Episode Transcript
The title of message tonight is "A Fort in the Road."
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And no, that's not mispronounced. It's not "fork in the road."
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It's "fort in the road."
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Proverbs 10, 29. Tonight's proverb takes us back to an often used theme here in the book of Proverbs.
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It's the theme of the way of the Lord. The way of the Lord. We've seen it over and over in Scripture.
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Here in Proverbs. And Solomon begins in verse 29 saying, "The way of the Lord."
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And I love learning about the way of the Lord.
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I love the fact that the Holy Spirit repeats this theme in the book of Proverbs.
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Because it's such a wonderful way of understanding our walk with God.
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You've got to walk somewhere. We always hear about walking with the Lord.
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We've got to walk somewhere. Where do you walk? You walk on the way of the Lord.
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And remember, the word "way" here is talking about a roadway.
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It's not talking about a manner in which something is done. It's talking about a road in which someone travels.
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So whenever you see the way of the Lord in the Bible, it's speaking of the road of the Lord.
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It's all the same. If you were to look up this Hebrew word in the Hebrew dictionary, it would say "road."
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So the road of the Lord. God has a road for us to travel.
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And that road is not paved with stones. It's not paved with asphalt.
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The road is paved with Scripture. I love God's Word.
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You know what I like about God's Word? I like everything about it.
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But I like the fact that it gives life, has the power to give life, has the power to set us free.
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What I really like about God's Word is it never changes. Never ever changes.
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What's true about it today is true about it tomorrow is true about it a million years from now.
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It will never change. It's always dependable.
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God has a road for us to travel and it's paved with God's Word to us.
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Now why would the Holy Spirit impress upon Solomon to write about the road of the Lord?
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I mean, if the road of the Lord consists of the word of the Lord, then why not just tell us about the word of the Lord?
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Why use the metaphor of a road to describe God's Word to us?
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And so far, Solomon hasn't said this was the word of the Lord. He just said it's the word of the Lord.
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But we know through study of God's Word, it is the word of God.
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And we'll show you that here in a little bit tonight.
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But why would he use a metaphor of the word road to describe His word to us?
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Well, I'll tell you one of the reasons why, or a few of the reasons why.
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And as a former highway patrolman, I can speak with authority on this.
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I know all about roads. When I used to be out on patrol and things were slow,
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I would sometimes get on a road that I'd never been on before. Has anyone done that before?
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Just take a road. Yeah. Just get on a road you've never been on before.
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Just to see where it goes, especially if you're out in the country.
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And do you know what I found out in my long experience in law enforcement getting on those roads?
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This is deep. Jeremy needs this is deep. Even for y'all, this is deep.
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I found out that every road goes somewhere.
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It'll take a little bit of y'all to get that. Maybe later during the week,
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the depth of that will sink in. But every road goes somewhere.
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Every road was built for the purpose of taking travelers to a particular destination.
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I'll say that again. Every road was built for the purpose of taking travelers to a particular destination.
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If you stay on a road, then you will arrive where that road was designed to take you 100% of the time.
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And you will arrive nowhere else except for where that road was designed to take you.
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That's what's beautiful about God's Word.
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If you walk down God's Word, you will arrive.
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Who is the one that laid out God's Word for us?
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God did. The Holy Spirit did. The Son did.
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The Bible was paved by our Creator.
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And if you take His road in His Word, you will 100% of the time arrive at the destination that God has purposed for your life and nowhere else.
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That's comfort right there. That is absolute comfort.
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There's a little ghost town in Cherokee County where I used to work.
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Sometimes I'd drive down that road and I'd muse at the buildings on the road there that were no longer occupied.
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And I would try to imagine what life was like in days gone by when that little area was thriving.
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People built these buildings. They had these big dreams, you know, about their job, their business they were going to have there,
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and what they were going to provide the community, and how they could make a living.
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And now it's nothing. Nothing but a little ghost town.
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And time can really change a place, but a road will never change its destination.
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You can take that same road, go to that same community.
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The community has changed. The destination has changed, but the road has not.
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And that's the security of God's Word. That's the stability of God's Word.
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It can be counted on every time to take you to the place that God has purposed for you to go in life.
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God's will is going to look different for Miss Ann than it is for me.
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His will is going to look different for these young folks back there than it is for the old folks.
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It's going to look different from one person to the next in here.
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Everybody is going to have a different purpose, a different destination, if you will,
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in the sense of our walk here with God on earth.
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God's Word will take each of us to the center of God's will every time.
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If you could understand that the Word of God as Highway 175 will take me back to Athens
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when I travel it in a specific direction, it would take me to Dallas if I traveled in the opposite direction every time.
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And if you get on the road of God's Word, I'm not talking about opening up the Bible and saying,
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"Okay, God, what is your will for me in life?"
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You ever see people do that? That doesn't work. That's not how you're supposed to study the Bible.
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Anyone that does that, they don't know what they're doing.
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"What is your will for me in life?" I'm going to look here and see if I can find a particular Scripture
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that tells me God's will for my life. You'll never find it.
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But it's the road. If you get on God's Word and you follow God's Word, and I follow God's Word,
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and we all follow God's Word, we're all taking the same road, and our destination may look different,
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but we're all going to arrive in the center of God's will. It'd be like us all going to Dallas.
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I may go to one address, you may go to another. I may go to, well, I'm sure I would,
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probably go to a very, very fancy high-rise building. Y'all may go live under the bridge. I don't know.
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But I'm kidding. But we all are going to go to different addresses. But it's all going to take us to the center of God's will.
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So tonight we're learning about the strength of the road that God's paid for us.
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Solomon says, "The way of the Lord." Look back in your text, please. "The way of the Lord is strength."
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And I want you to notice that the Lord's way, the Lord's road doesn't give strength.
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It doesn't say it gives strength. It says it is strength.
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And the word "strength" here isn't talking about the road giving strength to someone who is weak.
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It's not that type of strength. I need strength to stand. I need strength to lift something up.
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I need strength to make it through the day. But it's not talking about that type of strength.
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The Hebrew word here means fortification. Fortification. Like a building that's fortified.
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A structure that's fortified.
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And so when we see the word "strength" here, we're talking about strength in the sense of a strong hold.
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Right? A strong hold. That'd be like a fortified building. Strong hold strength.
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So it is fortification. When we're walking in the word of God, we are walking in the strength of God.
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When we're walking in the word of God, we're walking in the strength of God.
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Here's the kingdom truth for you tonight. God's word is fortified by God's grace.
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God's word is fortified by God's grace. Now listen here carefully tonight.
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If you're walking in God's word, you're walking in God's strength.
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If you're walking in God's word, you're walking in God's fortification.
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It's a fortified path. And that means this. No matter how bad the devil fights you, man, I've gotten two emails this week.
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People who've been battling the devil. I get emails usually every week from someone who's having serious spiritual warfare with the enemy.
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And this is the comfort and the confidence we have in God's word tonight.
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That if we commit ourselves to God's word to walk according to the Bible, no matter how bad the devil fights you,
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no matter how difficult your journey becomes, no matter how many setbacks you experience in your life,
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it is impossible for you to yield to the Scriptures and not have the perfect will of God fulfilled in your life.
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Impossible. Why? It's fortified.
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That means the enemy cannot get to you in the sense of overcoming you.
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The word of God is fortification to those who walk in it. When you're walking in the word, Satan can't harm you.
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Sin can't destroy you. And circumstances can't deter you.
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You say, "Brother Richard, if Satan can't harm me, how come he messes with my mind so much?
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How come I'm going through all these difficult trials and sometimes are more than I can bear?"
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If you're going through a difficult trial, if the devil's attacking you, if the world's against you,
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if you feel like you're about to throw your hands up, yet you continue down the path of God's word and not forsake the Scriptures,
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you are in the center of God's will. You're at the height of obedience when you cling to the Scriptures in spite of the enemy.
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The enemy cannot overcome the fortification of the Spirit of God when you walk.
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When we're walking in God's word, we have the rock-solid assurance that our trials, that are attacks from the devil,
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that the things we suffer will serve to further God's purpose but never hinder it.
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Picture someone who's, they read the Scriptures, they know what the Bible says, they know what the gospel of Jesus Christ is.
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They say, "Well, I'm going to follow God's word. I'm going to be someone who's obedient to the Scriptures.
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Yes, I'm a sinner. Yes, I fall. Yes, I make mistakes. But I'm going to surrender my life to the Word of God that I know."
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And while that person is doing that, boy, I tell you, here comes the devil.
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The devil starts assaulting their mind. They start having health trouble. They start having family trouble.
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They start having financial trouble. They start having all of these attacks and terrible things happening.
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And it seems like it's just coming from every direction. They're like, "Dear God, I thought the Word was fortified.
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Are you still walking in the Word?" "Yes."
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Then those trials are making you more in the center of God's word than you were without them.
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Do you know when Jesus was at the height of his obedience? It was when he was on the cross.
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His obedience was the greatest when his suffering was the worst. And it's the same for us.
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It's fortified. The enemy, the trials, the suffering, they cannot deter God's will in your life.
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They can only serve to bring it to pass. Solomon says, "The way of the Lord is strength."
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Look back in your text, please. "To the upright." "To the upright."
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Now, the word "upright" here literally means complete. It doesn't mean erect.
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"Up right." Right side up. It doesn't mean that. It means complete. It means full. Whole.
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For example, Jesus in the New Testament, someone's sick. They have a physical malady.
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Jesus says, "Your faith has made you," what? "Whole." "Made you complete."
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The part of your body that was lacking in health is now whole in health. It's complete in health.
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And so the way of the Lord, the word of the Lord is fortification to those who walk in it, to those who are complete.
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And now, don't sit here and think, "Oh, now wait a minute. You had me so encouraged when you were talking about how the road was fortified,
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but now you're saying it's fortification to the complete. And maybe I'm not complete.
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I've got all these maladies or whatever, and so it's not fortified for me."
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Now, you don't understand. The word of God is not only fortification.
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The word of God is that which makes you whole. It's that which makes you complete.
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The Bible says, "Speaking of Jesus, ye are complete in him."
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The idea being that the upright is someone who yields themselves completely to God, someone who has no other God before them.
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You know that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life, and there is no one who can come to the Father except for through him.
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And so you're not divided, you're not halted between two opinions like we learned in Hosea Sunday when they bound themselves to two different rows going in two different directions,
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trying to plow two different ways, having two different opinions. They're not double-minded.
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We know, taking God's word into our heart, that God is the one true God, and Jesus is the Savior he sent.
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And so we yield ourselves wholly to that, and he makes us complete in him.
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The word translated upright here is the singular form of the word "tumim."
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Tumim. And tumim was placed on the heart of the high priest.
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Man, this is good.
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In Exodus chapter 28, verse 30, speaking of the high priest garment, God said,
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"And thou shalt put in the breastplate of judgment the urim and the tumim, and they shall be upon Aaron's heart when he goeth in before the Lord,
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and Aaron shall bear the judgment of the children of Israel upon his heart before the Lord continually."
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The urim and the tumim, those were the stones that bore the names of the twelve tribes of Israel.
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And they were called "tumim," meaning completeness, perfections in the plural.
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That they, in the heart of the high priest, being represented by the high priest,
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when the high priest went and stood before God, he represented the people on his heart.
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And the people on his heart were called "urim and tumim," lights and perfections.
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Why? Because in him was life, and the life was the light of men.
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The people who sat in darkness saw great light.
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By receiving Christ, we received the light of God, and by receiving the light of the knowledge of Jesus Christ, we received the life of God.
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But not only do we receive his light, we receive his perfection.
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We who had spiritual malady are made whole, complete, and Jesus Christ, our high priest.
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And so the road of the Lord is fortification to those completed people.
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It's a description of those who walk the road.
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You don't get complete.
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Completion is not told that you pay to walk the Lord's highway.
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Completion is the effect of getting on the road the way that leads to God, in that way is Jesus Christ, our high priest.
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The only way to walk on God's way is to believe on God's Son.
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Why? Because he is God's way.
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I am the way.
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You know what he's saying when he says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life?"
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I am the road, the truth that's light, and the life that comes from receiving that light.
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So we must walk in God's Word through faith in God's Son.
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That's the only way to get on God's road to begin with.
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It's impossible to navigate the road of Scripture without believing on the Lord Jesus Christ,
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because he is the theme of the entire Word of God.
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If you deny the Son of God, then you cannot walk in the Word of God.
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So God's Word is fortified.
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God's Word is complete, makes us complete.
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God's Word requires faith in God's Son.
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Now, 2 Samuel, 2 Samuel, chapter 22, verse 31, puts it this way,
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and it's a wonderful summation of what we're looking at tonight.
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I told you earlier that God's road was God's Word.
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The Word of God is the road of God.
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Now, watch how all of this is put together in 2 Samuel 22, verse 31.
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"As for God, his way is perfect."
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"As for God, his way, his road is complete."
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"The Word of the Lord is tried."
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You see now how it's describing the road or the way as the Word.
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It says, "As for God, his way is perfect."
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"The Word of the Lord is tried."
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He is a buckler, or you could say a shield, or you could say fortification, strength.
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"To all that what? Trust in him."
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The moment I hear the gospel of Jesus Christ,
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the moment that I accept the fact that God is my Creator,
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and that Jesus Christ is the salvation he sent into the world,
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and that through him I, as sinner, can be made right with my sinless God.
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The moment I acknowledge God and I acknowledge His Son as my Savior,
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that's the moment I trust in Him.
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And when I trust in Him, I have stuck my feet on the truth of the gospel,
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which is the Word of God, which now puts me on the path of God,
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which now means I am walking a fortified path,
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and as long as I continue walking in God's Word,
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I am guaranteed to arrive at His destination for my life.
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God's Word is God's way, God's way, His strength to the upright.
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Look back in your text, but destruction, oh, here's something different now.
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Destruction is the opposite of fortification, isn't it?
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We saw a ship this week run into a bridge there in Maryland,
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and that bridge just fell down. That's destruction.
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That bridge should have been fortified, but it wasn't.
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Fortification keeps something standing.
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Destruction tears something down.
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If you walk contrary to God's Word, then you're headed for destruction.
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If you walk contrary to God's Word, you're not traveling the road
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that takes you to the correct destination.
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You're venturing off on a different path that God has not laid for you.
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Destruction is your destination when God's Word isn't your means of transportation.
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It's simple. Only God's Word yields God's grace.
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God's road is fortification to those who walk in it,
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but destruction, look back in your text,
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destruction shall be to the workers of iniquity.
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If you have your Bible open right down in your margin, A-V-E-N, A-V-E-N,
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the word translated iniquity here to remind you of our study through Hosea.
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Remember when we were studying about Bethel, Beth-El, the house of God.
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And when Israel sinned against God, when they rejected God,
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they went after false gods, the place where Jacob had originally called the house of God,
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Beth-El, because of God's revelation to him there.
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That's where the false worship began to abound in that same place
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that God changed the name from Beth-El to Beth-Avon.
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Can you remember what Avon means? What?
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What did he say? "House of emptiness."
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"House of emptiness." Very good. It's one of the little Jerry Minnie boys.
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How old is he? Six. Six years old.
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Thank you for paying attention. "House of emptiness."
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Beth means house. Avon means empty.
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It means vanity, empty.
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Remember Solomon writing in the book of Ecclesiastes?
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He was writing about a life without God.
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And that's why he kept saying vanity, vanity, all this vanity.
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Without God, everything is empty.
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And so, "destruction shall be to the workers of iniquity."
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Destruction shall be to the workers of Avon.
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That this word "Avon" from Beth-Avon is translated iniquity here.
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"Destruction shall be to the workers of Avon of emptiness."
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Without the gospel of Jesus Christ, a person's life is absolutely empty and meaningless.
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Without God, without his word, without his son, a person is wasting their life.
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People who aren't walking in God's word are walking in vanity.
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They're walking in emptiness.
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And a person who's not following God's word is literally wasting their empty life.
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The workers of iniquity is speaking about those people who live their lives apart from God.
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There's no fortification on the road to destruction.
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The only way to avoid destruction is to change the road you're traveling on.
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The road that you travel brings you to your destination.
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If I'm traveling the way of the Lord, guess where I'm going to arrive?
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I'm going to arrive where the Lord is.
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The Bible says that Jesus came, died, rose again, that he might bring us to God,
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being put to death in the flesh and quickened by the Spirit, that he might bring us to God.
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But if you're walking an empty road, it's going to bring you to emptiness.
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If you're walking a road without God, it's going to bring you to nothingness.
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The gospel of Jesus Christ is the only way to avoid destruction.
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So the way of the Lord is the only way for me.
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It should be the only way for you.
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Destruction means everything in your life will be absolutely torn down.
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This world is going to be absolutely destroyed one day.
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He's going to make a new heaven and a new earth wherein God dwells,
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and the knowledge of God dwells.
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And those without that knowledge will never experience that new heaven and that new earth.
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They lived a life of emptiness.
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They walked away of emptiness.
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And in the end, they arrived at emptiness.
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With that, we'll go ahead and close tonight.
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Thank you, Father, for your precious word.
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Thank you for the encouragement, Lord.
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When I learn about the way of the Lord, and the little nuances, Father,
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the different aspects you tell us about the way of the Lord when we get back to it,
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in tonight it's fortification or destruction if we avoid it.
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And, Lord, when I learn about the way of the Lord,
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it is such an encouragement to me to commit myself wholly to Scripture,
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to ensure, Father, that every aspect of my life, Lord,
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is yielding, Father, to your revealed word to me.
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And, Father, I pray that for each and every person in this church,
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Lord, we're committed to the Jesus and the gospel of the Word.
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But as we're committed, Father, for eternity to the gospel of the Word,
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and we arrive at the destination of your kingdom and your heaven,
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may so be committed in everything in your Word.
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We ask it in Jesus' precious name. Amen.
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