Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / April 21, 2024 | Deuteronomy - Heaven is a Place on Earth

Transcript

April 21, 2024 | Deuteronomy - Heaven is a Place on Earth · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to introduce you to the uh latest stylish footwear.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh week before last I uh hobbled into Cotton O'Neill down on the orthopedic area, and um the male nurse called me on back and he was reading my he was reading you know what he had in front of him, so I knew he was reading that uh I had a torn Achilles, and he said to me as we were walking back, he said, so how'd this happen?
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I had I'd just been around uh a grandson who I overheard um when he heard the true story of how it happened, I heard him say, that's a sissy way to break your leg.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I uh I said to the nurse, I said, Did you ever see the movie Con Air?
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Yeah.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, there I was.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: I said at 30,000, I said, I'm fighting off criminals and I had to skydive.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: So he got a little smirk on his face.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, So you hit the ground pretty hard.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Yeah.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, By any chance, did you have a pickleball racket in your hand at the time?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's how most of these things are happening nowadays.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Shut up.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um so uh for those of you who are visiting or newcomers, my name is Jim Congon, and I'm pastor here at TBC, and I love my job.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the pastor of missions and leader development.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: But my assignment today is to unpack, is to preach uh the next sermon in the Deuteronomy series.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: You heard me.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm preaching the next sermon in the Deuteronomy series.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: That and just saying that reminds me of the opening line of Nate Bargetzsi in one of his comedy sketches, where he comes out and he says, you know, for the next hour this reminds me, says, it's gonna be like a marriage conversation.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know what it's like.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: He said one side does all the talking, and the other side is thinking, How can I get out of here?
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: So um, if you're thinking, if you're a newcomer or uh you uh you know came late to this series, uh, and you're thinking, How can I get out of here?
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just telling you, I think it's understandable, because uh frankly, Deuteronomy is the Australian rules football book of the Bible.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: It goes on and on.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh hardly anyone understands it, and even fewer people care.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, but they should care, uh, and we should care because you know the world collects and it honors the final words of famous people.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Deuteronomy is the collection of the final words, over 20,000 of them, of one of the most towering figures in all of human history.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: His name is Moses, and he was both the George Washington and the Abe Lincoln of his people.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: For when his people, the Hebrew people, were slaves in the mightiest nation on earth, he liberated them, emancipated them, like Washington, and then in the next 40 years helped them survive in the desert and built them into a great nation and brought them right up to the border of the promised land, which their descendants, by the way, live in today, 3,500 years later.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: No one else on earth can say that.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's incredible.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: One of the five greatest men in the Bible, surely, Moses.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, let's remind ourselves for just a moment of his remarkable life and how God shaped him into the person that he became.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: For he was born in the land of Egypt and immediately had not one but two families, because there was an edict to kill all the male babies, and so his Hebrew family uh you know put him in the Nile River where by God's grace, a daughter of the Pharaoh pulled him out of the water and basically immediately adopted him.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: He had an Egyptian family.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: He was a royal baby, and so he had two families, though his Egyptian family was the one uh that primarily raised him.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: He learned Egyptian and Hebrew from an early age.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: His Hebrew family, his mother was Jacobed, sister Miriam, brother Aaron.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: So uh he he uh had these two families and he grew up as a prince of Egypt, and but finally became so upset with the mistreatment of his Hebrew people uh that as he saw a slave master viciously beating uh an Israelite slave, he shoved him.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And in the movie Prince of Egypt, uh, which I looked at this week, you know, the he it wasn't really Moses' fault.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: The the taskmaster tripped over his own feet a little bit and then fell over a thousand-foot cliff.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: But in the Bible, yeah, it is Moses' fault, and and but he doesn't think much of it, and he buries him in the sand and he goes on, but they gets found out, and Pharaoh puts a price on his head, and so Moses has to run for his life and he flees.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And immediately his relationship for the for the you know the next 40 years is severed, ruptured.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: The relationship between his Hebrew family and his Egyptian family.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: His life is a mess, a bloody mess.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a lot like, in some ways, um, what happened to me 13 days ago, because I was upstairs in the church gym and I was running to hit a ball across the net, and just as I landed, uh some mean person from behind hit my leg really hard with a baseball bat.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Some person who was invisible, perhaps didn't even exist, and I heard a loud pop, and I collapsed, and worst of all, didn't get the ball back over the net.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: And uh then I was later informed that I had a rupture of the Achilles tendon.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I Googled, obviously we all do, and I found out that the Achilles tendon is sort of the CEO and president of your lower leg below the knee.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's the strongest tendon in the human body, probably why it's called named after Achilles, and it connects the two large muscles that operate in your leg, connects them down to your heel bone, and that's how, you know, it's the reason that we can run and we can hike and we can play sports.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Or in my case, not play sports anymore.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: So and like this, I said, I went to the doctor a few days later, and he said the tendon had been torn apart, and he showed me, you know, a picture of it.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, we need to get those two sides back together again.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: We, you know, that we have two options, and I would recommend the second.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: First option, he says, surgery, and that's the one that's been done for uh quarterback Aaron Rodgers, you know, the New York Jets, and he's fine now.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: He said both of them will take about four to six months to heal, to recover.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: The second, the more conservative one is the one I recommend, he said.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that is that you use a boot or a cast that sort of immobilizes and holds close together those two sides.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's a mess down there right now.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: It said it's like blood, you know, after it's out of your nose and it sort of hardens.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, just to show off, I said it coagulates, because I remembered sixth grade.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: And um he said, yeah, coagulate.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, he said, so you got the blood down there, you have soft tissue injury, you got the stuff floater and so forth, and but you keep it really still, you immobilize it with a cast or boot, and and he says, you know, as time goes on, it's just a mess, it's a traumatic mess down there, but as time goes on, it hardens and it hardens some more.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: And over six months begins to turn into fiber, and those fibers stretch out, and those fibers pull back together and lock in both sides of your Achilles tendon, and in the end it's even stronger than it was before.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: I said, you know, that's sounds like a miracle.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Yeah, it kind of is.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that miracle, you know, happened to Moses.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Moses' life was ruptured and it was a bloody mess, and he fled at hundreds of miles to the east to a place where nobody was, the desert of Midian.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And he was a broken man.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And God took him off the grid.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Couldn't run, play, hike, or even play pickleball.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: And he was off the grid for not just say six months, but he was off the grid for 40 years.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: But in that 40 years, God began to heal him, and God also did some other amazing things.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: God taught him how to be a shepherd, and God taught him how to live in the wilderness and taught him wilderness survival skills, some things that God knew would be really important for him to know later.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: And God taught this prince of Egypt humility.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: And in the end, though Moses didn't realize it, he was much stronger than he had been before.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: And though he didn't want to go, though he was reluctant out of a burning bush, God convinced him to go back to Egypt, to go back to his homeland and to liberate his people, to take them into the wilderness, to shepherd them and to help them survive and to bring them to the promised land.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so he did.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: He went back to that remarkable place where the pyramids had been already standing for 800 years.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Let my people go, quoting God, and Pharaoh said no, and that's when the plagues began to come.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Moses, the first miracle worker in the Bible.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a dark time, amazing time, but in the end, the will of the Pharaoh was broken.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: And Moses was able to lead the Hebrews, or as the Egyptians called them, the ancient Near Eastern called them, the Hapiru, H-A-P-I-R-U, if you know anything about that.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Led them out of Egypt and he led them to the Red Sea, where they thought they would die, but God did a miracle.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: They crossed over and then the sea came back together and killed the Egyptians.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: And they were free, they were liberated, and they kept on going, and they went to Sinai, where they met God himself, saw him at the top of the mountain.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: For God, who had once come down to the Garden of Eden, had now come over to Mount Sinai and made that his home, and now had met with his people more than once there.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where Moses went up and saw the face of God, and the elders went up, and God gave them not just the Ten Commandments, but the entire law.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a remarkable thing.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: God gave them the instructions there for building him a home away from home called the Tabernacle, the most holy place, where he would sit as a king on a throne called the Ark of the Covenant between two giant cherubim.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what he did, except that what happened is that these people were, I mean, Moses had led them out of Egypt, but he couldn't lead Egypt out of them.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: They were rebels, they were worthless people.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: They found ways of rebelling.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: They built a golden calf even during the 40 days he was on the mountain.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: And God said, you know, after they had built a tabernacle, take them up to the promised land.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Only an 11-day journey.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: But as they got up and got under the border, they said, let's send up some spies.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: They sent up spies who came back and said the land is full of giants.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the people said basically, heck no, we won't go.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: We'd rather go back to Egypt.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: And they picked up stones to stone Moses.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: And at that point, their relationship ruptured.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Tore completely apart with God.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And God said, You don't want to go, you won't go.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Moses, I won't kill him.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: I want to kill him and just start from scratch.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I'll let them die in the wilderness over the next 40 years.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Not one of these people who's over 20 is going to make it.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'll take their children into the promised land.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so what happened over those next 40 years is that the sons of Israel walked in the wilderness until all that nation, that is the men of war that came out of Egypt, perished because they didn't listen to the voice of the Lord, to whom the Lord Yahweh had sworn that he would not let them see the land which he had sworn to their fathers to give us, a land flowing with milk and honey.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: And now they've come to the plains of Moab.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: They've come to where they can see the land across the Jordan River.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: But not they, they're children.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's like the same nation, but all of the cells have changed.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: These are the children.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: These are the youngsters.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: And if the story of Moses was a TV series, then season number one was the book of Exodus, which I did four years ago.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Season number two, Leviticus.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: First book Connor chose to preach as lead pastor.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: I told him no.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: I told him that wouldn't work.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: I told him he'd be out on his ear before he was half done.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being wiser than me.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: He did a great job, and then a year ago, Numbers.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: That was season three.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: And now the last book of Moses, Book of Deuteronomy, his final words.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing words.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: This book is actually not just one speech or one sermon, but as Connor has said, it's three sermons.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that first sermon has just ended.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: We're sort of late to the party.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: We're late to come into the valley, that natural amphitheater where Moses, standing on the highest promontory, is addressing them.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: And just to rehearse, chapters 1 through 11 of Deuteronomy are of key word is remember.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Moses goes back to the past.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: And Moses says, You know what?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord your God saved you.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: He delivered you from the land of Egypt.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: And when you've been saved, you ought to live your life in gratitude to the one who saved you.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, God did that for you.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: You ought to tell your children about it, Deuteronomy 6.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: You ought to tell them in the morning.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: You ought to tell them at noon.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: You ought to tell them at night.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: You ought to write it on the doorposts.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: You ought to put it on plaques around your house about God's salvation.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: Not only that, he says, but you were an unruly people.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: You were a rebellious people.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't even want to come into your parents, didn't even want to come into this land.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: And they all died.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: You buried all of them.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Eight minutes, every funeral.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: For the last 40 years.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: So many of your parents and grandparents died.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know all about that.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: He said, your job is never forget what God's done for you.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Never forget how he cared for you.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Remember.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then I assume they took the lunch break.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe took a nap.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: And now they've come back together.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now once again, I see Moses, this old man, the oldest man by far in Israel.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I would guess that he looks a little bit more like a desert shrub than he looks like a man because he's all bones and branches, and he has snow white hair and a flowing beard.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I can just see the assistants helping him back up to that promontory.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: And he clutches his robe around him for because he's over a hundred, he's always cold, even in the heat of the desert afternoon sun.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: And he gets back to the top of that promontory and stands there leaning against the rock, looking against thousands upon thousands upon thousands of Israelites flood back into that valley.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And he looks down there at their eagle, eager young faces.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: Almost all of them under the age of 40.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: None of them have one memory of Egypt's glories.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Most of these people never seen a pyramid, never seen a, you know, an Egyptian chariot or a pharaoh or a palace.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: These are children of the desert.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: They don't know about the plagues back in Egypt.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: All they know is scorpions and vipers and blazing heat by day and frigid cold by night and the unending search for a taste of water.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because their parents and grandparents are gone.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I am sure that Moses, as he looks at these young people whose faces are as eager as their faces of their parents and grandparents were 40 years before, when they came out of Egypt, laden with the plunder that their Egyptian neighbors had given them.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: But how soon their smiles disappeared, and I imagine Moses is thinking, how soon will their excitement go away when they cross over?
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: I wish, oh, how I wish I could lead them into the promised land.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: As Moses looks over their heads, down at that little ribbon of the Jordan.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: I've been there, Mount Nebo, looks over into the promised land.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: How I wish I could lead them there, but he knows he can't.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: He's been told he can't.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: He knows he will die maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, but he has not long to live.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: But after all, at 120, who wants to live much longer anyway?
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: But as he looks at them, I bet he feels younger.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: I bet he feels like a parent with unruly children, excited to go into the land, now finally unlike their parents, believing that they can conquer it despite the giants, those, those, those almost demonic descendants of an angelic rebellion against God, where the angels came down and cohabited with women, and their children were the Nephilim and the Anakim.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: And they have deliberately, these enemies of God, populated the very land that they know God has called his own.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: And they possessed that land, and they're going to have to be entirely eliminated.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: And these young, eager people have believed that God will lead them to victory.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: And Moses says, Oh, I wish I could see it.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: But I know that they have their parents' DNA.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: I know they're independent.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: I know they're a little bit rebellious.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: They don't realize that this is my last chance to shape and reshape their thinking.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: And this second sermon is going to be how you should live in the land.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to tell you how you should live in it.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, remember the past.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Tell your children in the present.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: But when you get into the land, I need to give them chapters 12 through 26, his longest sermon.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: I need to guide them.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: I need to motivate them.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: I need to not just be their prophet and preacher and emancipator and leader.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: I need to be their coach and cheerleader for the next hour or two.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so and so he pulls himself off the rock and gets ready to speak.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: And a cheer goes up as they see him.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: By far the most ancient person that they have ever seen in their lives, but he's their hero.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: He has dominated their families and their homes discussion for years.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if they had posters, they would have posters of Moses on the wall.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: And they look up at this man who looks more like a tree.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: And they quiet down under the guideship of Joshua and Caleb.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: And Joshua and Caleb signal to Moses, go ahead and speak.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: And they have already told him, speak slowly.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: We have shouters who will relay your words so that everybody, these hundreds of thousands, will hear them.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: Speak slowly.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: Take your time.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Moses takes a deep drink of water to clear his dusty throat, and he begins to speak.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: Time for him to lay down the instructions.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: How should he start?
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: He was thinking about that over lunch, and he's decided to speak about what he thinks is the most important single thing for God's people after they inhabit the land, and that is their worship.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Of God.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so he begins in Deuteronomy at the end of chapter 11 by saying, You are about to cross the Jordan, to go in to take possession of the land which Yahweh your God is giving you, and you shall possess it and live in it.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you shall be careful to do all the statutes and judgments which I'm placing before you today.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how much you love the property or home you live on.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up on a little three-acre property that we had a farm on, a little thousand-foot house.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: Could not believe how much my father loved that property that he'd lived on for 70, 60, 70 years.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we loved it.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: I have a picture of it hanging up in my home, that little property out in Oregon.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: But as much as you love your home, as much as you love the land of America, I need to tell you the land of Israel is loved by heaven a thousand times as much as that.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it's that important.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's why we have a tripod here, as Moses begins his speech.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: There is Yahweh, and then there is Yahweh's people, and then there is Yahweh's land, the gift of the land that we call the Holy Land.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it truly is sacred space.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: It truly is the holy land because it's the only place God has ever said, I love that place.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, I choose that place.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: So there is Yahweh, and then there is you, and then there is the land.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: And at the beginning of chapter 12, which is my passage, 12, 1 through 14, he repeats himself.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: He says, These are the statutes and the judgments which you shall carefully do in the land which Yahweh, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess as long as you live on the earth.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: I have little green circles there, as you can tell, and I just threw them on, and you're supposed to decide where they go, sorry.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm kidding.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think they should be around the word do.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because the thing is that you have this tribe, you have Yahweh, and then you have the land, and then you have Israel, and what keeps it all together as long as they obey, as long as they observe, as long as they do what he's about to tell them to do, and what he's about to tell them to do is priority one.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's how to worship.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: And he only has two rules of worship that he's going to give them.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the first is negative, and the second one is positive.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Rule number one is destroy the false worship places.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: He says, destroy completely, verses two to four, all the places.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that interesting that that's the key word in this chapter?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: All the places where the nations that you're driving out worship their gods on the high mountains, on the hills, and under every green tree.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, burn their Asherah, pulls Asherah is the consort, the wife of El E L, who's the main god, and their child, Baal, Baal.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: So Asherah, and she's always pictured, we I hate to always mention archaeology, but one of the uh great recent in the last couple years discoveries has been 30 miles southwest of Jerusalem in Lakish, Lakish, a very famous city.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: They have discovered the greatest, you know, the most uh well-kept Canaanite uh worship uh center that they've ever found.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: And and loads of these asherah poles and of these little gods of Baal, these little things that you can take home with you if you pay the priest enough, and and a white altar where you can sacrifice your child if you don't like them very much, and stuff like that.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: So he says, tear down their altar, and he makes fun of them.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: They're everywhere.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: They're everywhere, you're gonna find them everywhere and go on the land, on the high mountains, on the hills, under every green tree.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's an exaggeration, but he's saying, you know what?
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: They have loads of idols, they worship so much stuff, they're like, you know, and they're under all the green trees.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: Tear all that stuff down, wipe out their names from every place.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: Don't worship Yahweh your God this way.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, this no longer, I mean, we it's not not a rule for us, you know.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: If if if you go by a Hindu temple, don't burn it down.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: Don't, you know.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, um, so, but this, when you're in God's country, when you're in God's land and you're in a theocracy and God is ruling and you're taking over his land, then yeah, that's what you do.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now it says uh at the end of the chapter, the last three verses, the same similar thing.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: When Yahweh your God annihilates the nations before you, which you're entering to take possession of, and you drive them out and live in their land, be careful not to be ensnared by their ways.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: See, he's worried.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you leave those altars up and stuff, then your kids are gonna walk by them all the time, and everything is so green, and you're gonna be thinking, you know, my God, Yahweh, he's the God of the desert.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, we're thirsty and everything, but this land is so green.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: Why is it so green?
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Why are the crops so nice?
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: Why is there water?
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: Why is there rainfall?
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I wonder if it's maybe, you know, they worship this God.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: They worship Baal.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because after all, isn't Baal a God who dies and rises again every spring and brings the rain and has lightning in his right hand and so forth.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, so why don't we take a couple of these little Baal idols home?
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe if we got extra crops, maybe put them on the altar.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: And Moses says, this is why you've got to get rid of them.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be tempted to do this.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: Were they tempted to do this?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, they were tempted to do this.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: They left some of that stuff up.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: And now we find as we excavate Israelite homes, we find these little idols.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: I even bought one, my it probably shouldn't have it over at the church, but I figured it sanctifies it.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's in the library.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's an actual, you know, an idol, an Egyptian, basically an Egyptian idol.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: And but, you know, Paul says idols are nothing.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: So hey, it was worth the$30 40 years ago.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's now about a thousand.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: I shouldn't have told you that.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: But if you take it, it'll curse your house, I promise.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: So um, but that's why we're finding all of these things.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: They did take these.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: They found these little Baal idols and they took them home.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh Baal was this, you know, sort of a bull, you know, uh, because that's fertility, and they would and and notice they even, last line here, don't do this.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: Don't even ask about their gods, saying, How do these nations worship?
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'll do the same.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: They even burned their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods, and they did.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: There's there that this is Megiddo on the right-hand side with that giant Canaanite altar, which predates these words by Moses almost a thousand years, but was used, but was used by the Canaanites even to this day.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: Huge altar where they found all these children's bones at the bottom and signs of blood.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: Can you believe that?
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I can believe it, because the Israelites blew it.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: A couple hundred years later, they were still worshiping Baal.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't help the Jezebel, the high priestess of Baal, was queen up north with Ahab and set up the Baal worship.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, there was a king in Israel, Manasseh, the longest reigning king, who shut down the temples, erected an idol to Baal outside, and encouraged child worship by the Israelites.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: Incredible.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's why God had to, you know, send them away to Babylon where all the idolatry got burned out of them.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: But God says, you know, you've got to eliminate these places so they won't be a temptation.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: Worship rule number two is positive.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: You need to worship Yahweh in one place, one place only, not under every green tree, but at his place, the place he chooses.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Verses 5 through 7.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, and turn to the turn to the place Yahweh your God chooses from all your tribes to put his name there for his dwelling and go there.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: You are to bring there your burnt offerings and sacrifices, your tents, tithes, and personal contributions, your bow offerings free will, firstborn of your herds and flocks.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: You will eat there, at that one place in the presence of Yahweh your God.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: You will rejoice with your household and everything you do because Yahweh your God has blessed you.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's an invitation.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: Come to this place.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: Not every place, just one place.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: You are not to do as we are doing here today.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone does what seems right in his own sight.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: You worship any way you want.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Moses bugged.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: Some people say, I can worship God just as well on the golf course.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: They they were saying that back then.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: Joke.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: I can worship God just as well in a boat on the lake.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: I can worship God just as well on my cell phone.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: And Moses is saying, No, no, you can't.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: God sets the rules.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: He's not super grateful that you're just doing anything to worship him.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's not God.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: God's choosing.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: You indeed, you've not yet come, it's true, you haven't yet come into the resting place and the inheritance the Lord your God's giving you.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: But when you cross the Jordan and you live in the land the Lord your God's giving you to inherit, and he gives you rest, it would take about a year to conquer Canaan, and he gives you rest from all the enemies around you, and you live in security, then Yahweh your God will choose the place to have his name dwell.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, what place would that be?
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: It would be where the tabernacle is.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: Duh, right?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's where the Lord dwells.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: His throne is the golden ark and the holy of holies in between those two great cherubim.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: So that's where he dwells, and it's wherever God says the tabernacle should be.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: Bring there everything I command you, your burnt offering, sacrifices, uh, tithes, etc., etc.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: And he concludes our passage by saying, You will rejoice before there it is again.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like C.S.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis says, the serious business of heaven is joy.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: Our worship should include joy.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's one thing that carries over.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: You will rejoice before the Lord your God, you, your sons, daughters, etc., etc.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: Be careful not to offer your burnt offerings in all the sacred places you see.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: You must offer your burnt offerings only in the place the Lord chooses in one of your tribe.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: And there you must do everything that I command you.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: There it is.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: Rule number one to them at that time in God's land, right?
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: But the Lord is their king with a tabernacle, you do not worship anywhere else but one place, and that is the place the Lord is.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: And every single king of Israel was judged based on whether or not he did that.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: So uh there were two main places that God said, This is where I want my tabernacle.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: The first happens to be a place I planned to go this May to take a group to dig archaeologically, because the head archaeologist there is a friend of mine.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: He's a Christian, he's become famous, and that's Shiloh.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: For the next 300 years, during the time of Judges and 1 Samuel, this is where God said he wanted his tabernacle, and uh and uh they have found the site of where the tabernacle was.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's remarkable.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: Last time I was over there, I had a group from TBC, and we walked right in that site, went and stood where the Holy of Holies was back then.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: Someone found a little coin that dated back from this very time period, one of our group.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was remarkable.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: For 300 years.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, look at the you know where he says to eat and rejoice.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know what they found at the tops of all those hills around?
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: They found thousands of pieces of pottery dating from this time.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: Plates and cups and bowls.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: What happened is they would eat together and they had such a great week together.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was such a wonderful, joyful time that when they would leave each year after Passover or whatever, the last sight of that place, they would break, like breaking your wine glass at the fireplace, they would break their stuff just to say, you know, nothing beats the worship, the social worship, the joy that we've had this last week.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that cool?
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: So um, so that was the Shiloh, that was that place where they would come to that tabernacle and they worship because that was God's home away from home.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's where his presence was, right?
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: But then, as you know, in about 1016 BC, uh David Um moved the ark to um to Jerusalem, was not allowed to build a temple, but Solomon then built a temple and it became the central place of worship.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: And like I say, the rest of the kings, both of the north and the south in Israel, were judged based on whether or not they honored that central place of worship, which is why Jeroboam was called the worst, most evil king of all, because in the north he was so scared his people would go down to Jerusalem and fall in love with it, they would leave him, stop paying taxes, go live in the south.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so he built two alternate worship centers, one in the north at Dan, one in this in the south of Israel at Bethel.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you can go see the location of that altar where there was a golden calf, even today.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's remarkable.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: So that's it.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: In the Old Testament, you worshiped in one and only one place, and then all of a sudden you come to the New Testament and you read Jesus seemingly contradicting what Moses says, because Jesus says to the woman at the well, up north at Gerizim, there near Shechem, where the ark, where the tabernacle had been in ancient days for a few years, he says, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, Gerizim, where the Samaritans thought was the most holy place, nor in Jerusalem, he says, will you worship the Father?
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: And he's speaking, of course, about when he leaves and when the temple is destroyed.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: You worship what you don't know, we know what we worship for salvation is of the Jews, but the hour is coming, and now is already when the true worshipers will worship the Father in what?
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: Spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such to worship him, for God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth, which of course most of us, many people, misread to go, oh, that means I can worship anywhere and anyhow I want.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't really matter, just as long as you know.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm not gonna stand here for a moment and confuse you by saying that God has one place in the world, Jerusalem, or anywhere else, that we're supposed to go worship today, because he says very clearly through his son Jesus that the place right now doesn't matter except for where he uh where he resides.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, it's not necessarily Jerusalem.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: So where is it?
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, don't you?
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: Let me draw some lessons from this and in the process tell you how it applies and where where we're supposed to worship today.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: I grabbed this because Russell Brand is not a Christian.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: He is a well-known gadfly in uh the United Kingdom in London.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: He's a blunt British actor, he's a free thinker, he's a comedian.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: And stunningly, here recently he put this on his uh website.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: When it says in the Old Testament, worship no other gods than me.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: The implication is that we are a species that worships.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: And if you do not worship the divine, you will worship the profane.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: Can you say amen?
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: You will worship your own identity, you will worship your belongings, you will worship the template that culture lays before you.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: He's not a Christian.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: I hope he does become a Christian, but he's precisely right, isn't he?
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: That true worship is priority one, and true worship is worshiping God.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody worships someone, as Bob Dylan's saying.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone serves someone and worships someone.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: The question is, is your worship true?
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: Are you worshiping the true God?
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: Second, worship's not about you, it's about him.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: And he's choosing.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: Don't just casually say I can worship God any way I want to.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: I like what Donald Carson, who's been here to the church, uh one of the foremost New Testament scholars in the world, has studied under him for my doctorate.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: He says, you cannot achieve excellent worship until you stop pursuing excellent worship and pursue God Himself.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: Some have begun to worship worship rather than worship God, which reminded me of C.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: S.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis's words in The Great Divorce.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: Every writer and poet and musician is drawn away from the love of the thing he tells to the love of the telling.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we become more interested in what we say about God than in God Himself.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's true, isn't it?
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: You'll watch uh you'll watch a TV, you know, you'll watch a uh uh three-part TV show, or three seasons or three or four book series.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: And and and the thing is a super hip because the author is so concerned about the story in the first season, or in the first volume, and in the second.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: By that time they become so famous, all of a sudden, as you read the third, haven't you ever found this to be true as you're watching TV?
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: The third is just awful because you can tell they're they're thinking about themselves and they're adding words, and the third volume is 1,200 pages instead of 300, and you don't know what I'm talking about.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: How about volumes 4 through 20 of Dune?
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh anyway, this is just extra.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, but and and sometimes, and you see that happen.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we, you know, it's great to have good worship.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: We have good worship, we have high-quality worship here.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: But Lord, spare us from focusing, from sitting here, like sometimes you'll do when you go to a worship concert, and I caught myself going to a prominent worship group concert in Kansas City, and I had to keep catching myself because I was so in love with so admiring what was happening on stage and start not worshiping God anymore.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: Does that make any sense?
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: Am I unique here?
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: I tend to be a hero worshiper.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that's lesson tied step, three simple lessons.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's the second one.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about you, it's not about anyone else, it's about him.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: And he's choosing.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: And now we get to the main one.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the main lesson: the geography or place still matters.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's a cosmic battlefield.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's called by Michael Heiser cosmic geography.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the real issue is God must be worshipped wherever he is present.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's why it was just one place back in the Old Testament, because there he was at that place, in Shiloh or in Jerusalem, in the Holy of Holies, there in the Ark of the Covenant.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: Where is he now?
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, wherever he is is holy ground.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: Wherever he is is sacred space.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: But whereas in the Old Testament, that was in the tabernacle, and then in the temple, in the New Testament, we find out, thank God, he's at a number of places.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, he's inside you if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, for you are, as we read three times 1 Corinthians 6, 2 Corinthians 6, Romans 8, because you are the temple.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you know, Paul Asthets, you're the temple today of the living God, and that the Holy Spirit dwells within you.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that a remarkable thing?
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's just incredible, isn't it?
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why you can worship by yourself.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: Private worship was unknown in the Old Testament, but I hope you have a chair like I do where you can have a daily quiet time.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think of, I think of a famous story of a 17-year-old Vietnamese girl who watched the other 49 people around her who'd gotten on the ship fleeing Vietnam for Australia, watch them die one by one.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: One day out from Vietnam, the engine died.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: After several more weeks, the food was all gone.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: After a couple more weeks, people started dying.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: One, two, three, thirteen, twenty, thirty, and then they hit a coral reef.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: And people screamed, and she wept.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: Tranquai quay did.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: And she watched them drown.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the few of them that survived were able to swim and crawl onto that coral reef with no food.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: And they were beset upon by at night these vampire bats feeding on the dead bodies around them, and during the day, these seagulls and and and vultures that would dive down and be eating these dead bodies.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then one by one the rest of them died.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: And after 128 days, her one partner died.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: And little this little 17-year-old girl was able to capture a couple of vultures and feed on their raw flesh.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: And on the 140th day, a fishing boat came by and picked her up.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: And after she recovered enough to be able to speak, they asked her, How in the world did you survive this horrific adventure of watching everyone else died?
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: And she says, I began singing and worshiping God and praying without stopping.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that got me through it.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: And because she has God inside her, she was in a sacred space on that coral reef.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: That was holy ground where she was, and it's holy ground where you are when you stop during the week.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: And you sing and you pray and you worship God.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's astounding, isn't it?
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: But too many people stop there.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's two other ways, two other places that in cosmic geography, God dwells in one we call small groups.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's called two or three in the New Testament in Matthew 18, 20, where what?
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: Two or three are gathered together, speaking about elders and it's speaking about discipline, I know.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: But it's also it's a general rule that where two or three or six or eight are gathered together in the name of Christ.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: He's present there.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: Do you realize how critical, how important that Sunday school class is, that small group?
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Is.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's holy ground where you are at that moment.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's darkness outside.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: But it's light where you are.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the third place is, of course, the congregation.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: Where you are right now, this is actually holy ground.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: Sacred space.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is God's, you are God's temple, Paul said to all of them in that Corinthian church.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: You are God's, that's God's household, Paul said to Timothy in 1 Timothy 3.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's why, by the way, you have that strange, scary verse that Connor preached on, you know, last year, which is if there's someone with unrepentant sin, you have to kick him out.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's a sacred space.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: Commit him to Satan.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's all dark out there.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's where they sent unrepentant sin in the Old Testament.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: They put it on the go, on the goat Azazel, send him out and throw him over a cliff.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: Out there, it's dark.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: Out there, that's where the enemy is.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: But there is sacred space wherever God is.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: As an individual believer, as a small group, as a congregation.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: Amen?
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: And God is here, and you need to realize that it's a wonderful, wonderful truth.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so you and I can worship God here.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then one day, guess what?
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: The Old Testament comes back to life for the Lord Jesus Christ Himself comes back.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_00: And he comes back to one place on earth.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: He brings down the new Jerusalem.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: And in the next to last chapter of the Bible we read, I saw no temple in the city.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: For its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: For the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: And by its light will the nations walk.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: Where will they walk?
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_00: There it is.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: You and I and all the nations, where will we go?
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: We will go to Jerusalem to visit the Lord Jesus Christ, and there will be no night there.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll bring our glory and our offerings there.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_00: And they'll bring into it the glory and honor of the nations.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what's detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's Book of Life.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: Is that amazing?
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, we'll always be able to worship the Lord Jesus Christ wherever we are, because he will be in us forever.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: But then we'll also be able to have that one special place, which is in the land he loves, that special place called Jerusalem.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the Lord Jesus Christ will be there.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to get a reservation to be on the first plane.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: And because I looked like this in my four flights this week, California and back, I mainly was sitting in the very first seat, and they were wheeling me on and taking my crutches.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I might fake being crippled in that day.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: I can be the first one off the plane to go see Jesus.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: But that's what Moses wanted to tell him.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: He wanted to tell him that you can heal up if you've been broken in your life and things have ruptured.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: God has you in a place where you can get stronger and stronger.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: And what he wants more than anything else from you is what the Father is looking for.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: He's looking for worshipers.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: And praise God, you don't have to make a pilgrimage to Mecca or anything like that anymore.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: You can do it in a chair in your house.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: You can do it in your small group.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you can do it every weekend right here.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for the uh for the way you've designed worship, for the way you watch our worship, for the way heaven looks over the balustrade and delights in what we do when we worship you in spirit and in truth.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: Make us worshipers this week, Heavenly Father.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: In the name of your Son Jesus Christ, we pray.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for coming.