[0:00] We're reading Deuteronomy chapter 8, and we're reading through the whole chapter. The whole commandment that I command you today, you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply and go in and possess the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers.
[0:18] And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these 40 years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.
[0:32] And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.
[0:49] Your clothing did not wear out on you, and your foot did not swell these 40 years. Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you.
[1:02] So shall you keep the commandments of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and by fearing him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks, of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper.
[1:38] And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today.
[1:55] Lest when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart will be lifted up and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty grounds where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock, who fed you in the wilderness with manner that your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end.
[2:41] Beware lest you say in your heart, my power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth. You shall remember that the Lord your God, you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day.
[3:02] And if you forget the Lord your God, and go after other gods, and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. Like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God.
[3:22] We're trying to walk through the book of Deuteronomy, which is a big but very important book, and if you were not here last night, we looked at the first four chapters quite quickly, where Moses does a recap of the travel from Mount Sinai to the edge of the Promised Land.
[3:44] And one of the things I tried to point out last night is that the relationship between God and his people is like father to son.
[3:55] And it came up in the reading we just had, that God is a father to his people. He's not asking them to be obedient so that one day they might enter the family. He has brought them together as his family, and now he's giving them wisdom on how to live as members of the family.
[4:14] So last night I said we could divide the book of Deuteronomy into four parts, which is the four talks for this weekend. First four chapters is basically, where have we come from?
[4:26] Five to 11 is basically, what's our relationship like? 12 to 26 is an unpacking of the Ten Commandments in very practical detail. And 27 to 34 is it's time to make a decision.
[4:41] And this equates to the kind of treaty that would be made when a king would overtake another nation. And the king would say, here's a recap. This is the relationship.
[4:53] This is how you're to live. You need to decide whether you're going to live or die. But this, of course, is a friendly treaty from God to his people. So let's think carefully together about what I've called the seven diamonds on the covenant ring.
[5:12] One of my favourite wedding stories, which I often tell at a wedding, is where a young man goes down to the coffee bar and the lady behind the bar, seeing the nice shiny ring on his finger, says to him, you must be on your honeymoon.
[5:25] And he says, yes, I am. She says, it's a funny thing, you know, when I was on my honeymoon, I was reading the book, A Tale of Two Cities, and within the year, we were blessed with twins. Nearby, there's a man sitting, and he says, that's a funny thing, he says, my wife was reading The Three Musketeers, and within the year, we were blessed with triplets.
[5:42] The young man goes very pale, says, I've got to get back to my room. My wife's reading Alibaba and the Forty Thieves. So there is a guy not wanting to be over-blessed.
[5:55] But I want you to know that as we look at what I've called The Covenant Ring Between God and His People, there are seven chapters to look at in this talk, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven.
[6:08] And if you were to read them straight through, you would say to yourself, boy, there's a lot of repetition. But actually, every chapter is different. Every chapter is expressing a different greatness of God and a different expectation from God.
[6:25] And that's why I've called it Seven Diamonds on the Covenant Ring. Is there a little bit of a buzz? Can't do anything about it? No? Okay.
[6:38] As long as it doesn't irritate you, it only mildly irritates me. No, that's not true. I'm okay. So we come to chapters five to eleven. This would be a great series for a sermon, a series of seven, but we're going to try and do it in one quick talk.
[6:56] So let's look at chapter five. And if you've got your outline there, I have called this Rescued to Respond. You'll see in chapter five, verse three, if you were to open up Deuteronomy five, verse three, that the covenant is meant to be a very long covenant.
[7:19] This is what the Lord says. The Lord did not make the covenant just with our fathers, but with us, those who are here today. In other words, it is a long lasting covenant for the people of God in every generation.
[7:34] And it's a covenant of grace because in verse six, we read, and some of you will know this well, I'm the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt.
[7:45] You shall have no other gods, verse seven, before me. What's unusual about six before seven? Anybody like to comment? Thank you.
[8:01] Relationship before law. Salvation before stipulations. Liberty before legalizing. Yeah, relationship before rules.
[8:13] The world gets this completely upside down. If you were to ask a thousand people why they thought they might go to heaven one day, what will they do? They'll talk law. I've been good.
[8:23] I've not been bad. I've tried my best. I've always. But you see how the gospel works in the Old and the New Testament. Get saved. Live well.
[8:34] It's the sequence which is absolutely vital. And it's here in chapters five. It's here in chapter five, verses six and seven. The commandments are mostly a restatement of Exodus 20.
[8:46] But the Sabbath is slightly changed in Deuteronomy five and looks now back to the Exodus. Not back to the creation, but looks back to salvation. You'll notice in, at Mount Sinai, they were listening.
[9:00] Verse 27, if you go down to the end of the chapter. Yes, they were listening in Mount Sinai. They heard the voice of God. But verse 29 says, Moses, oh, that they had a heart, that they would respond.
[9:15] In other words, wouldn't it be great if they were not just listening, but were actually keen and able to respond? And Moses can only urge this group to respond. He has no power to get into their hearts and make them a brand new people.
[9:30] Only God can do that. And down the track of the Old Testament, the new covenant will come along and it will change the heart and make the person responsive so you know what it's like when a person is not a Christian and you're trying to get them to church.
[9:43] It's just miserable because there's no will or the person who doesn't want to read, doesn't want to pray, doesn't want to fellowship. Making them from the outside is such a miserable business but when God changes the heart, then there is something that is willing.
[10:01] So that's chapter five very quickly. Chapter six, I've called welfare dangers and at chapter six, verse four, if you have a look at six, four, we come to the famous Shema, which is the Hebrew word for hear or listen.
[10:16] Six, four says, hear, listen, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and strength.
[10:30] Yahweh is the one true God to whom they belong and there is a library packed into this little sentence, the Lord our God is one. Let me mention some things.
[10:41] First, there's probably the doctrine of the Trinity here in embryo. One God, three persons. Second, there are no other gods.
[10:53] Do you remember when the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel were calling to Baal and eventually not getting anywhere so they start slashing themselves?
[11:04] Because they're just longing for response but there is nothing, nothing, nothing because there's no Baal up there. There's only one God. Yahweh, therefore, has everything under his care and control.
[11:19] You don't need to hedge your bets when you get into the promised land. You don't need to say, well, we'll trust Yahweh for salvation. He was great but we're going to trust Baal for agriculture. No, no. Yahweh is the only God and he has everything under his control.
[11:33] And therefore, give him your heart, mind, soul and strength because when you do, you've brought yourself into the harbour of truth and peace.
[11:44] If you divide your heart, you are disintegrated and we pay the price of that. But if we bring to him our heart, mind, soul and strength with the help of God, then of course, we are integrated.
[11:59] Well, in chapter 6, verse 2, we're told that the children and the grandchildren are to be grounded in the one God. And verse 7, they're to be taught as you walk along the road and as you sit and as you lie.
[12:14] And I honestly think the families of churches need to be helped to know that they can play a fantastic role in talking to their children about God and godly things all through the week.
[12:30] Not in an insensitive way, not in an unhelpful way, but I look back to my long time, 30 years at North Sydney and I just wonder how many of those parents thought, I'm no good at this, I'll just leave it to the Sunday school teachers.
[12:47] But the parents are not to leave the children's spiritual welfare to the Sunday school teachers. The parents have got a fantastic opportunity to keep reminding the children of a very great saviour and a very great God and a very great creator and a very great heavenly father and that's what Moses is talking about here.
[13:05] When he talks about having the law on the hands and the foreheads and the door frames, I'm pretty sure that was meant to be symbolic. I know the Jewish people then insisted on having law hanging from the sides of the head and law stuck on the door frames, but I'm pretty sure what Moses meant was it's to be in front of you, it's to be a constant.
[13:28] Now the dangers in chapter 6 of having this great one God as your God in verse 10, 14 and 16 are first of all that you might fall into the trap of prosperity.
[13:40] Woe to you if you get too wealthy because you're in danger of then thinking I've got everything solved myself. Well the Lord can bring that undone very quickly.
[13:51] Idolatry, verse 14 and 15, we talked about last night. This is the danger of replacing God with something else and let me assure you that when the Israelites got into the promised land the idols that were present were not doping.
[14:06] We might say who'd be an idiot and worship a pole or a block of wood but behind those idols there was a huge amount of pleasure offered and a huge amount of prosperity promised.
[14:21] So we mustn't fall into the trap of thinking idols are all unattractive. Idols are incredibly attractive. The thing we need to keep asking the Lord is that he'd incline us to him so that we don't get disinclined.
[14:39] So prosperity is a problem. Chapter 6, idolatry is a problem and adversity is a problem. Verse 16, Moses says, remember how you were tested in the wilderness. You were tested to see whether you had a heart for God.
[14:55] And we're told in verse 620 that the call is to obey which is on the backdrop verse 21 of salvation. God brought us out to bring us in says Moses in 623.
[15:08] Well, we need to keep reminding ourselves again and again that the rescue that we've received outweighs the call for faithfulness that God gives us. Do you ever fall into the trap of thinking the Christian life is so terrible I think I'm actually asked to produce more than I'm given.
[15:25] And we know when we fall into that trap we really have made a mistake. We have received infinitely and we're called to be responsive to that. Let's go to chapter 7.
[15:39] Racing along, chapter 7 is what I've called loved, you're a loved people so make a decision. And chapter 7 verse 1 is a lovely verse which says when the Lord your God brings you into the land which you go to possess and has cast out many nations before you and then there's a list of 7 verse 2 then when the Lord your God delivers them you shall conquer and utterly destroy them.
[16:03] Notice what he says I'm going to go in and fight for you. Of course you're going to have to fight but I'm going to fight for you and that's why you'll win the fight.
[16:15] And then very serious verses from verse 2 that you're to make no treaty with the idols or gods of the land. In other words you're not to leave a trace of cancer in the body.
[16:27] You're not to leave any drugs in the house all down the toilet. You're not to allow a stranger to linger in the school. Get him out. And that's what it's like with idolatry and that's why Paul tells us in Colossians 3 put it to death and you'll know if you've been a Christian for a while that one of the best things you can ever do with a lingering sin is just to say get out of here and move on.
[16:52] You never regret that but the lingering is so tricky. I remember my old boss who I worked with in the UK he said and this was a great confession and it did us a lot of good he said he said even when I'm repenting there's a part of me which would like to take down the phone number of the sin so that we could keep in touch.
[17:15] I thought gee what an honest thing to say and then he looked at the rest of us and he said is that not you? And of course it was us and he said if it's not you collect your wings and go straight to heaven and I thought it was a great reminder to us that we are in a battle.
[17:32] So that's how chapter 7 begins. Now why did God choose us? Chapter 7 verses 7 to 8 two of the loveliest verses in the whole Bible and this is what Moses says in 7 7 to 8 Why did God choose you?
[17:49] The Lord did not set his love on you nor choose you because you were more attractive more in number more wealthy had more potential more sweet for you are the least of all peoples but because the Lord loves you and because he would keep the oath which he swore to your fathers Why did the Lord love you?
[18:13] Because he loved you. It was his decision. He didn't look down and see Simon Manchester and say what potential or what a past such a winsome guy or where would the kingdom be without this guy?
[18:28] How are we possibly going to make any progress unless we quickly rescue that guy? Not at all. He looked down and saw somebody hopeless, hopeless, hopeless fixed his love and said we'll make something of this guy.
[18:43] That's what he's done with you. He's loved you because he loved you. And therefore chapter 7 verse 11 respond well because he loves you and he will bless you.
[18:55] And there's a list of the blessings. The Old Testament blessings were much more outward. Crops and children and herds and cattle and sheep and all the outward blessings.
[19:08] The New Testament blessings are inward and eternal. Let me tell you that if you had a choice of outward Old Testament blessings, outward temporal or inward eternal New Testament blessings, go for the inward and the eternal.
[19:23] They're much more precious, much more precious. And therefore the comfort in chapter 7 verse 17, the Lord has loved you, he's going to look after you and therefore don't fear the battle, 7 17.
[19:36] He's already won the battle in Egypt, he'll win the battle in the promised land. So there's a beautiful balance in chapter 7 of you're loved, so respond well.
[19:47] How do we respond well to God? Well we might say I'm deeply thankful for Jesus, otherwise I wouldn't have any hope. I'm amazed that you would call me. I'm amazed that you would choose me.
[20:00] Please help me to respond well to you because my inclination is to go all over the place. So incline me to yourself and then work through me so that my life is pleasing to you, helpful for others.
[20:14] That's how we might respond to this. Have any of you heard John Piper's I-O-U-S before? Anyone know what I'm talking about? He said it as an aside once and I found this incredibly helpful in the mornings.
[20:27] He has a little mnemonic called I-O-U-S I-O-U-S and they're four little phrases from the Psalms. Incline my heart to you. Open my mind to your word.
[20:40] Unite my will with yours. Satisfy my soul with yourself. I find this tremendously helpful because I get up in the morning and I'm disinclined and my mind is closed and my will is wayward and my soul is dissatisfied.
[20:58] And the I-O-U-S says incline my heart to you. Open my mind to your word. Unite my will with yours. Satisfy my soul with yourself. Chapter 8.
[21:10] This is what I've called trained for wisdom. Are you still with me? We're nearly through. No we're not. We're halfway through. Stay with it. Chapter 8. Trained for wisdom. Chapter 8 verse 2 which Jacob read for us says that God has led them and tested them and the test was to reveal the heart.
[21:29] So when a trial comes along in our life and trials do come along all the time they are testing experiences. If we begin at that point to accuse God ah there we are God I was so great and you failed me by bringing a test.
[21:46] That's very revealing isn't it? If we find a way of saying to him this is a very difficult test but I'm not going to walk away from you I'm looking to you. That's a very revealing response as well.
[21:59] And listen carefully to this friends. The Lord tests to strengthen the friendship. The devil tempts to stretch the friendship. Can I say that again?
[22:10] The Lord tests to strengthen the friendship. friendship. He's putting you in deep water to build up your spiritual muscles. He's for you. The devil tempts to stretch the friendship and cause you to want to give up.
[22:27] And there was an amazing provision in the desert chapter 8 verse 4 but there were serious tests as well. And so the point in chapter 8 verse 6 is to be wise.
[22:39] To give glory to God who's looked after you. And beware of self congratulation of saying gee you know the reason I got all this is because I was so great. Well in Corinthians 1 Corinthians 4 verse 7 Paul says what do you have you didn't receive?
[22:59] I was just listening to that violinist this morning whose name is and I was envying the ability to do that. Thinking how could I just get that?
[23:10] And of course God has given him this great ability and it blesses the music. And everything we've been given is a blessing from God. All that we have we have received from him.
[23:21] So therefore we find it hard to boast when we've got our correct mind on our heads. That's chapter 8. Let's go to chapter 9 what I've called success and humility.
[23:35] Chapter 9 verses 1 to 3. God is going to enable the entry to the promised land. Hero Israel you're to cross the Jordan and go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourself.
[23:49] In other words humanly it's impossible. Cities great and fortified are people great and tall the descendants of the Anakim and of whom you heard it said who can stand before the descendants of Anak.
[24:04] Therefore verse 3 therefore understand today the Lord your God is he who goes over before you as a consuming fire. He will destroy them and bring them down before you so you shall drive them out and destroy them quickly as the Lord has said to you.
[24:19] So God is the one who's going to enable the success of the entry to the promised land and therefore the people cannot turn around they should not turn around and say we won this ourselves. That would be insane.
[24:32] Chapter 8 says don't boast in your skills and chapter 9 says don't boast in your goodness. Now I don't know what you make of pride and humility. Tim Keller says in one of his books that in the old days people used to fear pride but you'll notice today pride is applauded and humility is not so popular.
[24:54] It's linked to low self-esteem. C.S. Lewis says pride is the essential vice. It's the chief cause of misery since the world began.
[25:06] It's the one sin which fractures friendships. When people talk evil, drink, sex, etc. it can bring them together with a lot of fun but pride polarises.
[25:19] And so notice in chapter 9 verse 7 how does Moses drive this home? He reminds them of the incident in Exodus where they built the golden calf. Imagine you're Moses talking to the people and you're saying to them you're about to go into the promised land and I want you to listen very carefully because you know at Mount Sinai God spoke with tremendous power and within hours the people of God were committing adultery on their honeymoon.
[25:47] I remember meeting a girl whose husband went off and committed adultery on the honeymoon. and that's what the people of God did. Almost immediately after hearing him speak at Mount Sinai they went off and they organised the golden calf.
[26:04] And so Moses is saying to them I want you to realise what you're like. You're the sort of people who can fall very quickly. You're not a gold medal people. You're a gold calf people. You can fall very quickly.
[26:17] And therefore you need to take seriously what's being said to you. Chapter 10 what I've called mercy and fear. In face of the golden calf and that dreadful debacle Moses realises of course in Exodus that the only hope is the mercy of God.
[26:35] Do you remember that lovely moment where Moses says oh Lord here we are we've all fallen on a heap. Show me your glory. And the Lord says come up the mountain.
[26:45] I'll hide you in the cleft of the rock. You remember this? And I'll pass by. And I'll show you my glory. And he doesn't actually show him the glory. He declares the glory. And he passes by and he declares the Lord the Lord gracious, merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love.
[27:03] And it says in the original Bible that I bought when I was a boy and at this Moses made haste to bow his face towards the earth and he worshipped. Because he suddenly realised that the answer to the judgement of God was the mercy of God.
[27:21] The problem that would drive you away from God finds its solution in coming back to him for mercy. And that's what chapter 10 is all about.
[27:32] There's going to be two new stone tablets. Chapter 10 verse 3. Does anybody know why there were two stone tablets? We tend to think, don't we, from church buildings that one to five went on one of them and six to ten went on the other.
[27:49] As if we never had room on the tablets for Ten Commandments. But actually a treaty, you see, had two parties. And so when they drew up the Ten Commandments, one copy went to one half and one copy went to the other half.
[28:05] When God draws up his treaty with his people in the Ten Commandments, he doesn't need a copy. His copy can go into the tent. And their copy goes into the tent.
[28:16] So they've got two copies. It's a little bit like Jesus saying, truly, truly, I say to you, you've got double good reason for taking seriously what God says to you.
[28:28] So the new two stone tablets are being built because the people have failed. And Moses is reminding them on the edge of the promised land. And he says to the people, this God, chapter 10, verse 12, is massive.
[28:44] Absolutely massive. But he's also deeply interested in the widow and the orphan and the needs of your table. That's the wonderful thing about God.
[28:54] He's transcendent and he's imminent. He's the God of the telescope and he's the God of the microscope. I heard a man say once that he had small views of Jesus until he went on a retreat like this.
[29:07] And the speaker said, I want to ask you to try and experiment. You may have heard me say this before. And he said, the experiment is I want you to make a model of the galaxy that we live in.
[29:18] And the scale of the galaxy is that the distance between the earth and the sun is going to be the thickness of a piece of paper. Okay, so here's a piece of paper. Earth to sun is that far in your model as you build a model of the galaxy.
[29:34] And then he said, how big a box do you need to put the model of your galaxy in? And the answer is you need a box that's 700 kilometres by 700 kilometres by 500 kilometres to put the model of the galaxy in the box.
[29:52] And the speaker said, since the Lord Jesus has made and governs billions of galaxies, we don't get to put him in our back pocket. He is massive.
[30:05] But he's also incredibly interested in the minor details. The tiny, tiny details. Everything. Nothing misses him. And that's why we must respond to him with great gratitude.
[30:17] Merciful, but majestic as well. Well, the last chapter, 11, is what I've called grace and obedience. And this is where God, again, reminding them if his grace calls on them to be obedient.
[30:31] Now, I don't know how you think of obedience in the Christian life. You may think it's a miserable thing. But let me give you an illustration which may help you. And that is that I think of obedience like this. When you're taking small children on a holiday, some of you may identify with this and some of you may identify in the past, or you may at least be familiar.
[30:50] When you're taking children on a holiday and you're going from A to B, 500 Ks, you do not put the security of the trip in the hands of your children.
[31:03] They get put in their seats. They get their little seatbelts put on. You close the door. You take the wheel. The security of the trip is in your hands, not theirs. But it is possible for them to contribute to the joy of the journey.
[31:17] I know that sounds ridiculous. But it is possible for them to contribute to the joy of the journey by being cooperative in the back seat. I know it's never happened. But in theory, it's possible for them to contribute to the joy of the journey.
[31:29] And that's how obedience fits into the Christian life. It's pleasing to God. And it contributes to the joy of the journey. But it's got nothing to do with the security of the journey.
[31:41] And that's why we give thanks for the security that comes to us through Jesus. But the obedience will contribute to the joy. So in chapter 11, verse 2, if you just look at 11, verse 2, the children who are standing in front of Moses now, those little kids, they were not there at Mount Sinai.
[32:02] And so the older people who are adults who were children at Mount Sinai are being told to help the younger ones to know what took place. And chapter 11, verse 10, the land which you go to possess is not like the land of Egypt from which you've come, where you sowed your seed and watered it by foot.
[32:25] But the land which you cross over to possess is a land of hills and valleys which drinks water from the rain of heaven. In other words, when you're in Egypt and you had to get your rain by foot, that either means you had to walk to get your water or there was an irrigation system where you pumped little planks with your feet, but you had to work hard for water.
[32:45] Well, it's not going to be like that in the promised land, says the Lord. The rain is going to be plentiful and is going to come down as a mark of grace. So therefore, the climax of the chapter, choose carefully who you're going to serve because God is this covenant God with all the blessings and all the requests or obligations.
[33:10] And we read at the end of chapter 5 from verse 26, there's going to be two mountains as you enter the promised land. Gerizim to announce the blessings, Ebal to announce the curses, and you've got to make your choice.
[33:23] Are you going to be a God following people or a God forgetting people? If you're a God following people, well, of course, you'll be living under his joy, favour, blessing.
[33:35] If you're a God forgetting people, you'll be living under his discipline, not because he doesn't love you, because he does love you. It's just going to make it much awkward. Now, friends, all of this is a great signpost to the Lord Jesus, because in the end, when we think about the curses which could fall on people, the Lord Jesus, because of the cross, has caused the curses that could fall on us to fall on him.
[34:00] And that's the wonderful privilege of being a Christian, Galatians 3, that he took the curses, that we might take the blessings.
[34:11] So as we live with God in the world, we have this heavenly Father who's lifted the curses off us, seeks, of course, to be gracious to us, always gracious. But sometimes that grace will be seen in testing, strengthening, and when we fail, calling, disciplining, but all the time, this gracious God is going to be at work again for his people.
[34:35] Now, I thought I might just finish by reading something again from John Piper, who I haven't read for a long time, but a long time ago, I read his little meditation on rain. And since there has been a bit of rain lately, I don't know if you've noticed, but there has been a bit of rain.
[34:50] I thought I'd read to you as we close something about rain. Have you heard this before? This is a meditation by John Piper on the text from Job. My God does great and unsearchable things.
[35:01] He does wonders with a number like rain. Piper says, is rain a great and unsearchable wonder? Well, picture yourself as a farmer, far from any lake or stream.
[35:17] A few wells keep the family and animals supplied. But if the crops are to grow and the families to be fed, water has to come on the fields. From where?
[35:28] Well, the sky. The sky. Water will come out of the sky. Water will have to be carried in the sky from the Mediterranean Sea over several hundred miles and then poured out from the sky onto the fields.
[35:47] Carried. How much does it weigh? Well, if one inch of rain falls on one square mile of farmland during the night, that would be 27,878,400 cubic feet of water, which is 206,300,160 gallons, which is one, nearly two billion pounds of water.
[36:13] That's heavy. How does it get up in the sky and stay up if it's so heavy? Well, it gets there by evaporation, really. What does that mean? It means the water stops being water for a while so it can go up, not down.
[36:27] Then how does it get down? Well, condensation happens. What's that? The water starts becoming water again by gathering around little particles between 0.0001 and 0.0001 centimetres wide.
[36:43] What about the salt? Salt? Yes, the Mediterranean Sea is salt water. That would kill the crops. What about the salt? Well, the salt has to be taken out.
[36:54] Oh, so the sky picks up a billion pounds of water from the sea, takes out the salt and carries it for 300 miles and dumps it on the farm. Well, it doesn't dump it.
[37:04] If it dumped a billion pounds of water on the farm, the wheat would be crushed. So the sky dribbles the billion pounds of water down in little drops and they have to be big enough to fall and small enough to keep from crushing the wheat stalks.
[37:18] How do all these microscopic specks of water that weigh a billion pounds get heavy enough to fall? Well, it's called coalescence. What's that? It means the specks of water start bumping into each other and join up and get bigger.
[37:31] And when they're big enough, they fall. Just like that? Well, not exactly, because they would just bounce off each other instead of joining up. If there were no electric field present, what? Never mind. Take my word for it.
[37:42] I think that I will take Job's word for it. I still don't see why drops ever get to the ground because if they start falling as soon as they're heavier than air, they would be too small not to evaporate on the way down.
[37:53] But if they wait to come down, what holds them up till they're big enough not to evaporate? Yes, I'm sure there's a name for that too. But I'm satisfied now that by any name, this is a great and unsearchable thing that God has done.
[38:03] And I think I should be more thankful than I am. Isn't that great? Let's pray. Our gracious God, thank you for your greatness and your goodness, seen to your people and especially seen in the Lord Jesus.
[38:18] And we pray that because our hearts are so wayward, you would incline us to yourself. You would keep opening our mind to your word. You would keep uniting our wills with yours and keep causing us to be satisfied with yourself.
[38:33] For Jesus' sake. Amen. Amen. Amen.