Episode Transcript
Hosea chapter 9 verse 15, I titled this message for Glenda and it's called "Rolling Stones."
It's probably right up her alley back in her day.
In our text this morning, God draws our attention to a special place in the Promised Land,
a place called Gilgal. How many of y'all, without hearing the message yet,
how many of y'all know the significance of Gilgal this morning and could say it, "Raise Your Hand"?
Most of you do not, which makes it exciting for me because that means I get to teach you.
Hosea chapter 9 verse 15, look what God says about Israel. He says, "All their wickedness is in Gilgal."
Gilgal was a very sacred place. Now you don't want wickedness in a sacred place, do you?
Gilgal was a place of great spiritual and historic significance. On August the 2nd, 1776,
the Declaration of Independence was signed at the Pennsylvania State House,
now called Independence Hall. And to this day, that building still stands.
It has a great cultural and historical and legal significance to our nation.
It's nationally a sacred place, if you think of it that way.
Wouldn't it be terrible if someone were to go in there and spray paint inside
where those founding fathers once were and desecrate that site?
It would be considered a terrible offense to our nation and to our citizens.
Yet that's what Israel did with Gilgal, by having wickedness in Gilgal,
except it being sin and being holy. It was done on a much grander scale when it comes to defiling it.
God said, "All their wickedness is in Gilgal." They had desecrated that holy place.
Now, to understand this story, to understand the significance, we have to know about
the historical importance of Gilgal, just like we'd have to understand how the Independence Hall,
what happened there with the Declaration of Independence and our founding fathers.
So let's talk about the story of Gilgal this morning,
or else we will not understand what God is talking about here.
The story of Gilgal began when the children of Israel,
they had been wandering through the wilderness for 40 years.
The promise for God to bring them into the Promised Land had been going on for 40 years,
and finally we get a generation of believing young people.
And they crossed that Jordan River, and that Jordan River, man, there was no way you could cross it.
It was kind of like the Red Sea when the Israelites came out of Egypt.
It was swollen. It wasn't some little trickling river.
You got women, children, elderly people.
You've got all these people there of different ages, different physical capabilities,
and this river is here, and God dries up as soon as the priest, bearing the Ark of the Covenant.
As soon as they step into that river, God dries that river up all the way back to the city, Adam,
which was a picture of God separating us from the sins of Adam.
Absolutely amazing story in the book of Joshua.
They walk across that river on dry ground, and the river just stands up on a heap.
God's like, "Nope, y'all stop right there. All these waters are going to stop. Do my people go cross?"
That's not going to impede my people from receiving the promise I gave them.
It was an incredible miracle, an incredible testimony of God's love and faithfulness to them that day.
When they crossed over, they got 12 stones out of that river, 12 stones, one for each tribe.
Then they come to this place, and they set up their camp after they crossed the river,
and they set those stones on top of another into a heap of 12 stones to make a memorial.
That way, every time someone looked at those 12 stones piled on top of each other,
they could look and think back to how God was faithful to bring them across that river
and fulfill His promise to His people.
Every time they saw those stones close to that river, they'd think, "Yep, that's how we got here, our God, our God."
Not by our own strength, but by the grace and faithfulness of our God, the work of God.
It was a place of great victory and revival.
Joshua 4, verse 19 through 24.
"And the people came up out of Jordan on the tenth day of the month and encamped in Gilgal.
In the east border of Jericho and those 12 stones which they took out of Jordan
did Joshua pitch or heap up in Gilgal."
So they made this monument out of these stones for their nation,
testifying to God's love, power, and faithfulness to them.
Verse 21, "And He spake unto the children of Israel, saying,
'When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come.'"
What mean these stones?
In other words, in the future, when your offspring ask their daddies,
what are these stones piled up here for?
What's this about?
Verse 22, "Then ye shall let your children know, saying,
'Israel came over this Jordan on dry land.
For the Lord your God dried up the waters of Jordan from before you,
until you were passed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea,
which He dried up from before us until we were gone over.
That all the people of the earth might know the hand of the Lord, that it is mighty,
that ye might fear the Lord your God forever.'"
They were a testimony, a memorial, to forever testify to the faithful power of our loving God.
On that day, God was magnified.
On that day, people were praising the Lord as they witnessed this incredible miracle.
On that day, they were filled with the Spirit of God.
And Gilgal was a place where people could come to and remember what God had done for them.
On that day, there was great joy in the camp and great courage among the people
because God had kept His promise of them and showed Himself mighty on their behalf
because they trusted His Word and entered the land of promise, believing God over their enemies.
The other day, Leah St. John, one of our online members,
she contacted me and told me about something that God had orchestrated in her life,
a very marvelous thing that she knew God was faithfully working in her life.
She told me how God had arranged it so that through her job,
she could share the gospel with a woman who had been seeking how to know that she could be saved,
had even been talking to different pastors about it, seeking assurance of her salvation.
And Leah just knew because God put it on her heart to offer that woman a ride home,
and all this came up on the way home, and she got to share God's Word with her.
And she bought her a couple of my books and had them sent to her.
Now, why did Leah tell me that story?
Well, besides praying for this woman, she wanted other people to know and to celebrate what God had done.
And then what did I do? I then took that audio of her telling me that.
I then shared it with the church on the announcement group, and then you all began celebrating as well.
What was I doing when I shared her testimony? I was doing what Joshua did.
I was erecting a monument before the people's eyes that everyone would give glory to God when they thought upon it.
And when the Israelites erected those stones in Gilgal, they were setting that monument up.
They were setting up a holy historical marker so that the love and faithfulness and power of God
would never be forgotten on that day in their land.
Gilgal was a place of great revival that day.
They were praising God for what he had done for them, but not only that,
they were getting their lives right with God.
They were getting their lives right with God. Do you know how?
All that time they'd been in the wilderness, God had commanded them, but on the eighth day,
he commanded us all the way back with Abraham.
On the eighth day after a little boy was born, that little child would be circumcised.
A little boy would be circumcised. And guess what they'd been doing in all those 40 years in the wilderness,
not circumcising their little boys.
I believe that was the hand of God, though.
Because until they got into the Promised Land, they were still in transit from one place to the other.
But now that they were in the Promised Land and they were completely escaped from Egypt
and they had inherited the promise God gave them, guess what?
We got uncircumcised people in the circumcised land. That's kind of the way it was.
You can't have that. And they thought, we need to get right with God here.
We need to follow His command. Everybody, sharpen up some stones. Here we go.
When they circumcised those men, you know what it was?
That what they were born with naturally was forever put away from them.
It was a picture of our old identity in Adam being completely discarded.
Gone forever.
So when they circumcised those men, you know what was happening?
Their old identity as bond slaves in a nation, in a country that sought to keep them in bondage
and to keep them held down and in prison there to serve in bondage until they died.
All that identity is gone. That's in the past.
They were taking away their old identity as slaves in Egypt and as descendants of Adam and putting it away forever.
Listen to what God said after they had circumcised themselves in Joshua 5 verse 9.
"And the Lord said unto Joshua, 'This day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt from all few.
Wherefore the name of the place is called, sent with me, Gilgal unto this day.'"
When those men were circumcised and when that flesh that they were born with was put away from them,
God said by putting that away, God rolled away their reproach from them.
You know what reproach is? It's shame. It's disgust. It's embarrassment.
And God took that old identity, that shame of being slaves in Egypt and by circumcised those men,
He rolled that shame away. And that's the reason that place was called Gilgal.
Because in Hebrew the name Gilgal means to roll.
Has the idea of a big heavy stone wheel and someone powerful taking that stone wheel and just rolling it away.
That reproach of Egypt had been on them this whole time.
The rolling weight has the idea of something too heavy for us to move.
Something that someone more powerful than us can roll away from us and set us free from that old identity.
Gilgal.
I rolled away that reproach from you.
Their identity in Egypt was a burden they were trapped under.
They were locked into.
In the same way we used to be trapped under our burden too.
Because as they were born as slaves in Egypt, we were born as slaves to sin, Satan and death.
That's what that was a picture of. We were born with that reproach of sin on us.
And it was such a heavy burden, it was too heavy for us to roll away. We were trapped in it.
But by God's grace and His great power, He rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off of us.
When Jesus died, He was buried and then rose again from the grave.
That's what the gospel did. It rolled a reproach away from us.
The cross in the empty tomb is our Gilgal.
Joshua chapter 10 verse 17 and 18. I want you to see how this word rolled is used.
When God said, "I rolled the reproach away from you at Gilgal," Joshua 10, 17 and 18.
It was told, Joshua saying, "The five kings are found hid in a cave in Makata."
So you've got five kings running from Joshua. They're hidden in the caves.
Here's what Joshua does, verse 18.
Joshua said, "Roll," that's the same Hebrew word, "roll great stones upon the mouth of the cave,
and set men by it for to keep them."
All right, now watch. Kings in a cave. You'll never see this story the same again.
You've got these kings in a cave. They're hiding from Joshua.
They don't want Joshua and his men to kill them.
They're the enemies of Joshua, but they're trying to hide in that cave.
So Joshua says, "Here's what we'll do. While we're out fighting the war, you take great stones, great big stones,
and you all roll them over the mouth of that cave. They won't be able to get out.
We'll trap them in there."
And so they rolled those stones over there to keep those men in.
You know what that's a picture of? That's a picture of us trapped with these great stones.
And here we are in this cave just waiting to die. That's how we're born.
And no matter what we do, we can all get there, and we can be pushing and shoving and all.
And you can't move those stones. They're too heavy for us to bear.
You know, when Jesus died, he died in our place. He died in our name and our stead.
He died representing us. And the Bible clearly tells us that when Jesus died, we died with him.
We were on that cross with him.
So when Jesus was put in that tomb, that was God taking our old identity,
because our identity in Adam was put on Jesus that day.
Our reproach was put on Jesus that day.
And so Jesus died. We died.
Jesus was then put in a tomb. We were put in a tomb.
And you know what the world did to us? The same thing Joshua did to those men in the cave.
Same thing.
The world got its world system, Egypt, if you will, except they were Romans.
Same thing. They still crucified our Lord.
And the world got them to take a great stone and roll it over that cave, trying to keep Jesus in,
meaning trying to keep you and me in, because if Jesus is not raised from the dead,
the Bible says we're yet in our sins.
And so rolling that stone across that tomb, which at this time is not empty,
was a way of trying to prevent the gospel from being ratified through Jesus' resurrection.
So here we are. We're all trapped in this cave with Jesus.
There's a great stone rolled across it.
You've got soldiers out in front making sure that we don't get out.
That our reproach stays upon us.
If you'll remember, when those ladies came that Sunday morning, they were going to come.
You know what they were saying to themselves?
Who's going to roll the stone away for us?
They knew they couldn't roll that stone away.
How are we going to get inside to put the spices and things that we have for our Lord and pay our respects to Him?
Who's going to roll that great stone away?
Well, you know who did?
Soldiers was there to keep them from it.
God rolled that stone away.
And when Jesus came out, we came out.
He rolled our reproach away.
That's all being signified here at Gilgal.
The empty tomb was our Gilgal.
The Bible calls the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ the circumcision that's made without hands.
Not made with sharp stones, not made with careful hands and a good eye,
but made through our death, burial, and resurrection with Christ.
We leave our old identity in the tomb and the new man comes out with Jesus.
It's our Gilgal.
Isn't that good, brother?
Gilgal was a picture of Israel's salvation from the bondage they were in,
the great love of God rolling away their shame for them.
Yet despite the revival that took place in Gilgal back then,
in spite of the memorial stones that testified of the grace and power of God the generations to come,
this new generation of Israelites had filled that land with all their wickedness.
Do you realize what Israel did?
In the very place God rolled the reproach away from the past generation,
the new generation rolled it back on.
That just walked right back into that cave.
Isn't it here?
It just rolled the stone right back over us.
We'll celebrate our bondage to sin.
In the very place where the fathers once celebrated their freedom from the burden of sin,
their children are now celebrating the burden on their backs.
Here's a kingdom truth for you this morning.
If not carefully guarded, your past victories will become places of future defeat.
If not carefully guarded, your past victories will become places of future defeat.
Gilgal is a lesson to every one of us that former glory is subject to future shame.
Did you know that every Ivy League school in America was started as an institute to further the kingdom of God?
Every one of them.
The very first Ivy League was Harvard University.
Harvard University was founded only 18 years after the pilgrims came to New England.
Only 18 years ago.
I want you to listen to what the founders of Harvard University said.
I'm going to quote.
After God had carried us safely to New England and we had built our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood,
reared convenient places for God's worship and settled the civil government,
one of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity,
dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when our present ministers shall lie in the dust.
Isn't that amazing?
I'd go to a university like that.
They said after we got our houses built, after we built our churches so we could worship,
after we got our civil government established, the very next thing we thought,
here's what we need to do, we need to make sure that when our present ministers who are already educated in the word of God,
when their time comes to lie in the dust, our posterity will not have uneducated men in the pulpit.
That's sacrifice.
I want you to listen as I read to you just a few of the rules that Harvard students had to go by.
You ready?
Harvard University had to go by this to remain a student.
"Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal
life.
And therefore to lay Christ in the bottom as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning,
and seeing the Lord only giveth wisdom, let everyone seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seek it of him."
Here's the next one.
"Everyone shall so exercise himself in reading the Scriptures twice a day that he shall be ready to give such an account of his proficiency therein,
both in theoretical observations of the language and logic and in practical and spiritual truths as his tutor shall require,
according to his ability, seeing the entrance of the word giveth light, it giveth understanding to the simple."
Here's another rule.
"That they," that is the students, "escuing all profanation of God's name, attributes, word, ordinance, and times of worship do study with good conscience,
carefully to retain God and the love of his truth in their minds.
Else let them know that notwithstanding their learning, God may give them up to strong delusions and in the end to reprobate mind."
Wow.
That was a place of Gilgal, only 18 years, and these men are determined that these institutions are going to be to carry on the work of God to their posterity.
You know what they were doing when they built Harvard University?
They were erecting stones so the future generation would never forget their God.
Same reason Joshua set up those stones.
Now today, that same university which once was a place of former glory has a much celebrated chaplain named Greg Epstein.
Let me tell you about Greg Epstein.
First of all, he's a New York Times bestselling author.
He graduated with a master's degree in theology from Harvard University School of Divinity.
Yes, Harvard has a School of Divinity.
He also graduated from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Have the name Epstein? You're right. He's Jewish.
He's Jewish.
In this celebrated chaplain at Harvard University today is an ordained atheist rabbi.
If you can imagine such an animal, he's an ordained atheist rabbi.
Harvard's leadership today says, "I got this directly from Harvard's website yesterday."
This is Harvard Today, the leadership of Harvard Today versus what I just read you.
Quote, "The humanist chaplaincy at Harvard and MIT is dedicated to building an inclusive community of atheists, agnostics, and allies at Harvard, MIT, and beyond."
My goodness.
Chaplain Epstein, he specializes in, and I quote, "meaning and purpose beyond religion and developing healthy masculinity from a feminist perspective."
The place where our forefathers sacrificed to carry out their godly vision of passing down the word of God to the next generation,
in that same place, it has now become a place dedicated to eradicating God's word,
dedicated to eradicating the mission for which that institution was founded.
"All our wickedness is in Gilgal," look back in your text, "for there I hated them."
Meaning, therefore, I hated them because their wickedness was in Gilgal.
Now, let this sink in deep this morning.
God said he hated those wicked people.
Let the people today who think they can defy God's word reject the gospel and live in debauchery and they, "Well, God just loves me like I am."
That's a lie.
That's a lie.
Let those people listen to what God is saying about people like Mr. Epstein, the mega churches that Mr. Epstein speaks to.
Yes, he goes and he's invited to mega churches.
Why they would want to listen to him?
I don't know, but they do.
And all the people following and celebrating this godless religious nonsense, God says he hates these people.
That may be a hard pill for us to swallow today because we just think, "God, oh, I just love everybody."
That God says, "All inclusive, embrace every--" that's not God.
That's a lie.
The Bible says the fearful and unbelieving, the abominable, that the hornmonger, they'll all have their place in the lake of fire that burns with fire and brimstone.
God is not that God.
He hates wickedness.
The Jews in the days of Hosea were just like Mr. Epstein, the Jew today.
When you read what Mr. Epstein's all about, that's what those Jews were about back then.
God hated it then. God hates it now.
There is no difference.
They were and still are catering to the foolishness of the godless world around them.
And now God doesn't hate them in the sense that he doesn't want them to be saved.
He hates them in the sense of the rebels that they are.
He hates them in the sense of what they've done to his holy institutions as being enemies of the cross of Christ.
And God's right for hating them for that.
I'd hate for God to love it.
God said love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.
God loved the world. He gave his son.
But God doesn't love what the world stands for.
You see the difference?
God would have gladly forgiven them if they'd only repented and returned to him, but they would not.
So God said, look back in your text,
"For the wickedness of their doings, I will drive them out of mine house."
Whose house? His house.
"For the wickedness of their doings, I will drive them out of mine house."
If you've got that open, you might want to score mine in your Bibles.
God said, "I'll drive them out of my house."
Now, I want you to listen to what Jesus said to Israel after Israel rejected him in Matthew, Chapter 23, verse 37 and 38.
Jesus said, "O Jerusalem, now that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee,
how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathered her chickens under her wings,
and ye would not behold, sit with me, your house is left unto you desolate."
You see the difference?
God said, "I'm going to drive them out of my house."
Here comes Jesus.
And here you've got this temple, same land, same people, same temple.
Jesus not says, "My house is left desolate."
He says, "Your house is left desolate."
Let me tell you something. God's house will never be desolate.
Why?
Man, we're stones in that building.
But their house was left desolate.
Notice the difference.
Again, it was the same people, the same land, the same temple, but it was no longer God's house.
It was their house.
Here's a kingdom of truth for you this morning.
People can move out of God's house and never move anywhere.
You listen?
People can move out of God's house and never move anywhere.
Harvard's still Harvard.
Same institution.
Most people haven't gone anywhere.
That institution hasn't gone anywhere, but it's not God's house.
That's their house.
Ephesians chapter 2, verses 19 through 20 tells us this.
It says, "Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners,
but fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God,"
Listen carefully now, "and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets."
Jesus Christ being the chief cornerstone.
You see, God's house is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets
who all point to Jesus Christ, the chief cornerstone.
When a church embraces a false belief system
and a church abandons the truth of the foundation of Jesus Christ and His cross
and of His empty tombs upon which the church of God is built,
they are moving out of God's house into the house they built themselves.
God built a house for us out of the prophets in the Old Testament,
which we've been studying next door.
God built a house for us out of the apostles of Jesus Christ,
and God put Jesus Himself, the promised Savior, as the cornerstone
for our faith to be built upon.
I am standing on the promise that God has given of Jesus Christ,
and if you're standing on that promise for your salvation,
then you, like me, are standing on the foundation,
and at being on that foundation together, we make up the house of God.
But when you destroy the foundation,
and you've built your hope on your own ideas of humanism, of atheism,
of some type of other "Christianity" of another gospel,
you have moved out of God's house, which is built on the foundation
of the truth of Christ, and you've moved into your own house.
They may keep the same church name.
They may keep the same building.
They may still have the same constitution, the same check-in account.
They may be the same university, but the lies they embrace
have driven them from the house of God.
Now, like Israel, their house is left under them desolate.
They're no longer dwelling in the house God built for them.
They're now being absent of God's truth,
dwelling in the empty house they built themselves.
And God says, "Look back in your text. I will love them no more."
I will love them no more.
You understand? God so loved the world, he gave his only big God and Son.
God loves you, but God's love for you is given to you through His Son Jesus.
And if you reject the Son of God, then you have rejected the love of God.
And apart from Christ, God can't love you outside of Him
because Jesus takes the unholy and through His death and resurrection
puts away their old identity and makes us into something that God can love.
You see? God says, "I'll love them no more."
A righteous God can only love a sinful world one way.
That's through the gospel.
When sinful people reject Jesus, they roll that reproach onto themselves again
and invite upon them the wrath of God.
People say, "Well, God loves everybody."
Yes, He loves them in Christ, but He hates them in their sin.
If a sinner wants God's love, he must accept it on God's terms.
And those terms are this, "Repent ye and believe the gospel."
That's God's terms.
"Repent ye and believe the gospel."
God said, "Look back in your text as we begin to close.
All their princes are revolters."
They're revolters.
What does it mean to revolt?
Revolting is the opposite of repenting.
Fortunately for us, they both have the letters "R" in there.
It makes it easy to remember revolting is the opposite of repenting.
The word "revolt" in Hebrew, it means to turn away from.
That's what it means, to turn away from.
That's what the word "revolt" means.
When I hear the truth of God's Word, that's the light of God's truth shining to me.
In me, not wanting that light, what do I do?
I turn from it.
I turn away from that light.
I will not accept that truth.
That's what the people did to God.
They revolted.
Their leaders revolted from God's truth,
and they embraced the lies of the nations around them.
Repenting is the opposite of revolting.
It's to hear God's Word and turn toward it.
So here I am in darkness.
Watch our memory verse.
"They that sat in darkness have seen great light, Brother Doug."
So here I am in darkness, and I hear the gospel.
When I hear that gospel truth, I say, "A'ight, that's right.
I believe that truth right there.
I want to hear more about it.
Tell me about Jesus."
That's repenting.
This is revolting.
God says this is the condemnation.
That light has come in the world, and men love darkness rather than light
because their deeds are evil.
They don't want that light.
They don't want their sin exposed.
These people were apostates.
Having known the truth of their Creator, they turned their backs on Him and His truth.
A Christian does just the opposite.
Upon hearing the truth of our Creator, we turn and face that truth,
believing on the Savior He sent.
One day, all Israel will face the love of the truth of Jesus Christ when Jesus comes again.
The Bible says they will look upon Him whom they pierced.
And when they accept the love that God had for them in Christ,
He who said, "I will love them no more," will forever hate them no more
because they'll be saved forever through faith in the Savior He sent them.
In every instance in the Old Testament, we looked at Joseph.
Joseph came into his own.
His own received him not.
His brothers sold him into slavery.
We looked at Moses this morning.
Moses went out there and tried to settle the dispute between two Jews.
They rejected him.
Both Moses and Joseph had to leave twice, and they both got a Gentile bride each time.
And after they did so, they then eventually, ultimately were accepted by their own brethren
and brought their deliverance, whether through bread or through escape from Egypt.
And one day, the Savior, who they rejected, who came into His own, the Jews received Him not.
He's going to come back, and finally they'll accept the terms of God's life.
They'll repent and believe the gospel.
Father, we thank You so much for Your precious Word.
I pray, Father, that we'll be very careful, that we'll walk circumspectly in our lives.
Lord, this is a place of Gil-gal at this church.
It's a place where Your truth is preached and where burdens and reproach are rolled away by that truth
as people believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and His death and resurrection for them.
But Lord, just like at Harvard, and I'm sure those men were much, much more powerful men than me,
and Brother Shepherd, and all that they've gone through and the grace you put upon them.
But, oh Lord, just like at Harvard, just like at Gil-gal, just like in the holy place of Your temple,
Lord, help us to be careful. Help the children here today who hear our words, Lord.
Let there be some among us. Grow up embracing the words of their fathers and grandfathers.
And let them grow up, I pray, Lord, and continue, Father, to erect the stones of memorial,
to continue to preach the gospel at this church here in Maybank, I pray, Lord,
so that our Gil-gal will not be filled with their wickedness,
but let it perpetuate unto our offspring to Your honor, Your glory, and to their grace.
