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January, 2021 (Vol.55-No.1) |
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Preached by Dr. Gene Scott on April 25, 1982 Thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart . . . Deuteronomy 8:2 Thy shoes shall be iron and brass, and as thy days, so shall thy strength be. Deuteronomy 33:25 I WANT TO PREACH ABOUT SOME “FAITH HANDLES” that you can grab hold of as you journey through this life. In Deuteronomy 8, God speaking through Moses said, “Thou shalt remember . . .” That zeros in on individuals. God’s word has a certain quality about it: it speaks directly to you, if you will listen. “Thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness . . .” Numbers have meaning in the Bible. The number four symbolizes the whole earth, and the number ten symbolizes human responsibility. The number forty is use to symbolize a complete time of testing. So if you had been in the wilderness for forty years, you might be tempted to think, “Whew, that’s all over now! Forty years of testing was a long time; but from here on, everything should be smooth sailing!” Well, we will see about that. It is true that when one test is over, there is a sense of completeness and we can pause and look back. I want us to do that today, but I also want us to notice that the Lord was leading us, which takes us right back to our previous message about going through valleys. Where was the Lord leading us? In the wilderness. Now if you are looking for a “show me how to get out of the wilderness” church, this isn’t it. This is a “God led me forty years in the wilderness” church. Many of you know from experience what this means, because you are still in the wilderness. The church is supposed to teach people how to walk with God, but we normally don’t think that walking with God sometimes means being led around in the wilderness. “Thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee . . .” Some people go to church so they can learn how to be deliverers. Some people go to church so they can learn how to get rich. There are lots of people who go to churches where the preachers tell you “how to make faith work for you” or “how to be a success for God.” But I can guarantee that there will not be long lines of people forming in front of a church that teaches you how to be led of the Lord for forty years in the wilderness to humble you. Now abstractly, because we have learned the purposes of God, we can say that we want to be humbled. Jesus looked forward to the cross, though He still drew back from it. But there isn’t anyone who can honestly say that he welcomes humbling. There is a quality about the flesh that wants to shut out the reality of the Christian journey. That is why God lamented that the children of Israel only saw His action, but they never came to know His ways. God is not our bellhop or our servant; he is not even our teacher of how to be an earthly success. He is our Redeemer and our Master who created us for His purposes. He found us lost and wandering, and He brought us back with the price of His Son. He set us on a path that fulfills His purpose in eternity, and part of His method to accomplish that purpose is to lead us forty years in the wilderness to humble us. What is humility? Humility is a relationship between you and God. Humility does not mean humility before men. Pretending to be humble before men is not humility; it is self-righteousness. That is the substitution of human effort for what God has done. Humility is the state of being that comes upon a man who sees God aright, who sees the distance between himself and God, and sees his own unworthiness before God and responds to God accordingly. Humility has nothing to do with horizontal relationships between people. You cannot be humble toward another man. Indeed, if someone were to try to act humble toward another man, that would essentially mean that they would be putting another man in the place of God and rendering to man something that only God deserves. Those who define humility as a relationship between men reveal their humanistic idolatry, which is the ceiling of their spiritual insight. When Isaiah saw God, he said, “Woe is me! For I am undone.” But when Isaiah looked at Sennacherib’s army, he defied them and prophesied their doom as he gave encouragement to all of God’s people. When Jeremiah was called by God, he said, “I cannot speak; I am only a child.” But Jeremiah could stare five corrupt kingdoms in the face and pronounce curses on them. Humility begins with a state that understands our total dependence upon God. “Thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no.” Notice it does not say, “He led you in the wilderness to see whether or not you would act like a perfect Christian.” The world is full of super spiritual, self-righteous Christians who have done much to help the devil’s program. The self-righteous never have any problems from the devil. They are the devil’s best secret agents; and they are good at it because they don’t even know that they are his instrument. Their definition of spirituality is themselves and their mission in life is to make everyone else try to live up to their standard. God is looking for men and women of faith. What is faith? In the abstract sense, the Greek would define faith as any action based upon belief and supported by confidence. But God limits the definition of faith to an action based upon belief and supported by the confidence that when He says something, He will do it. Faith as the Bible defines it means faith in God’s word of promise. In the New Testament, keeping His commandments means grabbing hold of the promises of God and hanging on; and you keep hanging on even if you die in the process. Keeping His commandment means doing what God says because you believe that He will do what He says. Keeping God’s commandments does not mean “Thou shalt not ever get angry” or “Thou shalt not ever smoke or cuss.” Many people in the traditional church think that keeping His commandments means that you must keep a list of “Thou shalt nots,” some of which have no sound scriptural basis and were just made up by their grandparents. Keeping His commandments means hanging your body on what He has said because you believe that God spoke and nothing became everything. Whenever you are standing on His word, you are keeping His commandments and you are on the safest ground of eternity. Now, what God looks for is faith. In the New Testament frame, keeping His commandments means faithing. “The LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee,” to drive you to a dependence upon God, “and to prove thee,” that is, to test and bring forth what is in you, “to know what was in thine heart . . .” No one will ever find out if they are fearful until they are in a frightening circumstance. If you are healthy, it is easy to believe God’s promise “I am the LORD that healeth thee.” But if you are sick, that is the test that calls forth faith in the promise. It is the test that brings forth what is in your heart. If you are so wealthy that you don’t even have to look at your bank balance before you write a check, the verse “I have never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread” will not require much faith to appropriate. And if you have never been threatened with annihilation, how can you cry out as David did, “What time I am afraid, I will trust in the Lord?” It is nonsense to believe that Christians somehow live above pressure. It is the pressure that reveals our carnality that we must deal with. Christianity puts iron into the soul to cope with the weaknesses common to us all. You ask me, “Do you do it perfectly?” Heavens, no! But I know how to go on coping. “Thou shalt remember” what your life is about, which is God’s leading in the wilderness to humble you and to prove you. He “suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna,” the type of God’s word, “that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.” All of that was a backward look at how God has led us in the past. Now I want to take us into the present and the future. My goal in this message is to put us back on track. It is the devil’s trick to somehow change our focus until the right tract looks like it is not the right track. In fact, if we have been traveling on a short span of level track, when the next hill comes, the devil will try to confuse us and say that is not the track. Yes, it is. This is the track of the Christian, and you can’t eliminate it from God’s book: “thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness.” I only hope that someday my faith will be so solidified that when tomorrow morning brings the same kind of news that Jehoshaphat faced, that Hezekiah faced or that David faced, It will only take me 30 seconds to say what Paul said: “Thank God for the tribulation.” Thank God for the opportunity to keep learning that man shall not live by any of these other things, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Christianity is as tough as the Bible makes it out to be. I understand that God intends it that way for His purposes, and that His salvation is worked out in that frame. When you understand God’s word, there isn’t any other message. We are pilgrims down here, aliens in a strange land and children of a heavenly Father. We are to rejoice in those missiles that the enemy sends to annihilate us, because those missiles provide an opportunity for God to demonstrate what He will do for those who live by His word. That doesn’t mean you will be a success in the eyes of the world, but you will be a faith survivor; there is nothing that will keep you from making the whole trip. Let me ask you, as you pause for a moment and look back: is that the way God has led you? And what makes you think that it will change? It will not change. Let’s be honest and admit that when we are not threatened with our very survival, it is easy to go through a day without God’s help. Don’t you find it easy to get along without God when things are going good? How many of you can get up in the morning, have breakfast and go to the beach or play golf without the Lord’s help? Do you really need the Lord’s help to deposit a $5,000 check into the bank? It is the pressure that drives you to God. It is the pressure that teaches you that He is able. It is the pressure that makes you go straight to God’s book, and not just as an onlooker who wants to learn about His faithfulness. The pressure drives you to literally reach in and grab hold of a promise and not let go. There are passages in God’s word that I know can save me and I am going to hang on to them. Let the missiles fly; I am still going to make it through with those verses. That is why God leads us the way He does: He wants to save us by our faith. That is why we need to learn to live by God’s word alone. Now this ceases to be a general message and it becomes a specific message for you. Have you ever said, “I really need God today. I need some help; I feel like I am in a pressure cooker. Things are not going easy for me?” Well, the backward look says that God put you in that spot in order that you might learn to rely on His word. He did it that He might humble you and prove you, which is to teach you dependence on Him and find what is in your heart while you are flailing in every direction. He did it that He might teach you that you cannot live by bread alone, which symbolizes every earthly thing, but you can live by every word that proceeds out of God’s mouth. So pull up a chair at the table of the Lord and receive the word I offer you today. Deuteronomy 33:25: “Thy shoes shall be iron and brass.” Iron and brass shoes are for a tough trip. You don’t need iron and brass shoes to walk on a carpet. You don’t need iron and brass shoes to wear around the house. You don’t wear them in a sauna or in a feather bed. Remember that God was speaking to the same people whom He had already led in the wilderness for forty years. They were the same people, but now they were preparing to move forward and they could not make the journey wearing ordinary shoes. Write in the margin of your Bible these words: “Tough shoes for a tough trip.” God’s promise is that it will be a tough trip, but He also guarantees that He will give you shoes that are tough enough for the trip. That means you can make it. And on this trip, the promise continues, “As thy days, so shall thy strength be.” There are nights when exhaustion and pain set in, and the problems of the day fill my mind. I want to sleep, but it seems like my eyelids are being held open with matchsticks. That is when the demons come to whisper, “You are not going to make it.” But God’s word promises, “As thy days, so shall thy strength be.” Have you ever thought that you wouldn’t make it through the day? Yet you are still here. That is why I say that you should never quit at the end of the day, because God promises renewed strength tomorrow. “As thy days, so shall thy strength be.” Note the precision of this promise: as thy days, thy strength. God measures out the strength that you need for the day. If you wake up in the morning and you feel like you could fight off a tank, look out! That means God gave you a full dose of strength because you are going to meet the enemy head-on. But if you wake up in the morning and you can barely get out of bed, you should say, “Halleluhah! Not much is going to hit me today.” God measures out your strength exactly according to your need. In the New Testament, God says that He will not tempt you beyond what you are able to bear, but will with the temptation provide a way of escape. Literally in the Greek it says that He works out a precise method of escape for each of your temptations. I cannot face tomorrow with only tonight’s strength, but God never said that I had to. Today is over. Jesus said, “Take no thought of tomorrow; sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.” Just say, “Thank God, today is over.” God’s promise is that He will measure out to you the strength you need to face tomorrow. Now our problem is that sometimes we decide what we need, and we are sure that there is something we are going to lose tomorrow. We say, “God take my way and lead me,” and the word says that He goes to work with knowledge to order your steps. But sometimes He turns to the right when we were sure that He should have turned to the left. And here I am, saying, “Wait a minute, God, You must be lost!” God knows exactly where He is leading us. The way of faith says, “As thy days, so shall thy strength be” and tomorrow begins with a renewed portion of His strength. I only have to deal with today. The next promise is in verse 27: “The eternal God is thy refuge . . .” Literally, it says, “The God of the front is your refuge.” I could also translate it, “The God of the forefront is your place of safety.” This passage, in the original Hebrew, is very challenging for us to wrap our minds around, because it forces us to change the way we view time itself. When we think about time, we normally think that the past is behind us, and the future is ahead of us. I know all about my past, but I know nothing about what is coming in the future. But from God’s perspective, time and history are like a parade. Imagine that you are watching a parade as it passes by. The front of the parade has already passed us, and the back of the parade is yet to come. So what is up front, the future, has already passed; and what is behind, the past, is yet to come! You must reverse your view of time to see it from God’s perspective. With God, there is no time. The Bible says that He is the “Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the ending.” Einstein changed the way we view time, and we now know that time is a relative concept; it depends upon your viewpoint. We are sitting here panic-stricken about tomorrow, because we do not know what is coming up, even though we can look back with confidence concerning all the way the Lord has led us. But with God, time is like a parade. The front of the parade has already gone by, and He led it. What is yet to come is behind, trailing along. That is what this expression “the eternal God” means in the Hebrew. In simpler words, it means that God is not surprised by what is coming around the bend. Now let’s change the perspective again and imagine that we are marching in that parade. The future may be uncertain to us because the parade is about to turn a corner, but the future is not uncertain to God: He already made the trip. The God of the forefront is on tomorrow’s corner before you get there. He will give you the strength you need and He knows what is coming around the bend. It seems that I will never learn this lesson. I hope that one day I can honestly say, “I didn’t know what was coming around the bend, but when I turned the corner, the God of the forefront, who was there to shelter me, had already seen this missile coming before I got there.” But more likely, tomorrow I will say, “Hey, God, is it possible that Your radarscope missed this one? Are You as surprised as I am by what is landing on me today?” Have you ever felt that way? God’s word says that the God of the forefront is your safety. He is already there. The last part of this promise is “underneath are the everlasting arms . . .” The imagery suggests the idea of something that is underneath bottomless. I do not know how far down bottomless is, but underneath bottomless are the everlasting arms. If bottomless is as far down as I think it is, and God is as fast as I believe He is, then He doesn’t have to keep His arms there. If I am falling a great distance, then God has enough time to swoop down and catch me, assuming that God is fast and it is a long drop. But God does better than that. He keeps His arms there eternally and everlastingly; His arms are always there under bottomless. “Thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee . . . to prove thee,” to drive you to one thing. I cannot preach God’s word and not be forced to live it. He leads us to prove what is in our heart as the pressure comes. Are we relying on the word of God or on something else? Are we relying on our gifts, our talents, our money, our career or our loved ones? What are we relying on? God promises iron and brass shoes for a tough trip, and strength meted out daily, but it is always enough. “As thy days, so shall thy strength be.” There are no surprises to Him, the God of the forefront, our safety. He is not surprised, though I may be. God said to His people, “Look back over the last forty years; this is what I taught you.” Now to those same people, He promises for the trip ahead, “You will have shoes tough enough for the trip and strength sufficient for the day. The God of the forefront is already there to be your safety, and underneath are the everlasting arms.” How are we supposed to go on? That leads us to the next book in the Bible, Joshua. The children of Israel were about to go into the land that God had promised to Abraham. God said to them, “Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you.” How does that relate to us today? We are not claiming land in a literal sense having to do with geography. Rather, we are standing on all the promises of God, including the ones we have presented today. There is only one condition attached to receiving these promises, and it is repeated four times in Joshua 1: Verse 6 says, “Be strong and of a good courage . . .” Verse 7 says, “Only be thou strong and very courageous . . .” Verse 9 says, “Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage . . .” And verse 18 says, “Only be strong and of a good courage.” Faith is 90 percent courage, 9 percent endurance, and 1 percent all those other things you might have heard about faith. There is only one way for us to go: keep on faithing, and don’t lose courage. Reprinted with permission from Pastor Melissa Scott | December, 2021 Wingspread | November, 2021 Wingspread | October, 2021 Wingspread | September, 2021 Wingspread | August, 2021 Wingspread | July, 2021 Wingspread | June, 2021 Wingspread | May, 2021 Wingspread | April, 2021 Wingspread | March, 2021 Wingspread | February, 2021 Wingspread | January, 2021 Wingspread | | Year 2019 Wingspreads | August, 2016 Wingspread | 2016 Wingspreads | 2014 Wingspreads | 2013 Wingspreads | 2012 Wingspreads | 2011 Wingspreads | 2010 Wingspreads | 2009 Wingspreads | 2008 Wingspreads | 2007 Wingspreads | 2006 Wingspreads | 2005 Wingspreads | 2004 Wingspreads | 2003 Wingspreads | 2002 Wingspreads | 2001 Wingspreads | August, 2001 Wingspread | November, 2001 Wingspread | December, 2001 Wingspread | 2000 Wingspreads | 1999 Wingspreads | 2015 Wingspreads | Year 2017 Wingspreads | 2018 Wingspreads | Year 2020 Wingspreads | Year 2021 Wingspreads | Year 2022 Wingspreads | Year 2023 Wingspreads | | Return Home | Current Wingspread | Wingspread Archives | Contact Us | |
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