Thank you for watching. Thank you for watching. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
And so, Lord, we come, and that is our declaration, to be reminded of your faithfulness, a faithfulness that extended before we could even think a right thought about you. You are pursuing us with an awareness of something missing, something, some deep longing inside, each of us that says there's only hope found in you. There's only a true love, a love that will never disappoint that is found in you.
In your goodness, Lord, we see Jesus in your sacrifice. We recognize and embrace that there is no other name by which we can be saved, that there is no other God by which we can be met with a goodness that transcends anything this world could offer us. Lord, we want to be a part of that. We want to be a people, a people who respond to your faithfulness with faithfulness, to not put on ourselves this need to be perfect, to perform for you, but rather to recognize our ongoing need for more of your grace and your truth in our lives.
And so, Lord, as we humble ourselves in the presence of your church and in the presence of you, our living God, might you meet us in that place once again. Might you remind us that you are working around us, that you are working in us, and that you desperately, desperately want to work through us, Lord.
We want to see your kingdom come. We want to see your will be done. And so we would ask, Lord, that as we take some time this moment, this morning, that you would show us spiritual reality, that you would cause us to hear your voice, and that in responding to you in worship, Lord, we would declare that there is rest in you, and in you alone, that we need to no longer strive to prove our worth, but you have given us a new identity, a new purpose, and a place, and a sense of belonging. We find a great deal of joy in that, and a great deal of peace in that.
Lord, move in us this morning. In your name and for your glory, I pray. Amen.
Good morning. Nice to see you all on, I guess, a rainy weekend. Kids, you can head out to your classes as some of our students are going to be there. First Impressions team, pass around the offering plates for those of you prepared to give.
With that in mind, as the kids are leaving, and as you're all listening, we have our final financial statements for 2023. For those of you who are members of the church, you can pick those up at the Connect desk. And if you have any questions around that, you can ask me, Brad Cameron, our board chair, or Loretta Burns, our treasurer. We're happy to answer any of those questions for you.
And then along the way, we will talk more about that. Just a couple other things as everyone is leaving. The last number of weeks, we've been having senior youth after church on Sundays, kind of a cool thing with Ethan, our youth director, and some of the new things that are happening. Today, that won't be happening, but we'll pick up that next weekend.
After the church, though, there is a belonging class for those of you who might be new to our church and are wondering, hey, what does it mean to be a part of Sandwich Baptist? And so Pastor Lindsey will be leading that.
And then next week, we're gonna have baptisms, all right? So we're gonna have a time where individuals will come, we'll tell of their story about how Jesus met them, just testify to their faith in a short way or in a long way, whatever they decide. And then we baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit as a picture of what Christ has done when we place our faith in him, that he baptizes us in the Spirit. And we kind of add a symbol to that.
And so it is an important marker in the life of a believer. And if you're not baptized, but you do trust Jesus for salvation, you are one of his followers, we would love to talk to you about how to be a part of that. So that's happening next weekend, which is awesome.
We've been in this series in the book of Exodus. And what the goal has been is to kind of try to parallel what God was doing in the midst of these people in setting them free from slavery, in identifying their need, entering into their needs, speaking promises, demonstrating his power, that what we see in that is a pattern, a parallel for our lives as humans, and essentially even as Christians, as people of faith, that what God did, he's still doing.
And we can kind of embrace these stories almost as our own. We've talked about how there's a broad brokenness because of sin, but God comes and speaks and then moves in power to deliver us from that. We look and we say, okay, what God did for the Israelites, even at the Passover, where he said, substitute a young animal, put his blood on your door and death will pass over you. When judgment comes, it will pass over you.
The Christian says, I believe that is true for me. And I'm trusting in the blood of Jesus to be the sacrifice, the substitute for me. In the midst of all of that, my hope is that you have seen that God continues to work, right, and that when he invites us to be a part of his kingdom, when he invites us to become people of faith, it is a relationship that transcends, that extends beyond just that one moment.
That to be a follower of God, to experience his grace and his truth is to be changed and changing for the rest of your life. It doesn't mean your life's gonna get any easier, but does mean that there's a faith and a hope and a reality of love that is meant to guide us as we move forward.
In fact, what I hope we can see is that what God saves us with is what he saves us to. That God saves us with this gospel, the grace and truth of Jesus, that enters into our life once and then in a continual way. That the transformation that takes place that assures us of our life, of our salvation, and then brings about a renewal and a transformation.
The Israelites were saved from the penalty and power of sin by the dynamic power of God, according to his grace and truth. And so Christians would say, I also have been saved from the power and penalty of sin by the dynamic power of God, according to his inherent grace and truth through the cross of Christ.
It invites us into a new identity and a new relationship with God. We look at this, the New Testament and would say, okay, this is what it means to be a disciple. That is a follower of Christ. Someone who's a Christian is someone who's trusting in Jesus for salvation. And every Christian should be a disciple, but there needs to be almost a movement in our thinking towards that.
And so we as a church have kind of defined a disciple as someone who finds their identity, purpose, and belonging in God's design, what we read about in Genesis 1 and 2, and in Christ's redemption, how Jesus comes and works, and what he takes in our life to bring about that redeemed identity.
And then discipleship is when we surrender to Jesus' grace and truth in all of life, for all of life. That what we are participating in is an ongoing transformative relationship with a living God in every area of my life. That is my, nope, flip back, my identity, purpose, and belonging in all of life and for all of life.
This is the little bit I want to talk about today and over the next few weeks. That when we then look at our lives, we look at all of our life differently, including our past, our present situation, and our future. A couple of weeks ago, we talked about how what happens in life is we experience brokenness.
And then we respond with an emotion, right? We have some sort of suffering that comes into our life, either by our own hand or by someone else's actions or just an event that takes place. Could be abuse, could be addiction, could just be tragedy. We respond with fear. What does this mean when I'm facing my own mortality?
Maybe we find ourselves angry when we've experienced some sort of injustice or even ashamed when we're marked by a sinful action. And that emotion then brings about a response. How do I manage this? My arrows are going the wrong way. I've looked at this, I can't tell you how many times.
And it makes me wonder if the next slide's arrows are going the wrong way. No, those ones are going the right way. Anyways, flip it back. Create coping mechanisms. Just pretend, just pretend. Coping mechanisms, control mechanisms, right? How do I manage these emotions? How do I make sure these things don't control me?
A control mechanism. A coping mechanism for many is anger or manipulation. I'm just gonna control my environment. A coping mechanism might be a distraction. Something to medicate. Something to numb pain, right? And then we find ourselves falling into patterns of addiction and dysfunction, which only perpetuates the cycle.
And then we see this de-evolution, this de-integration, this disconnection from God in the midst of all of these things. But thanks be to God that he enters into this, with his presence, his promises, his power in order to shape us as his people. He invites us to be aware of his nearness. That God is not a distant or detached God.
And that is all by his grace. That he comes close to us. And then when he comes close to us, he speaks, he speaks truth. He speaks promise. He speaks reality. He speaks invitation. He speaks in order to empower our faith. And as we believe that, we experience the power of redemption and transformation.
That God does set us free from that old pattern. He sets us free from recognizing, by recognizing why those mechanisms of control and coping are in place. How he speaks to our fear, anger, and our shame with his promises. When we believe those things, we experience his redemption and transformation.
And then it shapes us as his people, bound by and defined by faith and hope and love. Which only draws us further deeper. So the way we come out of the cycle is by being aware of and responsive to God's ongoing work in our lives. This is awesome. This is profound. This is beautiful. This is transcendent.
This is not religion. You can't religion this. Religion is how do I prove my worth to God? What are the things I need to do? Religion is a control mechanism. Religion is how actually I make sure that nothing bad will ever happen to me. Well, that's not, you can't do that.
That's how we say, I'm gonna be freed from judgment. God can't judge me because I'm acting religiously or morally. Well, then you don't need the cross, do you? Right? Instead, we recognize our ongoing need for Jesus' grace and truth, but the presence of that need so close to us to speak to our fear, anger, and shame so we don't get caught up in those realities.
In the book of Exodus, we see kind of this climactic moment where God finally sets the people free. He finally breaks Pharaoh's will. He finally does something profound, something devastating, something incredibly tragic when he comes as death and takes the firstborn from every household. He provides a way out. He provides a solution, and those who trust the solution are saved from his judgment.
But we know that Pharaoh, in his arrogance, in his hard-heartedness, in his stubbornness, refused that. I wanna pick up the story in Exodus 12, and there's gonna be a lot of scripture, but we're gonna be jumping from Exodus 12 to 13 to 14. You can see that. You can try to follow along in your Bible, or you can just read on the screen behind me.
But here's what happens, just as a reminder. Now, at midnight, the Lord struck every firstborn male in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on his throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and every firstborn of the livestock.
During the night, Pharaoh got up, he along with all of his officials and all the Egyptians, and there was a loud wailing throughout Egypt because there wasn't a house without someone dead. He summoned Moses and Aaron during the night and said, get out. Immediately, from among my people, both you and the Israelites, go worship the Lord as you've said.
Take even your flocks and your herds, as you've asked, and leave, and also bless me. Now, the Egyptians pressured the people in order to send them quickly out of their country, for they said, we're all gonna die. So the people took their dough before it was leavened, with their kneading bowls, wrapped in their clothes and shoulders.
So God comes and he breaks Pharaoh's will. And Pharaoh commands them to leave. You are no longer a slave. You are no longer welcome here. Up until that point, he wanted them to stay. He wanted to use them and abuse them for his own glory.
God had demonstrated his power through a series of plagues, showing the consequences of sin in order to break down creation. But it came to this final event where there was loud wailing, where there was devastation, where there was tragedy. The Israelites are sent out by Pharaoh.
In verse 35, the Israelites acted on Moses' word and asked the Egyptians for gold, silver, and gold items, and for clothing. And the Lord gave such favor with the Egyptians that they gave them what they requested. In this way, they plundered the Egyptians.
Which is a crazy story that we're gonna come back to. Why? In a few weeks. But in this moment, they're saved. In this moment, they're set free. This is their new reality. This is their present. Their present truth. They are no longer the property of Pharaoh. They are given a new identity. They are no longer slaves. They're objects of God's grace. They're God's people.
They're given a new family. They become a nation. They're given a new kind of worship that they don't worship the old gods. They're not defined by the culture that they live in. And they are being led out to a new home, to a new place where they can be with God, where they can be their own nation.
They had placed their faith in God's plan amidst the judgment God had broken Pharaoh's power over them. They are saved. Saved from slavery and saved to worship and freedom. Awesome. God had freed them completely. His presence was with them.
We're gonna read about that in a moment. His promises belong to them permanently. And he has given them a victory that is meant to move them forward by faith. And he's done the same for us in Christ. God has freed us completely from past sinful actions that we have done and have been done to us.
He has said, you are no longer a sinner. You are a child of God. He's given us a new identity. He's given us a new purpose. He's given us a new family. He's given us all these realities that we can claim and can never be taken away from you.
To believe that what Jesus did is to say, it is not up to me at all. Jesus has done everything I need in order to establish this new reality. Therefore, my greatest truth is what God says. Awesome. Can never, ever be taken, stolen, changed, warped, adapted.
This is for all of us who believe. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. See, the new has come. Just like the Israelites. We get to move on, move past our past. Into this new present with the presence of God, the promises of God, and the power of God working on our behalf.
Let's carry on with the story. Exodus 13, verse 17. When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them along the road to the land of the Philistines, even though it was nearby. For God said, people will change their minds and return to Egypt if they face war.
So he led the people around towards the Red Sea along the road of the wilderness. And the Israelites left the land of Egypt in battle formation. Here's a cool verse. The Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to lead them on their way during the day and a pillar of fire to give them light at night so that they could travel by day or by night.
The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night never left its place in front of the people. They have the tangible presence of God. The obvious presence of God. They've seen what he's done. They've seen how his action has broken their slavery. And he is leading them.
And he's guiding them around danger, right? He's being gracious and saying, I'm not gonna ask them to go to war right away. So let's go around the Philistines. And he takes them to the edge of the Red Sea. God has made sure they have everything they need for their new life.
They have a meal before leaving. They have bread for the journey. They've been given wealth. They have a pathway around their enemies. And can you imagine the ecstasy of being liberated? Like that? How profound. Here's God. I can see him in the daytime and in the nighttime. I can see his favor to me. I can see his working all around me.
They left with the power and favor of God being the source of their faith. And they move forward. And if you have come to Christ in a way that you recognize what Christ has done for you, you see that it is a very, very profound and beautiful story. It's a beautiful thing to be given new life, new hope. And just follow him.
I don't need to know where we're going. I just need to know who I'm following. That's the essence of their faith. What happened, though? Well, they find themselves on the edge of the Red Sea. And Pharaoh once again changes his mind.
Chapter 14, verse 10. Pharaoh comes after them. When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up. They opened their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly. And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord.
They said to Moses, Is it because there's no graves in Egypt that you've taken us away to die in the wilderness? Love it, right? It was awesome one moment. Oh, and now I'm afraid again. It's everything's over, right? Who can I blame for this? Is this why you did it? There's not enough graves in Egypt. You got to take us out here.
What have you done in bringing us out of Egypt? Is not this what we said to you in Egypt? Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians, for it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.
They are in a desperate place where there's nothing in front of them. God has led them to the Red Sea. He's with them, and they set up camp, and it was all really good. They're living on the edge of the beach, right? They're having bonfires and campfires, and they're singing to Jesus and all that stuff.
They're having a really good time, and then they see on the horizon an army coming after them, and they recognize, and this is Pharaoh's army, and Pharaoh's ticked. He's upset, and he's basically saying, if I can't have you, no one's going to have you. I'm going to enact my justice.
So where are they? Their past is coming back to get them, and their future is uncertain because there's a sea in front of them. It's important for us to just take a minute and jump up to what the Bible teaches about the sea.
Whenever we see the sea in Scripture, it's a reference to chaos. In Genesis 1, before everything came about, it says the earth was formless and void, and the spirit hovered over the sea. Kind of this picture of chaos in all things. Isaiah writes about this. He says, The wicked are like the tossing sea which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and mud.
This verse shows us that the sea is this, is this chaos and can be paralleled to wickedness, emphasizing how the sea's turmoil kind of shows a lack of peace in the world. The Psalms and prophetic books say that God is Lord over the sea, and that that's what we need to recognize.
In Psalm 89:9, it says, You rule the raging seas when its waves surge. You still them. Isaiah 51, Wasn't it you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made the seabed into a road, for the redeemed to pass over?
And then Jesus comes, and we see him traveling over the Sea of Galilee with his disciples on numerous occasions. On one occasion, he calms a storm with words. On another occasion, he just decides to walk on the sea. What are we learning?
Here's what we're learning, is that life remains chaotic, that we continue to live in a broken and fallen world, where we sometimes don't know what God is doing, but we have this belief that God is with us, and that he's the Lord over the chaos.
He's given us a new way of viewing our lives and the world that we live in. We just have to find ourselves fighting to believe it. The past is coming back to get them because that's what the past does. The future is uncertain. How am I going to walk through this chaos?
We're going to do so by faith. We live in a post-fall, pre-renewal world, and therefore we are vulnerable to the chaos. And sometimes we'll look at the chaos and say, God wants me to figure out how to live into this new reality. When tragedy still comes, when hardship still happens, we wonder, wait a second, is this what I signed up for?
I thought when I came to Christ, when I became a Christian, when I put my faith in Jesus, everything would be easy for me. The Israelites had it good, as long as their past wasn't coming back to get them, and as long as they had a nice, sterile, straight, easy path forward.
God puts them into this position on purpose. Why? Because he wants to demonstrate his power even when they're free. He wants them to see that he is still at work. He's still moving. He's still delivering. He is still acting. He is still saving them.
He's given us a new way then of looking at it, that before we come to Christ, we experience the deintegration and the disconnection, but after Christ, we've experienced a regeneration and a redemption, in that he's given us a new identity, and he is continuing to deliver us from that slavery.
But if you look at the plot lines, the burden still feels the same, doesn't it? Even though I'm on this side of my faith in Christ, I still feel the weight and the struggle and the burden. This is where a lot of people peace out. They quit. They walk away. They give in.
This is not what I signed up for. I signed up for easy. I signed up for laziness. I signed up for heaven. That's what I want. But God wants to show his glory in an ongoing way by demonstrating his power in a profound sense.
The people are struggling. They're like, I thought we were free. I don't feel free. I don't see anything but chaos in my future. I only see the enemies of my past coming to reclaim me. Defeating the past is part of God's plan of redemption so that we can live a new life and a new reality.
At the same time, it niggles, right? Our memories are still there. Our tendencies are still there. Our struggles are still there. Pharaoh's message and coming back to the Israelites is you belong to me. I'm taking you back. You will always be my slaves.
The Israelites respond to that with questions. If I'm free, if we're free, why are we being chased? It might be that you say this: if I'm forgiven, why do I feel broken? If this is who I am, if I'm a sinner, then why wouldn't I just go back to my old life?
What's the lie? The lie is you're never going to be free. You may as well go back. They are triggered in this moment. They see their oppressor demonstrating their anger, and they just say, maybe if we just go back, we'll survive this. There's no way forward, and we're only going to be destroyed.
That's the place where God places them. Triggers are often these implicit memories, these memories that come back that are stored in our bodies, in our minds, that we often remember. They have told us that the world works a certain way, and oftentimes we don't even know that we're giving into them.
They bring about this new reality, this changed reality, not this new reality. It's really an old reality that it's all nothing's ever going to change. I'm always going to be shaped by this. Triggers make us believe the lie that we're never going to be free.
They're thinking as slaves, not as redeemed people. They were thinking like they were still slaves, and they're angry and indignant. But what God is doing is doing something profound in their midst to show them that they are now part of a different kind of story.
See, what the gospel does, what God's story does, is it allows us to see that what God is doing in all of history, he's doing in our lives in order to give us a hope that even as we face ongoing brokenness in a fallen world and the fear of chaos overwhelming us, he is still present. He is still there.
Why? Because we look back at the cross and see that that remains to be true. We call this reframing. The gospel gives us a new narrative, a larger story that says I was created a certain way. That's why I have certain desires, certain understanding of myself.
I know that I've fallen, that I've broken, that sin has distorted those things, but I believe that Christ has redeemed me and is working about renewal and restoration. And it's this broader narrative that allows all of us to place our personal story in the context of God's greater story, as opposed to being so consumed in the moment by our old memories becoming our present realities.
That when implicit memories move their way to the forefront, when we're triggered by some sort of event in our life, that we realize maybe I'm always going to be a slave to this. We tell ourselves here's what's true: my past is in the past. I've been set free from it. I've been redeemed from it. It no longer has the power over me.
It's only the power that I let it. The Israelites were letting Pharaoh have power by succumbing to their fear. This is beautiful for us because then we look and we say, okay, I'm going to believe God's promises just like I did before Christ in order that I might see God's power.
I'm going to take this moment and I'm going to say my past doesn't need to control me anymore. What I got to do right now is fight to believe. We got to identify the triggers, identify the lies in order that we might hear the truth.
If I'm free, then why don't I feel free? What does God say in the midst of all of that? Well, this is what he says to the Israelites in Exodus 14. If you have a Bible, you should underline this, memorize it.
But Moses said to the people, don't be afraid. Stand firm and see the Lord's salvation that he will accomplish for you today. For the Egyptians you see today, you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you must be quiet.
What do we do? What do we do in those moments when it feels like our past is coming at us, when there's no way forward, there's only chaos? God says don't do anything. Well, that's super counterintuitive, right? What do you mean don't do anything? Stand firm. See salvation. The Lord will fight for you. You only have to be quiet.
What's the invitation? The invitation is to embrace faith over the fear, to stand still, to say I believe that God is working for me, that he is active on my behalf. I believe that he loves me and he wants to defeat my enemies. I believe that he can defeat my enemies because I see what he's already done.
All they had to do was think back a couple of days. Look what God has already done for us. He wouldn't lead us out to this place and leave us here. He wouldn't tell us that we're only going to be enslaved again. He wouldn't play these kind of games.
I need to believe that God loves me. What's the proof of that? It's not in an emotion. It's not in an affection. It's in the cross. How do I know God loves me? How do I know God's fighting for me? How do I know he's active in my life? Because Jesus died for me, and then he rose victorious over the things that I think will kill me, and then he placed his spirit inside of me to move me forward.
That when I'm facing the chaos of the future, the known, not knowing what my pathway is, when I'm tempted to go back to the old slavery, because at least that was familiar. I believe this, that God loved me and is still working for me.
So don't be afraid. Stand firm. See salvation. Be quiet. Be quiet. I love that because here's what I do. I fight every trial with words, right? I face chaos in my future. I'm like, uh-oh, trouble's coming. What do I do? Formulate a plan.
I'm going to formulate a plan. Somebody gets angry with me. I think they're angry with me, right? What do I do? I formulate a response. Think about how we use words as our power, as our coping and control mechanism, and in so doing, we step away from God.
We fight our battles with our words, and God says, watch, see, listen, be there, be present. I am here with you. You just have to believe is what he's saying. God is not asking us to be awesome. God is not saying, now you go defeat your giants, right?
Books are written about this all the time, right? See a giant, God wants you to defeat that giant. See a mountain, God wants you to move that mountain. No, he wants you to trust him that he will defeat your giants, and he will move your mountains. He just wants you to watch it.
See, when he says this, he's inviting us into a new kind of reality, but our Christianity and some of our discipleship has been warped and changed. I believe these lies in my discipleship at times.
I believe that sometimes God says to me, the reason you're anxious is because you've been reckless. I believe this sometimes, that I need to do something good in order for good things to happen to me. I believe this. I think it's in the Bible. I will only help you when you help yourself. It's not in the Bible.
I think this. My salvation is temporary. I might lose it. I think this. I need to prove myself worthy, and then God might fight for me. See, we use all these things, then they say, I got to formulate these arguments, and when we do that, we detach from the grace and the truth of God because all God is saying is, see me with you, hear me speak, watch me act.
Those lies are massive distractions and discouragements, and they keep us stuck in the past or sitting on the edge of the sea, wallowing, and we don't get to experience the freedom, and we don't see the power of God. The power of God is active.
We don't get to experience the freedom, and we don't see the power of God. All around us, it's whether or not we see it, whether or not I'm standing firm in my faith, whether or not I'm looking for salvation based on what God has done in the past, believing that he's going to do it now.
So the people, they have no choice. They can't fight Pharaoh's army, and they can't build a boat in time to get them across the Red Sea. You know the story. Verse 19 of Exodus 14, Then the angel of God, who was going in front of the Israelites, moved and went behind them.
The pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and stood behind them. It came between the Egyptian and the Israelite forces. There was cloud and darkness. It lit up the night, and neither group came near the other all night long.
God placed himself in front of their past enemy. Then Moses stretched his hand over the sea. The Lord drove the sea back with a powerful east wind all that night and turned the sea into dry land. So the waters were divided, and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground with waters like a wall on their right and on their left.
What did they do? They walked through the chaos. The promise is not that there is no chaos. The promise is that God controls the chaos. A pathway forward. They're faced with a crisis of faith, but God, by his goodness, moves their faith forward.
And on what basis do they do that? His presence with them. You say, okay, Ben, yeah, they had a pillar of cloud. They had a pillar of cloud. They had a pillar of cloud. They had a pillar of cloud. They had a pillar of cloud. They had a pillar of fire. What do we have? Where do I see the cloud? Where do I see the fire?
I see it in the gospel account. I see it in the belief that Jesus died, rose, ascended to heaven, and then sent his spirit as fire into my heart, into our heart. We don't see it around us because it's in us.
I got to believe that, and I got to fight to believe that, but it never ever goes away. Whether I believe the spirit is in me or not, in wavering, in my faith, in my faith, in my faith, in my faith, in my faith, in my faith, in my faith, in my faith, in my faith, in my faith.
What's true is what God says is that you've been united with Christ. You are in Christ, and Christ is in you. The pillar of cloud, the pillar of fire with me, and then what he does, moves forward through the chaos.
They've got to move by faith and believe. And God is gracious and kind to make sure that they have faith. And that's what God says. They've got to move by faith. They see that the chaos will not overwhelm them, but they had to get in the middle of it all to see it, right?
And he gives them a small grace by drying out the land. I just think that's awesome. A little thing. They could move forward without getting their cart stuck, their feet muddy. They got to move forward in that.
I know that there are times where God brings me to that place where I just think I'm never going to be not the person I don't like that I was. I've talked a lot about, you know, some of those things that I've done that I'm ashamed of, some of those tendencies that I have that I hate, right?
I talked a couple weeks ago about buying shoes when I feel sad. Like, how dumb is that? In the past, it was a major problem. In the past, debt was a thing. And I came to a place where a number of years ago, there was a debt I just couldn't repay anymore.
And the bank was coming, and it was all going to end. And what I thought I could keep secret, I couldn't keep secret anymore. What I thought I could control, I could no longer control. There was nothing but chaos in front of me because I was an idiot.
I was an idiot. I was an idiot. I was an idiot. I was an idiot. I was an idiot. In my past, that's the obvious thing with debt, right? It borrows from the future to give present comforts, and then you find yourself in the midst of it all, and you go, oh, hate that I did that back then.
And I remember God saying, you just need to put this in the light. You need to invite somebody else into this. You need to confess your sin. So I did that. And this is not always the story, but this is my story.
In that moment when I confessed that, when I brought that to somebody who I knew would love me in order that they might just speak truth to me, not that they would rescue me, God showed up. And it was through that that the debt was paid in a gracious way.
And that person said, I'm happy to take care of this for you. He did not shame me. He did not condemn me. He didn't need to, right? It says, I'll just cash in some investments. So he did, and he wrote the check, and that was awesome.
The next day he called me and he says, you're not gonna believe this, but my investments overnight grew the amount that I cut the check for. Now what I don't want, I don't want you seeing that. That's a miracle. That's a beautiful thing. That's a profound thing.
But it was this, it was God allowing me to walk on dry ground. It was allowing us to kind of move forward and say God just showed up and did this. These are not always the cases. This is the one in my life, okay?
But it just shows us that God's love and his grace is active. It's moving. It's this, it's this is what he invites us into, right? To give us just something, at least he's here, right?
For those six weeks that I wrestled with this, I just had to believe that the gospel was true and that Jesus was close, right? I had to believe his promises that there was no condemnation, that he did care for me and my needs, that he would show me his kindness.
I didn't know what that would look like. I just had to trust that he was there. And I had to believe that he was going to show up. And he did.
And I want to finish with just Revelation 21. This is the hope of every Christian. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.
Right at the end of the Bible, God brings us back and says, I am the Lord of the chaos, and one day there will be no more tears. There will be no more pain. Death will be no more. Shame and sin will be gone, and you will be completely free.
But right now, you can know that that redemptive reality is true for you. We just got to fight to believe it. God, Jesus says, look, I'm making everything new. It's one thing he's going to do for all of creation, but what does he say about it?
He says, look, I'm making everything new. We're a new creation. It's something he's doing right now. God is making you new. He's renewing us into the image of his son, increasing our faith, deepening our hope, and expanding our love.
Let's pray.
Lord Jesus, as we bow before you, I pray that you would just make yourself real and alive and profound and beautiful. That for those here today who have yet to trust in you, who have yet to believe grace and truth is for them.
Maybe it's shame from their past. Maybe it's anger that's creeping in the way. Maybe it's a fear of what it means to give their life to you. That right now, Lord, they would see you in all of your beauty, all of your glory, and that the grace and the truth that you extend would not be a threat, but rather an invitation.
Would you give that to them in this moment? Would you invite them to place their faith in you, to confess that you are Lord, and to believe, Lord Jesus, that you died for them. And that you rose to new life.
And that they would know today that they have been saved from their past. That they've been saved from the penalty of sin, and that they can be saved from the power of sin.
Lord, it is so easy for us to believe lies, to give ourselves over to temptation. I would ask, Lord Jesus, that you would cause us to cry out to you once again when we find ourselves in the midst of that chaos.
When Satan tells us we're always going to be slaves, that we would hear you say, you're my son, you're my daughter. That when Satan tells us that we will never be beyond the shame, that we will hear you say, there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ.
That when, Lord, we're so overcome by fear that we would remember and hear you say, there's no fear in love because perfect love drives out fear.
Lord, that when we're angry that our life hasn't turned out the way we wanted it to, that we feel even like you've let us down, that you've taken us to a place that just seems so untenable, that we would see and believe that you are fighting for us, that the enemies, enemies we still keep battling with, you have defeated, you've removed their power, and you will defeat ultimately.
As we sit between that new hope of heaven, that new creation that you promised us in Revelation 21, would you grant us the faith to believe that you are with us, that you are speaking, that you are working, that you are shaping us into your people, that our stories would be stories of your ongoing grace and transformation, that you would set us free from the past, from our past mistakes, our past sin, our past trauma, past abuses done to us.
Lord, that you would set us free and that you would establish us in something that is true, and that any time a memory comes, we would identify it, call it out, and claim it in the name of Jesus and say, I am no longer that person. I am no longer defined by that event.
I am defined by the event of the cross of Christ, that that would be the power at work in us, that it would be our faith that would bring about transformation, that you would show yourself to be real, even now, even in our singing.
Might you fill this room as a cloud of words of praise. Lord, and that as we move into the night times, into the darkness, into the chaos, that you remind us that you are a refining fire, an all-consuming fire.
That we would see Jesus, the Lord of all things, the Lord of the sea. Empower our faith, Lord Jesus. Help us to trust you. In your name and for your glory, I pray. Amen.
Let's stand together and respond in worship.
on Oct 27, 2024
