they?

Through these means, escape, the destruction was going to come to them. No. This is one of the dangers of coming under the Lord's discipline, is that when he rises up, he is a consuming fire. And those that he disciplines are not able to escape him or defend themselves against him. In this case, God promises to use other nations to discipline his people, to judge them. He's going to take their land away, he says. And many of them will die along the way. And we're left asking, why would he discipline them so severely? What's the big deal? Like, what did they do? The danger was, or their failure would be, that they would turn away from his worship. That they would become impure. That they would forsake him. Not fully, not completely, but partially. And that was enough to kindle his anger against them and to cause him to break out in this sort of judgment. This idea of...

corporate or martial punishment, the sort of thing that's coming to them that they're being warned of. It's really a foreign concept to us. Between dispensationalism and feminism, we've been taught that God is not like this. Or that if he is, it's bad. That he's become soft. That he's become compassionate. That he's become patient. And I want to tell you, he is all of those things. And even in this text, we're told he is these things. The sermon title is that we have a compassionate God. Back then, Moses, in the midst of this warning, is telling them, you serve a compassionate God. But the compassion has changed shape. At this time, it would have been considered compassionate not to kill everybody. And in our day, compassion means that we would never judge or never say no or never cause any trouble. We would never discipline. We see this in our raising of children in society nowadays, that we can't discipline them or tell them no or give them boundaries.

That we can't expect things of them or punish them when they don't do the thing that's expected of them. And it really does tell us something about the societal mind concerning the nature of God. And so we read a passage like this where God says, I'm going to do something to you and you're not going to be able to stop it. It's going to be terrible. And we read it and it was just kind of strange to us. We're like, well, that must have been the way God was in the Old Testament. But doesn't Hebrews warn us of this same thing, that God is a consuming fire and that it's a terrible thing to fall into his hands? Are his warnings not still for his people? Do we not still face the temptations to corrupt his worship and to take in, to suck in the impurity around us and then offer it up to him like it's true and good? As they're cast out among the peoples, God gives them over to their worship, to their idolatry.

In the land of Canaan, some of them undoubtedly would turn completely away from the Lord and worship the idols of the lands. But many of them would take the tack of syncretism or this admixture of worship where they wouldn't have denied the true God. They just would have mixed in this other worship, these other trinkets, these other things. And God says, here's what's going to happen. I'm going to sweep you out of this land. I'm going to judge you and many of you will die. But those of you who go into captivity, there you will serve God's, the work of man's hands, wood, stone, which neither see, hear, eat, or smell. What does that mean? What it means is that God is giving them over to their desires. Many of us would like to maintain plausible deniability. You know what plausible deniability is?

it's that you would have some believable excuse for why what you're accused of wasn't actually what was going on. It really wasn't that bad, Dad. There was this more to the story. There was this other thing. You didn't see the whole thing. Well, he hit me first. There's this justification for why we did what we did. We don't want it to just be, yeah, I just punched him. Little kids, we want to say, yeah, I just got mad and I punched him. It can never be that simple because you can't avoid consequences if you're just that simple. There has to be a reason why I did it, why I was sick and I didn't get enough sleep and he's teething and puberty and whatever. We kind of want to shape our disobedience into the form of obedience. We wanted to say, in the golden calf, we weren't worshiping a different God. We were worshiping you in the form of it. And what God does is he spits that out of his mouth and he says, no, I won't be worshiped like that. And if you want to bring in these things, then I will give you those things. I will remove myself from you and I will remove you from my land.

There you will serve God's, the work of man's hands. You'll get to do it fully and completely. You'll get to see what it's actually like to be without me and without my blessings and without my presence. Now, if you'd asked the Israelites at that time, is that what you want? Of course, they all would have said no. If we were asked, do you want God to remove his presence from you? And do you want to be given over to the things that you're tempted by? We'd say no. God doesn't play by our rules. You remember when Israel was brought out of the land? of Egypt and they're wandering in the wilderness and they have these problems. They have the problem of we don't have any food, which is a real problem. And they have the problem of we don't have any water, real problem. They weren't being greedy. They weren't asking for something that was superfluous. They needed food. They needed drink. God gave them drink, water out of a rock. God gave them food, manna from heaven. But do you remember when they had manna that they weren't content with it? It wasn't good enough.

So what did they do? We need meat. I'm going to read to you from Numbers 11, verses 4 to 6, and then later on in the chapter about this meat that they were longing for. It says, the rabble who were among them had greedy desires, and also the sons of Israel wept again. And it's interesting, when you read chapter 11 of Numbers, they keep talking about them weeping, and weeping in our... At least when the word hits us, we go, well, that's sad and they need comfort. But weeping here was like, it was the weeping of bitterness and anger. It was not the weeping of sorrow and humility. And so the rabble who were among them had greedy desires. And also the sons of Israel wept again and said, who will give us meat to eat? We remember the fish we used to eat free in Egypt. The cucumbers and the melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlic. But now our appetite is gone.

There is nothing at all to look at except this manna. Poor, poor Israel. Poor, poor Israel. There's a big section that comes after that where Moses just had it. He's just like, he basically says to the Lord, he takes their request to them. The Lord hears their request and he says, if you love me at all, would you just kill me? I can't deal with these people. If you'll receive me into your presence, would you just take me away from them? That was his response to them. And the Lord didn't do that. He says, no, gather all the elders. It is too much of a burden. Bring the 70 elders and they're going to prophesy. And I'm going to give the spirit that rests on you. I'm going to give it to them. And they're going to be able to bear some of the burden. And then there's two guys, Eldad and Medad, who don't come of the 70. They didn't show up to the party. And then they're prophesying the camp and they're telling Moses, oh no. Moses is like, it's fine. The Lord sends them meat.

The result of all of it was they whined and they complained and they needed meat. We just need meat. We need meat. And Moses asked him, he's like, because the Lord says, we're not going to give you meat for a day or for two days or for a week or two weeks. We're going to give you meat for a month. And Moses is just, you know, logistical. He's like, do you have any idea how much meat that is? Like, where are we going to get all that meat? We don't have that much meat. He's complaining. He's just like, this is awful and terrible. And it says, then the Lord stirred up, I believe it was a west and east wind, and the wind, it blows in all these quail.

blows them in and it's like they drop out of the sky and they land and they pile up like knee deep all the way around the camp. They have meat, a month's worth of meat. I'll read to you from later in the chapter where this happens because there's some interesting stuff toward the end of the chapter. It says, now there went forth a wind from the Lord and it brought quail from the sea and let them fall beside the camp about a day's journey on this side and a day's journey on that side, all around the camp and about it, two cubits deep on the surface of the ground.

It's like three feet deep. Quail. Quail are little birds, right? Dan, how many quail is that? A billion. I mean, you know, Dan used to hunt quail. It's a lot of quail. A day's walk in terms of how big the strip of it was all the way around the camp, three feet deep. Dead quail. Maybe they weren't dead. Maybe they were living in the bushes three feet deep. The people spent all day and all night and all the next day and gathered the quail. He who gathered the least gathered ten homers, which is a lot. And they spread them out for themselves all around the camp. And while the meat was still between their teeth, before it was chewed, the anger of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord struck the people with a very severe plague. So the name of that place was called Kibroth Atava, because there they buried the people who had been greedy.

Now, why do I tell you this big, long story? Well, it's interesting. But also, I tell you this story because these are the same group of people. This was a long time previous to this passage in Deuteronomy. But they were a greedy, discontented people who wanted something from the Lord and petitioned Moses for it. And the Lord said, you're not going to rely on me. And if you're not going to trust me, then what I'm going to do is judge you. You're not going to get what you want in the way that you want it. You want meat? I'll send you meat. And the meat was a test to see who was greedy. And the ones who were greedy, he struck down. This name, this Hebrew name that's hard to pronounce, Kibroth Hatava, literally means grave of greediness. And the Lord struck him down. He says, look at all these greedy people who've come out and just gathered up, gathered up, gathered up. Remember with manna, they were only supposed to take enough for one day. And then on the day before the Sabbath, they were to take two. There was this idea of moderation, this idea of contentment.

This idea of humility and dependence on the Lord and obedience to him. Same thing's going on here. And they go out and they gather up and they gather up and all their greed's on display. And those who are greedy, he struck down. His anger was kindled and he killed them. They didn't get what they wanted, did they? We want meat. But their greed consumed them and destroyed them. We want to fit in among the people of Canaan. We want to be good neighbors. They were destroyed because of it. It was their idolatry. that rose up as a testimony before God that they had forsaken him to be like the people they were around. They corrupted the land and the worship of God. And this is the reason he got rid of them. You remember in Isaiah where he warns us, he says, this people draws near to me with their words and they honor me with their lip service, but they've removed their hearts far from me. And their reverence for me consists of tradition learned by rote. That's what was going on with the Israelites. That's what they were being warned against.

This shell of reverence and this shell of honor and this husk of obedience. God doesn't care about it. It's worthless to him. Do you like eating almond shells or peanut shells? Would you be glad if someone gave you a bowl of them on their coffee table and said, here, have a snack? You'd spit it out of your mouth and you'd say, this is awful. That's what their worship had become. That's why he struck them down. That's why he kicked them out. He sent them away and he tells them that they will, in that land, worship idols without him, without the confusion. And they'll see where that gets them. You know, sometimes we look around and we think the Christian life is a hard life. It's a life of denying yourself the pleasures of the world. But really, the pleasures of the world, we think, are the only pleasures to be had. And so God, in his mercy, gives us pleasures of the world knee-deep to make you happy, to draw you closer to God.

No. Always takes you away. And it corrupts you. And so why do I call it a mercy of God? Well, I call it a mercy of God because sometimes we need that plainly shown to us what we're actually doing. How much difference was there between their worship in the land of Canaan that was idolatrous and their false worship in the foreign land? To them, there may have seemed a big difference, but to God, there was no difference. They had forsaken him. And so he cast them aside and destroyed many of them along the way. Then comes the sweet part of the text. He says, but from there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him if you search for him with all of your heart and all of your soul. I said to you guys many times before, we would love to be led gently and peaceably and tenderly, but it's not in us most of the time to follow if that's how we're led.

Our sins rise up within us. Our temptations are too strong and we're led astray by them. They're more intense. They have a greater grip on us. And so for God to break that grip, he has to be severe. He has to be strong. And that's what's going on with them. From there, after you've been taken out of the land, after many of you have been killed, after you've left freedom and been reintroduced to slavery, there you will seek the Lord your God. you'll realize that these idols you've worshiped and the things you've given your life to do not produce for you what you need because they're simply wood and stone. When the Lord brings all of this about, then his people will turn from their sins and they'll seek him. I think many times parents, when they discipline their kids, are worried about being too severe, too harsh. We've sort of got an eye over our shoulders, wondering what other people would think.

And my exhortation to you as parents is this example we have here of God dealing with his children is faithful parenting. His goal wasn't to grind his true people into the ground and to wipe them out, but to purify them, to remove the danger from them, which were their brethren who had denied the Lord. And he was severe in doing it. What does he tell them will happen after all of this? He says, from there, you'll seek the Lord your God and you'll find him. You see, they had thought they were close to God in the land and they had mixed up their worship and they had done all these things, but they paid lip service to him. And then God took it all away. And you would think, then all hope is lost. And they've been cast away. And one of the things you have to learn when you read Scripture is that whenever there are warnings and whenever there are judgments being executed, either warned about in the future or happening right now, repentance is never off the table. Repentance is always on the table as an option.

To mitigate and to avert the anger of the Lord. Sometimes it's explicitly, like in this text, and other times it's not. When Jonah went to Nineveh, what did he tell them? In this period of time, if you don't repent, the Lord's going to destroy this place. He warned them. They repented. They averted the Lord's anger. Before he struck down Sodom and Gomorrah, what did he do? He sent angels. They warned them. They said, you guys need to get out of here. Lot, you need to get out of here with your family. He's often warning and caring for us, calling us to repentance before the destruction comes. And really, it's not clear at this time who's serving the Lord and who's not until all of the destruction comes and we see how they respond to it. Some of them are consumed and destroyed. Some of them are hardened in their sin. And some of them seek the Lord. And it wasn't until all of that had happened that it was clear who was who and what was what.

All the clouds cleared out and we could see, they could see who belongs to the Lord, who had found him, who had given their heart and their soul to him. Repentance is a messy business. It's not attractive. Your repentance is not the kind of thing you'd necessarily want somebody looking in on. It's like tripping and falling and busting your nose wide open. Aside from the pain, the first thing you want to know is, who saw me do it? Because it's embarrassing. Repentance is like that. We don't want anybody seeing it because it's humiliating. I mean, it produces humility. You know, same thing. It's a messy business. Those who are living in a far off land now who are in captivity are seeking and searching for the Lord and finding him. Paul describes this sort of repentance in his sermon on Mars Hill in Acts 17 this way. He says, he's speaking and he says, they that would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for him and find him. Oh, he is not far from each one of us. What does it mean to grope for something? It's like being in a dark room, like dark, like you can't see anything dark and a room that you're not familiar with. And it's like going around blind with your hand, grabbing and figuring out what have I gotten a hold of? Where is the door?

And you have no clue what you're getting a hold of because you can't see and you're just reaching. Your hands are all you've got left. You're reaching and you're groping, you're touching, you're trying to figure it out. What is this? It's desperate. It's embarrassing. If they flip the lights on and saw you behaving that way, you'd be ashamed. You'd be like, I wouldn't want to be seen like that. That's how repentance is described here. For those who would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for him and find him. If those who would seek the Lord their God, they will find him. Repentance is a business that only belongs to Christians. We're the only people who are willing to go through the humility of seeking after our sins being forgiven. Whatever other people think about it or think about us or whatever the consequences are, we say, I have to find him. I have to be saved. I have to live and I want to live. It really does take a lot most times to bring us to this point. Instead of repentance, many times we fall to anger and to bitterness.

Instead of taking account of our own sins, we draw up an account of other people's sins against us. In this life, you're going to be sinned against. And it's never an excuse or a justification for a sinful response. And that sinful response, however justified it might be in your eyes, is not justified in God's eyes. You can imagine the Israelites saying, what else could we do? They were going to kill us. Or more likely, if you know the story, It's my son, because they intermarried. It's my son-in-law. They're my grandkids. Remember, after you have children and your children's children, then you're going to fall into this idolatry. And you think, well, what did they do when they went there? Like, they're grandkids. Were their grandkids, like, had they stayed faithful? No. They had not cast out the people. They intermarried with them. They had children with them. And they worshiped the gods of the people of the land. What were they to do?

disown their grandkids for the true worship of God? If they had, it would have been the first step of obedience where they had been unfaithful in the past to cast out the people, to remain separate from them and not to intermarry with them. You see, they had to be brought to repentance, not just for the sin of that day, but all of the sins that had led up to it. In Sunday school last week, we talked about God removing his grace from us for a period of time. And what it said in the confession was that in the life of a believer, many times God will do that to us to call to mind our former sins so that we might feel them more fully and repent of them more thoroughly. Many times we feel like our discipline is so severe because we're only thinking about what's going on right now and not all the stuff that's led up to it. And Moses promises to them, you who seek and search with all of your heart and soul will find the Lord.

He's still there, even though they're not in the land, even though they're not free to worship him. He is still there. When you, in all of your distress, and after all these things have come to you, in the latter days, you will return to the Lord your God and listen to his voice. And this is where it comes full circle. In the beginning, what was Moses telling them? In the early chapters of Deuteronomy, what was the constant thing he was pushing them to do? Remember, listen, and remember, listen, and remember. And here he says, we're going to go through a whole lifetime of trouble. And we're bringing you back to this place where you will listen to the voice of God, where you're willing him to do what he says. That's the mercy of God, that he would bring us back time and time again when we wander and when we stray. I just want you to understand that when he brings us back, it's not often like the prodigal son's return. That's the part of the story we all want to talk about. But do you remember what it was like when he was over there hungry and starving and eating pig slop?

And had squandered all of his inheritance. It was so miserable. That's what it took to bring him to repentance. But when we think about the account of the prodigal son, we always want to talk about the older brother and the younger brother and the fattened calf and all of these things. But we don't want to pay attention to what it took to bring that man to repentance. He had to lose everything. Everything he wanted, he got. And then he saw what it was. And all he wanted to do was be a servant in his father's house. That father was a picture of the merciful and compassionate God who was still willing to receive him back. So Moses says to the people, after all of this warning of destruction and judgment and death and scattering and idolatry, for your God, the Lord your God, is a compassionate God. A compassionate God. One who will never fail you or destroy you. Who will not forget the covenant that he's made with your fathers.

In the story of the prodigal, the son wanted to come back as a servant. And the father says, no, you're my son. You're my son. And all that you've done doesn't change the fact that you're my son. And he receives him back as a son. And that is how it is with God. We can talk about repentance and how difficult it is and how shameful it is and how embarrassing it is and how hard it is. And sometimes with our repentance come consequences that are long lasting. lasting the rest of our lives. And yet we serve a compassionate God who is ready and willing to receive us back from whatever we've done, provided that we're coming back to him. This is compassion. You know, we live in a day where everything is, what's the word? It's not temporary. Things don't last. You know, you'll see little memes and it's like, my refrigerator from 1970 still works, but like, can we please get our refrigerators from two years ago to still work? Like things used to last, right? For a long, long time.

We live in a disposable society. One of the dangers of living in a disposable society is that you will then attribute this transience, this use it up and throw it away and get a new one, use it up and throw it away and get a new one. You'll attribute that method, that way of interacting to God. Then he uses you up and throws you away. Once you break, he's like, I just need to get a new one. We can't fix it. It's not worth being fixed. It costs as much to fix as it costs to get a new one. We'll just pitch it. Here he says he's going to remember the covenant that he's made with their fathers, that he swore to them. He swore in that covenant to be compassionate to them, and he didn't put qualifiers on it. He didn't say, unless you do this, then I'm free and clear. It was an unqualified promise of blessing to his people, provided that they served him. And however many times they went away from him, if they came back to him in humility and repentance, he would receive them. That's quite different than you and I.

We treat things like modern refrigerators. Yeah, I know. I need to go get a new one. It's not that way with God. And so wherever you're at and whatever sins you've committed or whatever you're hiding, whatever you're ashamed of, whatever you don't want to give up, whatever you're embarrassed for people to know, it'll be worse if you stay in it. Eternally worse if you stay in it. Confess your sins. Give glory to God and confess your sins and entrust yourself to him to do with you. Whatever he sees fit. That phrase I just said, give glory to God and confess your sins. Do you know that I was quoting scripture? And I said that. Do you remember the context in which that was said? What was it? It's Achan. Do you guys know the sin of Achan? Remember how Israel went into the land and they kicked butt in the first city or two? And then they came to the city and you're not supposed to take any of the wealth. You're not supposed to take any of the good stuff. Throw it all to destruction. And he took some of it. He buried it. And he hid it. And then they lost.

And Joshua goes, what happened? They cast lots and they find out that it was Achan. And he tells them, you know, this is where it is. But he says that in response to Joshua saying, give glory to God and confess your sins. And he does. He gives glory to God. And he says, it's buried in my tent. And what happened to Achan? What happened to his wife and his children? What's God good in doing that? If you don't know what happened, he killed them all. Achan and his whole family and all of his belongings were killed and destroyed. Give glory to God in confessing your sins. Would it have been better for Achan if he had kept his mouth shut? Would it have been better for the people of Israel if Achan had kept his mouth shut? Do you care about anybody other than yourself? To be a Christian is to live by faith in the power of God and the mercy of God. And if in his mercy and in his providence, stiff discipline is what's in order, then even in that, you have to trust God that he's doing good by his people.

And he's restoring his preeminence and his worship and his glory. And he's purging out all of the corruptions out of us individually and out of us corporately. And so the final exhortation from this passage is that you have a choice before you. We all have sins. We've all sinned in this last week. We could name them. We may not prefer to name them, but we could. If we're not sure what our sins are, we can ask the people who live in the house with us, and they could tell us what they are. We could ask our coworkers, and they could tell us. Or we could ask our parents, or we could ask our kids, and they could tell us. What will you do with it? What will you do with it? Will you bring it to the cross and submit it there for judgment, for mercy, for cleansing and healing? Will you entrust yourself to God and say, do with me what you will? I don't want to be consumed with the rest.

Have mercy on me, a sinner. That's the life of a Christian. That is the steak and potatoes of being a Christian. And we never rise above it. However long we've been a Christian, however long we've been in church, however much theology we know, however far we've gotten and whatever else other people think of us, that is the basis of our life in Christ. That we have been called by a compassionate God. And that when he disciplines us and deals with us, he deals with us as sons, as his children, to make us more like his beloved son, Jesus. So do you want to become like him? Or do you want to stay the way you are? Do you want to meet with him in the judgment when he's scattering and destroying? Or do you want to meet with him at his throne with mercy? That's a question you have to ask yourself every single day. Let's pray.