Testing in the Wilderness

Introduction

Good Morning! My name is Danny Watton and I am your service pastor. I want to thank you all for coming this morning even though we have had a little bit of snow this weekend.

I pray that you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that you were able to enjoy amazing food and pies. We had a nice quiet Thanksgiving with some family that flew up from Tucson. We were a little worried from the snow that Laurens brother was going to have his flights canceled but he was able to escape Minot with only a little bit of Frost Bite.

Last week you heard from Chaplain Lichlyter on and and he talked about Being set aside for a purpose, being Holy and Sanctification is a process and doesn’t happen over night.

This week we are going to look at and we are going to look at what Moses is teaching the Israelites. Up to this point We see in the beginning of Deuteronomy Moses tells the new generation of what has happened to them up to this point in their lives. He highlights that the previous generation was rebellious against God despite the grace God extended to them. Moses then calls this generation to be more faithful to God and then reminds them of the Ten Commandments. Moses tells then that the greatest Commandment is to

“love your God with all your heart and with all your might”

And then he reminds them that they are a chosen people because God loves them. He didn’t choose them because of anything they did but because He loves them and He will be faithful to the oath he gave to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

And that leaves us in Chapter 8 of Deuteronomy where Moses is telling them to remember the Lord your God. But before we jump into chapter 8 please bow your heads with me.

Pray

ESV

Remember the Lord Your God

8 “The whole commandment that I command you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers. 2 And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. 3 And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word[a]that comes from the mouth of the Lord. 4 Your clothing did not wear out on you and your foot did not swell these forty years. 5 Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you. 6 So you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and by fearing him. 7 For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills, 8 a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, 9 a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. 10 And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.

11 “Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, 12 lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, 13 and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, 14 then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, 15 who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock, 16 who fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end. 17 Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ 18 You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day. 19 And if you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. 20 Like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God.

Primary theme = Wilderness wandering

Abraham was asked to be a sojourner 500 years prior

The children of Israel were being warned by Moses. He was reminding them of the 500 years of slavery and 500 years of hardship before they entered the promise land.

It wasn’t because of their disobedience primarily but the last 500 years was about preparation. It was a test as verse 5 and so that it may go well with them as we see in verse 16

Application for us today is that the new testament says that we as a church are on a similar journey.

We live between the promise of what Jesus promised us with a new heaven and a new earth and Him coming back to wipe away every tear.

We as a church are currently living in the wilderness, waiting to enter the promise land. We can see that the world around us is not the way it is suppose to be.

And what we have to do today is how can we learn from their hardship learn so that in the end it will go well with us.

We are going to look at three things

Longing, Lesson and a Link

Longing Vs 7-10

Rest from restlessness.............God peace.

This world has too much hate, too much racism, too much violence too much brokenness.

And if you look inside yourself into places that no one else can see but you and God, That you and I not who we are suppose to be. We are restless and we are not happy.

We are consistently trying to fill that void in our hearts with stuff, experiences with relationships instead of Jesus.

You and I live in the greatest Country in the World. I was looking at a study done by the Washington Post on

“Why Most Americans Underestimate How Rich they Are compared to the rest of the World.”

The results of the study showed that most Americans think that they rank among the 37th percentile around the globe of top income earners.

What they found out was that we are ranked at the top 10% of global earners.

You see we are living at the top 10% of the world as Americans but yet we are still longing for more. We are longing for different circumstances….we are longing for something more.

We learn from the lessons of the wilderness that we are longing for a rest from our restlessness.

And the only way that the Israelites were going to find that was in a perfect relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Lesson vs 2-3

Lessons – We 2 and 16

2 And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.

16 who fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end.

The wilderness was a deliberate testing. God led them there to test them, to teach them. You know we are the best students when we are going through trials and going through painful experience.

The wilderness was a deliberate testing. God led them there to test them, to teach them. You know we are the best students when we are going through trials and going through painful experience.

One lesson we can draw out of this passage is the lesson of Dependence, and we see that in verse 3.

3 And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word[a]that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

You see God chose to use hunger in the wilderness to show them and to show us that we are fully dependent on God. God knew that if they got into the promise land that they would forget who brought them there. And we see that in verse 12-15 that if they had full bank accounts, extravagant houses and an abundant amount of the best foods and wine, that it would be harder to convince them that they needed God every hour and every second of every day.

You and I know this. When life is going great and we are succeeding at everything we put our hands to we begin to forget God. We begin to think that we attained the success on our own.

So Moses wanted to take the opportunity to teach them their dependence on God before they entered the promise land. You see this lesson is relevant today.

We as a society value our independence and freedoms more than anything else. We don’t want to submit to authority or be told how to live our life. We want to be in control of everything. We want to raise our families the way we feel is best or do our jobs how we want to and live our lives the way we want to without anyone telling us we are doing incorrectly or there is a better way.

But what we learn is that we absolutely would not survive one second without God as the center of our lives

So as they were wandering in the desert where there was no food or water for 40 years, God without fail provided for them those things so they would survive. And it taught them that without God giving them the mana and water they would perish in the desert.

5 years ago I was working in the early morning in February. I just got onto shift and I just got my coffee and was settling into my morning.

After a couple of sips of coffee I get a call on the radio that a small child around 2 or 2 ½ was wondering in the street by himself. The received a call from a passerby that said this child almost got hit by a car and was just wearing a diaper.

Now in February it is cold to Tucsonans. To all you seasoned Minot residence February in Tucson would be a tropical vacation but to use we bundle up quite extensively. So having a young toddler running around busy streets wearing just a diaper is extremely dangerous.

I begin searching for the toddler and sure enough he was on the sidewalk with a stranger who pulled him to safety. They wrapped him in a jacket and we were able to get him back to his parents.

The point I am trying to make is that we are just as dependent as that little toddler on God. We would be cold and alone without God directing our every step.

And the last thing we are going to talk about is the

Link/Application

At the beginning of Jesus’ Ministry he had just been baptized. Where was Jesus sent? Into the Wilderness. He was fasting for 40 days and 40 nights and at the end of that time and Satan enters in and says to Jesus

“You are the Son of God” You can do anything. If you are hungry make those stones into bread and eat.

Satan was testing Jesus to see if He was going to do what He said He was going to do.

You see after Moses gave the Israelites the 10 commandments he asked them if they would follow them. They said YES we will. But in verse 2 we see that the real test was how would they respond when things got hard. Would they follow him?

Jesus hungry has this test. Would He be loyal to the mission?

Jesus tells Satan that Man does not live by bread alone but every word that comes from the man of God. Jesus quoted truth from will not be defined by you but I will be defined by my Father.

Jesus didn’t come to satisfy his hunger but to satisfy ours.

In verse 16 it says if you do these things it will go well with you in the end

Jesus did everything right. He passed every test and was loyal all the way to the end and it couldn’t have gone any worse for Jesus.

In the end He was cut of from God, He was being murdered on the cross and that He received the full weight of Gods wrath

Why did Jesus do that? He did that because He said he would take the place of His people. Even though they failed at every corner and they deserve the ultimate wrath of God I will take it for them.

Give them my perfect record so that we can finally rest from our restlessness. Believe in Jesus and He will be our ultimate Mana. Jesus is the honey that In the promise land.

Conclusion

Conclusion

We are not here to gain as much comfort as we can, build our own castles for our Kingdoms. Because as we learned that if we don’t understand our mission to Love the Lord with all your might and soul. To love people and to make disciples of all nations then we will never satisfy our longing for we will rely on our own strength and ultimately forget that we need Jesus.

But if we do understand our mission then we will be filled with Gods peace and we can understand that we can’t live on bread alone but from every word that comes from the mouth of God.

I am going to ask our ushers to come up and help pass out communion. We are not alone today. We have the power and love of Jesus to guide us and give us strength.

Jesus is not dead but He is alive preparing a place for us to be with Him for eternity. We take communion as a remembrance of what Christ did for us.

He passed every test but he took the full wrath of God so that we could enter rest. We pass out the cup and He said do this in remembrance of the blood I shed for you.

We pass out the bread and remember that His body was broken for us.

We remember that He rose again through His sacrifice we can have ultimate rest in Him if we believe that He is our savior. That he died for our sins and that all we have to do is accept His free gift and we will have eternal life.

Drink the cup with me

Eat the bread with me

SONG

Benediction