40 is a sermon teaching that for as long as God is willing to use you, you follow Him prayerfully each step of the way, and you’ll arrive at the right destination.

Key verses:
Deuteronomy 8:1-20

 

May I ask you to take your Bible and turn with me to Deuteronomy chapter eight? We are going to look at this entire chapter this evening. Let me begin by just reading the first with you. Again, Deuteronomy 8:1:

Deuteronomy 8:1: “All the commandments which I command thee this day shall ye observe to do, that ye may live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers.”

Approximately six months ago, we celebrated 40 years of serving the Lord under the name of West Park Baptist Church. Many of you know the story. The church was founded in 1971 and located over on Congress Avenue, and it was called Congress Avenue Baptist Church. Then in 1977, they got a new pastor. The first pastor was Pastor David Mikel. And the new pastor was Pastor J. Morgan Haynes. And then, in 1982, to make a long story short, the church decided to sell the property on Congress Avenue and move over here at this location. This was trees and grass where you are sitting right now, and just had the other building over there. We moved here beginning in 1983.

I came to the church in August of 1982 and came to be the youth pastor here. So, if you’re doing the math, you’ll figure out something because today, Mrs. McClure and I celebrate 40 years of being married. Six months ago, we celebrated being under the name of West Park Baptist Church. Today, we celebrate being married. If you’re that good at doing math, you’ll figure out I was a single man when I came here. Now, it was already in the plans. We got engaged, actually, in February of 1982. So, when I came here, I knew we were going to get married. It was already well in the works but hadn’t had the wedding yet until January of 1983.

“40” in the Lives of God’s People

But the point I’m trying to get across to you is this. God uses “40” in the lives of His people. If you read the Bible, you’ll find the number 40, and other numbers recur over and over and over. Brother Joe, this morning, we said he mentioned that he looked up the number 40. And 158 times, I think he said it was in the Bible. Is that right? 158 times mentioned in the Bible. That’s pretty amazing. This is not because the writers of scripture like writing that because it’s a nice number, and they’ll use it a lot. No, God does things deliberately and precisely. When you talk about the Bible, there is preciseness to the meaning. Most often, you are going to find number 40 is connected to judgment.

Let me give you some examples. When God called Noah into the ark, there was rain for 40 days and 40 nights, which is the primary source that brought about the worldwide flood. I say the primary source. There were other contributing factors.

Then, Moses was 40 years old when he left Egypt as a fugitive. He worked for his father-in-law in Midian for 40 years, and then he returned to Egypt and led his people out of slavery and bondage and led them to the promised land for 40 years. So, his life consisted of 3 sets of 40 years. 40 years as the prince of Egypt, 40 years working as a shepherd, and 40 years leading the people of Israel.

Then, Jonah’s message to the people of Nineveh was that they had 40 days to repent before God’s judgment would reign down upon them. Again, you see the picture here. The number 40 is connected with judgment.

When Jesus began His public ministry, He fasted 40 days and 40 nights. Then, He was tempted of the devil. After His resurrection, He showed himself alive for 40 days before He returned to Heaven. Samuel was a judge for 40 years. King Solomon reigned over Israel for 40 years. We could go on with this, but I think you’re getting the idea.

God uses this period of 40, 40 days, 40 years, and 40 years is a long time. It’s a long time to do anything. Well, how do you do it? How do you remain faithful? How do you stay with anything for 40 years? Deuteronomy is going to give us some strong clues and information on that, so let’s take a look at it.

Follow God’s Word

First, let’s read the first two verses. Moses is writing, he says:

Deuteronomy 8:1: “All the commandments which I command thee this day shall ye observe to do, that ye may live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers.”

Deuteronomy 8:2: “And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no.”

Let me talk to you a little about that. Moses is telling us that the people of Israel followed the Lord, and he is telling us that we need to follow the Lord so we can follow His will. We need to follow His Word. That’s what he is talking about to keep His commandments. Now, he talks about how He tried the people of Israel. I’ve told you many times God never asks a question to find out the answer. When He asks the question, He always knows the answer. He asks questions so that we will think about the answer.

When He puts us on trial, it’s not to find out what we’re going to do. He already knows what we’re going to do. He’s showing us what we’re going to do. And here is what He says. We need to follow Him to humble us. He humbles the people of Israel in the wilderness. Most of us need to be humbled. Most of us have a little too much of the pride factor. It gets us in a great deal of trouble. We allow Him to humble us. And then, we must allow Him to prove us. Again, not so He can find out what we do, but that we find out what we are going to do.

And then, we must allow Him to show us what is in our own hearts. Sometimes we don’t realize what’s down inside. We kind of tuck it away in the inner parts of our hearts until we’re angered, or we’re going through a stressful time. Then it comes out. Again, He does these things for our benefit so that we will learn and so we will grow. It took Moses 120 years to complete all that God had for him to do, 120 years, 3×40. Most of us aren’t going to have 120 years.

I was in college for the second time, and I was sitting with my faculty advisor. He wanted me to take a certain course. It was a good course. Nothing wrong with it. No doubt it would have been a helpful course. But in order for me to take that one class, I would have had to go to school an extra year just to take that one class. To be honest with you, my funds were getting short, I paid for college, and funds were getting short, and time was getting short.

I told that faculty advisor, of course, by the way, he taught that class, so it had something to do with it, but I told him, “No, sir, I don’t think I’ll take that class.” He said, “Why not?” I said, “I’ll have to come back to school an entire extra year just to do that. I can graduate without it. I would have to go to school an entire extra year just to take that one class. So, he said to me, “Well, Moses was 80 when he started serving the Lord.” I said, “Yes, sir, that’s true. Moses lived to be 120, and I probably won’t.” That was the end of the discussion.

God Will Supply Our Need

Deuteronomy 8:3: “And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.”

Deuteronomy 8:4: “Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell, these forty years.”

What an interesting way of expressing it. But Moses is right, with the Lord inspiring him. We must trust the Lord to supply our needs. I expect many of us here can say the same thing I’m about to say. But over the years of life, sometimes you go through times of financial stress. Sometimes it’s difficult, and sometimes, it’s easy. There are seasons as you go through life. We have to understand that as great as our material needs are, God can supply them, and He does. And if we follow Him faithfully, He takes care of us.

Brother Bill Heller was just telling me before the service one of the churches that they served in, I won’t tell the whole story, you can ask him, but they came unexpectedly in $50,000 at a time when they had a great financial need. The Lord does things like that.

The truth of the matter is, he’s telling the people of Israel here when they get hungry, He let them be hungry, and then He brought them manna. He said they’d never seen anything like it. You’ve never seen anything like it. Nobody has seen anything like it. Except for those people who spent 40 years in the wilderness following Moses, nobody has ever seen manna. But He fed them with it, and He kept them fed until they cried out for meat, and then He gave them quail. The Lord allowed them to survive. He supplied their needs.

And then, at the end of verse 3, it says, “man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.” You know Jesus quoted that when Satan was tempting Him when He had fasted, how long? 40 days. Jesus quoted this same verse. And we need to understand that as great as our material needs are, our spiritual needs are even greater.

Everything in this life is temporary. Everything is temporary. Your hard times, the difficulties you’re going through, your illness you may have, all of it is temporary. You’ll be past it one day. All the good things in your life are temporary, also. This entire life is temporary. This entire world is temporary. The bigger picture is eternity and where we’ll be in eternity. And how you will be in eternity depends a great deal on what we do here and now. We must trust the Lord to save us, of course. But we must live accordingly as we follow the Lord. To follow the Lord is to follow His Word.

God Chastens Those He Loves

Then look at verse 5:

Deuteronomy 8:5: “Thou shalt also consider in thine heart, that, as a man chasteneth his son, so the LORD thy God chasteneth thee.”

Deuteronomy 8:6: “Therefore thou shalt keep the commandments of the LORD thy God, to walk in his ways, and to fear him.”

When we disobey the Lord. When we go astray, when we get off the path of following Him, He chastens us. I’m going to tell you when a child of God is chastened, it is not a pleasant experience, and we don’t like it, we don’t enjoy it. But the Lord does it to bring us back to where we need to be. He does it to bring us back to himself.

If you doubt that, I encourage you to read 1 Corinthians chapter 11, the later part of the chapter, and then read Hebrews chapter 12. He’ll tell you all about it. And why does He do that? Well, in Hebrews 12, He says that whom the Lord loves, He chastens. He does it because He loves us.

I’m going to tell you this, that I’ve told many times to young people. I think they think that I’m making up a story. But when I was growing up, I got paddled many times. Why? Usually, because I did something that deserved it. I don’t like to admit that, but it’s true. But the last time I got paddled, I was a senior in high school. That’s what young people really can’t believe.

“What did you do wrong?” I’ll tell you what I did wrong. When we were seniors in high school, we were allowed to go off-campus for lunch. We were allowed to go off campus. One day, a friend of mine and I went off campus, and we went in his car. He had car trouble. It took us a while, and we got going and got back. It took us a while to get back to campus, and we were late. So, we went to the office to get passes so we could go to class. We couldn’t go down the hallways between classes without a hall pass. So, we went to the office to get a pass. We were given passes, and we were on our way to class.

On our way to class, we had to pass the cafeteria. As we passed the cafeteria, I said to the other fellows with me, “Hey, let’s stop and buy an ice cream and eat it on the way to class.” We were going to go on to class. As we were coming out of the cafeteria, guess who was coming into the cafeteria? The dean and he had given us the passes. He said, “I didn’t give you a pass to go to the cafeteria. I gave you a class pass to go to class.” And because we stopped and bought an ice cream and did not go directly to class, we got up to the dean’s office and got paddled. I know you can’t believe that I know you can’t, but that’s a fact. That’s how school used to be.

I’m going to tell you, folks, society had a lot less trouble in those days. We had trouble, don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying, “Boy, those were the good old days. There were no problems.” That’s certainly not true, not for a minute. But it wasn’t like it is today.

I’m just saying that is what the Lord does. He, in essence, paddles us, and He does it for our own good. He does it to draw us close to Him, to bring us back to Him, and to get us back on the path we should be following. Hebrews 12, the writer of Hebrews, says if you are without chastisement, you may be an illegitimate child. The Lord loves His children. He chastens them. He chastises them. If you can do sin and never have any trouble as a result of it, you might not be one of His. You may want to consider that situation.

We Enjoy God’s Blessings

Look at verse seven:

Deuteronomy 8:7: “For the LORD thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills;”

Deuteronomy 8:8: “A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey;”

Deuteronomy 8:9: “A land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.”

I heard many people talk about the promised land as the land of milk and honey. It doesn’t say milk in this verse, but it does in other places. I suppose many of you would agree with me on this. Maybe not, but I think you would. Milk and honey are good together. It’s not bad at all. What is the Lord saying when He says that? He’s saying it’s a land that has all that you need. And not only all that you need to survive but all but all that you need to have a good life. When we follow the Lord, we enjoy the blessings of God. We must not allow our pride to interfere. We must trust Him that He is going to bring us to the destination that He has for us.

Let me tell you this from personal experience. In following the Lord, if you don’t get to do exactly what you want to do or go exactly where you want to go, or have exactly what you want to have many times, it’s because God’s got something better for you. I’ve learned that. Sometimes I wasn’t given what I wanted when I wanted it, but I found out the Lord had something better. He had a better plan, a better idea. You stay faithful, and you stay following Him. You’ll see that.

Always Be Thankful

Then in verse 10:

Deuteronomy 8:10: “When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the LORD thy God for the good land which he hath given thee.”

Deuteronomy 8:11: “Beware that thou forget not the LORD thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes, which I command thee this day:”

Deuteronomy 8:12: “Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein;”

Deuteronomy 8:13: “And when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied;”

Deuteronomy 8:14: “Then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the LORD thy God, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage;”

Deuteronomy 8:15: “Who led thee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water; who brought thee forth water out of the rock of flint;”

Deuteronomy 8:16: “Who fed thee in the wilderness with manna, which thy fathers knew not, that he might humble thee, and that he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end;”

Deuteronomy 8:17: “And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth.”

Deuteronomy 8:18: “But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day.”

Deuteronomy 8:19: “And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the LORD thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish.”

We’ll read verse 20 in just a moment, but I want you to think about what He is saying here. We enjoy the blessings of God. But we have to remember they are the blessings of God. We don’t have what we have because we’re so smart and so wise, and we’re so good at working. “I don’t know about you, preacher, but I work for what I’ve got.” I’m not saying that you haven’t, but I am saying had the Lord not blessed you in your endeavors and your work, you wouldn’t have what you have.

He blesses us as we follow Him. He brings us the things that we need and brings us more than what we need. We must always be thankful. We must always be thankful for what He has given to us. Never lose the idea of gratitude, never. Never get proud and say, “I built all this myself.”

Let God Lead You Step by Step

Now verse 20:

Deuteronomy 8:20: “As the nations which the LORD destroyeth before your face, so shall ye perish; because ye would not be obedient unto the voice of the LORD your God.”

That final verse is telling us to listen to God’s Word. Let Him lead you step by step. God has often used the number 40 in the lives of His people. How do you remain faithful? How do you stay with anything for 40 years or more? Let me share that with you, and then we’ll finish tonight.

Number one and two: You do it by trusting the Lord and following His Word and His will to the best of your ability. “I don’t always know God’s will in a certain matter.” You do the things that you do know. You do the things you do understand are God’s will. You do what you know to be right, what you know what you ought to do, and the rest of it will come. It will.

“Well, sometimes I’ve got to make a decision and can’t discern the Lord’s will in the matter.” You pray, give it to Him. A wonderful word is the word “surrender.” We sing that hymn sometimes, “I Surrender All.” That’s what we need to do. We need to surrender all.

I learned to pray many, many years ago, “Lord, you know what I want. But if what I want is not what you want, give me the grace to accept what you want.” You’ll never go wrong with that. Never go wrong. He’ll show you each time what is better for you than you thought for yourself. How do you do it for 40 years? You do it one step at a time, one day at a time.

You and I don’t know what will happen 40 years from now. Most of us won’t be here 40 years from now. I’m sure of that. But you and I don’t know what’s going to happen 40 years from now. We don’t know what’s going to happen 40 minutes from now. But you take it one step at a time, one day at a time. Eventually, you will be exactly where you’re supposed to be and where God would have you to be.

Number three: You do it with the understanding that every day will be a good day. Not every day is going to be a good day. You are going to have days of blessing. You’re going to have days of joy. But you are going to have days of trial and trouble also. It’s a promise. I don’t know anybody who goes through their whole life without trouble. Some of the blessed people I know have had trouble, but they are still some of the most blessed people I know.

Number 4: You do it by keeping your focus on the main goal and not getting off track with things that will hinder you from reaching that goal. You set a goal, and you go after it. You stay after it until you achieve it. If God’s shown you that you are supposed to do a certain thing, go to a certain place, then you pursue that and stay on track. So many things in this life distract us. So many things get us off course.

I’ll share one thing with you. One of our members who is so kind to me came up to me a couple of years ago and said, “Well, you quote scripture so wonderfully in the pulpit.” I said, “You do know that I use notes?” I do. I won’t tell you why I use notes for several reasons. But one is to keep me on track. If I don’t use notes, I have a tendency to get off track, and then it would take me a long time to get back to where I was supposed to be, if I can even remember where that was. So, I have to use notes to keep myself on track.

I preached in one church, and I’ll just say, in Tennessee. I won’t even say in what city. I’m not trying to say anything against that church, but I preached in one church, and they thought I wasn’t a very spiritual preacher because I used notes. They thought you just go up there, open the Bible, and whatever God gives you at that time is what you preach. That might have worked for them, but that doesn’t work too well for me.

Keep your focus on the main goal. Things can get you off track. There’s a preacherly term for getting off track, and it’s called chasing rabbits. That’s a hunting term. It comes from the south. They go out and hunt a raccoon, for example. You’ve got the dogs following the trail of the raccoon, and a rabbit crosses the trail, and that will get the dogs off the trail and start chasing the rabbit and forget about the raccoon, which is why they are there. We preachers chase rabbits sometimes. We do. We get a thought and go after it and forget about the main goal. In the Christian life, you have to keep focus, and you have to keep going.

Number 5: You do it with the understanding, while we make mistakes – and you do, all of us do – while we make mistakes, the Lord is still faithful, and He’ll forgive you and use you again.

Can I share something with you? It was after David’s great sin that he wrote some of the sweetest psalms. It was after Peter denied the Lord that he became the great preacher at Pentecost. So often after we’ve had a failure, so often after we’ve had our own mistakes and we’ve ruined the picture, we’ve made it wrong, God forgives us, and He uses us again. We may not get back some things we’ve lost when we’ve gone the wrong way or made a mistake. But we can get back on track in serving the Lord.

Number 6: You do it by praying all the way. You’ll never make it in your own strength; you won’t. You need to pray, and you need to pray daily. You need to pray constantly, asking the Lord to guide you through each step.

To be honest with you, I don’t know how much time I have, or we have together. None of us does. I’m not saying I’m packing my bags. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. But I’m saying we know this. We have to make the best out of the time we have left.

I’m reading a book. I was given several books at Christmastime. That’s a good thing, but it’s going to take me a while to read them. So, if one of you gave me a book and I haven’t read yours yet, it’s coming. It just takes me a while to get through a book. I’m reading a book that somebody gave me that is about Ronald Reagan. I haven’t got to this part of the book yet, but I’m sure it’s in there. But I remember being in Bible doctrines class at Pensacola Christian College, which by the way, this being our 40th anniversary, is where my wife and I met in Bible doctrines class. It’s a pretty good place to meet.

But we were sitting in Bible doctrines class. The class hadn’t started yet, and one young lady who was a nursing student came running into the room and announced to all of us, “Reagan’s been shot.” And he had been. The President of the United States had been shot by a man named John Hinckley, Jr. His intent was to assassinate the president. He had his reasons for that. That was his goal, and he didn’t succeed. He did shoot White House Press Secretary James Brady and permanently injured and disabled him. And he shot the President of the United States. The president had raised his hand to wave, and he shot him right under the arm.

When the president recovered, he was in the hospital for a while. He recovered and went back to work. He said, “God has spared my life. Whatever time I have left is His.” That’s the right attitude. I’m telling you not to praise Ronald Reagan. I’m telling you that to tell you that’s how it is in your life. God has spared your life. Whatever time you have left is His. Commit it to Him, and let Him use you.

Psalm 37:3: “Trust in the LORD, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.”

Psalm 37:4: “Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.”

Psalm 37:5: “Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.”

Psalm 37:6: “And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday.”

You trust in Him. You follow Him one step at a time. And you may do something in a year, five years, ten years, 20 years, 40 years, 50 years, 60, 70 years; as long as God is willing to use you, you follow Him. You follow Him prayerfully each step of the way, and you’ll arrive at the right destination.

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Let us pray. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for blessing us. Thank you for having this time together. Thank you, Lord, that we’ve had more than 40 years together as a church. Thank you for blessing us each step of the way, bringing us through the hard times, and bringing us through the good times. Lord, only you know what lies ahead. But we know this. We want to follow you. We have decided to follow Jesus. No turning back, no turning back.

Our heads are bowed, and our eyes are closed. We’re going to sing the hymn of invitation. There aren’t any strangers here tonight. God’s spoken to your heart. There’s a spiritual need in your life. The altar’s here if you need it. If you need prayer, come on, you can pray on your own, or I will be glad to pray with you. If you have a spiritual question that you’d like to have answered, come, and we’ll do our best to help you. If you are not sure you are saved, you need to come.

If you are sure you are saved and there are some things you need to straighten out between your soul and the Savior, you need to come. Let the Lord have His will and His way. Father, bless now in this invitation time. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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