Lessons from History

*The below transcript was generated and formatted by AI and may not accurately represent the recording.

Well, maybe you’ve had the question come through your mind before: How did I get here? Or how did we get here? It’s a common refrain that comes when you’re dealing with something tragic—you know, marriage failure. I’ve had the sad job of having to sit with couples where, or an individual, where someone has ruined a marriage through faithlessness. And it’s very, very common for one of them to say, “How did we get here? How did this happen? I don’t understand. How did we get to here?” It’s just hard for me to understand.

It happens in business failure. You know, someone’s business falls over, and they’ve been watching it, and they thought it’s been going well, and then it just collapses. How did this happen? How did it come to this?

But, you know, the same thought can come at really good times, right? When something really wonderful happens. You look at a brand-new baby in your arms—first child I think especially—and you look at it and say, “How did this happen? This is amazing.” Or you look at your new bride on day one of your marriage, and you look at her, and you say to yourself, “Man, how did I get such a stud?” You know, you have these wonderful moments in your life where you’re just filled with joy. How did we get here?

And you can probably imagine the Israelites asking that question, can’t you? As they stand on the edge of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Jordan’s before them. They’re standing there looking at the Promised Land, the land flowing with milk and honey. Behind them, of course, is the wilderness, and behind the wilderness is Egypt. And you can imagine the Israelites saying to themselves, “How did we get here?”

But, you know, even they could have said that in two ways because they had stood there 40 years earlier, hadn’t they? Forty years earlier they had stood there looking at the Promised Land, and so you could imagine them saying, “How did it come to this? How did we get here?” But then they could also say it wonderfully, looking at the fruit and the joys of the Promised Land, saying, “How did we get here?”

So how did we get here, is the question. Moses begins by reminding them of their history. He reminds them of their history, and he reminds them of sort of three primary lessons that come out of their history. And so I want us to look at these three chapters. Obviously, we can’t look in detail or we’ll be here for the next three weeks. But we can look at some big themes—three big themes that surface through these chapters, one after another. And we may come back and pick up some smaller themes in the coming weeks. I haven’t decided that yet.

The Faithfulness of God in the Past

The first thing I want you to see is that Moses reminds the people of the faithfulness of God in the past. He reminds the people of God’s faithfulness in the past to his people. And so one of them might ask the question, “How did we get here? How did it come to this? How did we get here?” And Moses would have said, “Because God is faithful. That’s why we’re here today. The reason we’re standing before the Promised Land is because God is faithful.”

And maybe an Israelite would reply and say, “Well, how has he been faithful to us, Moses? In what way has he been faithful?” And Moses would preach in his sermon and say, “Well, firstly, God has faithfully kept his word.”

Have a look at chapter one and verse 3: “In the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month.” Well, you might say to yourself, “Well, what does that mean? What’s that got to do with God keeping his word?” Well, if you transport yourself back into the Book of Numbers, in Numbers chapter 14 when the judgment of God falls upon the previous generation, what is the punishment that he says to them? He says to them, “You will wander in the wilderness for forty years.” And now, forty years later, here they stand. And when he made that judgment, he said, “And you will die in the wilderness, but your children, your children of whom you said would be devoured in the Promised Land, I will cause them to enter. I will bring them into the Promised Land.” And now forty years later, what do we find? We find the exact word of God spoken being fulfilled. The faithfulness of God—when He speaks, He always does. We love to quote those words, “The word of God never returns void.” Well, here it is. It’s not returning void. He said forty years, and forty years later they stand on the edge of the Promised Land. So firstly, He faithfully kept his word.

The second way He’s been faithful is that He has faithfully kept His covenant. Have a look at verse eight and 10 of chapter one. Verse 8: “See, I have set the land before you. Go in and take possession of the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them and to their offspring after them.” And in verse 10, notice that last line: “You are today as numerous as the stars of heaven.”

I wonder if any of you recognize that language. It’s very covenantal language, isn’t it? The Lord came to Abraham in the book of Genesis chapter 12, and He said to him, “I am going to lead you into the land of Canaan. I’m gonna give it to you as your possession. It will be given to your offspring.” He says, “Not yet. Not yet, because the sins of the Amorites have not hit their peak yet. It is not time for judgment, but I will bring your children in.” And He said to them, “Your people, they will go and they will be wandering in a foreign land, but then I will come and visit them, and I will bring them into this Promised Land.” And He took Abraham there, and they traveled there. They didn’t inherit it yet, but he got to sit in the Promised Land and look around him and say, “One day this land will be my children’s.”

And the Lord faithfully through the years watched over Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Jacob’s twelve sons. And through Jacob’s twelve sons, the children became numerous. He multiplied them. And do you remember the words of the covenant that God says to Abraham? He says to him, “Go outside. Look outside. Look at the stars. Count them. Count them if you can. I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of the heavens.” And what are we seeing? It’s fulfilled. We estimate some one to 1.5 million people traveled out of Egypt to the Promised Land. I mean, can you imagine a mass migration of a million people wandering through the wilderness? And yet they multiplied more as the Lord watched over them. The Lord was faithful to them. He fulfilled His promise.

And the Lord said, “You will wander for 400 years. You will be in a foreign land for 400 years, but I will visit. I will bring you out.” And in Exodus 12, Moses tells us that on the 400th year, since the promise to Abraham, on the 400th year we left. Because the Lord is faithful to His covenants. He never fails His covenants. The Lord makes them.

Do you remember the day when the Lord made the covenant with Abraham? Abraham takes a bunch of animals and he cuts them up in pieces, and he puts a half on each side. It was called cutting a covenant. And what you would do—this was like before you had contracts, right? They didn’t have printers yet. And so they would write up a contract with dead bloody animals, and then the two business partners would stand between them and they would walk between the dead carcasses, and they would say, “If one of us fails the contract, may we be like those dead animals.” And Abraham cuts these animals and he puts them there, and what happens? He doesn’t walk through them. The Lord does. The Lord appears as a pot of fire and travels through the carcasses, and what the Lord is saying to Abraham is, “This is my covenant, and I’m the only one responsible, and I will fulfill it.” And He’s doing it. And so we see God faithfully keeping His covenants.

Well, the third aspect of faithfulness that we see from God here is that He faithfully gave them elders and judges, leaders to help His people, to nurture His people, to care for His people. Why? Because Moses couldn’t do it. Moses says in chapter 1, verses 9 through 18, in verse 12 he says, “How can I bear by myself the weight and burden of you and your strife?”

Now, Moses has taken two stories here, one in Exodus and one in Numbers, and sort of squished them together. You know, preachers have a habit of doing this. And so as he’s preaching, he’s merged these two stories together. And the first one in Exodus, Moses’ father-in-law comes to him and says to him, “You’re gonna kill yourself if you carry on doing this. You’re trying to judge a million people by yourself? And the people are standing outside in the sun all day long while you do judgment? Like, this is insane. Appoint judges under yourself to make judgments, and difficult things have them bring to you.” And that seemed wise, so Moses did it.

The second story is in a moment when the people murmur against God, and Moses goes to God and he says to God, “God, I can’t do this anymore.” I mean, talk about the sermon this morning, okay. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t carry these people. I can’t put up with their moaning. I am through. Just kill me. I’ve had enough of it. I am not doing this anymore. I cannot carry them. This is not my job. This is not my responsibility.” And he’s partially right. And the Lord in His grace says, “Gather to me seventy elders, and I will put some of the spirit that I’ve given you on them.” And Moses gathers seventy people together. And the Lord in His grace and His kindness and His faithfulness to the people, He shifts some of the spirit of God from Moses onto these seventy men to represent God among the people of Israel.

And in this way, the Lord faithfully cares for His people. Because we all know that without leaders, we’re lost, right? Without a leader, the home suffers. We see it everywhere today. And without leaders, a nation will suffer, a church will suffer. And the Lord in His gracious faithfulness appoints these seventy men, or the judges from Exodus, in order to make sure that His people are well cared for, because He loves them. He loves them.

And so Moses is reminding them of the faithfulness of God. And brothers and sisters, can’t we say the same thing? The Lord has been faithful to us. Can you not say the Lord has been faithful to me? Not according to my standards, but according to God’s standards. He has faithfully watched over my life. He has faithfully guarded my life in such a way, as the catechism puts it, that not a hair will fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven.

Our Father has provided us with fathers. It’s Father’s Day. He’s provided us with fathers. Now, I know some of your fathers were rubbish. I get it. Some of you had wonderful fathers. And you can rejoice that you had leaders that looked over your family to care for you and nourish you. That’s the faithfulness of God. If you’ve had a Christian father who’s raised you in the fear and admonition of the Lord, you can thank God for a faithful leader. If you’ve had faithful elders and deacons in your life that you’ve looked up to, men of God, you can say, “Praise the Lord for God’s faithfulness to me.”

But you can also give thanks to God for His faithfulness in always keeping His word. Has there ever been once in your life where you’ve looked to the Word of God for something and it’s failed? Never. Because God’s word never fails, because He’s always faithful to it. Or what about His covenant? He made a covenant to save. And has He turned anyone away that would seek Him for eternal life? Has He turned anybody away that would seek to be part of His covenantal family? Has He forsaken their children? Has He forsaken His covenant? Never. We must acknowledge God’s faithfulness to us. And yeah, we only have—we’ve only been here a year—but even we have much to be thankful for, much to rejoice in God’s faithfulness together. God has blessed us in myriads of ways.

And so we see, and we’re reminded of God’s faithfulness to the Israelites in the past and to ourselves.

Israel’s Faithlessness

But Moses also reminds them of their faithlessness. He reminded them of God’s faithfulness, but he also wants to remind them of their faithlessness. How did we get here? Because we were faithless. Why are we here now rather than forty years ago? Because of our faithlessness. How have we been faithless? That’s the question to ask, isn’t it? Moses tells us.

First, verses 19 to 25, Moses effectively says that you did not trust God. You did not trust God. Now, it’s fascinating, when you compare the story with the account of it in Numbers, it reads quite differently. In the book of Numbers, we’re told that God told Moses to appoint spies. Here, Moses says, “You asked me to appoint spies.” So, which is it? Is Moses changing the story? Now, I think what we’re getting here is the other side of the story. In Numbers, we only hear about what’s happening on the divine side of things. But what we see here is the root of what took place.

As the people of God, the first time, came to the Promised Land and looked, they said, “Hey, you know what would be really smart? I know God’s told us to go into the Promised Land, and He’ll be with us and all that sort of jazz, but maybe it would be smart if we just tested the waters first. You know, let’s just send some spies in to strategize. You know, like, we don’t wanna be foolish and run headlong into danger. Let’s do some strategical planning first.” And it’s interesting that Moses says, “And I thought it was a good idea.” There’s not much mention of God in this section, is there? “Well, I thought it was a good idea, so I agreed.” And when we turn to Numbers, the other side of it is the Lord hears their request and allows it. He permits it. In His sovereign will, He permits it. In the same way that when the people of God ask for a king in 1 Samuel, God’s gonna say, “Samuel, they want a king? Give them a king. Let them find out the consequence.”

What’s the problem here in verses 19 to 25 when the people say, “Let’s send out some spies”? They’re ignoring the promise of God. They didn’t need to send spies out. Why? Because God had promised, “Go into the Promised Land and I will get rid of everybody for you. I will overthrow the nations. I will fight. The battle belongs to me. Don’t worry about it. I’ve got everything sorted. You just obey and go and conquer.” And the people said, “That’s a great idea, but I think some spies would be a good idea first.” Do you see the problem here? It’s faithlessness, a lack of faith and trust in God’s command.

But to make matters worse, the second problem we see, the second reason of faithlessness, is that they then rebelled and murmured against the command. So it starts with, “Let’s check it out.” The spies come back. Most of us probably know the story well. The spies come back and they say, we read it earlier, “Well, it is a good land. It’s got milk. It’s got honey. It’s got everything. It’s fabulous. Here’s the fruit. Check it out. It’s huge.” I mean, they carry a bunch of grapes on a stick between two guys. This is some serious fruit, right? It’s got everything we could ever dream. It’s also got something else: a whole bunch of giants with big walls and enemies that will squash us like bugs. And they so exaggerate, it’s extreme. They say, “Honestly, the people are so big there, we looked like locusts.” I mean, what an absurd exaggeration, unless you are terrified, and the last thing you want to do is obey God, and you need everybody else on your side, right?

And the spies convince the people of God to, verse 26, “rebel against the command of the Lord your God and murmur in your tents.” Listen to these words. Now, think about what we talked about this morning, too. “Because the Lord hated us, He has brought us out of the land of Egypt to give us into the hands of the Amorites.” That’s why we’re here. Why are we here? Because God hates us, and He’s gonna kill us by the Amorites. How did we get there? They faithlessly rejected God’s command to go, and instead they sat in their tents, and they whined like babies. They sat there and moaned and murmured and complained. What kind of God is this? You know, what kind of God delivers us from Egypt, decimates the entire city, provides for us in a loving fashion all of the way through the wilderness, does everything we could ever need, drags us all the way out here just to knife us through a giant? What a miserable God. Faithlessness.

Despite God’s promise, despite God’s promises, what did they do? They looked with the eyes of their face, rather than the eyes of faith. See, they looked at the giants. They looked at the walls of Jericho. Oh, it’s funny, isn’t it? You realize Jericho’s the first stopping point. The first place those spies would’ve seen would’ve been Jericho, and they would’ve said, “The walls are up to the heavens. They’re huge.” And they were. The walls of Jericho were insane at that time. And they say, “Look at these walls. No one would ever topple that.” What are we gonna see? In the Book of Joshua, what do we sing? And the walls came a-tumbling down. Poof. It’s not a problem for God. But they weren’t looking with eyes of faith, were they? They were looking with the eyes in their face, and they looked and they said, “Nope, can’t do it.” And they were faithless, because they would not believe God and what God said.

But to make matters worse, they then acted with presumption. In their faithlessness, they acted in presumption. So God comes and he says to them, we know the story, “Back out in the wilderness. You’ve rejected my commands. You’ve murmured and complained. The judgment is, that generation dies.” Now, it’s actually not that generation, it’s the men of war. So those that refused to go forth into battle, as Moses will tell us in chapters one through 3, it is the generation of army soldiers from 20 plus, all of them die. That’s the judgment.

What do the people do? “Oh, we were wrong. Oh, we should have listened to God. I don’t really like the idea of a wilderness. Wow, my bad. I guess we’ll just go in anyway.” You know, I mean, God’s a gracious God, right? And Moses says to them, effectively, “It’s too late. It’s too late now. You can’t go in because God is not with you. What you thought you saw will take place if you go now, because God is not with you. It will not be an act of faith, because God has said no. It will now be an act of rebellion.” And what do the people do? They presume upon God’s help, and they rebel against God’s command, and they march off into the promised land. And the description is telling in verse 44 of chapter 1: “The Amorites who lived in that hill country came out against you and chased you as bees do and beat you down in Seir as far as Hormah.”

I had this experience—it was enjoyable—down the back of Rob’s farm once. We thought there was a beehive in the side of a little hill. Turns out it was a wasp nest. And while we were exploring it, Rob was safely evacuated from the area, and I got too close. And I just remember hearing a loud buzzing and then something touching the back of my neck, and running as fast as I could. And it’s amazing. You can hear the buzzing as they pursue you. People draw in in rebellion against God, and the Philistines and the Amorites pursue them like bees. Or to say it differently, and this might be shocking to you almost, God enabled the Philistines to defeat the Israelites. God enabled and equipped his enemies to defeat his people because they were living in rebellion and presumption.

Presumption is the sin of believing we can take matters into our own hands without reference to God or his law. Or to say it differently, I know better than God does. We see it in Saul. Do you remember King Saul? He goes, he’s been told to kill everything in a war, and he returns with sheep. And Samuel says, “God told you to kill everything.” And he says, “Oh, yeah, but I thought it would be a good idea to bring some sheep back to sacrifice, you know, to worship God.” Samuel says, “Do you not understand that presumption is like blaspheming? It’s rebellion against God. You think you know better than God?” It’s a terrible thing to presume you know more than the one that created you.

And their faithlessness led to their destruction. Hundreds and thousands. Can you imagine, ladies, walking back into that wilderness that day? You know, if you’re a young newlywed, you’re 23 years old, you’ve got your life ahead of you, you’ve got one child, and you’ve just been told that your husband, and your father, and your father-in-law, and every other military-aged man that you love is gonna die in the wilderness. That’s an ominous walk back into the wilderness, isn’t it? And yet over 40 years’ time, the Lord did it. He killed every one of them for their faithlessness.

And Moses reminds them of this for a very important reason that we’ll see in a second, but before we get to that, we must acknowledge, brothers and sisters, while we are tempted to wag our fingers at Israel all too quickly, that we are not all that very different. Who of us can say that we’ve never murmured against God? Never complained because of the lot he’s given us, whether it be a spouse, or a child, or a parent, or a workplace, or a sickness, or a disease. Who of us have never murmured and complained against God? Who of us can say that we have never failed to trust our God in every situation of our life? We have never needed to rely upon our own brilliant strategical thinking.

Isn’t it true that all too quickly we rush to say, “God’s given us a brain to use it, you know.” I grew up hearing that line in the church I grew up in. Every AGM, every congregational meeting, some person would stand up and say, “God’s given us a brain to use it, you know.” Now, I’m all for clever thinking. Don’t get me wrong. We’re not fools. But when God has given us a clear command, we don’t strategize our way out of it. We obey it. And yet is it not true for all of us that at times we have failed to obey God’s Word because we just didn’t believe. God says, “Trust me. Don’t work on the Lord’s day. Just trust me. Tithe. Just trust me. I will provide. I am the Lord. I am able to bless you tenfold. Just trust me.” And what do we say? “Well, God wants me to be wise with my money, and he understands that I don’t have enough money to tithe, that I need to work this extra day because I’ve gotta feed my family, and it’s honoring to God to feed my family.” And we begin to strategically think out how we can disobey God and think it’s going to honor him. But it doesn’t, because God hates rebellion, and he will curse what we have when we live in rebellion. He will not bless it.

God’s Continued Faithfulness Despite Faithlessness

But there’s one more thing we must see. We see God’s faithfulness. Moses reminds us of God’s amazing faithfulness to his people. He reminds us of our own faithlessness, our lack of trust, our lack of obedience. But he also reminds them that despite their faithlessness, God continues to be faithful. That despite the fact that Israel constantly rebelled, murmured, complained, God never gave up. God was faithful to the end. And we see this in chapters two and three.

The Lord protected them in the wilderness, chapter 2, verse 1: “Then we turned and journeyed into the wilderness in the direction of the Red Sea.” Do you remember that stunning verse that says, “For forty years,” Moses says, “For forty years you wandered in the wilderness, and your sandals didn’t wear out.” It’s not because they had really good sandals. They were slaves. They had slave sandals, guys. They’re not wearing Nikes. They’ve got the scummy $2 shop shoes. And yet God made their sandals never wear out in forty years of wandering in the wilderness. Isn’t that insane? And their clothes didn’t wear out. I mean, clothes wear out silly fast, don’t they? You feel like you just buy it, and it falls to pieces immediately. Or maybe it’s just I’m rough on my clothes, I don’t know. Forty years the same outfit without a thread falling out because the Lord preserved them in the wilderness. He watched over them, which is amazing when you think about the fact that they’ve just rebelled against Him. They’ve just acted in presumption against Him. They’ve just said, “We don’t even believe in God,” basically. And He’s disciplined them in the most severe way and then He says to them, “And now I’m gonna preserve you. And now I’m gonna watch over you. And now I’m gonna tenderly provide you with manna and water and quail for forty years in the wilderness so that you never lack what you need, so that you flourish in spite of the fact that you’re living in a desert.” Such is the faithfulness of God.

We see this also in chapter 2, verse 15 and 16, and I mentioned this earlier. Verse 15 to 16: “Indeed, the hand of the Lord was against them, to destroy them from the camp, until they had perished. So as soon as all the men of war had perished and were dead from among the people, the Lord said to me, ‘Today you are to cross the border of Moab.’” Why is this a picture of God’s faithfulness? ’Cause He could have killed all of them, and He would have been perfectly right to do so, wouldn’t He? I mean, there’s only two guys in the entirety of the camp going, “Guys, what are you doing? Let’s go into the Promised Land”—Caleb and Joshua. Everybody else sides with the rebels, and yet the Lord only kills the men of war. Now, we tend to go, “Look, He killed all the men of war.” But the real incredible thing is He doesn’t wipe out the nation. He could have just removed them, like, I mean, just evaporated them immediately, but He doesn’t. In His faithfulness to keep His promise and His word and in His love for His people, He preserves them, and He cares for them. And He says, “I’m not going to destroy you all. I will bring in a people of my choosing. I will save a people. There will be a remnant to my name.”

We see this also in the way they defeat their enemies. These two stories, we won’t work through them in detail—King Sihon and King Og. The Israelites march in and just destroy them, which is a striking picture, really, when you think about the fact that they were so terrified to go into the Promised Land the first time out. It must have been a striking rebuke for these children and for the wives and the elderly mothers and grandmothers to sit there and think, “Man, forty years ago we didn’t wanna go in ’cause we were scared, and we’re just watching the Lord just defeat our enemies before us. We were such fools. But look at how the Lord is faithfully driving out our enemies before us, regardless of the fact that we were so faithless.” And so he defeats their enemies.

Chapter 3, verse 12 to 17, we get the story of the Reubenites and the Gadites receiving territory, half tribe of Manasseh. And you might think it’s just sort of an afterthought—“Oh, by the way, don’t forget that some people here got some land.” It’s actually extremely significant. Because what was the key promise? “I’m giving you a land as an inheritance.” And now we see the fulfillment of that before they’ve even got into the promised land. It’s sort of like a down payment. You know what a down payment is, right? It’s when you get a portion of something before you get the rest of it. They get a down payment on the inheritance, and they see God’s faithfulness that, in spite of our rebellion, the Lord’s given us the land. He’s giving us the land.

Next, we see the Lord’s faithfulness in giving them Joshua. Moses rebelled, didn’t he? Even Moses rebelled. Now, he doesn’t give us the detail here. You probably can’t blame him. He’s 120 years old, probably feeling rather ashamed of himself. But Moses lost his temper. But most of all, he did not honor God’s word. God said, “Go and speak to the rock and water will come out.” And he goes up with his staff and he whacks the rock. And he says, “Must we bring water out of this rock for you?” Crack, and water comes out. And God says to him, “Moses, you did not honor me and my word in front of the people. You will not enter the promised land.” Now, we will talk about how fair that is, ’cause that comes up in the last section of this chapter 3. But see the faithfulness of God.

Who was the one always standing in between Israel and God? It was Moses, right? God says, “Right, we’re putting an end to these people. Golden calf. We’re putting an end to them. I’m gonna kill them all and I’ll make a new nation out of you, Moses.” Moses says, “No, you can’t do that. You’ve made a promise. What will Egypt think? What will Egypt think when you destroy your people? You can’t do that. For the sake of your name and the sake of your glory, you can’t do that.” Moses always stood there. But then Moses failed. What hope is there for us now? And yet, what did the Lord do? He provided Joshua, whose name is salvation. Faithfulness of God.

And one more, one more picture of God’s faithfulness despite the faithlessness of God’s people, and that is that God had ultimately propitiated, turned away, his wrath on another. Chapter 2, verse 2 tells us, “The Lord said to me, ‘You have been traveling around this mountain country long enough.’” Okay, you’ve done it enough. The forty years is over. You’ve done enough. And then we read this before, but in verse 15 and 16, what’s taken place that has made it enough? The men are dead. What has turned away God’s wrath on the people? The death of these men, right? This is more than just a picture. Yes, this is a picture of Christ who takes away our sin, but it’s more than that. It’s the same that we see in the Book of Isaiah when God says, “I will bring the people back from Babylon, and I will say, ‘You have paid double for your sin.’” And what’s meant by that is there’s no more sin remaining. I have satisfied my wrath. We may be at peace. We may be at love. There may not be anything separating us any longer. Nothing now stops you from entering the promised land. This is what the Lord would faithfully do for his people, regardless of their rebellion, regardless of their presumption, regardless of their sin. He would propitiate his wrath so that they might be reconciled, they might have peace with one another.

And yes, this is a glorious picture of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, isn’t it? Because despite our faithlessness in all of our life, what does God do for us? He says, “I know you’re faithless. I know you’re a sinner. And yet, while you were weak, while you were ungodly,” Romans 5, “I sent my son.” And he died for you while you were there. And in my love for you, despite your faithlessness, I have propitiated my wrath. But he didn’t turn it away into a wilderness, did he? And he didn’t turn it away into our fathers, but he turned it away into his Son, into the Lord Jesus Christ. And so all of this, chapter 1 through 3, all of this ultimately points us back to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And it begs the question: What are you boasting in? Do you remember the words of the Apostle Paul? He says, “I boast in nothing save in the cross of Christ Jesus, my Lord.” Galatians. I will boast in nothing except for the cross. Why? Because I’ve got no hope outside of the cross. There’s nothing that can help me outside of the cross. I’m dead in my sin outside of the cross. My only hope in life and in death is found in the cross of Christ. And that’s true for every single one of us, and it’s true for those of you who are dead in your sin. Your only hope is to lay hold of the cross of Christ and say, “I cannot be saved by any other means than the cross of Christ, than the propitiating, the turning away of God’s wrath. Someone needs to take my wrath away. And my father can’t do it, and my friends can’t do it, and my loved ones can’t do it, but Jesus Christ is worthy to do it. He is human, therefore he can carry my sin, and he’s divine, which means he can absorb the full wrath of God.”

And so do you trust in the cross? Do you trust in his atoning work, his sacrifice? And that alone. Not in what you bring. Not in sacraments, not in other things, but in him alone. In the justification that we’ve confessed about, the sanctification that we’ve confessed about, which is rooted purely in the cross of Christ.

We’re being reminded of these things, brothers and sisters. Why? Lest we forget how we got here. Israel would forget, wouldn’t they? By the time you get to the Book of Judges, and in fact, not very far into the Book of Judges, they’re going to forget very quickly. And I guess the first challenge that comes to us from this is will we forget? Or maybe I should change that. Have we forgotten God’s faithfulness? Have we forgotten our faithlessness? Have we forgotten how faithful God is despite our faithlessness?

I think another challenge that comes from this is it challenges us to meditate upon the faithfulness of God, to study the Word, to see his faithfulness, to study our lives with specificity, finding, like criminal investigators, all of the ways that God has been faithful to me, and giving thanks to God for it. I think it reproves us for our murmuring, our complaining, and our faithlessness. It also humbles us, doesn’t it? It is humiliating to be reminded of our faithlessness.

I was speaking with John about this. No, it was Carol, at the hospital. I was speaking to Carol about this, about how much I look forward to eternity. And one of the things I greatly look forward to is years. And what I mean by years is not five years, not ten years. I look forward to five million years being over. Because I trust by then my memory of my shame of my life lived will be forgotten. It will be washed away in the oblivion of eternity, never to be remembered again. It’s humiliating when something reminds you. There are parts of Hamilton I will avoid like the plague. Like, I will take the longest way somewhere known to man if I have to go to Hamilton, because it reminds me of my sin. It is humbling, and yet it’s good for us to remember our faithlessness because it highlights the glory of our God. It highlights the glory of His grace, the richness of His mercy, the steadfast nature of His compassion. It leads us to repentance, doesn’t it, all over again.

And so brothers and sisters, be amazed. I think that’s what Moses would have loved as he departs with his final sermon. He would have loved, I’m sure, for his people to be amazed at just how faithful their God is. Isn’t it amazing to be a Christian? To have this type of a God? I mean, we could have had Allah. I mean, what a miserable lot that would be. A god in whom you can do everything you want, and then at the end of the day, he’ll make a decision, and it’s up to him whether you get into heaven or not. I mean, talk about horrible. Or you could have had some form of nirvana where after you die, you just sort of obliterate into eternity. That’s your god. No, we got this God, a God who is gracious and kind and slow to anger and abounding in love. Isn’t it amazing being a Christian? Oh, brothers and sisters, give glory to God. Give all praise and thanksgiving to Him, for He is a good and wise God, isn’t He?