Messages
Deuteronomy 8 |
| Posted by Administrator (charlie) on Mar 23 2009 |
- Introduction
Have you ever had something of great value that you loved but misplaced?
It is a terrible feeling to lose something.
I was putting together tax records this week and one of my pages was missing and I was starting to panic; fortunately I put it in the wrong file and I found it.
- Describing the Biblical Text
This text demonstrates the faithfulness of God in the way He keeps and cares for His people.
It is a text in which we a lot of encouragement in the idea that the people have been kept and protected by God.
He has lost none of the people that he intended to enter the Promised Land.
- Narrate the Contextual application
We can be confident of this very fact.
God will keep us to go where he wants to take us and will faithfully lead us there.
He will preserve what we need to enter into His purpose and His future and he will preserve His purpose in our hearts.
He will be faithful.
What poignant lesson we have in the text like the lesson of the Manna when seen beside Jesus as the bread of life.
There is just such a huge reminder here that God did not forsake you in the wilderness.
- Life Application (thesis)
So, when you looked in the mirror this morning, what did you see?
Besides hair all over the place and no makeup, I hope you saw someone that God has kept and preserved for today.
God has brought you to this moment on this day for a purpose that is higher than we are.
It is a purpose that is about His glory and about His service.
It is a purpose about His mission
Now, think about this.
What brought you here?
Some of us have been through great distress and tragedy and some of us have had circumstances sort of just dump us out where we are, but we are here now.
God has kept us.
God has protected us.
God has called us into His service.
God has kept and protected us to serve Him.
- SO WHAT!! (Outline)
Why don’t we consider two indicators this morning?
God has preserved us.
I had lunch with someone this week who told me that she grows hot peppers in the summer and likes to eat them year round so you know what she does? She puts them in jars. I can’t remember whether she said that she cans or pickles them, but either way, they are preserved for later use.
You know, that is exactly what God did for the Israelites.
He preserved them to be used for His purpose later.
Notice how he says that he fed them with Manna and he kept their clothing so that they would able to enter a land that is good in every way.
When we consider our salvation, all too often we consider an act or a decision that was a point in time.
What we often overlook is that our salvation is not a point on the timeline of our lives.
That point of realization that we needed Christ to know God and his forgiveness is merely, from our perspective the beginning of a process.
From God’s perspective is in a point already on the line of our redemption.
In other words, from my perspective, I received Christ in 1980 and thus began my walk with the Lord.
From God’s perspective, His relationship with me was already working in his foreknowing me as we would see in Romans 8.
But in either case, salvation is not a point in time.
Salvation from our perspective might begin with a point in time but it cannot stop there.
For too long in Baptist life we have tolerated an unregenerate church membership.
For too long, we have allowed people to join our churches who did nothing more than walk an aisle.
They would stand at the front of the church and a vote by the membership would be taken and voiles they are members.
Once they get a license or the emotional lift wears off, they go back home and they never darken the doors of a church again unless it is for a funeral, sometimes their own.
I was in a church business meeting one time and the congregation was discussing an item and one of the members stood up and said this, “And if I was saved I wouldn’t be able to understand the preacher’s messages anyway.”
So, what did we have?
It was someone who was a church member who had not attended church in years and had been brought in by people who had an agenda against the preacher and the person admitted to not being a Follower of Jesus Christ.
And, all that came from the erroneous teaching that salvation was all about a point in life when you made a decision.
But I want to show you that it is more than that.
Salvation is the securing of the eternal purpose of God for your life.
Salvation is the point when our purpose becomes one with God’s redemptive purpose for our lives and when it begins from our perspective, our lives should never be as they were before again.
The Spirit of God goes to work in our lives and we recognize that there is something better, something more to life than just living it for ourselves.
When that happens the Bible says we become new creations in Christ.
Old things pass away and new things come to us from God.
It is in that newness that we begin to see God’s preserving hand forhtat which is new to us is eternal in the heart and in the mind of God Jeremiah 29 tells us this, “For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. 12‘Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. 13‘You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. 14‘I will be found by you,’ declares the LORD, ‘and I will restore your fortunes and will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you,’ declares the LORD, ‘and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile.’
So, God brought his people through the wilderness and provided for the needs that they had to preserve them for His purpose.
He has done the same for us bringing us to the place where we can trust Him and abide in Him for our salvation.
But, even though he has preserved us, God has also judged us.
This is our second indicator.
Look at verse 5 with me for just a minute.
The same thing is stated in the book of Hebrews in the NT reminding us that chastens us because he loves us but I want to extend that a bit.
Most of us who are or have been parents understand that we have to establish limits and boundaries for our kids.
If we don’t, they will not be productive in life.
The Lord does the same thing for us and when we push the limists on those boundaries, He will chasten us in order to help us conform to His will in our lives.
Yet, we have opused the boundaries of those limits to the point of being out of fellowship with God.
IOW, we have all sinned
That sin is what prevents us from knowing or having fellowship with God and therefore that sin must be judged and it has been judged.
When Jesus suffered on the cross, He was suffering on behalf of everyone who would come to know Him.
He was suffering because He was paying the price for our sins.
We could never pay that price to God, for payment had to be made by one who was perfect and without sin before God.
Jesus was our substitute taking our punishment for the sins He never committed.
Your sin has been judged in Him.
This is why we have confidence that God is preserving us.
The payment that He made for us was so complete that once it is done, it is done completely.
That is why Paul declared in Romans 8 that nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.
The great love of God was demonstrated on the cross by the one who gave His all for us and who purchased us with His blood for the kingdom of God.
Do you know Christ?
Are you forgiven of that which has caused you to be at enmity with God?
Are you confident that God is keeping you?
You need to come to Him today or to rededicate yourself to Him.
Last changed: Mar 23 2009 at 2:48 PM
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