A Choice, Not an Echo - Unwavering Faith in an Unraveling World

Queen Elizabeth wasn't always Queen Elizabeth.

She had to be Princess Elizabeth first.

And she was a little girl, and her other sister, her little sister Margaret, You know, their favorite castle is Valmoral Castle in Scotland.

That's why the Queen was pretty heavily invested in this Scotland independence thing.

Because he really likes Scotland.

And uh their um their castle in Balmoral is beautiful out in the rolling countryside of Scotland, which you can almost picture and where some of you want to go and play golf someday uh or have.

But um She and her little sister went for a walk, and unfortunately, in the rolling hills around there, they lost sight of the castle.

She was just six years old, and they made one in too many turns, and she had no idea where she was.

So she and Margaret are all kind of lost, just two little girls lost out in the country.

And they go the only house they can find is this little old lady who lives in this shack and they go to the door and they said, Can you tell us where the castle is?

And she pointed in, you know, which way to go and so they start to walk away and sh that lady must have thought for just a minute about Well that was strange.

And so she r she ran back to the door and she yelled down the road and she said, girls, girls, um, aren't you somebody?

And Princess Elizabeth yelled back, she said, Oh, we're nobody.

But our father is the king.

Hello, welcome to us.

Well, we might be nobody, but our Father is the King.

And he told us we are sons and daughters of the Almighty in Corinthians Which I guess would mean a room full of prince and princesses.

You better treat these people fine around here, I'll tell you.

You hanging out with royalty this weekend.

We're going to talk about your identity and the significance of your identity because that's a big issue in the book of Exodus.

And compromising your identity It's a lot to do with the secret, one of the important secrets of being unafraid in this kind of an unraveling world.

You see a quote at the beginning of your notes, and actually, I think I was told that I said this at a warrior leadership summit. to y Native American young people from all over the continent about being a warrior for Christ.

And and I've watched enough of them struggle as they are bombarded by Satan like nobody I've ever seen.

Satan hates these young men and women because they are taking territory that's never been taken before.

And so they really got bombarded.

That's why I always ask you to pray for them and pray for their protection.

And I told them, I said, a warrior falls when they forget who they are.

And I'm convinced that when we make our spiritual mistakes, It is when we forget who we are, and we trade in who we really are according to what we are now because of Christ , trade in our identity for all identity.

That we might have used to believed.

So that's kind of where we're headed tonight.

And it leads right to secret number five of living unafraid.

And I'll give it to you right up front.

Never sell out.

Never sell out.

When you do, you make your own personal world an unraveling world, let alone the world around you.

And there are three deciding factors that I see in the book of Exodus In living your identity or losing it.

I mean your real identity.

Your spiritual identity And the first, one of those deciding factors is a revolutionary relationship that's revealed to us in the book of Exodus.

Exodus 19 and verse 4, if you happen to have any on Eagles Wings shirts or have seen any on Eagles Wings stuff, you will know this is where the name of the On Eagles Wings movement comes from.

Karen has been behind so many things in the ministry, and one of the many things in helping to build and found the Hole on Eagleswings movement. .

Was that she came up with a name?

She was reading in Exodus 19 one day, and she read this verse.

Now, this was actually spoken to God's people in the book of Exodus.

You yourselves, he says.

Now, let me tell you, they're out of Egypt.

They're at Mount Sinai.

They are about to receive what will become the moral foundation of the Western world.

They're about to receive in a momentous time, from a mountain on fire, the Sen Ten Commandments.

And God says, before he tells them that, you have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagle's wings, and brought you to myself.

I don't know a lot about Eagles because I grew up, you know, in Chicago and lived in the New York area all those years.

And we had I mean I know Eagles came and played the Giants twice a year, but You know, I had to I've had to learn about eagles.

If you're going to be with Native Americans, you learn about eagles.

And one of the things you learn, and it's actually talked about in the Bible, is that um Mother eagles, as they're trying to get their little babies out there, will actually carry them on their wings.

And there are times when that little baby's trying to learn to fly and isn't doing too well and starts to crash, and mama will whoop swoop in underneath them And this is referred to in the book of Deuteronomy as an example.

We'll swoop in underneath them and catch them on their pinions.

He says, I took you on eagle's wings out of Egypt.

But here's the cool thing about it.

Look at your notes.

The Jews' ultimate destination was not a land.

God said, I'm going to take you to a land, yes.

But their destination wasn't a land, it was the Lord.

He rescued them for a relationship, not for a land.

The land was incidental.

And what was going to become their identity was that they had been delivered, they had been rescued in order to become God's special personal people.

And that was to be their ID card.

God's special people.

Several years ago, I just happened to have the news on and see this story.

You probably never saw it, but the um the Denver uh police had found a homeless man and they brought him in because as they questioned him, they found out He had amnesia.

He didn't know who he was, didn't know where he was from.

He was totally disoriented.

And they were trying to help the poor guy.

I mean, it's bad enough to be homeless, but to have no identity is just crazy.

And they couldn't, they tried to help him figure out, you know, what some find some connection.

Didn't have anything on him that would uh identify him.

Finally, and this is what I saw, the lieutenant got on national television with him And the man that you said, the man got on camera and he just talked to the camera and he said, can somebody please tell me who I am and where I belong?

And a few minutes later the phone rings and it's his fiance in Seattle.

And she knew who he was and where he belonged.

Every human being is asking.

Can somebody tell me who I am?

Can somebody tell me where I belong?

And the answer is, Colossians 1. 16, yes I can.

You were created by him, and you were created for him. not to have a religion about him, but to have a love relationship with him.

And God says, I have rescued you to get so you can have the relationship you were made for.

This is your destiny.

I am your destiny.

I am your destination.

I've carried you on eagle's wings and brought you to Canaan?

No, brought you to me So there's sort of revolutionary relationship.

So your spiritual destination isn't ultimately the promised land.

Your spiritual destination is a forever love relationship with the Most High God.

And that is an awesome destination to have.

It's not about the land, it's about the Lord.

And look at Exodus chapter 6.

Therefore, say to the Israelites, I oh, remember these words?

I am the Lord.

This is one of those I am the Lord statements.

I am the Lord And I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.

This is still while they're still there.

I will free you from being slaves to them.

I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.

Let's go on.

I will take you as my people.

I'll take you as my own people.

Pharaoh doesn't get you.

You're my people.

What was the message?

Let my people go.

I will be your God.

You will know I am the Lord your God.

Yahweh Elachim who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.

And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

I will give it to you as a possession, and he starts and ends with the same thing, I am the Lord.

But his interest is making them his people.

Bonus.

You get the land as well.

Now you think about um Moses, what was Moses?

What did it say about Moses?

We'll look at this in the morning, but it says that Moses talked to God as friend would talk to friend, face to face.

He got it.

That was the relationship.

A friend talking to a friend.

Nothing to hide.

Face to face.

What was Abraham called friend of God.

And then you think about David, a man after God's own heart.

He had a heart thing going with God.

Mary.

Who sat at Jesus' feet, listening to what he said while Martha ran around finding her identity by being busy for him.

And Jesus said, slow down and sit at my feet.

You need to do what Mary's doing.

And when Jesus called his disciples, he gave them their job description I mean can you imagine all the people waiting at the bottom of the mountain as Jesus prays all night?

It's like Academy Awards.

I don't know what it was like.

It's like in the envelope please.

You know, who's going to be the guys that he picks to be with them?

Because at this point everybody's pretty excited about Jesus Who's going to be the guys that he picks to be be his main men?

Must have been some shocks.

Who?

Who's that?

When he names them.

But when they get together, they go, well, what do you want us to do, Jesus?

You got a job description?

We don't know what a disciple is.

What do you do?

What do the disciples do?

What do you want us to do?

He said, and it says in Mark chapter 3, he chose 12 to Preach, cast out demons, start a world movement on the backstroke.

First thing he said was, he chose 12.

To be with him.

First job of a disciple of Jesus isn't to do anything.

It's to be with him.

How you doing on your job?

Don't tell me all this stuff you're doing for the Lord.

Don't tell me your creed.

Have you been with him?

That's the job.

So you were rescued for a relationship.

That's the whole point of the deal.

Deuteronomy chapter 7, verse 6.

For you are a people holy to the Lord, your God, the Lord.

Your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people.

And look at this, this carrying language, this this value language, his treasured possession.

I think there's a beautiful example over in the book of Ruth Many of you know the story of the book of Ruth, and to make it short, Ruth lives in the land of Moab, which is not kind of God's country.

And uh Naomi uh is in i with her two sons is down there and um they marry Moab Moabite girls and one of them is named Ruth, the other's named Malon, and The boys die and Naomi is left without her sons and she said, you know what?

I'm going to go back home to Israel.

You girls, don't come with me.

You have no future with me.

I'm not gonna I'm too old to have any more boys.

I 'm not gonna have any more sons.

You probably should marry one of your own anyway.

You you don't need don't I know you you that you're being nice.

You don't need to come Malon stays there.

Ruth says these immortal words in Ruth chapter 1.

Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you.

Will you go, I will go.

Will you stay, I will stay.

Your people will be my people.

And your God my God.

Where you die, I will die, and there I'll be buried.

May the Lord deal with me ever so severely if anything but death separates you and me.

Ruth is saying, I'm not interested in what you can do for me.

You're my destiny.

You're my future.

Wherever you go.

I don't really care where I end up.

I just want to be where you are.

Well, that's the revolutionary relationship to which the God of the Galaxies has invited you and you say, I don't care where I go.

I just want to be wherever you take me.

So the big picture of your life according to the eternal plan of God goes like this.

You see it in your notes.

First comes deliverance, phase one Whatever day you gave your heart to Jesus Christ and truly belong to him, God broke the power of cancel sin and set the prisoner free.

You were delivered.

You were redeemed You will redeem for your destination, which was to be in a relationship with him.

And after you realize that you have been born into this intimate love relationship with him, you start to fulfill your destiny, which is to be a representative of the one with whom you have the relationship So when people look at you, they see the character of God.

That's your identity.

Anything else will never satisfy you.

You'll always be restless.

You always wonder what's wrong unless you're doing this.

Genesis chapter 12, verse 3 says this.

As uh we have God talking to Abraham, the old father of the race I will bless those who bless you.

Whoever curses you, I will curse.

And the first glimpse of the Great Commission and the God is not just a God of one people, but a God who wants the whole world to know.

He says, all peoples on earth will be blessed through you because somewhere down the ancestry. com family tree will come a Jewish baby boy in Bethlehem who will fulfill that, that all the peoples on earth will be blessed through your descendants.

You're going to be I'm I'm I brought you to me to be for representation to the rest of the world.

Now first Peter, let's fast forward to the New Testament.

First Peter, this is great.

Here you are, here's your identification.

You are, you, I wish I could put your name in there, but I'm not going to put whatever 60-some names in here.

But you, Ferf, are a chosen people You are a royal priesthood.

You are a holy nation.

This is who you are.

Whether you know it or not, whether you live like it, this is your real identity.

You are a people belonging to God.

Why?

Just so you just so you could belong?

Oh no no no no see you you were you were delivered for the the the destination of a relationship, so you would have the destiny of declaring the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light.

Your job is to be God's people look at you and they get an idea of what God is like.

He brought you to himself for a relationship so you could then represent him.

Okay, now that's going to be foundational to the rest of this.

I want to show you a video that was shot while we've been here.

Somebody who's here with us.

Of one woman in this room who came into relationship with Jesus.

And from that relationship, realized that beyond that was a destiny to represent Christ.

And God surprised her.

And has ended her up where she never would have been, never would have expected to end up.

This is where this journey of becoming one of his own people and then understanding what it means to be a representative of the one who you have the relationship with.

Well this is where it can take you.

Let's watch.

I was uh asked by my church to share my experiences with on eagle's wings and somebody called me up as they were putting the information in the bulletin and they said, what should we title it?

And just off the top of my head, I said, Chasing God's glory.

I was raised in what you would call a Christian home.

Every Sunday we were in church, our whole family.

Whenever I was uh high school age, I decided that that faith of Christianity was the faith of my parents.

And I needed to investigate who I really was.

From about age 18 until I was married at age 27, I spent very little time in church.

After our daughter was born, I just had this overwhelming feeling of unwillingness.

Worthiness.

And I wanted to be the perfect parent.

So when she was two weeks old, we started going to church.

It dawned on me that these had been real people and that the Bible was not just a bound volume of all the those little Sunday school leaflets that I took home when I was growing up.

And that's when things began to really change for me because I knew that there was power in those words.

People in our church were coming back from doing mission work and They were excited and wanting to share and and I remember thinking, I I'm not called to do mission work.

And I realized my heart was not there.

I remember praying, God, if you want to. me to go on a mission trip, then give me a heart for that.

We had supported Ron Hutchcraft when he was back in Wayne, New New Jersey, as I was always listening to the Christian radio station and got pulled in by a word with you.

We came to the first President's retreat and it was just a mountaintop experience.

At one of the meals we were sitting with a board couple and they were sharing the adventure that they had had with a trip that Rob did each summer called On Eagle.

And they had traveled along with the team as cooks.

And so when my husband and I went back to our room, I just mentioned to him, I said, I think I'm going to do that trip.

I'm going to go with On Eagles Wings.

Eventually we started making our preparations for the trip.

And I remember just praying, God, don't let this whole week be about nothing but food for us.

As a cook, I had many, many precious experiences with team members in the kitchen.

Many of them, if I didn't have a chip, To get their hope story on the trip, I would ask them to write it down for me and send it to me.

And I still have those.

My heart was broken for people like that.

After several years, I began to pray, God give me. my own on eagle's wings at home.

I knew that there had to be those type of people in my very own city, but I didn't know how to reach them.

He gave me a burden for prostitutes and drug addicts. and alcoholics, I decided it was time to go into the jail.

I had to step out of my comfort zone big time.

I even wondered about my reputation.

And I prayed about that.

And you know what God said to me?

He said Well, even Jesus didn't have a good reputation.

What does it matter what people think if you're doing kingdom work?

We could only have 15 assembled at a time, and so we would have to do services back to back, sometimes three, four, or five services.

And when the women came in to hear the message, all I can say is that I loved them.

And I wanted to have more of a connection with them.

And I was going in there every day, doing as many visits as I could.

I could, one right after the other.

And he said to me very simply, I want you to go in there and get the ones who belong to me.

And that was my commitment.

We cannot limit God by what our dreams are.

God wants us to be willing to change anything at a moment's notice because his plans are more than we can even wrap our mind around.

And if we will just let him lead the way and we wait patiently, then he's going to do things that are going to get the world's attention.

You walk away from a good life and walk into an adventure.

With the Lord.

And you don't want to miss out on what He's doing because it's better than life itself.

My calling is to rescue men and women from the darkness for the glory of God.

You are my chosen people that you may declare the works of him who called you out of darkness and in his wonderful light.

A wonderful example of how the Jesus that you believe in becomes your life and you realize that you are here to extend his work.

And that is your ID card, and that will define how you spend the rest of your life.

See, when you live the plan, you become one of the most important people on planet Earth.

Because when you walk in the room as one who belongs to the Almighty God, you are the most important person in that room.

For you are the rest of those people 's connection to heaven.

That's your identity.

Did you have any idea how important you are?

God has chosen you out of the all these people for a relationship with him and then to represent him This is an amazing identity.

2 Corinthians chapter 6 reinforces it.

I made reference to it here a few minutes ago.

What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols?

For we are the temple of the living God, as God has said, I will live with them, I will walk among them, I will be their God.

And they will be my people.

Oh, but it gets better.

Let's go.

Therefore, now, this is where God's chosen people didn't quite get it.

Therefore, since you have this lofty, cosmic , cosmically important identity as on that basis come out and be separate.

Some of you grew up in a pretty legalistic background.

What they forgot to tell you was It's not about rules.

It's about the relationship.

You see, when I realize who I am, I can't do that.

I wouldn't do that.

You come out and be separate, says the Lord.

Touch no unclean thing.

I'll receive you and I will be a father to you.

You will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.

You know, when our daughter was born, Lisa , very early on, because of an infection and caring got, I had to take, we had to start feeding her by bottle And uh so I got the 2 a. m. feeding.

And um I remember those days, that's when um Lisa didn't have any hair, and I did, and now she does, and So I ended up not so much calling her Lisa, but in the middle of the night as I fed her, I just started calling her princess.

And to this day , when I call her, I say hi, Princess.

She always has been and always will be, and there she is, my princess When God looks at you, ladies, he calls you princess.

And sitting next to you is a prince in the family of God.

That's why you can never sell out Not when you know who you are.

Here's the problem.

These guys were slaves.

You realize what their identity had been?

Everybody they'd ever known.

Everybody, their mother, their father, their grandmother, their grandfather, their great mother, their great-grandmother, their great-grandfather, everybody'd been a slave.

Slime, bottom, nothing, worthless.

Just produce, just make make bricks And then God says, you're my people.

That's not who you are.

You thought that's who you are?

You're my treasured possession.

Well Some of you haven't been treated like a treasured possession.

I have a twenty dollar bill.

Who would like it?

This is not ministry money, this is my own.

Who would like it?

Timony, you would, would you?

First hand up.

Richard, will you give her her allowance for heaven's sake?

You cheapskate, man.

Um look, um Now you would you really would like this, huh?

It's real.

See?

We just printed it this morning.

Um wait just a second Okay, you want it now?

Are you kidding me?

Really?

Wait a second.

Hold on a second here, just second.

Just to rip it some and we'll rip it over there.

You still want it?

You want this?

You you do I'm not sure where these shoes have been.

Okay, alrighty.

You want this?

Come again.

Come again.

Cheers.

Pass it back to her.

Yeah, here.

Don't you shortstop that There you go.

You still wanted a thing?

Of course you did.

Oh yeah, it got ripped, it got crumpled, got stepped on.

But it was still worth 20 bucks, wasn't it?

I don't know how you've been treated in your life.

I don't know what you've been called.

I don't know if you've been abused, abandoned, disappointed, neglected, left out, passed over.

But no way anybody ever treated you reduced your value.

Because that was given to you by God and no one on earth gave you your worth and no one on earth can take it away.

Isn't that awesome?

God's workmanship.

And now you were carried on eagle's wings into a relationship with him so you could be his representative.

And so you may have felt like a slave much of your life, but now it is time to live without compromise like the royal child you are.

I love Leviticus 26, 12, spoken to God's rescued people.

I will again walk among you, be your God, you will be my people, and as a result of that The next verse, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt so you would no longer be slaves.

I broke the bars of your yoke, and I have enabled you to walk with heads held high.

Come on, keep that head up, baby.

Do you know who you are?

A warrior falls when they forget who they are.

Now, here's the second deciding factor in whether you live your identity or lose it, and that is a blessing blueprint.

God now gives his people who have been redeemed for this uplifting and empowering relationship with him.

He gives them a blueprint for his blessing.

And his blessing is the most decisive factor in your life.

I was out mowing the lawn.

Many years ago, I I mean I mowed it since, but I was mowing the lawn and uh you know some of you uh know what it's like that one of the great motivational challenges of your life is getting kids to work.

And uh so of course my boys were always there saying, Dad, what can I do?

And um and uh so Just let me get over here.

I don't want the lightning to hit me.

Um so uh I actually they they did help on occasion and I was out mowing and Doug was pretty little.

He's probably I don't know, six, maybe something years old And um and I it was a hot day and I had the power mower going and and I saw his lips moving, but he was coming over and they was trying to say something.

But I anyway I smiled at him, I said Is that he was kind of clipping around the you know the edges for me and uh so I smiled him a couple times, waved a couple times.

Finally comes over and he is trying to talk to me as the and I can't hear him over the mower, so I turned off the mower.

I said, Doug, what'd you say to me?

He said, Daddy, would you do it again?

I said Uh do what again?

He said, would you smile at me again?

He said, it's your smile that keeps me going.

Altogether.

Doug?

He's gonna get they're gonna he's gonna get mercilessly taunted on this tonight by his team.

You know what?

Your sh his smile, your daddy's smile, is what keeps you going.

And you got with his blessing, things work.

Without it, no matter what you do.

You've moved out of the blessing zone.

You've moved out of living your identity You were rescued at a great cost to be a part of God's counterculture.

You are destined to be the only true counter-culture on this planet For the drumbeat of the rest of the world is totally opposite of the drumbeat of Jesus.

When our kids left for school in the morning, many of you know this.

My advice is they went out to often be the only Christian in their class in the, you know, we lived in the New York area for years, which is now we're in the Bible Belt, we're in the bagel belt then, and they were often the only believers in their class and as they went off to school, because it was hard there to be a Christian, even in the very early grades.

It's amazing how much sinful conversation it was with second graders.

Amazing how corrupt you could get by the age of eight these days.

Even those days.

And I would just say to them, go mad, and the next door neighbor thought I had, but go mad meant go make a difference.

I wanted my kids to be madmen and a madwoman.

And I and I remember Lisa coming back and talking about the kids in her class talking dirty and disrespecting their parents and how hard it was and the things they were saying.

And this is like very early grades in elementary school.

And I said, honey You know what?

You instead of instead of worrying about how they're acting, you've got to show them there's a different way to be.

Because if you're like them, they'll never know there's any other way.

They're that way because they think there's only that way to be So you gotta show them something different.

So you'll be the only one in your class who doesn't talk dirty.

So they know you don't have to You'll be the only one in your class who is respectful to your parents so they realize that not everybody is disrespectful.

And when they say, well, everybody's doing it, you go, not everybody.

And she took that seriously, and then her brothers did, and to go be to go make a difference.

I said, the primary reason you're here isn't to go make grades or go make money or or or or you know go make friends or go make an impression or go make out.

Your reason you're here is to go mad.

Go make a difference.

Well, that's what God is saying to you.

I want you to be the alternative person.

They talk about alternative lifestyles.

Let me tell you, the alternative lifestyle is that of a follower of Christ.

It's not some gender choice.

It's saying there's another way to be, world.

That's why God said I got a people so I could show the world there's another way to be.

But you gotta be the other way and not march to the drumbeat of the culture and political correctness So, God intended for your life to be a choice, not an echo.

Not that you are an echo of the way everybody in your neighborhood is and echoing their values and their choices and their what they watch and what they listen to and what they talk about and what they think is important.

No no you're not supposed to be an echo of the people around you.

You're the choice You embody the choice that people have.

Hey, there's another way to be, guys.

Leviticus chapter 22 says.

Keep my commands and follow them.

Oh, those are those words again.

I am the Lord.

Do not profane my holy name Don't forget who you are.

I must be acknowledged as holy by the Israelites.

I am the Lord who makes you holy.

There's a lifestyle that goes with this identity who brought you out of Egypt to be your God.

Aye, he keeps going.

Man, do you realize who's saying this?

I am the Lord.

And then you go to 1 Peter chapter 2 and you get the New Testament version of same.

I urge you as aliens and strangers in the world, time out.

You realize this is hotel earth?

This is hotel earth.

This isn't home.

God said, I want you to live like this is your hotel.

Not home.

When I go to a hotel, I don't bring all my furniture I don't bring all my clothes.

Did y'all bring all that stuff with you?

Maybe the husband's going.

I think she did.

I carried it in.

But but but the pet The fact is, you don't bring everything you have and load it into the hotel because you know this ain't home.

You leave that stuff at home.

This is your hotel.

He says, you're visiting here.

You're you're passing through here.

You don't you don't put you saying, well, I want to I want to have as much as I I can have of this.

No, no, no.

You get through with what you need, but basically you're saying, I'm gonna I want to live here for what's gonna matter at home when I get home.

Well, I'm going to be forever, not as I spend a few nights in this hotel.

So as aliens and strangers in the world, abstain from sinful desires.

That's why I got you out of Egypt.

They war against your soul.

Live such good lives among the pagans.

Here's the counterculture.

Live such good lives that though they accuse you of doing wrong Ultimately they're going to see your good deeds and guess what?

They're going to end up going, God must have done them.

God did that.

That's a God human there.

That's a God man.

That's a God woman there.

I know what I'm looking at.

And they'll glorify God on the day he visits us You were it worked.

You were the counterculture.

So you can't afford to be seduced by this culture.

You can't afford to be eroded by this culture.

It's cultures running away from God.

And he meant for you to be a rock, not Plato.

But I will tell you this, the culture, even within the church, is trying to squeeze you into a mold.

And if you are Play-Doh and you start to do dance to the music of how people do it in your career and how people do it as a parent in your town and how and people what everybody's watching that you sh have to watch and everybody's listening to that you have to listen to because everybody is you become play-doh instead of a rock that is solid all the way through Here's the magnetic difference that people are supposed to see in us.

Look at this.

Deuteronomy chapter 4.

God's ancient people and again today.

Deuteronomy 4.

What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them?

The way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him.

And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today?

Only be careful and watch yourselves closely So you don't forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live.

Teach them to your children and to their children after them.

So the counterculture Choice continues.

Did you notice the two things that people are supposed to notice notice about you?

Number one, you have a God who's so close.

And number two.

You have a standard that is so compelling.

That's the two things you said.

What they're going to notice about you is you have a God you're so close to.

I don't know how to be that close to God.

Remember I said when you pray for people?

They can sense your closeness to God.

That's one of the things that's supposed to be your distinctive, is how close God is to you.

The other thing is the standards you live by aren't like everybody else.

Your marriage isn't like everybody else.

The way you parent isn't like everybody else.

The way you are at work isn't like everybody else.

You are a living difference, a positive difference. known for that.

A God so close and a life that is so compelling.

Now, God 's standard for his make a difference people, he gives them in Exodus 20.

He says, now, you realize whose you are.

Now because of whose you are, well, he starts to give them the way to live.

Let's go to Exodus chapter 20 and verse 1.

And as you know, this is probably one of these core chapters of the entire Bible, for this is the Ten Commandments chapter.

So let's all close our Bibles and quote the Ten Commandments together.

Okay, we're not going to go there.

I won't do that to you.

Notice though, before people start with the Ten Commandments, they don't do the verse before.

You don't get the Ten Commandments if you don't get the verse before.

It's all about the verse before.

Exodus 20, verse 1.

And God spoke all these words.

I am, here they go, the Lord, your God. who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

You shall have no other gods before me.

In other words, he said, everything I'm about to say to you is because of our relationship.

This is how you live out who you are.

You're mine.

I redeemed you.

I brought you out.

I am the Lord.

I'm your personal God.

Here's how children of the Lord, their God, live.

And then he starts down, and I'm not going to read every verse, but you're quite familiar with this.

And you say in your notes, it's all about a relationship.

It's not about the rules.

You shall have no other gods before me.

Why?

Because God is why you're here and nothing can be allowed to displace him.

Why would you put something else in the place of the reason you're here?

And so you should have no other gods before me, or make for yourself any idol, which would be some kind of a competitive god.

And then he says if you do that, that punishment is going to pass down to the sins of the children will be punished for the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.

There's those family sins.

By the way, notice this.

The punishment for having other gods will punish the children of the third and fourth generation, but for those who love me, that'll go to a thousand generations.

That's cool.

His love , he says, my yeah, there'll be some judgment go down to a couple generations, but ma'am, those who obey me, I'll bless a thousand generations Oh, and and because God is who put you here, you don't misuse the name of the Lord your God.

By the way, there are different ways to take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

You say, oh no, no, no, I would never say, I don't, I try not to use the Lord's name in vain.

Oh, there's a lot of ways to use the Lord's name in vain.

It's not just about saying, oh my God, or something, oh no, no, no, no, no.

I mean, obviously that that's a that's a that would break this commandment.

You know what else break this commandment?

Putting God's name on something that isn't like God Don't you put God's name on something, on a life that doesn't back it up?

That's cheapening God's name.

Well, there's a lot of ways to take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

Besides swearing.

And okay, and then he says, um, you you uh remember the Sabbath day, so you you're gonna keep the Lord's day.

You're going to reserve a day showing that he's the Lord of time and that you trust him to do more with seven six days than you could do with seven, because you're going to give him his day.

And then he says, honor your father and mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.

And because the family has to remain strong, God's in favor of strong families, so he says, you need to, in order to keep the family strong, Keep the divine order of authority.

I've got a a system set up.

You need not violate that.

Then he says you shall not kill.

Why?

Because God says life is sacred.

Everybody that's killed is in my image.

Don't you dare kill somebody made in my image So there's a reason I'm for life.

That's why I don't want you to take it.

Then he says that you should not commit adultery because marriage is the bedrock foundation of the human race.

Don't you mess with the sacredness of the sexual bond That is the super glue between a couple for life.

Don't you dare mess with that or defile that And then he says, you shall not steal, because the dignity of each person is important.

Don't take what belongs to them.

See, God's for something, so because of what he's for, he's against something.

It's like, well, because I'm for this, I gotta be against this.

And then he says, you shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.

And uh and and you know you you don't well he says don't steal because the dignity of each person is important, you don't take what belongs to them.

Because truth is important, you don't lie.

And then he says, don't covet.

You know what coveting starts with?

So many sins start with comparing.

You can't covet if you don't compare.

Did you know that?

You will never break this commandment if you don't compare to somebody else.

I saw it start young with our kids.

Oh yeah, these were words you would hear in our home.

Lisa 's the oldest.

How come Lisa?

Did you have that going on in your house?

Just fill in the blank.

Whoever was the firstborn.

How come Fufi gets to do?

How come?

How come they have that and then I don't?

We start with this comparing really early.

Comparing leads to discontentment, it leads to coveting, and God says, comparing erodes love, so don't start wanting what someone else has.

So, as God's face on earth, his people are to embody his character, and that's what embodying his character looks like.

That's the blueprint for his blessing.

You go outside that and you forfeit your dad's smile.

I thought this was a great, great statement.

Listen to this from a column in Christianity Today.

Keith insisted I quote Christianity Today, so I will do this right now.

He says um he always he says he never understood passion for a moral code until he thought about children playing near the edge of a cliff.

Now think of the commandments of God this way Without offense, the children are always in danger, never able to relax.

But if a barrier is installed, they can play freely and without fear.

God's law is God's grace.

It's a safe defense that brings incredible freedom.

When you're committed to this, to not committing adultery and taking a life and wanting what somebody else has, your sanity in an insane world You're light in a dark place.

And you're free.

You don't have to worry about going over the cliff.

Jesus said, if you love me.

You will obey what I command you.

It's look, when Jesus was asked about the matter, the things that matter most about God and what are the greatest commandments, he said Obey the Lord your God in all his commandments.

He said, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

You'll do all the right stuff if you love him.

This is a love deal.

I do it because I love him.

Not because somebody gave me a rule book to live by.

And then love your neighbor as yourself.

Our living is about loving, not about law-keeping.

So those are the boundaries of his blessing.

And by the way, I want to say this.

The boundaries of God's blessing are unmovable.

They are not subject to political correctness.

They're not subject to culture.

And it's going to become increasingly inconvenient.

Truth. to stay within the fence at the edge of the cliff, which the Ten Commandments represent.

And in convenient truth, we have no right to rewrite it.

And today you are seeing many Christians go into the blog world, and you will see many Christians who are feeling they have the right.

To dilute God's word, reinterpret God's word , disregard God's word, because certain truth has become inconvenient in our time.

I apologize to those of you who've heard one of my favorite stories before, but uh I I think it's it it says everything I want to say about this Um there was a a ship's captain who was pretty alarmed one night at night uh out with his his ship because uh he saw another vessel on a direct looked like he was on a direct collision course.

So he immediately got on the radio and he said And he said to this other vessel, he said, I ask you now if you would move 10 degrees north.

And the answer came back, you move 10 degrees south.

Well the captains get a little hotter now.

He said, excuse me, I'm a captain.

Move 10 degrees north.

And the voice came back.

I'm a seaman second class.

Move 10 degrees south.

By now the captain's enraged.

He said, I'm a battleship.

Move ten degrees north.

And the answer came back.

I'm a lighthouse.

Adjust your course.

You're gonna argue with the lighthouse, huh?

And I'll tell you what, there's a lot of people that are trying to get the lighthouse to move.

But the ways of God and the lifestyle prescribed by God for the people whose identity is you are my chosen ones, my treasured possession, my face on earth.

You are my representatives on earth as my princes and princesses.

You are listening to the lighthouse, and it doesn't, you do not adjust your course.

Never Never compromise.

Or, as we said as the secret, never sell out.

There's a perverted culture there was back then.

There's a pervasive culture constantly pulling you the other way.

Leviticus 18.

Look at what God said back in those days.

The Lord said to Moses.

Speak to the Israelites and say to them, here we go again.

You notice it's always based on the relationship?

I am the Lord your God.

Oh because of that, because of that, let's go.

You must not do as they do in Egypt You're gonna be in you know you you were in the middle of a compelling culture in Egypt.

It was easy to be seduced by it, eroded by it.

You used to live, don't do that culture.

And you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan where you're going Do not follow their practices.

You must obey my laws and be careful to follow my decrees.

Here we go again.

I am the Lord your God.

These are not men's rules.

This comes from heaven, not from earth.

Deuteronomy chapter 7.

When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you all the ites.

Seven nations stronger than you.

Let's go on.

And when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you've defeated them, then you must destroy them totally.

Make no treaty with them.

Show them no mercy.

This is a cancer to be removed.

Do not intermarry with them.

Don't start to begin that merge their culture and your faith.

Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons.

For they will turn your sons away.

There goes the difference.

There goes the counterculture.

They will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord's anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you.

You've become a contradiction to the God you belong to.

So be merciless with the sin Break down the idols, smash the sacred stones, cut down their ashera poles, and burn their idols in the fire.

God's pretty aggressive here.

You are people holy to the Lord your God.

And here we go.

You're his treasured possession.

If you ever go to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, the bottom of the state, you'll know when you got there because of what I'm about to tell you.

You won't have to read the sign.

Just open the window.

There 's a paper mill there.

You ever been around town with a paper mill in it?

I moved to northern Illinois from Chicago when I was, I think we were in sixth grade.

And I was like, what is that smell here?

Well it wasn't a paper mill.

There was a green giant plant there.

And I said, I mean it was like disgusting.

They said, oh that's rotting pea vines.

We didn't have riding pea vines on the south side of Chicago.

But like riding pea vines, they said, yeah, first of all they said, what smell?

When you go to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, you say, what's that smell?

They go, what smell?

They've been around it so long they don't even notice.

It stinks here, baby.

You need to wake up your nose.

It just died on you.

You know what?

You get used to the stench.

When sin is everywhere And it begins to become the normal.

And without even realizing, you are watching things portrayed that you would never allow in your living room and that violate the holiness of your God.

And should never pass before your eyes.

You listen to things without even thinking about it because it's masked in entertainment or humor.

I can't go there.

I'm his chosen one.

I'm his treasured possession.

I'm his face on earth.

I can't do this.

You get too used to the smell.

It still stinks to God.

Look at the next statement.

Culture must always bow to Scripture.

America's parenting culture, business culture, academic culture, scientific culture, church culture, culture must bow to scripture, scripture cannot bow to culture.

For God has spoken.

As Martin Luther stood against the world in his day at the risk of his life, standing for what he believed to be the truth of the Word of God.

This was his verse, Psalm 119.

89.

Your word, oh Lord, is eternal.

It stands firm in the heavens.

You can't change it on earth because it's firm in the heavens.

I love it By the way, it doesn't take a ship very long to go way off course if it just goes off a little bit off course at the time at a time.

Satan doesn't come along and pull you way over here.

He just simply gets you to make a small compromise.

And suddenly you're not headed for your destination.

You're not headed where you're supposed to be.

And for many of us here, it wouldn't be surprising if we have made not horrible sins, but a series of small compromises.

And you're not living like his treasured possession right now, and you have no idea where this takes you.

People usually don't fall suddenly.

So you realize that you've got this revolutionary relationship And you've got this blessing blueprint.

And let me just give you real quickly that third deciding factor and whether you live your identity or you lose your identity, and that's the destiny destroyers.

You need to know what destroys the destiny you were made for.

Do you remember when we read to 1 Corinthians 10 about this is examples, don't be like they were, and it was all Exodus stuff?

We're going to go there in just a minute.

Because that's specifically what those verses were about.

But first I want to show you what happened to Moses.

He did so well.

He was such a hero of the faith.

But he tripped at the end. because of the first destiny destroyer, which has destroyed many people, destroyed God's best for them, and that's pride.

Here's what happened.

Acts 7. 25 tells us this.

Let's read.

Now, you know what?

Let's go into Numbers 20.

Let's go to Numbers chapter 20.

You remember that Moses had been told to strike the rock and water would come out when the people were all so he gets water.

Now there's a second time they're out of water.

And again they're like, Moses, you're a stinky leader.

You got us into this again This is take two on the rock and the water.

Moses and Aaron went from the assembly to the entrance to the ten of meeting, fell face down because the people were driving them crazy.

And the glory of the Lord appeared to them.

The Lord said to Moses, take the staff and you and your brother Aaron, gather the assembly together.

Speak.

What?

Speak.

What did you say the first time?

Strike.

Strike the rock.

Hit the rock.

A little different method this time.

God doesn't often don't get stuck on the old method.

He should speak to that rock before their eyes.

And I will, it will pour out its water.

You will bring water out of the rack rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink.

So Moses took the staff from the Lord's presence, just as he commanded him.

We're doing good.

Let's go.

Yeah, Moses raised his arm and what?

What was he supposed to do?

Or what's going on here?

He struck the rock twice.

He's supposed to speak to it once.

Twice with his staff, water gushed out in the community and their livestock drank.

Now what's Moses say?

He said, we will show you how we can get water out of a rock.

See, his leadership had been criticized over and over again.

And so it was an act of self-validating pride.

He does it his way.

And says, watch, he didn't do it what God says.

He did it his way.

And the God show becomes the Moses show.

And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, Because you did not believe in me to sanctify me in the eyes of the Israelites, you therefore shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.

It's a sad thing.

So what happens is this, in an act of self-validating pride, positioning himself, advancing himself.

To be somebody, to prove he is somebody.

His pride costs him 40 years in the wilderness.

Initially, when in pride he tried to be the Messiah 40 years early, and now it costs him entering the Promised Land.

William Barclay very wisely has said that pride is the ground in which all other sins grow. and the parent from which all other sins come.

God resists the proud You want God in your way?

You start being all about you and pushing you and advancing you, self-promotion, self-validation, and stealing his glory And you will miss his best.

I have to ask you the question, are you in that picture?

Jeremiah 45, 5, write down the reference.

It says this.

Are you seeking great things for yourself?

Seek them not.

Stop it.

Stop it.

Then the second destiny destroyer is impatience.

Let's go to Exodus 32.

This is the passage that 1 Corinthians 10 was specifically talking about.

Moses is up on the mountain, meeting with God.

And the people go, they saw Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain.

Boy, he and God are sure taking a long time.

They gathered around Aaron and said, come make us gods who will go.

What in the world?

who will go before us.

As for this fellow Moses, he's now become this fellow, who brought us up out of Egypt, we don't know what happened to him.

Okay, what sins did God say in Corinthians were examples for us not to follow?

For our own, lest we are destroyed ourselves.

Impatience.

This was a sin of impatience.

They couldn't wait for God to come through and for it to come God's way.

You know what I think is the most dangerous room in God's house?

The waiting room.

The waiting room is the most dangerous room in God's house because when you got to wait on God, I'll tell you some of us are very make-it-happen people, and we're not really good at waiting.

So, we hatch a human solution.

We start sinning to make it happen.

You say, well, what's so bad?

Well, what's so bad as this?

is what you do to start to make it happen.

You deceive, you manipulate, you scheme.

Warren Wearsby says faith is the absence of scheming.

You hurt people to get it done, and you ruin it.

I I thought this was pretty profound.

It says this.

Uh just a second.

I you know that people who know me know that I believe that the world is held together by four by six cards?

This is pitiful.

I take them to movies.

Isn't that sad?

His purpose in waiting is to bring more glory out of it all.

This is convicting.

Your desire for the thing you wish may be stronger than your desire for the will of God to be fulfilled. in its arrival.

I want it so bad, I will sin to get it.

Impatience.

Here's another destiny destroyer.

The next one is discontentment.

Discontentment.

Look what it says in Numbers 11.

This is what got him in so much trouble.

The people complained about their hardships in the hearing of the Lord.

And when he heard them, his anger was aroused.

Anger over complaining.

Fire from the Lord burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp.

And when the people cried out to Moses, he prayed to the Lord and the fire died down.

So that place called Tabera because fire from the Lord had burned among them.

The rabble with them began to crave other food.

Come on, man, we're food from heaven isn't good enough.

The Israelites started wailing and said, if only we had meat to eat We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost.

They just fed us there.

Also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic.

But now we've lost our appetite.

We never see anything but this man, huh?

This is like the Eeyore of the Old Testament.

Oh, all we get is man, huh?

This is discontentment.

Because they've forgotten God's goodness.

They forget the bondages that have been broken.

They forget the Red Sea.

You know what they're doing?

They are dissing God's provision.

They're saying what God's provided isn't enough, isn't good enough for us.

You say, well, okay, discontentment, is that that a sin?

Uh-huh.

Here's why.

It is the first downward step to depravity.

You say, oh, come on.

Be in discontent?

Romans chapter 1, verse 21.

If you're familiar with Romans 1, you know that it starts to talk about degradation, depravity, sexual perversity.

But you know what how it all starts?

Right here.

They knew God.

They neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him.

Ingratitude to God starts down a road, it morphs into anger, bitterness. complaining, negativity, coveting, ingratitude, unbelief.

And it starts with discontentment, which starts you farther away from God than you could have ever imagined And it is one of the things that destroys the destiny of one of God's chosen ones.

Henry Ward Beecher, the great preacher, said, the unthankful heart. discovers no mercies.

But I tell you, if you're looking through a dirty window, everything looks dirty.

You're like, man, everything's going bad.

Yeah, the unthankful heart doesn't see any mercies.

But let the thankful heart sweep through the day, and it's like a magnet.

It finds the iron.

And in such a way it will find every in every hour some heavenly blessings.

If you're a thankful person, you've got God's sightings all day long.

If you're ungrateful, you don't see God anywhere.

So impatience, discontentment, immorality, oh my goodness.

Let's go back to Exodus 32.

Can you believe that Moses is getting the holy commandments of God and the people are rising early, sacrificing burnt offerings, and they sit down to eat and drink and get up to indulge in revelry.

That's nothing other than that sex play is what that is Moses is on the holy mountain hearing from God.

He's about to come down with these commandments.

And they are, they're just playing around sexually.

You see, God says it will take you out of his blessing, of course, is the unholy pursuit of your passions.

I doubt that very many people in this room are in danger of being in an orgy, like they had that day.

But the latest research, five years in the making, they say that 60%, 68% of Christian men.

View pornography regularly.

That's most of us. 50% of pastors view pornography regularly I am the Lord your God.

Be holy as I am holy.

Do you know who you are?

Can you explain why one of my treasured possession princes would be watching that?

immorality comes in many forms.

And right now it's actually more despicable than it was at Mount Sinai.

Because of 1 Corinthians chapter 6, which says this.

Flee from sexual immorality.

Don't flirt with it.

Flee.

All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who's in you, whom you've received from God?

You're not your own that's not your body You kill you don't do those aren't your eyes.

That's not your ears.

That's not your heart.

That's not your body.

Listen, I live here.

You were bought at a price.

Therefore, honor God with your body.

In the old days, back then, I mean I I was at the temple of Athena in Athens, and I'll tell you what happened there.

Listen, nobody messed with that temple.

You go in there and you go against their laws and you displease the ways of Athena and you're dead.

Because pagan people know that where your God lives, you don't mess that up.

Well, our God lives here.

Property of God, not property of me.

And so whatever degrades this or defiles this or dirties this or devalues this I am doing to the temple where God lives.

You know when Jesus got really mad, don't you?

You know when Jesus got the whip out, don't you?

Yeah, that's whatever happened to the gentle little Jesus standing on the street corner.

Get out of here!

is when somebody was messing with his temple.

And today, that's this.

And any unholy pursuit of sexual passion does to his temple what you have no right to do.

I'll ask if you were in this picture.

Last one is idolatry.

This is shocking.

Exodus 32.

They said, well, we need a God.

You know, where this God is kind of disappointing us.

So take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons, and your daughters are wearing.

You know where they got those?

They got those when God delivered them from Egypt.

They have jewelry because of what God's done in their life.

That's a blessing from God.

He says, why don't you take your blessings from God and bring them to me So all the people took off their earrings and brought him to Aaron.

He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf.

This is the shape of an Egyptian god.

Fashioning it with a tool.

They said, these are your gods, O Israel.

Who brought you up out of Egypt?

What?

Let's go.

When Aaron saw this, he built an altar.

Now this is really nice.

He says, you know what?

Let's do something.

Let's do a God thing.

With the with the the the idolatry thing.

We'll make it okay because we'll do a God thing.

So we'll have an altar and tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.

What is this?

You can't mix these Well course we don't have a problem with idolatry today.

We don't have any golden calves.

Well This is a violation, of course, of Commandment 1.

Have no other gods before me.

And it is, I believe, the cause of every other sin.

That is committed because I dethroned God.

Can I give you the signs that something's become an idol in your life?

And you decide if you have one or not?

I'm not going to tell you if you got an idol.

I do know this.

John Calvin said the human heart is a perpetual idol factory.

Things are becoming idols all the time.

And the last word of John to his little children in 1 John, what a strange way to end the book.

Don't say God loves you or grace and peace.

He goes, oh, and keep yourselves from idols.

Here's the way you know got an idol.

You can take your own test.

You think about it almost constantly.

You rationalize it to justify it.

It is a major factor, if not the deciding factor, in most of your important decisions.

You seldom consult God about it.

You are determined to get it or to keep it.

Whatever it takes.

And it would be very hard for you to live without it.

Welcome to your idol.

And the most insidious idols of all are the noble idols.

Your family can be an idol.

Your children can be an idol.

Your ministry can be an idol.

Because it really has taken the place of God on the throne.

Though you may even do it in his name See, what they did back then was they made a God in their own image.

They made a God like they wanted their God to be.

A God who would let them do what they wanted to do.

Our culture is still trying to do that.

They're trying to redefine God.

They're trying to recreate the Creator who created them so he'll be a God like they like.

A God who doesn't have a hell.

A God who says, all roads lead to me.

This God doesn't exist.

Except we want him to be like this.

A God who won't judge me.

A God who is okay if I redefine sex or redefine marriage from his things change.

Brad was staying in a mobile home out on the Hopi Reservation.

And while we were staying with him, he said, you guys should weigh in on my scale.

So I did.

Because I've been on a diet since I was like, you know, three days old.

Some of you skinny people have no idea.

You have no idea that your thorn in the flesh can be your metabolism.

Right?

Amen from some of us.

So I get on the scale to see how I'm doing because I weigh every day.

I had lost 15 pounds.

Overnight.

Love that scale.

I'm gonna eat more fry bread, man.

This is awesome.

I lost 15 pounds Karen got on there.

She had lost 15.

Well, she lost more than that.

Like this is a miracle scale.

Can I take this scale home with me?

I want this scale Then you go to the doctor and you put the little move the little bar and do the thing you're like what just happened?

I just blimped just as fast as I shrank.

What's happening here?

Well the scale lied to you.

That's what happened.

In fact, every time you got on that scale, you played something different.

People want a scale that tells them what they want to do and how they want to be And God 's scale always tells you the truth and tells you who you really are and what's really going on.

Recreating the God who created you is blasphemy.

So let's move down how God responded to the mutiny. of his treasured possessions.

The mutiny, the defiant mutiny of the people who were supposed to, who were, who were destined for a relationship with him to be his representatives Numbers 14, and it's instructive for us.

The Lord replied to Moses , Moses asked God to forgive them.

I have forgiven them.

Well, that's great, as you asked.

Nevertheless, as surely as I live and as surely as the glory of the Lord fills the whole earth Not one of the men who saw my glory and miraculous signs I performed in Egypt in the desert, but who disobeyed me and tested me ten times.

Not one of them will ever see the land.

I said I brought them out of Egypt.

I would take them to the land.

They'll never see it.

No one who has treated me with contempt will ever see it.

Lesson for us.

The sin is forgiven.

But the blessing is lost.

And that's why 1 Corinthians 10 said, get warned by the mistakes that they made.

So on this side of Calvary, we are not just his special people.

Oh, we're way more than that.

We are the purchase of his blood.

It's a smash your idols and burn all very bridge to any sinful way and if you gotta make something right, make it right.

My sons clean their room at least once a year.

I mean, you don't need to be fanatical about it.

Oh, I tried to get them to clean it more often, but at least it was one day a year I can guarantee it was gonna be clean.

Day before Christmas.

Always a clean room.

Eventually.

Yeah, because we had a rule.

I go in there and I go, no gifts coming in here.

There are no gifts until you clean this room There's no place to put the gifts anyway.

Man, I'd go downstairs there's thunder upstairs.

Man, they are, I mean, it's like a cleaning marathon.

I knew they had it in them.

I knew they could do it.

That room was impeccable.

Because they weren't going to get my gifts until the room was clean.

I have a feeling there's a whole lot of things God would like to give you.

But not till you clean your room.

He said, I can't bless that mess.

I'm waiting for you to clean your room.

And I ask you as chosen ones, his royal kids, the purchase of his son's blood.

Stand your ground.

Thomas Jackson, nobody knew.

He was an officer in the Confederate Army.

And at the Battle of Bull Run, as General Lee thought he could take Washington, D.

C. in the early days of the war in July of 1861.

The Union Army was absolutely routing the Confederate Army.

They were in full-out retreat.

Tom Jackson, a professor at Virginia Military Academy.

Rode up in his horse while everybody else was riding out. and gets to his men and he keeps riding back and forth, making a huge target out of himself, because he was a big man, and with a sword drawn, he would ride back and forth and go, stand your ground, stand your ground, stay c gray running, the whole direction.

Union Army.

Charging after him.

Tom Jackson and his guys.

Stand your ground.

Stand your ground.

Stand your ground.

And General B from the south looks up and he says, look up there.

There stands Jackson like a stone wall.

And the Confederate people in full retreat look back at General Jackson and begin to reverse their retreat.

And they begin to pursue the Union Army, who fled back to Washington, D.

C. in a shocking defeat of the Northern Army.

Because of the man who had become known as Stonewall Jackson.

And the man who, because he took his stand, reversed the retreat of the rest of the army.

Somebody, some of us here, have to stand holy ground.

Be the alternatives we were destined to be, we were redeemed to be, we were bled for to be.

God's treasures, God's blood purchase, God's face on earth.

Live like who you are And never, whatever the pressure, never sell out.

Let's pray.

I want you to take a moment of quiet with the Lord and just in case there's Somewhere you were in the picture here tonight.

Would you begin the process of reversing your retreat?

And begin the process which you'll have to finish later of repenting before your Savior.

For having forgotten who you are.

A warrior falls when they forget who they are.

If any way you've lived unworthy of your holy identity.

I should turn that around tonight.

Lord, you have fashioned us.

You have bled for us.

You have prayed for us.

You have rescued us.

You have parted our Red Seas.

You have pushed back our enemies.

You have led us with your pillar of fire through our life.

You have made us sinners and rebels and fools.

The treasured possession of a holy, holy, holy God.

Not to live by rules.

But to live out a relationship.

A treasured relationship.

Where we have compromised it, where we have sullied it.

Where we've moved out of your blessing zone.

May we move back into your glory tonight.

Where we've become too much like the people around us.

We come back to stand our ground again.

And to be your holy ones.

In a generation that desperately needs to see somebody like that.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.