to the Wednesday night evening service.
Let's take our seats and find our hymn books.
Turn to page 420 with us this evening.
There's a song in the, 420.
There's a song in the, get out with us on the first.
We're steadfast.
And all the people here who came to worship you this evening,
thank you for the Christmas season.
Thank you for your son, Jesus, who came on the cross
for our sins, savior of the world.
Pray, Lord, that you bless this evening
and that you use this name.
Our second song is "What Child Is This?"
You should have a sheet in your bulletin.
If you don't have a sheet, you can raise your hand
and Usher will come by to eat and hand one to you.
How does this all along with us on the first there?
- If you would like one, just let them come by
and get you guys a bulletin on the new Bible memory passage,
Romans chapter 10.
Inside is our service and soul winning times,
as well as our church stats on the right.
Our expecting ladies list, please be in prayer for them.
Our children's choir is gonna still be practicing
after, I'm sorry, yeah, the afternoon services
immediately following here in the fellowship room.
Upcoming events, our choir's gonna be performing
the 21st.
We have a cookie bake-off the 21st.
Essentially, it's just, you bring any Christmas cookie,
or it doesn't even have to be Christmas,
just any cookie at all that you would like.
And we just have a competition for the evening service
afterwards, we'll have them.
And there's basically three categories of winners.
There's the best tasting, there's the best decorated,
and then there's the most creative.
So we usually let the whole church vote on that.
It's a lot of fun.
My only recommendation I typically give people
is if you want to do well, you typically
have to bring a large batch or a lot quantity just
because so many kids are going to get in there
and other people, single guys, and they just take everything.
They're just selfish, you know what I mean?
No, I'm just kidding.
But we have people get in there and they just
wander all of those cookies really quickly.
So look forward to that.
Christmas Candlelight Service, December 24th.
Men's Preaching and Pizza, December 31st.
There's a marriage workshop that our church is hosting,
January 23rd to the 24th.
If you'd like to register for that,
you just go to steadfastvows.com.
It's a completely free event.
And there's a lot of details that are on the website.
And then the link if you go to register.
So if you have questions or you're thinking about something,
please check out that information first.
If you want to ask a question though,
please talk to me or email me or something,
and I'll try to get back to you on that.
If you have a do-it-yourself missions trip
that's gonna be to the Philippines
January 26th through February 4th,
and I think some people have been looking like some flights.
You can get around $700, $750 for this particular trip,
and so if you'd like to go on it, talk to Evangelist Fur.
He can give you a lot of the details, information about it,
but it's definitely a really awesome opportunity
to go to the Philippines.
Most people speak English over there,
so a lot, especially the young people,
there's just so many people over there
that honestly, it's a pretty easy place to go soul winning,
and I highly encourage anybody to go out there and visit.
Evangelist Urbanic's doing a great work over there,
and so it's great to see them and partner with them.
Even if you can't go, just pray
for those that do travel over there
and keep praying for the work that they're doing.
The back is our prayer list,
and we continue to pray for several here.
We'll go through those.
We're praying for both the mother and father
of the Carlson's.
We're praying for Brother Jared's work.
We're praying for the Scott's parent,
both of their health issues.
Please be in prayer for Brother Tony's health.
Also, if you'd pray for the Foley's dad
who has kidney disease.
I continue to pray for Brother Paul,
and then also if you'd pray for the Goodwin's family.
We're also praying for Miss Lola and Phoebe.
Continue to pray for them and thinking about them.
Please pray for Brother Joe, the Burns's brother,
for his health complications.
Please pray for the Warners,
and then if you'd pray for Brother Jameson's father,
and then also if you'd pray for Brother Jimmy.
So several prayer requests there.
We'll just say a quick word of prayer as a church family.
Thank you Heavenly Father so much for our church.
Thank you for all of these ladies
that are pregnant and are expecting.
Thank you for such a blessing.
I pray that you'd please help them with their pregnancies.
I pray that you'd also help those
that have recently given birth,
that you'd please be with them.
Help them have a smooth recovery.
We thank you so much for our evangelist in the Philippines.
I pray that you'd bless him
and the work that he's doing over there.
I pray that you would bless the upcoming trip
and those that are planning on going to it.
I pray that you'd also just be with our church family
and friends that are struggling with either cancer
or disease or some serious illness.
I pray that you'd please help them.
I pray that if possible,
you could just give them health, give them recovery.
I pray that no matter what,
you just please give them joy and patience
and comfort during this difficult time.
I pray that you would also help give favor
unto our church family, those that need work
or need a vehicle or need to just not be sick
or whatever they need in their lives.
I pray that you would just please bless them.
Please give them favor.
I pray that you'd bless the last few weeks of this year
that we'll be thinking about the gift of your son.
And I pray that you'd bless the upcoming year
that we would do mighty works for your honor and glory.
And it's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
That's all I have as far as announcements.
We'll go ahead and sing our Psalm of the Week,
Psalm 147, Psalm 147.
Psalm 147.
Seat out unto the Lord this evening.
Seeing this evening, plates will be passed around.
You can turn in your Bibles to Deuteronomy chapter 11.
Deuteronomy chapter 11.
Bible reads, therefore thou shalt love the Lord thy God
and keep his charge and his statutes and his judgments
and his commandments always.
And know ye this day, for I speak not with your children,
which I have not known, and which have not seen
the chastisement of the Lord your God,
his greatness, his mighty hand, and his stretch out arm,
and his miracles and his acts,
which he did in the midst of Egypt
unto Pharaoh the king of Egypt, and unto all his land.
And what he did unto the army of Egypt,
unto their horses, and to their chariots,
how he made the water of the Red Sea to overflow them
as they pursued after you,
and how the Lord hath destroyed them unto this day.
And what he did unto you in the wilderness,
until ye came into this place.
And what he did unto Dathan and Abiram,
the sons of Eliab, the son of Reuben,
how the earth opened her mouth and swallowed them up
and their households and their tents,
and all of the substance that was in their possession
in the midst of all Israel.
But your eyes have seen all the great acts of the Lord,
which he did.
Therefore, shall ye keep all the commandments
which I have command you this day,
that ye may be strong, and go in and possess the land,
whether ye go to possess it,
and that ye may prolong your days in the land,
which the Lord swear unto your fathers, to give unto them,
and to their seed, a land that floweth with milk and honey.
For the land whither thou goest in to possess
is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out,
where thou sowest thy seed and waterst it with thy foot
as a garden of herbs.
But the land whither ye go to possess it
is a land of hills and valleys,
and drinketh water of the rain of heaven,
a land which the Lord thy God careth for.
The eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it,
from the beginning of the year,
even unto the end of the year.
And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently
unto my commandments, which I command you this day,
to love the Lord your God, and to serve him
with all your heart and with all your soul,
that I will give you the reign of your land
in his due season, the first reign and the latter reign,
that thou mayest gather in thy corn
and thy wine and thine oil.
And I will send grass in thy fields for thy cattle
that thou mayest eat and be full.
Take heed to yourselves that your heart be not deceived,
and ye turn aside and serve other gods and worship them.
And then the Lord's wrath be kindled against you,
and ye shut up the heaven, that there be no rain,
and that the land yield not her fruit,
unless ye perish quickly from off the good land
which the Lord giveth you.
Therefore shall ye lay up these words,
these my words in your heart and in your soul,
and bind them for a sign upon your hand,
that they may be as frontlets between your eyes,
and ye shall teach them, your children, speaking of them,
when thou sittest in thine house,
and when thou walkest by the way,
and when thou liest down, and when thy rises up.
And thou shalt write them upon the doorposts of thine house,
and upon thy gates, that your days may be multiplied,
and the days of your children,
and the land which the Lord swear unto your fathers,
to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth.
For if ye shall diligently keep all these commandments,
which I command you to do them,
to love the Lord your God,
to walk in all his ways, and to cleave unto him,
then will the Lord drive out all these nations from before you.
And ye shall possess greater nations,
and mightier than yourselves.
Every place whereon the soles of your feet shall tread shall be yours,
from the wilderness and Lebanon,
from the river of the river Euphrates,
even unto the uttermost sea shall your coast be.
There shall no man be able to stand before you,
for the Lord your God shall lay the fear of you,
and the dread of you upon all the land that ye shall tread upon,
as he had said unto you.
Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse,
a blessing if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God,
which I command you this day,
and a curse if you will not obey the commandments of the Lord your God,
but turn aside out of the way which I command you this day,
to go after other gods which you have not known.
And it shall come to pass when the Lord thy God hath brought thee in
unto the land whither thou goest to possess it,
that thou shalt put the blessing upon Mount Gerizim,
and the curse upon upon Mount Ebal.
Are they not on the other side of Jordan,
by the way where the sun goeth down in the land of the Canaanites,
which dwell in the campaign over against Gilgal,
beside the plains of Morah?
For ye shall possess over the Jordan,
to go in to possess the land which the Lord your God giveth you,
and ye shall possess it and dwell therein.
And ye shall observe to do all the statutes and judgments
which I set before you this day.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, thank you for this passage of the Bible, Lord.
Thank you for this church.
Thank you for all the souls that have been saved.
I pray that you bless Pastor Shelley,
filled with your Holy Spirit, Lord,
to preach unto us, Lord,
and I pray that we would have a soft heart to receive your word
and make applicable changes to our lives.
Praise in Jesus' name, amen.
Amen.
Verse number one says, "Therefore,"
so obviously it's kind of capturing a thought
that we prior were reading.
In chapter 10, we look at verse number 22,
just the preceding verse.
It says, "Thy fathers went down into Egypt
with three score and 10 persons.
And now the Lord thy God hath made thee
as the stars of heaven for multitude."
So God promised unto Abraham
that he would multiply his seed greatly
and that they would have to take a period of time
where they were traveling into Egypt.
And before Jacob enters into Egypt,
God essentially confirms to him
that it's okay to go into Egypt.
They're gonna spend a period of time there.
You're gonna come out.
Keep your finger here.
Go to Genesis chapter 46 for just a moment.
And the Bible tells us
that there was essentially 70 people
from the loins of Jacob.
That Jacob, this is his seed.
And of course the Bible talks
about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
And there's this lineage that we see
formulating and populating
through Abraham physically.
And of course the Bible tells us
that the inheritance of the promised land
is going to be given to Abraham's seed.
And I believe that is a genetic thing
that genetically speaking
the seed of Abraham
is going to be the one
that inherits the promised land.
But it wasn't really talking
about just all of his physical descendants.
It's talking about Christ.
Because the Bible tells us
in Galatians chapter number 3
that it's the Lord Jesus Christ
who was that seed
that was going to come
from the loins of Abraham.
But the Bible is really clear
that Jesus Christ is the son of David.
Why?
Because he really is
according to the flesh.
I mean the Bible says this explicitly
in the New Testament
that Jesus Christ according to the flesh
is of the seed of David.
And of course David is coming from Abraham.
So there is a genetic lineage
that you could trace
from the children of Israel
all the way up into Christ.
Now once we enter the New Testament
the Bible basically divides that wall
that's between the Jew and the Gentile
and this genealogy stuff
and this genetic stuff
ceases to really be relevant anymore.
It's not really a thing.
But historically speaking
there was this genealogy
there was this genetic trace
that we can see going from
the male patriarchs of Abraham
all the way unto Jesus Christ.
That's why we have specific genealogies
in the book of Matthew
and in Luke chapter number three
tracing the Lord Jesus Christ
all the way back even to Adam himself
unto that particular lineage.
And Jesus says
I am the root and offspring of David
because he really is
of that particular family tree
that particular family lineage.
Now the children of Israel
were very few in number though
and at this time in history
you know they're very few in number.
They travel through the land of Canaan
they're vastly outnumbered.
They travel into Egypt
they're vastly outnumbered.
They go in there as 70 people
it could be a fearful thing
to be living somewhere
that you're not accustomed to
that's a foreign nation
maybe the people there
are a little bit hostile towards you.
According to the Bible
you know when Joseph
was dealing with his brethren
the Egyptians wouldn't even eat
with the Hebrews
because they're considered
abomination under them.
It was an abomination
to sit with the Hebrews.
They hated their guts basically
and what's funny is
they're not even that dissimilar
from an ethnic perspective
because the Bible says
they kind of look the same.
You know Hebrews and Egyptians
kind of look similar
but for some reason
the Egyptians just hate the Hebrews
and the Hebrews hate the Egyptians
and you can kind of just see this
even in the world today, right?
You go to certain parts of the world
and certain Asian cultures
will just vehemently hate each other.
North Koreans hate South Koreans
but I guarantee if we had a lineup
of 10 North Koreans
and 10 South Koreans
you and I would probably
have a hard time figuring out who was who.
There was no, it's okay to laugh, right?
I'm just saying like, it's funny
that these people sometimes not like each other
and you know, it's really not that big of a difference
and these kind of things just exist
in the reality of our world.
I'm not saying it's right.
I'm just saying these things happen, right?
The Egyptians just kind of hate the Hebrews
and so there would be a great timidity
to want to go live there.
If someone said, "Hey, Pastor Shelley,
let's all go move to North Korea."
I'd be like, "I don't know about that.
That sounds terrifying to go live somewhere
where it's very hostile or these people don't like me."
So going into Egypt would be a big deal.
But God confirms his oath,
confirms his promise unto Jacob here.
Look at Genesis chapter 46 in verse number two.
"And God spake unto Israel in the visions of the night
and said, 'Jacob, Jacob.'
And he said, 'Here am I.'
And he said, 'I am God, the God of thy father.
Fear not to go down into Egypt,
for I will there make of thee a great nation.
I will go down with thee into Egypt,
and I will also surely bring thee up again,
and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes.'"
So he's trying to tell Jacob, like,
this is what you're supposed to do.
You're supposed to go into Egypt.
Now, this is prophesied beforehand in Genesis chapter 15.
It's telling Abraham, hey, you're going to go into a strange land.
Your seed's going to go in a strange land,
and they're gonna be evil afflicted for 400 years.
Here he's telling him and giving him this promise.
Go if you would to Galatians chapter three now actually,
and let's just see a verse in there
that sometimes people confuse,
but Galatians chapter number three,
and of course the promise was given Abraham.
He's mentioned repeatedly in the book of Galatians,
but what is Galatians three really kinda talking about?
It's talking about the inheritance of the land.
It's saying hey, the inheritance of the land.
Abraham never inherited the land.
That's really clear in the book of Hebrews.
In the hall of faith, it's telling us
that Abraham sojourned in a strange land.
He never inherited it.
And so he doesn't get it.
Isaac doesn't get it.
Jacob doesn't get it.
And now they're having to flee the land
that they're supposed to inherit.
They were just sojourning in the land of Canaan.
Now they're up to flee into Egypt,
but God is saying no, no, no.
I promise you're gonna get this.
But why were they not getting it yet?
Well, he had told Abraham in the book of Genesis, chapter 15,
that the iniquity of the Ammonites was not yet full.
So he's just basically waiting, giving it more time
before they're gonna actually come in.
They're actually gonna inherit the promised land.
It's gonna be theirs as a possession, okay?
Now in Galatians chapter three,
let's read a little bit of this.
Verse number, let's just start in verse 16.
Now to Abraham and his seed where the promise is made,
he saith not into seeds as of many,
but as of one into thy seed, which is Christ.
So of course, the true inheritor is Jesus Christ.
Verse 17, in this I say that the covenant
that was confirmed before of God in Christ,
the law, which was 430 years after cannot disannul
that it should make the promise of none effect.
For if the inheritance be of the law,
it is no more a promise,
but God gave it to Abraham by promise.
So he's saying God gave them the land by a promise
before the law ever showed up.
So it's not like the law is what gives them
the inheritance.
It was the promise given to Abraham.
And again, that's the same way with us.
We are the children of God
and we inherit the promises of God
through the promise of faith in Jesus Christ,
not by some ethnic specificity
or the fact that we're of a pure race or blood
or who our descendants are.
No, the inheritance didn't come by the law.
It came by the promise given to Abraham.
And we are counted as Isaac as the child of promise.
We're children of God by faith, not by physical descendancy.
Now that wouldn't really make sense
if there was no physical descendants
'cause there really are physical descendants
and they're not special by being a physical descendant.
What makes them special is having faith in Jesus Christ.
That's what makes them truly special and truly of Israel.
So again, what's this 430 years after?
It's not after God told Abraham this.
It's after it was confirmed before of God in Christ.
That's what we see in Genesis chapter 46
when he tells him to Jacob, "Hey, fear not to go in."
He's confirming the promise.
He's not delivering the promise.
He's confirming the promise.
He's reminding Jacob, "Hey, I'm gonna do this unto you.
I'm gonna tell you this is okay.
I'm telling you this is fine.
I'm confirming it.
I'm reminding you it's okay to go in there."
That's what the whole point is.
So they go down there 430 years.
As Exodus chapter 12 plainly states,
they were there for 430 years to the day
and then they left, okay?
Go back and go to Deuteronomy chapter number 11.
What's the point?
Well, when they left, the Bible says that when they left,
it was 603,000 men that were military-aged men
of the children of Israel.
Now, that's significant.
What's significant about that
is that's a very high multiplication rate.
Now, it's not like unreasonable.
It's not like it's mathematically impossible.
It's not even necessarily mathematically difficult.
It's just a high percentage.
You know, today, Americans, you would say like,
our birth rates are really low all of a sudden.
It's like we have like 1.7 children or something like this
or some low number.
And I'm not even sure exactly if that's accounting
for all the different factors
that come into human population and growth rates.
But generally speaking, for the growth rate
to have actually gotten to this point
for the children of Israel,
it would have to have been a lot higher than that.
It would have to have been somewhere around
two, like, and a quarter or maybe even like two and a half
to account for their population.
Not only this, when you start in the book of Exodus,
what happens?
Pharaoh is kind of like weirded out
or is concerned with the population,
with the multiplication that's happened there.
And so he wants to throw the male children,
the babies into the river to destroy the children of Israel
because he's afraid of how big they've gotten,
how much they've multiplied in number.
And so a lot of them died.
A lot of the male children died as a result of that.
Not all of them, some of the Hebrew midwives saved
and delivered part of them.
But the text does imply that he did kill
some of the children.
So there's definitely a difficulty.
Obviously Moses had to be hid for a reason,
for fear of being killed.
And that's why we even go through that whole story.
So the children of Israel are facing death
from the Egyptians, facing eradication,
facing genocide as a result of their multiplication efforts.
So it's like, they come down to 70, they're afraid.
They go through the 400 years, they're like,
we've been multiplied.
But now they're facing threat to that promise.
Oh well, we've been multiplied,
but now Pharaoh's trying to kill us.
Pharaoh's trying to destroy us.
Pharaoh's trying to genocide us
because he kills every single male for a whole generation.
Well, pretty soon you're gonna completely perish.
You're gonna basically just diminish into nothing again.
You can't survive without the males.
And he leaves the females,
but the females would have just probably been swept
into the Egyptians and they would have just been
completely eradicated if Pharaoh had had his wishes.
So this is important because then God with a mighty hand
brings them out of great bondage
and delivers them out of Egypt and fulfills his promise
that, hey, they were 70, but they come out 603,000,
just men, you know, the 70 was not only men,
but I mean, probably millions.
Because the Bible says not only the 603,000,
not including children, not including women,
even then a mixed multitude went out with them.
So probably a lot of Egyptians and other people.
I mean, we're talking about millions of people
coming out of Egypt.
You go in 70, you come out millions.
It's basically like investing in Bitcoin in like 2009
or something like this, you know?
It's like you bought Bitcoin in 2009, like a dollar,
and now it's worth, you know, I mean,
I think if you bought like a dollar in 2009,
it'd be worth like millions and millions of dollars today,
which is just kind of crazy when you think about,
but that's just the power of multiplication.
And the same can happen with human population
that you can have just a few,
and through consistent multiplication efforts,
you can grow to a great host or to a big number of people,
even over 430 years.
So after 430 years, they come out.
And again, I believe that those children of Israel
are actually children of Israel,
that they're biological descendants of Israel.
That's why they're called the children of Israel.
I did this podcast with Pastor McMurtry yesterday,
and he said they're not biological children.
And I was just thinking like,
I've never heard this in my entire life.
So, you know, that's just bizarre.
It's just a strange idea.
Hey, I believe they were biological.
Now again, does that mean
because they're biological children
that they're all special?
No, they're not all Israel,
which are of Israel's what the Bible says.
Obviously you had to have faith in Jesus Christ
and be saved to actually go to heaven.
But you know what?
They were physical descendants of Israel.
That's why they're called the children of Israel.
That's why they're of certain tribes.
That's what's special about it
is that God multiplied them greatly
and performed this miracle.
And since God performed this miracle
to multiply them greatly and to give them all these children.
I mean, you look at Benjamin, he has 10 sons.
That's great multiplication.
And it's God that's opening and closing the womb.
It's God that put the fear on the Hebrew midwives
to save a lot of the male children
so they could be this great number.
God did all these things to orchestrate them
to give them the success.
That's why verse one is important here.
"Therefore thou shalt love the Lord thy God
"and keep his charge and his statues and his judgments
"and his commandments always."
Why?
Because they went in 70, they came out,
what does the Bible say?
"As the stars of heaven for multitude."
Since God has performed this great blessing unto you,
because God has delivered you from your enemies,
because God has multiplied your seed,
you then should love the Lord thy God,
'cause he's the one that did this for you.
And you know, we as New Testament believers and Christians,
we should also count our blessings
and recognize the things God's done for us.
And you know, if you're someone that God has blessed with
four, five, six, seven, 10 children,
you should thank God for those children.
And you should love God for the blessing of the children
that he's given unto you.
And I'm saying, look, if you have one kid,
you should thank God for it.
But so much the more, if he is multiplying you greatly,
you should thank God and you should love the Lord thy God
for doing this unto you.
And you need to make sure you're keeping his charge
and his statutes and his judgments and his commandments.
Notice this all the way.
And ye know, I'm sorry.
And know ye this day, for I speak not with your children,
which have not known and which have not seen
the chastisement of the Lord your God,
his greatness, his mighty hand and his stretched out arm
and his miracles and his acts,
which he did in the midst of Egypt
under Pharaoh the king of Egypt and under all his land
and what he did under the army of Egypt,
under their horses, under their chariots,
how he made the water of the Red Sea
to overflow them as they pursued after you
and how the Lord had destroyed them unto this day
and what he did unto you in the wilderness
until you came into this place
and what he did unto Dathan and Abiram,
the sons of Eliab, the son of Reuben,
how the earth opened her mouth and swallowed them up
and their households and their tents
and all the substance that was in their possession
in the midst of all Israel.
But your eyes have seen all the great acts
of the Lord, which he did.
So verses two through seven, he's saying,
now, when I'm talking to you,
I'm not talking to your children,
I'm talking to you adults
that were probably children at the time,
but you guys actually saw with your own eyes,
you saw the miracles performed in Egypt.
You saw the great plagues.
You saw what I did to Pharaoh.
You saw us literally walking through the Red Sea.
You know how we got here.
You know the difficulties and the hardships
and the burdens that we went through.
You know what happened to the rebels
that oppose the things of God
and tried to usurp authority over Moses and Aaron.
And you watched them get destroyed.
You watched them be punished.
You watched the chastisement of God in the wilderness.
And he's saying, you guys need to recognize,
hey, I've delivered you with this great hand.
You've seen all these miracles.
You've seen all these wonders.
You've seen all these works.
Do not forget me.
Don't give up following my commandments.
Don't go after other gods.
Don't change your God.
You see what I can do.
And again, this is a concept theme in the Bible
that we need to not forget what God has done in our lives.
It's so easy for us to just forget sometimes
what's God's done in our life
and not even necessarily our life.
Think about this.
He's trying to tell this generation to do this
because his children didn't see it.
You know, we live in America.
There's a lot of things that our spiritual fathers
and even just our founding fathers have done
for our nation and for our country that often we forget.
And we don't even realize the red seas
that they had to travel through,
the Atlantic oceans that they had to cross,
the Catholic church persecution that they had to endure,
the frontier wilderness that they had to conquer,
the pagans that lived in this land.
You know, we always want to sit here
and empathize for the Native Americans,
but you don't know what the savages were doing
to Christians in America.
They were trying to give them the gospel.
I mean, in fact, just,
why don't you just read the Declaration of Independence?
Because, you know, that'll red pill you
on a lot of things pretty quickly.
Just read the Declaration of Independence.
You know that a large section of it's dedicated
to the Native Americans
and how they were savagely murdering their women
and children, and they were just like begging
and pleading with the King of England
to give them the ability to defend themselves
from such savage attacks and warfare.
And you look at the charters that many of the pilgrims
and the early settlers of America had,
their charters were saying,
"Hey, we want the freedom to give the gospel
to these people and to evangelize them
and to give them the love of God
and to be gentle under them."
You know, the attitude of a lot of the Christians
coming over into America were to love the Native Americans
and give them the gospel and to try to, you know,
civilize them and to help them.
And they just savagely are attacking them
and trying to destroy them.
And what happened?
Oh yeah, the pilgrims won and the savages got destroyed.
We shouldn't forget that.
We shouldn't sit here and act like,
oh man, we should just feel so bad for the savages
with their pagan idolatry and devil worship.
We should sit here and say like,
God condemned that devil worship and that satanic religion.
And those who converted and assimilated, hey, God blessed.
And those who had the true religion, God blessed.
And the reason why we have the country we have today
is because of those that went before us and pioneered
and did these hard works.
You know, someone had to walk through the Red Sea
to get into the wilderness.
Someone had to go through the wilderness
to get to the promised land.
Eventually they're gonna conquer the promised land
and they're gonna have a generation that rises up
after Joshua and they're gonna forget, oh yeah.
God's the one that delivered us
when we had all these difficulties.
They're just gonna basically inherit success.
They're inheriting prosperity.
They're inheriting a land flowing of milk and honey.
And of course, America in many ways
is inheriting success, prosperity,
a land flowing of milk and honey.
You know, it's this stupid idea and it pisses me off.
When people act like they've done something,
they're like, we settled America.
It's like, you haven't settled nothing.
You play Minecraft.
You know, you haven't built anything.
You didn't build the frontier.
You didn't do anything special.
You know, you little atheist people out there,
oh, I'm white and atheist.
Well, you've accomplished nothing and you're an idiot.
Okay.
You know what you should do?
You should recognize the God of the Bible
is the one that gave you the freedom
to even be the idiot playing video games all day.
And a lot of people,
they just don't recognize the God of the Bible.
They don't recognize where we came from.
Just like the children of Israel.
He's trying to warn them like,
hey, you're gonna go into this promised land.
You've seen, you know what happened.
You need to educate the children on what happened.
We need to tell them stories about Dathan and Abiram.
We need to tell them stories about Pharaoh.
We need to set up, you know, monuments.
They're supposed to set up a monument
on the other side of the sea to remind them,
hey, this is how we got here.
We had to walk through this particular portion
of the Red Sea.
We had to go through these difficulties.
We had to trust in God.
God delivered us.
God multiplied us.
We were only 70 people.
And then God gave us this great multiplication.
God is the one that delivered us.
You know, this church started as a small host.
Now it's growing.
And who knows what the sky's the limit for God.
We could just keep multiplying and keep growing.
You know what, if we become a great host,
we better make sure that we recognize God is the one
that gave us that multiplication,
that it's God that's delivered us.
Talk about all the different journeys we went through.
The journeys into Hearst and the journeys into Whataga
and the journeys into Cedar Hill
and the journeys to the Bahamas and the journeys to Mexico
and the journeys all over and all the different dramas
and all the coras and the, you know,
datheans and abirams and the one in 17 trillion
skin disease people, you know,
we shouldn't forget those things.
We want to make sure that we're always remembering
those things.
It's like, oh, you guys bring it up.
Good.
We want to bring it up and just keep talking about it
because it's God that's delivering us.
It's God that's guiding us.
It's God that's giving us these successes.
And at the end of the day, you know, if we forget,
it'll be to our detriment and to our children's downfall.
We need to remember the Lord.
We need to think about him.
Why come to church?
Let's remind ourselves of what he's done for us.
What our eyes have seen.
Hey, have you seen great miracles in your life?
You know, maybe getting saved.
Maybe, maybe you're someone that got saved later in life
and you made a major transformation in your life.
Remember what God did for you.
Maybe, you know, you didn't have much to live for,
but after going soul winning,
God's changed your perspective, changed your outlook.
Maybe God's blessed you with a wife or a child,
or God's blessed you with a job,
or God's blessed you with a house.
You know, there's probably miracles
that are on an individual level
that you've gone through that I don't know about.
You know what?
Thank the God of the Bible for those miracles,
and you need to testify of those miracles
to your children and to your family
and praise God for what he's done for you.
It says in verse eight,
"Therefore, shall you keep all the commandments
which I command you this day,
that you may be strong,
and go in and possess the land
whether you go to possess it,
and that you may prolong your days in the land
which the Lord swear under your fathers
to give unto them and to their seed,
a land that floweth with milk and honey."
So God's constantly promising this.
Notice that keeping the commandments
does something for you in verse eight,
that you may be strong.
You're strong by keeping God's commandments.
Again, this could be in many ways.
It's not only physical strength,
but I believe it is partly in physical strength.
Keeping God's commandments will give you strength,
physically, mentally, emotionally,
just in number, removing diseases.
It keeps you strong.
Committing sin will weaken you.
You look at someone and say,
"This person looks like they've lived a hard life."
Why?
Because drugs and alcohol and fornication
and just debauchery will often destroy you physically
and mentally and emotionally.
It'll destroy your family.
It'll destroy your children.
It destroys everything around it
because sin is a destructive force.
And by keeping God's commandments,
it keeps things in order and in line
and authority structures and it makes families strong
and it makes husbands strong and it makes men strong
and it creates strong families and strong civilizations
and strong everything.
As you have to recognize,
"Hey, it's God's commandments that's keeping us strong."
Why are you going into a nation and going to defeat them?
Because it's God that keeps you strong.
He caused you to work hard and to be smart
and to create all kinds of witty inventions
as the Bible describes it.
Whereas you just waste your time on stupid pagan religion.
You're just going to rot your brain out on peyote,
rot your brain out on alcohol.
So many false religions incorporate drugs and alcohol
into their religious practices.
Catholics drinking booze at their church.
And of course, many Catholics are drunk.
When you look at other false religions, Hinduism,
they'll drink, obviously Native Americans do peyote.
You go to a lot of Indian reservations,
they're just drinking themselves drunk.
You know, Christianity says, hey, be sober.
Hey, redeeming the days because they're evil.
Taking your life seriously
and actually doing something with your life.
You know, you shouldn't take that knowledge for granted.
There's so many people, they just feel like
there's not really any purpose to work hard
or to put effort in or be sober.
And they just wanna drown their sorrows constantly
in drugs and alcohol.
And you know what?
You should bless the God of the Bible
that gave you the wisdom to realize, hey,
wine is a mocker and strong drink is raging
and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.
Hey, that's the knowledge of God
keeping you on the right path.
And then he's gonna put you in a land
flowing with milk and honey.
Notice it's not booze and fentanyl.
It's not drugs.
It's milk and honey.
And you know what?
Those things are good.
There's nothing wrong with drinking milk and eating honey.
Oh, they're fattening.
Oh, well they're animal products.
I don't care what you think.
Milk and honey is good.
Why would God drag them into a place
he's not saying it's like cockroaches and dirty water.
He's saying, no, it's milk and honey.
These are good things.
And you know where I get my doctrine from the Bible?
Milk is good.
You know, I like those commercials.
Where are those commercials?
Bring those commercials back.
Milk does the body good.
Isn't that what it was in the nineties?
Now we've kind of gotten away from that.
It's like, hey, milk is a blessing.
Milk is a good thing.
And look, not just milk.
What do you get from milk?
Cheese, yogurt, all kinds of awesome dairy products
that come from milk.
Obviously, if you're getting milk,
you're probably getting butter.
You're getting all kinds of the great pleasures
of this life.
Honey, obviously being sweet with honey.
You can basically make all kinds of tasty treats
and delicacies.
And hey, the Bible says eat honey until you're full.
I mean, hey, there's nothing wrong
with enjoying the pleasures of this life.
You know, God's not trying to bring them
into a land of asceticism.
I bring into a land of asceticism and self denial.
He says, "No, I want to bring you into a land
"flowing with milk and honey and prosperity
"and the blessing and the goodness."
And that's what God's commandments will do.
They'll bring you into a land flowing with milk and honey.
Verse 10, "For the land whither thou goest
"and to possess it is not as the land of Egypt,
"from whence ye came out, where thou sowedest thy seed
"and wateredst it with thy foot as a garden of herbs,
"but the land whither ye go to possess it
"is a land of hills and valleys
"and drinketh water of the reign of heaven,
"a land which the Lord thy God careth for.
"The eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it
"from the beginning of the year
"even unto the end of the year,
"and it shall come to pass
"if ye shall hearken diligently unto my commandments,
"which I command you this day,
"to love the Lord your God
"and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul,
"that I will give you the reign of your land
"in his due season,
"first reign and the latter reign,
"that thou mayest gather in thy corn and thy wine
"and thine oil,
"and I'll send grass in my fields for thy cattle,
"thou mayest eat and be," notice this word, full.
So notice God wants them to be blessed.
God wants to take care of them.
Notice God controls the weather.
If you actually study the Bible,
you realize God's really in control
of so much more than you think,
so much more than you realize.
He has the numbers of your hair,
like the hair on your head counted.
As we sing, we're singing this song,
the psalm, it says that he calls all the stars
by their name.
If you actually study astronomy a little bit,
the number of stars in the universe is like innumerable.
Think about, how can he call them?
He has them all named.
He knows how many hairs are on your head.
Now for some of you, it's not that hard, okay?
Just kidding.
Or the lack thereof, right?
Some people are just making God's job easy, all right?
We'll just say it that way, you know?
But at the end of the day, hey, God is in control
so much he opens and closes the womb.
He's in control of the weather.
In fact, why are the children of Israel
even going into Egypt in the first place?
'Cause he caused the famine to be in the land of Canaan.
And so he drove them into Egypt.
Now he's bringing them back.
Why did he put a famine there?
Well, he's also punishing the Canaanites.
The Canaanites are being punished
because he drives the children of Israel into Egypt.
And when they go there, they live in where?
Goshen.
It's a great place.
So he didn't punish the children of Israel.
He brought them into a better place.
But he was punishing the land of Canaan
for being wicked and evil.
Because when you're wicked and evil,
God will hold the reign
and he'll cause you to experience the famine.
You'll lose your money
and you'll lose all of your possessions
and all the good things that are happening in this world.
You do what's right and God will bless you.
And notice how he blesses them specifically in the text.
He says he'll give them the corn, wine, oil,
grass in the fields.
And why is the grass so important?
For thy cattle.
God likes brisket.
God likes steak.
God likes beef.
What's for dinner?
Beef, you know?
You know, people are like always down on Tex-Mex
and I'm like, it's called beef, you're welcome, okay?
People are like telling me,
"Oh, I love authentic Mexican food."
And they're like,
"I love going to Mexico and eating authentic Mexican food."
And it's like, we go into Mexico
and you know what they're eating?
They're eating steak fajitas on flour tortillas.
And I'm like, that's Tex-Mex, man.
Sorry to tell you about history.
Like that's, I know you love Mexican food,
but like that's bringing in the cow, okay?
That's bringing in the wheat.
And you know, look, I'm not down on authentic Mexican food.
Hey, you know, to each their own.
But I'm just saying like, hey, I like the cow.
And instead of worshiping it, you know what we should do?
We should cut its head off and eat it, all right?
And worship the God that made it.
Hey, I'm all for praying about cows,
saying thanks God for dinner.
We're not praying to the cow for blessing me.
You know, I'm praying to God that blessed me with the cow.
And you know, bless God for the grass,
you know, that he can eat and he can be fat
because that's what's gonna make it taste good
is the fatted calf.
The Bible talks about the fat calf and the lean calf.
The lean calf ain't good.
It's the fat calf that you want.
You want the fat calf, you want the oil.
Hey, oil is good.
You know, you get the corn.
And again, corn, a lot of times in your Bible,
like I always think of maize is kind of the other term.
When I hear the word corn,
I'm typically thinking of like, you know, it's cone.
You know, it's that funny meme where,
it's the yellow corn.
But often what the Bible's referring to is wheat,
when it says corn.
It's an older word that actually typically,
and I didn't know this for the longest time,
but essentially corn is really
what we think of today as wheat.
And so bread is being made from that.
'Cause I was thinking like this,
this kind of like weird cornbread must be kind of weird.
They weren't eating cornbread.
They were eating what we would think of as wheat.
And so whenever Joseph's gathering all of this corn,
he's gathering wheat.
And that's what they're using to make bread.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And bread's a great thing
because it can last for a long time.
You can store the grain for a really long time.
Bread is high in calories.
So whenever you're in a famine or in a desperate situation,
you wanna have as much calories come in as possible to survive.
And so bread is just such a great staple
to keep people alive and sustain them.
And so they're gonna have bread,
they're gonna have oil, they're gonna have honey,
they're gonna have the cow.
I mean, they're not eating shabby meals here.
They got milk, they got steak, they got bread,
they got the oil to dip in the bread.
I mean, they're having that really good bread
to dip the oil into.
They got butter.
I mean, this is not some lame meal
that these people have to eat,
but why are they getting to eat it?
'Cause they're following God's commandments.
These are being blessed by God,
and God's giving them the rain,
and God's controlling the weather for them,
and God's allowing them to have this blessing
of being in this area.
Why?
'Cause all of the blessings are coming from God.
The world's really in his hands,
and he's really controlling
all of the different things that are happening.
You know, some people have this idea of God
that he created everything,
and then he just kind of like stepped back,
and just kind of let everything just take care of itself.
I think God is active in his creation,
and we see his constant hand
being like guiding all the different forces
that are happening in the world,
and he can just change things like this.
And so I believe, you know,
from this text and many other texts,
we can see God constantly influencing the weather.
You know, I'm not like Kenneth Copeland
in my private jet telling hurricanes, you know,
dissipate or something,
but at the end of the day,
hey, no matter what, I'm gonna pray,
hey, God give us good weather.
If there was a storm or a problem,
hey, I'd pray to God and ask him.
And I believe God can control the weather.
So, you know, maybe sometimes we should recognize
bad weather patterns or natural disasters
could just be a curse from God.
You know, famine is constantly,
I mean, it's hard to find a famine in the Bible
where it's not attributed to God
being the one that's causing it for some divine purpose.
So if that's the case, then I would think,
hey, if God's cursing my land,
if God's causing me to have horrible natural disasters
regularly, maybe we're not doing something right.
Like maybe there's some issue
that we need to get right with God
so that God will bless us.
You know, there's been some pagan islands and stuff
in the Caribbean and other places
that were just like super into wicked sin
and then God just like caused some nasty storm
to come in there and just destroy them,
wipe them out, cause them all kinds of problems.
So it wouldn't surprise me
if those things happen even again in the future.
Says in verse number 16, take heed of yourselves,
that your heart be not deceived
and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them.
And then the Lord's wrath be kindled against you.
Notice this, and he shut up the heaven,
that there be no rain and that the land yield not her fruit
unless you perish quickly from off the good land,
which the Lord giveth you.
Now in one sense, you kind of see like God
is the one controlling the weather.
But you know, you also can kind of think from a perspective
of that they're controlling the weather.
You follow God's commandments,
he's gonna give you good weather.
You don't keep God's commandments,
he's gonna cause you to have bad weather.
So it's almost just dependent on your action.
And really that's another aspect or layer
that we should think about.
Even though God is in ultimate control
and God can do whatever he wants,
often God is controlling things based on our behavior.
Our actions have consequences to them.
Whether that be blessing or cursing,
therefore we should be careful.
You go after other gods,
hey, he could just give you a famine.
It could cause you to have serious problems
in your country and your land.
Verse 18, "Therefore, shall you lay up these my words
in your heart and in your soul
and bind them for a sign upon your hand,
that they may be as frontless between your eyes,
and you shall teach them your children,
speaking of them when they'll say this in thine house,
and when they'll walk us by the way,
when they'll lie us down, and when they'll rise us up,
and thou shalt write them upon the doorposts of thine house
and upon thy gates, that your days may be multiplied
in the days of your children,
and the land which the Lord swear unto your fathers
to give them as the days of heaven upon the earth.
For if ye shall diligently keep
all these commandments which I command you to do them,
to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways,
and to cleave unto him, then will the Lord
drive out all these nations from before you,
and ye shall possess greater nations
and mightier than yourselves.
So a couple things, number one,
he's saying it's really important to teach your children.
We covered that in another chapter of Deuteronomy
a little bit already, but again,
you can't really belabor the point,
we need to constantly be teaching our children the Bible,
and teaching ourselves, and reminding ourselves.
You know, why go to a church on a Wednesday night?
Hey, we need to constantly be talking about the Bible.
And notice, I mean, God's timing here.
He said we should do it when we're sitting in our house,
when we're walking by the way,
when we lie down and we rise up.
So if you're standing, sitting, lying down,
or any other posture,
you're just always talking about the Bible.
It's like floating in space wasn't mentioned,
but it's still covered, right?
I mean, it's basically just saying,
it doesn't matter if you're sitting, standing,
talking, rising, just talk about the Bible.
God wants us to constantly be thinking about the Bible,
and thinking about what he's done,
and bringing up scripture, and being filled with the spirit.
And you know what?
Church is only gonna help you in that.
You're sitting, well, what does the Bible say?
It's time to talk about the Bible.
Hey, you're standing, let's sing the Bible.
Let's just think about the Bible,
and be consumed with the word of God.
Why?
So that then we'll diligently keep all the commandments.
And then what will be the outcome?
Well, we'll possess great nations.
And notice this in verse 23 again.
It says, greater nations and mightier than yourselves.
Previous texts, we've already read this,
but the Bible just says repeatedly
that not only were the Canaanites bigger
as far as just the sheer volume, the sheer number,
but they themselves are just physically superior
to the children of Israel.
They're bigger, taller, stronger, just mightier.
You know what, being mighty physically
doesn't necessarily make you better.
And it depends on what category we're talking about.
Look, you could say like one nation
is mightier than another nation.
That's just what the Bible says.
They're bigger, faster, stronger, taller.
You could go on an individual level.
When we talk about David and Goliath,
Goliath is bigger, taller, stronger, mightier than David.
But it ended up David conquered Goliath.
Why? Because God was on his side.
And the Bible tells us explicitly
in 1 Corinthians chapter number one,
that most of the time God doesn't even use the mighty,
or those that are mighty according to the flesh.
Why? Or strong according to the flesh,
or they have wisdom according to the flesh.
Why? Because he doesn't want
just the strongest and smartest people to constantly win,
and then they just think it's a carnal thing.
Like the reason why they're so superior,
or the reason why they're so much better
is because of some carnal means.
He wants to get the honor, he wants to get the glory,
he wants to get the credit.
So often God will use the base things of this world,
weak things of this world that are strong in faith,
so that he gets the honor and he gets the glory.
You bring in this smaller nation in number of people,
you bring in this smaller nation in physical size
and dominance to just wipe out everybody else,
then what's the conclusion?
God must be on their side.
You know, you invade, think about this,
colonizers would often go into certain parts of the world
and colonize certain parts of the world.
They may have been inferior physically
to the people that they were going into,
but why were they able to conquer?
Because of oftentimes technology
or the wisdom that they had.
And many times they would conclude,
hey, these guys must be closer to God,
look at the wisdom they have,
look at the might that they have,
they're afraid of them, not because they're physically better,
it's because of the technology or the wisdom that they have.
And the same vein, hey, the heathen were supposed to look
to the children of Israel and say, man,
these guys are so much wiser than us,
what's up with these people?
It's because God is so nigh on them.
It's because they have the word of God.
Because you know what, this is what makes you better.
The word of God, the Bible is what makes you better.
It's not being so physically strong or physically smart.
In fact, you could be the strongest, smartest person,
and if you're not saved, you're a fool.
And you could be the weakest, dumbest person,
and if you're saved, you could be the wisest person.
And often we think like, oh, it's not fair.
Who cares what's fair?
There's a poor widow woman who gives only two mites.
And then what Jesus says is that she gave more
than everybody else has ever given.
And in perspective of eternity,
she might have greater riches and greater rewards
than most people that had such an awesome life.
Because it's not really mattering where you're born
and what you have.
It matters what you do with what you have.
And if you get two mites, well give them all to Jesus.
Hey, you got 10 talents, give them all to Jesus.
And at the end of the day,
if you're so great and so smart and so wise,
well then you know what, you better produce.
There's actually more responsibility given to the person.
There's more demanded of the person
that has a lot of wisdom, a lot of strength, a lot of might.
And let me tell you this, if you're in America,
I personally believe you're a 10 talent person.
I don't care who you are.
I guarantee, I mean, you already have a passport
that you can virtually travel the entire world.
You have more riches than most everybody in the world.
You have more wisdom and access to information
than you've ever had in this world.
Here's my question.
What are you doing with the 10 talents God's given you?
And even amongst ourselves, I'm sure there's some people
that have a little bit more than others,
but just generally speaking,
you have so much more opportunity to serve God
than someone that's in North Korea
or someone that's in some southern portion of India
or some communist hellhole like China.
Those people have way less opportunity to do things
for God and to produce at a high level.
What are you doing as an American, as a Texan,
as someone that goes to Steadfast Baptist Church,
someone that has the King James Bible in their hand,
a soul winner, what are you accomplishing?
We better be doing big works for God
so that we can stay right with God
because God's given us the ability to do big works.
And it's not to sit here and say like we're so special.
No, no, no, God's the one that's special.
But if God has given us 10 talents,
we better produce 10 talents.
And we better be measuring that and thinking like,
I don't wanna produce two mites when I got 10 talents.
I wanna make sure I'm producing 10 talents worth, okay?
And at the end of the day, hey, this nation's mightier
than the children of Israel, but you know what?
The only reason they're gonna win
is because God's on their side.
You can be mightier and you're gonna lose.
You can be smarter and you're gonna lose.
You can be stronger and you're gonna lose
the battle and the fight.
You know, the race is not always to the swift
is what the Bible says.
Hey, you know who's gonna win?
If God before us, who can be against us?
That's who's gonna win the battle and the fight.
And so we always need to trust in God
and we need to use whatever he's given us
to our fullest extent.
God is not using just the mighty and the strongest always
because then, you know, they would get the credit, right?
I mean, I'm not like,
I think that we have a great crop of people.
When I look in the room,
I'm not looking at a bunch of Tom Brady's
and Wayne Gretzky's and Nolan Ryan's
and Olympic athletes.
And I'm not looking at a bunch of, you know,
the people that have won the Nobel Prize
and a bunch of people, you know,
we're pretty much just all just kind of normal people.
Let's just be honest that we're not just,
these just gladiators or something sitting in this room.
Because if we were just all these, the 300,
you know, these 300 Spartans or something like that,
we could think like it's because we're so smart
and strong and mighty or whatever.
But when it's just a bunch of average normal Joes
that have regular jobs,
some of us just have the most basic blue collar job,
but you know what, you can be mighty in God
because you're trusting in him.
And when you open your mouth,
it's with boldness and with wisdom and might.
And you know what, in the kingdom of God, you're great.
Even though in this world, it's like,
eh, I'm just a regular guy.
I just have such a lame blue collar job
or just some kind of a lame, it doesn't even matter.
I live in some cheap apartment.
I don't even have anything, who cares?
All that stuff's carnal.
You know what matters is the spiritual.
And you know the children of Israel have nothing,
but they're about to inherit great promised land,
these great things because they're trusting in God.
Hey, you know what?
Even if you never arrive in this world,
you'll eventually arrive in heaven
and that's the real home that matters.
Those are the real possessions that matter.
Not your wardrobe and houses and cars and money today.
Your 401k, it's gonna eventually go away.
But you know what?
Your spiritual bank account, that's what really matters
and nothing can take that away.
So hey, we need to focus in on the spiritual
and God will often give us the carnal
if we seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.
Says in verse 24, every place wherein the soles
of your feet shall tread shall be yours,
from the wilderness and Lebanon,
from the river, the river Euphrates,
even under the uttermost sea shall your coast be.
Now again, he says in verse 25,
there shall no man be able to stand before you
for the Lord your God shall lay the fear of you
and the dread of you upon all the land
that ye shall tread upon as He has set on you.
You know, the enemy constantly wants you to be afraid
and be fearful, but notice that
they're always afraid of them.
It's like they're smaller in number,
they're smaller in size, but they're terrified of them
because they recognize God's on their side.
And you know what?
You should realize, hey, God's on our side.
People are afraid of us.
People are actually terrified of us,
not because of us, because of God.
And why should we then be afraid?
If God before us, who can be against us?
We are more than conquerors, as the Bible describes.
We should not be the ones that are running away.
We should be running towards.
We need to be like David, running towards Goliath,
not being afraid to enter into the battle
or be afraid to go out there and preach the gospel.
So many times people are trying to put fear into me,
saying, oh, you shouldn't travel to Mexico, it's dangerous.
I mean, I've heard that countless times.
You know, oh, you shouldn't travel.
You know, I was told I shouldn't live in Houston.
It's real dangerous.
And I'm like, yeah, I'm going there soul-winning, you know?
I've been in lots of neighborhoods,
like, you shouldn't be in this neighborhood.
You know where you are.
And I'm like, yeah, where the fish are biting, you know?
I wanna get in here and get me a big black tuna.
You know what I mean?
Like, it's like, oh, you know,
I don't know if you should travel the world.
I don't know if you should go to these places.
Well, you know what?
Sitting around doing nothing is stupid.
Hey, wherever I put the sole of my foot,
they're gonna be afraid of me.
I shouldn't be afraid of them.
They're terrified of me because I carry the truth.
And you know what?
They're afraid of the truth.
Men are afraid of darkness.
I'm sorry, they're afraid of the light.
They're in darkness.
Men are in darkness because they're afraid of the truth.
They're afraid of the light.
The light doesn't comprehend the darkness.
It flees from it.
We have the truth.
Why should we be afraid?
We bear the truth.
We bear the light.
Hey, Jesus Christ has all power and authority
given unto him.
We should go out with boldness
and preach the gospel everywhere.
Obviously we should use discretion.
Obviously we should use wisdom.
Obviously the Bible says when an area won't receive us,
we should shake off the dust upon our feet.
But generally speaking, we have all power and authority
given unto us to go into all the world
and preach the gospel to every creature,
and we should do it.
We shouldn't be the ones afraid.
They're the ones that are afraid.
Verse 26, "Behold, I set before you this day
a blessing and a curse,
a blessing if you obey the commandments of the Lord,
your God, which I command you this day,
and a curse if you will not obey
the commandments of the Lord, your God,
but turn aside out of the way,
which I command you this day,
to go after other gods which you have not known."
Notice God never gave unconditional blessing
to the children of Israel.
Anybody that's actually read the Bible, recognize,
hey, you guys are gonna be blessed
if you keep my commandments and follow me,
if you love me, but if you don't,
you're gonna be a curse.
And again, that's what the children of Israel are like.
When they're following God's commandments
and they're doing good,
they're a huge blessing unto the world,
they're a huge blessing unto themselves,
to their children.
When they're not following his commandments,
they're a huge curse.
And in fact, they get some of the worst curses
ever known to man.
Later in the book of Deuteronomy,
he's gonna give a huge list of the curses.
It's gnarly, you know, eating their own children
and getting all kinds of crazy diseases
and just kind of the worst things imaginable
you could ever think of or dream up.
He's like, I'm gonna give you all of it
and then I'm gonna multiply it.
He's just like, I'm just gonna keep doing it to you
until you get it right.
And so you need to make sure that you're right with God.
You know, as a child of God,
don't think that God can't curse you.
You know, God can still punish you in this life
and God can bring hardship and woes and problems
in your life if you turn away from him.
You know, why go to church?
Well, you wanna stay in the blessing of God.
You wanna stay in the blessing category,
not in the cursing category.
And you know, you see people get away
from the things of God
and it's not like they're just gonna instantly die,
but you just see more problems racking up,
more issues, just more cursing in their life.
The more you stay with God,
the more you're right with God,
more blessing in their lives.
Doesn't mean it won't come with persecutions.
I get that.
But you know what?
I'd rather be persecuted than cursed.
I'd rather be persecuted than punished.
And I'd rather be cherished than chastised.
And so at the end of the day,
what we do does matter in this life.
Now it gives us in kind of a metaphorical example here
in verses 29 through 32.
It's come to pass when Lord thy God hath brought thee
in the land whither thou goest to possess it,
that thou shalt put the blessing upon Mount Gerizim
and the curse upon Mount Ebal.
Are they not on the other side, Jordan?
By the way, where the sun goeth down,
in the land of the Canaanites,
which dwell in the champagne over against Gilgal
beside the plains of Mori,
for ye shall pass over Jordan to go in to possess the land
which the Lord your God giveth you,
and ye shall possess it and dwell therein,
and ye shall observe to do all the statutes and judgments
which I set before you this day.
So they're on the east side.
They're gonna have to cross into the promised land.
They're looking towards the promised land,
towards the west where the sun goes down.
He's saying once you get in there,
there's gonna be two mountains.
There's Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal.
Now, just geographically,
these two mountains are pretty close to each other.
Mount Gerizim is on the south side,
Mount Ebal is on the north side,
and then the valley is the valley of Shechem.
There's lots of things that you could probably
draw from this.
The Bible brings them up in a couple other passages.
When we get later into the book of Deuteronomy,
it's gonna really talk about the curses
with that particular setting,
and we'll probably dive in a little bit more.
But here's one thought I had,
and one thing that I think it could represent.
If we think about Gerizim as being the southern mountain,
well, Gerizim is the one's the blessing.
Look at verse 29 again,
and that's what put the blessing upon Mount Gerizim
and the curse upon Mount Ebal.
What do we know about what's gonna happen?
They're gonna enter the promised land,
they're gonna take over,
but shortly after, what's gonna happen?
They're gonna split, aren't they?
They're gonna have the southern kingdom
and they're gonna have the northern kingdom.
And the northern kingdom does what?
They turn away from the God of the Bible,
they set up idolatry, they go whoring after idols,
and they end up being much more cursed
than the southern kingdom.
And the southern kingdom is the one that ends up having
that great blessing.
It's Judah, that's of course the tribe
that the Lord Jesus Christ is gonna come from.
And so I think symbolically, you kinda just see,
hey, this one mountain's kinda representing the blessing,
the other one's representing the cursing, why?
Because one really turns away from God,
the other one stays loving God.
They're both messed up.
And you know, I think that to give some comfort
to all of us, because you know, I don't wanna live a life
where every time I make a mistake, every time I'm lazy,
every time I don't do something right,
every time I have a bad attitude,
I'm just kinda looking over my shoulder
thinking that God's just gonna strike me down
with lightning or something.
And I think that's an unhealthy way to live.
I think that's not, you know, taking things into balance.
And sometimes people that leave a church like ours
or leave fundamentalism, they deconstruct,
they always tell these sad stories
about how they were just so terrified.
They thought God was gonna kill them
for every little minor infraction.
And it's like, they didn't really think that.
They're just throwing stuff out of the wall.
They're just lying.
But obviously sometimes we could have that opinion.
And I just think, I don't wanna diminish
anybody's fear of the Lord.
We should always fear God.
We should always get right with God.
But it seems like God, he's not just,
it's not like you just commit one tiny little sin
and now you're on the, you're now on Mount Ebal
and you're gonna be cursed for the rest of your life.
Because you study Jerusalem,
you study the Southern Kingdom,
they're not like committing a few minor infractions
here and there.
They're pretty screwed up too.
But what kind of separates these two from a big picture
is that the Northern Kingdom just doesn't really love God
and the Southern Kingdom loves God.
The Southern Kingdom is where they're going to worship God
and where they're performing the sacrifices
and where they're actually keeping
the commandments of God going.
They're not setting up idols and Dan,
they're not setting up some kind of a false religion as much.
Obviously when we get into the late portions,
they do and it gets bad
and God has to completely eradicate them.
I'm just saying from a big picture,
often the southern kingdom is still trying,
at least, to serve God.
And to me, where you need to really measure yourself,
where you need to examine yourself is just, do you love God?
We need to have a love for God.
And test yourself a little bit on this.
Now think about this.
It's like, I just hate reading my Bible
and I just hate going to church
and I just hate going soul-witting.
Well, you're probably headed in a bad direction.
Now again, if you have a zeal and a fervor and a love
and you're appreciating things of God,
I think you're headed in a good direction.
I'm not going to sit here and list all your sins.
I'm not going to say like, well, if you're sinning,
you know, if you have five sins a day, it's too many.
You know, you need to whittle that down to four.
Or if you have 20, you're back.
We all have sin and it's hard to quantify all that.
Obviously, if you're on the first
Corinthians five issue list,
you need to get that right immediately.
Otherwise you get kicked out of church.
But you know what, we're all going to have sin.
We're all going to have mistakes.
We're all going to cause problems.
We're all going to be backslidden.
We're all going to be selfish.
I mean, what is sin?
We're all going to be selfish, we're all going to be in the flesh at times, we're all going
to be selfish at times, but at the end of the day, you need to have some love for God
somewhere in there.
And if you don't have love for God, you need to stir it up.
And with anything and everything, you say, how do I get love?
How do I get it?
You just have to put in some time.
You know, you don't love things that you're not putting any time or effort towards, okay?
And it's just like, you know, you're not going to ever love steak if you never have it.
And here's the thing that's interesting about food, it's like having it doesn't make you
want it less.
Now maybe in the moment, there's a law of diminishing return, like when you take the
first bite, they always say like, that's the best bite.
The seconds are kind of the next, and then eventually you reach a satiation point.
You're basically satiated, you don't need it.
But it's like, you can have a really good meal and still want it the next day.
You can have a really good meal and want it the same day.
And you know, some meals you're like, okay, I'm good, I don't want this for a few days.
But at the end of the day, the things that you like, you can have all the time, you
can keep wanting it, you can keep desiring it, and in fact, it actually keeps the desire
up.
When I was younger, my favorite soft drink was Dr. Pepper.
Who else?
Anybody else?
All right, some saved people in the room, all right?
No, I'm just kidding.
That's like a Texas drink.
I remember I went to, we went on a trip when I was in junior high to New York, and they
didn't have Dr. Pepper, and I was like, "What's wrong with you people?"
You know?
And that's where I was born, you know?
I was like, "What's wrong?
There's no Dr. Pepper."
It's like Pepsi or something up there, right?
But I just loved Dr. Pepper, and I drank him all the time, whenever I could.
But at some point, I don't even know why exactly.
I think I just, maybe someone said I was unhealthy or something, so I just kind of like stopped
drinking Dr. Pepper.
And like, I just only was drinking water and stuff.
After a long period of time, then I was trying to go back, I didn't even like it anymore.
Because I just basically got out of the pattern of like drinking Dr. Pepper.
And here's the thing I know, I don't really like it, it's like almost too sweet.
But if I just started drinking Dr. Pepper, just kind of just had one every day for the
next like few weeks, you know, I'd probably start liking it again.
I'd probably really want it again.
And you know, let me make another confession.
You know, I don't eat Indian food.
I don't know if I'm shocking you with this, okay?
And I've said that a lot of the smells kind of,
I don't really personally think that it's that great.
But here's the thing.
I know that if I just force myself to eat a bunch of Indian food,
I'd probably like it eventually.
I'd probably like garner a taste for it.
So that's why I just don't want to try it.
Because I just don't want to go down that road.
I've already preached so much in one way that it would just make me look so bad
that I have to stay committed.
You know, I have to be steadfast or whatever.
Because like, wherever you grow up, like everybody just likes the food wherever they
grow up.
What's with that phenomenon?
It's like my dad grew up on Pinto's just as like the only meal he had.
It was like Pinto beans and cornbread, just like every meal, almost every meal literally.
He would say pretty much on Sundays, they would get fried chicken after church.
So it was just like they had Pinto beans Monday, Pinto beans Tuesday, Pinto beans Wednesday.
Dude, my dad still eats Pinto beans all the time and loves it.
And I'm thinking like, now that you don't have to eat that, you would think like you
just want something else or whatever, but he's just like, he just like loves it.
Why?
Because he's just so ingrained in him.
He just, he's had it so many times.
And look, I guarantee as a young child, there were days on Wednesday, there was days on
Thursday where it was just like, oh, pinto beans again.
You know what?
By just being consistent with it and having it over and over, he eventually, hey, just
got a deep love for it.
You know, it's with anything.
Hey, you want to, you want to love a person, spend time with them, hang out with them,
be nice to them.
It's like, oh, me and my wife, we don't love each other as much anymore.
We know, you know why a lot of times that happens in marriage.
It's like when you were dating or when you're early married, you don't have any kids, you
don't have any responsibilities, maybe you weren't even going to church, so you just
hung out all the time and it was lots of fun and you grew really close.
Then you start having to work more, then you had kids, now you're not spending as much
time together and all of a sudden there's more friction and you feel like you're drifting
apart.
It's just how the world works.
You know, people say like, oh, distance makes the heart grow stronger.
There's a lot of truth to that, but there's also a lot of like misleading information
about that.
If you just go on a short trip and you're gone for a day or two, you come back, oh man,
it's so great.
You're so glad you get to see them.
You go off for six months, you go out for a year, that can be detrimental to a relationship.
You start separating yourself.
You start getting away from people for a really long period of time.
It can be detrimental.
Think about your friendships.
You had friends in high school, you had friends in college, you had friends that you lived
on your street and y'all hung out all the time, y'all really close.
Now that you haven't seen each other in a while, you just don't feel the same towards
that person anymore.
And here's the thing.
Some of you might think like, "Oh, I don't know, how do I love God?"
It's called going to church.
You go to church Sunday morning and Sunday night and Wednesday night and you'll start
loving God more.
You start reading your Bible, you'll start loving God more.
You start singing psalms and hymns and you'll start loving God more.
The person that stops singing and stop going to church and stop reading the Bible, they
never love God more.
It's like, "Oh, I don't feel like I have," well, you know what, you need to increase
your intake.
Now look, if you're just, if you're just like maxing out and you're still having problems,
you know, we can have another conversation about it, but for the most part, most people,
they're struggling with it because they're just not doing it, they're not putting in
the effort, they're not putting in the energy, and whatever level you're at, by decreasing
it, it'll only make it worse.
You know, I had somebody one time, they told me, "Hey, I'm struggling because my wife
just doesn't really want to come to church," and so what I thought was, let's just, let's
just not go as much.
Like, she's just really struggling, she doesn't really like church that much, she's not having
a good time, she's like, "So I'm just, I'm just not going to make her go three times
a week anymore."
So now they're just going like once, you know, every week, then it's just kind of like once
every other couple of weeks.
Now they're just gone, now they don't go to church.
And when I tried to tell them, I said, "Look, not going to church will not make your life
like church more."
Like, I'm sorry, like we should, we can address this, we can try to work on this, but let
me tell you something, not going to church will not make you like church more.
Not reading your Bible will not want you to make you read your Bible more.
Not spending time with your spouse will not make you want to spend more time with your
spouse.
Like, time is essential.
And so what is the most key important?
Loving the Lord thy God.
If the children of Israel in the northern kingdom just don't have the things of God,
it's really far away, it's out of the way, they have other gods, they have other things,
why do you think their heart turned away?
Because they weren't making it a priority, they weren't going, it wasn't close to them,
they weren't making a priority.
Look, the people that make church a priority will stay with church.
The people that stop making a priority will eventually get away from it.
It's how life works.
And you know what?
We'll eventually see where your heart is.
Where your treasure is, there your heart is also.
It's like, oh man, this person, you can't get them out of church.
It's like 10 p.m. and we're like turning the lights off, you know.
We know where that person's heart is, right?
The person that you can't even hardly freaking drag to church.
Look, whatever you love, you make time for.
Whatever you love, you make time for.
If we said, hey, where are you spending all your free time?
I'll tell you what you love.
Well, every time I get a chance, I watch every Cowboys game.
Well, I know what you love.
You love losing, OK?
It's like every second this guy gets, he's reading.
OK, he loves reading.
Every second he gets, he's working on his car.
Well, he loves his cars.
Every second-- whatever you're spending your time on, you love.
All I do is work and make money.
Then you love money.
Whatever you're spending your time on, you love.
And let me tell you something, if you want the blessing of God,
we have to seek first the kingdom of God
and His righteousness.
We have to have God nigh unto us.
And we have to remind and wake up America and say, hey,
we need America to be Christian again.
And you know what America needs?
It needs to spend time with God.
America needs to read his Bible again.
America needs church again.
America needs to sing the Psalms and the hymns again.
And why?
So that our nation doesn't get cursed from God
and it gives us famine and natural disasters
and takes away all of our economy.
God is saying, "Hey, I'm gonna bless your economy
and give you the rain and give you all the blessings
if you're following me."
You know what, if America stops being a Christian nation,
you know what, he'll take away our blessing.
We need to make America Christian again.
And let me tell you what that is, it's church.
We should never be ashamed of church.
We need to get people back into church,
get them baptized, get them reading their Bible.
You know what, they're not gonna want church
if they're not going.
And you know what's also not wanting people to have church
is the non-denominational church because it's not church.
You know it's not making people wanna read their Bible?
The NIV because it's not the Bible.
You know it's not making people wanna sing praises to God
Hillsong because it's not songs of the word of God.
We need people to get the real Bible and real church
and real Psalms and real hymns
so they'll actually want God.
And America needs these things desperately.
And we need to do the work.
We need to go into our highways and hedges
and get people saved and compel them
to have the right Bible and to compel them
to go to good church.
I don't want to sit here and just allow America
to become Islam.
I don't want to just sit here and allow America
to just be denigrated and become Catholic again.
I don't want to go back to the dark ages
where they don't have the blessing of God
and where they have constant plague.
What do you think the black plague came from?
From hating the word of God and rejecting his commandments
and from all the disease of the call of Catholicism,
the Catholic spirit.
Hey, God's commandments keep you strong.
Having Catholicism makes you weak,
makes you effeminate, makes you queer,
makes you everything awful and rotten and wicked
and prideful and stupid.
Oh, white people are so great.
Well, then how come Catholics suck so bad?
I mean, you really want to go back to the dark ages?
Do you really want to go
and hang out with a bunch of Vikings?
Look, you know, people have the wrong ideas
about what makes someone great.
You know what makes someone great?
This book.
You know what makes our country great?
This book.
You know what gives us cattle?
This book.
And it gives us rain and corn and oil and milk
and all the things that we love.
You know where the milk comes from?
It comes from the cow.
That cow's important.
But instead of worshiping it, we need to slaughter it.
And you know what?
We need to drag people to church
to bless the God that gave us it.
And what is the whole point?
We need to realize where the blessings are coming from.
We need to follow God's command.
We need to take this stuff seriously.
We need to teach our kids what God has done for us.
We need to remind ourselves what God's done
for our forefathers and our grandfathers and everybody.
And we can't take the word of God more seriously.
And look, do not allow yourself to be deceived.
Do not think that spending less time with God,
less time reading your Bible, less church, less hymns
will ever result in a good thing.
Oh, I know this guy.
He quit church and he quit reading his Bible and more,
man, he's just like a soul winning machine.
He's just, he's spending all this time getting people saved.
No, no, no.
The people going three times a week,
they're getting people saved like a machine.
Look at the Foley's over here.
They're getting more people saved
than like the rest of our church combined.
And they're here three times a week.
You know, look at the people
that are going three times a week.
Look at the people going on the missions trips.
You know, it's the same people.
It's the same people taking church seriously.
And you know, I bet it's the same people
that have the most Bible memorized.
And I bet you the same people that read the Bible the most.
And I bet you the same people that sing the songs,
the loudest.
Hey, there's a correlation.
Don't get deceived.
And you know what?
The people that love their spouse
spend time with their spouse.
And the people that love their kids
spend time with their kids.
And the people that love God spend time with God.
And you know what?
If we want to fix America,
we need to get our priorities straight.
We need to start elevating church again
and elevating the things of God and the word of God.
Otherwise, we're going to go through a big famine.
Let's close in prayer.
Thank you Heavenly Father so much for what you've given us.
Thank you for this church.
Thank you for the King James Bible.
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to have so much blessing.
Thank you for allowing us to live in a land that has so much blessing and just so much
good food and just so many good things.
I pray that we wouldn't take them for granted if we realized they come from you.
I pray that we'd take church seriously.
I pray that you would help us to wake America out of its stupor.
I pray that you would help encourage people to draw closer to you and that you could draw
closer to them.
I pray that you would help us to have a strong love and affection towards you, and that when
we sin and get selfish and backslide, that we would come back running to you, that we
would confess our sins and we repent and we get back to church and we get back to reading
our Bible, and that we could just make sure that we're constantly loving you, and in Jesus'
name we pray.
Amen.
The last reading will be page 422, "Thou didst leave thy throne."