Ken Fish - July 13

Welcome to His Story, Our Story, a fresh podcast series

of interviews, testimonies, messages, and anecdotes where a range of

people from all walks of life share their journey as

they've traveled with Jesus. Here at Southland Church and Pasaden Adelaide,

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We pray that you are blessed and encouraged as you

listen to His Story Our Story.

Without further ado over the King, Bless your brother. I

think I'm on, am I on, I'm on. Okay, Hi everyone?

The kleague lights up here aren't like really strong. If

I do this, I can see you. Otherwise I can't.

I can just see heads in silhouette. Yeah. I was

sitting there on the front row and I was thinking

about a lot of old memories. How many people here tonight?

Obviously I don't know who's on the web stream, But

how many people here are remember the days of when

this was being built, all right, so maybe a third

or possibly a bit less. When we were walking in tonight,

I was telling the team that's with me. I've got

two Americans and four Australians. I was telling them that

there was a time when this shopping center didn't exist.

And it's it's too long of the story to go into.

But anyway, Robin dev Norman, when they were pastoring here,

they made they made an arrangement with the developer of

this shopping complex. And there are actually Bibles buried in

the foundation of the footings of this building, and they

I went, I came here. We had them wrapped in plastic,

but then we laid them in the foundation and they

poured the wet cement on top of them. So, you know,

they say buildings on the word of God. I don't

know if that's what they meant, but that's what happened.

So anyway, I was thinking about that memory and I

shared it, you know, with the team. I know approximately

where some of them are, but I don't remember where

all of them are. And then I was also remembering

I was remembering during worship. Something I'd forgotten, but there

was one night kind of early on, maybe some of

you were here, and this Iranian guy came in and

he came down here to the front and Rob grabbed

me and he said, hey, this guy wants to get

filled with the Holy Spirit. He was a believer. Anyway,

he got smashed and so he's lying on the floor,

just completely blitzed in the Holy Spirit. And after a

while he gets up and disappears, and pretty soon he

came back with like twenty or thirty more Iranians and

they all wanted to get baptized in the Holy Spirit.

So I think I had him hold hands or form

a semicircle or something right over there. But anyway, it

all went off, and so I was thinking about that,

and then I was thinking about the chairs were configured

differently once upon a time, but there was kind of

a center aisle and there was I'll just say, there

was a woman who was delivered of a spirit very

visibly in front of the entire congregation right about in there,

based under the way the chairs were configured. And this

went all over Adelaide because a few days later I

went to see Jenny Hagar and I think she now

lives down on Kangaroo Island. But anyway, I went to

see Jenny Hagar and I walked into this meeting with

all these intercessors. I mean, these people were intense. Man,

they're ready for war, right, They're in a prayamp as storm. Anyway,

I walk in and Jenny walks up to me and

she goes, man, the news is all over Adelaide. What

happened with that woman the other night? In the meeting,

I was like really, and she goes, oh, yeah. This

is a small town. So everybody was talking about this

deliverance that had happened, and interestingly enough, it was a

deliverance from a spirit of annihilationism. Anyway, up getting healed

of something as a byproduct of that, but I don't

remember now what the something was. And then there was

another woman again. The chairs were set differently then, but

there was another woman, and as it turned out, her

husband has been attending the meetings that I've been doing

up in the hills at Mount Barker, and she ended

up getting healed of celiac disease in this room. All

these things happened in this room, except for the bearing

of the Bibles and oh was that you. Hey, nice

to see you again, Hi Helena. Right, yeah, Well, anyway,

so she gets delivered to Celiac and it was an

afternoon session or late morning session or something, and so anyway,

I was kind of the last person out of the

room and I went, like most people do, down to

Balthazars to get something to eat. And I walked into

Balthazar's and here's this woman who's had Celiac and she's

got like the massive Mondo half meter pizza pan and

she's just finishing the whole thing off, and so there's

just a few crumbles in the pan and she's like

and then she wipes her face appropriately. You know, she

is a woman with manners. But anyway, these are all

some of my memories of this room. And I haven't

been back in this room for a while because of COVID.

And then when I came back after COVID, I wasn't

sure what I was gonna find. I didn't know if

there's anything left of the Australian Church. Jesus at the

Gates of Hell would not prevail against the Church, but

maybe COVID did or tried so. Anyway, in twenty three,

I came back and I didn't make it to Adelaide,

And then last year you invited me to come, but

I think my schedule had already been set so it

didn't work out. So I don't know. It's been maybe

six years, maybe seven years. I've kind of lost track.

But anyway, it's been a while and it's fun to

be back here and lots of memories. Yeah. Anyway, Okay,

let me get my timer going here so I don't

talk too long. Hah. Tonight, I want to talk about

the Lord, our Healer, and I'm not going to use

a New Testament passage. We're going to look at the

Old Testament. So if you've got your Bibles, you can

open them to Exodus chapter fifteen, and we're going to

be starting in verse twenty two. Now, the story that

goes before this part of the story is that the

Israelites have crossed out of Egypt. Of course, we've already

had ten plagues, we have the parting of the Red Sea,

and chapter fifteen begins with the Song of Moses. And

I'll just say, in the earliest years of the Vineyard Movement,

Exodus fifteen was one of our most favored songs, and

I won't torture your ears by singing it to you,

but it was one of my favorites, and like I say,

it just became one of our most powerful songs. But

it was about the Lord's ability to rescue and heal

his people, save his people, deliver his people. These words

don't all mean the same thing, but we often use

them in the same context. And so when the song

is over, and Pharaoh and the chariots and the horses

have all been thrown into the sea, it says in

Exodus fifteen twenty two, then Moses made Israel set out

from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness

of Sure. They went three days in the wilderness and

found no water, and they came to Marah. They could

not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter.

Therefore it was named Marah. And the people grumbled against Moses,

saying what shall we drink? And he cried to the Lord,

and the Lord showed him a log, and he threw

it into the water, and the water became sweet. There

the Lord made for them a statute and a rule,

and there he tested them, saying, if you will diligently

listen to the voice of the Lord your God, and

do that which is right in his eyes, and give

ear to his commandments, and keep all of his statutes.

I will put none of the diseases on you that

I put on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord

your healer. Then they came to Elim, where there were

twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and they

encamped there by the water well. The Bible is a

book of covenants. We have the Old Covenant, commonly called

the Old Testament, and we have the New Covenant, commonly

called the New Testament. Exodus fifteen twenty six really represents

kind of a proto covenant of something wider and greater

that the Lord was going to do, or I might say,

offer to the children of Israel. I don't think the

children of Israel ever really picked up what was on offered,

and we'll talk about that as we get a little

further into this. But here's something that should be obvious,

but maybe we don't always think things through before you

enter into a covenant, any covenant, let's say the covenant

of marriage, just to pick one that often goes sour.

You should know and more than casually the person with

whom you are entering into covenant. And so we see

various things that are promised in the scripture. In one place,

God says if they would keep his covenant, they would

be blessed to a thousand generations. Now, depending on how

long you number a generation, thirty years, forty years, some

people say fifty. Most don't, but some do so depending

on how long you number a generation, we are probably

not more than one hundred and fifty generations away from

the story that we just read, and we might only

be maybe seventy two to seventy five generations away. Probably

never thought about that. But what it does mean is

that if you take this statement seriously, that God is

offering a covenant here and he's good to one thousand generations,

we're well inside the perimeter. We're well within the purview

of this covenant which God offered to the children of Israel.

And to boil the entire message down to a sentence,

I will be the Lord your healer. Now, this is

something that we're not always comfortable grabbing a hold of

or proclaiming too forcefully, because no sooner do we say

it than the yabbuts start you know what a yabbat is. Yeah,

but so you say, God's willing give be my healer. Yeah,

but I'm not healed. Yeah but my wife's not healed.

Yeah but my husband's not healed, and so on, and

so the yabbuts begin right away. But it is the

promise of the Lord, and this is a covenant that

he made, and he repeats it actually multiple places. One

of them is in Exodus thirty four, verse seven, where

God appears to Moses on the mountain and he passes

by him, and he says he is the Lord, the

God of covenant, mercy, keeping steadfast love to a thousand

generations of those who love him. But he also says

he will by no means forgive the guilty. He requires

something for that. Now. He made a way for it himself.

It's called the blood of Jesus. And prior to the

coming of Jesus, he provided an entire sacrificial system that

was a prototype of what would ultimately come about. But

this is an interesting question when we see that the

Lord is our healer, and it should cause us to

ask who exactly is this God with whom we are

in covenant. Well, in any relationship you get to know

people better and better over time. We live in an

age where a lot of relationships are short lived. They're fungible.

People don't really value them as they maybe one time did,

and as a consequence, many times relationships come and go,

maybe they're three to five years in duration, and then

you don't hear from those people anymore. I have one

friend who was actually my roommate when I went to university,

and I think I've known him longer than anyone except

for a couple of my blood relatives who knew me

when I was knee high to a grasshopper. But everyone

else in my life is of shorter duration than that. Well,

the Lord revealed himself to the children of Israel progressively,

and this which he promised here in Exodus fifteen is

actually the fourth great reveel of his name, the fourth

grade revelation of his name. And we're going to look

at the first three of them in a bit to

help understand why this is such a stunning revelation that

he gave. But let me just say this. Beth and

I we've been married for thirty seven years, will hit

thirty eight years in December, and I know her a

lot better now than when I first married her. I

know that she doesn't like truffles. I know that there

are certain things she would much rather I not do,

and if I do them, she would much rather that

I not do them so strongly that it might create

some difficulty in our home for a bit. And similarly,

she knows some things about my preferences, likes and dislike.

And I would say, even at thirty seven years, we're

still figuring some things out about each other. But we

know each other better now than say at thirty years

or twenty five, certainly ten or five years in And

so our understanding of our spouse this grows over time,

and our understanding of God grows over time. But an

important part of biblical revelation is that always our understanding

of Him grows consistent with prior revelations of who he is,

because he doesn't change. Malachi says this, I the Lord change,

not Malachi three to six. And so there's no contradiction

as these updates occur, but they can create, I would say,

big shifts in our understanding our revelation of who God is.

Now all of this is ultimately for our benefit, because

it means that we can build on what we know

of God. But even more importantly than that, and this

is why Christianity is a historic faith. You know, there

are some religions that are hang on, I think it's

a yoda ball or something anyway, Okay, so there are

some religions that are ahistoric. They don't really require that

history be true. They don't require anything because they're more

myth They're more mythological. And one of the things that's

going on in modern circles modern times is everyone's trying

to reduce the Bible to myth. But the Bible will

not be reduced to myth because it is a historic

document and it deals with things that have happened in

specific space and time. The Exodus event can be dated

to fourteen forty six BC. We know when it happened

roughly thirty five hundred years ago. And so because this

is true, we actually can build our faith today on

the things that our forefathers and fore mothers knew back

even to three thousand, five hundred years ago. And if

we go back to Abraham just about four thousand years ago,

and so, as I said, in this account, the Lord

gives the fourth major revelation of himself with the objective

that they would worship him. Worship can be for many things.

If you travel the world, you'll quickly figure out, especially

when you visit lands where other gods are worshiped, you'll

quickly figure out that religion can be highly utilitarian. Many

times people will worship whatever god it is, even this

one that we serve, because they think they'll get something

out of it. It's a kind of a quid pro quote.

They may offer sacrifices, they may, you know, sing with

great gusto. There may be various things that they do.

But God intended that he would do something remarkable in

order that they would worship him, because the Lord had

said when he appeared to Moses in the Burning Bush,

I will bring my people three days into the wilderness,

that they would worship me three days into the wilderness.

And it's actually part of the conflict that Moses has

with Pharaoh when he's saying, let my people go, let

my people go, let my people go. At one point

Moses says they actually have to go three days into

the wilderness, and Pharaoh's like, that's never gonna happen, because

he knows if they go three days into the wilderness,

and they ain't coming back. And so three days it

might be prophetic, it might be something that looks forward

to the three days in the tomb for Jesus. But

with all that is kind of background and preambled it,

I don't know. Chill the soil. Let's go into Exodus fifteen.

So Moses made Israel set out from the Red Sea.

The chariots are under the water. Pharaoh's men are under

the water, the horses are under the water. And they

went into the wilderness of Sure. Now the word sure

in Hebrew means the wall. And so anyone here who's

been a runner, particularly marathon runners, you know the saying

hit the wall. They ran out of their own energy,

they ran out of their own gas. They're traveling into

the wilderness, and suddenly every thing that they have, all

of their human power, all of the power of the soul,

all of their best intentions. That's it. And so they are,

in fact three days in the wilderness, just as God

had said they would be, and it would become a

test of worship for them. The reason the Lord did

this is because typically when the Lord takes a people

out of Egypt, he must then take Egypt out of them.

And this is true of us too. This is a

story about it's a historical event. In fact, this year

Andy and I were in the Middle East and we

went and saw this place called Elim. We were there,

But there's a wider story here, because the Bible tells us.

Paul writes this that everything that happened in the Old

Testament was written down as examples for us upon whom

the ends of the ages have come. Now, it's an

extraordinary thing think that God would allow this entire Exodus

story to occur in order that people like you and

me would be able to look back at it and say,

there's a lesson in here for us. And the lesson

for us is a lot of times. We have come

to faith, a lot of times. We've had our own

if you will, deliverance from Egypt. We've come across our

own red sea. Paul refers to the crossing of the

Red Sea as being a baptism into Christ. He does

this in one Corinthians ten. And so we find ourselves

on the other side of the water. We're out of Egypt.

But the real question is is Egypt left us? And

the answer is usually not. We have a lot of

old ideas. We have a lot of old attitudes. And

let's remember that these Israelites had been slaves for more

than four hundred years. Now, we have a history of

slavery in the United States. It lasted about two hundred

and fifty years, and we're still dealing with the fallout

from it. And it's been one hundred sixty years since emancipation,

one hundred and sixty five. But anyway, whatever, no one's

sixty one, there we go, got it right? Do the

math in your head, ken, So we're still dealing with

the fallout of it. But imagine a people who have

been in slavery for four hundred years. That's six generations,

or maybe if it depends how you measure your generations,

maybe it's maybe it's only four. But whatever it is,

it's it's more generations for more damage, for intergenerational You

guys love the word trauma, so I'll say intergenerational trauma.

There's there's there's more time for all of that to occur.

And so what kind of people do you think these

Jews are anyway? I mean, they're servants of God by covenant,

but just how deep is their faith really and by

the way, which gods have they been worshiping all these

four hundred years? Do you think they were strict? Yaois

in the midst of Egyptian civilization, Andy shaking his head

because he was with me in Egypt. These use that

they were very much into syncretism. They had all kinds

of stuff mingled in to their faith in Yahweh. And

so God has to take Egypt out of them. And

at one point, more than one point, actually, but near

the end of Joshua's life, Joshua is still admonishing them. Now,

remember Joshua outlives Moses. Joshua is still admonishing them to

get rid of their Egyptian gods that they carried out

of Egypt with them, and they're hiding them in their

tent or in their satchel or whatever they're doing. And

so they hit the wall because God has brought them

to the wall. And when you hit the wall, you

only have a couple of options. You either go over

the wall, or you go down the wall far enough

to where maybe the wall runs out and then maybe

you can hook around, and then you got to backtrack

all the way to where you were. Your third option

is to dig under the wall, but that's its own

form of difficulty, so usually not the preferred choice. Now

I'm belaboring all this because I'm trying to help you

think about this passage. I don't just want to blow

through it and throw a bunch of stuff at you.

I want you engaged in this with me. And so

when they come to shore, they're three days in the

wilderness and they find no water. Now this is a

problem because this is desert country. And the scripture tells

us that there were six hundred thousand men who came

out of Egypt and they're marching, and you know, the

way population works, there would have been about the same

number of women, So that'd be one point two million people.

And then I don't know how many babies one point

two million adults can make, but they didn't have birth control,

So pick a number, maybe four kids per family, six eight,

I don't know. You do do your own math, but

this could conceivably be four to five million people. That's

more than Sydney, never mind Adelaide. It's like five Adelaides.

So I'm trying to help you think about, how are

you gonna get water for that many people in the

middle of nowhere. This is what you This is more

than a faith crisis. This is a real crisis. And

so they find no water. But they come to this

place called Marah, and three times the scripture calls out

this word Marah. Now Marajh means bitter. And they couldn't

drink the water of Marah because it was bitter, and

so the place was called Marah. And the people begin

to grumble against Moses, and they say, what shall we drink?

And there's a lot of miracles in the story of

the Exodus, but this is a big one. He cries

out to the Lord. Now this doesn't mean he's like,

this is more an exclamatory cry, Oh God, we are

in need. Oh Lord, we need water. They're gonna kill me.

Help that kind of praying. And when he it says

the Lord showed him a log. Now this translation says log.

Some translations say a piece of wood. That's because in

Hebrew it's the same word. Everybody knows that logs come

from trees. Trees are made of wood, so it's all

one word. But anyway, they're next to this bitter water,

this pond, this lake, whatever it is. And I could

suppose maybe not unlike when Moses had seen the burning

bush and his eye had been drawn to it, and

he said, I will turn aside and see this great sight.

He turns aside, or he looks over and he sees

this again. Is it a tree, maybe an old, dried

up tree, you know by the water there, kind of

leaning in a bit. Or is it a piece of wood,

maybe a smaller log like you would throw on a fire.

I don't know. But he sees this piece of wood,

this log, and he threw it into the water. Now,

if it was big enough, he would have needed help.

If it's small enough, he might have grabbed a hold

of it himself and kind of heave ho thrown it in.

But however he got it in the water. He did.

And when the log hits the water, the wood hits

the water. Now the water becomes sweet. Now it's interesting

because we have a scripture that ultimately would come out

of the Pentituke, which hadn't been given yet at this point,

but it's going to be given in this wilderness journey,

and it says, curse it is everyone who hangs upon

a tree. Well, if it was a tree, a whole tree,

instead of a log, this becomes unquestionably a prophetic foreshadowing

of the power of the cross to heal bitterness. And

so once the cross, once the wood of the cross,

once that tree is introduced into the water, now it

becomes drinkable. And as soon as that happens, as soon

it's a proto revelation. It's not a full revelation. They

don't know exactly what they're seeing. Moses is going to

get further revelation about this on the mountain. But as

soon as this has happened, now the Lord makes for them.

It says a statute and a rule, and there he

tested them. You know, this is an interesting phrase. God

never tempts anyone, but he will test them. He tested

Abraham when he said sacrifice Isaac. Of course, he didn't

let him get all the way done with it. He

interrupted that, because God is just and fair, but he

will test people. And the reason he does it is

not because he doesn't know what's in our hearts. It's

because we don't know what's in our hearts. And so

part of getting Egypt out of us is to recognize

that there is any Egypt to be gotten rid of.

And it really as they hit the wall and they're

facing the bitterness of Marah that they begin to realize

there is some Egypt yet in them. And so the

word comes to diligently listen to the voice of the

Lord your God. Now this is the living voice of God.

Because they don't yet have the written Word of God.

They will get it, but they don't yet have it.

But they're being told well ahead of time, you must

listen to the voice of the Lord your God. This

is reminiscent of what Jesus would say, my sheep, hear

my voice, and a stranger they will not follow. But

I wonder how many people really know the living voice

of God. How many people when they hear it, and

it might not be audible. In fact, usually it won't be.

I wonder how many times when they hear the voice

of God will they yield to it rather than continuing

on in whatever direction they wanted to be going. So ultimately,

this business of listening to the voice of God becomes

a test of the will, and one of the things

that is most difficult for believers, whether Jewish or Christian.

Although I think on this one the Christians are doing

a little bit better than the Jews, mainly because most

Jews don't really believe in God anymore at all. Christians

might struggle with their faith, but at least we hold

on to some residue of it, and some are stronger

than others. Well. Anyway, this business of being willing to

listen to the voice of God ultimately comes down to

a contest of will will you do what God says?

Will you yield to him or do you want to

continue trying to run the show. And we really struggle

with that when as a race, that's just the nature

of humans. And he says, if you will listen to

the voice of God, if you will do what is

right in his eyes. This is another big test, will

you do what is right in his eyes? We just

finished up a conference up at Mount Barker and today

we had a ministry time that lasted until like three

o'clock in the afternoon, and there were still a few

people that we didn't get prayed for, but we got

through most of them. And we'd had some other ministry times.

But the level of brokenness that we see in society,

I think it's getting worse and it's going up. And

anyone who's doing any kind of ministry at all knows

that if you're unaware of it, you obviously aren't doing

any lay ministry or professional ministry. But the world is

really it's getting darker, it's getting more challenging, it's getting

more difficult. But you know the second part of this,

So you have to listen to the voice of God,

but you actually have to decide to do what is

right in his eyes. And that is also a choice.

And from high to low, and through many of the

stories of the people who were receiving prayer up at

our conference at Mount Barker, many many, many of them

were the victims of people who had chosen not to

do what was right in the eyes of God. They

committed incest, they molested, they stole, they were violent, whatever

it was. I mean, you just go down the list.

It's kind of the same woe litany that you listen to.

But you have to do what is right in His eyes.

And I don't know what it is about human nature,

but so often when we are faced with choices to

do what is right or to do what seems expedient

in the moment, we choose what is expedient in the

moment rather than choosing what is right, mainly because doing

what is right seems more costly, but in the long run,

it's always far more costly not to do what is right.

Every single thing God commands, every single thing he tells

us to do, everything he intends toward us is goodness

and kindness. Now it may not appear that way to us,

and that's part of the will problem. We look at

it and we go, that's just God being mean. He

wants to ruin my fund. Some people even say it

that way. But if we're not saying it, it's in

our head. And that's why we say, I'll go this

other way. I got a better idea than God. So

again the matter of the will, I will yield to

what is right in his eyes, not my eyes. His eyes. Now,

if you're aligned with God, what's right in your eyes

will be what's right in his eyes, and reciprocally, what's

right in his eyes will be right in your eyes.

But for a lot of people this is a non starter.

That's why we have things like adultery. That's why we

have things like murder. That's why we have theft, and

more than that, By the way, adultery, theft, and murder

are all on the list of ten commandments, thou shalt not.

Is that because God thinks that, you know, we will

have more fun killing each other. No, it's because he's

trying to preserve life. But we have to yield. Our

will is engaged. And then he goes on and he says,

you also have to give the ear to my commandments,

which are about to be given, but they haven't yet,

and you have to keep my statutes. These are like

the codicils and amendments that clarify and expand on that.

He says, if you will do these basic things, then

I will put none of the diseases on you that

I put on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord,

your healer. Well, what are we going to make of this?

The Lord first revealed himself to Abraham back in Genesis

seventeen one. Now, when the Lord called Abraham, he called

him as el Shadai. That was the name that he

revealed himself by. The word Ale is an ancient word

that means God, but it's a generic word for God.

It doesn't necessarily mean this God whom we serve, whom

Jesus taught us to call father. It just means any

old god. In the Middle East and which God, did

you mean? Will you tagged on a last name? So

he could be El Elchim, he could be El Shadai,

He could be any number of names. But what he

did was he revealed himself to Abraham when he called him,

and he said, I am al Shaddai, which means God

all powerful. Now these first three names of God are

highly like blown up transcendent type named God in all

of his glory. So I am God almighty. And because

I am Almighty, Abraham was called to walk before him

and be tamim or upright, to live a holy life.

And this doesn't just mean like punctilious and dotting all

the eyes and crossing all the tea's and being a legalist.

It actually means to be complete, to be whole, and

to be free of guile, to be innocent. Now, Abraham

had been living in Or of the Caldis. This was

like the center of the world. It had been built

as a city centuries before by a man named Nimrod.

And Nimrod was kind of a sketchy guy. He's called

a mighty hunter before the Lord. But he founded the

world's first empire, and this city was one of the

four foundation stones of his empire. And let's just say

all empires developed the same way, by oppression, militarism, and more.

And that's who Nimrod was. And Abraham came out of

that culture. He was a trader. He came from a

family of herdsmen. They would have been accustomed to trading

livestock and more. And let's just say that when Abraham

was called, he had a few things to lose himself.

He wasn't coming out of Egypt. He was coming out

of Or. But when God takes you out of Uri

has to take Or out of you, just like when

he takes you out of Egypt, he has to take

Egypt out of you. Now we're developing a theme here,

because this is the problem of humanity. We all have

this stuff in us. It's called sin, but sometimes it's

sinful attitude, sometimes it's other things. So Abraham didn't know

a lot, but he knew that this God who named

himself El should I, had called him and he was

now going to become a different kind of a man.

Instead of being that trader guy, that guy who was shrewd,

that man who is calculating, he was now going to

live a life that was complete, whole and innocent. And

it wasn't enough for him just to know about God.

God expected of Abraham, and this is why he was

called to be Tamim, that a particular lifestyle would follow

that knowledge. Now that sounds in many ways parallel to

what's going on in this passage. Lifestyles matter, all right. Well,

a lot of time goes by, and the children of

Israel go down to Egypt. And when the Lord begins

revealing himself in this second Great Revelation to the children

of Egypt, he does so as the eternal, self sufficient one.

He does so by confronting Moses in a burning bush.

It's about five hundred years after Abraham has had this

revelation of God the all Powerful. Now this is really

important because if you're a Jewish person and you're in captivity,

you believe that the God of your forefathers is the

all powerful God, and yet you're living in internal faith

contradiction because you're living in captivity. If God's so powerful,

why doesn't get me out of this?

Huh?

By the way, this has a lot to do with healing.

How many times have we said, if God's all powerful,

why doesn't he heal me? And it's always with that

kind of tone of voice. It may not be uttered aloud,

but it's in our hearts. God's taking Egypt out of us.

He's taking or out of us. Does this make sense

all right? So it's about five hundred years later. The

Lord appears to Moses in the burning Bush and he says,

Moses's what is your name? He says, yeah, A share Haiah,

I am who I am? Who are you to ask me?

Who I am? I will be who I will be? Unk.

So it was a limited revelation. It's showing just a

single aspect of God's nature. But this word hiah i am,

it means I exist, I am alive, and I am present,

and I am aware. In fact, it says that when

the children of Israel cried out to God in their

agony because of what the taskmasters were doing to them,

God knew. God was aware. God was with them, but

they didn't know God was with them. That's a very

important part of what is developing here of this revelation,

because when we are suffering, God is aware. It may

not seem like it, but He is aware. You know.

It's interesting. Moses is born in response to the cries

of the children of Israel. When he's forty, he kills

the Taskmaster and has to flee from Pharaoh, and he

goes to the land of Midian, where for forty more

years he is tending sheep. When he comes back to Egypt,

it's been eighty years that they have been crying out

for God to move eighty years. But in this revelation

God showed with this very name hiah Asherhayah. He showed

that he was sovereign and self sufficient. He didn't rely

on anybody, and so he's not only all powerful. He

gives answer to nobody because he doesn't need to. And

then the third revelation comes when he clarifies this revelation

that had previously been given to Abraham and to Isaac

and to Jacob. He revealed himself to each of them separately.

In their lifetimes, they knew him as Ale, but they

never knew him as Yahavah or as we say, Yahweh

or Jehovah. These are These are the consonants in the

four letter word that is the name of God by

which he said, you shall name me. But this word

means I am the self existent one. I have no beginning,

I have no end. Nobody will outlast me, and nobody

predated me. So now we have the all powerful one

who is sovereign and self sufficient, who has no beginning

and no end, and he gives no answer to anybody.

And yet at the same time he's going to reveal

himself immediately on the heels of this as the God

who is Rahum, hanum and arek, which means merciful and compassionate, gracious,

and slow to anger. Now that almost sounds like a

contradiction of terms, because we've been describing something that sounds

like the great and mighty Oz behind the green curtain.

Right.

All these are huge concepts, all powerful, self sufficient, self existent,

with no beginning or end. Oh yeah, and he's merciful

and kind. And so the fourth revelation comes right here

at the waters of Marah. We might almost say, as

they're looking into the water, they see the reflection, maybe

like the ancient myth of narcissists who saw his own

reflection in the water, they see their own reflection in

the waters of bitterness, and they realize, yes, this is

who we are. The Lord says, I want to heal

your bitterness, and I also want to heal your diseases,

and so the all powerful, self sufficient, self existent one

happens also to be a healer. Isn't that interesting because

when we think of people who are healers, we don't

generally think of them in the same category as say,

I don't know military leaders or businessmen or government officials.

Healers are people who somehow have a more compassionate side

to them. There may be a softer tone to them.

There people who come alongside of people who are afflicted

with weakness, with sickness, sufferings, and God says, I respond

with compassion, grace and mercy. And so now at this

point the revelations of God, which have been very transcendent,

and we might almost say impersonal, but he is speaking,

so he does have personality. It's at this point that

his own self revelation becomes highly personal, and so healing

flows out of the person of God, coming from his

very nature. He could have revealed himself as anything, but

he chose to reveal himself as healer. And so when

he says I am yahweh Rafa or yahavah Rafa, this

is a self given name by which he presented himself

to Israel. And he said, I want you to know

me in this way. And this should beg a question

in our minds. Do we know God in this way?

Not theoretically, not about some healing that just happened down

the block or in church seven months ago with somebody

that we barely know and who always sits on the

other side of the auditorium from us. But have we

encountered God as healer in order that our own lives

could be transformed and our misery could be lifted? Well,

the people had been grumbling at the waters of Mara,

And when you see this, this is a natural response.

I mean, after all, how much water can you really

carry when you've got a few million people to water?

Everybody might carry a couple of skins, but that's not

going to last more than a couple of days. And

so what we've really got here is a supply chain problem,

and it's a supply chain problem that's going to go

on for many years. Award after this happens. Immediately after

this happens, So you get to chapter seven, we're in

fifteen right now. You get to chapter seventeen, and they're

back at it. They're grumbling and they're complaining, and what

they say is God brought us out here to kill us.

Does that even make sense? I mean, he did ten

plagues on the Egyptians. He splits the ocean so they

can go through it. He lets the ocean close in

on the armies of Egypt so they can't capture them,

and he brings them out and he's just given them

water in chapter fifteen, and by chapter seventeen they're saying

he came out here to kill us. In fact, he

didn't just come out here to kill us. He wanted

to kill our children and our cows. That's in chapter seventeen.

That's what they say. You kind of look at it

and you go, what's wrong with you? Well, look in

the waters of Morale, because that might be what comes

out of your mouth too. Why did God leave me here?

Who is this God? Anyway? What's going on here? And

so the rock splits, water comes from the rock. Everybody

has water to drink. That's all in chapter seventeen. Oh

but I forgot to mention right in between chapter fifteen

where they get the waters of Mara sweetened and chapter

seventeen where the rock splits open. So they now have

an artesian spring that doesn't run dry. Right in the middle,

we come to chapter sixteen where they're saying, we have

no food to eat, and God gives them both manna

and quail, and yet by chapter seventeen they're back to

God hates us. We would have been better off in Egypt.

He brought us out here to kill us, to kill

our little kids, and to kill our cows. The cows

cracks me up. It says cattle in the Bible, but

we know what that means. And so the issue, the

issue really becomes one of looking. And I hear Michael

Jackson singing, I'm looking at the man in the mirror.

I'm asking him to make a change. If you want

to make the world a better place, take a look

at yourself and make the change. Oh yeah, whooo Okay,

I am no, Michael Jackson. It's not pretty anyway. Okay.

So God has revealed himself to them as the healer,

and the scripture goes on and tells us in verse

twenty seven of this chapter that they left Marah and

they came to Elim. Now Elim means the palms, and

we stopped at Alim. Now we were in a militarized

zone on the Sinai Peninsula, so they wouldn't let us

get off the bus. We thought they would, and the

door's open and we started a pile out and they're like, no, no,

you can't do that. So we all got back on

the bus and took pictures from inside the bus. But anyway,

we saw these palm trees and some of them are

like thirty five hundred and four thousand years old. Those

palm trees were there when this story happened, and we

were just there in April. Yeah, okay, So all tests

eventually come to an end, but they typically end only

when we passed them. So what is the answer to

the tests of life? Die to your flesh quickly, or

we'll just make it in shorthand just die quickly. Just

get it over with. Yield to the Lord, do what

is right, because when we do this, we come to

the place of blessing. So the Lord had taken them

out of Egypt, and now that they were out of

Egypt through this trial, he was taking Egypt out of them,

as I've said already, and they rest at this place

of the palms. Now, the thing that's interesting when we

look at this passage is that when they come to Elim,

there are actually twelve springs of water. How many tribes

of Israel are there? So what's he doing. He's giving

every tribe its own source of water. They're saying that

there's not going to be enough water, and God is

giving super abundantly. You know, there's a parallel to this

in what Jesus taught Matthew six thirty three. If you

will seek first the Kingdom of Heaven, if you will

make that your number one priority, if you will live

according to the principles of the kingdom. And there are

some standards here, they're like the statutes and covenants that

are spoken of in Exodus fifteen. But if you will

do that and seek the righteousness of God, you also

have to seek his righteousness. If you will seek first

the Kingdom of Heaven and his righteousness. If you will

do that, all these things will be added unto you.

A lot of times people say, ah, that's just nice sentiment,

but that doesn't actually work. Yes, it actually does, but

you do have to fulfill the requirements. So here they come.

God has given them twelve springs, one for every tribe,

and seventy palm trees. Why is seventy important because later

on in the Book of Numbers, chapter eleven, there are

seventy elders who have been appointed at that time to

judge the children of Israel along with Moses, to settle

their disputes and kind of lead the community and deal

with civil matters and so on. The elders seventy palm trees. Now,

those men were already known when they were brought out

to the tent of meeting. In the spirit of God

was put upon them for that purpose. They had already

been leaders and officers among the people. That's the language

that the scripture uses in Numbers chapter eleven. So they

were known at this time as well. In the Book

of Exodus, and there's one palm tree for every single elder.

And listen, in the Sinai Peninsula, there are no coconut

palm trees. Every one of them is a date palm.

And what's one thing that we know about dates. They're sweet.

So these people have made the transition, at least partially,

from being bitter people, not necessarily bitter at anybody, just

bitter at the bitterness of life. We have a story

called the Book of Ruth. It's not one of the

more popular books in the Bible, but it has a

lot of profound lessons in it. And in it there's

a woman named Naomi who is Ruth's mother in law.

And Naomi loses her husband and she loses her two sons,

and she says to Ruth, do not call me Naomi

any longer, call me Marah, because my life has been bitter.

And so it's that sense of kind of shriveled up,

grinding your teeth. You may be shaking your fist at God,

you may just be gutting it out. You may not

even be thinking about God. Maybe you're agnostic or atheist.

But when they come to the place of pools and palms,

one pool for each tribe, one palm for each leader,

they've crossed into a place. It's not the Promised Land,

but it's a place of sustenance and so healing. Really,

this promise, this covenant of Exodus fifteen twenty six, is

a sustaining covenant. When we get to heaven, we will

have all we need. We will have new resurrection bodies.

There will be no further sickness or illness. But in

the meantime, while you're going through the desert, God will

sustain you. And now let's go almost done. Now let's

go to Matthew chapter one, because in Matthew chapter one

we have a very interesting part of the prophecies around Jesus,

but one I think that has often overlooked. And so

the Angel of the Lord has appeared to Mary and

announced that she's going to have a baby. And then

he appears to Joseph, the son of David, and he says,

do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for

that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

She will bear a son, and you shall call his

name Yahashua or Jesus, for he will save his people

from their sins. The word save there isn't just salvation

from sinfulness. And I think one of our problems with

modern Western theology is we're talking about sin, but we're

forgetting about the totality of what God wants to do

in our lives. The Greek word there is soso. And

for anyone who's been around Bethel or the modern renewal

and you know anything about inner healing, this is a

comprehensive word. It means saved and healed and delivered and

living under the shalom the peace covering the protection of God.

That's what Soso really means. It's a John Wimber used

to say, it is salvationtion. It's a big salvation. And

so Jesus came to Soso people from their sins, and

so the healing ministry of Jesus when it emerges as

he hits about age thirty, he's saving his people from

their sins. But he's also saving them from the effect

of their sin. He's saving them from the effect of

their wrongdoing of disregarding God's ways and covenants. He's rescuing

them from their bitterness. All of that and more is

wrapped up in the coming of Jesus, and it's really

it's our father's gracious and kind restoration to a wayward people.

Because remember, Jesus did not come first to Gentiles. He

did not first come to Australians or Aboriginals, or people

from Southeast Asia, or to people from North Asia. He

came first and foremost to Jews, and he was reoffering

a covenant, including the covenant of healing, which they never

effectively picked up. If you study the history of the

Old Testament, there are seven healings in the entire history

of Israel, not counting the many that were healed when

they grumbled and complained against the Lord, and he said

to Moses, make a bronze serpent. When they look at that,

they will be healed. We don't know how many got

healed there, But otherwise healing is a fairly sporadic thing

in the Old Testament. But when Jesus comes with this name,

Jesus yahesh. God is with us, God saves us, God

sozoes us, this is a sign that Exodus fifteen twenty

six is still on the table. Now, this could be

healing for their bodies. This could be healing for their minds,

This could be healing for their broken sexuality. This could

be healing for any number of things. But if we

look at Exodus fifteen twenty six and we go just

a little bit forward from there, just a couple pages

in our Bibles. In Exodus twenty three, the Lord says this,

he's expanding on the offer of Exodus fifteen twenty six.

He says, you shall not bow down to their gods

nor serve them. Well, there's a lot of mingling of

gods that's going on even in our time today. We

need to put away the foreign gods from us, just

as the Jewish people had to do here. Nor do

as they do. But you shall utter overthrow them and

break their pillars in pieces. Why because if you don't,

you'll probably end up serving their gods at their places

of worship. Verse twenty five. You shall serve the Lord

your God, and he will bless your bread and your water.

I started out tonight not knowing that Helena was in

the room, But I told you a healing story from

Celiac that occurred in this room. Well, that's blessing your

bread or it's removing the curse from it. Either way,

it's a good outcome. He will bless your bread and

your water. So all you gluten intolerant people, there's an answer.

But not only that, I will take sickness away from

among you. This is a covenant of divine health. It's

a covenant of divine sustenance. It's a covenant of being

able to do beyond what you ought to be able

to do. It's a covenant of restoration and more. And

so God actually fans on the offer of Exodus fifteen

twenty six. In Exodus twenty three, twenty six, and the

naming of Jesus is a sign that that offer was

still available. It was a renewal of the covenant, a

covenant that they had never truly grasped or stepped into.

And I think it was in part because they didn't

know who they'd made the covenant with. That was what

I started out with. We make covenants with those whom

we know. God was trying to be known, but even

though he was always reaching toward them, they weren't necessarily reciprocating.

And so Jesus came with a declaration the Kingdom of

God is at hand because his father and our father

was still offering the covenant of healing to his own

the Kingdom of God, as the Vineyard really popularized. There

are some people still teaching us, but it's largely kind

of gone away. It seems to have been something that

had its time in the seventies and eighties, and not

many of ung onto it. The Kingdom of God is

a fulfillment of a promise made about thirty five hundred

years ago to the people of God. Are you part

of the people of God? If you are, then that

promises for you, And it's tonight. It's a now word

and the Kingdom of God is a realm in which

God's economy, which is to say, his shalom, in his

abundant provision, prevails. The Kingdom of God carries with it

a promise of living under that shalom, where the Lord

himself is king over his people, where he provides and

cares for them. And it is still a signed today

that our Father wants to bring his people back into

a fuller revelation of who he is and specifically what

his intentions his kindness toward us may be. Now, I

remember some years ago being in Indonesia. I don't remember

what island we were on, but I remember the room

very clearly. I can see it in my mind's eyes.

I'm talking about this. I started out telling you a

few stories of miraculous interventions in this exact room, but

this one occurred in Indonesia. And when we were in Indonesia,

this one night, there was a word of knowledge that

came forth that there were ten deaf people who needed

to be healed. And sure enough, ten deaf people came forward.

There was maybe six or seven hundred people in the

meeting that night, and all of these people came forward

and just to as it were, pour water on the wood.

I'm thinking of Elijah in his sacrifice on Mount Carmel,

just to pour water on the wood. We asked for

ten people who had never prayed for anybody to be healed,

to come forward and be the prayer ministers to these

ten deaf people. Now, if you did this in Pasadena,

South Australia, all the oxygen in the room would immediately

leave because everybody would go God's going to be embarrassed.

This is going to fail. But all those people came up,

and the ten prayer ministers came up, and we prayed.

Four got healed. Now that's not bad, that's a forty

percent yield. But we were looking for something more. We

were looking for the totality of God's promise, and so

we had translators and we went down the line, my

partner and I, and we asked the six remaining people,

are you angry at somebody? Are you bitter with somebody?

We asked it different ways, and every single one of

them yes, yes, yes, And so as they acknowledged this,

we led them in a prayer to forgive those people. Now,

I know sometimes people have been so deeply wounded, so

much so offended that they do not readily let go

of that kind of thing. But as near as they

were able, they did that. And then we had the

newbies pray for the six remaining people, and six out

of six got healed, and we had now had ten

out of ten deaf people get healed. Mara is a

serious problem. God confronts us with it when we have it.

Oftentimes we turn away from it, and when we're hitting

the wall, sometimes we think it's easier to run down

the wall. But like I said, sooner or later, you've

got to come all the way back to where you were.

And that's where a lot of people are stuck. That's

why they don't find breakthrough. It's a simple matter. It

can be hard to manage. But when we just say, lord,

I'm not going to try to collect this bill anymore,

i just refuse to be angry about this and I'm

just going to let him go. It is not that

what happened. Whenever it happened, it is not that that's okay. No,

it's not okay. It's never going to be okay. But

I'm going to leave it up to you to settle

the score. And when that happened, then everything can shift.

And when we do that, it's not just that it

might create a particular outcome tonight, which I'm sure you

for many of you at will, but it's more than that,

you're actually getting back on side with God. And in

the Book of Hebrews, there's a whole dialogue that goes

on in chapter four. I'm not going to turn there

and make this sermon go longer, and I know we

need to wrap it up, But in the Book of

Hebrews it talks about how we can enter into God's rest,

and one of the ways we do that is we

stop contending with God himself, which is what they were doing.

They did it in chapter fifteen, they did it in

chapter sixteen, and then they did it again in chapter

seventeen of Exodus because they weren't learning very quickly. Everything

that was written down was written down as examples for

us upon whom the ends of the ages have come

in order that we might learn from what they went through.

So set another way, we should be quicker learners than

they were. Maybe we shouldn't have to march forty years

in the wilderness in order to find our place of breakthrough.

And so as we think about all that we understand

the story of Marah. We understand that the Lord is

still offering a much larger covenant of healing with his

people than most of us have experienced, much much, much

larger than most of us have ever experienced. And it's

because our entire way of thinking about this has been wrong,

and maybe, like the Jews of old, we're clinging to

our own version of Mara. So tonight, as we go

to ministry time, I want to encourage everybody. If you

don't have bitterness, you don't have bitterness, don't worry about it,

don't flog yourself, don't make something up. Okay, I don't

have that problem, but be honest with yourself because you might.

And oftentimes we deceive ourselves, and in so doing we

fail to grow ask everything that the Lord intended for

us to have, and when it fails, then it's not

his fault, it's ours. Amen.

All right?

With that?

Thank you for joining us today for his story, our story.

We hope you've enjoyed this episode and have been encouraged

and uplifted. If you would like to learn more about

Walking with God or Southland Church in Pasadena, Adelaide, please

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