Welcome to Delight in Grace. The Teaching Ministry of Rich Powell. pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. God's provision is a gift. He delights in richly giving to his people.
But there is a danger that comes with abundance. How we can let ease draw us into drifting from our Lord our ultimate source of wholeness and help. Deuteronomy eight holds warnings for Israel as they prepare to enter the rich abundance of the promised land. God calls them to remember. to hold fast to what they have known to be true of him.
and to follow all that he has commanded them. This is part two of a message originally preached on June 16th, 2024.
So, I'm going to bring two points today, two main points to the sermon today. The first one, number one, following God's way is the path to life. That's verses one through ten. The whole commandment that I command you today, you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers. You shall remember that the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these 40 years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart.
Remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you. The main point here is following God's way is the path to life. Don't get carried away with cliché here, okay? This is true. You with me?
Following God's way is the path. to life. That's true for them. It's true for us. Hear God speaking to you.
I'm not claiming to be God, okay? But God's Holy Spirit is at work in this room right now. Why? Because we have His Word open. And we are his people.
And there may be some in here this morning. that do not know him, he invites you to himself. But hear him saying to you right now, people of God, Walk with me. Walk with me. You see, he's inviting his people to relationship.
God doesn't just stand aloof and give his commands and say, you need to behave this way. No, he says walk with me He led us 40 years in the wilderness. Kelly is up here this morning talking about being in a wilderness. God leads us through a wilderness from time to time. You could probably identify with that.
Some of you, maybe right now, some of you in the recent past, maybe some of you in the distant past.
Some of you are going to be walking into a wilderness pretty soon. I don't know who you are. I'm not speaking prophetically, okay? It happens. And oftentimes, God leads us into that wilderness, but he's calling you to.
relationship. It's like the proverb says, in all your ways do what? Acknowledge him. Acknowledge him. Relationship, the Lord has led you these forty years.
Verse 2. And what was going on there? Two things. Correction. He was correcting them to change, to transform their hearts from rebellion and mistrust.
And to transform them to a people characterized by trust. and a pursuit of God, trusting him, walking with him, in relationship with him. because they know who he is. They remember who he is. And he tells them very clearly that their obedient faith would yield delight in the promised land.
Delight in the promised land, speaking historically of the people of Israel. We see that, for example, look at verse 7 with me. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks, of water, of fountains and springs flowing out in the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land where stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig cotton. Copper, and you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land He has given you. This was God's promise to his people here.
He says, I've promised that to you. He was not only correcting them, but there was discipline involved here. This whole, as God is leading them in the relationship between. the authority and those in submission There is discipline going on here. The word discipline, I don't want you to think of discipline as, you know, take your kid and whop his behind or something like that.
I mean, that can be a form of discipline, but what he's talking about here is teaching, warning, instructing. like the discipline of a somebody playing a uh an instrument. They practice over and over and over again. They learn the discipline of an athlete. It it takes hard work.
It takes consistency, but the Lord is disciplining them. He's teaching them and instructing them. And he says, I humbled you. It was God's. Why did God take them through the wilderness?
to humble them. You and I need to be humbled. What does it mean that he humbled him? We need to think rightly about ourselves. When we are not humbled, we think we tend to think too highly of ourselves.
Why? Because we were born self-preeminent rebels.
So we naturally think too highly of ourselves. And God said, I led you into the wilderness to humble you. Why? To test you, to see what's in your heart. You know that common illustration, if there is a can.
And I'm talking with my hands, right? And I knock it over. If I knock this over and water spills out of it, I could ask you: why did water spill out of this bottle? Because I knocked it over. No, because water's what's in the bottle.
You knock it over, whatever is in the bottle is what spills out. Listen to me. Life has hard knocks. Life is not easy, life is hard. You will struggle.
You will go through a wilderness. What's going to spill out? When you meet, when you're met with an injustice or an unkindness, what spills out? You see, that's the purpose of testing. And God was testing his people, what is in your heart.
God didn't need to find that out. He says, I want you to know what's in your heart. And he says, thirdly, I want to make you know that man does not live by bread alone. You see, life isn't just a physical existence. You are not self-sufficient.
You cannot live just by existing. Man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Here's the truth of the matter: He is your creator, He is your sustainer. You are the branch growing out of the tree. If you cut yourself off from the tree, What's going to happen to you?
You will wither. You with me on this? This is what he's teaching the people, and it's true for every one of us in this room this morning. You walk away from him. You will get hungry, you will get thirsty.
God takes them in the wilderness, and here's. Here's what we need to learn from this this morning. God takes you places where you must depend on Him. And this gets you in touch with reality. What is the reality?
You were created by him and for him. He is your creator. He is your sustainer. You cannot sustain yourself. You are a contingent being.
You had nothing to do. with your existence. That's God's work. And he made you and he made you for himself and he is your sustainer. And so that's the reality.
And he takes us sometimes in the wilderness to be reminded of that reality and not the bubble of the world in what we think is our. prosperous self-sufficiency. Man lives by every word that comes from the mouth. What is that? That is God's self-disclosure.
When God speaks, things happen. God's word is powerful. God's word is creative. It's restorative. It's transforming.
Man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Remember what Peter said? Jesus had said some very hard things recorded in John chapter 6. And a lot of people walked away and say, we didn't sign up for this. Jesus looks at his disciples.
And he says, are you going to leave me too? What did Peter say? To whom shall we go? Here it is. You have the words of eternal life.
Loved ones, listen to me. Mark that on your hearts because you're going to be tempted to go after other objects of satisfaction and security and trust. To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. There is no other worthy object of trust and devotion than the one who made you and redeemed you.
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word. The words of God, all of them, by every word. That proceeds from the mouth of God. What are the words of God? They are God's purposes.
His promises, his patterns, his precepts. All of that recorded for us in writing. And we have His Holy Spirit now to illuminate that to us. His word is what he has spoken, what he has revealed of himself. That we are to trust, that we are to commit ourselves, we entrust ourselves to what God has said.
The New Testament truth is the just shall live by faith. That's an Old Testament truth as well. What is What does it mean that Josh should live by faith? I live, listen, here it is. I live by taking God at his word.
I entrust myself to what God has said. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
So what is this live he's talking about? Very interesting. Simply put, let me put it this way: God designed us to flourish as humans. Because we're created in his image.
So living is human flourishing. And the laws that he gives us, the word that he gives us, all of them are loving protections and patterns for life. Because God is loving. He is good. He is holy.
Let me give you an example. Told this with my kids, I've said this before, you know, but you know, when your kids are growing up, they need direction, they need counsel, they need understanding, they need the principles of God. Bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
So, talking with my boys, and I said, listen, girls, you're You can have a relationship with the girl. You need to respect her. Because it eventually You know, you're going to marry this girl. You've been listening to Delight in Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. To hear this message and others, check out www.delightandgrace.com to discover how to live by grace.
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