Fear or Faith

Now, today we have Pastor Jason Gaston here with us. Jason heads up all of our family ministries here at the church. And I can tell you personally as a parent, there is nobody I would rather have leading the charge of partnering with our families, and my family in particular, to raise the next generation for Christ. He has got a challenging message for us today right here in the middle of our series that's right into the heart of the whole story. So I've asked him if he would speak to us. Summit Church at all of our campuses, please give a warm welcome to the Summit Church's Metro Redneck, the man who hunts in ark aisles and skinny jeans, Pastor Jason Gaston.

Well, I'd like to welcome all of you to the Summit Church across, all across the Triangle and all of our Summit campuses. I do need to correct Pastor JD on one thing, and I do not wear skinny jeans. I can't fit into skinny jeans. They're slim fit, baby. Okay, slim fit.

There is a massive difference between skinny and slim. Can I get an amen from somebody out there, okay? Man, you heard Pastor JD say that we are in the middle or the beginning of a series called The Whole Story. And what we are doing is we are walking from the very beginning of scripture, from the book of Genesis, all the way to the end throughout this whole year, the book of Revelation. And over the past several weeks, we have been journeying from Genesis all the way through. And today we're going to be in the book of Numbers, specifically in the book of Numbers chapter 13 and chapter 14. So if you have your Bibles, you can go ahead and open them up there. But in order for us to get an idea of what's taking place in the book of Numbers, I have to press rewind for us just for a moment.

And I've got to set the stage. So it's going to take a minute, but I've got to tell you guys a story that's going to take us all the way back to the land of Egypt, okay? Now if you don't know much about the Bible, the people of God were enslaved in the land of Egypt, okay? This is a patio paver right here, and I'm having this representative of hard work that took place in Egypt.

The reason I'm doing this is because literally for the past three months, I've been building a patio in my backyard, and it has been hell on earth, okay? And that is exactly what Egypt was for God's people. It was hell on earth, okay? And while the people of God were enslaved in Egypt, there's two stories that are running parallel. There's the story of slavery. The people of God would be enslaved in Egypt for 400 years. But at the same time, there's a story of hope that one day, this slavery would end, and we would make our way somewhere else. And the reason that is happening is because God showed up in the Old Testament in Genesis chapter 15, and he said to Abram, he said this, Your people will be enslaved in a land that is not their own for 400 years, and then after 400 years of slavery, I will bring them into a land where the possessions will be good, okay?

So that's how the story is going, and God raises up a man by the name of Moses to come into Egypt, and Moses shows up to Pharaoh after several hundred years, and he says, Pharaoh, Pharaoh, oh, baby, let my people go. Okay, four of you remember that song from the 90s, okay? That's cool, though. That's good. That's no big deal, all right? And so Pharaoh is like, no shot, buddy.

Not happening, all right? And so what does God do? He sends some plagues, and Pharaoh can't take it anymore. And so eventually Pharaoh says, take you and your people and your God and get out of my face and leave. Go.

Leave us alone. And so finally, after 400 years of slavery, hope is coming to God's people. And so the people of God begin their journey out of Egypt, and they come. As soon as they're leaving, they come to their first major obstacle, and we know that as the Red Sea. Moses is leading the charge with his people, and they get to the Red Sea, and they're like, oh, no, we're going to die. Pharaoh's army is chasing after us.

What are we ever going to do? Moses picks up a staff. He sticks it in the sand, and what happens to the water?

Whoosh, whoosh, and the people do what? Straight through the Red Sea onto the Promised Land. Pharaoh's army is giving chase. They run through the sea, and God swallows them up.

I mean, it is a beautiful moment, okay? God is doing everything that He said He would do. He's brought His people out of slavery, and He's taking them to a land that is good, and the people are jacked up, man. They are pumped up, and that's where the book of Numbers starts.

It starts in the beginning of year two post-Egypt. And so in the book of Numbers, God uses His man, Moses, to lead His people, and He gives Moses three specific tasks, okay? He tells Moses, all right, the people have been brought out of Egypt, and now you are going to take them to the land that I have been promising them for a long time. It's the land of milk and honey, all right? And we all know that God's milk is whole milk. Can I get an amen to somebody, okay? Amen, right there, and organic honey, of course, right?

Locally grown from your farmers, okay? So the land of milk and honey, and that's what the book of Numbers is all about. It starts two years post-Egypt, and it's all about Moses leading God's people to the land that He had been promising them.

And in the first several chapters, Moses did what God calls them to do. He organizes the people, all right? He counts the people. If you've read the book of Numbers, you'll notice the first several chapters are a little bit of a doozy, because it's naming all of these people and the numbers from the tribes. But what you see here is that there are 600,000 able and fighting men that have come across the Red Sea. That's approximately 2 million people. I don't want you to lose sight of that, because when God made the promise to Abraham that he would be a father of many nations, and that his descendants would be as many as the multitude of the stars of the sky, how many people were there when He made that promise to him? It was just honest Abe and his wife, okay? That's it. And then as people go into 400 years of slavery, and even in the midst of slavery, God is still fulfilling His promise.

Come on, somebody. That's good stuff. God is growing His people to be a great nation for His glory, even in the midst of a difficult season. And so what happens is Moses then begins to count them, and then he gives all of the tribes in the first several chapters, he gives them all a job.

Why? Because all of the people of God have a responsibility. Every tribe was given a task. They were given a job in order to get to where God was sending them. And then what you see after that is they set up the tabernacle, dead smack in the middle, okay? The tabernacle is set up right in the middle of the people and all the tribes, and really that's supposed to be symbolic of a couple things. That God's presence would always dwell among the people, that He was not going to leave them. They may have felt abandoned for generations, but God was still God, and He was still good, and He was not going to leave His people. And that He would lead His people, that He would go in front of His people.

We see that when it's evidenced by a cloud of smoke and a pillar of fire, right? And as the presence of God moved, the people of God picked up camp, and they moved with Him. That should have been the story of the people of Israel. Where God leads, the people will follow. That really, that should be our story today, too, right? I mean, where God leads, we should follow.

But we all know how that song and dance goes, don't we? Right, I mean, it's like it's good for a season, Lord, I lift Your name on high, God, You're good, woo-hoo. And then something happens, and all of a sudden we're like, nope, no way, not going there, okay? Well, that starts to happen to people of God when they're journeying. This is a 250-mile journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. God has shown off His glory.

He's doing some incredible things, and the people start marching. They're on their way, and then they start complaining. We don't have this.

We don't have that. You get to Numbers Chapter 10 and Numbers Chapter 11, it's really starting to hit the fan now, okay? Like, people are grumbling against the leadership, and it's not just the people on the outskirts of the camp. It's people in Moses' own family, okay? It's Miriam and Aaron, okay? Like, they are ticked off, and Moses is pleading with God.

He's like, God, can we please get this show on the road, because I am going to kill these people, and I've already pled with You twice not to do the same. Can we please just move this ship? Let's go, let's go, let's move this thing. And so that's where Numbers Chapter 13 begins. The people now have gone approximately 240 miles from where they spent the last 400 years of slavery, and they are 10 miles away from tasting the promises and the fulfillment of God's promise to His people. Ten miles.

That's tobacco road, okay? They are, like, right here, and that's where Numbers Chapter 13 picks up. So let's read this together. The Lord said to Moses, send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites. From each ancestral tribe, send one of its leaders.

And so that's what happens. If you're reading from the Scripture, you'll see that, man, one person is brought out from each tribe, from the 12 tribes of Israel, so you have 12 spies that are brought forward. So these 12 spies, what are they doing? Man, they're going on a camping trip, baby, okay?

Verse 17, when Moses sent them to explore Canaan, he said this. Go up through the Negev and on into the hill country. See what the land is like, whether the people who live there are strong or weak, few or many. What kind of land do they live in? Is it good?

Is it bad? What do the towns look like? Are they unwalled or are they fortified? How is the soil? Is it fertile?

Is it poor? Are there trees there? Is it a desert?

I mean, what's it like? Do your best to bring back some of the fruit of the land, and the people of God are pumped, okay? They are so jacked up right now because the spies are here, and they're going to go into the land, and they're going to bring back a good report, and then people are anticipating something good.

You just spent generations in something that was not good, and now you're on the brink of tasting the fulfillment of the good thing that your God has been promising you. So they went up and they explored the land. They went to the Negev, just as Moses had commanded them to do, and they came to a place called Hebron, okay? That's going to be important in just a few minutes.

Make a note of that. They came to Hebron where they cut off a branch bearing a single cluster of grapes. Two of them carried it on a pole between them along with some pomegranates and figs, and at the end of 40 days of being in the land, they came back to the camp, and they gave this report.

When they returned, this is what they said. We went into the land which you have sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey. Here's its fruit, and they got that big old cluster of grapes, man. They're like, this place is wine country. You would not believe what's on the other side over there.

It's incredible, and the people are pumped up. They cannot believe what they're hearing, but listen to what the tin said next. But the people that live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified, and they're very large, and the Amalekites, which will be important here in just a second as well. They live in the Negev, and the Hittites, the Jebusites, the Amorites, and all the otherites.

They live in the hill country, and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan River. Then in verse 31, this is what they said. We cannot attack these people.

They are stronger than we are. They began to spread among the entire camp of the Israelites a bad report about the good land. Now, the people anticipating a report of hope, and expectation, and anticipation, all of a sudden get a bad report, and that balloon has been popped.

Now all of a sudden, the game changes. Look what happens in chapter 14, verses 1 through 4. That night, all the people of the community, okay, how many were there again?

Two million. All of them raised their voices, and they wept aloud. All the Israelites grumbled against Moses, and Aaron, and the whole assembly, and this is what they said. If only we had died in Egypt, or in this desert, why is the Lord bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword? We should choose a leader, although we're right here on the cusp of going into what God has been promising us. We should choose a new leader, Moses, and we should go back to the place that we hated.

Did you guys catch that? In a moment's notice, the people of God moved from a posture of expectation and anticipation to a posture of fear. That's because fear is cultivated in the soil of unbelief. Fear is cultivated in the soil of unbelief.

Let me just break this down for us practically for a second, okay? Why do most normal human beings hate clowns? Because we don't believe that they're nice people, okay?

That clowns are not good people. Why do I? I have a legitimate fear. It's called tokophobia, okay? It's a fear of pregnant women.

It's legit, seriously. Why do I fear pregnant women? Because I believe two things about them. Number one, that belly button shouldn't poke out like that, okay? And number two, I don't believe that they're going to make it to the hospital in time to give birth, that they're going to go into labor right in front of me and I'm not going to know what to do and I'm going to scream my head off, okay?

Imagine a pregnant clown. That's the spawn of Satan right there, man. I mean, you have a fear, right? I mean, everybody has fears, and fears in some capacity are born. They're cultivated in the soil of unbelief. Fear in the life of a believer sprouts most often when two things happen. When we forget the promises of God towards us and we forget His faithfulness towards us.

Let's just rewind this story again, okay? Remember where these people were? Four hundred years of hell on earth. God brought them out of hell on earth and He was leading them to a place that He had promised them for a long time. And then He provided manna and quail and water from a rock.

He's like, what more could you people want? Yet they forgot. And then on top of that, there's this promise in there that most of us would just skip over if we don't really dive into it. But it's this promise that has to do with the Amalekites.

Remember I said that? The Amalekites would be an important piece. And it's important because in the book of Exodus chapter 17, Moses sends a man by the name of Joshua out to fight a battle against a group of people called the Amalekites. And Moses goes up on a hill and he's observing it from his place and he's holding his hands up in the air. And as long as his hands are in the air, what's happening? The people of God are winning. But when his arms start to fall, the Amalekites begin to advance. And so it's this constant battle going back and forth. So God sends two men, Aaron and Hur, up there to hold up Moses' arms during this battle.

And they end up winning. And at the very end of that battle, this is what God says to his people. He says, the Amalekites will never taste victory over you as long as they're on this planet. I will constantly and always defeat them on your behalf. Who is dwelling in the land in Numbers chapter 13?

The Amalekites. But they forgot. And then on top of all of that, it's no coincidence in Numbers 13 that the spies, when they go out, the first place that they see, that Scripture tells us, that they see that the land is really good, that it really does flow with milk and honey and that the grapes are there and the fertile is soil and everything is great is at a place called Hebron.

Why is that important? Because in Genesis chapter 13, a man by the name of Lot and a man by the name of Abram are moving together. They're moving forward together in life and they decide we should probably part ways. Lot goes to the left and Abram goes to the right and Abram settles down in a place called Hebron. And it's there in Genesis 15 in Hebron where God makes this very specific promise.

He said this. The Lord said to Abram, know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own. And they will be enslaved and mistreated for 400 years. But I will punish the nation that they serve as slaves and afterward they will come out with what?

Great possessions. This is a pivotal moment for Abraham and the entire people of Israel. And now in Numbers 13, they are actually experiencing the fullness of the promises of God coming into effect. And they forgot. They forgot because as one pastor said, they do this. They magnify the obstacles and they minimize God's promises. They magnify the obstacles in front of them and they minimize the promises of God to them. Now, before we go pointing a finger at them, thinking, man, these Israelites are a bunch of idiots.

What are they doing? I think we should probably hold the mirror up in front of ourselves and let this just sink in for a second, okay? My wife and I, last semester, just along with many of you, we made a multiply faith commitment, man. God, we're going to be generous. A couple months later, we get a letter from the IRS saying, hey, like 15 years ago, you filed your taxes wrong. You owe us a couple thousand dollars. We're like, what?

Anybody ever gotten one of those? You're like, what in the world, man? What do you mean? 15 years later, are you kidding me? And then, you know, we're in the middle of what? Tax season.

Well, this year, guess what happened? We messed something up on our taxes and we owe more money. All of a sudden, we're thinking to ourselves, God, do you really want us to be this generous?

Are you sure? I don't know, man. Maybe we need to cut this thing back, sacrificial giving, maybe not to that extent. Maybe we need to rethink some things. We started to magnify the obstacle and minimize the promise.

Let's break it down a little bit more practically. UNC fans, all right, two words for you. Northern Iowa, all right, in November, your Tar Heels go all the way out to Iowa and they lose by four points to Northern Iowa. And every Tar Heel fan on the face of the planet goes into their dreadful state. Oh, our team is terrible. Fire Roy Williams, fireroy.com, get it going. Oh, man, we got all the pieces, but our people aren't going to get it done. This is another year because we lost one game. Where are they at this weekend?

In the stinking national championship game. I'm not even aiming in that. I'm not into that. All right.

What happens is you begin to magnify the obstacle and minimize the promise. We got any parents in the house? Anybody in here a parent? Okay. All right, parenting is easy, right?

Said nobody. All right, what happens in parenting? All right, we take one step forward with our kids and then somehow we take ten steps back. What do we always focus on?

The ten steps back and not the one step forward where we see God moving. Case in point, my five-year-old, Annie, starting to begin to like really understand the Bible. We're like, Katie and I are really pumped. We're like, oh, man, she's like starting to get it.

And then three days ago, she throws our two-year-old Parks through a window, literally. I'm like, Satan, right? Like what is going on here? We magnify the obstacle and we minimize the promise. Many of you have been walking with Jesus for a long time and you've never taken that step to be baptized. The New Testament says to repent and be baptized. Repentance, understanding the lordship of Jesus for the first time. Baptism, going public with the lordship of Jesus for the first time. And you have magnified every single obstacle you could possibly think of and you're stuck in your chair in the soil of uncertainty.

Because we magnify the obstacle and we minimize the promise. Now, my oldest son, Holt, is a baseball player. I love the game of baseball, okay? I love it. I love what it teaches us. I love the smell. I love the sounds. I love the dirt. I love the chalk. I love the superstitions. I love that a guy could go for 15 games straight and never wash his jockstrap because he thinks it's a good luck charm, okay? I love that, all right? I love it. That's pretty disgusting.

I'm sorry. More than any of that, I love the bond that it creates between me and my oldest son. It started when he was three. We get out in the side yard and it starts with a tee ball. I'm giving him his first glove that we bought at Play It Against Sports. It's his first glove.

We start to play catch. I'm kind of throwing a ball at him. It's bouncing. He's throwing his glove around. Eventually, it lands in the glove and he's jacked up. He's pumped.

All of a sudden, he starts to gain some confidence. As the years go on, we move up to a real baseball, okay? This is like every father's dream, all right?

Every dad's dream is a play catch in the side yard or their backyard of the house with their kid playing a game of baseball. I got the real ball and I'm throwing the ball to Holt and he's catching it. I'm like, oh, this is beautiful. He's throwing it back. We're just going back and forth, boom. All of a sudden, my confidence starts to grow. And so I start to throw it a little harder. I whip it in there and he's catching it. I'm like, my man is getting it, man.

This is great. So then I reach back and I fire a laser at him. Where does it go? Straight into his eye socket. Black eye, down goes Frazier. He's down for the count. He's screaming his head off.

You would have thought homeboy's leg had just gotten amputated, right? And I'm his father and I'm over him. I'm going, buddy, listen, I'm sorry, man, but you know what? That's baseball. That's life. You're going to get hit.

You're going to get black eyes. It's just the way it goes. Man, and I had convinced him before 30 to 45 minutes was up that he should get back up, right? Man, I see this happen all the time. I coach youth baseball.

I see it happen all the time. That kid gets hurt. Little Johnny's playing third base. Kid hits a laser at him at 30. He doesn't get his glove up. It hits him in the shoulder. He starts screaming and crying. The mom runs out of the stands on the field, which is a huge no-no, by the way, parents, okay? Stay in the stands, all right?

And she puts his arms around him. She's like, oh, man, he didn't mean to hit a line drive at you. I'm like, yes, he did. That's what he wanted to do.

He wanted to hit a line drive. Your kid didn't get his glove up enough. If you want to play baseball, you're going to have to understand that you're going to get hit eventually, okay? Suck it up, kid.

Not everybody gets a trophy. Get back in the game. Maybe, maybe God's telling the same thing to his church. Maybe we've been living in the soil of fear, and there's obstacles that just keep jabbing you left and right, and you have forgotten the promises of God and what the Lord is saying to you is, get up. Get back in the game. You're going to encounter obstacles, but my grace is sufficient for you, and my power is made perfect in your weakness.

You guys, I wonder how many of us need that reminder today, that God is still God, and he's still good. You know, imagine for a moment, okay, you're in a boat with five of your best friends. There's six of you, and your five buddies are rowing this way, okay? You're rowing in the boat. This is my row, okay?

My strength coach would be very, very, very displeased with me right here, okay? And then you are rowing this way. So, five guys are rowing that way, and you're rowing this way. Who would you say is working against the objective? The one, right?

Me, okay? Now, imagine for a second that I pulled that view out. Alright, I pulled that picture out, and what you saw was a completely different picture. You saw that the five guys rowing this way are rowing towards a waterfall that is 5,000 feet high, and if they keep going in that direction, they will die. The one guy sees it, and so he's rowing this way. Who would you say is rowing against the objective now? The five.

Why? Because where they are going is leading to their death. The 10 spies come back in Numbers chapter 13, and they have been to the land, and they get in that boat, and they say, we want to go back to Egypt. Let's go.

Let's get in this boat. But God raises up a man by the name of Caleb and Joshua, and they say, no shot, dude. That's leading to our death. Listen to what happens here. Numbers chapter 13, verse 30. Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses as he said this. We should go up and take possession of that land, for we can certainly do it. I can imagine Caleb listening to all these people weeping and crying and complaining.

He's like, shut your mouth. The land is good, and our God is better. Caleb had a spirit of faith, and faith is cultivated in the soil of assurance.

Faith is cultivated in the soil of assurance. You know, Caleb and Joshua, they saw the same thing the other 10 spies saw, but they came back with something different. Listen to how God describes the difference between these two and everybody else. Numbers 14, verse 22. He said, I have forgiven them.

All of those people that are railing against me and crying and complaining and want to go back, I've forgiven them. By the way, God gets a bad rap a lot of time in the Old Testament. He's a God of wrath and vengeance. But it's interesting to me that God actually shows his mercy and forgiveness right here. But then he says, but not one of them will ever see the land that I promised them because there's consequence for their sin. So basically what you see here is, man, God's like, none of those old geezers are entering into the promised land. None of them.

None of them. But because my servant Caleb, listen to this, has a different spirit and he follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to and his descendants will inherit it. I love how God describes it that Caleb had a different spirit. You know, the different spirit isn't the movement that he led. It's the posture of his heart. The different spirit was an internal posture, not an external movement.

It's not an external action. It's that he was aligning his heart with the promises of God. He was assuring his heart that God is who God says he was. I mean, you see it all throughout scripture, right? One of my favorite Old Testament stories, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. King Nebuchadnezzar, right?

I kind of picture him as like a little Oompa Loompa guy for some reason, okay? And so King Nebuchadnezzar is like, you will bow before me and worship me. And they're like, no way, bro. Not happening. They're like, you'll go to the fiery furnace. And they're like, we don't care. Throw us in there. We refuse to bow to you, O king. And we believe, listen, we believe that our God will rescue us.

But even if he doesn't, we'd rather burn. Faith grows in the soil of assurance. Roland Bingham, a missionary to Africa, weighed the cost of what it meant to follow Jesus to another country and to another continent.

And this is what he said. I will open Africa to the gospel or I will die trying. That's faith. That's the man that saw the obstacles in front of him when everybody else was saying, no way. Don't do it. Don't go. He said, I will open Africa to the gospel or I will die trying.

Why? Because he knows that God's heart for the nation supersedes the obstacles in front of him. You guys are like, man, that's great. Big people going to do big things. Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego are in the Bible.

Roland Bingham went to Africa. What about me? I just go to work nine to five. How do I live a life of faith and have a spirit that's different about me?

You know how you do that? You hold fast to the promises of God. When those obstacles and those fears start to get put in front of you, what God wants for you is for you to hold fast to his promises. Are you tired? Are you tired?

Are you worn down? Pray back to the Lord, Psalm 121, verse 4. He who keeps Israel never slumber nor sleeps. The Lord watches over you. The Lord stands beside you as your protective shade.

Are you anxious? Philippians chapter 4, verse 6. Be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving. Let your request be made known to God.

You have a God that cares. Are you burdened? Jesus said in Matthew chapter 11, verse 28. Come to me, all who are weary and burdened. And what does he say he will give you?

Rest. What he doesn't say is keep working 30 extra hours a week. What he says is come to me and lay your burdens down. You've fallen on hard financial times. Hebrews chapter 13, verse 5.

Keep your life free from the love of money and be content with what you have. For he has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. All of those things will go.

The IRS will come knocking one day and your money is going to go. But guess who never will? Your king.

Your father. You don't feel good enough. Romans chapter 5, verse 8. But God shows his love for us in this. That while we were still sinners, while we were still dead in Egypt, Christ died for us. You don't feel pretty enough.

You don't feel loved enough. Psalm 139, verse 14. God, I praise you, the psalmist says, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made because your works are wonderful.

I don't care how the culture paints how I'm supposed to be. You said that you have created me and I am fearfully and wonderfully made. And if you created me and all of your works are good, surely I am good.

Maybe you don't have any satisfaction or direction. Psalm 16, verse 11. The psalmist says, you make known to me the path of life and in your presence there is fullness of joy.

At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. God's not after some crazy movement from you. He's after you aligning your heart to his promises.

Because he's a good, loving father. You know, Israel was promised that land, church. Though they had to overcome the obstacles in front of them to take possession of it. Their spies went in and they brought back the fruit, proving just how good it was, showing them it is worth your effort to trust God, yet they did not trust him. And they failed to enter into the promises of God in that land. And instead, in their areas and their season of compromise, they fought long, extended, draining wars, 40 years worth, 10 miles from the promised land. And they kept wondering for 40 more years.

Why? Because they didn't trust. They trusted in their fears and not their father. That's the story of Israel. And you know what? That's our story today, too. But listen, there's great joy in this story.

You know why? Because every story whispers his name. In fact, in this story, you and I, we're really not that much like Joshua and Caleb.

We're actually more like the 10 and the rest of Israel. We were created to love and to know and to trust our heavenly father. But we hightailed it out of the land we were created for and we headed back to the wilderness willingly. We literally, we jumped back in that boat and we started rowing back to Egypt.

That is why God had to intervene through Christ. Jesus left the land that we were created for and he came and he fought the decisive battle against the enemies of God to secure that promise for us once and for all. And you know where he did it? He did it at the cross. He alone is God's victor and the people of God are his beneficiaries. He trusted God alone, not us. And he drank the cup of wrath that his father gave him.

Why? So that we might know the fullness of God and not the wrath of God. Then, like the spy who's been to God's promised land and brought back its fruit to show us his unfaithful, rebellious, scared people, Jesus rose from the dead and he crushed the grip and the sting of the enemy forever. Jesus left the promised land and he came to us in the wilderness and he fought the battle on our behalf and he walked out of that grave the victor so that those of us that trust in him might not live lives of fear but of faith because Jesus is the victor and we walk in that victory every day.

And that victory is what God is calling you to live in the land between. It's time to step out in faith. It's time to trust your father to magnify his goodness towards you. Stop magnifying the obstacles and allowing unbelief to grow in that soil and trust in his goodness. Trust in his promises.

Trust that your father is a good, good father. And as the writer of the book of Hebrews says, it's time for us to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. For the joy set before him, you know what he did? He scorned the cross. He endured the cross and he scorned in shame and he sat down at the right hand of the throne of God forevermore and he said, it is finished.

He is the author and perfecter of our faith. Fix your eyes on him. I don't know what that fear is that you're sitting in right now. Maybe it's a job transition.

Maybe it's a parenting thing. Maybe you've been hearing the gospel for a long time and you're just scared to take that step. It's time to step out and to step into the loving arms of your father and stop living lives of fear. Lord Jesus, we come to you today and we say that you are good. So we know, Lord, that on the other side of this life is a promised land and it's a good, good place. But we know, Lord, that we're just not longing for something there but we have something good here and it's you. We have it in you now.