Well, spirits willing, but the
flesh is weak, isn't it? Yeah. Well, it has just been
an absolute blessing to be here. I just have enjoyed it so much.
I got reacquainted with someone I was acquainted with 15 years
ago. Yeah. Brother Zane, he and his
bride was We sat at the same table and visited for a while,
and I'm glad he said I was there because you know how things happen
at meetings. But it's just been a blessing.
I'm glad Brother Wayne is here. Your pastor's here. I miss him. But the phone line is just the
same length. Yeah, every once in a while he'll
let me do that where I can see his face on that phone too. You
know, FaceTime. So it's just like being there.
Did you know that there's not one extra pastor? There's not one too few. If God is sovereign, he's sovereign
over that too. There's not one too few churches. There's not
one extra one. God has his preachers where they're
sheep. That's the only reason they're
there. He is wasting his time, he's not wasting our time. And
he is going to harvest those sheep in his time. Turn with me right now to the
book of Deuteronomy, the last book of the Pentateuch, the last
one that Moses was used to write. Brother Henry Mahan shared with
me many years ago, after I had heard the gospel, the Lord saved
me and he was my friend now, First thing I ever said about
him is, I hate that man. But he's my friend now. I called
him up and told him after I was saved, I know what you were talking
about. Christ is the issue. Christ is
the issue. And he shared with me that in
every sermon, there needs to be three R's. Ruined by the fall. Man's state
needs to be brought up or we have nothing to be saved from.
I was visiting with a young man the other day, he's about 11
or 12 years old, and he's told me he was saved by his free will.
And I says, what were you saved from? I was saved from sin. I said, how did you know that
you were a sinner? He says, my dad told me. When God tells us,
it's a different story. We will not say my dad told me.
God reveals to us our desperate state only after we're born again. That's what we're gonna read
in the scriptures today. Ruined by the fall, redeemed by Christ,
regenerated by the Holy Spirit. We're left out of the equation.
You know what we bring to the table? Our sin. And that's it. Here in the book
of Deuteronomy chapter nine, we're gonna begin reading with
verse one. The children of Israel are about to enter into the promised
land. Now there was a national Israel,
and they're gonna enter into some land that God gave them.
And they are a picture and a type and a shadow of the church many
times. And here we begin reading, here, O Israel, thou art to pass
over Jordan this day. You know, as I approach that
time of, we metaphorically speak of Jordan as passing through
this life into the next, as I approach that day, this is my hope, this
is my prayer, as I come to that point, to go and to possess the
nations greater and mightier than thyself, cities great and
fenced up to heaven, a people great and tall, enemy after enemy
is preventing here in our life today trying to prevent us, our
greatest enemy is ourself, I can't blame the devil, I can't blame
the president, I can't blame anybody for the situation that
I'm in, it's myself, it's me that's the real problem, but
I'm thankful greater is he that's in me than he that's in the world.
I'm thankful that the Lord has control over his people, control
over Norm Wells, restrains me, We used to go into a grocery
store and our children, you know how they are, we had to put our
hands around them sometimes just to keep them from raking stuff
off of the shelves. That's what God does for us.
He restrains us. He constrains us. The love of
Christ constrains us. It's not the law, it's the love
of Christ that constrains us. I love you with an everlasting
love, I will take care of you in this life, and I'll present
you spotless in that life to come. And the church says, hallelujah,
it's not on my back. Now, he doesn't ask us to just
go and, you know, Paul was brought up, he said, shall we sin that
grace may abound? Absolutely not. That's not what
we are in here for. I've had people tell me, oh,
if I believe like you do, I just go out and do this and that and
that. Well, you might as well go do it because your heart's
not right with God. God's heart, oh Lord, I sin so
much more than I want to. I don't have to plan to do it.
The people are great. Then in verse three, understand
therefore this day that the Lord thy God is he which goeth over
before thee. As a consuming fire he shall
destroy them. He shall bring them down before
thy face. Thou shalt not drive them out
and destroy them quickly as the Lord hath said unto thee. Speak
not in thine heart. Now here, The Lord is saying,
now take a reckoning here. Don't you ever say, when you
come to this point, whatever it is, don't you ever say that
it was your righteousness. Look at this. Speak not in thine
heart after that the Lord thy God hath cast them out from before
thee. Say, for my righteousness the Lord hath brought me here.
Please. The Lord says, do not ever say
that. Believers, don't ever say, it's
my righteousness that brought me. And you know what? Believers
will never say that. We depend upon the righteousness
of Christ, that imputed righteousness that he gives us in the new birth,
that imputed righteousness that God has promised to all of his
children. That is what God looks at. as
we are whole before Him. And it's not our righteousness.
You know what the Bible says about our righteousness? Isaiah
chapter 64 verse 6 says, our righteousness is as filthy rags.
That's what it is. And you know, we only know that
after we've been born again. We think our righteousness is
pretty good. In fact, we're kind of like that Pharisee there,
Lord, I thank Thee that I'm not like other people. I'm so much
better than Brother Wayne. And the Lord said, that man didn't
go down to his house justified, but the guy that could not raise
his eyes to heaven and smote his breast and said, God be merciful. You know, mercy cannot be demanded. It's pleaded. You get into trouble,
end up before the judge. Do you, I demand mercy. No, I
plead mercy. Please be merciful to me. We
might have a child in, in court and we say, Oh, look, judge,
please be merciful to him. He's such, We do not demand mercy,
we plead mercy. God be merciful to me, the sinner. Speak not in thine heart, after
that the Lord thy God hath cast them out from before thee, for
saying, For my righteousness the Lord hath brought me in to
possess this land. But for the wickedness of these
nations the Lord hath drive them out before thee, not for thy
righteousness, nor for thy uprightness in thine heart dost thou go to
possess their land. But for the wickedness of these
nations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee,
that he may perform the word which the Lord sware unto thy
fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." Who was that? Why were
they brought up? He had a covenant with them.
He's going to honor a covenant with them. He's a covenant honoring
God. He makes a promise. Not only
does he have the ability and power, but he says he will do
it. Only God has the power to keep his word. You know, we wish
we could keep our word. Sometimes it breaks our heart
that we can't keep our word, but God has the power to keep
his word, and he is going to keep his word. He kept it to
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He's going to keep it to all
of those children that belong to him, and he will keep that
to all of his children in this day and time. I will deliver
you spotless. Not for your righteousness, but
because of His righteousness will I deliver you spotless.
You know what we had imputed to Christ? Our sin. It was imputed
to Him. It was placed on Him. And when
God took out justice upon His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, when
He bruised Him, as it tells us in Isaiah 53, when He bruised
Him, He beat Him to a pulp. It was God Almighty that did
that. The Romans drove nails, but other people had nails driven. But those two other that were
crucified that same day did not have what Jesus Christ had given
to him. And that was the justice of God
for his people's broken law and sin against him. That's what
was poured out of him. The justice of God was poured
out on him. We imputed, he imputed, excuse
me, he imputed. In God's miraculous way, he took
the sin of all his people in all time and swished them together
at one place at one time and placed them on the Son of God. And in that moment, Jesus Christ
paid for all our sin. Now, when I grew up, I probably
mentioned this before, when I grew up, I always was told, you're
going to have to answer for that sin. If you went to a dance,
you're going to have to answer for that. I said, you know what?
If I have to answer for one, I'm going to have to answer for
them all, because that means he didn't pay for any of them. But he paid
for all of them. So I'm going to stand before
him clean and just. I can look at the one who justified
me. I can look at the one who made
me righteous. I can look at him, Jesus Christ. Oh, what a glorious
gospel. What a glorious salvation it
is that he took care of all the issues that were between his
people and God. He took care of every one of
them. They were placed on him. He was crucified on our behalf.
He shed his blood on our behalf. And we walk away scot-free. thankful
bondservants, bondslaves to the Lord Jesus Christ, and thankful
for it. Please put me, back my ear up
to that post and draw that all through me. I want to stay with
you. Remember verse 7, and forget
not how thou provokest the Lord thy God to wrath in the wilderness. For the day that thou didst depart
out of the land of Egypt, until ye come to this place, ye have
been rebellious against the Lord. He did not give them, even from
a physical standpoint, he did not give them that land because
they had been good people. He did not give them that land
because they had done all his will. He did not give them that
land because they performed all that the law had to say. Why
did he give them that land? Because he chose to do so. They
were unrighteous people. You know, the Apostle Paul brings
that up in the book of Romans. He concludes, as he goes through
there verse by verse, chapter by chapter, and he concludes,
as the Holy Spirit gives him the conclusion, that all are
under sin, Jews and Gentiles alike. There are absolutely no
difference between them. You know what? Israel was an
experiment. Israel was an experiment. Let
me explain it. I can imagine, you know, It's
wonderful when God says, just think about this a little bit.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart. You know, sometimes it's just
time to ruminate. Think about this. I can imagine, in the council
halls of eternity, before the world was ever created, that
the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, in covenant mercy,
sat down and said, let's do an experiment. We're going to choose
a nation out of all nations. They are going to be the chosen
ones out of Abraham. They're going to be called Jews.
You know, Stephen said in that great passage of scripture in
the book of Acts, he said, the God of glory appeared unto Abram
in Ur the Chaldees. Now remember what that glory
is? The God of election, the God
of predestination, the God of foreknowledge appeared unto Abram
and chose him one person. And he had a friend tail along
with him, his nephew Lot. The Bible calls him Just Lot.
Just Lot. Justified. Oh, how can that be? Look where he lived. How can
that be? Look where you live. We live
in this world. He's justified. Preacher brought
that to my attention one time when I was a kid and he says,
he was just one person out of them, just Lot, just one person.
No, if you look at the language, you look at what that passage
of scripture is talking about, you'll find out he's justified
Lot. And justified means he was saved by the grace of God. All
right, now, God is saying, we're gonna have an experiment. We're
gonna choose the children of Abraham, Isaac. He had two children
that we know about, and then he had a bunch more by his second
wife, Keturah. And then we're gonna go through
Isaac, and then Jacob, and he's gonna, Jacob's gonna have 12
sons by four wives. And those sons, we're gonna have
them multiply. Now, they're going to be taken
down to Egypt and they're going to be staying in Egypt 400 years in
servitude, 400 years in servitude. Then, we're going to take them
out with a high hand. We're going to take them out,
not one dog is going to bark at them when they leave. Those Egyptians are going to
be so glad that they leave, they're going to give them all their
gold and silver and precious jewels, just get out. And you
know what he said? Then we're going to have that
man in charge, Pharaoh, we're going to say, Pharaoh, what did
you do that for? Going to harden his heart and
he's going to go after them on purpose. Now this is all before
it all happened. I can just imagine they're discussing
this. Now they probably didn't. God
doesn't have to discuss anything. I'm just saying that for my benefit.
All right, and after they get out there and up to the Red Sea,
he says, Pharaoh, go get them. And they're in a state of consternation. What are we gonna do? What are
we gonna do? And God said, stand still and
see the salvation of the Lord. He opened up that great Red Sea. The children of Israel went through
on dry shod. Egyptians followed right behind
and you know what? At that exact minute, the grease
on those wheels of their chariots got dry and they drove heavily
and stopped the entire army inside of the Red Sea on purpose. God
has determined this before the foundation of the world. Now
they're all drowned, and they're out there in the wilderness.
They go to the Mount Sinai. This is what God is determined
to do. He'd give them the law. And he'd say, will you keep the
law? And you know what they said? Absolutely. All that is said,
we'll keep and do. They spend some time at Sinai.
A year and a half or two years later, they're up at the promised
land, ready to go in and Twelve spies are sent in. God's determined
this before the foundation of the world. We're going to have
an experiment here. Sent them in, they spied it out, came back
and said, it was great, great, great, great, great. Did you
notice in our reading there was some Amalekites? Ten of those
guys came back and said, we can't win over those Amalekites. They
are serious guys. We will not win. They turned
the heart of the people. Now remember, God has an experiment
going here. And so they stay in the wilderness
for 38 more years. Now God is going to say, we're
going to provide all their food. You know, I estimate that there
was about 3 million Israelites out there, and God said, I'll
provide all their food. You know, there was a Omer. prescribed for every individual. That's about a sixth of a gallon,
the best estimation that I could find. And if you have 3 million
people, that's 1,800,000 gallons of food a day. Well, that's 54
million gallons a year, and that's 2,160,000 gallons in 40 years. Now, I'll dare say one feeding
would more than fill this building. Talk about a miracle. Then they
complained about not having meat, so he sent them quail. Well,
if you had two quail a piece, just think how many quail he
provided for them. On and on it goes. He had an
experiment. We're going to have the most
favored nation. We're going to protect them.
We're going to give them water. We're going to give them food.
We're going to give them quail. We're going to lead them by a
fire by night and a cloud by day. We're going to give them
a religion. We're going to show them what is required. There
must be a substitute. On and on it goes. God's miracle
to them. They crossed the Red Sea. The
chariots were destroyed. Bitter was made sweet. Manna,
water from the rock. Moses raised his hands one time. He had Aaron and her just like
all preachers have somebody to help support their hands. They
said, as long as you hold your hands up, we'll win that victory.
And if you put your arms down, we'll be defeated. So Aaron and
Hur came and blocked his hands up, and they won the victory.
What a miracle, my goodness. Ground opens and swallows Korah. Nothing like that had ever happened
in all the world. And as far as I know, it hasn't
happened since. They went down to the pit. Aaron's
robbed and butted. Water from the rock the second
time. The brazen serpent, and on and on it goes. God did all
of those miracles in their sight before them all, not hidden,
but before them all. They saw it with their physical
eyes and turned around and were angry with God the very next
day. He is doing an experiment. What if God took and set aside
a people and treated them with such high honor and provided
every bit of food and every bit of water and everything they
needed? Sandals didn't wear out, their clothes didn't wear out,
they had the most perfect food and that was manna, and yet they
said, we loathe this light bread. Wayne, is that the only thing
you're gonna preach is Christ? Well, that was the only thing
that would benefit it. It had all the minerals and nutrients and
everything that they need. They went through that wilderness.
They had so much given to them by Almighty God, and yet He shares
with us at the conclusion, ready to enter into the land, it's
not your righteousness that you're getting to go in on. It is because
I determined that you're going to go in there. And there's a
bunch of people that I'm going to get rid of. You're going to
replace them. You know, as God performed this
miracle, or this experiment, he's just showing all the world.
What if God did that for everybody? Would there be any more people
saved as a result of it? You know, there was no more people
saved among Israel because of all of that. We find out that
they had the gospel preached unto them as well as unto us.
You know, that was a startling revelation. What I read there
in the book of Hebrews, that God preached the gospel unto
them just as much as he does unto us. What did he do? He preached
Christ. He preached Christ and him crucified.
He preached that there's only hope in Christ. He is the water
of life. He's the bread of life. He is
our meat. He is our sustenance. He is all and in all. He's the
one that provided all of this. How many hearts were changed
as a result of that? None. They died in unbelief. Can you imagine this? That God
would do that? What if he'd have done it for
the whole world? Would he had any more people saved? No. I asked that young preacher one
time, I said, would you agree to this, that if there was more
money sent on the mission field, there'd be more saved people?
Oh yes, oh yes. I said, you don't either. You
don't believe that. He says, why is that? I says,
you wouldn't have a possession if you really believe that. You
would have given all for the support of some missionary so
more people could be saved. People don't believe that. They
wouldn't have a checking account. They wouldn't have a savings
account. They wouldn't have three cars. They wouldn't have a big
house. They would be doing it all to take care of people getting
saved. You know, God never intended
that anyway. He's going to save his people on purpose wherever
they are. And God will send a preacher
to preach to them. And it doesn't matter whether
they're getting paid or not. They will do. So God did all of that. They
tempted me, he says in the book of Numbers chapter 14 verse 22,
you've tempted me 10 times. And yet they would not look to
him. Why? Well, there's a verse of
scripture here in this book of Numbers that I'd like to look
at. And it's in Numbers chapter 11,
Numbers chapter 11. Verse 10, verse 10 and 11, a
couple of my favorite verses of scripture out of this whole
book. Now there's a lot of favorite verses in this book. It's a new
book to me. Once I was saved, the Old Testament
became a new book. Well, here in the book of Numbers
chapter 11, he says, for the land, whether thou goest to possess
it is not as the land of Egypt. Now he's saying a whole lot here,
because he says, from whence you came out, where you sowest
thy seed, and waterest it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs. Now what does that mean to water
it with your foot? Here in the book of Deuteronomy
11, verse 10. Sorry about that. Deuteronomy
11, verse 10. For the land whither thou goest
into possess it is not as the land of Egypt. Now in the land
of Egypt, if you did any irrigation, and irrigation was required there,
you had to irrigate your fields, you had to irrigate. They had
a lot of flooding and they had very fertile soil. But God is
sharing with us that down there, these Israelites, they had to
use the foot. Now that's a foot wheel. They
had to run a footwheel to get water out there on their plants.
And they work, and work, and work, and work, and work, and
work, and work. And you know what? They'd go home, rest, come
back. The work was never done. Someone
else had to take their place. And then they got back on it.
You know, that's just like religion. The work is never done. The preacher
always has more for you spiritual folks to do. I know. I had that over me and
then I provided that over people. Look at the next verse. But the
land where whether you go to possess it is a land of hills
and valleys and drinketh the water of the rain of heaven. Where does that come from? That's
coming down. That's rain from heaven. He's
going to take care of it. So the works are over. He's going
to provide the blessings because he's God. He's going to take
care of his people because he's God. He's the God of glory. He's the God of election. He's
the God of predestination. He's the God of foreknowledge.
And he is going to provide all that is essential and necessary
for us. He's not running an experiment
now because Israel, you know what we read about Israel? I'm
going to have a new covenant with the house of Israel and
with the house of Judah, not after that original covenant
because they kept it not and I regarded them not. But I'll
have a covenant with them and I will forgive their sins and
put away their iniquities. Now, he's going to do that without
our help. There, he said, let's see what
happens. I'm going to give them a law,
and they're going to say they're going to keep it. Yeah, they
did. We'll keep it. We'll keep it. They lied. Why? Because they're fallen creatures
in Adam. They were the same as you and
I, even though God hedged them up and provided everything for
them, they were not changed in heart or mind. They were still on the water
wheel. There were a few, as Paul said,
not all Israel is of Israel. There were a few among those,
Moses, Aaron, Joshua, Caleb, we know of, that quit the water
wheel when God saved them and were dependent upon the water
from heaven to come down, the blessings from God to come down,
God taking care of them. Well, after all of that, I've
had people say, I'd have been smarter than that. I would have
listened better than that. Those are dummies. Those are
just ignoramuses. My goodness, if God had done
those miracles in front of me, I would have listened. You know,
God did miracles in front of a whole lot of people during
the time of the Lord Jesus. God, the Lord Jesus Christ, did
miracles and never changed a heart. We have God raising a man from
the dead. You know what people are planning? Kill him. We can't
have him around. We don't want Lazarus back alive. What a testimony that is. Kill
the man! They plotted to kill Lazarus. He fed thousands of people, and
they walked away when he started preaching to them. Nobody has
ever been changed by their own natural inheritance. We're only
changed by the grace of God. Look at with me, if you would,
in the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 29. Chapter 29. I don't know about you, but once
in a while I get to stumble onto something in the scriptures.
I'll call Wayne up and says, read this. Is your ink dry? I've never seen this before.
I read it too fast. Well, I'm just dependent upon
the Lord to open up some scriptures once in a while. And here in
Deuteronomy chapter 29 verse four. excuse me, Deuteronomy chapter
29. And I'd like to back up, verse two, and Moses called it
to all Israel and said to them, you have seen all the Lord did
before your eyes in the land of Egypt under the Pharaoh unto
all his servants. What, what a apropos Psalm was
read today, the history of Israel for his mercy and do it forever.
And here it says, the land of Pharaoh and unto all his servants,
all his land and great temptations with thine eyes have seen and
signs and those great miracles. Look at verse four. Yet the Lord
hath not given you a heart to perceive and eyes to see and
ears to hear unto this day. Why couldn't they see? After
all the benefits God gave them, why couldn't they see it? Why
couldn't they hear it? Why couldn't they obey it? Because
God did not give them a heart to believe. Now, when God gives you a heart
to believe, this will all be believed. When God gives a heart to believe,
Now, he did give a heart to believe to Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and
Caleb. You know, when they came back,
they were the only two that said, we can do it, we can do it. You
know what it says there? God gave them another heart.
That's the only reason they could say they could do it. The only
reason God's people can say that he can do it is because he's
revealed to us that he can do it. We'll see to it.