He Is God In Heaven And On The Earth Below

So this morning we're going to be continuing our study in Deuteronomy chapter 4. Last week we saw a number of rhetorical questions that Moses asked the Israelites. He was reasoning with them about their interactions or their history with God. He asked them if they'd known anybody who'd been let out of a nation the way that they had been. He asked them if they'd known of anyone who had spoken to God in the midst of the fire and survived it. He also asked them if they had ever seen or heard of God calling a group of people out of one nation to establish a new nation. All of these things were unprecedented. And they were all driving at one point. And that point was that the people of Israel, as they went into the promised land, would give their hearts only to the Lord and not to the gods of the nations, that they would be protected from idolatry. This week, our text focuses on why God did all of those things.

Why did he bring them out of Egypt? Why did he speak to them in the fire? Why did he establish them as a nation? Our text teaches us that he did this for two reasons. The first is that he had made a covenant long ago with their father, Abraham, with the patriarchs. That was the first reason that he did all of this. And the second reason was that he loved them. He did all of this for Israel because he loved them. And so my hope is that God will help us to see that he still interacts with us, his people, on these same grounds through means of covenant.

Because of his love for us. And I pray that that will lead us resting in him and praising him for his mercy. Putting aside our grumpiness and our fear and our tiredness and all the other things that attend us. Pray that our eyes be lifted up to see his glories. Would you please stand now as we read the word of the Lord from Deuteronomy chapter 4. This is verses 36 through 38. It says the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. Out of the heavens he lets you hear his voice to discipline you. And on earth he let you see his great fire, and you heard his words from the midst of the fire. Because he loved your fathers, therefore he chose their descendants after them. And he personally brought you from Egypt by his great power, driving out from before you nations greater and mightier than you, to bring you in and to give you their land for an inheritance, as it is today. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated.

Now, there's a really interesting thing right at the beginning of our text that I want to spend a little bit of time talking about. And it's where Moses says, out of the heavens, he lets you hear his voice to discipline you. God spoke to Israel to discipline them. Now, when we think of discipline, do we think this is a good thing? We tend to think of discipline as being the sort of thing that goes on when something is wrong or broken or needs to be fixed. And it's true that there's always things that are wrong and broken and need to be fixed. But discipline is not a bad thing. Discipline is a good thing. It's an indication of his love for them. Have you ever considered what would have happened to Israel if they would have gotten what they wanted, which was to be brought out of the land of Egypt and then cut loose? Like if they had been brought out of Egypt and they didn't go to the mountain, but they were just brought out of Egypt and they were like, well, here you go. Go where you want and do what you want. Where would they have gone?

What would they have done? Well, we know from the period of time between leaving Egypt and going into Canaan that their inclinations were to go back to Egypt, to go back to slavery, to go back to bondage. And I think we can trust with confidence that that's what they would have done if God had not spoken to them and told them what they were to do and where they were to go. He spoke to them so that they would know what was going on and what he expected of them. At Mount Sinai, the interaction between the people and God is often referred to as the Mosaic Covenant, the covenant made with Moses at the giving of the law. This was a subsequent covenant to the one that had come before it, which was the covenant that God made with Abraham. And so in some sense, these people were already God's people. God had already promised to Abraham that he was going to multiply him, that he was going to make him a great nation, that they would be numbered as the stars in the sky or the sand on the seashore.

There already was this covenant in place, but it had not really been acted on. There was a sign given, the sign of circumcision, but that covenant in many of their minds, I think, was just sort of an old relic laying in the corner of the closet. Not the sort of thing they thought about or talked about or relied upon or looked to as instructive to their interactions with God. So as they came out of Egypt, God reestablished his commitments to them to give them a land. which is what he promised Abraham long ago, and to reestablish their commitments to him that they would be his people. And so by speaking to them at the mountain from the fire, God was disciplining them, reminding them of their obligations to worship him alone and to serve him. They, like we, often forget what we should be doing. Sometimes when I ask my kids questions, and it's very simple questions. I'm sure you've had this experience. You'll ask a yes or no question, and you get this look.

that comes back and it's like, oh, oh, and it's not a hard question. It's did you say this or did you do that? And it's just a yes or no. And they're like, well, let me see if I can somehow dodge the implication of what I did. We're always forgetting. We're always making excuses. We're always pleading ignorance or we're justifying ourselves. It's the same with Israel. But when we interact with God, When he speaks to us, all of that stuff falls aside. It really is silly for a child to do that sort of thing with their father or their mother if they're asked, did you steal the cookies? Did you take the cookies before dinner? Simple question. We're probably asking it because there's chocolate smeared on their lip they don't know about or some obvious evidence of their actions. And they're like, well, I thought.

Well, he had one earlier, and they come up with this whole big story. And you as a parent, what do you think when they're doing that? You think, would you just tell me the truth? Would you stop trying to manipulate me? Would you trust me? This is what these parents want from our children. It's what we expect of them. And it is what God wants and expects and commands from us. Nothing we do is hidden from his sight. We don't get to go back into the terms of agreement between us and God and rewrite little sections or omit portions. He's covenanted to be our God. And we've covenanted to be his people. And as Hebrews says, there is no creature hidden from his sight, but all the things are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do. And so God speaking to them in a disciplinary manner was to remind them.

of their obligations. This is what we need. They should have thought of God's word and him speaking to them from the fire as some sort of miraculous, some sort of thing not to be forgotten. And we should revere his word the same way today. I've been thinking a lot about how Christians ought to interact with God's word because in a few weeks I have to speak at a conference and I'm supposed to talk about how husbands and fathers should be good husbands and fathers spiritually. What are their responsibilities? It's not to talk about how dads and husbands are supposed to lead their families and interact with the word of God. And this is a very basic point that I think I'll make down there, which is that we ought to have some reverence and honor for God's word. When we read it, we shouldn't just be threading words through our eyes and going, oh, isn't that interesting? Oh, isn't that, didn't I already knew that? Oh, I'm familiar with that passage. I don't have to.

Meditate on it. I just can read it quickly. I can skip over it or skim over it. When we interact with God's word, it's like if you were to go on the scenic route through Colorado on the Million Dollar Highway. I've driven it a few times. It's beautiful. And it demands that you drive slowly. If you want to just get through Colorado, you can just take the interstate. But if you want a beautiful drive, you take the scenic route. And what do you have to do on the scenic route? You have to pay attention because the road's narrow and it's a bunch of switchback. But you don't just have to pay attention to the road. You have to pay attention to the scenery. That's the point. The point of taking that route is to actually pull off and wonder at God's creation. That's actually the point of it. If you were to take that route and just keep your eyes on the road and never pay any attention, never slow down, never observe,

then it's worth asking, why are you on this road? The same question could be asked when we interact with God's word. When you read God's word, when it's presented to you, do you slow down and do you take it in? Do you allow it to discipline you? Do you allow God to discipline you? Or do we just pass on over it like a child when his dad or his mom is saying, make sure you clean your room. And you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I got it. Only for parents to come up later and be like. What about these socks on the floor? What about that stuff on the corner of the closet? We ought to pay attention to God's word. We ought to revere it. We ought to regard it. Slow down and take it in. When we refuse to do that, when we neglect doing that, we're rejecting our obligations to the Lord. We're not acting as his people. His people ought not to act that way. Then, if we do slow down and we do pay attention to God's word, I have a further push for you.

When you read God's word and you interact for it, let it discipline you. And what I mean by that is don't initially say what it doesn't mean or what it couldn't mean. Do you remember when Abraham had to take Isaac up to the mountain? What was he supposed to do with his son on the mountain? He was supposed to sacrifice his son. He was supposed to kill his son and offer him up as a sacrifice to God. Now, what would you have done? Any of us would have said, well, surely it doesn't mean that. That would have been the first thing. Whatever we're supposed to do, we're not supposed to do that. Even though that was the plain instruction of the Lord. We say, well, it can't mean that. It couldn't have meant that. But Hebrews tells us that Abraham believed that he would receive his, that if he obeyed God, he would receive his son back by means of resurrection. He was planning to do it. So when you read scripture, slow down, pay attention to it, and let it discipline you. And the first thing it needs to discipline is your impulse to say, well, that's not what it means.

Husbands, what does it mean for you to lay down your life for your wife? Don't start by saying what it doesn't mean. Give me ten things it does mean. And it would be even better if the ten things are ten things you're not good at. And then the same thing to the wives. What does the Scripture mean when it says that you should submit to your husband in all things as to the Lord? It's like, well, how about we start with what it does mean? And let's start with the ten things that rub you the wrong way. Are you children? When you think your parents are being unreasonable.

That they're out to lunch and they don't understand how things are and what your priorities are. It is true that somewhere between when I got married and now, I lost touch with modern culture. The kids use words now, and I think they're stupid. I don't know what they mean. I think they're an indication of stupidity. But we had those words when I was that age. Different words, but the same words. And the kids tend to think, well, dad and mom, they don't know what they're talking about. They don't understand culture. They don't understand social media. They don't understand music. They don't understand movies. They don't understand boy and girl relationships. They just don't understand all that stuff. As though we weren't their age once. Slow down. Listen. And consider the part of God's word that rubs you the wrong way. I've said before when I prepare to preach, My basic approach to it is to read the passage and say, which part of this passage is the part that we want to ignore or the part that rubs us the wrong way? And then that's the part I talk about. That's it. That's it. Every week, my goal is to put before us the part of the text that we go, I don't want to think about that part. I don't want to consider the implications of that part. So we spend 40 or 50 minutes delving into those things where it's like, I don't know that I want to listen to this. I'm not sure.

And you might think, well, that's a terrible approach to preaching. But if we believe that God spoke to us to discipline us, then shouldn't we be looking for the discipline? Shouldn't we take hold of it when we find it? I'll tell you something. They heard God's words in the midst of the fire, and they were scared of the fire. And a few weeks ago, Eric talked about the fear that they had. What I want to say to you is that God speaking to them in the midst of the fire and them surviving it, was a great privilege. It was such a blessing to them for God to do exactly what he did. And isn't that strange that we would look at such a terrifying event and their wholesale, like, get me away from this, we're going to die, and then say, that was such a blessing. That's a weird thing to say, isn't it? Well, here's why I think it's such a privilege and such a blessing. It's because God, in that moment, as he was speaking to them in the fire, he was being their father.

And he was disciplining them. What is fatherhood except to discipline your children? And by discipline, I don't simply mean to spank them. I don't simply mean to point their faults out and their failures. There is that part of it, and there is that element of it going on in this text. But to discipline is to train, to imprint yourself upon them, to lead them, to instruct them, to point them in this direction and away from that direction. It's to love your children. Yet we live in a society where men doing this sort of thing is looked down upon. Men who would stand and speak and say no and expect their children or the people that they're responsible for to listen to them, it's seen as a failure or a fault. But I need to tell you that it's exactly what men and husbands and fathers are supposed to do. You know what's worse than not having fathers do this sort of thing? Not having them do it. That's what's worse.

We live in a society that hates men, the manliness of men, and where the epidemic of fatherlessness is just bearing terrible fruit in our society and in our churches and in our homes. Can we admit as husbands and fathers that we don't know how to be dads, but that somewhere deep down inside of us, behaving the way God did here, which was to inspire fear in his children, that we must be on the wrong path if that's what's going on. And if we're not sure about it, our wives certainly are. You can't talk to the kids like that. Discipline is a tangible manifestation of love. Now, there's a way to discipline your children or your wife or those under your care that's not loving. But we as Christians have to actually learn the difference between disciplining as an outworking of our love and disciplining because we're angry. And we ought not to discipline them because we're angry.

But if you're going to wait until you're sure you're not angry to discipline your children, then I'm convinced that what you will do is withhold love from your children. God is perfect, and so his discipline here is perfect. Ours isn't. But we should at least aspire to what Hebrews says about fathers, which is that we disciplined our children as we saw best. We did the best we could. Jesus told us that even unbelieving fathers don't give rocks to their children when they ask for bread. We shouldn't be ashamed of disciplining our kids and loving them. It's the same thing. It's a kind thing that God's doing here to his people and disciplining them, speaking to them, telling them no. I asked at the beginning, what would have become of them if God hadn't disciplined them in this way? They would have gone to hell. They would have gone back to Egypt. They would have died. So you fathers, when you speak to your children, love them and discipline them.

When you read God's word, Christian, when you read God's word, listen for the discipline. Listen for the discipline. So why did God speak to them out of the fire? Why did he discipline them? Moses tells us, because he loved your fathers, therefore he chose their descendants after them. God loved the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Israelites as they are today are many generations removed from the patriarchs. But long ago, God made a covenant with Abraham. And that covenant is the reason that the Israelites at that point were standing on the edge of the land of Canaan and about to go into it. It was because God had chosen them because he had loved them. They weren't around when he chose them. They weren't anything special. Moses reminded them that the reason that they were there was because God had loved their fathers and as a result chosen them. They didn't deserve this land. They hadn't earned this land.

They couldn't have taken this land on their own. In fact, we know that they wouldn't have tried to take this land on their own because when that option was put forward, they went, this is crazy and we're going to die. We want to go back to Egypt. We want to go back to slavery. These people, in a word, were not any better than the others around them. God didn't choose them because of that. And that's something that we have to keep in mind all of the time. There's a lot of discussion around election and God's sovereignty in these things. And how is it that we reconcile these sorts of things?

what we have to do is get out of our own selves enough to say and see what the scripture teaches us concerning God's choice of his people. When we read this passage, we're told very plainly and clearly why they're there. They're there because God made a covenant with their father, Abraham. He loved them and therefore he chose them. They weren't a special people. They weren't strong. They weren't mighty. They weren't wise. They weren't powerful. In fact, there were many of the opposites. God was giving them this blessing because he had promised it to them because of the great love that he had for them. This is a point you have to come to understand in your bones. This is a hard thing for us to comprehend, and there's a few reasons for it. One, the idea of God interacting with people covenantally, which just means as groups of people with set terms. It's just not how we operate today. There's a place in Scripture where Paul says something. It's very offensive.

He makes this blanket statement about Cretans. What's he say about them? And? Gluttons. Lazy. Evil. Yeah, this really, you know, unbecoming statement. All Cretans are liars. Evil beasts. Lazy gluttons, I think it is. And then he says, this testimony is true. In case you thought I didn't mean it, I mean it. You mean every Cretan? Every last single one of them? I don't know, what would the statement be? If God were to speak about Americans, what exactly would he say about us? Wouldn't we want exceptions to be made? Maybe we would be like Abraham when God was planning the destruction of Sodom, and he says, listen, but how about for the 50? I mean, well, how about for the five? Like, how about mine? How about Lot? You'd realize that in this speaking, this sort of covenantal speaking, God is dealing with groups as a whole. But we want to talk about all of the exceptions to the rule and not the rule itself. And it's dangerous for us to think of ourselves as though we're not a part of a group or part of a family or part of a nation. Is what's true of Americans true of us? We have to be able to say yes. Is it exactly true of us? Probably not.

Is that slight difference make us righteous as opposed to our countrymen? Nope. So God deals with us, with people, and has always dealt with people by means of a covenant. He's dealt with groups. We like to think that he deals with individuals only. And I'm not saying covenants don't require that God doesn't deal with individuals. He does deal with individuals. But he deals with individuals in the context or from the starting point of the covenant obligations that they're under or not under. Take baptism for an example. If someone is baptized, what is true of them? What is true of them is that they bear a sign of the covenant between them and God. It says, God is my God and I'm going to do what he says. And I'm going to do it no matter what the cost and I'm going to do it until my life's end. And God promises me.

through marking me as one of his children, that he will sustain me and care for me and provide for me through whatever he allows to come into my path in such a way as to prepare me to enter into his presence and to his rest and to glory. If someone who's been baptized says, I'm done with this. I want to do what I want to do. I want to give myself to my sins. Is there any difference in God's eyes between that person and the one who's never been to church and never been baptized? Yeah, there is. There is. In a church discipline case a while back, when we were excommunicating somebody or we were part of an excommunication, the person we were excommunicating didn't seem to feel the weight of what was happening. They trusted their own judgment and said, well, I don't think that you're right, and I'm just going to carry on business as usual. I'm just going to try to serve God and go on my way. And you guys can think what you want.

But I don't care. It was basically the sentiment of the discussion. And so I made a point of saying to him, I said, you know, I want you to know something. I said, this is not a light matter what's going on here. And your assessment of our judgment doesn't matter. What you should take away from this discipline is that if you die in the state in which you are currently in, you ought to have no hope of entering into heaven. You don't get to just set aside your obligations to the Lord or our judgments concerning your way of life. You're not able to do that. You can think that you're doing it, but in God's eyes, that's not how it works. You've obligated yourself to him. And he's obligated himself to you. And our judgment after years of work is that you're wandering and unwilling to repent. He got very angry, very angry at me for saying that.

But it is much different for him than it would be for someone who was doing the same thing and had never been committed to the Lord. So covenants are a way that we need to learn to understand. We need to learn to see that that's the starting point from which we interact with God. Are we members of his covenant? Are the things that are said of the people of God in this passage true of us or not true of us? If you're a Christian, if you are in Christ, If you're a member of a church, if you're baptized, these things are spoken to you. Okay? You're chosen. We get really, really tripped up by this idea of election, though. What we want to say is, well, if I'm going to understand covenant theology and I'm going to understand that God deals with covenants, then we want the covenant to be neat and tidy and for there not to be any tension in the covenant. We want the covenants to resolve all of the tension. And it doesn't work that way either.

What happens if someone is in the covenant and then rejects the Lord? They're cast out of the covenant and they're judged. In our church context, that would be done through means of excommunication. And in this context, it may have been done simply by killing them or exiling them out of the people, out of the land. When we think of God choosing people, though, we have to keep in mind that not everyone that's chosen into that covenant is... truly a member of the covenant. Now that's hard to understand. So I want to explain this a little bit. All of Israel is spoken of in this passage. Are all of the people that were there in heaven? Did they end up in heaven? No. Why not? Why are they not? Like if they were chosen and God loved their fathers, why aren't they in heaven? Well, because God hadn't chose them individually. He chose them group corporately, but he didn't choose them individually. Jacob and Esau is a good example of this. Okay. One of the patriarchs and his,

brother. You see the same sort of thing going on with Isaac and Ishmael. They're in the covenant, but they're part of the family, but they weren't individually chosen. And so when we understand that God deals with people, with groups of people as a whole, we say that's our starting point. And then we have to then go inside of that group and say, okay, are the people that are in this group living and serving and believing in God or not? Esau didn't. Why didn't Esau? Because God didn't choose him. Because God didn't love him. What did Esau do to deserve God's hatred and wrath? Nothing. Everything, but nothing. This is the tension. He did nothing to become an object of God's wrath, except exist, be born. Meaning he didn't start in a position of love and then move to a position of hatred.

And yet his life testified to his lack of love for God. He sold off his birthright. He had no regard for the things of God. We can look at Cain and Abel. We can look at Ishmael and Isaac. We can look at Jacob and Esau. There's many other examples in Scripture of people who were in the covenant but who were not truly members of the covenant. They were members outwardly. They bore the sign. They lived in the group. They did the stuff. But they weren't truly. Abraham's descendants, children of the promise. So how are we to live? Well, if we can't avoid this tension of am I a Christian or am I not a Christian? Does God love me? Doesn't God love me? If we can't resolve it through covenant theology, then what are we supposed to do? How do we get away from the tension? I want to tell you, you can't get away from the tension. You can ignore the tension. You can develop a theology.

that's like covenant theology that's adjacent to covenant theology that sort of like sweeps all of the tensions under the rug. But God doesn't do that. So what are we to do? How are we to process God loving them and choosing them, but not all of them? I think we would be best served to set aside these questions that, frankly, we're not capable of comprehending and understanding in its entirety. Covenant theology is helpful and it's necessary, but it does not answer every question we have. It doesn't by itself give us assurance of being in Christ, of being one of God's children. What does? How can you know if these things that are said here, that God loved them and chose them, are true of you? Well, one of the first tests, and you may not like it, but this is one of the proofs, is whether or not the Holy Spirit testifies within you that you're one of God's children.

He's not going to send you an email confirmation like when you order something online. You're not going to get like, and here's the proof and the receipt and the arrival date and all the... Do you believe that you're a Christian? Do you believe in Jesus Christ? Do you love him? When you see your sins, are you sorry for them? Are you sorry for your sins? You see, I think when it comes to being a Christian, we think of being a Christian as being something more than sorry for our sins. We might think... To say that Christians don't sin. Eric talked a little bit about this in Sunday school. We might want to create an economy where sin is not really something Christians interact with. But this is not how the Bible talks about it. When you sin, are you sorry for it? Do you come to a place of being sorry for it? Maybe it's a better question. After being confronted by your parents or by your spouse or by the word of God, are you sorry for your sins? I want you to know that unbelievers don't get sorry for their sins.

They might get sorry about the consequences, the relational consequence or the financial consequence. There may be some worldly sorrow associated. But does your sorrow say, I have offended my father. And in that sin, I drove those nails into Jesus. And I'm sorry about it. That's the question you have to answer. And you have to answer it as often as you're aware of the sins that you've committed, which as you live your life should become more and more. We should want God to make us more and more aware of our sins so that we're more and more thankful for his mercy and his sacrifice. For his choosing of us. But here's a strange thing. If you were to think that God loved you and forgave you of your sins and washed you away, you might think that that's not fair. Because there's other people he hasn't done that for. And I just want to tell you that God's not fair. And that as a Christian, you should praise God that he's not fair.

Not fair to us. If he was fair to us, then there's no hope for us. He is fair in the sense that our sins have to be paid for. He's just. But our sense of fairness, I mean, honestly, are you even fair yourself? I mean, aren't you biased in everything? Like when you walk up to, you know, a conflict and you're like, I'm going to help. Isn't the first thing you do try to decide, like, you want to decide who's right, but really you want to decide who you like. Or like, what benefits would come to you if you take this person's side versus that person's side? We're not as fair as we'd like to think we are. I'm not as fair as I'd like to think we are. I spend time going, well, if I do this, then this person's going to think that. How's it all going to turn out for me? And I don't think I'm unique in thinking that way or having to fight those sorts of temptations. If you're in Christ, you're loved no matter what you've done or will do. Do you hear me?

If you're in Christ, you're a new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold, new things have come. God loves his children, and he disciplines them, and he cares for them, and he shepherds them through their entire lives, and nothing they do can put him off. He promises in multiple places in Scripture never to leave or forsake his children, not to lose even one of them. This is what Moses is referring to. This is the love of God that he's referring to when he says God loved your fathers. He loved your fathers. If you think about their fathers for a minute, about Abraham. We'll just take Abraham as an example. Do you remember the kinds of things Abraham did that were memorable but not the good kind of memory? Like the sort of thing you'd want left out of the biography. He loved Sarah, you know. He loved her so much that he passed her off as his sister. Twice.

To save his own butt. He was willing for another man to take her as his wife. To have sex with her. To lose her. Just so he could live. Now isn't that shameful? What would you wives think if your husbands thought about that? You need to suffer and go live this other life apart from me. Because that would be better for me. You wouldn't have a whole lot of respect for it, would you? You wouldn't think there's a righteous thing to do. And he did it twice. And yet God loved Abraham. He loved him. He was a sinner. And our best hope as Christians is to come to the place where we'll admit what our sins are. And just say, here I am, and here's what I've done. And Lord, have mercy on me and forgive me for my sins. That's it. That's it. That's the gospel. That's the gospel. Whatever you've done, if you're one of God's children, then he loves you. And he'll discipline you because he loves you. And don't stiffen your neck when he does.

God was disciplining Israel when he brought them out of Egypt, right? That was hard for them. It was a stretch. But they were terrified. It was chaos going on. There's all these dead firstborns and they take off out of there and then the army's coming after them. And you could think like they just wanted to crawl under a rock and be forgotten. But God disciplined them and brought them right to the edge of the Red Sea where they're like, and now we're going to die because there's the water and there's the Egyptian army. God was disciplining them. He was loving them and protecting them and leading them through and destroying their enemies and giving them wealth and the things that they needed. When he struck down all of the men who were afraid, he was disciplining them. He was pruning them. I think too often we want God to leave us alone. We don't want to be disciplined. We don't want to be dealt with. You know, like teenagers, they just want their parents, leave me alone. No.

This is what we say. No, I won't leave you alone. You're my kid. You don't get to not be my kid for four or five or ten years. Not allowed. I love you. And you're supposed to love me. So stop trying to dodge God's discipline. God's love for his children is constant. He stayed involved with them. Did you notice what he said about them coming out of Egypt? He says, I personally brought you out. I personally brought you out. He could have done it by any means he wanted. He could have just sent a plague on Egypt that kept the military from ever pursuing them. But he didn't. He personally delivered them out, consuming their adversaries along the way. He dealt with them. And then they get across. And what's he do? He leads them in a pillar of smoke and in a fire.

He leads them to the mountain and he speaks to them and then he leads them through the wilderness and he tells them how to live and how to set up the tabernacle and how to make camp and how to break camp and what to eat and all that kind of stuff. He just cared for them constantly. He was there with them and you see them always grumbling about it. What if you were in one of the tribes that had to leave the camp first? You had to get up earlier than your brothers. It's not fair. He stayed with them and stayed with them and stayed with them. He also stayed with them through Moses.

And through Aaron. God was always present with his people. And he's always present with us now. Now he's present with us through his Holy Spirit. Now he's present with us through other believers. Now he's present with us when we commune together and worship God. He's here. Working in us. Right now. Healing with our hearts. Softening us. Making us able to serve him better. I'm going to end with this. He says that he's driving out the nations before them that were greater and mightier than them. What you learn from that is that God's interactions with us and his constant attendance upon us is in part because we're always in the midst of struggles and conflict. If you know Psalm 23, you probably think of it as being a very comforting psalm. But have you ever noticed in Psalm 23 all the conflict that's in it? I want to read Psalm 23 to you. Listen, because he makes me to lie down by, he guides me, he does these things. But I want you to listen to the context in which he does all of that stuff. This is Psalm 23. It's only six verses long.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul. He guides me in the paths of righteousness for his namesake. And you think, that is what I want. That is sweet. That sounds pleasant. And then he says, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. And you're like, wait, what? Where'd the green pastures and the still waters go? Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You have anointed my head with oil, my cup overflows. Surely goodness and loving kindness will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

as Christians, is that God will attend to us in our valleys and in the face of our struggles and our enemies and our hardships, that he'll be with us. And that in that place, he'll make us to lie down in green pastures and he'll lead us beside still waters. This is imagery of us having faith and trusting in him. He's described in this psalm as a shepherd, one who will go be with us, one who will care for us, one who will use his rod and his staff. To lead us, to comfort us, to direct us. This is what it means for God to love you. Okay? This is what it means to be one of his chosen children. That God would lead you through this life and stand by you and go before you every step. And that when you have to walk down those steps, you'll be scared. And in your fear, you'll question whether God loves you. And my exhortation to you is, don't give in to the fear. The psalm says,

I shall fear no evil. So don't give your life to fearing evil. Give your life to loving God. He's been good to you. He's been good to you. Don't make it a habit to reason the way the world does about your life. In this world, you'll have trouble, Jesus tells us. But I've overcome the world. And so face the troubles and the difficulties and the hardships and all the things that testify to you that this place is not heaven. Receive them with gladness. And by faith. And persevere. Because God's doing a work. And he has been doing a work since the days that they were about to enter the land of Canaan. And he's going to continue to do that work. Caring for his people. And I promise you that when you go and stand before him. When all of your days are over. And you see his glory. You won't feel like he owed you anything. All you'll do is be able to testify to him for his mercy and his goodness. And his kindness in leading you and sustaining you through that day. So don't be short-sighted.

Don't lose sight of what's to come. Live like one of God's children. Trust him. Go everywhere he calls you to go and do what he tells you to do when you're there. That's what it means to be a true child of the covenant. Let's pray.