Leftovers - Exodus 17

Happy Monday. I'm Pastor Matt.

Pastor Chris is here. I am.

Angry Elmo's here. Oh.

Yeah, that's right. That's right.

I did say. That maybe, well, he's not like

here here. But we talked about angry Elmo.

I did I well, I, you know, if you go back to Genesis 252025, I

think where Jacob and Esau are born.

I just, I read that passage about you saw being born and

he's red and he's hairy and it's just like, and then I know you,

we know what he grows up to be. And it's like, dude, that's,

that's a weird angry Elmo. Like it's really strange to

think about, but that's just where my brain goes.

So you're welcome. There's like there's like no

substance in that description. Like that's not that's not

useful because it's also not like real, like what are you

talking about? It's super real.

I I mean, it's an OK description, but I don't know,

imagine. OK, Well, I like, I'm just

there's no like practical application of that.

Like it's not useful to know that Esau was an angry Elmo.

Well. I mean, maybe I don't know,

like. Well, because it's a fun visual.

Well, because back in the day we had Tickle Me Elmo, which like

sold out of stores, like people were paying thousands of dollars

for this little Tickle Me Elmo toy.

But imagine this marketing geniuses.

Here we go. Imagine that we had an angry

Elmo doll that when you tried to tickle him, he just like smacked

your hand away and said something mean.

Like that's kind of funny in my head.

And how does that help people more deeply know I saw I?

Don't know. I don't know.

That's what I'm that's all I'm asking.

Like how does that description bring out the richness of like

the story of Jacob and Esau? I don't.

You're right, it doesn't it. Doesn't.

And obviously like that, you know, comment I made yesterday

about angry Elmo that was not in my notes.

Oh, I thought. No, no, I did not think about

that. Really.

No, that just that hit me in the moment.

I'm like, oh angry Elmo sweet. I don't know why when you when

you said that I was like, oh, Chris has been sitting on that

for a couple days. Like I I thought that was a

pretty meditated connection. OK, that makes.

More sense, I I think. Yeah, that makes more sense.

OK, well, I, I should, I should probably, I don't know, for some

transparency, you know, some of the illustrations that pop into

my brain like I've been thinking about the text all week, right?

So some of the illustrations are very pointed and very on

purposeful and things like that are just, hey, in the moment I

just had this funny thought. And that was my funny thought in

that moment that I wanted to share with 200 people.

Is it always that way though, 'cause I, I sometimes have the

like borderline, Should he, should he not say this?

Like some of them for me, some of those are premeditated and

I'm like, Nah, I'm going to say it.

Like I know, I know this is like right toe in the line, but like

I'm just going to do it. OK, gosh, maybe it sounds.

It sounds too safe, too generic to say maybe it's 5050.

But if I'm being really honest, it probably is.

OK. So some are premeditated, it's

not some of them are you also said yesterday the you admitted

to the I have no filter like it's tough.

For me, it's really difficult. For me, I, I mean, well, you

know me. I do know you.

I mean that like it's it's very difficult for me.

I'm wondering if that will get worse or better with the age.

I actually can't tell. I'm not sure.

I don't know. We'll we'll find out I.

Guess we'll find out. Depends on how long, yeah.

How long you're along for the ride.

Will this go up or down? Will that get rained in?

Or will you gradually grow more crazy and senile?

We'll see. More.

I thought you got that more crazy.

More. Yeah, more.

Okay. See.

Okay, here we go. We have in a couple weeks, first

Monday in November, I think is going to be another Ask Me

Anything episode and you're welcome to submit some to the

the jar. We'll have a Facebook post this

week that you can comment your questions on there if you'd like

to be a little less anonymous about your questions.

But there's a jar at the Connection center if you want to

submit those for us. We do need them by this weekend,

like the 26th, 27th is when we're recording that episode.

So that's when they will happen. You're welcome to yeah, jump in

or even text, text back to the church thread or either of our

numbers. We can take AMA questions as

well. We had some early contributors

already. So we're going to take a new ish

one off the pile and talk about it today before we get into

business. But simply, who is this a funner

1, not a theology one. Who is your celebrity look

alike? So this is oh man, this is funny

because people see me now and have only seen me like now,

Adult Matt. Go team, Matt.

Go team Matt. It was not always go team Matt

even like early, probably first. I don't know, five years of my

marriage, probably. Yeah, probably like before I

moved to Iowa. I've been in Iowa for 7-8 years.

Didn't really do the facial hair thing.

Wasn't was it clean shaven? Matt was a thing I even had back

in high school. I had like the Bieber hair, like

I, I had the full, it was almost, almost shoulder length.

Like I did, I did the hair, I was the hair flip guy, like.

But I could see that like you could totally pull that off.

Well, maybe, I guess, I guess it you definitely did pulled it off

enough for me to land a wife. So in high school, that was

also, so I graduated in 2008, who almost 18 years ago back

then was the High School Musical craze, those, those 3 movies and

back then. It's really hard, especially

with the facial hair now. And he's also become like mega

Jack superstar. I know you're talking about when

I was in high school and Zac Efron was still like baby

phrased kind of shy Troy Zac Efron.

I did. I did look a lot like him in

high school and the hair was almost exactly the same as like

Troy in those movies. There was actually a time I was

at a news boys concert actually in Minneapolis once and came out

after the concert and it was I mean, it was a church thing.

People bring youth groups and stuff to that was that Excel

center in in Minneapolis, Saint Paul and this youth leader came

over to me and and he just said, I know you're not Zac Efron put

up my youth, my group of youth group girls over here.

They think you're Zac Efron. Would you come over and like

talk with them for a little bit? And I was not like into into

high school. I'd I'd maybe seen it once.

I feel like I'm like wanted to watch.

And I was just like, yeah, so I didn't I didn't know a whole lot

of the storyline. I barely knew that, like Vanessa

Hudgens was the Co star and that, and that's where I I was

chatting with him and talking with him.

And then and then there became a couple more specific questions

about like and how was and and what was it like to work with

Vanessa or, or something like this?

And I was just like, I don't know who that is.

Like I couldn't keep up the ruse.

I couldn't keep up the ruse anymore, But the the youth

leader was wildly entertained. So I'm pretty good.

I don't know who presently I I don't even have an idea of who

presently I I maybe look like, but you all can, you all can

jump in and tell me who. You think my celebrity?

Look like is that would be great.

What about you? So before my beard was quite as

Gray as it was. So probably even oh gosh, that

what it'll tell you that even like 3 or 4 years ago, like my

beard was not primarily Gray. It was like, more like yours,

Matt, a little bit. And so I've gotten text messages

around around the time that, like, Disney started doing

these, like TV series and stuff around the Star Wars characters.

I gotten text messages from several people in my life at

various stages of my life. And they would send me a picture

of Ewan McGregor, who is young Obi Wan Kenobi.

And then they would send a picture of me, which I know what

I look like, but they did that. And they're like, come on, man.

Like this is spot. On it's like a spider man GIF.

Right. Yeah, yeah.

The point, The point, yeah. I think in maybe a different

life, I could have been Ewan McGregor's stunt double if I was

not so scared of things. But I am, so I couldn't.

But I think I could have pulled a stunt double when my hair was

a little bit longer. I would come back and yeah,

yeah, could have, could have pulled that off.

So did you? I can and I can see that,

especially like Episode 3 Ewan McGregor or even the Kenobi

miniseries. And I can definitely see it.

What about, I guess what about episode 1 Ewan McGregor?

Were you ever that clean shaven? Because he's he's smooth, clean

shaven. Young Padawan Obi Wan Kenobi,

were you ever doing that? Look.

I mean with the little padawan braid, don't we call that a rat

tail? I guess some, some no I don't

think. Is it a rat too?

Oh, I suppose it's not dead center at the very bottom, so it

can't be. Right, they kind of.

Yeah, OK, well, you know, I, I guess post high school, like I

couldn't really good grow good facial hair.

So, you know, it's like the facial hair that the cat can

lick off and you don't want that.

So I I stayed mostly mostly clean shaven.

I've never heard that phrase before, really.

Because my dad. The cat could like.

Yeah, they've got rough tongues and it's so peachy like your.

Cat lick your face too much man. Also something that I'm not

crazy excited about. Never heard that phrase before.

My dad used to say that to me. When, you know, you're young,

you're like 1516. And a lot of boys now who are

that age, they're trying the mustache, which is hilarious to

me. I love it.

But my dad used to say stuff like that to me, like, oh geez,

son, why don't you have the cat lick that off your face?

Like he would say things like that to me.

And I'm like, Dad, you're hilarious.

No, you're not, because you're my dad.

And that's not funny. Take me seriously.

I'm a man. I thought it was funny, never

heard that before. But I'm also not a cat person

and will not will not be cat person I.

Don't know that he was much of a cat person either, but he always

had him in his house because you know.

That's already too much of a cat person for me so.

That's fair. All right, I like I like that

Ewan McGregor for for you the. Kids call me Harry Potter when I

wear the round glasses. Oh, you do have the Harry Potter

glasses. Yeah, so.

We've never. That's interesting though,

because as as Daniel Radcliffe has grown up, he's tried to do

the facial hair thing and I feel like he doesn't pull off the

facial hair thing. So you also have that, you have

that disconnect a little bit between the Harry Potter

character, but. Yeah, you know, maybe by the

time he's in his 40s. We'll see.

We'll see. No, he's not in his 40s, is he?

No, he's definitely way younger. Well, he's probably your age.

I don't know. He's in his mid 30s maybe.

So young now I have to know. This is why now we have to.

Producer. Yeah.

Daniel Radcliffe, 36. He's older than me.

OK, 1989. He's only 5.

Five. Wow.

Well, and This is why. OK, so this is really off on a

tangent. We're way off on a tangent and

it's. Pretty nerdy, but there was a

lot of people pining for him to be the next Wolverine in the

movies because, well, because here's the thing.

In the comics, Wolverine is he's not a tall person.

Hugh Jackman's like 6 three. So when they first cast him 20

something years ago, they're like, that guy's too tall, he's

too skinny, that's not Wolverine, blah, blah, blah.

But like, no, Daniel Radcliffe at 55 is perfect for that.

Role I feel like that could be a secondary look alike for you

actually Hugh Jackman especially like especially like Wolverine

Hugh Jackman, not like not greatest showman Hugh Jackman.

He's far too suave. Or even what's the magician

movie? The prestige?

Prestige. Not that one either.

You're not. You're not that.

One, I got to be Wolverine. Hugh Jackman.

OK, that's fair. That's fair.

I would have preferred if you would have been like Chris

Hemsworth and I'd be like, yes, yes, I am I.

Mean Wolverine. Hugh Jackman is pretty close to.

That's pretty cool. Or Chris Hemsworth.

Yeah. It's pretty cool I guess.

Doesn't wear a shirt a whole lot.

Oh I do because I got dad bod so it's fine.

I'm I'm cool with it at this point in my life.

Mid 40s dad bod, I'm fine. Boy, all right, well, thanks for

rocking along with us on the ERC Leftovers podcast here.

We had a great time. Thanks for joining us.

Those of you who came out to the river for baptism Sunday,

yesterday we had about 50 of y'all and we baptized 10 people

into into the Holy Spirit in the Wapsey River this weekend.

That was just really cool day after church yesterday.

So yeah, we're doing, we had a hymn sing on Friday and

baptizing in the river. I had, I was talking with

someone who was like, man, it's just kind of feels like we're

back to basics. And I was just, yeah, it's,

it's, it's that simple. This is what we're called to.

We don't need to, we don't need to dress it up or, or make it,

make it crazier than what it is. We're going to, we're going to

preach the word. We're going to praise Jesus and

we're going to to make disciples baptizing people.

That's that's what we're called to as church.

So thanks for being excited about that and holding us to

that and, and being a part of this community.

We're going to continue the conversation out of Pastor

Chris's message yesterday from Exodus 17.

And we, we kind of jumped past you.

You preached on verses 8 through 16, which is kind of the end,

the second-half of that chapter, but we jumped pad because we did

that. We jumped past a couple of

provision things that maybe tag on pretty well to where we were

last week with the manna and the quail.

They really do. 2 verse one in Exodus 17 and all the

congregation of the children of Israel set out on their journey

from the wilderness of sin according to the commandment of

the Lord, and camped in refidim, but there was no water for the

people to drink. Therefore the people contended

with Moses and said, Give us water that we may drink.

Moses said to them, Why do you contend with me?

Why do you tempt the Lord and the people thirsted there for

water and the people complained against Moses and said why is it

you have brought us out of Egypt to kill us and our children and

our livestock with thirst. They love this line right?

It's always it's always doom and gloom and it's always Moses

fault and you brought us out here just to kill us.

Could you imagine every this is this is a random thought, but

like every youth group trip you've ever been on, when

something, when something goes wrong, you're out on the road in

this van with the students. And their response is, why'd you

bring us out here today? We could have just stayed home.

We could have stayed home on my Xbox.

Oh my God, could have stayed at the pool.

Why'd you bring us out like man? Please don't put that into their

psyche because then we're going to get that every time we go on

a road trip. You're welcome.

Oh my gosh. That's where it is.

So, so God's solution, verse 5 Lord said to Moses, go before

the people and take with you some of the elders of Israel,

take in your hand your rod which you struck the river and go,

behold, I will stand before you there on the rock and horrible

and you shall strike the rock and water will come out of it

that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of

all the elders and the people. So we've got this magical staff,

not this magical stop this, this spirit inspired Shepherd's

instrument that that God bestows to Moses to lead and use and

help the people. And God's provision pours out of

this rock, right? So what else is going on here?

Well, you know, I, I just barely introed it yesterday, but yeah,

I, we, so we. OK, So again, the movement I

think we see throughout this time period in Exodus as we see

this warrior God who fights for his people and he provides all

these real clear physical ways that I will not let anybody harm

you physically. So I'm, I'm going to carry you

through all these kinds of things via plagues, via crossing

the Red Sea, all that kind of stuff.

But then we see the same God who is a warrior, we see him walk in

and with great sensitivity to their daily needs.

We see him providing for daily needs, just those kind of

sustenance kinds kinds of things.

And so we get multiple angles of the character of God and how he,

yeah, how he cares for and helps his people along the way, never

allowing them to experience, you know, something that he can't

just fix for them an instant. Now, do they?

Are they kind of drama Queens about it?

It would seem that way, but then again, the text doesn't tell us

how long they've gone without water or if they've totally gone

without it or if it's just the stockpiles running a little low

or something like that. And part of that, too, is

understanding. OK.

So we we, we say they're in the wilderness.

And when Midwesterners think of the wilderness, we think of

forest. We think of lots of trees and

stuff like that. The wilderness in this part of

the world would not be these green, leafy forests.

Often times we're talking about more kind of barren spaces a

little bit. And so I could see how this

would be troubling to them because as Moses is guiding them

through these different geographical regions, some

regions may have more or less water than others, that is, you

know, drinkable. And so we also have to

potentially think about like weather patterns, which is

really getting deep into the, into the stuff here, weather

patterns in that part of the world.

Also, there'd be incredible seasons where like there's so

much rain at floods certain areas and for a time there's

like a river and then during the dry seasons, it's like totally

dried out and so livestock and stuff like that.

So shepherds know that the rain seasons there.

And so they'll, they'll bring their flocks to different parts

of, you know, the those spaces in order to feed them, water

them, etcetera. And they just kind of know those

rhythms. But Israel, you know, coming out

of Egypt, they're not super Privy to that yet.

They have not spent a lot of time there.

And so obviously they're kind of wondering what's going on.

So anyway, there's there's a lot there, but that's at least

something. So this is, I mean, it's a real

and understandable threat. They're they're in a place

where, OK, there's not water, we're out or maybe out of water

or we don't and we don't have a means of getting more water.

And it's like we kind of talked about last week that the

physical needs kind of inform the spiritual when we're when

we're depraving the body. It's really easy to lose hope in

in the spiritual things. But the reaction is still

strange to me in, in how God has miraculously worked provision

for them in the past. They're still they're, they're

still barking up the wrong tree, right?

They're still coming to Moses and being like, this is your

fault that we don't have these things instead of maybe turning

to God and having and, and I'm not even saying they should,

obviously they, they were probably mad with God and OK,

well, Moses is leading us and you're following God.

So by extension, we're mad at God and we're mad at you, Moses.

But again, where was the, where was the intermediate?

Was Moses just entirely living out faith and guidance for these

people? It seems like their faith was

more in Moses even than than in God.

Shouldn't they have turned and, I don't know, pray to God, hey,

we're wandering out in the wilderness and we are cast out

here. God, would you, would you

provide a way? Would you provide water for us?

Because no, rationally it doesn't make sense that a loving

God who has brought us out of slavery made a way through the

sea just to kill it like that. That that.

The thought process doesn't really play out.

Right, It's terribly illogical and I think you're right.

So what we see earlier, you know, in God's story through his

people, as we see Abraham, who has this really intimate

relationship with God, he speaks to God, right?

He prays. Now we, I think you're spot on

because we don't get that sense with these these these this

group of people. We don't get the sense that they

have like this deep seated personal faith of ABBA, my

father, which Jesus just comes along and says later they don't

have that. They have this intermediary

that, you know, I don't, I don't know, but I, I think you're

right, like the lack of personal relationship with God at that

point. And we, we continue to see that

as we go because Moses is going to go up the mountain in a

little bit and only Moses is allowed to go up.

Nobody else is even supposed to touch the base of the mountain.

So there's something perpetuated here about Moses and his

relationship and his intimacy with God versus the general

people's relationship and intimacy with God.

And it's hard to say whether like, are they reacting that way

because, you know, is like is quote UN quote, is this God's

fault? I don't think it is.

But we also see that God is clearly speaking through a

couple individuals and not necessarily like intimately

meeting each individual. So I don't, I don't fully know I

guess how that works, but. I just think it's interesting

that Thursday because we have. I think the dynamic is

interesting because we have a, an advocate, a great high priest

sort of dynamic here, this personified in Moses.

He's he's the on behalf of the people coming to God.

Just as I mean, look for Fast forward with Jesus is the

intermediary in that relationship between US and God.

But there's still a, there's still a true vine sort of

connection, right on John 15, where Jesus is I, I am the true

vine. He who knows me knows the

Father. So that that would tell me to

some degree. A lot of these people, and

obviously he was gone for 40 years, but like a lot of these

people still don't know Moses, right?

Like they don't, they don't trust and know Moses's heart as

he shepherds them. So of course they don't

understand his heart after God, and thereby they don't really

know God. They not understand Him

correctly. And this is where it's really

dangerous. Let's let's consider the modern

day church. This is where it's really

dangerous to potentially chase after a pastor.

So you know, and I and I don't necessarily think it's the

individual pastor's fault. I don't think anybody goes into

ministry saying like I'm going to be the rock star

representative God and I'm I'm going to be so quote UN quote

good at this thing that nobody will think they can know God

better than me. And again, throughout the Bible,

we just see that that's absolutely not true.

God wants to have an intimate, meaningful relationship with

individuals. And so that is the that is the

hard thing about the modern church and some of these big

churches that have 1020 thousand people attending because it even

if they didn't mean to, sometimes that some of those

lead pastor worship leaders, whatever they can, they can

become that for the people. And then all of a sudden the

people don't feel like they can communicate to God.

It has to be this person. And I think that comes with

idolatry on some level. I've idolized this person who

seems way closer to God than I am.

But everybody has access to God at the same level.

He's given us that through his Son Jesus Christ, through the

Holy Spirit, we all have equal access to God.

Yeah, and that's not to we. We love relationship with you

all. We love knowing things and and

being in your lives. But we also it's it's not our

desire or even intent to to be that crutch either.

We're not yes, of course we're willing.

We're willing to help and bear burdens and be along with you in

these things. But as pastors, we can't be that

like solution or that faith liver for for you it it has to

it has to come down to your relationship with God to working

out your salvation with fear and trembling, not working out your

salvation in a conversation with pastor Pastor Matt like that

that can help. That can be along with it.

But if you take us out of your relationship with God, what does

it look like? That's and and that's not I'm

not that's not an ego thing and I don't want to inflate that.

We don't, we don't want to be that either.

We don't, we don't because, and this doesn't have anything to do

with with any. There's nothing, there's nothing

impending. We're we're both here.

I don't, I don't want to scare or say there's anything that one

of us would be out of your life. But if we, if we were, would

would you be wildly frustrated in your faith?

What, what would that look like? What would your relationship

with God look like? I would hope it'd be affected a

little bit because I would hope that we're helpful in in

speaking into that, but not to the point of just this lack of

understanding that we see of the Israelites of like, they just,

they don't even seem to be familiar with the heart of God

apart from Moses. And I'll and I'll tell you

something that's I'm pretty intentional about.

So if you've ever been in a Bible study with me or a life

group or anything along those lines, what you'll find is that

I don't like being the one who's praying by myself, you know what

I mean? So in other words, like in these

group settings that I've been a part of and still am, often

times, what I'll do is I'm going to open it up to the room.

I'm going to say, hey, we want to pray together.

And it used to be like in Bible study, for example, everybody

would kind of say, Hey, Pastor Chris can pray for this and this

and this and this, and I'd be right in my list.

And then at the end of all the kind of prayer requests, I'm

going to pray for all these things.

But I, I switched after a while because I was like, no, like

these all of us have equal access to God and all of us

ought to be using the mouth that God gave us to speak in and

amongst our community, speaking to him.

And so like, yeah, if you're in a, if you're in a group with me

at any given point, you're going to, you're going to see that,

yeah. You're going to see the fact

that like, no, I want you to like we talked about yesterday,

I want you to participate in this faith that is yours because

you have equal access to God as do I.

Yeah, Yep. And that's, I think, I think

that's fair. And hopefully what we

communicate well that we are not, we're not holier than thou

because we're in vocational ministry.

Yeah, we have, we have a point of emphasis and we have a

higher, higher calling and accountability as, as teachers

of the word. But we don't have this secret

sauce that is like a direct a Direct Line to to God like.

Yeah, yeah, I agree with that totally.

Yep, I think Joby Martin. I think he's used the phrase

professional Christian. Talking about people.

Who are in ministry like, yes, we get to be quote, UN quote,

professional Christians, but I mean, the, the access to God is

total and complete through his Son Jesus Christ and through the

Holy Spirit. And so I would encourage all of

you, yeah, to participate in that in a, in as meaningful way

as you possibly can and stretch yourself a little bit.

Don't be afraid to pray when you don't have words because the

Holy Spirit is with you and even your groaning.

And so I think that's an important thing to consider and

it's an important thing for each one of us to remember as we go

to God in prayer or in worship or any other space.

So we get to the text that you talked about yesterday.

What are what are some things that we couldn't get to in the

sermon from yesterday? Details.

Historical accounts What? What do?

You get so one of the things that I failed to do so I brought

up the fact early on that the Israelites were attacked from

the rear. They were attacked from their

weakest point. In fact, that was kind of one of

the things that I used as a launching pad for making sure

our back door is is guarded, right?

So, but I didn't tell you all where how I knew that because

the text itself, it does not pull that out.

But how do we know that they were attacked from the rear?

How do we know that they were attacked where they were

weakest? If you go to Deuteronomy chapter

Deuteronomy 25 · chapter mention

25, starting in verse 17, it says this.

Remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you came out of

Egypt, how he attacked you on the way when you were faint and

weary and cut off your tail, those who are lagging behind

you. And he did not fear God.

So there's more there. There's a little bit more there.

But what we gain from Deuteronomy 25 is the fact that,

yeah, like they looked at this great number of people protected

by God, and they said, you know what?

How can, how can we get in the back door?

How can, how can we get them where they're weakest?

And that's exactly how Satan attacks.

And that's how the Amalekites attacked.

And it's terrible and it's cowardly, but it's what they

did. Like, like hyenas, almost.

Yeah, and that's the I, I love that the the, the weakest, the

the unsuspecting place, even even maybe the Yeah, the

innocence. Have you ever seen the

illustration where you can bring, you can bring talking

about temptation? Satan doesn't Satan doesn't

bring you a chain. He doesn't bring, he doesn't

bring the whole thing. It's it's one link at a time,

right? And it doesn't one link on its

own isn't very scary. But when you when you chain them

together and it's and it's this kind of growing weakness.

And that's and that's what kind of got brought to this point of

this. This was this was the glaring

weakness. There's that that part of it in

battle so despicable way and and a way that like they didn't

expect or anticipate, but also you're in it like, why would you

expect your enemy to fight fair? I.

Suppose not like, yeah, yeah, as you were saying that there's

another illustration that comes to mind, and it's a weird one,

but I've heard it. How do you boil a frog?

Well, you, you just put them in nice lukewarm water.

They're very comfortable. And then you just slowly,

slowly, slowly up the temperature over and over.

And, and I do think as silly as that illustration is, I think

that's exactly what Satan does to us.

That's what our enemy does to us.

He's just slowly pulling us in. So, you know, that could come in

any number of ways. So like maybe it comes with

financial resources. And because God, you know, one

of the things that Jesus talks about all the time in the New

Testament is money. In fact, he talks about that

maybe more than any other topic. So one of the things that Satan

can do to us with money is you just never quite have enough,

you know, And so like as we, as we gain more and we spend more

on ourselves and we're not thinking about the widow, the

orphan, our neighbor, our church, whatever that looks

like. And, and we just have to have

more. We have to have more.

We have to have more. And I, I fully believe Satan is

all the happy, all the happier to just continue to give us just

a little more, just a little more, just a little more so that

we can spend on ourselves so that we can become those kind of

prideful, greedy people. And the one thing that's tricky,

I think about living in America, living in the West, is that

since we're so many of us are always trying to keep up with

the Joneses or even just be the Joneses, as they would say, you

know, like what's ever enough? Because I'm only going to

compare myself with people who have as much or more money than

me. I'm not typically willing to

compare myself to, you know, the, the, the family in certain

parts of Africa, for example, where they have to walk 4 miles

one way to get a bucket of water.

You know, I'm not comparing myself to them.

No, I'm going to compare to myself to somebody who has more

money. That way I feel better about

being greedy with it. Yeah, no, that's that lifestyle

creep and even the morbid as the frog and boiling water is like,

I think that that makes sense. That's an understandable thing

and that we can apply to complacency really.

And that's what that's why we're called to be alert, right?

So because your enemy, your enemy, the devil is, is like a a

prowling lion, right. Ready, ready to ready to pounce

and and looking for that opening.

And that's what we see kind of here in the the forces of the

Amalekites here. They, they saw the opening, they

saw the weakness and, and we're ready to jump into and, and

fight that way. Yeah, one one of the other

things that I didn't get to yesterday that I had big sad

feelings about was when so Moses said to Joshua, choose for US

men and go out and fight with Amalek.

Now one of the, I, I definitely, I definitely touched on our male

population a little bit and, and, and gave the biblical, some

of the biblical reasons, like guys, like there's a reason why

we're called out, right? Well, let me, let me share a few

statistics with you that I got from the Lifeway research team

on the importance of men in their faith and what that

ultimately can mean for their family.

If a mother does not go to church, but a father does, a

minimum of 2/3 of their children will end up attending in church.

Here's the other side of the coin.

In contrast, if a father does not go to church, but a mother

does, an average of 2/3 of their children will not attend church.

Here's another good one. Another survey found that if a

child is the first person in a household to become a Christian,

there's a 3.5% probability chance everyone in the house

will follow. OK, we've got that.

If the mother is the first person to become a Christian,

there's a 17% probability everyone in the household will

follow. Now dig this.

However, when the father is a first, there is a 93%

probability rate that everyone else in the household will

follow. That is remarkable.

And, and again, that's, that's just one of those things like

God has called men to be leaders in their families in faith.

Now you could be, you could be a, a leader, a male leader in

your house and you don't even make the most money in your

house, but God has called you to be a leader of faith amongst

your family and amongst your community.

And again, research backs this is true.

We've been talking about this a lot recently, how research and

science, it just eventually catches up to what the Bible has

already been telling us for thousands of years.

This is one of those cases where when God calls men to lead their

households in faith, he does so for a reason, because that's how

we're designed. And when we fail to do it, we

see in real statistical analysis how that impacts the family in

such a negative way. Powerful stuff in my opinion.

That is, but that's you drew that out yesterday of the of the

call to men and how it was it was them who led.

It was God who called them to lead and to fight right.

So and I loved how you drew out at the end of the sermon

yesterday, the parallels between between Jesus and Christ, the

top of the hill and the and the arms, the arms raised, the arms

spread wide. That posture of, of prayer.

I I think is very powerful as well.

Did you I can't remember. I wasn't in the room the whole

time. Did you talk about who her was?

Oh. Yeah, OK.

So I did not get into the details of her.

Now scholars are not in total agreement on this but her some

people think HUR by the way, not HERHUR her because.

We have vows in Hebrew. Yes, thank.

You. I'm sorry.

For that. OK, OK, no her.

Some scholars believe that that is Moses's brother-in-law

married to Miriam, who if you remember just a couple weeks

ago, Miriam was the one who grabbed, you know, the

instruments and started leading in the chorus of the song that

we heard in the Prophetess 15 Yeah, she's the prophetess.

She's a big deal. She's a leader in that community

and some scholars believe that her is married to Moses's

sister. So it's not universally agreed

upon. But it would make sense because

you've got Aaron on one side who is his, you know, flesh and

blood brother and a Co leader in the movement of God's people.

And then you've got potentially his brother-in-law who's another

Co leader in that movement along with his wife and probably some

others that are maybe not mentioned.

Yeah, and that would be a further conversation of who?

It doesn't have to literally be your brother and brother-in-law,

but it makes sense that those relationships were closest to

Moses, those in his situation, those are the ones who were

closest to him. So reflect on that.

And, and who are, who are your hand raisers in your life,

right. And you, you said it at the end,

we are the some of those closest to us.

And, and do you have, do you have brothers that go into

battle with you? Do you have brothers that can

hold you accountable? Do you have brothers that can

encourage you? I can't, we can't craft those

relationships necessarily and just say, hey, like go meet this

guy. You should be best friends now.

Like we can't, we can't exactly facilitate that.

But that's ultimately the goal of this faith community, right?

We have, we have layers to this. We have we have the big church,

the whole body Sunday morning, everybody coming trying to

encourage interaction in in small groups, in Bible studies,

life groups, right. And and hopefully out of that,

out of we can, we can kind of facilitate those two things.

We have we have the big tent we got we got the big church, the

big gathering on Sunday. We can also train and equip and

and bring up raise up leaders to lead smaller churches by Bible

studies, small groups in in houses and things like that.

We can't exactly like and and and even that we canmore

facilitate. We can't intentionally craft and

live out the relationships that are in those Bible studies.

Even more so though. Like we're just we're trying to

create context and community for you to come together with like

minded hand raisers, right? Well, and you know, one of the

things that we see in the early church, we had just gone through

the book of Acts not so long ago, but one of the things that

we see in the early church is the church is not what you would

necessarily consider what we see today, the Sunday gathering of

of God's people. What we're seeing is the the 1st

and earliest church is house church.

It's a smaller group of people who all believe that Jesus

Christ is Lord and King has died for their sins.

And so that's how we see the church grow from its infancy is

in house churches because again, too many times we hear the word

church and we think building no, we have to exit that entire idea

out of our brains and say, no, the church is the church is

God's people in movement. And so the church moves and the

church exists in smaller spaces in such a way that more people

can come to meet Jesus Christ and people can form those deeper

accountability relationships with each other.

And they're so, so, so important.

If if ERC has any chance of continuing to reach people with

the gospel and and grow deeper in that, in that faith

relationship, praying with one another, how are we seeing God's

God moving in your life kind of things That's probably not going

to happen on Sunday morning so much.

It's probably going to happen in people's homes.

And so if we're not doing that well, if we're not creating a

system for doing that and building up leaders in their

homes to do that really well. We're probably going to hit our

heads on the ceiling at some point.

And so just from, you know, as I'm speaking to whoever is

listening right now, if, if you feel like God is calling you

into hospitality, if God is calling you to lead a life group

at some point, please don't Shuck that call on your life

because that is going to be the key thing moving forward for us

to continue to grow in community and grow in faith.

That's good, man, It's good. It's important.

You also brought out the importance of of prayer on the

battlefield in our in our daily lives.

A couple thoughts from David Guzik and the enduring word

commentary here, as verses 12 and 13 tell us that Joshua

defeated Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword, so

of course there were practical instruments involved in the

battle here too. But from David Guzik, this

amazing passage shows us the great importance of prayer, life

and death. The course of history itself

depended upon prayer. We can conclude that many times

the people of God are defeated today because they will not pray

or prayer does not support their work.

Every little thing, even the things you feel like you have

figured out, you have under control going smoothly, going

well bathed in prayer. Ask Ascot can continue this.

This feels like the right thing that we're on to here.

God the the household is in order the the kids or the OR the

family or the the jobs going well, whatever it is.

Of course we we run to prayer when those things are falling

apart and we probably run to prayer too late when those

things are falling apart. We have we been praying about

them along the way, but in the good things that you talked

about gratitude yesterday that do do we have God.

This is it feels like I got this life thing figured out.

Thank you. Keep me sustained in this keep

keep me on track for the things that matter, the things of you,

the things I should be investing important time and attention in

prayer. Yeah.

It is that powerful because it's we're it's a release of control,

right? We're we're admitting our lack

of control and power in the situation in the situation and

submitting to God's ultimate sovereignty in it.

Right. You know, one of the things I

find interesting about prayer, and I've lived this out at

various stages of my life, sometimes we can treat prayer,

or I would say lack of. We can kind of treat it this

way. So let's say you have a friend

who, you know, you, you were maybe really good friends at one

point, right? But then because maybe people

move or life gets busy or whatever, you haven't talked to

them in a while, you haven't checked in in a while.

And all of a sudden it feels awkward to text or to call them.

I've, I've had, I have friends like that and a couple people

are coming to mind right now. They need to get a text right

after this. But you know what?

But sometimes, like if we haven't prayed in a while, then

we feel really awkward about going back to God because we're

like, we've got our heads down and all this kind of stuff.

It's almost like the prodigal son.

He's going to come home with his head down.

He's got this big sob story about, I'm really sorry, here's

why, blah, blah. And but we what we need to see

is that if we've been LAX in our prayer life, God just wants to

hear from us. He's not angry, He's not mad,

He's not disappointed. He just wants to hear from his

kids. So for example, if I didn't hear

from one of my two children for six months, I would be really

sad. I would, I would feel

disconnected. That would be my heart would be

broken. But the second, the second they

contacted me, all of that would go away.

I, I forget the last six months, I don't care.

I'm just so happy you're here. I'm so happy we're talking.

I just want to hear from you. And God's posture as a loving

father is not different. He just wants to hear from his

kids. That's so good man, you're still

preaching. He could have gone 40 minutes

yesterday. But that's what the pods for,

too. Yeah.

And that's that posture of our Heavenly Father, too.

Yeah. Just wants to hear from his kids

man. It's so important.

That preaches. You heard it right here to tag

to tag on to that. I love this thought from Charles

Spurgeon too, of I think I think prayer is powerful enough to to

move mountains and and to do the things.

But also we see it. We see it drawn out in this as

much as Moses was praying, as much as that was affecting the

battle, Charles Spurgeon points out.

Nevertheless, Joshua had to fight.

Praying Moses did not eliminate what Joshua had to do.

The battle was won with prayer, but also through normal

instruments, the work of the army led by Joshua.

Prayer is a downright mockery if it does not lead us into the

practical use of means likely to promote the ends for which we

pray. It's that it's that it's that

Holy Spirit magic I feel like we've talked about in the past,

right? It's this isn't a prey and

sprinkle the fairy dust on a situation sort of thing and

watch the spirit work that we're we're still called to do right

there. There's still action.

Yes, some situations are wildly entirely out of our out of our

control. Yes, we cannot.

I think of medical situations and health situations,

especially like bathe those situations in prayer.

Absolutely. There's there's maybe not

something for us to practically do other than maybe being

present and and bathing that situation in prayer and and and

doing that. But other things like, oh man,

God, I just, I feel like I'm not, I'm not in the place of, of

my job. I got, I got like 4 calls for

interviews this week, but like haven't, haven't gotten the sign

from you yet of I just, I don't know what to do.

No, the do was was you're frustrated, your job take one of

those interviews. Like we still got to, we still

got to do it right. Yeah, there's a, there's a funny

illustration that I heard years ago that I think correlates

nicely with what you're talking about, which it kind of goes

like this. So there's this tremendous flood

and somebody is on the roof of their house and a boat floats by

and they're like, hey, and and this person has been on the roof

of their house praying for God to do a miracle so that they

don't die on the roof of the house.

So a boat floats by and the guy's like, Nope, Nope, I'm

good. God's going to do something

great here. And then a helicopter comes

down. They're like, Hey man, like

climb the ladder, like we're going to save you.

And he's like, Nope, God's going to do something great.

And the man ends up dying. He, he floods out and it's like,

no, God works through these seemingly quote UN quote normal

means of human activity to answer our prayers.

And so like, let's participate, let's get involved.

Let's jump in the boat when God provides the boat, right?

So I, I think that's one of those things.

But that's what you were talking about yesterday about the, about

the being present in, in the, in the moment things too, like,

yes, of course, the, the home moments with people that are

close to us, but like eyes open, ears open, aware of of these,

yes, quote UN quote, normal practical situations that are in

fact God's provision. God, God, we've it's again.

I, I said it last week and I didn't want to, I didn't want to

poo poo like the miraculous nature of our God, because he of

course he acts in that way, but I think he acts in very just

normal. Every we, we romanticize or or

Hollywood defy these, these things where it's going to be

like this amazing wall. Didn't even see that coming.

No, I think a lot of the time it's things we could have seen

coming and just didn't step out in faith or even just regular

reason. Didn't step into the boat,

didn't climb the ladder like we could have, and we just didn't

care to be present for God's provision.

Oh my gosh, it's, it's kind of ridiculous.

But you know, the participation in what God is doing both in

prayer and physically speaking, that combo package is the entire

book of James, right? So, you know, James, James does

a great job, I think, of pulling out.

And again, we're talking about Jesus's half brother, right?

So James just pulls out like the nature and the importance of us

participating in God's mission in very real ways.

That's so good, this final thing.

I don't think you drew this out too much.

The the Lord is my banner. I.

Didn't get to it at all. That could have also been a

great closing. Well, I mean, it was, there's a

lot you could, you could have a lot of different ways you could

have gone with this, but this, this kind of promise that there

will be ongoing battle, but that the Lord is the one who fights

for me. Like that's what's contained in

the closing verses of this chapter, right?

Moses knew his prayer was important.

He wasn't foolish enough to think that he himself won the

battle. Of course it was God's working

and also within it like this is a battle.

This wasn't the war, right? It wasn't death wasn't done and

defeated in in and and in that way.

There's another Jesus parallel there too, that Jesus did

ultimately finish the war against sin and death.

Yes, we are in the already, not yet still afflicted in a world

of sin, but Jesus was the ultimate victor, right?

Absolutely. And The thing is, I, I brought

it out just a little bit yesterday, which is Amalek is

really a metaphor for kind of fleshly sin desires because of

who Esau was and he really lived by his the wants and the desires

of his flesh. Again, read Genesis 25 through

27. You'll catch all of that, but

like when it says the Lord will have war with Amalek from

generation to generation, OK, take that metaphor of the Lord's

going to the Lord is going to have war.

He will be at war with the desires of our flesh for every

generation to come. And he does that through the

power of the Holy Spirit. So when we resist the temptation

of sin inside of our flesh, whether that's pride, whether

that's something deeply physical, whatever that looks

like, that is the Holy Spirit of God going to war against Amalek,

your flesh and your sin, it's true.

So. Yeah, one last thought from

David Guzik on the end here, and I think this answers sometimes

the question of it can be out there of why?

Why does God include? Does God need us?

Why does God include us in his work when it's really Him?

I've heard people ask that before.

Yeah, when it when it's him doing the work.

Why would he include imperfect people in that?

Just a thought from commentator David Guzik here in the Enduring

Word commentary. We sometimes are even more aware

of the power and help of God when we work together with him

than when we are when God does all the work by Himself.

God Yahweh came after the battle with Amalek, not after the dead

Egyptians at the Red Sea. He was He was still.

He did provide a way in the Red Sea and was also not now He's

he. He saw it.

They witnessed it, right? They saw the faithfulness.

They saw his power. Now he's inviting them in to

experience it right? OK, we we power of prayer, the

supernatural spirit working and and victor.

But now, now you're in it. Now you're a part of it, right?

It's super fun. I have to.

I don't think you're probably in here for maybe this part of the

sermon. I wonder when we're talking

about participation. I gave this off the cuff

illustration about, you know, parents.

It's actually more loving to let your kids do the dishes with

you. They're not going to be.

But I mean, like, practically speaking, I wonder how many kids

went home and got to help with the dishes yesterday.

I hope a lot. I hope a lot because, yeah, just

like a good parent does. God wants us so much to

participate because he loves us and he wants to grow us.

Yeah, delivered from it and then and then now included in the.

Work. And I don't think I said this,

but you've said it in recent weeks, like, you know, if God

has put you in the lifeboat, hey, man, it's time to start

helping some others who are drowning get pulled out of the

water. And I, I love that.

I love how you phrase that. I just think it's, it's gold.

And so, yeah, God wants us to be in the lifeboat, but not just

hanging out in the lifeboat. Like, oh, sweet, I'm safe now.

No man, get on the edge of that boat and start pulling some

people out of the. Water, If you've been rescued,

you're on the rescue team now. That's right, yeah.

That's right. I love that so much.

Yeah, it's great. Cool.

All right, we are. We are rolling along.

We're about halfway through Exodus.

We got a few more weeks getting through this.

Christmas is coming. Christmas reminder, we've got

Ask Me Anything episode in a couple weeks.

You can use any of the electronic forms of

communication. Comment on the show here,

Facebook, text, the church thread.

There's also a physical jar at the connection center if you

want to write a question and and drop it in there.

We'll have an Ask Me Anything episode on November 2nd.

So get us those questions soon and if not, we'll keep them in

the hopper to kind of jump into each episode or store up for

some Christmas Ask Me Anything episodes as well.

So this is fun. Thank you, church.

We value you and your community. We love our church, we love our

people and we're going to continue reaching the one more.

Have a great week.