Bulletins - Richvale Community Church

Good morning. Before we get started,
Pam and I want to thank you for all your thoughts and prayers for her dad. We really appreciate your love and concern.
He's back in rehab and doing much better, and we're grateful for that.
Today we're beginning a new fall series
Entitled The Desert Song — Finding God in Every Season.
This time in New England, the foliage absolutely beautiful. The trees turn brilliant shades of red, orange and yellow. It's quite a display of God's creation.
Don’t you love the seasons?
—-Season are not just found in nature they part of life.
And today Some of us might find our selves.. in various season.. maybe you are..
experiencing summer. Life is good.
Things are going well, and
You are enjoying a season of
blessing.
Others might be experiencing spring.
Where There are new beginnings, new opportunities, and perhaps God is doing something fresh in your life.
Some might be experiencing fall.
Things are changing. You're entering a new chapter, and perhaps you're having to let go of things that were once familiar
.And then there are some of us who might be experiencing winter.
Life is difficult. You're walking through uncertainty,
disappointment, loss or perhaps heartache.
And here's something about the seasons
of life:
We don't always get to choose which season we're in, and we don't always know how long it will last.
Sometimes seasons change gradually. Other times, life can change almost overnight.
But regardless of what season we're facing, there's something we need to remember:
Our circumstances can change,
people change…
… but we take comfort in this one thing.
God doesn't…
His character doesn't change
His promises don't change.
His faithfulness doesn't depend on whether we're experiencing summer or winter.
And that's really the heart behind this series.
Over the next. four week ..
We're going to explore what it means to trust God in every season of life —
And we are going to that in every season we can sing of God’s faithfulness regardless of where we find our selves.
This morning our text is in Deuteronomy 8.
In Deuteronomy -Moses is speaking to a new generation of Israelites who are standing on the edge of the Promised Land..
They've spent forty years in the wilderness, and now they're preparing to enter the land flowing with milk and honey.
In Deuteronomy, Moses writes four sermons to prepare Israel for transition.
He wanted this new generation to remember God's commands and, what God had taught them along the way.
In chapter 8, Moses takes them back to the wilderness.
He reminds them that God had a purpose in leading them through the wilderness... — And What they learned is the desert was going to ..prepare and sustain for a season a head of them,
Where they would face a different kind of test…a season of abundance...
T/S How do we find God in Every season…
1. Remember Where God Has Brought Us.
How good is your memory? That a loaded question! When it comes to communication, you can never communicate. There is a saying
"The biggest mistake in communication is assuming that it has happened."
Just because you have said something doesn't mean people have heard it. And just because they have heard it doesn't mean they have understood it, remembered it, or acted on it.
And that's not just true in communication. It's true in our relationship with God..
Throughout Scripture, God repeatedly tells His people to remember.
In fact, Deuteronomy
Moses keeps on bringing them back to the same things:
Remember what I have done.
Remember where I brought you from.
Remember how I provided for you.
Remember how I carried you through the wilderness.
Why?
Because we have a tendency to forget.
We get so caught up in what is happening today,
or what we're worried about tomorrow,
that we forget what God has already done.
And when we forget God's faithfulness in the past, we can easily lose confidence in His faithfulness in the present
Its at this important juncture Moses says Remember the wilderness… remember the desert..
Let’s read our text… Moses is preaching.
Deuteronomy 8:1–2 ESV
1 “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. 2 And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty 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.
Moses begins with the imperative a command to follow ..
the whole law…
God wasn't asking them to obey only the parts they liked or the parts that made sense to them. He was calling them to take His Word… as a whole…
The whole counsel of God..
Have you ever cooked something and it just didn't taste quite right? You followed the recipe, but something was missing. Maybe you left out an ingredient or decided to make an adjustment.
And sometimes that one missing ingredient makes all the difference.
We can do something similar with Scripture.
We agree with the parts we like, but quietly set aside the parts that challenge us.
Following Jesus means trusting..
His Word—even when it challenges us, stretches us, or asks us to change.
But His Word is always for our good..
And notice that Moses connects obedience with God's promise: “that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land.”
In other words, God's instructions were not designed to take life away from them. But to give, purpose…meaning..
The reason we need his word.. is Gods Charator…his nature..
One of the most important things Israel needed to remember was that
God is good.
And this is where many people struggle with faith.
One of the biggest obstacles people have to believing in God is the question of His goodness.
How can a good God allow this to happen?
How can He allow tragedy in our family?
How can He allow suffering, injustice, and heartache?
For many people, the goodness of God becomes the dividing line between faith and unbelief.
But we need to understand something:
We live in a fallen world. That doesn't mean God is not good. It means the world is not what God intended it to be.
Jesus never promised that following Him would mean a trouble-free life. In John 16:33, He said:
John 16:33 ESV
33 I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”
Jesus acknowledged the reality of suffering, but He also reminded us that suffering does not have the final word.
We can have peace in suffering — why because Jesus has overcome the world….
Faith goes back to the word of God…reminds usmusmof Who he is..
It is his goodness that brings is to Repentance and Faith
And God leads us with h is word..

Deuteronomy 8:2 ESV
2 And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty 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.
Moses tells Israel that..
GOD HAS BEEN IN THE whole journey ….
He says God led them through those forty years to humble them and test them, to know what was in their hearts.
Now, that doesn't mean God needed the wilderness to discover something He didn't already know.
He is OMNISCIENT he know the end from the beginning..

Rather, the wilderness revealed what was already there.
God uses the wilderness.. to reveal to us what is in our hearts … In Israel the biggest problem was self reliance..Israel needed to learn that they couldn’t make it on their own. They needed God— The same God who led them through the wilderness would be the same God they needed when they entered the Promised Land.
We Need God is both season of and lack and plenty..
T/s T/S How do we find God in Every season…
1. Remember What God Has Said
2. Recognize What God Is Teaching You .
We all have different ways of taking in information.
But there are basically two primary ways we learn in life.
We learn Through reading, studying, and listening.
And then we learn through life lessons — what we learn through our experience.
Mark Twain once made this humorous observation:
"Anything parents have not learned from experience, they can now learn from their children." Mark Twain
Have you noticed.The older you get, the more you realize how much you still have to learn.
Life is full of lessons. Every experience has the potential to teach us something.
Every relationship,
every challenge,
every disappointment, and
every opportunity can become a learning experience.
As believers, we dont only learn about God through His Word. But through the circumstances of life.
And that's exactly what we find in our text.
Moses tells Israel that God led them through the wilderness to humble them and test them, to reveal what was in their hearts…. He is taking a out learning through life experiences..
Verse 3
Deuteronomy 8:3–6 ESV
3 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. 4 Your clothing did not wear out on you and your foot did not swell these forty years. 5 Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you. 6 So you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and by fearing him.
My brother recently completed a 12,000-mile journey on his motorcycle. Part of that journey took him through North Africa and Mongolia. One of his goals was to reach the desert—to experience those vast stretches of sand.
And when he arrived, there wasn't much there. Just sand, desert, and the occasional camel!
He had to carry his own food because there was nowhere to stop and buy anything.
You couldn't simply pull into the next town and pick up something to eat. You had to bring what you needed with you.
Now, imagine living in that kind of environment—not for a day or two, but for forty years.
That's the kind of environment Israel found themselves in.
There was no supermarket around the corner. No fields to plant.
No reliable source of food or water.
They were in a place where they couldn't provide for themselves, no matter how hard they tried.
And Moses tells us that God allowed them to experience hunger.
The hunger they experience d…exposed their weakness and self-sufficiency —
But God did not leave them hungry indefinitely;
he “fed [them] with manna.”
there is a sequence..:
Hunger created the need,
and manna demonstrated that God could sustain them in a way they and their ancestors had never experienced.
God took care of them..
He fed them..
God brought them to a place where they had to depend on Him, and then He demonstrated that He was able to sustain them.
Here is the issue..
We can be full of so many things that we don’t see our need for spiritual bread..
Moses goes on to say that..
“man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”
Remember when Jesus was in the wilderness for 40 days?
He had been fasting,
He was hungry,
and the tempter came to Him
and said, in essence, “If you are the Son of God, turn these stones into bread.”
Jesus could have done it. But He responded by quoting Deuteronomy 8:3.
Man does not live in bread alone..but ever word form the mouth of God..
Why did Jesus says this.?
Because Jesus understood something that Israel had been learning in the wilderness:
There is something more important than satisfying our physical hunger.
There is Spiritual hunger… a hunger that can can not be satisfied in this world…
That why we have so many addictions and dependeny’s..
we trying full the gap of spiritual hunger…with some thing else..
Jesus said to the Woman at the well… he would give her living water …spiritual water …where she would never thirst again!
God was teaching Israel a lesson in dependence.
The manna was more than just food… it’s spiritual
….
And that's an important lesson for us, because it's easy to focus on what we need ..
rather than on God Himself.
God was teaching Israel that their security wasn't found in the bread in their hands, but in the God who provided it.
The manna showed showed thats we put God and his kingdom first… He will take care of the other details..Matt 6.33
Matthew 6:33 ESV
But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Their clothing did not wear out,
and their feet did not swell during forty years.
vers 6 Speaks about the Discipline of the Lord…
Deuteronomy 8:3–6 ESV
5 Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you.
Here is the thing… we dont like that word..
. We often want the quickest route. We want the easy road. We want God to get us out of whatever we're going through.
God give the The wilderness… was not punishment it was training..it was where Israel learned to depend on him…
The y were going to need this lesson on the other side of the Jordan..
T/s How do we find God in every season if our lives..
1. Remember What God Has Said
2. Recognize What God Is Teaching You
3. Trust God for What You Need —
Now, I don't often go to a buffet, but for Ryan's birthday we went to the Hibachi buffet in Roseville. And the problem with a buffet is knowing where to begin.
You walk in and there is food everywhere. So many choices. You need a strategy… divide and conquer.l
We decided to go for the protein. Stay away from the carbs. Go for the good stuff!
But here's the thing about a buffet. After a couple of trips, you're done.
In our text..
Israel was about to move from the wilderness into something very different. They were moving from the desert to the buffet of God's provision!
Deuteronomy 8:7–11 ESV
7 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, 8 a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, 9 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. 10 And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. 11 “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,
For forty years they had lived in a place where they had to depend on God for everything.
Their food came daily. Their water came through God's provision.
No refrigeration!
They couldn't store up enough to live independently of Him….
But now they were entering a land flowing with milk and honey.
A land of houses,
vineyards,
olive trees, and an abundance of food.
They were moving from scarcity to abundance.
And you would think that would be nothing but good news.
But Moses understood there was a danger waiting for them on the other side of the wilderness.
The danger wasn't that they would have too much food.
The danger was that they would have so much that they would forget God
The danger was now in abundance, Israel might forget these lessons and credit themselves for their ease—who needs to trust God when things are going well?
Isn't that interesting?
Moses tells them to remember God when they're full!
Because sometimes it's easier to depend on God when you have nothing than when you have everything…
EASY TO BE SELF SUFFICIENT
THE LESSON IN THE WILDERNESS.. IS that God is our provider…
He will get us through whar ever we facing today..
.. not only had he gives us his word… His commandment..
he has Given himself ….He had give us His Son and the Holy Spirit.
Proverbs says taste and see that the Lord is Good..
..The God who provided in the desert is the God who provides in the promised land.
God’s desire for us is not scarcity but sufficiency—yet that sufficiency is based on His identity..as loving Father..
Conclusion..
This morning we sang the
Desert Song, written by Brooke Fraser there is a story connected to the song— the story of Jill McCloghry.
One of the ladies on the worship team.
Just days before the song was recorded, Jill gave birth to a little boy named Max, at just under 24 weeks of pregnancy.
He lived for approximately one day before passing away.
Can you imagine the heartbreak?
But She decided she still wanted go sing.l
,
in the middle of that grief, she continued to worship God.
She was grieving.
She was hurting.
But she understood something profound:
Her circumstances had not changed who God was.
God was still faithful. God was still good. And He was still worthy of her worship.
That’s really the heart of Desert Song.
The song speaks about the different seasons of life:
The desert, where we experience our need for God.
The fire, where our faith is refined.
The battle, where we learn to trust God.
And the harvest, where we celebrate His goodness.
We can find Him in every season of life..
And that’s what Moses is reminding Israel in Deuteronomy 8.
Don’t forget who brought you there.
Don’t forget who sustained you.
Don’t forget who provided for you.
Because the God who was faithful in the wilderness will be faithful in the Promised Land.
We don’t worship God because every season is good.
We worship Him because He is good in every season.
Amen.
- - Deuteronomy 8:1–2NIV2011
- - John 16:33NIV2011
- - Deuteronomy 8:2NIV2011
- - Deuteronomy 8:3–6NIV2011
- - Deuteronomy 8:7–11NIV2011

1. Remember Where God Has Brought Us.

2. Recognize What God Is Teaching You .

3. Trust God for What You Need —

Deuteronomy 8:1–2NIV2011

John 16:33NIV2011

Deuteronomy 8:2NIV2011

Deuteronomy 8:3–6NIV2011

Deuteronomy 8:7–11NIV2011