A Promise to be Fulfilled

A joy to serve in a church that we have that ability to get away as pastors, but it's so good to be back with you right now today, one of the things that we really like about the desert.

If you were to ask my son what's one of the best things about the desert, he'd probably tell you a couple of things.

We had a friend that was like why are you going to the desert?

Why would you want to camp in the desert?

Well, it's not hot, it's the fall.

There's a lot of reasons why right now is a good time to camp in the desert, but one of the things that my son would tell you, and I'll tell you too, is that there are no bugs in the desert.

Now, that's not quite true.

Obviously, there are some pretty nasty bugs in the desert, like scorpions or whatever, but we didn't see any.

In fact, the whole time that we were in the desert, I think we saw like two bugs in total, whereas other places we'll camp, there'll be bugs all over the place and, honestly, as miserable as any of all the things that can make you have an uncomfortable camping experience, bugs are perhaps one of the biggest ones.

You can deal with heat, you can deal with cold, you can figure it out, but bugs, no one wants to just have to be sheltered behind screens the whole time or hanging out in their car eating lunch, like we did when we went camping at the end of the summer down in Hollister and there was like an infestation of yellow jackets and we're like run to the car with our lunch so we could eat inside.

But here's the thing.

Here's the thing when we think about bugs is.

I want to ask just a question.

We don't usually call bees bugs because bugs are things that are kind of unwanted and bees are very necessary.

But I'm just going to ask you a question who is scared of bees?

You don't actually have to raise your hand, but you can raise your hand because I think, if everyone in here is honest, you are scared of bees.

It's human nature.

Like if there were a swarm of bees coming at you, you're going to be scared.

You're like oh no, I don't want to get stung, okay.

And maybe you've seen these like short form videos where people, where someone like reacts, like there's a you know something dangerous, but you can't see it and it's all to see if the person sitting down will react to.

Well, one of the common things would be like a bee or something that could sting you, because we're scared of those things.

You see someone all the way across the field and they're waving around their hands and they look crazy and you're like what's going on?

Oh, clearly there is a bee or something like a bee that's pestering that person.

Because that is our nature.

Our nature is such that we have a fear of these kinds of things, and for good reason.

Well, we're going to go into the text here in just a minute and we'll come back to this idea of fear of bees.

But you're going to see, as we read this text in Exodus 23,.

You can open and turn there if you want you can see that one of the ways that God acts in this text is as using bees, or particularly hornets.

So I'm going to read this text.

It's in Exodus 23,.

Starting verse 20 and going through the end of the passage.

It says Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared.

Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice.

Do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him.

But if you carefully obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.

When my angel goes before you and brings you to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, and I blot them out, you shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do as they do, but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their pillars in pieces.

You shall serve the Lord, your God, and he will bless your bread and your water.

And I will take sickness away from among you.

None shall miscarry or be barren in your land.

I will fulfill the number of your days.

I will send my terror before you and will throw into confusion all the people against whom you shall come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you.

I will send hornets before you which shall drive out the Hivites, the Canaanites and the Hittites from before you.

I will drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you Little by little.

I will drive them out from before you until you have increased and possessed the land and I will set your border from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines and from the wilderness to the Euphrates, for I will give the inhabitants of the land into your hand and you shall drive them out before you.

You shall make no covenant with them and their gods.

They shall not dwell in your land lest they make you sin against me, for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.

This is the word of the Lord.

God, thank you for this text and for Exodus.

Thank you for this season in the church, this new church year, where we celebrate Advent, where we remember the anticipation of the coming Christ and look forward to his return again.

Help us now, as we look into this text, to understand from it better who you are, your faithfulness to your promises, your goodness to your people and to those that follow you.

Help us today to know and understand these things.

Help me to speak and to preach truth.

Keep me from speaking any kind of error.

We pray all this in Jesus' name, amen.

So this text is in our regular series in Exodus.

We at least have one visitor.

If you're visiting with us.

We've been in a series in Exodus and typically what we do in our church is when we get to Advent, we do an Advent series, which this actually is going to be an Advent message, but for a number of reasons, we decided that we're going to take this week and next and get to a certain spot in Exodus, because from an Advent perspective it works well.

It tells us the story of these people that have been brought out of the land of Egypt and they are anticipating a promise.

Okay, and we have been building up to this these Israelites, as they've been going through and learning better how to depend on God for sustenance from manna, for the purifying of water, for driving out people before them and having to have Moses' arms lifted up, all of these things, they have learned that God is at work, bringing about in them what he has promised to bring about, and so they have been seeing God be faithful and they are anticipating something.

They are looking forward to being brought into a place.

They don't fully grasp all of who God is yet, but they've now been given the commandments and the book of the covenant and they've been given these instructions.

And here we have a part in the book of Exodus where there is a promise that is being laid down, particularly to bring them into the promised land, a land that's often referred to as Canaan, a particular place where God had arranged for them to arrive and to be there.

And so when we're at Advent a season that the word Advent means coming where we remember that Christ came, and we sang about this so much this morning, but also we were singing of an anticipation that Christ is coming again, because, you see, so often as Christians, we focus on that first coming of Christ, the Christmas story, which is great and glorious and something to focus on and remember, but we need to remember that, like the people leading up to the time of Christ, like those who John the Baptist came and delivered a message to, that, christ was coming.

Well, hey, that's where we find ourselves today is that Christ is coming again, and our hope is not a hope in some distant reality, but our hope is a hope in a Savior who is coming and is going to make all things right and good.

Daniel, this morning, as he led us in our prayer of confession, did something that was helpful to me, where he talked about this coworker of his who had left her faith, and what an interesting thing it is to think about the way that Daniel phrased it, where for her, perhaps, it was a relief of guilt that she felt by these laws and these rules.

But the thing is this is that, as those who have faith in Christ, we know that Christ's burden is not a heavy burden, but it is a light burden.

It is one that he carries for us.

It is one where we don't have to rely on some obedience to a law in and of ourselves.

But we recognize that in all of this, in everything that we've been reading here, in Exodus, christ has fulfilled the law, and then Christ gave himself for us so that we could have life.

So it's not a heavy burden, but it is the absence of burden it was.

I used to carry this thing around, but now I have given it away, and so where we find ourselves today is just waiting with eager anticipation for Christ to come again.

I found myself as we were singing the last song, and I can't remember the exact words, but it was just like come Lord Jesus, or come Jesus, or come Jesus.

And I was singing that and I was just praying it in that moment, because I, just in that moment, I just was like you know what?

Yeah, jesus come, we're ready.

We're as ready as we can be, because, ultimately, we're never going to be ready.

We just need you.

And so that's where we find ourselves today is living with a promise of something to come, and that's where we find ourselves.

In the book of Exodus is this whole group of people being led about by a pillar of fire and a pillar of smoke, being led about by all of these things, and they are looking to a promise to be delivered into the land.

And so that's the promise we see today.

And so I want to make some observations from this text that I read, and we'll talk about these.

So the first observation I want to make is this is that God is at work in real ways that you don't always know or understand.

God is at work in real ways that you don't always know or understand.

So there's something unique about this.

Obviously, at Christmas time, we talk a lot about angels.

If you were in our discipleship class recently, you heard some talk about angels, but this text promises an angel.

That word means messenger or sent one.

Obviously, this is a Hebrew version of the word and it says some very particular things about what he's going to do.

He's going.

Verse one says behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared.

And so the question becomes who is this angel?

Is that even an important question to ask, and I would say yes and no.

Yes, it can be important because, as you ask it, you can make some observations here.

First of all, from verse 21, you can observe that he has been given authority to command the people.

They have to obey him.

So he's been given authority to command.

He's been given authority to forgive sins or not forgive sins, and then also that Yahweh's name is in him.

I, some people, have very, you know, they're very convinced that this is like God, or God the Son, the second person of the Trinity before the incarnation.

I'm not going to take a definitive opinion on that, but what I am going to say is that this angel, whoever the angel is has been given tremendous authority to do what God is commissioning him to do, and so they are to follow him.

Now, this doesn't mean that they see him, it doesn't mean that this is a you know.

Hey, here's this angel that's going to be there and we're going to follow.

I mean, some people have taken it to be a human person or something like that.

I think this is clearly seen as something supernatural, an angel, an angel part of the heavenly host, or even God the Son.

But here we have this being that is going to guide them and is going to do the work for them.

So we'll go into it in just a minute.

But the reality is is, when you look at this text as a whole, like we just read, what do you see?

Well, you see God doing the work to lead the people into the land that he's promised.

He's not saying, hey, you have to go and make these tools of war, you have to go do this.

And that he says, hey, you have to go do this.

And that he says, hey, I'm going to be the one that drives them out, I'm going to be the one that leads them away.

So much so that we go back to this idea of the bees, of the hornets, as you will.

I don't know that it was literal or a figurative thing, but the idea is I mean, imagine for a moment you know a village, a town, somewhere, and just it's descended with a swarm of hornets.

What's going to happen?

Well, people are going to leave.

They're going to do what I did when we had like 12 yellow jackets buzzing around trying to eat our lunch, and jumped into the car so that we could eat our lunch with the windows up.

They're going to run, they're going to flee, they're going to hide because, hey, we can't live here, we can't survive here, and you know what If they don't depart?

Ultimately they're going to leave.

But the interesting thing is is God doesn't just do this all at once, he doesn't drive them all away, he even provides for them and makes provision by His timing.

Because you might say, well, hey, how would it be good for this all to work out?

Well, humanly speaking.

Well, it'd be great if we just show up and they're gone, and they've been gone, and we don't have to fight any battles, we don't have to do anything.

And God says, no, I'm going to, to take them out little by little, and so that way, you know, the the wilderness doesn't overtake those communities.

So so this is just a like a kind of a in a big picture.

What we see here is that God does the work and the requirement on the people is that the people just need to obey.

They just need to trust and obey that God is going to be faithful to what he was supposed to do.

And so you see, there in verse 22, it says but if you carefully obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.

Now, obviously, that's a condition on this covenant, right?

It's not just like, hey, you know, whatever happens happens, and the reality is we kind of know how this story turns out.

Right, they approach the land and they send in the spies.

And what happens?

10 of them come back, 10 of the 12 spies come back and say no way, we can't do it, it's too dangerous, we can't do it.

And they don't believe God.

And so what ends up happening is they have to wander the wilderness for 40 years because they did not obey.

But what we see here is that there is provision for all of this through God, and the condition is just to obey.

And particularly, there's a couple ways that they say to obey, and it's this they are to obey in worship, by worshiping God alone and by destroying any idols that they come across and ultimately, not committing or making any kind of agreement with their gods, the gods of this land.

Look at these verses, verse 24.

It says you shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do as they do.

So you're not supposed to worship the way that the people worship, you're not supposed to do the kinds of things that they do, the sacrifices that they make.

You don't make those, but instead, rather than that, rather than going into the land and serving their gods.

And you might think, well, that's weird, but you need to remember this culture, this society that these people lived in.

They lived in a culture and a society where there was this general mindset of a polytheistic view.

And you go into a certain area and there was a god of this area and a god of that area, and the very normal thing to do in that culture would have been to acclimate to the gods of a place because, hey, that's that God's place.

And God has been trying to teach his people and making it very clear that, no, I am God, I am the God of the whole earth, I am the one true God, I am your God, and so do not worship any God other than me.

So, rather than do that, you shall utterly overthrow them and break their pillars in pieces.

Now you might have said, well, practically, wouldn't it be nice to save their worship spaces and just kind of remodel them?

Like to think about it in like modern day?

You know like this would be, like we would think, you know, hey, if we went into a place and there was a closed down mosque or a synagogue, shouldn't we go in and remodel it and make it a church?

And I would say, yeah, we should.

But this was a different thing, a different time, a different place.

And what does God say?

No, god says no, we're not going to have no appearance of any of that.

We're going to just utterly destroy these places because they are worthless.

They are shrines to false gods, to idols.

And then verse 32, he goes on to say that you shall make no covenant with them, the people that are there and their gods.

Basically, he's saying, hey, you're not going to go in there and make a peace agreement, you're not going to go in there and say, oh, let's just coexist.

No, you're to go in there and have nothing to do with them or their false gods.

He makes that very clear.

So those are the things that the people need to obey.

God does the work, but his people just need to obey.

Next, I want you to see that God's blessing this is the last observation from the text God's blessing comes in his way and at his time.

I kind of hinted at this earlier, but let's look at the text a little bit.

Look at verse 29.

I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you Little by little.

I will drive them out from before you until you have increased and possess the land, and I will set your border from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines and from the wilderness to the Euphrates, for I will give the inhabitants of the land into your hand and you shall drive them out before you.

So, like I said earlier, it's an interesting observation that perhaps human wisdom would say, hey, do it this way or that way, but God is going to do it all for them through miraculous means that's what we see here by this angel going out before them, by this angel accomplishing these various tasks going out before them, by this angel accomplishing these various tasks.

But no, god says this is going to be the timing, this is going to be the way.

As we think about that.

I think and we're going to do some application here in just a second, but before that, as we think about God's timing none of this I want you to think about Exodus as a big picture.

If you were going to write the story, would you write it this way?

Hundreds of years in slavery in Egypt I mean they had to leave the land in the first place because of famine they become utterly enslaved, completely hopeless.

God delivers them through the works of the Exodus, through the use of Moses and Aaron and the plagues and all of this story, and has led them to where they are.

Would you have written it this way?

I would say I wouldn't have written it this way.

Obviously, I know, I know like the theology in my mind says God's way is best, and so of course I would write it this way because this is the best way.

But I don't my wisdom, I don't understand God's wisdom in all of this.

I can, after the fact, look at it and try to understand it and see how all of this testifies to who God is and his greatness and his goodness.

But here's the thing is, god's blessing comes in his way and his time.

But here's the thing is God's blessing comes in his way and his time.

You look at the New Testament and you see, seemingly, people that are following Jesus, they're Christians, and they're like, hey, I'm just going to wait around because Jesus is coming back.

And it's like, no, you actually have to live life, you have to provide, you have to care Because, hey, despite the fact that Jesus is coming and it's imminent, we have a mission, we have a job to do in the meantime, and so we have to wait on God.

As we wait on God and this is what I think if there's a big thing to take away from all of this, if there's a big thing that I want you to as you just think through it what do I want to internalize?

It's this that you need to live a life with confident expectation that God can and will keep His promises.

Okay, okay, confident expectation, that statement if you live your life with a confident expectation that God can and will keep his promises, that will affect the way you actually live your life on a day-to-day basis.

See, one quick effect would be like well, I want to know what God promises, right?

So I'm going to be in this word, I'm going to try to seek to understand, you know who God is and what he's going to do, because he's given us the book, he's given us revelation, he's revealed to us something and so, yeah, I want to do that, but not just that.

Then, as you understand that, or even as we come into this Advent season, where we have, through liturgy, designed ways to remind us that we are living in a world, as a church, as a people of God, we are living in a world that Christ has come into and has died and was buried and was raised again, and we carry his message.

So we remind ourselves of that.

We also remind ourselves that he is coming back and that we have a job to do in the meantime.

We also remind ourselves that he is coming back and that we have a job to do in the meantime.

If we believe he is really coming back, if we believe that the promises of the gospel lead to life and that the opposite of the gospel the bad news, that people are sinners and that people are headed for eternal separation from God and hell, if we believe those things those are promises if we believe that it will impact the way we actually live our lives and the choices that we make and you know what, when we live our lives that way, we can make some big choices.

And so my question to you if living your life this way has been a struggle and is still a struggle and let me tell you it's a struggle I think it's a struggle for all Christians, because we see a world around us just going on and people seem to be.

You know, you look at the Psalms and you read about the wicked.

You know why do the wicked prosper?

That's our world, right?

We look around and we see the wicked prospering.

But here is the thing the people of Israel, in the time of the Exodus, they saw the nation of Egypt prospering too.

But God entered the story and, through powerful, miraculous means, delivered them and is continuing to deliver them through this book of the Exodus, to the point where he is now sending this angel to guide them into the land, to bring them to the promise.

But we serve that same God.

And let me tell you this If you think that God no longer sends angels, you've put on blinders.

If you think that the physical world around us, when you open your eyes, that that's all there is, well, you are missing the bigger picture.

I was talking to Pastor Ricky, and just as I was thinking about this and the idea of, you know, angelic beings being in battle around us we were talking about the Lord of the Rings, and if you've seen the movies, let alone read the books or whatever, when they put the ring on and they turn invisible, they see this other world around them.

They put the ring on and all of a sudden, their eyes are open to everything that is going on around them.

And what is the response?

The response is utter fear.

Fear of everything that is happening around them, and I think that's a good picture of actually what perhaps is going on around us.

But here's I don't say that to give you fear.

I say that to say we serve the same God and he has made promises.

You know what he's promised to the church?

He's promised that he is going to build the church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

That means that he sends angels to protect us.

That means he empowers His servants to speak and to protect us.

That means he empowers his servants to speak and to preach truth.

That means he empowers you to go out boldly into a lost, dying, dark land and tell people the good news that Jesus gives life.

And so I'm going to ask you what is it in your own life that you have not been trusting God with?

What is it that you've been fearful of?

Maybe you have been scared to talk with a friend or a co-worker about Christ something relatively small, but that might be really big to you.

Or maybe it's something really big, like you think.

God might be calling you to make a big change in your life, like go into the mission field or dedicate your life in some unique and profound way to serving God.

Maybe it's something small, maybe it's something big, I don't know.

I could list off possibilities, but I'm going to suppose that you know better than me.

Is there something that you have been scared to take a step of faith on?

Because if you live your life with a confident expectation that God can and will keep his promises, well, then that will change how you live and it will change the choices that you make.

And so my challenge to you is this If there is something in your life that you have been fearful to obey on, don't be fearful.

Don't be fearful, and even though you are fearful, know that God, in His own way, will empower and strengthen and provide for you to do the things that he is calling you to do.

So do it.

Let's pray God, thank you.

Thank you for the book of Exodus, thank you that we get to see these people, your people who you led out of Egypt, and we see their mistakes, we see their triumphs, we see their struggles.

Yet, lord, we know that you are at work in and through them and that, though, yes, they fail, that through them, you fulfilled your promise and that, though, yes, they fail, that through them you fulfilled your promise to bring about Christ.

And so, as confident as we look back to know that Jesus came, help us to look forward to know that he is coming again.

We serve a risen Savior and Lord.

We are eager for him to come again.

Help us to live that out faithfully in Jesus' name, amen.