The Bigness of Why

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And so, Lord, we want to tell the story.

The story is unchanged.

How it comes out sometimes is different.

The medium through which you broadcast the story is different.

Sometimes it's eight-year-old Brooklyn or eight-year-old Grace.

And sometimes it's a 51-year-old guy who drinks too much coffee.

But the story is consistent and it's constant throughout.

So let us hear the story, the bigness of why today.

We pray and we listen now in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

You can have a seat.

If you've got a Bible, I invite you to take it and open it up to Exodus chapter 11.

Exodus 11 · chapter mention

And if you don't have a Bible, there's one on your row.

I'm on page 53.

I'm on page 53.

And so uh uh let me just uh if you're our guest today, we're preaching through the book of Exodus.

We took a couple of weeks off just so you could hear from good preachers that had pictures and stuff.

Uh and so this week, you're back to just me.

And all God's people said, Oh, no.

Anyway, we're preaching through the book of Exodus, and we've been talking about the ten plagues.

And so if you saw the ten, the movie The Ten Commandments, you're kind of like, uh, I know about that.

What is that about?

Uh and so I want we're we're to the tenth and final plague today.

And look at me just for a second, okay?

Stick with me.

We're gonna read things in the Bible, and you this thought's gonna go through your head.

What's that got to do with my life?

I don't get that more than you realize, okay?

Because the Bible's incredibly relative.

So I'm not here to make a case for how relative the Bible is.

I'm here just to tell the story.

The same story that God's been telling since the very beginning in Genesis 1, when it says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

That same story has been told from them, and it will be told to the end of time, okay?

And so I'm gonna read a little bit of the story.

I'm gonna point out four things in the story for us to think about.

We'll get to the end, and I'll say, let's just be still and think about this for a minute before we get out of here.

Fair enough?

All right.

I want to talk to you this morning about the bigness of why.

The bigness of why, okay?

Because there's things in this life that we don't understand.

Yesterday I went to a wedding and I just, it was an outdoor wedding, beautiful wedding on the golf course.

I sit down, and the guy next to me got to talking, he's like, you know, bride or groom?

And I said, I know the the the bride's family, they go to my church.

Oh, you go to church with so-and-so and so-and-so.

Well, she works with me, and then so you go to church with them.

And then he kept saying, So you go to church with them, so I thought I out myself and said, Well, I'm I'm actually their pastor.

And then the question started coming.

Uh, and it was great.

Well, he told me about a friend of his who was playing tennis and stumbled and fell into the wall and broke his neck and ended up dying.

He goes, The guy was in great shape.

I mean, sometimes you just don't know why stuff happens.

And I just said, Well, yeah, we don't know why stuff happens.

In this life, we look through a glass dimly.

We're gonna have things we don't understand, but there's always a bigger picture and a bigger purpose to anything that happens.

I'm not saying everything happens is God's will, because sometimes we just live in a screwed-up world where sin is the reason stuff happens, and his wife's patting him on the leg.

You know, you get the pat from your wife, that's kind of like, hey, it's a wedding, shut up, okay?

And so he was getting the pat and I was getting the stare from my wife.

And I was like, he's asking me questions.

And so there's a bigness to why that I want you to understand.

It's not always in the negative, it's also in the positive.

Here's what I mean.

We'll start reading in Exodus chapter one.

I want to read a lot of the Bible and then just a little bit of Neil.

Amen.

I'm strangely not affirmed by that.

Uh Exodus chapter 11, verse 1.

Exodus 11:1

The Lord said to Moses, Yet one plague more I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt.

Afterward he will let you go from here.

When he lets you go, he will drive you away completely.

Speak now in the hearing of the people that they ask every man of his neighbor and every woman of her neighbor for silver and gold jewelry.

And the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians.

Moreover, the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh's servants, and in the sight of the people.

Now, what you just read right there is that God begin because of what God's done and who how consistently Moses has been, the people who followed Pharaoh are now kind of looking at Moses, kind of going, I think what you're talking about is the truth.

And so they begin to kind of transfer their allegiance.

Verse 4 says, So Moses said, Thus says the Lord, about midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt, and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die.

From the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who's behind the hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle.

There shall be a great crowd throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been, nor ever will be again.

But not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.

And all these your servants shall come down to me and bow down to me, saying, Get out, you and all the people who follow you, and after that I will go out.

And he went out from Pharaoh in hot anger.

And then the Lord said to Moses, Pharaoh will not listen to you, that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.

Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh.

He did not let the people of Israel go out of his land.

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, this month shall be for you the beginning of months.

It shall be the first month of the year for you.

Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their father's houses, a lamb for a household.

And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons, according to which each can eat, you shall make your count for the lamb.

Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old, you may take it from the sheep or from the goats, and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.

And then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts, on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.

They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire with unleavened bread, and bitter herbs they shall eat it.

Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roast it, its head with legs and its inner parts, and you shall let none of it remain until the morning.

Anything that remains until the morning you shall burn, in this manner you shall eat it, with your belt fastened, and your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it in haste.

It is the Lord's Passover, for I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments.

I am the Lord.

The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.

This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast.

Now, I read a lot of that.

I want you to get the whole story.

Now God's been coming to Moses and telling Moses, I want you to do this, and I'm gonna send this plague, and I'm gonna send this plague, and I'm gonna send this plague.

And I want just by way of reminder, because we haven't been in Exodus in in a while, I want to make an introductory statement, and I want to tell you just a few things about what the plagues teach us about God.

The first thing I want to say is simply this is that the book of Exodus is not a story just to help the Israelites trust God as things happened, uh, but on a bigger scale, he g God's trying helping them learn to trust Him that and trust the fact that He's the one that makes things happen in the first place.

And these things happen.

So you got, hey, don't just trust God as things happen.

If you pan the camera back a little wider, you see that, hey, trust the fact that God is the one who makes things happen in the first place.

And then you pan the camera back a little bit further, and you see the bigness of the why is that, hey, God causes these things to happen for a reason.

It's part of his redemption story that he's bringing to bear on his people.

Now, when it comes to the plagues, uh, what do they teach us about God?

Just by way of reminder, there's four things.

Let me just list them briefly.

Number one, they remind us that God is almighty, that God is almighty.

In other words, there's no one greater than God.

Over and over and over, up to this point in Exodus, God has said, I'm gonna do this so that you'll know there's no one like me.

I'm gonna do this so that you'll know there's no one like me.

May I ask you a question and think about this week while you're driving to work.

What does God still need to do to convince you that there's no other God besides Him?

What does God need to do to convince you that there's no one like Him?

That He is the only, He's the one true God.

And secondly, the plagues tell us that God is jealous.

Not of us, He's jealous for us.

In other words, He wants to have the place of first priority in your life because not because if He does it, He's gonna miss out, you're gonna miss out.

That's why we raise our children by asking this one simple question over and over.

Do you trust me?

Do you trust me?

Do you trust me?

My oldest knocked the top out of our standardized test and started getting letters from Columbia and the NYU, and she goes, Oh dad, I want to go to school on the East Coast.

I said, Over my dead body.

She said, Why?

And I said, Do you trust me?

Yeah, but just why?

And I said, babe, some sell the sizzle and some sell the steak.

That makes no sense.

That's because I'm smarter than you.

But God is jealous, not of you, but he's jealous for you.

In other words, God believes that no one can take care of you and bless you and save you like he can.

That's what it means when he says he's jealous.

Thirdly, he's just.

God is just.

In other words, God deals with people according to their sins.

Sometimes in the Bible, evil people die, and activists get all offended, go, oh, how can a loving God kill those people?

The wages of sin has always been and will always be death.

So there's not an injustice happening when evil people die.

Fourthly and finally, he's merciful.

Now, now think just for a second.

The Bible's not about trying to, Christianity is not maintaining an emotion.

That's not what it is.

I want to feel good, at least till Wednesday.

No, no, no.

The first thing that the gospel does is makes you think.

When you say that the plagues your mind is that God is merciful, you have to remember back in the beginning, chapter 2, this all came about.

God began to act to redeem his people Israel because he heard their cries.

And it says in Exodus chapter 2 about verse 23, God heard their cries.

Exodus 2 · chapter mention

He remembered his covenant.

And he said, I'm going to do something about this.

If God's not merciful, then none of this takes place.

And so I say that, just put that on like a lens through which you look at and hear what the Bible says today.

There's four points that the Bible makes, and I want to just kind of point to them like your tour guide today.

And then at the end I'll say, let's just think about this.

Here's the first one.

It's in chapter 11, verse 3.

And it's simply this the favor of God changes things.

The favor of God changes things.

Now listen to chapter 11 of Exodus, verse 2 and 3.

It says, Speak now in the hearing of the people that they ask every man of his neighbor and every woman of her neighbor for silver and gold jewelry.

And the Lord gave his people favor in the sight of the Egyptians.

Moreover, the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt.

And I'll stop right there.

Now you say, What do you mean, favor?

Now I've got to be careful because favor is a word that we've kind of let the charismatics and the crazy people have.

Have you noticed that?

When's the last time you heard a sermon on the favor of God at a Baptist church?

Like some of you right now, just me saying favor, you're kind of leaning back like, where are you going with this?

You're not getting crazy, are you?

No, I just want to just say to you that the favor of God changes things.

The favor of God is this tangible reality.

Let me just give you some biblical examples.

Noah, Moses received favor from the Lord.

Joseph was said to have enjoyed God's favor.

Now, now why did I say Joseph?

Now look at me.

The Bible says that Joseph enjoyed God's favor.

Remember Joseph?

Joseph didn't have like this rosy life.

He was sold by his brothers into slavery.

They threw him in a pit.

They sold him to some guys that were kind of passing through, and some woman falsely accused him of sexual harassment in the workplace.

Remember that?

He got thrown in prison.

And the Bible says he enjoyed God's favor.

God's favor.

So here's one of the questions I want you to think about this week.

Maybe talk about in your community group or think about on the way to work is how do you define God's favor and do you think it's on your life?

How do you define God's favor and do you think it's on your life?

Because the Bible, and I just I'll just list a few more.

The angel Gabriel told Mary that she had found favor with God.

Now when Jesus was born, the angels announced peace to men on whom his favor rests.

Later on in the book of Exodus in chapter 33, Moses will say to God, because God's the children of Israel have been disobedient, and God says, You guys can go in the promised land, but I'm not going with you.

Just get away from me.

I can't take your smallness anymore.

And Moses goes to God, meets with him face to face as a man speaks to a friend, the Bible says, and Moses appeals to favor.

He says, Lord, if I have found favor in your sight, then go with us.

So the favor of God is so real that Moses appeals to it.

Now I have a friend of mine that this bothers very much.

You talk about the favor of God, he gets uncomfortable.

He's just kind of like, oh, be careful, though, Neil.

So anytime he and I go to lunch or something and I get a good parking space, I just look at him and go, favor it and fair.

And he's like, You shouldn't joke about this.

And I'm saying, I'm not joking about it.

I'm not joking about it.

Now, if you're visiting today, this is a conservative church.

We're not like choking chickens and jumping the pews or anything.

But look at me.

The favor of God is real.

And you say, Well, what do you mean?

You got to think about and ask yourself, how do I define favor?

And is it on my life?

Because here's why.

Because we believe in what I call spiritual socialism in the American church.

You believe in spiritual socialism.

In other words, if somebody has it, everyone's going to get it.

No one has anything no one else doesn't have.

And here's why it comes out.

This is what it sounds like, especially if you've been going to church a long time.

Or the ground's level at the foot of the cross.

How many of y'all ever heard that phrase?

The ground's level at the foot of the cross.

What does that mean?

God feels the same way about everybody.

Then why did he never take Judas aside on the Mount of Transfiguration or in the Garden of Gethsemane?

Now I'm not saying God doesn't love people.

I'm saying that God, some people have a measure of favor over their life.

See, the way I define favor is this tangible evidence that a person has the approval and the blessing and the confidence of God.

This tangible evidence.

Let me get back to the Bible because I wish you could see some of your faces.

You look like you walked out of Walmart and forgot where you parked.

What?

Easy now, preacher.

You're getting crazy here.

Ask yourself, if you don't believe in the favor of God and you think that's just kooky talk, whatever.

When's the last time?

If you went home today and rang your neighbor's doorbell and said, give me all your gold and silver, what would they say?

Yet the Bible says that God made them favorably disposed.

He gave them favor with the Egyptians, and that's what the Egyptians did.

Here, not only do you need to get out of our country, take our silver, take our gold, and leave.

Because you see, spiritual socialism will make you mediocre the rest of your life.

Why should I be disciplined?

Why should I read the Bible?

Why should I pray?

Why should I fast?

Why should I go to church?

I can talk to God as good in a deer stand as I could in a church building.

That person will never know the favor of God.

Because you just kind of think, hey, you know what?

I'm going to do it my way.

So the first thing we see in the text is the favor of God changes things.

Secondly, we see that we're not all God's children.

We're not all God's children.

What do you mean?

Chapter 11, uh, about verse 6, it says, There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as never been, nor will ever be again.

But not a dog shall growl against any other people of Israel, either man or beast, that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.

And all these your servants shall come down to me and bow down to me, saying, Get out, you and all the people who follow you.

And after that, I got out.

I will get out, he says.

Now he what do you mean?

It's verse 7.

Actually, verse 6 and 7, but in verse 7, he says, Not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, so that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction.

Now, every once in a while, I think I can say this with you.

I can't say this with the other two services.

People ask me every once in a while, well, is Jesus sarcastic?

I'm like, well, when you're smarter than everybody in the world, you come off as sarcastic sometimes.

This is one of those points.

None of you memorize Exodus chapter 7 ever in your life.

Exodus 7 · chapter mention

You've never, somebody's never said, Hey man, where are you in the Bible?

Well, not a dog will growl against any of the people of Israel.

What's he talking about?

Now remember, I said that one of the reasons that we see in the plagues, one of the things God demonstrates is that he is almighty.

Remember that?

Hello?

That's not when we have like a like an introductory thought, that's not like, oh, we're just buying time to give make it worth your while because you drove in from Bulsher, okay?

God proves He's Almighty.

What does that mean?

He says, not a dog is gonna grow.

Actually, the literal translation in the Hebrew is not a dog is got no dog is gonna stick out his tongue at the people of Israel.

Now, what?

If you understood that, remember I told you in the very first time we I preached in Exodus that the Egyptians were pantheistic.

They believed in gods in everything, and they're polytheistic.

They have multiple gods.

One of the gods they have is a god of the underworld called Osiris.

Osiris's right-hand man, so to speak, in the underworld is a god named Abihu.

Abihu, and Abihu was a human with a dog head.

If you've ever seen Egyptian hieroglyphics, you've seen this before.

It's a human body with a dog's head.

The head's usually painted black.

That's Abihu.

And what he does when you die as an Egyptian, he takes you as a guide into the afterlife.

And God is not sarcastic.

God is just exposing the futility of religious superstition.

And God is saying, hey, not a dog is gonna stick out his tongue towards any of my people.

Translation, hey, your little, your little, your little uh a guide into the afterlife, which by the way, nobody spent more time and money on the afterlife than the Egyptians.

That's why when you go to a good museum, all these mummies are Egyptian.

That's why they find these tombs, they're laden with gold, because they were worried about the afterlife.

And God's so subtle.

And God just comes along in Exodus 7 and says, Let me tell you something, not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.

When I say we're not all God's children, that's what I mean.

Because, see, this has gotten pressed to the limits, this whole, well, we're all God's children.

And Oprah, who's the Pope of America these days, uh, Oprah's got a seven-part series on spirituality.

And somebody called me this past week and said, Hey man, are you gonna watch that?

And I said, Why would I?

I can tell you what it's gonna be.

It's gonna be seven different religions.

Choose the one that fits you, and there you go.

Because we live in a culture that puts all things into the big vat of spirituality, turns up the heat, melts it down, and what you have is this homogenous goo that comes out that's not compelling or consequential, but you know, basically says we're all, you know, gonna end up in the same place, so it doesn't matter how you get there.

And let me just say this.

When I say we're not all God's people, because a friend of mine, he's like, well, you know, I well, I'll I'll tell you in a minute, I'll bring this into the cultural, but let me just say this that there's more at stake than we realize when it comes to this whole we're not all God's children.

There there's there's more at stake because if this isn't true, if God doesn't make a distinction and we are God's children, then what we lose is a doctrine of election.

We use event we lose evangelism.

Why share the gospel?

We're all God's children.

I mean, heck, why even have a gospel?

Why have a Bible?

So you lose evangelism, the gospel, heaven, hell, the Bible.

If we're all God's children, then what is the good news of Christianity anyway?

If we're all God's children.

Now, you at this point you may be thinking, you're kind of wired up about this preacher.

Yeah.

Let me ask you a question.

How many of y'all seen the commercial for Proposition 1 here in Houston, where they have the black and white couple with their little clerical collars on, and the lady opens up and says, We're all God's children.

I got in a conversation with a friend of mine.

He's a nice man, but he's a kept man.

You know, you can pay a preacher so much that he'll no longer preach the gospel, right?

You know that, right?

His kids get free tuition.

He's got a country club membership, and I wouldn't spit on that cat if he was on fire.

And so when something comes out, I'm his conservative friend.

And he goes, Well, how do you represent me?

I represent you as my cowardly friend.

And by the way, Revelation says the cowardly will be the first people in the lake of fire.

That ain't funny, Neil.

It's sure not because you could lose your own soul because you love money and peace so much.

Oh man, you frustrate me.

Why do you keep calling me if I'm so frustrating?

I'm a nice man.

I give money to homeless people.

But I'm not gonna tell it.

He goes, Well, you know, proposition one, you need to get on board.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

We're not all God's children.

See, Proposition one, it begins with a lie because the entire thing's a lie.

It's just another attempt by the gay and lesbian community to normalize sin through political means.

And I said to my friend, I said, here's the thing, my man, what's killing America is we can't make a distinction.

What's going to kill you is you can't make a distinction.

You as a Christian, if you're not a Christian, I'm not talking to you because you can't make a distinction.

All you're gonna do is choose what you think is best for you.

But as a Christian, you need to make a distinction.

Let me just kind of give you what I mean by that and I'll show you in the Bible.

You with me?

I haven't been with you in a couple weeks, so I may come out a little stout today, okay?

Bear with me.

I'm a little charged up because this proposition one, we just rolled this Trojan horse to the door of our culture, and we got people that'll that'll get in their little priestly garments and kind of go, we're all God's children, and I gotta talk back to my TV and go, No, we're not.

And my kids giggle and go, Mom, Daddy's talking to the TV again.

Shut up, shut up.

Don't you believe this?

This is not true.

We're not all God's children.

If we're all God's children, Jesus Christ was the most unnecessary person who ever lived, and he died the most unnecessary death anyone's ever experienced.

You gotta make a distinction.

Like you gotta make a distinction between your time and your company's time.

When you go to work, work.

Get off your cell phone.

I can't go to one more store and some kids on this phone.

Hey, am I imposing on your social time?

I'm just checking my Facebook status.

Hang on a second.

How about at Home Depot, right up here on Highway 6?

It's just can't make a distinction.

Let me tell you another distinction you gotta make.

Your wife is the only woman you kiss and do anything else with.

That's a distinction.

Same thing for your husband.

You just I was at a conference this week on the brain because I'm a nerd.

I went to a conference on how the brain processes trauma.

Fascinating.

I was sitting at the table with all women.

I don't know any of these people.

And a friend of mine was there, they put on the conference and they said, Hey, you know, are you are you comfortable?

You're not talking a lot.

I said, I love not talking.

I love I don't know anybody here, okay?

And I'm sitting at a table the second day, you had to come in and just sit down.

I'm surrounded by all women.

There's like three men at the whole conference, and I'm sitting with all women, and one of those lady goes, Hey, is this a problem for you being surrounded by all these beautiful women?

Not a problem with y'all, because y'all mean nothing to me.

And apparently you're not supposed to say that.

Because they were just like, uh, what'd you say?

I said, y'all could all die today and I wouldn't shed a tear.

I don't know, you'd be sad, but you mean nothing to me.

There's one woman in the world that means something to me, and she ain't here, so we can talk or not talk, and I'll be great.

Now that sounds horrible, doesn't it?

If you're visiting right now, you're thinking, what a jerk.

No, I'm just making a distinction between my wife and all the other women in the world.

I'm not a rude person, but my wife gets access to me conversationally and other ways that other women don't.

You've got to make a distinction.

Why?

Because we stopped making a distinction.

And by the way, it started a long time ago.

Let me just point to you.

I mean, excuse me, this is Ezekiel chapter 22, because the salt is losing its saltiness because Christians can't make a distinction.

Ezekiel 22 · chapter mention

Ezekiel chapter 22, verse 23, and the word of the Lord came to me, Ezekiel, said, Son of man, say to her, Jerusalem, the most religious city in the world, son of man, say to her, you are a land that is not cleansed or reigned upon in the day of indignation.

Ezekiel 22:23

The conspiracy of her prophets in her midst is like a roaring lion tearing the prey.

See, when you want to corrupt the nation, you corrupt their priest.

You get them on TV, you pay them a country club membership, and you give them extra and this and this perk and that perk, and you tell them, you get to park right here next to the building because you're so special.

The conspiracy of her prophets is in her midst, is like a roaring lion tearing the prey.

They have devoured human lives, they've taken treasure and precious things, they have made many widows in her midst.

Her priests have done violence to my law and have profaned my holy things.

They have made no distinction between the holy and the common, and neither have they taught the difference between the unclean and the clean, and they have disregarded my Sabbaths so that I am profaned among them.

You see, when God's people, and it starts at the top, when we failed to make a distinction now.

By the way, I'm not hating on anybody.

I'm not mad at those people on TV.

I think it's kind of sad.

Especially that one cup that rolls their little.

That's why we're teaching our kid to just be a tolerant little boy.

I'm like, oh golly, you're not doing your son a favor.

Because when your son destroys, grows up and destroys himself because he doesn't understand the difference between right and wrong.

That's a distinction, folks.

If you're going to have a distinction, if you want your kids to understand this is right and this is wrong, there better be a distinction.

So the Bible teaches us, hey, there's a dis God makes a distinction.

Why?

Because we're all, we're not all God's children.

Third thing the Bible tells us today is the rhythm of your life should be set by God.

The rhythm of your life should be set by God.

You still with me?

Look at chapter 12, verse 1.

And the Lord said to Moses and heir in the land of Egypt, this month shall be for you the beginning of months.

It shall be the first month of the year for you.

That's another inconsequential thing you read in the Bible and just keep going.

None of you memorize that in sword drill.

What's your memory verse?

Exodus 12, 1.

The Lord said to Moses and heir in the land of Egypt, this month shall be for you the beginning of months.

It shall be the first month of the year for you.

Here's what God is saying.

The rhythm of your life should be set by God.

The rhythm of your life should be set by me, is what God's saying.

It's basically, don't raise your hand.

But any in this room ever gone through a hard patch in your marriage where you just thought, I don't know if we're gonna make it.

I mean, my wife just drives me crazy, and maybe I haven't made the best choices.

She's always on me, and then miracle, miracles, you work it out, you work through it, and you're still together.

It's like your wife looking at you and kind of going, man, this is so refreshing.

I think we should just start our year over right now.

Tomorrow's gonna be January the 1st.

You would be like, it's good and everything, but let's don't get crazy, okay, woman?

But yet that's what God says.

God says that what I'm doing right now in this whole Passover thing is so life-altering.

We're gonna hit the reset button on the calendar, and this month is gonna be the first month of your year.

Why?

Because what God is saying is the rhythm of your life should be set by me.

Because when God acts, he carves his name in history and he wants his people to order their lives in such a way that they don't forget it.

Like, did you know last week talking about reordering the calendar?

Did you know last Monday was Thanksgiving Day in Canada?

Hello?

No, not yeah.

No, I have a friend from Canada.

I called him on that day and said, hey, and he always says a boot, a boot.

I'm like, it ain't a boot.

We ain't getting no boots, and we ain't getting a boat.

It's about.

No, it's a boot.

You you butcher the language.

I'm gonna butcher you, you keep talking.

And I'm like, hey man, the pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock.

Plymouth Rock is in the United States.

We get to determine when Thanksgiving is.

Oh, there you arrogant Americans with your guns and your pride.

I tell you what, I'm gonna get some of my guns to come up there and show you some pride.

And I said, what?

He said, it's always the second Monday in October.

And I think, who does Thanksgiving on the second Monday in October?

I said, you are out of sync with the rest of the world.

And he said, Do you think America gets to determine the calendar for the rest of the world?

Well, I don't know.

Let me watch Bill O'Reilly and I'll get back to you about that.

By the same token.

Now, do I care when they celebrate Thanksgiving?

I don't care.

It's just out of sync when we do it.

Why do I tell you that?

Because God told his people, hey, I want you to reset the calendar.

And I want you to order the rhythm of your life around me and what I've done so you never get over this.

Never get over this.

Ever, ever, ever, never get beyond what's going on right here.

Let me give you another question I want you to think about this week.

Bring us down to where we live.

What order is the rhythm of your life right now?

For some of you, it's debt.

You seen that bumper sticker?

I owe, I owe.

So off to work I go.

Wouldn't you love to be at a place you could just look at your wife and come home at like 10:30 in the morning?

What are you doing?

I quit.

We don't need the money.

We got money in the bank.

I don't have to work for three years.

I just want to rest and hang out with you.

What do you want to do?

Your wife would be like, get your sorry self back to work.

It'd just be weird.

Or the lady I talked to a couple weeks ago, and her daughter and son-in-law, uh, they said, Oh, the grandkids want you at every soccer practice.

So grandma goes to every soccer practice, and at every soccer practice, the daughter says, Hey girls, you want to go with grandma and get some dinner?

And she pawns the kids off on her grandmother, and the grandmother has to take the kids to dinner and then take them home.

Well, her and her husband go to dinner.

And the grandmother said, I love my grandkids, Neil, but I'm starting to resent my daughter.

I'm starting to resent them.

I said, You don't resent your daughter.

You resent your, I mean your grandkids, you don't resent your grandkids, you resent your daughter because your daughter's selfish.

Your job is not to raise these grandkids.

That your grandkids should not set the rhythm of your life.

Uh-oh.

Did you feel that in here?

Whoo, the air got sucked out of the room.

Look at me.

Since we're out here, let's just fight about it.

Some of you are hiding, some of you older folks are hiding behind your grandkids because you don't know what to do at this station in life.

And grandkids are a convenient excuse.

Because you have to, you can't face that.

What do we do?

Oh, let's.

And I'm not saying don't hang out with your grandkids.

And the lady said to me, Well, if I brought my daughter down here, would you tell her that?

I would probably enjoy it too much, ma'am.

Why don't you tell her?

And by the way, I just, because I'm crazy, I said, Why are you going to soccer practice?

You don't need to go to any soccer practices, and you ain't got to go to every game.

She goes, Well, I used to play bunko, and I got out of my bunko league, and I'm like, Bunko?

What's Bunko?

Twenty minutes later, I was like, okay, I got it, I got it.

No, I can't play on Tuesday night.

Thanks for the invite.

Apparently there's a bunko revolution going on.

Hey, look at me.

Hey, what sets the rhythm of your life?

For some of you, ain't your grandkids, it's your kids.

You're chasing them all over the town and wonder why you're so tired.

Hey, right now, y'all are like, where's the guy with the cool pictures from last week?

We want him back.

The rhythm of your life should be set by God.

Fourthly and finally, God always has a why.

God always has a why.

And there's a bigness to the why that God has.

Let me just point to this and we'll be done.

You still with me this morning?

This is Exodus chapter 12, verse 3.

Exodus 12:3

He says, Tell the congregation of Israel to take on the tenth day of this month.

Every man shall take a lamb according to the father's houses, a lamb for a household.

And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons, according to what each can eat.

So you shall make count for the lamb.

Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male, a year old, you may take it from the sheep or from the goats, and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.

And then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.

They shall eat the flesh that night, roast it on the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.

They shall eat it, do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roast it its head with its legs and inner parts.

Look at me.

At this point you should be thinking, What's this got to do with my life?

Keep reading.

Verse 10.

And you shall let none of it remain until the morning.

Anything that remains until the morning you shall burn.

In this manner you shall eat it, with your belts fastened, and your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand.

You shall eat it in haste.

It is the Lord's Passover, for I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments.

I am the Lord.

The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you.

When I strike the land of Egypt, this day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout all your generations, as a statute forever.

You shall keep it as a feast.

Now, why?

When I say God always has a why, why does God give these almost appears to be crazy, detailed instructions?

Hey, this is what you're going to do, and this is how you're going to do it.

You're going to have this meal, this Passover meal, where you have this lamb, and this is how you're going to do it.

You're going to come to the dinner table with your suitcase.

It's like you come in today at lunch.

Your wife comes downstairs tonight at dinner and she's got all her luggage packed.

Your first question is going to be, where are you going?

You're like, whoa.

God says, hey, this is what you're going to do.

You're going to eat this meal.

And this is how you're going to eat it with your robe on, your sandals on, and your staff in your hand.

Why?

Because they believed that God meant what he said and they were getting out of there.

I mean, the fact that you believe God ought to manifest itself in your life at some point, beloved.

It'd be some external indications.

Hey, that cat believes God.

How do you know?

He's eaten with his bags packed.

He's ready to bust out of here.

And then the why.

This will be a memorial for you.

Never forget this.

Best we can tell, I'm done in about three minutes.

You still with me?

Best we can tell the book of Exodus was written in 1440 or 1400 BC.

I'll take the conservative number, 1400 BC.

That means for 1400 years, people have been keeping the Passover feast as a memorial.

And every day on the 10th of the month.

Remember, I said that there's a bigness.

The bigness of why.

There's a bigness to not just what God does, but why he does it.

And we can't sustain a thought more than eight seconds.

So we can't follow it and kind of go, okay, I think I see what's going on there.

There's a bigness to it.

And what is it?

God says on the 10th day of this month, you're going to select a lamb and you're going to keep it to the 14th day.

So 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, the course of a week.

You fast forward into the New Testament.

Jesus rides into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the 10th of this month.

And he goes from this person to that person to this person.

They're inspecting him and they're saying that.

And finally Pilate says, I find no fault in him.

And he washes his hands and said, This man is innocent on the fifth day.

While people are, he rides in, they're selecting their Passover lamb.

He gets examined by all these different priests and officials and judges and governor and Pilate says, Hey, I can't find anything wrong with this guy.

Basically, you got an unblemished lamb that you can now sacrifice.

When Jesus first shows up on the scene, John the Baptist says, Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.

Did anybody who'd been doing this for 1400 years kind of hear that and go, What?

What'd you say?

A lamb?

That's a person.

And Jesus lived with this crazy intentionality, this laid-back posture, yet this deliberate intentionality towards everything.

He would say phrases like, My time has not yet come.

People get so mad at Jesus they pick up rocks to kill him.

And he would just walk away and smile and go, My time has not yet come.

Translation, they can't kill me because it's not time for me to die.

And then at one point, the Bible says he asked his disciples, who do the people say I am?

Some say Moses, some say Elijah, some say John the Baptist.

And he says, Who do you say that I am?

And Peter says, You're the Christ, you're the Son of the living God.

And Jesus says, Blessed are you, Simon, son of Barjona, flesh and blood did not reveal that to you.

And from that time on, Jesus began to speak to them about his death.

He's journeyed out and now he sets his face like flint to go back to Jerusalem.

Rides in on this tenth day of the first month that God said 1400 years earlier, hey, reset the calendar.

Why?

Because he knew Jesus was going to come.

As the fulfillment.

Jesus was going to come to the bigness of God's why was going to be answered in the what?

Of the person of Jesus.

Jesus rides in.

He's unblemished.

And he sacrificed as a lamb on the cross for the sins of the world.

That means everybody in this room, me included.

Remember when they verified the fact that Jesus was dead and they said it was getting dark, and so they took his body down.

That's why way back in Exodus, he says, Hey, when you have a lamb, if you got two or three people, get with your neighbors.

They didn't leave Jesus' body on the cross.

Because every little detail of him being the fulfillment of what had to happen for us to be forgiven was taken care of.

So when I say to you, thousands of years later, there's a bigness to why.

Sometimes we'll read things way back here on the left side of the Bible that don't make sense unless you keep reading all the way through the Bible.

And there's this bigness to what God says.

There's this progression to the lamb.

It starts off in Genesis 22.

It's one lamb for one person.

Abraham and his son Isaac are going up a hill and they're going to sacrifice.

And the son's like, Dad, we got the fire and we got the knife and we got the wood.

Where's the lamb?

God will provide a lamb, son.

And God provides a lamb.

One lamb for one person.

Exodus 12, it's one lamb for one household.

You get into the nation of Israel, they get established later on in the Old Testament.

It's one lamb for one nation.

On the day of atonement, the high priest lays his hands on the lamb, sends them out in the wilderness as a symbolic, hey, this is this is the sins of the people are sent away.

Jesus comes and it's one lamb for the sins of the world.

See, there's a progressive bigness to this whole lamb that God just kind of bears out.

Why do I tell you all that?

To tell you this, and I'm done.

Look at me.

Jesus Christ died on the cross as payment for the sins of everyone of you in this room.

And there's not a reason you have to go to hell when you die.

And what's even better, there's no reason you have to live in fear in the meantime.

God was sacrificed so you could be forgiven.

So whatever you've done, like leaving your cell phone on in church, you can be forgiven for that.

Relax, don't stare.

We've all been that person.

You're like, oh, it's in there.

Oh, and you can't find it, it's in the bottom of your purse.

You're like, it's my kid's phone.

No, it's yours.

It's yours.

Look at me.

Whatever you've done.

See, when the Bible says, For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

There's so much that goes into that little phrase that he gave.

And he said it up way back in Exodus 12 when he said this will be a memorial for you.

This will be this ritual that will become a reality.

So I just want to ask you this question has this ever become real for you?

All the pictures that you wish would go away.

And the things that you wish you you could forget that you did.

All that you make a memorial to, God made a memorial for.

That's why the Bible says that grace is greater than all your sin.

Depart now and open yourself to believing that.

That God made a memorial to something that's bigger than your sin.

And He did that so you could be free.

So get out of here now and live free lives.

In the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Bless you, you're dismissed.