Deserts | Week 3 | Sermon

amen and amen. So to set up where I wanna go today, I wanna play a quick video for you. Okay. It's just a quick setup. It's a guy at an MLB game that was tasked with running a race against the mascot. He gets a head start, and the race is going really well in the beginning.

But you'll see the race doesn't end the way that he was expecting it to. So watch this video with me. Beat the freeze. They give the So they give him a head start. Right? Things are going well for him. Freeze suits. And then they got the Flash that's running behind him.

Watch this, folks. So watch. This is where it starts to get good. The guy's like, okay. I got a healthy lead. I can see the finish line there. Look at this guy go He's gonna start to celebrate here in a second. Like, this is this is amazing. We're all having fun. This is great. And then the Flash passes him and

beefs it and eats it right at the end. And poor guy goes from almost a hero to a zero in about two seconds. Right? And the reason that I show you the video is obviously it's a silly way, but it illustrates something powerful that we're gonna learn today from Numbers 20.

That just because you start a race and in the middle of the race, it seems to be going well. There's still the possibility that something could happen that will trip you up and the race will not end in a place that you wanted it to. And obviously I'm not talking about just a

literal race, but all of us are in this race called life. And oftentimes because we're so busy just doing and functioning and trying not to trip and to just keep going, we don't stop and sit and think, hey, this race is gonna end at some point.

And are we heading in a direction where we will be excited with where we are at the end of this race? And so what I wanna try to encourage us to do is we look at kind of the very last leg of the race for Moses and we watch one of the most important figures in the Bible end the race in a really poor way,

in a way that's going to cost him dearly. Moses' decisions that he makes at the end of his race are going to cost him the ability to lead the nation of Israel, God's people into the promised land. Because of his fatal flaws at the end of his race, his life will be left, legacy

will be left that is not one that he would have wanted. And so I wanna try to encourage us today, matter what season of life we're in, to just take a couple minutes and think about, hey, at the end of your life, when all of it's over,

the career's done, the houses are gone, like the stuff is done, the businesses are built, the four zero one ks is done and we're sitting there at the end, we're kind of in the final leg of our race.

What do we want that race to look like? What do we want the end to look like? Here's the big idea I wanna spend a few moments looking at from Moses's final lap. Friends, you and I today have to decide how we want the race to end.

The Bible says that without vision, we perish. What the scriptures mean is that without a preferred picture of how the end of the race looks for you and I, we won't just accidentally end up at a place where we enjoy how we ended. We we won't just leave a legacy without intentionality.

We have to have a vision of how we want our life to end. What we wanna leave to our kids and our grandkids, not in material possessions, but in legacy and story. And when we're at the end of the race, friends, my hope and my prayer for all of us is that we would sit there and say, man, I ran this race faithfully.

I like how I finished and I didn't just stumble across the finish line. Okay. Numbers chapter 20, if you're just joining us is kind of the tail end of the forty years of the nation of Israel's wandering through the desert. Remember Moses brought them out of captivity in Egypt and he's bringing them towards the promised land. But because of this generation's unfaithfulness,

God told them for forty years, you're just gonna wander in circle in the desert. And the Bible doesn't record a ton of what those forty years had for them but we see some key moments. Numbers 20 is the very end of that race. We're thirty nine years into that journey. They are about to enter into the promised land and this is the very end of Moses' story. Okay, here's how the story begins in verse one.

It says, In the first month of the year, the whole community of Israel arrived in the wilderness of Zin encamped at Kadesh. While they were there, Miriam died and was buried. There was no water for the people to drink at that place so they rebelled against Moses and Aaron.

Okay, first couple of verses and here's what we see. They're in a city called Kadesh, which is at the very end of their kind of journey before they enter into Canaan, the promised land.

And the nation of Israel is facing a drought. Again, there's no water to be found anywhere and the people are starting to panic. But this isn't the first time that they faced a drought during their forty years of wandering. This is actually the third time they've been in a similar position.

So you would assume because they've been here before that they would have learned the lesson that God taught them in the previous season and they would respond differently in this one, but they don't.

The Bible also tells us that in this city, in this moment in time, Miriam has passed away. Okay. Miriam is Moses' sister. Moses' best friend. One of Moses' closest companions and advisors.

If you go all the way back to the beginning of Moses' story when he was a little baby and Pharaoh was trying to kill off all of the Hebrew boys,

Miriam puts little Moses into a basket and she puts him in the Nile River. You remember the story and it goes down and Pharaoh actually ends up raising Moses. That's Miriam. She's always been one of Moses' closest friends and her death in Numbers 20 signifies two things.

The first is that one of Moses' closest friends and family members and confidants is passing away, which is going to deeply impact Moses. But it's also representative of the generation that was unfaithful that God was waiting for them to pass away before they would enter into the promised land.

This is saying that the unfaithful generation is now died off and now we have the new generation of Israelites that are supposed to be different than the previous generation. They were supposed to have learned the lessons that the previous generation didn't learn and they're supposed to respond differently.

But we're about to see what Solomon says happens in the book of Ecclesiastes. He says, life seems just very cyclical where we have hope that the next generation will do things differently,

but then they're young and stubborn and think that they know everything and they just repeat the same mistakes that we're trying to teach them not to make. And he says, what a waste. We waste our wisdom on the next generation because they're too foolish to even learn and listen.

And this generation is going to it's gonna be their first moment where their faith is kind of put to the test where a drought is ensuing and they're going to have to ask themselves the question, do I trust God?

Do I really believe that God's going to provide for me like I've seen him do in the past and look at what happens to them when the drought hits. Verse three says, the people immediately blamed Moses and said, if only we had died in the Lord's presence with our brothers,

why have you brought the congregation of the Lord's people into the wilderness to die along with all of our livestock. Why did you make us leave Egypt and bring us here to this terrible place? The land has no grain, no figs, no grapes, no pomegranates, and no water to drink.

What does the next generation do in their first moment of testing in the wilderness? The exact same thing that the previous generation did before. If you read the Old Testament, the book of Exodus chapter 17, it records a story that's almost identical to this. Same city, same location,

previous generation, they come up against a drought, they freak out, they blame Moses, they get angry with him. They begin to blame Moses for things that are outside of his control,

but God tells him to go to a rock to strike it, water comes out. So you would assume because they've been here before that they would behave differently, but they don't.

Here's the thing that this shows me. Friends, no matter who we are around, no matter how great we think the people are in our office and our neighborhood, at some point, all people are going to people. You know what I mean? They're going to complain. They're going to make mistakes.

And the people who have been led by Moses for almost forty years at this point, the guy that has been their faithful leader, who has worked hard for them, who has served them, who's been faithful to them, who has been the intercessor between God and them. Instead of looking at him for guidance, giving him some level of thankfulness

for how hard he's worked for them, what did they do instead? They immediately blame him for their circumstances. The circumstances of which Moses has no control over. This is not his doing, it's their doing. They are blaming Moses for the circumstances of their life. They're criticizing Moses' leadership decisions

that truthfully they have no context for. They don't understand a lot of it. There's 2,000,000 of them with no perspective, but their conclusion is this must be your fault. They don't care that Moses is in mourning.

They don't understand that he's just lost his best friend and life is happening to him and his heart is heavy. All they do is they just start to blame Moses. Here's what this tells me friends. You and I have to understand that people are going to people.

And sometimes in life, you and I are going to end up facing unfair criticism. There are going to be people in our offices, in our schools, in our communities, in our networks

that are going to blame us for things that we almost have no control over. They're going to chastise us for decisions that we've made with no context to how and why we arrived at the conclusion that we arrived at. And sometimes

criticism will come. The criticism that's the most hurtful, the most devastating to us are the moments where it comes when we're least prepared for it and we least expect it.

When we're already down, we're already hurt because of something that's happening in our life, like the death of a loved one. But instead of people coming and coming alongside of us, they just throw stones at us.

And friends, I only say this to say that all of us in this life are going to face criticism if we're doing something to move the kingdom forward. There's going to be people who don't understand. There's going to be people who criticize the decisions that we make.

And I've had people actually ask, hey, is this something you guys face in ministry or is like ministry just perfect because it's like the church world. I'm like, man, I wish sometimes I could just share the emails that I get after every sermon that I preach. And then this week I was like, you know what? I can share some of the emails with you. And so I was like, I just wanna read some every time I preach, I get two or three emails just like the ones I'm going to read to you. Most of the time I don't even read them. I just throw them in the trash. But sometimes I read them and I wanna share some of them with you just to tell you that I can relate. And for those of you who are like that's your email,

you should leave right now. I'm just kidding. I took the names off of them. These are all factual emails that I've received. Okay. Here is one from a few weeks ago. Message for Daniel. Daniel you do a fine job of preaching but you have a problem with using your hands. They're very distracting.

I would suggest you watch a YouTube video on preaching. I don't know what you're talking about. Here was a great one. Why do pastors of a church dress like they're mowing the lawn? It's like I was wearing Jordans. Who mows the lawn in Jordans, right? It says, but when there's a funeral or a wedding, they put on a suit.

I know the lawn does not look I know that God does not look at the outward appearance, but our attitude towards his house is reflected in our clothing that we wear to his house. So shameful. Dear pastor Daniel, maybe try putting more than twenty minutes into preparing your sermon. What a waste of a morning.

Listen, dog, next week you should watch YouTube. Okay? YouTube has better pastors that you can listen to. Here's a true one, came with a $20 bill. Here's $20 to get that poor pastor some new jeans because I had holes in my jeans, know? And I'm like, one, it's style, okay? Two, who gets jeans for $20 Like

you put a $100 in there, I will show up next week in new jeans but $20 does nothing for me. Okay? This is my favorite one says, the pastor on stage today was wearing pants that were uncomfortably tight and inappropriate for someone on a stage.

It would behoove the church to be more mindful of that especially when the message is about sex and sexuality. And then I was even more dumbfounded to realize that it was a guy that wrote that. I was like, I don't know what to do with that. All right?

Here's the reason that I read them. I don't do this to go, hey, I wanna just get some vengeance on people that I am 1000% for helpful feedback. But oftentimes what happens is because something's going on in our life, we end up criticizing people.

And I only say it to say that when I'm not ready for it, if I'm not expecting it, there are some times in the past I've gotten a lot better at it over the years, understanding that in a public situation like this, these things are going to come. But back in the day when I was younger in ministry, these things used to devastate me,

especially when they would happen in a moment where life was being difficult. And it took everything in me to not respond and go, you know what? You try next week, but understand every word you say, everything you wear, every mistake you make, I'm gonna write you an email about it. You wanna try next week is all yours. All right? But like, it's not helpful.

And the truth is, friends, I don't know why I'm shocked that criticism comes because it's something I think we just have to expect even if your position and your job isn't as public as mine. Criticism just comes with the territory.

It is a reality of living in the broken world that we live in. I wanna share with you a quote that talks about the only way to avoid criticism on this side of heaven. To avoid criticism, Albert Hubbard says to just do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.

That's the only way you're going to avoid criticism. But if you want your life to mean something, if you wanna push back the gates of hell with the years that you've been given on this side of heaven, you better understand just like Moses, criticism is going to come. The question is what do you and I do with it when it comes because your knee jerk reaction will be to go and defend it, to justify it, to write an email back.

And the problem is that oftentimes when you it. It. Going do And I I

the And the people that are critiquing you, your enemies, there's no explanation that you can give that's good enough that's going to actually get them to understand why you did what you did. So I would encourage us if we go, I wanna finish this race well.

I wanna get to the end of my life and not have these derailments that took me down past that I regret later. I think we have to pre decide today what we're gonna do when criticism comes

tomorrow. Look at what Moses does. This very next verse when criticism is all around. Moses verse six says, Moses and Aaron turned away from the people

and they went to the entrance of the tabernacle where they fell face down on the ground. And then the glorious presence of the Lord appeared to them and the Lord said to Moses, you and Aaron must take the staff and assemble the entire community. As the people was watched,

speak to the rock over there and it will pour out its water. You will provide enough water from the rock to satisfy the whole community and their livestock. What does Moses do when his heart is heavy and the people are criticizing his decision making? He immediately runs to God

and he falls on his face in God's presence. And he allows God to minister to the heaviness and the brokenness of what he's walking through that nobody would understand. That no matter how long he has to explain it, people still wouldn't

get it. It tells me, you and I have to pre decide today what we're gonna do when criticism comes because it's coming. If we are people who are going to finish well, we have to learn to run to God's presence when criticism is all around. We have to fight the knee jerk reaction to be our defender, to justify things.

I've wanted to so many times sit down and write an email to people and just rip them apart. But what I've come to learn over the years is oftentimes the people that are the most critical are the people who are the most hurt. And sometimes in my responding, in my justifying myself, in my critiquing them,

what I will do unintentionally is I will lose an opportunity to share with somebody the gospel message that there's a God that loves them and wants to redeem them because I was so convinced that I needed to be right. And I'll lose the opportunity to minister to their soul by winning an argument.

Friends, think we have to remember what Jesus said. Remember Jesus, the guy that was perfect, the guy that was sinless, never made mistakes, did everything perfectly, didn't ever cuss people out. He was the person that we all strive to be. And yet he faced more criticism than anybody.

He was judged more harshly than anybody. And it tells me if he was criticized, you and I better believe we will be criticized. He told his disciples, he gathered them in John 15, he told them, if the world hates you, remember it hated me first.

He says, it's not necessarily even you that they don't like, it's me that's living in you that they're rejecting. That's what's causing the hostility. So what do we do? We let God be our defender. We do the best thing that we can do and we give no response.

And we really believe what the Bible teaches us that vengeance is mine says the Lord and that he will be our defender. Look at what Peter says about what Jesus used to do. It says, they called him, Jesus, every name in the book. And he said nothing back. He suffered in silence, content to let God set things right.

When criticism comes, and I'm telling you, it's not a matter of if it's coming, it's just when you need to pre decide today what you're gonna do with it. Do you really believe that God's your defender or do you believe you have to defend yourself?

When somebody criticizes your spouse, do you feel like it's your job to defend them? Or do you really believe that the best response is no response and allow God to do the heavy work and you in that moment, your responsibility is to throw yourself at the feet of the cross and allow God to minister to your heart.

Because here's the thing that I've learned over the years. In these moments where you're really broken and you're really struggling and you're wanting with everything in you to lash out, if you can get yourself to just go to God in those moments,

there is a sweetness of his presence that's there that is almost exclusive to those hard seasons. I love in this story how clearly God speaks to Moses, how clearly he can hear his voice

in what seems to be something so difficult to do when life is going well. Hearing God's voice can seem to be so difficult when life is caving in and when the walls seem like they're crashing down with criticism all around. It's amazing how clear the voice of God is in those moments.

I promise you God will always minister to your hearts when you run to him instead of lashing out at people around you. This is the part of the story that I think Moses gets right. I think it's the next step where Moses starts to make a mistake and to stumble.

The decision that he makes to go to God is right. And God gives him a very clear instruction. He tells him, get all the people together. I know they're panicked. I know they think that they're going to not have water forever, but gather all the people together.

And I want you to speak to this rock and when you speak to the rock, water is going to come out of it. Again, if we had time, I would read the story of Exodus 17 because this is almost an exact replica of what happened in Exodus 17, but there's a slight difference. In Exodus 17, God told Moses not to speak to the rock but he told him to strike the rock with his staff. He told him to take your staff, strike the rock and when you strike the rock, water will come out of it. But in Exodus 17, it's just Moses and the leadership team. In Numbers 20, it's now Moses and all 2,000,000

followers of God. It's all 2,000,000 members of the nation of Israel and God tells him to do something slightly different. Don't strike the rock but speak to it. And this is where Moses is going to stumble in his final moments.

It says in verse nine, so Moses did as he was told. He took the staff from the place where it was kept before the Lord and then he and Aaron summoned the people to come and gather at the rock. But notice what Moses says, listen you rebels, must we bring you water from this rock?

And then Moses raised his hand and he struck the rock twice with the staff and water gushed out. So the entire community and their livestock drank their fill. It's such an insignificant detail. If you're reading the story quickly, you'll miss it. Moses strikes the rock instead of speaking to it and that

is the mistake that will cost him the ability to lead the people into the promised land. What's happening here is something that has happened throughout Moses' life. See, Moses always had a thing with anger. When you go back and look at Moses' whole story,

from the very beginning when he was put in the basket and he became an Egyptian, he was raised with kind of an identity crisis where he was living in the house of Pharaoh but he knew he wasn't an Egyptian. He knew he was a Jew. And there's one day when he's walking and he sees an Egyptian man that's making

fun of and kind of taking advantage of this Jewish man. Moses is just enraged with anger. He runs out and he beats that man to death. It's why he has to flee and run to the desert.

And ultimately God will find him in the desert. God will redeem him and restore him and tell him to go to Pharaoh and say, you're going to be my deliverer.

But there's even a verse in that whole encounter where Moses leaves the presence of Pharaoh and his heart is not filled with compassion for him. It's filled with rage towards him.

Remember when Moses got the 10 commandments on Mount Sinai when he went up and God gave him the law, arguably one of the most pivotal moments in the entire Old Testament. Remember how that story ends?

Moses comes down the mountain after being face to face with God and he looks at the Israelites that he left and what are they doing?

They're worshiping a golden calf that they built while he was gone. And what does Moses do? He gets incredibly angry at the people. He takes the tablets. He throws them on the ground and he breaks them. When you look at Moses's life, he had major issues with anger that he never dealt with.

And he did the same thing that you and I will be tempted to do this morning. He rationalized the sin that was in his life by just telling himself rationalize. It's not that big of a deal. It only rears its head sometimes.

I've managed the consequences. It really isn't that important. God hasn't struck me with lightning. It must mean that he's okay with it. And he began to mistake God's grace with God's approval.

Friends, I'm here to tell you if you and I have any shot at getting to the end of our life and liking where it ends up, we have to begin to take the sin in our life seriously. We have to begin to wrestle with the fact that it's more than just an anger issue. It's more than just a subtle drinking problem.

It's more than just a pornography thing that I deal with sometimes.

No, no, no. This is a King Cobra that's living in your house that is going to destroy your life at some point. It is going to steal, kill and destroy the life that Jesus died for you to have. If we sit here and have any shot of going, when we get to the end of this life,

we wanna like where we end up. We like the legacy that we leave to our kids. We like the story that our grandkids talk about who we were. I'm telling you friends, we have to learn to address the sin in our life head on.

We have to begin to call it out for what it is. If you're taking notes, write this down. The second thing that I hope we can learn from Moses's story is Moses didn't address the sin in his life head on. He convinced himself that he would just deal with it and he would manage it.

And he started back, it's just anger. Is it really that big of a deal? And I'm telling you, I know he never dreamt in a million years that it would cost him the ability to lead the people into the promised land. That for the rest of human history, we would remember Moses was the guy that got pretty close.

The guy that almost finished well. But because of his fatal mistake and not dealing with his anger, it cost him something and God had to rise up a man named Joshua. And Joshua is the one that would go down as faithful, who led the people across the Jordan River into the promised land, but it wasn't Moses.

Friends, I'm telling you the sin in our life, it's going to take from us. It's going to destroy more than we think it will. It's what sin does. Sin always leads to death. It is trying to kill things in your life.

And at some point, we have to deal with it. We have to pull it out from the shadows, put it in the light because what thrives and grows in the darkness, I promise you, it will begin to die in the light, but you have to address it. You can't just excuse it away because if you don't,

your story won't potentially end the way that you want it to end. And this is really what I think is happening to Moses that you and I are tempted to fall into as well.

See, what's hard for us when we recount the life of Moses is because we have the whole arc. We know the beginning, we know the middle, we know the end, we understand

what God was doing. We see the whole picture. It's easy for us to look at and go, man, look at the amazing story that God was writing through your life. Moses, how could you screw it up? Moses never had the perspective that we have.

And truthfully oftentimes you and I, we won't have the perspective of what God is doing in our life either. And this is the danger when we find ourselves just going, I don't really get what God's doing.

I'm struggling to figure out what my purpose is. I'm just like going to work. I'm trying to do my best. I'm trying to keep my kids fed and clothed and at sports practice. And I'm just trying to get to church on time. We get so lost in the rat race of life, we forget

that God is writing a beautiful mosaic for the world to look at that we get to play a small part in. And oftentimes we won't understand our role. We don't understand what we're doing and what God is using our unique part of the story to write.

But I promise you there's a day that's coming and it might be a few generations. Heck, it might not be until we're in heaven and looking back and seeing. I But promise you there will be a day where we will look and we will be blown away at the story of what God's doing through us.

But just as ambiguous as sometimes the purpose of God in our life can be, here's why I love who God is. Because the big picture, the big purpose, I think sometimes that's really ambiguous. But you know what I know is always really clear for you and I? The next step of obedience that God has asked you to take. Oftentimes,

a life of faithfulness can be reduced to simply taking simple steps of obedience one after the next. Here's what I would venture to guess is true about most of us sitting here today. If I were to ask you, what's the one thing in your life that you know God's been telling you you need to deal with?

What's the one thing that you've been dealing with that nobody knows about but you know it's hindering your relationship with your spouse? You know it's hindering your relationship with God. What is that thing? I would venture to guess that most of us know exactly what it is.

And sometimes it's not something we need to stop doing. For some of us, it's the thing we need to start doing. It's not the sin of omission. It's the sin of commission. It's like you've gotta start doing something.

And here's what I believe to be incredibly true about our story. That God is writing something really big. Something amazing is happening in your life. But we might not always see the big picture. But if we commit to being people who live radical steps of obedience,

I promise you those small steps of obedience over a long period of time, they will produce a life at the end of it that says, I like where this thing ended up. Here's what I'm trying to convince you of today. If we're gonna be people who finish well, we need to learn to develop a habit of obedience even in really small things.

God telling Moses to speak to the rock versus striking it is one of those things like that. That's a really small detail. It's a really insignificant thing, especially given the context that the first time he did this, God told him to strike the rock.

You could argue that Moses just kind of misheard God and his grief. He wasn't really paying attention. And so what did he do? He did the default thing, which is just I do what I did before. I rely on what God told me fifteen years ago to do. And you forget that God is a God that's doing a new thing.

And that God is writing a new story in this generation. And here's what Moses didn't understand about his story that we now have the perspective to understand. This rock,

this rock that seemed to be just a random thing that God was just going to randomly produce water from, It was a much bigger thing than anybody realized. The rock was a symbolic representation of the Messiah that would ultimately come that would refer to himself as the rock upon which we could build our lives.

The rock that would not just produce water that would satisfy our thirst, but it would actually satisfy the thirst of our soul. One that would come and say that he is living water.

And that if you can just speak to him and invite him into your life, he will produce in you, says to the woman at the well, a bubbling spring of water that comes out in overflows from you. Here's what Moses didn't understand. God had you strike the rock the first time because it was representation. It was representing

Jesus's penalty on the cross where he would be stricken one time but he didn't need to die twice because his penalty on the cross was sufficient.

So the second time Moses speak to the rock because I want people to know that Jesus paid the price for you once and for all. His death was sufficient and for all people for the rest of humanity to have the living water in you, all you have to do is speak to the rock.

All you have to do is invite the rock. Moses didn't understand that God was doing something so much bigger. The Paul tells us in first Corinthians, this is what Moses didn't get. The rock was Christ.

And here's what it tells me that you and I will be tempted to do as well. We will miss the magnitude of what God is doing in our life because sometimes God doesn't give us all the details. We wouldn't understand it. We couldn't comprehend it. But here's what I know He'll always do.

He will give you your next step of obedience. And if you just keep taking the next one and then the next one and the next one, I'm telling you, it is how we get to the end of this life and we finish really well. Here's how the story begins to wrap up here.

The last thing that I think Moses does that we need to learn that Moses doesn't do that we need to learn to do is to give God the glory for what he does through our life.

Moses says something that's really insignificant here and you can almost miss it if you're not looking for it. He yells at the people and calls them rebels. And then he says, must we produce water from this rock? He somehow has conflated

him and God as the same person on the same level that is no longer God providing water for his people, it's Moses and God. And Moses is making the mistake that we will make when we've achieved some success. When we've been here a little while,

you will with the wrong heart, you will begin to take credit for the things that God has done through your life. You will begin to really convince yourself that it was you that sacrificed. It was you that did all of those things. It was you that built the business. It wasn't God.

And friends, when we get to a place where we begin to stand in God's way and take God's glory in front of his people, it is a really dangerous place to be. Because we have to remember the scriptures are clear. Do you know who God chooses to do most of his work on this side of heaven?

The Bible says that he uses the foolish things of this world. The reason that he chose Moses to be the leader of his people is because thousands of years later when they would gather in a church in Queen Creek, Arizona and they would talk about the life of Moses, it's like, wait, so the guy that was a murderer,

the guy who had a stutter, the guy who was by himself that was walking through an identity crisis, didn't even know who he was, that's the guy that God would use as one of the most important figures in the Bible. None of us would come to the conclusion that, oh, that was all Moses is doing.

No, God uses the foolish thing of this world because of what it does is it shows the world who God is. But you and I have to realize that inside of us is this flesh that we have to learn to put to death that wants to take all the credit,

that wants to do all of that, wants to really be impressive to the people that were around. And we will be tempted if we're not careful and we don't build routines into our life to tell people that it wasn't my doing, this was God's. Here's one of those things of why I think Jesus talked about money so much.

I think intentionally bringing God your first fruits is a constant reminder to ourselves, our hearts, our flesh. This is not mine. I'm not an owner.

I didn't do this. Yes, God used me. Yes, there was things in there that I had to do, but all of this is God's and he's asked me to steward it. And so what I do to remind myself to keep my heart in check, to keep my pride in check, I bring God what is his and I remind myself more importantly than anything else

that God, this is all you. Anything that I accomplish in this earth, it brings you glory and you credit. Please help me not become the person that like Moses starts to say, look at what I did. Because it's how we potentially get to a place at the end of this life where we don't like where we end up.

Moses started to rob God of the thing that he was trying to show the people, how good he was, how much he cared for them. See the difference in this story between Exodus 17 and Numbers 20. In Exodus 17, it's just Moses and his leadership team. So if Moses makes a mistake there,

people that see it aren't that great. In Numbers 20, all 2,000,000 of God's people are watching this whole thing. And they know that Moses is representing God. He just came from being with God. And what Moses is doing is he's reflecting the character and the nature of God and he's misrepresenting it.

And you better believe God takes very seriously people who misrepresent who he is to the world, who misrepresent his nature and his character to the world. And because of that, this is why God will tell him he's not entering the promised land. Here's the final verse of how this story wraps up in verse 12.

It says, but the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, because you did not trust me enough to demonstrate my holiness to the people of Israel,

you will not lead them into the land that I'm giving them. This place was known as the Waters Of Meribah, which means arguing because the people of Israel argued with the Lord and there he demonstrated his holiness among them. Two times God says, this is my final indictment against you Moses. You robbed me of my holiness.

You robbed the people of seeing me for who I really truly am. Here's the last lesson that I think we can learn from Moses' life. If we want to finish well, friends, we have to be people who are committed to truly believing God and actually treating him as holy.

I think some of the times we end up in the sin that is going to be the thing that erodes the legacy that we want is because we truly don't believe that God is who he says that he is.

We think God's just like our friend. He's like our buddy. He's just like he's our companion. We live life and he you know, we laughed. And if he was here, he would have a beer with us and we just would have a good time. And we forget that God is holy

and set apart and other than, and that God is so separate and different than us that when sin entered the Garden Of Eden, he had to banish the people from his presence.

He had to force them away because otherwise we would die in the presence of our holy God. That God is so other than so set apart that the only way that that wrath and judgment and holiness could be rectified was Jesus ultimately would have to come and live the life that we couldn't live, die the death that we deserve.

And Jesus' price on the cross would ultimately make a path for us to have relationship with a God who is completely other than us, who is so holy and set apart that when the angels encounter him, all they can do is fall on their face and cry out, Holy, holy, holy are you God?

Friends, we have to not forget who God really is Because when we don't see him for who he really is, we won't take him at his word and we will begin to entertain things in our life that we should be waging war with.

Here's the beautiful part of my job that I get to be a part of in ministry.

I get to walk with people at the very end of their life. I get to be a part of some of those final conversations that people have as they're literally moments and hours and days away from facing what they know is death. And I've gotten to walk through that with 20 year olds, 50 year olds, 90 year olds. And the crazy part is, and I know it sounds really cliche,

but nobody at the end of it when they're really face to face with death is sitting there going, man, I just wish I had a nicer car. I wish I had done more stuff. It's always the things left unsettled that they regret. It's the forgiveness that they never extended. It's the resentment that they were still harboring.

It's the love that they wish they had shared. It was the restoration that never took place.

It was the time not spent with loved ones. It's all the things that you and I know up here, but because of how busy our world becomes, we just don't live it out. We don't really actually believe it. We think we're gonna be here forever. And we forget that all of this is perishing.

And that the reality is, is that all of us right now, whether we think it's a few moments away or not, we're all staring death in the face. And all of us should have the same goal.

Here's what I believe the goal is for our life at the end of this whole thing, is as we stare death in the face, my hope and my prayer for you is that you would be able to say the exact same words that Paul says to Timothy in second Timothy where he's writing him his final letter. His last letter, Paul knows he's about to die. He knows the end is here. And here's what he says to Timothy that I hope you and I will be able to say about ourselves one day. Second Timothy chapter four says this, it says, as for me,

my life has already been poured out as an offering to God. The time of my death is near. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have remained faithful and now the prize awaits me. The crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge will give me on the day of his return.

And the prize is not just for me, but is for all who eagerly look forward to his appearing. How do you and I get to the end of our life and like where we end up? I think it's a lot more simple than sometimes we realize. We have to wage war with this sin in our life.

We have to really actually understand that all of this is temporary. We have to be willing to ask God, what is my next step of obedience that I can take when I walk out of here?

And God, would you give me the courage and the boldness to do it? Because I know every decision I'm making today, it is the thing that is leading me to the life that will be my legacy. The question is, will you like where your life ends up? Without vision, friends, we perish.

My prayer and my hope is that all of us at the end of our life will say, I was faithful. I fought the fight. I lived a good life. And my life has been poured out like an offering. And I'm about to see Jesus face to face and I know what he's gonna say to me. Well done, my good and faithful

servant. Can I pray for you? Father, I thank you God for every single person that's here this morning. That God, I know in the hearts of people here today are all kinds of things. God, sin that needs to be dealt with, forgiveness that needs to be extended both for ourselves and for other people.

And father, I pray that right now, the holy spirit would be speaking to us really specifically and individually, showing us what our next step of obedience looks like, that we could walk out of here this week and be willing to do that.

And father, I just wonder what it would look like if thousands of people in the East Valley would begin to take radical steps of obedience, even if it doesn't make sense. God, I believe that that's how we can collectively change the world.

And sometimes we will devalue what it is you're doing through our life and we will miss the magnitude of the story that you're writing through us. And so father, give us your eyes. Give us your ability to see this world the way that you see it. Give us the ability to see our life the way that you see it. It is in the mighty and holy name of Jesus we pray all these things. It is in God's name all people said.

Amen. I thank you so much for hanging out with us. Thanks for joining us online this weekend. Let us We We We are Rock

Point.