Prepared to Do Battle

I love that song, and especially that third chorus. Two wonders. I confess.

Thank you. The wonder of his redeeming love and my unworthiness. Boy, being 71 is no fun.

All right. The title of my message is Prepared to Do Battle, and I'm dedicating this message to John, Michael, Jim, and Chad, wherever you guys are in there, because you guys will be graduating within the month, I'm told. And so this message is all about when you leave Pure Life Ministries, okay? When you leave Pure Life, what are you looking at? We're going to be in Deuteronomy 6 and 7, and last week, Dustin gave that excellent message about how the Lord came to Moses and the powerful experience Moses had with the Lord in the cleft of the rock, and the invitation that was sent out to the people, come in and have this intimacy with me.

That was the invitation there. We know the story of the Jewish people that after years of slavery in the Egyptian house of bondage, God led them into the wilderness. For what? To begin training them what it meant to walk with Him, what it meant to be a people free.

And now they're standing on the threshold of the promised land. You know, I don't know how familiar you are with the story, but for 40 years they wandered around, and then at the last month or so, they started—this great mass of people, a couple million people, I guess—started moving towards the Jordan River, and they camp on the other side of the promised land. And while they're there, they're getting prepared to move into Canaan.

But before they do anything, they need something. Moses has three sermons he's going to give to the people, and they need these sermons. They need these words.

That's what makes up the book of Deuteronomy, are these three sermons. Final words of Moses before he sends them into the promised land, and he goes on to be with the Lord. Moses, you know, when I hear some people talk about Moses and the law and all of that, it's as if he is the most dry, boring, tedious sort of person.

You know, just all he cares about is every minutiae of the law and stuff like that. No, that's Pharisees. That's the Pharisee rendition of Moses.

That is not what Moses was like. Moses, as we've already heard a little bit of, Moses walked with God. I mean, he was on the mountain with God.

He saw the figure of the Lord, and the pavement under him was as a sapphire that you could see was so like a clarity in it, like the heavens, it says. There's just no way to put into human language what it was like to see the Lord. And he used to speak face to face with the Lord.

And he was so full of the glory of God that they had to put a veil over him. When he gave these sermons, they were given with a mighty unction of the Holy Spirit. I mean, the word that came forth from Moses went into those people's hearts.

These weren't just dry, mechanical statutes and rules and, okay, and try to do this and do this and don't forget this. No, this was the power of God speaking to the people through Moses that day. And they needed it.

You know, they're getting ready to move into this mighty warfare. Now, if this was done like, you know, many carnal type preachers or whatever, carnal people, whatever, there would be a strategy. Well, we should have some, you know, committee meetings, and we need to come up with a game plan and goals and strategies, and we need to bring military leaders in and come up with a war plan and figure everything out.

No, you could boil down these three messages, these 34 chapters of Deuteronomy, get it right down to something very simple. Love the Lord your God, be completely devoted to him, and do not get involved with the idols. It's really that simple.

The message that comes forth through the book of Deuteronomy is stated in different ways and different forms, but it really comes down to that all the way through. Their situation is not a lot different than your situation, and as Nate was just sharing, I love that quote. I need to get that quote from you.

That was very good, that the Old Testament was a picture of what we experience in the spiritual battles we face, and, you know, it's an outward picture of it, and that is the situation that you're facing. You five guys, raise your hand, you five guys that will be graduating. One, two, three, four, five.

Okay, all right. Good to get faces with these names. I'm so glad.

Nice to meet you guys. I'm so glad you came to Pure Life Ministries. Um, you guys, you've spent years enslaved by the enemy.

Enslaved. Going to church, but enslaved. And you too were brought into the wilderness so that God could take you and set you aside, get you out from the domain of darkness that you've been in out there in the world, get you, set you aside where there's no enemies around, where you're in the presence of God, get you into the presence of God so you can be trained in how to go out and do warfare, because you are going to be leaving within a month.

Four of you will. One of you is not, is going to stay with us. But I want to tell you something.

You're going back into a pagan land full of powerful demonic entities bent on destroying you. I'm not going to make light of it. I'm not going to trivialize it.

I want you to understand what you are facing. And it's real. But there's other things too that are just as real as you've already heard.

Are you going to make it? Absolutely. Absolutely. I loved when Josh Rowan shared his testimony.

When was that? A month ago or something. He was sharing how he was all worried about going out preaching. Remember he told you guys that story, and he came to me with all his worries, and he was just fretting, like, I don't know, am I going to fall into sin? And he said that I burst out laughing.

And I said, don't worry, Josh, you'll be okay. Because I know, I knew he would be okay. And he was.

And you know, if you're walking with the Lord, greater is he that is in you than he that is in this world. You need to understand that, man. You've got to let him in.

But once he's in, and you are learning to walk with him in submission, greater is he. Greater is he. You don't have to go forward in the wrong kind of fear and trepidation.

You go forward in the fear of the Lord, as we're going to see here in just a second. And that is, yeah, you know what? That's just where I'm going to go right now. Look at verse 2, chapter 6, verse 2. That you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son's son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you all the days of your life, and that your days may be long.

You are going to make it, but you must fear Yahweh alone. You fear him, you need not fear man. You need not fear the devil.

You need not fear the world. You need not fear anything if you fear God. If you don't fear God, you better be afraid of those other things, because they're coming after you.

16 times in these three sermons, 16 times, Moses tells them to fear the Lord. To fear the Lord, 16 times in the book of Deuteronomy. I gave a message some years back at one of our conferences about the fear of the Lord.

And I said in that message, if George Barna took a poll of American Christians about what they most feared in life, I suspect it would be something like this. Number one, fear of suffering and death. Number two, fear of losing one's job or financial security.

Number three, fear of rejection or humiliation. Number four, fear of uncertainty of the future. Number five, fear of failure.

But where, oh, where is the fear of God? Where are the men of God who cry out, my flesh trembles for fear of you, and I am afraid of your judgments? I know what it is to fear the Lord. I know what it is. You know what, for me, I can tell you this.

He has dealt severely with me at times. Not nearly as severely as he could have. But he has dealt severely with me, and I thank him for it because after he was gone from the experience, I was left trembling.

You get dealt with by God a few times. You learn to fear him. Either that or you just harden your heart and you go the other direction.

Haven't you had enough of that? You've had enough of that, right? The dictionary defines fear as a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, whether the threat is real or imagined. And you know, I did a study on fear in the Bible some time back. And whether it's the Hebrew word or the Greek word, when you study out all this, just take all the times it talks about the fear of the Lord and set those aside and look at all the other occurrences of that word.

In every single time, it means that a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger. That's what fear means. And that's what it means in the Bible.

It's not this, man, it's like everything that's of the Lord in the Word of God, people have found a way to dumb it down to the most superficial and shallow comprehension of it. Fear means fear. It's not some cheap version of, well, we'll just call it reverence for God, you know, just don't cuss or something.

No, fear means to fear Him, but to fear Him in the right way. God put that distressing emotion inside of us so that we would know to protect ourselves and be careful about dangerous situations. And there is nothing more dangerous, man, than spiritual danger.

Because you're not talking about just your life on earth, you're talking about an eternity, forever and ever and ever. In chapter 5, the Lord just cries out, oh, that they had such a heart as this always to fear me and to keep all my commandments. You know, you cannot separate obedience from fear.

When it comes to Scripture, you can't separate the two. Or I should say, not so much Scripture, but dealing with the things of God. To fear God without responding in obedience shows that you have the wrong kind of fear.

You know, if you fear Him, but you're not obeying Him, what is that? Something's gone sideways. That's like the fear a child would have of a father who goes into rages or something, or, you know, Saddam Hussein's henchmen who walk around on eggshells around him. That isn't the kind of fear I'm talking about.

I never have to walk on eggshells around my God because I know He loves me. But likewise, to obey God without a proper fear of Him just means you're a religious rule keeper that you don't even know Him. You know, the obedience God wants is relational.

It begins with a relationship with Him, an interaction ongoing where you are talking to Him. He's talking to you. He's communicating with you.

You're communicating with Him. There is a knowledge, a growing knowledge of who He is. That's where obedience that will take you through comes from.

It doesn't come from a dry understanding of what this book says, and, oh, I'm going to try to do these things. No, you cannot get to first base in obeying the Lord in that kind of a way. You know, the problem we have in America is we have so overloaded ourselves with the world that we've squeezed God out, and He becomes very tiny.

And when God is tiny, His laws, His commandments are tiny. They're insignificant. We don't really pay attention to them.

And I suspect that's what happened with all you guys before you came here, right? You know, when you start thinking of the Lord like that, and He just becomes very minuscule, and the world becomes enormous, you can't walk with Him like that. It's not possible. It's not possible.

You're spending hours and hours every day immersing yourself in the spirit of the world, and you really think you have a life with God? You know, it's, in the church, there's such a lack of fear. You see it by all the sin that has just overrun the church. Pornography.

I just was hearing about this from someone. I can't, I think it was Josh Rowan, but I can't remember. But whoever it was, they were telling us about, they were meeting with this young women's group, and every single one of those young women, those girls, were into porn.

Christians! That's what the church has become. Divorce, same rate of divorce in the church, out of the church. Selfishness, the same.

Worldliness, the same. Pride, the same. Oh yeah, but we go to church on Sunday.

That is not the Christianity. Jesus Christ died for. So when you guys leave, you four of you, you must fear the Lord.

Walk out of here with the fear of the Lord very strong in your heart. The right kind of fear. Number two, you must serve Yahweh alone.

Look at verse four. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. This is the great Jewish Shema.

That's the first, how it opens up. It captures the weight and the gravity of this call that God is putting forth to his people. It means to hear him with the intention of obeying him.

Hear, O Israel, there is in Canaan a world teeming with idols. Teeming with idols. I mean, it's as if, I wonder, you know, if this may have even happened, but it was.

Moses doesn't go up to Mount Pisgah until after this, I believe. But anyway, I could just see him being on top of that mountain, looking out into the promised land. He's not allowed to go into.

And like in his mind's eye, like what happened with Jesus out in the wilderness. Remember that? Satan showed him all the kingdoms of the world. I just wonder if maybe Moses had some kind of vision or some kind of a sight.

And he sees all these villages and these thousands of groves or little places, shrines, where they set up these idols. This idolatry was a powerful, powerful thing in that time. Their belief, the group think in the world at that time was that every region had its own God.

Polytheism. That was entrenched in the cultures of the day. Everyone believed it, except the Jews.

And even those, even they struggled with that. Israel's survival hinged on understanding that God is one. He's one being.

He is the creator of all. He's not one amongst many. Now look at verses 14 and 15, because now he starts dealing with it a little more clearly.

Excuse me. You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you. For Yahweh your God in your midst is a jealous God.

Lest the anger of Yahweh your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth. Yikes. Here again, the word gods is used 40 times in the book of Deuteronomy.

40 times in these three sermons. I think the Lord wants to say something to the people. This is a big deal to the Lord.

A very big deal. You know, what are the first two commandments? To have no other gods before me. To do not make any idols.

The very first two commandments. Let me just say something about the ten commandments. You know, I don't know how true this is or how true it would have been with the other commandments, but I think this is true.

You know, in our mind, again, kind of the shallow sort of way of thinking of Moses and what he did and so on. We think, oh yeah, God told him what to put on these ten. Well, actually God wrote it down.

He didn't even have to write it himself. So he's just kind of like, you know, hearing these things. And yeah, I'll pass them along to the people, Lord.

No, no. These were ten powerful revelations. Now, I've had revelations of the Lord before.

Different kinds of revelations. You know, it's just like all I can tell you. I don't mean to make it sound spooky or super spiritual or something, but when you're walking with the Lord, he speaks to you.

That's all I can tell you. And so sexual idolatry. That came to me 40 years ago while I was in Bible school.

Sexual idolatry. No one ever even heard of such a concept at that time. Sexual idolatry is like it just came dropped in my heart.

Wow, that is what it is, isn't it, Lord? Because I had been thinking of it as sexual addiction because that was the big thing, you know, in psychology and all that stuff. And I thought, no, it just came to me. No, this is an idol that people have.

Sexual idolatry. I think I should write a book about that. What do you guys think? Yeah, well, that's a revelation.

So take every one of those ten commandments and every one of them, what I believe was a powerful revelation that came to Moses. Powerful. Okay, do not commit murder.

That's one of them. What is that? Number six, I think. Do not commit murder.

And I wonder if Moses just one day is just sitting there and the Lord brings back a memory from 40 years before. Or no, 80 years before at this point. But 40 from when he originally did the Ten Commandments.

But anyway, way back in his distant past, there was an Egyptian soldier beating one of the Jews. And Moses, 40 years old, powerful man at the time. And he just full of himself.

He attacks that Egyptian. I don't know how he killed him. But probably beat him to death with something.

I wonder if that just came over him. You know, a revelation. This is murder.

Do not commit murder. You know, now he had an experience with that. Maybe some of the other things he didn't.

But I think every one of those Ten Commandments was a revelation in itself. Do not commit adultery. And maybe he could just be in the place of a wife and her husband has been committing adultery with the neighbor's wife or something.

And he feels the brokenness, how shattered the wife is. And he feels what that other husband is going through. And so when he expresses to the people, do not commit adultery, it's done with a tremendous revelation of what God meant by that.

And the first two commandments are about idolatry. Because what is idolatry? Back then, like Nate read to us earlier, you see the typology of the Old Testament where things are played out in the outward. But these are things that we deal with in the inward life.

So idolatry in those days, just see the people gathered around. You know, these fertile cults, I'll get to this in a minute, but they were just horrid places, horrible places. And, you know, I think that Moses just came into that reality of how horrible and dark and demonic those places were.

So when he said these Ten Commandments, man, they were powerful. Those were powerful words from God to his people. All right, so anyway, you know, this was, these gods were behind all of this stuff.

And as I said, 40 times the gods are mentioned. When you're thinking about gods of the Old Testament, think about what Paul called principalities. So, you know, you would have a god for this region, his name is Baal.

And everyone is supposed to worship this, well, it may be a statue or something. The statue is nothing. But there is a powerful spiritual entity there.

And I think that people could feel the power of it. And that's what caused them to worship that demon god. And, you know, there was an atmosphere, a spiritual atmosphere.

I would like to think we have a spiritual atmosphere in this place. But it's a godly spiritual atmosphere here. But this would have been a demonic, powerful thing.

And, you know, when you go into that area, I think that it would be so overwhelming that you would want to fall on your face before that idol. So, you know, this is a big thing to the Lord because he knows he's sending his people out into this land where all this stuff is going on. And there's some reasons behind his concern.

The first I'm going to say is that there is a group think out there. You know, it was just common knowledge, so to speak. It was all falsehood, but it was commonly believed in all these gods of idolatry and stuff.

And the Lord knows that's got to be broken in my people. It's like evolution today. You go out in the world and try telling them about creationism, they scoff at you because it has been so... Our culture and our school system and all of it has been permeated with evolutionary teachings.

And so it would have been that same kind of thing. So the first thing, you know, about this is that the Lord had to protect them from this group think. There's a word that they use nowadays.

It's a German word called zeitgeist. And zeitgeist describes the invisible culture that moves beneath the surface of an age. The collective thinking of a generation.

And it shapes its values, desires, and ideologies. You guys see that, right? You see that out in our culture? It's powerful. It's a spiritual climate that comes through entertainment, politics, and social discourse.

And it's constantly feeding itself and strengthening itself and becoming increasingly more entrenched in the culture of whatever that culture is. The Lord knew the power of that thing. And so that was one reason he's warning them, don't get near these idols.

Because that culture is powerful. Also, you're participating with demons. I mean, Moses says it in Deuteronomy 32, and Paul would say it later in 1 Corinthians 10.

If you're worshiping an idol, you're worshiping a demon. That was these powerful demon gods. And you know, yeah, just the principalities and all that's involved with that.

Paul would say you cannot worship demons and worship God. And yet so many people try to do it. Another thing about it that the Lord was concerned about was the debauchery involved.

These were fertility cults. And that meant that basically every one of these worship centers, so to speak, were basically brothels. Okay, that's what they were.

And they had male and female prostitutes. And the way that they would engage in worship was to have sex. And, you know, just horrible, horrible, filthy, dirty, disgusting activities.

And, you know, what better way could Satan come up with to lure people into the worship of these things than to provide them something like that? To get the men going to the worship centers regularly. Powerful, very, very powerful. And lastly, and this is really the biggest deal, is the Lord knew that these demon gods would steal their affections.

God is calling himself a jealous God for a reason because he loves them and he wants them for himself. And that's why when people would turn away from God and give themselves over to idols, that's why he would become so fierce in his anger because it was a betrayal of the most intimate thing that he had with his people, their love, their affection. It was a complete betrayal of that.

So to allow those idols and that idolatry to remain in the land was basically planting seeds of destruction for the nation of Israel in the very promised land. No, they had to completely uproot and throw out those spiritual systems of these nations they would be displacing. This wasn't going to be just a military endeavor.

This was going to be a spiritual battle. All right, number three, you must love Yahweh alone. And not only must you love him, you must completely love him.

Look at verse five, you shall love the Lord, your God. You shall be utterly devoted to Yahweh with all your heart and all your soul and all your might. Every fiber of our being, that is the call.

Now, do we ever get there? I don't know. I know that I have a great love for the Lord, but I don't know that I can say that I have that level of love. But it's a call to constantly be growing and heading towards having that kind of affection for God that is real and is all-encompassing.

That's what God wants from us. That's what he gives to us. That's how he loves us.

And he expects the same, at least in the sense that he expects you to be taking that seriously and moving towards it. You're going into a land that is full of pagan worship. Back to you four guys again.

You are going back out into the world. I know you go to church. I know maybe you've got a great church.

Maybe you have a pastor who is on his face before God every day. Maybe you have a pastor who's a humble man of God and preaches the truth. I hope so.

I hope that's the kind of church you're going back to. Although in this day and age, odds aren't with you on that. But anyway, I hope that's what you're going to.

But even so, you're going to be out there working in that world, surrounded by people around you who are all idol worshippers. All of them. All of them in this same zeitgeist of the culture.

Everyone around you, practically. Even people calling themselves Christians. Most all of them are idolaters, giving their hearts to the things of the world.

God's jealousy is not interested in a half-hearted affection. He wants people who are all in. That's who he wants to spend eternity with.

You better have something more than just some religious rule-keeping going on in your life and believing certain doctrines or whatever it is. You better have a real life in God when you leave this place. John Wesley said, We think of what we love, but we do not love God.

Therefore, we think not of him. We have no pleasure in him. Nay, rather, as these thoughts are irksome to us, we drive them out as soon as we can and return to what we love to think about.

So that the world and the things of the world, what we shall eat and what we shall drink and what we shall put on, what we shall see, what we shall hear, what we shall gain, how we shall please our senses or our imagination, takes up all our time and engrosses all our thought. Don't be like that, guys. Come into a real love for God.

I'll tell you this. You've got to get to the place where you love the Lord at the same level that you have loved your idol, because you're going to be in a war out there. You're going to be in a war out there, and you better come to a place where you love God more than you love sexual sin and whatever other idols that you've had in the past.

That's what the Lord will bring you into if you're willing. You don't have to do it on your own, but you have to work with him, and he'll bring you into that. Okay, so we've been talking about our time here in the wilderness, all right? That's what we've been talking about so far here at Pure Life.

I want to switch gears. Let's flip to chapter 7, Deuteronomy 7, and this passage will be 17 to 24, and what we're going to look at now is actually going in to take the land. It was right for the Jews to be fearful.

It was right for them to be very concerned about what they were going into, and it was right for them to be afraid, because as I said, the land was full of these demon gods, and people totally devoted to them, and as we've already heard, it says right there in Deuteronomy 7, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you are out there waiting for you. You know, it's only going to be, what? Two or three weeks before they are standing before the mighty walls of Jericho. They better come in there with something.

Now, the thing is here, you know, and again, we've already heard this, but let's see it again. Verse 17, if you say in your heart, these nations are greater than I, how can I dispossess them? We can't allow ourselves to be dominated by fear. We have to go forward in courage and faith.

You know, and what I'll say to you guys is, if you look at things from the natural, and you look back at your lifestyle before you came here, yeah, you have every right to expect to go right back to it. You know, you have every right to fear that, that it would happen, except for one thing. And let me just say this first, that fretting over the future is a lot like fantasy.

You know, when you're fantasizing about something, God is not in your picture. I promise you. He's not there.

And you're creating this whole scenario in your mind of this thing you think you want to do or whatever. And God is not in that picture. And fear is like that.

When you start thinking about out in the future, and God's not in your picture, then you're going to be overwhelmed with fear. But I'm telling you that if you've been allowing the Lord to deal with you during your time here, if you've been responding to him as he's been coming to you, and like my wife was saying, when the conviction comes, if you've been responding to that, you can leave here with confidence. You can leave here with confidence that you will not go back.

I mean, for one thing, you guys hear testimonies in this place all the time. You're only hearing from the staff who live here. So I know in the back of your mind, you're thinking, well, sure, you live here on pure life grounds.

You know, what do you got to deal with? And there's some truth to that. But the only thing with that is there are hundreds of guys out there who are walking in victory with the Lord, who left here, graduated and left here. And you can too, and you should.

But here's like, I'm going to leave you four things. The first is, again, what you've already heard. If you will remember, if you will remember, look at verses 18 and 19, you shall remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt, the great trials that your eyes saw, the signs, the wonders, the mighty hand and the outstretched arm by which the Lord your God brought you out.

So will the Lord your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid. You know, I'm going to tell you that you need to remember what Egypt was like. Remember the misery of the slavery.

Keep that in your mind. How miserable it was. Don't just let your mind go to the flesh pots.

Forget the flesh pots, because there was a whole life of misery. Yeah, maybe you would have some cucumbers and leeks on occasion or something. But man, think of what your 24-7 was like.

Miserable. Remember that. But then remember how God set you free.

Remember that when you go forward. And think of all the victories you've already had while you're right here in this program. God's been doing a work inside you.

He's already been setting you free. He's been showing you things and teaching you things. And you can rest your confidence in that process.

The same power that broke the chains of bondage will drive out the nations before them, the Jews. But the same power will be there for you. That's what you're not maybe seeing when you're imagining leaving this place.

What he's done in the past, he'll do again in the future. Praise God. Praise God.

So don't let your feelings, your emotions determine your level of confidence. That's not where you get your confidence. You get your confidence from the Lord, from Him alone.

Secondly, you will leave here with confidence if you look to God for His help. And keep looking to Him. You can't just leave here that way.

You've got to maintain it. And maybe I haven't told you guys in a while. I can't remember.

But back when I used to be out preaching all the time, traveling all around the country and stuff, and I'd be running into graduates of the program. And I would ask them how they're doing. And many of them were doing well.

But many of them weren't. And every single time, because I would always do the same thing. If I asked them how they were doing, typically they'd drop their head.

They wouldn't want to look me in the eye. And I would say one thing, always the same. What's your devotional life been like? It's the same story every time.

They let it go. They couldn't get rid of it quickly enough when they left this place. I'm so sick of having to get up a half an hour early or an hour early, whatever.

They couldn't get rid of it quick enough. They couldn't get back to their internet quick enough. They couldn't get back to television quick enough.

They couldn't get back to their phone quick enough. Those are the kind of guys that fail. They have no reason to expect God to come through for them because they're not serious about it.

They don't care about the Lord. If you care about Him, you're going to want to continue to meet with Him in the morning. And if you meet with Him in the morning, He will give you the power you need.

I'm promising you that. And He'll do it in some unexpected ways. Look at verse 20.

Moreover, the Lord your God will send hornets among them. Can you imagine trying to fight someone when you got hornets just stinging you and not the other guy? Man, I tell you what, I've been stung a lot of times mostly by wasps, but it is no fun. I mean, it hurts, you know? And then they're so fast, there's no way you can do anything about it.

They're just ding, ding, ding. I mean, just go ahead and beat me into the ground. Just get this thing off of me, you know? That's how I would feel.

God has unlimited resources to help you. He will help you in ways you just could never even imagine. Who could have ever thought of the Lord sending hornets out among the Canaanites and stuff? Who could come up with something like that? The Lord, the Lord can.

He's got a lot of different ways He can help His people, and He will. The third thing is you can leave here in confidence if you see God in the picture. His name, Yahweh, is used 400 times in the book of Deuteronomy in these three sermons.

400 times. 19 times, just in these two passages that I'm covering in this message. 19 times.

His name represents who He is, His character, His love, His power, His holiness, all of it. His name is a huge part of who you are becoming because you're associating yourself with that name. You're coming under that name.

You're living in unity with that name and all that it means. And He will go out of here with you guys. But you've got to see Him in the picture and keep Him in the picture.

And lastly, you can leave here with confidence if you understand that your victory is going to come over time. Again, as we've already heard, it says it right here in verse 22. The Lord your God will clear away these nations before you little by little.

I like the way you did that name. Little by little. No, wait a minute.

That was Jordan. Jordan did that. I wish these people on the internet could hear all the different things that go on here.

But anyway, that's what the Lord did. And okay, we're not talking about sexual temptation because when you leave here, you're not looking for a little by little. You need to walk out of here in purity and freedom and you will.

What we're talking about now is the self-life. You have a whole lifetime of God dealing with your self-life. As you heard from my wife, 46 years, she's been walking with the Lord and the Lord is still dealing with her.

I can just tell you, she spent an hour on her face repenting this morning about stuff that you wouldn't even think of. Just, yeah, what I mean by that is stuff you wouldn't consider all that big of a deal. But when you've walked with the Lord for so long, you get to where you become so sensitive to every little thing that isn't right with the Lord.

You become very sensitive to it. And when the Lord just comes in and just whispers, that's not very pleasing to me. Bam, you're on your face before God, repenting.

And that's what she was doing for an hour this morning in the bedroom. I'm just, what I'm trying to get at here, guys, is this is going to be a lifelong battle with your self-life, your flesh, you know? We all have the fallen nature. I still have my fallen nature.

It's still there. And all I can tell you is if you're walking in the Spirit, you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. If you're staying connected to God, you're going to be able to overcome and do it on a regular basis.

But God's still got things that He's going to go after in your nature and in your ways of thinking, your attitudes and so on. And that's going to go on forever. But the Lord will win that battle.

So I'm going to end with this. Back in chapter six, verse three, it says, if you will do these things, it will go well with you. If you will do these things, it will go well with you.

Has anyone ever experienced God to lie to you? Anybody in here at all? I know God lied to me. And, you know, I'm going to tell you all about anybody. No, because God doesn't lie.

He is pure truth. And He is making a statement here to you, to you guys at Pure Life Ministries. When you leave here, if you do these things, you do have to do them.

You have to respond to the Lord. You have to humble yourself. You have to take correction.

You have to seek Him. You have to try to love Him, to try to come into that love. You have to do these things.

But if you do these things, it will go well with you. For the Jews, what that meant was, again, outward things. Rain would come in the right seasons.

Crops would flourish. Enemies would flee. Children would be thriving.

Joyfulness would be abounding in the land. But more than the material blessings, the presence of God would be with them. The presence of God will be with you.

With you. With you. You will leave here with an inner world where God dwells.

And you will take Him with you. When He says that it will go well with you, that's what He means. You can count on it.

You just need to fear Him alone, serve Him alone, and love Him alone. Amen. Lord, I thank you for words like this that comes from a very real story.

These were real people who had real fears, real struggles, tremendous challenges before them. These were real situations. And you're speaking to us through this setting of the people on the verge of going into the promised land where they were going to face tremendous battles.

They needed to know that you would be with them, Lord. And you told them, I will be with you. I will go with you.

And these guys, Lord, all of them, yes, the four guys leaving here, but all these guys as they go through the program, they need to know that you really are going to bring them into a life of victory if they will only obey you. I pray that you will make these things very real in every person's heart. In Jesus' name, amen.

God bless you all. You're dismissed.