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Village SDA Church

Ron Kelly

Safe and Secure on the Wrong Side of Jordan

Open our hearts, shape and focus our lives.

Help us to make the decisions You have in mind for us to make, and may they change us and point us towards the destiny of heaven.

As a matter of fact, I could find fantastic places to hide.

1 of the most favorite places to hide for me would be when my hiding place was above the viewing of the looker.

So I found a tree, I'd get up in the tree, and I would love to watch as my younger siblings ran around looking for me, and I'm not sure I even wanted to come out when they gave up, you know, called Olly Olly Income Free.

But you know, they'd walk around, and because they were looking in the wrong place, they never found me.

And some of you might be able to relate to this.

You had the best hiding place in the world.

And you ran to where it was, whether it was in a bed or under a closet or whatever, but let's just go back to my tree.

It's like I'd climb the tree and then all of a sudden I'd look down and there was my dog sitting at the bottom of the tree.

In our scripture this morning, we heard the story of 2 tribes, which turned into 2 and a half, the tribes of Gad and Reuben, and also half of the tribe of Manasseh, who were on the east side of the Jordan where the king of Og had been conquered.

And the plains for grazing were fantastic.

And they came to Moses and they said, we'd like to live here.

And the visceral reaction by their leader was such that it was very, very strong.

As a matter of fact, it was so strong that he went back to saying, you're doing the same thing that's already been done.

Can't you, or haven't you learned anything?

Take your Bibles and open there to the book of Numbers chapter 32.

This is 1 of those moments when it's easy to forget about the larger group.

And this morning, I wanna tell you that I don't think they came the way they ended up.

They showed up with not only Moses, but a whole group of leaders to make their request.

And they come and they have what they consider to be a very reasonable hope.

But they had forgotten about the rest of the group.

Numbers 32 verse 5, they said, if we have found favor in your sight let this land be given to your servants as a possession Do not take us across the Jordan.

Oh my Imagine how this sounds to a leader who would give his eye teeth to cross the Jordan.

Imagine how this would sound to Moses, who in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 3 will plead with God, just let me cross and see the land, who tells us in the first chapter of Deuteronomy chapter 1 that it is an 11 day journey from Mount, from Kadesh into the promised land or from Mount Seir to Kadesh which is on the borders of the promised land.

What could have taken 11 days from Mount Sinai on to their hopes being materialized took 40 years.

And now, right on the verge of crossing again, you've got a group of leaders who have forgotten how much some have wanted to go and how much harder and how much faith it's gonna take.

And so they say, don't make us cross the Jordan.

The king of Og had amazing bullocks and oxen.

And this is the reason why they could feed on this bountiful pasture land and that's who we are, let us stay.

But, verse 6, Moses said to the sons of Gad and to the sons of Reuben, and you can imagine it was with a bit of force, shall Your brothers go to war while you yourselves sit here?

Now why are you discouraging the sons of Israel from crossing over into the land the Lord has given them?

This is what your fathers did when I sent them from Kadesh Barnea to see the land.

12 came back, 10 came back with a bad report, 2 came back with a good report.

We only remember the 2 who were men of faith, Caleb and Joshua.

But Moses says, you're doing the exact same thing.

I want you to notice in verse 11, it says, none of the men who came up from Egypt from 20 years old and upward shall see the land which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, for they did not follow me fully.

When you read this story in its original context, this phrase, follow me fully, is a big deal.

Verse 12, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh, the Kenizzite, and Joshua the son of Nun, for they have followed the Lord fully.

Now behold, you've risen up in your father's place.

A place a brood of sinful men, and you still, you add still more to the burning anger of the Lord against Israel.

Now Listen, I want you to know from the very front side of this message, this is not a storyline about sins of commission.

In other words, this is not a story about things people did that were wrong.

Now the request was wrong, But the burning of the Lord was not about anything that had happened yet, it was about the fact that some weren't willing or weren't planning to do what was going to need to be done to make it into the promised land.

In other words, this is a sermon about things that we should have done but haven't and maybe about things that should be done but we don't want to do.

He's going to speak powerfully to them and in the dialogue they began showing that they are not just like those that wandered in the wilderness that they are not men of Faithlessness and fear and so they make a plan and the plan is we will establish Sheepfolds and fortified cities and homes for our wives and our little ones and some of the men to stand but we'll march over." Now Moses is so concerned that this people will go backwards on their promise that he comes down to verse 20 and this is what he says, "'If you will do this, if you will arm yourselves before the Lord for war and all of your armed men cross over the Jordan before the Lord until he's driven his enemies out from before him and The land subdued before the Lord then afterward you shall return and be free of obligation toward the Lord and toward Israel, and this land shall be yours for possession before the Lord." This is good.

But if you will not do so, behold, you've sinned, And be sure your sin will find you out.

I'm here to tell you today that the Seventh-day Adventist church in the Western world has a dog sitting at the base of its tree.

The Bible says, though you make your home in the munitions of the rocks, don't think that you're gonna be okay there.

This is not an age to be buying up dehydrated mashed potatoes and TVP and digging bunkers for ourself.

This is not an age in which we think about how we can protect the great experience we've had for the last 6 decades in this country experiencing the great American dream, not so great for our spirituality I'm afraid, this is not a time for those things.

This is a time for us to stop and realize we've been found out.

Because the devil who's looking for us has figured it out as a matter of fact he's facilitated it give them everything they want allow them to make more money in a day than some people make in a month give them nice homes maybe 2 or 3 give them nice cars maybe 3 or 4 Give them multiple times shares and opportunities to do all kinds of things.

Make sure that they enjoy the blessing, just make sure the blessing doesn't get passed on, and let their spiritual experience stagnate and mold and decay and rot.

You see, when we look at the statistics and we realize that the robustness of the world church is not found in the first world churches.

The dog is sitting at the base of the tree.

It is a battle for the souls of men and our children and our lives are probably the first to be lost in the unfought wars.

Reading in the spirit of prophecy, Ellen White speaks about the role of bigger churches.

Now, if you're listening to me here today, you're probably from a bigger church.

If you're here from Stevensville, there's over 400 members in that church.

You might actually be sitting here today and you come from a church where there's only 50 on the books and 25 attending.

But I tell you something, we have camped out on the wrong side of the Jordan.

We've not just camped out, we've built homes.

We're on the east side of the Jordan, but we're supposed to be in efforts of conquest until Jesus comes.

What's likely to be lost if we're not is our own souls and those of our children.

I want you to think about that big statue of Nebuchadnezzar's dream up there in Big Rapids.

There's a pastor in California, if he's still alive.

If he's not alive, I'll guarantee you he went to his grave praying for a boy.

Because some church somewhere said, you know, we ought to spend the money and go to the inconvenience and all the trouble of getting that 20, 000 pound piece of redwood that's been architected and artistically shaped into a reminder of the image, because somebody went to war.

There's somebody's boy who's reconnected, and there's a pastor in Big Rapids who now has the name of another pastor's son.

I'm here to tell you, friends, today, the worst thing that can happen to the Seventh-day Adventist Church is it can forget.

Jesus had 2 commands before he left this world.

You wait and pray for that outpouring of the Spirit, but you go after that.

And when we look at the 3 angels' message, we see there are 3 angels flying in the midst of heaven with a megaphone to get the attention of the world.

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Safe and Secure on the Wrong Side of Jordan

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