Choosing to Serve the Right Master

Hello Crossing Church, how are you doing today?

It is so good to see you. I don't know about all the other

locations. We got a packed house right now

and that's always so encouraging.

So many people just being able to share in the word of God and

be changed by God. So I want to welcome all of our

campuses joining from all across this region, all of our

locations. And if you're inside or online,

so thankful for each and everyone of you as well.

And I've had an interesting experience in the last week,

more than interesting, like a really formative experience.

My wife's had knee problems for a long time.

It's gotten a lot worse. She had a knee replacement on

Tuesday and it is absolutely amazing what God does through

those doctors because she was started surgery at 10:00 and she

was walking on a new knee at 1:30.

I mean, is that nuts? And they, you know, and I did a

little research and like the first knee replacement was like

1968. How many of you want to be a

candidate for that one? And before the knee replacement

surgery, what did people do? I mean, and that wasn't that

long ago, was it, that it was just, you were just out of luck.

You were in a wheelchair on crutches or something like that

from then on and how that would affect you.

And I, I'm just so thankful that God has given us human beings

the opportunity to be able to learn things to such a level

that that that kind of thing can actually be accomplished.

It's just such an amazing thing. So she's watching at home today,

but I'm just thankful for a God who just does amazing things on

his own and through his people. Would you agree with that?

He is a good God. He is just a really, really good

God. And I'm praising God for that

today. So we're in this series called

Decisions in the Desert, Walking with God in trial and triumph.

And it's about Moses and the children of Israel from the book

of Exodus. In the first week, we talked

about the birth of Moses and we connected that to what it means

to be a child of God. One of the things we learned in

that sermon was the proximity to God is more important than

production for God. And a lot of us, we struggle

figuring that out, that when we're in in close proximity to

God, he's going to do great things.

But we just need to not just try to do things for him, but to be

with him. The second week we learned how

Moses learned humility and how that reshaped his entire life.

But things had to go all the way down to the foundation and even

below that, and God had to lay a new foundation.

In the third week, we learned about the 1st 9 plagues that God

used to predispose the Egyptians to let the Israelites go and how

God judged an empire for defying him.

And and then in the fourth week we learned that God can redeem

his people, but the cost of sacrifice is high.

We learned that through the Passover.

Today we're going to learn something else that even though

we can be delivered out of bondage because we're going to

see the nation of Israel delivered out of bondage and we

have our own kind of bondage. Just because we have freedom

from that bondage doesn't mean that we don't have to serve

anyone. You are designed by God to

serve. Obviously we know that from the

one we follow, and that's Jesus Christ because he said the Son

of Man didn't come to be served, but to, to serve.

And so we take that from him that that we, we, we might not

think that we have to serve, but we're going to have to serve.

Somebody just has to be the right somebody, which in my mind

took me back to the 70s and a song that I remember that was

really popular in the 70s. I want to see how many of you

remember it. They're going to play a clip

from it. You may be rich or poor, you may

be blind or little, maybe living in another country under another

name, but you're going to have to serve somebody.

Yes, you are. You're going.

To how many of you recognize it? Yeah, four people.

Bob Dylan. But it may be the devil.

It may be the devil. It may be the love.

But you're going to have to serve somebody.

Yeah. It's from an album that he came

out with called Slow Train Coming, and it marked Dylan's

new found faith in Jesus Christ. And Dylan's conversion is

interesting. It came after a really difficult

stretch in his career. And a fan in the front row threw

a necklace up on stage and it had a silver cross on it.

And rather than ignoring it, Dylan went over and picked it up

and put it in his pocket. Later on, he was experiencing a

personal crisis. And it can that the crisis

continued and he reached into the pocket of those same genes

and he pulled out that silver cross.

And what he said was it led to a profound moment where he felt

the presence of Jesus with him. And it inspired him to write

that song and a number of other songs.

The thing is, what Dylan wrote in that song is absolutely true,

and Dylan made the choice pretty clear.

But a lot of the time it's hard for us to see that that choice

is that simple, that you're going to have to serve somebody.

Might be the devil, might be the Lord, but you're going to have

to serve somebody. When we read the story of Moses,

it feels a lot like there's an oppressor and then there is the

oppressed, this people group that's oppressed.

It's really easy to just turn it into something binary.

But if you look at the situation in the historical context, it's

a lot different than that. It's a lot more complicated than

that. Last week, Clayton kind of gave

us a history lesson, and he began by talking about Abraham

and how God provided for Abraham.

You know, Abraham was the first one to use this term for God.

He called him Jehovah Jireh. How many of you heard that

before Jehovah Jireh? And what that means is the God

who provides in God, it will be provided.

And he said that when he was willing to offer his own son

Isaac as a sacrifice to God, and then God provided a substitute,

God provided a ram with its horns thought caught in the

thicket as the substitute sacrifice.

And then Abraham said, Jehovah Jireh, God will provide.

He didn't just provide for Abraham.

He provided for his son Isaac and Isaac's son Jacob and

Jacob's twelve sons. And one of those sons was

Joseph. And even though his brother sold

him into slavery, this is actually the Nexus.

This is where Egypt becomes a part of this story is they sell

him into slavery but God uses that in such a profound way

because it was through Joseph that Egypt and the entire

surrounding area was saved through 7 from 7 years of

famine. It also gave Egypt incredible

wealth. During that famine, all of

Joseph's family moved from Canaan, migrated down into Egypt

because that's where the food was.

Nothing wrong with that. The thing is, and this is where

it gets complicated, they weren't meant to stay there.

That wasn't the land that God gave them.

Canaan was the land that God gave them.

He had set aside their own country for them, but they got

comfortable living in Egypt and then they didn't want to go back

to Canaan when the famine was over.

In Exodus one one through 7, the Bible says these are the names

of the sons of Israel. Israel was the name that that

God changed Jacob's name into Israel, who went to Egypt with

Jacob in each of his each with his family, Reuben, Simeon,

Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin, Dan and Naftali,

Gad and Asher, the descendants of Jacob numbered listen 70 in

all. So those sons, their wives,

their kids and their wives, 70 people.

Joseph was already in Egypt. Now Joseph and all of his

brothers and all that generation died.

But the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful and they

multiplied greatly and increased in numbers and became so

numerous that the land was filled with them.

So remember what was supposed to happen?

And God had told him be fruitful and multiply.

God had given him a, a wonderful land to do that in Canaan.

But they went down to Egypt because of the famine, got

comfortable in Egypt. Listen to me, some of you are

comfortable in Egypt. Now it's going to get real.

You get comfortable in Egypt. That's a dangerous thing to do.

You need to be where God intends for you to be, and he intended

him for to be in Canaan. But they but they got

comfortable in Egypt. And then Exodus 18 to 14 tells

us the rest of the story. Then a new king, to whom Joseph

meant nothing came to power in Egypt.

Look, he said to his people, the Israelites have become far too

numerous for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with

them, or they will become even more numerous.

And if war breaks out, we'll join our enemies and fight

against us and leave the country.

So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced

labor, and they built Pytham and Ramses as store cities for

Pharaoh. But the more they were

oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread.

So the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them

ruthlessly, made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick

and mortar, with all kinds of work in the fields.

And in their harsh labor. The Egyptians worked them

ruthlessly. When we think of slavery, we

tend to want to put it in our own American historical context.

But this was a lot different. People that were abducted in

Africa, put on slave ships, and brought to America didn't have a

choice. But the Israelites did have a

choice. The Israelites chose to stay in

Egypt. They start didn't start out as

slaves. They weren't a conquered people.

They were an immigrant people group, and history shows that

there was such diversity in these two cultures between

Israel and Egypt. They were so vastly different

that they found it comfortable to be a part than to be

together. That's why you see Israel living

in a separate area of Egypt called the land of Goshen, and

you see the Egyptians living where they were living.

They liked the space between the two.

They didn't assimilate their cultures.

They say separate cultures and then they found work with the

Egyptians and that's what led to their comfortable lives.

And it did for sometimes, but times change.

That's another Bob Dylan song, by the way.

The times they are changing and eventually the geopolitical tide

turned against them and Israel became a permanent underclass.

Over the years, their rights were whittled away, and then

they became a service culture for Egypt.

They were no longer free. They were owned not by

individuals, but by the state of Egypt and made to work for the

betterment of the Egyptian empire.

So let's personalize that. Let's bring that into our own

lives. That's how sin works.

Sin doesn't take you all at once.

It breaks you down a little bit at a time, but after a while you

wouldn't even recognize what you used to be.

You see, freedom means that you're able to make choices.

Choices in what you say and what you do and who you are and who

you want to be. But freedom needs a purpose.

And our purpose, as defined in the Bible, is to love and serve

God and to love and serve one another.

That's the great commandment. Jesus said it right, To love God

with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your

neighbor as yourself. That's who we're supposed to be.

It's what makes our lives matter.

But when we choose to serve ourselves, we can end up slaves

to those choices, just like Israel did.

And Bob Dylan had that right. I wonder how many of you feel

stuck right now, like you're in a spot that you never imagined

you would ever be in, but here you are.

And you feel like, you know, you're backed into a corner,

like there's no way out. And it, you know, it could be

anything. It could be that you're enslaved

to your addiction, or the results of your choices, or the

results of other people's choices, and you feel trapped

and you feel powerless to change anything.

Enslavement will do that to you. So you get up every day and you

endure the hardship of those choices.

You make your quota of bricks. You get enough to survive

another day. Heard it said one time.

I dig in the ditch to get the money to buy the food, to get

the strength to dig the ditch and your life just becomes this

never ending cycle. First time I went to Haiti, it

was the first time I'd ever been in a developing country that

really never has never developed.

And I went there with a lot of predispositions in my mind.

I had heard all my life this statement.

People in America, there are people in America that have it

just as bad as people in those countries.

When I went there the first time, I figured out that's not

even close to true. There's no such thing as that.

There's no one that's so poor in America that experiences the

poverty that's in Haiti. Let me explain why that is.

The poorest person in America can still drink water that won't

kill them. The poorest person in America

can still get a public education.

The poorest person in America can still walk into a an

emergency room and get treatment.

If you grow up in Haiti, the water will kill you.

If you get sick, you die. But that's not what I'm talking

about. Here's what true poverty is.

True poverty is when a father or a mother looks at their child

and realizes that there is absolutely nothing that they can

do to change that child's destiny.

They can't change theirs and they can't change their child's.

No matter how hard they try, no matter how many barriers they

want to break down, they cannot do it.

And you know what? That is hopelessness.

And that, my friend, is poverty. Poverty is when there is

absolutely no way that you can change the circumstance that

you're in. And I came back changed from

that first trip. And it's hard then to understand

when you're in that circumstance, how God can be

your Jehovah Jireh. He can be the God who provides.

In those 430 years of enslavement, I'm sure that

Israel felt that way, but He still is a God who provides.

He provided for His people not because of their choices, but in

spite of them and all the choices of those who went before

them. You know how He did it.

He sent an 80 year old Hebrew outcast, a former terrorist with

nothing but a shepherd's staff made of almond wood.

That and the power of Almighty God.

And if God can use an 80 year old broken down man with a

shepherd's staff that has the worst reputation, check this

out. He can use you because it's all

of that and the power of God. We've already heard about the

plagues and how it brought Egypt low and the lowest came from the

Passover and the death of the first born.

Why did that happen? You know, some people would say,

why would God be so ruthless? Why would he be so awful as to

do stuff like that? Clayton brought that question

up, and I've heard people say if you read that story in the

Bible, it'll actually tell you that God hardened Pharaoh's

heart. Like, it sounds like God made

Pharaoh incapable of making the decision to let the Israelites

go. But you're not doing a thorough

reading of that story. If you do a thorough reading of

that story, what you'll read is this in the early stages of the

plagues. Where it was hardship but not

dying. It doesn't say God hardened

Pharaoh's heart. It says Pharaoh hardened his own

heart. And as you move through the

plagues, it changes the language changes from Pharaoh hardened

his heart to God hardened Pharaoh's heart.

Some people are go, that's a hard one to explain, Jerry.

I goes, no, it's not really isn't.

And I like to use this illustration.

If you were to get like a lump of soft wax and you were to roll

it up like into a ball when it's soft, OK, and it kind of

solidifies. And then you were to take a lump

of clay and roll it up into a similar sized ball.

And you had in one hand you had the wax and in the other hand

you had the clay. And on a day like today, you

would take it out and you set it on your driveway in the sun.

What would happen? What would happen to the wax?

Somebody say what would happen to the clay, But the sun is the

same. The sun hasn't changed.

The sun's effect is the same. What determines what happens?

It's the substance that it's shining on, right?

This is what happened with Pharaoh.

He determined the substance of his heart.

He could have said he could have made the choice and said I

choose to be wax. I choose to allow the power of

God to melt my pride, my ego, my sense of power, the the fact

that I got everybody believing I'm a deity.

He could have done that, but instead he determined the

substance of his heart and he said, I'm going to have a clay

heart, not a wax heart. And so God's effect on him was

to harden his heart. So at first he had the choice,

and then he didn't have the choice.

Listen to this. Pharaoh made choices, but after

a while, his choices made him. You make choices, but after

you've made some of those choices, those choices make you.

They define who you are. You don't define what they are

anymore, and that's a hard thing for us to have to learn.

This is what happened to the Hebrew people when they moved to

Egypt. This was after that process.

Now we look at the details of the Passover.

We looked at those last week, but I want you to look at this

one. It's really an obscure part of

the story, but we read about it in Exodus 11, verses two and

three. It says this.

Tell the people. God is telling Moses tell the

people that men and women alike are to ask their neighbors for

articles of silver and gold. You know, that was after the

death of the first born. Do you think if your first born

was still alive and your neighbors first born, they're

getting ready to have a funeral service for that one and you go

and ask them for all their precious stuff, they're going to

say yes. Look what the verse three says.

The Lord made the Egyptians favorably disposed toward the

people. The Lord can work on a human

heart. In Exodus 12 verses 35 and 36,

Exodus 12:35

it says the Israelites did as Moses instructed and asked the

Egyptians for article of silver, articles of silver and gold and

for clothing. And the Lord made the Egyptians

favorably disposed toward the people and they gave them what

they asked for. So they plundered the Egyptians.

That's amazing. You can have whatever you want.

Just get out of here. You know I, God can do that in a

bad way and God can do that in a good way.

In other words, God can do that in your heart.

He can. You know you, you may be

resisting God, and God is putting it on your heart.

I want you to do this. You need to do this.

God can definitely influence your heart.

How many of you ever heard you can lead a horse to water, but

you can't make him drink, but you can feed him salt?

And God does that in bad ways or good ways.

He can. He can move a human heart

without taking away their choice.

He can definitely move it. He's doing that here.

Now I want you to understand why He said that.

Not only did God provide for the deliverance of His people out of

bondage, He provided all that they would need to serve Him.

The plunder of Egypt was not for making Israel rich.

It was for them to rediscover their identity as the people of

God. They had forgotten who they

were. They had forgotten their

identity as the people of God. There was 70 that went from

Canaan into Egypt. And here we are 430 years later,

and the Bible says there were 600,000 men on foot, not

including the women or the children.

That's how we know that by this time there were over 2,000,000

Israelites, which is really important to know when you think

that Moses is moving over 2 million people across the

desert, where there's no water, where there's no food, where

it's blisteringly hot during the day and cold at night.

Pretty amazing how many people. But over those years they had

forgotten their identity as the people of God.

All the years in the generations of slavery had erased Israel's

understanding of who they were. You know what?

If our choices have made us long enough, we can forget who we are

and we can forget whose we are. You and I live in a world and in

an American culture that has no idea who they are.

They're just reaching out everywhere to figure out

identity. When their identity is clear,

our identity is clear. We are the people of God.

We are the children of God and we need to act like that instead

of act any way we want to act. They didn't know who they were.

The plundering of Egypt was designed to give them all that.

They would need to rediscover that identity through

worshipping and serving God. And it's interesting that it

wasn't taken into some treasury. It was distributed to the

people. All the people got that plunder

to hold on to that plunder. But there was a reason for it.

It was a test. Exodus 25 verses one through 9.

The Lord said to Moses, tell the Israelites to bring me an

offering. Guess what an offering is?

It's a choice. How do I know it's a choice?

Look at the next words. You are to receive the offering

from for me, from everyone whose heart prompts them to give.

They had to make the choice. These are the offerings you are

to receive from them. Gold, silver and bronze, blue,

purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen.

Goat hair and ramskins dyed red and another type of durable

leather. Acacia wood.

Olive oil for the light, spices for the anointing oil and for

the fragrant incense and Onyx stones and other gems to be

mounted on the efid and the breast piece that's of the High

Priest. Then have them make a sanctuary

for me and I will dwell among them.

Make this Tabernacle and all its furnishings exactly like the

pattern. I will show you that gold would

be beaten into sheets and it would overlay a wooden box made

of Acacia wood called the Ark of the Covenant, as would a table

for bread. And a lampstand would be

fashioned after, with pure gold and jewels mounted on the

breastplate for the high priest. And it's all right there in

Exodus. You can read it all.

God gave them the plunder so they could return it to him.

Why? Because identity is what they

needed the most. Who cares if you have some gold

or silver in your house if you don't know who you are?

Why is the second highest suicide rate in America among

the very rich? Why is the highest suicide in

America among the young? Because what we really need is

to know who we are. And what do we use riches for

today? To have the biggest house, the

finest clothes, the fanciest cars, the best portfolio?

Isn't that just us trying to shape our own identity?

When are we going to realize that all we have and all that we

are comes from the hand of Jehovah Jireh, the God who

provides? We think about these riches, but

often we miss the true riches that God gave his people.

In Exodus 13, one and two, it says this.

The Lord said to Moses, This is right as they're leaving Egypt.

Consecrate to me every first born male.

The first offspring of every womb among the Israelites

belongs to me, whether human or animal.

That's powerful too, because while Egypt was consigning their

dead first born to the ground, Israel was consecrating their

first born to a sacred purpose. Think of the contrast between

the wailing in the background and the worshipping in the

foreground. And God.

He never stopped providing. He was in the cloud that gave

him the shade on hot desert days.

He was in the pillar of fire keeping them warm at night.

He was in the manna and the quail that came daily to feed

them. He was in the rock from which

water flowed to quench the thirst of over 2 million people.

And he was in the sea that destroyed their enemies.

He was everywhere. And he's here right now, that

same God. And I know there's people that

say, well, you know, there's that Old Testament God and then

there's the New Testament God. Like the Old Testament gods mean

God. New Testament gods, really nice

God. Old Testament God is a judgment

God. New Testament God is peace, love

God. God never changes.

He's never changed. He's the same God the Bible says

yesterday, today and forever. And he is here to help you today

to rediscover your identity, not as a child, but as his child in

his family. And you know how he did it

through the death of his first born.

Why do you think that they had to take a one year old male lamb

without any spot or defect on it at the height of its life?

Why did they have to butcher it, catch it's blood, put the blood

on a doorpost in the lentil of their house, the doorway of

their life, so that God would say, when I see the blood I will

pass over you. You know some people say, and

I've heard it's repeated many times, that the Angel of death

went over Egypt. That's not what the Bible says.

The Bible says the Lord passed over.

The Lord passed over and when I see the blood I will pass over

you. And he gave his first born.

All of that is a shadowy image of what God was going to do

14170 years later, the death of his first born Jesus Christ, and

his resurrection from the dead. And Jesus Christ is here in this

room and in every room right now.

He's not limited by time and space, and He is here to provide

all that you need for living every day of your life.

But it comes with a choice. And the choice today is this.

You're going to have to serve somebody.

Some of you right now are saying, well, Jerry, truth is

I've made too many choices. And now, just like you said, my

choices make me. I've got good news for you

because you're right. You're exactly right.

Your choices are made like you've blown it.

It's gone, your opportunities are gone, you're backed in the

corner. You're a hopeless person.

Except I know a God who sent his Son, who says, if anyone is in

me, if anyone is in Christ, He is a new creation.

The old has gone and the new has come, and it only comes through

him. That's an amazing thought when

you think about it, that God has the ability to take all of those

bad choices and erase them and cover them like the Egyptians

were covered by the sea. He can cover them in the blood

of Jesus Christ. And he says, here you are,

here's a new choice, choose my son.

And when you choose Jesus Christ to be your Lord and your Savior,

you can become a new creation. And I can tell you this, that's

a good choice. We're moving to a time of

decision. It's funny how I'm taking for

granted this right now, but you know, being the primary

caregiver to my wife is making it hard for me to take this for

granted. What I'm doing right now that I

can just walk down those stairs and walk back and forth and not

have to give it any thought at all.

And I'd like to tell you this. I would like to tell you that

when you come to Jesus Christ, he's going to make everything

great. I'd love to tell you that.

Like it's going to be poof and it's all better.

That isn't true. My wife is teaching me that

right now. It doesn't get all better all at

once. Yeah, she got to walk on it, but

it didn't look pretty when she was doing it.

She is walking on it, but she has to use a Walker.

Hopefully tomorrow she graduates to a cane.

She really struggles lifting her leg, but she can do this, and

she could do that a whole lot better before she had her knee

surgery. She had a lot more mobility

before she had her knee surgery. And they say the first couple

weeks after knee surgery, you're asking yourself, why did I do

this? This was the dumbest thing, but

maybe the 3rd and the 4th week you're saying something

different, which is this? Why didn't I do this a long time

ago? I want you to hear the truth.

When you surrender your identity to Jesus Christ, it's going to

be uncomfortable for you. It's not going to be easy for

you. People come out of that

baptistery and it is wonderful. It feels so good.

It looks so good, right? But that's just the first step.

And it's amazing to see the miracle of a person being able

to walk right after a prosthetic joint is put in.

But they got a long way to go before they're climbing steps

and running. We just have to be patient as

God teaches us to use muscles we haven't been using.

I know from other people I know personally that have had those

knee surgeries that it gets better and it doesn't it it

doesn't take forever and it's worth it.

Let me tell you this, being a Christ follower isn't easy, but

it's worth it when you have a bad days and good days, painful

days and easy days. He's not a genie in a bottle,

He's real, and every one of those steps that you take for

him, you're going to make some progress and He is in it for the

long haul to win it. If you don't know Jesus Christ

personally as your Lord and Savior, there's absolutely

nothing standing in your way from doing that today except

you. He is holding back every dark

force, every power, every principality, everything that

would be against us. He's holding it back and He's

protecting this moment for you right now.

He is here in this place. He's here to meet you.

If you want to meet Him, there's going to be somebody right up

there by that baptistry would love nothing more than to just

talk to you. Pray with you about what your

next steps are. God will begin doing something

amazing in your life. You think what I've been

describing in my home is amazing.

It's nothing like this. Because He can replace a human

heart, an eternal thing. Many of you here today, you've

made that decision. You've made that choice for

Jesus Christ. But that doesn't mean that the

things in this world don't get in the way.

And sometimes we just need to reboot.

I don't know how techie some of you people are.

Some of you are as old as me, which means you're not that

techie. Now I've got a son who's like a

tech expert. And I mean, that's how he makes

his living. And you know what he tells me?

He says, dad, did you turn it off and turn it back on?

How many of you heard that from your kid before?

And then you want to slap him in the face?

There's a lot of times that solves the problem.

Let me tell you what these steps are, is turning it off and

turning it back on. That's exactly what it is.

You're just rebooting. You're just reminding yourself

to go back all to all of your spiritual defaults.

And I invite you to come up here and have that time with the Lord

today. In any case, it's decision time.

Would you stand with me, pray with me, Heavenly Father, in

Jesus name, please take these moments that are in front of us

and help us to realize, just like you dealt with the children

of Israel, that you are dealing right now with the children of

God, your children that you've provided for, that you love.

Even when we forget you, even when we push you aside, you love

us. And I pray, Father, in Jesus

name, that you would speak that still small voice, those

whispers into our hearts, and help us to respond to you, the

Father who loves us in Jesus name, Amen.