Join us now for the chapel hour coming to you from the campus of Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Today's message was recorded during a recent Sunday morning worship service held on the university campus. Our speaker will be the university president, Dr. Bob Jones III. Following the reading of the scripture from Exodus chapter 15, verses 22 through 27, Dr. Jones will bring a message titled, Elam is good, but Canaan is better. Dr. Jones, the university president, has asked that we read the Scriptures before a sermon this morning from Exodus chapter fifteen. Exodus chapter fifteen. We'll be directing our attention to verses twenty two to the end of the chapter, Exodus fifteen, twenty two to twenty seven. So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea and they went out into the wilderness of shore and they went three days into the wilderness and found no water when they came to Mara. They could not drink of the waters of Mara where they were bitter. Therefore the name of it was called Mara and the people murmured against Moses saying what shall we drink and he cried unto the Lord. And the Lord showed him a tree, which, when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet. There he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them and said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians, for I am the Lord that healeth thee. And they came to Elim, where there were twelve wells of water, and threescore and ten palm trees, and they encamped there by the waters." Jesus Christ is the theme of the song of your heart. You're going to be very happy at Bob Jones University. We love him here and this is his place. And if there's anything good, he's done it. And I hope you are aware increasingly, the longer you're here, that you're in the midst of a miracle. There really is no human explanation for this place. It is the Lord's and all of us are merely custodians, stewards of what the Lord has done. I would say to you, parents and friends of the institution who've come to bring your children here, Please keep us before the Lord constantly. I know you will. You have children here. You have a special incentive to do that for you. And we want the will of God to be revealed and accomplished in their life. Jimmy Martin, whose funeral was yesterday, was a godly young man. He had just returned a couple of weeks ago from a mission trip to Haiti. He loved the Lord with all of his heart. He had a good testimony. One of his fellow students told me at the funeral home night before last, she said, you know, Jimmy and I were best friends. And just before he went in for surgery, for some routine surgery on his jaw, during which time he had a brain aneurysm and the Lord took him instantly to heaven. Just before he went in, a few days before, he said to her, you know, you won't recognize me the next time you see me. My face will look different. What a prophetic, sweet testimony that was of something he it had meaning for him that he did not know. For the beauty of the Lord will be upon him when next we see him in a way it could never be in this world for any of us. Oscar Velasquez was an incoming student, whose brother is also a student here from California. He was shot at a jack-in-the-box Wednesday night after prayer meeting. Some of the young people from the church had gone to eat and somebody was angry for some reason. Some other person there took out a gun and shot Oscar in the parking lot. And we know that this wonderful family is grieving greatly. So we're going to miss these two young men in the student body. But the Lord has put them in a far better place where you and I yearn to be. We're glad he's brought you to this place. This is your place by divine appointment, the opportunity place for you by divine appointment. Hope you're expecting and looking for the blessings of God, the will of God, the revelation of the Lord in a fuller way to your heart day by day as you're here. That's the prayer of all the faculty and staff for you. We've had a great beginning as faculty and staff. We believe we're walking with the Lord and our desire is to see you walk with the Lord in a greater way. We welcome all of you, old and new students and families. Good to have you here. It'll be a time of great spiritual refreshing and joy to your hearts. And I hope you'll find the presence of the Lord on this campus. Would you open your Bibles, please, to Exodus 15. Call your attention to verse 27, the last verse of Exodus 15, the first few words of Exodus 16. They came to Elam, where were twelve wells of water and threescore and ten palm trees, and they encamped there by the waters. And they took their journey from Elam and came into the wilderness of sin, which is between Elam and Sinai on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departing out of the land of Egypt. Elam is good, but Canaan is better. That's the title of this message. Nobody likes vacations more than my wife and I do. We plan them in our schedule. We mark them in our calendar. They are sacred events, and we don't let anything violate that No invitations, no whatever. We have commitments to each other and to the Lord to take a vacation. Everybody needs a vacation. If you've ever done any hiking or hunting and carried backpacks, you know how good it feels to stop sometime and take that load off your back and put it down and just rest a while. Life is full of burdens, yours and mine. And we need sometimes to take the burdens of life and put them aside and just do nothing, go and rest. And that's what Elam was all about for God's people Israel. Elam was not a rest from their past journey because it had been a very short one. A very short one. Elam was a storing up of energy for what was to come. A 40 year wilderness wandering. It was a brief vacation of maybe a fortnight, maybe three weeks. Nobody knows for sure exactly, but probably no more than three weeks. They vacationed at Elam, at the beautiful resort of Elam, 12 wells of water, 70 palm trees, a place where there was no need and plenty of everything for them. Israel was fresh from the slavery of Egypt. Jehovah's delivering power was fresh in their mind from the Red Sea experience. The voice of Jehovah was fresh in their ears from the bitter waters of Mara, where they complained greatly. And we have those words from Jehovah recorded in verse 26 of Exodus 15. If you will diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God and will do that which is right in his sight and will give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee which I've brought upon the Egyptians, for I am the Lord that healeth thee." God made some wonderful promises to them and the voice of Jehovah was fresh in their ears. You have come from a summer in Elam, some summer vacation. For you, many of you, it was hard work, but I hope most of you got at least some vacation, some time in Elam, because now you're ready to go and walk for nine months in the wilderness on your journey to Canaan, the promised land of heaven. Think with me, if you will, about these matters. In the first place, I submit to you that the blessings of Elam are also the dangers of Elam. You know, if we didn't know about Canaan, that wonderful place God has prepared for those who love Him and are washed in the blood of the Lamb, our heavenly Canaan, our eternal Canaan, Elam would be a great place to be if we didn't know there was a better place. Elam has a lot to offer. It has shade. It has plenty of everything we need, refreshment, ease, beauty. Elam's great. All of us like Elam. The church has times of festivity, celebration. The Lord Jesus, during His earthly ministry, attended more than one banquet. And the times of refreshing and good company and rest that God gives us are gifts from His wonderful hand of bounty. They're glorious times. They are to be received joyfully because they come from the Lord and they are, I guess, in some measure, glimpses, if you will, into the future life of Canaan. Elam, so soon given to them out of their deliverance from Egypt, was so much better than Egypt. They could have been content to drive their tent stakes down real deep in Elam, maybe even build a city there. It looked good. But if we put our roots down in Elam, we'll miss the rewards of Canaan. Elam is kind of a pass-through place. You've passed through the summer. You've passed through whatever pleasantness of refreshing and relaxation you might have been able to enjoy this summer. You can't live permanently in Elam. God didn't intend for it to be. I said to my wife during vacation this summer, I said, this is wonderful. I wish we could just stay here But obviously we can't. You know, it doesn't take much faith to live in Elam. That's part of the problem. Elam had its wells of water. It had its palm trees. It's had its attractions and its nourishment for the people there. Everything we need for our life is in Elam. And we'll never trust God, really, in Elam. That's why they needed to go on. They had to go on from Elam with God into the wilderness to find out that it's God who sends breath. And it wasn't very long indeed. Very shortly in the wilderness, God sent them manna from heaven and he sent it for 40 years. They had to be dependent on God. They would never have known that, how good the hand of God is. They would never have known to pray for their daily bread and neither will we if we just stay in Elam. We'll miss something far better than Elam could ever give us. The sure knowledge that God is with us and that all that we need will come from his hand and we'll see it. provided by His providence. Think about the times we have elims in our normal life. Any time we get alone with God, and I hope it's every day, and have our personal devotion time, that's an elim. That's a time of refreshing, a time we come apart from the other burdens and responsibilities and duties of life. We just get quiet with God. The wells of water and the beautiful shade of His sheltering wings are there. But we don't spend our day in Elam. We have to leave there and go on to the rest of our day. This is the Lord's Day. Today is the Lord's Day. A wonderful day of refreshing where we come apart from our regular duties and just spend time in the shade and fruitfulness and blessing of heavenly water upon ourselves. But we don't spend the week on the Lord's Day. It's just a pass-through. It's just an elam from which we go on to the other six days of the week. The homes that you and I were raised in, if we were raised in good and God-fearing homes, were designed of God to be an elam for us at that time in our life. But we don't spend our lives in the homes where we were raised. Let me read you something I found in a sermon yesterday. It's called Breaking the Home Ties. Some of us remember the sadness at leaving the old home and days that are gone. Every field was familiar to us. Every tree on the place was precious. Every item in the landscape had some association with memories of childhood which centered our affection there. The very rooms in the old house were holy. In one, the baby had been born. In another, a mother had died. In the parlor, the weddings and the happy social gatherings had occurred. And childhood cast its glamour of romance and sweetness all around it. Therefore, it was a sad time that night when the family gathered for the last time around the wide-mouth fireplace. Father was pensive. And every mind was thoughtful and preoccupied, and on the morrow tears quivered upon every eyelash as we glanced backward when we turned the bend in the road and caught the last glimpse of the spot which had been home and happiness to us all. But the change meant for us at least, did it not, in the full fruition of the passing years, a new home and a wider life The change meant larger opportunities, children of our own, and the inflowing of new experiences of happiness and growth that flighted the memory with more abundant treasure than any of the past. The homes you grew up in, if they were nurturing and caring and happy and God-fearing homes, were elims to you. But God didn't design you to stay an elim all of your life. Some of you are breaking the ties with those nurturing elims for the first time. And you feel like the writer of this paragraph from the sermon I just read to you. And yes, there is sadness and yes, there are tears, but you are beginning now an embarkation upon a journey of life that will open up such new joys and new vistas and new opportunities and new memories that will far overshadow and will, by God's ordaining, replace the memories of the Elam from which you have come. F. B. Meyer, the great preacher, said it this way, Intervals of rest are not the goals of life, but the arbor on a hill of difficulty where we pause and brace for the climb God has granted all of us some kind of an elam in recent weeks or months in our life. But that's merely an arbor on the hill of difficulty where we pause and brace ourselves for the climb ahead. God doesn't ordain for His people to spend their life in the pleasantness of the elams. He gives them to us on many occasions as they're needed. But they're just pass-through places. where we get strength for the journey ahead. I would submit to you in the second place that the perils of the wilderness ahead of us are also the education about life. The perils of the wilderness ahead of us are also the education about life. Ladies and gentlemen, students at BJU, you have now left Elim. It's behind you. And you're beginning your arduous wilderness walk. Israel had to leave Elam to find out what they were really made of. And it wasn't long at all before they found out to their shame that they were miserable, thankless, complaining, murmuring people, and it should have scared them to death. Look at verse 2 of chapter 16. The whole congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. You're going to find out now that you have left the Elam behind you and started on your wilderness journey on your way to Canaan. You're going to find out what you're made out of. You're going to find out how carnal you are. You're going to find out how easily you complain when things don't go your way. They murmured in the wilderness. Why do we murmur? Well, usually because I think we compare our present conditions against some illegitimate norm, some standard we have no business comparing our present condition against. Many times we're told that children of Israel wanted to go back to Egypt. They remembered the leeks and garlics of Egypt. Now, they didn't like it when they were there. Some of you complained a lot about home when you were at home. You didn't like mother's cooking. You didn't like this. You didn't like that. You had the spirit of the prodigal son in you. And you just said, I can't wait till I get out of here. This is a miserable place. But now you get in the wilderness and you look back and you say, man, those leeks and garlics are really good. Home was a lot better than I thought it was. Compared to the wilderness. And you start looking back over your shoulder, and you're making a great mistake, just like the children of Israel did. They should have been looking forward to Canaan, not looking back to Egypt. Not looking back even to Elam. Because that was all in the past. God didn't want them and their memories to be fixed back there. He wanted their thoughts to be ahead to where they were going, to the Promised Land, and to whatever the journey required of them on the way there. But they measured their present circumstances by the abundance of Egypt or the abundance of Elam, and they found out that they just weren't really happy in their present circumstances. You know, they could say things like you might be inclined to say, well, this isn't like home. No, it's not. It wasn't meant to be. The wilderness experience wasn't meant by God to be like Elam or to be like Egypt. You're making a false comparison. And yes, you're always going to be unhappy in that sort of situation. Because you're comparing it against the standard God doesn't intend you to compare it against. The wilderness is never like Elam. The wilderness is never like home. You say, well, it was easier before, and I had a lot more back there. Yeah, maybe so. But you're not supposed to be back there. You're supposed to be here, where God put you, headed toward Canaan through a long wilderness. They learned some hard lessons about their complaining hearts when they got to the wilderness and they needed to do a lot of repenting because of what they found was in their hearts. It may surprise you during your wilderness wanderings here at BJU for the next four years, how wicked and ungodly your hearts are. It's going to hurt. And conviction will be great. And rightly so, you will feel guilty. And the only proper response is, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. God, forgive me for having this kind of a heart. As the Word of God begins to work on you and as in your journey you find out more and more about the Lord who walks with you through the wilderness and who wants to manifest Himself to you in the wilderness, you're going to find out what wicked hearts you have, how depraved you are. You might have thought you looked pretty good. You say, I'm in a Christian university and, you know, I'm not on drugs and I'm not drinking and I'm not a thief and I'm not a whatever and a whatever. Yeah, but you're going to find out that there's wicked sin in your hearts and you're going to be ashamed of yourself. Well, hey, that's part of the journey of life. It's called growth in godliness. The more we know of the Lord, the less we respect ourselves. And the more vile and low and reprehensible we see ourselves to be and the more we realize that we owe everything to the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ and that in our flesh there dwells no good thing. They had to go in the wilderness to learn that. And you're going to be learning that here in your wilderness experience. They had to leave Elam to see the miraculous provision of God, the manna from God. Verse 12 of chapter 16, God says that in the evening you shall eat flesh, in the morning you shall be filled with bread, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God. He said, you're going to learn a lot of things about me. You're going to learn that I can provide for you. Some of you are here on faith. Many of you are here on faith. You've worked hard. Your parents have worked hard. You'll continue to do so, but there won't be enough. And you're going to come to the end of your way. Some of you have been very self-sufficient people. You've always somehow been able to connive and work and plan, and somehow you've been able to get for yourself. Well, God's going to bring you to a position of helplessness in this wilderness. It's the best place you and I could ever be in where we just have to look up and say, Help, Lord. I can't do this. It's beyond me. You're going to see the mighty provision of God. And like Israel, you shall know that God is the Lord, the all-powerful One, the One who can take care of all the needs of His own. The proper response to being in need is not to whine and complain and feel sorry for yourself, but to say, Lord, I'm in Your will. You're going to have to take care of me. Show me, Lord, Your mighty hand of provision. Some of you have never in your life had to do that. You've had mother and dad to provide it. You've had some source of provision. But now, many of you are going to find yourself these next four years totally without the ability to find any provision of your own. You're going to find out how great and wonderful God is. They had to leave Elam to fight battles against the flesh and win. I don't have time to read Exodus 17, but you can read it. At Rephidim, they came to a place where they met the enemy, the Amalekites. And I believe that we can liken Amalek to the flesh. As long as they held Moses' hands up, they prevailed against Amalek. When it fell down, they lost. As long as you and I keep our guard up and fight against the flesh, God will see to it that we can get victory in the flesh. Let our guard down a little bit, the flesh will win. We're also told about Amalek. God said, Amalek's going to be with you from generation to generation. You'll never permanently defeat him. He'll keep coming back. The flesh is like that. You'll win a battle over the flesh today, and tomorrow there'll be a new battle with the flesh. You have to keep doing battle all through your life against the Amalek in your life, the flesh in your life. They had to find that out in the wilderness. And they had to find out that you don't have to be defeated by the flesh. They won over Amalek. But God said, He'll be back. You're going to have to fight Him the next day and the next and the next. You're going to find that out here in the wilderness. You can fight and win over the flesh. You don't have to let the flesh be victorious over you. They had to leave Elam to find out what capable leadership potential they had. Look at Exodus 18. I'll just read just a little bit, verses 19 through 26 is the whole passage, but just look at verses 21, 22, start down later in the chapter there, about 22 or 23. Thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness, and place such over them to be rulers of thousands and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, rulers of tens, and let them judge the people at all seasons. And it shall be that every great matter they shall bring to thee, but every small matter they shall judge. What did he say? He said, you're going to find out in the wilderness, Moses, you can't do it all. And you've got a lot of capable people there with a lot of leadership potential. And they're going to be called upon to carry some of the burden too. They're important to the success of the cause. They had to go in the wilderness to find that out. And Elam Moses was the only leader they had. But later they had to find out in the wilderness that there were people there capable of leadership and they were given that responsibility. God is going to grow some of you here in this wilderness. into positions of leadership. We hope all of you will be Christian servant leaders and that God will give all of you, because of the training you receive here, opportunities to serve Him and to lead for Him, to stand for Him. But you'll never know that until you get in the wilderness. You don't learn that sort of thing and that sort of potential in Elam. They had to leave Elam to meet with God. Exodus 19, 17 says Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God, and verse 11 of that chapter says, and to see God. They had to leave Elam to meet with God. There was no visible evidence of His presence in Elam, except in the provision He had made, the natural provision. When they got in the wilderness, they saw God. They got a vision of God they never had in Elam. And they met with God. Why did you come to BJU? I hope it was to meet with God. To be able to see Him with the eyes of faith as you've never seen Him before. To look upon His beauty. To see how mighty He is. How good and gracious and kind. To see His operations daily in your life. They had to leave Elam for the will of God to be made known to them. Exodus 19, 5, If you will obey my voice indeed and keep my covenant, then you shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all the people, for all the earth is mine. They learned the reason for their existence when they got in the wilderness. They never could learn that in Elam. They had to go to the wilderness to find that out. Why were they in the earth? What was their purpose? To be a people of God. They learned that in the wilderness. If you learned that here, it would be the most life-changing thing you could ever discover. Why are you redeemed? Why are you in the earth? What is the purpose for your existence? Oh, I hope God's going to reveal that to you here during this wilderness experience. They had to leave Elam for God to make known to them His boundaries in Exodus 19, 12. God was in the mount. And verse 12 says, Thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about, saying, Take heed yourselves, that you go not up unto the mount, or touch the border of it. Whosoever toucheth the mount shall surely be put to death. They had to find out that their God was a God who set boundaries for His people, certain protocol, if you will, that was acceptable to Him in their approaching unto Him, whereby they honored Him. boundaries that God put for us as we approach unto Him. I believe one of the greatest tragedies of the church at this hour is that in sinfulness, in lack of biblical understanding of who our God is, there are no boundaries in how we worship God. Anything goes. Any kind of music, any kind of doctrine, any kind of attitude, God has boundaries for His people when we approach unto Him. He says there's certain protocols, certain ways you must come, there's certain things you must do, and you can't go any further without violating my holiness and receiving my judgment. They learned that in the wilderness. The Covenanters, the Scottish Presbyterian people of the 17th century, who took such a wonderful stand for God against state religion and all the rest. They referred to the elims of life. I really like the way they call the elims of life the blinks. The blinks. It's like you blink your eye and it's over. The elims of life are over quickly. Just a little moment. The earnest Christian in his life finds out that life is best described by the wilderness. Life is most lived in the wilderness, not in Elam. That wilderness life is real life. It's full of trials. It's full of discipline, where we endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. This is real life. Don't yearn to stay in Elam. Don't yearn for the comforts of Constant rest and relaxation. You're going to get really busy here in a hurry. The pressures are going to be immense. Don't you dare make the mistake of saying, well, it was better back there. It wasn't this hard in Elam. It was comfortable in Elam. I don't like this wilderness. Hey, you may not like the wilderness, but that's life. Learn to like it. You're not being real. To think that you can live your life in comforts and ease, with no responsibilities, no pressures, that's not life. And you don't find God at Elam. You find Him in the wilderness. He's proving you in the wilderness what you're made out of, just like He proved His people Israel. It's a proving ground. It's a way of life. And lastly, the rewards of Canaan are also the reason for enduring. The rewards of Canaan also are the reason for enduring. James 5.11 says, Behold, we count them happy which endure, that is, those which persevere, those who don't flee. They're the happy ones. You are never going to amount to anything in life if you run from the hard things. You may have been sheltered and shielded from failure. You may have been coddled and pampered and treated like a king or a queen, and nothing much has ever hurt you, or maybe many of you, you've never been really buffeted in life. Well, get real. You're going to be. That's life. That's life. We count them happy which persevere in the midst of hardship, who don't quit, who don't flee, who don't run back to Elam or to Egypt. The rewards of Canaan are the reason for endearing. We're not going to be forever in the wilderness. Life's a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. We're going to live somewhere forever as long as God lives. I hope you're ready to live in heavenly Canaan with the Lord and His presence. If you're a redeemed man or woman, you are. The rewards of Canaan are the reason for enduring the wilderness. We count them happy which endure. That doesn't mean that we are always happy with our lot in life that we're having to endure. It doesn't mean the circumstances are always happy circumstances. But when it's over, we'll be happy we endured. There are rewards and blessings for such people. Joshua chapter 1, beginning at verse 3. Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon I have given unto you, as I said unto Moses. From the wilderness and this leaven, and even unto this great river, the river Euphrates, and all the land of the Hittites, unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast. There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life. As I was with Moses, I will be with thee. I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. Be strong and of a good courage, for unto this people shalt thou divide. for an inheritance, the land which I swear unto their fathers to give them, only be strong and very courageous, and do according to all the law which Moses thy servant commanded thee. Turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest." God said, keep the land before you. Keep the promise of Canaan before you. It's a wonderful finished place. and be strong and courageous between now and then. Don't quit. Those who endure are a happy people. Think about it, ladies and gentlemen, the heavenly Canaan you and I are headed to has been under construction by the Lord himself since he ascended on high more than 2,000 years ago. He told his disciples before he returned to glory, I go and prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself that where I am there ye may be also. What has the Lord been doing since he ascended 2,000 years ago? He's been getting a place ready for us. He said in my father's house are many mansions. many dwelling places, I go and prepare a place for you, and if I go, I will come again to receive you to myself." What a promise! What a glorious prospect! For the redeemed, it belongs to them. And for 2,000 years, He made a beautiful world in six days. Six literal days of creation, He made a beautiful world. And we enjoy its beauties, even though they're sin-cursed beauties. They're still beautiful. the natural beauties of this world. But He's been getting a place for us, ready a place for us, 2,000 years. I can't believe how beautiful it must be, how perfect. We're not going to find anything wrong with it. We won't have any murmuring hearts up there. Just think what it must be like if it's taken Him The Creator God, who made a world in six days, if it's taking Him 2,000 years to get a place ready for us. The Bible says that there will be nothing enter into it that defiles, nothing that works abomination, nothing that makes a lie, but those whose names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life. Bible says there's a river of water there, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God, on which the Lamb sits. It says there's a tree of life on either side of the river. Sounds a little bit like Elam, doesn't it? Water and trees. On either side, and there's no more curse. And God's going to wipe away all the tears. We're going to see His face. Our names will be written in his forehead. There's no night there, but the Lord God gives the light to that place, and we're going to reign with him there forever and ever. We're headed to Canaan. Don't look back. Everything back there is in the past. We've been delivered from that. We're on a forward journey. You look back, you'll feel sorry for yourself. You look at the present circumstances, you'll feel sorry for yourself. See God in the circumstances. Seek His face here. Seek to know His plan and purpose here. Seek to serve Him here. Be like Paul. I press for the mark, for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. It's necessary for me to be here now, but I can't wait to be there. The heavenly Canaan waits for me. God's prepared it for me. He's working every day for me there to get it ready. But I have to go through the wilderness first to get there. For some of you, the wilderness journey will not be as long as others. You'll get there sooner than others. Jimmy went there last week. Oscar went there last week. They were supposed to be here. God said, I want to hurry up and get you to Canaan. You're special to Me. I won't make you have to go through the wilderness any longer. I want you just to come on and be with Me now. One day He'll say that to you and Me. You don't need to turn there, In Numbers 10, verse 29, Moses was speaking to Hobab, his brother-in-law. Listen to what he said. These are the closing words of the message. He said, Hobab, we're journeying unto the place of which the Lord said, I will give it you. Come thou with us, and we will do thee good. What goodness the Lord shall do unto us, The same will He do unto thee. Folks, the wilderness would be unbearable if we didn't know that at the end of it all, there is Canaan. Are you ready for Canaan? Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb? If not, your whole life is going to be a wilderness, and then at the end, there's hell. God's great prison house of the damned waits for you. Come go with us to Canaan. It'll be a good life on the way. And at the end, all the good things that God's prepared for them who love Him. Come go to Canaan with us. It makes the wilderness worth it. Let's bow together and pray. Are you bound for the promised land? How many of you say, by the grace of God, I am for sure. I got that settled a long time ago. The Lord has prepared heaven for me, glory for me, and I'm on my way there. If I died today, I'd be there, just like Jimmy, just like Oscar. I'd be there. And I have a Bible assurance of that. My sins are covered by the blood of Christ. If you know that to be true, that Canaan is your home, that heaven waits for you, and you'd be there if you died today, and you might, I'd be there today in the presence of the Lord for eternity. My sins are covered to be remembered against me no more. If you know that to be true, would you hold your hand up? Thank you, you may put it down. I saw some hands that were not raised. My friend, you don't want to miss out on this. But you have a sin problem that has to be dealt with. You don't earn Canaan. You don't work for it. It's a gift. The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Somebody else worked for it. Somebody else earned it. He won the victory at the cross. He who knew no sin was made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. You've got to deal with the sin issue. The only place to deal with that is the cross. The pardon has been paid. The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. The gift is yours for the taking. It doesn't have to be hell. The choir is going to sing number 394. Maybe the Lord Jesus has spoken to you today. Maybe you care for your soul. You say, Preacher, I would be a foolish person to walk out of here knowing that I'm headed to hell. Considering how short life is, how hot hell is, how great the judgment of God upon the sinner without Christ is, I would be a fool to go out of here gambling with my soul. I want to get this settled before I leave. Maybe you're here with someone. You are saved. They are not. Maybe it's a dad or mother unsaved. Maybe it's a child unsaved. Would you turn to that person and say, you know, you really need to get this settled today. Come to Christ today. I'll go back there with you. Somebody will meet us there with a Bible and lovingly point you to Christ. I'll go with you. The invitation is open for whatever the need that you may need to come and get along with God. You feel free to do that while the choir sings. when all my labors and trials are o'er, and I'm safe on that beautiful shore, just to be near the dear Lord I adore, will through the ages be glory for me. Now to Him that is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before His presence with exceeding joy, to the only wise God, our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and evermore. Amen. You've been listening to the Chapel Hour, coming to you from the campus of Bob Jones University. Our speaker was the University President, Dr. Bob Jones III. If you'd like a cassette copy of today's message, send a check for $7.20 to Campus Store, Bob Jones University, Greenville, South Carolina 29614. Be sure to mention the name of the speaker and today's date. The Chapel Hour has been sponsored by Bob Jones University.