Let's stay right there just a
minute. I want to look at something. Deuteronomy 8. The Lord's people today, we're
doing just what He did with Israel in the wilderness. We're traveling
through a wilderness. We were bondmen. We were in bondage. We were enslaved
to sin. And He delivered us out of that
by His grace. Just like He delivered them out
of Egypt. And He's leading us all the days
of our life through this wilderness of sin. And He's leading us to
a land He's promised to give us. God's promised to give us
salvation. He's promised that to His people.
And He's leading us just like He brought them out of Egypt.
Brought them into that wilderness and led them to that promised
land. Now God could have carried them right out of Egypt, right
into that land. He could have called us, saved
us and brought us right into glory right away. But God chose
to leave us in this world. To lead us through this wilderness.
He led Israel all around all different ways for 40 years in
that wilderness. And that's what God's doing with
His people right now. He's leading us in this wilderness
that He controls, that's under His power, and He's doing it
to teach us. To teach us. He's doing it to
prepare us for that land He's going to bring us into one day.
And here's what God teaches us. First of all, what He told them
in verse 1. All the commandments which I
command thee this day shall you observe to do, that you may live
and multiply and go in and possess the land which the Lord sware
unto your fathers. Now, the difference is the commandments
He gave to them was that law, that covenant of works they were
under. But when He calls us, He gives us commandments. And
the commandments He gives us are light and easy. The commandments
He gives to His people, you find them in 1 John. It's this, it's
two commandments. Remember Christ said, My yoke
is light and easy. Just two commandments. And the
only way we keep these two commandments is by the sovereign, all-powerful,
all-effectual grace of God. Number one, He says, Believe
on My Son. Trust my Son. Believe on my Son. And by His grace, He gives us
life, He gives us faith, He gives us repentance, He gives us everything
needful to believe on His Son. And the only reason we believe
Him is because He works that in His people. And see, once
you've trusted Christ, by believing on Christ, if you can look at
it, if you can look at it like this, here's all that broad,
vast law of God. The holy law of God is a mighty
steed, too many hands high for you and me to mount and ride
to glory no matter how we try. It's a mighty stallion. And we
can't conquer the law. We can't fulfill the law. But
God sent His Son to represent His people and He came and fulfilled
the law in every dot and every dash, so that there's nothing
left to be done. It's totally fulfilled. He's
established righteousness. And He's put away the sin of
His people. And He is that righteousness. And so God says to you and me,
believe on My Son. And by His grace, we believe
on Him. And the second commandment is a light and easy commandment.
And it's this, love one another. Love one another. To love one
another is to suffer long with one another. It's to be kind
to one another. It's to bear one another's faults
and to look for the best in one another and hope for the best
and trust God to save His people. is to hold his people up before
God in prayer and to pray for one another and to overlook one
another's faults and to restore one another to Christ. That's
loving your brethren. And just like faith, the only
way we do that is by God working in you both to will and to do
of His good pleasure, that which pleases Him. Putting His love
in our heart, giving us a new nature. God is love. We saw that
last week. And He puts His nature in your
heart and He calls you to love Him. And He calls you to love
your brethren. Born of the same Spirit. Cheryl,
you don't have to try to love your children. You love them.
Because they're your flesh and blood. Well, the child of God
doesn't have to try to love his brethren. We're born of the same
Spirit. We're redeemed by the same blood, saved by the same
grace. We're one with each other in
Christ. And it's a natural thing when you're born of God and given
the nature God gives you of being made a partaker of His nature,
it's a natural thing to love God and love your brethren. And
so He tells you now what He told them in verse 1. Keep the commandments
that I command thee this day, observe them and do them that
you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land which
the Lord swore unto your fathers. You know, the best life, he says
that you may live, the best life you can possibly have is by believing
on the Lord Jesus Christ and loving your brethren. That's
the best life. That's the good life. That's
the good life. And that's how we multiply. That's
how we multiply. The harmony of God's church,
the harmony of His people, by His grace, He works through that
harmony to send forth His gospel and He births children. And we
multiply with children of grace that He's given and brought to
life by the incorruptible seed, the Word of God. So we live,
we multiply by obeying Him, and one day we're going to go in
and we're going to possess the land which the Lord sware unto
Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. He promised them by a covenant
of grace that He would give them the heavenly land. This earthly
land He's talking about here was a picture, a type of that
heavenly land. But we're going to go in and
possess that land because He promised that land to Christ.
When He had redeemed His people and regenerated His people and
saved all His people, He promised to give Him that land with all
His people as His inheritance. And that's what He promised Abraham,
and Isaac, and Jacob, and that's what He's promised every believer
He's ever saved. They're going to possess that
land in glory. Not that land, I'm not talking
about that land over there. He's going to burn this whole
thing up, make a new heavens and a new earth. And we're going
to possess a new heaven and a new earth. And it's going to be ours,
our land where Christ dwells. We're going to walk amongst Christ.
and know Christ, and He said, you're going to sit at my table
in my kingdom, and I'm going to serve you, and it's going
to be real, a real kingdom with a real Lord and Savior in a real
land that's all the creation of Christ by His righteousness.
Now that's what He promises us. Now look here, verse 2, And thou
shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these
forty years in the wilderness. to humble thee, and to prove
thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldst keep
his commandments or no. And he humbled thee, and suffered
thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest
not, neither did thy fathers know, that he might make thee
know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word
that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live." Now
he tells you to go forth and he tells you to remember Remember. He's given us all these examples
of what God did for the children of Israel in the wilderness.
He tells us to remember. And then you have a history to
remember. The believer has a history to
remember of what He's done for us. And what has He done for
us? In everything He's taught us,
in everything He taught them, what did He do? He says there
in verse 2, I humbled you. I humbled you. Isn't that what
He's done for us? He's humbled us. He's humbled
us. He's proven us to know what was
in our heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.
He knew. He didn't have to have proof. He knew what was in your heart
and what was in mine. God looks on the heart. And the
heart that you have that's a heart of faith, He gave that heart.
So God knows what's in you. He don't have to have it proven
to Him. What does He do by all these trials and these tests
and this humbling? He causes you... He proves to
you that without His grace keeping us, we won't follow Him. If there's
anything the children of Israel should have learned walking in
that wilderness for 40 years, it was that one thing. If God
don't make us follow Him, we won't follow Him. Now, He wasn't
working in all their hearts. And they heard that, and I guarantee
you what a lot of them thought. They were puffed up and haughty
and arrogant in their heart, thinking by the strength of my
own hand, I've come a long way through this wilderness. And
if they would just have thought and looked back on what had happened
to them, they hadn't been out of that Egyptian bondage very
long at all. I mean, they hadn't even crossed
the Red Sea yet. And they're coming out of there
with a high hand. They are free now and out of
that bondage. And they got to that Red Sea
and there's a big old idol God on one side and a mountain on
the other side and a Red Sea in front of them. And here comes
Pharaoh and his army. And you know what they start
saying? God brought us out here to kill us. Moses, you've led
us out here to kill us. And Moses said, stand still and
see the salvation of the Lord. They crossed that Red Sea. He
split it wide open and they crossed it. He killed all Pharaoh's army
and Pharaoh and he leads them across and they're excited and
they're singing praises and it wasn't very long at all and they
come to a bitter well and they're just murmuring and complaining
because they couldn't drink. And they said, Moses, you just
brought us out here to kill us with thirst. That's all you did.
God's just brought us out here to kill us. What I'm saying is
if they'd have just looked back on all that and seen how they
acted, Every little trial they came to, they've said, we couldn't
make it if it wasn't for God. We'd have been long time slain
and righteously so if it had been up to us. And that's exactly
what we learned, isn't it? We come through these trials,
God showed us what He did for us in Christ, we just sing it.
It was just amazing grace the hour we first believed. Just
like Israel, we come out of bondage thinking, Oh Lord, I'm going
to serve you. I'm so thankful for what you've
done for me. And not very long at all. We're
complaining, murmuring, downtrodden because of some trial. Lord,
have you just brought me out here to slay me? Over and over
and over through this wilderness, that's how it's been. And all
we've got to do is remember. God's brought us through every
single trial. God's been merciful to us when
we murmured and complained. He's done everything for us,
and if it wasn't for Him, we couldn't have taken a step. Couldn't have taken a step. He's
proven to us what's in our natural heart, hadn't He? Nothing but
sin, nothing but rebellion, nothing but nothing. Just nothing. Look here. He said,
I've done this to prove you, you won't keep my commandments
if it's left up to you. He's shown us that, and He's
humbled us, and He suffered us to hunger. He suffered us to
hunger, but you know what He did? He fed us with manna from
heaven. He brought them out there in
that wilderness, and this was the whole purpose of what He
did. He brought them out there, and He said, okay, I'm going
to rain down manna from heaven. and I'm going to feed you." They
were murmuring, they were complaining, we're going to starve. Moses
brought us out here to kill us with hunger, and God said, I'm
going to rain down manna from heaven. And so He rained down
manna from heaven, and then He told them, told them, He said,
now, you go out, you gather a certain rate on this day. Don't gather
up extra. You eat what you gather up. If
you leave any, it's going to breed worms. What did they do?
They went out there and gathered up more than God said gather
up. Why? They didn't believe Him. They
didn't believe it would be there the next day. So they gathered
up some extra and it bred worms and died. And then God told them,
He said, I'm going to rain down so much on this day and on this
next day, don't even go out and gather any. There will be enough
for you. You won't have to worry about
it. It won't breed worms. Don't go out and gather any on that
day. What did they do? They went out and gathered on
that day. Everything God said to them, they did the opposite
of it. Did the opposite of it. And God said here exactly what
He was teaching them. He said, I humbled you, I suffered
you to hunger, I fed you with manna, which you didn't even
know what it was, neither did your fathers know. And I did
it to make you know that man doesn't live by bread alone,
not by physical strength, not by your hand and your might and
your bread and your physical carnal things. But you live by
the Word of God. God said it. You know what God
did? He provided the bread. God said,
don't gather more. It's going to breed worms and
die. They said, we got to live by
bread alone. We got to go out here and gather this up. There
won't be any tomorrow. By God's word, He showed them.
What I said to you is true. And He said, don't gather any.
They said, oh, we got to live by bread alone. We got to go
out here and do this by our strength. He showed them. Nope. Don't go out and gather. You
rest. What He was teaching us, brethren, by that is what He
teaches us in Christ. It's not the carnal things. It's
not the physical things that's our life. It's not by might.
It's not by power. It's not by your strength or
your wisdom, your intelligence. Salvation is by the Word of the
Lord. Salvation is by the Word of the
Lord. He spoke. He spoke and said, let there
be light. And there was light. He spoke
this earth into existence. He spoke all things into existence. And He spoke you into existence.
I'm talking about the new man. He spoke the Word of the Gospel
and by that Word created a new man in us, a new creation in
us. And the Word, the Word who is
God, the Word who is with God, Christ the Lord, He came forth.
And we beheld His glory, the glories of the only begotten
of the Father, full of grace and truth. And He came forth
and He walked this earth and He fulfilled all righteousness.
And He is that Word by whom we live, not by anything in this
earth, not physical or carnal or fleshly, but by the Word of
the Lord, by Christ the Lord, the Word. And that's the word
that enters into the heart. Christ Jesus is formed in us
and therein we have life. He's the only way we live. That's
why Christ said in John 6, don't labor for the bread that perishes.
If I could just... I know when you're young, I was
this way and you go to college and you got all these dreams
or you just head out right after your dreams, don't even go to
college, whatever it is, but you got all these dreams and
all this stuff you want and you come out and boy, you're going
to conquer the world and everything is going to fall in place. And
I pray God will do for you what He did for me. He hurt my feelings. One after another. I'd get to
one level and I'd think, this is where it's going to be happiness
right here. And it wasn't nothing but sorrow. Achieve the next
thing, oh, this is going to be happiness right here. More sorrow,
more disappointment. Every time you get to a place,
oh, I'm going to get here and people are going to think like
I think and it's going to be all good. You get there and you
think, it's just a bunch of sinners like it was where I came from.
One after another, one after another, and finally He teaches
you, There's no place where you find true joy, but one place,
that's in Christ. That's in Christ. You know it
in your head, you know it in your heart by His grace. But
He teaches you that by experience. One after another, one after
another, one after another. And He shows you, you don't live
by bread alone. Your job's not going to make
you happy. Your salary is not going to make you happy. Your
house is not going to make you happy. Your stuff is not going
to make you happy. That other person is not going
to make you happy. What's going to make you happy
is Christ. That's it. That's it. And that's what He's
teaching you over and over and over. Everything else is just
going to breed worms and stink. Alright, look here now, verse
4. There's something else He teaches you. Your raiment didn't
wax old upon you, neither did your foot swell these forty years.
Neither did... Your raiment didn't wax so and
your foot didn't even swell. Everything they needed, God provided.
You think about walking through that wilderness. They didn't
stop and put in a shoe store and a clothing store so they
could all buy clothes and have shoes. They were on the move
the whole time. But God provided them everything
they needed for shoes. to make shoes and clothes. He
provided them for them out there in a waste-toweling wilderness
and they didn't miss anything. And what He showed them by that
is what He shows you and me. The true raiment is Christ's
righteousness. The true shoes upon our feet
is the gospel with which our feet are shod. That's the true
shoes and the true raiment. It's all worked out by Christ
and provided by God's grace through the Spirit of God in the new
heart. That's where God provides. And if you got that raiment of
righteousness wherein you're accepted of God and you got the
gospel guiding your feet so that everywhere you go, no matter
what step you take, it is this. I got to have Christ. I got to
have the gospel. I can't go there. I can't take
that job there. You know why? It's going to put
me too far away from my brethren. It's going to put me too far
away from the gospel. Well, look at the salary you could make. Look at the fine raiment and
the nice shoes you could have. I got the finest raiment and
the finest shoes there are. I'm not going to forsake Christ
for a bunch of rags. I can't go there. See, that gospel
is directing your feet. That's what it is to have your
feet shod with the preparation of the gospel. I can't go that
step. I can't go that way because I can't have Christ if I do that.
I can't serve the world and serve God. A man can't be the friend
of the world and a friend of God. You think God told us that
just to kid around with us? That's so. That's so. Every believer, at one time or
another, when you were young and immature, you tried it. You
tried it. You thought, I could be a friend
of the world and a friend of God. It don't work out. He's going
to make you see it. It won't work out. And how is
he going to do it? Look at verse 5. Thou shalt consider
in thine heart that as a man chastens his son, so the Lord
thy God chasteneth thee. You know, a loving father is
going to chasten his children. The children don't think that's
loving. The children at the time don't think it's loving. They
think this is mean. He's separating me from what
I really want and what I really think I need and what I really
think I ought to have. But if he knows anything at all,
if he's been there and he's a faithful father and he's not just doing
it for his own pleasure, what he's doing is he knows that's
not what you need and he knows that's going to be harmful to
you because he's been there. And so he's separating you from
it. And it'll be a while before you understand that that was
the best thing for you. Well, that's exactly what God
does. Just like a father chasing his son. When we start wanting
things and thinking we gotta have certain things, God takes
them away. Sometimes it's a job. Sometimes
it's a loved one. Sometimes it's stuff that we
want. But if we don't need it, God's
gonna take it. And if He takes it, It'll be
painful, it'll be sorrowful, it'll be a trial, but it's for
good. He's going to separate His people
from anything and everything that would separate us from Christ. Because He's not going to let
us be separated from Christ. And when He's done with it, it's
going to yield peace, And fruit of righteousness, you are going
to say that was the best thing for me. That was the best thing
for me. We were just talking the other
day about, I have told you all, 2003 for us, me and Melinda,
just one thing after another. And we were just going through
it with the kids, telling them everything that happened. And
both of us, at the end of talking about it, both of us said it
was the best thing that ever happened to us. Best thing. It didn't feel like that at the
time. But it does now. It does now. Look at this now. Verse 6, Therefore thou shalt
keep the commandments of the Lord thy God to walk in His ways
and to fear Him. For the Lord thy God bringeth
thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains
and depths that spring out of valleys and hills, a land of
wheat and barley and vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a
land of olive oil and honey. A land wherein thou shalt eat
bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack anything in it,
a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest
dig brass. And when thou hast eaten and
are full..." Let me stop right here, let me stop at verse 9.
Now He's telling them what He's going to give them. What He's
going to give them. And God's done that to us too.
He's told us what He'll give us. He told us what we are sure
to have now. He said this, He that spared
not His own Son, His own only begotten Son, but delivered Him
up for all His elect people, do you not think now that He
will not with Him freely give us all things? All things include
first and foremost righteousness. acceptance with God, forgiveness
of sin, reconciliation, pardon. He's going to give us all things
that pertain unto godliness and eternal life. He's going to give
us all things He already has in Christ. And He will give that
to His people. And as we go through this life,
He's promised your Father, your Heavenly Father, you have a Father
who is in heaven, who rules everything, who knows everything, who owns
everything. And He knows what His child has
need of. And He's promised you that same
Father that sent His only begotten Son shall provide everything
we need in this life. And what do we do? What do we
do? We do just what the children
of Israel did. He brought him right to that
land. He told him about it, told him how it was going to be. Look
at that. He said, I'm going to bring you into a good land, a
land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of
valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley and vines and
fig trees and pomegranates and olive oil and honey, a land where
you'll eat bread without scarceness and you won't lack anything in
it, a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills thou mayest
dig grass. They came back out of that land.
They got there and they said, before we go in there, we don't
know what that land is going to be like. All we got to go on now is the
word of God. We don't know what that land
is going to be like, so let's send some spies in there and
look it out. So they sent some spies in there. They come back,
two men. You get this now, two men carrying
a stave on their shoulders with a grape, one cluster of grapes
hanging down to the ground. Carry that back. Boys, we can't
go in there. Why? Because it's just like God
said it would be. Just like God said it would be.
Oh, He told them. He said there's going to be giants
in there. There's going to be men of war in there. There's
going to be men that you can't conquer in there. But I'm going
to conquer them all, God said. And you're going to have all
this. And you're not going to lack anything. And they come
back and they said, there ain't no way we can go in there. We
can't go in there. And how many times do we do that?
We've heard God, we've seen what God's done for us. Just looking
back on our life and seeing we haven't been without raiment,
we haven't been without shoes. I've known my spiritual raiment,
spiritual shoes. Not to mention physical raiment,
physical shoes. Have you ever been without them?
No. But we come to some obstacle
or some trial and what do we start doing? We can't conquer
this. We can't go through. We can't
take another step. God, have you brought me out
here just to slay me? If we just look back and see what He's already
done for us and listen to what He said He's going to do for
us, There's no reason to fear. There's no reason to be cast
down and troubled. God's going to do what He said
He'd do. We're going to have what He said we'd have. But again and again, what does
He do? He proves what's in our own heart, doesn't He? Just like
that bitter well He brought them to and just like every trial
He brought them to in that wilderness, He showed them what was in their
heart. Even when He brought them to that land, He promised them.
And they finally got there. He showed them what was in their
heart. There was two people there. Two fellows there that stood
up. One named a faithful dog. Caleb
the faithful dog. And he said, fellows, it's just
exactly like God said it would be. Why wouldn't we go in? God said He would deliver us
into it. God, look what He's done for us. He's going to deliver
us in there. He said it just like He said it would be. I believe
God. God always provides a faithful
witness amongst His brethren to cheer us up and point us to
Christ when we're looking at the waves, don't He? It might
be me today that's sitting here going, we can't do it, we can't
do it. And God using you to say, it's just like God said it would
be. Yes, we can. And tomorrow it will be you saying,
we can't do it, we can't do it. And God has strength in me to
say, yes, we can. It's just like God said. But
He's always got His witness there to say, yes, we can do it. Yes,
we can do it. It's believe the Word of the
Lord. We got something more real, more sure than if God gave us
a prophet to tell us exactly what's going to happen tomorrow.
We got the Word of God. We got the Word of God. Let's
go on here now. And then he says, now beware,
verse 11, that thou forget not the Lord thy God in not keeping
his commandments and his judgments and his statutes which I command
thee this day. lest when thou hast eaten and
are full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein, and
when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and
thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied,
then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy
God which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt from
the house of bondage, who led thee through that great and terrible
wilderness. Beware now, beware! The worst
thing in the world, is for a believer to be given some prosperity in
this world. Great prosperity in this world.
Because we're very prone to forget God. We're very prone to forget
God. One of the writers said, Lord
don't give me don't give me poverty Don't give me riches. Give me
poverty, I'll be so downcast, and I'll think God just totally
forgot me. Give me riches, I'll be so puffed
up, I'll forget God. Keep me right where I need to
be, Lord. Keep me there so I see that everything
is of Your hand, by Your grace, and not of me. Don't let me forget
You. Do you see here, everything the
Lord is saying here, On our part, it's nothing but forgetting and
stumbling and complaining and murmuring and having to be reminded,
having to be taught, having to be chastened, having to be kept. And on God's part, it's nothing
but faithfulness to do all that for us. Who's doing the saving
here? Us or God? God is. God does it all. Don't forget
now, don't forget God. Look, verse 15, He led thee through
that great and terrible wilderness wherein were fiery serpents and
scorpions, and drought where there was no water, who brought
thee forth water out of the rock of Flint. Those fiery serpents
and scorpions, you remember that part? I'm just going to touch
on this because we're going to see this, Lord will it, as we
go through our more popular stories in the scriptures, but remember
those serpents? They got to a certain place and
they were murmuring and complaining and God sent scorpions in there
to bite them. And they started being bitten
by those scorpions and those venom started going through them
and they started dying. And God told Moses, He said, you take
a piece of brass now and you make a brass serpent and you
hold that serpent up on a pole. The very thing that was killing
them, that very thing that was biting them, He said, you make
a serpent like that lifted up on a pole. And everybody looks
to it to live. And Christ said, just like Moses
lifted up that serpent in the wilderness, even so must the
Son of Man be lifted up. Christ was made to be the thing
that was killing you and me. He was made sin for His people.
And if you look to Him in faith, you'll be saved. That's the gospel. You'll be saved. And then he
said, and I brought you to that place where there was no water.
And I brought water out of the rock. He told Moses, he said,
you go forth in front of these people and you stand up and you
take a ride. Picture the law of God. And he
said, you take that ride and you smite that rock with that
ride. Christ Jesus the Lord on the
cross was smitten with the rod of justice in the place of His
people. And when Moses smote that rock,
when the law smote Christ, out of that rock came living water
and they were able to drink and they lived. And Paul said in
1 Corinthians 11, that rock is Christ. That rock is Christ. That's who He is. That's the
Rock. Now look here. He said, I did that for you,
verse 16, I fed you in the wilderness with manna, another picture of
Christ, and I did all that to humble you, to prove you, to
do thee good at thy latter end. Everything God's doing for us
is, number one, is to show us Christ is all our salvation.
He's the one high and lifted up. that had to be lifted up
to save His people, in the place of His people, our substitute.
He's the rock from which comes the water of life who was smitten
in the place of His people. He's the manna from heaven whose
life that gives bread to His people. And everything God does
to show us Christ, number one. Number two is to humble us from
not trusting ourselves, to turn us from trusting us. And number
three, it's because God has purposed from eternity that in our latter
end, He's going to give us everything He promised Christ. We're joint
heirs with Christ. He's going to give us everything
that He promised Christ in the latter end. Now look at this.
And thou say in thy heart now, when you get all lifted up, puffed
up, you say, my power and the might of my hands got me this
wealth. You think now, look at Israel,
think everything that happened to them. They were slaves in
Egypt. Slaves in Egypt, in bondage under
Pharaoh, unable to do one thing. God says, I brought you out,
I carried you across the Red Sea, I carried you through the
wilderness, I fed you the whole way, I clothed you the whole
way, I humbled you the whole way, I kept you the whole way,
and I'm going to deliver you into the land, and you're going
to get in that land, and I'm going to bless you with the fatness
I promised, and give you all the bounty I promised you, and
when I've done all that, this is what you're going to say,
I got all this by my hand. Would we do that? That's exactly
what we'll do. That's exactly what we'll do. Don't look at Israel and say,
well, if I'd have been there, I wouldn't have done that. Israel
is you and me. That is you and me. That is you
and me. How many times, how many times
have we said the very same thing? I got this by my skill. Man,
that was a smart move I made. I can remember sales was the
world's worst for me because I'd go in and make a sale and
I'd come out and I'd think, boy, they were determined from the
beginning they weren't going to buy nothing. When I got through,
they bought everything. And I'd walk out of there thinking, boy,
I'm a good salesman. We don't have anything but what
God gave us. Nothing. We wouldn't even have
breath to breathe if God didn't give it. Everything. Who makes you different from
another and what do you have that you didn't receive? If we
received everything from God, why would we dare glory like
we didn't? But He showed us a mirror right
here. This is who we are by nature. Look at this. But thou shalt
remember, verse 18, the Lord thy God, for it is He that giveth
thee power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant
which He sweareth to thy fathers as it is this day. What He is
saying to us is this. And he told them, he said, I'm
the one that gives you power to get everything you've got,
and I'm not doing it for you. That's what he's telling them.
I'm doing it because I made a promise to your fathers. And what he's
telling you and me is, he don't do it just for our sake. He does
it for us because he made a promise to Christ. And Christ upheld
that covenant and fulfilled it for us, fulfilled our end of
it. And so God the Father is going
to fulfill His end of it to Christ. And we are going to get the benefits
because Christ did everything. Now look at this next thing.
And it shall be if thou do at all forget the Lord thy God and
walk after other gods and serve them and worship them. I testify
against you this day that you shall surely perish. As the nations
which the Lord destroyed before your face, so shall you perish,
because you would not be obedient to the voice of the Lord your
God." Now, let's learn from them. Did they obey the Lord? Nope. Nope. The majority did not, because
the majority were merely under a covenant of works, walking
in their own understanding and trying to keep the law themselves.
And what God said they would do right here in forsaking Him,
they did that exact thing. And by that, God shows you and
me, we don't want to be under a covenant of works. You don't
want to be left to your own will and your own way and your own
wisdom and your own works. And I don't either. We want to
be saved by God's everlasting covenant of grace, by the covenant
of redemption. are the covenant God made with
Himself and that God makes sure by Himself and comes and tells
you, now it's all done and it's all free to you because I did
it all. That's the covenant we want to be under. Because if
God left us for a minute, we'd forget Him and we'd turn away
and we'd be disobedient. You see, God doesn't make a man...
He doesn't make a man be disobedient. God just leaves him to do what
He will. And because of the fall in Adam,
man disobeys God and goes away from God. And God says, I'm going
to justly punish you. Because you sinned against me.
You rebelled against me. You went away from me. And so
God's just to punish the person who doesn't believe on Him. But
you and I who He saves are just like that. We're just the same
way. And the only way we believe is
because God in grace plucked you out and said, I'm going to
save you, I'm going to do everything for you, I'm going to bring you
to Myself, and I'm going to make you the glory in Me alone. God did that when He chose us
in eternity before as yet we ever even fell in Adam. And that's
the only thing that makes us to differ. The only thing. So
right now, when we go through this wilderness, hear what God
says. Don't cease believing on Christ
and don't cease loving one another. He says there, don't forget,
don't cease remembering how I fed you, how I've humbled you, how
I've proved you, to show you, number one, you've got to have
Christ. Christ is everything. To show you it's all by my hand.
And He says then, and beware now, lest when you're given a
heart to know Him, and to be blessed of Him, and to walk after
Him, and your life's good, and your family's life's good, and
He gives you all these different blessings, don't get puffed up
and think, I did this all by my hand. It's all by the grace
of God. The only thing that makes us
to differ from that disobedient child of wrath is the grace of
God. That's it. But I promise you
this, by that grace, He shall give us our latter end. One other
thing we do see in Israel is this. He did deliver them into
that promised land. Everything God promised physical,
natural Israel. In that covenant of works, God
did everything He promised. He fulfilled it all to them.
Every bit of it. And He did that to show us everything
He promises us in the covenant of grace, God shall make good
on it. He will bring us to that latter
end. And you know what we're going to do when we get there?
We're going to say, thou art worthy. Christ, You are worthy
to open the book and to open the seals thereof because You
have redeemed us to God out of every kindred tongue under heaven
and You have made us kings and priests unto God. We are going
to say, You are worthy. You are worthy. We are going
to glorify Him. I pray He will make us do it now every step
of the way and bring us to that end. Alright, let's stand together. Lord, we thank You for making
Your Scriptures alive to us, dropping down messages to us
and giving us a heart to hear and speak and believe. Everything we have, we got from
You. We can't boast of anything. Tonight, if we sit here and worship
to You, it's because You gave it. Thank You, Lord. continue
to show us that we can't live by physical strength and physical
power and physical bread alone, but by every word. Your word's
life. Make us to know that, Lord. Make
us to know that the things that are seen are temporal, but those
things that are unseen, they're eternal. Forgive us, Lord. Forgive us of our doubting and
our murmuring and our complaining. Keep us for Your namesake. Forgive
us our sins, Lord, in Christ's name. Amen.