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Men, in Deuteronomy chapter number 9, we're continuing this preaching that Moses is doing right on the verge of entering into the promised land. And this is a pretty negative chapter where Moses is bringing up a lot of the bad things that have happened over the last 40 years and a lot of the sins that the nation of Israel has corporately been guilty of. And he tells them not to forget these things. One of the things I want to point out is that when it comes to our own individual lives, I don't believe that we should sit around meditating upon the sins of our past. Because in the New Testament, the Bible tells us, forgetting those things which are behind, reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. And we know that if we confess our sins to God, He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And there are so many verses about being forgiven by God and that as far as the east is from the west, so far has God separated us from our sins. What I believe is going on in this chapter is that when it comes to a nation, though, it's good for a nation corporately to remember the mistakes that they've made throughout history or the sins of their past in general. Obviously we don't want to beat ourselves up about personal mistakes as long as we've repented and gotten those things right. The Bible says, he that confesseth and forsaketh his sins shall find mercy. It really doesn't do any good to dwell upon the mistakes of the past. You know, you just move forward in the Christian life. But as a nation, though, it is good to remember history because those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it when it comes to history. And so I believe that that's what's going on in this chapter. He wants them to remember their sins as a nation because they're about to enter the promised land and he really doesn't want them to mess this up because, remember, 40 years ago they messed this up and it cost them 40 years. So he doesn't want them to goof this up again. So he's really impressing upon them, look, don't make the mistakes of the past. Don't do what you did 40 years ago. Don't do what you did these various other times. And so it makes sense in that context to bring up these sins. We just want to make sure that we don't get the mistaken idea that preachers are all about, you know, dragging out your old sins and beating you up for your past and reminding you of bad things that you did. You know, David says in the book of Psalms, remember not the sins of my youth. And you know, Job talks about how, you know, his three friends would try to bring up something from his youth or something. You know, it's never right to pull out people's sins from their past that they've already moved on from, they've already confessed and forsaken those things. Once someone gets it right, let it go. It should be forgiven and forgotten. I hate the fact that in our society people carry around a criminal record for the rest of their lives. It isn't right. It isn't biblical. And people who have committed a crime, once they've served their time, once they've paid the punishment for that, it should be totally forgotten and never brought up to them again. Now you say, well, you know, what about these, you know, pedophiles and, you know, sex? They should be dead. No criminal record needed because they're dead and you don't need a record. Anything that's not worthy of death, we should be able to live it down. Let's say somebody stole, you know, oh well, you know, this guy stole 20 years ago so his employer has the right to know that. Really? Because I would say it's time to let that guy live it down. Let him that stole steal no more but rather let him work with his hands, right? And I forget how the rest of the verse goes but it's a great verse and it's in Ephesians 4. So Deuteronomy Chapter 9, let's jump into this with those things in mind. It says, Hear O Israel, thou art to pass over Jordan this day to go into possessed nations greater and mightier than thyself, cities great and fenced up to heaven. He's just saying, look, let's just get this out of the way because last time you guys seemingly were under some illusion that you're going to do this through your own strength and so then when the 10 spies came back and said, oh man, they've got chariots of iron, the Anakims are there, they're so tall and they're these great warriors. He's just saying, look, let's just skip the spies and let's just get this out of the way. Yes, you want to know how high the walls are? They're walled up to heaven. Any questions? The Anakims are there, the tallest people ever and by the way, there's a saying out there, you know, who can stand before the children of Anak, it says at the end of verse 2 there. I feel like Moses is just kind of getting this all out there saying, look, of course they're stronger than you, of course you can't defeat them in the flesh, of course they have all the weapons, all the munitions, all the technology but God is the one. It says in verse 3, understand therefore this day that the Lord thy God is he which goeth over before thee, as a consuming fire he shall destroy them. I mean, God's just going to come through like a forest fire and just destroy them all. Don't rely on yourself. Don't trust in yourself or you might as well just turn around right now. It's the Lord that's going to be that consuming fire that's going to go before you. He says in verse number 3 there at the end, so shalt thou drive them out and destroy them quickly as the Lord has said unto thee. And of course the entire conquest, obviously the children of Israel did not carry out the conquest perfectly the way that they were supposed to, but even so it still only took them a total of seven years to complete the conquest of the land. It says in verse number 4, speak not thou in thine heart after that the Lord thy God hath cast them out from before thee saying, for my righteousness the Lord has brought me in to possess this land, but for the wickedness of these nations the Lord doth drive them out from before thee. Not for thy righteousness or for the uprightness of 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, and that he may perform the word which the Lord sware into thy fathers Abraham Isaac and Jacob. So God is killing two birds with one stone here. He's fulfilling his promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by giving the land to their descendants and also he's destroying some really wicked people that he wanted to wipe out anyway. And if you remember, God even tells the patriarchs that the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full. You know, they hadn't really got wicked enough to where it was justified to just totally wipe them out. And after 400 years in Egypt, they are really that bad to where God is just so done with them and so he's wiping them out. Now, the interesting thing about this is that he's saying it's not your righteousness, but it's rather their wickedness why you are dispossessing them of their land. Because he says you're not really that righteous. You're a stiff-necked people. You know, you've done all these wrong things in the past. Now, if we think about our own country, the United States of America, obviously America historically has been a Christian nation. Now, America has never been perfect. It's never been as godly as we would have liked for it to have been. But yet, relatively speaking, it has been a lot more Christian and a lot more godly than a lot of other places out there. And so, just as God would look at Israel and say, you know, you're a stiff-necked people, you're not as righteous as you think you are, but yet these people are way worse. God also looks down from heaven and yes, all nations in his sight are nothing and less than nothing. And obviously, he sees the whole world as being a sinful place and every nation is sinful. But yet, it does matter which nations are worse than others. So don't get this attitude of just, well, all sin is equal and all nations are equal or whatever. Well, no, because there are some nations that are worse than others. And a nation that is relatively righteous or at least somewhat righteous or at least kind of righteous, God can work with that and God can give them space and God can give them grace, whereas a nation that gets as bad as these Canaanite nations just gets wiped out. Okay? They get punished severely. And so, we see here that the children of Israel, they're sinful in general, but they're not near as bad as the Canaanites. Now, here's the thing about that is that this is probably one of the best crops of Israelites in the history of Israel. I mean, the first batch 40 years ago were pretty bad. That's why they had to wander in the wilderness. They didn't get to enter the Promised Land. This is actually one of the better groups. And he still says to them, don't get puffed up. You're not as righteous as you think. Because guess what? Even people in this world that we look at as pretty righteous in God's sight, it's not good enough. Right? We've all sinned and we've all come short of the glory of God. So even when Israel is doing right in the sight of God, they're not that great. Now, here's the implication of that is that throughout Israel's history, whenever they're doing right in the sight of the Lord, it's only because they have a right leader. And as soon as that right leader's gone, then things go bad. Well, here's the thing. If the nation were really that righteous, having a bad leader wouldn't just cause everything to just fall apart. They would just get rid of the bad leader, get a good leader, and keep moving forward. Or how many of us are serving God right now with an ungodly leader? I mean, do we have some godly leader in the White House politically or some godly leader at the helm of the state of Arizona or whatever? You know, here's the thing. We're going to do what's right no matter what. Now here's the thing. You say, well, you know, but in church, we have Pastor Anderson. And you know, he's preaching the Bible and teaching the right things and so forth. But here's the thing. If I started just preaching heresy or let's say I just, you know, quit or died or whatever, this church wouldn't just fall apart. It would keep going. It would keep thriving. It would keep serving God. And let's say I died tomorrow and let's say the guy who replaced me ended up being a bad guy and a bad leader. You guys aren't all just going to start worshipping the golden calf, okay? You guys would get rid of the bad guy and you would keep moving forward. Because this is a solid group of people, okay? Because the local church is superior to the nation of Israel as an institution. Because see, the nation of Israel, they get a bad person at the helm and it's just, you know, yeah, obviously there are going to be some individuals that are serving God. But in general, the whole thing kind of just goes to pot and the majority of people go the wrong way. And just the very fact that they only do right when they have a strong leader really pushing righteousness shows that across the board, they're not a spiritual bunch across the board. Which makes sense because if you just take an ethnic group of people and just say, okay, these are going to be God's people, these are the chosen people, I mean, let's face it, human nature being what it is and the fact that broad is the way that leads to destruction and many there be which go in their act because straight is the gate and narrow is the way which leads them to life and few there be that find it. You know, it's no surprise that the nation of Israel is usually not serving God throughout their history. And even when they are serving God, it's just because of a couple of prophets or a king or somebody that's really pushing them and motivating them and making them do it. And as soon as that guy's gone, everything falls apart. Whereas the local church is not ethnic or hereditary, right? It's people who are choosing to join together. People are choosing to come together because of their love for Christ, because of their dedication to the truth. And so it's a stronger body, it's a stronger institution, it's a superior system to have churches be, you know, God's people and God's unit of getting his work accomplished. And so nations are obviously never, even when a nation is a Christian nation or, you know, serving God or whatever, you know, there's still going to be a lot of ungodliness in every single nation. It could be relatively better than others, but people are sinners, my friend. And so that's what's going on in this passage. It says here in verse number six, understand therefore that the Lord thy God giveth thee not this good land to possess it for thy righteousness, for thou art a stiff-necked people. And being stiff-necked simply means that they don't take correction well, okay? The Bible says he that being often reproved, which means like corrected, he that being often reproved hardeneth his neck shall suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy. So the hardening of the neck is not taking correction. It says in verse seven, remember and forget not how thou provokest the Lord thy God to wrath in the wilderness from the day that thou didst depart out of the land of Egypt until you came unto this place, you have been rebellious against the Lord. Also in Horeb you provoked the Lord to wrath so that the Lord was angry with you to have destroyed you. When I was gone up into the mount, and now he's going to recap the story about going up into the mount and receiving the 10 commandments. When I was gone up into the mount to receive the tables of stone, even the tables of the covenant, which the Lord made with you, then I abode in the mount 40 days and 40 nights. I neither did eat bread nor drink water. Now a couple of things. We already talked about this a few weeks ago, so I'm not going to review this, but the tables of the covenant, the 10 commandments are the old covenant. They're used synonymously. They're like a cliff's notes version of the old covenant. Obviously the old covenant is also more than that, but the 10 commandments are definitely old testament, old covenant. They're the tables of the covenant, and they were written with the finger of God, the 10 commandments on two tablets of stone. When Moses was in the mount for 40 days and 4 nights, he did not eat bread or drink water. This is not humanly possible. This is a miracle. This is a supernatural event. Now Elijah did the same thing where he did not eat or drink for 40 days and 40 nights. This is not humanly possible. This is something that is a supernatural thing, so don't try this at home because after like a week with no water, you will be dead. In Arizona, you'll probably be dead tomorrow without water. But it is humanly possible, and I'm not recommending this. Don't try this at home either, but it is humanly possible to go 40 days and 40 nights without food if you're drinking water. Now there is one person in the Bible who did that, and that's Jesus. The reason that I would say that Jesus drank water during his 40 day and 40 night fast is because of the fact that it says, and when he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, he was afterward unhungered. If you're not eating or drinking, you're thirsty, not hungry. I believe that Jesus actually fasted not supernaturally, but rather just actually naturally just fasted for 40 days and 40 nights without any kind of a miracle or divine intervention because that is humanly possible. There are even human beings that have done that in modern times, Baptist preachers who've lost their reward by talking about it and bragging about it. Imagine going through that and then losing your reward. What a bummer. I believe Gandhi did some 40 someday fast or whatever. But the point is that this is a supernatural event. He doesn't eat or drink. That's not possible without a miracle. But he's up in the mount. He's communing with God. It makes sense that he doesn't need to eat or drink during that time. And so the Bible says in verse number 10, and the Lord delivered unto me two tables of stone written with the finger of God. Oh, that's right, God the Father has body parts, I remember now. And on them was written according to all the words which the Lord spake with you in the mount out of the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly. And it came to pass at the end of 40 days and 40 nights that the Lord gave me the two tables of stone, even the tables of the covenant. And the Lord said unto me, arise, get thee down quickly from hence. For thy people, which thou has brought forth out of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. They're quickly turned aside out of the way which I have commanded them. They have made them a molten image. Isn't it interesting how God isn't really claiming them at this point? You know, this reminds me of when parents will sometimes do this, like you need to go have a talk with your son, like even a married couple has kids together. You need to have a talk with your son about blah, blah, blah, you know, like when they're doing something bad, it's the other person's child because they're taking after them. And so here, God is not really owning the children of Israel. He's saying, well, your people which you brought, and here's what's funny about that is that people today have this idea that Israel is just God's people no matter what they do. No matter how bad they get, no matter what they do, they can hate Jesus. They can be unsaved. They can deny Christ, but you know, but they're still the elect though. They're still the chosen people. I mean, here's the thing. In the New Testament, that's not even close to being true. But even in the Old Testament, he's disowning them at times. He's ready to totally disown them. In fact, he's ready to kill them all. And he says here, they're your people that you brought out and everything. And then Moses has to step in and intercede. Let's just quickly go through this. But he says that they've corrupted themselves and so forth. And then it says in verse 13, furthermore, the Lord spake unto me saying, I've seen this people and behold, it's a stiff necked people. Let me alone that I made sure he's like, get out of my way, Moses, because I'm going to kill them all. Let me alone that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven. And I'll make of thee a great nation, mightier and greater than they. So I turned and came down from the mount and the mount burned with fire. And the two tables of the covenant were in my two hands. And I looked and behold, you had sinned against the Lord, your God, and it made you a molten calf. He had turned aside quickly out of the way, which the Lord had commanded you. And I took the two tables and cast them out of my two hands and break them before your eyes. To me, this is one of the most surprising things in the Bible. Why would you throw the tables on the ground? I mean, can you imagine you just spent 40 days and 40 nights up in the mountain, you come down with tables of stone written with the finger of God, and then you throw them on the ground. I mean, I don't care how mad I was. I just can't see myself throwing down the 10 commandments and breaking them. I mean, has anybody else thought the same thing? It's kind of a crazy thing to do, like, wow. Like you're that mad. Like, you just spent 40 days and 40 nights with no food and no water to come down with these two tablets and it's written with the finger of God, this irreplaceable item. The value of it you can't even grasp. And you're just like, dang it, just throw it. But he just throws them on the ground. But here's the thing. I believe that it's important that he throws them. It's such a strange thing to do in my opinion, but I don't think that God didn't see this coming and like, you know, Moses is throwing them down and God's like, whoa, whoa, you know, have a little respect, buddy. I believe that it was God's will that he throw them down. Now he might, he might've just thought that he was losing his temper and throwing them down because he is a hothead at times in the story. But I believe that God wanted him to throw them down because it's symbolic of the breaking of the old covenant or the destruction of the old covenant. Because what you have to understand is that the tablets of stone are the tables of the covenant and they represent the old testament. Why was the old covenant broken? Because of the sins of Israel, it ends up getting destroyed. And here's what you have to understand. The old covenant was never an eternal covenant. It was never meant to be an eternal covenant. It was never planned as an eternal covenant because guess what? God always planned for Jesus Christ to come and die on the cross for our sins and be risen again and to bring in a new covenant. The new covenant is not God's plan B, the new covenants prophesied all the way back in Genesis. It's always been the plan. The old covenant is not designed to last forever. God knew the old covenant's only going to last for about 15, 1600 years. That's all it was designed to last for. You know, I think that if it were meant to last forever, it would, it would, some things about it would be different because it was only designed for that period and God always knew that. So ultimately the old covenant ceases to be enforced. It ceases to exist. It is no longer a thing today. In 2023, the old covenant is not a thing. There's only the new covenant. Now there are people out there that are wrong on this and they will try to act as if the old covenant and the new covenant are both side by side operating. And that is a false doctrine. In Hebrews chapter 8 verse 13 it says, in that he sayeth the new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away. What is it that is decaying and waxing old and ready to vanish away? It's the old covenant, number one. The old covenant is done away in Christ. It's replaced by the new covenant. But not only that, the nation of Israel itself went away and ceased to exist. Now when is the book of Hebrews written? We don't really know exactly when the book of Hebrews is written. It's written sometime during the first century A.D. but people could debate about whether it's written before the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. or after the destruction of the temple and these different things. I would say it's probably written before the destruction of the temple. I think that's clear in my mind. But the thing about that is that after Christ died on the cross, the veil in the temple is ripped in half, right? And that was the veil that separated the holy of holies from the holy place. And so that veil is rent and twain and what that symbolizes right there is that now we have access directly into the most holy place through the blood of Christ. We can go boldly to the throne of grace and find grace to help in time of need and we have one mediator, Jesus Christ, and we don't need the high priest, we don't need the priest and the Levite. It's all, like at that moment, spiritually, I mean God in heaven knows it's over, it's done at that point. But does the whole world know that at that point? Not even Jesus' disciples fully understood that at that point, right? So it's going to take people a while to figure that out, especially the diaspora, people that are living, Jews that are living thousands and thousands of miles away. Because you have Jews all over every nation under heaven that are devout Jews and they're believing in the Lord, it might take them a while to even hear that Jesus came and died on the cross and everything, you know, because they don't have TV and telephones and satellite and everything. It's going to take a while for word to spread and everything. So what you have is you kind of have this transition period where, as far as God's concerned, it's over. We don't need animal sacrifices. Once Jesus dies on the cross, you never need another animal sacrifice again. But it just takes people a while to figure that out. Animal sacrifices are still going to continue going on for a while. A lot of the disciples are going to be a little bit confused sometimes, some of the apostles are going to be confused at times and participating in those type of rituals and things because they don't fully grasp the difference between Old and New Testament. Like, we have the luxury of just having a copy of the whole New Testament, 27 books. Obviously in the first century, they don't have that. They're trying to figure things out. They're learning. They're growing as they go along. So and plus, I believe that a lot of people are kind of grandfathered in under the Old Covenant as the Old Covenant's kind of moving out and the New Covenant's kind of coming in. And so I think that's why he says, that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away. It's going to soon vanish away because when Hebrews is being written, it seems like we're still kind of seeing the Old Testament is decaying and it's on its way out in that sense. So there's kind of that little bit of overlap or transitional period there. But once the temple is destroyed in 70 AD, that was tantamount to the nation being destroyed. And if the nation wasn't totally destroyed in 70 AD, it was 100% destroyed in 135 AD. Because in 135 AD, the Romans defeated the Jews again in what's called the Bar Kokhba revolt. At that time, they made it to where not a single Jew, not even one, is even allowed to enter the city limits of Jerusalem. They can't live in Jerusalem. They can't even go to Jerusalem except once a year on the 9th of Av. And they could go and do their little thing with this kind of number and cry about it. But the thing is, the nation of Israel was destroyed, totally destroyed. You have a diaspora of Jews. And here's the thing about that is that the nation of Israel was completely destroyed and it just wasn't a thing anymore. You have, now you say, well, you know, they stayed together and banded together in communities and they kind of kept things alive and interbred and kept their culture going. But what was it as they were scattered into all nations in the 1st and 2nd century AD? What was it that kept those Jews of the diaspora, what was it that kept them together? What were they united around? A religion called Judaism. Am I right? That's what it was all about. And it was a brand new religion because it's not the religion of the Old Testament because the religion of the Old Testament involved animal sacrifices. And in Jesus' day, what are the Jews doing? They're doing animal sacrifices. But then they came out with this new portable version of Judaism that they could take it on the road that didn't involve Jerusalem because it's illegal to even go to Jerusalem. Look folks, it was God's will that Jerusalem be destroyed and that it be illegal for Jews to go to Jerusalem because he's trying to basically let them know it's over. Old Testament is over. Old Covenant is over. Get on board with the New Covenant. But then you got these stubborn, stiff-necked, hard-hearted, Christ-rejecting Jews who just want to keep being Jewish and not accept Christ as their Savior, not accept their Messiah. And so they say, well, we're just going to replace the animal sacrifices with prayers. We're just going to pray. And then they started teaching, well, if you read about doing stuff in God's law, it's like you did it. So even though we're not actually doing any of the stuff that we read in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, we're not doing these things. But if we read about it, it's like we did it in our mind. Like we did sacrifices. We did these different rituals and feasts and things because we read about it. This isn't biblical at all. It's just a made-up, false religion, and it's a Christ-rejecting religion. It's a reaction to the Messiah saying, we will not have this man to rule over us. And why did the Jews not want to have this man to rule over us? It says that his citizens hated him, so they didn't want him to rule over them. And so that's what's keeping them together. So throughout history, throughout 2,000 years of history, you've got the Jews rejecting the Lord Jesus Christ during that time. But obviously, biologically, ethnically, they're mixing in with whatever people they're living amongst. And they were living amongst every nation under heaven. But the main group that we would think of today as Jews are European Jews, also known as Ashkenazi Jews. And so the Ashkenazi Jews, it looks like 90% of the Jews in Israel or whatever, are the ones that are in Europe. And if you look up who Ashkenaz is in the Bible, he's a Gentile guy. And these are Jews from Europe, and they're white people. I mean, let's face it, they're white people. They're whiter than I am. You go over there, and they've got red hair, freckles, blonde hair, blue eyes. It's like you might as well be in Norway or something when you're around a lot of these Jews over there. OK. So it's not that they're ethnically Israel and that they're the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. No, look, in the first century AD, you still have an ethnic Israel. You have James writing to the 12 tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting. You have the Apostle Paul saying, you know, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved. They're my kinsmen according to the flesh. I'm related to these people. I'm an Israelite. I'm of the tribe of Benjamin. But here's what's funny is that people will try to take those passages and try to put that into 2023, like we still have the 12 tribes scattered abroad, and it's still the kinsmen of the Apostle Paul. After 2,000 years of diluting and mixing and intermarrying and turning into white people – because look, if you get a time machine and go back to the time of Christ, you know, the apostles aren't going to be a bunch of blonde-haired, blue-eyed guys. They're going to be a bunch of brown dudes. OK? Sorry Black Hebrew Israelites. They're not going to be black, though, OK? But they're going to be of a darker complexion. They're going to be probably looking like what we would look at today as Arabs or Egyptians or people, you know, people in that part of the world. That's what they would probably look like. You know, if we look at the old – if we look at the Egyptian artwork, you can see a bunch of brown people, and the Israelites and the Egyptians pretty much look the same. I mean, look, somebody in the New Testament thinks the Apostle Paul is an Egyptian. He's like, aren't you that Egyptian guy? No, dude, I'm – look how white I am. Look at my blue eyes. No, he thought he was an Egyptian because he looks like an Egyptian. Joseph looked like an Egyptian, right? Moses was, you know, mistaken for an Egyptian. All throughout the Bible, the Egyptians and the Israelites, they don't look that different. They live close together, and they're not a bunch of Nordic, Celtic, white people. They're just not. And so the point is that the nation of Israel was destroyed in the first century AD. It's gone. It's not over. It's not a thing. It was scattered to the four winds. So right after it's scattered, yeah, you could talk about different tribes being scattered. Right after that happened, you could talk about your kinsmen, and Paul could show up and be like, oh, I'm going to go to the synagogue and see the Israelites. But 2,000 years later, it's just white people who've been rejecting Christ for 2,000 years. They have nothing to do with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and you have as much DNA from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as those people do. Well, it's not about DNA. Then what is it about? What is it? Then what makes them special? Oh, just because they reject Jesus? Because they believe in a Messiah other than Jesus? Because why would that make you chosen? Oh, you reject Christ? I was thinking, like, what do I have to do to become the chosen people? Renounce Christ and put on a funny hat? And now I'm the chosen people? That's garbage. I'm already the chosen people. Because if you believe in Christ, red, yellow, black, and white, you're the chosen people. And so the Old Testament gets done away with in the first century, and the nation of Israel itself gets done away with in the first century. What do we have over there in the Middle East? Not the nation of Israel. In the end times, we're going to have something called the Antichrist. What does anti mean? Antichrist means in the place of instead of. You have an Antichrist, well guess what? You have an anti-Israel. That is a fake Israel that's getting ready for a fake Antichrist for a fake millennium. That's what we're heading into. Fake Jews, fake Israel, fake Christ, that's what we're heading toward. So don't be deceived for one second to thinking that that nation over there is somehow a godly nation or god's chosen people. Folks, that place is spiritually Sodom and Egypt. That's what the Bible literally says about it in the New Testament. It calls it Sodom and Egypt. And of course, they're the queerest nation in the entire Middle East. Second place is nowhere near. There's not even a second place. There's just a first place, Israel. And so, okay. So I wanted to just kind of explain that. I believe that when he threw down the tablets, it's a picture of the fact that this covenant isn't necessarily built to last because eventually it's going to be destroyed. Eventually it ends. Why? Because God wasn't faithful? No. Because the people of Israel have sinned. And so that breaking of the covenant there, the breaking of the tablets is a foreshadowing of the fact that the Old Testament's not going to last forever. It's going to come to an end after the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. There's kind of a overlap period, but by the time you reach 70 A.D., 135 A.D., these things are just totally gone. And so today there's only one program to be on, my friend, Christ's program. There's Christianity and that's it. So let's hurry up and finish here with the chapter. So he broke them before their eyes. Verse 18, I fell down before the Lord as at the first 40 days and 40 nights. I did neither eat bread nor drink water because of all your sins which you sinned, in doing wickedly on the side of the Lord to provoke them to anger. For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure wherewith the Lord was wroth against you to destroy you. But the Lord hearkened unto me at that time also. So here's what's going on. Moses, and especially if you read the account in Exodus, because this is just kind of a quick little recap, you can go back to the book of Exodus, I believe it's chapter 33, you can read through the story back there, whatever chapter it is. But in Exodus, when you read this, it's like when Moses talks to the people, he's talking really harshly to them. He's rebuking them, he's preaching hard, he's being really negative. But then when he goes to God, he's kind of singing the opposite tune because now he's pleading with God to be merciful to his people. So to them it's like, look what you did, you're wicked, you know, busting up their idol, putting it in the water, making them drink it and everything. But then he goes up into the mountain and what's going on in his heart, he's like, man, I'm afraid for these people. I'm afraid of what God's going to do, I'm afraid for the Lord's fierce anger. And then he goes up and he says, oh God, these people have sinned a great sin, but please forgive their sin. And he's interceding, he's begging God to be merciful. And you know what that shows me is that just because somebody's rebuking you, just because somebody's preaching hard against sin, just because somebody is being negative, it doesn't mean that they don't love you. Because Moses is a loving guy and he's behind the scenes praying for them. He's not making some big show publicly praying for God to be merciful. He's doing that privately on his knees. But publicly he's preaching the rebuke that people need to hear. So the preacher who loves you is going to preach against sin. He's going to rebuke what needs to be rebuked. And the guy who just says only positive things to say, well, he's probably also not the guy who's loving you behind closed doors and praying and caring about you. He's more disinterested in being popular or whatever. And so that's what I take away from the story is that Moses is acting one way toward the people and one way toward God. When he's talking to God, he's wanting to play up Israel's repentance or that God should forgive them or that he should be merciful. But then when he's talking to the people, it's just a lot of wrath and doom and gloom. Because he's basically taking to the people what they need to hear. Not that he doesn't love them. That's what they need to hear even though it's negative. And so it says in verse number 20, the Lord was very angry with Aaron to have destroyed him. I prayed for Aaron also at the same time. So remember, Aaron had a part in making the golden cap. And so God's ready to kill Aaron too. And so Moses intercedes for Aaron. And this is a good example for us that we should be praying for God to be merciful to our brothers and sisters in Christ who are in sin. When we see a brother or sister that gets out of church, starts going down a dark path in life, starts getting into drugs or alcohol or fornication or whatever, we should be on our knees interceding and saying, God, be merciful. Give them space to come back. Give them space to repent. And we should be an intercessor like Moses. And so he breaks the calf and so forth. We talked about that. Let's just jump down to verse 25. Thus I fell down before the Lord 40 days and 40 nights as I fell down at the first because the Lord had said that he would destroy you. I prayed therefore unto the Lord and said, O Lord God, destroy not thy people and thine inheritance which thou has redeemed through thy greatness, which thou has brought forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Remember thy servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Look not unto the stubbornness of this people, nor to their wickedness, nor to their sin, because the land whence thou broughtest us out, say, well, because the Lord was not able to bring them into the land which he promised them. And because he hated them, he had brought them out to slay them in the wilderness. Yet they are thy people and thine inheritance, which thou brought us out by thy mighty arm and by thy stretched out, or by thy mighty power and by thy stretched out arm. Now one of the great things we can learn from this is a lesson about how to pray. Because these are pattern prayers. I mean, this is Moses who was effective at praying for the children of Israel and getting God to forgive them. So when we think about interceding for other people, then these are the type of things that we could bring up to God as well, right? We could remind God of some of his promises. I don't think there's anything wrong with praying to God and reminding him, you know, God, you said that you would do this. So do it. You know, it's like Elisha is saying, where's the Lord God of Elijah? And so when we pray, sometimes we could quote scripture to God and bring some things to his remembrance and say, hey, remember. Like he says here, remember thy servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We could pray and say, hey, remember what you said over here. Or remember this person has served you in the past. This person did soul winning in the past. This person has, you know, done works for you. You know, and I know now they're going down a dark path, but be merciful unto them. And you could pray that God would restore them. And you know, you could even pray something along these same lines where Moses says, well, what are the other nations going to think? Right? We could pray and say, you know what? What are other people going to say when they see this godly Christian continuing down this dark path? Lord, restore them so that their testimony could be restored so that other people could see and be saved. Because ultimately what matters the most is God's program. The gospel of Christ going around the world, people getting saved, right? His kingdom, his agenda. That's more important than any of our own personal goals or ambitions, right? We all have our own personal goals for family or for our job or just athletics or whatever our goals are. And it's good to have those goals and we work on those things. But at the end of the day, what really matters most is God's program, God's agenda. So a good way to pray according to the will of God or pray in a way that pleases God is to get on God's agenda in our prayer life and say, well, God, please do this and so for me so that I can keep serving you. Please be merciful to this person and restore them so that they can get back into soul winning and then more people can get saved. If we're constantly bringing it back to the things that God is interested in, the things that God wants, not just, well, you know, do it so that I can enjoy, right? Oh, God, please give me this and so because it'll be more fun for me, it'll make me happier. Now God does do a lot of nice things for us to enjoy, but when we're praying, it's better for praying according to God's will and it's going to be more effective to bring up scripture and bring up the things that God is going to benefit from this and how the gospel is going to benefit and how unsaved people are going to hear the gospel and so forth. Now at the end of the day, you say, well, you know, God already knows everything anyway. Why, you know, why would I tell God? But by that logic, you might as well just never even pray then because there's obviously there's nothing you could ever tell God that he doesn't already know because he's God. The Bible says your heavenly father knoweth what things you have need of before you ask him, but yet he still says you have not because you asked not. So God does want us to talk to him and pray because of the fact that going through that process of asking for something, if you don't ask, you're not going to receive. I'm not one of these people that think that prayer is just some exercise that we go through that doesn't mean anything. No, prayer changes things. And I do believe that when we pray, if we ask not, we're not going to get it. If we ask, then we're going to receive. Praying makes a difference. Okay, so praying matters, but we don't need to repeat the same thing over and over again because God already knows what things we have needed before we ask. So we shouldn't use vain repetitions or redundancy when we pray. But God does want us to say these things and express these things. Look, if somebody did wrong to me and I know that they're sorry, I still want to hear them say, I'm sorry. Well, there you already know, you know, if, if, if, look, if my wife loves me, I don't want to just be like, well, I already know that she loves me. I still want to hear her say, I love you. She wants to hear me say, I love you. Not just, well, you know, I told you that when we got married and if it changes, I'll let you know. If anything changes, I'll let you know, just otherwise just assume that I love you. Look, we want to hear that, don't we? We want to hear people say they're sorry if they're sorry. We want to hear people say that they love us. You know, we want our children to talk to us and when our children talk to us, they're not always laying on us a bunch of wisdom that we've never heard before, but we still like to hear our children talk to us. We still want to hear these things come out of their mouth. Why? Because we're made in the image of God. And so if we want to hear from our children, God wants to hear from his children, too. And so when Moses is saying, hey, remember Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, obviously God's not like, oh, I totally forgot. I was wondering what I was doing with these bunch of stiff-necked Israelites. That's right. It's for Abraham. Obviously, God already knew that, but yet that is still the right way to pray. And so what's wrong with us saying, hey, God, remember how you said, seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you? Hey, Lord, I'm seeking you first. I need some help right now. Please help me out with thus and so. Or even better, interceding for other people, saying, God, be merciful to so and so, help them out, and praying for our friends, praying for the people that are backslidden and so forth. That's an effective prayer, to remind God of his own promises and also to bring it back to what it's going to do for the kingdom of God. Because that shows God that our heart is in the right place, that we want what he wants. We want the church to succeed. We want people to be saved. We want Christ to be glorified. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for your word, Lord. And we thank you for the new covenant. And Lord, we thank you that we're not under the old covenant. The old covenant's completely done away in Christ. And Lord God, I pray that we would not be stiff-necked, but that when you correct us, we would take that correction as we see things in the word of God that we need to change about our lives. And Lord, help us to love and care about other people, and help us to love and care about your program and your agenda so that we can pray according to your will and be blessed accordingly. And in Jesus' name we pray, amen.