Obedience: Deut. 2:24-3:20

Victories: 1. Praise the Lord for the Safety we have had through this cold and snowy snap 2. Pray for Andrew and His family with the loss of his Grandfather.

Prayer: Jonesboro Friends Church Pastor Rich Wollan

Missionary Prayer: Pregnancy Help Center - Pray for Katie and Lauren as the Staff

Intro

The picture up on the screen is a moth and it is called the cecropia moth. It is North America’s largest native moth. As you can see from the picture it is large and can have wingspans from 5 to 7 inches. Interesting fact is that the female cecropia moth has no digestive system once it emerges from it’s cocoon it has a few days to 2 weeks of life during which it must mate and lay eggs. It is that emerging from the cocoon that I want to go into a bit more detail on. When moths or butterflies begin the process of emergence they struggle to get out. If you were to watch the process you would almost think that this is a desperate struggle to get out of the cocoon and that they would be better off to have the cocoon removed for them. However, you would be wrong. It is the struggle that allows the moth to flourish. In the struggle to remove themselves from the cocoon they are engaging and building muscles that have never had to work and as they do this the struggle is helping their bodies push essential fluids into the wings. When they have emerged they are ready for flight. Let’s say you are watching this moth struggle and you decided that it would be easier on the moth if they had a little help so you snip off the end of the cocoon and tear a little bit of it so that process is a easier. If you were to speed the process up the result would be wings that could not unfurl and the moth would be forced to crawl instead of fly.

The struggle is what makes the beauty of this moth possible. Struggles often are what makes us into the person we have become good and bad, yet we so often see our own struggles as being only to our determent. We want them to end. We say that if life were fair we wouldn’t have such problems. We cry out for them to end and we seek for others to take them away. However, what if we are looking at our struggles in the wrong light? What if they aren’t meant to destroy us but to make us even more beautiful? What if God is using our struggles to make us beautiful? He may be using them to make us into His image, His children? Jesus reminded us in John 16:33 “These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.””

The people of Israel were kind of like that moth. They had spent many years in Egypt knowing that God had something better planned for them but what they were unaware of was the struggle it would take in order to get to that something better. They emerged from their slavery in Egypt into a new struggle, the struggle of becoming a nation and this was not a struggle they were ready for. They thought that if God was really their God that He should just pave the way forward for them and they would never have to struggle or fight or work for their freedom. But God had other plans. Through struggle God made Israel beautiful and He will do the same to us. As we continue in our walk through Deuteronomy this week it is this struggle that I want us to focus on.

Disobedience & God’s Wrath

Last week we looked at how the people of Israel sinned by denying to do what God had told them to do, “Go and take the Promised land”. They saw the cities there as being too fortified. They saw the people there as too much for them in every way, they were big they were strong, they were warriors. What could they do against an enemy that big. All they saw were enemies they couldn’t overcome and obstacles they couldn’t get around. Their fear of what could happen kept them from being obedient to the Lord and in doing so they now had to face the discipline of an angry God. If you were able to get online last week and listen to the first sermon in this series you heard in more detail the disobedience of the Israelite people and how we copy their ways so very often.

If you remember Deuteronomy means copy of the law or second law but it isn’t simply a copy but it is a retelling of the Law by Moses in a way that the people were able to live it out. This was done in a series of speeches or sermons by Moses and we are in the middle of the first sermon which goes from Deut. 1:1-4:43. Moses took the time in this first sermon to remind the people where they had come from. So he reminded them of their disobedience which we covered last week and now Moses is going to remind them of what the Lord does for them when they are obedient. For while they had been serving out the discipline of their fearful fathers these children who were now adults were about to lead the nation back into the promised land. Moses’ words to the people here were meant as a warning not to be like their predecessors, and to remind them of just how good God can be when they instead choose to obey. As we look at the commands of God we will see the commands followed up by obedient actions and then we will see action of God.

Obedience & God’s Help

Bible Reading: Deut. 2:24-25, 2:33-35

Let’s look at that. Read with me Deut. 2:24-25 Skip to 33-35.

In the first 2 verses we see the command of God to Rise, Journey, Cross, and then to posses the land of Sihon the Amorite. These are the same people whom God has just sentenced to 40 years of wandering in the dessert. Remember this is just a retelling of the disobedience and subsequent obedience of the rebellious generation. They were unwilling to go into the promised land because for some reason they didn’t trust that God could help them win the battles so God found another way. He would teach them to trust Him. This is what we see in verses 33-35. The Lord delivers them and allows them to defeat Sihon the Amorite in 33 and then Israel was able to take the spoils of Sihon’s cities for themselves. And Why? Because they were obedient to the Lord’s commands to GO and POSSES. Action equals reaction. Obedience equals Victory. The victory may not always look like we expect it to but never doubt that the Lord is victorious. Sometimes God does just that with us. We are rebellious and untrusting so God has to give us discipline and adversity so that we learn to put our trust in Him.

He does the same thing again in Deut. 3:1-7

First we are introduced to a new enemy, Og the King of Bashan, and here we also have a cool battle name. The battle of Edrei. The Lord tells them to go to Bashan in verse 1 and to battle this king there at the battle of Edrei. Then in verse 2 God tells the people not to fear this king nor his people. Then in verse 3 we see that God delivers the king into their hands and no survivors remained and in verses 4-6 all the cities were destroyed and the spoil was theirs. When the people obeyed the Lord, the Lord saw to their victory, again.

The Lord used these times of adversity to bolster up His people. In both cases it is made clear that the victory came as a result of the Lord doing the work, but it started with obedience. Deuteronomy 2:33 “And the Lord our God delivered him over to us;" Deuteronomy 3:3 ““So the Lord our God also delivered into our hands Og king of Bashan" The lesson to be learned by the people of Israel is that God is trustworthy and He will bring the victory.

This is where we want to turn today. We want to learn to Trust in the Lord, and to get back to our moth; we must trust in the Lord in the midst of our struggles.

Trust in the Lord

We have given trust to people we have deemed trustworthy only to have them break that trust. We have wrongly placed trust in untrustworthy people. And we ourselves have broken trust and been untrustworthy. This is all the struggle of life. When we think about trusting in God we are often left with this idea that if God is trustworthy then He must fulfill our every request because for us to have to struggle or to have troubles means that God is not trustworthy. But that is us placing on God our view of what it means to be trustworthy and God doesn’t fit into our box in that way.

The Righteous don’t Struggle?

Where do we get this idea that in order for God to be trustworthy He has to give us what we want? A perfect life as it were. Moses was a pretty righteous man right? Did he face adversity? Yep. How about those God put in charge of Israel after Moses. Did they face adversity? Yep. OK so, instead let’s look at the ones that God spoke to in order to bring His Words to the people. Did they face adversity? I mentioned this passage a few weeks ago but let me bring it up again here. Jeremiah who was given the warning of destruction of Jerusalem and all Judah by God to bring had this to say about the task. Jeremiah 20:7–8 “O Lord, You induced me, and I was persuaded; You are stronger than I, and have prevailed. I am in derision daily; Everyone mocks me. For when I spoke, I cried out; I shouted, “Violence and plunder!” Because the word of the Lord was made to me A reproach and a derision daily.” Ok so the leaders of the people didn’t have it so good nor those who spoke for God but what about those who follow God. They should be OK right. Well, Jesus’ disciples were simple followers right. the Bible records only the martyrdom of James (son of Zebedee) and Judas Iscariot's suicide, while Peter, Paul, Andrew, Thomas, Bartholomew, and Matthew are traditionally depicted as being crucified, beheaded, speared, or flayed for their faith. Not exactly living the life of ease and wealth. To live is to suffer. Every human being that draws breath will one day stop drawing breath that is just the way it is. The struggle in between that first breath and last one is inevitable and God isn’t here to take the struggle away instead he is here to use that struggle for His purposes.

I would like to take credit for the moth illustration but I cannot. It was used by the author and theologian Jerry Bridges in his book “Trusting God”. Let me read for you some of Jerry’s words, “...just as God has more wisdom and love for the moth than its viewer did, so He has more wisdom and love for us than we do for ourselves. He will not remove the adversity until we have profited from it and developed in whatever way He intended in bringing or allowing it into our lives.”

The Israelite people saw the adversity against them in the promised land and they shrank from it and were more willing to be rebellious towards their God then they were willing to face the enemies in the promised land. The problem is that we see our struggles, our enemies, our vices, our sins, our worries, our troubles as being too big for us to handle which of course they are but we fail to see that God is there to help us through them. God doesn’t want to come along and just take them away but He wants to teach us through them how to grow more like Christ.

A Perfect World

We think that to truly have the perfect life then struggle and worry would be no more. Let me tell you a big problem with that. We lost it in the Garden. With sin came struggle. The lack of struggle is not the perfect world anymore. When we look out onto the world we will always find those who we think have it better than us. Jesus in Matthew 7:24-27 gave the parable of the wise and the foolish men building their houses. One built it on the rock and the other on the sand. We know the outcome of both right? The one on the rock stood and the one on the sand fell. But here’s the thing both of them went through the same storm. In verses 25 and 27 they both start with, “and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; ” We can’t avoid the storm we can only avoid the foolishness of building on anything other than God as our foundation.

What we think would bring us the perfect life will only leave us like that moth who did not struggle to get out of the cocoon, weak and powerless. Instead God says that He is doing a good work in us through the adversity. And our God will finish His work in us. Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;” Therefore this is the perfect world at least as perfect as it can be in an imperfect world. We must expect the struggle. We must expect the adversity. For through it we learn to Trust God and we learn how to be more like Christ.

Dependance

The people of Israel were disciplined by God to wander in the wilderness for 40 years, but during those 40 years the greatest gift that God gave them was that of dependance. If they were to face the enemies of the wilderness they would have to depend on God to be their strength and victor. If they were to eat and drink daily they would have to depend on God for those things too. Even the clothing they wore would wear out if God did not supernaturally intervene so that once again they would have to depend upon God for that as well. Dependance is an incredibly important part of our Christian faith because the older I get the more I realize just how weak I really am. I know for instance that I am well past my days of being an effect athlete, or soldier. I am well past the days when I could work hard for 8 hours and wake up the next day and just roll out of bed without pain. I am well past the days of believing that I am God’s gift to preaching or leading. Gone are the days of feeling like I can conquer the world. And good riddance for I realize now that none of those things were every really strengths. It is when we realize that we are not the greatest, the smartest, or the best that we begin to depend on the one who is. Paul said it best in 2 Corinthians 12:10 “Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” It is here where we learn to embrace the struggle, because we realize that it is good for us and that it is proof that God is at work in us. Praise the Lord!

Gospel

‌Are you in the midst of a struggle? Praise God for it. Maybe your struggle is drawing you to Jesus for the first time? Maybe you should stop fighting the Lord and allow Him to do the work in you. Maybe you should accept Jesus as your Savior. Jesus died for our sins and because He did we can place our belief in that sacrifice. 1 John 1:9 says, “we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” We have the promise of God that if we ask for forgiveness and believe in the saving power of Jesus we will be saved. And from the saving power of Jesus, we become new creations. 2 Cor. 5:17 states, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” This means that as Christians we get a fresh start we aren’t who we used to be and we have the power of God behind us to change who we are becoming. Glory to God in the highest for He has saved my soul and He can save yours to if you will let Him. If you aren’t sure then you can confess Him as your savior. If that is your desire today you can say this prayer with me. Bow your heads.

Dear Lord, I know that I’m a sinner. I’m sorry for my sin, and I ask you to forgive me. I believe you died for my sins and rose from the dead. I repent of my sins and I ask you to come into my life and take control. I make a commitment to follow you, and I trust you as my Lord and Savior.

Friend if you prayed that prayer today I ask that you come and speak to me after the service.

For those of you who are believers-

‌Benediction: Kings Treasure