Exodus: The Way of The Wilderness

This podcast is a ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church, helping people know, enjoy, and glorify God.

For more information about Grand Parkway, visit Grandparkway.org.

If you have your Bibles, let me invite you to turn to Exodus chapter 13.

Exodus 13 · chapter mention

If you do not have a Bible, look around you and you'll find a Black Pew Bible somewhere within reach.

Exodus chapter 13, we're going to begin in verse 17.

Exodus 13 · chapter mention

While you're turning to that, while you're finding that, let me introduce myself.

My name is Wade Collier.

I am the Missions and Outreach Pastor here at Grand Parkway.

It is my honor to be here leading us through the Word this morning as we pick up in Exodus 13.

As you can see on the front of your worship folder, we are walking through a series on the book of Exodus.

Neil McClendon, our lead pastor, walked us through Exodus 12, which brings us to Exodus 13 this morning.

Probably in your Bible, Exodus 13 is divided up into two, maybe even three sections.

We're going to grab those last five verses at the bottom.

Exodus chapter 13, verse 17 says this When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near.

Exodus 13:17

For God said, Lest the people change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt.

But God led the people around by the way of the wilderness towards the Red Sea.

And the people of Israel went up and out of the land of Egypt, equipped for battle.

And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for Joseph had made the sons of Israel solemnly swear, saying, God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones with you from there.

And they moved on from Sakoth to the encampment of Etham, on the edge of the wilderness.

And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night.

The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from them from before the people.

This is the word of the Lord.

Just as a slight preface before I teach this morning, I shared this with the first two services, so I want to share it with you as well.

This was a a bit of a rough week for me personally.

I lost a really close friend and a mentor of mine.

I share that with you, not for sympathy this morning.

I share that as a word of preface for two reasons.

One, if I break down at any moment during the sermon, uh you won't judge me as a small schoolgirl.

It's because it's because of the next thing that I share.

His name was Al.

Al was one of my volunteers at a church that my wife and I were on staff with before Grand Parkway.

He was a youth volunteer.

Um I had a son in my youth ministry, but he was also, like I said, a friend and a mentor.

And when we when I would have mission trips, especially down in the border, South America, he would be the guy that would go with me a day early.

Um I used to say that he was my right-hand guy, but I think more the other way around, I was his right-hand guy because he had way more business leading mission trips than I did.

Um but Al passed away and we buried him on Friday.

And here's the other reason I share this is this is interesting because when we mapped out the schedule for Exodus and I saw I was going to be preaching Exodus, I was convinced that I was gonna preach the first half about preparation.

Um but as it carried on, and even before Al passed on Monday, um I'd had conversations with Al over the last several years about these times of wilderness.

These times where we go into the wilderness, these seasons that we don't understand why God has us there.

Um Al's daughter had been married not very long and only a year and a half, and her husband uh died in a tragic car accident and just wrecked their family.

Um, Al had been left on the side of the road by a company that he had given 35 years to and was just let go without warning.

Al had seasons of wilderness.

And I think now about his family.

Um like I said, he died suddenly.

His son, who was in my youth group, who's now mine and Sally's neighbor, they just had a baby, and I just was talking with his son Patrick just the other day at the gas station, and he's like, I just can't wait to see my folks as grandparents, you know, his dad as a grandfather, and so um it's just it's it's it's it's sad, um, it's interesting, it's insightful to see um the these seasons of wilderness that the Lord pulls us into.

And so um I wanted to offer that as a little bit of preface, and this is totally um off the radar, but this is what I can't shake in my memory of Al we went on a mission trip.

We were gonna work down in Acuna, Mexico, and we had gone down to Del Rio late one night after a youth group, and neither of us could make it.

We were struggling driving down 90.

If you've ever done that drive, there's a whole lot of nothing down there.

And so we couldn't make it, and so we pulled off on some little town and found some little best western and got a double room that was all they had left.

I think it was bird season, and so I was like we were we were lucky to even get that room.

And uh, it takes me about 37 seconds once I lay down to fall asleep.

I don't know about you guys.

Um, but I fell asleep, woke up in the middle of the night, and Darth Vader was in the bed next to me.

I had never in my life heard of a CPAP machine, let alone see one, scared me to death.

This man who is hooked up to a robot sleeping next to me.

Like I said, had nothing to do with the sermon, but there was a couple things with Al that I had never I'd never been around a man who had so much authority, but yet was so peaceful.

Um, all the men in my life with authority, um, coaches, my dad, uncles, all very brash, kind of bold men, um, where Al was just so peaceful, um, always just the epitome of peace, um, even through the seasons of wilderness.

And so I say that as we unpack these five verses.

Um I didn't I didn't have an original title for this morning's sermon because this is a this is an often preached and often taught section of scripture that there is a term that's been used for these five verses for centuries, and so I figured why mess with a good thing, right?

Um and so this morning we're going to look at uh this text through a sermon entitled The Way of the Wilderness.

The way of the wilderness.

The first thing that we see as we begin to look and unpack these five verses is our first point, and that is that God's path is often not the most direct route.

That God's path is often not the most direct route.

Look with me again at verses 17 and 18.

It says, When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near.

For God said, Lest the people change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt.

But God led the people around by the way of the wilderness towards the Red Sea.

See, if the Israelites had taken the most direct route to Canaan, they would have been there, most theologians believe, anywhere from a week to about ten days.

As they walk out and they see Canaan land, promised land that God has promised, anywhere from seven to ten days, right through the land of the Philistines, right onto the land that God promised.

But we read that as though even though rather they could make this journey within a week or so, God knew they weren't prepared.

God knew they weren't prepared for this seven to ten day journey, that if the Philistines would come out and meet them with war, which they probably would have, their faith was not at a place where it couldn't keep itself from being overrun by fear.

It wasn't strong enough, and so that fear would have gripped their hearts and they would seek to return to Egypt.

And so instead, what God does is he directs them on what would end up being a 40-year journey, right?

It goes from seven days to 10 days to 40 years.

All right, some of us have taken some wrong turns before.

There's some men in here who don't, well, we'll talk about you guys here in a minute who don't like Google Maps.

I'm not proud.

I go from my house to the grocery store at the front of my neighborhood with Google Maps.

Um, but a 40-year journey is quite a detour that the Lord has.

And um, as interesting as I was preparing for this morning, this is the weirdest thing, and part of it is my ADD, and part of it I don't want to rule out or discredit the Holy Spirit, these things that come to mind.

And this was one of those things that I couldn't shake this this week as I was preparing.

Anybody know what this is?

Group participation time.

Pinewood Derby car, yes.

Okay, so when we moved to Houston, I joined Cub Scouts.

I think I was about seven or eight years old.

Um, it's the scene better days.

My son and my dog have gotten a hold of this thing, and it rolls all over our living room floor.

So the pinstriping is falling apart, but I gotta be honest, it didn't look that good beforehand.

But this was uh my my my dad and my uh first venture into the pinewood derby business.

Um, if you are unfamiliar with this, you can do this in Cub Scouts, some I wanna do this.

If you're not given it, you go to the store and you get one of these kits right here.

Starts out as a pine block, four little nails, four little plastic wheels, all right?

And you assemble this, you you you you design it for speed.

I felt like the first two sermons were pretty pretty good in the Lord spoke.

I've had more people come up to me and want to talk about pinewood derby cars.

Hey, it's great.

I'm glad you won.

All right.

So let's just just for a poll, how many of you have built a pine wood derby car before?

Leave your hands up, especially if you're a dad.

How many of you have built them and acted like they were your kids?

Liars.

All right, here we go.

So anybody remember how heavy they have to be?

You've been in two services.

You don't get to the media guys are like, we know.

Anybody else?

Five ounces.

All right?

Five ounces with the wheels, with the nails that are the axles, everything you put in there.

And so I brought this kit home.

Uh I got to work on it as soon as I got home.

I got my dad's drill out.

I drilled it in, I put the weights in there.

I put as many, I put every weight that was in the package.

This thing weighed about 11 pounds when I got done with it.

I got home, my dad says, Oh, that's not gonna work.

We need to pull all those out.

He pulls the weights out.

We kind of measure the weights, we put it back together again, and then we find out, well, the paint has some weight to it, so we've got to adjust the weights.

We need to cut those weights, and then we put the weights back in.

And my dad's like, well, no, the putty we're using for the weights, dad has some weight to it.

Five nights.

Five nights to build the original minivan.

All right.

So as my friends are out playing ball and they're hanging out in the neighborhood, my dad and I are working on this.

Um, we get to Saturday, the day of the Pinewood Derby.

My dad has been chosen as the guy who's gonna release the lever to race the cars.

Slip them a little, George Washington, you know, let that do the walking and the talking.

Um, we get there after five days, five evenings of work.

Nothing.

I won nothing.

I lost the first race, I lost the concession race.

When they walk around and give the pity prizes for if it looks good or not, nothing.

I won absolutely nothing.

So why do I share with you the physical embodiment of my shame?

Because here's the one thing that I that I did walk away with was this important life lesson that I think is pertinent for this morning, and that is that the correct avenue, the right way, the correct way, isn't always the shortest route from point A to point B.

It isn't always the shortest route, it isn't always the easiest route, it isn't always the sexiest route, it isn't always the most convenient route, and it's definitely not always your idea.

And not only is it sometimes the most indirect route, but let me love you enough to tell you that sometimes when God, a lot of the times, when God is calling you and telling you and directing you, it's gonna wear you out.

It's gonna wear you out to the end of yourself.

Robert Emerson eloquently represents it this way.

He says this the current of our earthly being seldom runs straight.

There are often many windings before it reaches its goal.

And it may be that few of those windings would have been in accordance with our wishes.

I not so eloquently say it this way, that until we embrace that God's purpose and direction for our life, even when we consider it, we look at it and we see, God, I can see the other side.

Why are we going the long way around?

Even when we consider it the long way around, that it is always better.

That God's way is always better.

And until that we, until we can set ourselves up to believe that we set ourselves up for following and falling to these unnecessary roadblocks.

And here's the spoiler alert for the rest of Exodus.

For the next 40 years, as the Israelites journey and we read through this, we won't read through it for 40 years, hopefully, but you never know.

Anybody here when we did the book of Luke?

That was about nine and a half years.

Uh but as we go through the book of Exodus and we see this, the Israelites are gonna fall, just like I have, just like many of you will, to two of these roadblocks are gonna be on the screen.

The first one is distrust.

Is distrust.

When God says, This is where I have called you to go, this is where I'm telling you to go, this is where I'm asking you to follow.

Many of us sitting here right now and we think, I would gladly, Alex, take the 10-day journey over the 40-year journey.

I'll take box number one over box number two.

It's because in us is this distrust, which is can be a really tricky one.

And what do I mean by tricky?

Because most of us wouldn't come out if we were to line up here and say, Do you trust God?

Do you trust God?

Most of us would say, I trust God.

But it's it's very tricky and a little bit pervasive because what happens is it's not that we trust, we distrust God in a general way.

We have allowed things to happen in our life or things that happen in our life that we have no control over that have allowed us to doubt God's character.

It's allowed us to doubt God's character.

Here's what I mean.

Keep your finger there in Exodus 13 and turn back to the left in your Bibles to Genesis 3.

Genesis 3, verse 1.

Genesis 3:1

It says this It says, Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field, as the Lord God had made.

And he said to the woman, Did God actually say that you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die.

But the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die.

For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

When I do my devil impression, it sounds like an obnoxious fourteen-year-old boy for some reason.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and she ate.

And she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.

And the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sowed fig leaves together, and they made themselves loincloths.

As the serpent comes, as John Nelson says, never to tell you about how good God is and how disobedient you are.

You never get tempted where the devil's like, Man, God is so good and you're so disobedient, but let's do this instead.

No.

The devil comes to deceive and to come to and trick and comes to call uh call into question God's character, and it causes this distrust in us.

This is what it looks like.

Did God really say that?

Did he really mean this for you in 2015?

Is he are God's rules from then still relevant now?

And it begins to build this distrust in God's character.

And so when we're called and directed by God to walk this path of his will and his sovereignty, we must be aware of our proclivity to distrust God and to distrust his character.

If we don't, if we refuse to embrace that God's purpose and his direction for our life is always better, that it is always better, that distrust will breed the second roadblock, which is resentment.

Which is resentment.

I mentioned before that the distrust of God, it can be tricky and pervasive, and it's it's kind of hard to wrap our arms and minds around that trust thing.

But I believe that the roadblock of trusting in the supreme sovereignty of God is an even harder pill to swallow because with this resentment, it really is rooted and it's founded in our own immaturity.

For some of you, don't check out on me because I just called you immature.

Hang with me and let me explain that it's an immaturity defined by the fact that we have never matured in the way that we approach relationships.

Not just our relationship with God, but all the relationships that are in our life.

Whether it's your relationship with your spouse, your relationship with your parents, your relationship with your friends, your relationship with your children, your relationship with your boss.

Not me.

Mine's perfect with my relationship.

But of course, but here's the deal is we take these relationships and we have this immaturity or this lack of developed maturity, and the fact that we want all these people in our lives to take responsibility for us.

We want all these people in our lives, our spouse, our boss, our friends, our parents, we want them to take responsibility for us.

And in the same way that we take this distrust over things that have happened in our life and we project that onto God, in the same way we take this resentment that no one has come in and rescued us and no one has come in and taken responsibility for us, and then we put that on God.

I see this about every other day at my house.

And here's what I mean is right about the time it's time to take my seven-year-old to school.

And we are running late because we're always running late, which is an amazing thing because we live less than a block away from the school.

I'm not sure how that happens every single morning.

But here's what happens, and here's how it plays out.

Hey daddy, where are my shoes?

Hey, daddy, where is my homework folder?

Hey, daddy, where is what is my responsibility?

I know it's my responsibility because I use the pronoun of mine.

My daughter's a very intelligent seven-year-old.

She has great understanding of pronouns in the English language.

And then when I don't know and I won't help her, because here's the world falls apart because here's the big scandal at our house is my wife and I have made the decision and the commitment to make our kids responsible for their own stuff and their own decisions.

Right?

And so then the world falls apart because we won't come in and rescue, and then we do the same thing to God because we have made these bad decisions or we have um uh projected our own junk onto God, and then He doesn't come in and rescue us in the way that He think we think He should rescue us, then we begin to have this distrust.

But it doesn't have to be that way, because that's not the way that we were designed.

God, before the world was ever in being, knew you and created you and had purpose for you and had plans for you and designed you not to be a resentful, distrustful person, that you, like the Israelites, when God is saying here in Exodus 13 that this is the way I'll take you, and it's not the most direct way that we can lean into this.

And so if we can position ourselves and we will position ourselves and orient our hearts and our souls and our spirits and our minds in such a way that when God is saying, Hey, this is the journey, hey, hey, that this this is the season, hey, this is the job, hey, this is the conversation, or on the flip side of it, hey, this isn't the season.

And this isn't the time, and this isn't the guy that I have for you, or this isn't the girl that I have for you.

That we can orient ourselves and line ourselves up with the Lord, that we can say, God, put to death my distrust.

God, put put put to death my immature resentment that I project on you.

And when we can do that, then you and I, church, we can be about our father's business.

We can begin to be about our father's business.

In this case, in Exodus 13, the father's business is to have Israel begin their journey from Egypt to the promised land by promptly turning them away from it.

That's the father's business.

Hey, about a about a week's journey that way is the promised land.

But if you want to be about my business, it's gonna take us 40 years.

And we're gonna learn a lot.

And that's the father's business.

Look at verse 17 and 18 as we look at our second point that there is purpose in the wilderness.

That there is purpose in the wilderness.

When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near.

For God said, lest the people change their minds when they see war and they return to Egypt.

But God led the people around by the way of the wilderness towards the Red Sea.

Do me a favor, look up from your Bible and your notes on the screens behind me.

Look at this map.

Those of you who have never seen something like this before, this is a map of the Israelites' journey over 40 years.

Start at the top left, making good progress.

Soon, maybe in about 17 years, we'll get to the Red Sea.

No, we'll get to the Red Sea and we'll we'll read through that.

We get over, we get through the Red Sea or the Reed Sea, we're making north, we're making progress.

Oh, and then we bank down.

This is for those of you who don't like Google Maps and think you're above and you know every landmark everywhere, man.

Right?

And then you make your U-turn and it's not bad enough that you gotta head back the same direction.

Now you're walking over your own steps, right?

And then we see the rest of the journey.

If we're if we're to be honest and we hear that word purpose, it's hard to look at that red path and see purposeful.

Right?

It's hard to see that and go, yeah, that looks purposeful.

Here's the reason it's because we're involved, and when we're involved, we don't choose the wilderness.

We don't like the wilderness.

I know there's some rednecks in here who got rained out from going to the deer blind this weekend, and you're like, I like the wilderness.

Liars.

You don't?

Have you ever seen the deer blinds that these guys use?

These deer blinds that most of these guys use are nicer than your living room.

Padded chairs, insulated TVs, Wi Fi cappuccino makers.

That's not that's not the wilderness, ladies.

Alright?

Because we don't choose the wilderness.

We don't we don't see the purpose.

But when God sees this, God sees purpose.

When they're at the beginning of the wilderness and takes them the way of the wilderness, it's because God God sees purpose.

It makes sense to God.

There's a guy named Wayne Stiles.

He's a great writer.

He also, if you have on your bucket list that you want to go do a journey to the Holy Land, be a great guy to just write down his name and look into one of his trips.

But he's got this great quote that's going to be up on the screen based on the purposefulness of what God intends in a season of wilderness.

He says this based on what we see.

What we see, while we strain to see over the next horizon, God sees the map from above.

And he so knows the best way to proceed.

So the Lord often leads us.

Hear this, hear this church.

The Lord so often leads us according to the needs of our heart, not always according to its desires.

You want to know why God sees purpose?

Because he is the creator and we're the created.

He created your heart.

God will meet the needs of your heart.

God is not in the business.

Hear this, I know this isn't a great popular message.

He's not in the business of meeting your desires.

He's in the business of meeting the needs of the heart that he created in the person that he created for his purpose.

So this is what God sees.

The Father sees the fear buried in our hearts that the quick and easy way would bring out.

Maybe I'm the only one who can relate.

All right.

In our lives, we must realize that God's goal for us, the best he could possibly give us, isn't found in simply taking us from here to there.

It isn't even found in a new biblical insight.

These come as but the means of his real goal, which is to know him.

The reason that map is purposeful is that's 40 years of knowing God.

So he can meet the needs, not the desires, but the needs of our hearts.

Three reasons, just quickly, of God's deliverance of the Israelites into the wilderness, of why, instead of from point A to point B, the direct one week or week and a half trip, instead the 40-year journey.

And the reason I want to share these is I think that all of us in here can relate to at least one, if not all three, of these.

Here's the first one is they had spent their whole lives up to this point surrounded by the works of man.

Here's what I mean: they were under the thumb of Pharaoh who believed and acted like he was a god.

And so everything in their world is directed towards one person.

And here's how I know we can relate to this.

And here's how I know as a society and a culture we can relate to this.

Did you see the drop-off in the ratings for the debate?

For the most recent debate?

That is the creation of man.

That is like just like the Pharaoh, everything pointing to man.

But what God does is God pulls them out of this man-focused, me-focused, my ideals.

I'm my own demigod.

And this is what he does is he pulls them into the wilderness and he shows them his works.

He shows them his works and he refreshes their exhausted hearts.

That's what we say is I can't take another night of self-important people talking about how important they are.

I am exhausted.

And God says, I will withdraw you from this man-centered world, and I will give you a vision of the splendor of my world.

Because I'm the creator.

These created ones that are trying to create, I'm the creator.

Here's the second one.

God led him into the wilderness so that he might reveal not nature only, but himself.

Here's the truth I know because I've lived this.

There's some of us that are sitting here and you're thinking, okay, I gotta be honest.

Given the choice between point A or option A, where I have a direct route and I can be there in a week and a half, right?

Or option B where I'm over here and it's gonna take 40 years, it sounds great, and I can tell you're excited and you're passionate about it, but I'm gonna take this one over here.

Hear what happens in this season of wilderness.

He leads them into the wilderness, and as he leads them, and as he leads us, he meets with them.

He speaks with them.

He reveals himself to them and he teaches them to know themselves in light of knowing him.

You want to know the difference between your passions and then your true needs?

It's in the wilderness where God is meeting and speaking and revealing.

And lastly, God leads them into the wilderness to prepare them for what was to come.

Here's the upside-down nature of when we get involved in this is we are really thankful on the other side of the wilderness.

Right?

Here's what I mean.

How many times have you said yourself or heard something like this?

It was a hard journey, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Or you've heard the famous quote: Life is a journey, not a destination.

That's a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote, kids, by the way, not the rapper Drake.

He's a plagiarist.

All right.

Saw that on some kid's Facebook, and I drove to his house and throat punched him.

Um for the glory of the Lord.

For the glory of the Lord.

Um in retrospect, I'm really glad I went through all that.

I learned so much.

Right?

We're quick to give God glory once we've left the wilderness, but we miss the opportunity to give God glory at the head of the trail.

We can miss that this time in the wilderness is to refresh us, for God to reveal Himself to us, for prepare us for what is to come.

But here, just like before, with resentfulness and doubting, it doesn't have to be that way.

We don't have to live waiting for it to be over.

We were created to live in the midst of it, being led out by the Creator.

And this brings us to our third and final point.

Are you still with me as we finish?

There is provision and direction in the wilderness.

There is provision and direction in the wilderness.

Look at verse 21.

It says, And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they may travel by day and by night.

The pillar of cloud that we just got done singing about by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people.

Just like the burning bush that Neil, when Neil taught when we were in Exodus 3, just like the burning bush, this is what God uses to speak.

And this is this pillar, is this visible symbol, much like the bush, of God's presence among his people.

The Lord Himself was in the pillar.

He is the pillar.

And as we'll read in weeks to come, he's going to speak to his people from it.

Look quickly as we close.

I just want to point out some things about God's presence as we understand why these seasons of wilderness are not to be run away from, why the journey that doesn't make sense, why it's not to be veered away from.

Look at verse 21.

It says, The Lord went before them.

The Lord went before them.

Why is that important?

We talked just a few minutes ago about doubting and not trusting God's character.

Here's how we know we can trust God's character.

God isn't going to take you to the foot of a journey into the wilderness and hand you a little brown paper bag with lunch in it and go, Good luck.

See you on the other side.

No, what does it say?

It says that he went before them.

He provides his presence.

Before you even got there, he was there.

And his presence is waiting for you in this season of wilderness.

He's not sending you out there going, Good luck.

Hope you listened in Sunday school.

No, he's there.

It also provides shelter.

Don't turn there if you're taking notes.

Just jot down Isaiah 4.6.

And there's this great picture of what this shelter is that God's presence provides.

This this literal shelter.

It says, There will be a booth in Isaiah 4.6.

There will be a booth for shade by day from the heat and for a refuge and shelter from the storm in the rain.

God is saying, in this wilderness, I'll be your shelter.

I'll be your provision.

I'll take care of you.

I want to read something for you.

It's going to be on the screens as well.

This is from Isaiah chapter 41, verses 4 through 10.

Isaiah 41:4–10

And I know we have ESVs, and that's what you always see.

This is going to be from the message.

And I think this paints this beautiful picture of what this looks like for us to understand that in the wilderness God's are shelter as we close.

It says this.

Who did this?

Who made it happen?

Who always gets things started?

I did.

God.

I'm the first on the scene.

I'm also the last to leave.

Far-flung ocean islands see it and they panic.

The ends of the earth are shaken.

Fearfully they huddle together.

They try to help each other out, making up stories in the dark.

The God makers in the workshops, remember the works of men?

The God makers in the workshops go into overtime production, crafting new models of no gods, urging one another on, saying, Good job, great design, pounding in nails at the base so that these things won't tip over.

That's life outside the journey into the wilderness.

But you, O Israel, you're my servant.

You're Jacob.

You're my first choice.

You're descendants of my good friend Abraham.

I pulled you in from all over the world.

I called you in from every dark corner of the earth, telling you, you're my servant, serving on my side.

I've picked you.

I haven't dropped you.

Don't panic.

I'm with you.

There's no need to fear, for I'm your God.

I'll give you strength.

I'll help you.

I'll hold you steady to keep a firm grip on you.

It's a great picture of what it looks like to trust God in a seasonal wilderness.

Say, God, I see the quick route, but this is what you got.

Let's do this.

I'm going to trust your provision.

I'm not going to doubt you.

I'm not going to be resentful about the fact this looks different than what I had planned.

And this sets my 10-year plan completely on its head.

Because God says, I'll hold you steady.

I won't drop you.

The text lastly says that God went before them to lead them along the way.

Not only is he there before you, what God is saying, God isn't saying, hey, go in there and give it your best.

God is saying, I'm already here and I'm going to lead you.

I'm going to lead you.

And it says that it never left them.

By day and by night.

And so if God is calling us into the wilderness, which says that God has gone out before us and he is leading us.

So if God is leading us, let's finish with some group participation, and then Clyde's going to come up and we're going to pray together.

If God is leading us, then our role is to.

I heard one person over here.

If God is leading us, then our job is to let's follow.

Hey, do me a favor and uh stand to your feet and let me speak a blessing over you.

And there are just a few, and come and take these.

Don't be shy.

There's just a few of these um Operation Christmas Child boxes.

Um come do that and uh and do that as a family this morning, alright?

Your father has gone out before you.

He was there before you even thought about getting there.

He will hold you tight.

He will not drop you.