And we're going to be back in Exodus one.
I've made it. I made it to verse 5 last week.
I am going to all goes right, I'll get through verse 22 today.
Our our fun title today is what will it take?
And we're going to start back in verse 5.
We're just going to read through it real quick.
All those who were descendants of Jacob were 70 persons, for
Joseph was in Egypt already. And Joseph died all his brothers
and all that generation. But the children of Israel were
fruitful and increased abundantly, multiplied and grew
exceedingly mighty, and the land was filled with them.
Now there arose a new king over Egypt who did not know Joseph,
and he said to his people, Look, the people of the children of
Israel are more, mighty, more and mightier than we come.
Let us deal shrewdly with them. Let us, lest they multiply.
And it happened in the event of war, that they also join our
enemies and fight against us, and so go up out of the land.
Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with
their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh,
supply cities, Python And Ramses.
But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied
and grew, and they were in dread of the children of Israel.
So the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with
rigor, and they made their lives bitter with hard bondage in
mortar and brick, in all manner of service in the field.
All their services in which they made them serve was with rigor.
Then the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, of whom the
name of name of 1 was Chiffon and the name of the other was
Puah. And he said, When do you, when
you do your duties of midwife for the Hebrew women and see
them on the birth stools? If it is a son, then you shall
kill him, but if it is a daughter then you shall then,
then she shall live. But the midwives feared God and
did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but he saved the
male children alive. So the king of Egypt called for
the midwives and said to them, Why have you done this thing and
saved the male children alive? And the midwives said to
Pharaoh, because the Hebrew women are not like Egyptian
women, for they are lively and give birth before the midwives
come to them. Therefore God dealt with, dealt
well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and grew very
mighty. And so it was because the
midwives feared God that he provided for for them or
provided households for them. So Pharaoh commanded his people,
saying, every son who was born you shall cast into the river,
and every daughter shall be saved alive.
So Lord, I just lift up this time, Lord, and I just lift up
everybody here and just thank you for what you do in our
lives. Lord.
Thank you that you don't forget about us, Lord, that you are
more faithful than we are, Lord that you're always working, and
Lord that you'd be here in this room walking amongst us.
Speak into our hearts. I pray all this is Jesus name.
So in Genesis 37 it says, then the eyes of both of them were
open and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig
leaves together and made themselves coverings and they
heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the
cool of the day. And Adam and his wife hid
themselves from the present of the Lord among the trees of the
garden. And then the Lord God called to
Adam and said to him, where are you?
Because that's what he wanted, right?
He wanted to walk with him. Now God at no point didn't know
where Adam was, but was calling Adam.
But then in Genesis 524 it says an Enoch walked with God and he
was not for God took him. And Genesis 6 says 69 says this
is the genealogy of Noah. Noah was a just man, perfect in
his generations and Noah walked with God.
Micah 68 tells us this right? He has shown you, O man, what is
good and what does the Lord require you but to do justly to
love mercy and walk humbly with your God.
So when we when we think about that walk with God, what does
that look like And what what does God truly expect of us,
right? And verse 5, we talked about it
last week is Joseph, all the descendants came to the land.
There were 70 people and Joseph was already there.
And Joseph had had spent his time in Egypt understanding who
God was right. And if you look at Joe, if you
read, if you read the, the saga of Jacob and the growth of his
family and Joseph going into the land, I mean, it's quite, it's
quite a story and it's, it's worth, it's worth reading
through it. But you look at Joseph and what
you see in Joseph is he had an understanding of who his God
was. He had an understanding that
that God was with him and that because of that, that
understanding there was a there was a a fear of disappointing
God right a respect. And you see that in Genesis 39
nine it says there is there is no one greater in the house than
I nor has he kept back anything from me but you because you are
his wife. How then can I do this great
wickedness and sin against God. And this is, this is Joseph
speaking to his master's wife. And he doesn't say that my
master has done all these things and how could I sin against my
master? He says, how could I sin against
God, right? So Joseph understood that that
God was living and, and that his responsibility was to, to honor
that right, to honor the Lord. Joseph didn't fear his master,
he didn't fear his master's wife.
He feared God, right? And Joseph understood that God
was in charge. And that's something that you
see again. So Joseph, Joseph ends up in
jail. He's in prison.
He does all this stuff and he gets called out.
If you guys don't know the story, he gets called out of
prison by the Pharaoh. And so now he's going to meet
the most powerful man in the country he's in.
And Joseph doesn't fear him either, right?
It says verse 41 or sorry, chapter 41, verse 15 of Genesis,
it says, and Pharaoh said to Joseph, I have had a dream and
there is no one who can interpret it, but I've heard
it's said of you that you can understand to interpret it.
So Joseph answered Pharaoh and what he didn't answer him, and
I'll tell you what he said, but what he didn't say is, oh,
honorable Pharaoh, I can do all these things for you.
That's not what he said. What he said is it is not in me.
God will give Pharaoh an answer, right?
He understood where his power came from.
He understood that that he had nothing to offer, right?
He had nothing to offer except God, right?
He had, and Joseph didn't have a terror kind of fear of the Lord.
He had a respect. He respected the power that the
Lord had shown in his own life, right?
He understood that the wisdom and knowledge came from God,
right, that it wasn't that Joseph suddenly became smart.
He understood that anything he was going to tell the Pharaoh of
any value was going to be from the Lord, the living God that he
had relied on his entire time in Egypt.
And and you can watch Joseph's life.
You go back and read it. This is it doesn't talk about
Joseph's conversations with the Lord, but you can see the
moments in his life that that Joseph just knew God was there,
that he was faithful. Now you can also look at
Joseph's brothers and his brothers did not understand.
And Joseph is 1 of 12, right? And and maybe Benjamin
understood. You don't get to hear anything
about Benjamin, but at least 10 of Joseph's brothers definitely
didn't get this. They did not understand that God
is God and he's living right. I say it all the time.
I don't want to act like a Christian.
I want to be one, right? I, I, it's, it's about that
conversation with the Lord, right?
It's not about doing all the right things.
It's about spending time with him and doing what he wants me
to do. And Genesis 50 verse 15 to 20,
this is Joseph's brothers after Jacob dies.
And it says when Joseph's brother saw that their father
was dead, they said, perhaps Joseph will hate us, and they
actually repay us for all the evil which we did to him.
So they sent messengers to Joseph, saying, Before your,
before your father died, he commanded, saying, Thus you
shall say to Joseph, I beg you, please forgive the trespasses of
your brothers and their sin, for they did evil to you.
Now please forgive the trespasses of the servants of,
of the God, of your father. And Joseph wept when they spoke
to him. Then his brothers also went and
fell before his face. And they said, Behold, we are
your servants. And Joseph said to them, Do not
be afraid. I'm in in the play.
Am I in the place of God? But As for you, you meant evil
against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring, bring it
about as it is today to save many people alive.
So they were serving the God of their father.
They weren't serving God. They were keeping their dad
happy, right? Can you, can you think of any,
any organization over the centuries any worse than the
than the church has been at just we're going to I'm going to have
these traditions. I'm going to do the I'm going to
check these boxes. And now, now, because I did
this, we're better. And that's Israel over and over
and over again. Will will fall into that trap of
I am doing X and I deserve Y and God and what you what you what
you do is serve God and have that relationship and you watch
Joseph's life and that's what he did and that's that's what he's
explaining to them. Guys, you're missing it.
I'm this is not a this is not a, a box to be checked, a work to
be done. This is time to be spent.
And and then we talked about it last week that their moral
center wasn't God. They had walked with their dad,
right? They had, they had walked with
Israel. That's that, you know, and
Joseph has to respect what what Jacob, he has to respect his
father. His father said this and
Joseph's like, no guys, I have to respect God.
How could I do? How could I do anything against
what he wants me to do? And that's where we need to be
right? Joseph understood that the the
beginning of wisdom, right, which is Proverbs 910.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, right?
And the knowledge of the Holy one is understanding.
And that fear, guys, is I, my, it breaks down when, when I try
to explain it from a, from a human standpoint of what do you
respect anybody? Do you have fear of anybody like
that? When I got married in 1998, I
had a plan. I was getting married, we were
going on a honeymoon. As soon as the marriage was
over, we were going to jump in the truck and we were out of
there. And that was the plan.
It was the plan from day one that was the plan.
And then we had the wedding and or we're we're prepping for the
wedding, pictures are being taken and the there is the we
had 300 people there and we're in my mom's front yard.
And my grandpa doesn't even say it to me.
He said it to, I can't even remember who came and told me
when I said, yeah, we're not staying.
And they said, well, Grandpa D says that you, you're staying
for the reception. And I didn't, I didn't bow up.
I didn't do anything. I just went, we're staying for
the reception. Not because Grandpa D would have
been angry, right, but because that's what he wanted me to do.
And I and you don't ever get to meet him.
Well, he might get to meet him, obviously, but he he was a man
in my life that could, with a word change my direction, right?
I graduated high school because of the conversation I had with
him and not because he said you will graduate high school.
That probably would have worked, but he was smarter than that,
right? He had a had a conversation with
me that had nothing to do with high school, had nothing to do
with whether or not Nick was going to graduate high school.
He had a conversation about starting and finishing things
and guys he hired and why he hired him.
And all of that to be said is that I had a fear for my
grandfather. I had a fear and respect for
him, but not because I thought he was going to beat me.
Not because I was in terror, but because I feared to disappoint
him. And I don't know if I could
right. That's the and the thing about
our fear with with the Lord, it's that it's that idea that
I'm sure you guys have all seen a meme or whatever.
It's it's there's two kinds of fear when you talk about fearing
somebody or or thinking about their power is I hope my dad
doesn't find out versus my dad will know what to do there.
There was never time that that I thought that I I was sharing
with Uncle Pat last week or the week before that.
My mom was a single mom and we lived in the tri-cities.
She worked two and three jobs pretty regularly.
And I knew we were going to be OK because I knew that less than
an hour and a half away was my grandparents and my uncles and I
knew they wouldn't let us die, right.
I, I had faith in that. Now I wasn't a believer, but I
understood that connection. And God will spend the entire
book of Exodus explaining to Israel that he's that God, that
that he just wants to walk with him and something he talks to us
about Romans 724 and we've all heard this.
I'm sure, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from
this body of death, Thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord,
so that when so then with the mind, I'm with the mind.
I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh, the law of
sin. Do we understand that that The
thing is with the fear of God, it I'm I can fear God or I can
accept that he already knows everything and loves me anyway.
Do you get that that you're already undone, that there isn't
anything hidden in our lives that he doesn't already know,
that he hasn't already already paid the price for and is
willing to forgive us for? But it's that it's that
question. Are we willing to walk with him?
I do imagine that Joseph, as he went through his life and got to
the end of his life, that he that he was like Joshua, like
Moses. If you if you read Deuteronomy,
you'll get to hear Moses say this over and over again in
different words, but Joshua really finite pointed it out
after dealing with Israel for for the decades that Joshua,
Joshua had dealt with them and watched them, he ends his life.
His last words to him is in Joshua 2415.
And it says, and if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord,
choose for your yourself this day whom you will serve, whether
the gods which were your father, that which your father served,
that were on the other side of the river, or the gods of the
Amorites in whose land you dwell.
But As for me, in my house, we will serve the Lord.
And I can imagine that that's Joshua or Joseph's, Joseph's
conversation with his brother. Do you guys, will you walk with
him? Will you just understand who he
is and how much he cares for you?
I mean, it doesn't record. That's his last statement, but
you can, you can watch Israel over the over the next, over the
centuries. And they're like us, They don't
learn that lesson. When we look at when we look at
Egypt and we're as we're going through the book of Exodus,
Egypt is that picture of the world now.
It is a real place that really existed.
And and we're going to go through Exodus, Exodus and it is
a history lesson in what happened, but it's also it's got
it's got a pliable pictures to us that Exodus is that picture
of the world. And and God takes us out of the
world, right? And you'll watch Israel
longingly look back at the world.
And as a Christian, do you do that right?
Our flesh does that and and walking with God, guys, walking
with God is something that is very painful for your flesh and
it was supposed to be that way. Galatians 220, which is one of
those verses you guys get to hear a lot.
It's I've been crucified with Christ.
It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me and this
life. I now live in the flesh.
I live by faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave
himself for me. And that's a daily thing, right?
My flesh doesn't get to win the conversation.
We talked about ice cream last week or a week before and just
the, the funny there. But when you say yes to your
when you, when you cave to your flesh, you're you're, you're
accepting it has power over you. And, and what Paul repeats over
and over again is that your flesh needs to die.
And what Joshua or what Joseph is continually sharing with his
brothers is guys. He just wants us and, and when
you watch his as as he went through the process of bringing
them into Egypt and and reconciling with them, he
continued to point at the Lord as the reason that they were
where they were. And they wouldn't take that,
that they were a, they are a stiff necked people.
But I think we are stiff necked people.
I think we, we want, we want to do it in a way that makes sense
to us. And I will tell you that the
Lord doesn't need my buy in for his plan.
I need my buy in. I need to walk with him.
I need to turn right. His plan is moving forward and
ha, verse 7 of Exodus says, but the children of Israel were
fruitful and increased abundantly multiplied and grew
exceedingly mighty and the land was filled with them.
And I love this just because this is this is being written
down in such a way to to to express in redundancy.
They were fruitful, increased abundantly multiplied, grew
exceedingly mighty and filled the land.
So let's just be clear, they grew, right?
This wasn't a little thing. So when they leave Egypt, so
7070 people came into us. A lot of debate back and forth.
Between 70 and 200 people came into the land. 70 is what it
says, but that's just counting men and there's a whole process.
But regardless, walking out of the land was just over 600,000
men 400 years later. And so then when you, when you
extrapolate that to the ladies and the children, that's
2,000,000 plus people walked out 400 years later.
And it's always funny when the I, I, I, I pick on fuzzy
thinkers because it's fun, because they, they look at that
and go back, you couldn't do that.
I mean, that's, that's ridiculous population growth
that can't be done. So that's 3.25% a year.
And that here's the, here's the fun number with that in Uganda
between 2010 and 2015, they grew at 2 point, 3.25% a year.
And that's six children per woman, right?
And that was and, and that was a time so 2010 to 2015, the war
ended in 2009 in the north. And basically it was a time of
just, they were suddenly free and alive.
They, they, the Uganda is probably a lot like Goshen in
the sense of it. If you throw seeds on the ground
in Uganda, they grow. It is a, a very fruitful place.
And they, they, it was, you know, we, we started going in
2010 and there are children everywhere.
It's how JB ended up with a, how he ended up with a school was
there were so many children that he's like, well, I'll just start
a nursery school so we can take care of them.
And he jokes and said, and if I'd have known it was going to
turn into a school, I probably would have never started because
it's a lot of work. But, but it was, if you would
have asked those people in 2008 and 2009, they wouldn't have
expected to have the children they had.
They wouldn't have expected the the population explosion that
they had. And the reason they had it was
because everything was in line, right?
And Pharaoh had set Israel up to grow and God planned it that
way, right In Genesis 47, it says that 47 six, it says the
land of Egypt is before you. And this is the Pharaoh talking.
Have your father and brothers dwell in the best of the land.
Let them dwell in the land of Goshen.
And if you know any confident among them, then make them chief
herdsman over my livestock. So God set them in Goshen.
And this, this wasn't an accident.
This wasn't like, well, since this is happening, then I'll do
this. God told Israel in chapter 46,
he told Jacob so, so he said, I am God, the God of your father.
Do not fear to go down to Egypt for I will make you a great
nation there. So the cool thing with, with
the, the whole story of Exodus is you, you literally have a
family that entered a country and then was isolated in that
country and they turned into a nation.
And it is it's not by they were completely separated from if
they'd have stayed in Canaan. Canaan was a completely Pagan
society. Egypt had many, many gods, but
they were they, they didn't like shepherds.
So they were, they, they were like dirty and unclean.
So they kept them away from them.
So they didn't intermingle and because of that you end up with
this growth that is isolated to those tribes.
So when when we look at God in our life, do we believe that God
is big enough to be trusted with everything right?
That this isn't for 400 years Israel abided in God's plan.
Now do I do I think they knew what God's plan was?
No, but they stayed still. They they stayed in Egypt.
They didn't go back to they didn't go back to Canaan.
Now I would imagine that there was a reason to stay in Egypt
because Goshen was a wonderful place when they got there.
And when I look at my life and I and I would imagine if you're a
believer here today and you look at your life, so I didn't get
saved till I was 30. And at 30 years old, I can look
back on my life and I can tell you that God protected me, God
chastened me. God had a plan for my life.
And and I say that not because at any time before I was 30
years old that I was serving him at all.
In that time I had had prayers that went something like if you
Get Me Out of this Lord, right, like I'm sure we've all had now.
I had no idea who I was praying to.
I just was in a lot of trouble and I didn't want to be.
But there are times in my life that I I can look back on and I
can see me just that that God has a hedge around me and I have
a machete and I am really trying to get through this hedge
because I want to go do what I want to do.
And God finally goes OK and let's me just crash and burn in
a horrible fashion, but keeps me alive.
And I'd like to say that I learned that at the first time
or the second time or even the third time.
But I'm, I'm not the smartest tool in the drawer, right?
But he was building the tool that he needed for the work that
he was going to have done, right?
And he's going to do this with Israel.
He's going to, he's going to work with them.
They don't know it. And I would tell you, just from
from watching, watching them through Genesis and through,
through their last words to their brother, they have no clue
who God actually is. You know, they get circumcised
and they might do some things, but they have no idea who God
is. And God is, you know, Romans,
Romans 8, we all know it. God works all things together
for good. And that brought that verse gets
just abused for things it doesn't mean.
It means that God knows what needs to be done to get the most
names written in the book of life that can be written in the
book of life, period. That's what that verse means.
He's willing to use everything under the sun up into the
Holocaust. Do we remember that 16 million
Jews and millions of people died and that is something that was
allowed because in in that the most people end up with God in
the end. It's the best plan.
Do we believe that you know, it's it's when our friends in
the tri-cities whose son died it at 16 years old and a head on
that he he tried to pass a truck when he shouldn't have.
And and I can talk about it like this because Joe talks about it
like this is we know where Jacob's at.
He's he's with the Lord. That doesn't mean that it was
easy for his family, but hundreds of lives were changed
by, by Jacob's death because it wasn't smooth sailing, right?
Joe Joe. And someday he'll come up and
teach. And I don't want to steal
anything he's going to say, but he will, he will share that if,
if life just went on like you got up and and everything was
sunshine and rainbows, no one would get saved because nothing
would disrupt their life. And so in Israel's case, and I
have a note here says enter the Black Hat.
You know, the the bad guy has shown up.
And verse 8. Now there arose a new king over
Egypt who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, look,
the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier
than we come. Let us deal shrewdly with them
less they multiply and it happened in the event of war
that they also join our enemies and fight against us and so go
up out of the land. And it doesn't give a time frame
for this. I know that they're in the land
for 400 years, but it doesn't say when this happened, right?
It doesn't I mean, this could be two generations in, it could be
6 generations in or three. It doesn't say, right?
We just know that it was long enough that they didn't remember
why, why these people were here. They did understand.
He did understand though, that those people are what ran his
country because he he doesn't just say they may raise up a
rise up against us and and take over.
They may rise up against us and leave and we couldn't withstand
that. So he does understand that there
is, there is something there and this is a standard cycle that
the, that that goes on in culture, in governments,
basically the human race. We have a, we have a memory that
is almost as good as our ability to tell the future, right?
We, we rewrite things and, and we were talking about it last
week, just the things that have been forgotten.
And the king saw a resource that was very powerful and then he
feared that he didn't have the power over them, right.
He had this workforce, but he wasn't in control of it.
Does anybody ever watch The Bug's Life?
It's old cartoon, but it's what the grasshopper who's running
the ants, he's in charge. And the ants are little, The
grasshoppers are big. And one of the one of the
grasshoppers is, is being mouthy to the bad grasshopper and is
like, what's the big deal? There are a bunch of ants.
And he says those ants outnumber us 100 to 1.
And if they ever figure that out, there goes our way of life.
And that's really the, I would say the king has looked down and
he went. So Egypt, Egypt's workers are
shepherds. They're they're farmers.
They're brick layers helped us build this Kingdom, but they're
not Egyptian. And and he didn't know the
history. He didn't know where they came
from. It's the bean counters of the
world get like this. They, they forget, you know,
that's I, I, I pick on our government very often a city
government, the state government, but city governments
very often and I deal with doing, doing subdivisions and
just infrastructure stuff. You talk to city, city managers
and board members, they get to thinking that they are in charge
of people and guys, they are not in charge.
Look at their look at the, look at the documents of each city
and they are representing people in the city.
They're just representatives, right?
And the Washington State Board of Education is my favorite
example of this is this is this instead of the, instead of the
king going to Israel, the Israelites and having a
conversation, figuring out who they were.
And, and you know, and hey, you guys have been blessing us and
we're just kind of instead of that, what he decides to do is
squeeze them. The Washington State Board of
Education through COVID, they they had they had some had some
bad press because suddenly Washington schools were on video
doing Zoom calls in every household in Washington state.
And to say that went badly for them because suddenly parents
that didn't know we're at home listening to what their kids are
being taught. And so like many of the schools,
but Calvary Chapel, Tri-cities, the the first open enrollment
looked like, looked like, like a Star Wars opening.
There were, there was, we were blocking the road with cars
parked at trying to get in to get their kids into school.
And we had every everybody showing up Christian, non
Christian, everybody wanted, they just did not want their kid
in a, in a school in, in the public school.
And that was for all the schools in the area.
And so the Washington State Board of Education said, so
we're going to change the way we do school.
No, that didn't. What they said, what they tried
to do was say, well, now we're going to force all the private
schools to teach what we teach and we're going to mandate it.
And they went through a whole process and the phone call, I
mean that I sat and listened to their whole thing.
And that day, those guy if, if those it would have been a live
meeting, they'd have probably been lynched because the level,
I mean, basically every person that got on there said the same
thing. If you do this, we will
homeschool our kids. And the reason that Washington
state wanted it was because what was happening is people were
pulling their kids out of school and they weren't getting federal
money because there weren't kids in those seats.
And so they wanted, they want, they, they, they, they're going
to take their stuff instead of fixing, right?
And this is the king, right? Instead of, instead of having
that conversation and figuring out how can I, how can I, how
can I make them part of Egypt to not not incorporate them into
our culture, but how can I make, how can I make it to where
they're not a separate thing? No, I'm just going to squeeze
them. And like I said, the Black Hat
quality overreach, verse 11 to 14 says therefore they set
taskmax taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens.
And they built for Pharaoh, supply cities, fish on the
Ramseys for the more they afflicted, the more they
multiplied and grew. And there were, there were dread
of the children of Israel. So the Egyptians made the
children of Israel serve with rigor, and they made their lives
bitter with hard bondage in mortar and brick, in all manner
of service in the field. All service which they made them
serve was with rigor. And that just means hardship,
right? So hundreds of years the Hebrews
had worked in Egypt as shepherds and their general labor force
building and caring for the Egypt, the Egyptian nation and
Egypt reaped God's blessing right there.
This was a time of growth in Egypt.
There was, you know, there these supply cities that are being
built. These were these were to fend
off, to defend off attacks because they would basically put
their armament, protect their armament, but put them in far
enough out that they were actually able to to get those
resources at their border cities.
And Israel is being put in this pressure cooker, right?
And when that happens, the question is, and, and you can go
go through the book of judges, go through, go through Joshua,
the book of Judges Samuel, first and second Samuel, you'll just
watch Israel do this over and over again until they turn, they
get put in a pressure cooker cooker.
And what they attempt to do is just grunt it out because in
chapter 1, there ain't going to point, there ain't going to
become a point where they turn. They're just going to keep
working at it. But in Acts 1, Christians,
Christians that love the Lord, they get struck and they don't
fight right now. Saul was consenting to his
death. And this is Saul who turns into
Paul, but consenting to Stephen's death.
At that time a great persecution arose against the church, which
was at Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the
region of Judea, Samaria, except the apostles.
Then skipping to verse 4. Therefore those who were
scattered went everywhere preaching the word.
So God will stir up the nest. He will he will create the
issues. I you know that my, my common,
my, my common line, which is embrace the suck, right?
God let sparks fly and and we went through James and you know,
count it all joy when we fall into various trials.
But the goal there is is God wants to disrupt our lives.
He wants to disrupt us in such a way that we are out telling
people what he has done in my life.
Right, and Israel is a stubborn group.
I mean they get called stiff necked by Moses numerous times
and as as believers or as non believers.
If you're in here, how much, how much service with rigor do you
have in you before you'll turn to the Lord?
How many problems do we blame God for that are truly our
problems? You know, I, I, I, there's lots
of different ones, you know, people that drink too much or
people that smoke cigarettes or people, people.
And I say cigarettes, not it's, you know, I got cancer.
Why did I get cancer? That would be reaping what you
sow, right? But one that came to mind.
And I don't think I won't, you know, I won't use her name and
hopefully she doesn't figure out who I'm talking about.
But a friend of mine, daughter, she's she's walking with the
Lord again and she's got, she's got two kids and one and both of
them are with different dads. And life is hard.
It's it's hard. And she gave her life back to
the Lord and she one of those kids that just truly had a great
relationship with her when she was younger.
And then she she went out in the world and did a bunch of stuff
that was bad choices. And you know, we'll have
conversations. And I just said, well, you're
still paying consequences, right?
Thank God when when I gave my life to the Lord.
I would love to tell you when I gave my life to the Lord, the
slate was wiped clean and it was from God's point of view.
But in the world I still had a bunch of stupid that I had made
decisions and I had to I had to fess up to him.
I had I had bad thinking, right? And Israel hunkers down and
sticks to their bad thinking over and over again.
And then they blame God when things go wrong.
I mean, and does that sound like anybody you know, right, We ever
get in that, right? Well, one of my favorites is in
Ezekiel 1829. And this is this gets said,
right? Yet the House of Israel says the
way of the Lord is not fair. Oh, House of Israel is not my
way, which is, which are my ways which are fair and yours ways
which are not fair, right? And that's guys, when you come
to the Lord, you don't come to the Lord and say, do it my way.
Why isn't this working? We come to the Lord and say,
Lord, I suck. You have a plan.
Let me follow your plan. And and his plan is, is hard.
You're going to have to suddenly be honest.
You're going to have to suddenly accept, accept that you are not
the smartest person in the room. You're going to have to be
humble, right? You're going to have to, you're
going to have to love mercy and do justly.
And guys, we don't love mercy. We love mercy for me, I don't
love mercy for the guy tailgating me, right.
I, I, I love justice for other people.
You know what? I got pulled over when I was
driving home from, this was 10 years ago.
I was driving home from up here, taking my brother back to Dayton
and this really foggy night and I'm on a back Rd. and somewhere
on that back Rd. And I have driven that
particular back Rd. hundreds of times when I was younger.
And I used to drive everywhere between 80 and 90 miles an hour.
It was just that I didn't have a lower speed.
There was either I was either on the brake or on the gas.
There wasn't A and I got my wife and my, my two daughters and my
brother in the car and we're driving and I got pulled over.
I was doing, I was doing 60 miles an hour.
I thought I was on a 55 mile an hour Rd. and somewhere in the
fog I had missed a sign that that had dropped it to 50.
And I got pulled over and the officer is not impressed that
I'm speeding and da da da da. And my brother's in the back
seat and he's he's going to be all mouthy because it's foggy.
But I'm like James, I may not deserve this ticket, but trust
me when I tell you I deserve a ticket.
Do we believe that right? I didn't deserve that one,
right? That one?
I could, I could have explained my way out of it.
Did I deserve on that particular Rd.
Did I deserve to be in jail? Yes, I did.
So this wasn't God giving me justice because justice is
sending me to jail because I had broke the law.
I just hadn't been caught. And that's when we give our
lives to the Lord. Do you accept that?
That, that my I don't. Lord, please don't give me what
I deserve, right? Because what I deserve is is
death and dismemberment. And he has protected me from
that. And so whatever my life is today
is fair. That's that's up and to the
point that my, my friends whose son died up and to that point,
right? It's fair God does not say that
life will be sunshine and rainbows when he says is he will
walk with us through it. He watches us, He takes care of
us, right? And now that that isn't to say
there aren't random acts of suck right?
We that does happen. But most of the time guys, I can
trace the suck in my life back to choices I made.
And what I know is God is God is true and he is good.
So because of that, I can trust him and I can trust that I can
walk with him. And what we also know is that
that I don't, I didn't bring anything to the equation.
I didn't, I didn't bring well, I'm, I'm, I'm a 50%.
I got 50% of it. Lord, I need you to add the
other 50, man, I'm only 20%. I need you to add 80.
Well, I'm pretty good. I'm about 90%.
I need 10%. No, we all suck.
Ecclesiastes 720 and we all know Romans 2323, but this one says
it as well. For there is not a just man on
earth who does good and does not sin.
The one it isn't, it isn't a gamble.
It isn't a hey, Lord said, well, there might be somebody out
there. No guys, I can guarantee
everybody in this room center, every single one of us question
is, are we forgiven? And how we how we become
forgiven is really simple. Is we cry for help and we turn
and we walk with him in Christ. Is that it?
And that is something that as we go through Exodus, Oh my
goodness, they are, they're painful because they are like
watching me in my life, right? They, they, they make decisions
that are selfish and self-centered and self seeking.
And God is just there waiting for them to go.
So are you, are you coming? I'm still here.
That's our life with him. Are you coming right and and
that's what he wants. He wants those he wants that
time with us that that cool of the of the day.
When you get back-to-back to Egypt, verse 15, the king of
Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, of whom the name of 1
was Sapphira and the other name was Para.
And he said when you do the duties of a midwife for the
Hebrew women and see them on the birth tools, if it is a son,
then you shall kill him, but if it's a daughter, then she shall
live. But the midwives feared God.
And then you move down and we've read it all and it says
therefore God dealt with the midwives and people multiplied
and grew very mighty. And so it was because the
midwives feared God that he provided households for them.
Now the the the king had zero fear of the Lord right?
And and I would blame that partially on Israel's lack of
living out loud for him, right is and that's for us.
Do we, do we share with people the the reason for the hope?
That's when that is right. And because I'm going to the
Pharaoh through our the king and then the Pharaoh is going to get
what we're going to get. We're going to get him in this.
But did he know? Did he know Now the midwives,
they found a loophole, right? He said, he said do this when
they give birth. So maybe they walked slow right
now. They already gave birth.
Sorry, I we weren't there and this wasn't just two ladies,
because we're talking we're talking thousands upon thousands
of birds and they wouldn't have been at all them.
So these were probably the leaders of that of the midwives.
But the the point I want to point out is God bless them for
their fear of him, right? He didn't bless them and that
you'll you'll hear different things between people.
That is that he blessed them because they, you know, well,
it's OK to lie because God bless the midwives.
You know, they lied, they lied for a good reason.
And he didn't him bless him for the lie.
He blessed him for the fear and that fear once again, wasn't a a
horror. It was a respect for for him,
right? Romans 120 and this is because I
don't know if they were if they were Israelites, I don't know if
they were Egyptians. What I do know is they feared
God. And Romans 120 says for the
since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are
clearly seen being understood by the things that are made and
even His eternal power and Godhead so that they were
without excuse. So know that when you're talking
to people, and I don't care if you're talking to Richard
Dawkins, you know God exists. Everything's a smokescreen.
Come into those conversations with people with that attitude
that what people want. What I wanted as a as a 25 year
old was I wanted an explanation in my head that let me sleep at
night. I wanted an excuse that allowed
me to not walk with God. And that's what everybody wants.
And and they may get it in science, they might get it in in
another religion, but what they need is Jesus.
And what we have is Jesus. And the reason for that is
because he is a living God who walks with us, right?
So we get back to the Pharaoh and this is this is over the
over the centuries and decades, we have watched this in ancient
times and in modern times that when the secret's out, right,
that that Pharaoh wants to kill the kids.
So then he just pulls back the veil, right?
And verse 22 says, so Pharaoh commanded all his people saying
every son who's born you shall cast into the river and every
daughter you shall save alive. So it's just kill them all, kill
the boys, just just throw them into the river.
So you got to ask yourself, when, when the culture or just
bad choices attack us with all the suck, what do we do?
Do we buckle down? Do we do we buckle down and just
absorb it? One of the stupidest things I've
ever said in my life is I, I can fight a fight like AI fight like
the third monkey on a ramp on the on the ramp of the ark and
it's brought in to rain, right? I'm a fighter.
And like I've explained numerous times, the moment you put your
hands up to fight the enemy, you have already lost because he's
he's a middle school bully and you're a three-year old.
He he wins that fight. Now what he doesn't win is when
you say God, I can't you have to God steps in, flicks the middle
school bully who runs away. And that's our job, right, is to
walk with him and be with him and be in Christ.
And think of Peter in this like when our life is hard, when
things are going badly, what did Peter do when he stepped out of
the boat? Because when he stepped out of
the boat, he was, he was in that place that we all want to be
exactly where God wants us to be, doing exactly what God wants
us to do. He is he is out of the boat
standing on water. And what did he say when he
started to sink? Because he got he got worried.
He said, Lord, save me. Now that was probably as quick a
prayer as he could come up with, right?
Because he was going to drown. And what did the Lord do?
He didn't have a conversation with him.
He didn't say he didn't say, well, I mean, do you really need
me? No, he was there instantly
pulled him up out of the water into the boat, right.
He was his desire for us is to walk with us.
Our desire should be to walk with him and Israel as we go
through this guy's they will they will struggle with that,
but it's God picked them as that people because they were a whole
people that act just like his Children Act today.
And So what would it take? Do you have things in your life
that are that need to be said Lord save me, but I can't you
have to because all he wants to do is walk with you.
He wants that relationship. He wants that one-on-one time.
So Lord, I just lift up everybody here and I lift up
this time. And I just thank you, Lord, that
you're here with us. I thank you that you walk with
us every day. Lord, Lord that.
But if there's anything going on that we need to, to just give to
you, Lord, that we would turn and give it to you or that we
would just want that that time with you that we would just
spend spend our our week, but that we would just be in
fellowship with you and enjoying what you do for us.
Lord, I pray all this in Jesus name, Amen.