Open—Wally Dear
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I very much enjoyed Whatever Brother Robert.
Brought before us is searching how that.
Murmuring seems to come natural to us, but the Lord desires that we might be rejoicing in His presence, and I believe that this is brought before us in another incident in.
The, uh, the count of Israel in the Old Testament.
Deuteronomy chapter 26 number.
Deuteronomy chapter 26.
And, uh, perhaps we'll just.
Read a portion here, it says, And it shall be, when thou art come in unto the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, and possesses it, and dwelleth therein, that thou shalt take up the first of all the fruit of the earth which thou shalt bring of thy land, that the Lord thy God giveth thee, and shall put it in a basket.
And shall go unto the place.
Which the Lord thy God shall choose to place his name there, And thou shalt go unto the priest that shall be in those days, and say unto him, I profess this day unto the Lord thy God, that I am come unto the country, which the Lord swear unto our fathers for to give us. And the priests shall take the basket out of thine hand, and set it down before the altar of the Lord thy God.
Now this land that God brought his people into, it was a good land. It was a land that flowed with milk and honey.
And the Lord has good things for us to enjoy.
And He has brought us into a place of unspeakable favor.
In Christ.
And we had opportunity today.
To be gathered in the presence of our Savior, the Lord Jesus.
And to enjoy.
Together, that which God has given to us.
In Christ and it involves worship.
It involves praise and Thanksgiving.
And this is what God delights in.
And here the people were to bring of the fruit of the earth.
But notice it says, When thou art come in unto the land.
In verse three, they were to take this basket of fruit to the priest and say, I am come unto the country, which the Lord swear unto our fathers for to give us. You know this basket of first fruits, it wasn't brought to the priests in order that they might get into the land, but it was because they were already in the land.
And.
As believers, we know that we are in Christ. We are not seeking a position.
We have come, we have accepted the Savior, and God puts us now in Christ. This is our position. We're not striving to get there.
But the Lord has placed us there, and we are to be enjoying in our souls the wonderful.
Position that is ours now.
In Christ.
And he has made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption.
We find in him one who not only saves our souls, but He satisfies. He's the bread of life and He's the water of life.
And how wonderful it is to contemplate the salvation that is ours. It's a full and free salvation. And we have it. You know, we have all the blessings that God has to bestow upon us when we accept the Savior, when we believe in him, the Lord Jesus Christ.
00:05:03
We receive it all.
We're blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.
And it's so wonderful, but we only enter in, it seems a little bit at a time to what we have been brought into.
But I do believe in order to.
Bring this offering.
In order to worship, in order to offer the sacrifice of praise to God, we have to.
Have a sense in our souls of security, of peace.
Because if we don't, if we question our salvation.
If we question.
The goodness of God and what He has provided for us, certainly we're not going to be offering to Him.
Because we're gonna be suspicious of him, we're gonna be questioning his goodness, and this is what Satan is up to.
He hasn't changed his tactics back in the Garden of Eden.
He sowed in the mind of Eve.
A doubt as to the goodness of God. He made Eve suspicious.
Of the Lord.
And try to give her to believe that the Lord was withholding something from her that was for her happiness. This is what Satan is up to. He's a master of deceit.
And may we?
Look to the Lord that we not be taken in.
By his.
Deception. I wanna tell you today, the Lord is good.
And how could we question the goodness of God when we contemplate the sacrifice He's been willing to make on our behalf?
And we spoke of it this morning and we thought about it this morning.
We saw it in Abraham. He was willing to offer his son.
But he was spared the agony of offering his son.
Iran.
God provided instead of Isaac, but there was no substitute for the Son of God. God he spared, not his own son.
But delivered him up for us all.
This, beyond a question of a doubt, shows.
To us the infinite love and goodness of our God.
And He wants us to be reveling in the sunshine of His love and grace.
Because this is what's gonna produce.
Worship and praise and Thanksgiving.
So this Israelite was to know that they had come. He had come into the land.
And it was God that gave them the land.
God gave it to them because the Lord is a giving God, and every good and perfect gift it comes down from above.
That's what we learn in James. It comes down from the father of lights, with whom there's no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
Now they were to bring this basket.
And put the first of all the fruit of the earth.
In the basket.
And bring it where?
They were bringing to the Lord.
They were to bring it, as it tells us here in verse 2, on to the place which the Lord thy God shall choose to place His name there.
They just couldn't bring it anywhere they pleased but.
They were too. Let the Lord make the choice as to where this offering was to be brought.
00:10:07
And so this is actually putting the Lord 1St and this is what we need. You know, there was a brother.
Uh, Ron Reeves. Years ago, I recall he'd give me a little piece of wood.
Is about four inches piece of corner molding.
4 inches long.
Had two words on it, God first.
And you know, this is what I'm seeing in this portion.
There's 5 words that seem to just jump out at me in verse 2.
It's the word.
1St.
And it's the words, the Lord thy God.
5 words. First, the Lord thy God.
We live in a world where the Lord is.
Not even given a place.
I imagine it appeared that he is, you know, we, we have that which is called Christianity. But the fact is, uh, man seems to rule.
And the Lord doesn't have his rightful place, but I believe.
We find in scripture that God wants to have the 1St place.
And if we don't give him the 1St place, he won't get the 2nd place. He's going to be way down the line somewhere.
So may the Lord help us to give him the 1St place. You see, God gives us so many things to enjoy.
He's a wonderful.
But we find that.
Our natural tendency is to take what God gives us.
And enjoy it selfishly.
Rather than recognizing that this is what comes down from above, this comes from the Lord.
Years ago we were distributing invitations.
In Fredericton and I talked to a man as he stood in his garden.
It was a beautiful garden.
A vibrant growth and there were large vegetables.
And you could see them hanging off the vines and the plants.
But he was tending to tomatoes, you know, And I thought to myself, these tomatoes are beautiful, big, red, juicy tomatoes.
And so.
I said to the man.
Isn't it wonderful that God gives to us tomatoes like these?
And it was just like I was talking to a wall.
He didn't want to have anything more to do. I couldn't even give him an invitation.
To the Eiselhower, he wasn't interested. He was interested in tomatoes.
But he wasn't interested in the one who gave the tomatoes. You know this is a serious problem when we become.
Interested in God's creation and leave the Creator out of the picture?
This is.
Not good.
And it's going to lead to destruction, man's destruction.
Placing more importance on the creation the creature.
Then the Creator here they were to bring first to the Lord what God had given to them.
And to enjoy it in the Lord's presence, in the place that the Lord.
Would choose to put his name there, you know. It's not up to you or to me to choose.
As to where the Lord, well, let me put it this way.
We need to look to the Lord to make the choice as to where He would have us.
To offer the sacrifice of praise.
00:15:04
I'm talking in a collective way.
But.
I talked to many.
And I have to be careful, even myself, that I don't get in the way of God with respect to making a choice.
There's many today that they're simply looking at what pleases them.
You know the dynamic preaching at this place or the beautiful building.
Or or. The people are so very nice.
And they seem to be.
Friendly people.
I think this is probably where I want to go. Well, I mean.
We need to be looking to the Lord, don't we, about the choice, and He can make that plain to us through His word as to where He would have us to go. So we find that the.
Israelite brings the basket of the first fruits, presents it to the priest and acknowledges his past condition, he says.
I'm a Syrian ready to perish was my father. He went down into Egypt, verse 5 sojourned there with a few and became there a nation great, mighty and populous. The Egyptians evil entreated us, inflicted us, laid upon his heart *******. And when we cried unto the Lord God of our fathers, the Lord heard our voice and looked on our affliction, and on our labor and on our oppression. And the Lord brought us forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand, with an outstretched arm, and with.
Terribleness, and with signs, and with wonders, and yet brought us into this place.
And has given us this land, even a land that flows with milk and honey. There's no murmuring here. This Israelite is very thankful.
For what the Lord has done for him or for her?
And in verse 10 says, And now, behold, I have brought the first fruits of the land which thou, O Lord, has given me, and thou shalt set it before the Lord thy God, and worship before the Lord thy God.
And thou shalt rejoice in every good thing which the Lord thy God hath given unto thee.
In Unadine House, thou and the Levite, and the stranger that is among you. Now you notice what this kind of activity results in when we put the Lord 1St and we follow His word, and we find ourselves where He has placed His name.
And together we enjoy what the Lord has given to us.
This rejoicing, it's a place where there's joy.
And.
We must acknowledge that there are problems in the assemblies, but you know, God is above all these problems. The Lord is above the problems, and sometimes we come up against situations that seem impossible.
We had our brother bring before us about the Red Sea. The people they've seen trapped, What are they gonna do? Impossible situation. Well, they look to the Lord and he works it out.
And I'm thinking, too, of how they came to Jericho and here are these huge walls.
And this place is blocking their entrance into the land. What are they going to do? Well, God has that all figured out too. And so we know.
In a remarkable way.
The Walls of Jericho fell down and twice it says he fell down flat. I like that word flat.
Didn't fall down in heaps that make it rather difficult to get into the city, but they fell down level horizontal with the ground.
So we can see how God comes in and gives deliverance and he will in his time and way. And sometimes it's exciting, you know, to anticipate how the Lord is going to work things out.
But His deliverance, it doesn't come too soon that we miss out on the blessedness of trusting in His heart.
But neither does it come too late that we experience the misery of trusting in vain.
00:20:08
So.
Take heart. Look up. Don't give up, look up.
And the Lord is able and willing.
To come in and undertake for us.
And we can trust him.
For the future, you know, as we read on here, we see that they were.
Tithing.
And uh.
Verse 12 When thou hast made an end of tithing, all the tithes have thine increased the third year, which is the year of tithing, and hath given it unto the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, you know, you see here.
Uh, when we give the Lord the 1St place.
And there's worship and praise. We're not only going to be thinking about the Lord.
We're gonna be thinking about others.
That are in need.
And I think we have the truth of it in Hebrews chapter 13.
You know, there we have.
Offering the sacrifice of praise to God continually. So this is.
Vertical.
But when you come to the next verse, it says, But to do good, and to communicate, forget not, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased. This is horizontal.
And so they were to.
Be looking out for those that were in need, The Levites, you know, he was involved in the service of the Lord. He didn't have a earthly possession. He was provided for the stranger, the fatherless, the widow, here's one that perhaps cannot support herself and so on.
Well, these ones, they were to eat within the gates and be filled.
Well, may the Lord bless His word.
These few thoughts and may we give the Lord his rightful place.
And remember.
That the Lord has said, they that honor me, I will honor.
With thy thy extent in.
This place the rainbow and cross my heart.
Of gratitude.
Holy sweet claims, please do the crazy service.
Where do I behave?
My spirit.
Where I saw it came by getting to go away on the floor.
Against my chain and ignore. It's time to increase.
To the end of my life and wait for the place for anything.
00:25:07
Process my day your sexy.
You know what? Can't fall and wait for more energy?
All right, you got anything for you all over the prompts and these two 500.
And yes, I understand.
You're following. Stir right away for me.
Every day, and I love everything about every day. Let's try to take it, even if we're all a little scared and passed away while we're going to be.