God's Commitment to Love Us | Road Out 5

Hey, what up?

It's Mark Carter on, the Pastor of Fierce Church.

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I hope this encourages you, inspires you, strengthens you, gives you hope to keep pressing on, and it's my prayer that this sermon gives you a more expansive view of God's love for you.

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Thank you so much for joining us right here online.

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I think we're going to have a really good time today.

I want to talk to you about God's commitment to love us, god's commitment to love us.

We've been in this series, the Road Out, and it's really.

It's the road out of the mess you're in.

Whatever the mess is, however, you got there, whether it's your fault or not.

We all can find ourselves in messes, and we're going to give God's help.

We're going to give God's bold steps of faith to help us get out of whatever we're in.

But what are we getting out into, like?

where are we going?

Well, there's, there's several ways we could talk about this in the Bible and they'd still all be true.

On one level, the we're all coming out of sin, like this is a big picture.

Egypt, where we're discussing a lot of the story, is sin, and we're all led out of sin, out of Egypt, by Moses, by Jesus Christ, the true and better Moses.

Okay, so, on one level, on the macro level, god is using this to say just like these Egyptians were led out, you also are led out by Jesus into a life of forgiveness and freedom and no longer shackled to a sin nature.

In a different kind of way, it's also just about progressing out of different bondages in life.

Okay, so, yes, i've already come to faith in Christ many, many years ago, but now I'm still coming out of things.

I'm coming out of certain sins.

I'm learning how to be a better husband.

I'm learning how to be a better father.

I'm learning how to be a better pastor.

There's all kinds of like little hangups that we slowly lose as we come into freedom and out of the bondage that we're in as God leads us.

And then there's also this sense of we're all on this journey to heaven, like we're all.

We're all walking our way and we're coming out of the bondage on a very real, in a very real sense.

We're bound to earth And there comes a day when we're no longer bound entirely.

Yes, we're forgiven in Christ.

Now we're making our way to the promised land, and the truest promised land is in Jesus's presence, in His Majesty's presence himself.

So all those ways are appropriate ways to look at it.

I don't know which way might be important for you today.

When you are going through a really tough job, let's say really tough marriage, when you're going through maybe a really tough singleness and you're like, how do I break out of this thing?

If you're going through some really tough family tensions, if you've got a grandchild that is man, they're just not turning around.

You're praying for them and praying for them.

They're just not turning around.

You might be a great candidate for the road out.

As we get God's help.

Here's what He does He grabs our hands.

He says I'm going to lead you to take steps of faith.

And we're talking about how to sense that I'm going to lead you to take steps of faith And, as you do, it's going to take some boldness, but you're going to be coming into greater levels of freedom.

You're just going to bring breakthroughs that you never saw coming, as important as we look backwards.

Okay, so one way we could describe ourselves, as we are New Testament people, we are the New Covenant people.

We are on the other side of the cross.

As we look back into the Old Testament, into the pre-Jesus stuff, there's an important interpretative key that we need to look at.

It's Romans 15-4.

Paul is talking to New Testament Christians like us.

These things are like many of you, for whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope.

He's saying we're looking back at Exodus or any Old Testament book and saying there's certain ways that that was written.

Even though it was written to those people in those times, it's also written to us And we're just taking instruction from that.

And he said the reason we do that is so that we might have hope.

Now, you always need more hope.

How many needs some more hope?

I don't know if you can have enough hope.

Life just pulls you down.

It gets you discouraged.

And we need more hope.

And, importantly, hope just doesn't randomly come.

It comes through the encouragement of the scriptures.

We need encouragement, or perseverance, and the encouragement of the scriptures The perseverance part is where we press through.

It's where we, we, we, i just got to keep going.

It's where you're, you're hitting the gas to get up the hill.

I got to get up this hill as perseverance.

But the encouragement of the scriptures, baby, that's the fuel in the tank, that's how you keep going.

And so that's why it's so important to come to church, that's why it's so important to tune in, that's why it's so important to begin to develop daily time with God.

So we have that encouragement of the scriptures to keep going.

So in previous weeks we talked about this.

We said there's two truths when you feel forgotten Everybody feels forgotten sometimes Does God remember?

And he does.

God remembers even when no one else does.

And we said God rewards even simple obedience.

He doesn't need us to be rock stars and superstars.

He says hey, man, just do the little thing that you know and we'll go from there.

The next week we talked about God takes us through a character development process.

We said he has to do it in us before he can do it through us.

So he's like, hey, man, i wanna lead you out, i wanna lead you into greater freedom, but there's some work under the hood that we've gotta do.

And so we're gonna work on some stuff with you.

We're gonna work on your motives.

We're gonna work on instead of how can I fix the situation, which Moses might have asked when he was younger.

We might ask we say how does God want me to serve these people?

Instead of what is the quickest way to go about this, we said no, try what is the godliest way to go about this.

Instead of how do I show these people who I really am?

Try this Instead how do I learn who these people really are And what God has been up to among them?

It's taken the posture and the position of a servant, someone who wants to learn and be used in a friendly, non-imposing, non-jumping into someone's circumstance and forcing our way into their lives.

Then, the next week, kenzie talked about real confidence comes not from a better assessment of your potential, but from a clear view of how big and powerful God is.

It's not that I look at me and be like, well, what else?

what else I got.

How can I pump myself up and just be a better version?

No, no, no, don't look there.

Look at how big and powerful God is.

That's where you're really gonna get the power that you're gonna overcome some of your insecurity.

Then Pastor Andy talked about last week.

God uses our ordinary stuff for his purposes.

He's like man you don't need the upgrade, you don't need the premium version, you don't need the special brew.

What you got is good.

Just take a look at what you got and start with that.

Now.

This week we're gonna talk about this week, and next week we're gonna talk about the fact that the way out involves rightly thinking about God's commitment to love us and his way of holiness.

This week we're talking about his commitment to love us.

God is committed to loving us.

Next week.

There's a certain way God does things.

He does love us, but he does things a certain way as more than we get what his way is.

Because some of us, we do this in life, we do this in life all the time.

We think, once I know what to do, it doesn't really matter how I do it.

Once I know what to do, it doesn't matter how I do it.

And let me give you some examples.

You know not to text when you drive, but the way you do life, sometimes is you text when you drive.

You know that I need to check in, maybe a little bit more with my finances, but the way you do life would imply that you don't know that or you don't think that You might know.

Relationships are really important to me.

I gotta make sure things are going well with the key relationship in my life.

You know that for sure, but there can be a carelessness with it.

You don't necessarily live that way all the time, and God knows this.

He knows this is what we're like.

He says.

I know that you think you know what God wants you to do, maybe if you're on the road out, but the way you do it is important.

You can't just be careless with it.

That's where I'll talk about that next week, and the whole idea is we're trying to receive God as Father and we're gonna redeem that word for some people today And we're trying to see him as Holy King as well, because he's both, and one of the keys to the road out involves rightly relating to God the way he is rather than the way we imagine him to be.

He really is a certain way And we've got to get this down because we're gonna encounter difficulties, just like Moses was about to.

I can't wait for two weeks from now because we're gonna get into oh man, it's gonna be hard The detention, the stuff that is coming against Moses is gonna be really hard for him And for him to survive.

That he's got to understand this thing about the love of God, the love of the Father and the way of holiness.

That's the only way he's gonna make it through And that's what we've got to learn as well.

So we're gonna go back to Exodus, chapter four.

There's some other stuff that we wanna dig deeper into the soil.

I'm gonna like to go deep.

You like to get a little bit underneath the surface?

I know I do So.

Moses has got a new mission.

This is such an epithetal moment I don't want us to zoom past it.

He's going back to a haunted place.

It's not haunted by ghosts, but it's haunted for him.

This is the place he was chased out of.

This is the place where he's reminded of his shame, what he did wrong in God's, what he thought was God's plan.

But he's really doing it in his own timing, in his own way, in his own strength, in his own wisdom.

He's afraid somebody might still remember and might be trying to kill him.

And so he's going back to this haunted place.

And sometimes it's hard to go back to haunted places.

Some of us have haunted places.

It's not that you're necessarily afraid of danger, but you don't wanna go to that place because it reminds you of the pain that you were in A couple of years after my wife, kenzie and I went through a church split and we'd left that city Like we moved away.

And a couple of years after that we felt like God was calling us to go back to that very city And that for us that city was haunted Like we don't wanna go back there.

That's where all our pain happened.

And yet ultimately the Lord talked us into it And so we moved back down there and all kinds of redemption happened.

But it was hard.

It was hard to go back to something that you don't particularly want to do.

So if the question is, would God ever call you to do something that you did before, even though it's scary?

The answer is yes, he absolutely would Sometimes.

So, moses, that's what he's doing.

So, moses, he's just heard from God.

He's had this whole interaction with him And remember it's not like Moses came out of there like, yippee, here we go, right, there wasn't like a rally.

Like Moses, you can do it and go.

And he's like I can do it, here I go.

It's more like he walks away, like he just gives up arguing.

He's like, all right, well, so you don't kill me, i guess I'll just start going And he kind of walks off, half discouraged, half like this is gonna work at all.

And sometimes that's how we start half discouraged.

This is going to work at all, but he does start.

Moses departed and returned to his father-in-law, jethro, and said to him please, let me go, that I may return to my brothers who are in Egypt and see if they're alive.

And Jethro said to Moses go, please, let me go and see my brothers who are in Egypt.

This is such an important moment because you don't see this in this language.

Okay, but this is a rhyme.

This is a repeat of what Moses did earlier, moses we saw in chapter two.

He went out to see his people And that's when he got in all kinds of trouble.

That's when he did it the wrong way.

And now he's going out to see his people again.

Well, this time he's going in the strength of God, in the wisdom of God, in the timing of God.

Now he's going back out there, but isn't it interesting?

He's still like he's not zealous about this.

He's filled with a little bit of doubt, like I don't know man.

He's not running out to the line like King David did years later.

He's a little nervous.

It's important that he goes through these doubt tests.

Don't despise the doubting test sometimes.

It's important that we deal with our doubts, bring our doubts to God, go through some of the trauma and difficulty of doubt, because first he's got to deal with his own doubts but later you know what's harder than your own doubts The doubts of other people about you.

It's even harder when first they believed in you and then they start to doubt you.

And that's the exact story that Moses is going to go through.

And if you've ever stepped up, if you ever stepped into something, you're a little bit nervous and everybody kind of came against you and they're like you're dumb, you're an idiot, don't do that.

What are you doing?

You psychopath?

if that ever happened to you, you know the sting of.

Well, i thought doubting myself was bad.

It's even harder when somebody I wanted to accept me doubts me.

It's hard, man, but he's got to go through it, because the road out involves growing in fortitude, it involves growing in perseverance, it involves getting tough as we go out.

So in order to get tough, we're gonna do something soft.

Here's three ways, god fathers, those he calls out.

Three ways, god fathers, those he calls out.

Number one says I am your comforter.

Now I am.

Remember.

That's the name that God revealed to Moses.

I am that, i am, i'm all that you need, i'm everything you could ever need or want, and I am your comforter.

Now the Lord said to Moses at Midian go back to Egypt, for all the men who are seeking your life are dead.

So Moses took his wife and his sons and mounted them on a donkey.

In return to the land of Egypt, moses also took the staff of God and said now he was already going.

He already told, hey, man, i'm going.

But as he's going, as he's getting ready, you guys might remember he's 700 miles away from where it was, so it might take a couple days to pack up and if you've ever lived in a house for even like five years, you know you collect all this crap and you're like, where did this even come from?

when you try to move, and so I'm sure they're sifting through stuff for a couple days, and as he's getting ready, the Lord knows he's thinking about stuff And the Lord's like, hey, moses, don't worry about, don't worry about those things you're worrying about.

You're worrying about there's people there still wanting to kill you.

They're all dead man, no worries.

Now we might in our own lives think, if I doubt this at all, god's gonna be mad at me.

And you might think God's gonna say Moses, come on now, man, i can destroy anybody.

You don't have any.

Even if someone is trying to kill you, i'll take care of it.

But that's not what God says.

You know what?

because God's a comforter, because he's gentle, he wants to put Moses at ease, just like you might want to put a child at ease.

The Lord is saying Moses, i want to put you at ease.

I know you're going to do something hard and I just want you to know I'm with you, i'm thinking about you, i'm in your head, i'm in your spirit, i know what you need and I'm able to comfort you.

Now, what's even more awesome than God comforting Moses in that moment is that if you've trusted Christ to forgive your sins and be the leader of your life, he's filled you with his Holy Spirit.

And one of the names of the Holy Spirit is the Comforter.

He's there to comfort you, he's with you.

We should never, we should always jump at the idea God is ready to comfort me.

God is never rejecting you.

God is never like oh, come on, get your act together.

Nope, that's not who he is.

He says I am your Comforter, i am the one who holds you, who says I know what you feel, i know that those hurts that nobody else can see.

God can see them.

He says I'll be with you, i'll comfort you.

And this comfort word, this is more than just consoling.

Like it's not just to like yeah, man, that's tough, dang it.

Like it's not just being with you.

Comfort means to come alongside and strengthen.

It means to stand next to and be like I'm with you.

Emotionally, i feel the pain with you, but I also know you're not going down with the ship on this one Like we're gonna make it.

Hey, man, you're with me and we're strong together.

We're gonna go conquer this together.

That's what God is telling Moses And that's what he tells us.

No matter what we're going through, no matter what we did wrong, no matter what anybody else said about it, god comes in and he comforts.

God comforts me.

He's comforted me when I've been rejected.

He's comforted me when I was doing something hard and people didn't particularly receive it or like it.

But God, he comforts me even when I have a fussy day.

You ever had a fussy day?

You know what a fussy day is.

A fussy day is when everything's not only kind of going wrong, but you're kind of being a pill while it's going wrong Okay.

This is when you're kind of grumpy, you're kind of arrogant.

Okay, you're kind of snippy and you got you know like, ah, ah, ah, ah.

He's grumpy And God's like I'm still gonna comfort you even though you're being a fussy baby, like God will still do that because he's our comforter, he's our God, even when things that you never expected going wrong go wrong, even when you begin to contemplate I really wanted this kid to have two parents in the house and they're not going to Sounds like.

God will meet you there and comfort you there, and one of the keys to God comforting us is connecting with him.

We've got to connect with God more and more for him to comfort us And to connect with him means we've got to listen, we've got to hear, we've got to slow down, we've got to be quiet long enough for God to really comfort, cause it's not like you're just gonna be racing through your day and God's like gonna get in your way and be like I'm ready to comfort you.

You got to slow down, you got to get quiet and listen for God's comforting.

This is a little bit how it works at the Carter dinner table.

Sometimes I've got a lot of wonderful kids that sometimes are very excited and sometimes before dinner they're all in the kitchen and they're singing and they're laughing and they're making what dad would call a lot of noise.

It's fun and loving noise, but it's still noise, and so we sit down at the table and they're still going and you know they're having a great time.

But I might want to have, you know, let's have an actual serious discussion And I'll say something like all right, it's time to play the quiet game, and you know they get a kick out of it.

So they'll all smile and they'll be quiet, even trying to win sometimes When they play the quiet game.

The reason we're doing that, or even just as hey, guys, i need you to quiet down to talk about something serious is because, as the dad, what I'm communicating is I'm not gonna talk over you.

And sometimes, as our heavenly father, god, is saying to you and I, hey, i'm not gonna talk over you.

If you're always unable to calm down and listen, i'm not going to talk over you, man, i'm going to wait until you calm down and come aside so I can talk to you.

I'm not going to talk over you.

Now there's a way that we progress in hearing God.

This hearing God thing it's real.

It's not a perfect, it's not like you can always get it right, But we start with Bible study.

You see that there on the screen.

That's the foundation, that's the.

Everything is filtered through that.

If we really want to be comforted by God, we got to start with the Bible, because that's the primary place that he begins to comfort us.

We learn who he is.

This is my way, this is what I think about you.

And then, as we add things like sermons and Christian books these are kinds of things that we're acclimating to our thinking We're trying to think like God thinks now, so we can have his counsel and his comfort more easily.

And then you learn to, as you're praying, to be quiet and listen and through the currents of the Bible and the sermons that you're hearing, you begin to hear God speaking to your heart just a little bit.

It's just a little encouragement here or there, just a thing he brings to mind, it's just a strengthening that he gives you And over time that can grow.

Now it's not really that we grow it, it's more like God grows it in us as we're faithful to keep not making him talk over us and come aside.

By the way, this is what you learn at this midweek experience that we call the Grove.

This is what we talk about how to study the Bible for yourself in a way that you hear God.

How to pray in a way that you hear God.

How many of you have been to the Grove and think it's the dope jam?

Yeah, i think we need a third one called how to have your pastors back in a sermon.

When he asks a question like that, we need to say, oh, look at, that was the best thing we've ever done, carter, thank you.

Well, that's how we progress in hearing God.

That's what we should all be practicing Now.

Here's one more way God comforts us.

It's less gooey but it's just as helpful.

One of the ways God comforts us is he says I'm not going to change this, i'm just going to help you learn from it.

I'm just going to help you.

I promise to use this.

My comfort to you is this won't be in vain.

My comfort to you is nothing is wasted.

Not long after we had our church split when we were very young, in our early 20s, we're all sitting kind of in the wreckage.

Both of the people are sitting there in the room and we're just like, wow, what happened?

Hearts are bleeding, everything's split in half.

This wise older woman she's probably 45 or something like that, which I am right now When you're in your 20s, some of you would say I think you're old Carter.

I'm just saying by the time you're here you might not think that.

Anyway, so she wasn't that old is all I'm saying.

She looks at me and she says, like a really Holy Ghost moment, the spirit kind of silences the room in your ears.

Nothing is wasted.

God's going to use this, like, even though this is really hard, god's going to use it, and we've seen this over the years.

God has used that church split so much to shape us and to help others out of trouble and help others to sidestep certain dangers.

Super helpful, nothing is wasted.

And God would say to us in some of the hardest things that we've ever gone through, god would say nothing is wasted.

I'm not going to change this, but I am going to use it.

I'm going to use it for you, i'm going to use it in you.

Nothing is wasted.

Now, when he's using it, one of the things he's doing is he's teaching us patience, teaching us wisdom, he's teaching us to.

Sometimes it's got to get hard before you're going to push in prayer.

Have you noticed that Sometimes it's got to get pretty tough before you're like she's fine, i'll pray, You know?

Fine, i'll finally do it.

It gets bad enough that I'll pray.

Sometimes one of my kids will bring me to their phone because I'm like one of the phone fixers in the house.

Okay, hey, dad, something's wrong with this.

And occasionally I'll ask how long has this been this way?

Oh, you know, a week, two weeks, a month, i'm like dog gone.

So what happened was it was already bad, but they weren't frustrated enough to come to dad until about a month in.

I'm like okay, i'll fix it Now?

I'm not going to ask him every day.

Your phone's okay, everybody.

Your phone's okay, i'm waiting, i'm just waiting.

When you're ready to get the phone fixed, you'll come to dad.

God's the same way in for her.

And when you're ready, when it's painful enough, when it's difficult enough, god's like I'm right here, man, i'm here the whole time, but sometimes it's got to get painful enough for somebody like this dog gone thing don't work at all.

I got to go to God And that's where we'll find his comfort.

How many know this is right.

And, of course, as we get God's comfort, what do we do?

We comfort other people, like that's one of the things he's teaching us.

I'm comforting you now.

You comfort other people, and this isn't a whole part of the sermon, but let's just remember that when we're comforting people, usually you can either comfort them or you can give them a little lecture.

It's one of the other.

I find that they don't work well together.

So when we're comforting people, we're just being kind, we're coming alongside and strengthening them.

We're like I'm with you And we might offer some perspective, but it's not time for a sermon at.

It's not time to be like man.

I know this is so hard?

Are you ready to know what you did wrong, like I was?

I was.

If you wouldn't have said it like that right there, maybe the Lord could have spoken to me.

But now, like I can't, it's hard to hear through that.

So it's just hard to do both at the same time.

So let's mostly pick comforting.

Let's just comfort people And maybe God will speak one or two words of encouragement through us to them.

I'm your comforter, god says, but I'm also your warner.

Now, that's not just a movie company.

I know that's a weird way to say it.

I checked is that a real word?

It is a real word, but we just mean one who warns, one who gives you a heads up, one who says Hey, watch out, this might be bad, this might be more difficult than you think.

Verse 21,.

And the Lord said to Moses when you go back to Egypt, see that you perform before the forefare all the wonders which I've put in your power.

But I will harden his heart so he will not let the people go.

Notice what he's doing here.

He's reviewing with Moses.

Hey, moses, here's the expected behaviors, here's some things that you have opportunity to do, all these different miracles that I've anointed you to do, make sure you do them all.

Like, don't get your own ideas, just do what I told you to do.

And, by the way, it's not gonna seem to work at first and we're definitely gonna see that in two weeks.

It's not going to work.

And he's telling about it right now.

It's not going to seem to work at first, but I'm giving you a warning, giving you a heads up.

I'm letting you know all is well, all is cool, we're gonna be fine.

One of the things God warns us about is expect opposition.

Don't get into this fantasy that things are all gonna go hunky dory.

They're not.

Jesus says in John 1633, i've told you these things so that you may have peace In this world.

You will have trouble, but take heart, i've overcome the world.

He says hey, i'm telling you ahead of time, there's gonna be parts that suck, like that's real man, that's gonna happen.

And Jesus, like I'm telling you ahead of time.

And where is he telling us?

He's telling us let's see that image again.

He's telling us this in the Bible.

Let's see that, those three yep.

There you go In your Bible study.

That's where you're hearing these little warnings from God.

He said reminder, warning.

Moses already told you, but I'm telling you again, warning about this.

You might wanna have a heads up.

So there's a book called Over the Edge Death in the Grand Canyon.

It's written by a guy named Michael G Jalleri, i think, but anyway, he chronicles all these deaths that have happened in the Grand Canyon that we know about, and he says it's somewhere around 277 since the 1870s Now, and you could imagine like, yeah, i imagine a lot of people do die.

I mean, the thing is, how long is it?

277 miles, 18 miles wide at different places.

It's 6,000 feet down at different places.

So he says, the way people, the most people, die at a time is plane crashes, but there's also like people are rafting and there's just a swell and there's a flood and they die, and then people fall.

The most tragic ways to die perhaps, though, are when there was already a warning and people didn't heed the warning.

Okay, so in 1992, a 30 year old father was joking around with his daughter, okay, and he's jumping over the rail and be like, okay, he sees a ledge below him, i'm just gonna fall, and she's gonna freak out for a second, and so he falls to the ledge, slips, falls another 400 feet and dies.

Now, there was a rail there.

He knew I shouldn't do this.

He didn't heed the warning.

In 2012, an 18 year old young woman.

She was hiking on the North Rim Trail and she decided I'm gonna go a little bit off the beaten path so I can take a picture.

And she goes to this ledge, where she shouldn't be, and the thing gives way.

She falls 1500 feet to her death.

It's super sad And it's even more tragic because she knew not to go out there.

These people knew not to go and we would say, man, how could she be so foolish?

And yet there's places that we hear God's warning and we're like that's just a grand canyon sign.

They don't mean nothing.

Like the do, i am not gonna fall here.

And yet God says certain things that warn us.

He says in Luke 12, 15, watch out, be on your guard against all kinds of greed.

Life does not consist in abundance of possessions.

He says hey, hey, everybody listen.

Warning, warning, warning.

There's deceptive goals of financial gain that are gonna actually rob your life rather than give it to you.

Warning, take it seriously.

Jesus says this is actually hurt you.

Better is a little with the fear of the Lord than great wealth with turmoil.

That's a warning.

Better is a little with the fear of the Lord than great wealth with turmoil.

He says, hey, man, a nicer house with a jacked up family is not gonna be worth it.

Like, if you gotta neglect all the people in your life in order to get that thing, you're gonna find at the end you didn't like that thing.

After all, an inheritance obtained early in life is not a blessing in the end.

Jesus warns us.

He says, hey, man, you can be so urgent, so insistent, so impatient that you jacked the whole thing up trying to get there, and it's not what you thought.

So go slow.

So there's like that Bible version, okay.

And then there's, on the other side of that image, we saw, you know, prayerful listening.

This is a place where God, you know it's a little bit more subjective, but perhaps God is speaking to us in certain ways.

He was doing this with Paul in the book of Acts, for chapter 20, verse 22.

And now, compelled by the spirit, i'm going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there.

I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me.

So he's being warned like the spirit of God it's not through the Bible, it's just through the spirit of God is warning.

Hey, paul, just so you know there's some jacked up stuff coming.

This is gonna be hard.

Now, he's not doing it to scare Paul and he doesn't do it to scare us.

Hey, let me give you a little shortcut.

God is never trying to scare you.

That is not how God works.

He's not giving you a spirit of fear.

That's not what he does.

That's not how he rolls, even if there's something a little bit like hey, watch out for this.

He's telling you.

So you're not surprised by it.

And you remember who is with you.

God is with me.

He told me something about this was happening.

Everything's good, everything's golden.

It's not like a time travel mover where you're trying to stop this thing from happening.

He's like thanks for the heads up, lord, i'm gonna keep doing what you told me to do.

Here I go.

I remember so I was about.

I was probably Jesus, what?

already?

20, 21?

I was Kenzie and I were on this little trip with her parents And I was on the woods.

We're in like a ministry season.

Even back then And I was just born out man, like it was a tough ministry season.

I probably wouldn't think so now, but back then it was like the toughest I'd experienced.

And I remember sitting down like on the trail in the woods.

I'm like, oh Lord, i just feel like I'm running, and running, and running.

And I believe the Lord spoke to me right then And he said you're gonna be running all the way home to heaven.

And that was like is that a good word?

I don't know if that is a good word.

It was a little bit foreboding.

It was like, oh.

And yet over the years it has been so comforting to remember that because he brings it to mind from time to time.

Yeah, this is hard.

I told you, this is what it would be, and so what it makes it is that this isn't so unexpected.

The hardness level is not quite as unexpected.

It's not a surprise.

It's like God told me back when I was 20 years old man Yeah, this is exactly what it should be like.

Now I'm not saying that's God's word for you.

I don't know, man.

All I'm saying is it's great to listen and believe when God gives you.

Sometimes warnings are like stay away.

Sometimes they're warnings of encouragement, of, like it was to Moses, keep going.

Like it was to Paul keep going.

I'm just telling you this is happening, so you don't give up.

Is it possible that the Lord is warning some of us today, but he's not necessarily using words like that.

Maybe he's using you're feeling particularly empty because, honestly, you've given yourself to stuff like career too much now and you've taken your heart away from God.

And his warning to you is like you're feeling more and more empty, you're feeling more and more distant.

He's not mad, he's just saying that's the warning dude.

Like, pay attention to that.

Maybe you've got some relational breakdowns happening with people that are used to be particularly close to you but honestly, you haven't been investing any time in them And so now this thing is fraying and it's pulling apart.

And that's God's warning of like hey, man, slow the boat.

You might want to check in with them a little bit more.

If you value that relationship, you better work on that.

Maybe it's your health.

Maybe your health is breaking down And at first you're like, why am I sick?

And it might be.

I'm not saying this is it, but it might be Lord's trying to get your attention to be like you're doing life at a reckless pace, you're not exercising the right way, you're not eating the right things, and I'm warning you it can get worse than this.

Let's take those warnings seriously.

Let's at least consider I'm not saying everything That whatever happened is God, but I'm just saying it might be.

Let's not roll past it.

Did you notice Whether it was Paul or whether it was Moses?

they're already obeying what God had told them last, and he gives them more encouragement, slash warning, slash comfort.

They're already doing it and then he gives them more.

I found that to be true about God most of the time.

Like those who will boldly and courageously step into God's will, they're gonna find he's more inclined to speak to them And to give them more encouragement and more.

Yeah, see you doing it, man.

Good job, go, go, go.

That's what God will do for the people that are stepping in Now.

If you're like God, i need, i just need you to say it again and again and again.

I've been resisting you for 10 years, but I'm just saying it again and again.

I wish that's dangerous, is all I'm saying?

Like, if you wanna not hear from God, try that strategy.

That'll probably work in not hearing from God.

Do what you know to do and watch God do what you can.

I'm your comforter, i'm your warner and now I'm your defender.

Here's the last one.

I'm your defender.

Then you shall say to Pharaoh this is what the Lord says Israel's my son, my firstborn.

So I said to you, meaning to Pharaoh let my son go that he may serve me.

You just take a pause right there.

The sermon is not about this, but I just need us to notice for the book of Genesis, why does God want to let the people go?

So they will come and serve him, so they'll be his people.

It's not just to be free.

It's free to serve God and enjoy the fullness of life in his service, on abiding life, on abundant life.

It's attached to serving.

It's attached to serving the great God.

That's what you were made for.

Your life is never gonna feel quite like it's in alignment until you're serving God, like that's what you were supposed to do.

And that can be a bazillion different ways.

But the point is the life is set apart for God's glory and not our glory.

And that only comes.

It doesn't come through being better, it doesn't come through working harder.

It comes first by trusting Jesus to do what you can't do.

It's just trusting.

It's taking Jesus' hand and trusting that he's got you That he may serve me, but you have refused to let him go.

Behold, i'm gonna kill your son, your firstborn.

Now.

This is like a jarring statement.

This is a little bit hard to hear.

He's talking about the last plague, okay, where all the firstborn of the Egyptians are going to die, and we might say I feel like he's being a little bit mean here, man, when he says firstborn.

Let's remember what he's saying here.

Remember he made the promise to Abraham 430 years ago Hey, abraham, i'm gonna make an entire nation out of you.

You're gonna be the first nation I ever deal with.

You're my firstborn.

You're the first nation I'm gonna reveal myself to.

They're gonna have my commands.

They're gonna be mine, in a different way than everybody else's.

They're mine.

And one of the major conflicts of Exodus is this conflict between Pharaoh and God, because Pharaoh thinks the people are his And God says no, no, no, pharaoh, yeah, i know you think you're a God.

You did not make these people.

I made these people.

These people are mine.

I know you feel like you have the freedom to limit and remove their freedom, but they're not even yours, they're mine.

And, by the way, pharaoh, even the people that you think are yours are also mine.

All the people are mine.

God says I'm the only real thing here.

And God gives, as many of you know, throughout the book he gives Pharaoh chance after chance after chance to turn away.

Pharaoh, you can stop this at any time.

You can abort this.

This doesn't even have to happen.

I'm so gracious, I'll just let you off the hook right here.

And of course, pharaoh keeps hardening his heart, this entire stubbornness thing.

But God is saying I treat my people different.

Pharaoh, my people are my kids.

Okay, i've made a covenant with them.

They're now in my family.

And, as we're gonna see through that entire Old Testament, god keeps telling everybody I distinguish between your people and my people.

My people have special favor.

We're used to thinking well, doesn't God love everybody?

He loves everybody, but he doesn't treat everybody like family, because they haven't entered properly into covenant with him, they haven't become his family, they've resisted, they've stood outside of his family.

So I don't want to end there.

But once we come in, all the blessings, all the promises, all that have run down Abraham, david, all the way through, all the blessings of Jesus, are on us.

The curse is reversed.

We're not in the family and God just treats his family members with special favor.

It doesn't always look like it, but special favor is on your life.

God's solve them.

He's defending you.

People come against you.

Maybe it doesn't seem like he defends you right away, but later on he promotes you.

Somebody else defends you, your life comes into alignment, there's a financial breakthrough, you get the job.

This thing moves up.

He protects you.

You don't even know the car accidents.

You didn't get in because God's favor is on you.

He's defending you against the devil's stuffing your life out just like that.

God is the defender and he's the defender.

Why do these Israelites get this?

Why does Moses get this?

Why do any of us get this?

because of Jesus.

Jesus is the one that secures the promise.

Jesus is the one, and he opens it up to everybody.

Everybody can have it.

It doesn't matter what your background is, doesn't matter what your race is, it doesn't matter what your sexual thought, life is like, it doesn't matter what it is, it's for everybody, he says.

By the way, not only do I distinguish between the two peoples, but I want all the peoples to be this one, to be the favored ones, to be the ones that are experiencing my joy and my blessing.

And so he says to us here at Fierce Church.

He says so look to me to defend you, don't defend yourself.

I will find a way to let everybody know at some point that I got you.

I'll come around the back, i'll do something to demonstrate.

There might be a lot of stuff to go through, but I'll come around the back and I'll show I am their defender.

I don't need anyone else to defend them, so look to him.

Hey, thank you so much for joining us today.

If you don't have a home church and you're looking for a Bible preaching community that has its heart set on passionately knowing Jesus and being his witness in our generation, check out Fierce Church.

We'd love for you to join us, either digitally or in person.

Also, if you're looking for leadership development related content, don't forget to check out the Fierce Leadership Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts from.

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Thanks again for listening.