Those Who Tremble at His Word, Part 1

Sharon Hardy Knotts: Let's turn, if you will, to Exodus, chapter 32. Today, many churches across the nation have called for a day of fasting and prayer on behalf of America, the condition of our nation. Amen. And we have chosen to join them today, and we're going to have the church will be open until 3:00 for those who want to stay and pray here, and those of you who need to get home, you can join us in the spirit. Amen. And pray at home. But we're going to get a word of the Lord to prepare our hearts. Is that okay? Let's go to Exodus, chapter 32 and look at verse seven. And the Lord said on to Moses, go get you down for your people, which you brought out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made them a molten calf and have worshipped it and have sacrificed there unto and said, these be our gods, oh Israel, which have brought you up out of the land of Egypt. And the Lord said on to Moses, I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Now, therefore, let me alone that my wrath may wax hot against them and that I may consume them. And I drop down to verse 11. And Moses besought the Lord his God and said, Lord, why does your wrath wax hot against your people, which you have brought out of the land of Egypt? He's letting them know it wasn't me, it was you. You not only brought them out of the land of Egypt, but you did it with great power and with a mighty hand. Wherefore should the Egyptians speak and say, for mischief did he bring them out to slay them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth? So, Moses said, turn from your fierce wrath and repent of this evil against your people. And remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. He didn't say Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He was very, very specific. And Israel, you said they would be a nation. Israel, thy servants to whom you swore by your own self and said on to them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven. And all this land that I've spoken of will I give on to your seed, and they shall inherit it forever. And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do to his people. Oh, the power of intercession. Moses said, now God, come let us reason together. If you kill these people, what are the Egyptians going to say? You brought them out in the wilderness just to kill them and to slay them. Yeah, we made them slaves, but at least they were living. At least they had their husbands, their wives, their children, their grandchildren. They did have a life. It wasn't the best life by any means. It was a slavery life, but they had their life, and you brought them out in this wilderness just to kill them all. Moses said, that's what they're going to say, God. And then he went another step, and he said, remember, remember your covenant. Remember what you promised Abraham when you brought him out of the land of the Chaldees and you said, go to a land which I will show you, and under you and your seed will I give this land, and your people will be as it were the stars of heaven. He told Abraham and it's the sand upon the seashore. You will be a great nation, and out of you will come kings. And by you, all the families of the whole entire earth will be blessed. Remember what you said, God, and you swore it, and you swore it by yourself because there was none greater.
R. G. Hardy: That's right.
Sharon Hardy Knotts: That's what it says in Hebrews. When God swore to Abraham he could find nobody greater, so he swore by himself. Amen. He said, what are you going to do, God, about this? He said, God, repent. Now, we see a very good illustration of what the word repent means. It means to change your mind and change your course. You have a change of mind, a change of heart, and then you follow through with a change of action. Amen. He said, repent. Don't do this. And the Lord changed his mind because one man stood between the people who had greatly sinned. I mean they had insulted God in the worst possible way. Yeah, look at our golden calf, which we just made ourselves. This calf brought us out of Egypt. But Moses stood in the gap and said, God, have mercy. Do it because, first of all, you swore and you can't go back on your word. God said through David in Psalm, I believe it's 89, my covenant will I not break, neither will I alter the words going out of my mouth. And the covenant that God made with Abraham was unilateral, meaning one-sided. God said, I will do this. I will make of your seed a great nation. And no matter how wicked or ungodly they became throughout their entire history, God had to keep the covenant that he made with Abraham. Oh yeah, they suffered the consequences. They didn't get away with nothing. But God never totally destroyed them because of his covenant. So, Moses we see here is a great intercessor. Now, he's going to have to do this more than once. But let's turn to another very specific time in the book of Numbers and chapter 14:11, a disaster which is equal in its ramifications to what we just saw with the making of the golden calf. And the Lord said on to Moses, how long will this people provoke me? And how long will it be before they believe me? For all the signs which I've shown among them, I will smite them with pestilence, and I will disinherit them. Here he goes again. Disown and disinherit them and will make of you a greater nation and mightier than they. And Moses said on to the Lord, then the Egyptians shall hear it. For you brought up this people in your might from among them, and they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land. For they have heard that the Lord are among this people, and you, Lord, are seen face to face. And that the cloud stands over them and that you go before them by day and in the pillar of a cloud and in a pillar of fire by night. Word has spread about what a great God you are. And now if you kill all this people as one man, then the nations which heard the fame of you will speak saying, because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land which he swore on to them, therefore he has slain them in the wilderness. And now I beseech you, let the power of my Lord be great according as you have spoken saying, the Lord is longsuffering and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children under the third and fourth generation. Pardon, I beseech you, the iniquity of this people according under the greatness of your mercy. And as you have forgiven this people from Egypt even until now. And the Lord said, I have pardoned according to your word. According to your word, Moses. Now, this particular incident is the result of one of the most tragic incidents in the entire Bible. One of the saddest chapters in the Bible is Numbers 13. And what had happened is Moses had sent in the 12 spies into the land to spy out the land, someone from every one of the 12 tribes. And he said, I want you to go spy out the land, look at the lay of the land, the topography, check it out. Uh what are the cities like? Are they walled cities? What are the crops like? You know, is it wooded or is there farmland there? What about the people? Are they mighty people? Are they armed? Are they strong? So, he sent in the 12 spies, and when they came back, they came back with evidence that it was the land that God said to Abraham flowing with milk and honey. They had one cluster of grapes that was so huge they hung it on a pole and it took two men to carry it. Imagine what the Israelites there in the wilderness surrounded by a bunch of dirt, sand, rocks saw this great cluster of grapes when it they must have thought to themselves, wow, this land must be something else. But their expectation of good was short-lived because 10 spies just began to go on a rant about how scary the people were. Amen. The Bible says gave them an evil report. They said, we saw giants in the land, men of great stature. Listen to this, who could eat us up? And said, when we saw them, we were as grasshoppers in our sight. So, then we were as grasshoppers in their sight. Oh, I tell you I could stop here and preach. But I don't have time. But I just want to throw this out there. However you see yourself, you project yourself, and your adversary sees yourself that way. If you're weak and you're doubtful and unbelieving and you're afraid and you're intimidated, you put off those vibes and the Satan he sees it and so he takes advantage of you. And so this was their evil report. Yeah, yeah, it does flow with milk and honey. It it's beautiful. It's lush. It's fertile. Look at these grapes, folks. You should have seen some of the other things. We just couldn't bring everything back with us. Yes, it is a land that is lush and fertile and beautiful. The cities are walled. The people are strong and the giants are there. And they will eat us up if we try to go into that land. And when they told the people this, the people just fell apart. They began to cry and and yell and scream and moan, and they just melted down. Now, Joshua and Caleb tried to diffuse this situation. And Caleb said, oh, no, no, no. Let us go up at once. Let us go up now. Let's not hesitate. Let us go in and possess the land for we are well able to take it because here is the difference. The Lord is with us. Jehovah is with us. The God who sent the plagues on the Egyptians that caused them to let us go, that God is still with us. The God who opened up the Red Sea and let us march over on dry ground. The Lord is with us. The Lord that then closed it and drowned Pharaoh and his armies in that Red Sea, the Lord is with us. And then the 10 men yelled out again, we are not able for they are stronger than we are. And Caleb said, but the Lord God Almighty is with us, and he promised us that he would give us the land. He said he would give us the land. But you know the negative comments of those 10 men. Their fear and their unbelief damaged the people. And they cried all night long. And they murmured against Moses and Aaron. We will read that back up to verse one. And all the congregation lifted up their voice and cried, and the people wept that night. And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron, and the whole congregation said on to them, would God that we had died in the land of Egypt? Or would God we had died in this wilderness? And wherefore has the Lord brought us into this land to fall by the sword that our wives and our children should be a prey? Were it not better for us to return into Egypt? And they said one to another, let us make a captain and let us return to Egypt. Now, I can just feel God's blood pressure going up. Oh, we would have been better off if we would have just died in Egypt. Or we would have been better off as soon as we got here that God just killed us all, got it over with. And you know, we just need to go back to Egypt. That's what we need to do. We need to go back to Egypt. Let's right now, let's elect us a captain to take us back. I'd like to ask one question. How were they going to get back over the Red Sea? Moses had the rod of God. Moses was anointed and his brother Aaron. Moses is the one that stood on the banks of the Red Sea and held the rod up and the waters parted. And he held it up until the children of Israel had gone over. So, if they got themselves a captain, how were they going to get back over the Red Sea? When they said this, let's get us a captain and go back to Egypt, Joshua and Caleb tore off their robes. You know, and that's a sign of absolute total desperation. You're pleading with people. And they said, it's an exceeding good land. And if the Lord delight in us, he will bring us into the land. Don't be afraid of the people. And this is what Caleb said, they are our bread. Who's going to be doing the eating now? They will be our bread. We will eat them like bread. Amen. Because the Lord is with us. And you know what happened when he said that? The people picked up stones and they were ready to stone Caleb and Joshua, ready to stone them. And they would have done it. They would have stoned them, but just at that point the glory of God came down in front of the tabernacle. And I think that would stop you dead in your tracks. The glory came down, and here you are with that stone. Amen. And that's when God said, Moses, get out of the way. I 'm going to kill them all. I'm going to kill every one of them. And he would have. But Moses interceded again. Oh, the power of intercession. God chose Moses to be their leader and their captain and their superhero because Moses was the right person. He had 40 years of training in Egypt in the ways of the Egyptians so he could understand Pharaoh, but he had 40 years on the backside of the mountain where he got training from God. And he was the right one. He was their hero. But God also, I believe, chose him because he knew that Moses would be an intercessor. And those people were a stiff-necked people. And they were going to need an intercessor. There's one time in one of these journeys where God said, these people have done provoked me 10 times. God was counting. I don't know what that's where the saying came from. Count to 10. When you get angry, count to 10. It may have come from that. But God said, these people have provoked me 10 times. And it was only the intercession of God's servant Moses that God did not kill them all in the wilderness. Let's read about another great intercessor in the book of Ezra. Let's turn to Ezra, chapter nine. I'm bringing these messages and these examples to us so that today when we have the time of prayer for America, we will understand how we should be interceding. Amen. So, in the book of Ezra, chapter nine, let's look at verse one. Now, when these things were done, the princes came to me saying, the people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the people of the lands doing according to their abominations, even of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites, all wicked people. For they, meaning the Israelites, have taken of their daughters for themselves and for their sons so that the holy seed, the holy seed, have mingled themselves with the people of those lands. Yea, the hand of the princes and rulers has been chief in this trespass. Wow. The leaders, the princes of the Israelites have been chief in this sin. Ezra is speaking, and when I heard this thing, I rent my garment and my mantle and plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard and sat down astonished. Then were assembled on to me every one that trembled at the words of the God of Israel because of the transgression of those that had been carried away. And I sat astonished until the evening sacrifice. This took place while the children of Israel were in captivity in the land of Babylon. The kings had come, Nebuchadnezzar, and then after that we had the uh Assyrian kings, we had the Persian kings, and the kings of the Persians and the Medes. Remember that God had prophesied through Jeremiah and said, Judah, your time is up. Now, consider this. Israel, the 10 northern tribes had already gone into captivity 150 years before. But Judah, of the two tribes, the southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin, had not because they did have some very good kings, such as Hezekiah. Whereas the northern kingdom had no good kings. They had some of the worst ones you ever heard of like Jezebel and Ahab. And so now, even though they have gotten by down here in the southern two tribes, they've gotten by for 150 years, but they also now have fallen into the same sins as their sister in the north. And time is up. And God prophesied through Jeremiah, you're going into captivity. You are going to Babylon. You're going into captivity and you're going to be in captivity for 70 years. God was very specific. Amen. When you're a real prophet of God, you're not afraid to tell the specifics. Amen. Sometimes it doesn't give specifics and he just gives generalizations, but sometimes he's very specific. Amen. And time will tell whether or not it was God or whether it was the prophet. Amen. And so he had prophesied, you're going into captivity for 70 years, and now the 70 years were up. And now God used a pagan king, King Cyrus. He used him, and God put it on this man's heart. Now, this man was an idolater. He did not serve Jehovah. But he was king at this time, and God put it on his heart to allow a group of the Israelites to return back to Israel, to Jerusalem, and rebuild the temple of God that had been destroyed by his predecessor Nebuchadnezzar.