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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 179 such love. Give them the 179 that God should love a sinner such as I. Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love Such love The chosen seed Of Israel's grace The ransom from the fall Hail him who saves him By his grace And round him Lord of all Hail him who saves him By his grace And round him Lord of all Let every wind Let every time On this terrestrial home To him all majesty A strike And round him Lord of all To him all majesty A strike And round him Lord of all We'll join the everlasting song and crown him, Lord of all. We'll join the everlasting song and crown him, Lord of all. We'll join the everlasting song and crown him, Lord of all. Lord of all. All right, this time we'll be doing our announcements together. If you don't have a bulletin, slip up your hand nice and high, we'll get to you with one. On the inside, we have our service time. Sunday mornings at 10 30 is our preaching service. Sunday nights at 6, Wednesday nights at 7 is our Bible study, tonight we're in Deuteronomy chapter number 9. We've got the soul winning times listed there below as well as salvations and baptisms. Across the page is the note about the missions conference, November 8th through 12th. FWBC Tucson is gonna celebrate their five-year anniversary coming up on Sunday, September 3rd. There'll be a potluck after the service. Everybody's welcome to drive down there and attend. It's on kind of the closer side of Tucson, so it's like less than an hour and a half from here if you're interested in going down there. On the back, we sponsored a Toronto Soul Winning marathon and they had 36 soul winners come out, 187 salvations, and so praise the Lord for that. They had a great day of soul winning in Germany with five soul winners, 11 salvations. We got a missions trip coming up to St. Lucia. I think that the Caribbean is one of the best mission fields for us right now. I mean, it's just such a no-brainer because it's close, it's receptive, there's not a lot of jet lag. It's only a couple hours different. It's cheap to get there and they speak English. I mean, it literally just checks all the boxes for what you would look for in a great mission field and so I'm looking forward to seeing what God allows us to do September 17th through 23rd at St. Lucia, so if you can go yourself, great. Talk to Brother Raymond Cooper for more details. Otherwise, just pray that the trip is a big success. Also pray for our pregnant ladies that they will have a safe and healthy pregnancy and delivery and then other upcoming events. The young soul winning trip, you don't have to be young. It's just, it's a city called Young. Actually, it's not a city called Young. It's a town, a very small town called Young. It's kind of a cool area though. It's definitely a beautiful drive so it's kind of a neat place. So that is coming up on September 2nd, small town soul winning and then there's the trip to the Navajo reservation on the 8th and 9th and then there's also a Dominican Republic mission trip happening at the same time as the St. Lucia trip so that's for Spanish speakers if they wanna go and preach the gospel in Dominican Republic which I believe is the other side of the island that contains Haiti, right, Hispaniola. It's got Haiti on one side, Dominican Republic on the other side. So that's about it for announcements. Let's go ahead and count up the soul winning from the past few days. Going back to Monday, anything from Monday? Okay, got it? Okay. All right, how about Tuesday? Anything from Tuesday? All right and then today, I know we had two for the van. Anything outside of the van today? Very good, keep up the great work on soul winning with that. Let's sing our next song, come lead us. All right, you can find the insert in the front of your hymnals of the song How Great Thou Art. If you don't have an insert, please raise your hand. We'll get to you with one. How Great Thou Art. Oh, my God, when I hear awesome wonder Let's hear all the words thy hands have made I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder I howl throughout the universe displayed And sings my soul, my savior, God to thee How great thou art, how great thou art And sings my soul, my savior, God to thee How great thou art, how great thou art When through the woods and forest plains I wander And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur And hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze And sings my soul, my savior, God to thee How great thou art, how great thou art And sings my soul, my savior, God to thee How great thou art, how great thou art How great thou art And when I think that God his son not sparing Sent him to die, I scarce can take it in That on the cross my burden gladly bearing He bled and died to take away my sin And sings my soul, my savior, God to thee How great thou art, how great thou art And sings my soul, my savior, God to thee How great thou art, how great thou art When Christ shall come with shout of acclamation And take me home, my joy shall fill my heart When I shall bow with humble adoration And there proclaim, my God, how great thou art And sings my soul, my savior, God to thee How great thou art, how great thou art How great thou art, how great thou art And sings my soul, my savior, God to thee How great thou art, how great thou art How great thou art My Jesus, I love thee, I know thee Thou art mine, for thee, all the follies of sin I resign, my gracious redeemer My savior art thou, if ever I love thee My Jesus, this now, I love thee Because thou hast first loved me And purchased my pardon on Calvary street I love thee for wearing the thorns on my crown If ever I love thee, my Jesus, this now I love thee in life, I will love thee in death And praise thee as long as thou lendest me breath And say when the dead do my soul on my crown If ever I love thee, my Jesus, this now In mansions of glory and endless delight I'll ever adore thee in heaven so bright I'll sing with the glittering crowd on my brow If ever I love thee, my Jesus, this now Deuteronomy chapter 9, the Bible reads Hear, O Israel, thou art to pass over Jordan this day To go in to possess nations greater and mightier than thyself Cities great and fenced up to heaven A people great and tall, the children of the Anakims Who thou knowest and of whom thou hast heard say Who can stand before the children of Anak Understand therefore this day that the Lord thy God Is he which goeth over before thee as a consuming fire He shall destroy them and he shall bring them down before thy face So shalt thou dry them out and destroy them quickly As the Lord hath set unto thee 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 hath brought me in to possess this land But for the wickedness of these nations the Lord doth dry 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 dry them out from before thee That he may perform the word which the Lord swear unto thy fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob 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 Remember and forget not how thou provokes the Lord thy God As thou didst in the wilderness From the day that thou didst depart out of the land of Egypt Until ye came unto this place Ye have been rebellious against the Lord Also in Horeb ye provoked the Lord to wrath So that the Lord was angry with you to have destroyed you When I was gone up to 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 forty days and forty nights I neither did eat bread nor drink water And the Lord delivered unto me two tables of stone 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 forty days and forty 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 hast brought forth out of Egypt Have corrupted themselves They are quickly turned aside out of the way which I commanded them They have made them a molten image Furthermore the Lord spake unto me saying I have seen this people And behold it is a stiff necked people Let me alone that I may destroy them And blot out their name from under heaven And I will make of thee a 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 ye had sinned against the Lord your God And had made you a molten calf Yet 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 And I fell down before the Lord as at the first forty days and forty nights I did neither eat bread nor drink water Because of all your sins which ye had sinned In doing wickedly in the sight of the Lord to provoke him 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 And the Lord was very angry with Aaron to have destroyed him And I prayed for Aaron also at the same time And I took your sin the calf which ye had made And burned it with fire and stamped it and ground it very small Even until it was as small as dust And I cast the dust thereof into the brook that descended out of the mount And at Tabura and at Massa and at Kibroth Hatayvah you provoked the Lord to wrath Likewise when the Lord sent you from Kadesh Barnea saying Go up and possess the land which I have given you Then you rebelled against the commandment of the Lord your God And you believed him not nor hearkened to his voice Ye have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you Thus I fell down before the Lord forty days and forty nights As I fell down at the first Because the Lord had said he would destroy you I prayed therefore unto the Lord and said O Lord God destroy not thy people and thine inheritance Which thou had redeemed from thy greatness Which thou hast 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 Lest the land whence thou brought us out say Because the Lord was not able to bring them into the land He promised them and because he hated them He hath brought them out to slay them in the wilderness Yet they are thy people and thine inheritance Which thou broughtest out by thy mighty power And by thy stretched out arm Father in heaven we thank you for your son Jesus And your King James Bible Lord We ask you to bless Pastor Anderson's sermon tonight Fill in with your Holy Spirit And Lord we love you It's in Jesus' name we pray Amen 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 forty 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 And 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 And 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 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 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 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 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 hero Israel thou art to pass over Jordan this day To go into possessed nations greater and mightier than thyself Cities great and fenced up Devon 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 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 hath set out of 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 For the Lord thy God hath cast them out from before thee saying For my righteousness the Lord hath 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 They hadn't really got wicked enough to where it was justified to just totally wipe them out But 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 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 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 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 You guys would get rid of the bad guy and you would keep moving forward Because this is a solid group of people 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 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 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 serving God or whatever 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 6 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 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 7 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 Ten 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 Forty days and forty nights I neither did eat bread nor drink water Now a couple 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 Ten 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 Ten Commandments are definitely Old Testament Old Covenant They're the tables of the covenant And they were written with the finger of God The Ten Commandments on two tablets of stone When Moses was in the mount For forty days and four 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 forty days and forty 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 And tomorrow you will probably be dead tomorrow Okay 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 forty days and forty nights without food If you're drinking water Now there is one person in the Bible who did that And that's Jesus And the reason that I would say that Jesus drank water During his forty day and forty night fast Is because of the fact that it says Jesus fasted forty days and forty nights He was afterward unhungred And so if you're not eating or drinking You're thirsty not hungry And so I believe that Jesus actually fasted Not supernaturally But rather just actually naturally Just fasted for forty days and forty 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 have 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 forty 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 And he doesn't need to eat or drink during that time And so the Bible says in verse number ten 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 I came to pass at the end of forty days and forty 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 are 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 My 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 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 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 may destroy Let me alone That I may destroy them And blot out their name from under heaven And I'll make of thee a great A 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 had 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 ten 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 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 have 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 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 covenant is 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 is only going to last for about 1500-1600 years That's all it was designed to last for I think that if it were meant to last forever Some things about it would be different Because it was only designed for that period And God always knew that And so ultimately the old covenant ceases to be enforced It ceases to exist That's what I'm saying 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 saith a 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 1 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 AD But people could debate about whether it's written before the destruction of the temple in 70 AD 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 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 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 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 Because they don't have TV and telephones and satellite and everything And so 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 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 it's still 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 overlap, a 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 Kochba Revolt And 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 on But what was it as they were scattered into all nations in the first and second 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 The New Covenant But then you've 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, you know, if you read about If you read about doing stuff in God's law, it's like you did it So like even though we're not actually doing any of the stuff that we read In Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy You know, 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 You know, because we read about it Now 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 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 Okay, I mean you go over there And they've got red hair, freckles, blonde hair, blue eyes I mean they're as It's like you might as well be in Norway or something When you're around a lot of these Jews over there Okay, so It's not that they're ethnically Israel And that they're, you know, they're the descendants of Abraham Isaac 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 As the kinsmen of the Apostle Paul After 2,000 years of diluting And mixing and intermarrying And turning into white people Cause 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 Okay? Sorry Black Hebrew Israelites They're not going to be black though, okay? They're going to be of a darker complexity 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's an Egyptian He's like, aren't you that Egyptian guy? No, he thought he was an Egyptian Cause 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 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 gonna 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 Well, it's not about DNA Then what is it about? What is it about? 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 gonna have something called the Antichrist What does anti mean? It 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 That 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 It'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 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 an overlap period But by the time you reach 70 A.D. Or 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 There was 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 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 Busting up their idol Putting it in the water Making them drink it and everything But then he goes up into the mountain He's 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 just interested in being popular Or whatever And so that's what I take away from this 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 You know Israel's repentance Or that you know God should forgive them Or that you know He should be merciful But then when he's talking to the people It's just you know It's just a lot of wrath and doom and gloom And it's really taking to the people What they need to hear Not that he doesn't love them It'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 When we see a brother or sister That gets out of church Uh you know 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 You know give them space To come back Give them space to repent And we should be an intercessor Like Moses And so he uh you know He breaks the cap and so forth So let's talk about that Let's just jump down to verse uh 25 Thus I fell down before the Lord Forty days and forty 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 hast redeemed through thy greatness Which thou hast 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 For 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 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 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 Elijah 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 done works for you 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 God's 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 You know please Do thus and so for me So that I can keep serving you You know 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 You know if we're constantly bringing it back To the things that God is interested in The things that God wants Right? Oh God please give me thus and so Because it'll be more fun for me You know it'll make me happier Now God does Do a lot of nice things for us You know to enjoy But when we're praying It's better if we're praying according to God's will And it's going to be more effective To bring up scripture And bring up the things that 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 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 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 We don't need to repeat the same thing Over and over again Because God already knows what things we have need of 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 you already know 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 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 them 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, 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 us 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 And that's what inspired us to 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 is 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 Amen if you need the psalm book For I will sing of the mercies 195 I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever 195 I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever 195 I will sing, I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever I will sing of the mercies of the Lord With my mouth will I gain hope I gain bliss, I gain bliss With my mouth will I gain hope I gain bliss to all generations I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever I will sing, I will sing I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever I will sing of the mercies of the Lord I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever