Jesus shouldered the heavy cross and staggered along after the Roman soldiers. It wasn’t the first cross that Jesus had faced. As a minister, He had put others needs before His own, and made a thousand selfless choices before he finally took up the final and greatest cross for us. Embracing the Cross is really dying to a self so as to bring life and blessing to others. Jesus embraced the cross among the ancient olive trees as he was tested with the will of God which He ultimately held fast to. To be under Christ’s authority means to be a follower of Jesus. It means to accept the Cross daily and die to self. Jesus said that anybody that wanted to follow Him had to first deny himself and take up his cross. Our submission to God is not tested, till the cross is presented. Jesus was submitted to the will of God at all times but it was supremely tested in the garden. The cross tests or willingness to be a Christian and a follower of Christ. There can be no cross-less followers. No one following the lamb! We have this idea that disciples are one step up the ecosystem of believer or Christians. We need to destroy this notion. Christians and disciples are to be the same people.

Friend, if you are a Christian; you are a disciple and it is only possible to follow Jesus if we carry our cross.

Adam felt incredible shame and guilt as he heard the steps of the Creator in the garden. He hid in the trees but where can you hide from Love. If we learn anything from the theology of Genesis 3, it is that imperfection and failure run in the family. Even the perfect specimens are tainted with it; those prim and proper people who never seem to blow up perhaps struggle with pride and judgmental pettiness. The fact is we all fail. If we don’t give ourselves and others room to fail, we will breed dishonestly in people. People will be afraid to admit their mistakes, choosing to live in unreality. Brothers or sisters that are struggling with certain fears and temptations will be afraid to reach out for help. God’s people may sink in a sea of failure and temptation, not able to ask for help, thinking that weakness or failure is unforgivable. It’s great to have a triumphalist theology, where we talk of a constant walk in the glory and power of God, but where does that leave people in the times when they struggle and need help. When we fail, we must know that God is still able to use even that! Before Adam failed he felt perfect without any sense of sin and no need for forgiveness. He also felt no gratitude for God’s mercy and no sense of love. God allowed men to sin that man might discover all of God.

Friend, if we fail or stumble in sin, God still has a plan in mind. For us to see our own inability and our need to abide in His love. He wants us to experience His forgiveness, and then see His loving character and to love Him even more in return.

I used to work at the city council where there was a man in our section, who often used to say “success has many fathers but failure is an orphan.” Everyone wants to claim they played a part in something that was successful but when something is a disaster or fails, nobody wants to own it. We might talk about failure in hushed tones but everybody does it. Teacher and students, cops and crooks, parents and children all fail. Doctors fail and they bury their mistakes! Nobody likes to fail but everybody does sometimes. In Gen 3.10 we find that failure is part of the human race. Moses failed in understanding when he sought to save the Israelites. He rose up in anger, killed an Egyptian and hid him in the sand. Samson failed morally and David failed the temptation test. Peter denied that he knew Jesus, and wept bitterly later as he thought about his lack of courage and loyalty. Probably like me, you have come to church some weeks with a small or large library of failures from the past week, and some even added that morning.

Friend, failure has been a part of the human experience for a long time but stop and think; did their failure stop them being used by God and becoming an eventual success? No they all finally did the will of God. Some of them not in spite of their failure but because of their failure, as it made them more aware of their need for God.

The rugby coach asked the team to run another five lengths of the field. He knows that although training is not popular, it is only the hard yards that will prepare them for the rigors of the games to come. He is training them for the challenges of the future. It always takes discipline to maximize our potential. No one loved us like our own father, so we know when they disciplined us it was because they loved us. The discipline of children is not done to them but it is done for them. Discipline helps children grow in obedience and respect. Without obedience and respect in society, there is no civil order only anarchy. That is the reason why God tells fathers, to train the next generation to obey, honour and respect authority. Child discipline builds a sense of justice; it also removes guilt, develops their sense of right and wrong and gives boundaries and security.

Deuteronomy says that God disciplines his children, for the same reason. The discipline of the wilderness was to prepare them to enter the land. It doesn't matter how much we turn up the volume at church or how high we jump in the worship, if we aren't people that fear God or have not been trained to live at our potential, we may not enjoy the fullness of what God intends.

Friend, Father God may discipline us, but it will enable us to enter the inheritance and the better future He plans for us.

The wilderness stretched out in front of the people of Israel for miles, as they walked through the desert on their way from Egypt to the Promised Land. It was harsh, empty and cold at night, and it was hot during the day, but there was no alternative. In the wilderness, they were to learn to observe the word of God, and not to observe everything else around them. It was a place that tested their hearts to see whether they would obey God's Word. In the wilderness, God gave them manna they didn’t know so they would come to understand they could not live on the bread they already knew. To see that the things of this world, that they knew, were not what gave them life. The Manna was a type of Jesus Christ. It was free, pure, from heaven and tasted good, but it had to be gathered daily and eaten daily to be enjoyed. As they picked up Manna every day, they learned to obey and they learned to trust God. They learned to do things Gods way and they learned to do the difficult. When they came out of Egypt as slaves, they thought of themselves as poor, man dependent, and bound by natural limitations but as they learned to walk in God's ways they learned that they were wealthy enough, to have a day off every week, that dependence upon God meant the impossible could happen and that God can remove human limitations.

Friend, like the Israelites we have to learn that Gods ways are different. We need to learn that he is for us and leading us into a life of unrestricted, heaven-sent, limitless possibilities.

Moses stood before the nation to repeat the promises of God, to the new generation that would fight their way in the land. They would be the generation that got a breakthrough, into the promises of God. Moses was convinced they could do it. I know you will breakthrough. I know you will take the land from the enemy but if you don't obey the word of God once you are in the land and live God's way, you may not be able to maintain possession of the land. A “breakthrough generation” has to be more than louder music and stronger shouts of praise. There needs to be a strong character, a strong home life, a strong marriage, a strong work ethic and a strong personal life. The breakthrough generation will be people of faith and passion but they will also live with a commitment to the principles of God's Word in their family and their finances. If they don't know how to live right every day, they may enjoy days of victory but not be able to maintain their victory. It is just as important that our marriage is a testimony as our miracles are. For our family to be as much a testimony as our faith and our finances should be as sound as our fervour for God.

Friend, the way we do live in the community is more testimony than the way we do communion. Moses said the nations were going to take note because they were a wise and understanding people, not just a noisy excited people.

Your words bring you into Gods future plans and destiny for you. The words you speak today can bring Gods “planned tomorrow” toward you. If we speak words of unbelief, we can frustrate and even deny the good plans of God for our life. How much of what God planned to bring into our lives, has been bound up in the heavens by the words we have said or not said. When Jesus said to Peter “I give you the keys of the kingdom and whatever you bind on earth, will be bound in heaven,” He was talking about binding and loosing with words. Words of preaching, forgiving, casting out demons and prayer. All words by which we bind or lose the things in heaven onto the earth and into our situations. Only what you loose in heaven, comes to us and we lose it by our words.

Friend, our words need to agree with God promises.

Moses climbed the rugged mountain to meet with God. On the mountain, he received the 10 Commandments and other laws as they are recorded in the Pentateuch. The high watermark of the law was the simple command to love God with all our might and our neighbour as ourselves. This is still the essence of Gods law and illustrates the goal of our spiritual growth as the people of God. In fact, the first five books of the Bible or the Pentateuch, from Genesis to Deuteronomy, are an illustration of the processes of growth, that God takes us when we follow Him. Genesis is the beginning and explains how God called men from Noah to Abraham. It is about Election; God calling His people, the first privilege we experience, being called by the father to Jesus. Exodus illustrates deliverance and coming out of Egypt. God’s people are brought out of the old into a new beginning. It illustrates how we are redeemed by the blood of the Passover lamb. Leviticus informs the redeemed slaves, how to live with a holy God, as they approached His sanctuary: Sanctification is about we gain a new way of thinking about God, along with a changed lifestyle. Numbers deals with how God trained his people from a mob or rabble into the army of God through discipline and learning to follow the cloud of His presence. Finally, Deuteronomy repeats to the second generation all the requirements they were to obey after the old generation had died off. Their obedience would bring the blessing and victory as they entered into their inheritance. These truths formed the basis for the teaching of the early church doctrine about how we are called, regeneration, justified and sanctified to be made ready to enter fully in our inheritance, who is Christ.

Friend, to come to the full stature of Jesus Christ means to be a wholehearted disciple but mostly means to be fully loving of people and God; even in that order. John said we can’t say we love God till we love your brother and sister. 1 John 4.21