Please turn to Isaiah 42.
It's been a wonderful thing for me just
to see how God integrates things and how
he synchronizes things.
That's, it's almost God's hallmark.
He works all things together.
He synchronizes things so wonderfully.
And the pattern of the ministry as it's
been coming from the different brothers has really
been a tremendous encouragement to me, just to
know that God is linking it all together.
And all kinds of other help come as
well.
I had one gracious brother who offered to
interpret for me into English.
He, he was impressed with my pronunciation of
Hebrew names, but didn't know what I meant
by words like foot and book.
All right.
I'll just read a few verses from Isaiah
42.
Behold my servant whom I uphold, my elect
in whom my soul delights.
I have put my spirit upon him.
He shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.
He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor
cause his voice to be heard in the
street.
A bruised reed shall he not break, and
the smoking flecks shall he not quench.
He shall bring forth judgment unto truth.
He shall not fail, nor be discouraged, till
he have set judgment in the earth, and
the isles shall wait for his law.
That passage really goes farther on, but I
just want to pause there and go farther
back into the Old Testament, to the book
of Deuteronomy.
And if you'll turn please to Deuteronomy chapter
8, I think it is, yes, Deuteronomy chapter
8.
And if I can just remind you of
the context of the book of Deuteronomy.
The people of God, the people of Israel,
had been denied access to the promised land
because of their unbelief, and God had taken
them in a kind of a circuit throughout
the wilderness for a period of 40 years.
And then it comes to this point in
the chronology of things, when the people have
come back to the land that God has
promised to them, and they are poised, ready
to enter into the inheritance that God has
promised for them.
And Moses gathers them all together, and he
reminds them of the covenant, and, if you
read it carefully, almost re-enacts it, and
joins others into it who were not originally
part of it.
If you read the book of Deuteronomy, you'll
find that.
He actually says that what is happening is
that a covenant is being established which isn't
just the same as the one that was
with their fathers, but it's now for you
as well, he says.
You who are listening, who are hearing.
During those wilderness wanderings, it seems that maybe
other peoples were added to them.
This is always a surprise for people when
they hear this, but if you read, for
example, the book of Numbers, you'll discover that
at least 32,000 Midianite virgins were added
to the people of Israel.
So, they come together to the edges of
this promised land, and Moses repeats to them
the terms of the covenant, the understanding that
is the basis of their relationship with God.
And they're going to be joined into it,
and this is why it's called Deuteronomy.
Deutero means second, and nomos as law.
So, Deuteronomy really means the second giving of
the law.
And they come to, as I say, the
edges of the promised land, and it's a
wonderful book to read, the book of Deuteronomy,
because it's not just a straightforward account of
what has happened in the past.
It's an account of what has happened in
the past, plus the consequence of Moses' meditations
and contemplations.
40 years have passed in which he has
digested some of the lessons that God has
taught them, and God speaks to them again
as they're about to go in.
And this is chapter 8.
I'm going to read from three different chapters,
and they won't be in exact order, but
there is an order in which I'm going
to read some verses.
This is chapter 8.
All the commandments which I command thee this
day, shalt ye observe to do, that ye
may live, and multiply, and go in, and
possess the land which Jehovah swore unto your
fathers.
And thou shalt remember, notice the continuation of
plurals and singulars.
I mentioned this yesterday.
There are times when God regards his people
just as one corporate person, as though it's
one person, and that one person carries upon
his two shoulders the responsibility that God has
given to them as the nation.
Sometimes he's referring to individuals, and the individuals
have their individual responses to make to God.
But God joins them together, and they become
one people, and God views them as one
people.
Now, this is very strange to our Western
ears, because most of Western civilization is really
based on Greek ideas, and one of the
main Greek ideas was democracy and the individual.
It didn't work for them either.
That's in case people here are putting a
lot of trust in democracy.
But it emphasized the individual.
It emphasized the individual, and his rights, and
his responsibility, these kind of things.
If you go in the other direction, not
West, but towards the East, you begin to
get much more of a sense of belonging,
a sense of being all together in something.
You needn't put your finger in, but we
will come back to Deuteronomy chapter 8.
I just want to turn to Hebrews, briefly,
and not to go into any detail of
anything, but just to touch on an illustration
that is used by the writer to the
Hebrews, which sits very uncomfortably sometimes on Western
minds when they read it, because they can't
quite get a hold of what's going on
in this.
This is Hebrews chapter 7.
He's speaking about Melchizedek.
Remarkable character, Melchizedek.
He appears 2,000 years before Christ, very
briefly in the history of Abraham.
Then, there's no mention of him for another
thousand years, when David speaks of him very
briefly in a psalm, and then you come
another thousand years farther on into the book
of Hebrews, and there are virtually three chapters
about him.
So, he's an interesting person, and it speaks
of Melchizedek here, and what the writer to
the Hebrew is doing is he is showing
the way in which the new covenant is
superior to the old covenant.
Right the way through the letter to the
Hebrews, you've got this reference to better, better.
It's a better covenant based upon better promises.
He's a better mediator.
It's a better hope.
It's all better.
It's a contrast with the old against the
new, and one of the things that the
writer of the Hebrew wants to express is
that the priesthood of Jesus Christ is better
than the priesthood of Aaron and the descendants
of Levi, and he does this by touching
upon this mysterious character of Melchizedek, and the
reason that Melchizedek is chosen in this way
is because in the whole of the Bible
there is only one man who was both
a priest and a king at the same
time.
With his own people, God split the two
things very definitely.
The descendants of Judah would be the kings.
The descendants of Levi, one part of the
family of it, would be the priests.
The two were never to come together.
They had separate responsibilities.
There were some kings who would have liked
to have been priests and paid the penalty
for it.
Uzziah was one of those, but God had
taught them over hundreds of years that these
two functions were quite separate, until you come
to begin to speak about the Lord Jesus,
and he says his priesthood is of the
kind of priesthood of Melchizedek.
He is both a king and a priest,
and then he's going to show how that
kind of priesthood has to be better than
the priesthood that comes through the line of
Levi.
And this is what he says, chapter one,
for this Melchizedek, king of Salem, there he
is, he's a king, priest of the Most
High God, there he's a priest, who met
Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings
and blessed him, to whom also Abraham gave
a tenth part of all, being, first being
by interpretation, king of righteousness, and after that
also king of Salem, which is king of
peace.
Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither
beginning of days nor end of life, but
made like unto the Son of God, abides
a priest continually.
Now consider how great this man was, unto
whom even the patriarch Abraham gave the tenth
of the spoils.
And verily, they that are of the sons
of Levi, who receive priesthood, have a commandment
to take tithes of the people according to
the law, that is, of their brethren, though
they come out of the loins of Abraham.
But he whose descent is not counted from
them, received tithes of Abraham and blessed him
that had the promises.
And without all contradiction, the less is blessed
of the better.
That's one of the key words of Hebrew,
better.
And here, men that die receive tithes, but
there he receives them, of whom it is
witnessed that he liveth.
And, as I may so say, Levi also,
who received tithes, paid tithes in Abraham, for
he was yet in the loins of his
father when Melchizedek met him.
If therefore perfection were by the Levitical priesthood,
for under it the people received the law,
what further need was there that another priest
should rise after the order of Melchizedek, and
not be called after the order of Aaron?
For the priesthood being changed, there is made
of necessity a change also of the law.
Do you understand that?
It's a strange bit of reasoning to western
ears, because the writer is saying, you can
tell, he says, that the priesthood of Melchizedek
is greater than the priesthood of Aaron, and
the reason for that is, he says, during
the priesthood of Aaron, their priests received tithes.
The priests were, in a special sense, the
servant of God, and they received tithes.
So, during the time of Aaron's priesthood, the
priests received tithes.
So, they're pretty important.
But he goes on to say, the priesthood
of Aaron, the people of Aaron, actually they
prayed tithes too.
And you say, well, who do they pay
tithes to?
And he says, oh, well, they paid tithes
to Melchizedek, because they were in the loins
of Abraham when Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek.
You see, there is a corporate sense.
They're all in this together.
They're all part of one thing.
Abraham paid tithes, and because Abraham paid tithes,
Levi, who was in him, was paying tithes
to Melchizedek.
Is that strange?
If you're going to be honest, it's probably
strange to most of us.
It's strange because we have been taught from
earliest days, this strict sense of personal responsibility,
personal identity, I, me, mine.
But if you go farther to the east,
there's much more a sense of being in
something together.
And me being responsible for my father's debts,
and in some circles, of course, being responsible
for worship at my father's shrine.
And the whole thing is kept together in
a much more collective sense.
Well, let's go back to Deuteronomy now.
Deuteronomy chapter 8.
We do need this book to orientate us,
because the western way of thinking is not
God's way of thinking.
Neither is the eastern way of thinking, for
that matter.
But God's way of thinking is different to
anyone else's way of thinking, and what we
have in this book is the expression of
the way in which God thinks and declares
his thoughts.
There's a little word that's used quite often
in the Old Testament and in the New
Testament, and I love it.
It's the word, therefore.
Because, therefore, means this next statement is the
next logical step to the one that we've
just taken.
That's what the word, therefore, is there for.
That's what Dennis Clark used to say, whenever
you see the word, therefore, in the scripture,
you should always endeavor to discover what it's
there for.
It's always the next step.
If you can cast your mind far enough
back to days when you were sitting in
school and doing maths, there was a little
sign which was three dots and a triangle,
which meant, therefore.
And it meant, if you're falling through some
algebraic problem or some geometrical thing, it meant
that this statement that you are now making
is the next logical step from the one
that you've just taken.
Well, God is logical, too.
It's not human logic, but it is a
step-by-step reasonableness in the way that
God works.
And as you read the scriptures and just
notice those, therefores, you'll begin to see something
of God's logic, the way in which God
works.
And it's very different to the way in
which men work.
Okay, back to Deuteronomy chapter 18.
This is Moses speaking to the people.
All the commandments which I command thee this
day shall ye observe to do, that ye
may live and multiply and go in and
possess the land which the Lord sware unto
your fathers.
And thou shalt remember all the way which
the Lord thy God led thee these forty
years in the wilderness to humble thee and
to prove thee to know what was in
thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments
or no.
And he humbled thee and allowed thee to
hunger and fed thee with manna which thou
knewest not, neither did thy fathers know, that
he might make thee know that man doth
not live by bread only, but by every
word that proceeds out of the mouth of
the Lord doth man live.
This little phrase here, these few sentences, in
which Moses tells us something more.
The years in the wilderness were not just
punishment.
They were not just punishment.
In any case, all God's punishments are remedial.
They're always as a result of his love,
whom he loves, he rebukes, and chastens.
God actually said to his people Israel, it's
recorded in the prophecy of Amos, he said,
you alone have I known of all the
nations of the earth.
That's why I will punish you for all
your sins, said God said.
Part of his training, part of his chastening
and his bringing up of his people.
So this time that they spent in the
wilderness, as well as being a punishment for
their unbelief, was more constructive than that.
It was positive.
God was doing something during these 40 years.
Verse 2, thou shalt remember all the way
which the Lord thy God led thee these
40 years in the wilderness.
We sometimes refer to wilderness wanderings, and I
think the scripture does on occasion, but you
mustn't think of aimless wanderings.
These were led wanderings.
He led them in the wilderness.
They weren't lost in the wilderness.
They were being led specifically stage by stage.
God was ordering things, and this was the
purpose of his ordering, to humble thee and
to prove thee.
That's to say, to put people to the
test.
Sometimes the Bible uses this word prove in
a way that we use it, but perhaps
don't think of using it very often.
If you have a piece of gold or
something, it is taken to an essayist, someone
who tests it and checks it, and if
he gives it his approval, it is proved.
That's part of the meaning of the word
prove in the New Testament.
It has built into it the idea of
a testing which has taken place in order
that approval might be given.
So this time of being led in the
wilderness, these 40 years, was for a purpose.
It was so that a testing could take
place, and this is how it's expressed, to
humble thee and to prove, as to say,
to test with a view of approving, to
prove thee to know what was in thine
heart, whether thou wouldest keep the commandments or
no.
And during those 40 years, Moses says, this
is what happened, and he humbled thee, and
allowed thee to hunger, and fed thee with
manna which thou knewest not, neither did thy
fathers know, that he might make thee know
that man doth not live by bread alone,
but by every word that proceeds out of
the mouth of the Lord doth man live.
I'm sure that latter verse, man shall not
live by bread alone, but by every word
that proceeds out of the mouth of the
Lord, will be familiar to you.
Let's go to Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse
1.
Now these are the commandments, the statutes and
the judgments, which the Lord your God commanded
to teach you, that you might do them
in the land whither ye go to possess
it.
That thou mightest fear the Lord thy God,
to keep all his statutes and his commandments,
which I commend thee, thou and thy son.
Can you see that thou and thy son
is actually part of the thee?
Does that sound very complicated?
You'll need to look at this in the
authorized version.
Look at it in verse 2.
I commend thee, and then he explains who
he means by thee.
When he says thee, he means thou and
thy son.
In other words, when he says thee, he
means you.
But he's all gathered it together into one.
So I'm sorry if this archaic English grammar
is a bit strange.
Which I command thee, thou and thy son,
and thy son's son, that's three generations, all
thee, all the days of thy life, and
that thy days may be prolonged.
Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do
it, that it may be well with thee,
and that ye may increase mightily, as the
Lord God of thy fathers hath promised thee,
in the land that flows with milk and
honey.
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is
one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thine heart, and with
all thy soul, and with all thy might.
And these words which I commend thee this
day shall be in thine heart, and thou
shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and
shalt talk of them when thou sittest in
thine house, and when thou walkest by the
way, and when thou liest down, and when
thou risest up.
And thou shalt bind them for a sign
upon thine hand, and they shall be as
frontlets between thine eyes.
And thou shalt write them upon the posts
of thy house, and on thy gates, that
shall be when the Lord thy God shall
have brought thee into the land which he
swarent to thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac,
and to Jacob, to give thee great and
godly cities which thou buildest not, and houses
full of all good things which thou fillest
not, and wells digged which thou diggest not,
vineyards and olive trees which thou plantest not.
When thou shalt have eaten and be full,
then beware, lest thou forget the Lord which
brought thee forth out of the land of
Egypt, from the house of bondage.
For thou shalt fear the Lord thy God,
and serve him, and swear by his name.
Let me put another word instead of fear.
It's really part of the same thing, and
we'll say more about it in a moment
too.
Verse 13.
Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and
serve him, and shalt swear by his name.
Let's read on.
Ye shall not go after other gods, of
the gods of the people which are round
about you.
For the Lord thy God is a jealous
God among you.
Lest the anger of the Lord thy God
be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from
off the face of the earth.
Ye shall not tempt the Lord your God,
as ye tempted him in Massa.
Now, I'm not going to read any more,
but I want, if you will, just to
make a mental note of verse 13.
Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and
serve him.
And verse 16.
You shall not tempt the Lord your God.
And I have also asked you to keep
a mental note of that part that says,
it is written that man shall not live
by bread alone, but by every word that
proceeds out of the mouth of God.
What I want us to notice, if we
will, is that these three verses all come
from the same section of Scripture.
Don't worry about the fact that they have
now been broken down into chapters.
Moses did not deliver Deuteronomy in chapters and
in verses.
That's, at most, an accidental thing.
There's an old legend that the first person
who put the Bible into chapters and verses
did is a horseback.
And every time his horse stumbled, he started
a new chapter.
No, every time he stumbled, he started a
new verse, and every time he fell off
it, he started a new chapter.
And there are times when you look at
the chapter divisions in the Bible, and you
think there may be some truth in this
kind of story.
Well, Deuteronomy was not divided up into chapters,
it was one whole thing.
This is one discourse of Moses speaking at
one point in the time.
So, in the one discourse that Moses gives,
you have these three sentences.
Man shall not live by bread alone, but
by every word that proceeds from the mouth
of God.
Thou shalt not tempt the Lord your God.
Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and
serve him.
They all come from the same piece of
Scripture.
I hope you know where they all come
together again, but we'll look at it in
a minute if you don't.
Now, let's turn to Deuteronomy chapter 11.
This is still the same discourse, all the
same time.
Let's read from verse 7.
Chapter 11 and verse 7.
If we had the time, I would love
to read the whole of Deuteronomy, because it
really would set the scene for what I
want to say next, but I'm trying to
take some representative parts of the book of
Deuteronomy just to give the atmosphere and the
feeling for verse 7 of chapter 11.
But your eyes have seen all the great
acts of the Lord which he did.
Therefore shall ye keep all the commandments which
I command you this day, in order that
you may be strong and go in and
possess the land whether ye go to possess
it.
If you are, I'm sorry to keep breaking
into the readings, but if you are ever
doing any kind of study about Joshua and
the time when it came for the people
to possess their possessions, it might interest you
to know that the word possess is used
more in Deuteronomy than it is in the
book of Joshua.
The whole purpose of this book was to,
or of this period of time, was to
express to the people of Israel the terms
under which they would be able to possess
the land.
The only way they would be able to
possess the land is if they were rightly
related to God, if they were keeping his
commandments.
If they were keeping his commandments, God guaranteed
that they would possess the land.
And as a consequence of their possessing the
land, they would dispossess the people who were
already in possession of the land.
And I'm using this kind of language purposely
because I want us to try and make
some connections.
The land of Canaan was a possessed land.
It wasn't an empty land waiting for some
people to come and settle in it.
It was a possessed land.
The land was people-possessed.
I hope you understand what I'm trying to
say.
The land was people-possessed.
And God was raising up this people of
his to exorcise the land of Canaan, to
cast out the people who already possessed it,
so that it could come under God's law
and genuinely become God's land.
At the time when they came to the
borders, it wasn't God's land.
It wasn't under God's law and God's rule.
The people who were going to bring it
under God's authority had to be themselves people
who were under God's authority.
They had to be.
It isn't an optional extra.
The only way you can possess this land,
God says to this people, is if you
are rightly related to me.
If you're keeping my commandments, if you're walking
before me, if you're living and breathing the
things that I've spoken to you.
It's the only way you will bring this
land under the authority that is ultimately my
authority.
So now they're with Moses, and Moses begins
to say these things in verse 8.
Therefore shall ye keep all the commandments which
I command you this day, that you may
be strong and go in and possess the
land whither ye go in to possess it,
and that you may prolong your days in
the land.
This is another factor.
The only way, once the people of Israel
had possessed their land, that they could hold
on to it, was if they were rightly
related to God.
And if they lost their right relationship to
God, they would lose their possession of this
land.
And they did do.
Constantly.
It was always because the vertical relation had
been broken, and that worked its way out
in the horizontal relationships being broken.
The covenant was in two dimensions.
It was vertical, that's to say between God
and man, and it was horizontal between men
and men.
And usually the signs that it had broken
down on the vertical were seen in the
horizontal.
I'm sorry if that sounds a bit kind
of technical, but what it simply means is
this.
That if you are rightly related to your
brothers and sisters, if things are right there,
it's usually a good indication that things are
right in the other dimension.
And if things are wrong in that dimension,
don't fool yourself, says John in his letter,
into thinking that things are right in the
other dimension.
Don't you dare say that you love God
if you don't love the people in whom
God's life already is.
Don't you dare say this relationship, the vertical
relationship, is right if the horizontal relationship is
wrong.
The only way they could hold on to
their possession is if they were rightly related
to God.
Verse 9, that you may prolong your days
in the land which the Lord swear to
your fathers, to give unto them and to
their seed, a land that flows with milk
and honey.
For the land whither thou goest in to
possess it is not as the land of
Egypt from when ye came out, where thou
sowest thy seed and waterest it with thy
foot as a garden of herbs.
But the land whither ye go to possess
it is a land of hills and valleys,
and drinketh water of the rain of heaven,
a land which the Lord thy God careth
for.
The eyes of the Lord thy God are
always upon it from the beginning of the
year even unto the end of the year.
And it shall come to pass if ye
shall hearken diligently unto my commandments, which I
command you this day to love the Lord
your God and to serve him.
Put that connection together again.
Love and serve him.
To love and serve him with all your
heart and with all your soul, that I
will give you the rain of your land
in his due season, the first rain and
the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in
thy corn and thy wine and thine oil.
And I will send grass in thy fields
for thy cattle, that thou mayest eat and
be full.
Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be
not deceived, and ye turn aside and serve
other gods."
Can I just remind any who may not
have been here previously, this people had been
a servant nation.
They had been the servants of Pharaoh in
a foreign land.
And God had said, let my people go
so that they can serve me.
They're going to come into the land so
that they can be God's servants, under God's
authority, expressing, exercising God's will in the land
that he has brought them to.
And he says, you be careful that you
don't serve other gods.
Don't come under any other bondages, any other
lords, any other gods.
Verse 16, take heed to yourself, that your
heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside
and serve other gods and worship them.
And then the Lord's wrath be kindled against
you, and he shut up the heaven, that
there be no rain, and that the land
yield not her fruit, and lest ye perish
quickly from the good land which the Lord
giveth you.
Therefore shall ye lay up these words in
your heart and in your soul, and bind
them for a sign upon your hand, that
they may be as frontlets between your eyes.
And ye shall teach them, your children, speaking
of them, when thou sittest in thy house,
and when thou walkest by the way, when
thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
He keeps on repeating this.
In other words, at every possible circumstance of
life, every possible family event, every possible time
in the day, they were to be contemplating
the things of God.
They were to be conscious that they were
not their own, but that they belonged to
somebody else.
And the land that they were living in,
they were there as tenants on a strict
tenant agreement.
And the agreement was that they were in
right relationship with God.
And if they broke their tenancy, they would
lose their land.
Okay.
Verse 20.
And thou shalt write them upon the doorposts
of thine house, and upon thy gates, that
your days may be multiplied, and the days
of your children, in the land which the
Lord sware unto your fathers, to give them
as the days of heaven upon earth.
Isn't that an amazing statement?
This was God's full intention with the people
of Israel, to bring them then as His
representatives, His servant into this land, and under
His authorities to subdue it, and bring it
into perfect order, into the way that God
wanted it to be.
And the consequence of that, God said, it
would be like heaven upon earth.
It would be heaven's rule upon earth.
It would be God's will in heaven, done
upon the earth.
They would have been as the days of
heaven upon earth.
This was God's intention.
This was the willingness of God's heart.
He provided for His people all things necessary
for them to accomplish this.
He wasn't pretending with them.
He wasn't going through a charade.
He was offering them a genuine destiny, a
genuine purpose, providing for them all that they
needed, as long as they would walk in
His way and in right relationship with Him,
it would be accomplished.
You can understand again, can't you, why the
Lord Jesus should look upon Jerusalem and weep,
and say, how often, Jerusalem, how often?
Again and again and again.
And there's no callousness of God in this.
There's no cynicism of God in this.
Although God knows everything that will happen, although
He knows the end from the beginning, that
does not, that gives Him no defense against
it.
It still impacts upon Him as though He
hadn't known it was going to happen.
What I mean is, His disappointments are genuine.
They're not contrived, because love always believes all
things.
Love always hopes all things.
Love never is thinking they're going to mess
this one up as well.
It's hopeless.
That isn't the way love works, and it
isn't the way God worked.
He constantly encouraged them, rising up early and
sending prophets to them.
That was the way He expressed it on
one occasion.
Constantly, again and again.
There's a poignant comment in the book of
Ezekiel.
Ezekiel was prophesying in Babylon, when the people
had lost their land for a period of
70 years.
And during that time, Ezekiel is expressing God's
heart.
And there's one point in it, I think
it's in Ezekiel chapter 6.
And God says this concerning the people.
He says, you've broken me with your whoring
heart.
That's incredible.
I don't want us to be sympathetic towards
God, but what is happening in God when
He expresses Himself like this?
You've broken me, He says.
You see, He didn't get used to their
sin.
He didn't become hardened to it.
He isn't like human beings can be when,
and you know why they do it.
They keep themselves distanced from people, because they
know if they get too close, they'll get
hurt.
Let me just share with you a very,
very simple principle that is at work right
the way through the scripture, and right the
way through life.
And it's this, that if you love someone,
you give to that person a terrible power
to hurt you.
If you love someone, you give to that
person a terrible power to hurt you.
If you don't love them, if you keep
your distance from them, if you harden your
heart, if you—what's the opposite to enlarge—if you
cause your heart to shrink so that it
doesn't keep on getting hurt, you can save
yourself a lot of harm.
You can save yourself a lot of hurt,
but you won't be like God anymore, because
His heart is enlarged.
And it doesn't matter how often the arrows
come against Him, and how often people spit
in His face and turn away from Him,
He still keeps coming.
All day long, He says, I've stretched out
my arms to a contradictory people, all day
long.
He says in Ezekiel, you've broken me.
And He wanted it to be as the
days of heaven upon us.
He wanted this people who were His people
to worship Him and serve Him.
They were to be the servant of the
Lord, those who worshipped the true and living
God, and expressed the consequence of that worship
in lives that were utterly surrendered to Him,
lives that were not their own.
Now, let me just, if I may, just
remind you again of what happened on the
cross.
That was man's power to hurt God.
And what that tells you, more than anything
else, is the measure of God's love towards
men.
He loved men so much, and as a
consequence of loving them so much, He put
that deadly power into their hands, that when
the time came, they could actually say away
with Him, crucify Him.
And if we're going to love one another,
we just have to keep on taking risks,
and we just have to keep on getting
hurt.
There's no other way for it.
Yes, you can insulate yourself against a lot
of hurt, but you will never be the
person God wants you to be, if that's
what you do.
So, Israel closed on the edges.
You know the point at which they entered
into the promised land?
They entered into the promised land just opposite
Jericho, at a place called Gilgal.
They went across the river Jordan, and that
was the place where ultimately they were to
enter into the promised land.
This was the place where Moses gave this
discourse, when he said these things, when he
reminded them of their glorious destiny, when he
reminded them of what God was fully willing
to do with them, as long as they
would stay in right relationship with Him.
Now, let's go from the Old to the
New Testament in our Bible, and look at
Matthew chapter 4.
We'll take a verse or two from the
end of chapter 3.
It tells us, I think it's in John's
Gospel, I'm not sure, it tells us that
John the Baptist conducted his baptisms in Bethabara,
beyond Jordan.
That means he was actually the wrong side
of the river.
Beyond Jordan, that's what it means.
It means, in that sense, he was the
other side of the land.
And I have often speculated, and I don't
know whether I shall ask him, I shall
have more important things to do, I think,
when I get to heaven, and asking John
where exactly he was he did his baptizing.
But I have wondered whether, when the people
came to John, they were baptized in the
river Jordan, and got out the other side
of the river.
You see, he was baptizing beyond Jordan.
His congregation, if you like, the people he
was speaking to, were the other side of
the river.
Then they stepped into the river, and I
suppose the next row of people would move
towards the river.
So, I don't know where you can get
out, except the other side.
And the river Jordan is not a deep,
and big river at certain points.
It's very easily, easy to wade across it,
except the kind of time, of course, when
the people of Israel came to the land
of Jordan, when it was the time of
the barley harvest, and then Israel flood, Jordan
floods all its banks at that time.
So, something was needed at that time.
But generally, at certain points of it, it
would be possible to baptize from one side
and bring them out the other side.
I have in my mind, I know it
didn't happen, but I have in my mind
a sense in which the people of Israel
are paused, and poised, ready to enter into
the land, to subdue it, to bring it
under God's authority, to bring in days like
the days of heaven upon earth.
And in my mind, it's almost as though
I see God saying, this is my son,
this is my servant, he's going to accomplish
all my will, he's going to bring all
this land under my authority.
But they didn't.
But another time came.
If Jesus went into the wilderness close to
Bethabara beyond Jordan, he went into the wilderness
very close to the place where Moses gave
his discourse.
He may well have been standing or kneeling
in the exact spot where Moses said these
things.
Certainly, he would be able to see that
spot from where he was.
This is God reenacting history.
This is the Son who has come to
the edge of the Jordan.
This is the Son who for 40 days
is tested in the wilderness to see what
was in his heart, to see whether he
will keep my word or not.
This is the Son.
He comes, he spends this time in the
wilderness beyond Jordan, and his mind is filled
with Deuteronomy.
He is thinking in terms of Deuteronomy.
His points of reference are Deuteronomy.
When the temptation comes, the things that automatically
come out are Deuteronomy.
He's thinking Deuteronomy.
Let's read chapter 4, please.
Then was Jesus led.
Do you remember we read about Israel being
led in the wilderness?
All right, now was Jesus led.
Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit
into the wilderness to be tempted of the
devil, tested, proved.
And when he had fasted 40 days and
40 nights, it's an established biblical precedent that
a day can stand for a year.
Read the prophecy of Ezekiel, and you'll find
that work out.
When he had fasted 40 days and 40
nights, he was afterward unhungered.
And when the tempter came to him, he
said, if thou be the Son of God,
commend these stones be made bread.
And he answered and said, and quoted straight
out of Deuteronomy, man shall not live by
bread alone, but by every word that proceeds
out of the mouth of God.
Then the devil takes him up into the
holy city and sets him on a pinnacle
of the temple and says to him, if
thou be the Son of God, cast thyself
down.
For it is written, he shall give his
angels charge concerning thee.
And in their hands they shall bear thee
up, lest at any time thou dash thy
foot against a stone.
And Jesus said unto him, it's written again,
and he quoted directly from Deuteronomy, thou shalt
not tempt the Lord thy God.
Again the devil takes him up into an
exceeding high mountain and shows unto him all
the kingdoms of the world and the glory
of them.
And saith unto him, all these things will
I give thee, if thou wilt fall down
and worship me.
Then saith Jesus unto him, get thee hence
Satan, for it is written, and he quotes
from Deuteronomy, thou shalt worship the Lord thy
God, and him only shalt thou serve.
Can you see the point I'm trying to
make?
This is the servant of Jehovah.
He has stepped into the footprints of Israel.
He has come to the place where Israel
stood.
He is tempted in the way that Israel
was tempted, but he has stood the test.
God has discovered, not that he needed to
discover, but God has demonstrated what was in
his heart.
And now he comes to this place.
It was the end of these temptations that
these things come together in this kind of
way, and it's settled.
It's settled.
Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and
him only shalt thou serve.
This is the servant.
This is the servant of Jehovah.
There is an essential connection between true worship
and true service.
You can't have one without the other.
Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and
him only shalt thou serve.
We always end up serving the thing that
we worship.
Always, in the end, man will always end
up serving the thing that he worships.
If you worship yourself, you'll end up serving
yourself and pleasing yourself.
If you worship your wife, you'll end up
serving your wife.
Whatever you worship, the result in the end
will be that you'll serve it.
But why is that?
Well, it's because of what worship really is.
What is worship?
There's a brother here I recall.
On one occasion, I was traveling in a
car with him, and he asked that question.
He said something like, if there was just
one other word that you could use instead
of worship, what word would you use?
And I said, submission.
Or if you like, surrender.
Surrender.
That's what worship is.
More than anything else, worship is total, unconditional
surrender.
That's what it is.
I know that in our minds, it's got
all kinds of other connotations now.
We begin to think of singing and music.
Although, if you read the Bible carefully, you'll
find that worship and music never come together.
Praise and music come together a lot, but
you won't find worship and music coming together.
And it's not an accident, because the word
for worship literally means to prostrate yourself.
It means to be flat on your face.
And it's not easy to play a tambourine
flat on your face, or a guitar, or
a pipe organ, or anything else at all.
It's not easy to clap your hands lying
in your face.
It's not easy to dance lying in your
face.
In fact, there's nothing you can do lying
on your face.
You are utterly at the mercy of the
one that you have just surrendered to.
And that is the essence of worship.
You don't usually have great conversations with people
when you're lying on your face.
There's nothing to say.
The action itself is saying everything.
This is utter and absolute surrender.
It's very interesting to go through the scriptures
and look at the first occasions of a
word or an idea.
It's what Bible students sometimes call the law
of the first mention.
The idea that whenever you get the first
use of something, it's almost like a seed,
and in that seed are all the essential
truths that will later come to full fruition
in other parts of the scripture.
You've already had read to you this week,
the very first use of the word worship
in the Bible.
When Abraham said to his servants, I am
the lad will go yonder and worship.
And I actually quite like a tambourine.
I'm not the same as some other people
who I know don't.
I can play a tambourine a little bit.
I was a Pentecostal pastor for a while,
so I have a kind of a history
of this difference to some other people's history.
But Abraham didn't take a tambourine.
He took fire and a knife in his
hand when he went to worship, because he
was going to surrender.
He was going to surrender the thing that
was most precious to him, the thing which,
in a sense, you might almost say he
worshipped.
You see, everything was in this man, Isaac.
Everything.
All the promises of God were in him
now.
Abraham was an old man.
His possibilities of doing many of these things,
fulfilling these implications, was gone.
The only hope now is this new generation.
There are no grandchildren yet.
There's just Isaac.
Everything is in this man.
All the promises of God are in this
man, Isaac.
I don't know how old Isaac was when
he went with Abraham, his father.
We're not told.
I know if, when you, by the time
you get to the next chapter, chapter 23,
Isaac is 40 years old.
So, he may not have been the nine
-year-old boy that your Sunday school teacher
has told you about, or that you've seen
pictures of.
The Jews were quite convinced that he was
21.
I'm quite convinced that he was 33.
But I can't prove it from the Bible.
Abraham and Isaac, the two of them, go
together to this place of utter, total surrender
to the will of God.
There's another classic illustration of the word worship
in the first chapter of Job.
When Job is a wealthy man, he's the
wealthiest of all the men of the East.
He's a good man.
He has a large family.
He has lots of herds and animals, and
one day he's sitting, and the messengers begin
to come.
And one by one the messages come, and
each message is worse than the last one.
And slowly, stage by stage, he's being stripped
of everything that he had.
He's lost his cattle.
He's lost his camels.
He's lost his goats.
He's lost his servants.
He's lost his sons.
Stage by stage, all of it's stripped away,
stripped away.
Let me read a verse just to get
it.
This is the last message.
Behold, there came, this is a servant saying
this, behold, there came a great wind from
the wilderness and smote the four corners of
the house, and it fell upon the young
men, that's Job's sons, and they are dead,
and I only am escaped alone to tell
thee.
Then Job arose and tore his clothes and
shaved his head and fell down upon the
ground and worshipped.
I don't think he would have been singing.
I don't think he would have been clapping
or skipping, but he was surrendering.
Naked came I out of the womb.
Naked shall I return.
The Lord has given and the Lord has
taken away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Utter, absolute surrender.
That's worship.
And those who surrender will serve Him.
They will.
Those who don't surrender will be serving some
other interest, either themselves or something else.
It is inevitable.
And here's Jesus who comes and he says,
I come to do thy will, O God.
He pleased not himself, Paul says of the
Lord Jesus when he refers to this in
Romans.
He pleased, he was not serving his own
interests.
Wow.
Doesn't the time go quickly when you're enjoying
yourself?
Um, let's turn please to, um, I want,
sorry, I want to read a little bit
more from Matthew.
I want to read just a little bit
farther on so that we can see the
other part of the link with it.
Verse 11, Matthew chapter 4 verse 11.
Then the devil leaves him and behold angels
came and ministered to him.
I'll wait and everyone got it.
Matthew 4 verse 12 now.
Now when Jesus had heard that John was
cast into prison, he departed into Galilee.
And leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in
Capernaum, which is upon the seacoast, in the
borders of Zebulun and Naphtalene, that it might
be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the
prophet, saying the land of Zebulun, the land
of Naphtalene, by the way of the sea,
beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles.
The people which sat in darkness saw great
light.
And to them that sat in the region
and shadow of death, light is sprung up.
From that time, Jesus began to preach and
to say, repent, for the kingdom of heaven
is at hand.
He was going to bring in the kingdom
of heaven.
That that the other servant of Jehovah never
did, he was going to do it.
He was going to, because of his right
relationship with his father, he was going to
bring the will of heaven unto the earth.
That's what he was doing.
It's only Matthew who speaks about the kingdom
of heaven, because Matthew is the gospel to
the Jews, and this whole concept of God's
intention and what he was going to do
was all wrapped up in this whole thing.
He's coming to be what they had never
been.
There's another way in which it was symbolized,
and that's in the fact that I think,
as far as I know, of all the
nations of the earth, Israel is the only
nation that has ever taken a non-predatory
animal for its national symbol.
If you know a nation that has another
animal, please tell me, and I will revise
this the next time I say it.
But I don't know of a nation which
has taken a non-predatory animal for its
symbol, except Israel.
Their symbol was the dove, and so the
Holy Spirit, in bodily form as a dove,
comes upon the land, and he says, this
is my son, my beloved one, in whom
I am well pleased.
He's quoting.
Or is he?
Is he quoting from Isaiah 42, or is
Isaiah 42 quoting from him?
What has Isaiah heard?
Behold my servant, mine elect, in whom my
soul delights.
The other morning at breakfast, two mornings ago,
I think it was, there was a conversation
going around the table.
I'm in a family which has two little
girls and a new baby boy, and the
youngest of the girls was looking forward to
her birthday, which was the next day, and
talking and planning and wondering what she might
get and what she might not get.
And one of the things she began to
speak about was a watch, and was promising
her daddy that if he needed this watch
at the office, he could borrow her watch,
if she got a watch, because she wasn't
absolutely sure that she was going to get
a watch.
And then the next day came, after just
as breakfast was being ended, and she began
to open her presents.
And she opened one, and it was a
nice blue top, and she opened another one,
and it was some soap, and she opened
another one, and she was sitting or standing
the opposite side of the little breakfast bar
to me.
And I know people say this, but I'm
not exaggerating.
Her face lit up.
It was as though someone had shone a
light onto her face.
She was delighted, absolutely delighted.
It fulfilled all her expectations.
It's what she'd thought might just possibly happen.
It's here.
It's almost as though she's saying, it's here.
This is my watch, in which I delight.
Here it is.
It's pink, so I don't know whether daddy
will ever wear it to the office.
But it's delight, absolute delight.
Can you imagine, God?
This is the sun, my beloved one.
The AV says, in whom I am well
pleased.
It could equally be translated, in whom I
delight.
Oh, can you, can you feel the longing
of God's heart?
Disappointment after disappointment, generation after generation, failure,
failure, failure.
This is the sun, mine, in whom I
delight.
He had at last got what he'd always
wanted, the one who would fulfill his will.
Let's turn back briefly to Isaiah 42.
Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen
one, mine elect, in whom my soul delights.
I think it's in Proverbs chapter 8 that
it speaks about the delight within the Godhead
before anything was.
You read it.
It speaks in terms of wisdom, speaks, it's
a personification of wisdom.
It is the Lord Jesus, but spoken of
as under the heading of wisdom.
And there's a little, little phrase in it,
and it's using, it's using earthly language, but
it's expressing heavenly things, and it says, I
was daily his delight.
That's right.
And now the one who, from eternity past,
has daily been his delight, is now in
flesh and blood, on the earth, poised to
begin his mission, to bring the rule and
the realm of God onto the earth.
And he says, this is my son, in
whom I delight.
That's wonderful, isn't it?
It really is.
He, I have put my spirit upon him.
He shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.
He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor
cause his voice to be heard in the
street.
That's to say, he wouldn't be strident and
harsh, he wouldn't be forcing his way, he
wouldn't be making a big fuss.
It's not his way.
The bruised reed shall he not break, and
the smoking flax shall he not quench.
He shall bring forth judgment unto truth.
He shall not fail, nor be discouraged till
he have set judgment in the earth, and
the isle shall wait for his law.
I have a very patient wife, and a
few weeks ago, long before I was thinking
of the Exeter Bible Week, she came bustling
into the kitchen, and she said, what is
it?
What's that terrible smell?
Well, I was conducting an experiment in the
kitchen.
I'd managed to get one of these little
reproductions of a Roman oil lamp, that you
can buy sometimes at places like Carnarvon Castle,
or something like that.
And, I got some extra virgin olive oil,
because I knew that was the kind of
oil that came from the first pressing, which
was used in the oil lamps in the
temple.
And, the experiment that I was conducting was,
I wanted to see what the effect was
when you begin to extinguish flax, which has
been soaked in virgin olive oil.
Have you ever done this?
Maybe you're not of this kind of, maybe
you haven't got a wife whose patience is
mine.
Well, the smell hung around for about two
days.
It's acrid, it's penetrating, you can't ignore it.
There's no way that you can say, oh
well, even people with not very good olfactory
senses, like earlier preachers today, would have smelled
it, I'm sure.
It was, it's a terrible smell, terrible smell.
But, even a smoking flax, he wouldn't quench.
Literally, it's really a dimly burning flax.
I had to take it out into the
garden in the end.
I was banished from the house in my
experiment.
A bruised reed shall he not break.
There's something that happens in these two verses
which doesn't really come out into the A
.V., maybe you'll use another version in which
it does come out.
And, it's the fact that this word for
bruised, in verse three, the bruised reed, shall
he not break.
And, the word for smoking flax, or something
which burns dimly, is actually carried on into
the next verse.
So, that literally, the next verse says, he
shall not be broken and he shall not
burn dimly.
It's exactly the same word.
You see, there's a contrast between these two
verses.
God is conscious of that that was intended
to be the light of the world, and
show forth the praises of God's name, which
is failed utterly.
It's a broken reed.
It's a smoking flax.
He was conscious of that, but even of
that he wouldn't just, he wouldn't just rubbish
it.
He wouldn't just throw it into the bin,
because his whole disposition is not to do
that.
His disposition is one of one who is
not broken, and of one who will not
burn dimly.
It's the servant of Jehovah.
It's one of the special roles of the
high priest in ancient Israel, to trim the
wick of the lamps, and to make sure
they didn't burn dimly, and to cut off
what needed to be cut off, and to
make sure they were replenished with good virgin
oil, so that the light was good and
clear and steady.
She's still the servant of the Lord, still.
At the Father's right hand in the heavenly
temple, walking amongst the lampstands of his church,
he's still doing the same thing, trimming and
replenishing.
Judgment is his strange work, one of the
prophets says.
It's his strange work.
He's just so full of love, so full
of expectation, full of a love that doesn't
keep scores and accounts, full of a love
that gives and gives and gives and gives
again.
Hallelujah.
Let's just stop and we'll surrender to him,
shall we?
Do you feel you can surrender to someone
like this?
Oh, there's not a harsh note in his
voice.
There's just such a willingness to come and
serve, knowing who he was, knowing where he'd
come from, knowing where he was returning to.
His instinct is to be on his knees
at the feet of his disciples, washing them,
cleansing, renewing, replenishing.
Oh, Father, our delight is in him too,
Lord.
He is the desire of nations.
He is more than we ever dreamed might
be possible.
Thank you, Lord, by your Spirit you reveal
him to us in all his wonder, in
all his grace, in all his provision, in
all his willingness to dispossess the territory of
that that has no right there and to
bring in heaven's rule.
Lord Jesus, our greater than Joshua.
Hallelujah.
Oh, Lord, do glorify your Son in the
gaze of our spirits, Lord.
Oh, help us not to be dismayed by
looking here and there, but fix our eyes
upon him.
Behold, my servant, he shall not fail, nor
be discouraged.
Blessed, blessed Lord.
Oh, hallelujah.