In this sermon, the preacher addresses a crowd of believers and warns them not to be shocked or fearful when faced with opposition and persecution. He reminds them that God has been with them in the past and will continue to be with them in the future. The preacher emphasizes the importance of recognizing and remembering the supernatural and miraculous things that God has done for them. He also highlights the image of God carrying and protecting His people, comparing it to a father carrying his son. The sermon concludes with a rebuke against those who would accuse God of bringing them to difficult situations out of hatred.

When Brother Conrad asked me to fill in for Mark, I asked if it would be permissible to give one of Brother Woodruff's devotionals. He said that would be fine, and then I got to realizing what I'd gotten myself into, because how am I going to follow in his footsteps? We've heard so much here, though, these days, that I trust that if I could just get one thing across to you, I'd be thankful to the Lord. And that's what I want to try to do today. Let's turn to Deuteronomy chapter 1. Deuteronomy chapter 1. You know that the word Deuteronomy means second law. And in the book of Deuteronomy, we have Moses recounting some of the things that God had done with His people, and that's what we take up here in Deuteronomy 1. And we'll start at verse 19. I'm reading from the New American Standard Version. I would have brought my old King James if I had known that I was going to be speaking. But I trust that you'll be able to follow along. Deuteronomy chapter 1, verse 19. We'll just read a good-sized section here. I'll only be speaking on one verse. But let's get a little feel for where we are. Deuteronomy chapter 1, verse 19. Moses is recounting these things to the people, and he says, Then we set out from Horeb, and went through all that great and terrible wilderness which you saw, on the way to the hill country of the Amorites, just as the Lord our God had commanded us. And we came to Kadesh Barnea. And I said to you, you have come to the hill country of the Amorites, which the Lord our God is about to give us. See, the Lord your God has placed the land before you. Go up, take possession, as the Lord the God of your fathers has spoken to you. Do not fear or be dismayed. Then all of you approached me and said, Let us send men before us that they may search out the land for us and bring back to us word of the way by which we should go up and the cities which we shall enter. And the thing pleased me, and I took twelve of your men, one man for each tribe, and they turned and went up into the hill country and came to the valley of Eshkol and spied it out. Then they took some of the fruit of the land in their hands and brought it down to us, and they brought us back a report and said, It is a good land which the Lord our God is about to give us. Yet you were not willing to go up, but rebelled against the command of the Lord your God, and you grumbled in your tents and said, Because the Lord hates us. He has brought us out of the land of Egypt to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites to destroy us. Where can we go up? Our brethren made our hearts melt, saying, The people are bigger and taller than we. The cities are large and fortified to heaven. Besides, we saw the sons of the Anicum there. And I said to you, Do not be shocked nor fear them. The Lord your God who goes before you will Himself fight on your behalf, just as He did for you in Egypt before your eyes and in the wilderness, where you saw how the Lord your God carried you just as a man carries his son, in all the way which you have walked until you came to this place. But for all this, you did not trust the Lord your God, who goes before you on your way to seek out a place for you to encamp, in fire by night and cloud by day, to show you the way in which you should go. And the Lord heard the sound of your words, and He was angry and took an oath, saying, Not one of these men, this evil generation, shall see the good land which I swore to give your fathers, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh. He shall see it. And to him and to his sons I will give the land on which you set foot, because he has followed the Lord fully. The Lord was angry with me also on your account, saying, Not even you shall enter there. Joshua the son of Nun, who stands before you, he shall enter there. Encourage him, for he shall cause Israel to inherit it. Moreover, your little ones, who you said would become a prey, and your sons, who this day have no knowledge of good or evil, shall enter there. And I will give it to them, and they shall possess it. But as for you, turn around and set out for the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea. I'd like for us to consider this morning verse 31, regarding God's carrying of His people. God's carrying of His people. I bore you, says in the authorized version. I bore you as a man bears his son. Well, you know how a man bears his son. He doesn't bear him like a donkey would, but he carries him. He bears him. And so God's carrying of His people. This section opens with the people of God standing on the brink of the promised land, terrified of their enemies, and trembling at the future. And so Moses exhorts them in verse 29. He says, Do not be shocked nor fear them. Again, the authorized uses the word dread. Something stronger than just plain old fear. And the New American Standard attempts to capture it by saying the word shocked. Don't be shocked. Don't dread nor fear them. And even the wording itself here, brethren, is a blessing, isn't it? Because it tells us that there are going to be some things in the Christian life that would shock us, that would tend to put us in dread, and to cause our hearts to melt. We're going to encounter some things in the Christian life that are shocking and dreadful if we don't come at them by faith. They're going to tempt us to have our hearts melt. We're going to encounter situations, the Word of God tells us, when we appear to be grasshoppers and our enemies appear to be giants. And you know what giants do to grasshoppers. That's the reality of things. That's the way it's going to look to us. Brother Gilbert the other day talked about the Lord sending us out as sheep in the midst of wolves. And we've gotten used to that kind of terminology, but you just stop and think about it. I mean, a man, a hunter out in the wilderness armed with a high-powered rifle at night that is being encircled by wolves knows what it is to fear. Can you imagine what it is when you send a sheep out? I mean, let's suppose these wolves are howling all around this building, circling everything, and here's this sheep, and you say, go on out there now. That's the reality, beloved, of the situation that we're facing, and we are every bit that vulnerable to destruction. Jesus didn't just use pretty pictures that exaggerated reality. They were illustrations of reality. We are being sent out as sheep in the midst of wolves. And so Moses here tells us, he says, don't give in to that. Don't give in to that dread, don't give in to that terror, don't be shocked. Here you are a sheep, you come out through that door, and here's a big old crowd of wolves. He says, don't be shocked by that, don't dread, don't give in to it, because God will be with you just as He has been with you before. That's the burden of what he's saying to them. Now notice the emphasis here. We're looking at verses 29 through 33 right in this area, as far as where you can be looking. Notice what he says, the emphasis here on what they had seen. Verse 30, he says, just as He did for you in Egypt before your eyes. And verse 31, in the wilderness where you saw how the Lord your God carried you. You saw these things. These are things that you have seen. They had seen some things, beloved, and if you're a Christian, you have seen some things. God has done some things for you that are supernatural and beyond the realm of man. And because of that, especially if you've been a Christian for a while, He's going to put you in some situations that are harder than what He let you face when you were first converted. You remember what it says when the children of Israel were coming up out of the land of Egypt? God Himself said, I'm not going to lead them up by the way of the Philistines, though it's shorter, lest the people see war and they get afraid and they turn back. They weren't ready for it at that time. But by the time they got over here to Kadesh Barnea, they had seen quite a few things already that God had done for them. And beloved, you know all the miracles that we have seen. I mean, every now and then I sit down with somebody and I start telling them some of the things God did for me and those of you who know Dick Oaks. When we were in Germany together, single men, trying to serve God, we sat down and started telling some of the things that God did for us way back then. And you get started talking, you can talk for hours of the things that God did. And I go down through my life there in Kirksville and our married life. We've seen so many things that God did. I start telling about how God brought Mona and me together and all the provisions that He made. I didn't have any money. We couldn't buy a wedding dress. And her dad gave us some money for a wedding dress, a small amount, and we thought that money sure would go a lot better for something else, you know. And one of her old friends from earlier years stopped by our house. She said, I have some wedding dress material that I bought and I never used. And you'd be welcome to have that. I went ahead and bought a dress and you could have that material. Mona said, well, there's a certain kind of material that I'm looking for. Such and such and so on. She said, that's what it is. So she brought that and gave it to her. And one of the sisters started sewing this dress together and she gets down to the bottom and finds the name of the designer fabric company that's supposed to be sewn inside the dress, Leiter, L-E-I-T-E-R. I didn't even know there was such a company. That must have been from the rich side of my family that I wasn't on. But anyway, I'm saying, and you can say the same if you're a Christian, you have hundreds and thousands of such things that you can say that God did, particularly for you with your name on it. Now God expects us not to forget that the instant we get into our next trial. And that's exactly what we do most of the time. Those things just fly out and you can't even remember one thing God ever did for you when you face the next thing. Now Moses says, remember, God's expecting you to look back and remember what He's done for you. He's done so much for you. And He's going to keep doing that for you. So he reassures them. Well, what in particular had God done for them? He tells us here, if you look in verses 30 and following. First of all, he says, verse 30, The Lord your God who goes before you will Himself fight on your behalf, first of all, just as He did for you in Egypt before your eyes. So in other words, Moses directs their attention back to the miracles that attended their deliverance from the power of darkness. What we would say the typology in our situation, he points them back to the miracles surrounding their conversion. Then secondly, verse 31, he says, You remember what God did for you in the wilderness, verse 31, where you saw how the Lord your God carried you just as a man carries his son in all the way which you have walked until you came to this place. And then verse 33, he reminds them not only how God had carried them, not only how He had converted them, but he reminds them of how God had guided them. His glorious guidance with this fire by night and cloud by day. You go back and read those accounts of God's particular guidance of His old covenant people. You know, if the cloud stayed there one day, they'd stay one day. If it stayed a month, they'd stay a month, and so on. What is God saying to us except that He wants to assure us that He's going to show us what we're supposed to do? He's not hiding His will from us. He is perfectly willing to guide us, and He will guide His people. So these are the things that Moses reminds them of. But today, as I said, we just want to look at one, and that is God's carrying of His people, verse 31. The Lord your God carried you, just as a man carries his son, in all the way which you have walked. God's carrying of His people. Now, the first thing we need to lay hold of here is the fact that this is what God says He was doing. If we just looked at it, we might not get that impression from some of the events that took place. But God says, here's what was happening. I was carrying you all along, all the way, just as a father carries his son. And let me just remind you, we don't need to read these passages, but let me just remind you some of the things that they had already been through by the time they got to this place. In Exodus 15, they had come out into the wilderness of Shur and found no water. And immediately, you remember, they came to this situation of bitter water. And then a little bit later, in Exodus 16, the people were grumbling. They were complaining because God had led them out in the wilderness to die of hunger. And then again in Exodus 17, they came to another situation, no water. Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to kill us and our children with thirst? And then in Exodus 17, verse 8, they run into Amalek. So there were some things along the way that they had come into, and yet God Himself says that the reality is, I was carrying you the whole time. Now beloved, think of this. Do you suppose that it was chance that they ran out of water and just happened to come up to a place that had bitter water? If God was carrying them, wouldn't they have come up to a place that had nice, clean water? It was all part of God's plan to show them to get that tree to throw in that water and make the water sweet. Do you suppose that it was just chance that they got out there and they were thirsting and carrying on and complaining? And brought to that place, and God says, there's a rock over there, Moses, and speak to that rock and water will come up out of that rock. You see, God was guiding in all of that. God was guiding in the fact that Amalek came up against them. What was that all about? Well, so they could learn that if you held the rod of God, and really so we could learn, that if you hold the rod of God high, you'll have victory. And so we could learn that we're not even able to hold the rod of God high. And so we could learn that there is a place of support and rest where the rod of God can be held high all the time. You see, all that happened perfectly with God carrying them into the situation, carrying them through the situation, and carrying them out of the situation. He was carrying them all the time through that time. God Himself. And the same is true of all of God's dealings with His people, isn't it? I recently was stirred again reading that account of Joseph. His brothers there, before Joseph had revealed himself to them, his brothers are talking among themselves, and they say, you remember how in the distress of his soul he pleaded with us, and we wouldn't listen to him. You know, it wasn't some little thing when they took their brother out of that pit and sold him into slavery. He was crying, he was carrying on, and they hardened their hearts against him. And those traitors took him, slave traders took him down to Egypt. You know what was happening right there? He wasn't being carried by some camel. He was being carried by God right down there into Egypt. And when that stuff happened with Potiphar's wife, and he's falsely accused, and everything seems to be going against him, and they call in the guards and they grab him roughly, carry him down to that prison. It's God carrying him down to that prison. All the way, God says, I've carried you. Just like a father carries his son. Look at your past, beloved. Look back at it. Look at the worst things. God was carrying you. If you're a Christian, He was carrying you right through that whole thing. Look at your present right now. What is it? That's your end. I know one thing. If you belong to God, He's carrying you as a father carries his son. You look at the future. And whatever it is that you're fearing, I guarantee this, God's carrying you and will carry you then. Now what does this thing of carrying on God's part speak of? What's He saying to us? Well, the first thing that I think He's saying to us has to do with the weakness and inability of those who have to be carried. Why else would God carry us? I mean, my son's here this morning, 18 years old, strong and healthy. I did not carry him in here this morning. But there was a time when I carried him. Why did I do it? Because he wasn't able to carry himself. That's what this speaks of. Why does God tell us, I was carrying you the whole time? Because you need to be carried. That's why. And there may come a time when He'll have to carry me, when my son will have to carry me. I mean, that happens. It's quite a thought, isn't it? That same father that carried his son when he was little ends up being carried by his son because he's too weak and too sick and too old to do anything himself. That's the reason that you get carried. God doesn't carry strong people that can do it on their own. He carries people that are halt and maimed and lame and blind and that cannot do it. And beloved, there's no way we're going to make it in. Just like somebody that can't walk would have to be carried in here this morning, there's no way that one of us is going to be in glory except God carries us in there. That's how incapacitated we are and unable we are to do anything. That's what God says. He says, I'll carry you. Isn't that wonderful? I'll carry you. He's teaching us something about how utterly dependent we really are upon Him and His sustaining power. You know, there's a, I don't know what you'd call it exactly, kind of like a plaque that is popular in Christendom that has these footprints in the sand. And you remember that? It gets to a point where there's just one set of footprints and the Lord tells him, I was carrying you through those hard times. Well, that's not it. If God didn't carry you on your very best day, you'd end up in hell. You look back, there's only one set of footprints all along. There never was any more than one set. He's carrying us the whole time. I'm carrying you. Somebody said, Christianity is a crutch, you know, for weak people. And the reply was, well, no, it's not a crutch. It's a wheelchair. But I'll tell you something better than that. It's more than a wheelchair. It's a Father carrying His Son. That's what it is. It's a Father carrying His Son. How many times would we have utterly perished if God hadn't carried us? How many temptations would we have fallen into if the Father hadn't intervened, carrying us along, carrying us around that thing? How many decisions would we have made that would have been utterly ruinous if God hadn't intervened and turned it off by carrying us? What a blessed thing. Quite a few years back we were dealing with a young lady that was extremely agitated and troubled and in a bad way spiritually. She had purchased a gun. And there was a danger of at least one life and maybe more. And God brought her through that. And she's still walking today. He carried her. But my brother-in-law, John Brashear, said to me afterwards, he said, I bet you were really interceding during that time. I said, no, I wasn't interceding. After the first month or two of that, I was so worn out and exhausted emotionally and mentally, about all I could do was hang on myself. Somebody was praying somewhere, and God was carrying, but I wasn't doing anything. He carries us. You think of the apostle Peter. Certainly one of the chiefest apostles. I appreciated some of the things Brother Barr said the other day. We have way too low of an estimation of Peter. We've got all these things, you know, and we laugh about how he did this and that and said this and that. You know, George Whitefield was one of the greatest preachers of church history, but I don't know of any time where George Whitefield saw 3,000 people converted from one sermon. Do you? I don't know of any time where George Whitefield had handkerchiefs carried from his body for the sick, rightly or wrongly. Or people out there trying to get into his shadow as he walked by, get sick people into his shadow. These are amazing things. Peter raised the dead. He was one of the chiefest apostles, but beloved, he was one prayer away from total apostasy. Simon, Simon, Satan has desired to have you. What? I have prayed for you that your faith fail not. If he had not prayed for him, his faith would have failed. He would have been gone. You wouldn't know anything about him except the apostate Peter, if you knew anything. God carries us. We need Him to carry us. There are so many Scriptures on this. Psalm 28, he says, Save thy people and bless thine inheritance. Be their shepherd also and carry them forever. That's what we need. We need to be carried forever. One more passage before we go on here. Let's turn to this one, Isaiah 46. Isaiah 46, verses 3 and 4. A glorious promise about this carrying. He says, Listen to me, O house of Jacob, and all the remnant of the house of Israel, you who have been born by me from birth and have been carried from the womb. Now, he's given us an assurance here in the children of Israel of what He's going to do for us. These things were written for us. You who have been born by me from birth and have been carried from the womb even to your old age, I shall be the same. And even to your grain years, I shall bear you. I have done it, and I shall carry you, and I shall bear you, and I shall deliver you. I've done it so far, I'll do it to the end. Each sweet Ebenezer I have in review confirms His good pleasure to see me right through all the way to the end. But what I want us to notice here, the contrast. If you look up in verse 1, he talks about some carrying. And he does again in verses 5 through 7. He says in verse 1, Baal has bowed down, Nebo stoops over. Their images are consigned to the beast and the cattle. The things that you carry are burdensome. Load for the weary beast. They stooped over, they bowed down together, they could not rescue the burden but have themselves gone into captivity. So here they are, they've got all these idols, images, keeping them on the backs of their cattle and what have you, trying to rescue their gods, and they can't even get their gods out of there. The cattle can't even carry them, and they all go into captivity. Verse 5, To whom would you liken me, and make me equal and compare me, that we should be alike? Those who lavish gold from the purse and weigh silver on the scale, hire a goldsmith, he makes it into a god, they bow down, indeed they worship it, they lift it upon the shoulder and carry it, they set it in its place, and it stands there. It does not move from its place. Though one may cry to it, it cannot answer, it cannot deliver him from his distress. Now beloved, here's what I want you to get here. We're talking about how carrying, God is showing us how utterly unable we are to do anything. He has to carry us. But what I want you to get is this, false gods have to be carried. The true God carries us. False gods have to be carried. Now if we could lay hold of this. This is true right through from beginning to end on false gods. We have a sister in our church that married a Chinese fellow. They live over in Taiwan. His mother is a Buddhist. And they've got the little gods in on their table. And she goes and offers things to those gods. Somebody had to carry them in there and set them up. One of the brothers in our church took a bus. He drives a bus for the college there. And he took a class that was studying comparative religions. He took them up to Chicago to visit some Hindu temples. He's just the driver for this class. And they went around to this and that place. And one of the places, the fellow who was there, he said, Oh, I'm so glad you're here right now. You'll get to see the ceremony where we put the gods to bed. They take the gods in. I guess they kind of tuck them in, you know, and tell them good night. Isn't that pathetic? Men put their gods to bed at night. They feed their gods. They've got to carry them. But the same kind of stuff is going on in the name of Christianity. People are carrying their god around. They work all day long. They labor to try to carry this god. And it grates and it's grinding and it's awful. Trying to keep this list of rules and this and that. And trying to help God out in this and that situation. You know, he's not able to do it himself. So man's got to help him out. And it is an exhausting exercise to carry your god around all the time because there's no life there. Carrying your god. If you're carrying your god, you're not a Christian. Is God carrying you? That's the reality of the situation when you become a Christian. Well, God's carrying us speaks of our utter weakness and inability. Now, I've spent quite a bit of time on that. I think it's one of the most important things. But I want to say at least a couple more things here before we quit. What else does this picture of God carrying us as a father carries his son? What else does it speak of? It speaks of our weakness. It also speaks of his tender compassion and love for his people. He doesn't carry us like a donkey carries a burden. He carries us like a father carries his son. What tenderness there is in this picture. You see these videos on TV of people fleeing from war and that type of thing. Refugees going along the trail. And some of those mothers, they're so tired and so weak, they're about ready to drop themselves, but they're still carrying their child. God says, I've carried you, not like some hateful burden, but I carried you the way a man carries his own son. That's the way I've carried you. That's what you are to me. God's telling us how he feels about us and how he views us. As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities them that fear him. He knows you're afraid. He knows how weak you are. That's why he picked you up and carries you like that. Because he knows you and he pities you and he loves you. As a father loves his son, that's what he's telling you. And this element of tender compassion comes out in a lot of Scriptures. I'll just read the verses to you. If you want to make note of them, you can. Isaiah 40, verse 11, he says, Like a shepherd he'll tend his flock. In his arms he'll gather the lambs and carry them in his bosom. So that's the picture. He's gathering up these lambs and gently, tenderly, compassionately carrying them. Isaiah 63, verse 9, In all their affliction he was afflicted. You know, he's not cold to what you're going through. In all their affliction he was afflicted. When he confronts Saul there on the road to Damascus, he doesn't say, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting them? Why are you persecuting those Christians? He says, why are you persecuting me? In all their affliction he was afflicted. What's it say? The angel of his presence saved them. In his love and in his mercy he redeemed them, and he lifted them and carried them all the days of old. That's the picture of God's compassion. Not carried. Beloved, you're not being carried on the rough, impersonal arms of fate. You're not being carried in the clutch of chance. There was a story a year or two ago. Some of you may have heard it. A pastor was driving down the road. I think his name was Willis. Driving down the highway with his family in there. They drive over a piece of metal. That metal flips up, hits the gas tank. The car is in flames, and in a few seconds half of his family is dead. Just that quickly. Now, suppose you thought that when you get to God, behind Him there's this big black hole of chance. Do you realize the misery that we'd be in if there was chance back of God? I mean, God was in control of that thing. God saw the way that tire would hit that thing, and planned all that out in His loving purposes. We don't understand a lot of times what He's doing, but we know this. God was carrying that man. He was carrying that whole carload. And every one of those children God was carrying. You see that? We're not being carried in the clutches of circumstance. We're being carried by a loving Father. Well, last thing. What does God's carrying us speak of? It speaks of our utter weakness. It speaks of His tender love and compassion. What else does it speak of? It speaks of absolute security and protection. He's carrying His children. God Himself, we're in His arms. And that's what Moses said to them here. When he's telling them, he says, You saw what He did, how God Himself goes before you, and will Himself fight on your behalf just as He did in Egypt, and just as He did in the wilderness where He carried you. He's carrying us what could possibly get to us. If we're being carried in God's arms like a father carries his son, do you suppose somebody's going to come up to God, take ahold of His arm and wrench it back and tear you away and pull you to pieces in front of Him? I don't think so. He's not going to let that happen. Who can stay His hand? Who can stop Him? Who can turn Him? Nobody's going to do that. If He's carrying you, you're protected and you're safe. He guards us like the pupil of His eye, and we don't have anything to be afraid of. And again, the Scriptures about carrying emphasize this aspect as well. I want us to turn to them. Exodus 19. We'll look at two more verses here before we close. Exodus 19, verses 3 and 4. Moses went up to God. Exodus 19, verse 3. And the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the sons of Israel, You yourselves have seen... There it is again. You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to Myself. See what that speaks of? The power, protection, carrying. I bore you on eagles' wings. And one more. Deuteronomy 32. Deuteronomy 32, verses 9 through 12. For the Lord's portion is His people. Jacob is the allotment of His inheritance. He found Him in a desert land and in the howling waste of a wilderness. He encircled Him. He cared for Him. He guarded Him as the pupil of His eye, like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that hovers over its young. He spread His wings and caught them. He carried them on His pinions. The Lord alone guided Him, and there was no foreign God with Him. So this picture of carrying, again, speaks of power, protection, safety, guarding God in control of us as He carries us. Now, in closing, beloved, just think of this, how wicked it is. When here's God carrying us in loving compassion like a father carries his son, how wicked it is to say, because the Lord hates us, He brought us to this place. Isn't that wicked? Every time they ran into a problem, He gloriously and miraculously brought them out of it. Why not when you get run up against the next thing, why not say, because the Lord loves me and He's going to show His power in carrying me through this that He brought me to this place? Think of how dishonoring it is to God in light of His carrying us to do what they did and not believe Him. He said, yet for all this, you still won't trust Me and believe Me. Remember what He's done for you. Remember that He's carrying you, and believe Him and trust Him to carry you right through to glory. Well, amen.