The Promise of Heaven

What this episode covers

Old Testament Reading The Old Testament reading is Exodus chapter 23, verses 20 to 32. And this is God’s inerrant, his infallible, his inspired word. Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared. Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice. Do not rebel against him for he will not pardon your transgression for my name is in him. But if you carefully obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries. When my angel goes before you and brings you to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, and I blot them out, you shall not bow down to their gods nor serve them, nor do as they do, but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their pillars in pieces. You shall serve the Lord your God, and He will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from among you. None shall miscarry or be barren in your land. I will fulfill the number of your days. I will send my terror before you and will throw into confusion all the people against whom you shall come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. And I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites and the Hittites from before you. I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you. Little by little, I will drive them out from before you until you have increased and possess the land. And I will set your border from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the Euphrates. For I will give the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out from before you. You shall make no covenant with them and their gods. They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me. For if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you. New Testament Reading And our New Testament reading is John chapter 14, verses one through seven. Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself and where I am, you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going. Thomas said to him, Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way? Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my father also. From now on, you do know him and have seen him. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. The Importance of the Destination You have all heard the saying, it’s not the destination that matters, but the journey. And sometimes that is true. But that was probably not what the Israelites wanted to hear as they set out on their wilderness journey to the promised land. For the Israelites, it was all about the destination and not about the journey. It was about the destination that God had promised to bring them to. That is, the promised land. He would bring them through the wilderness into a land flowing with milk and honey. This was the promise that God made to Abraham, that his descendants would inherit this land. This was the promise that God made to Moses when the Lord appeared to him from the burning bush and told him that he would be the one who would lead his people out of Egypt and into the land of promise. And in this passage, the Lord makes this promise again as he speaks to Moses, who will relay these words to the people of Israel. And so for the Israelites, what made their journey meaningful, what made it a journey worth making was the destination. It was the promised land. That was their hope. That was the promise, the gift tha

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