Impossible Moments - Part 7

Victory Against All Odds - Judges 6-7

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

And we have been in a series called Impossible Moments, And we have talked about tons of stories. We've been focused on the Old Testament, but stories like Moses and David fighting against Goliath and Noah and the Israelites having food just appear for them in the desert. So many different stories of God just coming through when it felt impossible. And the thing I love about this series, and really, I mean, let's be real, it's all of scripture, but the thing that's really cool about this is we get to see these stories and be reminded, maybe we've heard them many times, so maybe we're being reminded of them, but we get to learn more about who God is. That really is the whole point of the Bible. He wants a relationship with his people. There's no other God that wants a relationship like our God. He wants a relationship with his people. And how do you build a relationship? You get to know them. And so through these stories and through his word, He reveals more and more of Himself to us. Now He's infinite, we're never gonna understand Him completely, but how cool is it that He is so good and in His kindness, He shows us His character and who He is. And in turn, because we're learning about God and because He created us, we get to learn more about ourselves and how we relate to Him, how we relate to this world. And so I just, I am loving this series.

And today we are going to focus on a story where God basically says, you know, this army is just too big. Ever heard anyone say the army's too big? Not me. Usually it's the opposite problem. But God said this army is too big. We are gonna be talking about Gideon. We're gonna be in the book of Judges today. But before we get started, let me open us up with some prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day. We thank you for the opportunity to get to know you better through your word, through the people that you've used, through your scriptures. I pray that you will be present in this place, that you will be felt. Holy Spirit, come speak to us and to our hearts. We thank you so much for this opportunity to worship together and to learn more about you in your name. So while you're gonna be in Judges, We're gonna start in verse six. I want us to have a little bit of background of who Gideon is. You may be really familiar with him, you may not. Gideon was a judge, hence the book of Judges, but he was one of the judges of Israel. And the Israelites at this time were under oppression from the Midianites. And so there was a lot of distress, a lot of struggle. And we find Gideon in Judges six. We're gonna start in verse 11. You can turn there on your phone, in your Bible. We got it on this screen. We also have blue Bibles in the chairs. We're gonna be in the NIV version today. So turn with me to Judges 6, verse 11. And we find him in a winepress. So let's read. The angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiserite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites. Pause for a second. He was threshing wheat in a winepress, not typically what the winepresses were for, but he was scared of the Midianites. So he was basically hiding while he was getting his work done. So this little section's gonna tell us a lot about Gideon, and we're just making a note of that here. Okay, verse 12. When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, "The Lord is with you, mighty warrior." Another translation says, "Mighty man of valor." 13, "Pardon me, my lord," replied Gideon, but if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about? When they said, "Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?" But now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian. The Lord turned to him and said, "Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian's hand. Am I not sending you?" "Pardon me, my Lord," Gideon replied, "but how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh and I am the least in my family." The Lord answered, "I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites, leaving none alive." Gideon replied, "If now I have found favor in your eyes, give me a sign that it is really you talking to me. Please do not go away until I come back and bring my offering and set it before you." And the Lord said, "I will wait until you return.”

So Gideon goes off and prepares a meal, and brings it back to the answer of the Lord, and it burns like a burnt offering, and he receives that. And that's the sign for Gideon to know, oh, this is real, this is really the Lord talking to me. Okay. So, like I said, we learn a lot about Gideon here in chapter six, and he's not, doesn't seem like the guy for the job, you know, by human standards. He's hiding in a wine press, threshing wheat, first of all. But God calls him a mighty warrior. And God calls him that before he's ever gone into battle. That I find that so interesting. Gideon hadn't done anything of valor or of warrior likeness, but God calls him that. Gideon himself actually didn't really think very highly of himself because in verse 15 it says, "My clan is the weakest in Manasseh and I am the least, "I'm the youngest in my family." Birth order and clan order, that was all very, very important in this time. So he's like, "Are you sure you got the right guy? "Because I don't think I'm it." But something else we learn is that God says, "Go in the strength you have, not that you will have, "but that you currently have." So God is speaking into Gideon's life saying, "You have this strength. "I am giving it to you now. "You are a man of valor. "You are a mighty warrior right now, "before you've done anything." We see Gideon's lack of courage in this, and we see maybe his fear or his lack of confidence in God's choice of warrior.

But we also see some other really cool things from Gideon. He starts asking God for signs. You may have heard the idea of asking, laying out a fleece for the Lord. This is where it comes from in chapter six. He puts out a fleece and he says, God, if this is you, make the fleece wet and the ground around it dry from dew and God does it. And then the next night he said, okay God, I'm gonna ask you to do it again, but the opposite. I want the fleece dry and the ground around it covered with dew and he does it. Now, at first reading, I'm kinda like, oh, Gideon. Kinda pushing the limits here, asking God for all these signs, but it's okay. God wasn't offended by it, he wasn't intimidated by it. He actually, in his goodness, allowed Gideon to have these confirmations so that he could build his confidence. We may look at Gideon as modern day readers and say he had a lack of faith, but how many times have we done it? How many times have we questioned? God, is this really you? Are you sure? I don't think you have the right guy. I've definitely given God plenty of reasons of why I'm not the right person for the job, why I'm not capable or equipped or good enough. And God doesn't make mistakes. So, he has the right person. I think a lot of times we want to be available. I think Gideon, as an Israelite, as a follower of Yahweh, wanted to be available, but are we willing to follow up that availability with obedience? Honestly, for a lot of us, I think the answer's no. If we're truly honest with ourselves, because we're scared or we're unsure, we actually are putting more faith in ourselves other than God, or over God.

But the funny thing is, in this series, and really throughout the whole Bible, Every person that God used was not good enough. David was too small to fight Goliath. Moses should have been killed as a baby and then as an adult and had a stutter. Elijah was rolling solo up against 300 of Baal's prophets. Noah built an ark for somewhere that never had rained before. It didn't make sense. But God made them enough. He gave them what they needed. He equipped them and he called them to do it. So he was gonna make them enough. Same thing with Gideon. Maybe he was the least of his family. Maybe he was in the smallest clan. But God, as we'll see, as we continue, we'll see that God gives Gideon exactly what he needs. And he'll give us what we need too. He is not gonna call us to something that he will not equip us for. He's gonna give us exactly what we need. So now we have a little bit of background of who he was. We can see that he is not wildly courageous or wildly confident in himself, but he asked God to build his trust. He asked for signs. He even went so far as to tear down an altar of Baal. Now in that time, Yahweh and Baal were basically worshiped equally. For many people in the area, including Israelites, both of them were worshiped. So it was a big deal for him to tear down this altar. In fact, he was so scared to do it that he did it in the middle of the night. But in that time, he can't really tear down a altar of a god and it not be noticed. So they figured out who it was, but he did it. It also says that He was, that the Spirit came upon Him.

Now, as Christians and Christ-holders, this side of the resurrection, we hear that more of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, or when a Holy Spirit comes into our heart or our lives. We are given the Holy Spirit. But in the Old Testament, most of the time, it's understood as the Holy Spirit coming upon someone. And we see here that Gideon had the Spirit of God upon him. He was anointed. He wasn't just told to go do something. God was going to go with him. Gideon also started building an army. He's like, "Okay, well, I gotta go defeat the Midianites. "I guess I need some people to do this with me." So he started growing an army. His trust in God grew. His confidence in who God said he was grew. So we're gonna go ahead and jump ahead to chapter seven. We're just gonna work section by section here. So Judges seven verse one, early in the morning, Jerubal, who's called Gideon, and all his men camped at the spring of Herod. The camp of Midian was north of them in the valley, near the hill of Morah. The Lord said to Gideon, "You have too many men. I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against me." They would say, "My own strength has saved me." Now announce to the army, "Anyone who trembles with fear "may turn back and leave Mount Gilead." So 22,000 men left while 10,000 remained. The math is not mathing, okay? This is not making sense. First of all, just for some context, the army, the Midianite army had what was estimated as 135,000 men. So with 32,000 Israelites in their army, they were already severely outnumbered. But God said, "No, you're too big. "Because if you defeat them with 32,000 men, "you're gonna take the glory. "You're gonna say that you did it in your own power." And that's not how this is gonna go. So he said, "If you're afraid," which obviously many were, because they saw this vast army in front of them that they were going up against. So 22,000 went home. and they were left with 10,000. Seems really small amount of men to go against this army. I was reading a commentator on this passage and he said, "If we really believe the principle from Zechariah 4.6 "that says not by might nor by power, "but by my spirit says the Lord of hosts, "then our smallness does not matter. "If we really believe the principle, "some trust in chariots and some in horses, "but we will remember the name of the Lord our God," from Psalm 20, verse seven, then smallness does not matter. 10,000 men was small, but it didn't matter. All right, on to verse four. "But the Lord said to Gideon, "There are still too many men. "Take them down to the water, "and I will thin them out for you there. "If I say this one shall go with you, he shall go. "But if I say this one shall not go with you, "he shall not go." So Gideon took the men down to the water. There the Lord told him, "Separate those who lap the water with their tongues "as the dog laps from those who kneel down to drink." 300 of them drank from cupped hands, lapping like dogs. All the rest got down on their knees to drink. So God basically said, if they get on their hands and knees and they put their head in the water and they're just drinking, They're not being alert, they're exposing their backs. Send them home. The ones that picked up the water and laughed at like a dog and stayed alert, stayed ready, were on the lookout. Those are the ones God wanted. Unfortunately, it was only 300 of them. But small doesn't matter with God.

The same commentator wrote, Now the Israeli army was less than 1% of its original size, and the proportion was 400 Midianite soldiers to one Israeli soldier, 400 to one. Gideon could only trust in God because there was nothing else to trust. Gideon already didn't have a lot of confidence in himself. Now he didn't have an army to put his confidence in. He only had the option to trust in God. Sometimes we feel that way, we get to the end of our rope, we got nothing left. Hopefully we put our trust in God before we get to that point, but sometimes it takes us getting to the end of our rope to realize he's all I need to put my trust in. All right, verse seven. The Lord said to Gideon, with the 300 men that lapped, I will save you and give the Midianites into your hands. Let all the others go home." So Gideon sent the rest of the Israelites home, but kept the 300 who took over the provisions and trumpets of the others. God was gonna use 300 men. So now Gideon has asked for signs and he's received signs, building up his confidence. And then God pared down his army to 300, probably broke his confidence down a little bit. But God knew and He is good and He is kind. And so He's like, you know what? I'm gonna give you another sign, Gideon. I'm gonna show you that you can trust me. So we head into verse nine. During that night, the Lord said to Gideon, get up, go down against the camp because I'm going to give it into your hands. If you are afraid to attack, go down to the camp with your servant, Pirah, and listen to what they are saying. Afterward, you will be encouraged to attack the camp." So he and Pera, his servant, went down to the outpost of the camp. The Midianites, the Amalekites, and all the other eastern peoples had settled in a valley thick as a locust. Their camels could no more be counted than the sand on the seashore. Gideon arrived just as a man was telling a friend his dream. "I had a dream," he was saying. "A round loaf of barley bread came tumbling into the Midianite camp. It struck the tent with such force that the tent overturned and collapsed. His friend responded, "This can be nothing "other than the sword of Gideon, "son of Joash the Israelite. "God has given the Midianites "and the whole camp into his hands." He was telling the Midianites that they were already gonna lose. That's a confidence builder. When Gideon heard the dream and its interpretation, he bowed down and worshiped. He returned to the camp of Israel and called out, "Get up, the Lord has given the Midianite camp "into your hands." Dividing the 300 men into three companies, he placed trumpets and empty jars in the hands of all of them with torches inside. "Watch me," he told them, "follow my lead. "When I get to the edge of the camp, do exactly as I do. "When I and all who are with me blow our trumpets, "then from all around the camp, blow yours and shout "for the Lord and for Gideon." Gideon heard the dream and the interpretation and his confidence was built again.

He knew God was gonna give him the victory. And what was the first thing he did? He worshiped. So I wrote this as a quick side note, but in the middle of the night, the Lord kept bringing this up to me. And I feel like this is maybe the most important part of this passage. Gideon worshiped God before he had the victory. So whether you're on a mountaintop and things are going well, and your relationship with God is good, and things seem to be smooth sailing, you get to worship him then. But even if things aren't going well, if things feel really low, if you are in the thick of anxiety or depression or financial crisis or relationship issues, whatever it may be, we still get to worship. Gideon knew that God was gonna come through. He knew he was gonna give him the victory. So he worshiped that part of God. He worshiped that God was good. He worshiped the God that was going to bring the victory before the victory came. And I know so many of us are praying for a victory in some area in our lives. And it feels really hard to worship right now. It feels like, what am I worshiping? You haven't given me the victory. I haven't seen the end. And for some of us, we may not even get the victory this side of heaven, but it is coming. And we get to worship now. We get to praise Him because of who He is, not because of anything He's done. So, even before they took the Midianite camp, even before they did anything, Gideon worshiped God because he was worthy. He was worthy of being worshiped. He was worthy of being honored and praised, simply because of who He was. So Gideon receives the signs, he builds his confidence, and then he gives his men empty jars, trumpets, and torches. What I find interesting here is that Gideon, of all the things he questioned, he did not question the weapons of choice. Now, scripture's not clear on whose plan this was, but because we know that the Holy Spirit came upon Gideon, it's safe to assume that this was the Holy Spirit's idea, to fight with torches and trumpets and glasses and essentially household items. If there's ever a time that I'm going to question God's plan, it's when he gives me a household item to go into battle. That's what I'm gonna question it, personally. Call me having a lack of faith, I don't know. But it's just, I struggle with that. But Gideon didn't, he just was rolling with the plan.

So, verse 18, we'll jump back in. "Gideon and the hundred men with him "reached the edge of the camp at the beginning "of the middle watch," so the middle of the night, "just after they had changed the guard. "They blew their trumpets and broke the jars "that were in their hands. "The three companies blew the trumpets and smashed the jars. Grasping the torches in their left hands and holding in their right hands the trumpets they were to blow, they shouted, "A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!" While each man held his position around the camp, all the Midianites ran, crying out as they fled. When the 300 trumpets sounded, the Lord caused the men throughout the camp to turn on each other with their swords. The army fled to Beth-Shi-ta toward Zor-ah, as far as the border of Abel-Meholah near Tabeth. Israelites from Naphtali, Asher, and all Manasseh were called out and they pursued the Midianites. The Israelite army, the 300 men, barely had to lift a finger. They blew their trumpets and they shouted. And now, granted, if you were in the dead of night, dead asleep, and then you're suddenly surrounded by fire and shouting and torches, That would freak me out too. But it says that the men held their ground. They literally just stood there. And the whole army, the whole many army got up and fought against each other. And the ones who didn't die ran. And then as we see more tribes of Israelites joined in and pursued them as they fled. But the 300 men didn't even have to fight. God fought. God won that battle. God did the work. Gideon and those 300 men just had to be obedient.

I'm not well versed in war strategy, but glass jars and trumpets don't seem like a great strategy to me, but it doesn't matter. He just wanted their obedience. And even more so, God got the glory. 'Cause not only were they severely outnumbered, it didn't make sense who he chose. The weapons of choice made absolutely no sense. So God got the glory. There was no argument of who won this battle. It was God. Gideon was the weakest. He was everyone's last choice to be called to do something impossible. It didn't make sense on paper. It didn't add up for our human minds. It doesn't add up. But it doesn't have to because in God's upside down kingdom, it works somehow, but it works. He doesn't need it to make sense. He just needs our obedience. He just needed Gideon to say yes, I'll go. It seemed like an impossible moment. It seemed impossible with 32,000 men. And then it seemed even more impossible, and more impossible. But that is when God shows off in the coolest ways.

So, a few truths for us today that we can take away from Gideon in his story. First of all, we can trust who God says He is and who He says we are. God is mighty and powerful. Scripture talks about that. He is all powerful. He showed that through this story, how powerful He is. But He's also trustworthy. And I know that through the failure of some human relationships, it can feel really hard to trust a God you cannot see. But I promise you, he is trustworthy. And because he is trustworthy, we can believe what he says about us. Not only can we believe what he says about himself, but we can believe what he says about us. He called Gideon a mighty man of valor, a mighty warrior before he ever went into battle. Gideon had to trust that. He had to trust God that he was gonna make good on it. God calls us beloved more than conquerors, his sons and daughters co-heirs with Christ. It may not always feel like those things are true. We may not always believe it, but it's true. And we can trust that.

Number two, we can know that He will equip us to do whatever it is He's called us to do. 2 Corinthians 12, nine says, "My grace is sufficient for you, "for my power is made perfect in weakness." God's power is made perfect in our weakness. I don't really know a better promise 'cause I feel pretty weak sometimes. But then God gives us his power, and he equips us, and he strengthens us. Sometimes we get caught up in our ability and what we can do, or our lack of ability. And we discredit ourselves, we discount ourselves, we tell God he's got the wrong person. Like Gideon, we list all the reasons why not. But we know that he equips those that he calls to do his work. We just have to be more focused on our availability over our ability. Second Peter 1.3 says, "His divine power "has given us everything we need for a godly life "through our knowledge of Him "who called us by His own glory and goodness." He's gonna give us everything we need for life and godliness and for what He's called us to do.

Lastly, we too are called to obedience even when it doesn't make sense. This kind of goes hand in hand with the last point of knowing that God's going to equip us, but we can know that he will equip us, we can know it in our head, and still choose to not be obedient. Gideon could have seen all these signs and know that it was truly God talking to him and still not been obedient. We can desire to be used by God, we can desire to be available and not actually take any action. But as Christ followers, we are called to a life of obedience even when it's hard, even when it doesn't make sense, even when we don't understand it. Which is like usually, right? Like, it's like most of the time. Just like Gideon, it's okay to ask for confirmation, to ask God for a sign, maybe it's in his word, maybe it's seeking wise counsel and receiving confirmation from another believer. Maybe it's just praying about it until you have a piece. But we can't let those things delay our obedience. We can't let those things be an excuse to not obey. Hold on, I gotta pray about it. Hold on, let me just, let me just say, pray about it, please, pray about it. But don't let it be an excuse. So often, God only gives us the next step. We don't get to see 10 steps ahead. We don't get to see the whole picture. Wouldn't that be nice? Can I get a text message, God? Like that would just be super helpful. Unfortunately, no, it's usually just the next step. But we can be obedient with that next step. And then the next, and then the next. Because God is trustworthy. He wants us to lay down our selfish desires. He wants us to lay down our own sin. He wants us to give up our own need for comfort. I don't like that one. He wants us to surrender to Him, to His calling, and to be obedient to what He's calling us to do. But the cool thing is, if we trust in who God says He is and who He says we are, if we believe that He will equip us to do what it is He's calling us to do. It's gonna be so much easier to be obedient and following Him every step of the way, even if it's just the next step.

Pray with me. Heavenly Father, I just thank you for this story, for Gideon and all of his fear and anxiety and lack of confidence. God, He still trusted you. He still took those steps of faith. He asked for signs and in your goodness, you gave them to him, God. And I just pray that you will help us as you call us to new things, new situations, new stages of life, God, whatever it is you're calling us to, no matter how big or small, God, give us confidence in you, not in our own ability, but in what you can do in and through us. God, you want to use us. You want us to be co-laborers with you. Help us to be available, to be open, and to just take action, to be obedient, to choose obedience even when it doesn't make sense. We love you, Lord. We thank you and we praise you in your precious name. Amen.

Impossible Moments - Part 6

A Prayer Unlike Any Other - Joshua 10:1-15

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

How are we doing this morning? We doing well? We doing good? Yeah, good. Another question, just gonna keep rolling through questions here. How are you guys enjoying this series? Impossible moments. Good? Like it. Yes, you don't have to say that. Thank you guys so much. That's great. I hope it's been encouraging. Bringing... It's alright? That's alright. That's fair. That's fair. Bringing good reminders of faith. We hope that that's happening. Or new insights that are drawing you closer to God. Pastor Chris, myself, and Pastor Lauren next week. We're just loving the series. Even for pastors most of the time, speak for every pastor. We love studying because I mean we get a lot out of it. We probably get more out of it than you do because we spend all week just like pouring over it and so we're really liking it. We're hoping that you guys are enjoying it too.

I want to start this morning with a truth that you probably know better than myself and that is that communication is one of the biggest components or keys to a healthy relationship. Good communication takes makes clarity, trust, intentionality, understanding between two people. Communication becomes effortless sometimes with another person when you're on the same page. And sometimes it even means little to no words can be spoken and you guys, two people can read each other's minds, just know exactly what the other person is thinking. Maybe it's just a nod or like that eyebrow look that you're like, I know, I know what my spouse or my best friend is thinking right now in this moment. I, again, you're going to get a lot of sports analogies from me and a lot of Lord of the Rings references. So I think of this in sports. You know, I played, I grew up playing soccer and I was most of the time in the back, defense, and I could tell when one of my teammates was wanting to make a run or go down the field, they'd look back and I could see the look in their eyes and I knew like, all right, he wants it down there. He didn't have to say anything. He wasn't yelling or anything like that. I just buy a look and I try and try my best to kick the ball downfield. Or football fans, if you're watching football, NFL or college, there's a broken play and the quarterback is back there scrambling, trying to figure out what receiver to throw it to. And sometimes the receiver, the quarterback and receiver just have this connection. No words are spoken. He just gives a look or a nod and the quarterback knows, "I know exactly where I'm putting this ball for my receiver to catch it." Communication can get to this point where it's effortless, where minimal, you know, actions are taking and two people can be on the same page. One last question for you this morning is, how is your communication with God? Have you ever had a moment where you've been on the same page with God? Where you felt that connection? Where maybe after something happened, you and God are processing together in the same way. You're like, "God, we're thinking the same thing right here. We just saw this, or we witnessed this, or we were a part of something." And you can tell that you and God are on the same page. Another way of asking this might be, "How is your prayer life? Do you pray and connect with God, not just in the morning, maybe not just at night, but throughout the day, just talking with Him, listening, talking, going back and forth?

Today we're going to look at the account of Joshua in the Old Testament and look at his example of communication with God. We're jumping a bit forward from our sermon last week where Pastor Chris talked about Moses and the Israelites in the wilderness. We're jumping forward to now they are entering the promised land. Before Joshua is in leadership, we get a little background on Joshua here, before he's in leadership we know that he is a courageous man. He is one of the 12 spies sent into the promised land by Moses to scout it out and he is one of the only two that believe that God can do what he says. That God said I'm gonna deliver you the promise, I'm gonna give it to you. Even though there's a bunch of people there, a bunch of enemies, I'm gonna give it to you. Well the other 10 spies say we don't think we can, we don't think it can happen Moses. We went there, we saw it, no good. But Joshua and Caleb are the only ones that say, "No, we've seen it. We've seen all the enemies and we think that God can still deliver the promised land." So we know that Joshua has faith. He sees God as a protector, as a leader, and he sees him more capable than other people seem to think that God is. Joshua has courage and his biggest leadership quality is his deep trust in God. If God is calling Joshua to do something, we see throughout Scripture, throughout especially this part in Joshua, that he goes no matter the circumstances because he trusts that the Lord will do what the Lord says he will do. Joshua is very much a new Moses in the eyes of Israel as they share in so many similarities. They both lead the people through water on dry land, they both send spies into the Promised Land, and they both are known for the reading of God's word before the nation of Israel. And so after 40 years of wandering the wilderness under leadership of Moses, Moses hands off the leadership to Joshua. And Joshua is gonna be the one who leads them into the promised land. And so they go from the wilderness and Joshua leads them through the Jordan River, which is a mini Red Sea moment. We think back to when Israel went through the Red Sea who escaped Egypt and Moses, God threw Moses, part of the Red Sea. Well now, Joshua parts the Jordan River. And the Ark of the Covenant goes through and the flood waters are so high, but still the waters separate and all of Israel passes through the Jordan River. He leads them against Jericho, Joshua does, and I won't go too much into that 'cause that might be another impossible moment we cover. But Joshua leads the people in obedience to what God instructs them to do at Jericho. And it is God who defeats Jericho, but it's Joshua and the Israelites who obey God's instruction and execute his plan. And so city after city, people after people, God is giving the Promised Land to the Israelites.

And right now at this point in Israel's timeline, it's all about capturing the Promised Land. God is fulfilling the covenant that he made generations ago to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, And then again to the Israelites in the wilderness, Israel will finally have a land to call their own. They've been made a nation, that part of the covenant was fulfilled, and now they're gonna have a place to call their own. In fact, in the book of Numbers chapter 34, while Moses is still alive in the wilderness, God gave the people the exact dimensions, the exact property lines that they would have in the promised land. This is amazing, they're in the desert, and he's like, "Hey, you're gonna have that land." They're like, "Okay, we've never been there. Don't worry, let me tell you exactly what every tribe will have. It's gonna go from this border over here to this border. This tribe is gonna have this much land. So God is doing it all. And that was before Zillow. So that's pretty impressive that they could know, heading into it, what they would have. That joke didn't land very well. It's okay. It's too scripted. It's too scripted. But God is setting it all up. And I wanna pause here. We haven't even got to our passage yet. So I want to pause here and just reflect on all that God has done for the Israelites. Because God is the one making it all happen. Israel's along for the ride, and they still have to do their part, but God is the one making it all happen. So God freed the people from slavery. He rescued them. God performed the miracles to save them over and over again. God provided food and sustenance, like we talked about in last week's sermon. God is fulfilling His promise, and God is the one fighting the enemies. look at all that God can do. Sometimes we need to pause and reflect on all that God has done in our lives and in the world around us. If there's nothing else you hear from this sermon, just do that. Sometime this week, later today or this week, just pause, maybe journal, get out and just start listing all that you know that God has done for you, for people you know in the world around you, and see how that list grows, and take comfort and joy and just reflect and praise God for what he has done. So far, they're not even in the promised land yet. God has done so much for Israel. Tonight, or today we're gonna take a closer look at this time when Joshua and Israel are taking over the promised land and something impossible happens.

So if you could turn with me to Joshua 10, as I, you guys can follow along as I read aloud. It says, "Now Adonai-Zadok, king of Jerusalem, heard that Joshua had taken Ai and totally destroyed it, doing to Ai and its king as he had done to Jericho and its king, that the people of Gibeon had made a treaty of peace with Israel and had become their allies. He and his people were very much alarmed at this, because Gibeon was an important city, like one of the royal cities. It was larger than Ai, and all its men were very good fighters. So Adonai-Zadok, king of Jerusalem, appealed to Ho-ham, king of Hebron, "Pyrrhum, king of Jarmuth, Japhia, king of Lachesh, "and Dabir, king of Eglon. "Come up and help me attack Gibeon," he said, "because it has made peace with Joshua and Israelites." Then the five kings of the Amorites, the kings of Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachesh, and Eglon joined forces. They moved up with all their troops and took up positions against Gibeon and attacked it. The Gibeonites then sent word to Joshua in the camp at Gilgal. "Do not abandon your servants. come up to us quickly and save us help us because all the Amorite kings from the hill country have joined forces against us so Joshua marched up from Gilgal with his entire army including all the best fighting men the Lord said to Joshua do not be afraid of them I have given them into your hand not one of them will be able to withstand you after an all-night march from Gilgal Joshua took them by surprise the Lord threw them into confusion before Israel so Joshua and Israelites defeated them completely at Gibeon. Israel pursued them along the road going up to Beth-horon and cut them down all the way to Azekah and Maquedah. As they fled before Israel on the road down from Beth-horon to Azekah, the Lord hurled large hailstones down on them and more of them died from the hill than were killed by the swords of the Israelites. On the day the Lord gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the Lord in the presence of Israel, "Son, stand still over Gibeon and you moon over the valley of Ajailon. So the sun stood still and the moon stopped till the nation avenged itself on its enemies as is written in the book of Jashar. Sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. There has never been a day like it before or since. A day when the Lord listened to a human being. Surely the Lord was fighting for Israel. And then Joshua returned with all Israel to the camp at Gilgal. Would you guys pray with me? God, as we open up your word, as we dive into your truth, I pray that you would work in our hearts, soften our hearts to hear what your spirit has to say to us. I pray that we would be drawn closer to you, that we'd be made more into the image of Christ, that we'd be reminded of who you are and what you can do through this passage this morning. I give you all the praise. Amen.

Alright, a little background on our situation here. We're jumping into the middle of Israel's conquest into the Promised Land. So I have a map here. We have a map. We got a map. There's a map. It's a little small. The farthest point on the right is where we're starting. That's Gilgal, that's where Joshua is, and then over to the left. So they're starting that way, they're heading left, and it says that they entered into like the middle of the Promised land and then they kind of swept south and a study Bible says that the victories of Jericho and I give the Israelites a foothold in the center of the land effectively dividing it and preventing the southern and northern cities from taking a united front so we see that little marked colored portion is the southern conquest and context there our passage today is taking place in that southern conquest so seeing what God had done at the previous cities the people of Canaan who are already there have different reactions to what's going on and to Israel coming in and invading their land. Both reactions, there's two, are out of fear of Yahweh and his people. The first happens earlier in chapter 9 where the king of Gibeon set up a peace treaty with Joshua. They said they were from a faraway land and they told Joshua, "Hey, we've heard about all that Yahweh your God has done. We traveled all this way to worship your God." And Joshua was like, "That's great. Oh my goodness, come worship God. Of course. That'd be wonderful." Well, it turns out that was a lie. They were actually from the land, but they did not want to die. And so they told the lie so that they wouldn't be killed. Joshua and Israel are obviously upset, but they want to honor the covenant they made before God, not to kill the people. So they come up with this punishment for the Gibeonites to become woodworkers and water carriers for the people of Israel, which was primarily used for temple service. So the Gibeonites are now working for the Israelites and our allies. That's one reaction. The other reaction happens in our chapter, chapter 10. The people of Canaan come together and form an alliance and say, "We don't like what's happening. Israel's gonna invade our land. Let's come together. Let's stop them." And so the five kings, Adonai, Zadek, Hoam, Piram, Jephiah, Deir, they all come together and they attack Gibeon, Israel's newest ally. and they're testing Joshua and Yahweh and Israel. Is Israel really gonna honor this treaty? Are they really gonna be able to defeat all five of us together? And Gibeon, now in battle, sends word to Joshua, asking for help. Verse six, the Gibeonites then sent word to Joshua in the camp, "Do not abandon your servants. "Come up to us quickly and save us. "Help us, because all the Amorite kings "from the hill country have joined forces against us." So what does Joshua do? Verse seven, so Joshua marched up from Gilgal with his entire army, including all the best fighting men. He goes. This is like, okay, one Lord of the Rings reference here. The third movie, Return of the King, The Beacons Are Lit. This is that moment. If you know, you know. If not, you can Google The Beacons Are Lit, that phrase. It'll pull up the scene. It is awesome. So this is that moment where they're calling for help and the people that they're calling for, they respond. They do what they were supposed to do. And Joshua and all his men, they march. they marched all night from Gilgal to Gibeon. It's 21 miles. That, I've done a few hikes. That's a long hike. After not sleeping all day, you're just awake, and then Joshua, your leader says, "Hey, we gotta go hike to go into battle." So not only are you just hiking, but you're bringing all your armor and stuff, and you're tired, and then you're gonna go straight into battle. So this is not ideal, but this is amazing that they are able to do this. And they get there, and God says to Joshua, verse 8, the Lord said to Joshua, "Do not be afraid of them. I have given them into your hand. Not one of them will be able to withstand you." God gives complete assurance to Joshua, kind of in three parts here. The first part says, "Do not fear them. There may be five kings, there may be more soldiers on that side, but do not fear. Why? The second part of his assurance, I have given them over to you. God has given the enemy already over to Joshua and the Israelites.

This is a done deal. They get into battle and they can know that they're gonna win. Just imagine the confidence. Just knowing that going into war, this is a victory. I have only experienced that kind of level of victory maybe in in intramural sports in college, when as a senior we were playing, and then a bunch of freshmen who've never played before came to the field, and our team was like, "God, you have given us this victory. Thank you so much for this." That's the only way I can relate. But that, I just imagine, just the confidence of, "God, we got this. God has given this to us." And then the last part of that assurance is that the victory will be an overwhelming victory. It's not even gonna be close. God has got this. And so he offers his complete assurance to Joshua. What is Joshua's response? Verse nine, "After an all-night march from Gilgal, Joshua took them by surprise." Joshua shows immediate action. He moves against the enemy quickly. I love this, "Joshua had heard all he needed to hear in order to go and to go with God." What a good reminder for us today. When God calls, when God affirms, when the Spirit is leading you, not to wait for anything, but to go, to listen to that voice. Today we can follow Jesus through the guiding of the Holy Spirit, and we can follow with our everything in full confidence that God is going to do what He said He would do. Now it may be rare to have complete assurance from God, like Joshua does here. We don't often have that in life, where God clearly says, "I'm going to do exactly this." But nonetheless, our response to God's leading should still be immediate action and complete obedience. All right, so Joshua attacks and the Lord throws the enemy into confusion and the coalition of enemies begins to run. And as they flee, like out of a C.S. Lewis book or something, God starts hurling hailstones at them. This is just insane. More men died from the hailstones than by the hands of Israel. Can you just Just imagine a scene as an Israelite. You're fighting, they're in confusion, this is going great, you're already assured of the victory, they start running, and then God is sending hailstones to defeat them. Yahweh, your God, is fighting for you. He's on your side. Just imagine what that does for your belief and trust in God. Then imagine this from the enemy's point of view. It's not going well. The fight is not going well, you were already confused, your comrades are going down like and then you start running and it can't get any better because now stones are flying from the heavens and more people are dying. Yahweh, their God, is fighting for them, unlike anything they've ever seen before. A God, a deity, fighting on behalf of the people. It's the worst day of their lives, I think it's safe to say. And then Joshua speaks. Now Joshua and God throughout this time in Israel's history and definitely in this passage, are really on the same page. They are so in sync with each other. And I wanna bring back those questions that we asked at the beginning. Have you ever had a time in your life, be it a moment or a few days, a season, weeks, months, where you felt like you were step for step in stride with the Holy Spirit? If you have, if you can think of a time where you were like, hey, there is that time in life where just God and I were on the same page. Day after day, I just knew we were close. Our thoughts were aligned, our hearts were aligned. If you felt that, let that be a comfort, a guide, strive for that. If you haven't yet, that's okay. Maybe you can think of someone who you've seen their life and their walk with God, and that be a model. Or you can think of Joshua, strive for this. Joshua and God are so in sync, look what happens next. In verse 12, it says, "On the day that the Lord "gave the Amorites over to Israel, "Joshua said to the Lord in the presence of Israel, "Son, stand still over Gibeon, "and you moon over the valley of Ajelon." So the sun stood still and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies. As is written in the book of Jasher, "The sun stopped in the middle of the sky "and delayed going down about a full day." There has never been a day like it before since, a day when the Lord listened to a human being. Surely the Lord was fighting for Israel. This is a prayer unlike any other that we've ever seen in scripture. And just to be clear on what happened here, Joshua, Joshua, the man, the human, told the sun to stay put so that Israel could continue the battle and continue to do what the Lord had instructed them to do. And God listened to Joshua and stopped the sun and the moon.

I don't know science that well. I don't know how this works. When I thought, I was like, I don't know, Did we stop orbiting around the sun? Did the sun, did everything stay? I can't explain it. I have no idea. Some people think that the theory is like some kind of eclipse happened. Rubbish, I don't think that. I think the only thing that makes sense is that God stopped the sun and the moon, just like it says in scripture, and that there has never been a day like it since. I mean, something impossible that no human could ever replicate. God did in a moment here. It's just amazing. I wanna spend more time though on the prayer because this prayer is also unlike anything else. A biblical scholar, John Barry, writes this. "The exceptional nature of this moment "is due to the specificity of the prayer "and immediacy of the response. "Even the life of Moses has nothing so immediate "and dramatic with such a direct "cause and effect relationship." Honestly, all this week, as I've just been reading this over and over again, I come to those 12 through 14, and I'm just dumbfounded. I'm in awe. I don't understand how this works. That's amazing. Never seen anything like it. Can't relate to it. I have not seen besides an eclipse, which again, I don't think that's what it was. That's just amazing that God would hold the physics of how the world works so that Israel could do what they were supposed to do. This isn't just about how great Joshua is It's not just about how great God is, which he is, but this moment highlights just how close the human-God relationship can be. This passage shows us that as we go about our lives in the day-to-day, we can be so in sync with God that we are attuned to more of what he is doing in and around us. This Joshua and God relationship is the goal that we should be aiming for. And so there are three reminders from the relationship between God and Joshua that I wanna bring to us today. First is the simple reminder that you have a relationship with God. It's a two-way street. He is continually involved in your life. And we have to continually make the efforts and put the work in and the time in to have a relationship with God. Just like we do with anyone else. Second reminder, God listens to us. God listens to his people. I think we've said this three or four times now in this series from different accounts of these impossible situations, but God is a God who listens to his people, responds to our requests, our prayers, our pleas, our cries. He may respond in the exact way that we want, or he may respond in a way that he deems better. I found that if he does answer in the exact way that I was hoping for, that's more of a reflection that I was more in tune with God rather than God just giving me exactly what I wanted. My desires at that time aligned with God's desires. We'll come back to that in a bit. The last reminder of this relationship is that God is for us. God is fighting for us. God can perform miracles on our behalf, not just for our benefit, but ultimately for His plan and for His glory. But there are many people who have a distorted view of God, who think of him more as a punisher or lean towards his anger, rather than his loyalty and love and compassion for his people. Remember that God is for you. Even just today, from the moment you woke up to now, when you're sitting here in church, God was fighting for you. God was doing things on your behalf. You may not be aware of them. Maybe you are. You're sitting here like, "Hey, I remember this moment "where blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And I felt the Lord be there with me, comfort me, provide for me, or maybe you're unaware. You just showed up here and God had already, unbeknownst to you, he's been working in the background, fighting for you, supporting you, encouraging you. Remember that God is for you. This relationship between Joshua and God is so, so close. It's one of my favorite relationships in the Old Testament. But as we close, I wanna shift our focus towards our relationship with God and the approach and mindset that we need to have when following Him.

So when it comes to communicating with God, praying with Him, I want us to realize this. When our will is aligned with God's will, when we are in sync with the movement of the Holy Spirit, when we are step for step in stride with God, we will witness amazing things. We'll see God working in and through us, and we'll experience a life that nurtures deeper faith and stronger trust in God. I wanna say that again. When our hearts, our wills are aligned with God's heart and His will, we will experience a life that nurtures deeper faith within us and grows a stronger trust and belief in God. Look at the life of Joshua. Experience after experience, trusting and believing and seeing God work, he comes to this point where he and God are on the same page and he can tell the sun and moon to stand still and God is right in sync with him. This prayer from Joshua is a prayer unlike any other. And it should encourage us in our own prayer lives in a few ways. It should encourage us to pray with expectancy. When we pray, and I'll be the first to admit, this is me sometimes. We pray as if we were just going through the motions, just saying words, maybe like at a counseling appointment, where we're just venting our frustrations, stating our desires, but we don't expect God to do anything about it. We're just like, "Hey, I know I'm supposed to talk to you, God, so here's what I'm thinking, here's what I'm feeling, but I'll get back to work and I'll make my life, I'll try to do it myself." Or, "God, if you intervene, great, but I don't expect you to." We don't say that necessarily, but sometimes we're thinking that. When we are aligned with God, our prayers will also be aligned with his heart and we can expect God to move. We can expect God to do something about our situation. There was a well-known pastor a few years ago now, who had cancer and he announced to his congregation that he had cancer, that he was gonna get treatment and he stated, "I believe that God will heal me." And he said, "Even if God doesn't heal me, I will believe and preach and praise that God is good, but I believe that he will heal me. God healed him. He expected God to work. Still gonna praise him and honor him, even if he doesn't work in the same way, but God did. He prayed and talked about, and expecting God to do something. We don't always have to know exactly what God will do, but we can still expect God to work. And so we should pray knowing that, believing that. This passage also encourages us to pray with confidence. This kind of goes hand in hand with praying with expectancy. I love Joshua's confidence in this passage, all throughout Joshua's life. He's just so confident. And it's not a self-confidence. It's not about, "Hey, I know I can do this." It's all based on God, who God is, what God does, and we can have the same confidence. Let's pray and talk with God confidently, knowing that He is there, knowing that He will move in our lives, knowing that He will hear us and respond to us. Again, confidence isn't necessarily knowing exactly what God will do, but that God is there and He will do something. Think of that list that maybe you'll write this week of all that God has done in your life. Or look at Scripture. Have that list be a source of confidence for you moving forward in what God can do. And then lastly, this passage encourages us to pray in alignment with God's will. Prayers like, God, please give me more money. I'm not sure if that's really the answer that God is wanting to give you. Maybe it is. Bless you if that is the case. That may not be God's will for you right in that moment. that may not be what's best for you, though you think it's the answer, is that really God's will for you? Something that, a prayer that is in alignment with God's will may be more like, "God, please provide for my needs. "You know what I'm going through, "you know where I'm lacking, "you know that I need this by the end of this month, "I don't have it right now, "God, can you in some way provide?" Whether it's in cash or whether it's some other miracle or whether it's a way we don't even know, God can work. And we can pray with expectancy, with confidence, and in alignment with God's will, that he will do something.

There are so many stories that I've heard, there are people praying, "God, I don't have this for rent at the end of the month." And somewhere along the way, some person shows up at the door and says, "Hey, I don't know why, but God wanted me to give you this exact amount." And that person's like, "That's exactly what I needed." Countless stories of, I can't even think of the, There's a person in New York who started a ministry, and this is a long time ago, and they would just pray for every meal. They didn't ever have food, enough food, for all the people that they were trying to serve, but every time, God would provide in ways that they just had no clue. Someone would show up and drop off food, and then everyone would be fed. The story, even in the Bible, story after story, of God providing. So praying in alignment with God's will. Prayers like, "God, help me love my noisy neighbor." That is a prayer in alignment with God, 'cause God wants us to love our neighbor, like literally our neighbor. He wants us to love, He wants us to have compassion. Instead of prayers like, "God, please put Nashville on my neighbor's heart. "Please get them out of here, please make them move." Probably not a prayer in alignment with God's will. But sometimes when we pray in specifics, we close ourselves off to so many other ways in which God may work. When we're so focused on, "God, I need it to work in this way. "You have to do it in this way." We put the blinders on to other ways in which God can work. I'm not saying you shouldn't pray for specifics, we should, but also just be open to God, here's the need you provide. Here's what I'm thinking, you figure out the way. I don't have to determine the way in which you're gonna work. Pray in alignment with God's will, pray in a way that aligns with his character, and pray in a way that aligns with what he wants you to be, the image of Christ.

This story of Joshua and God today showed that God, again, can do the impossible. Even things that are set in order, like the rising and the setting of the sun, things that we have no human control over, God can control and do what is humanly impossible. We worship a God who can do the impossible, who we can have a close relationship with, who we can pray to, who listens to us, and who responds. This relationship that we have with God is the most important relationship we have. our communication with Him. It's the most important communication we have with anyone. So this week, today, moving forward, let that be a reminder that you need to invest in that time. Invest in your communication with God. We should strive to be step for step, in stride with Him and what He is doing in our lives and in the lives of those around us.

Let's pray. God, thank you again for your word. And God, we just pray that you would make this a reality in our lives, that we would be drawn closer to you, that our relationship with you would be strengthened, that it would grow. God, that you would help us to communicate with you in confidence, knowing that you're listening, knowing that you hear us, and knowing that you will respond, whether it's in a way that we can imagine or whether it's outside the realm of possibility, but yet you can do it. I just pray that you would open our eyes to how you're working so that we could praise you more, so that we could have deeper faith and trust in you. I pray that we would be an encouragement to each other, that we would pray for each other. God, we know that this is a broken world, this is a world full of sin, and that we are all still struggling and striving to be more like you. So I just pray that as the body of Christ, we would come together and love each other, pray for each other, support each other, encourage each other. God, I pray that your work in us individually and corporately as a church at Spring Valley would continue, that you would grow us, God, closer to you, that we would reach this community, that your glory would be very apparent here. We pray all this, trusting you, knowing that you are gonna work and move. We pray this in your name, Amen.

Impossible Moments - Part 5

Blessings In The Desert - Exodus 16 & 17

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Sermon Transcript

Well, we are jumping back into our impossible moments today, and I'm really excited to be sharing a little bit about a little grownup Moses. We've been through a couple of different, well, actually I say a couple, we've only talked about Moses once here and we kicked off the series, but we've talked about David and Goliath, we've talked about Noah's faith, we've talked about Elijah versus the prophet of Bela, we've talked about baby Moses, we kicked off our series, Pastor Andre, and today we're gonna jump into a little grownup daddy Moses. And so it's gonna be awesome. If you want, you can flip over to Exodus 16 is where we're gonna start this morning. But this idea of this series of impossible moments is really as we have it here, believing in God through life's challenges, really believing in God and pressing in when we face these impossible moments. And we're jumping around all over the Old Testament looking at different stories of when God showed up in impossible moments, when backs were up against the wall, when all hopes seem to be lost, when there was no chance that there was gonna be any escape, victory, resolution, anything. And at that moment, God shows up. And that in that space, God showed up. And in this, I hope, and in our prayer, Pastor Andrei and myself is that when you face impossible moments in your life, that you can look back and remember these stories. These aren't fairytales, these are true stories. And remember that God showed up in ways. And wherever you're facing, whatever you're walking through, big, small, medium, middle, hard, easy, surprise, known, coming, hardship, that God's got your back. That God wants to show up in your life, to show up in the impossible moment. And today we're gonna go a little bit different route. We're still gonna be talking about impossible moment, but the question for us, I want us to think about is what is our heart? What is our posture? What is our response when we face this impossible moment?

We're gonna be talking about God's chosen people, the Israelites in Exodus today. And they didn't always have the right response. They didn't always respond the way that they probably should have when they faced impossible moments. And they faced a whole slew of them. From the crazy, unexpected, to God doing some unbelievable things, even before their eyes, that we would hear the story and think, "You're a crazy person." That you would even say that that happened. God showed up. And so we're gonna drop in on the Israelites at this moment. And they had just come out from this place of being in slavery in Egypt for generations. They had been used by Pharaoh and the Egyptians to build stuff, to serve them, to grow crops, to do everything that basically nobody in Egypt wanted to do. The Israelites got handed the job and said, go do this. And so we find the Israelites here just being able, having been rescued from Egypt with impossible moments alone, with all the plagues and the craziness that happened. God, at one point, Moses tells them, "Hey, you're gonna have this meal and you're gonna sacrifice his lamb and then you're gonna take the blood and put it over your door." And they're like, "What's going on?" And then if the covering wasn't there with the blood, the firstborn male died in the family, it was just chaos in these moments. And then you come to this point where Pharaoh finally says, "Fine, I'm tired of all this garbage you've been putting me and my country through. Moses, Aaron, just take these people and get out of here." And so they pack up, "Hey, we're free." And they take off. And then God takes them through this crazy route. And then all of a sudden, they're sitting by the edge of this giant sea called the Red Sea. And all of a sudden Pharaoh has a change of heart. And he sends all of his armies with chariots and technology of weaponry that nobody would have at that day and age except for them. And they think we're gonna be slaughtered out here by the edge of the sea. And God facing impossible moments, splits the Red Sea. And they don't just trudge through muck and mire through the Red Sea, they walk on dry ground. Then they get to the other side. God closes the ocean, the Israel army is wiped out. And they get to the other side and they're doing okay for a couple, a while. And then all of a sudden they're having to find water. And they finally find this thing of water, but it's undrinkable. It would kill them all. God does a miracle. God tells Moses, "Hey, take this log that's beside the water, throw it in the water and it's gonna be made clean and you can drink it." And Moses is like, "Are you kidding me? This is crazy." People don't believe him. So Moses does, it throws a log in there, water's clean, they're set. And so when we come to this point in Exodus 16, they have already seen impossible odds and God show up in their lives. And so we would think they got it down. These Israeli people, they got it figured out. They know exactly what's gonna happen. They face even the hardest thing. They're like, "Nope, I know my God. "I know my Yahweh, he's got my back. "He's got this under control. "He's gonna do something crazy. "It's gonna be awesome and we're gonna be saved." But they don't. They don't respond that way.

And so we come to this point in chapter 16, and we see a back-to-back test of the faith of Israel. They had been traveling since their last spur of water that had been made clean for them. They'd probably been traveling for a little bit. And they find themselves in the midst of this faith struggle. And really as scripture would say, they find themselves in this place of functional atheism. They're trying to still figure out this God. They're still trying to figure out what this thing, because for generations, they've been led by the Egyptian religions that had thousands upon thousands of gods and the gods of the air and the gods of the sun and the gods of the earth and the gods of the water and all sorts of different gods. they came from this place of just polytheism. And so they're in this place going, "Okay, I know God saved us and he brought us out, but was that the God of water that split the Red Sea? Was it the God of the earth that made the water clean for us to drink?" Where they're wrestling with all of this stuff and they choose to respond in this moment out of a place of fear and anxiety. Pastor and Andre, we were talking about this a little bit this morning. And we read these scriptures and we see like, man, how could these people respond this way? They've seen God act and God move and God saved them time and time again, and yet they still respond in this way. And we talked and we go, I would think there would be more than just maybe Moses and Aaron that would say, we gotta trust God, we gotta trust God. But when we read scripture, we see the majority of them still choose this idea of fear and not trusting a sovereign God who's going to do what he said he's going to do.

The Israelite people choose to believe in this place of their lack of control. And these tests were actually a part of God's sovereign plan to teach them about his covenant and to learn for them to trust and follow him. And we get to this place in the story of Exodus 16 and 17, the Israelite people have been traveling for about a month. And they come to this place where they enter into the official wilderness, which is a geographical place that is vast, rugged, and harsh. Commentator, Philip Ryken talks about it this way. It says, "If being delivered out of slavery in Egypt was about Israel's salvation, then their time in the wilderness was about their sanctification. There's two pieces going on here. And this place and where God is trying to grow them and teach them and to change their hearts and who they are, not just rescue them. And this is where we jump into the story today. And this story itself is one of the most famously referred back to stories in the book of the Bible. Jesus talks about it, the early church talks about it, multiple references go back to this moment in this time when God does this miracle in the wilderness. And so as the Israelite people are traveling through the wilderness, you can imagine there's not much around. And we're not talking like a couple hundred people here. It actually says in Exodus 12, that there was a count of 600,000 men alone, not including women and children that left Egypt. So if we were to say one for one plus maybe a quarter or so for those who had kids that didn't have kids, we're probably talking roughly 1.2 million people trekking through the wilderness. So when you run out of food, it's a big deal. There ain't a Starbucks you can pull into and grab some egg bites. There's a McDonald's you can grab a happy meal for the kiddos. There's no subway where you can eat fresh. There's no place for you to just grab some food on your road trip through the wilderness. And so the Israelites are facing this place of life and death. This isn't just a, oh my God, a little rumbling in my tumbling. Like we are hungry, we have no food, and we feel like we are going to die times 1.2 million. So this is a serious thing that's happening. and the Israelite people find themselves in this place of the impossible moment, and what's their response? What's their response? You would think back, okay, you've been through this, you've been through this, you come out of Egypt, the Red Sea, you got in the water, you've been saved, you've been protected, all this stuff, what do you think? You think Israelites are like, you know what, God's got us, it's all good. No, they freak out. They freak out in this impossible moment. What should have been a supernatural moment for them to go, we trust God. He's got our back. They freak out. And this idea of they don't know yet, but they're just on the beginning moments of what's going to become this 40 year journey of learning and sanctification and testing that they are facing impossible odds.

So we jump in, Exodus 16 starting in verse one, it says this, "The whole Israelite community sent out from Elam and came to the desert of sin, which is funny when you think about this, which is between Elam and Sinai. On the 15th day of the second month, so two and a half months in, they came out of Egypt. In the desert, the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, if only we had died by the Lord's hand in Egypt. There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted. But you, you have brought us out into the desert to starve this entire assembly to death. How quickly people turn when they get hungry, right? I will admit, I've had to apologize on many occasions to my lovely wife when I've gotten hangry. I'm not a pleasant person when I get hangry, okay? So I'm gonna give a little grace to the Israelite people here, they're getting hungry. But we drop in and they just go at Moses and Aaron. They just attack them. And I think, man, how could you do that? The Israelite people are 100% ungrateful for anything in this moment when they just run out of food. Even to the point, did you guys notice what they said? How chaos was it? We wish we'd rather had left us in slavery, at least we had food. So they are to the point where they are not even thinking straight they're so hungry, that they are saying, we would rather be in slavery under oppression, having to work whatever hours every single day before sun up to after sundown, at least there was food. What? Sorry, I don't know what dead end job I'm sticking around for because they got donuts in the morning and a coffee machine in the break room, I'm sorry. This is crazy. How could they respond this way? And so how quickly, and I think we're right there with them, right? How quickly do we forget when God does something in our life and then immediately we go, how could you do this to me, God? God's like, we're not even out of this moment over here where I did this for you. So I think there's definitely some relatability here to the Israelite people.

Let me try to point the picture this way a little bit. Everybody been around either maybe your child or a child you've seen where the temper tantrum begins to boil up. You guys seen that? Where it's something happens, kids not acting right. Maybe it was one of my children in the hallway. Never, never. Maybe it was a child at a restaurant or at the mall or at a store somewhere. And you see the temper tantrum try to start to unfold. And you start kind of going, okay, let's see what happens here. You're curious on two parts. One, you wanna see what happens with the child. And two, you wanna see what happens with the parent, right? You wanna see how they're gonna handle it. But then it gets to the point where it starts to escalate. Maybe there's a kick in the shin. Maybe they throw themselves on the ground. Maybe some words start coming out. Maybe you get the, "No!" No! And then you go, all right, now I'm fully glued in on this. I wanna see fully what happens here. And it's like, okay, what's mom or dad? What are they gonna do in this situation? This is what we're seeing right here. We're seeing Israelites go into a full temper tantrum right in the middle of the desert, right there in the sand. They are throwing a hissy fit because they're a little hungry. And they think that God who brought them all the way out of this slavery and bond for generation after generation, that they are just gonna, God just brought them out to watch them die in the desert. But we know that's not God, right? We know that's not gonna happen. And so right now, the Israelite people have a choice to make. They have a choice to make. Either they're gonna keep going this path of grumbling and moaning and crying and being hangry at God and that more specifically Moses and Aaron, 'cause they're the representative of God before them. Are they gonna go after them? Or are they gonna have this moment where they're gonna choose to look back, to remember and to have faith? Because every reason up to this moment should point them to this faith side. Everything that they have experienced, everything that they had gone through, And it's kind of absurd honestly, for them to respond the way that they did. And yet God responds in mercy. Let's read about verse four, it says this, "Then the Lord said to Moses, "I will rain down bread from heaven for you. "The people are to go out each day "and to gather enough for that day. "In this way, I will test them "and see whether they will follow my instructions. "On the sixth day," the day before the Sabbath, "they are to prepare what they bring in, "and that is to be as twice as much as they gather "on the other days. "So Moses and Aaron said the Israelites, "in the evening, you will know that it was the Lord "who brought you out of Egypt. "And in the morning, you will see the glory of the Lord "because he has heard your grumbling against him." Moses also said, "You will know that it was the Lord "when he gives you meat to eat in the evening "as quail and all the bread you want in the morning "as manna, because he has heard your grumbling against him. "Who are we? "You are not grumbling against us, but against the Lord." So God, in a very loving, gracious way, says, "Okay, I hear you guys, I got a plan." And God tells Moses to tell the people what's gonna happen is in the evening, you're gonna get quail, a little bird to be able to eat for some protein. And then in the morning, you're gonna wake up and you're gonna find on the ground bread that'll be able to get you some carbs to get your blood sugar out for the day and get you going until I get you that protein at night. I'm gonna do this every single day, day in and day out. But there's some instructions in there. There's some instructions of how they're supposed to go about this, 'cause this is gonna be different, this is gonna be counter-cultural to what they know or experience and have experienced in their entire life up to this point. We read on in verse 11. "The Lord says to Moses, "I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. "Tell them, at twilight you will eat meat, "and in the morning you will be filled with bread. "Then you will know that I am the Lord your God. "That evening quail came and covered the camp. "And in the morning there was a layer of dew "around the camp. "When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground "appeared on the desert floor. "When the Israelites saw this, they said to each other, "What is it? "For they did not know what it was. "Moses said to them, "It is the bread the Lord has given you to eat. "This is what the Lord commanded. "Everyone is to gather as much as they need. "Take an omer or a portion for each portion "and have in your tent." The Israelites did as they were told, "Some gathered much, some little." And when they measured it by the omer, the one who gathered much did not have too much and the one who gathered little did not have too little. Everyone had gathered just as much as they needed. When Moses said to them, "No one is to keep any of it until morning." However, some of them paid no attention to Moses and they kept part of it until the morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell.

So the Israelites find out that God is gonna freely provide for them all of their nutritional needs. But there's some rules. There's some rules in this, is that you are only supposed to collect as much as you need for you and your family. And I love what it says in scripture there, how it says some were probably a little bit anxious, gathered a little bit too much, but it was just right. Some maybe didn't have enough time, they slept over, the alarm clock didn't go off for them in the morning. And so their spot of gathering had already been taken. So they had to quickly gather what they needed and they didn't think they had enough, but at the end of the day, they had enough. That's amazing. There's a story in a moment right there, in that piece right there. But Moses tells them, "Don't take too much." If you try to take too much and then hoard it, it's against the rules. It's against the way that God wanted them to live. Why is that? Well, the reality is what's going on here, the writer Douglas Stewart says it this way. It says, "These instructions given by the Lord were not so that he could see if they would follow directions, but in their hearts, but if their hearts were inclined to be his covenant people. So the question here that God is asking in this moment of providing for them, God is saying, will you follow me even if my way is different from yours? Because here's what's going on. The story is incredibly important because there's two things that are happening right here. And this idea of manna being referenced multiple times throughout scripture points to this symbol of God's provision for his people. And when we really dig deep into what this manna thing is, there's two sides to this. The first side of that is manna is satisfying. In these instructions, the Lord gives to his people, He says to them, you're gonna go out every day and gather a portion. That word there, omen, means a peace or what they needed for the day. And when that's all that you need, you come back and you don't gather too much. You get exactly just what you need. So he's setting up some guard rails here to try to lead them in this place where he needs them to go. And he says, whatever is left over, whether it's the result of you taking too much or maybe you had hungry eyes that morning and you went out and gathered a few extra two loaves and you get done at the end of the night and you've eaten up, you're like, "Oh, I've eaten my full, there's still some leftover." That's okay, you don't keep it. I don't know what they did with it or where they put it, probably someone smarter than myself knowing the Old Testament would say they gathered up, I don't know what they did with it. But they weren't supposed to keep it in their tent because God here is trying to take them to this place of trust. He's trying to grow them into this place where they press into God every single morning.

Because the reality up to this point was when you harvested food, you had a crop, you grew it for X amount of months, then you harvested it, you brought it back to the storehouse, and then you just hope and pray that either you planted enough or it grew enough, or you don't have kids that turn into teenagers in the middle of the crop harvest. And you pray to Jesus, to God, God make this last. Because why? Crops don't grow new every day. And so in the Israelites mind where they are, well, this man is here, I don't know if the man can be here tomorrow, I'm gonna take extra. But what happens to it? It goes bad. It goes bad almost instantly. Then God says, "I need you to trust me. "I need you to press in to who I am "and this way that I'm providing for you. "Yes, this manna is satisfying. "Yes, it has this peace that you are, "you're being nourished "and your physical needs are being taken care of, "but I need you to trust me." Charles Spurgeon has this great quote. He says this, "When we can't see his hands, we can trust his heart." God here is saying, "I got you and I need you to trust me." And what's awesome about this is that this is the beginning of God doing this for 40 years into the future as they wander through the desert. God is gonna do this day in and day out and provide for them as they travel to where God has them to the place called the promised land. God wants them to flourish, not just succeed.

There's a difference here between the two, okay? God is teaching his people that success in the times of tough is through him and that he wants them to flourish under his leadership. It's about achieving a certain aim. See, flourishing is about growing healthy in an intentional environment where succeeding is about getting everything we can and it's all about me and being me taken care of and me, me, me, me, me, me, me, I'm good. I don't care about you, me. God is trying to change them, which leads us to this place of the other part, which is manna is sanctifying. God just isn't providing for their needs for them physically. God is changing them and their hearts to focus more on who He is for their lives. Deuteronomy eight, when Moses remembers back this time in the wilderness, Moses says this, he says, "Remember how your Lord, your God, led you all the way in the wilderness for those 40 years to humble and to test you in order to know that in your heart, whether or not you would keep his command, he humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had even known what it was, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord." God here is shepherding their hearts and teaching them to trust in Him every single day. Why? Because God is worthy to be trusted for bread, is a God that can be worthy of being trusted and obeyed for salvation. That's what's happening right here. This is what God is doing in their hearts. Charles Spurgeon continues on, he says this, "God desired them to teach them himself by the gift of the manna. He taught them first their care over them, that he was their God and they were his people, and that he would lay himself out to provide for them." Think of the care that God had over them, each and every one of them, to teach them, each of them, that their own portion of manna was not forgot. That God knew in his, God just didn't throw out manna or throw out quail. There's a record where one of the times God throws out quail about two feet, three feet deep for two miles around the camp, just to kind of go, fine, here. I love God's moment of silly in that point. But God knew their portion. God brought every day the exact amount that they needed for each and every person. That mean that God knew each and every person's position, even before they woke up, of how hungry they were gonna be, what that day was gonna entail, the hard travel, the hard moments, the struggles, whatever they were in, God knew and provided each and every one of them their exact portion. Spurgeon continues on, "Every morning, "there was sufficient quantity for every person, "according to the needs that day. "There was no more, there was never no less. "So carefully did God watch over each individual." The individual divine love is a great part of the sweetness of the story. To think about that God thinks of every separate child as his own, as his own. There's an infinite affection that each morning God would care for each details of each person's life. And that you would see your portion filled precisely to the ounce, that he will give you all you possibly need. and He will give you nothing that you can lay by to minister in your pride. They didn't have anything left over to be able to go, "Oh, hey, Susan, I'm short on manna. Do you have any?" You go, "Well, yes, I do. Here's your manna." They didn't have any to be able to do that. All they had was enough for them to go, "God, thank you for today. I have eaten to my fill. I'm good, thank you God. And to have that dependency each and every morning.

So it takes us to this question. Will we trust God for tomorrow? Will we trust Him as the Israelites had to each and every day, not knowing what tomorrow is gonna hold, not knowing what even this afternoon is gonna hold. Will we trust God for tomorrow, even before we face the impossible moment? Will we wake up and say, God, you got today, and that's all that matters because you got me and I got you, let's go. Is that our mindset when we wake up? That God wanted to test them in their hearts if they were inclined to follow him. This story is ultimately foreshadowing God coming, Jesus coming to bring salvation, the biggest need that anybody could ever have. That Jesus was gonna come and he was gonna provide fully, freely and finally forever in Christ Jesus for all of humanity. They move on just moments after this to this place where they run out of water. Just shortly, I mean, we're talking just a couple weeks or so, they run out of water and what do they do? They turn to Moses and Aaron, "How could you do this? We would rather be in here." And Moses and Aaron are like, "Are you kidding me?" Like again? So God tells Moses, "Hey, take the staff, they're the one that, you know, I did stuff in Egypt and the Nile and the Red Sea and this and that and the snake and all this stuff." Yeah, remember that staff? Yeah, Israelite people, same staff, same God. Go over that rock. God tells Moses, I got your back, I'm right there with you. Hit the rock, water's gonna come out. Goes over, hits the rock, water comes out. Again, impossible moment, chaos. Everybody thinks it's the end of the world. Boom, God shows up.

Time and time again, we have these stories about God showing up. In 1 Corinthians 10, one through four, it talks about manna. It says, "For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, "brothers and sisters, that our ancestors "were under the cloud, which God led them, "the Israelites and the widows, "to cloud by day and fire by night. "We were under the cloud. "They all passed through the sea, the Red Sea. "They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud "and in the sea and all ate the same spiritual food "and drank the same spiritual drink, "for they all drank from the spiritual rock "that compared them with the rock who is Christ.”

So we come to the point of, cool pastor, cool story, pastor. What does this mean for me? Well, I think it means a couple things for us. This weekend we're talking about freedom, right? Fourth of July, America freedom, maybe you celebrated with fireworks this weekend, we had our showcase here, it was great. Maybe you saw us celebrate America in the park, maybe you're gonna watch some fireworks, River Cats, I don't know what you're gonna do, fireworks somewhere. And it's all about freedom, right? It's all about our freedom. But I don't want us to forget in this weekend and these times of celebration of where our true freedom comes. We get caught up in this idea of American freedom and it's a selfish freedom. It's not the kind of freedom that God wanted to bring the Israelites out of Egypt into him. The story goes, whether it's Abraham Lincoln or somebody else, that a person was visiting a slave auction and upon arriving, they saw a young slave girl who was up for bid. Moved by compassion, this person bid and won. After purchasing her, they told this disbelieving girl that she was free. To her surprise, she said, "What does this mean?" They replied, "It means you're free." What does it mean that I'm free? Does this mean that I can say whatever I wanna say? They said, "Yes, my dear, you can say whatever you wanna say." She then says, "Does this mean I can be whatever I wanna be?" They said, "Yes, you can be whatever you want to be." She said, "Does this mean I can go wherever I want to go?" She said, "Yes, you can go wherever you want to go." And with tears streaming down the face of this little girl, she said, "Then I will go with you.”

The driving disbelief with the American dream and American freedom is that we have control. That's all about us. And God says, yes, I've given you freedom. I've brought you out of Egypt, the Israelite people. I've given you freedom from death, eternal in hell through Christ Jesus' blood on the cross, the sacrifice, the rock on which they are brought, our impossible moment out of. We were brought into a freedom, but not a freedom for ourselves. That's the freedom that the Israelite people struggle with. They were free, but they didn't understand this freedom to fully step into. Because when they stepped out of slavery into freedom, they had to step into the true freedom, independence on God that meant they didn't have to worry about their food every day. They didn't have to worry about where they were gonna get water. They didn't have to worry about what the next day was gonna bring them. All they had to do was step in and as the response of the young woman says, if that is what it's about, then I'm with you. The question for us today, even in our American freedom is the freedom we have in Christ do we say, then God, I'm with you. God, I am stepping into you so that when we find ourselves in impossible moments, we press in to what God has for us, every single moment.

So what is our response in the midst of impossible moments? That's the question for us today. I'm gonna invite the worship team back up and close out with a few songs. But we need to wrestle with this idea that do we have the response to the Israelite people did? Do we grumble? Do we whine? Do we complain? Even when a smallest hardship comes our way. Or do we press into the freedom, this new found freedom we found in God that isn't even a fraction of what American freedoms is. But it's spiritual, eternal freedom in God to step into that to go, you know what? My God's done it before, my God's gonna do it again. My God has my back. My God knows the details of my life and what I'm walking through each and every moment. Do I trust God that He can make all things possible? That He is the one that's gonna take care of my every day. Reality is following Christ isn't easy. But the reality is that in stepping with Jesus, he has everything taken care of. And when we put our faith in Christ, and he comes on us, he covers us all. Tops of our head to the bottoms of our feet. And that he's gonna make everything be all right. whether it's here on this side or on the other side of heaven, everything's gonna be all right. Whatever impossible situation that you face, God's got it taken care of. So I encourage you, don't have the response that the Israelites had, have a response of faith to go, God's got my back, God's got it taken care of because His provision is sanctifying, but it is ultimately satisfying as well.

Let's pray. Jesus, thank you for today. God, I'm so grateful for the story of your care and compassion and mercy for your Israelite people. Those people that you cared for each and every day for those 40 years wandering in the wilderness, you had there every day. So Jesus, we're thankful for that. We worship you. We praise you. God, let us respond in the similar way that if that is freedom, then I'm with you. Let us choose that today, Jesus. Love you, we thank you.

Impossible Moments - Part 4

Showdown on Mt. Carmel - 1 Kings 18:16-40

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Alright, we're continuing in our series. I'm excited about about continuing in our series this morning. We've covered Moses, we've covered David, we've covered Noah. All these impossible moments or impossible odds where belief and faith in God were a must, and God was truly the only answer. What I'm loving about this series is that we are participating in a very simple ancient practice of sharing about Yahweh. I like using Yahweh because in the Old Testament, in the Hebrew, that is God's name, and it distinguishes him from all the other gods that other cultures worshiped. But this ancient practice is really simple. It's all about sharing stories of God, of what he's done. And so from Israelites who would share with their Israelite children, to even other nations who didn't know or worship God, they would hear about Yahweh from these stories. They'd say, "Oh, you know, hey, little kid, we worship this God that did this for us, that in our past, he has done this, he has provided this in miraculous ways." Or these other nations that worship other gods would hear about Israel's God and say, "Oh, your God, Yahweh is the God that split the sea in two and had people walk on dry land." Or, "Your God is the God who brought down the largest fortress without any weapons." Or, "Your God is the God who helped people stay alive in the desert for 40 years." The people would come to know who Yahweh was by simply sharing these amazing stories of God at work. And before the early church, and before we had the Sunday format that we have today of coming to the church and hearing a sermon, this is how God was shared, was just telling stories about him.

So I love that we're doing that here on a Sunday. We're just sharing stories about what God has done in the past. Today, I wanna get into another impossible moment where the situation looked like it had impossible odds, but God shows up on center stage before Israel to remind them that he is God, that he's alive and that he is at work. Today, a little background with where we're at. in the era of the prophets. So we've had the kingdom of Israel, they've had a golden era, they had King David, a most amazing king, they had King Solomon, but after those two kings, it was really a short-lived golden era, those two kings, and then after that it goes downhill pretty quick. Those kings that follow Solomon, the tone shifts to very darkened and saddened as most of them drift away from God, and they disobey the number one commandment. Does anyone here remember of your 10 Commandments, your Sunday school, what is the first commandment? Okay, yes? Yes, yes. So, to not have any other gods before me. I do it in like the King James version, that's what I grew up with, but yeah. There's the "hath" and the "thou nots." But to not have any other gods except Him. And many of the Israelite kings have invited false gods into the culture, into the life of the Israelite people, specifically Baal or Baal. And if you were to read through 1 Kings, you would see this phrase, next to all these kings who continue to fail, it says, "And they did what was evil in the sight of the Lord." I don't know about you, but I do not want that attached to my name at the end of my life. And for people to remember me by that, he did evil in the sight of the Lord. But that is what is attached to all these kings after Solomon, most of them. There's some good ones, but they're very few. but most of these kings are falling away from God and bringing Israel with them.

And we come to this, in this section of scripture, we come to this passage where we meet Elijah, this prophet. And so if you're reading your Bible, it's kind of this downhill decline of like, "Oh Solomon, uh oh, more and more, worse, worse." And then we have a little like, "Oh, who's this? It's Elijah. This is good." We don't have a lot of background on Elijah, he just kind of appears on the scene, but we do know that he's good because of how he's introduced to us. And it's through a couple small stories that let us know that he's going to be a good person. Kind of like David, there's this template in the Old Testament that sometimes we don't get the background on who they are, but we get a couple small stories, and they're good stories, like David and being able to defeat Goliath before he's king, or that he's able to kill a bear to protect the sheep, and you're kind of clued into, like, "Oh, David's going to be a really good guy." Well, the same with Elijah. We get a couple small stories that say, "Oh, Elijah's one of the good ones. He's working on God's behalf. And so the first story that we learn about Elijah is with this widow and her son. And right now at this time there's a famine in the land, and this widow and her son are on the doorstep of death. They're starving, and they're about to die, and they have a little bit of flour and a little bit of oil left. And they're planning their last meal. I mean, this is a very dark scene. And Elijah comes and he says, "I would also like to eat." Which, you're like, that's kind of inconsiderate. "This is their last meal, and you want them to share "what little they have with you." But God makes it go a long way, and it turns into a feast, and the oil and the flour don't run out. And so that's the first clue of like, "Oh, that's good. "This guy's a good guy." Next story is, sadly, that widow and her son, the son dies. And through the power of God, Elijah is able to raise that son from death back to life. And again, we're clued into like, "Oh, okay. "Elijah really is a good guy. "He's got the power of God with him." And so if you were reading the story of seeing all these kings fail, fail, fail, then Elijah, you'd be clued into like, okay, God's at work here, God's on the move, there's momentum shifting here, God is up to something.

The king of Israel at the time is King Ahab, and Elijah has had one previous encounter with him where he's told him, there's gonna be a famine in the land. There's gonna be a famine as a result of your disobedience to God, of your not being able to follow God's command. And so now Elijah is gonna come back and confront Ahab again, particularly about the worship of Baal and saying, "Hey, you gotta fix this "or it's only gonna get worse." So if you would turn in your Bibles with me to 1 Kings, we're in chapter 18, and I'm gonna read section by section, we'll pause along the way 'cause it's a long section of scripture, but we're gonna start in verse 16 And it says, "So Obadiah went to meet Ahab and told him, "and Ahab went to meet Elijah. "And when he saw Elijah, he said to him, "Is that you, you troubler of Israel? "I have not made trouble for Israel, Elijah replied, "but you and your father's family have. "You have abandoned the king's commands, "or the Lord's commands, and have followed the Baals. "Now summon the people from all over Israel "to meet me on Mount Carmel, "and bring the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah who eat at Jezebel's table.

We'll stop right there for a second. Elijah and Ahab meet up, and initially Ahab tries to put the blame for Israel, for Israel's issues on Elijah. And Elijah calls him, I was like, hey, this is not me. This was all you, I told you before, this is why the famine's here. And I love that in verse 19, Elijah says, let's deal with this right now. It's clearly on your mind, this is why I came to talk to you, let's deal with it right now. And I love this immediate action from Elijah, 'cause it's very much not who I am, so I admire that someone else is able to do this. If there's an issue, I kinda take the slow approach, like, all right, let's discern what God wants us to do, let's see what my response should be. And I like how Elijah's like, you, me, all of Israel, outside, right now, let's go. He's like, we're gonna take care of this. And so our stage is set. We have all of Israel, that's a lot of people, we have 450 prophets of Baal, We have King Ahab and one prophet of God, of Yahweh, and that's Elijah. By the way, if we just look at those optics, that's a lot of representation for the false god, Baal. And no wonder you can kind of see why Israel's fallen away. The one voice of God, which technically they should all know God, they come from, they're God's people. They know the law, they know the stories, but they have 450 prophets of false God. That's a lot of representation. That's a lot of false teaching. That's a lot of influence pulling God's people away from Him. And before you judge Israel and say, "Hey, you should have known better," which we're all tempted to do, pause and think about the influences in your own life. What voices are speaking to you? What influences do you have in your life? And how many of them are speaking truth? How many of them are speaking the love, the compassion, the kindness of God? Besides the Sunday, which you're all here right now, So this is one voice. What influences and other voices are speaking God's truth into and over your life? Israel had a lot of false prophets, but we too can have a lot of false teachings, a lot of lies being poured into our minds, whether that be through music or movies, TV shows, social media, other people that do not speak truth, whatever the case may be, all those things might be pulling us away from God. Israel needed to hear from God. And Elijah helped set the stage to make this happen. And the odds are becoming very clear. In front of Israel's eyes, on Mount Carmel, we have 450 prophets of Baal. On this side and over here, we have one prophet of Yahweh. And I imagine right now, by the way, Elijah just looks epic. Kind of like, I'm imagining like Jedi cloak with a beard, like a Pastor Chris beard, like, you know, just like man of God. And he's kind of, I imagine him with like this game face. He's like facing the other, he's like, yeah, let's go. We're gonna do this right now. Just epic, okay? Imagine that right there.

Let's continue in our story. Verse 21 says, "Elijah went before the people and said, "How long will you waver between the two opinions? "If the Lord is God, follow him. "But if Baal is God, follow him. "And the people said nothing. "Then Elijah said to them, "I am the only one of the Lord's prophets left, but Baal has 450 prophets. Get two bowls for us. Let Baal's prophets choose one for themselves and let them cut it into pieces and put it on the wood, but not set fire to it. I will prepare the other bowl and put it on the wood, but not set fire to it. Then you call on the name of your God, and I will call on the name of the Lord, the God who answers by fire. He is God. And all the people said, what you say is good." So Elijah's not messing around. He doesn't miss words. He walks over to Israel and says, "Let's decide this right now. Why do you keep wavering between the two, Baal and Yahweh? You can only worship one God. And if Baal is God, worship Him. If Yahweh is God, then worship Him. But no more worshiping both." Just a thought on Elijah's words here is because it's not something we see often in Scripture. is the opportunity kind of presented to Israel to say, "Hey, if you want to go that way, go that way. But just don't do this thing where you're in between." Most of the time we hear the prophets and the people in the Bible and the scriptures saying, "You need to follow God." And this time they're kind of given this choice of like, "Hey, if that's what you want to do, then go do it." And I like that because I think we need that clarity today. Not that we would say exactly this to people. I mean, obviously use discernment and God's love and compassion. But it's kind of like saying, "Hey, if If you're calling yourself a Christian, then you gotta, you can't do these other things and follow these other things. You need to follow Jesus. Clarity is important here. Don't claim the name of the Lord being the one that you follow if you also follow these other things that are clearly not God. It doesn't help. It doesn't help you. It doesn't help the witness of God to other people. So this clarity is super important. I don't think, again, I would say this, but I do appreciate Elijah holding the people of Israel accountable to the law, to who they are as God's people. And sometimes we need to do that with people in our lives who claim to be followers of Jesus. Hold people in your life, the brothers and sisters that you have in Christ, accountable to the faith that they have in God. We just had a bunch of baptisms. I think about 15 students got baptized at camp this past week. And part of that public declaration of their faith is that they now belong to the family of God, to the church. And that means that we get to speak into their lives and say, "Hey, this is the way in which you need to go. Hey, you're a little bit off course right now. Let me help you get back." And also people can speak that into our lives. So maybe God is calling you to be a voice into someone else's life, to help them as they've wandered off course and have the courage, pray for the courage and the compassion especially to love and be that fellow believer to them.

In our story, Elijah gives the parameters to the challenge. So each side gets a bowl for the sacrifice. Each side will build an altar, and each side will call upon their God. Whichever God answers by fire, lighting that altar on fire wins, and wins all the people of Israel. If Baal wins, then Israel will go follow Baal. Pretty straightforward. If you're a fan of God, which I know all of you are, and you kind of know that this is exciting because God's gonna be at work, And God and fire have a good, you know, they have a good history. You know, God, burning bush, that was fire, that was God. The pillar of fire in the desert, leading Israel. So I feel like Elijah is sitting here being like, "Yeah, this is easy. "We got this one in the bag." Again, game face for Elijah. He's like very serious right now. And so the prophets of Baal go first. Elijah lets them go first. And again, knowing that if Baal were to answer, Israel would technically be allowed to follow them.

And the showdown begins, let's go back into our Bibles at verse 25, it says, "Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, "Choose one of the bulls and prepare it first. "Since there are so many of you, "call on the name of your God, but do not light the fire. "So they took the bull, given them, and prepared it. "Then they called on the name of Baal "from morning till noon. "Baal, answer us!" they shouted. But there was no response, no one answered. And they danced around the altar they had made. At noon, Elijah began to taunt them. "Shout louder," he said. "Surely he is God. Perhaps he is deep in thought or busy or traveling. Maybe he's sleeping and must be awakened." And so they shout louder and slash themselves with swords and spears as was their custom until their blood flowed. And midday passed and they continue their frantic prophesying until the time for the evening sacrifice. But there was no response. No one answered. No one paid attention. This did not go well for the prophets of Baal. It was so bad that even the people of Israel stopped watching. The prophets had set up their altar and they start crying out to Baal, calling from morning till noon. That is a long time. Hours. And silence. Start dancing around, trying to get the attention of Baal. Silence. Elijah starts taunting them. And these are... There's not a lot of smack talk in the Bible, but this is good. These are some good smack talk lines. And he says, "Oh, is he tired? Maybe he's not home right now." The ESV translates it to, "Is he relieving himself?" Which, whatever tone or attitude you read that with, that's such a good line. Elijah knows that it's over. Like this is, it's over.

And before we get carried away, I mean, there is some humor to it. Before we get carried away with celebrating that the prophets of Baal are defeated, What happens next is really a very dark scene. They start to cut themselves. And self-mutilation was a common practice for false gods at that time of trying to get their gods' attention. It's a mourning ritual, saying we're so sad. And so you could see these prophets saying in sadness, like, where are you, Baal? We've been crying out to you. We're so saddened right now that we haven't heard from you. And as much as, by the way, Yahweh, just for the record, we worship an amazing God. He prohibits self-mutilation in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, so God's not about that. But as much as this scene gives us a sense of justice, and it should to a certain extent, I also believe that the heart of God was also broken and saddened by this. These people who are still humans made in the image of God, and God sees them and sees just how twisted and broken and fallen their minds have become to worship a false god like this. These people really believe that Baal would answer. They truly believe that. And when it didn't go their way, they started to harm themselves. Israel saw this too, and they even just stopped watching. I think they started to realize what was happening. But the tone here isn't like a, ha ha, like this is so funny, you guys lost. But it's more of silence and pity from Israel over these prophets. looking like how sad this is and kind of embarrassing. This is not good. And for us today, where are our hearts? When we see people whose minds and lives are broken and fallen and living out some twisted form of the truth, are we still compassionate, loving, kind, and slow to anger all the characteristics of God? Do we still look at them as made in the image of God? Or are we cruel and hateful and taking joy in someone's pain and loss? Do our hearts reflect God's love in all circumstances? Despite what happens at the end of the story, we are still called to love the lost and the broken. Even when those people don't realize it, even when they're in the deepest form of their brokenness, we are still called to be a Christ-like example to them.

Let's continue in our passage, verse 30. It says, "Then Elijah said to all the people, "Come here to me." And they came to him and he repaired the altar of the Lord, which had been torn down. Elijah took 12 stones, one for each of the tribes descended from Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord had come, saying, "Your name shall be Israel." With the stones, he built an altar in the name of the Lord. And he dug a trench around it, large enough to hold two sayers of seed. He arranged the wood, cut the bowl into pieces, and laid it on the wood. And then he said to them, "Fill four large jars with water and pour it on the offering and on the wood. "Do it again," he said, and they did it again. "Do it a third time," he ordered, and they did it a third time. The water ran down around the altar and even filled the trench. At the time of the sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed, "Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel, that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again. Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench. When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, the Lord, He is God, the Lord, He is God. Now, given our series, did we ever have any doubt? No. But still amazing to read God at work here. Elijah, it's his turn and he fixes the altar. That's a whole other side story that we don't get into this morning, but he fixes the altar.

And Elijah goes beyond the agreed terms. He digs this trench around the altar. He has them pour water over the bull, the wood, the rocks, and he has it done three times. And then he prays. He prays to God that God would answer so that the people's hearts would be turned back toward him. He's not praying for his own glory. He's not praying that people like God help him to see how amazing I am. He's praying that their hearts would yearn for God and that God would be glorified. I mean, do we pray like that? Do we pray with a mind and a heart that is yearning for God's glory? I wanna ask this this morning, how can we maybe change our hearts and change our prayers with more of a mind to seek God first in what is happening, even if it means hardship for us, do we have a heart and mind that is yearning for God's glory? This requires us to be in tune with God's heart, and to be mindful of God's desires, where he is moving, what he's doing, and requires us to know him. In order to yearn for what God yearns for, we have to know God. That comes through reading, praying, time spent with him. So Elijah prays, and what happens? God answers. And notice this contrast in the story. On this side, we had the prophets who are yelling, shouting, begging, cutting themselves, trying to get the attention of Baal. And on this side, we have Elijah who just prays. He talks to God and God responds. We worship and serve a God who hears us, who answers us when we call. And we can have a deep assurance that when we pray, God hears and responds. Verse 38 says, God's response was that the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench. So what happened to that altar? Gone. The rocks, gone. The bull, gone. Wood, gone. The soil, gone, like burned. The water, gone. All of it, God consumed all of it. Again, this is just, I love how over the top this is. Like you have these prophets over here trying their hardest and nothing happens. And you have Elijah who's just like, "Poor water, yeah, just water. "Add water to this, let's make this even harder." And it's nothing for God. God burns it all. Game over.

The people of Israel witnessed this and saw something undeniable. They witnessed Yahweh in action. And they responded in the most appropriate way, falling prostrate and declaring that Yahweh was indeed Lord. There is a renewed submission to God, a renewed confession of faith. Not only, they're saying not only does Yahweh exist, He's one of the gods, He's the God, but they also have put their faith back into Him. And this is one of the few times where we look at Israel and say, "Good job, this is what we should do too." When your wrongs are exposed in life, when you realize and acknowledge that you have been going in a direction that's away from God, do what Israel does. Repent, turn back to God, declare your faith in him. Fall prostrate and declare that Jesus is indeed your savior, that your faith is in him. Remember the gospel, let it soften your heart. Don't get defensive about where you've been going and the direction that you've been going, but instead repent, be like the Israelites just fall before God and say, "I'm sorry, you are Lord. I got this wrong.”

Our story ends in verse 40, where it says, "Then Elijah commanded them, 'Seize the prophets of Baal, don't let anyone get away.' They seized them and Elijah had them brought down to the Kishon Valley and slaughtered there." Now the end of the story has a very serious tone, as Elijah has all the prophets of Baal slaughtered. If you read to the end of the chapter, The famine that was in place because of Israel's rebellion is ended with heavy rains. The famine goes away and God brings rain back. And Elijah goes off to continue to do the Lord's work. But verse 40 is very real. And it was actually the mosaic penalty for prophets who promoted other gods found in Deuteronomy 13. Elijah is carrying out the law. And given the context of Israel having forgotten the law, the king forgotten the law, The consequence here seems to fit as a way of punishment for the false prophets. And also to remind Israel, "This is how I called you to live. This is the law, this is the word of God, this is the standard which I've set before you. And these are the consequences if you don't." Now let me be clear, that's not any application for us today. I don't know if it's spending a week with you students, I need to clarify that. We're not supposed to do what Elijah does in verse 40.

But instead, think about this, what thought or ideology or belief or distraction or sin or motivation do you need to kill in order to give God your everything? What do you need to get rid of in your life completely that may be holding you back from pursuing God with your everything? That's what it was for Israel. These prophets, this fixation with Baal was holding Israel back from pursuing God like they were supposed to. And while we may not have a ball in our lives, we do have other things in our lives that hold us back, that keep us from God. And so, this morning or in this week, think about what is holding you back. What are those things that are keeping you from pursuing God with everything you have? This is a great story of God showing up, of a prophet, God's servant, helping get Israel back on track.

And hopefully today you are encouraged to get back on track, or to be like an Elijah and help your brother or sister in Christ get back on track. Our series has a theme, "God can overcome anything." And He did so in our passage today for His glory, and also so that the people of Israel would be reminded of who He is and what He can do. And God can do the same in your life. Whatever you're going through, it is not enough to stop God. God can overcome it. God can show up when it seems impossible, when it seems unlikely, when it seems improbable. God can exercise His grace, His power, His love and strength to help you see Him more clearly. And sometimes we just need to pray and we can rest assured that God will answer. Amen.

Let's pray. God, thank you for this amazing story of seeing you at work. And thank you, God, that we can rest assured that you are there, you are living, you are a God that is not only present, but is deeply a part of our lives. And so I pray that you would draw us back to you. God, that you would help us identify the things that are keeping us from pursuing you with everything. Maybe some of those things are, in and of themselves, good things, but maybe they're out of alignment in our lives, and we have them too high of a priority. I pray that through your Spirit, you would help us discern where we need to adjust some things, and that we could run after you with everything that we have. God, I pray that for anyone who's dealing with difficult times, challenges, I pray that they would rest assured and take comfort in the fact that when they pray, you hear them and that you will answer. It may not be in the way that we expect. It may not be in an audible voice, maybe it is. But God, I pray that you would help them see how you are answering their prayers. That they would see and know just as Israel did, that you are God. We love you, Lord, and we give you our everything. We pray this in your name, amen.

Impossible Moments - Part 3

A Father's Faith, Noah - Genesis 6

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Sermon Transcript

I am really excited this morning to keep going in our impossible moments series and really to talk about and share an incredible story about one amazing dad. And we, Pastor Andre and myself, we were working through this series to think through them. Like, what are we gonna talk about on Father's Day? And what fathers maybe from the Bible could we learn from or where examples are there? And we both kind of turned to each other and said this guy's name about the exact same time. And it was pretty awesome. And this morning I'm really pumped to be able to talk about Noah. And Noah is one amazing dad. And Noah had this incredible father's faith that changed the world. And if you know the story maybe of Noah, you maybe heard it with the ark and the animals and the rain and the flood and God saving humanity through this guy and his family, that you probably know some of the faith that was needed for Noah to press forward. And I wanna dive in a little bit here because the reality is that Noah is this outstanding example of faith and obedience, not only as a dad, but for all of us to be able to take something home with us today.

Oswald Sanders has this great quote on the story of Noah. And he says, "The construction of the ark was one of the longest, most drawn out tests of faith recorded in the Bible. Throughout the whole period, Noah's hard pressed faith is given no visible confirmation. His conviction that a flood was coming was shared by no one, but him and his family. Public opinion was solidly against him. There was no precedent to which he could appeal for reassurance. Never before had there been a flood, never before had there been rain. Both nature and experience were against its probability. Noah was regarded as an eccentric and his sons as fools. So on questioning faith, the man who walked with God accepted God's revelation and acted on it.

Noah was one incredible dude. And Noah in faith faced an impossible moment. And the only thing that he could do was believe in God through this challenge that he faced. And that's the premise of our series. We've talked about Moses. Last week, we talked about David and Goliath. This week, we're talking about Noah. We're going through the Old Testament, pulling out some of these stories this summer to see places where God moved when there seemed to be no hope. And yet God showed up when there was no light at the end of the tunnel. God shined the light. He acted, he saved, he rescued, he moved. And our hope and our prayer, Pastor Andre and myself in this series is that whatever you might be facing in your life right now, press into God, press into Jesus. He's got you, okay? So we're gonna jump in in Genesis chapter six, if you wanted to flip, tap, click over to that. And we're gonna be starting in verse five. And we're gonna come onto the scene here of, we are, we've come out the garden and Adam and Eve and it's been generations and there've been some different things that are happening. Not very good stuff, let's be honest. Not very good stuff has happened since Adam and Eve. It kind of went off the rails there and it never really got back on the rails. It kind of kept going further and further and further. And so we come onto the scene here in this moment.

And it says this in verse five, the Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. Doesn't sound too good, right? The Lord regretted that he had made humans on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race that I have created, and then the animals and the birds and the creatures that move along the ground, for I regret that I have made them. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.”

God here looks down at the world, this floating marble in the sky, and sees just horrendousness. I mean, that's a word. There's gonna be a word today, okay? There's nothing good on earth. There is nothing good that is happening. It is just pure wickedness and God is greed. God's heart is breaking as he sees all of humanity. He sees this beautiful thing that he has created and it's just completely ignoring him. There's this emotional pain that God is feeling. And sometimes maybe we don't think about God like that, Right? We don't think about God having these emotions to feel this pain, but we know Jesus, who was fully God and fully man walked on earth. He felt emotional pain. We see that in scripture. And so if Jesus is God, then he shares the same characteristics with God, the Father, God, Yahweh, then we know that he can experience this emotional pain that he is being grieved. And he looks down and he's like, what is going on? It wasn't like God turned a blind eye and then like came back, like a dad would walk into the kitchen and it's just a mess. He's like, what happened? Like God has seen this the whole time happening. And he's saying, okay, I think we're gonna get back on here. Nope, no, the humans did that choice again. I think we're gonna get back here. Oh, and then they're over here. And so eventually they find themselves all the way over this way that in 611 of Genesis says, now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence. There was nothing good that was happening in this. Humanity time and time again was choosing a path, a life apart from God. But then there was this one dude, this one guy who's trying to do it right. And it's Noah. And so Noah comes onto the scene as God is sitting here contemplating this thing of, I'm just gonna start over. I'm gonna hit the reset button, Wipe it out and maybe I'll recreate and we're gonna try this again. I don't know. I don't know what God was thinking at that point. All he knew that he was like, I can't continue to let the world operate in this way. And so this guy named Noah comes onto the scene and he is the only person on the entire planet, the entire planet that is living the way and walking with a heart of God that God desires. I mean, we take a look at the world around us today and we might read this scripture and go, "I don't know how far from this we are with the days of Noah," right? There's a lot in life that is not the heart of God. There's a lot of action. There's a lot of people's choices that are far from what we read about in scripture is the way of the life that Jesus calls us to. And so here we kind of question and ask, How do we even as Christians live in the world of 2023?

And I think Noah would know exactly what this is like. Noah knows exactly and probably way better than we know how to live a life for God, even in the midst of the world around us. Says this in Genesis 6a, it says, "But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord." God is grieving over the loss of the human race. And he looks down and he sees one guy with a heart and a desire to please him, to live different and to live in a manner that is pleasing to God. I wanna talk through a couple things about who Noah is and then get into a little bit of what does this mean for us today?

But it says in Genesis 6, 8 through 9, "But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord." This is the account of Noah and his family. Noah was a righteous man, a blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. First thing we see here in these two short verses is Noah's position with God. Noah finds himself in this place when the God looked down on him that he found favor with God. Another word to use here would be grace, that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Noah found acceptance. God was pleased when he looked down and he saw Noah, how he lived his life, how he cared for his family, how he adored his wife, and the representative that he was to the world around him. Noah is standing before a holy God and seeing favor. and seeing favor. This is Noah's position. Now, I'm not going to say here that he was perfect. I don't think Noah was this perfect human being on earth, but as the Scripture says here, I think he demonstrates for us the life that we are called to live. Now, I would say that Noah probably let a few choice words fly when he smashed his hand with a hammer, building the boat. Maybe he came home from a long day working on the boat and Mrs. Noah asked to do some dishes and he said no. Or maybe he didn't love his sons as well as he could have, or maybe had as much patience as he might have after a long day in the field on the boat. But what the scripture tells us is that he was righteous. Noah's was human. Noah wasn't this perfect person, but Noah had a heart for God. And because of that, Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

Next part says here that Noah was a righteous man. We see here that is his character, Noah's character. This is the first time in scripture that these two words are actually used side by side for for an individual up to this point, a righteous man. What does that mean? Well, I think what it means is that Noah was a genuine person. He was real, he was authentic. He wasn't pretending just to be this good guy when he's out there and then come home and shut the door and he's a different person. He is living the life day in and day out, even when nobody is watching. That's the kind of character that Noah had. He wasn't just checking the box. Noah was through and through looking towards God for the way that he was to conduct himself and live his life. The third thing we see in here is that we see the phrase blameless among the people of his time. What does that mean? Well, that means that this verse, we're seeing this picture of humanity being pretty bleak, right? This picture of humanity and how they're conducting themselves and the wickedness and the selfishness and choosing whatever they please, they wanna do that moment from time to time, moment by moment just saying yes to themselves, saying no to God, pushing them away, not even thinking about him, not even acknowledging that he is even there. And yet this person, Noah, is following God. following God. I don't know that we can fully wrap our minds around this. That no one, no one apart from Noah is following God.

Another word and translation here, a blameless among the people of his time is of his generations, plural. Noah is the first to even attempt to live for God for generations, multiple generations have come and gone and nobody is living for God. And Noah comes on the scene and he draws a line and he says, I'm gonna push back to what the world is doing. I know this isn't right. I know that there's a God and I know I need to live my life different than the way that I'm living it in this what I see the example of the world around me. Noah is saying and pushing back against peer pressure. And he is saying, this is the life that we should live. I don't care if it's against what the society says. I don't care if it's against culture. I don't care what it is that I'm gonna push back with wisdom and strength and fight against this. Noah is a salmon. Guys know what salmon do? Swim upstream. I'm a salmon, just swimming upstream. Everybody's flowing this way. And Noah's like, "Nope, I'm going this way." And people would look at him and go, "You're crazy, dude. Are you kidding me? Why are you doing this?" But this is Noah's testimony. Day in and day out, Noah is out there banging away, building a boat. And people are looking at him and going, "Dude, you are nuts. You've completely lost it. But he's out there. He's faithful. He's walking each step. And it says, as in the scripture says, blameless.

Final thing we see for who Noah is, is that he walked faithfully with God. If you're looking to put something on your tombstone, Don't put Noah walked faithfully with God, okay? That'd just be kind of weird. But wouldn't that be amazing that your whole life is wrapped up with the phrase and Angus walked faithfully with God? Rich walked faithfully with God. Chris walked faithfully with God. Wouldn't that be amazing? a simple yet incredibly profound statement for one's life. Doesn't get much better than that, does it? Noah here walked in a way that was only really understood to this point by two people. One we read about a couple of chapters earlier in Genesis 5 24, it said the guy named was Enoch. He says, "Enoch walked faithfully with God, and then he was no more because God took him away." Enoch walked so close with God that one day he literally just walked up into heaven and he was with God. That's the type of walking with God. This is the type of fellowship that Noah has, this relationship that he has with God that each and every step of the way, he is right there in lockstep with God. Is it easy? Absolutely not. This isn't a nice little smooth stroll on the shade, on a paved path that's flat with no grade. We're talking uphill, both ways, in the snow, barefoot, just trying to truck along, struggling, fighting, clawing, kind of a walk. But it was a walk with courage. It was a hard, exhausting, draining, fighting walk, because no one else was walking that way. I heard this quote from a pastor, he's way smarter than myself. He says, "When a person walks with God, it necessarily means one cannot walk with everyone else around them." It's just impossible. The world is not going to walk the way that God wants us to go, at least not in everything.

But God was pleased when he saw Noah with his actions, his behavior, his choices and his character. So God comes up with this plan. He goes, "I'm still gonna destroy everything, but I want to save animals, I want to save humanity through this person Noah." And so God comes to this righteous man and and he begins to lay out this plan of what he wants him to do. He says, "My heart's greaved, I'm broken." He goes, "I'm gonna send a flood, And I'm going to send rain, something you've never seen before, water falling from the sky. He goes, "Just stick with me here, buddy." He says, "Now I want you to build a boat." Noah probably says, "What's a boat?" Noah says, "Well, let me tell you what a boat is." And so he begins to tell him these plans and how he's going to bring the animals to him, and they're going to load up. And through this faith of Noah to build this giant boat, that God is gonna save him and his family in an impossible moment. And gives them the synopsis of what's gonna play. And then he says, "This is the role, Noah, that I want you to play in all of this." And he gives them all the details. We fast forward a little bit into Genesis 6, and we see what Noah did. It says in 622, it says, "Noah did everything just as God commanded him." Noah and his content was obedient to the Lord. I think it's one thing to have the heart knowledge of what God wants for us, but it's something entirely different to live that out. I don't know, maybe you're like me, maybe you're not. You have all this knowledge in your head, but we don't necessarily bring that to action. Was it action is three fourths of the law of knowledge, right? That the fact that if we don't, we can know everything and that's fantastic. But if we never put it into action, it really doesn't mean anything. And we read here that Noah actually fulfills and follows what God asked of him. And not just followed a couple of things here and maybe a little bit here and maybe some stuff over here and kind of got creative with his build over here, but Noah did everything just as God commanded him. He did everything, absolutely 100%, every single little step of completion for God's plan. That's incredible. That's absolutely incredible.

And what happens? Animals show up, they load up, God says, get in the boat. Noah and his family loads up, God shuts the ark, and it starts raining, and raining, and raining, and raining. And it says in Genesis 7, 7, "And Noah and his sons and his wife and his son's wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood." You think, yep, that's it. That's how the flannelgraph story goes. put the little storm clouds up there and roll out the boat and the animals are behind the boat and the storyboard is all there and we're good to go and the waters go away and the Sun comes out and then the family gets off and the animals run off and then we the story continues on and we flip the page in Genesis over to the next story.

But I think there's so much more here than that and specifically for us today I want to talk about this in the terms of what it means to be a father. There's a lot, I think, here in the scripture that doesn't say about the details of it, but the reality is that God called Noah to an impossible task. But God didn't call Noah and say, "Hey, come back here, meet me at this rock with your family and your sons and your sons' wives. We're gonna have a conference call, and I'm gonna lay out all the details that everything is gonna happen, and I'll let you know so that everybody's on the same page. No, it didn't work like that. God told Noah. God didn't tell Noah's wife. God didn't tell Noah's kids. God didn't tell Noah's daughters-in-law. God told Noah.

And at some point, although the text doesn't tell us, at some point, Noah had to break the news to his wife. I'd love to fly on the wall in that conversation. Right? So, babe, got some news today from a big guy in the sky. So, you know this awesome weather we've been having for like ever? It's gonna end. And there's gonna be water that falls from the sky, and the earth's just gonna open up, and it's gonna flood. And God says, "I'm supposed to build this, how do you say it, boat?" And He's gonna bring a bunch of animals, and we're gonna load them up on the boat. And you, and me, and the boys, and the daughters in love, we're just all gonna load up, and we're gonna have an adventure. Mrs. Noah's there you go going what? And then he has to tell the boys because Mrs. Noah ain't telling them. Hey boys I got something we need to talk about which is never a good sign from dad right? Yeah so you know, this God thing and there's a water boat and you and your wives. Yeah, we're all gonna load up. We're gonna go on an adventure." And then the boys probably look to each other and go, "There's no chance I'm trying to convince my wife. You got to go break the news." So then he goes to his daughter's in law. Hey, so welcome to the family. So glad you're a part of it. I love you. I'm kind of the dad-in-law. I got some news. He goes through his pitch. I cannot even imagine. Yet Noah tells them a story and they believe. Why? Because Noah was a righteous man respected by those who knew him best.

See the best judge of our Our character is our spouse, our kids, our family, our extended family, 'cause they know the truth, right? We can come here, we can put the face on with church, we can say, "Hey, pastor, how's it going? Blessed be Jesus today. We're having a great Sunday, amen, hallelujah." And you go home and that door closes and then you go, "Oh, finally, I'm not around pastor anymore." And we let our real selves out, right? That wasn't Noah. Noah was the same guy that you knew in the market square buying lumber as he was the guy at home tucking the kids in for bed at night. When the kid would wake you up in the middle of the night for the 12th time, he was the same Noah. He was the same husband. He was the same father. And I think when we don't have others around, our real selves come out. We all get caught in this, it's okay. I get caught in it too. But behind closed doors, Noah was always Noah. And they knew and they believed, which is remarkable, this faith of Noah. Righteous man, respected by those who knew him best.

Find this interesting because we read the Pentateuch, which is the first five books of the Bible, which are written by Moses, recorded, that he's writing this historical record of the flood. And then we move on to Genesis 19. We come to this story, which kind of juxtaposed to the story of Noah and his faith as a father with this guy, with Abraham, and specifically his nephew named Lot, who if you guys don't know the story, Lot is this guy who's a family member of Abraham, Abraham at that point. They come from the land of Ur and the Calidees and they come to this promised land that God, the Holy land that God has told Abraham where he will make generations after generations after generations. But he's got this nephew with him. And they get into a conflict, an argument over where they're gonna settle. And so, Abram says, "Fine Lot, just pick what you want, go where you want, take your people, do your thing." And so Lot chooses to go the way that he wants and takes his crew and family and herds and he moves over to this land. And eventually he moves a little bit further and a little bit further and he starts getting closer and closer to this place called Sodom and Gomorrah. And eventually Lot finds himself headed to the city a couple times a week. Then he finds himself just hanging out at the city. He gets to know people and then eventually he's living in the city. And then eventually he's living in the sin and the selfishness of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. And again, God looks down and says, nope, this isn't right. He's had it up to here with it. So he sends a couple of messengers and he says to try to pull a lot out to go say, hey, I know you're not supposed to live your life like this. There is a better plan. I'm here to rescue you. Let's go. And Locke goes, hold up, hold up, hold up. He goes, let me go tell my family. So Locke goes and he tells his family, Hey, God has had it with Sodom and Gomorrah and the sin and the wickedness. He's gonna destroy the city. We gotta pack our stuff up and we're gonna head and we're gonna go meet up with Abram, Uncle Abram. We're gonna go join our herds together back again and live life with family again. And his family laughs at him thinking he's joking. Same scenario, same situation. God communicates only to the fathers, Noah and Lot. And with Noah, they believed because they knew the man of Noah. But then Lot's family rejects him because they knew the man who was Lot. Noah, which was righteous man, respected by those who knew Him the best.

Okay, closing real quick. Dads, I want to talk to you real quick. Everybody else can fall asleep. Still listen, fall asleep. Dads, I haven't been a dad very long on this earth, but I have an incredible dad, an example of a man, a godly man before me. And I try to walk in his footsteps because he walked in the footsteps of God. And we are called to this incredible task. an impossible task for us to be an example of righteousness to our spouse, to our children, to our families, to our communities. And just as Noah was to those around him in his life, this is our higher calling. This is, this is our higher calling to teach morals, to teach values, to teach virtues, Virtues like wisdom and justice and courage and self-discipline and ultimately grace, but the greatest of these of being love. To give to our children, to teach them from the Bible of how we live our life. Ephesians 6, 4 says, "Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger or irritate them or turn them bitter or exasperate them by the way that you treat them. bring them up tenderly with loving kindness, nurturing them full of grace with the discipline and the instructions that come from the Lord. See the Bible is filled, filled with examples of teaching and instructions and the way we want to pass down to our children. And from time to time, from the time that they are new to this earth, to where they are children, to where they are teens, they are young adults, and even past the time when they are adults, we are called to this state of teaching them, loving them, caring for them, and ultimately leading them to Jesus. That's what it's about. And see, I don't think the parenting ends, I think the parenting changes, and I think the approach has to be ever morphing, but there will always be influence. The influence will always be there. I don't know how old Joseph's sons were. We know by the end when they load up that they're old enough to be married, and I don't know, somebody probably knows how long it took to build the ark and all the stats and all that stuff, so So the boys probably young maybe when this started. They got to the point where they had to still, as an adult with their own families, follow the leading of their father to get onto the boat. And what's amazing is that kids learn more from observing than hearing or reading. And that should be an amen from all of us dads, right? That it is our calling and an incredible blessing that we have to walk with the Lord and for them to observe us. That's what it's about. For us to walk daily with God to be an example as someone so they know how to walk with the Lord. OK, dads, thank you.

Everybody else, we can all wake up. But I hope you guys are listening because the reality is that, honestly, this is the calling of everybody. This is everyone's calling. This isn't just limited to dads. This is for moms, it's for those who hope to be a parent someday, it's for those who are spiritual dads or spiritual moms, it's for those people in our lives, it's for those who are married, those who are not married, single widows, someone with kids, someone with no kids, it's for those who are old, it's for those who are young, it's everybody of all ages, everyone right near on planet earth, if you got a pulse and breath in your lungs, this is your calling. to follow Jesus, to walk with the Lord. And we are called to live this out through the power of the Holy Spirit, to live a life of full character with our testimony before others, walking in fellowship with God, even if the world around us is going the opposite direction, even if the world might ridicule us for our priorities, Even if the culture around us is deserting Christ, and we are the only person left on the earth like Noah, we will walk with God. That's what it's about. See, I wonder if it wasn't the flood, or the 40 days, or the smell on that ark, or the storms, or the waves that toss the boat or the daily grind of checking in with those animals for those 40 days. Or I don't even think even the first step off of the boat was the hardest. I think for Noah, the hardest of his whole story of his life was the waking up every day and picking up his tools and going to the boat and building. Being ridiculed, mocked, just every word probably in the book thrown at the dude. Day after day after day. I think That was the hardest. To putting faith into action in the impossible moments. But Noah did it. Noah did it. And he didn't do it for himself. He did it for his family. He did it for his family.

So you and I may not understand why God is doing the things that he's doing, or what he's called us to do, or how we're supposed to just put one foot in front of the other every single day. But we've got to walk with God. You've got to obey God's calling on your life. Hebrews 11, called this the faith chapter, writes about those with just tremendous faith. And Noah's listed in there. It says in verse seven, "By faith Noah, "when warned about the things not yet seen in holy fear, "built an ark to save his family." Noah's family members were his only converts. And yet God deemed him a success. Dad's our first ministry. It isn't for others or friends, it's for our family. It's for those in our lives. And it was in the days of Noah, And so it is in our day that there's a time of wickedness and violence and sin.

But God's grace is sufficient for us fathers, right? And God's grace is sufficient for us all. Just as it was then, the truth still stands today. So may God enable us to win our families, our friends, neighbors, those where we live, learn, work and play. May we lead them in a life that leads them to Christ. To be that example. To see our communities saturated with the glory of God. Even when it seems impossible. Let us walk with God by first being saved and then second by obeying God in our lives. us faithfully witness for God. Amen?

Let's be so real and authentic Christians that our families are convinced Christianity must be true. Let's be that first example and lead them to faith in Christ by our example. Let's pray. Jesus we thank you for this morning. God thank you for your servant Noah who facing impossible odds impossible tasks still said yes to you who even by himself all alone all without anybody else continued to say yes to you God and to walk every single day in the lockstep with you. God we're so grateful we're so thankful for pillars of faith these patriarchs God of Christianity that came before us and walk the hard so that we can be encouraged when you ask us to walk the same. We thank you, Jesus. We love you. Amen. Amen.

Impossible Moments - Part 2

David v. Goliath - 1 Samuel 17

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

I'm excited to continue in our new summer series today. we are talking about impossible moments. And Pastor Andre kicked us off last week. It was great talking about the story of Moses, who was saved as a baby, through just an incredible God moment that he then raised up this guy Moses, who would eventually lead the people out of slavery in Egypt and to the promised land. And so I am excited to continue this morning with a probably a classic that you guys might be familiar with. Anybody heard of the story of David and Goliath? Anybody? Yeah, yeah, we got some takers in here, sweet. So I am really pumped to be able to share. This is one of, not my favorite Bible story I'll say, but one of, I have a couple of different ones that I enjoy, but David and Goliath is one of my favorites. Who doesn't love an underdog story, right? That's the best part about this. But this summer series is taking time through this season to look into the Old Testament 'cause it is chocked full of some incredible stories, maybe familiar like David and Goliath and Moses, maybe unfamiliar with some of these different prophets we're gonna get into and talk about. But the idea of this is when all seemed lost, when your back is up against the wall, The odds are completely stacked against you. There's no light at the end of the tunnel. You have no hope, nothing, and yet God. And that's what I want our theme to be within this series of impossible moments is that, and yet God, God did something. He shows up in a person's life. He shows up in a people's life. We're gonna read about a story today, not just a story, but a historical event that actually truly happened where God showed up and beat the impossible odds. And I'm excited to share this morning. And I hope that you're ready to hear this morning. Anybody ready to hear a word from God today? Amen, let's go, come on, I love it.

So this story takes place in the 11th century or around the day of 1040 BC. We come into the scene here of the Israelite people, are facing a powerhouse of an army called the Philistines. And they are under their first king or a big king of the three big kings that we know of Saul, David and Solomon. And King Saul is leading the Israelite army into battle to take on the fierce Philistines to be able to really try to punch through from where they are into the Mediterranean Sea. So, because in that day, in that age, everything was driven by water. That was the fastest way of travel, it was the fastest way to connect with people. And on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea, if the Israelites were able to get there and to get one, capture one of these port cities, they would have incredible opportunity to have trade, to have like agricultural forward movement. They were able to have so many advancements to be able to travel even the Mediterranean Sea itself, to visit so many different cultures and countries, but to open up doors for an opportunity for the Israelite people. And so they are marching towards the sea and they come up against the Philistines. And the Philistines are this like ragtag, like just group of random people of like five different random cities that had decided to kind of band arms together and to fight and to protect this land because they do want to have this water opportunity at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea for their own society. And so we come on scene, not at the first time that these two have run into each other, they're neighbors. And as you might have neighbors yourself, you have run-ins, right? Do we not? I have some fun neighbors and I have some not so fun neighbors. I'll tell you, in the name of Jesus, I love them, but they're not so fun neighbors. We're in a situation right now of a dog that keeps breaking down fences and it's really fun. So I have not so nice neighbors. No, I'm just kidding. She's really nice and she's trying to help, but she can't deal with this dog. God bless her. But the Philistines, but not my story today, but the Bible, okay? I'm processing through it. Thank you for coming to my session.

All right, so we come in, if you wanna turn your Bibles to 1 Samuel 17 is where we're gonna be. And if you have heard the story of David and Goliath, maybe you were a kid, maybe you're new to it, maybe you've heard it a thousand different times, I want to take time, and we're not gonna read it in one swell felt through, I'm gonna break it up. But I want us to read this together today. Am I together? It means I'll just read it to you, you just listen. You don't have to read it with me. You're like, "Oh my gosh." But this idea that sometimes when we have stories like these we hear them and maybe we mix some stuff up. Maybe remember things a little bit differently. Maybe we add some things to the story. It happens, we all have that. You think of a memory back in the day and you start telling the story again. And if you're like me, I have a wonderful person in my wife that'll correct me as I tell the story 'cause she remembers everything better than myself. And so I want us to have the Bible be the record for the story today so that we can hear how God moved in this impossible moment. It starts all 1 Samuel 17 verse one. It says this, it says, "Now the Philistines gathered their forces for war and assembled at Sokoh in Judah. They pitched camp in Ephes Dammim between Sokoh and Azekah. Saul and the Israelites assembled the camp in the Valley of Elah and drew their battle line to meet the Philistines. The Philistines occupied one hill and the Israelites another and the valley in between them.

So this is the opening scene of the movie, all right? I can see it, the camera comes flying in from one side. You see all over the armies and they're all lined up and there are horses and the chariots and they're all ready to go and then it swoops over to the other side of the valley and the Philistines are lined up and everybody's shouting, "Ah, we're all pumped up." And then they just like pans out and just like here it is set. On one side of the valley, you have the Philistines, on the other side, you have the Israelites and you just have this empty space, no man's land in between the two of them. Are you guys excited about the movie so far? Yeah, you pulled in, you pulled in, cool. So here's what it looks like. Here's a map of the situation of where we're at. We have five different of these cities associated with the Philistine Confederation. You have Gaza, Ashkelon, Arshod, Ekron, and Gath. And then the Valley of Elah is in between Azekah and Sokoh. And you have a Gibeah, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Hebron. Okay? I just say it faster, the more it sounds like convincing that I know what I'm saying and we just roll with it, okay? So right here, the Israelites, They're moving from Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Jerusalem is where the temple is, where the kings are at in their empire. And they're moving towards this big blue thing over on the side, that's the Mediterranean Sea. And the Philistines over here are saying, "We ain't giving this to you, we're not giving it up." And they butt heads right at each other, right in the valley of Allah. And this is where our story begins. So if you were to have, here's a photo of present day, so you guys can kind of understand a little bit more. You have Gath all the way out there, in the far distance and Socoh, which you guys saw on the map. And then you have where you have the Philistine camp and then right behind them, that's the Mediterranean Sea. And then you have the Elah Valley and then you have the Israelite camp. So these guys clearly see each other. They see every single movement. They both have elevated positions. They can both look right down. There's nothing in the valley. It's completely wide open. So any move that either party makes, they can see coming from a mile away. And so they had the camps back up in the hills a little bit, and then every day they would ride down into the valley and they would line up to face each other and just hurl insults at each other.

And this is where we come into the story. Verse four, "A champion named Goliath, who was from Goth," remember Goth, far off in the distance, but associated with the Philistine. "A champion named Goliath, who was from Goth, came out of the Philistine camp. His height was six cubits and a span. He had a bronze helmet on his head. He wore a coat of scale armor, a bronze weighing 500 shekels. On his legs were bronze graves and bronze javelin that was slung on his back. His spear shaft was like a weaver's rod and its iron point weighed 600 shekels. And his shield bearer went ahead of him. Goliath stood and shouted to the ranks of the Israel, "Why do you come out and line up for battle? Am I not a Philistine? Are you not the servants of Saul? Choose a man and have him come down to me. If he is able to fight me and kill me, we will become your subjects. But if I overcome him and kill him, you shall become our subjects and serve us." Then the Philistines said, "This day I defy the armies of Israel. Give me a man and let us fight each other." on hearing the Philistines word Saul and all the Israelites, that's King Saul, King Saul, their fearless leader here supposedly, and Israelites were all dismayed and terrified. So they line up, everybody charges down to the battlefield, they all line up and they're staring at each other, and then comes this behemoth of a dude. He just comes out. So does anybody know what six cubits is equivalent to? nine feet and a span which is considered nine inches. So this dude, just under the height of a basketball hoop, marches out from, like, I don't think he like marches out or like sneaks out. You see him coming from Goth, like miles away. He comes out and basically the idea is, I know as Goliath, I can defeat anybody. There ain't anybody tall as me, there ain't anybody as strong as me, or anybody as big or as fierce or as crazy as Goliath. And he says, "Instead of letting you guys fight, let's do a one-on-one duel." A little Western, wah, wah, wah, just like you come out, this town ain't big enough for the both of us. You guys get the picture. The old school, Old Testament showdown. And so they're standing out there and Goliath comes out twice a day in the morning and the evening and taunts the Israelite people saying, "You don't have anybody that can beat me. Your God is not a God. I have my gods of Philistines behind me. I'm better than you, I'm stronger. I mean, the dude is wearing four pieces of like a brass armor. The guy has the helmet, he has all of the, what is it, he has the helmet, he's got the two like shin guards, he's got the chest plate, he's wearing a coat of chain mail that weighs like, what is it? It's like 155 pounds, okay? Then he has this shield with a guard, which I think is hilarious. Like this dude needs protection, really? This poor guy brings out the shield. It's probably as tall as him. And then he has this spear that weighs almost 20 pounds on it with a giant big old tree attached to it that I would assume, I don't know for sure, but I would assume this dude could probably wall up this thing across the football field. So like if I'm the Israelite people, yeah, I'm terrified. I'm scared, I'm afraid. I don't know what's gonna happen. My fearless leader, my King Saul is terrified as well. What are we supposed to do? We're stuck in this valley. If we run the Israelites back to Jerusalem, they're just gonna chase us back. If we try to fight them, we're probably getting walloped. And there's no way that we can even move forward whatsoever.

But the story continues. David was the son of an Ephrathite named Jesse, who was from Bethlehem in Judah. Jesse had eight sons. And in Saul's time, he was very old. Jesse's three oldest sons had followed Saul to war. So the three oldest brothers are already there at the valley. The first born was Elab, the second Ananabeb, and the third Shema. David was the youngest, the little brother. The three oldest sons followed Saul, but David went back and forth from Saul to tend to his father's sheep in Bethlehem. For 40 days, the Philistine came forward every morning, every night, and took his stand. Now Jesse said to his son David, "Take the epaph of roasted grain and 10 loaves of bread to your brothers and hurry to their camp. Take along them 10 cheeses to the commander of their unit. See how your brothers are and bring back some assurances from them. There was Saul and all the men of Israel in the Valley of Elah fighting against the Philistines. Early in the morning, David left his flock in the care of a shepherd, loaded up and set out as Jesse had directed. He reached the camp as the army was going out to its battle position, shouting the war cry." So David shows up right as everybody's running out. Israel and the Philistines were drawing up their lines facing each other like they had every day for the last 40 days, twice a day. As he was talking with them, Goliath, the Philistine, the champion from Goth, stepped out from his lines and shouted his usual defiance and David heard it. Whenever Israel saw the man, Goliath, they all fled from him in great fear. So every day they keep going out, They line up, they shout and yell at each other. Goliath comes out, Israelites get scared. They run back to their camp. They do it twice a day. I don't know why they keep doing this, but they keep doing this. Maybe they're hoping like Goliath like oversleeps his alarm and they're like, hey, we can take him while Goliath's sleeping. I don't know. But they do this every single day. And Goliath, he had given this title champion. You guys notice that in there? That word champion actually means the one in between. And the Israelites see Goliath and the Philistines see Goliath as this one that stands in between the two armies. But it's also understood that Goliath as man was the one who stood in between the gods and man. That Goliath himself was some sort of part God or like the gods because of his stature and his strength and no one had ever defeated him. And so they viewed him as this amazing godlike figure that lived on earth. And so David shows up and he's just trying to do something that good old dad told him to do. hey, go down to the battle. We don't have mail or email or text messages, just phone calls. You gotta send somebody old school on foot, get a note to my sons, let me see how they're doing. Let me know if they're still alive. Like that's the reality. Like we didn't even know if they were still living. And so David being the good son that he is, loads up and goes down there and shows up just as everybody is rolling out into the valley. And what's super important about this moment is because it isn't just any person who shows up, It's David. And prior to this, Samuel, who was kind of the head priest, the head pastor of the Israelite people in Jerusalem, had previously, if you read in chapter 16, he gets a word from God that the next king is gonna come soon and replace Saul, and it's gonna come from the family of Jesse. They didn't know it was gonna be David specifically, but there was this gonna be a new king in town, and it infuriated Saul. And I'm curious if part of this is why Saul decided, you know what, if I'm gonna keep my kingship, I'm gonna show everybody who I am, and I'm gonna march all the way to the Mediterranean Sea, and I'm gonna make the Israelite people put them on the face of the map of earth, and to say, I am king, look at me. And then he finds himself in this place, up against the battle of the Philistines. And so this is the point in the story, I believe, where Hans Zimmer would change the score to a minor key. 'Cause like, this is where like the tension starts building just even more in this moment.

We continue on. Now the Israelites had been saying, "Do you see how this man keeps coming out? He comes out to defy Israel. The king will give great wealth to a man who kills him. He will also give him his daughter in marriage and will exempt his family from taxes in Israel." Pretty legit payout if you ask me. David asked the men standing near him, "What will be done to the man who kills the Philistine and removes the disgrace from Israel?" Who is this uncircumcised Philistine? You want an old school like comeback from the Old Testament? This is it right here. "Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God? They repeated him what had been said and then told him, This is what we done to the man who kills him. When Elab, David's oldest brother, heard him speaking with the men, he burned with anger at him and asked, "Why have you come down here? And with whom did you leave those few sheep in the wilderness? I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is. You come down only to watch the battle." So like a good older brother, he marches in seeing little bro in the campsite going, "What are you doing here?" And I think there's probably a little like a pent up frustration from the past 40 days, little anger and what is he allowed to do? He takes it out on the little brother and just comes out and is like, "Why are you here? You're supposed to be home. What are you doing? Why are you in here?" And David, he's like, "Dude, back off, bro." He doesn't hold himself. He's like, "Who is this Philistine punk? Who is this dude that comes out and says all this slander, says all this blasphemy, says all this junk about my God. Who is this dude? And so he shows up and little does Elab know that little bro just didn't show up to watch a battle. Little bro showed up to battle. And so David here, and word's starting to get out in a camp of this guy, David, who's shown up.

It says now in verse 29, "Now what have I done?" said David, "Bro, what are you coming out? I didn't do anything. Can I even speak?" He then turned away to someone else and brought the same manner. And the men answered him as before. What David said was overheard and reported to Saul and Saul sent for him. David said to Saul, "Let no one lose heart on account of the Philistine. Your servant will go and fight him." Saul replied, "You are not able to just go out against this Philistine and fight him. You are only a young man. and he has been a warrior from his youth. But David said to Saul, "Your servant has been keeping his father's sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it. I struck it. I rescued the sheep from its mouth. And when it turned on me, I seized it by the hair, struck it and killed it. Your servant has killed both lion and the bear. This uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them because he has defied the armies of the living God. The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of the Philistine. Saul said to David, "Go, and the Lord be with you." When Saul dressed, then Saul dressed David in his tunic, and he put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. David fastened his sword over the tunic and tried walking around because he was not used to them. "I cannot go in these," he said to Saul, "because I am not used to them." So he took them off. Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd's bag, and with his sling in his hand, he approached the Philistine.

So Saul brings in this kid who's talking smack in the camp, and word's getting out about who's this little bro showing up, mouthing off. Okay, well, let's put some money where his mouth is. Let's see who this dude is. So Saul brings him in and David's like, "Hey, don't worry. I got this." And I can only imagine Saul, like, seeing this kid, which he probably, he's probably in the range of like 13 to 15, because we know that his oldest three brothers were allowed to be in the army, and you could get in the army between 18 and 20. And so if you do the math on how many kids, and every year and all this, So you get to the point where he's in his middle teens, let's say. So yeah, this is a kid rolling in going, "Hey, I'm gonna take care of this giant." And Saul's like, "What?" And I think Saul here in himself is a little bit, even just tired himself. He's been going up against this dude 40 days, twice a day, exhausted. And he's like, "You know what? Fine, whatever. If you wanna do it, it sounds like there ain't gonna be anybody stopping you and me. I might as well put some armor on you so it looks like you might live 10 seconds longer than what you would just being out there wearing nothing. And so he comes to this point and David, he's getting bolder. You guys notice that? He's getting bolder. The more that he talks to these people, the more that you see this passion and this heart that he has for God. And he's like, "I've been there. I fought the lion. I fought the bear. I've taken out beasts, which if you could, honestly, a bear standing on its leg is probably nine feet tall as well. So David's taken out some legit stuff. Like he's given Saul his resume here. I took this out and that was okay. I took that out. And so Saul's like, "Okay, maybe this kid might have something. Maybe he might not. I don't know." But he gets to this point where that even when it seems like from the eyes of the world that all hope is lost, that the battle was already over. Saul didn't have any hope in David. Saul said, "I'm gonna cover my butt for a lawsuit, and I'm at least gonna put Jesse's boy in some armor, so at least he can't get mad at me for just letting his son run out there in a goatskin." But like, he's kinda given up. And I can only imagine the murmurs in the camp of just like, "Are you serious? This is our fearless fighter? This is the guy who's gonna go into the valley by himself. We're all going to line up and just watch this guy die. And then they're going to come after us. There's probably people in the camp packing up already. They're like, yeah, this is over. This is a good 40 days. Wasted my time. Guess I will get used to being in the Philistine control and under their slavery. I can't imagine what is going on. The odds are completely stacked against David. This is not looking good.

But yet, God. Remember that part? But yet, God. Verse 48. "As the Philistine moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet him, reaching into his bag." Did I jump ahead? I did. Oh, jumped ahead. Back up. "Meanwhile..." This is a little flashback. You know, you watch those episodes. It was like five hours earlier, 30 minutes earlier. We meanwhile, the Philistine and the shield bearer were in front of him. They come closer to David. Then David looked over and saw that he was little more than a boy glowing with health and handsome. And he despised him. He said to David, "Am I a dog that you come at me with sticks?" And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. "Come here," he said, "and I'll give your flesh to the birds and the wild animals." David then said to the Philistines, his boldness here, "You come against me with sword, spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom have defied. This day, the Lord will deliver you into my hands and I will strike you down and cut off your head. This day, I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. All those gathered here will know that this is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves, for the battle is the Lord's, and he will give you all of it into your hands." So here's the movie scene. It comes down, the camera is right in David's face. I think of the, oh, what is it? The movie scene of, oh, who's the Scottish guy? Braveheart, Braveheart. He's like, "You might take our lives, but you will never take our Freedom." And they charge in a battle. I see this like being this epic, like this would have been a Grammy. Like it would have won every award, even like a Tony. Like they would have made a musical about it and it would have won it. Like it would have won everything. They would have swept the awards that year.

But this movie scene and Goliath comes out and he's like, "Who is this punk of a kid? Are you kidding me? This is a fly. I'm gonna flick him and he's gonna be gone." And then what are you gonna do Israel? And David steps up and gives this most epic speech in the world. Like I'm fired up right now. Like, can you tell? I'm fired right now. Just like I can take on anything for God right now. It's like, if you ever need like some fire at me, like eye of the tiger, like this is the original eye of the tiger in the Bible. And it's like this moment where God's like, I know and I serve this God who can do anything. And I know that because you've been sharing just flippant blasphemy against my God, I know that my God is gonna defeat you. And I don't care what God you come from, I don't care who you are, I don't care what background you are, I am 100% beyond confident that I know my God can take you out.

And as the Philistine moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly towards the battle line to meet him. Reaching his bad, he took out a stone and he slung it, and he struck the Philistine in the forehead. The stone sank into his forehead and he fell face down on the ground. So David triumphed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone. And without a sword in his hand, he struck down the Philistine and killed him. David ran and stood over him. He took hold of the Philistine's sword, drew it from the sheath, and after he killed him, he cut off his head with the sword. When the Philistines saw their hero was dead, they turned and ran. Then the men of Israel and Judah searched forward with a shout and pursued the Philistine to the entrance of Gath and the gates of Ekron. Their dead were sluned along the Sharon road and to Gath and Ekron, then the Israelites returned from chasing the Philistines who plundered their camp. David took the Philistine's head and brought it to Jerusalem. He put the Philistine's weapon in his own hand. As Saul watched David going out to meet the Philistine, he said to Abner, commander of the army, "Abner, whose son is that young man?" Abner said, "As surely as you live, your majesty, I don't know." The king said, "Find out whose son and young man this is." As soon as David returned from killing the Philistine, Abner took him and brought him before Saul, with David still holding the Philistine's head. "Whose son are you, young man?" Saul asked. And then he said to him, "I am the son of your servant, Jesse of Bethlehem." And at that moment, Saul knows he's in trouble. (chuckles) This is like part one of this story. It's just like, that's like the after scenes credits from a Marvel movie of you bringing him in. He's like, I am son of Jesse. And then just to look on Saul's face, 'cause he knows this is the new king and I am done. So this whole scene is absolutely incredible. It's the underdog versus the champion. It's just the story that we love from our movies and TV and books that we read of just this God coming along, the one who is least likely to win.

But there's actually something bigger going on here. There is actually a God battle going on here. Because before this, the Philistines and Israelites had gotten into it with each other on multiple occasions. And just before this, the Philistines had actually beaten up the Israelites and stole the Ark of the Covenant. If you know from the story of the Bible, the Ark of the Covenant was where the tablets from Moses were the 10 commandments. I believe the staff from Aaron and Moses were in that. It was the treasure place. And it was the place that God physically dwelt on earth and the Israelites carry God with them. And so think about the most precious thing that you have has been taken from you. And you just are fuming with fury for these Philistines. And Philistines and their cockiness and their pride take the Ark of the Covenant actually into their temple with all of their many, many gods and put it below the God of what they call as Dagon or Dagon, Dagon. And they put the Ark of the Covenant below Dagon in a sense to mock this God of Israel, that our God is greater than the Israelite God. And God has some fun with them. They leave in the temple, they go home, they fall asleep, they wake up the next morning, they come in and Dagon has actually fallen down and is laying bowing towards the Ark of the Covenant. They think, oh, some little kid ran through here and bumped it and it fell over, let's set it back up. So they set it back up, they go to sleep, they wake up the next morning, they come in. Dagon has not just fallen over, but Dagon has fallen over, he's broken off his head and his arms, and God chose the Philistine people. I am God. So when we come to this battle, there's backstory and back history of this God fight. And David himself is representing God of Israel, Yahweh. And Goliath comes out and he represents the God of Dagon, who's actually the father of Baal, if you know any of your Old Testament gods. He is actually a father of Baal. And so he's kind of like their national God of Philistine. And so this story takes us to a place where there is a secondary battle. God has already showed the Philistines what's going to happen of your God, your champion, the one who stands in between, Goliath, is going to fall, and he's gonna lose his head. And it's gonna be by the power of the God, of the name of the God of Israel, Yahweh, that this victory will be brought about. And I sit here and I read this story and this account, and I'm just absolutely blown away. Because I think the reality is with some of this stuff is we follow what we worship. We follow what we worship. Goliath followed Dagon and fell down and was decapitated like Dagon. David followed the God of, he knew the God of Israel, the Yahweh, and was brought victory.

And David came in this boldness in the name of the Lord. I love what 1 Samuel 16, who Samuel himself is talking about the new king. And he says this, he says, "The Lord does not look at the things that man looks like. Stature, wealth, physical, strength." Just look at that. "The man looks at outward's appearance, but God looks at the heart." I think this is the piece that Saul knew he was in trouble because he was so focused on what David would look like when he went out to battle. Looking like what we would think would be the man, the strength, the strong warrior, the battle, but it was a kid. It was a kid and he didn't even have any traditional weapons. He had a sling with a stone. And I think in this, we see this incredible truth that God empowers faithful servants to beat the odds. God empowers faithful servants to beat the odds because it's more than just an underdog story. And the reality is that the odds don't matter. The truth is that God raises up underdogs for his mission and his glory. David wasn't about David. David was about God. David didn't care about himself. David was the one who burned with the most righteous anger in the camp to say, you guys have heard this for 40 days. I've heard this once and I know that this isn't right. And yet he's the one that steps up. He's the one that steps forward. He's the one that says, this is not okay because my God is God of all. And I don't care what God you come with. I don't care what strength you come with. I don't care what armor you come with. I don't care whatever you come with. It doesn't matter because nothing is a match for my God. My God is God of all. And David had this consuming concern for the cause of God to prosper. I think for us, maybe sometimes we read the story and we think, well, you know what? That's a huge thing. But I wanna tell you today that victory doesn't need to be dramatic to be real. This is an incredible dramatic story. It's one for the record books. It's told since the 11th century and will be told until the ends of the earth and throughout history in heaven of giving glory to what God has done. But victories don't need to be dramatic to be real. There's been times where I found myself in life against the odds. When I felt my back against the wall, when all hope seems lost, when everything seemed to be over and there was no coming out of it. And God showed up. God showed up in such powerful ways that I never saw coming. That's why I love these stories we're gonna talk about this summer.

Because God shows up in a creative, dramatic way that we can't even ever think about or understand. That's how creative our God is. And that's how all things are possible with God. Because we have a finite limited thinking about how we think God can answer our solution. God goes, "Ha ha ha, just wait." The Israelite people were thinking, "We're gonna have some warrior come forward and our King Saul, he's gonna be the one." God's like, "Ha ha ha, just wait. I'm bringing you a kid who's gonna take it out. And I'm gonna bring him to be an incredible leader and a king over my people, my Israelite people, who will lead them forward in battle and victory." And I think the reality is we don't fight with weapons of this world, right? I love what 2 Corinthians 10 reminds us about, that we fight with the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And there's a spiritual war that's going on around us. And we fight with the power of prayer. We fight with the power of community. We fight at the feet of Jesus. And there is victory that is brought in our lives, not for us, but for the glory of God. And that's what this story is about, is remembering that Jesus is fighting with the gospel of truth, no matter what the odds are. That's what's happening. And we have to ask ourselves the question of what are we called to? What are we called to? 'Cause I think when we read this story, we like to put ourselves as the hero, right? We like to think we're the one that shows up at the camp like David. No, no, no. I think we are the Israelite people in Saul from verse 11 that says on hearing the Philistines words, Saul and all the Israelites were dismayed and terrified. All too often, we're the one terrified. We're the one afraid. We're the one dismayed. We're the one scared. And Jesus is just standing there saying, "Come to me, I got this. I am the God of impossible moments. I am your God. I am the God. I am Yahweh. And so I want you to be encouraged today that at the end of this and this moment, we are like the Israelite people that get to rush forward into the valley after Goliath falls and his head is chopped off. We share in the victory of Christ today. We get to share in the plunder and the riches and the spoils of eternity and heaven forever because of the sacrifice of God going before us, taking on the greatest enemy, death and Satan and winning. What Christ has done against the greatest enemy is nothing more than done with two pieces of tree. In Christ, the young king, we come before the gods of this age that they bow and defeat. Christ alone is the true son of David. And in his victory alone, we find our peace.

So how can you live more in the impossible moments that God wants for your life today. I think for some of us, it's taking time to remember those impossible moments that God rescued us from before, right? Remembering those victories. I think the Israelite people carried this through every single battle going forward for ages upon ages. The story was passed down. The story was told. The story was never forgotten because it reminded the Israelite people that the God that they serve is greater than anything that they could ever face. So how do we remember who is the source of our rescue? It's for us to decide. We remember who rescued us. 'Cause the reality is that we serve the same God, the God of Jacob, of Joseph, of David in this story. this story.

Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you for this morning. God, we worship you. We live in your victory. God, help us to remember the truth that your servant David shouted back against that horrible Goliath. That when all hope seemed to be lost, when all seemed to be forgotten and gone, God, you showed up in such a way that nobody ever saw it coming. And that's you God. I love it. Thank you Jesus for who you are in our lives. Let's remember to share in the victory of you, not for us to be able to say look what we did, but to remember and to point back to you and say, that's the God who I serve. It's the God who loves me. It's the God who saved me. It's the God who went to the cross and died for my sins so I could be saved in a way that there's nothing ever I could do myself. That's the gospel, and that's the God that we serve today. We love you, Jesus. We praise you, we thank you. Amen.

Impossible Moments - Part 1

Moses’ Miraculous Childhood - Exodus 1:15-2:10

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

How are we doing today? Are we doing well? I'm just going to answer out loud. You can give the thumbs up, you can go like this, not so good. Totally fine. I hope this weekend, so far is going well for you, that you were able to take some rest. I know some of us are on, as Pastor Chris mentioned, summer schedules, so maybe kids are home now, and that's a whole other energy that we need to provide as parents. Or maybe the older kids are back home, and it's really fun to hang out with them again from college or whatever. But as restful as summer, we think it is, sometimes it's just a lot more energy that is given. So if you're here and you're tired, that's okay. Totally fine, God wants you here too. I wanna mention something about Sabbath. Hopefully this weekend and today is a part of your Sabbath. And Rabbi Abraham Heschel wrote this. He says, "Six days a week, we wrestle with the world, "wringing profit from the earth. "On the Sabbath, we especially care, "we take care of the seed of our eternity "planted in the soul." So I love that phrase of taking care of the seed of eternity planted in our soul, taking special time on a weekend, on a Sabbath day, to mine for what's inside of us, what God has planted inside of us. And we hope as Spring Valley Church that Sundays, this time together as a church in the morning, is a part of your Sabbath. And I wanna take a moment right now to pray for all of us and to pray together.

So you guys bow your heads and close your eyes one more time. I want you to focus your heart and your mind on God and I wanna pray this prayer from LECTEO 365. So as we pray together it says, Lord show us what it means to care for the seeds of eternity in our souls. Help us to stop counting the minutes and to relinquish control. Inspire us to live and breathe with greater ease as an eternal being loved by you. God that's our prayer. That your spirit would guide and form us to be made more into the image of Christ. Help us this morning to listen with all that we have, that your word and your truth would grow deeper inside of us and that we'd have a deeper appreciation of understanding who you are and what you do in our lives. God, I pray that this Sabbath today would be restful and that we continue to rest in you and draw from your spirit. Be with us in this portion of our service. We pray this in your name, amen.

I have the joy of starting a new series this morning as we've been mentioning, Impossible Moments, where we're taking a break from our Roman series. We're going to continue that in the fall, so we only covered so many chapters in Romans. Don't worry, we're going to finish the book back in, or later in September. But this summer we're going to be looking into impossible moments in the Old Testament, looking at true historical biblical events where the situation or task was impossible through the human lens. In the eyes of the people in these accounts, there was seemingly no way forward, no means of success, no possibilities that would lead to their benefit. And yet, in God there was a way. Each scenario in this series tells of a story of a success or a victory that was only possible through the power of God. Throughout the Bible, God intervenes in lives and plans of people for their benefit, but ultimately, and more importantly, for God's glory. Sometimes it means defeating an enemy's army, other times it means bending the laws of physics, the way we understand them in the world, for the benefit of his people. And still other times it just means overcoming impossible odds to bring life and joy and righteousness into the world. Whatever the scenario, in each story, there is only one possible explanation, and that is God. Our goal in this series will be to learn and be reminded of what God has done and who He is, specifically in the Old Testament. In each impossible moment, there is something to be learned about who God is and how He operates in this world, and we wanna take a deeper look into the miraculous accounts but also learn what it reveals about God's character. We know that God is amazing, He is sovereign, all powerful, and He works in mysterious ways and in awesome ways. And so this series will showcase that mighty God that we worship and adore. By the way, as a heads up, this series does not follow any chronological order. So today we're in Exodus. Next week, we may be in the prophets. We may go back to Genesis. I'm gonna keep you on your toes. It's okay. Don't we know, by the way, I don't want you to know, like we don't know what we're doing. we do know what we're doing, we're just not going in chronological order. Yeah, relief.

We're gonna begin this series with a story that's been on my heart for a couple years, I'm so excited to finally get to preach on it, to talk with you about it, it's the story of Moses' birth, and how his life, from the very moment that he was born, was at risk. By human understanding, this situation and the circumstances should have meant that Moses would have died. It's by God's hand that Moses not only lives, but grows up in such unique circumstances that benefit him, his family, and all of God's people. So let's go ahead and read this story together and get into this impossible situation of Moses's miraculous childhood. If you wanna turn in your Bibles to Exodus 2, now we've been in Romans on one half of the book, we're going back to the beginning. Exodus 2, I'm gonna start in verse one. It says, "Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile." I'm gonna pause right there and just take this section at first. Moses is born under extreme circumstances. Mom here in this story is trying to keep baby Moses under wraps as long as possible. She knows that there is no possible long-term future for him to be alive, let alone a part of the family. And can we just pause here for a moment and put ourselves in this story and imagine the emotions here, the heartache, the feeling of loss and desperation of hurt and pain, anger. but what she does next seems to imply also that she has a bit of hope. In verse three, we see her in an act of desperation and hope, she tries to save her son. We'll come back to how that all works in a minute, but I first wanna ask and back up and kinda get some perspective.

Why is all this happening? Why is Moses' mother acting out of such desperation? Well, in order to find that out, we gotta go back a little bit in the book of Exodus to understand what makes this situation so impossible. And before we back up in the book, I just wanna give a brief history, just get us all on the same page, of how we got to this point here in scripture with Moses and everything. So, brief history lesson. The Hebrew people, the Israelites, had come to Egypt through Joseph, just a couple generations after Abraham. And Joseph was sold into slavery, and by God's hand came to be in second in command over all of Egypt. This is another impossible story that we might cover in this series, but Joseph is a man who's left to die in a pit by his own brothers and becomes the second most powerful leader in Egypt and really in the whole world. Joseph, after coming to that amazing seat of power, brings his whole family to Egypt and they dwell there, they put roots down and their family starts to grow. After Joseph dies, however, the relationship between the Hebrew people and the Egyptians becomes a bit strained. The new leader of Egypt, the new Pharaoh, has forgotten all of what Joseph did for the people of Egypt, and in the past, and the good that Israel brought to Egypt. And so this new Pharaoh is very fearful of what might be. There's no evidence of any threat that Israel poses to Egypt, but he just becomes paranoid. And he says, in his mind, he's thinking, If these Israelites who are growing and growing and growing, if for whatever reason, if they were to attack us, they could possibly defeat us because they're growing so rapidly, they might outnumber us soon. Did Israel do anything to threaten them? No. This Pharaoh is just becoming paranoid. They're multiplying, and so what does he do with this unfounded fear? Well, he oppresses the Israelites. He enslaves them. which I'm not totally sure, I've never been a dictator or world leader, but I don't know if the possibility of someone overthrowing me, if the right move would then be to oppress them. I feel like that would just ensure that they would become angry and an uprising would actually happen. So, Pharaoh, not sure what you're doing there, what you're thinking, but he enslaves the Israelites, and he and the conditions are just brutal, and the Israelites are crying out to God, crying out, "God, please save us. Do you see what's happening to us here? Please, please, save us from this. Pharaoh's efforts to slow down the growth of Israel backfire. In fact, Israel just grows even more. They are producing a lot of people, and now Pharaoh becomes even more fearful. And so I want to go back in Exodus, if you're in your Bibles, we're going to just go to the chapter before, chapter 1, and I want to read 15 through the end of chapter 1. It says, "The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, when you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him. But if it is a girl, let her live. The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do. They let the boys live. Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live? The midwives answered Pharaoh, Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women. They are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive. So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own. Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people. Every Hebrew boy that is born, you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”

There's a lot to unpack here as we gain some understanding of the context of Moses' birth. Pharaoh is making a serious, wicked effort to thwart Israel's entire existence. His plan is that any Hebrew newborn boy (that's a tongue twister, by the way, say that three times) Hebrew newborn boy must be killed and anyone can execute that order. But before that, Pharaoh had confronted two midwives about what is going on. He wants to execute his plan through these midwives. And I just want to say and point out that the fact that these midwives are named is very significant. It's an honor in the Hebrew, by the Hebrew authors that they are remembered for their brave acts against a ruthless dictator. Their courage and belief in God is meant to be noticed by just their names being in the text. In fact, this whole passage is an amazing story of women in the Bible trusting and believing in God and having courage in the midst of terror, standing up against evil and doing what is right. God is obviously the miracle worker and the hero, the ultimate hero of this story, but the women in this story are also heroes. So these midwives, they're possibly the head midwives over all the midwives, or maybe they're just the two midwives over Israel, but they disobey Pharaoh. And in verse 17, they make it clear to the reader, to us, that they were never going to kill any babies. They hold to this sanctity of life. And it's an amazing stand of faith with Yahweh, God, against Pharaoh, who, by the way, considers himself a god. So from the beginning of Exodus, we see that there is a face-off between a lowercase god, Pharaoh, and Yahweh, the true god. Yahweh crushes, as the story goes on and further you read in Exodus, Yahweh crushes this lowercase god, Pharaoh. We often think that this battle between Pharaoh and God starts later in the story, but it actually starts right here in chapter 1. The Egyptian culture is one of many gods, and the ultimate god in that culture was Pharaoh himself. But this Pharaoh is fearful of what he cannot control, the Israelites, which already tells us that he is a lesser god, a lesser being than Yahweh, who fears nothing. Nevertheless, Pharaoh, he doesn't know it yet, but he is going toe to toe with the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, the creator of the universe. And that's who the midwives fear. That's why they disobey Pharaoh's orders. In verse 18 of chapter 1, Pharaoh confronts them again because his instructions didn't seem to work. He told them one thing, they didn't do it, and so he calls them back, he's like, "Hey, what's going on? I told you to do this, and what's happening?" And in verse 19, they lie to Pharaoh. And I love this line that they tell Pharaoh that the Hebrew and the Israelite women are just built different. They're like, "Hey, sorry, Pharaoh, "like they're really strong "and they do it before we get there." Which I just appreciate that comment. It's just funny, it makes me chuckle in this story. Maybe it's true, maybe that really is true of the Israelite women, but I think more than that, they're just lying to Pharaoh for the sake of keeping life. They know who they really serve and who is really to be feared, and they know that Yahweh's purposes and power are not to be messed with. In verses 20 through 21 of chapter one, we see that God blesses the midwives.

In the ancient world, it was customary, it was a possible option for barren women to become midwives, and now God has blessed them with families of their own. It's another smaller example within this larger story of God addressing something that was impossible by human means and made it possible. These women who couldn't have families are then blessed with families and the only explanation is God. And in verse 22, it explains that Pharaoh continues this dangerous downward spiral of acting out of fear and the desire to be in total control, exercising his evil power. He doubles down and instead of just having the midwives carry out the orders, he puts it out there for anyone. Says every Hebrew baby boy must be thrown into the Nile and every girl should live. Pharaoh's plan here is multifaceted. Not only is he trying to weaken Israel by getting rid of their males, who in the future could be soldiers against Egypt, in his mind, they could be enemies, but he's also keeping the females in order that he can integrate them into Egyptian culture, so that they could marry Egyptian men and then give birth to more Egyptians. and Egypt would grow as Israel would lessen.

This is a god v. God moment here. Pharaoh thinking himself as a God, picking a fight with Yahweh. And this is the moment where it begins. And while we know who wins in the end after the plagues and after the Red Sea, this is still a very dark moment for Israel. This is the context for which Moses is born into. So let's jump back into our story now, and see the miraculous way in which Moses lives. If you want to jump ahead with me now to chapter 2 verse 3, we'll pick up again. It says, "When she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. And then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. Then Pharaoh's daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying. She felt sorry for him. "This is one of the Hebrew babies," she said. Then his sister asked Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women "to nurse the baby for you?" "Yes, go," she answered. So the girl went and got the baby's mother. Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you." So the woman took the baby and nursed him. When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses saying, "I drew him out of the water.”

This is truly an amazing story that has God's fingerprints all over it. And even in the Hebrew text, if we were to read this in the Hebrew, it indicates to us that God begins to intervene in this situation. And so I just wanna take some time to go verse by verse, looking at the story through the lens of how a Hebrew would hear this story and see God's hand at work. Starting in verse three, where Moses is in a basket. Moses' mother, not named here, but we find out later her name is Jacobed, the J makes it sound like Jacobed, so I'm just gonna say Jacobed is Moses' mother. And she has made a basket out of reeds and made it so that she can put the baby in and protect the baby. Now, the Hebrew word for basket, little Hebrew lesson here, very important, the Hebrew word here for basket has only appeared one time in the Old Testament so far up until this point. And Hebrew authors are very intentional with their words. They love to paint images and they want you to, if you hear a word, they want you to draw the visual image in your mind. And so they're very intentional with it and this is very purposeful. And all who would have heard this would have thought of the previous use of this word. The word for basket here is the same word that God uses when telling Noah to build the ark. It's the word, it's ark. And as a Hebrew, imagine then what this tells us of the story of Moses because of what we know of Noah. A righteous man surrounded by the evil of the world, the wickedness and sin set apart for God's purpose and saved by God for his purposes. So like the ark with Noah, it was a little temple, right? Everything that God had created, some plants and animals was put on that ark, a little temple, in order that there could be a restart in a sense, a restoration of what was meant to be, a redeeming of God's creation. And now we have Moses in the midst of Pharaoh's wicked and evil scheme in a little boat, in a little ark, kept alive by God to restore and to restart, to redeem God's people. And so for the Hebrew, and for us now, God has entered this story. Now God is a character in this story, and we're ready to see God intervene and be at work in the midst of Moses' circumstances.

This was a mood setter or tone setter for the Hebrew people. Now having the miraculous situation referenced about Noah, they are anticipating that God will do something. It's kind of like in movies, when you watch maybe in a very intense movie and the good music starts playing. And even if the scene is very intense, there's good, you're like, okay, but I know this is good because the music is good. So it's gonna be good, it's gonna be okay. It's bad, even if, you know, when the bad music plays, you're just anticipating. The good music, always a relief. This is the good music in this scene. God is present. In chapters three and four, Moses is then set among the reeds in the Nile. And historians believe that this situation is equivalent to modern times when a baby is left at a hospital or a church. They want the baby to live. They're giving it the best chance they can, but it's the last resort. Jacob was giving Moses the best chance, away from the deep waters, away from dangers, the wild animals. but still this is not ideal. And while this is happening, his sister Miriam is watching over him, seeing what will happen. And then in verse five, Pharaoh's daughter comes into the picture, going down to the river and sees the basket and asks her servant to get it and retrieve it for her. And she opens the basket, this little ark, this little boat, and sees the baby and has pity. She knew it was one of the Hebrew babies. And what I want us to focus on is she knows the circumstances that are present. I imagine she put together quite quickly why she found a Hebrew baby boy in the river, knowing the decree that her father had given throughout the land. And yet her next actions are also what make her one of the heroes of this story. She doesn't execute her father's command. She doesn't kill the baby. She doesn't listen to her father's orders and throw him into the Nile, but instead she's remembered for drawing Moses out of the Nile.

It's another moment in our story where a woman chooses to disobey Pharaoh to save a life. Another example of God at work at his providence being on display. And just a small moment here, but I love that the story says that the baby cries. Usually babies cry, and I'm sure when Moses' mother had him for the first while that the baby was crying too, but imagine those circumstances and the fear that Moses' mother had every time the baby cried, knowing that that could give away what she had with her, and knowing that at any moment an Egyptian could come in and carry out Pharaoh's orders to kill that baby boy. And now, for the first time maybe, Moses is crying and it's okay. It's okay that the baby cries. There's no threat over him right now in the arms of Pharaoh's daughter. In fact, maybe that crying endears Moses to Pharaoh's daughter helps her have pity on him. What happens next is also no small miracle, but an incredible redeeming moment. And remember, we're clued in as readers to what God is gonna be doing in this story, anticipating when he will do his miraculous work, and it's starting and here's another big moment, verse seven. Moses' sister Miriam then approaches Pharaoh's daughter. She's been watching the basket, she sees all this happening and she says, she's seeing that this Egyptian princess, Pharaoh's daughter, has not killed the baby and says, "Shall I go get one of the Hebrew women "to nurse that baby for you?" I love, I mean that's courageous and brilliant by Miriam to say, "Hey, I see what's going on "and I'm sure that was God working in her "to even say those words." And Pharaoh's daughter says, "Yes, and praise God "she says that." And so Miriam goes and gets Jacob and brings the boy's own mother. And now we are right now in the Hebrews who are listening to the story are just breathing sighs of relief and maybe the emotion is washing over us and it starts to hit us just how amazing this story is, how impossible this situation was and how God orchestrated it to be better than Moses' own mother or anyone in the story could have ever predicted this outcome to be. Pharaoh's daughter says to Jacob, take this baby, nurse him for me, and I will pay you. So Jacob gets to raise her own son in safety and is paid to do so. I mean, the irony here is amazing. This is great. And this situation has completely flipped from one of fear and heading towards death and sadness to joy and relief and blessing. An important note about Jacob getting to raise Moses is that now he gets to hear about Yahweh as he is being brought up, which is instrumental for God's plans later in his life. So that later when God approaches Moses through the fiery bush, He has some frame of reference for who is talking to Him. It's not one of the many deities in the Egyptian culture.

This is the Israel, this is the God of Israel. This is Yahweh reaching out. And then in verse 10, the text tells us that Moses, when Moses was older Pharaoh's daughter took over the mothering duties and named him Moses, which means again to draw out of the waters. An amazing story, I just wanna recap for us this impossible moment in the Bible, and how one of the most influential leaders and priests in Israel's history almost never made it past infancy. The story is about how under the orders of infanticide, Moses survives through miraculous events, being in a little ark, his life is saved, he is rescued and is raised by his own loving mother, who had also just said her last goodbye to him. Moses was also raised under Israelite tradition for a while, even after being rescued by the daughter of Pharaoh, God continues to work by then orchestrating events that Moses' own mother would be able to raise him and teach him about the Hebrew culture. An impossible thought at one point in the story, now made possible. And then Moses being raised as an Egyptian royalty in the future, right underneath the nose with the very man who wanted him and every boy dead. God is bringing about an instrument of his redeeming plan that would be the downfall of Pharaoh and an unthinkable reality in anyone's mind becomes Moses' very life. This truly is a story of God making the impossible possible. And a couple of points I want you to take with you today. Number one is that God was inverting every human effort against him and his people to actually benefit his cause, his purpose, and his people. From that order of infanticide that was meant to wipe out Israel's future, God made it so that Israel actually prospered and grew in number.

He can do the same in your life. And maybe without you knowing in the moment, in life's most difficult circumstances, maybe he is inverting things and you don't know it yet, but he will bring you to blessing. I have no doubt in mind that we will all get to heaven one day and we're gonna have conversations with God and God will tell us about our life and we're gonna have these conversations that he's gonna reveal to us, hey, you remember that time that you were in this circumstance and it was really hard and then you got through it? Yeah, by the way, that was me. I was doing all these things behind the scenes that you weren't aware of. And so it led you to this. Or there's gonna be times where maybe we are tuned in, I'm like, "Hey, I think God was at work here and he's gonna confirm." Yes, that was me. I did this and all this that you weren't aware of to bring you to this place where you were even better than before. So God can invert every human effort against him and his people to actually benefit his cause, his purpose and his people. Secondly, God blesses those who live not out of fear of men, but with the fear of God. Think of the midwives, the pharaoh's daughter in this story. Think of Miriam, amazing women who acted with such courage, some of them faith, to disobey the orders of a tyrant, the man who thought himself God. God blesses those who live with the fear of God, not man. God blesses them. Sometimes the blessing is a reward that we get to experience immediately, like those midwives, God blessed them with families. So God blesses those who fear Him.

Thirdly, know that God is a part of your story and you can eagerly await for Him to move in your life. As we look back at this story of Moses, we can see the various ways that God was working, that God was orchestrating things and how God was present throughout all of it. Even though the Bible, the text doesn't say that God did this, God did that, we know that that was God moving and working in the story. You can be assured that God is working in your life, that God is present, that he is in control, he is a part of your story. In fact, probably the better way to say it is that really you are a part of his story. And he has a significant role for you to play. He has plans for you. He wants to use you for his kingdom. But you can await that God will be present and moving in your life. And then lastly, know that God is aware of your circumstances and more than capable of overcoming them. If you are right now in the midst of a difficult circumstance, a challenging time, know that God is aware. God knows. He still wants you to communicate with him, he still wants you to express what you're feeling, but he knows what you're going through. And he is more than capable of helping you overcome it, get through it. It may mean a total change in circumstances, miraculously. It may mean that you continue through the hardship, but you can do so with God's power and strength inside of you, getting through those times. If this sounds familiar, it's because this is what we've been covering in our Roman series too, right? The words of Paul remind us of the same truth that God is sovereign over all, the power of the gospel to transform lives in the midst of life's most challenging moments is real. God is aware and hears your cries and he's capable of helping you overcome whatever is in the way of his purpose of making you more like Jesus. We serve a mighty and powerful God. So I just wanna ask, do you believe that today? Do you believe that God is capable, can handle anything, that He has a plan and a purpose for you? Do you believe that even though you may not see a way forward, that you can't see how you're gonna get through the next moment, the next couple days, the next couple weeks, that God sees a way, that God knows that there's a way that you are gonna get through each and every moment? Then when you feel like there is no hope that you're on the brink of living out of fear constantly, do you know that God is able, that God is at work? I hope that as you dwell maybe this week on this story of Moses, that you are reminded that God is at work in your life, that He cares about you and that He loves you. Be encouraged, believe that today, believe in a God that can handle anything and make your impossible moments a possible future where he is blessing you, looking after you, and loving you.

Let's pray. God, thank you for this account of just amazing providence that you work in the life of Moses. And we see through multiple people in this story, even before Moses, how you are present in hard times, in impossible moments. I pray that we today would be reminded of that, that we would be encouraged, that we'd be empowered, that our souls would be uplifted, knowing that you are in complete control, that you are a part of our story. You know every single thing that is going on, every emotion that we are feeling. And God, I pray that we would rely on you, that we would trust you. to put our faith in you. That's an ongoing decision. I pray that in every moment that we would continue to believe, continue to have faith. So I pray that as we leave this morning, as we sing this last song, as we leave and go about our week that we would rest in you, that we would have faith in you, we would stand on your promises, God. We give you all the glory, amen. - Thanks for listening. And if you would, please take a moment to subscribe and leave an encouraging review to help others find our podcasts on whatever platform you are listening on. We hope you have a wonderful day. We'll catch you next week.

Romans - Part 13

God’s Present and Future Work In Us - Romans 8:18-30

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Last week Pastor Chris had a wonderful message from the beginning of this chapter and he He spoke about our life in the Spirit and how we have a new identity, we have a new name and a new family. And it was a beautiful reminder of how transformative and powerful the gospel is. And the work that is done within us and for us by the Spirit of God. And this week, Paul is offering some perspective. If this entire series is like swimming in the ocean, today we come up for air a little bit and it's an encouraging time. It's gonna be a joyful passage about what's happening. And so Paul, we come up for air and he's gonna make sure that we're all on the same page, we know where we're going, and we know that we're all together, which is good. We left off last week talking about being co-heirs with Christ, and Paul said that we indeed share in Christ's suffering in order that we may also share in his glory. And now Paul turns his full attention to the future of the church. Knowing the tumultuous situation of the believers in Rome, He gives them an encouraging and yet measured response to what being a believer means now and what it means in the future.

So if you have your Bibles, turn with me to Romans 8, or you can follow along on the screen as I read our passage this morning, starting in verse 18. Paul says, "I consider that our present sufferings "are not worth comparing with the glory "that will be revealed in us. "For the creation waits an eager expectation "for the children of God to be revealed. "For the creation was subjected to frustration, "not by its own choice, "but by the will of the one who subjected it, "in hope that the creation itself will be liberated "from its bondage to decay, "and brought into the freedom and glory "of the children of God. "We know that the whole creation has been groaning, "as in the pains of childbirth, "right up to the present time. "Not only so, but we ourselves, "who are the first fruits of the Spirit, "grown inwardly as we wait eagerly "for our adoption to sonship. "the redemption of our bodies. "For in this hope we were saved, "but hope that is seen is no hope at all. "Who hopes for what they already have? "But if we hope for what we do not yet have, "we wait for it patiently. "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. "We do not know what we ought to pray for, "but the Spirit himself intercedes for us "through wordless groans. "And he who searches our hearts "knows the mind of the Spirit, "because the Spirit intercedes for God's people "in accordance with the will of God. "And we know that in all things, "God works for the good of those who love him, "who have been called according to his purpose. "For those God foreknew, "he also predestined to be conformed "to the image of his son, "that he might be the firstborn "among many brothers and sisters. "And those he predestined, he also called. "Those he called, he also justified. "Those he justified, he also glorified." Pray with me once more. God, we come before you eager to understand more of you. And as we come to your scripture this morning, we pray that you would reveal the truth to us in our hearts. Draw us closer to you, God. We seek understanding. We seek to be made more into your image. We're excited for what you're doing in this church through this series. And I pray that you continue the work that you started. We pray this in your name. Amen.

Paul addresses this tension that can exist between our present suffering and the hope of future glory, explaining why the redemption of the children of God and creation itself is only partially fulfilled right now. He even says that the world itself, the earth that we see around us, is affected by sin too, and it too will one day be redeemed. As Paul is connecting the reader to Christ, he wants to make sure that the Romans are not misunderstanding what they are inheriting and when they will inherit it. We know from scripture how difficult and challenging Christ's life was, ultimately leading to his death on the cross. Now, presently, Christ is glorified and sitting on the right hand of God in victory over sin and death. And Paul is making sure that the believers don't think that that's their inheritance immediately. That's not what they inherit here on earth fully. That is indeed in their future, but the present still looks different. Suffering and glory, they have a unique bond and connection. Our current understanding of glory that we will one day experience is often deepened when contrasted to the hardship of this world. While heaven will be a full experience of God's glory for everyone, our understanding of it right now is heightened when we have undergone pain and suffering. It's kind of like the situations that maybe you can relate to where you have something that you use every day, something common to you, and when you're without it, you don't realize how much you needed it and your appreciation grows. And when you get it back, you just are so thankful for that thing. So for, as an example, years ago, my wife and I were down to one car. I had gotten-- we had to get rid of one of our cars. And so I was working Granite Bay at the time, and I started riding my bike from Rocklin to Granite Bay every morning and afternoon. And at first, very excited, because I was like, what a better way to get in shape. And then by day two, I was like, this is no fun. This is no fun at all. This is very long, and I am sweating heavily at work, and it's no good. So I just didn't realize-- at first, I was like, yeah, no car, no worries. And then I was like, we need a new car. So a couple of months later, a couple of months went by, and then we're finally able to get a new vehicle. And I was very, very appreciative for that, yeah, for that reality. Now that example doesn't come close to what Paul is talking about because I was not suffering. I was just merely inconvenienced. And having a car isn't any sort of glory. But you get the idea that when contrasted to the pain and suffering, heaven seems even greater. Every hardship we face when held up to the future glory of being with God makes that picture of heaven even sweeter.

So Paul's first point in our passage this morning is that this present reality means struggle. This life in this world is full of hardship. We see this throughout these verses. 18, Paul says, consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed. Verse 21, creation itself will be liberated from its bondage. And 22 and 23 say, "We know that the whole creation has been groaning, "as in the pains of childbirth, "right up to the present time. "Not only so, but we ourselves groan inwardly "as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, "the redemption of our bodies." Paul is making it clear that suffering is a reality and it's to be expected. From the world around us that is also marked by the fall, we see this in evidence of like earthquakes and tsunamis and forest fires and other natural disasters, this world was affected by the fall, to our own physical bodies, the emotional and physical and mental hurdles that we face in life, be it anxiety or cancer, depression, back pain, migraines, abuse, and everything else that comes from being in this fallen world, suffering is a present reality. Life is a struggle. Now, what do we do on this earth? In the midst of the suffering, in the waiting, in the misery, what do we do? Well, Paul tells us three things that believers can do. And the first is, well, I'll tell you all three upfront. We can hope, we can wait, and we can pray. First is that we can hope. We hope because of what Jesus did. After his death on the cross, he ascended into heaven. He went to be with God. And because God has promised us to be co-heirs, as Pastor Chris preached last week, we look forward to that reality for us. We hope in the person of Christ and what he's accomplished. And we hope in his present reality, he being next to God in heaven. We want that for us and we can hope because we know that that will become our reality as well. Second is we wait. In our suffering, we can't assume that God will just end all hardships because we have faith in him. We must endure. We must persevere. We must wait. And waiting is really hard. I don't think anyone likes waiting. Some of us are better at it than others. Doesn't mean we like it. Waiting is really hard. Waiting means sacrificing our own desires and submitting to God's plan. It means embracing the struggle for a time.

Right now, we're trying to teach our daughter how to wait. and it's going, I don't know if it's going well, but we're trying. And so sometimes, the waiting, she doesn't have to wait very long, you know, for unwrapping a treat for her in that moment, but she still has these like gimme hands, where like, hey, yes, I can give this to you. She's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, right now, I want it right now. Like, just hold on, I gotta get it open. And other times, we'll tell her to wait, like, hey, after dinner, you can have that thing, and then she doesn't wanna wait patiently. She understands that she won't get it, but she's not patient about it. And I think we can be the same. We're praying to God, we're talking to God. God, I know that I think you're gonna get me through this, but I don't wanna wait for it. I don't wanna be patient about it. I'll wait, but I don't like this right now. Waiting and patience is hard. And Paul says that we can wait and we do so patiently because we have a certain peace and trust in who we're waiting in, and that's God. God is looking out for us and He loves us, and we know that we can trust Him, And we can be at peace because he gives us peace and we know his character. We know that he will eventually work all things out for our good, but it can be hard, but we just need to rely on him in those moments to wait and to wait patiently. The third thing is that we can pray. In the midst of sin and suffering, of pain and problems, in the middle of all the misery and muck of life, we pray. Sometimes we understand the challenges that we're in and the hardships that we face. We understand how our sin may have brought about issues or just understand the chaos of the world and we know exactly what to pray. So we may pray, we know, God, please help me with my recovery. God, please heal that person of cancer. God, please be with the victims of the wildfires. God, please heal me, give me patience. Sometimes those words are right there and we know exactly what to pray. Other times, we don't understand the challenges that we're facing, the hardships that we're in, or why it's happening at this time, and we don't know what to pray. We're not always, or whenever, we're not omniscient like God. We don't know all the reasons why things are happening. We don't have that infinite perspective that God does. And so sometimes we just don't have words to pray. And that is okay. Because that's when the Holy Spirit acts as our priest and stands before God on our behalf and prays the words that we can't seem to find, that we don't know that we even needed to pray.

Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit prays for us while we are suffering. Verse 26 says, "The Spirit himself intercedes for us "through wordless groans, because the Spirit intercedes "for God's people in accordance with the will of God." In our recent community group, we went through the spiritual practice of prayer, and we learned the difference between prayers of petition and prayers of intercession. Prayers of petition are when we pray for something going on in our own lives, and we petition before God to help us with it, or to change something about our current circumstances. We are petitioning for ourselves. Prayers of intercession are when someone else prays for us, or when we pray that God will what intercede in someone else's life, or when the Holy Spirit prays for us. John Mark Comer says this, he says, "We come as sons and daughters, "not as beggars off the street, "but as princes and princesses "who have been adopted into the family "through Christ our brother. "We come in the name and authority of King Jesus "with access to the full resources of his kingdom." That last phrase right there, "The full resources of his kingdom," I mean, that just struck me when I heard that and read that. That's amazing. God isn't withholding anything from us. If it is His will, He will go the full extent to make it a reality. At our lowest point, Jesus knows what we need. And through Jesus, we have the most intimate connection with God. And we have the full resources of His kingdom available to us in our lives. Theologian Walter Wink says, Intercessory prayer is a spiritual defiance of what is in the way of what God has promised. Intercession visualizes an alternative future to the one apparently faded by the momentum of current forces. Prayer infuses the air of a time yet to be into the suffocating atmosphere of the present. In the midst of our deepest struggle, the Spirit is praying this on our our behalf, praying that God the Father would intercede in our lives. The Spirit is visualizing an alternate future to the one that we are currently in, praying that God would make that a reality. That alternative future may not mean a change in circumstances, I wanna be clear on that. It's not necessarily, it may, it may mean that God changes our circumstances, it may not, but what the Spirit is visualizing is us being made more into the image of Christ. Through whatever we are going through, God wants us to be formed more like Jesus. We'll come back to that in a bit. But the other part of the Spirit praying on our behalf is that He does so in wordless groans. J.D. Greer says, "In that groan, that groan from the Holy Spirit, we see not only emotion, we see wisdom." Paul says the Spirit prays for us according to the will of God, and that groan is something that you and I don't even know how to articulate. It's what God wants from this situation. He's praying God's will into our lives. Guys, do you realize this? In your moments of suffering, in your hardest, most challenging times that you've ever gone through, that the Spirit was interceding on your behalf, He was praying to God for you. He is in your corner, fighting and advocating for you. How incredible is that? I don't know if you've ever been in a time where you didn't know what to say. There's times, most of the time, it's when prepping for preaching, when it is late into the week and I do not have a sermon yet and I will sometimes be on the floor, just laying there being like, "God, I don't know what to preach." Like just groans. I'm not even really saying words, but I'm sure that God understands what I'm feeling in that moment. Maybe you have been somewhere, a similar position, where you didn't even have words, but you are directing your groans towards God for him to understand your emotion and where you're at. And in that moment, you don't have words, but the Holy Spirit has words that he is praying to God for you. The God of the universe is behind you, is for you, is praying for you, praying for needs that you are not even aware of. This is truly how the Spirit sustains us every day. So in the present, suffering and all, we wait, we hope, and we pray. And when we can't pray, the Spirit will pray on our behalf. Now the other part of this passage is about the future. And Paul says that the future means hope.

For the believer, the future is bright. The glory of God is ahead of us, at its fullest. And it's something to be excited about. It's something to anticipate and to desire. Paul writes, "I consider that our present sufferings "are not worth comparing with the glory "that will be revealed in us." Now to be clear, Paul is not minimizing our pain. but magnifying future glory. He's not trying to say that whatever you're going through right now is so small. Right now, whatever pain or struggle or suffering that you are going through, it is a lot. It's probably more than you can handle alone. You need Jesus through whatever you are going through. What Paul is saying is that he's trying to point to how great and infinite that future glory is. It is eternal, the magnitude of God's glory, of being made like Christ is so great that in that future, when we look back, the pain and suffering will appear small. It's a matter of perspective. As Paul brings the reader to think about glory, he mentions freedom in verse 21, the redemption of the body in verse 23, and the most important, sonship, being heirs with Christ in verses 19 and 23 and 29. Again, making sure that we connect our reality with what Christ endured. Paul is saying that we as believers should not be surprised that this life entails suffering. And while he's already covered some of this in chapter five, right now, Paul is trying to convey the sequence that we as believers follow.

For Jesus, glory only followed suffering. and it's for the Christians as well. That future glory only comes after we endure our time on earth. The future glory that we will experience comes after our time on this earth that is marred with sin and pain and suffering. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:50, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. And here in Romans 8, Paul is talking about our mortal body being transformed and our bodies being redeemed. Theologian Douglas Mu writes, "It is the transformation of the body "that brings to fruition our sonship. "Only then will our sonship be revealed, "and will we be fully conformed to the image of God's Son." The life and future glory that is to come is not a distant dream, but it's partially present now. And the future will be complete, but some of it we can experience now. How? Well, Christians have some evidence of future glory in our lives already. It's the first fruits. And that first fruit is the Spirit, the Holy Spirit that dwells within us. Theologian F.F. Bruce writes, "The indwelling of the Spirit here and now is the first fruits." In other words, the first installment or initial down payment of the eternal heritage of glory that awaits believers. I think sometimes we forget or severely underestimate the weight and power of the gift of the Holy Spirit within us. The fact that the Spirit dwells within us is evidence of what is to come, the future glory that God has in store for us. You can hope and anticipate and get excited about the future now because the Holy Spirit is in you now. The work that the Holy Spirit is doing is to make you more like Jesus. That will be perfected in heaven, but it is occurring right now. Right now as you sit here, the Holy Spirit is at work inside of you. That is the goal. That in the midst of all the suffering and pain that we endure, God's goal is not necessarily to alleviate you of that pain, but his ultimate goal is that through whatever comes your way, you would be made into the image of Christ. On another note, did you know that the future is bright for earth as well? This earth, like I said, is also marred by the fall. I was having a conversation with some of you last week about how some of the things on earth are clear evidence of the fall. Things like black widows, mosquitoes, cockroaches. I do not see any redeeming qualities of any of those. If there are, I'm sure we'll find out in heaven, but I think they're all evil, and I think that we will not see them in the new heavens and new earth. No biblical evidence, just my personal belief, you don't have to believe that. Evidence of the fallen world. On a more serious note, things like earthquakes and tsunamis, famine, drought, evidence of this world being fallen, the earth groans for wholeness too. Not just we as believers, but the earth itself wants to be made whole.

Throughout our passage, Paul explains how the earth is groaning in anticipation for deliverance to the glory to be revealed. So not only will our individual lives experience the glory of God, not only will the church as a whole experience the glory of God, but this entire world will experience the fullness of God's glory in the future. Our Christian faith enables us to hope and wait for the culmination of God's plan of redemption. Dr. Gary Brashear says, "This whole passage focuses "on a work in progress, the cosmic redemption "he is working in and through the church." God's plan is a big one, and it's amazing because every part of it, he cares about to the fullest extent. He cares about what he's doing in our lives, he cares about what he's doing in the church, and he cares about what he's doing on the biggest, grandest level of this entire universe. Now that glorious reality that is in the future of being in heaven with God does not just happen randomly. It happens with purpose and with our sovereign Lord making it come to be. Paul reminds us of this when he writes in verse 28, and we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him and who have been called according to his purpose. That theologian Mu writes again, it is important to insist that all things do not tend toward good in and of themselves, as if Paul held to a naively optimistic interpretation of history, rather it is the sovereign guidance of God that is presumed as the undergirding and directing force behind all the events of life. Good things don't just randomly happen in this world. The world just doesn't hope that good things happen to us or make good things, that is all God working behind the scenes. And we know this to be true through his word, through scripture, through our own experience, through other people's testimony. We know the character of God and we know Him to be good. And we know that God is working all things for His kingdom, for His purposes. Because it is God who is doing it, we automatically know that those things are good things. Paul describes a present struggle and a future glory. And then he describes in further detail the work that God is doing. And He does this to give us reassurance. Because He knows that the struggle is real, it's hard to have perspective when in the midst of pain and suffering. He talks so much about pain and suffering because often he's writing in a place of pain and suffering. He's writing from prisons, he's writing from affliction, and he knows that we too will face a similar reality. Paul's third point, God's work in us.

The end of verse 28 reveals who this all pertains to, who have been called according to his purposes. Verse 29, "For those God foreknew, "He also predestined to be conformed "to the image of His Son." Now, let me say this. Paul is not trying to start a theological debate when writing these words. He's not sitting there thinking, "Man, this is really gonna trip up the church "for the next couple thousand years. "Let me just write this and drop the pen." No. (laughs) Paul, in the context of this chapter, and this is what I wanna stress, in the present reality of suffering, Paul is trying to offer assurance. He is trying to assure the people that what God started, the work inside of us, making us into the image of Christ, He is going to finish. This idea of God foreknowing is to emphasize that what is happening is not surprising to God. God knew everything that would happen to you, the good and the bad, the struggles, the hardships, the impossible moments that you would face in life are not surprising to him. He began a work inside of you, and knowing all of that, he's still gonna finish that work. It says in verse 30, and those he predestined, he also called, those he called, he also justified, those he justified, he also glorified. Paul wants the church in Rome and the Christian today to understand that when you feel Like all hope is lost. When you are barely hanging on, when you are at the end of yourself, you feel empty. For those who believe, for those who believe in the gospel, you can know that God is not done working in you. God is not finished with you. You can be assured that this work, the calling, the justification, the glorification that believers will experience all that he does in someone, he will do in you. Jesus called you and he is gonna see you through all the way to glorification in heaven. He started to work and he's gonna finish it. He started before you were born. He knew what he was gonna do in and through you before the world began. And he wanted to make you into the image of Jesus. It is easy to get caught up in the theological debate, and we can have that another time outside of this sermon. But I wanna stress this morning, in the full context of this passage, why Paul wrote these verses. It's in light of all the suffering. And maybe for the believer at the time, the future is just too distant. It is too difficult to wrap your head around. Paul is saying, then rest assured in what you know of God, and who He is, and what He does. Notice who is doing all the actions in this passage. God called according to his purpose, God for a new and he predestined. He is conforming us into the image of his son. He justifies us. He will also glorify us in heaven. Look at all that God is doing. Look at the work that he is working in you. This is what God will continue to do and promises to do using all that happens, the good, the bad that you experience in life, He will use all of it to make you into the image of Christ. That is his work and that is his promise. That's why you can have hope. That through the most painful situations that you experienced, you can know that God is not finished with you.

So my question this morning as we end our time is where is your hope? Are you hoping in anything from this world, a person, relationship, that just the randomness of this world to help you out in life? Or are you hoping in Christ? Are you hoping in the future of being with God? Hoping in the work that He is doing? Or is your hope founded in the gospel? Do you hope because you believe that Jesus lived the perfect life, became the perfect sacrifice, taking all of our sins, taking the death that we deserved, and defeating death and rising again to be with God? Do you have hope that you are heirs with Christ? You share in that sonship. You are a prince and princess in God's kingdom. Now again, this may or may not end your current suffering, but it doesn't mean that we can't pray for that. We can certainly pray for healing. We can certainly pray for whatever hardship to end. By all means, bring your desires before God, but also pray in the midst of all that that you would be made more into Jesus, into the likeness of Him. Have hope, church, have hope. Be encouraged that Jesus is at work and He won't stop working in you. Amen?

Let's pray. God, again, thank you for your word. Thank you for who you are. And thank you for the hope that you give us. I pray that we would all be encouraged have hope this morning in you, in the fact that you have started a work, you have called us, and you know that you will see us through to the very end. And so we are with you in heaven, you will never leave us. Thank you for the work that your spirit is doing in our hearts to transform us, to make us more into the image of Jesus. That is our prayer, that is our desire. I pray that you would make that a focal point for all of us, that as we go throughout our day, as we go through life, despite whatever hardships we face, we would keep our eyes on you and that our deepest desire would be to be made more like Jesus. God be with us, give us hope, encourage us, and I pray that you would use us for your kingdom. We pray this in your name, Amen.