Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Hello everyone.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: 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.
Connor Bonello: Pray with me our prayer of illumination, please.
Connor Bonello: Holy Spirit, make us hungry for your word that it may satisfy us, lead us, and bring us life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Connor Bonello: We pray.
Connor Bonello: Amen.
Connor Bonello: Our scripture this morning comes from Deuteronomy 1.
Connor Bonello: These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel beyond the Jordan in the wilderness.
Connor Bonello: It is eleven days' journey from Horeb by the way of Mount Seir to Kadesh Barneah.
Connor Bonello: In the fortieth year on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses spoke to the people of Israel according to all that the Lord had given him in commandment to them.
Connor Bonello: Beyond the Jordan, in the land of Moab, Moses undertook to explain this law, saying, The Lord our God said to us in Horeb, You have stayed long enough at this mountain.
Connor Bonello: The Lord your God who goes before you will himself fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness where you have seen how the Lord your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you went until you came to this place.
Connor Bonello: Yet in spite of this word you did not believe the Lord your God, who went before you in the way to seek you out a place to pitch your tents, in fire by night and in the cloud by day, to show you by what way you should go.
Connor Bonello: This is the God's word.
Connor Bonello: You may be seated.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Today we begin a 14-week series through the book of Deuteronomy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This will bring us all the way up to Advent.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We will turn into an Advent series at that point.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And if you've been with us for a little while, you'll know that from 2019 to 2021, we were in the book of Genesis.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: From 2022 to 2023, we were two years in the book of Exodus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In 24, we were in Leviticus, and last year we were in the book of Numbers.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so this morning, we begin our eighth year together through the five books of Moses.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And we finally have reached the fifth book, which is the book of Deuteronomy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, over the course of these 14 weeks, uh you will be left wanting more, I can assure you of that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so John Calvin preached 200 sermons over a year and a half on the book of Deuteronomy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You can find the PDF of those sermons for free online.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's 4,000 pages.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Indulge yourself, all that you want to, especially because you'll want more.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what I'm hoping.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now we call this book Deuteronomy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the English term.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It comes from the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which is called the Septuagint, which uses this word Deuteronomos in Deuteronomy 17, 18.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's where the word shows up in Greek.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And Deuteronomos just means second law.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But the Hebrew term for this book is divarim, which simply means the words.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And this title is actually taken from the first verse of the book.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, if you would get a Bible or device out, because the worship guide's not going to really help you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is going to be, we're going to go through the whole chapter one, but it's hard to summarize 40-something verses in a few.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so get a Bible or device and look at with me at Deuteronomy 1, verse 1.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And I want to see one journey, two stories, and three responses.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: One journey, two stories, three responses.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look with me at Deuteronomy 1.1.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It says this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What are the words?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, the retelling of Israel's story that is meant to determine how they are to live here and now.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, origin stories matter because they shape the identity and the activity of a people.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Some of you may know that the Romans lived with this mythology, this story about their founders, Romulus and Remus.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They were these mythical twins who were raised by wolves, and then they ended up founding the city of Rome.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And in many ways, Rome was shaped by this wolf-like military prowess.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In America here, the American spirit is shaped by stories of tyrants and tea parties and don't tread on me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's very core to what it means to be American.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And Moses is about to renarrate Israel's story to Israel.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Why?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because somewhere along the way, Israel began telling themselves the wrong story about their journey.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look with me at verse two.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It says this it is an 11 days' journey from Horeb by the way of Mount Seir to Kadesh Barneah.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, verse 2, there's something strange here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: From Horeb or Mount Sinai, the place where Moses received the law from Yahweh, from Horeb to Kadesh Barnea is only an 11-day journey.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But verse 3 starts off by telling us it's now the 40th year.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So what happened between Kadesh and Moab, that where they are now?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What happened in that gap?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 3.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It says this in the 40th year, on the first day of the 11th month, Moses spoke to the people of Israel according to all that the Lord had given him in commandment to them.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Forty years ago was 1986.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Ronald Reagan was president.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Top Gun just came out.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Imagine for a moment having left on a journey in 1986 only to have arrived today.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What that experience would be like.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Said differently, how is it that a people standing at the doorstep of God's promises end up spending a generation in the wilderness?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: How did that happen?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Or you could ask the question, and I think this is the question Moses wants the generation he's speaking to to answer.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I think it's the question we need to answer too.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What went wrong?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because if they don't understand what happened to their parents, they're going to repeat it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because whatever we refuse to remember, we are liable to repeat.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Whatever's not transformed is going to be transferred to the next generation.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's just true about our story.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So in this sermon, Deuteronomy is a series of sermons.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In this sermon, Moses takes them back 40 years to renarrate their journey.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look with me, if you will, at verse 5.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Beyond the Jordan in the land of Moab, Moses undertook to explain this law.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what a good sermon's gonna do.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's simply gonna undertake to explain what's going on in Scripture.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what Moses is doing.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And he says, verse 6 The Lord our God said to us in Horeb, You have stayed long enough at this mountain.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, the Lord delivered his people from Egypt to bring them to this mountain in Horeb, Mount Sinai.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You know, most of Exodus basically looks like this, or at least the first part.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's Moses saying, Pharaoh, Pharaoh, O baby, let my people go so they can come to this mountain, Sinai, in Horeb and worship the true and living God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's that's what Moses is basically sent to tell Pharaoh.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, what's the significance of this mountain?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, it's where Israel became a nation.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: At Mount Sinai in Horeb, God gave them his covenant, his law, his presence, his tabernacle.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But eventually God says to them, You've stayed here long enough, it's time to go.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And when God says stay, you stay, when God says go, you go, and that's what Israel does.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look with me at verse 19.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Then we set out from Horeb and went through all that great and terrifying wilderness that you saw.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: On the way to the hill country of the Amorites, as the Lord our God commanded us, and we came to Kadesh Barnea.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Something tragic happens at Kadesh Barneah.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Behind them is Egypt, before them is everything that God has promised to them through their fathers.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Kadesh Barneah is the doorstep of the promised land.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: All they have to do, all that remains is for them to trust God and enter the land.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look with me at verse 20.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And I said to you, You have come to the hill country of the Amorites, which the Lord our God is giving us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: See, the Lord your God has set the land before you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Go up and take possession, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has told you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Do not fear or be dismayed.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I want you to notice here the grammar of grace in this text.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God gives the land, but Israel must take the land.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God's promise doesn't eliminate their participation.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God's promise makes their participation possible.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, God delivered them from Egypt, God led them through the wilderness, God will conquer Canaan.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Christian, their story is your story.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God has saved you from sin's penalty.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God is saving you from sin's power, and God will save you from sin's presence.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you can trust God in the past, you can trust him for the present and for the future.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's where Israel failed.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look with me at verse 22.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Then all of you came near me and said, Let us send men before us that they may explore the land for us and bring us word again of the way by which we must go up and the cities into which we shall come.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I want you to notice something strange here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And if the Bible does something strange, just assume there's intention behind it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 22, it says, Then all of you came near me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's factually false.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They didn't come near near Moses.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In fact, most of the people that Moses is preaching to were not there in Numbers 13 and 14 when this event happened.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And if they were there, they were children, maybe infants.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So what's going on?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Even verse 35 says this not one of these men of this evil generation shall see the good land that I swore to give to your fathers.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So listen, the generation that was at Sinai, the generation that wandered in the wilderness, the generation who sent the spies into the land has all died.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Every last one of them.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Moses is here preaching to their children, and yet in verse 22 he says, All of you came near me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What is Moses doing here?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Moses isn't merely reminding Israel of their past.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Moses is re-narrating their story in such a way that the boundary between the past and the present becomes porous.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, this is what the Bible means when it tells us regularly over and over again to remember.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What it's getting us to do is it's helping us to, it's making you here and now a member of what happened there and then.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now I want to invent a term because I studied the commentaries and looked at theologians and nobody termed this anything.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So here we are.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: A novel invented term.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I want to call this covenantal contemporaneity.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: How's that for a good nerdy scholarly term?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Covenantal contemporary contemporaneity, I can't even say it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What I mean by that is what God did there and then shapes God's people here and now.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's all I mean by that term.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And I think that's what Moses is doing.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I think the Apostle Paul learned it from Moses.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In fact, in Galatians 3:1, he says this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Paul speaking to the Jews, or I'm sorry, the Gentiles at Galatia says this, oh foolish Galatians, it was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Nope.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: No, these Gentile Galatians were not there in Jerusalem on the day when Jesus of Nazareth was crucified.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's not factually true.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So how can Paul say that?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: How can Moses say what he said?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, it's because all faithful preaching, whether Moses or Paul or any preaching that happens in this pulpit, is simply a representation of what God has said and done.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what's happening.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So it's happening in our text here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You could say it's a deuteronomo, it's a second giving, it's another giving of the law, of the instruction that God has for his people.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now I want to come back to this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: For now, let's go back to Kadesh Barnea.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 25 with me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And they took in their hands, this is the spies, some of the fruit of the land and brought it down to us and brought us word again and said, It is a good land that the Lord our God is giving us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now they're telling the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So help them, God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They're telling what is really going on there.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But look at verse 26.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Yet you would not go up, but rebelled against the command of your of the Lord your God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Why did they rebel?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Well, notice the story that they tell themselves.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 27.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And you murmured in your tents and said, Because the Lord hated us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There it is.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the story.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Remember where we started?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I said that a people, a community always lives inside of a story, a narrative that makes sense of who they are and how they live.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And here's the story that Israel came to believe.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 27, they continue.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because the Lord hated us, he's brought us out of the land of Egypt to give us into the hand of the Amorites to destroy us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In an interesting way, in that's in verse chapter 1, verse 27, but in Deuteronomy 7, 8, Moses is actually going to tell the same story, but listen to what he says.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because the Lord loves you, the Lord brought you out.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, Israel says, Because he hates us, he brought us out of Egypt, to give us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But Moses is trying to out-narrate, to tell a better story than that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He says, Because he loves you, he brought you out of slavery.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: To give the hand the Amorites' land into your hands to multiply and bless you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You hear the two competing narratives claiming the same facts as their own.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What story do you tell yourself about who God is?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Or what God's up to in your life, in the world around you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You know, political pundits love this phrase: facts don't care about your feelings.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You ever heard this before?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's true.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Um, but what they fail to recognize is that your feelings will always interpret the facts.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And that's what happens is that your state shapes your story.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you're in an anxious state, you will tell a fear-based story.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you're feeling self-pity, you'll see everything as an offense.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you are grateful, you'll count a thousand blessings.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Your state shapes your story.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And because of that, I want you to watch and see how fear, what fear does with the facts.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 28.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Where are we going up?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Our brothers have made our hearts melt, saying, The people are greater and taller than we, the cities are great and fortified up to heaven.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And besides, we've seen the sons of the Anakin there.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, facts put fear puts facts into a false frame.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Fear puts facts into a false frame.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so what happens then is that these fear stories result in an inferiority complex.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look, it says, they are great and tall, we are weak and small.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Fear stories also result in exaggeration.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The cities are great, fortified, up to heaven.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Fear stories may even dabble in conspiracy theories.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It says, We have seen the sons of the Anakim there, whoever they are.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, fear functions like a microscope.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What it does is it takes small things and it makes them much bigger than they really are.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Faith functions like a telescope.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It takes great things and makes them much nearer than they really are.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so, what is fear magnifying in your life right now?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Or said differently, how is fear making God functionally small?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Since state shapes story, Moses is trying to tell them a better story.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look what he says in verse 29.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Then I said to you, do not be in dread or afraid of them.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Moses knows that fear creates this amplifying feedback loop until someone steps in and renarrates your experience.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Takes the same collection of facts but interprets it in a different light.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what he's trying to do.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at how Moses out-narrates their fear story in verse 30.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It says this the Lord your God who goes before you will himself fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, Moses knew God face to face.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I actually believe Moses learned something that you and I have on offer to us, but it can only be learned through experience, and that is, I believe Moses learned to regulate his nervous system through communion with God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I believe he knew what it was, what it looked like.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What the psalmist says is to calm and quiet my soul before the Lord.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so that's why from a from a place of calm and quiet before the Lord, he could believe, based on experience, if God is for us, who can be against us?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And he he tells a better story from that place.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, since Genesis 3.15, there are really only two fundamental stories that people tell about God and ourselves and the world.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: One is gonna be in light of the ancient lie of the serpent.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The other one is gonna take up the words of God, the divarim, and tell the story in light of that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: John Owen, a pastor, says it like this people are afraid to have good thoughts of God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: They think it is bold to see God as good, gracious, tender, kind, loving.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So they judge him to be hard, austere, severe, almost implacable, and fierce, the very worst affections of the very worst of men and most hated by God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Is not this soul deceit from Satan?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Was it not his design from the beginning to inject such thoughts of God?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: End quote.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, Moses appeals to who God is in order to out-narrate Israel's fear narrative.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 31.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It says this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And in the wilderness where you have seen how the Lord your God carried you as a man carries his son all the way that you went until you came to this place.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Just reflect for a moment on this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Why do fathers carry their sons?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There's a few different reasons.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: One might be their son is tired, another might be that the terrain is dangerous, another one might be that their son is being disobedient.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Yes, all of the above in this text.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: A good father will pick up his son to carry him when that son cannot carry on.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: A good father will carry his son when the way is treacherous.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: A good father will even carry his son when the son comes kicking and screaming.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And that's exactly what the Lord has done for Israel.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: All of those things.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because the wilderness is real.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And in fact, in verse 19, it says, All that great and terrifying wilderness.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But here the father heart of God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He carried them, verse 31 says, all the way until you came to this place.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I don't know what you are telling yourself about your wilderness right now.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But there's two stories right now that are competing for your trust.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: There is one that comes from looking inside yourself and trusting in your thoughts and feelings.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And there's another one that comes from looking up and outside yourself and receiving the divorce, the words of God, to narrate your story.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 32, where we see the heart of the matter.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It says this, yet in spite of this word, you did not believe.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You did not believe that the Lord your God, who went before you in the way to seek you out a place to pitch your tents in fire by night and in the cloud by day, to show you by what way you should go.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see what happened is they reached the doorstep of God's promises in in days.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And yet it took decades to walk through the door.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the question I started with is what went wrong?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What happened?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The issue was not a problem of geographical distance, the issue was a problem of unbelief.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So my question for you is what is the false story that you have in your head about God that results in disbelief?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Oswald Chambers says this the root of all sin is the suspicion that God is not good.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So, in light of these two stories, God loves us or God hates us, there are also three responses.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 34 with me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the Lord heard your words.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In other words, the Lord heard the story that Israel was telling.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The Lord heard your words and was angered, and he swore, Not one of these men of this evil generation shall see the good land that I swore to give to your fathers.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 39.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And as for your little ones, who you said would become a prey, and your children who today have no knowledge of good or evil, they shall go in there, and to them I will give it, and they shall possess it.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Little excurses for a moment here, because there's there's actually a poetic justice that's happening in the text.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, what happened is Israel refused to go into the land because they feared that their little ones would die, their children.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Yet they themselves died, and their little ones are the ones who will inherit the land.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Alana, my wife, and I will sit down and have date nights.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And one of the questions that we ask with pretty frequency, a good bit of frequency, is this question What are you afraid of lately?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And maybe the most common response from both of us is something related to our children.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And when I, when we had our firstborn, uh, the woman who basically prayed Augie into existence said to me, Ben, when you have a child, what happens is a part of who you are gets externalized and is profoundly vulnerable and it never goes away.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the reason why that matters is because fathers and mothers, here is a place that the Lord is inviting you into trust.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That the story that you tell about this really matters.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Will you trust God with your kids?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Said differently, many of us are willing to obey as long as obedience is safe for us and for our children.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But for some of us, in that fear, we we run, we go numb, we collapse in on ourselves.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what happened to Israel at first, right?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It was like, no, we're not gonna go in because of all these fears that stirred up for them.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But for others of us, like myself, fear presents almost like adrenaline, kind of dials you up, burns hot.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That also happens.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 41.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Then you answered me, we have sinned against the Lord, we ourselves will go up and fight.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Notice the emphasis, we ourselves will fight.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Just as the Lord our God commanded us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And every one of you fastened on his weapons of war and thought it easy to go up into the hill country.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Listen, rather than flight or freeze or fawn, some of us in fear, we we bow up, we go to fight.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And it may feel like faith, but it's actually a form of self-confidence.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's faith in yourself, not in God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what's happening here.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Um, let me just make that plain.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you listen to a sermon or read a book, and and your first move is to kind of steal your attentions, I'm gonna do better, I'm gonna try harder.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's not faith.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's caffeinating your will in a presumptuous self-confidence.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what that is in that moment.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what they do.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 42.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the Lord said to them, say to them, Do not go up or fight, for I am not in your midst.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I'm not with you, lest you be defeated before your enemies.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So I, Moses, spoke to you, and you would not listen.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But you rebelled against the command of the Lord, and here's the word, presumptuously went up into the hill country.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, at first they refused because they looked at themselves and they said, We can't.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But then they changed their mind and they charge ahead because they looked at themselves and said, We can.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Neither of these responses actually trusts God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Both timidity and presumptuousness bypass the presence of God.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Verse 42, for I am not in your midst.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: If you don't have me, you've got nothing, the Lord said.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Verse 44.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Then the Amorites who lived in that hill country came out against you and chased you as bees do.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Anybody been chased by a bee before?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Not good.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You're losing.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Okay?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Chased you like bees do and beat you down in Seir as far as Hormah.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And you returned and wept before the Lord, but the Lord did not listen to your voice or give ear to you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So you remained at Kadesh many days, the days that you remained there.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Here's the three responses.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Number one, we can't.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's the fear and timidity that comes from self-trust.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Number two, we can.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's the presumptuous and boastful confidence that comes from self-trust.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Both of these are opposite forms of self-reliance, and both of them come from an over-indexing on the self, what you can accomplish.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So if it's not we can't or we can, it must be God can.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's the response of faith.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's taking God at His word.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's receiving the promise and responding by obedience, saying, Yes, Lord.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so, New City, what will we do with this deuteronomous that's happening right now?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This second giving, this another giving of the words of God and the works of God, his story and his statutes, how will we respond?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What will we let our state drive our story, or will we receive these words looking up and outside of ourselves and let the diva reem shape who we are and what we do?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's the invitation right here, right now.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What is the story that you're telling yourself about God today?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Now, Moses incorporated the new generation into the old generation story, but Paul, the Apostle Paul, goes much further.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Paul says, through Christ we actually participate in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what baptism symbolizes.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so it's not just that you're to make their story your story, it's that now Jesus' story becomes your story.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, Israel's fundamental problem wasn't giants in the land, it was unbelief.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It was a false narrative.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The Lord hates us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And do you know why that lie is so compelling for the people of God?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's because there is a part in each and every one of us that believes that not only is that true, but it's deserved.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We know ourselves.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We wouldn't be surprised if God rejected us and opposed us and was against us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We wouldn't be surprised by that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: But listen, we have something Israel didn't have.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus Christ becomes the ultimate evidence against the lie, the Lord hates you.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Because at the cross we see that God doesn't hate us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Instead, God so loved that he gave.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: So when the ancient lie rises up in us, the cross becomes this controlling memory that interprets everything else.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: We have this covenantal contemporaneity where we bring what God has done there and then into the here and now and let it shape who we are and how we live.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the cross allows us to do that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Listen to how Paul does this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He's mimicking Moses, I believe, in Galatians 2.20.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He says, This I have been crucified with Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And the life that I now live by faith, I live, the life that I now live in the flesh, I live it by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is the ultimate master narrative.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is the better story that we have to tell.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: This is the gospel.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The good news for anybody who receives Jesus is that his story becomes their story.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: In Jesus Christ, you've lived and you've died and you've been risen again.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And we live this life out by faith in that story.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: God wants to incorporate you into the better narrative.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: C.S.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Lewis has a book called The Horse and His Boy.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And it really is an epic journey with two competing narratives.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And one of the narratives is told by the main character, Shasta.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He tells us about his life.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And basically, near the end of the book, Shasta is traveling alone.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He's walking through a thick fog.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He's exhausted, he's lost, he's feeling terribly sorry for himself.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And as he walks, he realizes that there's some mysterious creature walking beside him.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so Shasta begins to tell his story.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And from Shasta's perspective, it's a story of one terrible thing after another.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He was abandoned as a baby.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He was raised by a man who wasn't his father.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He was chased by lions, he was separated from his friends, and even now he's alone in this fog.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, Shasta has taken the facts of his life and he's put them into a narrative, and the narrative sounds like this.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Why do all these terrible things keep happening to me?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And then the mysterious companion reveals himself.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's Aslan.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And what happens in this moment is Aslan begins to renarrate Shasta's story.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: I was the lion.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: The lion who protected you when you were a helpless baby, I was the lion.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Even the lion who was willing to wound Erevis, I was the lion.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, Shasta misreads his entire life until Aslam Aslan comes up and says, I was there all along.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's Deuteronomy 1.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: That's what's happening in our text.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Israel looks back at Egypt in the wilderness and says, The Lord hates us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Moses looks at the exact same wilderness and says, The Lord your God carried you all the way.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, the same journey, two different stories, results in three different responses.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so, Christian, when you look at your life and you cannot understand what God is doing, you have something Israel did not have.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You have the cross of Jesus Christ.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: What that means is if the Father has given us his son, then whatever else, whatever else you cannot understand about God's providence, you can interpret what you don't know by what you do know, and that is he loved me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: He gave himself for me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You see, the Son of God is the one who came to be with us.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: And so when fear whispers, God is against you, remember the cross.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: When your circumstances whisper, God has abandoned you, you remember the cross.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: When when you are tempted to interpret the wilderness seasons of your life as evidence that obviously the Lord hates you, remembered He loved me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Jesus is saying to you, even here and now, He's looking at you, he's saying, I am the Lion.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Let's pray.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Father, you've carried us as a people.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Each of us individually, all of us corporately, we praise you for that.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Lord Jesus, you are the Lion of the tribe of Judah.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: You're the one who lived and died and rose again that we might have a new and better story told over our lives.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Holy Spirit, would you catch us up into that narrative?
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Deliver us from the fears that control our memories and free us up with faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: It's in his name we pray.
Rev. Benjamin Kandt: Amen.