The Promise of God's Provision
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I. Introduction
I. Introduction
Last week we talked about Israel’s lack of faith in God’s ability to bring them into the land and give their enemies over into their hand. It seems that Israel is not finished grumbling against God yet.
The people became impatient:
What does it say about us when we become impatient?
It means we are focused on self.
It means that we have established our own expectations without consulting God.
God has not called us to affirm one another in our sin.
II. God Punishes Sin and Demands Repentance
II. God Punishes Sin and Demands Repentance
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Then they set out from Mount Hor by the way of the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; and the people became impatient because of the journey. The people spoke against God and Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this miserable food.” The Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. So the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, because we have spoken against the Lord and you; intercede with the Lord, that He may remove the serpents from us.” And Moses interceded for the people.
A. God Punishes Sin
A. God Punishes Sin
God does not have human desires.
God does not desire repentance like we desire people to repent.
God desires repentance from sin from the standpoint that repentance from sin is good to desire.
God is sovereign. He does NOT sit in heaven wringing his hands HOPING and WISHING we would just do better.
I desire to do the rim to river hike at the Grand Canyon but I am not planning on doing it.
What kind of God would he be if sin were just an imperfection, a mistake that humans make on occasion and he reacted like this?
The reason some false churches and false converts to Christianity think the the Bible is so harsh in the OT and even in its views on issues like homosexuality is because they have a very flawed understanding of sin and a very high view of themself.
Lexham Survey of Theology God’s Wrath
The wrath of God is not a popular concept in the liberal West. It is widely ignored, denied, or radically reinterpreted. Yet it is a prominent doctrine in the Bible. In the Old Testament there are over 580 references, using more than twenty different words.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,
A jealous and avenging God is the Lord; The Lord is avenging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on His adversaries, And He reserves wrath for His enemies.
Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good.
to have a vehement dislike for someth., hate strongly, abhor τὸ πονηρόν the evil
Man is expelled from the garden and cast into spiritual bondage and darkness.
The entire planet is drowned in a deluge.
Sodom and Gomorrah are burned with fire over their sexual filthiness.
The entire Egyptian Army is drowned due to their profound display of pride and arrogance.
Israel and Judah rebel repeatedly and are given into the hands of their enemies.
In the end Israel’s prized temple is burned and Jerusalem is desolated by the Romans because of her rejection of Messiah.
And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
I am afraid that the picture that most of the church paints of God is hardly even half true these days.
B. God Demands Repentance
B. God Demands Repentance
“When you come to appear before Me, Who requires of you this trampling of My courts? “Bring your worthless offerings no longer, Incense is an abomination to Me. New moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies— I cannot endure iniquity and the solemn assembly. “I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts, They have become a burden to Me; I am weary of bearing them. “So when you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you; Yes, even though you multiply prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered with blood. “Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Remove the evil of your deeds from My sight. Cease to do evil, Learn to do good; Seek justice, Reprove the ruthless, Defend the orphan, Plead for the widow.
“Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance; and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father’; for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham.
Now after John had been taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”
and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”
J.I. Packer
Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs Repentance: A Christian Changes Radically
The New Testament word for repentance means changing one’s mind so that one’s views, values, goals, and ways are changed and one’s whole life is lived differently. The change is radical, both inwardly and outwardly; mind and judgment, will and affections, behavior and life-style, motives and purposes, are all involved. Repenting means starting to live a new life.
repentance, turning about, conversion;
John the Baptist starts off preaching repentance.
Jesus starts his ministry by preaching repentance.
Peter’s first sermon in acts is repent and be baptized.
When Paul stood before the Areopagus he preached repentance to the brightest minds in Greek society.
When you stop preaching repentance, you stop preaching the gospel.
The gospel is not come to Jesus and he will fix your problems. YOU are the problem. Everything else is just a symptom.
Share the gospel with a heart motivation that people will hear and believe. Share it with the hope that God will bring men to himself. Share it with confidence. Find a way to be okay with people hating you because they hate Christ and hate the gospel.
C. The Intellectual Element in Repentance
C. The Intellectual Element in Repentance
There is a knowledge of personal sin, defilement, and helplessness.
For I know my transgressions, And my sin is ever before me.
D. The Emotional Element in Repentance
D. The Emotional Element in Repentance
There is a change of feeling, sorrow for sin as committed against goodness and justice and therefore hateful to God, and hateful in itself.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me.
I now rejoice, not that you were made sorrowful, but that you were made sorrowful to the point of repentance; for you were made sorrowful according to the will of God, so that you might not suffer loss in anything through us.
How can you be involved in evangelism without creating this emotion of sorrow?
Those whom God is calling to himself repent when they feel the sting of divine truth. The unregenerate respond with a range of emotions.
E. The Volitional Element in Repentance
E. The Volitional Element in Repentance
There is a change of purpose, an inward turning from sin and disposition to seek pardon and cleansing.
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.
III. God Provides an Intercessor
III. God Provides an Intercessor
So the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, because we have spoken against the Lord and you; intercede with the Lord, that He may remove the serpents from us.” And Moses interceded for the people. Then the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he will live.”
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?”
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. “He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. “For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. “But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.”
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.
Now the main point in what has been said is this: we have such a high priest, who has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, a minister in the sanctuary and in the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man. For every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices; so it is necessary that this high priest also have something to offer. Now if He were on earth, He would not be a priest at all, since there are those who offer the gifts according to the Law; who serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, just as Moses was warned by God when he was about to erect the tabernacle; for, “See,” He says, “that you make all things according to the pattern which was shown you on the mountain.” But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, by as much as He is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises.
When you stand before God, you should stand behind Christ.
IV. God Provides the Way of Salvation through Faith
IV. God Provides the Way of Salvation through Faith
And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived.
“And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.”
“As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.
“And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.”
Lexham Survey of Theology Saving Faith
Traditionally, saving faith consists of knowledge, assent, and trust. Believing that certain things are true about Christ must lead to belief in Christ, a personal trust in Christ as Savior and Lord. This initial trust, given in response to the gospel’s announcement, is the first step in an ongoing covenant relationship marked by continuing trust and faithfulness.
For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.
This kind of Faith is NOT something everyone has and all the have to do is just make a decision to exercise it.
For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
How do I know that unbelievers do NOT have unexercised saving faith?
Without faith, it is impossible to please God.
Unless you do those things that please God, you are God’s enemy.
Faith comes from hearing the word of Christ which is the gospel.
The gospel must produce faith or it is not beneficial.
God gifts to us the ability to believe.
God must give us the ability to believe.