True North | Week 7 | Bill Bush

We're in the series True North, and and I was thinking about some some things today. We're gonna talk about some things I learned from an old soldier.

If if if if haven't been in this church very long, you need know that I was raised by an old soldier. My father was in World War two, Korea, Vietnam. He's a war hero, all those stuff. And he learned a lot

about life and leadership leading men in combat. And a lot of those life lessons are very applicable to all of life, and particularly to the spiritual walk. And and and one in particular, I think, is really gonna land the theme of where we're going today in our story of watching how God led his people from slavery

towards this promised land that he said, towards the place he wanted them to be in life. And we've been watching the journey of how God leads versus how we follow. And what we've seen in the story of the Israelites is this is the original This Is Us show.

You know, you ever watch that show? You're like, this looks cheesy. I'd never watch it. You watch it, you're crying by the end. You know why? Because you're like, that's me. You know? Well, we wanna act like these Israelites were dumb. As we dive into the story, we realize we're looking in a mirror.

And and so one of the things my dad used to say that came from his combat experience, especially when I was, like, playing a sport, when he was coaching us at baseball. I'd be playing ball in a kid. I remember one time, and we were playing, and and we started complaining about the ump making bad calls.

And and and then we started fighting with each other and whining. We're basically whining. We're like, we could win this game, but why can't you hit the ball? Why can't you catch the ball? Billy, why don't you throw strikes? You're our pitcher. You know? And you start whining

about every problem you have, and it's not a fun. And my dad would stop, pulled us together. He goes, listen. Listen. I learned something in combat that that is applicable right now. He go, you guys gotta understand something. You can win or you can whine, but you can't do both at the same time.

He goes, when you whine in combat, it's different than if you're whining at a baseball game. Because you're gonna be all upset until you take your little ticket and go get your free snow cone. If you do that in combat, you die. And I'm like, wow, dad, we're playing t ball here. A little intense, but he

didn't say that to us when we're playing t ball, by the way. But it's true. It's true. You can win or you can whine, but you can't do both at the same time. You just can't. And that's the lesson we're going to see where we're at in this story of True North. Matter of fact, that's our big idea today.

The big idea for today is simply you can win or you can whine, but you can't do both at the same time. Which I think the world could use a little bit of this right now, wouldn't you think? And so where we're going to be at is we're actually not going to be in the book of Exodus.

We're going to jump to the book of Deuteronomy. You're like, Deuteronomy? What does that mean? It sounds like math. And I got geometry, trigonometry, Deuteronomy. You know, and it's not. Deuteronomy means second law.

What's happening is where we're gonna go is we're jumping into the future. Pat left the keys to the time machine out front. We're gonna jump in. And where we're gonna go in the story is we're gonna go forty years to the future. We're gonna go to the end of kind of this this exodus story

of how they were they were following God. You know, he didn't take them the direct route we saw the first week. They could have went from Egypt to the promised land in about four days. He took them he took them a route that would have taken, like, you know, more like a couple weeks, but then they he camped them at Mount Sinai for several months.

So it took them a while to get there,

but then what happened when they got there is they wouldn't go into the land. They freaked out. And so then God says, okay. The fact that you you're whining all the time, you lost the chance to have this win. This generation isn't going into the land. Your kids who you're afraid were gonna die. You were so it's for the children. We can't go. Something's gonna happen to our kids. You used your kids as an excuse. So what's gonna happen is you are gonna wander in this wilderness,

and then a generation from now, they're gonna go take the land. And and and so you're whining, you know, led to not winning, And really, that comes from the fact of what is whining? We'll see in the passage, it says they complain. They complain. The word for complain just means to whine. Well, where does whining come from?

It comes from being uncomfortable, being concerned. It comes from worry. You're worried that I don't like where this is going. I don't like where this is gonna end. I'm afraid. And that's really worry is coming from fears. What are those fears of? Those fears really are a result of trust.

Do I really trust God? And guess where our trust of God issues come from? On how well we actually know God.

And that's what we're gonna see here. So they they're lined up. But one of reason I jumped to this story is the actual events happened in the book of Numbers. That does sound like math. But Numbers thirteen and fourteen. But I wanna go to the Deuteronomy passage because this is Moses

who's who's him. A guy named Joshua and a guy named Caleb are the last three of the last generation. Moses is gonna die before they go into the land like God said. Joshua's gonna be the leader, and then Caleb

is the remember Caleb as we go through this story because it's gonna come back at the end to be really cool because Caleb's really the old soldier I want us to learn from. And and and and so it's what

Moses doing in Deuteronomy, means second law, is he's talking to that next generation now. And he's the whole book is basically retelling them what the other generation heard from God at Mount Sinai forty years before. And he's getting them ready to go into the Promised Land. But they need to learn

from what happened to their parents. And so that's and what he's gonna show them is, you can win or you can whine, but you can't do both at the same time. And so here we are. We're gonna be in Deuteronomy chapter one starting in verse 19. And I'm just gonna go through this whole story,

but I'm gonna stop. There's two points I wanna make. Two things that you gotta understand. If you're gonna win and not whine, there's two things we need to embrace.

We need to embrace that the battle begins in the mind, and that the battle belongs to the Lord. That's what we're gonna see in this. This is how see, this is the two things that that that the Israelites didn't do. They wind through this, and they didn't actually embrace this, and this is what hurt them.

So what do I mean by that? Alright. Let's go. Battle begins in the mine. Start in verse 19.

Then just as the Lord our God commanded us, we left Mount Sinai and traveled through the great and terrifying wilderness, as you yourselves remember, and headed towards the hill country of the Amorites.

When we arrived at Kadesh Barnea, I said to you, you have now reached the hill country of the Amorites that the Lord our God is giving us. Look, he has placed the land in front of you. Go and occupy it as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has promised you. Don't be afraid. Don't be discouraged.

It's funny. Anytime the Bible and someone in it says, don't be afraid. Don't be discouraged, that almost tells you a little bit of a clue. They're probably already looking like they're afraid and looking like they're gonna be discouraged.

And we see that in the next verse. It says, but y'all came I love it. I guess Moses was from South Carolina. But y'all came to me and said, first, let's send out scouts to explore the land for us. They will advise us on the best route to take and which towns we should enter.

He says, this seemed like a good item idea to me. So I chose 12 scouts, one from each of your tribes. They headed for the hill country and came to the Valley Of Ashgol. They explored it. They picked some of its fruit. They brought it back to us, and they reported the land the Lord our God has given us is indeed good land. So basically, they came back and said, we'd everything God already told us is what we saw.

They learned nothing new. Now I'm gonna tell you right now. You might not caught it, but what they just did there, they already lost the battle of the mind. Did you realize they already lost it?

You gotta catch on it because that's where we do it too. A lot of us have already lost the battle of mind when it comes to following God. They sent scouts because they were already psyched out. They're already afraid. So what they wanted to do was buy more time and get more information.

And a lot of times when God says, here's what I'm asking you to do, do it, we will stop and we have some reason that we think, like to Moses, sounds like a good idea. You know what? I know God says to do this, but I just gotta study this. Right? I gotta look at that. I gotta wait for this. I gotta look at this thing. We have something we say that sounds responsible

to us, but it's really just trying to put off what's going on. And we kinda hope that if I just get more information, I'll be less afraid. You don't need information to be less afraid. You need more trust of God to be less afraid.

And so there are already and here's why I know this. We'll see it in a minute. But a couple of reasons why I know this. First of all, Moses, when he said, you came back and said, the Lord, the land our God is giving us is good. Actually, only two of the 10 scouts said that. You know what the other 10 said?

They said two phrases about the land. If you go into Numbers thirteen and fourteen, they said, the land which you sent us and the land through which we have gone. Not one of those 10 said, the land the Lord our God has given us. 10 of the 12 went into the land already doubting.

And matter of fact, we know this well as we'll see next week when we end this series looking at the story of Joshua and them going into the land.

Joshua, when he was sitting there forty years later, had learned the lesson because it says he sent some scouts in. The people didn't ask him. He decided to send some scouts in. How many did he send in? Anybody know? Nobody knows how many scouts that Joshua sent in. Read your Bibles, people. Two.

How many did they ask for originally? They sent 12. What happened to 10 of the 12? They freaked out and freaked everybody else out. So when Joshua forty years later goes in, I need a scout, he didn't say look at the whole land and look for routes. He only picked two, and he goes, go check out Jericho.

Guess why he did that? Guess who he picked? He picked his Joshua and his Caleb, and that's the only ones he sent. He didn't wanna let this small amount of people freak out a big amount of people. In other words, the 10 of them discouraged everyone else, we're going to see in just a second.

Aren't you glad that in this day and age, a small amount of people can't get a big amount of people scared?

I will take that laughter to mean you understand my sarcasm. So they're already psyched out. They're already acting like it's sports, you get it. I remember when I played baseball, we used to use a phrase about the other pitcher. We wanted to psych him out. We called it getting in his kitchen.

And you could tell when you got him a little bit nervous and he starts getting rattled, we're like, ah, we're in his kitchen. What it meant, you you're in someone's kitchen. You're in their their and you're beating their pots and pans. Ping. Ping. Ping. I'm in your kitchen.

That's what it meant. So that's what's already happening. That there it's already the battle in front of them has already gotten in their kitchen, and what they're already starting to do is be focused on the on on the problem in front of them instead of the Lord that goes before them.

They've already done that. Nothing's actually happened yet. And that's the same thing that happens to you and I.

So it goes on to say, but, verse 26, you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God and refused to go in. You complained in your tents. You whined in your tents

and said, the Lord must hate us. That's why he brought us here from Egypt. See how they didn't understand who God was? They had the wrong view of God because they were afraid,

And and they're they're psyched out. They heard this report that there was instead of hearing about this greatness that the land had, all they saw was walls and warriors. They saw a battle, and it freaked them out. So they started whining about it.

And when they whined, they said, look, God hates us. They're blaming God for bringing them into this situation.

Some of us do that. Actually, we all do this at some point. When God takes us to a point and then we're commanded to trust him on something, we wanna say, really? God, you're the one that put me in the middle of this mess, and now you're gonna ask me to trust you in this way?

That's what it means to complain or whine from the scriptural point of view. In other words, look how they immediately attacked God. To whine is to worry, is to fear, which is to not trust, which is to misunderstand God, which is an affront and an offense to the very character of God.

That's the problem. And it all starts in the noggin. He says, Where can we go? Our brothers have demoralized us with their report. He's talking about the spies and what they did. They tell us the people of the land are taller and more powerful than we are. They look like me. And their towns are large

I'm just kidding. Their towns are large with walls rising high into the sky. We even saw giants there, the descendants of Anak. So remember, they're looking, they looked at they're talking about the land that scared them the most is this Amorite hill country where the Anak was powerful. They're saying they're huge. They're just terrifyingly giant,

powerful warriors with big walls.

And that's the area that scared them the most. Remember Anak in that area. Remember, this is gonna come back at the end, and it's gonna be so awesome. If And you don't think it awesome is awesome, then I don't like you anymore. Okay? I'm just making it clear here. Alright. So remember that. Put that in your brain. But I said to you, don't be shocked or afraid of them. The Lord your God is going ahead of you. He will fight for you just as you saw him do in Egypt.

And you saw how the Lord your God cared for you all along the way as you traveled through the wilderness. Just as a father cares for his child, now he has brought you to this place. But even after all he did, you refused to trust the Lord your God. See? Trust. That complaining, the whining led to a lack of trust, which in the end here's the problem.

When we whine because we worry, because we fear, because we don't trust, you know where that ultimately takes us? We're gonna end up wandering. We're gonna wander in our faith because that's what happened to this whole generation. They ended up wanderers.

They didn't end up having that victory and that win, and go to that place that God really intended their life to go. And it all started in the mind. They lost the battle of the mind. What do I mean by that a little Now we read that, like, how does that work? Well, it's funny. Like I said, we understand

that even physical battles begin in the mind. I couldn't sleep the other night, so I turn on this documentary on the Celts. When you think of the Celts, think of the Irish people. But the Celts were pretty powerful. They're spread all over Northern Europe. And in March, the Celts burned down the city of Rome.

They actually had this mob. They came in, they were gonna negotiate. They brought this up, we want land, we want money. And one of the generals, when they met up in the field, got mad at one of the guys messing with his horse, stabbed him with a spear, killed him. So the Celts says, alright, we'll go to plan b. We're gonna take you out. And they did. And they sacked Rome, and they burned it to the ground, and then all the people fell back to the part of the city. They finally said, we give up. Please help us. What do gotta do to give up? And they we give up. What do you want to go away? And he goes, I want a thousand pounds of gold. He then rigged his scale to be more like 1,500 pounds. The Romans know he was doing it, but what are they gonna do about it? So they sacked these Celtic people, they actually, the great empire of Rome

early on got pretty much wiped out. My point is is early on in in the the Roman historians that report what happened

said the people panicked and fled and freaked out when they heard the Celt outside the city. They heard what they were how they were. Because guess what? Every his why do you think every army in history has had battle cries and battle paint when they go to battle? It psyches out the enemy.

And the Celts had this interesting thing I want to show you a couple pictures of here. This is a depiction of how the people that they've overrun that were terrified showed them. It looks like these giant beast like things that are attached to them. Was really it's called the Karnax. It's like this 10 foot battle horn.

And what's interesting is it's a dragon head, and it's bronze, but it's hollow, so it mimics how we can make voice. Instead of a typical instrument that just sends voice

sound this way, humans, it kind of radiates. That's why we can go, we can make noises with our mouth closed. That's because the sound actually reverberates and echoes and gets its fullness by bouncing around in our nasal passages. And if you don't have a brain, your whole head. So it just kinda goes around.

And so what they would do is they'd have a couple 100 of these guys leading this army that's hooping and hollering, and they would come in. Could you imagine 100 of these things, these giant dragon heads coming out of the mist in the early morning? Back in an era where you did it was a quieter world back then. You didn't have roads. You didn't have planes. You didn't have boom boxes. You you didn't have,

you know, nonstop, you know, political commentary TV. You didn't have any of that stuff. And and so it would have been a quieter world. Can you imagine in your city, all of a sudden in the morning, you're like a thousand fold, and everyone's like, and

then you see them all painted, and they look very barbaric to you. Like, they won that battle before it even started.

That's what the enemy wants to do. He brings his battle cry, and it gets in our kitchen.

Let me let me give you an actual more of a a a theologian's perspective. A W Tozer in the book Knowledge of the Holy.

He it's a great book. I'd read it. It's all about the attributes of God. You want to get to know God so you can trust God? Read this. It's only 117 pages, but you're gonna get about two or three pages at a time, and

it's deep. It's not deep in that it's hard to understand the language. He is a good writer. He writes very basic, simply where you can understand it. It's the depth of the point he's making. For example, in the overview, in the first part of the book, to lay out the whole reason why we should know God at a deeper level,

is he says this. What comes in our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. How we see God is the most important thing about us. For this reason, the gravest question before the church and us as individuals is always God himself.

And the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, it's not about our action, but what he is in his deep heart conceives God to be like. It's really yeah. Why? Because we tend by a secret law of the soul to move towards our mental image of God.

We know that from secular sources too when they've studied the mind, that how you think is ultimately how you live.

That's what it but on a spiritual end, because God created us in his image, it's basically how you think about God. You can force yourself to do biblical things. You can come to church and go, alright, I've learned that you don't smoke or drink or chew or go with girls who do. You know, I I got the list. And you can force yourself to do the list, but ultimately,

if you don't really see God correctly, you will walk away from acting correctly the way God wants you to. You have to see God correctly because that ultimately controls everything you do. And what happens to the Israelites over and over again is they keep imagining God in a way that he isn't.

They keep seeing God, and that's what's messing up the battle in the mind. So they have a twisted view of God, So they get a twisted view of life, and they get and it ultimately works its way out in their faith. They can say they follow God. They can try to follow God. But ultimately, they're too afraid.

Because they don't get to know God. And that's why we need to be in the word. That's why we need to be in church, why we worship together. It's not that this is a rule book. This isn't a rule book. This is a biography, guys. The Bible is so we can know God. And then as we learn to trust him, we have our own stories.

But if we don't get to know him, we're just trying to do the list because we don't want to disappoint him, and we just want to get our way. Let me give you another quote from a theologian who I know much better and I love even more.

If you're new here, that's me. What it's really saying is when you worry about who god is, you war against where god leads.

Cookies on the bottom shelf. That's the way I understand it. If I worry about who God is, I will always be worrying against where He leads. And that's how we lose the battle of the mind.

And it's kinda crazy in that because what's weird is why do we lose that? Why do we lose track? Because we get afraid because when God leads us to a place that looks scary, there's walls and warriors in front of us. When he leads us to places, hey, I'm taking you to a place of I'm taking you where I want you to go, but all a sudden there's a battle between you

and the wind, we focus on the battle and we're afraid and we're thinking, god, this is too hard. So we run to the way that we think is easier. That's how the the truth works. In other words, how do I win this battle is I need to focus on the voice, not the voices. I need to focus and listen to the voice,

not the voices. This is how I win this battle. Because otherwise, I'm gonna face a battle that's gonna look weird. If I don't really know God, and I don't listen to his voice, I'm gonna listen to all the other voices. The voices in my head, the voices out there. And here's the problem with the voices in this world. The the Satan does not wanna just destroy or replace God. He wants God's job.

So oftentimes,

his lies, the way he tells us stuff, is not necessarily all bad. It just takes truth and twists it enough. He wants a twisted truth so it sounds good. So if I don't really know who God is and I don't really know his word, I fall for the counterfeit because it sounds just as good, and often the counterfeits promises the same type of, hey, this sounds godlike.

This sounds good, and it lets me go around that battle. It lets me go around what god's actually asking me to do, and that seems easier because they didn't they're like, why you took us to this place to try to take this land, and it's too big of a fight. I can't do it. Because they don't understand who God is, so they wanna run away. But here's the problem. Do you know what Moses goes on to tell this next generation something that's very powerful. He says, you have to remember when you go in and take this land, you're gonna live in houses you didn't build, and you're gonna drink from wells you didn't dig.

You know what he's just telling them? Your parents freaked out because the warriors in the walls, but what they didn't see was a master planned community that's already built for you. It took them five years to clear the land.

All the cities and all the wells and all the stuff that was already and the systems already developed, imagine how long it would have taken them to build that stuff if God just gave them the empty land. In other words, yeah, you have a battle in front of you. But that's actually the easier way to go.

That's actually the easier way to go. How many times are you afraid to listen to what God's word says? You sit in your tent and said, God must hate me. Why would He ask me to do this when I'm not strong enough?

Why does He ask me to give when I don't have? Why does He ask me to serve when I don't feel like I have time? Why does He ask me to trust when it feels like? Why would He put me in a scenario and then ask me to do this? Because you are fixated on just the warriors and the walls. You don't see that actually God's way, the other side of the battle is actually

easier. But when we don't trust God, we listen to the wrong voices. We listen to the wrong voices. So what do I mean by that? Let me show you a passage in two Corinthians chapter 10. I'm gonna read verse three through five. We are human, but we don't wage war as humans do. Let's keep going.

There we go. We use God's mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy the false arguments. And then last verse here, verse five, we destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God. We capture the rebellious thoughts

oh, no. You went too fast. We capture the rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ. That's where I'm gonna stop. Some of you have read that passage before. In another translation, it says, what you're supposed to do to win the battle of the mind is take every thought captive.

Now take every thought captive sounds beautiful, doesn't it? But it what does it mean? I like how it says it here. What it means to take every thought captive is it says you're gonna attack the strongholds, meaning those the the the lies.

You're gonna go after the lies with the truth. How you take a thought captive is not you go, alright, this is the wrong thought. I gotta stop thinking this thought. Have you ever just got in a loop where you just can't stop thinking about something? Has telling yourself I'm gonna stop thinking about this ever worked?

You know what usually works? You're all worried about something, you're worried about fines, you've read all this stuff, and all of sudden your kid keeps bugging you, and then they come up and they're starting to irritate you, then they start to be really cute, they just climb up and give you a hug. Next thing you know, you're looking at them, you're like, oh, how sweet. And then as you start to look at them, guess what happened?

That truth and that love and that relationship, you forgot about the false thought. What it really says there is how you win the battle of the mind is you have to speak truth to the lie. You see, the the the false voices twist the truth and turn it into a lie.

So when I don't wanna trust God on something, it's because I'm believing a lie somewhere.

And so what I need to do is spend some time meditating and thinking, what is the lie I'm believing? How am I twisted where I somehow don't have trust in God? What but usually, I don't have trust because I've bought into a lie that's not true.

And so now, I buy the lie, and I'm stuck in this narrative where if I can get to the truth, I speak the truth against the lie. So what does that decide? Just shout things and I'm done? No. Let me show you one other great theologian. His name is Steve Rogers. He's also known by the name Captain America.

This is from the comics. He says this, when the mob and the press and the whole world, all the voices, tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth and tell the whole world, nope, you move. I'm not moving out of your way, you're moving out of my way. Now,

I know what some of y'all are thinking with the year we've had. Yeah. That's right. We gotta go fight those liberals or fight those because we gotta it's all about politics. I'm not talking about politics, people. Okay? Can we forget that? This is talking about your personal walk and trust of God with what he's asking you to do with what he's given you each and every day. It's you. Okay?

It's not about them. It's about you plant yourself in the word of truth, the word of God by knowing who he is and says all these voices aren't gonna stop me from moving forward to where God's called me to go. That's what I'm saying.

Sound good? If you disagree with me, I'm throwing my vibranium shield at your forehead. Okay? And and and and I just thought I'd throw Captain America in there and say, you're not getting it, maybe you understand a comic book hero. In other words, you know what this is saying? We got to faith our fears. Faith your fears.

I'll put it up there. First service, we didn't have this up there and people thought I just developed a lisp. Mike Tyson, faith your fears.

Sorry. I always do something like this in this service. I think I get loopy. We have to it's it's you you face that. So what it means is you speak the truth and lie, but the truth means you plant your feet and then you move forward. You gotta step out and make a decision.

Am I going to follow the truth and trust the truth and step into the truth? Let me give you example that you know, this is a perfect example because I think I'm gonna freak some people out and make you mad right now. One of the common lies that we have twisted in our culture as Christians that we just refuse

to faith the fear is when it comes to money. There are way more people in this church that you say you're a Christian than who actually financially support the mission of this church. If you say you're a Christian and this is your church, God's really clear about what we should be using our resources for.

And here's where you buy the lie and complain in your tents. You whine in your tents, and you get mad at me. Some of your blood pressure's already going up. Here we go. I knew he's gonna say it. How dare him talk about money? You know, I've said this before, but the guy who taught me how to preach, a wise old

spiritual soldier, said you throw a rock into a pack of dogs, the one that yelped got hit. So if you're getting mad, I think you should understand it ain't me that's making you mad. It's that planted word of truth that's having you tilt your throat open,

and it's punching you right now. But I'm just using this because it's the most obvious example. We struggle with materialism as American Christians. Because you know why? We try to get things done in our own power, own strength. And money is the thing we need.

And now you sit there go, but my job's not going well. I'm hurt. I'm not you realize the Bible says that your giving is supposed to be first fruits.

First fruits means you give first, not later. That's the only way you win the battle of the mind because that's the only way you can actually put yourself in a position that says, I trust God. And we'll see in a minute. That's the only way you can understand that the battle does belong to the Lord. If you give

to everything else and then see what you have left over and give to God, I'm gonna show you in a minute, that's the same thing as actually trying to fight a battle without trusting that the battle belongs to the Lord. You may be doing the right action, but you're not actually trusting God. The reason you give first

is so you will see the power of God and who he is. He says, guess what? It'll actually be easier for you if you trust me upfront. Because guess what? You trust me instead of whining in your tents about your lack of money, you're gonna understand that I am the Lord God Almighty

who's gonna allow you to live in houses you didn't build and drink out of wells you didn't dig. That's the point. And if you fight them on that, you want you're refusing to trust because you are buying a lie. And the biggest lie of the enemy is say, how dare he say that? He just wants money for the church.

That's what the Bible says we should be doing. Christians should be giving to the church. Why would that be the problem? That's actually the command.

All churches care about is money. No. Most Christians only care about money, and that's why churches have to talk about money.

You realize if everyone in this room, the cultures of a Christian, actually did your first fruits and gave what God really asked of you, we wouldn't even have a payment on this building right now. It would be paid for.

Did you know that they did a survey that every born again, confessing Christian, if they all actually gave just 10% to the whole world, every church and every ministry budget on this planet would be funded 15 fold. The problem with the kingdom moving forward is not God's not showing up. It's that we're not following Him

because we're listening to the lie. And we've lost the battle before it began because we're losing the battle in here. And what does that lead to?

It leads to the second thing, which is actually the first thing too. They go hand in hand. It's like chicken and egg. We gotta understand the battle begins in the mind. We gotta win that. And then we have to really embrace that the battle belongs to the Lord.

The battle belongs to the Lord. Let's keep reading. Verse 33. Finish this story up. He says, you refuse to trust Lord your God. And then look what he says, who goes before you looking for the best places to camp, guiding you by a pillar of fire by night, pillar cloud by day. God consistently takes care of you, and you freak out and don't trust him.

And he goes, when the Lord heard you complaining, you're whining, he became very angry. He solemnly swore not one of that you from this wicked generation will live to see the next, see the good land that I swore to give to your ancestors, except Caleb, son of Jephunah. Remember Caleb? Remember him.

Anak, descendants, walls, warriors, hill country, Caleb. You got that? Because at the end, it's gonna be awesome. He goes, he will see this land because he has followed the Lord completely.

Meaning, he won the battle of the mind. He committed that the battle belongs to the Lord. Matter of fact, when Caleb was reporting in in Numbers, when they came back, they started complaining. Caleb's attitude was basically, this is the dumbest thing ever. Why don't we don't take the land? A matter of fact, I don't even think we should have spent wasted our time doing this stupid scouting trip. God already told us it was ours. Why weren't taking it? And the crowd tried to kill him.

So he was pretty bold. He says, I will give to him and his descendants some of the very land he explored during his scouting. So he goes, he's gonna get the land he walked through. Remember that. And the Lord was also angry with me because of you. Moses sounds a little bit passive aggressive there.

He said to me, Moses, not even you will enter the promised land. Instead, your assistant, Joshua son of Nun, I guess he had no parents, will lead the people into the land. Catch up.

Encourage him for he will lead Israel they as they take possession of it. I will give the land to your little ones, your innocent children. You were afraid they would be captured, but they're gonna be the ones who take it. As for you, now take the people, he said, and turn around now and go back through the wilderness towards the Red Sea. Go back the way you came. So he says, new plan.

You're not gonna get this win because of the whining. You gotta turn around. And look what they do. Then you confessed, we have sinned against the Lord. That sounds good. Right? They confessed. We sinned. They they admitted they're guilty. But then look what they do next.

We will go into the land and fight for it as the Lord our God has commanded us. So your men strapped on their weapons, thinking it would be easy to attack the hill country. But the Lord told me to tell you, don't attack, for I'm not with you. If you go ahead on your own, you'll be crushed by your enemies.

This is what I told you, but you wouldn't listen. Instead, you again rebelled against the Lord's command and arrogantly went into the hill country to fight. But the Amorites who lived there came out against you like a swarm of beasts. So it's those hill country Amorites, the the the sins of Anak. They did what they were originally afraid of. They chased and battered you all the way from Serah to Hormah. Basically, they chased you, beat you up back to where I told you to go in the first place.

He goes, then you returned and wept before the Lord, but he refused to listen, so you stayed there at Kadesh for a long time. So think about this. Look what they just did. They lost the battle in the mind,

and then when they actually did say, okay. We're wrong, they refused to understand that the battle belongs to the Lord. So they tried to go in their own strength and do it. Even they said, alright. Now we'll listen to you. But you realize what they're listening to was like two statements ago.

We're gonna listen to you by ignoring the most immediate command. We're gonna go back to the command before. So, yeah, they felt guilty, but they didn't really repent. They felt guilty, but they still what they were afraid of, they were more afraid of the consequence

than they were of the Lord and the and the trust of the Lord. They had more fear of what God said the consequence would be than than the actual command and faithfulness to the Lord himself, which was their problem in the first place. They they were more afraid of the problems than the consequence, which would have been victory.

And so now they're gonna go fight, and they tried to fight. But guess what they did wrong? They fought without the lord with them. They fought in their own strength. They tried to do it on their own. Now you think that sounds kind of stupid. Why would they turn around and do that when they're afraid, but this is us. Remember, we do the same thing all the time. It's like when you finally realize you've been convicted of something. Like some of you when I just talked about money, some of you just got massive Holy Spirit conviction. And you do one of three things. You're gonna absolutely truly surrender.

You're gonna or you're gonna get mad, walk out here and ignore me, and do what you're still gonna do, and just keep wandering.

Or you're gonna actually say, I'm gonna do the right thing now. I'm sorry. I'm gonna do it. But you're gonna do it with an attitude that says, I'll just give from what's left over. I'll force myself to do it. I don't really get it. I'm mad. I just feel like that. I don't wanna be wrong before God, and you're gonna try to force yourself to honor God with your money in your own strength.

And that's the real problem. You realize they have the same problem going both directions. When they turned around and wouldn't fight, and when they turned around and fought, you realize nothing had changed in them. The direction they ran changed, but they had the exact same problem.

Running away from the fight is because they thought they had to win on their own, in their own strength. Running back into the fight after they realized God said this isn't gonna work, guess how they ran into the fight? Without the Lord. They did it in their own, come on, their own strength.

That was the problem the whole time. Both directions, they forgot the battle belongs to the lord. Both ways,

they were just trying to make. So doing the wrong thing was because they thought it was in their own strength, and then trying to do what what at one point was the right thing was trying to do it in their own strength.

That's our problem. We bounce back and forth. We either look at what God asked us to do, and that's too big of a problem, and you sit in your tent and you whine. He must hate me to ask me to do this because you forgot. Wherever he asked you to go, if you go, he goes with you. And you have him and his strength.

Then when you feel guilty, we just lie like in any relationship, we'll sit there and go, I'm so sorry. Feel so bad. And then we make these I'm never gonna do that again. And then we go, you know what else I'm gonna do? I'm gonna do this and this and this and this. And it works for a while, but we never really changed our heart. We never really surrendered to it. We just felt bad that we got caught, and we didn't want the other thing to happen. So so so we we we try to fight our way through, rather than a true heart change and a true trust of God, we try to force ourselves to do something and you will fail.

Hence why the God says giving should be first fruits. He's not trying to hate you. He's trying to give you a victory. And here's the problem. Either way, when we see that, we listen to the lies. We start losing the battle in the head. But then we also

lose the battle literally because we try to do it in our own strength. We forget that the battle belongs to the Lord. So yeah, God takes us to these borders and says, there's a place I want you to go, and over there is a great place. It's a blessed place. But then we see the battle in front of us, and we chicken out,

and we can't take it, and we don't know what to do. And here's the problem, guys, when you're right there and you feel like you've got nothing left, I can't believe God's asking me to go through this, I can't believe he's making me face this, In that moment, do you realize you are this close to winning? This close.

So close to victory. And that is almost every time we chicken out. And then when we feel bad about it, we go, alright, I did it wrong. We try to run back and do the right thing still on our own. We are afraid of doing it on our own strength,

and then we go back and try to do it on our own strength. And you know the truth is you're right. If you what they're afraid of wouldn't work. But God's not asking you to do it that way. He's not asking you to do these things in your own strength.

He's asking you to plant your feet in the truth of who he is and his love and then follow him.

And the consequence, which is still the consequence for us today, there are certain blessings and there are certain places God wants you to go and experience that if you don't listen, you'll never get it. You'll never get it back. You will wander.

Don't get me wrong. This passage, a lot of people think Canaan represents heaven. So the the people that he rejected, basically, you're going to hell. You're not you're not my believer. That's not true. Canaan doesn't represent heaven. The promised land doesn't represent heaven.

It represents our calling to be a part of his kingdom work in this world. It represents the places he wants our life to go on this planet.

It represents us as partnering with him and trusting him. Because guess what they're supposed to do by taking the promise line? It was supposed to establish nation of Israel, which God was gonna show the world that these whiny little people that are not that powerful are now a nation that God supernaturally protects.

It shows there's a God. And then through that, he was gonna bring the Messiah, can save the whole world. He invited them to be a part of his kingdom work and what he was doing to have the blessing of being a part of what God was gonna do for the whole world, and their fears and their distrust and their and their whining

led to wandering instead of being a part of that. And here's the deal, though, but he still loved them, and he still took care of them. Look what it says. The last go to chapter two, couple verses here. Says, when we turned around and headed back across the wilderness towards the Red Sea, just as the Lord had instructed me,

and we wandered around in the region of Mount Seir for a long time. Then at last the Lord said to me, you have been wandering around in the hill country long enough. He goes, turn to the North. Turn to the North. True north. You realize the whole forty years they wandered, God was leading them.

Do you realize God supernaturally fed them and gave them water and took care of them that entire time? He didn't desert them. But because of their refusal to win the battle in the mind and embrace that the battle belongs to the Lord and move into that, they never got there. They just wandered. And I think we I'll be honest.

I believe there's a lot of us sitting in this room that that describes your life right now. You believe in Jesus. You know He loves you. You're sitting here. And God is taking care of you. But you're wandering in the wilderness. You are not going to the place He's asked you to go to be a part of His kingdom.

You're just not. And you're going to spend your entire life wandering and never experience the very victory, the very win that He wanted for you to life. And you're going to miss it. You're going to miss it. Because He is there and He does love you. Don't confuse God's grace with God's will, people.

You're sitting in His grace but you might not be trusting His will. Amen?

Because look, what does it really mean to win the battle of the mind and understand that the battle belongs to the Lord? I told you, remember this guy Caleb? Well, I want to look at him. But I want to give you another statement my dad, another old soldier, would tell me.

Especially when I'd be like fighting with my sister. She'd hit me first, I hit her back. He goes, Don't hit your sister. Well, she did it first. And you know what he'd say? When you become what you're fighting, why are you fighting? And he told me a story about when he was in Korea.

He was near the front lines. Was in his tent, couldn't sleep one night, walked around and he saw this like teenager that was in the village nearby that would come and offer

to do their laundry and stuff. He saw him wandering around this camp with a satchel. He goes, that ain't right. So he went and tackled him. Turned out the satchel was full of explosives. Turned out this kid was an operative from the Chinese army, and he's looking to kill somebody.

So the next day, the MPs came to take him to Seoul Created, process them, question them. And then my dad,

the very next day, got a commendation, which he thought, great. I got a medal. That's nice. But what he really liked is the commanding officer says, you know what? Here's a three day pass to go to Seoul. Let's go to a hotel, stay, get get get a hot shower. He'd be out of the combat for the first time in like two years.

And then he could go do that, so he was excited. So he left the next day. He got a mile outside of the camp, and on the side of the road, he saw this kid strung up hung in a tree. The United States military personnel that took him just killed him. My dad said that broke his heart. The inconsistency. He said, We're here

to stand against stuff like that. We're not here to do stuff like that. And that's when he would say, Son, if you become what you're fighting, then why are you fighting? How many of us in this room just be honest in your heart.

The answer for your life is the same answers that all of your non Christian friends and family and neighbors have. You fight for the same things. You do the same things. You want you just sprinkle Jesus on top of it. It says we're in a spiritual war here, guys. And if we act like the enemy, then there is no fight, is there?

And we lose the power. We don't go to the Promised Land. We don't take anyone with us, and we just wander, go through the motions. But fortunately, the real lesson of the old soldier wasn't my dad's stories, it was Caleb. If you turn, we're gonna jump five more years into the future. Joshua chapter 14. So Caleb

was honorable. He said we shouldn't do this. He ends up living forty years in the wilderness. And then the five years when they go in the land, he helps Joshua and the people fight and clear all the land. But the one place that hasn't been cleared yet is his. So he shows up and talks to Joshua.

And here's what he says. A delegation from the tribe of Judah led by Caleb, son of Japunah, the Kenizzite, came to Joshua at Gilgal. Caleb said to Josh, remember what the Lord said to Moses, the man of God, about you and me when we were at Kadesh Barnea?

I was 40 years old when Moses, the servant of the Lord, sent me from Kadesh Barnea to explore the land of Canaan. I returned and gave an honest report, but my brothers who went with me frightened the people from entering the promised land. For my part, I wholeheartedly followed the Lord, my God. I won the battle of the mine, I clung to the fact that the battle belongs to the Lord. I didn't whine,

even when everyone else made us lose.

So that day Moses solemnly promised me the land of Canaan on which you were just walking will be your grant of land and that of your descendants forever because you wholeheartedly followed the Lord my God. Now as you can see, the Lord has kept me alive and well as he promised for all these forty five years since Moses made this promise. Forty five years later, forty years that he shouldn't have had to been a part of it because it was everybody else is why he had to go do it. Wouldn't that be a big reason to whine? And then five years of helping him clear the land and not his, wouldn't you think it would even be responsible? Hey. I get it. I sat here for forty years. Can we go take my land first? No. He helped every other people tribe get their land first.

Spent five years fighting. He goes, today I am 85 years old. And I am as strong now as I was when Moses sent me on that journey, and I can still travel and fight as well as I could then. So here's what he asked.

Give me the hill country that the Lord promised me. You'll remember here we go. Told you it's all gonna come together. You'll remember as scouts, we found the descendants of Anak living there in great walled towns. Which land was his that he walked through and saw? The land that was the scariest.

The land that made the it's a forty five years ago go, nope. We're not gonna do it. Though and then when they decided to try, that's the land that wiped out the entire army of Israel.

And now he's saying, as an 85 year old man, I wanna just take my clan, not even the whole army. I've helped you. Just let me go, and I wanna go take my land. The last piece left. The piece that scared the snot out of everybody else. And he says this. He goes, I will drive them out of the land just as the Lord said.

And I love that Joshua says, go for it. And he gave him Hebron, verse 13. And then verse 14, I love these understatements in scripture. It simply says, Hebron still belongs to the descendants of Caleb, son of Japuna, the Kenizzite, because he wholeheartedly followed the Lord. An 85 year old man with just his clan,

forty five years after they panicked and freaked out, took just his clan and went and took the very land that they couldn't beat, that they were afraid of, that did all of that, and he did it. Why? Because he relied wholly on the Lord. It means he won the battle that began in the brain, and he chose to embrace

and understand and live his life with the idea that the battle belongs to the Lord. All those things you're afraid of trusting God with is because you think you have to win the battle. You don't. The battle belongs to the Lord. It means we just step out. We plant our feet like Cap said, and we move forward into truth.

And that's what we need to do. So how do we rally ourselves? I think we've missed out. Most of us have gotten so bummed out in the last year that we've forgotten, and some of us have never known that you know what worship is? Worship is our weapon. Worship is our battle cry. I don't understand men

that say, I don't like to sing. You're like acting like a soldier that's about to go into the greatest battle ever, and you're trying to lead your family and lead your life, and you're gonna go, I'm not gonna do the battle cry.

You're walking into the battle already beat. All because you don't like a song, and it really is because you don't trust God. We speak truth to the lie when we stand,

and we worship God, and we shout out the truth to who he is, and we declare who he is. And that is our battle cry. You know what happens when we do that? We get in the kitchen of the enemy, and the enemy realizes he's the loser, and we're the winner, and we have the victory, and we don't have to hang our head low and mope.

We send him running. We send him terrified, and that's what we're called to do. So stand up with me, cause we're gonna close with a song we sung before. It's called the battle belongs.

And the words of this song, shout them like you mean them, because they really define what we just talked about. Some of the lines say this, when all I see is the battle, he sees the victory. When all I see is the mountain, he sees the mountain moved. When all I see is a cross, he sees the empty tomb.

So when I fight, I will fight on my knees with my hands out high because, oh Lord, the battle belongs to you.