Hindsight 2020

Doomed to Repeat  •  Sermon  •  Submitted
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God tests our hearts through suffering as well as through abundance. This is why we must seek God wholeheartedly in good times and bad.

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Transcript

Intro

Have you ever watched a movie or a TV show that started out in the first scene with some climactic event happening? A big fight, a car chase, or an epic showdown. I must watch too many action movies.
But you watch and you almost feel like you walked into a scene without any set up to how you got there.
But then it cuts to another scene and it will say something like “24 hours earlier”. So you know now that this big event is going to take place in the movie, and now you are going to see the details of how it happened.
It is like telling the story in reverse. And that is exactly what we have been doing that last couple of weeks as we have been going through this message series “Doomed to Repeat”.
Looking at Israel’s journey from exile to the promised land, but in reverse.
We are asking the question, why does it seem like regardless of our best intentions, do we find it so hard change?
Why is it that despite our desire for something better, do we continue to make the same mistake, hold on to the same habits, and participate in the same sin that we said we were done with?
Are we “Doomed to Repeat” the mistakes and sins of the past? Is there no hope for the future?
Each week we have been looking at what we can learn from Israel’s repeated failures and disobedience so we don’t have to be “Doomed to Repeat” our past.
God’s presence
Choosing life

Power in the Text

This morning we are starting our 3rd part to this series again in Deuteronomy but this time, earlier in the book in Deuteronomy 8.
Now just a refresher for everyone. At this point in the story we see Moses’ time as their leader is coming to an end and Joshua’s is about to start as he leads them into the promised land.
Deuteronomy was Moses last bit of instruction for the generation of Israelites who were either children, teens, or not even born yet when the events at Mt. Sinai took place. So he wanted to make sure they knew what their fathers and grandfathers were instructed to do, yet failed resulting in the 40 years of wandering.
At this point in the book, Moses is calling them to remember the instruction God is giving, and to remember the failure of the previous generation so they would not be doomed to repeat those same mistakes.
Deuteronomy 8:1-5 NLT “Be careful to obey all the commands I am giving you today. Then you will live and multiply, and you will enter and occupy the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors. 2 Remember how the Lord your God led you through the wilderness for these forty years, humbling you and testing you to prove your character, and to find out whether or not you would obey his commands. 3 Yes, he humbled you by letting you go hungry and then feeding you with manna, a food previously unknown to you and your ancestors. He did it to teach you that people do not live by bread alone; rather, we live by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. 4 For all these forty years your clothes didn’t wear out, and your feet didn’t blister or swell. 5 Think about it: Just as a parent disciplines a child, the Lord your God disciplines you for your own good.
God doesn’t mince words here. He is being straight with them in that their wandering, their humbling circumstances, frankly their suffering was a test.
He wanted them to know that what they went through wasn’t in vain. It wasn’t for no reason. Their struggle, though it was brought on by those who came before them through no fault of their own, was designed to reveal what they were made of.
Deuteronomy 8:2 NLT 2 Remember how the Lord your God led you through the wilderness for these forty years, humbling you and testing you to prove your character, and to find out whether or not you would obey his commands.
Squeeze Orange Juice
When we are squeezed, inevitably what we are made of will come out. If it is an orange, orange juice comes out.
When you and I are squeezed by suffering, it will always reveal what is on the inside. If you were squeezed emotionally, relationally, financially, even physically what would come out? If you trust God...
praise
trust
worship
peace
If we don’t trust God
complaining
whining
hopelessness comes out
Some of us look at our circumstances and believe that if we are suffering that we are somehow being punished. And this is because we have confused the difference between the discipline of God and the punishment of God.
Jesus took our punishment once and for all on the cross so that no one who calls him savior and Lord would have to be subjected to it.
That doesn’t mean that God can’t use our suffering to discipline us, not necessarily for something we have done, but to discipline us like an athlete disciplines their body for endurance.
Deuteronomy 8:5 NLT 5 Think about it: Just as a parent disciplines a child, the Lord your God disciplines you for your own good.
Discipline in the Bible rarely means punishment, it usually means “training”.
Jesus himself learned through suffering in Hebrews 5:8 NLT 8 Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered.
Hebrews 12:7-11 NLT 7 As you endure this divine discipline, remember that God is treating you as his own children. Who ever heard of a child who is never disciplined by its father? 8 If God doesn’t discipline you as he does all of his children, it means that you are illegitimate and are not really his children at all. 9 Since we respected our earthly fathers who disciplined us, shouldn’t we submit even more to the discipline of the Father of our spirits, and live forever?
10 For our earthly fathers disciplined us for a few years, doing the best they knew how. But God’s discipline is always good for us, so that we might share in his holiness. 11 No discipline is enjoyable while it is happening—it’s painful! But afterward there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way.
What we learn in the text is that when we are suffering, we can trust that God’s heart is to do whatever he does for our good. That was his intentions with Israel, and that is certainly his intentions with us.
But there is more to this than just suffering, yes God uses suffering to test us. But God also blesses us with abundance as we mentioned last week.
Deuteronomy 8:6-10 NLT 6 “So obey the commands of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and fearing him. 7 For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land of flowing streams and pools of water, with fountains and springs that gush out in the valleys and hills. 8 It is a land of wheat and barley; of grapevines, fig trees, and pomegranates; of olive oil and honey. 9 It is a land where food is plentiful and nothing is lacking. It is a land where iron is as common as stone, and copper is abundant in the hills. 10 When you have eaten your fill, be sure to praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you.
And you read this and you think, this is when they were the most blessed, when God was providing all this material abundance and more than they could need or ask for.
And it is true that God was blessing them in the abundance, but we can’t forget that in their suffering they were also being blessed equally as much.
food from heaven
clothes and shoes that did not wear out
feet did not blister
guided and directed their steps and was present among them.

Big Idea

This brings me to the big idea of my message and it is that If all we ever do is look for or focus on the abundance, then we won’t know how to navigate the suffering when it comes. And it will come.

Why it Matters

And this is a big deal, this matters a lot because it is failing to recognize this that leads to many being stuck, feeling like they are “doomed to repeat” the mistakes and sins of their past.
Because, think about it. When you are struggling or suffering, who do you look to for help? We lean into God when we are desperate for change, help, rescue, or peace.
But it seems so often that once we get those things, the things we leaned in to God so hard for, we forget the lessons we learn in our struggling.
Deuteronomy 8:11-20 NLT 11 “But that is the time to be careful! Beware that in your plenty you do not forget the Lord your God and disobey his commands, regulations, and decrees that I am giving you today. 12 For when you have become full and prosperous and have built fine homes to live in, 13 and when your flocks and herds have become very large and your silver and gold have multiplied along with everything else, be careful! 14 Do not become proud at that time and forget the Lord your God, who rescued you from slavery in the land of Egypt. 15 Do not forget that he led you through the great and terrifying wilderness with its poisonous snakes and scorpions, where it was so hot and dry. He gave you water from the rock! 16 He fed you with manna in the wilderness, a food unknown to your ancestors. He did this to humble you and test you for your own good. 17 He did all this so you would never say to yourself, ‘I have achieved this wealth with my own strength and energy.’ 18 Remember the Lord your God. He is the one who gives you power to be successful, in order to fulfill the covenant he confirmed to your ancestors with an oath.
19 “But I assure you of this: If you ever forget the Lord your God and follow other gods, worshiping and bowing down to them, you will certainly be destroyed. 20 Just as the Lord has destroyed other nations in your path, you also will be destroyed if you refuse to obey the Lord your God.
Moses knew that the transition from the desert to the bountiful promised land was about to happen, and he is warning God’s people not to become spiritually apathetic when they are out of the desert and in a more comfortable place.
Similarly, when we are desperate for God’s presence in seasons of hardship, we may be more likely to engage faithfully with Bible study or to seek God wholeheartedly out of a sense of survival.
But when things become more comfortable, we also have a tendency to abandon spiritual disciplines, such as seeking the Lord through prayer and fasting. We need to heed this warning and make sure we remember what God has done so that we can remain faithful and hungry for him even when we are walking in abundance.

Application/Closing

This is how I believe we have to come the place we are as a country today. During the formative years of our colonization our forefathers, notice I am talking about those who came before the founding fathers. I am referring to the pilgrims who came to the Americas for religious freedom and a better life for themselves.
During those formative years there was a deep dependence on God to provide and protect. It was a dangerous venture they had set out on. And it was that dependency on God that ultimately blessed their people. But that blessing did not come without suffering.
From those early years of dependence to the founding fathers who knew the odds were stacked against them as they attempted to break away from British rule and control, depended on God to lead them to victory, and ultimately freedom.
And from generation to generation since then we have benefited from great blessings and abundance. But with those blessings came apathy. Apathy toward the God our forefathers depended so much upon.
Apathy that led the last several generations to forget who God is and what he has done. There has been this exodus away from Biblical truth and serving God that has led to much of the mess we see today.
Will God bring judgement on our nation? I don’t know. That isn’t for me to proclaim. I do believe that in the Old Testament when God brought judgment it was usually upon nations, but in the New Testament, in the age of Grace that we currently live in we don’t see God in the Bible doing that anymore.
Rather than bringing national judgement we see him dealing with the individual.
I don’t believe that God is going to hold you and I accountable for the godless actions of our nation, but I do believe that he will hold us accountable for our own actions. And for how we led our families during these times.
And I also believe that there are dark days ahead whether we want to admit it or not. But even in the darkness, God can bless us. We don’t have to be doomed to repeat our past or the things we see going on around us.
We acknowledge the past. Like Israel, we learn from it. But we allow God to use whatever he asks us to walk through in order to train us to be everything he needs us to be whether that means in seasons of abundance. Or in seasons of suffering.
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