Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Hello everyone, this is Pastor Benjamin.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, Orlando.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com.
Joshua Esquivel: Good morning.
Joshua Esquivel: Please join me in reading the Prayer of Illumination.
Joshua Esquivel: Holy Spirit, open our hearts to hear your word, and through your word, create in our hearts a home for your presence, that we might live for the glory of the Father and the kingdom of his beloved Son.
Joshua Esquivel: Through Jesus Christ, we pray.
Joshua Esquivel: Amen.
Joshua Esquivel: Our scripture today comes from Numbers.
Joshua Esquivel: These are the stages of the people of Israel when they went out of the land of Egypt by their companies under the leadership of Moses and Aaron.
Joshua Esquivel: Moses wrote down their starting places stage by stage by command of the Lord, and these are the stages according to their starting places.
Joshua Esquivel: But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those of them whom you let remain shall be as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall trouble you in the land where you dwell, and I will do to you as I thought to do to them.
Joshua Esquivel: The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Command the people of Israel and say to them, When you enter the land of Canaan, this is the land that shall fall for your inherit for you for an inheritance, the land of Canaan as defined by its borders.
Joshua Esquivel: You shall not defile the land in which you live, in the midst of which I dwell.
Joshua Esquivel: For I, the Lord, dwell in the midst of the people of Israel.
Joshua Esquivel: This is God's word.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Well, good morning.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Good morning.
Pastor Jason Dunn: That's okay.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Wasn't a big response.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Well, my name is Jason, and I am one of the pastors here at New City.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And as Ben already alluded to, we are ending our wandering through the book of Numbers.
Pastor Jason Dunn: I got a laugh, Ben.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Ben didn't think I was going to get a laugh, but I did.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So today we come to the end.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And now your bulletin actually has a misprint because we did chapters 33, 34, and 35 for our scripture reading today.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But Ben, he kind of left us back at chapter 27.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So we were at a Mount of Erebim, and I'm supposed to take us to the end of Numbers, which is chapter 36, at the plains of Moab by the Jordan at Jericho.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So that's roughly 10 chapters, and we're not going to get to all of it today, but I think we're going to get to something really significant.
Pastor Jason Dunn: For me, I think some of us are kind of excited about moving on from the wanderings in the book of Numbers.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Right?
Pastor Jason Dunn: As Ben just alluded, we're going to be beginning our Advent series here next week, and we get to talk about Christmas and the coming of Christ.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And there's just so much goodness that happens in that holiday season.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Also, it means that we're moving from the Old Testament book here in the fall, and we're going to a New Testament book in the spring.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So that's kind of exciting for some of us.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But for me, honestly, the slowing down in the wilderness, it has been really, really good for my soul.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And we've called the wilderness here at New City God's Discipleship School or God's formation school.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He is forming us in the wilderness.
Pastor Jason Dunn: This is a picture of our pilgrim journey into a particular people for a particular person.
Pastor Jason Dunn: That's Jesus Himself.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But if you never really slow down, if you never go stage by stage, you will miss what God is doing in that.
Pastor Jason Dunn: You'll miss who we truly are as a people of God, and you will miss who God truly is.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So, like the Israelites, as we end our numbers series, I'm inviting us to continue to slow down, to look at the stage that God has guided us in.
Pastor Jason Dunn: In our text that Josh had read this morning, there was this really interesting line.
Pastor Jason Dunn: God warns us as we continue in this journey about the barbs in our eyes and the thorns in our flesh.
Pastor Jason Dunn: These are the challenges that we face as we move from stage to stage where we are being pulled away from dependence and trust in God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And so we're gonna we're gonna see this this morning in this way that God is the one who guides us stage by stage toward the promised land.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And that is our two points that God guides us stage by stage, point one, point two toward the promised land.
Pastor Jason Dunn: If you have a Bible or device, because this is not in the bulletin, please look with me at chapter 33, verse one.
Pastor Jason Dunn: These are the stages of the people of Israel, when they went out from the land of Egypt by their companies under the leadership of Moses and Aaron.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The point is this that we are all in stages.
Pastor Jason Dunn: God works with his people in a developmental way.
Pastor Jason Dunn: If you heard the sermon from last week, it was awesome.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Ben preached, and he weaved in the psychosocial Eric Erickson developmental stage theory with Ronald Roehiser's discipleship stages.
Pastor Jason Dunn: There was this interweaving that Ben did.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The points really stuck out to me is the struggle to get your life together, the struggle to give your life away, and the struggle to give your death away.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But there was a theme there for me.
Pastor Jason Dunn: As I kind of sat in these chapters of Numbers and I looked at the book of Numbers, it was the fact that all of those stages are defined by struggle.
Pastor Jason Dunn: No matter where you are on the journey, no matter which stage you're in, there is a struggle.
Pastor Jason Dunn: That's just the definition of the wilderness.
Pastor Jason Dunn: That's the pilgrim journey that we are on.
Pastor Jason Dunn: That's the reality of the already but not quite yet kingdom of God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: This might be coming from the guy who kind of sits with our people in their brokenness and fragmented wildernesses, but I actually don't think you guys can deny it.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's the stage four cancer diagnosis, way too early in life.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's the loss of a job, an uncertainty of the way forward.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's another miscarriage and the shut door of infertility.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's the death of a dream or death of a loved one.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's broken relationships between husbands and wives, between parents and children.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's our hope being deferred once again.
Pastor Jason Dunn: That's the wilderness that we are in.
Pastor Jason Dunn: That's the struggle we experience.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So life is hard.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And God, but the beautiful thing is that God does not leave us alone there.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He actually guides us stage by stage.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And that is the hope that we have.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Victor Frankel, who is a psychiatrist and a Holocaust survivor who survived the concentration camps of World War II, he has he did the work of his psychiatry.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He looked at people within those camps.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And so he continued to practice the vocation that God had given him.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And he saw two types of people who endured all of that suffering in the concentration camps.
Pastor Jason Dunn: There was those who could make meaning in the suffering, and those who could not make meaning of their suffering.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And those who could make meaning of their suffering, they had hope.
Pastor Jason Dunn: They experienced life with greater joy, with greater help, with greater purpose.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He concluded that hope in suffering is only found in meaning in that suffering.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And he called this the last of the human freedoms that no one can take away from you.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We actually have meaning in the struggle.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We have meaning in our suffering because God is the one who guides us stage by stage.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Yes, we are pilgrims, but God guides us.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So a natural question comes to my mind, God, if you're guiding us and there's meaning in our suffering, why are you choosing to do this in a suffering and in the wilderness?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Well, right there in our text, in verse 1 of chapter 33, it says, They went out of the land of Egypt.
Pastor Jason Dunn: They were under the leadership and the authority of who?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Pharaoh, the ruler and the rule of the world, right?
Pastor Jason Dunn: And they were compromised, they being the people of God, and we are compromised by being under the rule of the world.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Even Moses, right, doesn't enter into the promised land.
Pastor Jason Dunn: They had biases and practices that were not of God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: They had idols deep within their hearts that needed, that demanded God's formation school to get out of them.
Pastor Jason Dunn: They needed liberation not just from a geography, but from their imaginations and from their hearts.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We too need that liberation from the world, the flesh, and the devil.
Pastor Jason Dunn: More on that in a minute.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Look down with me at chapter 33 again, verse 2.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Moses wrote down their starting places stage by stage by command of the Lord.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So again, God is the one who is guiding them.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And these are the stages according to their starting places.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Now, why do you think Moses wrote those down?
Pastor Jason Dunn: I guess if it's a command of the Lord, you better listen, right?
Pastor Jason Dunn: And this gives credence to the fact that here in our tradition, we believe in organic inspiration, that God works through human authors to create the living and active word.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We believe that the word of God is so inspired by God that it can actually change who we are.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It confronts us, it changes us, it conforms us.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And that's why uh it actually it comforts us too.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So it's not all just the negative.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And this is why we actually pray and read scriptures.
Pastor Jason Dunn: This is why we have a daily practice of reading God's word.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But also, with Moses writing this down, it gave me the idea that it gives credence to the fact that we are a people of stories.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We have stories that go stage by stage, and we need to rehearse our personal stories with God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We actually need to write down our stories for ourselves, but also for our children.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We need to find our stories in the grand story of God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And here at New City, real quickly, we talk about that in the four-chapter story.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Creation, the way things uh had ought to be, the way that God created them, we're all good.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The fall, this is the way that things are right now, and this is me describing a little bit the struggle, the way things can be, which is redemption, and the way things will be, where there will be no more tears, no more pain.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And so, where is your particular story in that grand story?
Pastor Jason Dunn: This actually reminds me that we need to be we need to practice the discipline of journaling, the discipline of being reflective about what God is doing in our lives.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And if you have your Bibles or your devices, again, this is not in the bulletin.
Pastor Jason Dunn: I would encourage us, let's let's look at chapter 33.
Pastor Jason Dunn: There's all these stages, all these places that are listed there.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's not an exhaustive list of actually all of their journey for those 40 years, but you know, 42 sounds like a significant number.
Pastor Jason Dunn: God does that sometimes with the numbers in the Bible.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It could be six stages of seven, and now they're about to enter the seven set of stages into the promised land of rest.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But regardless of like the numbers there in terms of the number of stages that are represented, uh, you can, I I was helped by a commentator, you could break out the stages into three different categories.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So look with me.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So in uh the first category is the stages represent the Lord's faithfulness in our daily needs.
Pastor Jason Dunn: If you look at chapter 33, verse 8 or 9, there is God working with the provision of water at Elam, or making the water, the bitter water sweet.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So that's one whole category of stages that are represented here, the Lord's faithfulness.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The second big category of stages is the Lord's forgiveness, or I'm gonna call it the Lord's forgetfulness.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So if you read in the text in verse 8 or 9, they actually make uh comments about what happened, how the Lord provided.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But then there are other stages in the second category of the Lord's forgetfulness, is where uh the Israelites rebelled, they grumbled, their sin was known.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But it makes no mention of those specific things because it doesn't want to draw your attention to the fact that the Israelites sin.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It wants to draw your attention to God's forgetfulness, God's kindness, God's forgiveness.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Hebrews 8 reminds us that God will be merciful toward their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So we have a bunch of stages here about God's faithfulness, we have stages about God's forgetfulness or forgiveness, but the bulk of the stages that are listed here in chapter 33 of the 42 are just the Lord's ordinary means.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We don't really know what happened in those stages.
Pastor Jason Dunn: They're listed here, but it's it's in my mind, it's building out this theology of the ordinary.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So as we go stage by stage, we need to be reminded of these three things.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And we need to write our stories down in light of these things, of these three things: God's faithfulness, God's forgiveness and forgetfulness, and our call to the faithfulness and the mundane of life.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So the question I have for you all is can you name the stages or milestones of your journey?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Even before Jesus and after Jesus?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Where are you in that?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Where have you seen God's faithfulness, his forgetfulness or forgiveness, and your call to the mundane life?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Now, I've been thinking about this stage thing from stage to stage, obviously, because that's a bulk of chapter 33 this week.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And my attention was drawn to 1 John chapter 2.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Now, the apostle he gives us kind of another overlay of stages that a Christian can go on on a Christian journey, the way that we are discipled or developed along the way.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And you can overlay this actually in the whole book of Numbers.
Pastor Jason Dunn: There's a first generation and second generation, but real quickly from 1 John chapter 2, John talks about little children, young men or women, and fathers and mothers.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Little children, young adults, and fathers and mothers.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Stott does a really good job of explaining this.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He says the little children are those who are newborn in Christ.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Young men or women are more developed Christians, strong and victorious in spiritual warfare.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Whereas fathers and mothers, they possess the depth and stability of ripe Christian experience.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's really an interesting passage in 1 John 2.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So it's super simple.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Where are you all in that framework of children, young adults, or spiritual fathers and mothers?
Pastor Jason Dunn: The point is that God is working in a developmental way with us all.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He is the one who's guiding us stage by stage.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And the only way out is through.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And the only way forward is by looking back, looking back at God's faithfulness, looking back at God's forgiveness and forgetfulness, and looking back so that we can actually embrace what lies ahead.
Pastor Jason Dunn: God is the one who guides us stage by stage.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Now I want to tell a story real quickly.
Pastor Jason Dunn: This was some time ago when I had a little bit of means.
Pastor Jason Dunn: I was a single guy, and uh I got I decided to have get LASIK surgery done.
Pastor Jason Dunn: I don't know if you guys know the beauty of LASIK surgery, but it's amazing.
Pastor Jason Dunn: They take blind people and they make them see.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Uh and they do it with lasers, so it's like Star Wars in your eyes, you know.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And I don't know how it works.
Pastor Jason Dunn: I just paid my money and did it.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And so I was in a kind of a stage in my life where I was doing some traveling and I didn't want to have like my contact and kind of stick it in my eye with all this bacteria and all this other stuff.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So I had the surgery done.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And in this in this time period, I uh I found myself, you know, traveling the world.
Pastor Jason Dunn: I was in the South China Sea, and as one does in the South China Sea, I climbed a mountain on a small island, and here I was walking along, not really paying attention to the path that I was on, but I was talking to my buddy, and uh there's these big bamboo stalks along that path.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And I don't know if you've seen bamboo, but there's segments and they have these little pokey things that like poke out.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Uh and I ran right one into my eye and a barb broke off.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And uh here I was on a remote island in the South China Sea.
Pastor Jason Dunn: My vision was not really that great, and I was unable to find the next stage of my journey.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It didn't really matter that I can see 2015 anymore, because the barb in my eye was going to lead me astray.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Now, in the same way, that story connects to our passage here in Numbers, uh, chapter 33, verse 55 and 56.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's the end of the chapter.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Look down with me as I read this.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those of them whom you let remain shall be as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your side, and they shall trouble you in the land where you dwell.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So God is actually calling us to remove and drive out the inhabitants of the land.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He's calling the Israelites, right, as they enter the promised land, but he's also calling us, this text is for us.
Pastor Jason Dunn: If we do not drive out the temptations and hindrances that call us to compromise, they will be like those things that are like barbs in our eye.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We won't be able to see, we will be led astray, and the sin that so easily entangles Hebrews 12, it will get us.
Pastor Jason Dunn: There are besetting sins, little areas of compromise.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Maybe saying a quick word about a coworker who's not around so that you get ahead and they go behind.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Maybe that's parenting with anger and control.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Maybe that's consuming digitally and physically all the stuff that you should not do.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And what God is saying here to the Israelites, and what God is saying to you, beloved, is that if you do not deal with these things, they shall be trouble to us in the land in which we dwell.
Pastor Jason Dunn: God wants us holy.
Pastor Jason Dunn: That means all of you and holy.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He wants to he wants you to be set apart.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And he does not, he does not want you to be led astray.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And here at New City, so you might be thinking, like, how am I gonna find these barbs and thorns?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Uh, we do that in community.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We talk about community as a space where you're known and loved.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Community, but also in circles.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And so I invite you to be known and loved, be connected to people, that they can help you, be connected to young adults, be connected to spiritual fathers and mothers, where they are able to say, like, hey man, there's a barb right there, and you need to deal with that.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Or there's a thorn in your side, and you're kind of walking with the limp there, and you need to deal with that.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So wherever you find yourself in this struggle on the journey, know that God is the one that guides us stage by stage.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Now, this leads me to my second point.
Pastor Jason Dunn: God guides us stage by stage, where?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Toward the promised land.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Turn with me now.
Pastor Jason Dunn: This is in your bulletin, chapter 34, verses 1 and 2.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Command the people of Israel and say to them, When you enter the land of Canaan, this is the land that shall fall to you for inheritance, the land of Canaan as defined by its borders.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So as I said, we look back so that we can embrace what lies ahead.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And what lies ahead is the promised inheritance, the promised land, God Himself.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Again, here in these short verses, we're taught that the Lord spoke.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So God is the one who guides, God is the one who provides, God is the one, but also who derides our sin in our lives.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And so he's forming us, he's working with us, he's developmentally asking us to go through these stages to change us.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But God is not walking, he's not asking us to walk through the wilderness aimlessly, right?
Pastor Jason Dunn: He knows what lies ahead.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He knows that what lies ahead is so great, is so good.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So God goes ahead and defines the borders and the boundaries of our inheritance.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And I love how precise, if you read the whole of chapter 34 this afternoon, his his precision is so precise.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He he his precision, I think, is kindness.
Pastor Jason Dunn: His precision is love.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Now, Katie and I, when we uh were in 2018, we had fortunate enough experience to buy a house.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And so when you buy a house with a mortgage, you got to get it surveyed, right?
Pastor Jason Dunn: And so a surveyor comes out and he marks he marks the lots of the line with these big stakes.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And it was wonderful.
Pastor Jason Dunn: You know, we signed our name to a big thing, and and then we had this house, us and the bank.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And uh, and so it took me a year or more, though, to remove the stakes out of the ground.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And part of it was you might think, well, geez, did Jason have a feud already with one of his neighbors about the fence location?
Pastor Jason Dunn: No, that wasn't it.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But it was a reminder to me of the beautiful inheritance that God had given Katie and I.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So in the same way, he's defining the boundaries and the borders for the Israelites about who they what the inheritance is ahead.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Turn with me to chapter 35, verse 34.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Again, it's in your bulletin.
Pastor Jason Dunn: You shall not defile the land in which you live, in the midst of which I dwell, for I, the Lord, dwell in the midst of the people of Israel.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So, what is the great inheritance that God so aptly defines its borders?
Pastor Jason Dunn: It's that we get to dwell with him.
Pastor Jason Dunn: This is how the story began in Genesis, Adam and Eve dwelling with their creator, and then it hits a blip there in Genesis 3.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But this is how the story of the Bible comes back to us dwelling with God.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And this is the story that we unfold in Numbers.
Pastor Jason Dunn: That God wants to be in the midst of his people.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But you saw the warnings, right?
Pastor Jason Dunn: You saw the barb and the thorn, and you see the beginning of chapter 35, verse 34, that we have a problem.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The Israelites had a problem.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We are defiled.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We still have Egypt inside of us.
Pastor Jason Dunn: This is why God warns them, you shall not defile the land.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And this builds off the warning, as I said in chapter 33, about the barbs and the thorns.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Now back to the house that Katie and I bought.
Pastor Jason Dunn: When we bought it, it was wonderful.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We figured out which trees were ours.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And there were certain trees in our house that were really close to our uh the structure itself.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But I left them, you know, because I'm like, that provides shade for the for the house and it provides shade for the patio.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But these were like volunteer trees, they weren't really great trees.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And one of them was so close to the house that it started causing damage to the house.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And uh this reminds me of an old saying, and this gets back to the barb and the thorn and uh God calling us not to be defiling in the land.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So I wasn't there when this little volunteer tree actually first came out of the ground, but if I was, you could have just picked it up out of the ground.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But then over time, over 10, 15 years or wherever it's taken that tree to grow, it's gonna take like heavy equipment, maybe a chainsaw.
Pastor Jason Dunn: I may have to ask a friend or two to come over to help me take down this little volunteer tree.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And so I strongly encourage us.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The barbs and thorns, they will be like those trees that grow up and become bigger issues for us to deal with.
Pastor Jason Dunn: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound and cure.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So pull the weeds, do the work, drive out what so easily entangles.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Don't ignore the thorns in your side or the barb in your eye.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Jesus tells us the way is narrow and the road is hard, but the road of the struggle that God is guiding us in is to the promised land.
Pastor Jason Dunn: It is to himself.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Hebrews 12 reminds us, I keep quoting this, about sin that so easily entangles us.
Pastor Jason Dunn: How do we throw off every weight and sin which so which clings so closely and run with perseverance, stage by stage?
Pastor Jason Dunn: Hebrews 12, 2 says, by looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So you know that the story does not end well for the Israelites.
Pastor Jason Dunn: They fail to deal with the barbs and the thorns, they become defiled in the land.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And these are little areas of compromise that led to actually the destruction of their kingdom and the expulsion, uh, exile of God's people.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And that's what these little areas of compromise will do to us too.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And the reality is that we're unable to do the work ourselves.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So we need a savior.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And this is ultimately, since this is a series completion, this is ultimately what numbers is pointing us to.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We need someone outside of ourselves to actually save us.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The Lord wants to dwell in the midst of his people, but we are unable to drive out the inhabitants.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We have barbs in our eyes and thorns in our sides.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We are defiled.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But Jesus is the one who comes and drives the money changers in the temple and drives out all his and our enemies.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Jesus is the one who takes on the crown of thorns, so we no longer have a thorn in our side.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Jesus is the one who says, Come to me, follow me.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He has gone before us, stage by stage.
Pastor Jason Dunn: He knows, Hebrews again says, for, he knows our weaknesses.
Pastor Jason Dunn: God dwells with his people through our union to that perfect priest, to that sacrificial lamb.
Pastor Jason Dunn: And that means that the promised inheritance is Jesus Himself.
Pastor Jason Dunn: King David, who had rights over all the land, this is later in the story from Numbers, he had rights over all the land.
Pastor Jason Dunn: But he says this in Psalm 16 The Lord is my chosen portion in my cup, and you hold my lot.
Pastor Jason Dunn: The lions have fallen for me in pleasant places.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So King David, who had all of the land, he's choosing what?
Pastor Jason Dunn: The Lord as his chosen portion.
Pastor Jason Dunn: That is our beautiful inheritance, is Jesus Himself.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So union to Jesus, not our performance, not our ability to pull the weeds, actually secures our place in God's promised land.
Pastor Jason Dunn: So numbers is not about how we get to God, but how God gets to us.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Jesus guides us stage by stage, and there is grace in every step of the way toward the promised land of communion with Him.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Let us pray.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Father, we are grateful for your love for us in this, that you sent your son stage by stage, from the incarnation to his ministry, to his act of obedience, to his passive obedience on the cross, to ransom a people to be your inheritance.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Jesus, you are the faithful promised one.
Pastor Jason Dunn: You are our inheritance, and you are the one who has brought us to dwell with God, to dwell in his midst and spirit.
Pastor Jason Dunn: You dwell with your people.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Fill us up, help us throw off all that which entangles, help us to see those barbs and those thorns and move toward us in love.
Pastor Jason Dunn: We give you the glory.
Pastor Jason Dunn: Amen.