“Moses’ History Lesson" (2 of 13) with the Brett Stebbins

[Music] do [Applause] [Music] welcome to sacramento's central seventh-day adventist church thank you for joining us to praise the lord together and learn the bible in central study hour let us sing our first hymn with title until then hume number three 632 this hymn requested by pam of california let's sing all three verses my heart can sing when i [Music] stepping stones [Music] this troubled world is not my final home [Music] my heart will go [Applause] [Music] [Music] on earth [Music] and things of earth that cause the heart to travel remember [Music] my heart will go [Music] until [Music] until the day my eyes behold the city until the day god calls me home my heart will go on singing thank you so much pam for the him request that you sent us if you have a favorite hymn that you want to share with us so we can sing together please visit our church website at saccentral.org click contact us then scroll down to csh song requests let us know your name where you from and the title of the hymn we'll be happy to sing together with you on the upcoming sabbath let's sing our second hymn with title face to face this hymn requested by hugo of bolivia seven day adventist symbol number 206 face to face let's sing all three verses [Music] [Applause] [Music] what will it rapture be behold you jesus christ who died for me face to face shall i behold him foreign [Music] [Music] [Applause] lord a blessed [Music] to face shall i be holding on the starry sky face to face all [Music] in his presence [Applause] [Music] shall i behold me for beyond the stories is [Music] [Applause] face to [Music] to face with my reading [Applause] jesus christ [Music] face to face [Music] face to face in all his glory i shall see him by and by thank you hugo for the him request that you sent us let us pray [Music] dear heavenly father we're so grateful for all the blessings that you have given to us as we open our bible today please open our hearts lord open our minds so that we we will understand your will and the truth please help us to be faithful until your second coming lord in jesus name we pray amen central study hour today will be led by our elder brett stebbins i hope you have a blessed study [Music] welcome to central study hour whether you are online watching us streaming online live if you're watching from your tv if you have us in your smartphone or if you're here in the sanctuary we're glad you're here with us today it's always a pleasure to be in the presence of god and to be able to share and open the bible with each and every one of you today we are studying lesson number two in present truth in deuteronomy and it is entitled this week moses's history lesson so it's a good lesson i love it and we're going to be studying a little bit about that today and if you are interested in receiving a cd or dvd of this recording you can reach us at sac central or csh at sac central.org or you can call us at 916-457-6511 and remember to let them know what offer it is it's offer c22 so if you want a dvd or cd please contact us we'd love to be able to send that out for you and you can go ahead and give us your information so like they said not maybe everybody may know me especially those who are watching online my name is brett stevens i'm one of the elders here at sacramento central church and it's just it's a complete honor and a privilege to be able to open the word of god with each and every one of you those who are here those who are watching online it's going to be great we're going to study the word of god and our lives are going to be enriched so we can go ahead and on saturday there's a great memory text here and we're going to read it and it's found in first corinthians 10 3 and 4. so you guys everybody can open up to page 14 in your lesson and we'll go ahead and read first corinthians 10 3 and 4 and it says and they all ate the same spiritual food and they all drank the same spiritual drink for they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them and that rock was christ you may be thinking why are we reading in first corinthians about studying about moses history and deuteronomy well this passage right here is talking about moses and is talking about the israelites and as we start studying a little bit more into this lesson we are going to understand that deuteronomy is really about jesus it's really about the plan he created us and he continues to create new people in the israelites group he also sustains us and redeems us and all of this is happening before they go into the promised land so basically this book continues to reveal the plan of christ before christ even came to came you know on into this world it's to create to sustain and to redeem his people and just before god is going to bring his people into the promised land moses wants to stop them bring everybody back together and and do just a quick history lesson on what they have gone through in the past if you've read the lesson the main key the main focus that we're going to be studying on this week is remember what the lord has done for you in the past and that is the message that moses wanted to bring to his people he wanted them to know what they had done in the past at the bottom the last paragraph in on on saturday's lesson uh ellen white gives us just a brief summary that that uh from life sketches from page 196 and i really like what it says here i'll go ahead and read it to you it says in reviewing our past history having traveled over every step of advance to our present standing i am filled with astonishment and with confidence in christ as leader we have nothing to fear for the future except we shall forget the way the lord has led us and his teachings in our past history so basically she is saying that we cannot forget what god has done for us in the past what christ has done for us what the people of the bible have been through in the past and you see this is a big issue not only for the people for the israelites and this time in the time of moses but it's also really important for us because we don't have very good memories we forget a lot of things we forget a lot of what god has done for us and that's a big mistake to forget where we have been and where god has led us we understand here in deuteronomy in exodus and all of what we kind of studied before that this is the problem with god's people and this is our problem today if i forget what god has done for me i'm no longer brett i am no longer who i am because god has really molded me and molded me in my life i'm a completely different person now who i was 20 years ago if i forget i had a really severe drug and alcohol addiction if i forget about what has god has done for me and how he has helped me be the person i am today what can happen to me what dangers can i fall in if i forget that god has has brought me out of that dark dark place those strong addictions i can fall again i can go and have those addictions again and i don't want that i need to keep moving on because i am who i am today and you are all who you are today because of what god has done for us we all have similar but yet very different experiences we are like the israelites right now and god through this lesson wants to kind of call us bring us back together and have us remember something what moses wrote on all his stories in the past thousands of years ago when he wrote this continues to inspire each and every one of us today it just has he also inspired the people the israelites as he was guiding them through the desert moses was able to do so much because he knew about the past he had a very good recollection most moses had a tremendous memory unlike most of the israelites and when you have a memory on what god has done for you in the past you're able to make really good decisions in the present and in the future i just want to read the memory text real quick one more for one time one more time for you because i want to move on to the to the next part here it says first corinthians 10 3 and 4 it says they all and they all drank oh they all ate the same spiritual food and they drank the same spiritual drink for they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them and that rock was jesus but do you know what verse 5 says first corinthians 10 verse 5 it says but with most of them god was not well pleased so it talks about our memory verse just some great that they all drank of the spiritual rock which is jesus but for most of them god was not pleased and is that how we are today is god pleased with us we need to remember what god has done for us in the past and we need to remember what god has done not only for us in our lives but what god has done for his people do you think god is very pleased today in general about god's people about us and then we can bring that in personally and even individually as well and say is god very pleased with me in what i'm doing let's go ahead and move on to sunday so throughout the whole bible moses is mentioned and moses's presence is his field is felt uh especially because he was author of genesis exodus leviticus numbers deuteronomy he mean he wrote all these and what were these books especially genesis it's our foundation it's who we are as a people it tells it gives us a story of how were we created what was the original plan that god had for us it talks about the the planets and what our original diet was supposed to be like um what was the fall of man like how satan entered into uh into all of our lives what was the flood like what were god's promises moses was was the author of all of this the lesson calls us to read in uh exodus 32 29-32 and it gives us a couple of questions here i'll go ahead and read this for you it says which record which records the conversation is talking about exodus 32 here that records a conversation between the lord and moses after the terrible sin of the golden calf we all kind of know that story what insight does the his does the story about the character of moses and why despite whatever flaws he had the lord was able to use him in such a mighty way so let's go ahead and if you have your bibles with you we can go ahead and open those up nice and fresh open them up and we can turn to exodus 32 and we'll just read verses 30 and 32 it says and it came to pass on the morrow that moses said unto the people ye have sinned a great sin and now i he's saying himself will go unto the upon the lord pre-adventure i shall make an atonement for your sin and moses returned to the lord and said o this people have sinned a great sin and have made them gods of gold and now if thou will forgive their sins and moses is talking to god if thou will forgive their sin and if not blot me i pray thee out of thy book which thought how has written moses understands that the people have sinned they were waiting for moses to come back and they were tired of waiting so they built this they brought all their gold together they built this golden statue so they wanted to make their own god and then god says hey moses it's great being with you but you need to go check out your people and see what they're doing and moses goes back and he sees these people and now he's going to god and he's asking for forgiveness moses understands that there needs to be a price paid for the sins that were committed so moses goes up and he offers his life for these people he had nothing to do with this building of the statue he was actually in the presence of god when they were building this statue but he goes and he goes and says lord take my life blot me out of your book and let these people forgive these people of their sins so let's go back to the question the original question that i had on sunday said what insight does this story give us about the character of moses moses was just a great man he was wanting to give his life his soul for these people how many of us are willing to give our souls and our lives for other people moses said i will go up into the lord and i will make atonement for you and for your sin it's talking about the people you know what let's just be honest here we really don't have any problems going to people and telling them they have sinned we really don't just speaking honestly but do we ever really go in front of the lord or go in front of our friend and say you know what i'm going to go and i'm going to take that sin do we do it moses was a great leader and he knew deep down or they knew deep down that moses really did love them he cared about them but what about us when god gives us the opportunity to lead people through the spiritual wilderness and through the the wilderness life that we're living in today how do we stack up to moses of course many of us are going to fall short of of who moses is in this great character but how can we strive to be like him how far are we willing to go for those who are around us that have sinned we need to kind of have a a personal look into our lives and and see about that i have a quick question for you i don't need anybody to answer but can we get to heaven if we are not willing to give our lives for those who we love first of all i think we need to learn how to love and we need to need to learn how to love those who are around us i love my family i love my friends it's great but do i really love those who hurt me do i really love those who think differently of me who have different points of views think about that because we need to learn how to love before we can learn how to give and if we want to give our lives we're never going to give our lives for people we don't love for people who we don't care about so we need to learn how to love we need to do this because if we are not willing to love we are not willing to give and then our souls are lost anyways so it's better that we just work on this love thing and we learn how to love people so then we can give our lives to them how many of you have now have a different perspective in in life about love than you did in the past i'm sure most of us have had our our form of what love really is has changed as we become closer to god as we read his scripture it's just amazing how the love that i once knew is is nothing compared to the love that that god gives us and that god shows us what how we can have time is still ticking down let's go ahead and go over to monday you find that on page 16 and it is fulfilled prophecy that's the title it starts off talking about modern science and modern sciences is a great thing uh we're able to do so many new things um and instead of modern science discrediting uh god in his creation it actually amplifies it i mean if we're able to learn more we're able to see how how cells are made we're able to see in in god's creation how how precise and how intricate everything is how this whole world this connection is connected i mean we really need to understand how everything is connected in this world every single organism and there are so many organisms like the fungi that we see that decompose things and bring things back in the world that we don't even see with our eyes but now with modern science we can see we can see how cells are made how cells heal themselves how the body heals itself it's just it's just incredible um how precise god is and if god is really precise in the creation in in our worlds and in us isn't he also going to be very precise in his scripture as well and on the spiritual side as well the lesson tells us to read uh deuteronomy 1 through 6 and it says here what is the prophetic significance of the fact that deuteronomy 1 3 talks about the 14th year let's go ahead and read that deuteronomy chapter 1 verse 3. we'll go ahead and read that verse first and it says and it came to pass in the 14th year in the 11th month on the first day of the month that moses spake unto the children of israel according unto all that the lord has given him in commandment unto them so now if we're reading this and we don't have any previous understanding of what has happened maybe that just flies right by us it probably flew right over most of your heads because we're just reading that one verse if we don't have the context of that verse then it just it just goes over there we can't just pick up the bible and read and just read what's on the surface and get something out of it yeah you can probably reread proverbs or psalms and you can or you can read some of the gospels and you can get a quick nice easy loving message something that you can take but but what most of the bible is the most of the bible is a treasure that we really have to dig for that we have to look for we have to to see the connections and and this is what this verse is talking about i don't know about you guys but i love hiking i love hiking with my family and going out and a lot of the times because we find places we like to go hiking yet you know locally and close by we go multiple times and usually when we go out hiking i see something new on the trail every time that i didn't see before and the bible is like that too every time we read it we're going to be finding something new if we are really reading it for understanding and for searching and and looking for that treasure that has for us so let's go back real quick to numbers 14 34 and numbers 14 34 is going to tell us why deuteronomy 1 3 is significant with the 14th year and it says there in numbers uh 14 34 it says after the number of the days in which you search the land even 40 days each day for a year ye shall bear the iniquities even 40 years and ye shall know my breach of promise so basically 40 years from this time in numbers when they the people rejected going into the promised land and they sent out the spies they were there for 40 days scoping this whole thing out 40 years they were going to be punished from going in that's why the 14th year is really significant and it's incredible how we see that god in his creation as well as god in the spiritual is so precise we see a fulfillment of prophecy for 40 years coming to fruition right here and now all of us know that this is not the first time that that prophecy is is you know talked about in the bible we talk about uh daniel chapter nine talks about the time the times and the half time it talks about the 2 300 days and we see in daniel 2 7 and 8 how how precise the the history of of how these you know the different powers came came to be that were that were prophesied about in daniel um came to pass this this book is in this book is incredible and i know this might be new to some people here but people don't know about prophecy it might be new to you you might not know that but they don't most people do not know about prophecy that is why we need to go out to the whole world and we need to share we need to share the treasures that we have found here i don't know about each and every one of you but this is what brought me into having a better relationship with god to really believing in what this word says is because i found the prophecy i found how precise and just how incredible god is in his plan and there are so many people that need to know about this and it's our job to be able to to share it because we have an overwhelming amount of evidence of god his love and his trustworthiness people are out in the world and they are searching for things that they can count on and they can trust people are taking their lives because they don't have anything to trust in and we can show them that they can trust in god but they won't know if they don't if they don't see this so we see we see the prophecy fulfilled but it also in this chapter talks about reading deuteronomy 1 through 6 to give us a little bit of a background here so we're going to go ahead and do that we read verse number three so we're going to go ahead and read a couple other verses real quick just so we can get a little bit more of a history everybody good up to this point we're following okay real good so deuteronomy 1 1. let's open up our bibles deuteronomy 1 1 and right here at this point it's it's we're starting off at the end of those 40 years uh the prophecy that we just took about uh talked about so deuteronomy 1 1 we're going to go ahead and read the first part it says these words with moses spake unto israel on this side in the wilderness so when moses is talking here he's still talking about the people on this side not on the promised land on this side of the promised land and you notice that he gathers the people together and he starts to prepare the people let's skip right down to verses five and six they're same in deuteronomy 1 5 and 6. it says on this side of the jordan in the land of moab began moses to declare this law saying the lord our god spake unto us in hereb saying you have dwelt here long enough on this mount so moses is saying after the 40 years okay we've been here long enough in verse seven it says turn you and take your journey and go to the mount of the amorites we don't have to read the rest there the the first part is what i wanted to focus on it says turn and take your journey i find it really interesting that the people must have been going in a certain direction right and god talking to moses and moses says turn because you're obviously not going in the right way you need to turn and go this way how many of us in our lives need to do a turn we may not need to turn completely around but we may need to turn a little bit verse 8 says behold i have set the land before you go in and possess the lamb which the lord swear unto you your fathers abraham isaac and jacob give unto them to give unto them and to their seed after them so god is saying i have set a special land a special place for you to go and i think at this time most of the people have forgotten about this promise that god has a special place from they've either forgotten or they have passed away or nobody's told them about this because they are not destined to live in that in that place where they are brothers and sisters we are not supposed to be living here right now we are supposed to be in a different place and i think all of you know what i'm talking about because we have forgotten it looks like if you look at our lives we have forgotten about the place where we should be so many people are building up treasures here on earth houses cars money retirements so many things that people are setting aside that it looks like they forgot that god has a different place for us so god is saying in this lesson so moses is saying to the people and god is saying through this lesson to us it says come together we have been here long enough we need to turn and take our journey because he has a special place that is prepared for us monday was a monday was a good one let's go ahead and move on to tuesday at page 17 in your lesson it says a thousand times more numerous and we've got a lot of information to cover here time keeps ticking away here so it asks us to read in deuteronomy 9 1-11 and the question is what is the significance of these words especially because this time they are being punished so let's go ahead and read deuteronomy 1 9-11 and it says and they spake unto you at this time saying i am not able to bear you myself alone that's what moses is saying to the people the lord your god hath multiplied you and behold ye are this day as the stars of the heaven for the multitude may the lord of your fathers make you a thousand times so many more as ye are and bless you as he hath promised you so we see here that these people are still being punished they're still in the time of the 40 years they're coming towards the right at the end of the 40 years but they are still being punished and moses is saying you are numerous but i want to ask god to multiply you a thousand times more it's incredible and because most people weren't weren't really aware of this this promise that they were going to be even more numerous i thought they probably thought yeah we're we've got enough numbers there's a lot of people here but god wants to bless him bless them god wants to bless us as well how many parents do we have here okay all right you guys know what i'm going to be talking about then have you ever punished your kids probably not because they have everybody's kids are angels right you probably punished your kids but have you ever given something really good to your kids while they've been punished i know i had to kind of think about that too have i have i done this because this is what god's doing to the people i remember about a time where i've got a boy and a girl and they're around the same age and they can get at each other i don't know if you guys have had the same experiences they can get a little tired of the parents they can get a little tired of each other and then they just start acting and in ways that they shouldn't and there comes a time as a parent where you need to say stop freedoms are taken away here's how life is going to be for the next week so i did that to my kids they just they were just at each other they're good kids but they were just at each other so we had to put a little stop to it but i remember two days later three days later uh my daughter and son both came back with their report cards and my daughter had straight a's my son almost had straight a's they were really good students and i had always told them and we've always done it as a family they come back with their report cards they have really good report cards we go out to eat i celebrate that let's go out to eat so this time happened to come when they were they were punished they were grounded they they had all their freedoms taken away but you know what i didn't not give them the promise that i that i said i would give them for the report cards so we went out and had a really nice dinner we had a good time when we come back now they're still on their punishment but we still i was able to give them something while they were being punished that's how kind of we can we can picture this so this is this is what moses is asking god to do then and god does that because he did promise him they'd be even more numerous um i don't know if you guys caught in verse nine it said something very interesting it says moses said i am not able to bear you myself alone so moses is basically saying there hey i can't take this i'm your i'm i'm the leader i need help i can't do this and unless i'm going to be able to do this because you're going to be a thousand times more numerous than you are now so now we go into deuteronomy uh 1 13 through 17 and and there's there's another question here it says as a direct result of moses's blessing upon these people what happened what steps did moses take to deal with this situation so let's go ahead and read deuteronomy 1 13-17 it says take or the new king james version says choose you wise men and understanding and known among your tribes and i will make them rulers over you and he answered me saying the thing which thou have spoken is good for us to do so i took the chiefs of your tribes wise men and known and made them heads over you captains of thousands and captains of hundreds and captains over 50s and captains over 10 and officers among your tribes even though god is present amongst the people even though moses is there they kind of get things organized before they go into the promised land they need to stop they need to take some time and then moses is picking people to be in charge uh over a certain number of people but we see there that moses doesn't just pick any person he picks people with certain qualities in the last days when it looks like the people of god are being punished god is going to come back and do the same thing he's going to multiply us more than what we are today is it going to be a thousand times more i don't know but we need to get set up for this we need to prepare even though god is in control of all things we're going to need to get a little bit more organized especially as a church we need to put certain people in place to be in charge over other groups and other people we're going to have people of different walks people with different backgrounds people that are parents people that are single we're going to need to organize ourselves and i think we do a pretty good job of that here at sac central but when we get more numerous we're going to need more help so my question to you is if you're not helping out now is god able to call on you for a role like moses is calling on other people hopefully we are hopefully we're all all ready you often hear people say they don't like organized religion so obviously they like disorganized religion but that's not who we are we are our god is a god of order our god is a god of control he likes things we see in this lesson that he's precise he's really intricate in what he does so we need to be more a little bit more like that as a people because as we go hopefully pretty soon as we get ready to go into that promised land we're going to be called upon to do a little bit more than maybe what we're doing now to lighten the load of our pastors our pastors aren't here to to be in charge of each and every one of us that's you know elders deacons deaconesses i mean we we all are going to be called on to help out we need to we need to help out we see that even even with jesus jesus didn't do it all himself he called disciples he said here let me come in give you instruction help you uh to understand calls on the wise men and women that have understanding so that he can can use them let's go ahead and move on to wednesday because wednesday has got a ton of information and hopefully we can get through all of wednesday and touch a little bit on thursday so wednesday page 18 the title is kadesh barney we we talked a little bit about what that was in the past um or the people refused to go into the promised land um but this lesson tells us to read numbers 14. we're not going to read all of numbers 14 here but it also says here in the lesson let's see here the question is how did the people react to the report of the spies that were a result of their what were the result of their reaction um so basically in kadesh barnea we know that the the people came there and they were they were told that they can go into the promised land and what did they say he said okay god cool great we want to go and check it out not a really good idea when god's going to give you something um really what they're saying is god cool god i like it looks great i need to give the the final okay though before we go so it's it's not a good idea so when the people refuse to go into this land uh because of one bad report and we know that there were two reports i think most of us here know the story there were two reports one of the reports was that this land is great it's just a fertile land we've got a pasture land we've got water we've got trees it is amazing there are already crops growing there one of the great vines two men even had to carry there were fig trees it was there were people there it was a great luscious fantastic land and then the other report was hey but there are giants there there's big people and they have cities so i'm not sure if we want to go there so i don't really understand these people god has guided them he's done so much for them uh and they're just they they just saw all the plagues in egypt they saw how god destroyed all the egyptians they'd seen other things and why are they like this why are they not believing in god so my question today too is why are we like this as a people today so many times we look at the negative we don't look at the positive we still do this today we see something and we see that god maybe is giving us something and we go ah it still looks a little too hard you know the people looked at this land and they saw you know something and it looks like their expectations of what god had for them was different from the expectations they had i think they thought they were going to receive a land that was that was just empty it was just beautiful and maybe they were expecting their houses already to be made maybe they were expecting the crops already to be planted and and everything ready for them i don't know what their expectations were but they they looked at these giants and these people and they just they didn't want to do it because it was going to take some work to be able to go in there it wasn't just free they had to do a little bit of work i'm not sure if everybody here got to listen to pastor dakota day's sermon yesterday but i think these were millennials that were you know going into the promise and they didn't really want to work for it or already say that the alpha generation um so it's it's a little odd i don't really understand why these people don't want to go into this land that god has promised them and it has done so much for them but so let's get back to the the lesson question is how did the people react to the report of the spies and what was the result of their actions let's go ahead and read numbers numbers 14 and we'll just read verses 1 through 4 right now it says so all the congregation lifted up their voices and cried and the people wept at night and all the children of israel complained against moses and aaron and the whole congregation said to them if only we had died in egypt if only we had died in the wilderness why has the lord brought us to this land to fall by the sword that our wives and our children should become victims why not why it not better for us to return to egypt so they said to one another let us select a leader to return to egypt so the people complained and they were scared and they wanted to return to egypt and they talked about dying why are they talking about dying at this time they're they're supposedly getting ready to go into a promised land and get this you know great promise that god's giving them so they start to look for somebody to take them back like no no we need to go so that's why i kind of think you know moses we're talking here when when moses says turn and take our journey how they were they were going back they were going somewhere where they shouldn't go we also get a perspective of qadesh barnea in deuteronomy 1 20 through i think 46. and i want to read all of it but i do want to talk uh touch real quick on verses 20 and 21 on deuteronomy 1. it says and i say unto you ye have come to the mountain of the amorites which the lord our god doth give unto us behold the lord thy god hath set the lamb before thee go and possess it and the lord god of thy fathers has said unto thee fear not neither be discouraged so god's saying hey this is the plan this is the area this is what has been promised to us do not be scared and they're scared anyways and they don't want to go verse 22 says and ye came near unto me every one of you and said we will send men before us and they will search out the land and bring us word again again by the way we must go up into the seas and we shall come so i'm saying yeah lord we know we're going to go check it out so what ends up happening after all of this most of those people end up dying those people who rejected going to the promised land all but two of them ended up dying they ended up dying in the wilderness so what were they thinking about instead of going into the promise then they were thinking about dying why are we going to die here why didn't we die in egypt so they were thinking about dying and that's what they got so we really need to be careful of uh have you ever heard the term you are what you think about well they thought about dying the whole time so that that's what most of them did but there were still people that were going into the problems and just these people who who didn't want to go uh didn't didn't get to go uh and it's a it's a sad thing and i think a lot of us still do this today um sadly that you know god has plans for us god has things for us and we we just we don't take advantage of it and we don't do it it takes too much work for us in the second part of wednesday it says in uh to read numbers uh 14 11-20 and it says see though we see moses again in the role of intercessor what is this significant what is what is significant about the line of reasoning with the lord regarding why the lord shall not destroy them so if you don't know what i'm talking about let's just read real quick in numbers 14 11-16 and we'll see what's significant about this it says starting with verse 11 and numbers 14 and the lord said unto moses how long will this people provoke me how long will it be here they believe me for all the signs which i have shown among them and the lord says here god's saying to the people i will smite them with pestilence and disinherit them i will make thee stalking of moses a greater nation and mightier than they and moses said unto the lord moses comes back and says but then the egyptians shall hear it for thou have for thou brought us up thy people uh the people in thy might among them and they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land for they have heard the lord art amongst this people that thou lord are seen face to face and that thy cloud standeth over them and that thou goest before them by daytime a pillar of a cloud and a pillar of the fire by night verse 15 now if thou shalt kill these people as one man then the nations shall which have heard of the fame of thee will speak saying because the lord verse 16 because the lord was not able to bring this people into the land which he swear unto them therefore he has slain them in the wilderness so basically god's tired of these people right now he's like they don't listen and they don't understand they're not with me and he and he's upset he said he's going to send pestilence out and he's going to destroy these people but then moses responds and says but god if you do this what are the people what are the egyptians going to say because ultimately this is not about israel this is about humanity as a as a whole because israel is supposed to be a light unto the world we are supposed to be a light into the world there's an important theme here that that god is to be glorified by his people and these people cannot glorify god if god destroys them and moses knows this so moses is kind of calming god down here and it's just it's amazing how how good of a relationship that moses has with god he's truly uh with him and and he just he understands everything he understands god and he understands the promises because he hasn't like most of us forgotten about the past so moses knows that these people need to make it to the promised land so he talks to god and he's he's saying no you know this is going to be bad everybody knows about what the what the promise is how you have promised these people this land and you have taken them out of out of egypt we we can't destroy them and it's an incredible thing that he has done so looks like we're going to be able to get to all thursday here so let's go ahead and switch over to thursday because here moses continued we see that moses continues to describe in deuteronomy 2 and 3 the historical the history of the israelites and how god were able to to receive their blessings so they were able to conquer their enemies when they were faithful that's that's what the lesson says and we can see that when they were faithful to god they had no problems fighting against their enemies they won every single time and now that they're seeing giants in their land they're scared but in deuteronomy two and three moses shows them hey two times before you you've already beaten giants it's like what are you worried about haven't we seen god do this because the number one thing is they had forgotten about the past that's why in this introduction in the deuteronomy it's remember what the lord has done for us in the past moses is gathering up the people so they can the people can have in their in their minds present what god has done for them in the past and we need to do that today this lesson this week is for us we can say that we're just studying what happened in the past but no it's really this is for us we need to remember what god has done for i'm not sure if you read it on thursday but there's a part that says they routed their enemies when they were faithful we just talked about that they said they routed their enemies and they were faithful they succeeded were they faithful when they beat the the giants in the past yeah they were they were faithful they won now they're going to the promised land are they faithful no they want to go in and check it out themselves they want to do their thing they want to check it out now let us reflect in our lives when we were successful in life and we weren't when i was faithful to god when i was reading his word studying his word having time with god every single day praying and i was faithful i did pretty good my life was pretty good i was able to do some incredible things and then i look back in my life at the times where i where i wasn't truly faithful or i kind of put god a little bit to the side because i was busy with work i was busy preoccupied with with something else i struggled a little bit i don't know if you if it's the same with you and your lives but i've noticed that when i'm faithful to god and when i'm good with god god's good to me it's a great thing so there's a quick topic that i guess we'll go ahead and cover it here there's a quick topic on thursday it brings us to deuteronomy 2 34 and it's a topic that that some people have a problem with but it will be good to clarify it here i'm not sure if you read it deuteronomy 2 34 and it says and we took all the cities at that time deuteronomy 2 34 and utterly destroyed men the women and the little ones of every city we left none to remain there are a lot of people that don't they don't want to read this they don't want to study this they don't they don't they don't want to know that they don't want to see that god's people is is killing women and children but this is this is actually a part of the story about who we are and when we look and we study a little bit more about this lesson we're not going to be able to cover every single part of it but when we look at this lesson we learned that god only does this to cities that are full of of sinful bad people when god has righteous people in his land as we see in the story of solomon and gomorrah he doesn't kill these cities when the people are faithful when the people are good we remember this conversation between god and adam or and abraham about well god what if there's 50 people in salaam and gomorrah there's 50 good people and god says when there's if there's 50 good righteous people i'm not going to destroy this and the number starts going down well what about 20 and then he finally gets down to what about 10 people if there are 10 good people in the whole land of saddam and gomorrah god was not going to destroy it but when then what ends up happening that destroys the land because there were no righteous people in this land and the righteous people that were there what happened god took them out and we see even with lot and his wife she wasn't one of those righteous people she had something in her she turned around and she became part of that destruction so god does not destroy righteous people yeah it's a little hard and we we don't really we don't nobody likes to talk about killing women and children but it's you know just some things are a fact of life and this had to happen we can we can study a little bit more here and realize that yeah these cities that were destroyed there was nobody good there so if there's nobody good there it's better that they're just not around right the in the last paragraph of thursday i'd like to just read it for you it says the fact is for now given the limited information we have about the full context of these events we just need to accept this hard reality and trust in the goodness of god which we which has been revealed in so many ways faith isn't about loving god i love this that's if you're not paying attention let's pay attention real quick here this is a good one here it says faith isn't about loving god on a beautiful day in a pretty forest full of wonderful sights and sounds it is about trusting in him despite what we do not fully understand i i don't know i don't know about you but on thursday i loved that thursday morning when i when i read that i loved it that was great because yeah it's it's easy to love god when everything's going good right it's easy to love god and have faith in god when when everything's perfect when it's beautiful so many times when i love to go out hiking with my family we go to some of the most beautiful places on earth and we just look and we see just all the beauty and we see god we see his presence and it's so great but when i'm getting yelled at by a customer at work i've got projects that are not going right i don't see that same beautiful thing necessarily all the time but i trust in god because in the darkest times of my life it was where i found god the most he's always been there with me let's just do a little quick recap here about what we've learned because we've gone through a lot of information number one remember what god has done for us in the past we really need to remember what the lord has done he's been so great to us we see that moses was willing to give his life for the people and we need to learn how to love and we need to learn how to give our lives for other people as well god is calling upon the church in these last moments to get organized he's going to call up on people we need to follow god and stop trying to make our own decisions in life because his plan is better than our plan we as god's people need to glorify god with our actions and not just with our words and we need to have faith in god even though sometimes we don't have all the answers once again if you are interested in receiving a cd or dvd of this conversation this lesson that we have had if you are interested you can call us at 916-457-6511 or you can email us at csh at sac central dot o-r-g thank you so much for joining us today may you have a wonderful day and be blessed by our lord each and every day thank you so much [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Sacramento Central Seventh-day Adventist Church

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Length: 58min 30sec (3510 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 02 2021