Please turn to the book of Exodus this morning. Genesis, Exodus, chapter 23 this morning. As I give you time to get there. We are concluding a section which is called the Book of the Covenant today. And this section began in chapter 20, verse 22, and it concludes at the end of chapter 23. And Lord willing, we're going to conclude this section today. The book of Exodus itself is named after that famous Exodus event. And of course, the book is more than that. But in that Exodus, the Lord redeemed his people from Egypt to serve him. The Lord told Pharaoh through his mediator Moses, let my people go that they should serve me. Well, we know that there was quite a bit of arm twisting that went on, but he eventually let his people go. And the Lord led them through the desert to Mount Sinai. And that is where we're at in this book, this point in the book, we're at Mount Sinai. They're going to be here about a year. First God spoke those 10 words to his people straight from heaven, speaking from heaven directly to them, those 10 commandments. And then Moses took over and then he has been giving them, us the last three chapters, the book of the covenant. This is essentially, what's happening here is God's constituting Israel as a nation and as his special nation, a theocracy in which he was their king. And this conclusion that we're going to look at today makes clear the reciprocal nature of the covenant. What do you mean by that? Well, they didn't do anything to get in, right? He chose Israel, the nation. He redeemed them by his strong arm. But there are covenant obligations on behalf of Israel. They have obligations in the covenant. And there are promises made by the Lord. And that's what we're gonna see in our text this morning. So Exodus 23, we'll begin in verse 20 this morning. This is God's word to us this morning. Let us receive it expectantly. Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared. Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice. Do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him. But if you carefully obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries. When my angel goes before you and brings you to the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I blot them out, you shall not bow down to their gods nor serve them, nor do as they do, but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their pillars in pieces. You shall serve the Lord your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, And I will take sickness away from among you. None shall miscarry or be barren in your land. I will fulfill the number of your days. I will send my terror upon you and will throw into confusion all the people against whom you shall come. And I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. And I will send hornets before you which shall drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites, and the Hittites from before you. I will not drive them out before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you. Little by little I will drive them out from before you until you have increased and possessed the land. And I will set your border from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates, For I will give the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you. You shall make no covenant with them and their gods. They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me. For if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you." Let us pray and ask the Lord's help. Dear Father, we thank you for your word and we thank you for your promise that all scripture is breathed out by you and is profitable for teaching us, for correction, for training us in righteousness that we may be complete Christians. And so we thank you for this book of Exodus that's helping us understand the foundation for our faith. And there's much to learn here today. We ask that you would help us with the eye of faith, with the illumination of the spirit, to understand how it applies to us individually and corporately as your body of Christ. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Promise and obligation, we see them both here. Like a teacher taking her small class of keeny gardeners to a fun day at the park. She says, kids, we're closing the books today. We're going to the park to eat ice cream and drink Kool-Aid and play at the park. The kids are excited and ready to go, right? What a fun teacher. What a nice teacher. But then the teacher says, there are some rules that need to be followed if we are going to have a good time today. You need to listen to me. When I tell you something, it is for your own good. If you follow my instructions, you will have a great time. I'm sure of it. If you don't listen, well, someone may get hurt, and that would ruin the day for us all. You may end up having to sit by me while the other kids have fun and play. In this trip, in this illustration, right, there's promise and obligation. They're going on a trip. They need to listen and obey the teacher if they're gonna enjoy the trip. The Lord has saved and redeemed the nation of Israel, not to be their own master, but to serve him. That was always the obligation, to serve him. That's why he redeemed him. Not serve you, Pharaoh. They're going to serve me. I'm going to be their God. They'll be my people. He promises a wonderful future for his servants. To enjoy it, they must be faithful to their obligations. Now, we're going to work through our text this morning in three headings. The first is, Jesus is the way to the promised land. Jesus is the way to the promised land. Look with me in verse 20 there. Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared." An angel again. You may be thinking, we've heard this before, this angel. This is not the first time this has come up. Sounds familiar, and it should. This is actually the third time that we've seen this angel. The first time was at Exodus 3, we're at the burning bush, where the angel was there, and the angel was Yahweh, and Moses was called to serve him. Remember, God declared himself Yahweh, that he is who he says he is. I am who I am. That was the first instance of the angel. The second, chapter 14, the angel of God led them through the sea. Then we see them here and we're gonna see them later again. Most commentators, just about everybody I read, most Christians understand that this is Yahweh. This is the Lord. But specifically, the second person of the Trinity. The Son of God. That's who this is. This is the Son of God. Yahweh is a Trinity. And What we mean by that is there's one God. He exists eternally in three distinct persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Look with me in verse 21. He says, pay careful attention to him and obey his voice. Who? The angel. Do not rebel against him. for he will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him. Obey his voice. Also look with me, he will not pardon your transgressions if you rebel against him. Well, that does not make any sense if he can't forgive. If he cannot forgive, and only God we know that can forgive sins. So there's a big clue. My name is in him. That's what he goes on to say, for my name is in him. Now, the name in the Bible, most of the time, refers to who the person is, who he is. That's the name, my name, who I am. And my name is in him. Well, this sounds, again, like the gospel of John. I am in the Father, and the Father is in me. Jesus said that. Sounds like the gospel of John, doesn't it? Look at me in verse 22. But if you carefully obey his voice and do all that I say, oh, if you carefully obey his voice and do that all that I say, see that? There's distinction and yet it's Yahweh, Yahweh's voice that comes through this angel. Verse 23. when my angel goes before you and brings you to the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I blot them out. He's going before you, and I will blot them out. See that? Again, this sounds a lot like the Gospel of John. We hear these statements in John. Jesus said these kind of things all the time. For whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. John 5.19. Whatever the father does, the son does likewise. Now, this is not a contradiction because in some sense, they're the same. They share the same being, essence. But in another completely different sense, they're distinct persons. Now, if you understand that, come tell me, because I don't understand all that, but this is what the Bible clearly reveals about the Trinity, and the historic Christian church has always believed in the Trinity, and so we're not gonna, we're gonna just believe what God says about it. You know, the mouse running around your house this morning, he probably knows more about your brain than you know about God's brain. There's something about God that's good that we don't understand at all, right? That's okay. If I don't get all that, that's okay. But this is what the Bible says and teaches, and it's clear. And Christians, throughout the history of the Church, the Christian Church has always recognized the Trinity. The person's, the angel is not the same, is not identical with God, but he shares the same being, it's obvious. Now listen again, John 1, I want you to listen, John 1, 1. John 1, 1 starts this way. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God. Distinction, right? The word was with God, and the word was God. Whoa, but he was with God and now he is God? He was in the beginning with God, and all things were made through him. Well, who made all things? God. Says he's God, but he's with God. So we're talking about the Son of God, where the passage goes on to let us know this is the Son of God. And we know this, this back in Exodus 20, is the Son of God. And also in verse 20, Again, this language here is so reminiscent of the Gospel of John. He will go before you to guard you on the way and bring you to the place that I have prepared. Does that sound like Gospel of John somewhere, John 14? Jesus said, I go to prepare a place for you. I prepare a place and come again and take you to myself. Does that sound, that sounds like Jesus in the Gospel of John. We call this a Christophany. It's a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus Christ, is what we have here in this text. A pre-incarnate appearance of the Son of God. And he is the way to the promised land. Now, the kingdom in Israel is typological. Now, I know that's a big word, and I taught a Sunday school class where I explained this in more detail, and most of you probably weren't there, but typological, what do you mean by that? Well, I mean by that is it's, a figurative story, it's telling us something about the real thing. It's typological. Israel was a real kingdom, but its ultimate purpose was to tell us and prepare us for the real kingdom of Jesus. It's typological. In other words, its ultimate purpose is to point to something else that will be the real thing. And so the kingdom of Israel is a typological kingdom. It tells us about the kingdom of Christ, the eternal kingdom. There's a lot of pictures here that we learn and we see, and we learn about the kingdom of Christ through what we're seeing here. It foreshadows. It's just another way of saying it. A shadow, we know what a shadow is, right? A shadow is a real revealing of the person. You see somebody's shadow, but it's not them. That's the way the kingdom of Israel worked. It was a foreshadowing. It foreshadowed the kingdom of Christ that will come. And so there's all kinds of stuff to learn here in Israel. And so if you're not reading your Bible that way, you should start, right? Start learning about what this is. It's not just you're reading a historical book about these people. It's much more than that. What is typified here then gives way to the kingdom of Christ in glory. And so we learn here in shadowy form about our own kingdom, the kingdom of Christ. In our salvation, we're redeemed, right? We're bought. All these things that we've been learning about are foreshadowing what our salvation is. And so we're dreamed by the blood of the lamb, right? Salvation is full and free. We gladly repent and trust in Christ, our Redeemer, out of the bondage, out of slavery to sin and captivity to Satan. He redeems us out of that to be His own people, to serve Him. He transfers us from the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of His beloved Son. All of grace We take Christ as our Redeemer by faith and we are members of the new covenant of his blood. He is our God and we are his people by faith. This free grace covenant does come with some obligations. And this is number two this morning, my second heading. The covenant comes with obligations. Now I want to break this down, this second heading, this is number two, three obligations. So three subheadings, three obligations. First, we must obey and serve the Lord. They must obey and serve the Lord. Now, just being a creature of God, who God wrote his law on, were made in his image, and his law is in our conscience, in our heart. Everybody knows the moral law instinctively. It's written on their hearts in creation. Everybody's bound to obey God. When God creates you and makes you for himself, you're bound to do what he says. That's just in the deal. That's how it works. But when you're redeemed back from your sin, and we're all sinners, we've all gone our own way, and we've all rebelled, and he redeems us back out of slavery to sin, to himself, we're doubly bound, we're doubly bound to be his and to obey him. The redeemed have duties. That's an old word, isn't it? And we don't like that word very much anymore today. The contemporary church just doesn't like that word. And I was in a church years ago, they would just say, we don't like that word. It's not about rules, it's about a relationship. And there's something about that that's really good and true. Let's try to see what's really good about that. It's not about rules, it's about a relationship. Okay, we're not saved by rule keeping. Amen, right? Amen. The whole purpose of Christianity is to have a love relationship with Jesus Christ. Amen, amen, right? But then Jesus says this weird saying, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. Whoa, there goes relationship, not rules. There it goes. And in fact, Jesus said, he said, you are my friends if you do what I tell you. Whoa, whoa. So maybe that's not a good saying. Maybe the old way the church is historically understanding that there's duties, there's obligations, there's a voice we need to listen to and rule our life, his word. Maybe that is a part of the deal. Well, it is. It is a part of the deal. Israel must serve and obey the Lord. Look at me in 21a there. 23, 21a. Be careful, pay careful attention to him and obey his voice. Do not rebel against him for he will not pardon your transgression. Look at 25, 25a. You shall serve the Lord your God and he will bless your bread and your water. You shall serve the Lord your God. Also the writer of Hebrews puts it this way. He became a source of eternal salvation to all who obey him. So there's obligation. There's obligation in the old covenant to obey the Lord. Jesus said the same thing in the new, right? If you love me, you'll keep my commandments. You are my friends if you do what I tell you. We know that there's an obligation in covenant with God to obey him. Second covenant obligation is they must drive out the pagans and put away their gods. Look with me in verse 24. You shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do as they do, but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their pillars in pieces. And then verse 31c, look at verse 31, the last part there. For I will give the inhabitants of the land into your hand and you shall drive them out before you. So this is a picture of putting away the foreign gods, the idols, the sinful people there. So I want to make a note here. There's a whole sermon I could preach on this. When they're driving out the Hittites and the Canaanites and all these people, it isn't that, and they're supposed to kill them and all of them, you know, they're annihilating them, it isn't that they're innocent people. Hey, why are you just going against this innocent? No, so if you read through the Bible, and I don't have time to take you all here, I can show you later, but if you have questions about it, let me know and I'll show you the texts. Leviticus chapter 19, 20, right in there, you get a clear picture. But the point is, is that even in Genesis earlier, we find that God says, I'm gonna give you the promised land, but the cup isn't full. Their sins aren't full yet. Those who are in the land, they haven't sinned to the point where I'm ready to exterminate them. You see in Israel, they have the law and there's a death penalty for apostasy and breaking God's law, there's a death penalty, that's just. The wages of sin is death. And so there's a point where God's looking at the Hittites and the Canaanites and all these Perizzites and he's saying, there comes a point when they've sinned in that land and a point where they deserve to die. And I'm gonna use my people as the judgment upon them. So it's judgment. We're just not thinking correctly if we think that there's these innocent people that are gonna get kicked out of their houses. No, these are people that have rebelled against God and have sinned in very grievous ways. These are people that are child sacrifice, idolatry, broken all of his commandments, which he wrote upon their hearts when they were created. They know better. And so there come a point where they're being judged. And it's a picture of, of course, eternal judgment. But okay, we could go down. I think I just had to say something about that. Let's go back in where we were. So again, this is a typological salvation. We learned a lot about our salvation. So as they're driving out the false gods and the idols, and they're to put those away and drive them out, that's kind of like our sanctification when we're redeemed. We're to drive out the sin in our life. We're to go to war against our sins. Put them to death, put sin to death. So there's a picture of repentance, right? When you're redeemed by the Lord, you believe in him and you repent. Faith and repentance are like Siamese twins, where the one is, other's there. We're saved by faith, but where faith is, there's always the other Siamese twin. You may not like him, but he's going to be there, right? That's how faith and repentance work. Where the one is, the other will be there too. So where there's true faith, there's always true repentance. And so what happens in the New Covenant is by grace alone we believe, by faith alone, but where that Faith is, it's never alone. There's always the repentance there too. And repentance unto life is a turning from sin to God, an endeavoring after a new obedience. And none can expect pardon without it. You see, that must accompany that. When we are converted to Christ, there is faith, there's repentance. There's a trust in him to save us, and then there's a repentance that turns from sin to God, and a commitment and endeavoring after a new obedience to him, because that's how we were created to obey him and to serve him. And so, So, in their lives, they were to drive out the false gods and these people. In our lives, in our covenant, we're to drive out sin. Go to war against it. The third obligation in the text, third obligation, is they were to make no compromise. Look at verse 32 with me, 32. You shall make no covenant with them and their gods. The normal practice in the day, and what they're finding is, is God is addressing a lot of the normal things that happen in their culture or in that day. Normally, when you went to war, if there was sort of a tie, they would just agree to stop and trade with each other and get along. Or if one dominated the other, there would be sanctions put upon them and they would have to serve them. Your people are gonna serve our people, because we won. There would be a covenant, an agreement, sanctions, stuff like that. So God's saying, nope, in this war, there's no covenants, there's no agreements. You don't live them in the land at all. You drive them completely out and you take away their gods, their high places, their offering, everything, it's gone, it's out. There's no compromise with that. Typological to our Christian lives is what? Drive out sin completely. All the idols of your life, go to war and drive them out. There's no compromises. Obedience must be complete in all things. Now, sometimes folks will take Christ And they'll come to God's commands like someone who's kind of a picky eater goes to a buffet line. You know, they kind of go through the buffet line and they're kind of a picky eater and they say, ah, that looks good, I'll take that. Keep going, oh, that looks good. Sometimes folks will come to God's, they'll come to the covenant with God and they'll say, yes, I want redeemed, but I'm just gonna take your commands like that. Ah, this seems agreeable to my nature. I like that, that'll help me in life, I'll take that. That'll work pretty good, I'll take that too. Nah, not so much. That would really be costly to take those things. Right, people come to God that way. And brothers and sisters, I wanna remind you that that is not the commitment in the covenant with God. I was reading Stephen Sharnick this week, the old Puritan pastor. He was talking about this, and he basically, and I'm paraphrasing, he said, you know, when people come to the commands of God and they think, well, that costs too much to me, and they just pass it over, that is an obedience to God. That's self-authority. That's self-authority. When we go through the buffet line of God's commands and we say, I'll have this, this is agreeable to my nature, this will be good. Ah, this ain't too bad. We're the ones in authority, right? God is not. And when folks say, you know, I'm gonna go to church this morning, make my wife happy. Otherwise, she's gonna be mad. That's not obeying God, right? Let's just be honest. That's not obeying God. Now, I'm glad if that's you, I'm glad you're here. Or if you're like, hey, we need to go to church, you know, they're gonna think we're not faithful Christians. Let's go make our presence. Listen, that's not. That's not obeying God. And I hope everybody's motives is great here. No doubt, no reason to think it's not. But if that is you, I'm glad you're here, and that's good. It's better to be here than not, because you're gonna hear the words of life, right? But let's just be honest, that's not obeying God. That's not your motive. And so, boy, this is stinging today, isn't it, John? Hey, I'm just preaching the word here, and I'm trying to help us. I'm really trying to help us to see where we're at with the Lord. And listen, it's not perfect. It's not perfect. And even when the Lord says here, obey my voice, for he will not pardon your transgressions, if you rebel against him, There's a kind of rebellion that he's talking about. It's like if you apostatize, if you turn your back on him and you just say, not for me, I'm not committed to him anymore. That's the kind of rebellion we're talking about. Listen, these people struggled in their sin to serve God, just like we do in our Christian lives. We struggle daily. but we're in the race, right? We're not consciously in rebellion to God. We're trying to walk with him by faith, and our commitment level is to live it all out, but we fall, when we get going, we just fall short, right? Every day, all the time, we keep ourselves falling short, falling short. That's not rebellion. That's Christian living, do you see? I just want you to see the difference here. In the New Covenant, we get these warnings as well. If you just go on sinning willfully and you just turn your back on Christ and stop going to church, Hebrews 10, and you just stop following Christianity, that's the point in Hebrews 10, if you read that later. He says there's not forgiveness of sins. So that warning is still in the New Covenant, that if we just decide we're gonna rebel against God in our life, There's no promise anymore of forgiveness. That's in the New Covenant as well. But the point here is when we come to the cross, when we come to Jesus Christ, we come to the cross and the cross kills us. What do we mean by that? When we place our trust in Christ, there's a point where we die with him to our old life. That's what baptism pictures. They come to Christ, pictures of baptism, you're dying to your old life. He's buried. Raised to newness of life. That's what happens when we become believers, is we die to the old life, to the old man, to the old self-rule, the old independent rebel against God. We die to that, we're buried with Christ, we die with Christ, we're buried with Christ, and we're raised to newness of life. That's the Christian life. So when we become believers, that's what happens to us, is we've died with Christ and we've been raised with Christ to walk in newness of life. And so that has to happen. Now listen, again, I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to do anything but preach the Bible. And I just, there's a couple questions I want to ask, and this is just for all of us to apply and think about. Is this, this isn't that hard to access either, to really assess. Do you want all of your life under the Lordship of Jesus Christ? All of it. Or are you more the buffet, the picky buffet eater with the commandments of God? I'll take Jesus in this part of my life. That's not that hard of an assessment, and if you take that to God on your own later, and this is a good thing to do on a Sunday afternoon, is to pray and seek God, and what am I? Am I a picky buffet eater Christian? Or do I really want you to be Lord of all of life? Not perfection, brothers and sisters. We stumble and fall. But we know, we want God to reign in all of our life. We want it to be that. We struggle. So again, that's an examination question for all of us. Listen, here's some good news. You're not saved by your faithfulness, but the faithfulness of another in your place. Now we need to hear that, don't we? Your sins are not washed away by your doing. Hey, start off, let's see how you do. If you do good enough, then God will take away your sins. That's not how it works. No. It is another's love, it is another's faithfulness that washes away our sins. He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in him. It's free grace. But the point of application is have we really come to Him and received this free grace and died when we came to the cross and saw Jesus at the cross by faith and committed ourselves to Him? Did we die with Him to the old life and were we raised with Him to the new life? That's the point of application. The covenant comes with obligations. but also with precious and very great promises. And this is my third heading this morning. The covenant comes with promises. First, he will bring us to the promised place. Look with me in verse 20. I will send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared. That's a promise. They're going, they're gonna get there. It's called the promised land. They're gonna get there. Look at me in verse 31. Quickly, I'm going to run over to 1 Kings 4. If you're fast, you can go with me. 1 Kings 4, and I want to show you something. Just want to write it down. It's going to be 1 Kings 4, 21. In the context there. Start verse 20. Judah and Israel were as many as the sand of the sea. Does that sound like a promise being fulfilled? Remember the Abrahamic covenant? Your offspring will be as the sand of the sea. Judah and Israel were as many as the sand of the sea. It's fulfilled now. They are, as many as the sand at sea. They ate and drank and were happy. Solomon ruled over all the kingdoms of the Euphrates to the land of the Philistines and to the border of Egypt. Does that sound familiar? We just read that, didn't we? They brought tribute and served Solomon all the days of his life. This will be fulfilled. They're going, they're gonna get there. Again, this is a typological kingdom. It's pointing to the kingdom of Christ, that eternal kingdom. We talk, Christians have talked for the whole Christian church throughout history about the promised land. What is that for us? Well, it's not a geographical location. We're not going to the Jerusalem, the real Jerusalem. We're going to the heavenly one. There's a heavenly city that awaits us, an eternal kingdom, a new heavens and a new earth. That's where we're going. When somebody dies, a Christian dies, sometimes we'll say, well, they crossed the river into the promised land. Well, you don't mean a real location, right? This is the prefiguring, this is foreshadowing, this is typological to what we're looking forward to. And you know what? God promises us, Philippians 1.6, here's a promise for you, brothers and sisters. He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus. You're gonna get there. He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus. You're going to get there. Jesus said, and where I am you will be, John 14. That's for us, that's for us. We can look at this and we can say God was faithful to bring these disobedient, grumbling, complaining, sinful people, he fulfilled his promises to them. He will do it to us too. Those promises we have, he will fulfill to us. Secondly, he's for us and He's an enemy to our enemies. Look at me in verse 22, back to Exodus 23, verse 22. But if you carefully obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries. He's gonna be for us and an enemy to our enemies. This is the same promise given to Abraham, right? Promise to Abraham. Basically, I'm for you, your enemies, but those who are your adversaries, I will be an adversary to. Those who bless you, I will bless, right? That's the same kind of thing. This is for us as well. That's how God works for his people. Third, he goes before them, look with me in verse 23. When my angel goes before you and brings you to the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I blot them out. He goes before them, verse 23. The angel goes before you. You know, if you have a bumper sticker, and it says Jesus is my co-pilot, We got to get a new one on there that says, Jesus is my pilot and I'm the co-pilot, right? That's how it is. And here the picture is too. He goes before them. He's leading them. He's the pilot. That's how it is in our Christian life. He's the pilot. That doesn't mean I don't take a seat in the back. I'm the co-pilot. I got things to do. I got responsibilities. I got obligations. I co-pilot, but he's the pilot. That's how it works in our relationship with the Lord. And he will lead us home. Fourth promise here, blot out, 23C. We just read this, and all these people groups, I will blot them out, 23C, I will blot them out. He will drive them out, the victory that he will give. This is a promise of victory, though not all at once. Look at me in verse 29 and 30, 29 and 30. I will drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate. Not in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you." Listen, if I drive them all out before you have the opportunity to fill it, the land's gonna go bad and the animals are gonna get nasty and they're gonna be killing people. No, I want them to habit it, like be like a husbandry to the land. And so, verse 30 then. Little by little I will drive them out from before you until you have increased and possessed the land." Little by little. What is this a picture of? Sanctification. He's sanctifying you little by little. We want it all at once, right? Oh, I want it now. I want all my sins gone. You know those, when I got saved, Some people, they get the sins of the tongue. It's just like their tongue becomes like silver and they talk like a Christian. That happens sometimes, okay? But a lot of times it doesn't happen that way, right? It's like, what just came out? What's wrong with this tongue? It's better than it was, but it isn't what it ought to be, right? And so it's little by little. The other sins, like lust or, you know, anger. You know, some people have a problem with anger, and when they get saved, yes, they have more power and ability, but it still shows up some. And sanctification is little by little by little. Some sins are taken away. I have sins that right when I was saved, they're just gone. I just didn't have any, but a lot of other sins, man, it was like, How long, Lord? Please take it away. And I had to struggle, I had to fight, I had to battle. And it's in His plan that's good for us because we depend upon the Lord and we don't get self-righteous and we're humble and we walk with Him and we look to Him and we grow in our love and admiration for Jesus as we keep having to look to Him and confess our sins and trust in Him. And in God's design, that's best. But it's little, it's victory, little by little. And then finally, verse 25, he promises amazing blessings. You shall serve the Lord your God and he will bless your bread and your water and I will take sickness away from you, among you. None shall miscarry or be barren in your land. I will fulfill the number of your days. Wow, no sickness? He's gonna bless the bread and afterwards All my work to get the bread, he's gonna bless all that, my crops, my farm, he's gonna bless it all, and the bread on that table, he's gonna bless that. Water, he's gonna provide clear drinking water, the streams, the rain, all that's gonna happen, he's gonna do that. Long life, the number of my days, I'm gonna live a long life. No sickness, I'm not gonna catch the bird flu or any other kind of sicknesses or diseases. What does this, this is wonderful. This sounds like heaven. What are we talking about? It's typological, isn't it? It's a typological kingdom showing us a picture of the eternal kingdom. Well, we're headed to a place where there'll be no more tears, no more sorrow, no more sickness, no more death. We're headed there. Now, some teachers will try to apply this to the church now, and they'll say, oh yeah, if you're living the Christian life, God doesn't want you sick, and if you're sick, you're in sin. You know, some of us have heard teachers like that, and we're like, oh man, that is a total misapplication of the covenant here. That was for Israel, and it was a typological kingdom, and there's application, sure, but not that kind of a literal one-for-one application. Just read your New Testament. Paul, read the book of Galatians. He was sick, very sick among them. He had some kind of disease. Timothy, he writes in Timothy's letter, Timothy's having stomach issues, digestive problems. It says, drink a little wine for the sake of your stomach. The New Testament, you'll just never come away with that. But we are going to a place that that's all gone. You know, they didn't have those promises while they were in the wilderness going to the promised land. Brothers and sisters, we're sojourners. We're not home yet. This is not our home. We're just passing through. When we get home, these promises will be ours, of course. Now, sickness can be related to sin. Disobedience, we know that. Read 1 Corinthians 11. Some were coming to the Lord's Supper, and they were taking in an unworthy manner, and Paul tells them, he says, that's the reason some of you are sick and weak, and some have died. because of sin in your life you're not dealing with kind of thing. Division, those kind of things. That can be related, but it's not a one for one. The New Testament, we know that godly people get sick. Godly moms miscarry. Godly families lose babies. Young people sometimes die. Godly young people sometimes die. We all know what it is to get sick, but we're going to a place, brothers and sisters, we're promised. It's promised to us where that won't be. As long as we stay in the race, that promise is ours. What do I mean by that? Keep believing, keep walking by faith. This is not a promise that if you just quit the team and you quit Christianity, we don't believe in like this one save, always save doctrine that, now I wanna clarify this, that there's a sense where I do believe that, but we don't believe this thing like you can say a prayer and then you got fire insurance the rest of your life and you can live how your wife and you're just gonna end up in heaven. That isn't quite how the covenant works. There's obligations and you must continue to believe. It's from faith from beginning to end. You must continue in the faith. Once you're really born again and you really have God's spirit and you really have faith, you will be saved. But the gift of repentance and faith comes with a gift of persevering in both. Do you understand that? The real true gift of faith and repentance comes with the gift of persevering in both to the end. Does that make sense? False faith, we read this in the parable of the sowers and lots of places Jesus taught this. Some people believe for a while and they fall away. Who cares of the world? Chokes it out and they become unfruitful. They never were really saved. That happens sometimes. So true faith is a gift that comes with a gift of perseverance with it. Again, not perfection. If you think you're perfect, Talk to me, because I think we've got some serious problems. If you're somebody out there who's struggling, and you're fighting, and you got sin, and you see it, and you hate it, and you're fighting, and you're, yeah, but I've struggled with this for years. Welcome to the wilderness, where we're fighting, and we're putting our sins away, and victory comes little by little, right? That's us. That's you, hopefully. Hopefully you can look back like five years, I am different. I am not what I was. I'm more like Christ today. You should see that, okay? Now I wanna conclude here with just saying this too. Israel failed, we know that, and they were exiled, weren't they? But we have a better covenant built on better promises. And everything he demands from us, he provides by his grace. Nine times in this text, 23, 20 to 33, nine times, and there's more, there's more of the language we could use, but just he says, I will. I will. Nine times he says this in this text. I will, I will, I will, I will, nine times. Listen, I want you to see some things about the new covenant. Go over to Jeremiah 31. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, so major prophets, Jeremiah, kind of in the middle of your Bible almost, Jeremiah. Jeremiah 31. Now, I could have taken you to Hebrews because this is quoted in Hebrews, what I'm going to read to you, but this is closer. This is the new covenant, the promised new covenant. This is our covenant, brothers and sisters. We're not in the old Mosaic covenant. We're in the new covenant. Now, Jeremiah 31, 31. Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. Not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on that day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them. I will write it on their hearts. I will be their God. They shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother saying, know the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. And I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sins no more. Did you get, I will. I will make a new covenant. I will put my laws within them. I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God. I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sins no more. All that he demands, he'll do. Ezekiel, go over to Ezekiel, book to the right, Ezekiel 36. Ezekiel 36, 25. He says, again, this is a promise that I will put, the heading of this is, I'll put my spirit within you. This is the promise of the new covenant. He's talking, same kind of thing, but he says in verse 25, I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols, I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. That's the new covenant. It's not just words on tablets of stone. What's he do? Puts them on our hearts. He gives us new hearts. He takes out that heart of stone and he gives us new soft hearts that the word of God is written on them. And then he gives us his spirit who gives us power to live out what's on our heart, this new heart we have, a heart that beats for the Lord. And he will cause us then to walk in his statutes. Wow, the Christian life is empowered by God's spirit. The New Covenant, we have the Spirit and the fullness. He indwells us and we have new hearts for Him. You know, before I was a Christian, I had a heart of stone. I didn't want that. When I believed, I had a new heart. I wanted to know the truth and I wanted to follow it. Know how badly I've failed. That's what I wanted. That was my heart. And so, I will sprinkle clean water you. I will wash your sin away. I will give you a new heart. I will remove your heart of stone. I will put my spirit in you and cause you to walk in my ways." Brothers and sisters, it's all of grace to beginning to end. Beginning to end. Everything required, he provides. He will take us all the way home. That's good news, isn't it? Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this text, this message. I hope it was helpful. Father, I pray the only way it is going to be helpful is if you take the Word and bring it home to our hearts. I pray that these promises would come into our hearts and be precious to all of us. I pray that we would also feel something of the obligation as Christians. We're in covenant with you, Lord, and there is, anytime you're in a covenant, you have responsibilities. Help us be faithful to those. For your glory, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.