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[0:00] Just kind of stay with me because I'm going to start in verse 24, and I'm going to go into the third chapter into verse 11. So Deuteronomy chapter 2, verses 24 through Deuteronomy chapter 3, verse 11.

[0:16] Let's open up with a word of prayer, and then we'll just get right into the text together. So let's pray. Lord, I thank you so much that you've allowed us to gather together this evening.

[0:26] We thank you, Lord, for the fellowship and the time we've had sharing a meal with one another. We thank you for just a great time of laughter, Lord, a time of spending time with one another.

[0:38] And Lord, we pray as we come now to the time where we open up your word, we pray, O God, that your word would speak to us. We pray that it would not be the opinion or the thoughts of man, but, Lord, rather it would be the very word of God that exalts you and lifts you on high.

[0:53] Lord, we pray that through our study of it, we would learn more of you, that we would grow closer to you, and Lord, through it, that our lives would be transformed for your glory.

[1:04] And we ask it all in Christ's name. Amen. If you remember, the book of Deuteronomy, if we're just making our way through the Old Testament, the book of Deuteronomy is Moses' final message to the nation of Israel before he dies.

[1:18] This is kind of his, I don't want to call it farewell address, but it's his final message. It's a sermon. He preaches it in one sitting, if you will, even though we're looking at it in small sections and small chunks, he is telling it as one whole.

[1:35] So we always kind of want to connect it with the things that went before it and the things that go after it. And he's doing it by way of preparation, not only of his departure, but also preparation of the nation of Israel, getting ready to go into the promised land.

[1:46] Now, what we understand about that is that God had called his people, got to go all the way back through history, right? God had called Abram out of the land of the Ur-Chaldeans to make a great nation out of him.

[1:57] All this is important, okay? He will make a great nation out of Abram. They go into the promised land. Abraham goes into the promised land, wanders around, never inherits any of it, and God tells him that his people will sojourn or be gone from there for 400 plus years.

[2:13] They will live in a land that's not that, but that he would bring them back. Now, we know that 400 plus years is the years of slavery in Egypt. After 400 years of slavery in Egypt, God delivers his people through Moses, and he brings them across, takes them to Mount Sinai, where they hear the Lord talk to them.

[2:32] They hear God give, you know, if you obey me and you follow me, I will be your God. And we get to Ten Commandments there at Mount Sinai. They hang out there for 11 months, just understanding what it is God has commanded them, understanding how God wants them to live their life, because they're freed slaves, right?

[2:49] They were in slavery their whole life, and now they're free. And God said, this is what it's going to look like when you live in a relationship with me, and this is how you're going to be different, and this is what's going to set you apart.

[2:59] And he took them an 11 days journey across that great and terrible wilderness to the edge of the promised land. He says, okay, now go in and inhabit. Take possession of the land I'm giving you.

[3:10] And they said, well, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Before we go in, we would like to send 12 spies to go in and just see this land that you're going to give us. Moses said, well, it sounds good to me, and God allows it.

[3:21] So we know that the 12 spies go in, and they look at the land, and they come back, and they say, yes, it's everything that God said. It is a land flowing with milk and honey. It's a land with great produce. It's a fertile land.

[3:32] It's a land flowing with rivers. There's houses and wells and gardens, and it's great. It's everything God said. But then there's those things that God didn't say. There are cities that are fortified to the heaven.

[3:43] There are giants that live there. There are these armies that, I don't know if we can defeat them. And they got scared, and they discouraged one another. And if you remember 10 of the spies said, no, we can't do it.

[3:55] Two of them, Joshua and Caleb, said, we're going to do it. 10 of them said, we can't do it. They'll kill our children. We won't be able to go in. We're just not able. So they didn't. They rebelled.

[4:07] And they went 38 more years in the wilderness, wandering around, and now they're back on the edge of the promised land, not the same place, because our refusal to obey God the first time, God doesn't always bring us back to where we were.

[4:22] Sometimes he brings us to another location. So they wandered around. He didn't bring them back to Kadesh Barnea. He actually brought them all the way back around to the other side of the Jordan River and the plains of Moab opposite Jericho.

[4:40] And they're sitting there. God has a purpose. You'll see it tonight. They're sitting there waiting, and Moses is rehashing for them everything that's brought them to this point. Now, the reason I tell you all that, because you understand this. We read these accounts.

[4:52] We're going to read stuff tonight. I look at it, and we're like, ah, that just doesn't seem right. We read these accounts, and we forget that 400, well, if you do the math, almost 480 years have transpired since Abraham walked around.

[5:08] Okay? It's a long time. 480 years. Now, what did Abraham do the whole time he was walking through the promised land? It says that he would go here, and he would build an altar, and he would go here, and he would build an altar, and there's that saying in the book of Genesis.

[5:22] You have to keep this in mind, because this is what happens. When we come to portions of Scripture, I'm going to read it here in just a minute, we read them, and we look at them in isolation, and we don't connect them with the rest of the Bible, and therefore, we misinterpret them because we're taking them out of context.

[5:35] But connected to the rest of Scripture, Moses walking, not Moses, Abraham walking around this land building an altar, and it says, and there he called upon the name of the Lord. It sounds good, right? Oh, he prayed. That's not what it means.

[5:46] That's just the English rendering. The literal reading is, there he proclaimed the goodness and the greatness of God. So Abraham was an itinerant evangelist in this land.

[5:58] He walked around and preached. There is a God. Why did God choose Abraham out of the land of the earth of Chaldeans? Because God's picking sides? No, because God wanted a people that would show the world what he looks like.

[6:09] That was what Abraham and the nation of Israel would look like. God wanted the world to respond to him, right? This is the desire of God. If you follow the yearly reading plan that some of us are reading, you read this morning in the book of Ezekiel, God does not delight in the death of anyone, right?

[6:23] He does not rejoice even in the death of the wicked. And that's a clear biblical truth. And God is revealing himself through the nation of Israel. But what we need to take in mind here, okay?

[6:35] 480 years prior to this, Abraham had walked around preaching. So they had heard about God. And then they had seen evidence.

[6:48] I mean, slaves don't leave the world's superpower in Egypt and walk across the Red Sea on dry ground and nobody hear about it. I know time travel, I mean, messages probably traveled a little bit slower back then.

[7:00] You know, people weren't tweeting it out or Instagramming it out or putting it on Facebook or anything like that. But, I mean, word got out pretty quick. You know, Egypt just lost every bit of their slaves and they marched on dry ground.

[7:10] When Pharaoh and his army tried to do it, they got engulfed in the Red Sea. That's pretty wild. So 40 years, it took 40 years for the news to travel, right? It's there. We'll see that. So I want you to just keep all that in mind as we read it, okay?

[7:22] Now, Moses is looking back here. He's telling them, because these things that he's telling them have already taken place. Now look at what it says in Deuteronomy chapter two, starting in verse 26. Prior to this, these few verses prior to this, Moses was talking about the land they had passed through that God said, don't touch it.

[7:37] Don't look at it. This is not your land. I've given it to somebody else. Don't look at it. This is not your land. I've given it to somebody else. Don't even step on this land. You're going to buy food and you're going to buy water. This is not your land, which means we don't name it and claim it.

[7:49] We don't get to walk around saying, God, give me this, right? We can only have what he tells us is ours. So then we come to this place and we have to connect it. There's this great bracket of parentheses in verses 20 through 23.

[8:03] So you have to go all the way back to verse 19, where it says, when you come opposite the sons of Ammon, do not harass them nor provoke them, for I will not give you any of the land of the sons of Ammon for a possession, because I have given it to the sons of Lot as a possession, okay?

[8:17] And then he brackets it, describing who lived there before. And then we get to our text in verse 24. Arise, set out, and pass through the valley of Arnon. Look, I have given Sihon, the Amorite king of Heshbon, and his land into your hand.

[8:31] Begin to take possession and contend with him in battle. This day I will begin to put the dread and fear of you upon the peoples everywhere under the heavens, who, when they hear the report of you, will tremble and be in anguish because of you.

[8:43] So I sent messengers from the wilderness of Kedmoth to Sihon, king of Heshbon, with words of peace, saying, Let me pass through your land. I will travel only on the highway. I will not turn aside to the right or to the left.

[8:54] You will sell me food for money so that I may eat and give me water for money so that I may drink. Only let me pass through on foot, just as the sons of Esau, who live in Seir, and the Moabites, who live in Ard, did for me until I cross over the Jordan into the land which the Lord our God is giving us.

[9:09] But Sihon, king of Heshbon, was not willing for us to pass through his land. For the Lord your God hardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate in order to deliver him into your hand as he is today.

[9:22] The Lord said to me, See, I have begun to deliver Sihon and his land over to you. Begin to occupy that you may possess his land. Then Sihon with all his people came out to meet us in battle of Jahaz.

[9:33] And the Lord our God delivered him over to us, and we defeated him with his sons and all his people. So we captured all his cities at that time and utterly destroyed the men, women, and children of every city. We left no survivor.

[9:44] We took only the animals as her booty and the spoil of the cities which we had captured, from Aurora, which is on the edge of the valley of Arnon, and from the city, which is in the valley, even to Gilead.

[9:55] There was no city that was too high for us. The Lord our God delivered all over to us. Only you did not go near to the land of the sons of Ammon, all along the river Jabbok, the cities of the hill country, and wherever the Lord our God had commanded us.

[10:08] Then we turned and went up the road to Bashan, and Og, king of Bashan, with all his people, came out to meet us in battle at Edri. But the Lord said to me, Do not fear him, for I have delivered him and all his people and his land into your hand.

[10:23] And you shall do to him just as you did to Sihon, king of the Amorites, who live in Heshbon. So the Lord our God delivered Og also, king of Bashan, with all his people into our hand, and we smote them until no survivor was left.

[10:34] We captured all his cities at that time. There was not a city which we did not take from them. Sixty cities, all the region of Argab, the kingdom of Og in Bashan. All these were cities fortified with high walls, gates and bars, beside a great many unwalled towns.

[10:48] We utterly destroyed them as we did to Sihon, king of Heshbon, utterly destroying the men, women, and children of every city. But all the animals in the spoil of the city we took as our booty. Thus we took the land at that time from the hand of the two kings of the Amorites, who were beyond the Jordan, from the valley of Arnon to Mount Hermon.

[11:06] Sidonians call Hermon Sirion, and the Amorites call it Sinir. All the cities of the plateau, and all Galeed, and all Bashan, as far as Silica, and Edri, cities of the kingdom of Og and Bashan.

[11:17] For only Og, king of Bashan, was left of the remnant of the Rephim. Behold, his bedstead was an iron bedstead, it is in Reboth, of the sons of Ammon. Its length was nine cubits, and its width four cubits, by ordinary cubit.

[11:32] You know exactly what an ordinary cubit is, right? We'll get to that in just a minute. There's our text, Deuteronomy chapter 2, verse 24, into Deuteronomy chapter 3, verse 11. As Moses is encouraging the people now as they are beginning to, if you remember, that old generation has passed away, here is the younger generation.

[11:50] These are the ones that their parents had said, our children will all die, and now God is going to use them to go into the land in a victorious fashion to lay hold of what God had promised them.

[12:02] Moses is reminding them of everything that God has done prior to this, and this reminder was to be an encouragement as they move forward. So I want you to see the night, a recognition of past victories.

[12:15] A recognition of past victories. We learn a tremendous amount from our past failures. Though Satan would long for us to hang out in that land of failures and hang out in that place of disappointment, this is one reason why I believe God did not take them back to Kadesh Barnea.

[12:32] Kadesh Barnea was a place of failure. It was a place of refusal to lay hold of what God had commanded them to do. It was a place of disobedience. It was not a place of victory. God doesn't leave us in places of failures.

[12:46] Right? He leads us beyond that, and he brought them to another region. And the region they were in now was a place of victory. And from this foundation of victory, God is encouraging his people that they can continue to move forward in that victory.

[13:04] So we see this recognition of past victories that would be a motivation for present and future battles. And I want you to see four things that come from this. Number one, we see that there was an invitation that they responded to.

[13:18] There was an invitation. I think God is very clear in what he is doing here. If you remember the place of failure, Kadesh Barnea, God said, go in and take possession. That was an invitation.

[13:30] And the people said, no, we don't really want to do that. We're not so sure we can do that. We don't think it's possible. So they refused the invitation. Here we get another invitation and we see them respond in obedience.

[13:43] The invitation is there in verse 26. Arise, set out, and pass through the valley of Arnon. Look, I have given Sihon, the Amorite king of Heshwan and his land into your hand.

[13:56] The verses prior to this speak of the people moving through a land that God said, don't touch it. This is not your land. It doesn't belong to you. I'm not going to give you this land. This is somebody else's land.

[14:07] Don't touch it. Now all of a sudden, after leading them through something that didn't belong to them, he extends an invitation and says, now, there it is. Arise, set out, go, lay hold of what I'm giving you.

[14:21] It is a very clear invitation. It is reminiscent of the invitation God had given 38 years prior. The difference is, 38 years prior, they refused it.

[14:36] This time, they responded to it. Moses didn't send out a delegation of spies to go seek out the land. Sure, he sent out what would be a delegation of peace to Sihon, and we know that Sihon didn't respond to that.

[14:49] We'll get to that in just a moment. But rather, God extends the invitation. And they're looking at it on the other side of these victories, okay, as Moses is looking back.

[15:00] And he says, when we responded, when we did what God asked us to do, we were victorious. We didn't fail. It didn't fall through.

[15:13] If God extends an invitation and we respond to that invitation, God is faithful to uphold His end of the invitation, their invitation was go. His response was, and I will give.

[15:27] Now, until they went, He was not going to give. He couldn't. But when they responded and actually set out and went forth, then He gave.

[15:39] Now, you remember, we read this account in the book of Numbers when we were going through the book of Numbers, and I know you remember that. And I know you remember as we looked at the geography of the land that if they had been in Kadesh Barnea, and I'm looking at it back real quick.

[15:50] So if they had been in Kadesh Barnea over here, they came out of Egypt. I'm doing it from your point of view, not mine, okay? So they came out of Egypt, and Kadesh Barnea is here. And so like the land of Canaan, which is modern day Israel, is right here.

[16:01] And all they would have had to do in Kadesh would be to just go in. They didn't do that, so now God brought them down below that into this, like the salt sea is down here, and it's just this terrible, really, wasteland even today.

[16:16] So they went down below that where all the snakes were, remember that? All the vipers and all that good stuff, and they, you know, all that good stuff, people died. Why did God bring them there? Well, that's also where we get the image of the serpent and the wilderness that Jesus uses in John chapter 3.

[16:29] It says, just as the serpent was lifted up, so must the Son of Man be lifted up. God redeems even the bad places, right? So he goes all the way around, he brings them all the way here, and now he's got them right here, right, in the plains of Moab, and all they have to do is go across, and then God extends an invitation.

[16:42] He says, go north. Now let me just go ahead and say, there was no reason whatsoever for them to go north, other than the fact that God was inviting them to go north and receive some land that he wanted to give them.

[16:57] The place they were headed to was directly west from where they were camping. God says, go north, and they responded. And they responded to this invitation, and they came back victorious, because after they go north, they defeat these two kings, they come back south, and they're back where they started at, and now they're looking back and saying, look, God just gave us that land.

[17:18] God gave us this simply because we took him at his word. And Moses is reminding them of an invitation responded to, because there's going to be another invitation when Joshua says, prepare yourselves, for in three days we're crossing the Jordan River.

[17:35] In three days we're going to go across the Jordan River and we're going to lay hold of that promised land, because if he can do it on the eastern side of the Jordan, he can sure do it on the western side of the Jordan. And we see the invitation responded to.

[17:48] Number two, this is one where we really have to slow down and kind of pump the brakes. Number two, we see his, that being God's, intentions revealed. God's intentions revealed.

[18:02] He invited them to go, lay hold of this land he was giving them. And he told them, because we ask ourselves, why would they go there?

[18:14] Now, ultimately, it's because this is part of the land that God had commanded Abraham that he would give them, right? This is a portion of that promised land that when Abraham was wandering around, God had told him, this would be your land too.

[18:27] But it would have made more logical sense just to go west and to cross the Jordan River and then kind of win your battles up, right? To start in the southernmost part and go up. But they went up, then back down, then back across, a lot of extra.

[18:40] But why would they do that? God says that he was going to begin, in verse 25, this day I will begin to put the dread and fear of you upon the peoples everywhere under the heavens, who when they hear the report of you will tremble and be in anguish because of you.

[18:55] Simply stated, God was going to use the report of the victories they had on the other side of the Jordan River to scare to death the people that they were about to inhabit their land.

[19:07] God was using victory over here to set fear in the heart of the people over there. God was working this out according to his purposes and his plans. His intentions were, I'm going to make you victorious.

[19:20] victorious. I'm not going to let you go into the promised land, a defeated, rebellious group of people. Rather, you're going to go in, having been battle tested, being victorious, and the people understanding God let you overcome.

[19:33] You remember, Sihon and Og are not just two pushovers. They're pretty big kingdoms. Now, I know, not like kingdoms like, you know, what we would think today. You know, you had all these little kingdoms, this number of kingdoms, city kingdoms, city states, and all this other stuff.

[19:46] But they're pretty powerful. If you remember the book of Numbers, Sihon had this chant about him that he was the big powerful one and he was greater than everyone and his God, Harkamesh, was bigger than everyone.

[19:57] And what the nation of Israel did is they said, well, we defeated your God. So our God's bigger than your God. And that's why Moab got scared because all of a sudden, no, Edom got scared because all of a sudden these people seemed to be more victorious than anyone else on this side of the land.

[20:12] And what God was doing is God says, I'm going to let your little battles be the instrument that I use to move you forward into bigger battles and I'm going to go before you. And I'm going to let you, your life and your testimony resonate with the people you go across.

[20:28] We have an enemy who opposes us. Okay, we have an enemy who opposes us much bigger, much bigger than any enemy the nation of Israel is going to face in their physical battles.

[20:42] But the reality is is every time we stand in victory and one small thing. All it does is remind our enemy, Satan, that God is strong enough to bring us through.

[20:57] That if God can deliver me here, then it doesn't matter what you throw at me, he can deliver me there, there, and there. God says, these are my intentions. I'm going to let your testimony of your victory resonate with the people you're about to come into contact with.

[21:13] and we see his intentions revealed. Now, the third thing is probably the most difficult of all, and it's the thing that makes us really not like these Old Testament passages, but it's also why I introduced it in such this way, and it is this third truth we see from these past victories.

[21:33] Number three is the indication of the requirement of sin. It is the indication, these past victories indicate for the nation of Israel and for us of the requirement for sin.

[21:50] Moses extended an offer of peace to Sihon. Let me pass through, I'll buy food, I'll buy water, I won't touch your land, you do just like the other people that I've passed through did.

[22:02] Moses did that. And then the scripture says, Sihon said, no, we're not going to do that. If you read the book of Numbers, it says Sihon just came down and struck a battle, like he picked a fight, right?

[22:13] Sihon said, well, I don't want your money, you're not even passing through my land, he's going to pick a fight. And then we would say, well, he picked a fight with the wrong guy because the nation of Israel whooped up on him. But when we read the book of Deuteronomy, it says this, but Sihon, king of Heshbon, was not willing for us to pass through his land.

[22:28] That sounds okay, that's good. But look, this is what makes us upset. I'm just going to go ahead and say it. This is what makes steam come out of our ears because we don't really understand it, but look at what it says. Because it's in the Bible, therefore we need to pay attention to it.

[22:40] For the Lord your God hardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate in order to deliver him into your hands.

[22:54] So, the reason Sihon would not accept a peace offering is because God wouldn't allow it. I told you this thing that makes smoke come out of your ears and we don't understand that.

[23:10] It says the Lord your God hardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate. Why? Well, let's go back. You say, well, Sihon's a pretty good guy.

[23:25] Surely he didn't deserve everything that was going on. Well, I mean, if by pretty good guy, you mean worshipers of false gods who sacrificed their own children at the altar to worship those false gods, then Sihon might have been a pretty good guy.

[23:42] Or if you mean rampant fornication, revelry, great, I mean, great gross sin like no other place, then yeah, he might have been an okay guy.

[23:58] Sihon, the king of that land, was leading a nation of some of the grossest immoral behaviors and some of the most wicked worship of false gods in that region, and God says, the day of reckoning has come.

[24:18] Now, is Sihon guilty for his sins? Yes. Did God ensure that he met the punishment for his sins? Yes. How is God going to deal with his sins?

[24:30] The nation of Israel. The nation of Israel is used as God's instrument for judgment upon people. And then we look at and say, well, I don't understand why it says, and I know we have a hard time and this is it and I admit with you too, and I agree with you, and this is at times where I say, well, maybe I shouldn't say it, but it's there in the text, right?

[24:47] So we have to address it because better way. Now, before we get so bent out of shape and say the God of the Old Testament is a big mean God, all we have to do is jump ahead to the book of Joshua and we see that other people living in sin came to the nation of Israel and took refuge in the nation of Israel and God extended grace and mercy and protection to them.

[25:15] But the whole reason others sought refuge in the nation of Israel is because they saw what the nation of Israel did to the other people. See, we don't understand the seriousness of the consequences of sin until God puts it on display.

[25:33] And what God was showing them, this is what sin deserves. Now, let's combine that with what we call New Testament theology.

[25:46] For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. The reason we have such a hard time with this is because we don't want to put ourselves there.

[25:57] We don't think we deserve that. We think we're better than them or we're better than this person or I can think of a worse sinner than me and we can. And we don't want to put ourselves there.

[26:08] But the reality is our sin and rejection of God deserves exactly what the nation of Israel did to these people. For the wages of sin is death.

[26:21] That's what it deserves. God was showing them that. But God was also in his mercy because the only way we ever respond to God.

[26:33] I told you someone asked I believe it was John Piper one time if you had an hour to share the gospel with an individual what would you do? And John Piper said I would take 50 minutes and do nothing other than talk about the law.

[26:44] For 50 minutes I would talk about the Old Testament and in the last 10 minutes I would talk about the cross of Calvary. Because until we see the desperate wickedness of sin we will not see the glories of the cross of Calvary.

[26:57] And until God put on display those who have rejected. Remember 480 years earlier the name of the Lord had been proclaimed in this very land. They had had an opportunity.

[27:09] You say well the people alive here didn't have an opportunity. That blood's not on God's hands. That blood's on their ancestors' hands. That gives us a whole other point of view when it becomes about but as for me and my house.

[27:26] God had given the opportunity because he let Abraham walk around his whole life testifying. They didn't respond. God says okay. And actually God told Abraham he said I'm not giving you this land yet because their sin has not come to its fullest measure.

[27:43] Why did it take Noah 120 years to build the ark? Some people say well because it was a big boat. Yeah. But also because God was given 120 years of a visible representation for people to repent.

[27:55] So that when the flood came man was that without excuse. For 120 years Moses said it's going to rain, it's going to rain, it's going to rain, it's going to rain, whatever, it's not going to rain.

[28:07] It came. For 480 years testimony resonated throughout this land. We don't need that. Our God's better. This God's good. This God loves, and it wasn't.

[28:18] God says okay, I'm going to hold you accountable. So we see here the requirement of sin, but we also see the great measure that man must take to separate himself from sin. Because God said no influence of their sinful behavior can be among my people.

[28:36] you say, well, you know, I can hang around it and hopefully I'll change them or I'll change, you know, I mean, I'm not perfect, none of us are perfect, we understand that, but we also know that there are situations that we don't need to be in, but yet we often find ourselves there and our mentality is, well, I'm going to be an influencer there.

[28:57] Well, what God is saying here is that sin was going to influence his people more than his people could influence sin. As a matter of fact, a very small pocket remains in the land of Israel and his people end up getting outcast because of their sinful behaviors.

[29:13] Because they did not see through this representation, this reminder of the past, we must completely separate ourselves from sin. So there's an indication of the requirement of sin.

[29:25] Fourth and finally, we see an identification of a removed giant. The identification of a removed giant. This is important.

[29:36] All the cities would say captured. Moses defines them in a very specific way. Did you see it? These were fortified cities with walls to the heavens and gates. Why is that important?

[29:48] Because what did ten of those spies say? We can't go in there, their cities are fortified to the heavens and they have gates. And Moses is sitting here saying now, hey, we've already defeated 60 cities that were fortified to the heavens and had gates.

[30:00] It's already happened. We've already done it. So the fortified cities over here, probably not stronger than the fortified cities over there. As a matter of fact, the fortified cities over there, all we're going to do is walk around it for seven days and the thing will fall down.

[30:12] Right? So we don't really have to be that. Now, Moses didn't say that. I know. Don't get all bent out of shape. Joshua didn't know that until he got there. I understand. But the reason that they could take God to his word at Jericho is because they had already seen what God could do to the fortified cities in Bashan and Og's territory.

[30:26] Right? So, and we had also read, as they passed through the land, and God said, this isn't your land, don't go here, this isn't your land, it doesn't belong to you. We had read the accounts of, well, the Rephaim used to live there, they were giants, and God dispossessed them and gave it to the descendants of Lot.

[30:41] And these giants used to live there, and God dispossessed them, but those are all general, right? Those are giants general, just like when somebody comes to you and say, well, people are saying, I love that, by the way, as a matter of fact, I know I don't know any pastor who loves it when people are saying, because what we like, we don't like generalization terms, I mean us, all of us, individually, we'd rather have specific, right?

[31:01] Because people have names. People always say, but we would like to deal and respond to the individual who is saying. So, when you see these giants, well, the giants used to live there, and the nation of Israel could be like, well, yeah, that's good, there are giants, but show me one, tell me one.

[31:17] God says, okay, I'll put one on display for you. Remember Og? He was a giant. He was a king. He was the only remaining reframion in that land.

[31:28] Now they can identify one. They know a specific giant by name that God defeated before them. It says his bedstead. Now the word bedstead is kind of misleading in the English because it literally means a stone with an iron band around it.

[31:41] Most people believe it's probably a covering for a tomb, not a bed. Okay? It's probably the tomb covering, not a bed that he actually laid on. That's why Moses could say you could go there and see it.

[31:53] They didn't put his bed on display, but his tomb was still there, or the rock with the iron band around it that was covering where his body laid, and it tells us that its length is nine cubits and its four cubits by the ordinary cubit.

[32:07] That's thirteen and a half feet by six feet. Thirteen and a half feet long, six feet wide. I don't care where you're at, that's a pretty big dude. And they knew his name.

[32:19] His name was Og. And as someone once said, a dead giant doesn't bother anybody. We're not talking in general terms anymore.

[32:31] God's showing them specific victories. God says, remember Og? He's a big guy. But he couldn't stand before me.

[32:43] He can't stand before you. Friend, listen. We can hear the testimony all day long of what God has done in general terms.

[32:56] But each and every one of us has a giant by name in our life. giant. And when that specific named giant is laying in the tomb, we don't care how big the rock that covers him is because God has called us forth victoriously.

[33:19] Those are the things we recognize from past victories. I preached a sermon Sunday morning on God's discipline of his people.

[33:32] Inevitably, I knew it was going to happen. Sunday night, I think it was about 11 o'clock, I got a message. Can you give specific examples of how the Father disciplines?

[33:45] I didn't answer it until Monday morning. And I said, you know, I was hesitant. That message was hard. Some of you are probably going to ask me when you leave here tonight.

[33:56] But anyway, I said, because it's hard to be clear. It's not hard to understand that God disciplines his children. It's hard to be clear because he does it individually. What the Father does to me may not be what the Father does to you.

[34:12] So what I did to the individual who asked me the question, gave a very long response. Of the specific disciplines, I am fully convinced God has geared towards me.

[34:27] Here's how he has disciplined me. Now, does that mean that's no, I'm telling you, I know the Father disciplines his people because this is what he's done. Here are the giants that have names on them that he's buried in my life.

[34:43] Right? Now, you have to fill in that blank of who's under that, the New American Standard says, bedstead. Who's under that rock? Because until we can go back and identify those giants God has defeated in the past, we'll be scared to death of the giants who wait ahead of us.

[35:03] And that's just the truth. But when I know God has overcome things in the past that I couldn't overcome, it emboldens me moving forward.

[35:15] Because there's no giant too big that he can't defeat. And I like to name them. And we see this as a recognition of past victories, as Moses is encouraging the people as they're about to move forward and allow the Lord to give them present victory.

[35:34] In Deuteronomy chapter 2, verses 24, into chapter 3, verse 11. Thank you, brother. Thank you.

[36:25] Thank you. Thank you.

[37:25] Thank you. Thank you.