Exodus: You Can Trust Me

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Jesus, it is you that we adore.

It's you we come to sing not only about, but too.

It's you that we come to meet with today because we need you more than we even realize or sometimes care to admit.

And once again, we ask that you would show up here and show yourself strong and do the work you want to do in us and through us, that you would heal, you would provide, you would bring peace.

And now as we turn our attention to hear from you, give us ears to hear and help us by your grace to just receive what you have for us, to admit where we fall short, and to invite your spirit to work in us to change us, to be more like you.

So do that now, we pray for your glory.

God in Jesus' name we all together pray.

Amen.

Amen.

Thanks so much for being here this morning.

I'm Rick, I'm one of the pastors, and we are in a series in the book of Exodus that we're wrapping up here as we head into Thanksgiving.

And um we'll be in Exodus 34 if you want to turn there, and we'll get there in a minute.

But I was thinking, you know, we've been talking a lot about um, you know, this encounter God had with his people around the Ten Commandments and them creating idols and God getting mad and all these sorts of things.

And I thought this kind of section kind of comes to a uh a culmination here in chapter 34.

So I thought today would be a good opportunity to kind of do a kind of what's God really trying to do with all this kind of talk this morning.

Um, and the way I think about it, I was reminded of a friend of mine, and many of us can relate to this when we had little kids, or if we have little kids, when his daughter, a couple years ago, she was two years old, and he's trying to help her get in the car to get going.

And being a two-year-old, she'd already gotten past the mind stage to saying, no, by myself.

She wanted to get in the car and get herself hooked up in her car seat by herself.

But she just wasn't big enough or strong enough.

And her dad's like, Sophie, this isn't gonna work.

Let me help you.

She goes, No, by myself.

And she he goes, Okay.

And then he'd go to help because she'd slip.

No, by myself.

And that just went on and on and on, and finally he just went, All right.

And eventually she got herself up there a little bit, and and she's kind of holding on here and holding on here and dangling, and she looks and goes, Help.

I think we all have a little bit of that in us, don't we?

We have this by myself.

I could do this by myself thing that kind of happens in any in all of us.

It's not just a two-year-old problem.

Many of us wrestle with this deep-seated desire to make our lives work on our own, on our own terms.

And can I say that that actually goes right back to the fall?

That's what happened in the garden with Adam and Eve.

The temptation was you can eat of that tree.

God just doesn't want you to be like him.

You could be like God.

You don't even need God to be like God.

You could do this by yourself.

That's what the original temptation was.

And we've been buying into it ever since, by myself.

And guys are famous for this.

I'm really good at this.

I think I'm a professional, I got it.

I'm gonna do this by myself kind of a person, right?

Especially when it comes to directions.

I've lost count of the how many times I've lost directions just on principle.

Lost, got lost on principle because I'm not asking for directions, and that's Siri, she doesn't know what she's talking about.

And you know, right?

Any guys ever there?

Can you admit that?

Yeah.

And women, we can women can be the same way, and it's usually not about directions, it's usually about kind of living up or keeping up with the Pinterest standard, right?

That's kind of the thing I've noticed today.

That I I gotta be this perfect wife and mother and neighbor, and and I gotta be like Joanna Gaines, and I gotta be like all these things, and my house needs to look like this.

I actually found a website called Pinterest Fails, or two, I think they're kind of appropriate for the season, where they get the picture of how it was done pristinely and perfectly, and somebody tried to pull it off on their own, and it didn't go so well.

So here's one.

Um, kind of the white chocolate strawberries.

Yeah.

Halloween strawberries didn't go so well.

And then this one, yeah.

And of course, we know on the right, that's really the reality, isn't it?

Right?

No kid wants to sit in a pumpkin and be happy about it.

Right?

So, but we all kind of do that at one level or another.

We have this by myself thing going on, which reveals in us the sin that we all gravitate toward, which is the sin of self-sufficiency.

And I say sin because simply simply mean sin simply means missing the mark, not hitting the bullseye.

And the bullseye for all of us was we were created to be dependent upon God, to do life with God.

And anytime we try and do life without God and just do it ourselves, we've missed the mark.

And every time we miss the mark, life doesn't go the way we want it to go.

And this attitude that we, this by myself thing, manifests itself in a number of different ways in us.

You know, we we kind of buy into this lie.

Well, the only person I can trust is me.

I can only trust myself here.

Right?

And how many have said something like this?

Well, if it's gonna be done right, I'm gonna have to do it myself.

Yeah.

Or, you know, the the uh the theme song of a generation was Frank Sinatra's, I did it my way, right?

Or if it's it's and we buy into this notion that if my life is going to work, no one else is gonna help me do that.

I have to do it myself.

It's really up to me.

Now, please don't hear anything I have to say today as an excuse for don't give a rip and don't try.

That's not what I'm saying.

It's about who we cooperate with and who's the one we're really trusting, is what we're getting at.

Because the reason we do this, I think, or at least the reason that I kind of am a by-myself, I got this kind of a guy, is really reveals the trust issues that I have.

Trust is this recurring theme of what God shows me time and time again.

Every time I kind of end up in one ditch or another or run up against a brick wall in life, um, it really shows that I've been trying to do it on my own instead of trusting God.

See, I say that I trust him.

Maybe you can relate to this.

I say, and actually I preach to people, you really need to trust God.

God's trustworthy.

And then what happens with me is either things aren't going the way I want them to go, I get nervous and say, Well, let me fix it, let me do this.

Or God says, All right, here's what we're doing.

And I'm like, Cool, give me the reins.

I got it from here.

I don't, you know, Jesus take the wheel is not one of my theme songs.

But no matter how many times I've done this or think I've got this, or come up with the perfect plan and God, alright, see, this is gonna be awesome.

Just bless it and let's go.

It doesn't take very long to be very clear.

I I don't have it the way I think I do.

And more often than I do end up in some kind of ditch, and at least internally I go, help.

Can anyone relate to that?

Yeah.

Well, there's good news for those of us with trust issues today, and it's right in this passage that we're gonna explore today.

And it's kind of two-pronged good news.

The first thing is this, and it won't sound like good news, but it's actually really good news.

The good news is I can't make my life work on my own.

That should be really good news to all of us if once that settles in, because that means it's not up to me to make my life work on my own.

I can't make my life work on my own.

But as I fully trust God, I then find the help, right, to experience the freedom and the joy to live the life I was created to live.

You were created to live a life full of joy, full of freedom, full that not that isn't where all this pressure and weight is on you to make your life work.

But the only way that's possible is in trusting God.

That's the good news we want to explore and begin to embrace today.

And I think that's the good news that really this whole um scene that's been playing out in Exodus tells us.

So let's kind of walk through and reset what's happening in Exodus.

So, this is what as we've been talking in Exodus, we're now in chapter 34.

What we've been talking about, um, it was several weeks with the plagues and the escape from Egypt, but ever since they got out of Egypt, it's only been two months.

Only two months have elapsed since the great escape.

So now Moses, after those two months, he goes up Mount Sinai to check in with Yahweh, and there he meets with God, and God gives him the Ten Commandments.

All right, this is how you can flourish if you if you pay attention to these commands I give you.

And then in chapter 32, verse 1, it literally says, while Moses is on the mountain, the people get impatient.

Like, come on, God, you're taking too long.

You're taking too long.

That's what's going on here.

They're like, wait, we've only been out here two months, now you're just gonna, the guy that got us out here and into this mess is gone.

What are we gonna do now?

And when they kind of get nervous, what do they do?

They take the divine protection and the guidance that God had provided them into their own hands.

They take the reins back.

And they create these substitute gods.

Substitute gods, by the way, that look a lot like the gods that were worshipped in Egypt because that's all they knew.

That's all they knew.

See, they didn't really know God, and therefore they didn't trust God, so they just defaulted back to what they knew.

Moses comes down the mountain, he catches them in the act.

You know, I picture like that Mel Brooks' History of the World.

He's coming down with the, he drops the commandments, they shed her, he goes, hey, you know, that kind of a deal.

And then God goes off on them, and and you could tell Moses like this isn't gonna go well.

He's gonna completely wipe us off the face of the earth, and we got it coming.

He pleads for mercy on behalf of the people, and God says, All right, I'm not gonna go with the nuclear option.

And you're like, But he says, All right, you guys can have the promised land, but I I just being with you is not good for me right now.

And eventually the people that is the wake-up call when God's like, you can have the promised land, but I'm not going with you.

They're like, wait a second.

If you're not going with us, then what are we doing?

We don't want the promises of God without God.

And they repent, they begin to agree with God that serving God and following God is the absolute best way to live and the only possibility for them to flourish is with by people who to be a people who serve and follow God.

So then God invites Moses back up the mountain and says, Alright, let's seal this then.

Let me then lay out for you what it's going to look like to serve and follow me.

If that's what they say they want, that's what I want, let's make this happen.

And so God extends mercy and grace by inviting Moses up to say, All right, let's get back on track here, which brings us to chapter 34, verse 10.

Chapter 34, verse 10 of Exodus.

Now hang in there because this can get like, this can almost sound like parts of Leviticus, like, don't do this and do this and do this.

Just hang in there.

There's a point, all right?

So verse 10, after Moses has said, God, please forgive us and take us back as your people.

The Lord replied, Listen, I'm making a covenant with you in the presence of all your people.

I will perform miracles that will never have never been performed anywhere in all the earth or in any nation.

And all the people around you will see the power of the Lord, the awesome power I will display for you.

But listen carefully to everything I command you.

Then I will go ahead of you and drive out the Amrites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.

Be very careful not to make a treaty with the people who live in the land where you are going.

If you do, you'll follow their evil ways and be trapped.

Instead, you must break down the pagan altars, smash their sacred pillars, and cut down their ashera poles.

You must worship no other gods, for the Lord whose name, whose very name is jealous, is a God who is jealous about his relationship with you.

You must not take make a treaty of any kind with the people living in the land.

They lust after their gods, offering sacrifices to them.

They will invite you to join them in their sacrificial meals, and you will go with them.

Then you'll accept their daughters who sacrifice to other gods as wives for your sons, and they will seduce your sons to commit adultery against me by worshiping other gods.

So you must not make any gods of molten metal for yourselves.

And you must celebrate the feast of unleavened bread, for seven days the bread you eat must be made without yeast, just as I commanded you.

Celebrate this festival annually at the appointed time in early spring in the month of Abib, for that is the anniversary of your departure from Egypt.

That's the feast of Passover he's talking about.

Verse 19 The firstborn of every animal belongs to me, including the firstborn males, from your herds of cattle and your flocks of sheep and goats.

And firstborn donkeys may be bought back from the Lord by presenting a lamb or a young goat in its place, but if you do not buy it back, you must break his neck.

However, you must buy back every firstborn son.

In other words, you've got to keep your kids.

No one may appear before me without an offering.

And then you have six days each week for your ordinary work, but on the seventh day you must stop working, even during the seasons of ploughing and harvest, even when it's busy.

And you must celebrate the festival of harvest, the first day, the first crop of the wheat harvest, and celebrate the festival of the final harvest at the end of the harvest season.

Three times each year, every man in Israel must appear before the sovereign, the Lord, the God of Israel.

I will drive out the other nations ahead of you and expand your territory, so no one will covet and conquer your land while you appear before the Lord your God three times each year.

You must not offer blood the blood of my sacrificial offerings together with any baked goods containing yeast, and none of the meat of the Passover sacrifice may be kept over until the next morning.

And as you harvest your crops, bring the very best of the first harvest to the house of the Lord your God.

You must not cook a young goat in its mother's milk.

Then, verse 27, the Lord said to Moses, Write down all these instructions, for they represent the terms of the covenant I am making with you and with Israel.

Moses remained there on the mountain with the Lord forty days and forty nights, and all that time he ate no bread and drank no water, and the Lord wrote the terms of the covenant, the Ten Commandments, on the stone tablets.

A lot of kind of minutiae there.

And a lot of it, I think, if we read it, we're like, what does this have to do with me?

Does this mean I can't have yeast?

Then that means no cupcakes, right?

You know?

This talk of allies and blood, and what is that, what in the world does that have to do with us?

Well, let me kind of set what it had to do with them, and I think it will make a lot of sense for what it has to do with us.

Alright?

So again, this is God's response of mercy and grace to these people who had kind of thumbed their nose at him and just blown it right to his face.

He says, All right, we're gonna do this.

I'm not gonna wipe you out.

You say you want to follow me, then let's do this, but let's seal this with a covenant.

Let's seal this with a covenant.

Now, covenant is a word that gets used in our society, but we don't mean what it meant then.

Back then, covenant was a super big deal.

It's the language of two becoming one, where a new identity is formed together.

And the way these covenants were sealed, where all you I have is yours and all you have is mine, was they would take an animal and sacrifice it, cut it in two, put two halves on either side, and the parties entering into this covenant relationship would kind of bind their arms together and walk between the two halves of the sacrificed animal.

Kind of gross.

But there's symbolism there, and the symbolism is this you can count on me so much to uphold my end of this bargain that if I don't, you can do to me what we just did to this animal.

That's how serious I am.

You have full access to me.

All that I have is yours, and all that you have is mine.

We're in this till death do us part, right?

That's the closest thing we have to that these days is marriage, where we do say till death do us part.

Unfortunately, that's not always how it plays out.

So I've been married to Michelle for over 29 years, and um, that's what we did.

We said till death to us part.

We, the two now become one, and we have this shared identity together as long as we both shall live: shared name, shared family, shared home, shared bank account, shared joy, shared struggle, shared love, shared faith, shared hope.

That's what God's looking for.

He's just looking for a shared life.

I want you to do life with me that deeply.

That's covenant relationship.

That's what Yahweh is looking for with his people in the wilderness.

That's why he went through all that trouble to get them out of Egypt.

Because he's like, you guys won't even get what I'm doing, want to do with you until I get you out of there.

And he gets them out in the middle of the wilderness where they have to realize we aren't gonna make it without God.

Even though they kind of fight against that, they finally come to their senses like, you're right, God.

We're only gonna make it with you.

So God says, All right, put your money where your mouth is.

Let's seal this in a covenant.

And then God is saying, I'll be your provider, I'll be your protector and king.

You'll have all you need under my watchful, loving care, but you need to trust me.

Stop trusting yourself, stop leaning on your own understanding, stop relying on your past success or strength or resources or willpower.

Trusting me is the only way this is gonna work.

Trusting me is the only chance you have to flourish.

And then he spells out for them here's what it will look like for you to trust me in your current circumstances.

So Yahweh, the stronger partner in this relationship, offers the children of Israel what they cannot provide for themselves.

Verse 7 talks about mercy and grace, which we've talked about.

God's gonna not give them what they deserve, but he's actually gonna help them be what they want to be, but they can't do on their own.

And then in verse 10, he talks about I'm gonna still provide this miraculous provision and access to my power.

He says, as a matter of fact, even though I've done the Red Sea thing and the pillar and the fire and the cloud to guide you and the manna and the water with the rock, all that stuff, I'm gonna still go before you and do things you've never seen.

I'm gonna remove all these obstacles so that you can have the land I promised you.

God's like, this is what I'm gonna do for you.

You have access to me.

So that means you don't have to worry about this.

And even as I read that the first time, it strikes me as just so incredible that God would continue to offer his presence and his power and his guidance to people who just blew it so royally, right?

I mean, these are like serial covenant breakers.

He knows they're not gonna keep their end of the bargain, but he offers it anyway.

It just says to me, man, that's how much God wants to be in relationship with me.

He offers to be in covenant relationship with me when he knows he's the only one that's gonna keep up his end of the bargain.

Which talks about Jesus.

We'll get to that later.

So God makes his intentions to his people very, very clear.

He wants this exclusive relationship, and he wants an all-in people who trust him implicitly, with no reservation and with no rival.

They are all in.

They jumped off the swan dive off the high dive.

We're in.

And in verse 14, Yahweh describes himself as this jealous God.

Again, reinforcing, this will not be an open relationship with me.

See, God's pulled them off the scrap heat, taken them in, made them his bride.

He's done the same for you and me.

So he's not cool with once the dust is settled for you to like make sure you're still Facebook friends with your old flame.

He's like, no, you gotta cut it off.

Burn that ship.

This is only gonna work if you fully trust me.

And he's neither is he cool when they get nervous for them to take the reins back or say, you know what, maybe this guy doesn't know what he's doing.

We should go do it the way we did it in Egypt.

We should do it the way the people around us are doing it, because they really seem successful.

He wants his people, his covenant partners to trust him in everything.

Period.

That's what he's getting at here.

Those are his terms.

And he's not being harsh, he's not being mean as our creator.

He's simply pointing out the fact that I'm the one that made you, and I know that you function best when you trust me.

When you don't trust me, you throw rods left and right.

This only works.

Life only works when we follow God's lead, when we shadow him, when we live his way.

He's saying, This is what I'm inviting you into.

And the people respond by saying, All right, God, you're right.

We admit that our grasping at self sufficiency, our grasping to try to recreate what we experienced and eating.

Egypt.

It's just not working.

So we fully submit to you.

You can call the shots.

We're going to stop taking matters into our own hands and do it your way from this point forward.

That's what the people are saying when they enter into covenant relationship with God.

And as evidence of their trust in him, by the way, this is not, do these things and then I'll do this for you, God's saying.

This is not a prid, I get tongue-tied, prid quo pro kind of arrangement.

I'll scratch your back, you scratch, you scratch my back, I'll scratch your sort of arrangement.

God's saying, no, this isn't what you do to earn my favor, you get my favor.

That's what covenant relationship is.

I'm offering that, but it's kind of evidence or fruit that you're really trusting me.

Let me kind of give you some examples of what that would look like.

Because quite frankly, I think God's like, you have no idea what it looks like to trust me.

You just default back to just taking the reins yourself or trying to be like it was in Egypt.

So let me help you get an idea of what it really looks like to trust me, because just saying it isn't enough.

If you really trust me, your actions will follow.

So if you want to trust me, God says, do the following things.

And that's that list between verses 12 and 26 that I read that you kind of like your head starts to spin a little bit, right?

But let me quickly kind of just put those in context for us, right?

Verses 12 through 15, he basically says, don't make treaties with any other nations.

The only ally you need is me.

If you trust me, I'll be your ally.

Verse 13 to 17, he says, tear down those pagan altars and idols, right?

This is an exclusive relationship.

You can't just like hang out with me on Sundays and then have other idols the rest of the week.

It's not gonna work that way.

Verse 16, don't intermarry outside of the tribe here.

They're gonna pull you away from me.

In other words, give up on the notion that missionary dating actually works.

It doesn't.

They'll pull you, you won't pull them.

Verses 19 and 20.

Give God the first of everything that you have, and that will serve as a reminder that all that you have is really from me.

I'm your provider.

You're not ultimately your provider.

I am, right?

Verses 23 through 24, this one is astonishing to me.

He says, three times a year, have all the men in the camp, all of them, leave camp, leave the women and children behind, go to a place I designate to worship me.

And then God says, which by the way, in that society, that was like suicide.

If you left the camp unprotected, you came back and there was no camp to get to have anymore.

But God's like, no, if you trust me, you'll do this three times a year.

And when you get back, not only will things be still intact, but if you read the text again, it says, your territory will expand.

Do you trust me that much?

That's the ultimate trust fall, in my opinion.

Then in verses 25 and 26, he talks about yeast and not cooking and mother's milk and all these kinds of things, which are just symbols of purity or exclusivity.

And then he talks about three feasts, right?

And these feasts, the way you look to look at them is simply they're regularly built-in, um regularly scheduled, built-in reminders of God's faithfulness, both past, present, and future.

I mean the first is the in verse 18 is the feast of unleavened bread or Passover.

That's the reminder, hey, I got you out of Egypt.

You don't think I can handle this?

Just remember that.

And then in verse 21, he talks about Sabbath.

In your everyday rhythms, you've got to take one day where you do nothing that needs to be done.

One day where you say, you know what, I trust God enough that He will provide for me, and things that need to get done the rest of the week will still get done by me only working six days.

As a matter of fact, I've come to appreciate that God's like, honestly, Rick, this also reminds you that I don't need your help.

I really don't.

You've grown up with this notion, at least I have, that I need to do all these things for God, and God's like, no, I kind of have all I need.

But if you want to do stuff with me, I would be, that would be incredible.

But I'm the one that sets the pace here, not you.

So you need to just stop.

I don't need your help.

I mean, I used to be one of those guys that would, I probably shouldn't even confess this publicly.

You know, I was really religious about I've got to get up at a certain hour and spend this much time in prayer, and if not, I gotta prove I'm proven my spirituality that way.

And one day it occurred to me, or at least the thought came to my mind, I'll say it was the spirit, where I got up and I was just like really groggy and grumpy, and I felt like the Lord said, just go back to bed.

You're no fun to be with this time of day anyway.

You know?

Because we just go, go, go, go, go, and like we're gonna proving something to God.

It's like, seriously, I'm the one that initiated this.

I picked you out of the ditch.

You don't have to prove anything to me.

You don't earn this.

I'm offering it to you.

But take a Sabbath each week to remind you that.

And then the future promise is the festival of harvest.

The two harvest festivals just celebrate not only did God provide, but trusting that He provided enough until we can plant again in the spring.

Right?

So this past, present, and future reminders of God saying, I got you, man.

You're gonna forget, so let me build it into the schedule to remind you that you can trust me.

See, the whole Mosaic covenant, which is what theologians call this section, is simply a way to talk about life works best when we exclusively trust God for everything.

When we exclusively trust God for everything.

And then in verse 28, God seals the covenant, he writes it in stone for Moses to bring back to the people.

Again, God is saying in no uncertain terms, I've got you.

I've got you.

And if you believe that, if you believe that, then you can trust me enough to dare to live differently.

To dare to be a peculiar people that isn't just like everyone around you.

To defy this conventional wisdom that it's up to you to take care of you.

And by the way, friends, that is ingrained in us in Texas.

I've already heard it from several quarters because everybody's nervous about how the election's gonna go and what if our side doesn't win and this side doesn't win, and I've heard people say it.

Well, you know, we're our own country.

We could just secede from the union and do it our own way anyway.

Yeah, I figured I'd get some amens on that.

But you also realize I just tried to unveil that as the sin of self-sufficiency, so yeah.

God said, come on, resist this tug to go along to get along, because I, your creator, have willingly entered into this covenant relationship with you, even though you don't have anything I need.

But I did it so that you can know you can count on me.

In fact, you can do to me what we just did to these animals if I don't keep up my end of the bargain.

And by the way, it's another sermon for another day, but let me just drop this little nugget in here.

The people agree to the same fate, don't they?

If we don't keep up our end of the bargain of trusting you for everything and staying faithful to you and exclusive with you, you can do to us what we just did to that animal.

And as we know, it doesn't take long, and they break their end of the deal, which is where Jesus comes along eventually.

The rest of the Old Testament is how the people of Israel over and over and over again just keep breaking this covenant with God.

So God says, All right, let me come and be one of you.

And as one of you, as fully man, Jesus set aside his divinity, Philippians says, Let me pay for your serial covenant breaking on the cross.

I'll take the death penalty.

God didn't kill his kid.

God said, No, I'm gonna pay the penalty that you agreed to myself.

I'm gonna pay it for you.

And then as God he said, now also let me establish a new covenant in which, if you're in relationship with me, Jesus says, What is true of me can now be true of you.

Which means the same power that raised Jesus from the dead dwells in those who are in covenant relationship with him.

Which means in God we can be righteous, we can be covenant keepers.

That's what Jesus did.

That's another sermon for another day.

We'll do that at Easter.

But Yahweh says, I willingly submit to these terms of this covenant so you can know firsthand you can trust me.

He says, In one day, you're gonna trust me so much that the fruit will just be popping out everywhere.

It will be so evident because your actions will have lined up with your words.

It'll be so much more than words.

He says, and you're not doing this to earn anything from me, but it's just gonna happen.

So, what does all this have to do with us?

Because we're in Christ, right?

We don't live under the law, that's all true.

But if you've been tracking it all, and as I prepared this this week, I realized, you know what, I still wrestle with the same stuff that the people in Israel did.

My symptoms are just different, you're right.

I'm not looking to make treaties and looking for other allies, or or I certainly don't want to cook anything in blood or mother's goat's milk or anything like that.

So, but I still slip into this.

I got this, God.

I let me take the reins.

I'm getting nervous.

You aren't doing it the way I think it needs to be done.

You're not moving fast enough, so let me do this.

Or conversely, I slip into the because I'm nervous, well, what other options do I have?

What else seems to be working around here?

What can I kind of do that that they're doing or they're doing and they're doing instead of saying, God, what do you want me to do?

And it shows up in all kinds of different idols.

We don't make metal ones, but we have our own substitute gods, things that we make ultimate that aren't designed to be ultimate.

You know, our careers, our reputations, our bank balances, our GPA, our achievements, our titles, our friends, our kids, our spouse, our family, our political party, all that kind of stuff we put our hope in, and that's what we're trusting in.

And it pulls us away from God.

And this has been revealed to me very deeply again, because it was something actually I thought I had figured out and had licked.

But I teach a class on Wednesday nights called Design that helps people figure out how they're wired.

And Howard and one of his friends came and helped us look at our personalities for a couple of weeks.

And I'd done all these sort of assessments before, so I kind of knew what was coming, but I thought, oh, let me do it again just to see if it's changed at all.

It's been like a decade since I've done that.

And I did it, and all of a sudden I realized, oh man, I've not changed nearly as much as I thought I had.

And I thought I knew how to answer these questions to get the answer the way I wanted it to answer.

Right?

And it revealed some really ugly stuff in me, right?

I'm a firstborn type A kind of control freak sort of personality at heart.

I just do better at hiding it, I think, the symptoms.

And so I wrestle with these this internal dialogue that I don't have enough, so I contend to be like this when I'm not trusting God.

I hoard things, and you know, I'm the I was the guy when the kids lived with us, I would the good cookies I'd hide in the top shelf so they couldn't find them, you know, that kind of a deal.

Um, because there has to be enough for me, right?

Um, and then I realized it's all kind of rooted in fear, right?

I don't have enough, um, that I'm not being enough.

I have this approval addiction, I want people to like me, and I want them to laugh at the right time thing going on in my brain.

I mentioned I can be a workaholic, I'm also a recovering fundamentalist, which means I gotta do all these things to earn favor with God, and I wrestle with that all the time.

And and when that fear percolates to the surface, my I just become more controlling.

I take the reins.

I want to control the narrative, I want to control the people, either directly or indirectly, and being manipulative and all those sorts of things.

And I thought just knowing that about myself fixed it.

Right?

And what it did was it real I realized this week it just helps me to manage around it, but not always to deal with it.

And so I brought home these results from the disc assessment, and I'm reading them to my wife and my daughter, and I'm like, I'm not like that anymore, right?

And it's like they pulled up this big mirror and go, oh yeah, you are.

You're just aware of it now, so you've gotten better at being more subtle about it.

But when you're stressed out, and when you're not walking in the spirit, you get very much like this, and very demanding, and very controlling.

And they kind of made the list, and I'm like, oh man, it was like it felt like a punch in the gut.

Do you ever have that where you get this glimpse of what you're really like, and you're like, Man, I thought I was so much more mature than that, and I'm just not, right?

But then I realized after the dust settled from that, that that was probably some of the best news I've heard in a while.

Because it reminded me of the good news that we are hearing here in Exodus 34.

And that is, Rick, you can't make your life work on your own.

You can't.

Just because you can teach everybody stuff and you can teach them what the Bible says and you can explain personality differences doesn't mean that yours isn't what it is, and that God doesn't want to do work in you right where you are.

And so God just said, I'm just peeling back this layer right now because I want to work on these things.

I want your hands to go from this to this.

I want you to go from this to this.

He says, I love you, and I want you to flourish, but that's only gonna work, Rick, if you trust me.

If you follow my lead.

Not if you think you have it mapped out and then you're like, I got it from here.

And it's certainly not gonna work if you're looking around envious all the time, going, well, he seems to have it better, or they seem to have it better.

Why don't we do it that way?

Or I should do that.

Or it's just you're missing what I have for you in the midst of all that.

And then the Lord began to bring some scripture passages to my mind, and I'm gonna share these and then we're gonna wrap up.

So if you can come on up, Clyde.

And these passages began to kind of come to mind, and I thought, yeah, God, that's what I want to be.

I want to be that guy.

The first one was Jesus saying in John 15, hey, apart from me, you can do nothing.

Remember that.

Again, that's good news because that means it's not up to me to do it all.

Apart from me, you can do nothing.

I'm like, I can do lots of things, and it's like the Lord said, not anything worth keeping.

And then Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12, and I'm like, I want to be this kind of guy that realizes when I'm weak, that's when I'm strong.

I don't have to be the guy that has it all together and has all the answers.

It's really okay to say, I have no idea.

But the Lord does, let's ask him.

I know the one who knows what to do.

I know the one who's not going, man, what are we gonna do?

I never saw that one coming.

That's not God at all.

God's like, no, trust me, I got this one.

I got you.

And then Proverbs 3, this is familiar to a lot of us.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart.

Don't depend on your own understanding.

And that's one that's so familiar, just like John 3.16 sometimes.

It's like yada yada, yada yada.

And we yada yada the best part.

We don't need to lean on our own understanding, we can really trust in the Lord.

And then I was reminded again this morning of one from Hebrews 4.16, the way Eugene Peterson puts it in the message.

He's writing to the people who are the descendants of these people in the wilderness who are doing the same things that their ancestors did.

And he's like, Don't be like your ancestors in the wilderness.

And then this is what got me.

Eugene says, take the mercy, accept the help.

Take the mercy, accept the help.

Realize you really do need mercy.

You're not getting what you deserve, thank God.

But you need his forgiveness, you need his grace, you need his help.

And this posture of by myself isn't gonna work.

No matter what state in the union we live in.

So I think God really wants us to just really wrestle with this question of trust.

Do I really trust him?

Not to earn anything from him, but do I trust him enough to do it his way so that I can actually experience the incredible life he has for us right here?

We don't have to wait to escape to heaven to experience the abundant life Jesus has for us.

This life of freedom and joy in Jesus is possible now.

Otherwise, he would have just gotten us out of here already.

It's possible now, but it happens as we learn to trust him.

So there's a bunch of questions that I are up that we have available, but really the first one is the one we want to invite you to wrestle with.

What does it look like for me to trust God?

Exodus 34 is what it looked like for them to trust God.

What's it look like for you to trust God these days?

And maybe a way to get at that is to begin to ask yourself about what where am I trying to do it by myself or where am I trying to go along to get along?

Those are revealing kind of the things that you're not trusting God in.

So, what would it look like to do the opposite of that?

Just begin to have a conversation with the Father about that right now.

And I trust the Spirit will begin to talk to you, and thoughts that come to your mind will be worth paying attention to.

So let's just do that for a few minutes.

Father, as now, as you're showing us ways where we're not really trusting you, but we're trying to do it ourselves or look to other things to do what you alone can do for us.

I pray that you would help us to experience your grace in this moment.

While there's sadness that we're not trusting you, the good news is we now we know.

Now we know, and that you're by your spirit want to help us to do that.

To step into a life of trust, to really live like we are your forgiven and love sons and daughters.

We're your heirs.

And that you are for us more than we can ever imagine.

So I pray, God, that you would help us to embrace that reality in a fresh way today.

That you give us an imagination for what it looks like to trust you this week in ways that we've never trusted you before.

Take us on that adventure, God, and draw us closer to you in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

I invite you to stand with us if you would please.

As we leave this morning, we want to make sure that you have someone pray with you if there's something stirring in you.

There could be something I said, or there could be something that's so like right here with you, whether it's a physical thing or relational or financial or work or school or something that's just making you really nervous, and and all you can think about is how to get out of it or how to fix it.

And um and we want you to know God's number one, not surprised, but number two, more importantly, he actually cares and wants to meet you right in the middle of that.

So we're here to pray with you so you can experience that reality.

And I can tell you, not trusting God is just saying, I'm not gonna talk to anybody about it, I'm gonna figure this out by myself.

It's not gonna work.

It's probably gonna get worse if that's how we do it.

So humble yourself in that sense and just let somebody in.

You don't have to tell everybody, but come on and we'll we'll have folks down here to pray with you, okay?

Um, if you're with us for the first time, thanks so much for being here.

I hope that you got a sense that God's here with us.

We believe he's in the room when we gather.

That's what he says.

We're two or three gather in my name.

I'm there.

And he really wants to meet with us and make us more like the people he made us to be in the first place.

So that's why we gather to do that, to meet with God together.

And we're so glad that you would join us with that this morning.

Um, this is a week where we have community groups meet all over the community all over the area, and the questions this week are designed to really rest with this, wrestle with this trust question.

So I hope that you're in a group.

If not, you can go to one.

There are blue cards out there that show you where they meet and uh just really talk about this.

And even if not here, talk about it at lunch or or dinner tonight.

What would it look like for us to trust God this week?

What would it look like?

All right?

Let me send you out with this blessing.

Receive this, would you?

May the Lord bless you and keep you.

May He make His face to shine upon you, and may you experience not only the peace, but the joy and the freedom that comes from just trusting God in everything.

I pray that you would have eyes to see and ears to hear what that looks like this week, and that the Spirit would give you grace and courage to step into a life of trust you've never lived before.

I pray in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Amen.

Have an awesome week.