sermonette: Stories From Deuteronomy

Learning From the Experiences of Israel
Bill Cherry
Given 27-Jul-02; Sermon #569s; 20 minutes

Description: (show)

---

Well thank you and grievance to you all. Please turn to I Corinthians 10 and 11. And this section we are familiar with. It concerns. Uh, Israel's exodus experience, his wilderness experience, and it's everything I mean this verse that we are going to read is related to that. Verse 11. Now these things happened unto them. For examples, And they are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world have come. So These things happen to them for our admonition, and they are our examples and they are written for us. God uses stories of what happened to Israel to to teach valuable lessons about keeping his laws, and he used them to teach them. And he's using them to he's using their experience to teach us. And that's his real purpose. So the, the purpose of this sermon is to show how God uses the stories of Israel's experience to teach us to obey his laws. Now As I said, the whole, let's let's look at verse 1 of I Corinthians chapter 10. Moreover, brethren. I would not that you should be ignorant of how that all our fathers were under the cloud and all passed through the sea. Now these words of cloud and see call to mind and to us the adventures that they had in the cloud. When, when they came out of Egypt, there was a huge cloud that went before them. And it showed the presence of God, and it went before them in the day, and they saw a huge peer of fire by night, and they were ever conscious that God was there, and it led them, and when it stopped, they stopped, and when it moved, they moved. Uh, and the sea. They remember seeing Moses stretch his hand out and say, see the salvation of the Lord, and seeing the sea parted. And when they did not know what was going to happen or when they should go and how they were going to get out of it. Now These Uh this willing this experience is directly related to the first commandment. And if you, we will not turn there, but in Deuteronomy 5 and in Exodus 20, the first commandment starts off, I am the God that brought you out of the land of Egypt. And You shall have no other gods before me, reminding them, I'm the one that did it. I did it, do not have any other gods before me, so it's directly relating to the first commandment. See Now verse 6 and 7 of this this chapter, it says, now these things were our examples to the intent that we should not lust after evil things. And so there is the 10th commandment, thou shalt not covet. And then it, it says, as they also lusted kind of implying that we do lut after evil things, and they also do it. And we should not do it. We should not lust after the evil things. We should not break the 10th commandments. Um, neither be idolaters as were some of them. So there is the 2nd commandment. Make no graven images, and it's telling us our admonition, do not make graven images. And Let's look at verse 7. It says, excuse me, verse 8, neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed and fell and one day 3020. So he's reminding them that the consequences of these things are following their rust and following their idolatry and their, their appetites. 23,000 of them died. So to sum up this section, see, it, it says that God's in charge. He, he can divide the sea. He can, he can deliver you anytime in his will. And he's in charge. And if you break commandments, the end result is death, and if you follow them, the, the, you get deliverance. Now let's look at verse 13 of this chapter. This is a familiar verse 2 that we read for assurance a lot of times. He says there has no temptation taken you, but such is common to man. And that God is faithful, who will not suffer you be tempted above that which you are able, but will, with the temptation, make it, make excuse me, make a way to escape that you may be able to bear it. So, I, I think of the times that I've played football and how football teams go through a very rigorous training program. They are first start off with exercises and lots and lots of exercises and sit-ups and push-ups and run in place and jump on the ground and turn over on your back and turn over on your stomach and do all kinds of things and then run wind sprints and all kinds of physically exertion things. But The purpose is that the coach is trying to mold them and make them into a team that can perform a function on, on the day of the games. And They have to be, if they are going to be effective football players, they have to be responsive. They have to be able to, to push themselves, and they have to also trust the coach, not to tempt them, not to push them beyond the limit. And, and Trust the coach, so. In this same sense, we need to trust God in any kind of activity that we go through, and we go through many, many hardships and sometimes it's like Israel with the Israelites coming, I mean with the Egyptians coming and nowhere to go, but I see. And God knows when the temptation, when he wants us to relieve our stress and relieve our, our adversity and show us a way of escape, then that's when he decides and that's when he does it. So, um, The point is that we need God's help, and he makes us strong, and he can help us and uh. As in verse 12 says, it says, let him who thinks he stands, take heed lest he fall. And sometimes when we were made strong and Israel when Israel was strong before their enemies, they thought they were doing it themselves, and they thought that they were in charge and they followed their own ways and then they suffered the consequences and, and we should not. Uh, I think that we are doing things ourselves when we are blessed by God leading us through these adversities. OK. Now let's turn to Deuteronomy 6. I will need 6, excuse me, verse 20. Uh, through 22. And when your son asks thee in time to come saying, what means these testimonies and these statutes and judgments which our Lord has given you and commanded you then you shall say unto your son. We were Pharaoh's bondmen in Egypt, and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hands, and the Lord showed us signs and wonders, great and sore upon Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all his household before our eyes. So what's he saying? But one thing he's saying here, when your son asked about the testimonies and the statutes and the judgments, which are all based on God's 10 commandments and God's law, when we ask you, tell him stories. Tell him about our experience in Egypt and the things that you saw and coming out of Egypt. So To impress upon their minds. They could tell we were in bondage, and they could tell the hard bondage that they had to suffer, the persecution from Pharaoh. They could also tell about the signs and wonders and how Was turned to blood and how the frogs covered the land and lice came on people's bodies and flies, and then God lifted his I mean, he, he put a protection on Israel and then he, the diseases of the cattle came only to the Egyptians, and barrels came on their skin and hail and fire. They turned the fire and wo us in darkness. And finally death of the first born, all these amazing signs and wonders they left no question in their mind that God was in charge, that God was in control, and God can do anything he wants to, and he can deliver. So this is the way God impressed. His law of people and impressive law of people was telling stories about the happenings of ancient Israel and We're supposed to learn from it, and they were told these stories that all in Deuteronomy. Now the focus of last year's feast was Deuteronomy, the book of Deuteronomy, and we were admonished to to read it and put it in our minds and hearts, and I was not really all that familiar with it, but when I started, I was, I said. Where are the laws? And, and I read the first chapter, a story, a story of what is called the Jethro principle. Moses said, I was, I had you here and you had grown to be a mighty people and you were too hard for me to, to deal with on an individual basis. And so I had captains of 10 and captains of hundreds and captains of thousands. And they According to God's law, would make judgments if you had disputes among you. But that was a story. A very graphic story that relates to the law. And then another thing even in still in chapter one, Relates the time that that they were supposed to send spies out to the land and see about these people that God had said go and capture. And so they went and reported that the land was good, but they were afraid because the people were giants and that, and they did not think God would deliver them and they did not have faith and they could not obey. Because they did not have the faith which is needed to obey God's law. And then chapter 2, God tells them, do not take, do not fight with Abraham's relatives, the children of what and Esau. How many more that you have peaceable relationships with them. Don't take them, but you go. And, and you kill you fight other people, but this is, um, Abraham kept my law, and I am going to keep promises that I made to Abraham because he kept the law. So this story is related to the law, and it teaches people about The importance of keeping God's law, and he told them to destroy wicked nations completely, men, women, children, and sometimes cattle and burn everything in the city. And because they break his laws and have given themselves over to wickedness. And all throughout Deuteronomy. You were here He will give you some words to say what things to do and say, be faithful, and then Don't go to idolatry and do not serve other gods and do not do this, but Then he will tell stories, and there are many, many stories in Deuteronomy that relate to God's law, but they were given to give an impression of God's lawLet's see. Alright, so the, the, the object of the stories are, if you obey God's laws, you will be blessed, and if you do not obey God's laws, you'll have cursings and you'll have problems and scatterings and all kinds of things will happen to you. But there was no question in Israel's mind that God was in charge. God, they made a choice and Uh, we have choices to make, but as we say it. Israel was taught by stories, and we are to be taught by stories and as Paul said there admonition. Don't we use stories sometimes to teach our children? And maybe you would take something like a newspaper article and say, Look at this article about a teenager was killed in a drive-by shooting. And it tells this teenager was well liked by everybody. He was painted as kind of a helpless victim. But when you read on, You found out that he was It was very late at night in the parking lot of a dangerous part of town. And he was with a group of teenagers that wear weird clothes and fashions and disrespectful to adults, maybe drug use and things like that. The people that he was with may have been questionable. And so you tell your children this story, and then you say, Now, honey, this is why. I keep telling you, choose your friends very carefully. Think about people that are moral character and, and that have good values and Uh, do good things, and then I, I ask you to be in at a certain time because there is certain times of the day when it's not as safe as other times and go certain places only because of the places that you go, some places are more dangerous than other people. So you, I mean other places, and that increases the possibility, but you're telling a story. Or you might tell a story about someone they know. They got a job, real fine job, and he was very responsible and You might have with fresh thoughts say, wow, he was lucky. But you think about the person's personality was courteous, outgoing. He had a serving type personality. He was working hard in his school work and trying to learn as much as he can because he knew that there would be a time when he could use this to serve other people, and he was hardworking and willing to serve others, and all those things made up for a personality that a man would want to give a good job to. The true stories about people are effective, a very effective teaching tool. And God gives us true stories about Israel and Deuteronomy, and he gives us true stories for our admonition. So please turn to Romans chapter 15. Uh, chapter 15 verse 4, some of you probably guessed where I was going with this. So what other things were written 1/4 time were written for our learning that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. And it's talking about everything that was learned and I've talked specifically about the stories from Exodus and Uh, certainly all the stories and all the writings, but these stories were written for our learning. And then we can have patience, comfort, and hope, but how do we have patience through the stories? They reassure us. We know that God sees us. He orchestrates our life, and he can. Do anything he wants to do. So that should give us comfort, it should give us patience, and then when we hear promises of what happens to people with obedience, then we have hope. So all these things are given to us through listening to the stories and understanding about stories. So, We know that God is in charge, and by listening to these stories, and it will help us understand that God is not going to tempt us more than we are able to bear.