Our Solution Pictured: Passover

If you are here for the first time, or you haven't been here for a while, my name is Tobin, and I'm one of the pastors here at Watermark.

We'll welcome you here on this Chinese New Year.

I love being a pastor, and it's amazing to see what God teaches in me as we do that, as we lead the people of Watermark and wherever God has us.

I love being a dad, and I just continue to be humbled by what God does to me and teaches me as a dad.

And so I'm very teachable always, and you can always pray for me and give me books that you find that are good.

So last night, KK, which we shared about last week, you know, KK prayed to invite Christ into her life, that she could come into the family of God.

And so last night, she came in, and she was so excited because today was the first day she got to take communion.

And she just could not go to sleep.

She was just thinking about this all this time, and she was so excited, and I'm so excited, and we're talking.

And it was just, it's like one of those moments you want, you know, a Kodak moment or however you call it nowadays.

It's like one of those moments that you want to bottle up and just keep forever.

And then she looks at me, and she says, what are you doing?

What are you reading?

What are we teaching tomorrow?

And I said, well, we're teaching this passage in the book of Exodus.

And she goes, oh.

I said, let me read you some.

So I started reading it to her, and I read verse 21, and Moses called the elders, and he said,

go and take yourselves the lamb according to your family and kill the Passover lamb.

Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in blood and put it in the basin and apply some to the blood of the basins and the lentils and the doorposts.

And don't go outside at the door of the house until morning, for the Lord will pass through to smite the Egyptians.

But when he sees the blood, he will halt.

He will hover.

He will stop at your door.

And as I was reading this, KK just got really sad.

It was her continence.

It was amazing.

Her continence just got really sad.

It changed.

And I looked at her, and I'm like, okay.

So a teachable moment as a parent.

Engage as a dad.

I said, why are you so sad?

And she said, because the sheep had to die.

Because the people disobeyed.

And I said, yeah, that is, that's not good.

That is sad, isn't it?

I said, what about us?

I said to her, who had to die because of our disobedience?

And she looked at me, and she said, Jesus.

I said, how does that make you feel?

And she looked at me, and she said, makes me feel sad.

And I looked at her, and I said, KK, I love you so much.

But you know that God loves you so much more than me.

God loves you so much that he would gladly give his son

so that you could come into the family.

Even if you're disobeying him, he loves you so much.

She smiled.

I looked at her and said, how does that make you feel?

She goes, wow, that makes me feel happy, fortunate.

So I thought, well, I asked her, so what should we do about this?

And she said, well, I think we should just thank God.

I think I should thank God.

I should just thank him for everything he's done.

I said, wow, that's right.

We need to be thankful.

And you can remind your dad because sometimes your dad isn't very thankful

and he gets grumpy.

And you can just say, Dad, be thankful for what God has done.

And I looked at her and I said, anything else?

And she said, well, I guess I need to obey.

I guess I need to obey God.

And in my mind, I'm like, oh, my gosh, this stuff works.

God's word is true.

And you say it and he does it.

And it's incredible.

But part of me as a dad is like, okay, should I add in there?

You need to obey your parents also.

But I didn't because I just thought, wow, just obeying God, that's good enough.

That's what this passage is about.

That's what God calls us to do.

And that's what we are looking at in the passage today.

We're looking at the things that KK has been learning in her last week.

She's looking.

We're looking at the things of sin and just what does it cost us?

What does sin really cost us?

We're looking at this idea of obedience and what does it mean for us to obey and how do we obey and why do we obey?

And we're looking at this idea of God's love.

What does God's love mean to us?

These are all things that KK is learning, but these are all things that this passage teaches us.

We're in this story called God's story and our story.

And we've been looking at this idea of God's story, which is his story.

It's all his story.

And we learn from the very beginning that he creates this world and this place and this land.

And he establishes his rule by his word.

And he makes man so that he can come to them and have a relationship with them and love them and bless them and encourage them.

But we learned a couple weeks ago that really quickly sin entered into God's perfect creation.

And it just corrupted everything.

It tainted everything.

All of our relationships are broken.

There's no longer perfection.

We're all living in the shadows.

We're all wandering around.

And we saw this passage in the last four or five weeks that mankind's been kind of spiraling.

We've been spiraling downward away from God.

But we've been heading east.

And we've been trying to do things on our own.

And we're messing it up.

And what we've seen throughout these series so far is that God just keeps coming in.

And he brings grace.

And he brings grace.

And he brings grace from creation to Adam and Eve to Cain and Abel to Noah to Babel.

We deviate more and more.

And God brings grace.

Last week we looked at this man named Abram.

And we talked about how God chose Abram.

He decides to continue this idea of blessing his creation and his people and fixing what was broken in the garden.

And he chooses this one man, Abram.

And we're told that Abram was far away.

He was worshiping an upland far away.

He was worshiping other gods.

He wasn't a follower of God.

But we see in the passage that God loved him.

And God went to him.

And God had mercy on him.

God just poured out grace onto his life.

And we see last week that God started this covenant with him.

It was this unilateral agreement.

It was one way.

And in this covenant, this relationship that God came to Abraham, he promised him things.

He promised him a land.

And he promised him a great name.

And he promised him a blessing.

And he promised him offspring and many nations coming out of them.

And it was amazing.

I mean, this is the story.

This is your or my story.

This is our story.

We're just like Abraham.

We're wandering far away.

And God comes and he grabs us and he opens our eyes.

And he pours these blessings on us of the gospel.

And he pours this life that he wants to give us.

And he pours this fruitfulness.

But so we struggle with this self-centeredness.

And we saw that even though God gave Abraham all these things, that he actually messed up sometimes.

He actually messed up a lot of times.

But we saw in the passage last week that God just continues to pursue Abraham.

He pursued him and he pursued him in this covenant because he wanted to bless him and he wanted creation to be blessed by him.

And Abraham comes into this promised land.

It's the first time in the Bible's history where people go west.

They come back to God.

And he enters into Palestine, Canaan.

And he comes down from the north.

And wherever he goes from the north to the south, we read that he built an altar.

And he told people about God.

And he worshiped God.

And he shared his faith, whatever his faith would look like back in that time.

It's the four spiritual laws of Abraham.

Think about that for a second.

He talked about God's faithfulness and his character.

But again, we saw that Abraham made all these mistakes.

And even in the midst of all these mistakes and all these things that he was doing, we saw that God remained true.

We learned that God's faithfulness is not based on our performances as people.

Remember that?

That God's faithfulness isn't based on our performances as people because we mess up.

But his faithfulness is always true.

It's always there.

It's based on him.

It's based on his character.

It's based on his love.

It's the things I want to keep teaching KK because these things never change.

Even when we change, they don't change.

From last week to this week, there's hundreds of years that have gone by and things have changed.

And I encourage you to go back and read your Bible.

Remember, we're just kind of flowing through this scripture and grabbing some threads of it and this idea of who God is and what he's called us to do.

But if you were to go back, you'd read that Abraham, he continues in his brokenness.

I mean, he lies repeatedly.

He uses his wife for financial gain.

He's almost like a pimp.

It's pretty amazing.

It's like you read it and you're like, whoa, can you talk about those things in the Bible?

But he does.

He has sex with his maid because Sarah is barren and Sarah doesn't trust that God's going to give her a child like God said he's going to give her a child.

And so he has sex with Hagar.

They have a kid.

And then eventually Sarah gets pregnant and they have Isaac.

And these two boys are always at conflict with each other.

And because of their disobedience, we still have this thing today called the Arab and Jew conflict.

And it's because of this unfaithfulness.

And what we see in Abraham is that the family is dysfunctional.

The family of God is dysfunctional.

And I don't need to tell you that because you can just look at your own heart and your own family and you can see how dysfunctional you are.

And if you're not dysfunctional, come over to our house one day and you'll just watch us and you'll see how dysfunctional we are.

And it'll scare you.

But then we see in this passage in Genesis 22 that God eventually called Abraham.

And God called Abraham for this test.

And in this test, he asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Moriah.

He says this is a sin offering.

This is offering for the sin of your family.

And Abraham doesn't even add an eye because he realizes that he's sinful and he's broken.

And so Abraham trusts the Lord and he takes Isaac up to Mount Moriah.

And you remember the scene because there's the fire and there's the wood on the back of Isaac.

And there's this knife.

And Isaac looks at his dad and says, well, we have the wood and we have the fire and we have the knife.

But where's the lamb?

Where's the sacrifice?

And God says, hey, you know, God's going to, I mean, Moses says God will prepare.

God will provide the lamb.

God will provide the sacrifice.

And it's in Genesis 22.

And he does.

And Isaac is spared.

And God relents.

And God provides a sacrifice.

He provides a lamb, a perfect lamb, an unblemished lamb.

It's Genesis 22.

And what we see throughout scriptures is that God always provides a way for his people.

God always provides a sacrifice for his people.

But we see the family of God just gets dysfunctional.

And Isaac has problems.

And Jacob has problems.

And it's almost like God has to do this massive intervention.

God says, you guys are just going so far.

And there's actually people in the family of God who are leaving the family of God because they're just following pagans and all these things.

And it's an amazing story.

You need to go back and read it.

But eventually God does this massive family intervention.

And he takes all of the people of God.

And he moves them away.

And he puts them into Egypt.

It's almost like he's having to fix all the things that were messed up in them.

And he takes them all away.

And there's this huge famine.

And everybody we know dies.

And that's the end of Genesis.

Does that make sense?

So now the family of God, they're stuck down in Egypt.

And God is working in their life.

And we start with this book of Exodus.

And we see in the very first chapter of Exodus that we see the people are being fruitful.

And they're multiplying.

It's just what God told them to do from the very beginning.

From the very beginning.

He told Adam.

And he told Noah.

And he told Abraham.

Be fruitful and multiply.

But now the people of God, they're doing that.

But it's not under blessing.

It's under a curse.

Because they're in bondage.

And it's slavery.

And it's just incredibly hard.

And their life is difficult.

But we see that God's covenant is true.

And we're reminded over and over that they're prospering.

But you prosper today because God's hand is in your life.

It's not because of what you're doing.

It's because God is there.

And they were prospering because God was in their life.

In Exodus 1.8, we see that the big problem is that

there's this king who comes.

And he doesn't know the Lord.

He doesn't remember Joseph or Jacob.

He doesn't remember any of these things.

And they get afraid of these people.

The people of God that they're growing in.

So he tries everything he can do to stop their growth.

He puts hard labor on them.

He cuts their rations in half.

He actually kills all their male babies.

He throws them in the water.

Some historians say that when you were to walk through Egypt in the Nile,

there would just be little babies floating around.

There was never a time where there weren't Hebrew boys floating in the water.

They're dead because Pharaoh was trying to stop them.

But God's word says it all along.

God's multiplying them.

And his hand is on them.

And they keep multiplying.

And then God saves this one baby.

This baby's name is Moses.

And he grows up into Pharaoh's court.

And then through a series of circumstances,

God gets him into an encounter.

And Moses comes back after meeting the Lord.

And he comes back to save God's covenant people.

And that's where we are today.

We're in this middle of this power conflict.

It's just where the superpower of Egypt,

the most powerful nation of the time,

with all their gods and all these things.

And you have Moses and you have Yahweh.

And they come in there.

And you remember the story?

Your kids sing it all the time.

You know, Moses comes in.

And he says, let my people go.

And what does Pharaoh say?

Oh, come on.

Pharaoh says, no.

Right?

Let my people go.

No.

Okay, you don't have three or four-year-olds,

obviously.

Because that's all we learned for about six months.

Let my people go.

No.

Okay, so let's go to another story.

But he does that.

And then Pharaoh says, you know,

who is your God?

I don't even know your God.

He's not my God.

And so what we see in this Exodus passage,

starting in Exodus 6 to 12 and beyond it,

is that God does these series of ten miracles,

these incredible interventions into the life of Pharaoh

and to his people.

And in your bulletin on Exodus 6, 6,

that's probably the most important passage

in the Old Testament.

And it shadows the most important passages

in the New Testament.

And God says to them, and you heard it read,

I am the Lord.

I will bring you out from under the burdens of Egypt.

I'll deliver you from the bondage.

I will redeem you with my outstretched arms,

and I will cause these great judgments.

I will make you my people,

and I will be your God.

And you will know that I am your Lord.

I brought you out from the burdens of Egypt.

And so he comes before there,

and he does this amazing thing.

And I just want to look in our remaining time

at three things that stick out to me

because they've been sticking out to KK on her journey,

and they've been sticking out to me

as we look at this passage.

And again, I just want to look at sin.

I know we don't like to talk about sin

because we're modern and we don't sin.

We just have misunderstandings and things like that.

But I want to look at sin and what its consequences are

and what it costs us,

but more importantly, what it costs God.

I want to look at obedience.

What does it mean to be obedient,

and how do we show our obedience to God?

Because KK is wrestling with that.

She's asking me these questions right now.

What does it mean for me to obey God?

And then I want to look at God.

What do we learn about him?

What do we learn about his character?

You got it?

So sin, obedience, and God.

And so the first thing that we see really clearly

in this passage and throughout Exodus

and throughout the whole Bible,

and it's kind of hinted at here

in certain little passages,

is just this idea of sin.

We see it in verse 9 that when Moses comes there,

the people of God, they don't obey.

They don't listen to God's word.

They just don't want to do it.

We see it in verse 23 because they're instructed

that every house has a lamb slain over it.

Every house has blood on it.

There's not a house in Egypt

that doesn't have blood on it.

We're told at the end of this story

that either there was a dead body in the house

or there was a dead lamb's blood

painted on every house.

And so we see that every house

has to have blood painted over it.

And in verse 22, we're given this warning

that we're not to go out.

That we're not to go out

because if we go out in the midst

of this thing happening,

if we take ourselves out

from underneath the covering

of the blood in the house,

that this destroyer's gonna come in

and he's gonna destroy us.

And what we see here in this time in Egypt,

there's no one,

there's no one in Egypt

that stood guiltless before the Lord.

There's none of us in here at Watermark

that still stand guiltless before the Lord.

Even though they were Jews,

even though they were slaves,

even though they were treated horribly,

even though they were God's people,

they still were tainted.

They were tainted with disobedience

and sin and brokenness before a holy God.

I mean, we're gonna read later on

that when they leave Egypt,

Joshua has to keep coming back to them

over and over again

and saying, get rid of your idols,

get rid of your idols,

get rid of your idols.

Because we realize that the people,

they had actually gathered

the same gods that the Egyptians had.

And they were worshiping

somewhat like what we do here.

We come into this world

and we find the things

that the people around us worship

and we start to worship those things.

And so Joshua's always reminding them

to get rid of them

and we see really clearly

that everybody,

everybody deserved to be met

by the destroyer that night

because there was no one

who was guiltless before the holy God.

And this sin debt,

remember, we've been talking about it

over and over.

It's massive because when sin comes in,

it just destroys everything.

It destroys our relationships.

It destroys our lives.

It corrupts us.

It destroys the way God meant

for things to function

and they don't function

like they're supposed to function anymore.

And sin puts this barrier

between us and the Lord.

And it's everywhere.

And what we're going to see

because we're flying through,

but we're going to come back to it

and we'll talk about it

a little later on today,

is that the Old Testament says

from this point on,

right after Abraham was told

to sacrifice Isaac,

from this point on,

because of God's people's sinfulness,

every firstborn male son,

every firstborn cattle,

every firstborn thing that came forth,

they were all forfeited.

Because of the sin of the people,

every one of these things

had God's hand of judgment on them.

They were forfeited.

And the only way

that you could get them back,

the only way you can get

your first son back

if you had a first son

was you ransomed him.

You went to the temple

and you paid an offering.

And if you were really poor

and you couldn't do that,

some people would actually

give their kids to the temple

and they would be raised up as priests.

And that was their offering

because their sin

caused them to forfeit that kid.

Because God is holy

and he's just.

And he demands sin

to be paid for.

And our sins mean more to God

than they mean to us.

Again, again, and again,

we see in this passage

that God, the God of the covenant,

he keeps coming back.

I mean, he keeps coming back,

he keeps loving us.

He keeps coming

to having a relationship with us.

He keeps coming

to try to free us from bondage.

He keeps coming

to set us free from sin.

And in verse 21,

we're told that

he gives this perfect substitute,

a spotless lamb.

And this lamb's blood is shed.

And some of the authors

have said that this night

there were over 100,000

sheeps killed.

Can you imagine

what that would have sounded like?

At three o'clock,

and just blood.

Can you imagine

what that would have smelled like?

And what the people

would have been aware of

is that sin is really bad.

Sin is costly.

Sin is not good.

And they would have had it

all over them

and the blood would have been

pouring through the streets

and the noises

and all these things.

In the passage,

we read at the end

that when this angel of death,

this destroyer,

it was actually God.

God comes in

and he comes to this door

and he sees this blood

spread out.

What he realized

was that in this house

which deserved wrath,

every one of us

deserved his wrath,

in this house

which deserved wrath,

somebody had died.

Because there was blood

everywhere.

And so when this destroyer

came to that house,

it stopped.

Because it realized

that there was a substitute

paid.

It realized that the sin debt

was paid.

It didn't have to go in

and exact the sin debt

of the people.

The people's lives

in that house

weren't forfeited

because somebody else's life

was forfeited.

A spotless lamb.

Verse 26 goes on

and it tells me,

and this to me is amazing.

He says,

hey, remind your kiddos.

Dad, when you're doing this,

your kids are going to ask you

why you do what you do,

why you come to church,

why you serve,

why you take communion,

why you worship together,

why you praise the Lord,

why you talk,

remind your kiddos

why you do these things.

Can you imagine that?

I mean, before days,

before the Passover,

you get this perfect lamb.

Let's just call him Fluffy.

And so Fluffy comes into your life

and you have to take care of him

because he has to be perfect.

He can't have any kind of spot.

He can't have any stain.

Fluffy has to live with you.

Fluffy sleeps with you.

Fluffy eats your food

because everything is

depending upon Fluffy.

And your kids are playing with Fluffy

and it's an amazing time

and Fluffy's playing

and you're having fun

and all of a sudden,

four days later,

at three o'clock,

dad takes Fluffy

and he pulls up his head

and he goes,

and there's blood

splurging out everywhere

and people go,

what happened to Fluffy?

And your dad has to explain.

He said,

hey, Fluffy

paid for our sin.

If it wasn't for Fluffy,

then the destroyer

would have to come in

because God is righteous.

God demands justice.

Sin demands payment

and sin is costly.

And we're going to do this

because we're going to trust the Lord

because he said to do this

and we've never experienced this before

but we're going to do it

and for some reason,

we believe because God said it

that this blood on this lamb door

is going to protect us

and it's going to help us

be free from our sin.

Do you understand that?

I mean, it's really hard

for us to understand,

I think today,

because most of us,

we don't like to talk about sin,

do we?

I mean, we think of sin

as something that modern men

don't deal with.

We think of sins

as something small in our lives.

We think of sins

that don't affect me.

We think of sins

that I can do

or I can lie

but it's only going to affect me.

It's not going to affect anybody else.

But the Bible says

that's not true.

The Bible says

that our sins

affect everything.

So what do you think of sin?

I mean, when you think of this idea,

what comes to your mind?

Is sin costly?

I remember when we started this church,

we had this,

one of our elders,

two elders had to leave

about within the first six months

because it got moved to London.

And one of the elders

is a really good friend of ours,

Harry Turner.

And of course, he's Australian

and he's working in this Aussie bank

and the language was so bad

on his floor,

so bad that he put this swear jar

because he's trying

to stop the language.

And he was the boss

and he said,

okay, every time somebody swears,

you got to put money in the jar.

We're going to pay for our swearing.

We're going to stop swearing.

So every time somebody swears,

you got to put money in the jar.

And I'll tell you what,

whenever I swear,

I'll put double the money in.

And so he went through this story

and every time I would see him,

I'd ask him questions like,

well, how's the swear jar going?

And he's like,

ah, it's getting filled up right now.

But he's trying to get this idea

of stopping people from sinning,

stopping people from sinning

to show how bad it is

and show how terrible it is.

What if we lived in this day and age

where we had had this sin jar,

but it was called a sheep pen?

And you had a direct line

to the guy who's a sheep herder.

Hey, you need to come up today.

Yeah, we have a lot of stuff

going on in the trading floor right now.

We're going to need a lot of sheep.

Just keep them coming.

Yeah, every time we sin,

we got to slay one.

So just keep them coming,

keep them coming,

keep them coming

because there's a huge debt here

at Macquarie

and we just really need those sheep.

And the sheep come up

and you say something

and the sheep come up

and they go,

I mean, what would you think

about sin then?

I mean, after a while,

it'd get really costly, right?

But what if your husband comes home

and he says,

I really blew it today.

God demands the sacrifice of our son

unless we can afford to pay for him.

I don't think I understand sin

the way God does

and the way Kiki does.

But in this passage,

what we see is that sin is a massive deal

and it stops everything.

The second thing this passage shows us

is it shows us a lot about obedience

and what it shows us about obedience

is in verse 28.

And you got to mark 28

because 28 is like one of these verses

that's the first time ever in the Bible.

Verse 28,

it's the first time ever

that all of God's people

obeyed God perfectly.

I don't think you're going to ever find

another time in a Bible

where God's people obeyed God perfectly.

But in verse 28,

they all obeyed God.

They had obedience.

The passage says they did it by faith.

It wasn't a feeling.

They just did it.

And I wonder,

can you imagine being there at night

and the destroyer's coming

and you hear the screams

and it says it was screaming

and wailing like never before

and never again.

Can you imagine the people

cloistered in their house

and the dad's wondering,

did I put the blood up?

Did I make sure the blood up

was a good sacrifice?

I hope it was a good sacrifice.

I hope it pleases the Lord.

I hope that the destroyer passes by.

Can you imagine

if the people wondered

if they were next?

Did we obey him?

Did we do what he wanted us to do, right?

And we're told here

that these people just,

they just did it.

Can I ask you a question?

What would happen

if someone didn't obey the instructions?

I mean,

what if the person said,

you know,

like we say today,

I believe,

I believe,

I'm a Christian,

but you know,

I just,

this God thing,

I just don't know about that very much.

I believe,

but I just don't want to paint my door

blood red right now

because I just finished all the woodwork

and I hate to just spoil that look.

I just don't want to do that.

I believe,

but I just don't want to give my best to God.

Maybe I should sacrifice a dog.

I mean,

blood is blood

and God won't really know,

will he?

Because sin's no big thing.

I believe,

but maybe I'll just give some sheep

that aren't my best.

I'll give a tainted offering

kind of like Cain did.

We talked about him a couple weeks ago.

What do you think would happen to those people?

What do you think?

The passage says that the people had faith

and this real faith was a trust in God and his word

and this faith always ended in obedience.

Even if it doesn't make sense,

faith in the Lord,

even if we don't feel like it,

faith in the Lord

almost always comes to an action.

It comes to a response to God's love for us.

We can't be loved by somebody

and not respond by it.

And so what is that obedience?

What is happening in their lives?

And for them,

it was sacrificing these sheep

and trusting the Lord.

What about us?

What kind of issues

is Tobin struggling with

in obedience?

I mean, God says to forgive somebody

even if they really, really hurt you.

Do we obey?

Do we obey?

Or do we keep the pain?

Do we keep the hurt?

God says tell the truth.

Even though a lie,

or just about right now,

man, it's gonna really help me out

with my wife or my spouse

or my work.

If I can really lie,

tell this perfect lie,

it's gonna get me out of trouble.

God says to be generous

to give them our best.

Do we?

God says to stay pure.

I mean, even when we say,

you know, just one look

won't really hurt that much,

will it?

And by the way,

all my peers are bothering me

and they say I'm an idiot

and I'm old-fashioned

and I need to catch up

to these days and age.

Oh, by the way,

I really love that person.

God says to stay pure.

Can we trust him?

Do we believe that he has

our best in store?

God says to act with integrity

even though no one else

in the office is doing it.

Can I in obedience

trust him in that?

God says to trust me

even when I don't feel like it.

The people in verse nine,

that's what they felt like.

God's word came to them

and they said,

well, we don't even want to hear it

because we're in so much pain

and so much trouble.

We don't even want to trust the Lord.

We can't do that.

But what we see here always

is that whenever God's people

obey him,

God does amazing things

in their life.

Whenever God's people

obey him,

they trust him.

They put their faith in him.

Whenever we do that,

the scripture says that

God always does amazing things

in our life.

Sin,

what is it?

Is it?

How do I see it?

How does God see it?

What does it cost God?

What does it cost me?

Obedience.

What does it mean for me to obey?

What does it mean for me

to follow the Lord?

And finally,

and we're going to close up here,

is just this idea

of God.

What do we learn about God

in this passage?

And what is Exodus

in this passage

teaching us

about the Lord?

Because we've already

talked about that

all of these stories here,

all of this

Exodus 6 and 12,

all of these things

are a shadow

and they're pointing

to this last supper

that we celebrated.

it's pointing

to this crucifixion,

it's pointing

to something

that's going to happen

1400 years later

and the question is

what do we learn

about God?

Look at verse 6 again.

Thus say,

therefore,

to the sons of Israel,

I am the Lord

and I will bring you out

from under the burdens

of the Egyptians.

I will deliver you

from your bondage.

I will redeem you

with an outstretched harm

with great judgments.

I will take you

from my people

and I will be your God

and you shall know

that I am the Lord,

your God,

who brought you out

from the burdens

of the Egyptians.

I'm going to bring you

into this land

which I swore to give

to Abraham,

Isaac, and Jacob

and I'm going to make it yours.

And what we see

in this passage

is the God

of the covenant,

Yahweh,

the creator

of the universe,

continues

and he continues

to pursue us.

He continues

and continues

to come towards us

even when we're sinful,

even when we're broken,

even when we're running

away from him.

He always approaches us.

He always comes after us.

He's the one

who wants to relieve us

from our bondage.

He's the one

that is pursuing us.

He's the one

who wants to redeem us.

He's the one

who wants to free us.

He's the one

who wants to deliver us.

He's the one

who wants to bring us

out of darkness.

He's the one

who wants to fix

our brokenness.

God is always there

pursuing you as his children

do you know that?

he can't not but do that

because that's his character

and in the Exodus passage

he loves you so much

that he takes this perfect lamb

and he kills it

and now instead of being slaves to Egypt

the people are slaves to God

and they go on this amazing journey with him

now in the Old Testament

in the New Testament

we have this last supper

we have this crucifixion

we have this resurrection

and God loves us so much

that he purchases you

with his son Jesus

the death of a perfect lamb

Jesus died for us

God loves us so much

and now instead of being slaves to sin

instead of being slaves to death

we're slaves to God

and God promises to take us

on this amazing journey

to this promised land

and the question is

will we follow him?

will we trust him?

the Exodus

and all the scripture

that we have studied so far

if you don't see it

you should see one thing clearly

and it's that God

loves his people so much

that he desires to have

this relationship

covenant with them

and he's going to sacrifice

his only son

the son that he required

the people to do before

because of this debt

that they owed him

he's going to take his only son

to satisfy that sin debt

that we owe him

so that we can come into him

he's going to take his firstborn son

so that you and I

can be called his people

so the question is

how do you feel about that?

when you hear the gospel

how do you feel?

one author says

that we struggle with this idea

of gospel amnesia

that we become so busy

in our lives

and we become so busy doing

and thinking

that we forget

that there's God

and he's pursuing us

the passage says

that sometimes

we forget

because we think

sin

is so small

it doesn't mean anything

the passage says

sometimes we forget

because we think

God is

so small

and God can't do anything

he can't remember

his promises

he can't keep

his covenant

what the Bible

continues to point us to

at the core

the center of it

is that Christianity

is about a God

who loves us so much

that he sacrifices

his son

so that we can come back

to him

because we

have no other way

of approaching him

because he's holy

and we are not

so how do you feel

are you in burden

the passage says

that God has come

to take away

those burdens

are you in bondage

and I know

a lot of us in here

struggle

with a lot of

different things

because I do

the passage in here

says that God

is the deliverer

of us

from that bondage

will we trust him

are we out

from underneath

the blood

the passage says

that God

killed his son

and painted us

and covers us

with this blood

so that he might

redeem us

and we might be

called his people

over and over

and over

the passage says

that God

wants us to be

his people

he wants us

to trust him

he wants us

to follow him

and the question

is will we do that

will we accept

the lamb

will we accept

the sacrifice

how we doing

do we understand

sin

what it means

what it costs

do we understand

obedience

do we struggle

with it

I mean it's okay

to struggle with it

we're not called

to be perfect

right

and God continues

just to pour grace

and pour grace

but the question

is do we see

Christ so beautiful

and so perfect

and so lovely

that we will only

give our lives

to him

that's the message

of Exodus

the message

is that God

pursues us

will we allow

him to take us

Father we thank

you for this day

we thank you

for your goodness

and your mercy

in our lives

we thank you

as we read

these passages

of men long ago

that the story

continues

and as we look

at it

we see just a shadow

of what it

meant to be

but now we can

see it fully

we can see your

son

and we can see

him on a cross

and we can see

him gone before us

as a sheep

before the shearers

we can see

that he's given

up everything

that he was

perfect

and spotless

and blameless

and through

his blood

you and I

are redeemed

Father I pray

for KK

I pray that you

would have mercy

and grace

on our life

I pray that she

would always

struggle with sin

what does it mean

and what does it

mean to be obedient

there would never

be a time that

she doesn't think

about those things

but more importantly

Lord I pray that

there would never

be a time

where she doesn't

fall in awe

and wonder

how good you

are to us

Father I pray

for the other

children in our

church

I pray for each

one of these

little kids

that you've

entrusted with us

I pray that

each one of them

sees your son

and they go

through those

same struggles

of sin

and obedience

and grace

I pray they

would come to

know you at

an early age

and they would

do mighty

things for

your kingdom

Father I pray

for my brothers

and sisters in

here who aren't

on this journey

yet

they're still

stuck in

Egypt

they're still

living and

worshiping

and doing

things that

will bring

them

or they

think that

will bring

them

satisfaction

I pray that

you would

open their

eyes to

the truth

of this

sin and

this debt

and the

holiness

that you

are

that the

only way

they can

atone for

those things

is through

your son

I pray

that they're

sitting here

right now

that they

would ask

questions

and come

to me

or people

who brought

them

that you

would open

their eyes

and their

hearts

to your

son

Jesus

Father I

pray for

the rest

of us

here

we're the

family

we're covered

in blood

but still

we sometimes

still we

often

we run

back to

Egypt

we run

back to

bondage

we run

back to

shame

we run

back to

things that

are not

things that

we should

be dealing

with

and we

forget

who you

are

and we

forget

whose we

are

so Lord

I pray

for us

may we

be a

people who

understand

repentance

often

and true

may we

understand

that you

are the

God of

second chances

you're always

there

you're always

pursuing

you're always

redeeming

you're always

fixing

since the

fall

there's never

a time

that you

don't rest

because you're

moving after

your people

and you're

opening their

eyes

and you're

taking care

of them

you're the

God of

the covenant

you're not

going to

let go

help us

to realize

that

help us

to love

you

help us

to embrace

your son

Jesus

Lord I

pray for

this part

of Hong Kong

Island

on this

western

side

I pray

that as

we go

out

as your

people

that we

would be

different

that maybe

this week

we would

obey

and we'd

walk with

integrity

in our

office

maybe this

week we

wouldn't put

so many

dollar bills

into the

swear jar

maybe this

week we

would love

and be

truthful to

our friends

and to

our spouses

maybe this

week that we

would point

people to the

only hope that

they can truly

ever really

have even

though we

live in

this world

that presents

all these

other different

hopes and all

these different

gods just like

in Egypt

it's the hope

of your son

well I pray

that watermark

would make a

difference

I pray more

importantly that

you'd make a

difference in

us

that our lives

would be changed

as we love

you

we love you

we need you

desperately

we pray all

these things

in your son

Jesus name

amen

thank me

you

thank you

are stagnant

there

oh

Ty

yes

he

is

left

are the

h

maybe

and

yes

we

hold on

again

to win

the

large