The Sign Has Two Sides Deuteronomy 29:22-28

We call out our misery god just hears the melody

I wake up in the morning, the time of the day.

And pray to live the evening, with children all in need.

Oh, and pray to live the new day, with gentle birds that sing.

Oh, pray to morning people, pray to the King.

Praise the King, praise the King.

Let it rain, praise the King.

And pray for a peaceful watch, and one who checks me.

And pray for a road ahead, with children that are in bed.

Oh, and pray for a one who can never long their way.

Oh, pray to morning people, praise the King.

Praise the King, praise the King.

Let it rain, praise the King.

Praise the King, praise the King.

Let it rain, praise the King.

It was as if the Lord picked all those songs to encourage me this morning.

I too am fighting this whatever it is.

And I skipped right to the almost thrown up this morning on the way to church.

So praise God, I am not going to do that while I'm up here.

But I'm prepared just in case.

Okay, so we're going to give Him all the glory.

So Arden and I were in St. Croix, and we left the group,

and we're traveling down the road looking for a shop that I had seen previously,

which was a shop that had a lot of sewing equipment in it, had threads and needles and stuff.

And I was looking for, in particular, some heavy duty needles and some thick thread,

preferably like leather or something solid like that,

because one of the suitcases that we had taken with us had received some rough handling while we were in the airport.

And however so that happened, I didn't see it happen.

And the plastic piece that had the wheel on it was breaking off the suitcase,

which then meant as you pulled the suitcase along behind you,

the nose of the suitcase wanted to dip to the right.

So if you took your mind off what you're doing even for a second,

the suitcase would fall over to the right,

or the wheel would get cocked back and then you're just here scraping along the floor as it was no longer rolling.

And so I was hoping to find something to repair the suitcase,

and I had in my mind that if I could get at least a thick needle,

like a leather needle and some thick thread, I could stitch.

There was a hole. I could stitch it back in place.

And I hope for better yet, like a rivet gun.

That's what I was really hoping for, so I could rivet it in place.

And sometimes you can find those because leather workers and seamstresses kind of go together.

And sometimes you can find those there.

We were looking for the shop, and I kind of remembered where it was at.

And as we were looking for the shop, I kind of remembered a street sign that I had seen on the way.

But the street signs in St. Croix are not like street signs that we have here.

So if you look out the window, for those of you who can look out the window later, you can look if you can't right now,

I can see the Hefner sign and the Kelsey sign, even though I am not on Hefner or Kelsey.

They are designed to point off the pole in such a way that from halfway down the block,

you can see the street that you are coming up to to cross.

They have print on both sides, and they are put upon the poles.

It's not like that in St. Croix. The street signs are up on the wall.

They are flat against the corner of the building.

Now pretty big, you can see them a block away, so you can see the street that you are coming up to.

But I guess what is assumed is, number one, that you already know the street that you are on, which we did not.

And so that was a bad assumption on the part of whoever hung those street signs up there.

They do keep them off the corners, make more space, that kind of thing.

I don't know, maybe it's better for when the wind blows really hard, whatever.

But the other problem that is assumed is that if you are coming from the other direction,

there is no street sign on this building up here, which was the case in many cases.

You cannot know which street you are coming up to.

So there is a street sign here for the street that we are going on to.

Somebody put that up, probably not even the government.

But over here, there is no street sign.

So if we were coming from this direction, we could not see.

So we actually had to walk up to a building, which I thought there was a street sign on,

walk around and go like this and go, oh, yep, there is a street sign there,

and read the street sign to figure out what street we were on.

In America, maybe because we do not have hurricanes or whatever where we are,

I do not know, it might be different where they have a lot of hurricanes,

we have on the telephone poles, we have the street sign so we can see from both directions.

I submit to you that even a sign that has no print on the front and the back,

so it has print on the front but not on the back, has two sides.

And that sign that we were at when we were in St. Croix,

that we had to walk around the corner and look up and see what it said, it had two sides.

In fact, the sign was not visible from behind.

We could not know that.

But if we knew that it was there, then we could walk up to see what the sign said.

So grab your Bibles, if you will, and go with me today to Deuteronomy chapter 29.

Deuteronomy 29 · chapter mention

Some of you say amen. All right, amen. Very good.

This is God's Word.

So the text that is up there on the board is not entirely factual.

We are only going to go through verse 28 and we will, and if you can study it for next week,

next week's sermon is entirely based on verse 29.

Okay, and I have already written over a third of it, so I know how it is going to go.

The Lord has been speaking to me about this passage of Scripture from 22 through 29.

But we are really going to focus on 22 through 28 today.

Okay, so here we go.

This will go by pretty quickly, so keep your thinking caps on the whole time.

Now the generation to come, your sons who rise up after you,

and the foreigner who comes from a distant land,

when they see the plagues of the land and the diseases with which the Lord has afflicted it,

will say, all its land is brimstone and salt, a burning waste, unsown, unproductive,

no grass grows on it, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Adma and Zebuim,

which the Lord overthrew in his anger and in his wrath.

So I want you to, the biggest thing here in these two verses, realize the contrast.

Does anybody remember the story in the Bible where a dozen spies were sent into the promised land?

Okay, and among them was Joshua, son of Nun, who would eventually lead them into the promised land, right?

And Caleb, who lived to be a ripe old age, and then after he lived to be a ripe old age,

and he was probably in his 80s, went in at the head of an army to defeat the last of the really big dudes.

Alright, so those are two interesting spies.

These twelve guys go in the land, and they come out, and does anybody remember what the report was of the twelve spies? Ron?

The majority of them reported that the people were too big and too strong, and they couldn't be overtaken and told it well.

Yeah, that's right. So ten of the twelve said, we can't do it.

The people in this land are amazing. Alright, they're huge.

And with that, they did say, they said, it's a great land, right? Is that what you're going to add?

Yeah, they did say, it's a great land. It's full of good stuff.

In fact, the twelve spies, and this is more tradition, that we know the factual nature of this,

but they brought out on a pole, carried between two people, a bunch of grapes that were so large, so large, So large. Very good.

Alright, it's on a pole between them. That's how big, a single bunch of grapes, right?

So this is a great land that God was going to call his people in. It was a promised land.

Remember that from a month ago? It was a promised land, and it was a grace land.

Remember that from three weeks ago? Okay?

And so the spies, after seeing that, and realizing the land was so great, but because the land was so great,

the people had become so great, right? These are nine, ten foot tall guys.

These are guys like Goliath, but they're all over the place, right?

And they basically said, as Ron said, we can't do it. This is too dangerous. This is too much for us.

And Joshua and Caleb, on the other hand, said just the opposite. They said, yes, it is a great land,

and our God is a great God, and he is able to give it to us, and we should proceed.

For that, they are rewarded, but the people overall listen to the ten spies, and it goes poorly. Okay?

But notice the contrast between the description of the land they are given by those guys

and the description of the land now that we just read.

And I ask you, what happened in between? What happened in between that they would go into the land

and go, man, this is awesome, and now, sometime later, they will be, mind you, this is a prophecy, right?

So we're talking about what's happening in the future.

They will be ousted from the land, and the land is left desolate and in terrible condition

to the fact that people say, it's all brimstone and salt, a burning waste, unsewn, unproductive,

no grass grows in it, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abba and Zebuim.

They said, it would be likened to cities that God had wiped off the face of the earth.

The promised land, the grace land, the holy land, now likened to cities that God had wiped off the face of the earth.

And notice that this is a question of a sort. They see this, and then they say, in verse 24,

and all the nations shall say, why has the Lord done thus, wait for it, to this land?

You follow that? So the promised land, the grace land, the holy land, the people go in there,

and now they're ousted, and it's in terrible condition, and the question is, why has God done this to this land?

Why this great outburst of anger, they ask, when they see what the condition of the land is now. 25.

Then men shall say, because they forsook the covenant of the Lord, the God of their fathers,

which he made with them, when he brought them out of the land of Egypt.

And they went, and they served other gods, and they worshiped them, gods whom they have not known,

and whom he had not allotted them. Catch that? So these are gods that they did not know,

and also gods that God did not assign to them, the Lord did not assign to them. We're almost done with the text. 27.

Therefore the anger of the Lord burned against that land to bring upon it every curse which is written in this book.

And the Lord uprooted them from their land in anger, and in fury, and in great wrath,

and cast them into another land as it is this day.

Okay, so what's in the text that's really brought this home for me?

Number one thing is we're talking about a sign. Now in the New Testament, of course, we're cautioned about signs.

You have to be careful about signs. But this is clearly a sign orchestrated by God,

and Moses is here telling them this is how that sign will read, if you will. There is a sign.

The sign is there. People are going to go, what does that sign mean? What happened there?

That historically was this great promised land, grace land, holy land, and now it is desolate, wiped out.

People see that sign. It's there, and people will see it. It's not going to be like, notice it's the foreigner,

and the guy from later generations. So this is not Israel. They're not in the promised land anymore.

They've been taken care of, if you will, by that point in time. And a small group of people does remain,

but they're no longer prosperous. The land is desolate. This land that had everything in it when they got it

has now been wiped out, essentially. So people will see that sign. It's there, and people will see it,

and the sign will lead them to ask the question. And we'll go back to verse 24 again. What was the question?

The question was, and all the nations shall say, why has the Lord done this to this land?

Not to his people, not to the people that were disobedient to him, not to his people who were carried off in other lands,

but why has the Lord done this to this land? Why this great outburst of anger?

So the sign is there. They see it, and it leads them to ask that question. Why has the Lord done this to that land?

Now for us, we're talking about the promised land. We're talking about the grace land, and the holy land that we studied,

that we talked about, right? That's where we live now. That's where our church is now. That's where our people are now,

if we're followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, not geographically bound by the Tigris and the Euphrates,

and down to Egypt, and over there to the desert, and over there to the sea, but in the promised land,

grace land, and holy land that God has called us to today. The second thing is that a sign speaks.

That's what a sign does. Now technically, how much information is actually contained on a sign? None.

Everybody's like, well, just whatever the sign is about, whatever it says, you know, there's a sentence here,

but truly there's no information contained there, right? What's actually there are symbols, or words, or writing

to move the information from the mind of the creator of the sign to the person who reads the sign.

Do you want to add something? Yeah, same amount as in a picture, same amount as in observable feet,

same amount as in a hug, right? How much information is contained in a hug? Well, the idea is that the person

giving a hug is conveying something with the hug. If you're giving them a hug because they're sad because a family

member just died, then what they get out of that hug is that you feel for them, you care about them, right?

But if you're giving them a hug because they're about to punch a deck of guy in the bar, and you're hugging them to hold them back,

right? They're getting out of that, that you don't want to let them go into the fight, maybe because you're protecting them,

or maybe because you're protecting the other person, or whatever. So the information is conveyed from the originator

of the sign to the reader of the sign, but there is no actual information in the sign. Anybody here read French proficiently?

So if all the signs were in French, you'd get teeny little bits, whatever it was connected to the English language,

or whatever you've learned, or whatever you know, right? Because the mind of the originator of the sign was in French,

and the reader of the sign is in English, and so the information that the intender intended does not convey through the sign.

But God is able to make people understand the sign. He is the one who prompts people to give an answer to the sign.

The sign speaks. First thing is, there is an answer to the question that was asked. The sign leads them to a question,

huh, what's going on with this land? Why did God do this? Right? And in verse 25, the answer is laid out,

Then men shall say, now notice these are not expressly Christian, these are not people of grace, this is not God's people,

right? Necessarily, but men, common men, ordinary folks who have seen the sign shall say,

Because they forsook the covenant of the Lord, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them up out of the land of Egypt.

And they went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they had not known, have not known, and whom he had not allotted them.

Therefore the anger of the Lord burned against that land to bring upon it every curse which is written in the book.

And the Lord uprooted them from their land in anger and in fury and in great wrath and cast them into another land, as it is this day.

A sign speaks. There is an answer to the question, and we can only assume that either by this person's knowledge of history,

by this person's, what they see evidentially in the land, whatever, that's how they come to the conclusion and they make this statement.

This sign then speaks of adultery by God's people, that God's people would get wrapped up in something that he did not give them to get wrapped up in.

Okay? They would worship something that he did not give them to worship.

Gods that they have no part with, false gods, demon gods, evil teachings, things that they got involved with, they were nothing.

Things that they put up that made important like God, it's idolatry.

The sign then is speaking of the adultery of God's people, and the sign speaks of a just God,

justly responding in violent opposition to the adultery. That's what we read in 27 and 28.

Therefore the anger of the Lord burned against the land to bring upon it every curse which is written in this book.

Wait a minute. The anger of the Lord burned against Israel.

Burned against his people that he brought out of captivity.

But that's not what it says. It says that the anger of the Lord burned against the land.

Remember the land is the promised land, it is the grace land, it is the holy land, and now God's anger burns against it.

Not against the people who have committed adultery. His wrath is against them. He is violently opposing their course of action.

But he is not angry at them or hateful to them that results in the destruction of this land.

Rather, his anger burns against the land.

It has happened a number of times in my parenting over the years that I have done something special for one of my children.

We thought, we got creative, we surprised, something special.

And then after that they took the something special, whatever it was, and they misused it.

A classic example would be like we plan a special trip for them, something they've really been wanting to do or whatever.

And then they get there and it's all about can I have more, can I spend more money, and never a thank you.

And I'm not saying that to slur anybody, but it's the human condition that if we start to get something, then we think we want something more.

And we start to look for it, that's the human condition.

But then as a parent now, I have to oppose this new course of action.

Where is the gratitude? We're done.

We went out of our way to do this.

Now does that mean I don't love my children?

Does it mean I wouldn't want to bestow them with some good surprise in the future?

No. In fact, you can read elsewhere, we're not going to go there today, but you can read elsewhere, that God says that he does not disown his people while they're off in captivity.

And you can read tons of stories about while they're off in captivity and how God did amazing things through the faithful folks that he carried off into captivity.

He says this is not about destroying the people.

We had that, didn't we?

We talked about that last week about how some would be singled out if they had a false teaching, poisonous fruit.

If they had a false hope, false peace, right?

And if they had a bitterness of soul, that those would be the qualifiers that would cause them to be singled out and God come down with the claw and shut them down.

Pull them out of the mix.

Do whatever he had to do with them to stop that poison from spreading to everyone else.

But that's not what we're looking at.

What we're talking about here is God's anger against the land.

The sign speaks of a just God, justly responding in violent opposition to the adultery.

That's wrath.

And then anger and fury and wrath toward the land.

In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve sinned against God and we were all present in them.

And so at that point in time, that sin then carried down to all mankind.

When they sinned and they were kicked out of the Garden of Eden and told they couldn't go back,

and the main reason that was was so that they would not take a bite from the Tree of Life and exist forever in their present shameful, sinful, wretched state.

That would be very bad for them, bad for everybody.

And so they were being protected from ever possibly falling into that terrible trap.

And God pronounced a curse against them on how creation and man would be in opposition.

And in the book of Romans, it talks about now how all creation groans for final redemption.

There is trouble on the earth because man has misused the blessings of God.

And we could talk geography.

We could say that all over the world it's like this.

Why does a tornado wipe out a house and kill a family of four?

Why does a flood overflow a town and people die in their cars?

Why does cancer invade bodies and people die from cancer?

Because creation is messed up.

It is under the anger and the fury of God, the same as we would be if we were not saved.

Now there is a wrath. We were objects of wrath.

And there is a grace saved from that.

And we enter into a non-physical, holy, promised land filled with grace that God intends for us.

And my question is this.

This sign that we're seeing here, a sign that speaks and has answers, does it also speak about something additional?

I submit to you it does and we're getting there.

The third thing I want you to see, and I mentioned this in my opening, is that a sign speaks in both directions.

Remember that this thing that we're studying today is a prophecy.

It has not happened.

God is not speaking saying, my fury poured out against the land because my people sinned against me

because they went and were idolatrous with other gods.

That's not what's happening here.

This is Moses telling them how it will be when they get there and do that.

So this is a prophecy.

This question, this answer, all serve to warn of ignoring God's commands.

If you will, this sign is a do not enter sign.

Don't go there.

Now he's prophesying saying they will go there, but they are being told clearly, don't go there.

And people say, well, I don't know, if God tells me I'll go there, but says don't go there, how does that work?

That make any sense?

God already told me I'm going to go there, but then tells me don't go there, right?

David, you may or may not recall that King David had a moment of very adulterous behavior.

He went out at night when he should have been on the battlefront with his men.

And he stayed home in the spring when kings go out to war.

And he saw a woman taking a bath and she was a hottie.

She was taking a bath on the house across the way.

And he said, I think I like that.

But he found out that woman was married to a man named, a loyal servant named Uriah the Hittite.

And David arranged to take her into his bed and he slept with her and she got pregnant.

Uriah the Hittite came home, as was accustomed to officers could come home at times, and was,

and David tried to arrange for him to sleep with his own wife and said go stay in your house,

so that the pregnancy would be covered up.

But Uriah being the faithful loyal servant said, no, as long as my men can't be at home,

I'm not going to be at home either.

Sounds pretty just, if you think about it.

And David was like, now what do I do?

And he ordered him and he still didn't go home to be with his wife.

And so he went back to the front.

So when David, when he went back to the front, David sent orders for them to let him take the lead,

as he was accustomed to do it because he was a great warrior and a leader and officers often led their troops in that day.

Let him take the lead and then to get him out forward against the walls and then for the rest of the troops to pull back

so that the enemy could kill him.

And that's exactly what happened.

He went to war and they pulled back and the enemy killed him.

After he was dead in battle, David took his wife and let everybody believe that he was doing it in a magnanimous way

to be good to his servant who died in battle, when in reality he was doing it because she was already pregnant with his child.

It's a sordid tale.

Now God, long story short, brings him up short through a prophet and David realizes he's in trouble

and a prophecy is given that the child will die.

And David begins to mourn and weep and he sits in ashes and he cries out to God.

And then the word comes that the baby is dead.

And David gets up and he says, I'm going to eat now, I'm going to take care of myself.

And they said, I would understand, you just got word that your son is dead and now you're okay.

You're going to get up and you're going to praise God and you're going to be fine.

But while the baby was sick, shouldn't you now be mourning the loss of your son?

And what did David say?

He said, well, as long as the baby was still alive, there was a chance that God might relent and he might die.

But now that the baby is dead, God is not going to change his determination.

And so it's time to get on with life and to live according to God's will.

This sign is a do not enter sign.

God is setting it up there saying, if and you can say when you go there, I will curse the land.

I will destroy all that which has been good to you, all that made you big and strong, all that I gave you.

The prophecy, this question, this answer, all warn of ignoring God's commands.

And he's saying, if you will ignore my command and become my idolatrous,

I will destroy the land as well as cast you into captivity.

And then that brings us to our conclusion.

And it is this, God is gracious.

We know that about God, right?

He gives us what we do not deserve.

That's what he does.

That's what salvation is.

We get saved.

God gives us grace.

He gives us his presence.

He comes and lives with us.

He fights on our side in spiritual warfare.

He seals us up for the day of final salvation.

God is gracious.

But here we see that God is gracious to warn before.

He is gracious to set up a sign which I submit to you is visible from both directions.

Not just those who are looking back saying, oh yeah, this land is all destroyed and people are all cast off

because they were adulterous toward God.

But also from this side, there's a sign there.

What does that say?

God says it's blank.

You can't see it.

You've not been there.

Your land's not been made desolate.

You've not been cast out of my presence.

You've not seen me curse where you are, the promised land, the grace land, the holy land.

You have not seen that yet.

But I'll tell you what that sign says before you get to the other side of it.

God is gracious to warn us what the sign says before we get there.

Indeed, God is gracious to faithfully judge.

Because if God's people who claim to be Christians, who are living for the Lord,

behave in an idolatrous fashion, right?

And so now we're worshiping other things, other things are important, more important than God or as important as God and so on.

And God does nothing.

Where's the sign?

If there's no sign, then how will people know that God is a just God and a gracious God?

See, God could pour out the worst of punishments, could have done far worse than just casting them off into another land.

He would have been right to do so.

Because what they had done was the worst of the worst.

They followed him out of the promised land.

They received houses they didn't build, crops already growing that they didn't plant.

Huge cities already constructed for them, given a promised land, a holy land, a grace land.

And then as a people drifted into idolatry, and instead of destroying them,

he faithfully judged them to illustrate here for all the other nations, remember it's the foreigner and the men of future generations,

to see the nature of God and the opportunity.

Most signs aren't printed on both sides.

Stop signs often aren't printed on both sides.

Yield signs, now they have a shape, you might know, right?

So a lot of signs aren't printed on both sides.

That doesn't mean we don't know what they mean.

Doesn't mean you can't figure it out.

There's a sign there.

And if you want to know what it means, you could go, oh, I'm not going to go on the other side.

I'm just going to go and peek.

Well, let me tell you what happens.

Here's what you'd see.

If you go and peek on the other side of this sign, if the church of today becomes idolatrous,

if we get wrapped up in the things of this world enough that we are no longer showing God's faithfulness and his justice and his mercy and his grace to the people around us,

if we get wrapped up, then God will remove his church and curse this land.

These chairs will sit empty.

This building will either be torn down or become something entirely different.

The church will be gone.

We've been there before, lured to one thing or another.

There are good things in this life.

There are good things that God has given us, not even things that we don't know.

But there are things that we know and we know we cannot worship them like God does.

Remember, this is not a text that is about or written to individuals, right?

Because the previous text, the one we studied last week, said that if a person has a poisonous teaching, if they have a false peace, right?

If they have a bitterness of soul, that God will reach down and pluck them up and deal with them himself.

So that's not what we're talking about.

We're not talking about a people that has amongst a couple of problems, right?

Or some people that are going in the wrong direction.

There's a place for that and a thing to be done about that.

We're talking about a people that has allowed idolatry, things of importance to drift in and become important enough to draw them away from worshiping only God.

Here, the people see there is a sign and they blow past the sign.

Now, how fast?

Ten years?

No, it's generations.

But we're accountable to generations, right?

We're responsible to make sure that the teachings of the Lord are handed down to your children and your children's children if you're still alive.

And so we need to be making sure the best we can that people know that the sign is there and they don't have to go to the other side of it to see what it means.

And we are warned in the New Testament about signs and getting wrapped into it.

At the same time, we are warned about ignoring the teachings of God.

This sign is not the key.

This sign won't save us, right?

If we get wrapped up in idolatry and blow past the sign, God will do what God's going to do and you'll already be there before you know it.

But the sign exists before we cross the line.

As a church, I'm not talking about an individual.

Now, we collectively as a church, you heard it in the songs that we sung, we collectively stand for one another.

We represent the love of God.

We have a job to do to love every one of our members, to love everyone who comes even, who might come and lean in the direction of God.

And God, I wonder if somebody would get out of bed one morning and go, I think I'm going to go there and see what this God is about.

They better be able to come here and see what this God is about because we better be about this God.

If we're about something else, if we've got other things to talk about, other things to do and so on,

then we can safely assume that we are blowing past that sign.

And when we do, as the book of Revelation says, Jesus speaking, I will remove your lamp stand, the church will be gone.

We've got a job to do.

Our job is to live in the promised land, to live in the grace land and recognize it for grace, to live in the holy land, right?

To individually remain faithful to the Lord so that we personally are not plucked out,

as the word promised last week when we studied it, that would happen.

And to ensure that we collectively have an immune system, we collectively remain faithful,

we collectively cut aside from anything that looks like idolatry,

anything that looks like worship that is more important than the worship that we do of God.

I do only that which I see my Father doing.

Well, that's the example. That's the model. That's what we have to follow.

And if you don't, if we don't as a group, I submit to you that God will remove the church.

And in so doing, I'll probably wind up in another church, you'll probably wind up in another church,

you'll probably wind up in another church, you'll probably wind up in another church, you'll probably wind up in another church,

everybody in this room will wind up following the Lord in some other way.

I believe that you profess to be a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, right?

And Jesus puts His people in churches.

And so you will wind up in another church serving the Lord.

The problem is, you're supposed to be here.

We're supposed to be here. We're supposed to be serving God.

Here, when this building couldn't be, when it wasn't possible,

God intervened with multiple miracles, month after month after month, to make this into a church building.

When the bill came in, it was going to be $26,000 to get the electricity hooked up.

God intervened miraculously, sent an electrician who found people, who found supplies,

and it went from $26,000 to $2600, which we had.

When we couldn't get the water turned on, after months of trying and six weeks on a waiting list,

called the guy and he said, yeah, it's going to be six weeks.

And I said, it's already been six weeks. I'm okay with it being six weeks,

but if it's already been six weeks and you say now it's going to be six weeks,

that's what you told me in the first place, how do I know when six weeks is going to be on?

He said, well, that's just not how it works. We turn it on when it gets on.

And I said, well, that doesn't work. We need water. We can't clean up the building.

Can't flush the toilets. And he said, there's nothing you can do.

So I called Jim Gantt, who technically was TPS manager and they still own the building,

and TPS called, Jim Gantt called the new head of the water division,

who had just been instilled and called him like a few days before and said,

if you need anything, call me. That man was Tom Carruthers.

Tom Carruthers was the deputy mayor who pitched the idea to the mayor of Toledo

in the first place for us to get this building.

But when that mayor left office, he lost his job and became the head of the water department.

So as soon as he said, hey, can you make sure this water gets turned on, guess what happened?

The next morning, the next, not six weeks, the next morning at 8 a.m.,

they showed up out here to hook up the water. The chairs were sitting in.

We had chairs before this. And we were on Main Street.

We had awesome chairs over there. I think they were green. I'm trying to remember.

And a church had donated them to us. And then the pastor of that church,

his son started a church plant like 100 miles away and asked him, say, you got any chairs?

And he came back to me after he said we could keep the chairs permanently,

he came back to me and said, I'm sorry, we need those chairs back.

And so that was Thursday. And we needed chairs.

And so we got online for rush shipping and got chairs shipped.

And three guys who claimed to be followers of Jesus and didn't even go to church at the time,

and three guys who were in the church came together and we put them all together.

They were coming up out all in pieces. And we put all the chairs together, one after another after another.

And that's the chairs you're sitting on today. And we didn't pay for them.

The Mississippi Baptist Convention paid for them when the building didn't have heat.

And we thought, well, finally going to break down to get the boiler operational.

And God said, in my heart, so are you going to have to do something because it's getting cold,

you're going to lose the, you're going to break water pipes and so on.

So we called somebody and said, OK, let's get this boiler out. We'll pay it.

$4,000, whatever it's going to be. We don't have a lot of money.

We'll do whatever we have to do to get this operational because we can't lose our building.

And they came and he said, after he looked at it, he said, you got so many pipes in there are bad.

It's really not usable. You can't do it. And so all of a sudden we don't have heat.

Fast forward, God put together a businessman locally that what he does is renovate churches.

And he put together a consortium of individuals, businessmen, heat contractors and so on.

And the Mississippi Baptist Convention bought the new boiler,

which was an $80,000 piece of equipment that we could not afford and shipped it here.

And these guys came in and they put it all together. And it cost in the end, it cost us some money,

$15,000 for a $120,000 boiler system. God miraculously put us here.

How many people have been saved at block parties and go to different churches? I don't know.

How many people have been saved here in this building and aren't here now? I don't know.

But this is what I do know. This is where God put us. And I know how to stay here.

Here's how we stay here. We need to develop an immune system that shuts down every opportunity for us to drift into idolatry.

People have been plucked from our midst and they probably will be again.

There's nothing we can do about that except for practice loving accountability and say,

look, I don't think the direction that you're going is good.

Hey, we're, you know, ultimately we're going to have to remove you from the church if you can't serve the Lord here.

This is not where you're supposed to be doing what God wants you to do. You got to go.

We can practice loving accountability. But people have been plucked from our midst.

There was a man who cussed me out after service standing right over there behind that row

because I preached on something that he and I had already talked about that we disagreed on.

And it was in the text, had nothing to do with it. I didn't choose to do it. I just preached the text.

And he said, F'ing this and F'ing that about what I had done and cussed me out.

And I said, well, this is the one thing I'll tell you for sure. And he was a church member.

I said, the one thing I'll tell you for sure. So you're not going to talk to me like that.

You're not going to cost me after service on Sunday. You want to make an appointment, we'll talk.

I said, you're not going to treat me that way. That man died six months later.

I don't know why. I'm not saying God killed him.

But I am telling you that God has removed people from our midst.

He allowed that to happen at the least if he didn't do it. Right.

So what I'm saying to you is, individually remaining faithful and then as a body having an immune system

so that we stop idolatry from our midst. There is nothing else worth what God is worth.

It doesn't begin to compare.

If your speedometer is buried in the red on God and running 50 miles per hour on your hobby or on your phone or whatever,

you are in danger. You're in danger of allowing that idolatry to take up a serious place in your life.

If you're studying other things but not studying the Word, you're in danger.

If you're listening to what somebody has to say but you're dismissing what I have to say because it's too freaky or too aggressive

or I'm pushing you on something that you don't want to listen about, you're in danger.

But you're in danger. But then if we do that, the whole church is in danger and the ground will be gone.

And in 20 years, this will not be a church building and we won't be meeting anywhere else either.

We won't be seen scattered amongst other people because God gave us this promised land, this grace land, this holy land.

Individually, we stayed the course enough to not be plucked from it, but corporately we decided that idolatry was okay

and God says, be careful, there is a sign. I already put up a sign.

I have two closing illustrations I'll share with you and then I'll be through.

The first one is about a natural anomaly. In the Pacific Ocean off Vancouver Island,

a stretch of water known as the Zone of Silence. Because this area is acoustically dead, no

sound can penetrate or travel through it. It's a natural phenomenon. Since no bell or

siren can warn ships of dangerous reefs, the ocean floor is studded with wrecks. Your mouth

was given you to represent Holy God. Yes, grace God. But when you see a believer who

is drifting into idolatry, and certainly in our church, you need to not be silent. Many

ships have crashed because no one spoke up. And in the world today, if you speak up about

something, generally speaking, either you're a hater or you're hated. And sometimes both.

But in the church, it's your responsibility. When things aren't right, we have to haul

each other back from the brink. And if you save a man from his sin, then don't be surprised,

you've saved his soul. And I submit to you the soul of our church. And we can be elsewhere

and still worshiping God, they were worshiping God in captivity. When they were called out

of captivity back together again, they never drifted into idolatry again. Of course, they

never had a great land again. Even today, there are no grapes that grow there the size

of a man's head. Because God punished and cursed the land, took them out of it. They

were supposed to be the great caretakers, took them out of it and then cursed the land.

One more. There's a young girl, 11 years old, her name is Sheila Nossworthy of Cambridge,

which is in England. She suddenly went deaf. She couldn't hear. When specialists predicted

that she would never hear again, she was heartbroken, but knew that she was still here and needed

to do something. And so she switched her attention from television to books, because she couldn't

watch TV anymore. And even with the captions, it just wasn't the same. And so she switched

her attention from television to books, as she started reading books and more books and

more books. One day, while she was in her room, a stack of storybooks fell from the

top of her closet onto her head. The pretty little blonde was stunned, aghast, shocked,

stunned because she in that moment discovered that her hearing had returned. She says, and

I quote, it was Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland and Snow White that hit me hardest, said Sheila

afterwards, I'll believe in fairy tales for the rest of my life. I'm asking you to do

nothing less than trust God. Doesn't matter if you feel like what you've been through

has been hard, He's been with you through it. Our church must be faithful to the Lord

to the end. It won't matter if one of us dies to persecution, if we stay faithful to God.

It won't matter if we suffer terribly, if we stay faithful to God. The worst of it,

as we heard in an inspirational moment, most of what you're going through, most of the

troubles that we're going through on a daily basis or weekly basis, it's all designed to

get us to take our attention or our focus off of God. We live in the promised land,

we live in the great land, we live in the holy land, we do not take our attention off

of God. But we're living in a world that has convinced us that we can share, that it's

fair and it's safe. I can focus on this and also focus on God at the same time. And I

submit to you, I'm asking you to believe more than that. I'm asking you to believe

that God has done this in us as a people and for us collectively as a group to stand firm

with an immune system in place that will chase out all idols. If God has not given it to

us specifically, it has no place here. And I understand God has given you everything,

but God gave you a cell phone, but He never said you could declare its worth. God gave

you hobbies, God gave you a job, God gave you income, but He never said you could worship

it. A man cannot have two masters. So if anything has become a master in your life, I'm asking

you to cut it out. And then we as a church need to have an immune system that when we

see those things creeping in, we say, whoa, wait a minute, this is my concern. And it

may turn out that that's not what's happening. Someone will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt

that we're not worshiping that thing in which it can stay. But if it can't be proven and

it looks like we're headed for that sign, and we have to realize that beyond that sign

is an absence of New Heights Fellowship Baptist Church of East Toledo in the place that God

has put us, in the promised land, the grace land, the holy land that God has put us in.

And people will say, well, whatever happened to New Heights Fellowship Baptist Church?

I got food there so many times. I heard Pastor Dan preaching at block parties and other guys

come up and preach. And they all seemed like they were so on fire for the Lord and they

were all so united and they were all together and they loved one another, they did things

together and they worked hard together. And they had that building that God gave them

was clearly a miracle when God did that. And people say, well, what happened? And someone

will say, inspired in the moment, well, they drifted away from God. They stopped making

God the absolute most important thing and something else became important. And so God

took them out. And so even then, we'll have a witness. We're going to have the praise

team come forward at this time and lead us. We're going to sing a closing hymn. I'm asking

us and really this is, as you saw, a corporate thing. Now, you know that you personally are

either A, drifting into idolatry is something that's sticking up and big part of your life

or B, that you're too quiet and you can't speak up, that you can't lovingly correct.

Then you need to repent and let God work through you and stand firm in what's right in the

promised land, great land and holy land. But if you say, well, I can, I mean, with God's

help, I can. So I'm saying that we all need to make a commitment. We all collectively

need to make a commitment to say, no, God first and God alone. And we're all we've been

blessed with instead of taking it for granted and finding other things to worship. We need

to be grateful for what God has done and stay firm, stay faithful. As we sing, would you

stand with us? If you're online and it's touched your heart, then you respond. You listen to

the podcast and you realize that you're not in the wrong place. Turn to the Lord, God

of heaven. It's not about me, about him. Light of the fact that I may have the flu, I'll

ask you not to walk forward. But if you need to share a word or respond in some way, just

raise your hand where you're at.

I'm at the feet of Jesus, the grace that comes, mercy and love. I'm at the feet of Jesus,

the grace that comes, mercy and love. I'm at the feet of Jesus, the grace that comes,

mercy and love. I'm at the feet of Jesus, the grace that comes, mercy and love. I'm

at the feet of Jesus, the grace that comes, mercy and love. I'm at the feet of Jesus,

the grace that comes, mercy and love.

A couple of real quick things that the Lord has been speaking to me even just these last

few seconds. The first thing is that it occurs to me that traversing the sign, if you're

not paying attention to the sign, traversing the sign usually occurs in an ambush. It's

tricky. The thing comes into your life, it becomes that important to you and pretty soon

you're making choices about, do I invest in this or do I invest in God? Sherry and I are

looking at trying to build an expansion on our house for example. I had a dream, I woke

up from a dream, I asked the Lord, I said, Lord is that what my house is supposed to

look like?