God Is With Us --- Presence

God Is With Us

Deuteronomy 31:1-8

“The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.” Deuteronomy 31:8

Today we sit on the brink of a new month in our New Year. The January rush of making resolutions and decisions is over. Many people are now settling back down into the routine of school, work, retirement or every day activities. The holidays sure are fun…but we often JAM PACK too many things into them…so that we actually look forward to “returning to normal!”

As many of you know, my wife and I made a trek across the United States this January. I received many text messages and emails that told me how awesome our preachers were when I was gone. Many of the messages said that I could stay away a little longer! Thank you, Jodi, Mike and Dan. You have given me a much-needed rest! Thank you!

Talk about JAM PACKED! Listen to the details of our 2-week trip: We traveled through seven states or 14 if you can count going back through them on the way home! We ended up driving 5,600 miles! We saw around 40 members of our family! We saw friends and attended the wedding of our nephew on the way home! Jac was still finishing up her 70-day, chelation cycle and was sick most of the trip. She napped most of the way. In fact, I renamed her on the trip. Her new name through those seven states and 5,600 miles was “2 nap Jac!”

Being in the car for 8-14 hours a day, we had plenty of time to reflect on the past year, and to look forward to all that God wants to do in our lives this year. We celebrated our 45th wedding anniversary and had a lot of laughs recalling each of the stages of our married life together.

As I was driving, I had a lot of alone time to think. I thought about the Israelites who wandered in the wildness of the desert for 40 years. We traveled through some pretty barren places along the way. Have you ever driven through West Texas on Interstate 10? Jac would wake up long enough to tell me, “Make sure you get gas before we head through West Texas.” I think she was a little afraid of running out of gas and being stuck out there with no gas, or bathroom!

Back to the Israelites! They wandered through the desert for 40 years. They had seen miracle after miracle. For openers, they saw the Red Sea parted and they walked through it without getting wet. Their enemies were swallowed up in the flood when it closed on them. The Israelites were given breakfast every morning with manna from heaven. When they were tried of manna and complained, the Lord rained down quail for a treat and a blessing. The quail and manna were only good for the day. The leftover manna and quail would spoil if they tried to save it for the next day. Wow! Talk about living day to day for your daily bread! (Give us this day our daily bread?) I wonder how we would do living day to day trusting God to provide our meals? When they were thirsty, God provided water from a rock, flowing long enough for all of them to get a drink.

God rescued the Israelites from slavery and gave them their redemption --- their freedom. God gave them the Ten Commandments and formed them into a nation!

Our passage today comes at the end of the wilderness wanderings. They are sitting on the brink of a New Year! A New Life! A New Beginning! A Fresh Start! A Clean Slate! They were getting ready to enter the Promise Land! Just stop and think about that name for a minute! The Promise Land!

“So What?” What are the promises that God wants to give you this New Year?

Before we turn to God’s Word, let us come to Lord in prayer. “Lord God of all promises, fill our hearts and minds with Your Presence, Your Promises and Your Purposes for this New Year. Amen”

The time has come, 40 years has gone by. Moses is about to die and turn the task of entering the Promise land over to Joshua. Moses gives Joshua and the Israelites these words.

Deuteronomy 31:1-8

Then Moses went out and spoke these words to all Israel: 2 “I am now a hundred and twenty years old and I am no longer able to lead you. The Lord has said to me, ‘You shall not cross the Jordan.’ 3 The Lord your God himself will cross over ahead of you. He will destroy these nations before you, and you will take possession of their land. Joshua also will cross over ahead of you, as the Lord said. 4 And the Lord will do to them what he did to Sihon and Og, the kings of the Amorites, whom he destroyed along with their land. 5 The Lord will deliver them to you, and you must do to them all that I have commanded you. 6 Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.” 7 Then Moses summoned Joshua and said to him in the presence of all Israel, “Be strong and courageous, for you must go with this people into the land that the Lord swore to their forefathers to give them, and you must divide it among them as their inheritance. 8 The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.”[i]

“I WILL BE WITH YOU”

Can you enter this story for a minute? The people had seen all miracles year after year, for forty years. They are now getting ready to cross the Jordan River. Moses is ready to turn over the reins of leadership to Joshua. I would like to focus on verses seven and eight this morning.

Be strong and courageous! Those are some very powerful words! God first tells the people to be strong and courageous and then issues the same words to Joshua personally!

It is something to hear those words for someone else. (People of the Seed: be strong and courageous!) But when those words are given to you personally, does it make a difference? (Sharon, be strong and courageous! Al, be strong and courageous! Ruth, be strong and courageous! Mike be strong and courageous! Ryan be strong and courageous! Yvonne, be strong and courageous! Sue be strong and courageous! Clyde be strong and courageous!)

Be strong and courageous! I have been thinking a lot about being courageous What does that look like? Courage comes in many ways: I think of little toddlers taking their lumps while learning to walk; I think of senior citizens living alone; paraplegics in wheelchairs. I think of astronauts walking on the moon; I think of those who are living with family tragedies; I think of single parents coping with children and jobs; I think of our students who are facing the challenges of going to school; I think of my unemployed friends who are desperately seeking work. And then, I think of Jesus struggling uphill to Calvary with a cross on his beaten and bleeding back. In all of these examples we can get a glimpse of the courage of the human spirit—where we find daily battlegrounds faced and conquered.

I want to break down verse eight. The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Can we say that together? It’s a powerful promise.

Have you ever thought about this? That God is with you? Have you ever felt His presence? That God is with you? These are powerful words. God is speaking. And God says --- “I myself ---no one else --- it’s me—I personally go before you!” Do you know that God has gone before you? No matter what your troubles, fears, doubts, or worries that you are facing? God gives Joshua and the Israelites this promise. God also gives us this promise! Here’s what I find in these verses, in this story: God promises us His presence. God’s promise is that He will never leave nor forsake us. The Hebrew word for leave means to “to leave alone, to let down, to fail. To falter, to cast down, to leave unchanged.” Stop and think about that for a minute. God promises to never leave, fail, falter, cast you down. He promises never to become slack in being with us.

On our way home from Florida, I did a part of my nephew’s wedding. At the rehearsal dinner, we sat with Deacon Don and his wife. It was a catholic wedding and Deacon Don was performing the wedding vows and giving the message. At the rehearsal dinner, we sat with Don and Sherry. Sherry mentioned that she was a Spiritual Director. I said, “My wife is too!” We talked back and forth and I found out that Sherry had gone to the same monastery that my wife attended in Pecos, New Mexico. Immediately, the four of us became best friends and had lots to talk about. Jac and Sherry spent a few hours sharing stories of their time at the monestary and talking about many of the people that they knew. When Sherry heard about our lead poisoning, she brought us into a separate room and brought her husband and grandmother of the bride. They had us sit down and they prayed for us. She then anointed us with Holy Water. The Holy Water came from the Father Sam from the monastery in Pecos. Both Sherry and Jac related some hair-raising stories about Father Sam as he was the head exorcist for the Southwest portion of the United States. Father Sam wore a cross around his neck that held a sliver of the cross of Christ inside of it. Father Sam had given Jac some of his blessed salt, and he had given Sherry some of his Holy Water.

Can you imagine for one moment that God had us travel across the nation and back again in order to meet a couple from Houston who wanted to pray for us? At the end of the prayer time, Jac asked Sherry and Don if they had a word for us not to hold back. At that time, they said did not have any kind of a message or a word for us…just the prayer that we had been blessed with.

The next day we did the wedding and went to dinner at a really fancy ranch outside Sugarland. Sherry and Don came over and got us up to dance in the Grand March. A few hours passed, and it was time for us to head back to the hotel. Sherry came up to us in a hurry and sat down next to me. She grabbed my hand and held it in hers. She said, “I have a word from the Lord for you.” With all the noise of the band and the people, she looked me in the eyes and said that the Lord told her to tell me that He would never leave me or forsake me! She said that many in my life had left me and had forsaken me, but that God wanted me to know that He would never leave me or forsake me.

If you have been reading my emails, you will know that my little ditty for this new year is “Seeing the Unseen in 2019!”

Boy, oh boy, did I ever see the unseen that night!

As I thought about this encounter with Deacon Dan and Sherry, I was led to my Bible. I started reading all the passages that contained the promise that God is with us and will never leave us.

I came across a passage in Acts 18 --- listen to Paul’s owns words:

“One night the Lord said to Paul in a vision, ‘Do not be afraid, but speak and do not be silent; for I am with you, and no one will lay a hand on you to harm you, for there are many in this city who are my people.’” Acts 18:9-10

As I read this passage, I thought of Paul being afraid. Here is a man who had left his family, his home church; before his Damascus Road conversion, Saul was a prominent Pharisee. But then Paul encountered Jesus on that road. And Paul left his livelihood, his profession, his income, his security, his education and his home in order to follow after the Risen Lord. By the time we read this passage in Acts 18, Paul has already been on one missionary journey and is just completing his second journey. He will be heading to Jerusalem soon. On his first missionary journey, Paul was confronted by a sorcerer and false prophet in Cyprus, persecuted in Pisidian Antioch, threatened with stoning in Iconium and was stoned and dragged outside of the city and left for dead in Lystra. On his second missionary journey, Paul was severely flogged and put in prison in Philippi. In Thessalonica and Berea, he was threatened with his life. Paul was not accepted in Athens. In Corinth Paul was rejected by the synagogue rulers. I wonder what was going on in Paul’s mind. I wonder how his heart could stand so much rejection. How was he able to continue under so many threats to his life? How did he bear such physical punishment? I am sure there were times when he wanted to throw in the towel. Cash in the chips! Sever his ties with Messiah! Life was hard! Life was difficult! Life seemed out of control! Life surely was not fair --- had he really given up his life--- for this: persecutions, threats, whippings, stonings and put in prison. What was God doing? Where was God, anyway?

This is when I was enveloped in the love, grace, mercy, truth, power, comfort, encouragement and peace of the Holy Spirit. Paul had a vision and the Lord spoke to him, “Do not be afraid, Paul, but speak and do not be silent; for I am with you, and no one will lay a hand on you to harm you, for there are many in this city who are my people.”

Those four words in the middle of the sentence stopped me in my thoughts: “I am with you.” As I was praying about those four, little words, the Holy Spirit impressed upon my heart to look in the Scriptures for those four, little words: “I am with you.” During my quick reference, I found 19 times where those words are spoken.

Genesis 26:24 “And that very night the Lord appeared to him and said, ‘I am the God of your father Abraham; do not be afraid, for I am with you and will bless you and make your offspring numerous for my servant Abraham’s sake.’” God speaks these words to Isaac to fill him with hope and courage!

Genesis 28:15 “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” God speaks these words to Jacob to encourage him wherever he may go!

Deuteronomy 31:6 “Be strong and bold; have no fear or dread of them, because it is the Lord your God who goes with you; he will not fail you or forsake you.” Joshua hears these powerful words from Moses as Moses is passing the baton of leadership to him!

Joshua 1:9 “I hereby command you: Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” Joshua gives these words to the people of Israel as they prepare to enter into the Promised land!

Isaiah 41:10 “… do not fear, for I am with you, do not be afraid, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.” God uses the prophet Isaiah to deliver a message of hope to the people of Israel who have been taken into captivity!

Isaiah 43:5 “Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you.” The prophet Isaiah speaks these words of promise to fill the hearts of those held in darkness and despair!

Jeremiah 1:8 “Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you.” (see the following verses: 1:19; 15:20; 30:11; 42:11; 46:28) --- The prophet Jeremiah heard these four, little words often; his message was not accepted. He was rejected, thrown in a well and left for dead. He was sent into slavery in Egypt and more. Jeremiah is known as the “weeping prophet,” yet he was filled with hope, courage, and the strength to have the endurance needed to finish the task he was called to do! (I am sure Paul felt a strong kinship with Jeremiah.)

Haggai 1:13; 2:4 “Then Haggai, the messenger of the Lord, spoke to the people with the Lord’s message, saying, ‘I am with you,’ says the Lord.” (1:13) Haggai gives these words to the people to strengthen them and to encourage them to continue to rebuild the temple!

Matthew 28:18-20 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” One of the most famous readings of these four, little words comes from our Risen and Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, as he prepared to ascend into heaven to be with His Father! The promise Jesus leaves with His followers? I am with you!

As I was reading over these passages and reflecting on these four, little words, my heart was strangely warmed. I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit speak to me and say, “Dave, why are you so afraid? I am with you, always, even to the end of the age.” As I studied the original Greek, I was overwhelmed. The Greek words are “ego eimi meta sou…” Here is how it breaks down:

Ego eimi— is an EMPHATIC “I…I AM.” It’s like God is saying something twice, He’s doubling up, compounding the emphasis of the personal pronoun… “I…myself…no one else --- it’s me…I…I AM…”

Meta sou—means with you, among you, after you, accompany you, amid you, before you, behind you, on you, in you. In essence, what God is saying and what Christ is promising us is that He is with us, in us, on us, around us, among us, after us, before us, amid us and He will accompany us—always, to the end of the age. Wow.

So What?

Have you been feeling like God has forgotten you? Are your financial pressures overwhelming you? Have you experienced a broken relationship? Has someone you love passed away? Have you lost your job? Perhaps your health has you worried or maybe it’s the health of someone you love. Maybe a child has you worrying yourself sick. The “so what” for us today is for you to put your faith in these four, little words: ego eimi meta sou. Those four, little words that are found 19 times all throughout the Holy Scriptures. The same words Isaac, Jacob, Joshua, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Haggai and the disciples heard! Now, do me a favor, put your name right in front of those four, little words, “Dave, this is me…God…I am with you…I am in you…I am among you…I am beside you…I am before you…I am behind you…I am above you…I am under you…I am all around you and I will accompany you…ALWAYS…even to the end of the age.”

Guess what? Every Sunday I get a word for you! But this Sunday the word I have for you is the very same word that Spiritual Director Sherry from Sugarland, Texas gave to me: I will never leave you nor forsake you. Be strong and courageous!

The Seed Christian Fellowship

Rancho Cucamonga, California 91701

www.theseedchristianfellowship.com

February 3, 2019

Pastor Dave Peters

[i] The Holy Bible: New International Version. (1984). (Dt 31:1–8). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.